My vet still requires masking . . . for people-- but pets don't have to wear masks and they are the patients!
Tomorrow, I Just Might Start Playing Video Games . . . Tomorrow
New episode of We Defy Augury up-- I read Gabrielle Zevin's novel about creativity, collaboration, and video-game design Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Simon Parkin's book Death by Video Game: Tales of Obsession from the Virtual Frontline and this (along with an article about Dead Space at The Ringer) sent me on a long, nostalgic, philosophical and reflective journey . . . check it out, and if you've got the time, leave a review on Apple podcasts . . . "Tomorrow, I Will Play Video Games, Tomorrow."
Salad Days of Dave
Making a salad in the morning to bring for lunch seems like a great idea in the AM-- healthy, nutritious, delicious and fibrous-- but then when lunch time rolls around, that salad is not as appetizing, and feels a bit paltry-- especially if you forget the dressing.
That Was Only Monday?
Full on Monday today . . . as a model narrative, I told a story in Public Speaking I haven't recounted in a while-- the time Catherine and I took a bus from Damascus, Syria to Cappadocia, Turkey-- a twenty-hour ride for only seven dollars?- but the bus broke down at the border and the driver escorted us (and the dozen or so other passengers) to a decrepit mosquito-ridden gas station waiting room and then some other guy drove the bus into the darkness behind the building-- it was 3:30 AM-- and it was quite cold in the gas station waiting room so I told the driver my wife and I were cold (in my caveman Arabic) and that I wanted to get our jackets and he said the bus was broken and I couldn't do that but I finally got fed up and walked into the darkness around the back of the building and I found our bus and there were some guys inserting tubes into various hidden plastic containers in every nook and cranny of the bus-- even under the walkways inside the bus-- and then I realized why the tickets were so cheap-- this bus wasn't for transporting people, it was for smuggling gasoline over the border-- gas was subsidized and cheap in Syria and more expensive in Turkey, so after the guys had filled all the containers and canisters with gas, the bus was "fixed" and we headed to Goreme National Park-- but the bus dropped off on the main highway road sixty miles short of our destination-- the driver said a minibus would come along eventually, but instead Catherine stuck her thumb out and a truck driver picked us up and brought us all the way to our destination-- definitely one of the most scenic places we ever visited-- houses and Byzantine churches carved in the soft stone and labyrinthine underground cities to explore. . . and I told this story because I have some Middle Eastern kid in my first period class and I thought they'd enjoy it-- which they did-- but they informed me that, coincidentally, last night there was a terribly powerful earthquake right at the border of Syria and Turkey, right where our bus stopped-- so that was weird-- and then I covered PE class second period-- and I had what I now call "jailhouse" PE . . . first the kids walk in a circle and then I covered a split class of ping-pong and weight-lifting, so three premier jailhouse activities-- then another Public Speaking class, then down to the Library . . . excuse me, Media Center . . . for peer-editing, then an endless faculty meeting with an extensive presentation on the dangers of substance abuse . . . and wow, according to this lady, kids are really abusing all sorts of substances: THC, Delta 8, edibles, nicotine vapes, fentanyl, etcetera . . . drugs are easier than ever to get, hide, ingest, and abuse and she had all kinds of horror stories from the local emergency rooms-- but apparently vaping is horrible for you, vaping ANYTHING . . . heavy metals, weird particles, deeper lung penetration, unregulated chemicals and dosages-- scary stuff-- and kids are eating huge doses of edibles (or even dosing their classmates) and exhibiting some nutty behaviors . . . but perhaps we'll sort all this out on Tuesday.
Good (Dog Defecation) Deed
Today at the dog park, when this older guy's dog Max pooped in the far corner, I went and picked it up and disposed of it-- and I didn't even mention this to the dog's owner, a nice older gent named George, so this was a true altruistic act, a true good deed for which I received no credit . . . so it is now likely that upon my deathbed, I will receive total consciousness (or some such comparable benediction).
Uh . . . Wow . . . TV?
The third episode of The Last of Us-- the HBO show based on the video game with the same name-- is some very ambitious, very emotional, very amazing TV . . . the episode is really a film unto itself (it reminds me of the Station 11 episode Baby Boom in that respect) when the show takes a worthy detour in time and place to show us Nick Offerman as a survivalist prepper bizarro-world version of his most beloved character, Ron Swanson, with a compelling twist (the other fabulous cameo appearance is Murray Bartlett, another great actor who absolutely stole the show as Armand in White Lotus).
How to Get a Seat at Salt
After many fruitless attempts, my wife and I finally got a seat at Salt during happy hour; Salt is an upscale seafood joint in New Brunswick with a small bar and an excellent (but very short) happy hour: it only runs from 3 PM - 5PM . . . perhaps we were able to get a seat because it was bitterly cold and windy-- we barely made it across the bridge with getting frostbite-- but it was worth it, delicious oysters and tuna and rock shrimp and fish tacos . . . and they make some excellent drinks, as well.
Dave Educates the Youth?
Groundhog Day (on Groundhog Day)
It's mid-year . . . mid-terms are over and it's back to the repetitive grind; I did "first day of school stuff" in my three semester classes: learned a bunch of names, went over the rules-- no cell phones!-- and did all the icebreakers and such; covered several classes, including a couple of PE classes (one class was abysmal at ping-pong, leading me to lecture my College Writing classes about the sports they need to learn how to play before they go away to college: darts, pool, ping-pong, corn-hole, volleyball, and spike ball) and generally felt like we are on infinite repeat . . . no snow days, no breaks in sight . . . but soon enough we'll be over the hump (and it is getting sunnier in the mornings).
It's February!
Get busy, pack it in and compress yourself-- it's February, you sons of bitches, and you've only got 28 days to get it done this month . . . unless it's a leap year, is it a leap year?-- then you get an extra day and things aren't so dire.
Less Cheese Please
We stopped buying bags of pre-grate cheese (mainly because they have weird chemical additives to prevent clumping) and this had two good outcomes:
1. we eat less cheese;
2. when we grate a block of cheese by hand, the cheese tastes better.
Riley Sager, You Give Genre Fiction a Bad Name
Wow . . . this new Riley Sager book The House Across the Lake is a hot mess . . . but it certainly inspired me to think about the rules of genre fiction and lent itself to an episode with many special guests: Bart and Lisa Simpson, Marty and Rust, Steve Martin, God, Alec Baldwin . . . so my advice is DO NOT read this book, listen to my podcast instead: "Riley Sager, You Gives Genre Fiction a Bad Name."
Highs and Lows
I was quite pleased with myself (for a few minutes) at indoor soccer this morning-- the first two games were zero-zero ties (no wonder Americans don't watch soccer) but in the third game, I scored two goals to give our team a definitive win . . . and the winning team stays on; in the next game I was trying to send a ball up the line, and I was near where we stash some of the stray gym equipment-- so after I kicked the ball, my foot connected with a protruding wheel on a volleyball net base-- OUCH!-- the sound resounded throughout the gym and I really nailed my big toe (and ripped my sneaker!) and then I was not so pleased with myself, although I was able to play a few more games (after I shook it off) and now my foot and toe hurt . . . stupid wheel.
Sarcastic Tone Implied
I'm not very good at sarcasm-- I don't have the voice for it-- so I've got to broadcast it . . . here it comes: you know what's fun after teaching English to high school students all week . . . helping your son on Saturday with all the AP English assignments he neglected to complete while he had COVID.
AM Record
An EB AM record . . . nineteen people at Friday morning basketball today-- pretty wild, we had an upstairs game and a sub-gym game-- and the winner of the sub-gym game (after 11 minutes of play) walked up the stairs and played the winner of the upper gym game . . . and it only took three games for my shot to warm up, but when it did . . . it was pretty spectacular (for 7:15 AM in the morning).
