Do It Geno!

While I did not climb, cut, or dispose of the giant dying tree that stood next to our house, menacing our roof (and our neighbor's roof) I did feel like I put in a full day's work watching this thing come down-- it was a very stressful for both me and the dog, the thumping of the logs as they swung down and crashed into the remaining trunk, the destruction in the garden, the denting of our siding, the general mayhem in our neighbor's yard (they had to take apart the chainlink fence so they could get the excavator back there to carry the giant chunks of tree to the truck) and the decision of just how high to leave the stump-- I'm going to sand it down and hit it with a couple coats of polyurethane to preserve it-- but though it was demanding, nerve-wracking, and costly to watch Genie Tree (highly recommended! they did it for $2800 . . . which was much lower than any other estimate . . . except JCR Tree Service) the threat of this tree falling on our house (and our neighbor's house) has been driving me mad for years-- the only thing I can compare it to is how Claudius feels about Hamlet, when he sends him to be executed in England . . . all I could think was "do it Geno, for like the hectic in my blood this tree rages and thou must cure me."

The Little Friend: A Southern Gothic Tour de Force

Donna Tartt's novel The Little Friend, a convoluted, meandering, and tangled Southern Gothic tale, inspired me to record a meandering and convoluted podcast celebrating this epic story: "Donna Tartt + Poisonous Snakes = Hell Yes!"

Milton Friedman Was (Kind of) Wrong

I played some pickle-ball with my wife this morning (for free!) and then I carted and spread a few wheelbarrows of free topsoil in my backyard, and now I'm enjoying a free beer-- some lady gave away a bunch of leftover IPAs from a fundraiser she had-- solid stuff: Night Shift Santilli and Lord Hobo Banger #6 . . . so while there's no free lunch there seems to be free other stuff, if you're willing to seek it out.

She Got Her Butt in Gear (After Being Probed in the Rear)

My wife got a colonoscopy this morning (she passed!) and then-- after a nap-- she got her butt in gear and hosted a book club reunion this afternoon (but she did not drive a car, drink alcohol, or sign any important documents-- all of which are strictly prohibited after being under anesthesia).

Gross Stuff

My wife is in the midst of colonoscopy prep and I played pickle-ball so hard in the heat that my scalp started peeling dead skin (or maybe it's just sweat residue or stuff from the inside of my new hat . . . I don't know, it came off in the shower).

My Children Are Conspiring Against My Inner Peace

Despite yesterday's post-acupuncture clambering, my back was feeling pretty loose this morning . . . until I noticed that the minivan's back driver-side tire was totally flat-- it turns out Ian ran over a nail on the way home from life-guarding last night (at least it wasn't Alex again) and after the usual mallet pounding and yanking (and some standing on the lug wrench) the lug nuts came loose and we changed yet another tire (it's getting tiresome) but hopefully, they'll be able to patch this one on the cheap-- and next summer my kids need to get jobs they can bike to because when they drive the car, it costs more money than they make.

Almost Therapeutic

After some three-on-three basketball this morning, my calves and back were pretty tight, so I told my acupuncturist to go to town on them-- and while there was a bit of pain right when she poked the needles in, then the muscles started to loosen up-- and after lying there in the liminal sleep state for twenty-five minutes, I felt much more relaxed . . . until I went into the parking lot and saw that the fucker that parked next to me wedged his car so close to my driver side door that I couldn't my door more than an inch or so-- I had to get into my car on the passenger side and climb over the middle console like some kind of middle-aged gymnast vaulting the ol' pommel horse (I'm not sure if that's what gymnasts do but I don't feel like googling it).

Straight From the Cardiologist to the Cheesesteak Joint

Catherine and I spent even more quality time together-- we accompanied my mom to her cardiology appointment at the Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine (and I drove my dad's boat of a car into the city and down into the bowels of the parking deck, which was slightly unnerving because the Lincoln Nautilus handles like an overweight blue whale) and while we had to wait quite a while to see the doctor, the news was fairly good-- no rush on fixing the valve in my mom's heart-- she just has to monitor things and get a new electro-cardiogram . . . and so we celebrated the only way you can when you drive all the way to Philly . . . we got cheesesteaks at Tony and Nick's Steaks (and I got sharp provolone and long hots on mine . . . amazing).

