Episode 11 of my podcast We Defy Augury is up . . . while it's inspired by the new Don Winslow novel "City on Fire," it's more of a clip show-- I run through all the mob tropes in the novel and provide audio examples from famous films.
Another Labor Day, Another Greased Watermelon Water-polo Rugby Match
Yesterday was the end of the season picnic at the Rutgers pool and the end of the season picnic culminates with the greased-watermelon-rugby-water-polo match in the deep end of the pool . . . and it was the usual melee-- no goggles allowed, so everyone's eyes were burning, a few of us (including me) got kicked in the head, lots of dunkings and near drownings, a lack of ability to sweat because your skin gets covered in vaseline, and so much treading water that by the end, it was difficult to pull yourself out of the pool-- but I also noticed something with the dynamic-- the game was seven on seven this year-- kind of small-- and the only people playing are the crew that is my age (around fifty) and our children (and some of our children's friends) and the rest of the eligible pool members-- all the twenty and thirty and forty year olds-- pull up chairs and watch the match . . . we got exactly one new player, a 44 year old named John who was a water polo player-- and he told me after the match "I didn't realize it would be so intense! and I thought I would swim circles around everyone but there are some really good swimmers," which is true because one family is all swimmers and their kids can grab the watermelon and submerge to the bottom of the pool and swim with it, which is pretty much an indefensible play . . . anyway, this gladiatorial event may die (sink and drown) with our generation (and I think this year's match caused me to pass a very small kidney stone, I won't go into further detail on that front).
Graduation Wine
Action-packed Saturday: I took a long bike ride on the tow road (and with the cross country coach, who I ran into on his bike in Johnson Park) and then I drove to Clark with Ian and we bought a used bike because he keeps growing and then I installed some basement window well covers-- I should have done that a long time ago-- and Catherine bought a new coach and chair and then we went to Flounder Brewing for a beer and now we're getting dinner ready and drinking the bottle of wine that the kids and I got many years ago, which was specifically for once Alex graduated and went to college-- and it actually tastes quite good.
Back to School
Total brain fog-- today was some kind of epic Professional Development Day at school (and even though what all the teachers want to do is get set up, figure out lesson plans, talk to people that are teaching the same classes as them, and get ready for the kids . . . but we need to be inspired) so we had two hours of music and dancing and edu-tainer Dr. Adolf Brown, what happened to be at William and Mary at around the same time I was there (but he was obviously making something of himself, attending class and then many levels of graduate school, while I played darts and ping-pong) and though he was a great speaker, his message could have been conveyed in twenty minutes-- basically that the kids are bringing baggage to school and so are the teachers, and we've got to empty our own backpacks and see that the kids are carrying cumbersome weight in their backpacks-- and there was some prop comedy with a mirror and some toilet paper jokes (even though good teachers never have stomach issues-- you get on a schedule and never stary from it . . . one of the reasons I wake up early) and then we had ANOTHER 90 minute meeting after the two hour meeting and then we rounded it out with a department meeting . . . meanwhile, Catherine was moving Alex into his dorm room on Rutgers-Livingston Campus (which is only a mile or two away from our house, so I can certainly do some Rodney Dangerfield back-to-school action) and so I got to check out the finished product once I got out of school, and then we stopped by the high school to see Ian play in the soccer scrimmage (but he had to call for a sub, he's got a pulled stomach muscle-- I told him to rest it) and anyway, I'm definitely feeling old, overwhelmed at school, a kid going to college, another a high school senior . . . but once the students come, everything will sort itself out.
Mafia Redux
If you're looking for a well-written organized crime tale in a different setting than usual (Providence! Like Crimetown!) then check out Don Winslow's new one. City on Fire . . . it's got all the mob tropes-- I'm cataloging them now for my next episode of We Defy Augury . . . but if you're looking for something a little different, try the Italian mobster film Gomorra . . . it's cycles between the quotidian and extreme violence: the ins and outs of illegal toxic waste disposal and trying to make it as a mobbed up tailor and the assassinations and terror that occurred in Italy during the Scampia Feud . . . there's not the romance and drama and fun of Goodfellas and The Godfather, just daily life in the criminal underworld.
Willie Nelson Strikes Again!
My favorite joke of all time-- the Willie Nelson joke-- appeared in one of Adrian McKinty's crime novels, leading to a visit from McKinty himself at SoD . . . now the joke has reared it's ugly (but adorably stoned) head in the new Sedaris memoir, Happy-Go-Lucky . . . which means that Sedaris has to come visit my blog as well.
Double Digits!
I'm proud to announce that I've released TEN episodes of my podcast "We Defy Augury" . . . and I hope I have enough material for many more, as I enjoy making them (although my favorite part-- the weird voice that happens when I explain the purpose of the podcast and the joys of reading and autonomous thinking, over the inspirational music-- is my wife's LEAST favorite part of the show).
Nothing Says Jersey like a Microbrewery in an Industrial Park
Yesterday my wife and I went to the Jersey Cyclone Brewing Company-- which, like Cypress Brewery is located in a weird industrial park-- but unlike Cypress, Cylcone Brewery has a spacious tasting room with tables, booths, and a large bar- the beer is decent, but nothing to write home about . . . as far as local breweries go, I still like Flounder Brewery the best (both for it's excellent and various beers and the pastoral setting).
Some Deets
Yesterday's sentence was vague, Yoda-esque, and boring-- so here's a bit more detail: yesterday, Ian and I took off for Hamilton, New Jersey at 6:50 AM so he could take the SAT at Trenton Catholic because there were no seats available for the test near us; I dropped him off at 7:35 AM and they admitted him into the testing facility; I then when and played pickleball with my brother at Veteran's Park-- which was only a few miles away-- and this was elite pickleball competition, in fact, they wanted me to "try-out" to play with them, but my brother vouched for me-- and then my brother and I beat nearly everyone there so there were no longer concerns about my skill level-- then I went to my brother's place and Amy made me a sandwich and gave me some watermelon- and then I headed over to the school to pick Ian up, and I parked in the lot, got out of the car, and wandered and stretched . . . and I put my tennis shoes and socks on the hood so they could dry out and not stink up the car . . . and there was no sign of the test ending, though it was supposed to be a 3 hour test with one fifteen minute break-- but now we were going on noon and they were supposed to start at eight AM so it should have been over but it went on and on . . . I reparked the car on the road in a shady spot, I got really annoyed with all the people sitting in their cars, idling, making me breathe all kinds of fumes while I wandered around, but they sat on their phones in the AC, burning fossil fuels, and the kids didn't get out until nearly 1 PM and Ian was starving, so we stopped at Wendy's and he got some ridiculous chicken sandwich with fried pickles and honey habanero and bacon and then I went over Stacey's house for Ed's birthday, ate BBQ, played cornhole and lawn darts-- lawn darts made for a very long and boring game to 7-- and I just think the SAT is not equitable, normal, or useful-- there should be some hour long test that every kid takes in school and that should be enough.
My Dog is Panting
We are past the "dog days" of summer-- those occur in late July, when the dog star Sirius appears to rise alongside the sun-- but it still feels like the dog days (and I'm ready for some other kind of day, where you need to wear a sweatshirt).
Altercation at the Tennis Court!
My buddy Cob and I went to play tennis this morning at Johnson Park, and the girl's tennis team was practicing-- taking up a few courts-- and then some older ladies were playing doubles on two of the four remaining courts . . . so we walked over to the far court and one of the older ladies ran onto it and said, "we have this court reserved-- some of our friends are coming at 10" and it was ten after nine and so I told her:
1) this is a public park and the courts are first come first serve;
2) you can't "reserve" courts unless you have a park permit . . . like the tennis team;
and she got very sassy with me and said that she was going to stand on the court and play singles with her friend-- even though all these people do is play very bad old people doubles and I dismissed her and told her to stop being absurd and that I was the varsity tennis coach and knew how the courts worked-- and she said, "well you don't know who I am!" and I said, "No I don't, but I'm telling you who I am" and I told her my name and my position with the school and told her this wasn't like a parking space where you could stand in it for fifty-minutes to hold it for some friends (though I doubt the legality of that move as well) and then Cob and I started warming up and the ladies went back to their doubles game, this lady muttering stuff, and it turned out that more people never showed up and the three courts were plenty for them and then she came over and apologized and told me that I was right and she was wrong and that she was a territorial old bitch . . . NOT . . . despite the fact that they didn't need the court and they all stopped playing before Cob and I because it was hot, she did NOT apologize for her juvenile behavior . . . so obnoxious.