Two Profound Questions
Here they are:
1. Why is it so hard for me to get a pair of socks on without ripping them?
2. Why have I gotten so into listening to The Brian Jonestown Massacre lately?
Dave is Not a Doctor
I'm not a medical doctor (though I often play one in my home, when I'm diagnosing my children and telling them various remedies: try the NetiPot, take some ibuprofen, you need to ice that, go take a shower, take some Tums, etcetera) and I learned yesterday that sometimes it's beneficial to go see an actual medical doctor because they know a bunch of stuff and you don't end up down a WebMD rabbit hole; anyway, my son Ian has been experiencing some gastrointestinal distress and he had to stay home from school yesterday so he could be near a bathroom, and this is the second time this has happened recently, so I took him over to our pediatric doctor and we told her the deets-- he had COVID two weeks ago and lately he's been having stomach pains and diarrhea and she asked if he had been drinking sugary drinks and the answer was a resounding yes-- Ian works at the local bubble tea place so he has access to free delicious sugary drinks all the time-- and he had three Tuesday during his shift, and a bunch of lychee fruit-- and she said that after COVID or any viral infection, your GI is screwed up and can't handle sugary juice or drinks, and it gives you the runs, and then she asked if he had any dairy-- cheese, milk, etc-- and the answer was yes and she told us that after COVID people are generally lactose intolerant for a week or two, while certain bacteria is returning to their GI tract, so mystery solved and now we know the culprit and what to do to remedy his discomfort . . . that young lady really knew her stuff!
Why I Don't Own a Gun
When I play pickleball, I get great joy from hitting my opponent square in the chest with the ball-- if they pop up a "dink," this is perfectly acceptable behavior (when you're playing with guys) and when I play badminton, if someone doesn't hit their shot deep enough, and they are near the net, I take great pleasure (as do the rest of the players in my badminton crew) in nailing the person in the head, chest or stomach with the shuttlecock-- last week, I even took aim at someone who had just dove and was on the ground-- I hit a man while he was down!-- and though I behave like this while competiting, I consider myself fairly civilized . . . but if you take this basic human (male?) desire to hit other people with fast moving things and then you toss 400 million guns into the mix, something bad is going to happen on a daily basis . . . and it does, day after day in America-- and this is why I don't own a gun!
Let's Play Duck Duck Oil Sands
Kate Beaton's graphic memoir Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands is heavy viscous stuff . . . I get into it in my new episode of We Defy Augury-- the gist is that if you reverse the male fantasy of being stranded with a large group of bored and sex-starved women, if you reverse that ratio and make it fifty men to every woman, it becomes Kate Beaton's nightmare.
Where Art Thou, Snow Day? Wherefore, No Snow?
Another gray, kind-of-mild winter day . . . where is the snow?
Moral: Eat at La Casita!
Yesterday at early morning basketball, we had sixteen players so we had to run a pair of four-on-four games across the gym-- while this was fun and very tiring, it was also dangerous, as when you run games this way there is very little space between the end line and the bleachers-- and one row of bleacher seats were protruding s when I barreled in for my patented hook shot, which involves a fair amount of contact-- think bowling ball and bowling pins-- after I made the shot my momentum carried my into the bleachers, where the one protruding row took me out at the knees and I scraped my elbow against the recessed bleacher wall-- but, aside from a scraped arm, I was fine . . . although by the time the school day was over, I was looking forward to a mellow evening-- the wife and I went to La Casita and drank a few beers and ate mole and sopes and a gordita-- and we had the place to ourselves, which was nice but kind of sad-- if you live in town, PLEASE support this place . . . it has great food and it's cheap (which is very unusual for food these days!) and it would be a great loss if it closed.
Real Night Court Takes Longer Than 22 Minutes
I hope my son learned his lesson yesterday at night court-- my lawyer buddy Jay got his violations knocked down to two points (and a stern lecture from the prosecutor) but it was still a long, rainy, costly evening . . . and we saw what COULD happen-- the kid in front of us got his moving violation knocked down to two points as well, but he was doing 60 in a 25 so he lost his license for ten days (and you have to go BACK to the DMV and get a new license, a punishment in itself) and that youngster gave Alex a lecture as well and said that Alex should be thankful that he has a supportive father who accompanied him to court, because his dad -- a truck driver-- was so pissed at him that he didn't want anything to do with the matter; anyway, I hope he slows down, I hope our insurance doesn't go up too much, and I hope Ian learns his lesson (by proxy) as well.
The Joys of Fatherhood
It would be a perfect Thursday afternoon to relax, take a nap, perhaps have a beer or two and avoid the ugly weather, but instead, I'll be accompanying my son and a lawyer friend on an excursion to Woodbridge Municipal Court to take care of my son's (three) moving violations-- because, in the parenting domain, while grades and school and medical stuff seem to be my wife's purview, illegal activities are my jurisdiction.
I'll Always Have "Tupperawareness"
I made a playlist on Spotify called "psychedelicious" but -- once again-- I haven't coined anything new . . . dammit.
Beware the Candy House
Jennifer Egan's new novel The Candy House, ostensibly a "sequel" to her tour-de-force A Visit From the Goon Squad, reminds us that "knowing everything is too much like knowing nothing"-- the book is certainly a wild ride, dipping into the consciousness of all sort of tangentially related characters-- but in the end, like eating too much candy, you will be cloyed but unsatisfied-- and that is Egan's purpose, of course-- as she is a super-genius . . . and this was a tough We Defy Augury episode to make because this book is more like a social network than a narrative-- it took all my brain cells to hold it together.
Let There Be Sweat
The Sporting Gods did shine their benevolent (and sweaty) light on New Jersey yesterday-- for five glorious hours, as Rutgers defeated Ohio State (vengeance!) in overtime and then the Giants hung on to beat the Vikings in their first playoff appearance in years . . . I definitely had a bit of a hangover this morning, but some sacrifice to the Sporting Gods-- in the manner of imbibing-- is necessary for such illustrious results.
May the Sporting Gods Shine Their Light on New Jersey Today?
This could be-- if the sporting gods will it-- a great sporting day for New Jersey-- Rutgers vs. Ohio State basketball game is about to start, a vengeance match because of the lousy call that cost Rutgers the game the first time they played-- and then the Giants play the Vikings . . . and the Giants haven't been in the playoffs in half a decade . . . and I have no school tomorrow, so I'm going to crack open a beer soon and hope for the best-- and if the games are close, I'll be happy-- that's all you can ask for (and I scored a couple goals at Sunday morning indoor soccer this morning and my team won four in a row, so I'm feeling that the sporting gods are on my side today . . . although I guess everyone at soccer is from New Jersey, so that doesn't really indicate shit).
Picture This: You Are a Woman Working the Oil Camps of Alberta
Kate Beaton's autobiographical graphic novel Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands is heavy, viscous stuff; Beaton heads from Nova Scotia to Alberta to make some money and pay off her student loans, but working in the man's world of the oil sands, she experiences environmental devastation, loneliness, drug and alcohol abuse, sexual harassment and rape, and numerous existential crises-- all amplified by the insular nature of the oil camps-- highly recommended but not as fun as the last graphic novel I read.
Catching Up
This is the week COVID finally caught Catherine and Ian-- but not me! . . . or not yet-- and earlier in the week the principal caught Ian going out to lunch when he wasn't supposed to (because he left through a door with an alarm on it) and so Ian can't go out to lunch for the rest of the month and then on Wednesday afternoon, a state trooper caught Alex flying down the Turnpike, doing at least 90, weaving in and out of traffic, without using a directional and he was so appalled by his driving that he gave him three tickets and made him call his mother-- even though he's eighteen and a legal adult-- so the trooper could explain, as a courtesy, just how idiotically he was driving . . . so hopefully we're all caught up with this kind of crap and can now get on with our lives.