Quality Time with the Ol' Ball and Chain

Catherine and I went and played pickle-ball this morning and then we biked to the Rutgers pool, swam a bit, ate some sandwiches together, and then fell asleep poolside (we were at a fun birthday bbq last night) only to awaken to some very dark clouds rolling in, so we packed up, leapt on our bikes, raced home (sort of-- she was racing, I'm pretty slow on a bike) and beat the torrential downpour by a minute or two, then we went grocery shopping together, and after that we watched TWO finales-- Season 2 of From and Season 1 of Red Oaks . . .  and we didn't bicker, not even once!

Potpourri

I went to acupuncture Thursday (because I'm a very lucky dad . . . my kids have gotten into the pick-up basketball scene and I'm just good enough to play with them-- I've got to take advantage while I still can, but it's slowly killing me and acupuncture helps to loosen up my back and calves . . . I played for two hours with them this morning and then I planted a shrub on the side of our house . . . a yew, which is supposed to thrive in the shade-- I built a really nice bed with all the stones I've filched from the park and a bunch of topsoil that got dumped by accident in a friend's rental property driveway-- trapping a car in the driveway-- and the police say there's nothing they can do so my friend who owns the property is telling everyone to take the free soil-- and I only live two blocks away, so I've taken six or seven wheelbarrow loads of dirt from the pile-- which has not put a dent in it) and I was hoping to just lie there and relax while Dana stuck some needles in my sore spots-- but Dana is a talker and she had a lot to say-- which is coincidentally and ironically related to my new podcast episode-- there was a horrendous car accident at the edge of town two weeks ago-- my wife saw the wreckage on her way back from Costco-- and it turns out the accident was right in front of the acupuncture office and Dana was right in the midst of the accident, pulling bodies from a car and trying to administer CPR and getting one of the license plates of the two cars that were racing, at 85 MPH in a 35 zone, and it turns out the victims of the crash were the parents of a local family that Dana and I both know and there was a third car that was on fire and one of the cars that was racing was mangled and they had to pull that guy out with the jaws of life-- so that's the story I got, in graphic and gory detail, before Dana stuck some needles in me and knocked me out-- and so I had some very weird and scary dreams while I was in the acupuncture dream-state.

Autopocalypse Now (Carmageddon Later)

Autopocalypse Now (Carmageddon Later) is certainly my most impassioned episode of We Defy Augury . . . I get pretty worked up about the book Carmageddon: How Cars Make Life Worse and What To Do About It by Daniel Knowles (a guy who hates cars even more than me) but to balance things out, I was able to dig up a very rare monologue by The Boss himself . . . and you know how that guy feels about automobiles.

greasetruck · Hemi - Powered Droning

Red Oaks and Roxy Music

I don't know how we missed it, but wife wife and I are catching up on the nostalgic, funny, and wonderful Amazon show Red Oaks-- it's Caddyshack and The Graduate and Ferris Bueller all rolled up into one delightful '80s comedy-- that's set in New Jersey!-- and the eternally stoned valet Wheeler has got me listening to Roxy Music . . .. and while I love the show, I'm not certain that I love Roxy Music (but like Steely Dan, it might grow on me).