Dr. Moreau, What Have You Wrought?
I enjoyed Silvia Moreno-Garcia's The Daughter of Doctor Moreau so much that I went ahead and read the original, the novel her book is based upon-- The Island of Doctor Moreau by H.G. Wells-- and I enjoyed that quite a bit as well; the latter is very much a thriller in the vein of Jurassic Park: there's an island inhabited by monstrosities that have been created by a man playing God with Nature-- but Moreno-Garcia writes a much more subtle love story, putting Moreau's hybrids in the context of the Mexican Caste War . . . both books have in common the theme of freakiness, the emotions a freak of nature evokes, and how freaks will band together and find more of their own and create their own society.
The Only Way to Make it Through a Colonoscopy: TikTok
I survived my colonoscopy today-- and last night's utterly disgusting colonoscopy prep-- and I will NOT be doing this procedure again for a long time . . . though Dr. Plumser wants me to come back in three years because some of the colon viewing was "suboptimal"-- but I had no polyps at all and he just couldn't see inside some fold because of stool residue-- although I don't know how anything was left in there after last night's purge-- yuck-- and the procedure wasn't too bad . . . a lot of lying around I a gown and I got my first IV in my life (I didn't look) and when they give you that anesthesia, wow do you pass out quickly . . . it's pretty bizarre-- but now I'm eating food again and drinking coffee and perhaps I'll eat a full meal tonight, but I think I'll do the mail-in version next time (since I don't have a family history of colon cancer) especially because I was so bored last night, just walking back and forth to the bathroom, downing the gross liquid laxative, that I downloaded TikTok and I can see why that app is so addictive-- if you're sleep deprived and too distracted to read or watch TV, those short videos really pass the time.
Colonoscopy Humor
This sentence is going to be a little hazy because I'm fasting for my colonoscopy tomorrow morning-- but I've gotten lots of advice from people who have been through this (most of it too gross to print) and I went to acupuncture today and she told me a story about anesthesia and Pink Floyd and I told her I was wearing a "Dark Side of the Moon" shirt and she said I should wear that shirt tomorrow for my colonoscopy, as it would be very appropriate.
Back to Reality . . .
I'm still a little dazed from our beach vacation-- lots of pickleball, tennis, spikeball, eating, drinking, and young male hijinks . . . including poker on the beach in a hole-- so I'll cut the sentence short and let the pictures do the talking.
Weather is Everything
Finally, some decent weather . . . high 70s and East winds down in Sea Isle, I finished "Nemesis Games," the fifth book in the Expanse series and this one is very similar to the show, we played tennis and basketball and spikeball and pickleball without sweating profusely, Alex finished Dark Matter so we got to talk through all the silliness of that book and compare it to Primer, Dom and Connell have been staying up late every night, we saw LeCompt, meatballs and pulled pork we're great, kids have been getting along and haven't gotten in too much trouble, lots of jamming in the house, etcetera, all the normal beach vacation stuff but with better weather.
Boys are Gross
We were about to get an early start to Sea Isle City yesterday-- the car fully packed, bikes on the rack, chairs on the roof-- when we noticed that not only had we packed everything and the kitchen sink, but we had also packed a strange pungent odor; after some pit-smelling and other investigation, Alex admitted he had not showered in a day and the stink was coming from him . . . so he ran inside and took a quick shower while we got egg sandwiches, and then the four of us were able to exist in a confined space for the two hour ride.
Dark Matter . . . Read It Quickly
If you're looking for a fun, thrilling, and kind of ridiculous "many worlds" quantum multiverse sci-fi book that explores the road not taken . . . and lots of other roads-- and lots of alternate versions of yourself clogging up these roads and creating all kinds of paradoxical problems, then read Dark Matter by Blake Crouch . . . it's fast-paced for a reason . . . if you think about it too hard, then the premise disintegrates into a quantum cloud.
Preemptive Plumbing
Today, for the first time in my life, I visited a gastroenterologist-- aptly named Dr. Plumser-- and when he asked why I was visiting, I said, "For a preemptive colonoscopy?" and he said he had never heard it phrased that way and he liked that reason-- and then he told me about polyps and percentages and preparations for the big event (which will happen after our week at the beach . . . perhaps I will clean out all the toxins from vacation).
Preemptive Cream
Today, for the first time in my life, I visited the dermatologist and when the doctor-- Dr. Penelope Cohen, a little lady who wore a doctor's gown and red high-heeled shoes-- asked me why I had scheduled an appointment, I told her "my wife told me to" and she said, "that's what most men your age who come here say" and then she prescribed me some cream for a spot on my face that is sun-damaged so it doesn't turn into cancer-- so I'm glad I went.
Hot Peppers, Homer Simpson, and Some Annoying News
My wife's garden has been producing an abundance of hot peppers and we needed to do something with them before they decayed in the crisper, so I cut them, deseeded them, and roasted them on the grill-- it was too hot to do them in the kitchen (honestly, it was too hot to do them on the grill-- it was 95 degrees yesterday) but I did not wear gloves when I cut the peppers and my hands got covered in capsaicin and they burned and burned, though I washed them . . . and I took a bike ride to the pool and swam a few laps but that didn't help either-- in fact, they burned even more-- and it turns out that Homer Simpson was right, as "alcohol . . . the cause of and solution to all of life's problems" would have remedied the pain (and, in not so great news, I also read about a recent study that found that people who drink more than five alcoholic drinks a week have shorter telomeres and thus are aging faster than those that drink less . . . dammit, so much for the "pickling yourself" theory).
Outer Banks Fishing Trip XXIX
Here are a few things I remember from OBFT XXIX:
1) manatee sighting;
2) Bruce gave a heartfelt speech and then we took turns scattering some of Johnny's mortal remains into the bosom of the Atlantic Ocean . . . and luckily the wind was blowing the right direction so there were no Lebowski moments;
3) sea turtle nest next to the dune, so we were chastised for being "in the direct line" between the turtle eggs and the ocean-- I could hear David Attenborough's voice describing the difficult journey the baby turtles make from under the sand and into the ocean, trying to avoid the drunken middle age men, the beer cans, and the flying cornhole bags . . . unfortunately, the eggs did not hatch while we were there, but we did get to watch the volunteers rake the sand and build a little walled runway for the turtles;
4) Ethan told an excellent joke about a party that was going to have some "drinking, dancing, fighting and fucking" . . . I can't wait to tell it;
5) Paci spoke in a German accent for thirty-five minutes straight;
6) Gormley spoke in tongues on Wednesday night at Whitney's new place . . . and Billy made the mistake of staying up late with him;
7) Whitney was in the middle of a move-- so while we enjoyed the pool in Norfolk, he was running around trying to figure out task rabbit chores, prices of furniture, and other real estate minutia;
8) Whitney's canopy withstood the wind, mine did not . . . and then I forgot it;
9) Whitney and I played a live version of our tribute song "Where's Johnny?"
10) plenty of stinging jellyfish in the water (mainly in the mornings) so Marston offered to drink a lot of beer so he could pee on anyone who was stung . . . maybe next year he'll get his chance;
11) Charlie Carter cooked an amazing meal of tuna and beef tenderloin and Fernandez brought down a bunch of high quality sliced smoked meats-- chorizo and salami and such-- and some really good bread and cheese . . a whole charcuterie!
12) we filled the bar at Tortuga's on Friday, including the panhandle-- and we were NOT shushed;
13) much cornhole was played on the beach-- I had good runs with Old, Marston, and Smokin' Joe;
14) Mac thought I might like a band called Ice 9 Kills-- perhaps because the lead singer holds various weapons (including a chainsaw) while singing, but I informed him they were a little heavy for my taste now, and that I was listening to a lot of Steely Dan;
15) Mac and Whit played a drunken game of drunk driver;
16) Whitney engineered a compelling song connection/trivia night on the deck on Saturday;
17) Z was played on Friday;
18) we got salad with our pizza Saturday night;
19) I believe a good time was had by all . . . thanks again Whitney (and everyone involved) for organizing, traveling, and making this happen-- we've been doing this for more our half our lives now!
Two Recs
Two good things:
1) Jordan Peele's new movie Nope . . . it's Moby Dick, Jaws, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind all rolled up into one story . . . with horses too!
2) Spice 24-- a dry pot stir fry place in the H-Mart plaza . . . my wife and I both loved it and I think the kids will too, it's an authentic version of Honeygrow: you get to choose what goes in your stir fry from numerous options (from baby octopus to black mushrooms to bean sprouts) and everything we got was delicious . . . although I don't recommend biking there, which is what we did-- it was really hot and hilly (although the straight shot home on 27 wasn't so bad).