Word Word Words
Catherine and I couldn't agree on the difference in meaning between "pocket change" and "pocket money"-- the argument is too ridiculous to transcribe here-- but we did agree that Tanya's "core of the onion" speech about how when you peel away all her layers, there's just a "straight-up alcoholic lunatic" is an absolutely brilliant choice of words.
Next Level
This afternoon, Ian and I played basketball with a big man who could really pass-- it was like he had eyes in the back of his head-- and when he passed, which could happen at any time, in a fraction of a second-- the pass came fast . . . and now my thumb hurts.
Stars, Caves, and Everything in Between
New episode of We Defy Augury up and streaming . . . "Stars, Caves, and Everything" is loosely inspired on the new Neil deGrasse Tyson book but there's also a bit on Carl Sagan-- and I need to edit the audio to include some of this priceless Johnny Carson impression of Sagan, which-- oddly enough, life imitating art and all that-- spawned Sagan's catchphrase "billions and billions."
When Pigs Fly
I never listened to Pink Floyd's Animals enough-- perhaps because of the weird song lengths . . . 3 songs that are over ten minutes and two songs that are under two minutes-- but after a couple of listens, I think it's my favorite one . . . obviously Dark Side of the Moon is incredible, but I think I've listened to that one enough for several lifetimes; Animals is a bit like my favorite David Bowie album, Low-- both albums are heavy on musical interludes and instrumentals and light on lyrics, and the songs seem to have a more chaotic structure than you're typical verse-verse-chorus-bridge-verse.
I Sat in a Teacup Chair on a Little Island
Entertaining day in the city yesterday-- we took an 11:30 AM train in, along with lots of hockey fans going to the Devils/Rangers game (and I saw a few old students on the train-- they were from a dozen years ago so I didn't really recognize them until they identified themselves) and then walked The High Line over to The Little Island . . . pics below of the island, which is constructed of wide-mouthed concrete pylons full of soil-- the plantings are varied and fairly mature but I can't wait to see what it looks like in a few years when everything is grown in-- then we hung out at a great pub called The Blind Tiger and had some delicious nachos and an even more delicious IPA . . . New York brewery Equilibrium's Wavelength-- citrusy and smooth, not sure if they sell it out of state-- and then we saw Colin Quinn's show "Small Talk," which was incredible-- 65 minutes of A-list material and delivery . . . very Carlin-esque, fast-paced, detailed, insightful, funny, and often focusing on language-- one of the best comedy shows I've seen . . . and then-- the best part about seeing a 3 PM show-- we could go out for dinner and drinks and talk about the show-- I hate going to a late show, after dinner and drinks, when I"m full and groggy and have to pee, I'd much rather see the show early and then eat and talk about it: so we ate a Cuban/Chinese place called Calle Dao-Chelsea, which was excellent AND they have Happy Hour until seven on Saturdays and then we made our train and we were home by 9 PM . . . perfect day (aside from the fact that Catherine was coming down with a cold-- she's down for the count now).
We Walked on a Little Island
Colin Quinn has still got it-- more to come tomorrow, but a full day in the city (but MVD . . . Most Valuable Driver . . . to Ian, who drove us to the train station AND picked us up).
Weird Movie
The Banshees of Inisherin is evocative, beautiful, bucolic, awkward, insular, funny and weird-- it will make you evaluate your friends, your landscape, your purpose, and just how clever you really are versus how clever you think you are . . . and though it's a slow burn, you'll eventually fall in love with Achill Island, J. J. Devine's Pub, and Jenny the miniature donkey.
Weird Weather
Foggy and unseasonable warm this week, which is annoying as far as snowboarding conditions go but a great week for our hot water heater (and radiator heat) to be broken.
The Futility of Chasing the Shuttlecock
I was playing badminton yesterday morning-- singles-- and I was heading to the right but the shuttlecock came back more to the left and I unwisely lunged back in the other direction and rolled my ankle-- it hurt, but not enough to stop whacking around the shuttlecock, so I kept playing-- but that might have been ill-advised because now my ankle is swollen and sore (although I still got my steps in today-- I covered PE class and we went outside . . . it was a balmy 65 degrees . . . weird) and I guess I have implement the analogous lesson that I learned while playing competitive tennis-- even if you get the drop shot-- and with some extreme hustle, you might-- you're still going to injure yourself and not be able to hit the next shot . . . in badminton it's not the drop shot, it's the erratic weird shot that goes a strange direction-- and I'm too old to make sudden lateral directional changes.
Livin' La Vida Lapvona
A weird episode about a weird book: in "Livin' La Vida Lapvona", I try to make sense of Ottessa Moshfegh's repugnant folktale Lapvona . . . and while my analysis might be lacking, I am proud of the title.
School Returns with a Vengeance
My wife and I had to teach today, despite the fact that it was a federal holiday, while Ian got to sleep in; Alex didn't get in until two AM because he's off for college break; the road was desolate on the ride to East Brunswick, and though we were all tired, the kids were in good spirits (I made them stand up and announce New Year's resolutions after I bored them with my thoughts on digital minimalism, stretching, and eating less sugary treats) but last period things got a bit hectic, as we were saying resolutions a girl slid out of her desk onto the floor and had a seizure-- luckily, I'm right next door to the nurse, so while a student cleared the area around her head I ran and got some assistance and then we cleared out while they tended to her . . . then when I got home, Alex informed me that the tankless hot water heater was totally broken so we went to the gym, worked out, and I showered there, but then when I got home, I went down and turned the thing on and really banged the circuit board with my hand a few times and now it's working again, for the time being (or not . . . just broke again . . . and Catherine just got home and she had quite a day as well, the elastic in her tights broke-- she was wearing a dress so she didn't moon anyone but she was doing a lot of shimmying) and then I tried to light our gas grill with a long wooden match, but I turned all the burners on at once before I struck the match-- God knows why-- and a fiery plume shot forth and burned all the hair off my right hand-- but my skin didn't get burned, scary and weird, but I seem to be unburnt.
Feral Hogs + Atlanta = Awesome
We just finished one of my favorite TV shows ever: Atlanta . . . my son Alex finished ahead of Ian and me, but Alex watched the last few episodes of season four again with us (while annoyingly pointing out all sorts of stuff about the background music) and though I loved the last episode-- which is loads of fun and might explain the surreal nature of the show-- I enjoyed the penultimate episode most of all; Paper Boi has some wild adventures with a tractor and my favorite villainous creature-- a feral hog!-- what more could I ask for?