Ian . . . It Is Your Graduation

 

Ian graduated from high school today and the ceremony was lovely-- the speeches were short and sweet, the weather was breezy and temperate, and we had a delicious lunch afterwards with my parents at Wu's Shanghai Dumpling in North Brunswick-- and while the only mishap during the formalities was the fact that Ian tripped on his ascent up the stairs to receive his diploma, my wife suspected this had something to due with his designation as "Class Clown" in the Yearbook-- and she was right, he bet a friend twenty dollars that he would stumble on stage and then he followed through (and got paid) but we also had a minor mishap BEFORE the graduation got underway: Alex drove Ian over to the high school while Catherine and I were getting dressed-- a half-mile drive-- but there was a bunch of graduation traffic and he was trying to squeeze between a truck and a parked car and he hit the parked car's mirror with the van's mirror and broke the other car's mirror-- and he didn't have his license on him and I think there was a bit of conflict between him and the other driver-- but we sorted things out right before the kids walked out in their robes (of course, this guy was sitting right behind us and he was pretty indignant-- with good reason-- but I gave him my information and hopefully it won't cost that much to fix it) and now both my kids have graduated high school . . . but one of them could use another semester of Driver's Ed (and my wife will finally "graduate" tonight from Project Graduation-- she's been working her ass raising money and recruiting volunteers for the all-night event-- once she rides over there and sets things up, she's free at last free at last).

Bedtime Stories

I don't know if this is a common experience, but it happens to me all the time-- when I'm reading in bed, at night, and I start to fall asleep, I'll nod off for a moment or two, but I'll dream that I'm still reading-- and my brain will invent the text-- so I'll still be reading along, but not really, my eyes are actually closed and my mind is making up what comes next in the book-- and then I'll start and wake up and I'll reread whatever I was reading and it will be totally different than what I just "read" in my previous half-conscious state . . . I'm assuming this happens to everyone who reads before bed?

Things I Learn in the Car with My Wife and Kids Episode 74

Apparently the little metal button on the side of my OnePlus 8 model phone turns the phone's ringer on and off (so there's been nothing wrong with my phone or mobile network . . . I've just had the ringer turned off for a couple months or so).

Father's Day Excitement (with a Lady)

I biked over to Castleton Park this morning to play some pickle-ball and when I returned home, I saw a groundhog amble around the bend in my yard and head into the open door of the bike shed-- so I called for Lola, thinking that she'd scare the creature out of the shed but-- because of the other three bikes in their slots-- she couldn't really get in there properly and all I heard was some frightened groundhog squeals from the back corner; I used Ian's phone light but I couldn't see way back in there and Lola was now obsessed with the situation and I didn't want a repeat of what happened with my old dog (Sirius) and a very unlucky groundhog so I had Ian take Lola for a long walk and I left the bike shed door open and vacated the area and now it seems the groundhog has hightailed it out of the shed, because Lola is no interested in the bike shed and has returned to her usual chill lady-like demeanor.

Second for the Second Time

I had another meh performance at the annual Joe Rosenberg cornhole tournament but Alex and his partner (a random old dude who was decent but not good) came in second-- so in the money-- and Alex came in second place last year as well . . . he was on fire today and his team only lost (in close matches) to the randomly drawn dream team of Joe (the host and board maker) and Ryan (a previous champ).

End of the School Year Sporting Potpourri

I finished off a full week of athletics with a stellar performance-- if I don't say so myself-- at 6:30 AM basketball this morning . . . sometimes it pays off to be a minute late, as I ended up on a dream team with all the elements-- youth, athleticism, basketball savvy, and the ability to shoot from outside-- and when you're on a good team, you often get good passes and open shots, which I converted like crazy today-- unusual when I play early in the morning-- it's too bad this is not the end of the line, there's another game Monday morning, where I'm sure I'll return to my usual shooting form (chucking that shit up from anywhere, waiting to get hot, cursing the russet clad early morn) but I can't complain-- starting from last Friday, it was cornhole, pickleball, singles tennis, basketball with college kids, badminton, lifting,  bike ride to Castleton and pickleball last night, and then hoops this morning-- and I'm still upright and walking, an impressive week of screwing around in various arenas- and there's still a cornhole tournament tomorrow and father's day pickleball on Sunday and one last day of early morning basketball on Juneteenth.