Rain!
I'm not sure I'd like living in a place where it rains all the time-- Pittsburgh or Rochester or Seattle-- but we've had quite a dry stretch in central New Jersey and it gets depressing-- all the plants are brittle, the ground is dusty, and I feel like I'm always about to sneeze . . . so it was nice to have a damp, dark, rainy day (and we could finally take the dog for a long walk) and I hope we get a couple more of these before the end of summer.
Mean Streets and Not-So-Mean Streets
I couldn't find my car keys this morning but we solved the mystery-- Ian left them in the car door last night . . . and the van was parked on the street-- a street where cars are occasionally broken into-- so it was something of a miracle that the car was trashed, stolen, taken for a joy ride, or something worse . . . but we don't live on streets as mean as those I detail in the new episode of We Defy Augury: Ghettoside vs. Murderbot . . . check it out, it's my best one yet.
Back from the Beach
A fun but slightly fraught family beach vacation-- Alex never made it down, he kept testing positive for COVID and he didn't want to risk passing it to my father or the two pregnant cousins-- but the rest of us had a good time (despite the frigid water temperatures) playing pickle ball, basketball, tennis, cornhole, and spikeball . . . Greg and I defended our cornhole title (despite the presence of his wife) and that will be it for us-- you get one year to defend your title in the random draw cousins event, so next year we will both be back in the pool . . . because of the cold water, I did a lot of reading on the trip-- I finished Jonathan Franzen's new novel Crossroads, The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era by Gary Gerstle, and Last Orgy of the Divine Hermit by Mark Leyner (and I started Tracy Flick Can't Win by Tom Perrotta . . . in other news, my brother got engaged to his longtime girlfriend Amy (and all things being equal, my dad-- while toasting them-- also mentioned the cornhole champions) so we're adding another wedding to the mix (a bunch of the cousins are getting married and there are two babies on the way, so next year's trip will have a different tenor) and while it's good to be home and see Alex and Lola again, there's nothing like the ocean breeze at the Jersey Shore and it's going to be really fucking hot all week inland (but at least I'm headed down to OBFT in a few days).
No Swimmin'
Interesting beach week so far: Alex tested positive for COVID the night before we left-- luckily, he hasn't been around much, he's been working and hanging out with friends so none of us contracted it-- we all tested negative-- but he's home alone, hanging out with his buddy Aidan-- who also has COVID-- and hoping to test negative soon and get down to the beach; he hasn't missed much as far as the ocean, it was frigid yesterday -- 56 degrees Fahrenheit . . . to whom do I complain?-- and today there's a red flag up because of rip currents; Ian and I played some tennis yesterday, but we were beset by green-head flies and high heat and humidity; today we had an excellent three-on-three basketball game . . . Ian, who is really just learning to play again, is now the big man! until his brother shows up . . . tomorrow we're going to try to play some pickleball and hopefully the ocean will stop being so cold and angry.
The Tattoos They are A-Changin'
Long ago, I wanted to get a tattoo on my back of the great undersea battle: sperm whale vs. giant squid, but They Might Be Giants released "Apollo 18" and I didn't want to be second fiddle to an album cover . . . yesterday I realized (while my wife shaved my back) that if I get a tattoo on my back now, it would have to be some kind of dark-haired mammal, like a bear or a moose or a musk ox, so my back hair would not ruin the aesthetic.
Sherlock Holmes in Space
If you're looking for a locked-room-type whodunnit set in the far future, in the vast reaches of space, on a space station, with a robot detective, then check out Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells . . . especially the parentheticals when Murderbot gets annoyed by humans (and their habits of touching everything and throwing balls where they are not supposed to throw balls).
It's Still Hot, But We're Out In It
I played tennis this morning with my buddy Cob and-- because of the extreme heat-- we were the only people on the courts playing singles . . . it may have been ill-advised, but we took plenty of breaks and we survived; Ian worked eight hours at the tennis camp; Alex worked eight hours life-guarding; and Catherine went to her garden and did maintenance there; I also grilled a bunch of hot peppers (on our outdoor gas grill) so we could freeze them: the combination of the heat, the sun, and the grill added up a an inferno on our back porch . . . so we're soldiering on in this weather but without the respite of A/C I would lose all my energy, my mind, and my ability to complete any tasks . . . I'm not sure how people are surviving who don't have it.
It's Hot
Stacey gave me a ride home in her jeep from our college writing workshop today (we got so much work done! I actually did some work in the summertime!) and riding in the jeep with the top down is generally a treat: the sun on my head, the breeze blowing through my (lack of) hair . . . but it was so hot today that it felt like we were driving in a pizza oven.
Sleep Comes and Goes
Everyone knows when you have a newborn in the house, you're going to be sleep deprived; soon enough they sleep through night and things are restful again . . . but what they don't tell you is that when they turn eighteen, you go through the same thing all over again-- but this time around, you're old and amazed at all the energy a human can have at 2:30 AM in the morning.
Dave Finishes Two Things
I just finished making Episode 5 of We Defy Augury: "The Foundling by Ann Leary: Eugenics on the Beach?" and I just finished reading Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America by Jill Leovy, which will definitely inspire another episode-- this is a book that turns policing and violent crime on its head-- it's about a particular murder of a policeman's son in South Central LA; the causes and misperceptions of gang violence; the kind of policing necessary to combat the high murder rates among black males; and the reasons murder rates in certain areas stay persistently high . . . tragic but highly recommended.
As Usual . . .
One of the recurring themes of this blog is that I think I am sore from doing some oddball exercise (this time: deadlifts) but then it turns out I have a virus-- this time it's a weird stomach bug that I got from my wife: no diarrhea, thank God, but bloating and burping and generally feeling a little run down and sick and glassy-eyed . . . hopefully it will be gone tomorrow (and it's definitely not a kidney stone, which I wondered about last night when I couldn't sleep because my stomach hurt).
Post Deadlift Blues
Ian and I had some fun doing trap bar deadlifts yesterday at the gym-- the trap bar makes deadlifts much easier to execute . . . which might not be such a good thing, now my entire body is sore.
Post Beach Blues
The day after a beach day is always a bit depressing-- it's so hot and dry in central Jersey right now- and while I did bike to the pool and swim a few laps, it's not the same as a foggy chilly breeze off the ocean . . . unfortunately, beach real estate is through-the-roof, perhaps because of this work-from-home thing that has freed rich people from living in urban centers . . . boo to that.
Bloodhound at the Beach?
Lovely (and fairly typical) beach day in Asbury Park with Stacey, Cunningham, Chantal and my wife-- but one odd moment when we were walking through the convention center: a policeman with a retired bloodhound ordered Stacey and I to get "cheek to cheek" with the dog for a picture; we obeyed, of course, he was wearing a uniform and the dog was too cute . . . and so we have this priceless pic to show for it.
A Beach Read . . . About Eugenics?
The Foundling, by Ann Leary, is billed as a summer beach read and it meets those specifications: while there's no sun or sand in the novel-- it's quite gothic-- it's definitely a vacation for your brain, especially the second half, which has a very compelling escape plot, reminiscent of Shawshank Redemption; the book is an easy read, on the one hand, especially for historical fiction (the setting in a woman's asylum in Pennsylvania in 1927, the Nettleton State Village for Feebleminded Women of Childbearing Age) but on the other hand, the book brings up some difficult questions about eugenics, morality, who should be institutionalized, corruption, power authority, religion, woman's rights, and racism . . . but only in the first half of the novel-- then it just gets beachier and beachier.
Oddly Liberating
This morning my son Alex took the book bag with my phone in it and Ian took the car with my wallet in it so I had no phone or money so I took a nap.