Book List 2022
Here are the books I finished (possibly with some skimming) this year . . . I started plenty of others and quit them because . . . well because I wanted to . . . that's what's great about reading-- if you've got access to a library, you aren't beholden to any particular book:
1) Depth of Winter by Craig Johnson
2) Lazarus Volumes 1-6
3) Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law by Mary Roach
4) Kindness Goes Unpunished by Craig Johnson
5) The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain by Annie Murphy Paul
6) The Given Day by Dennis LeHane
7) Live by Night by Dennis LeHane
8) A Little History of the World by Ernst Gombrich
9) Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey
10) Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
11) Caliban's War by James A. Corey
12) Batman: The Long Halloween by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale
13) The Nineties by Chuck Klosterman
14) Tochi Onyebuchi's Goliath
15) We Are Never Meeting in Real Life by Samantha Irby
16) Abbadon's Gate by James S.A. Corey
17) The Paradox Hotel by Rob Hart
18) The Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
19) One-Shot Harry by Gary Philips
20) The Last Days of Roger Federer and Other Endings by Geoff Dyer
21) The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow
22) Cibola Burn by James S.A. Corey
23) The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West by David McCullough
24) Harrow by Joy Williams
25) The Quick and the Dead by Joy Williams
26) Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead
27) The Foundling by Ann Leary
28) Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America by Jill Leovy
29) Fugitive Telemetry: The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells
30) Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen
31) Last Orgy of the Divine Hermit by Mark Leyner
32) The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era by Gary Gerstle
33) Tracy Flick Can't Win by Tom Perrotta
34) Dark Matter by Blake Crouch
35) Nemesis Games by James S.A. Corey
36) The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
37) The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells
38) City on Fire by Don Winslow
39) Happy-Go-Lucky by David Sedaris
40) what if? SERIOUS SCIENTIFIC ANSWERS to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Monroe
41) Enemy of All Mankind: A True Story of Piracy, Power, and History's First Global Manhunt by Stephen Johnson
42) The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music by Dave Grohl
43) The Tomorrow Game: Rival Teenagers, Their Race For a Gun, and The Community United to Save Them by Sudhir Venkatesh
44) Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon
45) A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller
46) Blacktop Wasteland by S.A. Cosby
47) Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby
48) Liberation Day by George Saunders
49) Upgrade by Blake Crouch
50) Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid
51) Adrift: America in 100 Charts by Scott Galloway
52) Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport
53) Pines by Blake Crouch
54) The Rise and Reign of the Mammals by Steve Brusatte
55) Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh
56) Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization by Neil deGrasse Tyson
57) Fantastic Four: Full Circle by Alex Ross
Bizarro Four
Fantastic Four: Full Circle is a psychedelic journey into a Bizarro World anti-matter negative energy universe, where some weird doppelgänger of The Thing resides (although he surfaced on our planet, full of grotesque half-creatures and somehow existed in both time frames) and though the ending may indicate that we are just figments of some other world's imagination, this is highly unlikely, because the artistic imagination of Alex Ross-- the colors, the perspectives, the layout of these pages-- must indicate that we are controlling things here in our world . . . and it is that other anti-world that is a figment of our imagination . . . or at least that is what we need to believe, that we have autonomy when we get a midnight snack.
The Essence?
At a party last night, we played a game called "The Essence"-- but instead of "the Asker" asking questions like that, we just free-lanced it . . . it was quite fun but it could probably go down a dark road if there was some animosity in the house (and I couldn't help taking it down an absurd road: if this person were an apocalypse they would be zombie . . . if this person were an organ, they'd be a spleen, etc.)
THAT Was Fun
It's weird when your kid comes home from college for Winter Break-- there is certainly an adjustment period: they are used to a totally different schedule, they are used to interacting mainly with college-aged people, and they are not used to whatever family dynamics have developed since they have been living away from home-- and perhaps that is why Alex and Ian nearly got into a battle royale the first time we tried to play some pick-up basketball at the Piscataway Y . . . Alex is used to playing a certain style of pick-up with kids at the gym over at Rutgers, Ian is a bit too competitive when he's covering his brother, and the two of them have grown quite a bit and Ian, although he's very athletic, does not have complete control over his long arms and bony elbows when he's playing basketball; anyway, they talked it out and we went back and played again today and we played four-on-four with some decent players and Alex, Ian, and I were on the same team and this made a world of difference-- we killed the other team; Alex and Ian both rebounded, Alex drove with confidence and made a lot of touch shots around the basket; Ian blocked some shots with his long arms and took advantage of a mismatch inside; I shot a bit from outside; and the fourth guy on our team was an excellent player who know how to move the ball . . . it was very fun and everyone got along smashingly and then we met Catherine for lunch at Mr. Pi's and ate some sushi-- and they are both certainly better at pick-up basketball than I was at their age (when I played basketball in the same fashion as I played rugby).
Charismatic Megafauna!
New episode of "We Defy Augury" is up . . . thoughts loosely inspired by Steve Brusatte's book The Rise and Reign of the Mammals" but plenty of tangents, asides, cameos, and even a musical monologue.
Almost Fun . . .
Alex, Ian, and I went to the gym at 10 AM to play some basketball and we got a three-on-three game going but Alex and Ian were the tallest players, so they had to split up and cover each other-- which I should have known would be a disaster-- and Ian swatted at the ball for a steal with his long arm and hit Alex in the lip, drawing blood and scratching his face-- and then the two of them were at it, and they finally got into some kind of scrap over a rebound and Alex tossed Ian to the ground (he's bigger) and Ian punched his leg and Alex decided he'd had enough and walked home . . . they sorted it all out later but they might not be able to cover each other until they reach an age of enlightenment (they are seventeen and eighteen now . . . maybe in their mid-twenties they'll mellow out?)
Gold, Frankincense, and Bluetooth Hat
Fun Christmas: I got the kids some graphic novels (that I want to read as well) and my wife got me a bluetooth ski hat with speakers embedded in the fabric so I can listen to music while walking the dog in the frigid cold (and the dog got a sweater, which she really likes) and Netflix gave us a new Knives Out mystery, Glass Onion, which was totally entertaining and a great thing to watch with the family on a lazy Christmas day . . . thanks Netflix!
Xmas Eve Miracles!
This morning, my older son Alex and I went to the Piscataway Y and played some basketball-- his game has gotten better because he's playing so much pick-up ball and Rutgers and my unconscious outside shooting picked up exactly where I left off yesterday morning . . . we were playing two-on-two and I think I shot 80% from beyond the arc-- it was ridiculous . . . and then to add to the miracles, Catherine botched another idiom in her inimitable style, when she told Alex she "didn't want to hear any comments from the popcorn gallery."
Winter Break is Here!
Winter Break has arrived: we survived ChatGPTbotgate at school, I survived early morning basketball (and lit it up from outside . . . Merry Xmas from the basketball gods), Alex survived his engineering exams, and-- hopefully-- we'll survive this bomb cyclone super freeze . . . the temperature has dropped precipitously and we're holed up at home-- the dog is bored, Catherine and I are making tacos, Alex and his buddy Gary are watching the Festivus episode of Seinfeld in the basement-- but Ian is at work at the bubble tea place-- I can't imagine many people are coming in because it's so cold and windy but he won't be home until 10 PM, I hope it's not too ugly out then-- anyway, the presents are wrapped and under the tree, there's no school tomorrow, and it's nice to be warm and inside and drinking a beer.
Almost Break
Alex is home from college and Alex, Ian, and I watched an episode of Atlanta and ate some pizza and told stories about college and high school and ChatGPT . . . and it felt very normal.
The Robots Are Here and the Writing is Uncanny
We had a Rutgers grade calibration day and we found several essays that seem to have sections written by AI, probably ChatGPT . . . and this is more difficult to prove than old-school plagiarism-- you have to guess what the student typed into the prompt to get the chatbot to spit back out the weird stuff in the essay-- but you can tell the sections that are written by a computer . . . Stacey made an astute comparison to the idea of the "uncanny valley" in digital animation.
Early Morning Date with a Dead Dog
You never know where the adventure of parenthood is going to take you . . . this morning I woke up my son Ian at 5:45 AM and we drove over to Carolyn's house-- Ian does odd jobs, outdoor work, and dog sitting for her-- and Carolyn's dogs are old, one is deaf and blind and the other had severe problems with his back legs and needed to be put down yesterday . . . poor Huckleberry . . . anyway, the vet came to her house and put the dog down last night and Carolyn needed a couple of people to carry the dog to her car this morning so she could drive the dog to the crematorium . . . so Ian and I started our day by lugging a seventy-pound carcass out of Carolyn's living room and wresting it into the back of her Subaru and then Ian went back to bed and I got ready for work . . . dogs-- they just don't live long enough.
Adrift in the Digital Doldrums
New episode of We Defy Augury is up and streaming: "Adrift in the Digital Doldrums" . . . in this one I describe how to become a digital minimalist, how to solve all of America's problems, and how NOT to clean out a lint duct; cameo appearances from Bill Maher, Tristan Harris, and Alexander Supertramp.
Meta Action is Still Action, Right?