Blind to the Way of the Blinds

 

A couple of ladies (Rachel and Sam) were complaining about the state of the window blinds in their room-- a room I happen to share with them for one period-- and I said, "Yeah, my blinds are fucked up the exact same way down in my room!" and one of the ladies remarked that I seemed to be the common denominator in the fucked-up-blinds equation and the other lady asked me if I flattened the blinds before I opened and closed them and I said, "Wha?" and they both said, "You need to turn them flat before you open and close them" and I told them I had never heard that-- but apparently you need to twist the long plastic thing until the blinds are flat, relative to the floor-- as opposed to flat against the window (in maximum light blocking mode, which is the state I keep them in) and I said maybe these blinds needed some step-by-step instructions on the wall because I didn't think the general public was aware of this blind peculiarity and the ladies said that my wife had probably told me about this and I told them that we don't have blinds, we have curtains. 

Birthday Athletics, Plus . . .

I am very sore today, but in a good way: yesterday Alex snuck Ian and me into the Busch gym so we could play some pick-up basketball and we ran into one of my old students from East Brunswick (Armaan) who loves to play (and often plays with my son Alex) and then once we got in the gym, we saw several soccer players and one tennis player from Highland Park (Matt, Amay, and Boyang) and so we played a couple of hours of four-on-four and-- aside from one random-- I had either sired, coached, or taught all the players in the game-- and my team was kicking some butt (Armaan could really shoot and pass) and I was driving the soccer player that was covering me crazy-- he played basketball like a soccer player-- the way I did when I started-- and so succumbed to all the basic moves . . . anyway, we had a blast and then I got up this morning and played 6:30 AM badminton, which I haven't done in a while, and it was as frustrating as it usual is-- that game is difficult and unpredictable and it's really hard to hit a backhand out of the corner-- but I got another good runaround and now I can barely move.

Thoughts on My Son's Eighteenth Birthday

It is my son Ian's eighteenth birthday today-- yikes-- and it's been quite a senior year, but hopefully, he will get his shit together before he has to send his fourth-quarter transcript to Muhlenberg-- my wife said she'd like to "shake him" and I said, "go right ahead, he's not a baby anymore"-- in other news, I was eating a couple of my wife's vegetable and ham egg muffins-- she was trying to use up our egg surplus and so she baked eggs and other good stuff in a muffin tin and made a bunch of them-- and while I kind of like the egg muffins, I don't love their consistency-- they are too foamy-- and I don't like foam . . . I don't like foam on my beer and I certainly don't like cold foam on my coffee-- who the fuck is paying extra for cold foam? would you pay extra for cold foam on a beer?-- and, on a positive note in the age department, yesterday at the Y, my older son (he's 19) and I beat two giant Asian dudes in two-on-two basketball-- they were seniors in college, they were very athletic and could jump and shoot, but they had no clue how to deal with a pick-and-roll and didn't figure out Alex was left-handed until I told them . . . I'm not sure how long I can keep this father/son basketball thing going, but it will be fun while it lasts (and we can't wait until Ian can play with us too-- he's gotten really tall and long, but he keeps busting up his fingers playing volleyball . . . and though my kids are coming back to basketball rather late in life, they're a hell of a lot better than I was when I was nineteen-- when I was nineteen, I played basketball like a rugby player).

Hippies vs. Billionaire!

 

My new episode of We Defy Augury focuses on my favorite book of the year-- the eco-thriller Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton-- and I'm also proud to announce my favorite title of any episode: "Eclectic New Zealand Acid Trap."

AI Can Cook

I highly recommend asking Chat GPT for cooking advice-- it spits out a clear recipe without all the ads and anecdotes-- and I also highly recommend asking for your recipe "hip-hop" style . . . you'll get lines like this: "Carefully remove the foil packet from the grill, treating it like a valuable vinyl record, and let it cool slightly before opening."