Sharks and Lantern Flies Menace the East Coast
Yesterday, my wife went over our friends' house (Lynn and Connell) to help them plant some milkweed-- because apparently milkweed poisons spotted lantern-flies and Lynn and Connell have an epic spotted lantern-fly infestation, mainly because they live on a cliff right above the Raritan River . . . a great view of New Brunswick from their back deck but also plenty of tree-of-heaven, the weedy river bush that lantern-flies love-- so they were waging chemical and biological warfare, which involved climbing out onto the ledge above the cliff, clearing brush and small trees, and planting the milkweed-- and it was hot yesterday and they were all wearing long sleeves and pants to avoid poison ivy and I guess they were working for quite a while, sawing at trees and removing ivy and weeds and bushes and planting the milkweed, and Connell got out his little chainsaw to cut down one particular tree and clambered down onto the cliff, on a little ledge above the river, and my wife was working away and not paying attention to much else-- she was in the zone-- when Lynn, who was up above, yelled to her that Connell wasn't responding and she didn't know what was going on-- so Catherine climbed over to where Connell was sitting and he was lights out, pale as a ghost and unresponsive-- but luckily, we just took a First Aid course, so she didn't lose her shit . . . she shook him and talked to him until she finally got a response-- but she was ready to do some serious CPR-- and she directed Lynn, who was up top, to call 911 . . . the police were there in no time, and Connell came to and she ascertained that he hadn't eaten or drank anything that morning and then started working in heavy clothing in the hot sun-- so she made him drink some water (and poured some on him) and Lynn lowered him down some food and the police helped get him off the cliff-- Connell was annoyed that they had called 911 but Catherine was like, "there's no way I'm getting you off this cliff, if you fall, I'm not going to be able to catch you" and in the end he didn't have to go to the hospital-- it was just a case of heatstroke, but these lantern flies are a serious menace-- we've got civilians clambering around on cliffs with chainsaws getting heatstroke, so perhaps we've got to take Kent Brockman's attitude and welcome our new insect overlords . . . and then my parents told me there's sharks at the Jersey shore-- which I took with a grain of salt, until I looked online, and not only have there been shark sighting, but there was a giant great white just off the coast of Sea Isle City, the beach we are headed to in a couple weeks (but I will not forego my early morning run and swim-- if I'm going to die, then that's how it's going to happen).
Shuffling Around Harlem and Elsewhere
Colson Whitehead's new novel Harlem Shuffle is not as dark and profound as The Underground Railroad but it still explores race and place-- Ray Carney appears to be a straight furniture salesmen to most of the uptown denizens of Harlem-- but he's more crooked than the average person might think (but less crooked than his father and many of the hoods that abound in his neighborhood) and while there's no surreal time-traveling train, the structures of grift, corruption and power are quite different when he pops out of the subway downtown, where the white people are-- the book is a caper tale, a revenge story, an astute take on the duality of human nature, an evocative period piece, and a real page turner, definitely worth a read.
Summer sans Motor Vehicle
Relaxing summer so far: the kids take the cars to their various job so all that's left for me to do is pull my training sled up and down the hill by my house, work on my podcast, watch Wimbledon, bike to the pool, swim a few laps, pass out with a book in a lounge chair, then bike home (my wife seems to have a bunch of other stuff she's occupied with, but I try not to let it interrupt my focus).
Trip to Possumtown!
My wife and I took a road trip to the Possumtown Firehouse last night for what I thought was going to be a two hour CPR class-- I need to update my certificate for coaching-- but the course also included First Aid and the lady running the class was a bit disorganized and a bit tangential, so we were there from 6 PM until nearly 10 PM, learning about tourniquets and nosebleeds and impalements and all kinds of things that make me dizzy-- luckily there was a large couch in the very comfy Possumtown Volunteer Firehouse (the lady's dad was the chief) and this place really had small town firehouse character: a big TV and a kegerator and a soda machine that you could just open and take the soda out and a fish tank with some big fish in it (I watched these fish when the videos got too graphic about blood) and the class was quite intimate, just me, my wife, and a young dude-- it was kind of stream-of-consciousness, with lots of anecdotes from the teacher's EMT experiences and the main thing I learned-- which no other class was so blunt about-- was that you don't need to worry about breaking someone's ribs when you're doing CPR because they are CLINICALLY DEAD . . . once she put it that way, it assuaged a lot of my fears about pressing too hard or whatever, you're literally trying to resurrect someone when you're doing those compressions (and we always have an AED nearby when I coach, so hopefully that machine will do the trick . . . although if someone like me goes down, you'll need the razor in the accessory kit top deal with my excessive chest hair).
Youngsters are Cute . . . But F%$% 'em
Youngsters ARE cute-- as evidenced by the baby raccoon that Lola and I saw cavorting in a tree at the park-- and they the future, of course, but I was still happy to see Novak Djokovic come back from two sets down against the young Jannik Sinner and watch Nadal finish off Taylor Fritz, who is more than ten years his junior . . . I've talked to quite a few people who are sick of seeing those old pros win over and over (with the possibility of a Federer return?) but I'm rooting for them-- because when they start losing, it means we're all that much closer to obscurity and death.
Impressive Stuff
Impressive amount of people at the Rutgers pool yesterday for Fourth of July; impressive amount of meats served, not so impressive performance by Alec and I in the balloon toss (I blame the overfilled balloon), very impressive amounts of lantern fly nymphs on the trees, tables, and one old guy; impressive amount of fireworks on display from Connell's back deck-- perhaps we could see displays from North Brunswick, South Brunswick, Milltown, Sayreville and Somerville but it was hard to tell . . . Cat and I returned home stuffed and tired and I was glad to get back to the routine today: I went to the gym, then biked to the pool-- which was empty-- did some laps, passed out on a lounge chair while reading my book, woke up and biked home (I don't understand how people bike enormous distances-- my butt hurts when I ride a few miles).
Right on the Note
No irony at our town fireworks display last night: they blasted Katy Perry's song "Firework" as the shit blew up-- and some nine-year-old behind me remarked, "this song is perfect for this."
Sort of Relaxing Saturday
It could have been a relaxing Saturday . . . but I got up early and did some work on my new podcast-- it's called We Defy Augury, I'm looking for guests, and it's up and running-- you just have to read something you've read and talk about what the reading makes you think about-- and then I played 90 minutes of two-on-two basketball with my older son and a couple guys at the Piscataway Y, and then I collapsed on the couch-- ostensibly to relax and watch some Wimbledon . . . but the featured match was Nick Kyrgios vs. Stefano Tsitsipas and it was NOT relaxing-- I was really rooting for Tsitsipas and he was trying his best to deal with Kyrgios's antics but Kyrgios spent the entire match bickering with the line judge and talking to himself like a lunatic and playing at a breakneck pace (and serving the hell out of the ball) and while Tsitsipas had his chances, he just couldn't break Kyrgios's menacing serve.
The Joy of Joy
I'm starting to understand Joy Williams a bit more-- I just finished The Quick and the Dead and her fragmented moments and motifs are starting to make sense; Annabel, Alice, and Corvus are three precocious girls linked by grief-- all of them have lost parents to terrible tragedy-- and they wander through a nameless desert town-- volunteering at a grim nursing home, forging strange relationships with older people, navigating a big game hunter's taxidermy museum . . . and all through, the living and the dead interact, and man and nature push against each other in strange oppressive ways . . . once again, the world is on the verge of something apocalyptic and these girls realize this more than the adults who are blinder by their petty thoughts.
Victory . . . But At What Cost? At What Cost?
I beat Dr. Michael Atkin today at tennis 7-5-- it was a grueling match and I rarely get the best of him (he's the quickest 40 year old this side of the Raritan) and then I had to bike home from the match (because Ian took the van to work) and I saw my wife's car parked on the road but she wasn't in the house or the yard (though the shed was open) and I yelled around to see if she was home, but she wasn't inside-- and then a few minutes later she poked her head in the house and said, "You really didn't see me painting the front porch? You biked right past me? RIGHT past me!" and she was correct-- I didn't see her, or the entire painting set-up-- the match took away all my noticing skills (and I don't have many to begin with) and if the police would have interrogated me I would have swore up and down, on my grandmother's grave, that my wife was NOT in the driveway-- and that's why I don't believe anything anyone says they saw or didn't see because while people may be great at seeing and hitting a bouncy yellow ball, they're not so great at seeing other stuff.
If You Live In Jersey (and Teach) Check This Out
Holy shit . . . my wife saved us a boatload of money by switching from Liberty Mutual Insurance to Teachers Insurance through Plymouth Rock-- she actually thought it was some kind of scam (but it turns out it's less than half the price for the same specs . . . nuts).
Summer Begins?