The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, starring Nicolas Cage as a gonzo-version of himself, is entertaining, fun, and meta . . . and Pedro Pascal's understated emotion is the perfect foil to Cage's wild manic swings; this is the lighter version of JCVD . . . a similar premise, but Jean-Claude Van Damme plays a very dark version of himself . . . if you're going to watch one meta-action movie where the star plays himself, I would go with the Nicolas Cage one.
Let There Be Lint
I cleaned my dryer vent duct today, using a shop-vac and a kit that contained a bunch of flexible plastic sticks that you screw together and then you put an augur lint brush on one end of the long flexible stick and you attach the other end to a drill-- you insert that thing into the duct outside your house (after removing the louvres) while you have the shop-vac attached to the hose in the basement (you've detached the hose from the back of your dryer) and when you're done you have cleaned the lint from the hose, there's a bunch of lint in the shop-vac and there's also an unlimited amount of lint all over the washroom-- I'm not sure why this happened (because I was outside spinning the augur brush) but there certainly was a lot of lint.
Peanut Butter Hustle
I was preparing to go to early morning basketball-- it was 5:30 AM-- and I had to walk the dog in the sideways rain (I've got a special jacket for this-- I'll put up a picture) and Lola will sleep as late as you let her and is often fairly reluctant to come down the stairs early in the morning, she's content to wait up on the landing until everyone wakes up-- but I had just finished a jar of peanut butter, and her favorite hobby is to lick the remaining peanut butter out of the jar and even though she was warm and in her bed in Ian's room, all I had to whisper up the stairs was "peanut butter" and she came racing down, no hesitation about bounding down a dark staircase.
At Least It Was Short
Once again, I got sucked into another ridiculous Blake Crouch sci-fi thriller: this one is the first in a trilogy and it's called Pines . . . it's pretty much Twin Peaks plus Winesburg,Ohio inserted into The Matrix.
I Need To Try Chick-fil-A
My Public Speaking students are giving informational speeches and I have learned I don't know anything: today I learned about Abby Lee Miller-- the crazy abusive dance teacher who hid assets and survived spinal cancer; I learned about the YouTube phenomenon called Sidemen Sundays; and I learned I am really bad at eating fast food . . . I've never had Popeyes or Chick-fil-A.
Croatia: All Feet on Deck
Croatia, with a population of 3.9 million, makes it to the finals of the World Cup in 2018 and the semi-finals of the World Cup in 2022 . . . very impressive . . . and they'll probably bury Luka Modric in the basement of a castle in Transylvania and then resurrect him for the 2026 World Cup.
Carrie Soto Is Wack
On my podcast We Defy Augury, I usually try to convince you to read a particular book-- or at least to enjoy my thoughts on the book-- but this episode is different: I try to convince you NOT to read a particular book, Taylor Jenkins Reid's inane tennis novel Carrie Soto Is Back . . . which, oddly, got excellent reviews and-- even more absurd-- won the GoodReads reader's choice historical fiction novel of the year . . . anyway, join me, Clubber Lang, Helen Keller and John McEnroe as we try to unravel the idiocy of this book.
Sometimes You Win When You Don't Watch
Good week of sports for me: I managed to get to school early for both badminton and basketball, made it to the gym Saturday morning and played indoor soccer Sunday morning-- so now I'm pretty much immobile and very sore-- which will be perfect, since the Giants are on at 1 PM . . . and the World Cup games were fantastic, especially Croatia/Brazil and Argentina/Netherlands and the best sporting move that I made all week was that I completely forgot to watch the Rutgers/Ohio State basketball game on Thursday night, just blanked out and forgot about it . . . which was great because it ended with this debacle and if I would have committed to watching the entire game and then saw that ending, I probably would have had an aneurysm.
World Cup Woes
It's kind of nice when your country is eliminated from the World Cup because you can watch the games in a state of curiosity, awe, and general relaxation-- not that I told my British friends this nugget of wisdom after the disaster of the England/France game this afternoon . . . nothing worse than when your team totally dominates and your most overrated player-- according to these Brits-- skies a PK into the thirtieth row and you miss a chance to play Morocco to get into the finals . . . brutal stuff (and I feel quite bad for Harry Kane, but you've got to get that on goal and then if the keeper makes the play, good for him).
It's a Miracle . . . Now Shut Up and Do Your Work
We were brainstorming topics for an informational presentation in my Public Speaking class and some boys wanted to do a speech about how "Helen Keller isn't real" and I was like "what?" and they told me they just didn't buy it-- how could someone who couldn't see or hear write books and I told them the one thing I remembered about Helen Keller-- that the teacher poured some water on her hand and spelled out "water" and they were like "what about 'the'? how did she learn the word 'the'?" and I was like, "I don't know! go do some research" and this class is split in two by the lunch period, so I brought this up in the English Office and Cunningham was like "yeah! how did she do all that? how could she learn all those words?" and I was like "you need to go sit with the stupid boys in my Public Speaking class" and Cunningham was like "how could she learn all the words?" and I said, "they put stuff in her hand and spelled it" but now I was starting to doubt myself because that sounded absurd . . . and she was like "how did she learn abstract concepts?" and I said, "you pour water over her hand and spell 'water' for a couple days, and then one day you pour hot water on her hand and spell 'betrayal'" and then I spent the rest of my lunch period researching Helen Keller and apparently her teacher spelled millions of words on her hand, and she used a braille typewriter, and she felt cheeks and mouths and lips for vibrations to learn what words sounded like and there were always doubters of her abilities but she repeatedly proved them wrong and rode a bike and flew a plane and went to college . . . and I'm not exactly sure how she did all this, but I'm pretty sure she is real-- but I'm still hard-pressed to explain how it all happened.
BADminton
I debuted my new (and fairly cheap . . . under fifty dollars) badminton racket today at 6:30 AM-- it was certainly an upgrade from the gym class equipment I've been using-- much lighter because it's made of graphite . . . but I saw no marked improvement in my game, perhaps because we couldn't get the basketball hoops up and so we had to tape out a court in the center of the gym-- which made judging things quite difficult (and while my play was, as usual, erratic and profanity laced, my arm doesn't hurt as much as it usually does after one of these sessions).
Liberation Daze
I just put up a new episode of my podcast, We Defy Augury . . . this episode, "Liberation Daze," examines the writing of George Saunders; Festivus makes a cameo appearance, as does Lloyd Dobler from Say Anything.
Too Many Sports . . .
Big Rutgers win over Indiana Friday night, then I settled in at the bar with some friends to watch the Giants, Jets, and World Cup game Sunday afternoon-- Giants should have won but tied-- nothing like watching an entire football game and it ending in a tie-- Jets fell apart on the one-yard line, and England crushed Senegal . . . in the end I don't know how to feel (although I was excited that Argentina moved on, I love that little Lionel Messi chap) but there might be too many sporting events on TV right now for me to handle.
USA? USA!
Here we go . . . should be fun, despite the anxiety and undue concern about the state of Christian Pulisic's nether regions-- there's nothing that can make a guy feel sympathy pain like another guy with a sore groin.
I Cook on Thursdays
No time to write, as I'm about to start cooking . . . yesterday was Catherine's birthday and instead of the usual present: two weeks of cooking dinner, I've decided on something more ambitious-- I'm going to cook dinner every Tuesday and Thursday until her next birthday (and maybe beyond that, we'll see how it goes) and while I won't be able to pull this off during tennis season, the rest of the time it should be fine-- the two weeks of cooking every meal was a mistake-- I would get stressed out, drink too much, run out of things I know how to make-- but this way I can stick to stuff in my wheelhouse and it won't get repetitive and she'll always know when I'm cooking-- on her meeting day and on Thursday, a good night to have a beer while you cook (unless you just had the flu) so I've got to get on with it: blackened mahi-mahi, Brussels sprouts and bacon, and roasted potatoes.