Long Saturday

One busy day after another . . . I can't wait for the dog days of summer-- yesterday we drove up and back to Muhlenberg for Ian's pre-registration and counseling-- this place is the exact opposite of Rutgers-- they really spell out exactly how everything is done and insist that your kid will be advised and counseled and will get through this experience-- it's really nice but kind of weird, after watching Alex learn how to navigate the many campuses, buses, gyms, cafeterias and bureaucratic snafus of Rutgers . . . it almost feels like this is our first kid going away to college-- because he's actually going away (a little over an hour) and not living up the road-- Catherine and I are also excited to explore the Allentown region-- you can walk to the city from the campus and there's a big Amish farmer's market along the way-- so long day up there-- lots of various sessions for parents and kids-- and then we went to a block party when we got home . . . this Sunday needs to be a day of rest.

Long Full Day

6:30 AM basketball this morning, followed by an empty exam period (which was lucky for me because I forgot a change of clothing) followed by a long and arduous Public Speaking exam (it takes more energy to listen to a speech than to make one) followed by some errands with Stacey, followed by the end-of-the-year party and cornhole tournament (Krystin and I made it to the semi-finals but the tournament has gotten very competitive . . . no more pushover teams-- every game was insane and Kim Pzeszski kicked my butt even though I was putting in eight or ten a round) followed a well earned Friday crash.

Long Half Day

The high school students had a half day today because of the air quality-- our school is not fully air-conditioned and it was fairly hazy inside the building yesterday-- but the teachers were required to stay until contract time . . . they had a short meeting at 1:35 PM to insure that we didn't bolt with the kids-- and then when I walked out to my car to leave (and while it wasn't quite contract time, it was in the ballpark) my car would not turn over, nor were the electric locks working, and so I assumed it was the battery and Stacey and I tried to jump it, but had no success-- so then I had to call roadside assistance and while there was a high volume of calls, once I got through, the guy got there fairly quickly, and he was able to jump the battery with his supercharged portable battery jumper-- but he said I needed a new battery so I drove straight to my mechanic and dropped the van off there and then walked home through the haze-- and since it was a long half-day, I decided I deserved a treat so I stopped at the coffee place and got a cold brew ($5.86 for a cold brew? yikes) and while it was expensive, it was very delicious-- but what a weird couple of days here in Jersey-- I guess this is what it's like when you live in L.A.-- and I can't wait for some typical hot humid rainy weather; also, my students taught me about the "point five" feature on my phone camera-- which allows you to take a wider picture--but it's "point five" on their Apple phones, but on my Oneplus 8-- much to my students' amusement-- it's "point six".

And It Was All Yellow

Canadian wildfires and the yellow haze they produced made for a strange penultimate day of class (and the final "A" day) but despite the glowing hazy apocalypse, we managed to finish ACT V of Hamlet and watch everyone die (except Horatio, of course, because he's a good friend) and then I realized that I forgot to vote for mayor yesterday (because of the haze . . . I blame the haze!) and I really hope this shit clears out tomorrow-- I was supposed to play tennis today but we canned that idea and Friday is the end of the year party (and cornhole tournament) but it won't be much fun in this fug.

AI vs. the English Office . . .

The EBHS end-of-they-year party is fast approaching and Kristyn and I have to defend our hard-won cornhole tournament title . . . the bag-tossing competition is fierce but the competition for clever team names is lame-- people usually go with cliche monikers like "The Cornholios"-- but I wanted our team to have a more creative and unique title . . . so I asked Bard AI for some cornhole team names and, sadly, I got a bunch of bullshit . . . stuff like this:

--Corn on the Cobb

--The Kernels of Truth

--The Maize-ing Masters

--The Cornhole Ninjas

--The Bean Bag Bandits

so I told Bard I needed even funnier names and the AI gave me:

--The Cornhole Whisperers

--The Cornhole Crüe

--The Cornhole Mafia

--The Cornhole Jedi

-- The Cornhole Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

so then I tried to think of some clever names all by myself, but everything that I thought of was filthy and this is a school-sanctioned event and you have to put the team name on a Google Sheet, so I didn't want to incriminate myself . . . I was thinking of genital-themed stuff along the lines of "One Bag, One Hole," because Kristyn takes a lot of shit from the men (making our victory all the more sweet) and also basic and filthy names like "Jam it in the Hole" but then I got the other English teachers working on the project-- Stacey, Terry, Denise, Eric-- and we spent a good 45 minutes brainstorming every possible pun . . . first Stacey and I worked out the actual math for "One Sack, One Hole" and we determined that between the two of us, the proper name should be "One Sack, Fifteen Holes" . . . don't ask how we figured it out . . . and here are some of the other names that surfaced during this session:

--Sack-religious

--Sack-a-jawea

--The Holy Shots

-- Stuff it in the Hole, Shoot it in the Hole, Put it in the Hole, etcetera

--The English Tossers, The Underhanded Tossers

--Lick My Cornhole, The Money Shots, Flaming Ring of Cornhole, Fire in the Cornhole

--Bilbo Baggins

--Sack Up

--The EB Sack Exchange

and in the end, Terry went the Onanistic route and chose "The English Tossers" and I went the very obtuse, very annoying route and chose a name only the history teachers will appreciate: "The Visigoths" . . . the Visigoths are  the barbarians who sacked Rome for three days in 410 AD . . . I think "Three Day Sack" is also a good name, but not as irritating as "The Visigoths" . . . and the English department definitely defeats AI in clever cornhole team naming . . . for now.

I Feel Like a Crippled Waterfowl

Teaching seniors in June is like being a lame-duck President-- you're still the President but you can't enact any new legislation and you don't hold any actual power-- you're just a figurehead.

Sunday Wrap-up

The end of an action-packed anniversary weekend: my wife and I made it out after getting lost in the Sourlands-- we walked over the bridge to Cuzin's-- and, as usual, the drinks and the seafood (and the eggplant tower) were all fantastic (if a bit pricey) and the vibe in that place is nuts-- as opposed to Salt, which is a bit fancier and stodgier, Cuzin's always has people dressed casually who are there to spend some money-- the people next to us at the bar were particularly amazing-- a very Jersey couple . . . who may or may not have been a couple-- they frequently cursed each other out and referred to each other as "an asshole" and they required a TON of attention from the bartender-- the dude started out with a $55 tequila shot, then he needed to charge his phone, then his date needed the bartender to come around and show her the channel where there was a hook to hang her purse, then they had a lot fo questions about every drink and item on the menu-- but the woman-- who was 37 but didn't look it  . . . according to the bartender-- was a particular kind of fit petite peroxide blonde Jersey girl from Manalapan with a fucking priceless "real housewives of New Jersey" accent that made everything she said hysterically funny-- anyway, Cuzin's is a lot of fun if you've got some money to spend-- it's more like a club that serves seafood than a restaurant, especially if you sit at the bar . . . so a good end to our anniversary-- we finished out the night watching the finale of The Diplomat . . . thumbs up on that show, and then this morning I got up early and played basketball with my son before he had to head to work lifeguarding-- and then he dropped me off at the pickle ball courts-- so I played sports for four hours and then came home, did some requisite cleaning of the house, and then took a two hour nap-- and when I awoke, Ian was back from prom weekend and mowing the lawn!-- he actually read my wife's note and did a chore-- pretty sweet-- and now he's sleeping . . . he must have had quite a weekend-- he started out in Wildwood and then ended up in LBI, staying at a rental organized by one of my EB students-- so maybe I'll get some gossip on Monday.