This morning was going to be the official start of summer relxation for Catherine and me-- school is over, Alex's graduation party successful and complete, the clean-up of Alex's party also successful and complete, plenty of leftover food from the party so no reason to cook, both kids heading out the work at their respective jobs . . . all good stuff, but when I was going down to my study at 5:30 AM to do some recording, I noticed a crazy sound coming from the basement-- I thought it might be coming from an open window in the basement, but it was actually coming from the freezer-- and the freezer door was left WIDE open . . . as wide open as possible, and the condenser fan was frozen and most of the food had defrosted-- and there was a bag of peanut butter squares (leftover dessert from the party) on the counter and the only person who had been down there to eat them was Ian . . . so I had to wake up my wife and wake Ian up and we went into freezer crisis mode-- we filled a cooler with ice, threw what was still frozen into the cooler with some ice, made Ian cook the rest of the defrosted stuff: some ground beef, some ground turkey, and some sausage-- and we'll be having shrimp for dinner tonight because those were totally defrosted-- and then we unplugged the fridge and let the ice melt-- hopefully it will start working again-- and then we settled in to some serious college financial budgeting-- yuck-- and we made a hard decision and canceled HBO MAX (that fifteen dollars a month is really going to help?) but we did not cancel YouTube TV because there are too many upcoming sporting events (and what else are we going to do since we can't go out to eat or go to bars or live events or go on vacation or go shopping or pretty much do anything except pay for college).
What the Hell is a Harrow?
Reading Joy Williams is like scrambling up a muddy embankment . . . but there is no top of the cliff, it's all scrambling; Harrow is set at a cryptic boarding school with strange slogans and then the school closes and then the main character Khristen-- if you could call her that-- finds herself in an odd post-apocalyptic world, a world that has gone beyond the "verge" that we've been at for so long and falls into a slightly more chaotic state-- there are strange episodes at a bowling alley, where a cake with a depiction of Goya's Saturn Devouring His Son offends a youngster, and then a long strange section about seditious geriatrics living around a toxic lake, plotting revenge against ecologically corrupt humans . . . but these plans come to naught, raising the question: why aren't old people more violent and rebellious? they've got nothing to lose, right? . . . I think Joy Williams might be a modern-day Kafka, and she refers to him-- I don't think this book is her best work-- I was more compelled by The Changeling and now I'm making my way through The Quick and the Dead and that one has some roots and rocks in the mud to hang on to, but it does feel a bit like reading Pynchon, except the vocabulary is right there and easier to ascertain and comprehend-- each sentence a little masterpiece, but how do you connect them together . . . or should you?
The Slow Decay of Summer Begins!
We had a successful graduation party for Alex yesterday-- Catherine did SO much preparation-- salsa bar, three kinds of taco meats, gorditas, chorizo-stuffed peppers, centerpieces, photo decorations, Rutgers decorations, lots of tables and chairs-- and it was the first time we've seen both her brothers in the same location for quite a while . . . a good time was had by all and Alex and Ian were wonderful, social and helpful and appreciative (even though Alex has some kind of sinus congestion and feels like shit . . . they were much better than I was at those kinds of events when I was in high school-- in fact, they're probably better than I am now) and now we can stop cleaning the house and fixing stuff and let the slow decay of summer begin!
People Dreamed of Ohio
I read David McCullough's The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West on my Kindle, in dreamish fragments, late at night when I could not sleep-- and this dreamlike state is appropriate for a place that stern New Englanders warned about-- they didn't want folks to fall prey to "Ohio Quixotism," but according to McCullough, after some initial despair and violence and death-- due to war between the settlers and the Native American tribes-- things settled down and became heroically civil, especially in Marietta-- the center of the narrative-- and education and experimentation and agriculture and society ruled the day, and all this without slavery, and eventually, the trains and the riverboats connected Ohio to many other parts of the country but this is a great reminder of what occurred before these modern technologies-- and while McCullough doesn't focus on this, also what civilization was lost when the settlers moved in and displaced the indigenous people . . . the book really does get across what an epic and wild and life-changing adventure it was to travel what is now a day's journey by car-- back then it was a place from which you might never return.
Softball Drivers
There's a big softball tournament in the park by my house and some softball parent from South Jersey passed out at the wheel of her Jeep, barrelled through the wood barrier in the parking lot, and knocked the community garden fence down-- and she was headed straight for my wife's garden!-- luckily, her car stopped and a county employee ran over, turned the car off, and got her out of the vehicle . . . apparently she didn't eat breakfast.
Still in the Ending Mode
The End is Nigh (Or Is It The Beginning?)
Alex graduated yesterday-- a lovely ceremony on the front lawn of Highland Park High School-- and then he went to Project Graduation (an event at the Woodbridge Community Center from 10 PM to 4 AM) and so he was coming home when I was leaving this morning for early morning badminton-- pretty weird-- and after my stupid penultimate day of school (a random A day with nothing to do until graduation practice) I came home to a million projects-- my wife is getting the house ready for Alex's graduation party on Saturday, so I shouldn't be writing this sentence, I should be sanding or scraping or fixing the bike shed or something (plus I've got to pick Ian up from work-- he started as a tennis instructor today-- we have four drivers and two cars this summer, so that's going to be kind of nuts until we figure out the schedule).
A Great Father's Day Weekend
Saturday was the big $25 dollar a head random draw cornhole tournament at my cousin Tim's father-in-law's house in North Brunswick and while I was hoping to win two tournaments in a row, it was not to be-- I thought my partner, Manny, might have some potential but after the first round, he couldn't put a bag on the board, but the tournament turned out well anyway, especially for Father's Day weekend-- as both my kids were playing (I subsidized their fee, with the promise that they would pay me back if they won money) and they ended up placing second and third-- Ian was playing with a guy named Chad, who was a North Brunswick alum a year younger than me-- and they eventually lost to Alex's team-- Alex drew the same partner as last year (who might be Manny's brother?) and while he was a disaster last year, this year his guy figured out how to put a few on the board and Alex was on fire-- I had to square off against him and we lost a tight one, which was fine with me, because then Alex and Ian had to play in the semi-finals and they had a close match but most importantly-- the best Father's Day gift-- they were totally civil and didn't get into a fist fight-- so they both made some cash and I got $50 of the $75 I laid out for all of us to play, a win/win, and then I had a wonderful Father's Day-- the kids gave me a framed picture of the tennis team, perhaps the last time I coach both of them together (although we've been playing some pick-up basketball at the park and I still have to tell them where to go) and this is all a reminder that I'm a very lucky dad, with a beautiful loving wife and two athletic healthy kids (and a fairly well-behaved dog) and I've got to remember to enjoy that.
In the Money
Another fabulous EBHS end-of-the-year party: the Victory beer was free, the pool was warm, and Kristyn and I finally won the corn-hole tournament-- we usually make it to the finals, and then-- because we have over-served ourselves on free beer-- we collapse . . . but not this time!
Two Things I Learned Late in Life
Here are two things I learned very recently:
1) leftover wings are delicious if you reheat them on the grill;
2) when you're in the shower and you depress one nostril with your index finger and shoot snot out the other nostril, even if you aim for the drain, the snot might end up on your body so if you don't spray yourself thoroughly after you do this, you might get out of the shower with some snot on you.
It Took A While
My brother, an accomplished jazz pianist, has always sung the praises of Steely Dan, but I never got it-- until today, in the car . . . I put on "Aja" and I really dug it, so you never know when your taste will change (and unless you go back to stuff, you'll really never know if your taste changes).
Am I This Guy? I Guess So
As an adult, at some point while reading a sci-fi series, you ask yourself:
"Am I really the kind of person who reads an entire sci-fi series?"
and I'm at that point with Cibola Burn, the fourth book in the Expanse series by James S.A. Corey-- this was my favorite season of the TV show and the book fills in a lot of gaps-- a LOT of gaps . . . it's a bit interminable in spots, but there's also so much good stuff: the protomolecule built a ring gate that gives humans access to thousands of worlds across the galaxy, and this book is mainly set on New Terra, a planet that seems habitable and rich in lithium and other resources . . . but it's not habitable at all- there are conflicts between colonists/squatters and official security, there are poisonous slime worms and blindness inducing bacteria, there is ancient technology built by the protomolecule which is starting to awake, there are volcanoes and storms and technologically crippling defense systems . . . so it was a lot of fun, but also LONG, long enough that I wanted to get back to some quality non-fiction or something . . . I will say it's a better fourth book than the fourth one in the Game of Thrones series-- and I was asking myself the same question-- am I really this kind of guy?-- but I forged on and the fifth book was better (I think there are a couple more books slated to come out soon, I'm going to need a recap) and so I might continue on with this Expanse series, I love the characters and all the hard sci-fi stuff, though I think the action scenes could be pared down and so, despite the fact that I'm a grown-ass man, I might be the kind of grown-ass man that finishes an epic sci-fi series.
It's Been a Day, A Birth Day . . .