I'm Back . . . And Angrier Than Ever (About Dumb Stuff in a Chick-lit Novel)
I'm on the mend-- thanks to Tamiflu, my immune system, benzonatate, Mucinex, and acetaminophen-- but that flu was a doozy . . . I hope I'll be back to work tomorrow, although I have to teach three 82-minute periods, and Tamiflu screws with my stomach a bit . . . I'll bring some emergency underwear-- and I know I'm getting better because I got an easy read on my Kindle for $3.99 . . . Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid, and while I'm enjoying the cheesy father-daughter Serena-esque sports story and all the chic-lit feminist drama-- I don't think Taylor Jenkins Reid knows shit about tennis-- Carrie Soto is making her comeback at age 37 and all the players on tour hate her because she was a grinder? . . . so they are trying to find a top-quality player for her to hit with and no female players will do it so they have to get a male player who she once slept with and it ended badly-- Bowe Huntley-- who is ALSO trying to make a comeback . . . and Carrie isn't sure about this because she has such a past with this guy and while this is good for romantic drama, this makes ABSOLUTELY NO TENNIS SENSE . . . female tennis players do not require any particular professional male player to hit with-- they could use any male player of Division 1 college quality and beyond because male players are so much better than female players-- they've already done this experiment-- the Williams sisters played the 203 ranked male player and he beat them handily, back to back, while smoking cigarettes between games-- John McEnroe estimated that Serena would be ranked around 700th if she were to play on the men's circuit . . . not that any of this means anything, but the point is that Carrie could hit with any decent men's player and she would be seeing more velocity and spin than with the best woman's player-- how did this bestselling author's editor not catch this?
Sick Sucks
Sickness . . . it's so fucked up-- the Friday after Thanksgiving was turning into one of those wonderful holiday break days-- on Wednesday night, we dealt with the college son returning home and still behaving like he was in college, but we straightened that out and we had a lovely Thanksgiving at my parents-- but I didn't drink or eat all that much-- I don't like Thanksgiving food and I didn't really trust my kids to drive us home because there are a lot of drunk yahoos on the road post-Thanksgiving, plus I was saving my servings of alcohol for the USA/England World Cup Match-- Friday morning I rose early, and got my go-to-chili recipe simmering in the crockpot and then Ian and I went to the Piscataway Y and played some two-on-two hoops against some high school basketball players-- and beat them in two hard fought games-- my two point shot was on and Ian has learned to roll to the basket and his arms are so long that it hard to guard him . . . the Hispanic kid was calling me "Pops," as in-- "make sure you guard Pops outside" which was an absolute delight-- then we went home, got the house set up and thirty or so people of all ages came over for the game-- we had three devices streaming (we had to calibrate the iMac in the kitchen because it was a couple seconds ahead of the smart TV in the living room, because folks were very serious about all cheering being in unison, even though said cheering was totally apostrophic, as the players can't hear us) and the party was great-- a perfect result since we had a number of Brits over . . . and people stayed a bit late and some Scotch was consumed (thanks Adrian!) and then it was time for bed . . . and two hours later I woke up shivering and I've had a fever and a cough and a headache-- which really hurts when I cough-- and body aches and sleeplessness and all kinds of other gross symptoms-- so all my plans to go out with Terry on Tuesday to watch the USA/Iran game have come to nought-- especially since Terry came down with a wicked case of COVID yesterday-- so we'll both be watching the game on our respective couches, cheering softly . . . usa . . . usa . . .usa . . . and I'm headed to the doctor today so I can avoid this typical sequence of events and perhaps I'll get some kind fo drug or diagnosis that will get me better sooner rather than later-- this is the first time I've been really sick since February 2020, and I'm shocked it's not COVID-- but the test was negative so maybe it's RSV or the flu or just some weird virus like I had three years ago.
Costa Rica Shocks Japan
I always root for the Central and South American teams in the World Cup (and Mexico and Canada . . . proximity rooting) and so I was excited to see Costa Rica redeem the nation, after losing 7-0 to Spain, by coming up with a dramatic 1-0 win over Japan this morning . . . and I know it's got to be tough to announce an entire soccer match-- there's a lot of dead time and a lot of just knocking the ball around, but I still think that the announcer should not have called Japan "shell shocked" after Keysher Fuller's change-up chip shot goal, because of the firebombing of Tokyo and the atom bomb . . . "shocked" would have been enough-- that would be like saying, if the US team were to beat Iran, that it looks like the Iranians have been roasted by the Great Satan-- and I don't think you can say that on TV-- but soccer does bring out the hyperbole in many of us (my favorite adjective used by an announcer in this cup was a "tantalizing" pass).
This Is How Old Soccer Fans Party
Fun day today . . . got up early, worked on the podcast, got my game-time chili into the crockpot, went to the gym and played some two-on-two with my son Ian-- and he's started to really roll to the basket, we beat a couple of high school basketball players because I was making my outside shot and Ian was setting screens and rolling, despite the fact that the one kid was calling me "pops"-- then got the house all organized for the USA/England game-party and we had a bunch of people over, of all ages-- and a number of them were British, which added a great element to the event because you couldn't root like a total asshole, you had to keep in mind that the person next to you might be rooting for the opposite result-- and we were all friends-- and a nil-nil tie was actually the perfect result for this party . . . it's a nice metaphor for our country, perhaps I would be more empathetic politically if there was always a Republican sitting on the couch next to me . . . anyway, my chili was a hit-- I've never had a party where the entire crockpot was consumed, and Adrian "neutral" bottle of Glengoyne Scotch was also a crowd favorite-- all parties should start at one and end at 6 PM.
Happy Thanksgiving
I'd really like to put up this clip from the movie Pieces of April, where Tyrone (formerly Eddies) wishes his ex-girlfriend "Happy Thanksgiving"-- it's one of my favorite movie scenes ever (from a great little indie film) but I can't find the clip anywhere . . . someone get on this . . . wait, I found a pirated version, go to 59:50 and watch the scene!
A Slow Start to the World Cup . . .
Yesterday, I took a half-day and so did my friend, colleague, and fellow soccer coach Terry-- our plan was to find a raucous bar, settle in, and watch the USA vs. Wales World Cup game . . . the first two places we went-- Barca and Tavern on George-- were closed because it was Monday . . . and while I get the whole restaurants-are-closed-on-Monday thing, we're talking about the World Cup-- most countries shut down (except for bars and restaurants) when the national team is playing a cup game-- so we ate lunch at George Street Ale House and talked soccer with a salesman and watched the Netherlands beat Senegal in the waning minutes and then we went over to the Golden Rail to watch the USA game-- there was a bit of a crowd there and the new owner, an enthusiastic Asian guy, was excited about the game-- but the only reason he opened the bar was because he saw that there was an article in the local paper (and the local internet paper, if there is a such a thing) that said that the Golden Rail was a great place to watch soccer-- because the previous owner was British-- so he figured he'd better open; then for the second half, we went to Highland Park and tried Pino's because they said they would have the big projection screen going for the game-- and they did-- but there was also a group of old dudes in a circle in the front of the bar playing folk music (one at a time, taking turns . . . yikes) and there was only one other USA fan in the place, my buddy John, so we watched together and suffered through Zimmerman's unfortunate foul of Gareth Bale and the resulting PK that drew the game-- hopefully there will be more fanfare and festivities on Friday.
Southern Change Gonna Come at Last?
The past couple weeks I have immersed myself in the South, with a capital "S": my wife and I traveled to Charleston; I read a bunch of Battle Cry of Freedom-- the epic James M. McPherson Civil War history-- and I whipped through two S.A. Cosby crime novels that are set in rural Virginia . . . Blacktop Wasteland and Razorblade Tears . . . the result of all this Southern immersion is a new episode of We Defy Augury called "Southbound with S.A. Cosby" . . . there are cameo appearances from Zman and my son Alex (but they are pretty deep into the show-- you've got to have patience in the South . . . check it out and I hope you enjoy it.