Nothing Says "Happy Anniversary" Like a Blair Witch Incident

Instead of splurging on the recommended silver plate, my wife and I decided to celebrate our 23rd Anniversary by going on a hike with the dog and then getting a fancy pasture-to-table lunch at an upscale distillery/brewery/gastropub (which welcomes dogs) in the fancy upscale rolling hills north of Princeton . . . but it took us longer than expected to make our way to BrickFarm Tavern because we got very fucking lost in the Sourland Mountain Preserve-- we tried to avoid a large group of Indian ladies and took an alternate route which sent us into a counter-intuitive infinite loop of trails in some forgotten corner of the park (once you're on a red or a blue trail-- or, God forbid-- a red/black trail-- then you're pretty much screwed) but a lovely lesbian couple (who were walking the trails "in reverse" to avoid the crowds) got us sorted out and headed back towards civilization-- but this was after a 3 hour, 20,000+ step hike-- Lola was a champ but Catherine and I had sore feet (the Sourlands are very very rocky) but this made the pulled pork and smoked beef sandwiches and the beer and tequila drink (in a Capri sun bag!) taste even better-- BrickFarm Tavern is a bit pricey but highly recommended-- one of the best BBQ sandwiches I've ever eaten and the grounds are lovely (and Lola was very well-behaved because she was so fucking tired) and perhaps we'll make it out tonight for an anniversary dinner . . . we stopped at Hidden Grounds for some powerful coffee on the way home-- it might be enough caffeine to motivate us to go out for an actual anniversary dinner . . . or maybe not.

 

Conflict in the Spider-verse

 

Catherine and I went to see the new Spider-verse movie Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse with Alex and his girlfriend, and we all agreed that the film is awesome in all aspects: visuals, characters, and plot-- but the crowd at the theater was NOT awesome . . . a bunch of middle school kids talking and horsing around and making a huge mess-- it was distracting enough that I spoke to them in my teacher voice: "hey some of us are here to watch the movie, not listen to you guys . . . you need to respect that" and they were quiet after that-- I didn't need to go full Costanza on them-- but then, when the lights came up, we noticed that there were parents sitting with these kids-- and the dad was giving us the stink-eye and we were giving the dad the stink-eye . . . both my wife and I were annoyed that we spent all day telling kids what to do and how to behave and then we went out in public and had to do the same damned thing again.

End of Something (Start of Something Else)

We played Metuchen today in the Group I State semi-finals and we knew it would be a tough match-- all we could hope for is that it stayed close-- and that's how it went down; Ian was playing a very tough heavy-hitting player who he has never beaten (Grayhson Kang) and he knew he had to work his ass off the beat him-- unfortunately, he ran into a pole at the back fence in the first set (down 2-3) and smashed his fingers and that was that-- he lost the first set 6-2 and really couldn't hit the ball-- his pinky nail was split and the rest of his fingers jammed and shaking . . . but we only needed to win three matches and we were doing well at second doubles and third singles and second singles was close-- but not close enough-- we ended up losing the match 3-2 . . . there was some contention in the second singles match but the other coach and I were watching the third singles match-- because of some disputed calls-- anyway, I was very proud of my guys, they played hard and we nearly pulled off an upset victory and this is the end of something very special-- I don't think there are many high school coaches who coached their own children in both high school soccer and high school tennis . . . then we rushed back to Highland Park and the seniors all got dressed for prom and headed right back out--  this is all high school in one day, from the tennis match straight to the red carpet for photos and then prom (and then they head to the beach tomorrow-- and Ian's friends acquired some lodging so they're not sleeping in the car) and Catherine and I are excited because Alex and his girlfriend invited us to go see the new Spiderverse movie tomorrow night-- it's nice when the youngsters include you (when it's not mandated).

Senior Cut Day!

I nearly forgot to put a sentence up-- it's senior cut day and the vibe is infectious.

Sports with the Boys (and more)