Today is my younger son's seventeenth birthday, and he was scheduled for his driving test at 11 AM . . . but first, he needed to attend a training for his summer job as a tennis instructor at the Rutgers Prep camp (with the affable curmudgeon Ted Ransom) and we borrowed our friend's car for the driving test because you need a vehicle with an emergency brake in between the seat-- which is rare in new cars, so most people just pay the driving school to use their car, which is a total scam-- anyway, I was slated to do all this stuff with the birthday boy, but first we had an early appointment with Steve the Appliance Doctor-- and his prognosis on our stove was not good, we need a $500 valve to fix the thing-- so then Ian and I drove over to Rutgers Prep and just after we crossed the Landing Lane Bridge we witnessed a car accident, nothing epic and lucky for us it wasn't on our side-- and then I took a walk on the tow road while he trained and I learned a lot-- a friendly fisherman showed me a picture of a fifteen-pound catfish he caught in the canal the other day and he also informed me-- totally new information-- that there are pike and muskellenge in the canal-- musky!-- and I saw a lot of wildlife on my walk: turtles, a big snake, all kinds of flowers, frogs, tadpoles, and little fish . . . and an herbalist, an African American dude decked out with all kinds of harvesting gear and he told me about the powers of elderberry flowers and then I asked him if the plant on the side of the path was poison ivy and he grabbed it and took a look and confirmed that yes it was poison ivy and I was like "don't touch that shit" and he said only sixty percent of people are allergic-- which seems to be lowballing it-- and I have also read that every time you touch the stuff, you increase your likelihood of getting it, so he might have to use some of his elderberry flowers on himself . . . then we went over to the Kilmer DMV, with all our documentation, but one minute into the driving test it was over-- the instructor said that the emergency brake was too loose and that we had to get it fixed and we had two hours to do so or our appointment would be voided-- so we started driving to the mechanic but I knew that was as shot in hell, so I called Ian's driving instructor and he happened to be in the vicinity giving a lesson, so we met him in the parking lot, gave him 80 bucks and he took Ian over in his car-- what a scam, but at least it worked out-- and then Ian had a fairly wild driving test-- he had to slam on the brakes because a lady ran through a stop sign and when he tried to parallel park an old man pulled up right behind him-- but he's a great driver, so he handled it all and passed and then we got to spend some quality time in the DMV-- and though we had every fucking document on earth, it still wasn't enough for their byzantine requirements-- and we had to reprint all the numbers in the little boxes because Ian crossed out a date-- and then they asked me if I had a driver's license and I said yes and that somehow was enough stuff and he got his picture taken, got a temporary license, we went to Don Huang for noodles, and then Ian went to do some yardwork for a lady across town and he drove himself-- which was wonderful-- and then when he got back, we went to the park and played some pick-up basketball with random folks and then settled in to eat a home-cooked meal of Indian food, quite a busy birthday.
Short and Old
The more my kids have grown, the more they've gotten into basketball-- and while they're not very good, they have long arms and can kind of play now, and when we play one-on-one, their arms are so long that I can't shoot over them unless I step back to Steph Curry range, so I have to bang forward and try for hook shots, which is exhausting and ugly . . . but I'm glad they're getting into hoops again so that they can play pick-up ball in college-- it took me four years of playing on the ugliest team in intramural basketball, the Nicks (named after Nick Huth) to achieve any kind of skill in the sport-- and now it's all downhill for me.
It's Friday, I Think
The closer we get to the end of the year, the more time becomes elastic and the longer the 84 minute block schedule classes seem . . . this week felt beyond eternal, every moment a mini-infinity, so that when Friday finally ended, it seemed as if the year reset and it was a dry September afternoon in 2022.
Epic Hump Day
My buddy Jeff cajoled me into getting up early this morning to play badminton with the 6 AM badminton crew-- the last time I did this was in the late '90s-- and though it was very early, it was also very fun-- and I was still able to whack the shuttlecock with some accuracy and power, despite the twenty-three year hiatus; we played until 7:15 because a few of us had the first period of the day off, giving us time to shower-- but I got called for a first period coverage, so I had to rush to get my clothes on and get over to K Hall . .. and then I realized that I had forgotten my belt and I've lost some weight so my pants are quite loose-- they don't mention the down side of shedding a few pounds: you might get fired for indecent exposure . . . but Stacey came up with a solution and I used some of her knitting yarn to cinch my pants together and I made it through the day without showing the students my underwear; then I had to rush home to get ready for the end-of-season tennis party-- which turned out to be great fun; in addition to MVP and Coach's Award, I gave out a bunch of wacky awards (such as "Most Likely to Crash His Skateboard Right Before a Match and be Unable to Play" and "Best Use of the Headband") and the kids played some corn-hole, ate pizza, and a few are still here in the driveway playing ping-pong . . . I couldn't ask for a nicer bunch and I'm a little sad that this will be the last time I coach both my kids on the same team.
I Have a Dream . . .
I have a dream to make the side of my backyard like the back of my backyard . . . to make a similar leafy green wall of fargesia clumping bamboo along the fenceline so I can't see my neighbors and they can't see me-- but I suffered for my dream today, while I was transplanting a smaller bamboo plant to a cramped slot behind a plastic storage chest when I bent over to shape some soil around the roots of the plant and a pointy bamboo stalk poked me in the eye; it hurt, my hands were covered in dirt, and I needed to shower to get the remnant of the stalk out of my eye socket . . . but it will all be worth it in a couple of years (but why didn't I do this years ago?)
The End is Nigh
In class today, Hamlet-- who recently returned to Denmark from a near-death adventure with pirates-- confronted Yorick's skull today and the inevitability of decay . . . and my seniors, who returned from their near-death adventures over prom weekend, must now also face their own imminent decay-- they are graduating and growing older by the minute and will never look this way again (also, I'm writing this over the din of professional lawncare equipment-- that shit is so LOUD).
Crowded Bridge, Noisy Bridge, Deserted Bridge, Little Bridge
Yesterday's Man Hike (led by Dave Tulloch) started out reminiscent of the day my wife and I spend in New York a few months ago but the reason this is called the Man Hike is not sexist-- only men would be stupid enough to spoil a good day in NYC by walking way too far (although not as far as this one and better weather than this one) and so while we started out in known territory-- we took the train to the Oculus, carefully examined the treescape (pretty incredible irrigation system) and the survivor tree at the 9/11 Memorial (and then saw a clone of the tree that inspired Anne Frank and the church where George Costanza attempted to convert to Latvian Orthodoxy) and then we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge with the throngs of people-- this was the crowded bridge-- then did NOT stop in DUMBO for pictures, beer and food-- instead we zipped right back across the noisy bridge-- the Manhattan Bridge-- shouting above the roar of the train-- beautiful views, anyone who was anyone was riding around on their yacht in the East River-- and then we walked a bit (and Pete and I lost the group when we stopped for Asian pastries) and crossed back into Brookly on the Williamsburg Bridge (which was empty) and walked through Greenpoint and other Brooklyn neighborhoods and saw ALL the hipsters and young people, out and about, we stopped for some amazing pizza, and then crossed the small(ish) Pulaski Bridge into Queens-- and I had never really wandered about in Queens so that was new and then we made out way to the a park on the water near Roosevelt Island and caught a ferry all the way back down to Wall Street, had a few beers and a burger, and hitched a ride home with Doug, who took a shortcut through Staten Island . . . so we visited four of the five boroughs, walked some 35,000 steps, and only neglected the Bronx.
Geoff Dyer Gives Up on Giving Up
Geoff Dyer-- famous for Out of Sheer Rage, his anti-biography of D.H Lawrence, which becomes a mediation on procrastination-- has written another weird and wonderful and obscure and profound book, The Last Days of Roger Federer and Other Endings . . . I often struggle with some of his references, and he alludes and refers widely, from literature and jazz and French film to soccer and tennis and Beethoven and Nietzsche; but mainly this book deals with something from a Joy Williams story, when an adult tells a young girl:
"I hope you're enjoying your childhood. When you grow up, a shadow falls. Everything's sunny and then this big goddamn wing or something passes overhead."
and this book is Dyer contemplating life under this shadowy giant wing, as the end approaches-- the end of his tennis playing, the end of Roger Federer's career, the end of movies and films and books and musical pieces, the never-ending non-ending of Bob Dylan, the odd endings that happen when some people are still young-- such as Bjorn Borg and fighter pilots in WWII-- the end of stealing shampoo, the end of artistic purpose, and the end of The Tempest . . . the book ultimately asks the question "when should a creator stop creating?" and the answer is never, never stop until you stop.