Kids These Days . . .
We've had bathroom issues at East Brunswick High School-- vaping, vandalism, hooking up, etcetera-- so kids have to digitally sign into monitored bathrooms and only two students can enter at a time . . . it's a real pain-in-the-ass, pun intended, and in any given period (and we have block scheduling, so our periods are 82 minutes long, so kids are going to have to go to the bathroom) most of the bathrooms around the school are closed and locked, so the kids have to seek out an open bathroom and often wait in line to go-- some kids take advantage of this, they know they can wander the halls of the school with impunity, basically cutting class, but when they see teachers or SSO officers, they just tell them they are looking for an open bathroom; I saw a couple of these "hallway wanderers" pass each other last week, and after they slapped hands, one delinquent said something that might have passed between two septuagenarians: "bro, you're the only guy who get more steps in this building than me."
American Tailgating vs. The Americans
There's nothing like a good-old-fashioned-football tailgate-- but that doesn't mean I like everything about a good-old-fashioned-football tailgate; Rutgers played Penn State today and we have a number of kids from Highland Park that attend both schools (including my son Alex, far right in the photo) so it was fun to see the high school gang back together and the parents brought loads of good food and drink, but it was bitter cold and it was windy-- notice the flags-- and wind ruins everything . . . tennis, biking, golf, tailgating (everything except kite-flying) so while I enjoyed the cold-- especially from a food hygiene point-of-view, I had no problem eating leftovers from this tailgate hours later, because everything was kept at refrigeration temperatures-- I was happy to catch a ride home and watch the game inside my warm, windless house . . . and then when the game broke bad, I was happy to watch an episode of The Americans with my wife . . . and choosing a show about Russian spies over football probably means I'm some kind of pinko communist.
Stuff I Watched, Stuff I'm Watching
If you're looking for a different take on the horror genre, check out His House-- it's the story of a refugee couple from wartorn Sudan who seeks asylum in England and ends up in a not-so-typical-haunted-housing situation . . . these folks have some real skeletons in the closet and some real ghosts in their past; if you're looking for more traditional horror, check out Midnight Mass, a Netflix miniseries directed by Mike Flanagan-- the characters are well-drawn and Saracen from Friday Night lights has a superb role in this haunted island community; if you're looking to be stressed and depressed, watch The Americans . . . we've almost made it to the end of season four, and while the portrayal of two Soviet deep-cover spies who are "married" and have a family in Washington D.C. is compelling, gripping and candid, the show gets dark and then it gets darker . . . we can't stop watching, but it's brutal.
Voodoo Health Shit
I pride myself on being a logical person, versed in numeracy, literacy, and many topics-- but one thing I don't fuck around with is medical information . . . I don't read about medical stuff, I don't investigate it, I don't wonder at it, I don't think about it-- when I was a kid, I skipped that page in Discover about medical mysteries (was it called Vital Signs?) and while I know this is ridiculous, I just think it's bad juju to wonder about how your body works . . . if you read about heart attacks, you might have one; if you watch a medical show where someone has an aneurysm, your body might follow suit; if you research too much about your kidneys, they might stop working, and I did not read one page of Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer (even though I heard it was an excellent book) and then yesterday, we were discussing strokes (because my friend's dad had a stroke) and I got a terrible headache-- and I never get headaches-- and it was like a spike had been nailed into my head above my right eye and I could barely teach and I had to cancel my dermatology appointment . . . but apparently lots of people get headaches-- some far worse than the one I experienced-- and I wasn't having a stroke and it went away when I had some acetaminophen and coffee, but I still don't want to know how this stuff works (my friend Rachel told me she has lots of little white scars on her brain from migraine headaches!)
Dave Learns Two Things (That He Already Knew . . . Sort Of)
This morning I learned that I really like Billy Cobham-- I like his drumming and his original stuff and his work with Miles Davis and his work with the Mahavishnu Orchestra . . . I just didn't know the name "Billy Cobham"-- I "liked" a bunch of his songs on Spotify without ever knowing the percussionist behind the music . . . the other thing I learned TWICE this week (and I'm sure I knew this previously) is that if you don't rake the leaves in your backyard, you are going to step in dogshit . . . because fallen leaves are often the color of dogshit and fallen leaves obscure dogshit.
Go Ahead and Glue Yourself to The Scream
I really loved the new Sam Harris podcast "Science and Civilization"; Harris chats with astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson about numeracy and the difficulties humans have with numerical logic . . . the section about global warming was especially enlightening-- and, as usual, I am adding my own thoughts and tangents into a summary of what was discussed; Tyson points out that people have trouble understanding the dire consequences of one-degree change in average temperature because they don't think in Gaussian (Bell) curves-- we think about one degree warmer in our house or on an average day, but the fluctuation has much greater significance at the edges of the curve-- that's where the action is at (the storms, droughts, wildfires, dust storms, erosion, heat strokes, and death) and even if most people DID understand the ramifications at the long tail of a one-degree change, the mathematics of our political cycle precludes our political system from addressing the problem because we elect people in four-year cycles-- so the time horizon is too short to run on a long term concept like climate change . . . politicians run on inflation, cultural wedge issues, gas prices, immigration . . . things that are happening NOW . . . and Sam Harris is concerned that young people are th eonly people that care about these issues, but the way young people are protesting is kind of deranged-- especially the folks gluing themselves to "priceless" works of art; Tyson explains that young people are the only ones who care about these kind fo long term problems, plus they are the people with time and energy to protest-- I agree, and quite honestly, these "pricesless" works of art are only priceless in a market economy with extreme wealth inequality-- we have plenty of digital pictures of the art and it's only paint on canvas, so who gives a fuck? . . . maybe some rich art patrons but for the rest off us, the planet, the ecosystem we live in, the current state of the oceans and rivers, clean air and water, endangered species . . . all these things are far more priceless than art; a species took millions of years to create-- so I say, go ahead and glue yourselves to famous paintings if it gets some attention to the cause of climate change-- you've got to break a few eggs to bake a cake . . . but then you've got to explain the statistics to people as well-- so good luck.
A Bit 'mo Charleston
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Some last thoughts about Charleston--
-- our tiny VRBO rental on Line Street (in the young and trendy Upper King Street neighborhood) was not for the faint of heart (or the elderly) because the bed was a floating loft at the top of a skinny spiral staircase . . . when you got out of bed, your only option was to get ONTO the staircase . . .
--Brown's Court Bakery was a block away from our place-- some of the best baked goods I've ever eaten: the pepperoni/jalapeno danish, raspberry danish, bacon and cheddar scone, and the lavender sugar donut are all worth trying;
--Brown Dog Deli in downtown Charleston is a cheap, delicious joint to grab sandwiches and a beer;
-- the Two Sisters walking tour was excellent . . . we had Mary Helen (as the two sisters split the group) and she gave us an entertaining history of the city-- it's a weird place, after the Civil War and the earthquake of 1886, Charleston was somewhat in ruins . . . and because it wasn't wealthy, the city never rebuilt all it's historic homes and buildings-- and then some motivated Southern Ladies started preserving things until the money came into town and now the place is astounding, the homes are all remodeled historically by rich part-timers, there are lush gardens and window boxes and narrow cobblestone streets and brick alleys and iconic porches and patios-- it's like a beautiful version of New Orleans (without the urine and the vomit) and I'm not sure if we've ever put in more miles walking in a city--
--despite the windy weather, everyone told us you have to go to a rooftop bar when you're in Charleston so we went to the Pour Taproom, atop the Hyatt . . . an interesting concept: they have 80 computerized taps and you serve yourself beer and pay by the ounce . . . great views from up there, you can really see the layout of the city;
-- our last meal we went to Leon's again-- great affordable Southern food and local beers and a really great vibe;
--the Led Zeppelin poster in our VRBO rental was of the same nature as all those Nirvana t-shirts that the youngsters are wearing . . . I doubt very much the rental barons of StayDuvet are huge Zep fans but the band logo has become an aesthetic signifier of something young and fun;
--Charleston is a lot fo fun but I've heard it's swampy and mosquito-ridden in the summer and if we stayed there another week, Catherine and I would both be obese . . . it's a great place to visit and it's being rapidly gentrified as we speak . . . it's a Southern version of what happened in Asbury Park-- a prim location stunted by poverty and left in ruins until the money came to gentrify, and now both towns are adult playgrounds, great for a fun weekend, but maybe not somewhere to live full time.
More Charleston
We have really covered a lot of ground over the past two days, according to my Fitbit we've walked over fifty thousand steps, and we've managed to avoid getting soaked; Wednesday night w took a very very long stroll north to Edmund's Oast brewery-- but we thought we we headed to the restaurant but Google maps sent us to the brewery and while the beer was delicious, they didn't have an extensive menu so we ordered some boiled peanuts, which I loved at Cat hated-- very very messy food-- and then walked all the way back to Leon's-- an oyster and fried chicken place in a refurbished garage . . . the food was amazing; the nest day we walked down to the water, through the colorfully painted home in the French Quarter, which has a New Orleans feel, and took the tour of the Old Exchange and Dungeon, a venerable and extremely solid old building with symmetric brick foundational arches, a hidden cache of revolutionary gunpowder and an impressive history as a slave market, a battery, a port building, and a historical society, the building was on the river but now there is four hundred feet of reclaimed land; we got soaked on our walk home, but the vociferous and loquacious black lady working the register at the convenience store told us it was all God's plan and the rain removed the bacteria; we went back to our tiny house, watched a show called Magic For Humans which is oddly addictive and we only discovered it because we are on Sissy's Netflix account, so all kinds of weird suggestions, and then we walked back downtown for a rich Southern dinner at Magnolia's and then back uptown to see a band at the Commodore, a weird dive bar with music-- quite the crowd in there, it seemed everyone actually knew how to dance, like really dance, but the band canceled and some white guy started energetically rapping, doing hip hop covers, so we watched a bit of that and then went home (it also should be noted that I yanked my belt off a closet door, it was under my jeans, and the buckle whipped over the door and clocked me in the head, giving me a nice knot on my noggin).
Charleston day one
After a slightly stressful departure, as our son Ian-- who was locking up the house and heading to my brother's place with the dog while Catherine and I celebrate thirty years since our first date with a trip to Charleston-- dropped and broke his phone while listening to music in the shower and then totally lost his phone either at school or in the house so we had no Sim card and so we had to make like Avon Barksdale in The Wire and buy a burner phone, which was way harder to set up than we thought, but we did it and so we could communicate with our air brained son who ended up getting everything done he had to get done, enabling us to leave very very early, fly to Charleston, tour Magnolia Plantation, see some slave quarters, learn about rice farming, stalk some gators, take scenic pictures of Spanish moss and ancient live oaks, pet a pig, and walk a lot of miles through reclaimed swamp and beautiful wild gardens along the Ashley River, and then we ubered to town and gave our Uber driver some advice on his other job, where he cleans pools and got to drive a really nice pool truck until the new supervisor took it from him and gave him the shitty truck, a real kick to the balls, and it still wasn't check in at our tiny house near King Street so we grabbed a beer and a catfish sandwich and some fried green tomatoes at the Rarebit and then, finally, got into our little cottage with spiral stairs and a loft bedroom; soon enough we'll head back out to check out the night life and then hunker down for the rain.
Destroying the World (Creatively)
My newest episode of We Defy Augury is an epic adventure into apocalypses of all kinds; "Apocalypse New" is inspired by Walter M. Miller's classic post-apocalyptic religious sci-fi classic A Canticle for Leibowitz, but there's lots of cameos: Ziggy Stardust, Tyler Durden, Karen Thompson Walker, Rick Grimes, Sookie Stackhouse, Bill Compton . . . and even Kramer, to help with some poetry; I highly recommend the first novella in Canticle-- the Catholic Church, like a cockroach, is still hanging on six hundred years after a nuclear flame deluge-- and the monastery in honor of St. Leibowitz is trying to preserve some arcane and archaic knowledge from that old, destroyed world . . . then the book keeps going and going and going . . . you might want to listen to my podcast rather than reading the rest.
What About the Dogs? The Dogs!
Nothing is more fucked up than having to tell your dog she can't have dinner at her usual time because of a massive government conspiracy to control our clocks . . . I really thought there was some legislation to end all this springing forward and falling back bullshit, but apparently we're still doing it-- with no concern for the dogs! the poor dogs!-- and so now I've got a grouchy Pavlovian salivating dog, who can't understand why 5 PM is now 4 PM (mainly because I can't understand why 5 PM is now 4 PM . . . so there will be barely any time to get outside in the sun after school . . . why do we do this?)
Lantern Flies: The Hits Keep on Coming
Ian and I took a chainsaw to the low branches on the autumn blaze maple in our yard; I held the ladder and Ian used his long arms to reach and sever a half dozen or so limbs that were hanging over the bamboo and the Leyland cypress, in the the hopes that now the lantern flies will be more exposed on the main trunk-- the easier for trapping and killing . . . meanwhile, I taped the two maples in our front yard and while many lantern flies got stuck on the tape bands, there's still been an endless supply climbing the trunk, which I diligently massacre every time I go outside . . . so at the base of each tree there's a mass grave of splattered lantern flies-- which you'd think would serve as a warning to these stupid beasts, but they keep on coming-- but the questions is: where the fuck are they coming from? . . . or to be grammatically correct: from fuck all where do they be coming?
Conspiracy Theories in America
This episode of Plain English about conspiracy theories is both compelling and entertaining . . . I especially like the definition of a conspiracy theory-- brought to you by the guys from "Stuff They Don't Want You To Know"--
1) an event with an unsatisfactory explanation
2) lack of transparency
3) element of control-- either something controlling events or controlling information
4) a participatory aspect
and there's lots of other "fun" stuff about JFK, Lee Harvey Oswald, aliens, UFOs, and the government secrecy orders and patents.
But Don't Confuse Samuel Jackson and Laurence Fishburne
A student walked into my first period class this morning sleepily murmured, "Good morning Mr. Soder" and I turned my head and said, "YOU RACIST! You think every old white bald goateed English teacher looks the same?" and he stammered a bit and apologized for calling me the wrong name and then I told him I was just kidding-- that I could totally see how he mixed up me and Mr. Soder . . . because old white bald guys with goatees do look the same (especially to sleepy teenagers).
Got to Be the Shoes
You don't choose your family, but you don't really choose your friends either-- friendships tend to form in a fairly arbitrary pattern based on your activities, location, upbringing, family, race, religion, and a host of other factors . . . in fact, when you think hard about it (which you shouldn't) you might not choose anything (aside from the kind of shoes you wear).
(Ooh) That Smell
I lent my car to my seventeen year old son Sunday night, so he could drive some friends to get Halloween costumes-- but instead they got pho and I think someone spilled some (or they were very sweaty and were rubbing their stinky feet all over my van's upholstery) because Monday morning, there was a heinous odor emanating from the interior of the car, like vomit and chlorine and footstink all mixed together-- I've been driving with the windows open since then and the smell is finally dissipating but then today at the dentist I was punished with an even worse odor/flavor-- the cement that they used to affix my bridge made me gag over and over and over . . . I'm glad I didn't puke on the hygienist because she was very nice (not that I would punish a rude hygienist by puking on her) but I hope that the rest of my week is odor free.
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