Hamlet is Perfect for Seniors in June
It must be getting near the end of the year, as we finished Act IV of Hamlet today; Ophelia finally met her tragic, but beautiful, flower-strewn, mermaid-like demise . . . and after three hours of planning, procrastinating, and pontificating, you'd think that the play would be near the end-- but Shakespeare really lost his mind with this one: he figured out how to get Hamlet back to Denmark-- oddly friendly pirates!-- but he isn't quite ready to resolve things, Laertes still needs to do the whole jumping in the grave thing, Hamlet needs to do "alas poor Yorick" and "the readiness is all" and we also need the weird interlude with Osric (played by Robin Williams in the Branagh version) before we get the final violence and the endless last words . . . it's a perfect play to do at the end of the year because it seems as if it will never end and the seniors keep asking what we will do in class after Hamlet and the answer is "the rest is silence."
The Last Days of Tennis (Like This)
All things must come to an end . . . and endings are worth meditation-- as evidenced by Geoff Dyer's fantastic book The Last Days of Roger Federer; and so I must note that the end of this wonderful high school tennis season is coming to a close-- we lost last night 3-2 in the continuation of our Group I State Semifinal match to Shore Regional and this was a match that had more controversy than usual because of a rain delay, a religious delay (we have two observant Jewish players) and a Memorial Day Weekend delay-- I even got some weird flak from a Shore parent, who insisted on showing me his phone to prove that it didn't rain on Saturday (which it most certainly did) but I explained to him that the reason we were playing last night was because we had two Jewish players who couldn't travel or play on the Sabbath and that the tournament director decided the match couldn't be played on Sunday or Memorial Day and thus pushed it all the way back until Tuesday . . . and then we couldn't play at the normal time on Tuesday because of the heat restriction so we had to play at 7 PM . . . he asked me if the match would have been postponed if players were sick and I countered with the fact that the match would have been canceled if it were Easter and then I told him he was acting weird and insinuating something and a detached myself from the situation-- one of the HP parents said the guy also said something about how his kid tried baseball but that tennis was one of the last "white sports" so there was a strange vibe out there; anyway, Ian came back and beat his kid at first singles and our second doubles team won handily but the center of the line-up was trouble-- there was no way Alex could beat their second singles-- he actually seemed better than the first singles player, and Boyang was facing a classic pusher (who actually had a higher UTR than first and second singles, slightly fishy) and he struggled to stay patient enough to find the perfect net shots to beat him . . . first doubles became our last hope, the two Jewish kids, but they were facing two tall dudes who could hit overheads-- they lost the first set but went up 5-0 in the second, only to lose in a tiebreaker 7-5 . . . which might have been for the better because they would have had trouble winning a third set . . . anyway, we've got two more matches to make-up, which will be nice so we don't end on this oddly elongated loss and it was truly a pleasure to coach this group of players (and two of my children) and it will be the last time, after many many years of doing so, that I will coach BOTH my children on the same team-- this happened for many years in soccer and just once in tennis and I've got to say, it's a wild experience-- you're invested as a coach and a parent so it's pretty emotional, but I think I navigated it as well as I could and I was proud of what good sports my team was during the match and once it was all over.
Keeping the Quadrupeds in Line
Deer bounding across the road are quite menacing when you're on rollerblades.
America's Gun Problem is Impossible
Derek Thompson's excellent and informative podcast Plain English details the four obstacles that impede any solution to the proliferation of guns and-- thus-- gun violence and mass shootings in America:
1) money . . . many politicians are in the pocket of the NRA and guns are big business;
2) cynical love of power . . . some politicians will do and say whatever is necessary to gain votes-- even if it's detrimental to our country;
3) the Second Amendment, fear of government overreach, the desire for freedom and liberty, and the ability to fight oppressors;
4) a genuine love of guns and a genuine gun culture-- this is the hardest one for many people to understand, but there is a whole nation of people out there that love guns-- they love the feel of the metal in their hand, they love shooting, they love talking about guns and buying guns and going places with other people with guns . . . and I think they think of guns the way other people think of cars or video games or whiskey . . . they love these things despite knowing that there are harmful consequences and externalities . . .
these are formidable obstacles and so it seems to me (and the podcast espouses this) that because there is a correlation between gun prevalence and gun violence, the only way to tackle the problem is statistically-- it has to be the same as cigarettes, which are still legal but stigmatized to the point where they aren't as prevalent as they once were . . . so little laws, little taxes, licensing requirements, background checks, etcetera . . . anything to reduce the number of guns will reduce the violence . . . but it's never going away . . . but it could get better-- cars are safer now and technology will make them less and less prone to crashing and perhaps we'll need similar technological solutions to deal with guns.
I Don't Serve on Shomer Shabbos!
The boys and I had off yesterday-- we never burned our snow days-- and my wife took off from her school, so this was supposed to be a relaxing day where we could sleep-in, get a few things done around the house, and then play our State Semi-Final tennis match at 4 PM . . . but the weather reports kept getting worse-- and while the other semi-finalist teams decided to play at noon to avoid the rain (Metuchen vs Florence . . . Florence won 3-2) for some logistical or transportation reason Shore Regional could not get out early to play us . . . so there was lots of texting and phone calls and I made a Google doc to figure out what day we could finish the match in case of rain, which reminded me that I have two observant Jewish players who can't really play on Saturday-- or one kid could walk to the courts, which are quite far from his house, but not drive in a car-- and then the weather cleared enough for Shore to come to Highland Park and we started the match, but soon enough a massive storm rolled in and we had to write down the details of every match-- and they were all close, a barnburner . . . except second doubles-- we took a solid lead there; the next problem was when to play, as we HAVE to complete the match by Tuesday, according to State Rules, so that the final match can be played ON Tuesday and then the winner can attend the Tournament of Champions, which is at Mercer County Park on Thursday-- that date is set in stone . . . but just after the match, my Athletic Director, a good friend of mine, got a call from the NJSIAA director and he said we HAD to play the match on Saturday-- no exceptions, religious or otherwise-- even though it was supposed to rain all day Saturday . . . so because we are the higher seed and home team, we had to provide indoor courts-- no easy feat in Central Jersey on Memorial Day Weekend . . . but my AD found some courts at noon on Saturday in East Brunswick and reserved them (with his own credit card!) but my Jewish player said he couldn't get there because he couldn't drive on the Sabbath and we brought this up to the tournament director and he said it didn't matter, so we were just going to have to forfeit that match . . . this still gave us a shot to win, as you only have to win three of the five matches-- so we were going to suck it up and win for religious tolerance and freedom and Walter from the Big Lebowski . . . but then things got interesting, the Jewish kid wrote an email and his father contacted our superintendent and the tournament director-- making the argument that if the next day was Easter, you wouldn't play the match-- you'd postpone until the next available school day, and I think the threat of a prejudicial lawsuit scared the tournament director because then I got another call from my AD and now we are finishing the match on Tuesday at normal time, so everyone can play and it will be a fair result . . . if we win, we'll have to play again Wednesday, so that's tough-- but at least we'll have all our players and the best chance possible . . . and win or lose, this was quite an adventure.
Respect the Speck
Hockey is hard enough to watch on TV, but if there's a black speck on the TV-- or several black specks on a couple of TVs-- then things can get really confusing . . . sometimes you're following the puck, sometimes you're following the speck, and sometimes-- like that magical moment on The Office when the DVD logo hits the corner-- the black speck intersects with the actual puck and reality breaks down into an inception of the matrix.
Whew . . .
I was nervous all day for our first state tennis match: we earned a bye in the first round and we had to play Point Beach today-- last year's sectional champ-- and while we matched up well against them, it's tennis, so you never know who's going to lose their mind, play poorly, smash their racket, start double-faulting . . . there are so many ways to fall apart in this stupid game . . . but we came to play; Ian had the toughest match, against a very solid player, and he beat him 6-0, 6-0 . . . and Alex, Boyang, and our very consistent second doubles team of Ethan and Patrick all won handily in two sets-- but we still can't figure out the perfect first doubles team-- they lost-- so we're going to experiment tomorrow and see what happens and then we'll probably play Shore Regional-- who is excellent-- in the semifinals on Friday.
The Horror, the Horror!
The year is winding down but we're still not done with Hamlet . . . or at least I'm not done with Hamlet-- one of my senior students looked like she was attentively following along with the play, holding her book in the classic two-handed meditative literary pose, but then I noticed that she had her cell-phone inside the book-- as we used to do back in the day with comic books (most notably, School is Hell by Matt Groening) and so I made her put the phone into the pocketed phone holder in the front of the room; apparently she was shopping, some prom dress algorithm blocking the text to one of the great works in the canon, which is exactly what those folks at Amazon are trying to do.
Crime and a Whole Lot More in 1963 L.A.
One-Shot Harry, by Gary Philips, certainly evokes Walter Mosely . . . Harry Ingram, a black journalistic photographer/ Korean War veteran, attempts to navigate a slew of issues in 1963 Los Angeles: the fishy death of his war-buddy-- a white jazz musician; racist police; radical leftists and a radical romance; a photographic blackmail scheme; some typical heavies; the Nation of Islam; power and politics; and a plot against Dr. Martin Luther King . . . the prose is clear, the plot is thick, and the perspective offers a counterpoint to James Ellroy's take on this particular time and place.
Ian = Work
Ian put in some hours working this weekend; Saturday he went to his county trail maintenance job with his brother and the heat was so brutal that they let them go home after lunch-- but that was enough time for Ian to ruin his gloves and consequently have to throw them away-- they were at some park in Old Bridge and they ended up cleaning up a homeless encampment and-- by accident-- Ian touched a bag of homeless person poop which ripped open (or something like this, he told me the story at a family bbq and I cut him short because I was eating) and then Sunday morning Ian worked for a lady, weeding and mowing her lawn, and then he went and mowed another lawn and then he called Ed Ransom, to see if he could work at his tennis camp, and Ed Ransom, a veteran teaching pro, said he needed to take a look at his game because he wanted someone to teach the advanced kids so we met him at a nearby park and the job interview turned into a tennis lesson (and Ian passed the interview, got the job, and improved the kick on his second serve) and now he's taking a well-deserved rest.
AITA?
There's a forum on Reddit called AITA (Am I the Asshole?) and I wanted to put this incident on there (but forgot to post it) but I got into a bit of a beeping/traffic situation in the school parking yesterday afternoon, so I wrote that one up and posted it on Reddit . . . check it out and upvote me!
The Jack Wong Effect?
On Tuesday, my son Ian got to play Jack Wong, the eventual winner of the GMC tourney (and one of the best players in the state) and then he had another tough match on Wednesday against Spotswood's top player, senior Jason Acheampong; in the first set, though both players were hitting the ball very well, Ian beat him 6-0 and when he came over to talk to me he said, "After Playing Jack Wong, the ball looks like it's going so slow . . . everything is easier" but then the Jack Wong Effect wore off and he lost the second set 6-0 . . . but then he rallied and won the third set 6-3, a nice victory after playing a ton of tennis the day before . . . and we noticed the other player who played Jack Wong on Tuesday (and, like my son, got beaten handily) also had a great match on Wednesday and beat a good opponent decisively; the other thing that happened during the Spotswood match was an annoying hack of a tennis player, a white dude in a tie-dyed shirt, expressed some annoyance and impatience about the fact that there was a high school match going on and we were taking up six courts; I informed him that some of the matches might finish in 45 minutes or so and he would just have to wait and then he went over to the sixth court-- where some beginner high school players were having a match and apparently he insulted their play and told them their match would never finish because they couldn't hit the ball, so the kids came up to me and informed me and I went over to the guy and gave him a piece of my mind-- and I get very defensive when anyone fucks with my players so while I felt myself getting angry, I figured out a way to deal with the situation without punching the guy (and the Spotswood coach, who is a football guy and ex-lineman, had made his way over as well) but instead of yelling at the guy and losing my shit, I played the pedophile card and told him it was very odd that he was lurking around a high school sporting event, especially since he wasn't a parent or a coach, and that he was interacting with my youngest players . . . which I deemed highly inappropriate-- and then I told him he could read about the results in the newspaper and he needed to get away from the children and this worked quite well-- he beat a hasty retreat into the parking lot (and the Spotswood coach was impressed with my method, and now I know to use this method if this ever happens again).
Setting the Story Straight
My wife insists that I revise yesterday's narrative, when I presented a video of a Killer Deer . . . apparently this particular deer, a female, was protecting a newly born fawn-- the fawn was on the other side of the road, and neither Lola nor I saw it, but my wife did when she went down to the park a few minutes later to investigate . . . so this doe was just being an overprotective parent and the "killer" moniker is absolute hyperbole.
Men . . . We're the Best
I learned from a Freakonomics Radio Podcast (Women are Not Men) that while women are catching up and even surpassing men educationally and economically, there are some things at which men still significantly outperform women . . . things such as drowning and getting struck by lightning (men overestimate their ability to swim and they are outside more than women and don't come in during storms) and I believe I have found another thing that men excel at-- getting attacked by large animals . . . this morning while I was accompanying my dog Lola on her usual constitutional to Donaldson Park, we were confronted by an unusually aggressive deer-- and I normally let Lola off leash so that she can chase the deer down the hill and into the park, so they don't eat all the neighborhood hostas and spread deer ticks and cause traffic accidents-- but this morning was different (as you can witness in the video) and this doe would NOT back down and eventually charged us-- and this happened on our way down to the park and our way back home-- on our way back home the deer actually stalked us-- and my wife wondered why I had video of this-- why on earth I was would mess with this deer twice and I really had no good answer for her, other than the fact that I am a stupid man-- in fact, I should have realized that the doe was protecting a fawn, instead of screwing with it . . . and I later learned that when I sternly admonished the charging deer to "cut it out," it actually could have kicked me several times in the face instead of listening to me . . . anyway, Lola and I lived to tell the tale and we're not going to fuck with that doe any more.
So Much Tennis . . .
Today was the GMC Tennis Tournament, an all day tennis extravaganza with 26 teams from Middlesex County in attendance . . . we left for Thomas Edison Park at 8 AM-- packing food, water, chairs, tarps, coolers, sunblock, sandwiches, snacks, rackets, balls, etcetera-- and Ian lucked out with a prelim walkover so then he played an undefeated kid from the lower division and he beat him handily in the first set 6-0 but then started fooling around in the second set but still ended up winning 7-5, giving him the honor of playing the overall number one seed (and one of the top five players in the entire state) Jack Wong from East Brunswick . . . so he got to have some fun against a serious athlete and college player-- Ian had to back up to the fence to hit his serve back and while he was able to stay in some games, he couldn't take one . . . Jack Wong also hit a court length tweener that turned out to be a winner; Alex had a similar fate, he won his prelim in a tiebreaker and then got to play the number one seed in second singles-- another East Brunswick kid (East Brunswick had the number one seed in all five events) and our other players and teams had a good day as well-- everyone advanced to the second round; Boyang then lost in a close one to the Metuchen kid (again) and first and second doubles faced very strong teams, after winning their preliminary matches . . . so no complaints-- everyone got to play two matches, no one got injured, we saw some incredible tennis, and we got some great practice for the state tournament (where we play only Group I schools, so we should be competitive).
Be Prepared and Have a Plan?
This morning the weather report was grim: "High winds, severe thunderstorms, possible large hail, possible tornado" and there was an actual exclamation point next to the three weather slot and the recommendation to "be prepared and have a plan," and when I ran this by my students, none of them were aware of this and none of them had a plan . . . but apparently, it didn't matter-- the big storm never materialized, very disappointing, but the looming threat was probably good because it meant that the GMC Tennis Tourney was postponed until tomorrow-- so I was able to go to school today and spread the word about a nonexistent storm (and I was very successful in my acting endeavor, which related to the start of scene 3.2 in Hamlet, in which I pretended to choke on some water-- it went down the wrong pipe-- and then, in a coughing fit, consequently knocked over the water bottle, spilling water all over the carpet . . . the kids couldn't believe I was acting and decided that I should pursue a film career, though I could only act in movies where I pretend to choke on stuff and then knock things over).
Here We Go Again . . .
It's hot, it's humid, and-- just in case you thought you were safe in the water-- the lantern-fly eggs masses, mortar colored and ready to hatch, are dotting the trees in abundance.
Tranquil Time Travel
Emily St. John Mandel's new novel Sea of Tranquility floats by in an otherworldly manner, which makes sense-- since it is beautifully written about other worlds, other times, other timelines, and other possibilities . . . and while there are ghosts of the post-apocalyptic, post-pandemic world of Station 11, the current COVID pandemic, and the author herself, the book flows by in an odd, serene state of hypothetical possibility, the possibility that the world is a simulation, the possibility that you might interview yourself, that you might go back in time and live a recursive life, the possibility of moving too fast and too far, and the possibility of being still, and the possibility that time and motion and memory might be corrupted like a bad file . . . this was a much smoother and philosophical read than the last time travel novel I read, The Paradox Hotel.
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