I had off yesterday (because we didn't use any snow days) and so my older son Alex snuck me into the Rutgers gym on Busch Campus at noon so we could play basketball-- I felt pretty sketchy, hanging out by the back doors waiting for my son to let me in-- but no one seemed to care and there was a fun five-on-five game-- a few older guys and a few college students . . . Alex and I got to play on the same team and we won every game-- he's really become a player, he can shoot a bit from outside, he's tall and long, and he knows how to drive and seal someone and get to the rim (he's also lefty, which confuses people) and I made a few three-pointers and got some rebounds-- definitely a treat to be able to play full court with a nineteen-year-old-- and then I rushed home and was off to coach the tennis match-- we were playing the two seed in the state quarterfinals but we matched up well-- we played a much tougher schedule than they did-- and Ian was crushing his forehand-- he whipped his kid in less than an hour and though some of the other kids put up a fight, we still won 5-0 in the end-- but the match took forever because there were only four courts, so second doubles had to wait-- then we rushed back to Highland Park and went straight to the senior awards night-- Ian got an award from the booster club for athletics and sportsmanship-- very nice-- and it was a great-- if tiring day-- until Ian told us that after prom-- which is on Thursday, along with the state semi-tennis match-- him and a couple of friends planned to drive to Wildwood and sleep in the car for a couple of nights-- so we had to explain that you really can't do that and that he needed to plan some lodging and that became a whole teenage debate which I won't get into-- but that's the deal with teenagers, it's an emotional rollercoaster (for all those involved).

The (Murder) Mystery of Existence

A new episode of my podcast We Defy Augury is up and streaming-- this was a tough one to make; it's called "The (Murder) Mystery of Existence" and my meandering philosophical thoughts are (loosely) based on Stuart Turton's mind-bending mystery novel The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle . .  . Special Guests include: Albert Camus, Phil Connors, and Grant Goodeve.

A Very Windy (and possibly penultimate) Practice

Tennis season is annoying-- it runs through Spring Break and Memorial Day Weekend, so you're always missing kids for various reasons-- but we had a pretty good turn out at practice today-- despite it being Memorial Day-- and the second doubles team (Akhul and Theo) actually beat Michael and me in a set-- they played awesome-- and I gave the team the typical motivational speech at the end-- no other team is practicing today, no other team is preparing for these gale force winds (it was insanely windy today) and all we need to do are the things we know how to do, just with as much focus and good-decision-making as we can muster-- and so we play the two seed tomorrow, but we match up well against them . . . hopefully we'll get a win and head to the semi-finals later in the week (with the added bonus of Thursday night prom).

Weekend Review

I went out with the pub crew Thursday night to Steakhouse 85 and Alec leaned too far forward on his bar-chair, so that he was leaning on two legs, his elbow resting on the bar, and the chair legs slid backward on the polished wood floor and the long-legged chair went skittering backward-- horizontally-- and Alec's body suddenly dropped vertically, down below the bar (and luckily, he didn't hit his face on the rail) and though the chair skittered back eight feet or so, toward the host stand, no one was injured; then Saturday Catherine and I drove all the way up to Foxwoods in Connecticut for my cousin Nick's wedding-- and I remarked that you don't hear much about the state of Connecticut-- it's an under the radar state-- and now I know why-- the fucking traffic is terrible-- we stopped in Clinton at Liv's Dockside Grill for some seaside seafood-- and once you get off the highway, Connecticut is lovely-- it looks kind of like Cape Cod-- Clinton is near the end of the Long Island Sound-- you're looking across the sound at East Hampton and Montauk-- but then you have to get back on 95 and it's two lanes and white knuckle driving-- Foxwoods is a wild place, a little bit of Vegas in the middle of the Mashantucket Pequot reservation-- the wedding was lovely but we split the very expensive hotel room with my brother and his (soon-to-be) wife and my brother had a sinus infection and was snoring and making a lot of noise so we got up at 6 AM and hightailed it home-- much better drive with no traffic, but still a long fucking way-- and then I played some pickle-ball, practiced tennis with Ian, and went to a graduation party where I drank a bunch of Corona beer-- great for the day after a wedding-- and Alec and I dominated at corn-hole-- even over the recent college graduates, who were surprisingly bad . . . I asked one college student what the leisure sport of choice was at Reed college-- darts, frisbee golf, corn-hole, spike-ball, beer pong?-- and he said they don't play anything . . . I guess they just go to class and learn stuff . . . kids these days.

I Need to Even Out

I am developing quite the "farmer's tan" because of tennis season and today's Relay for Life outdoor school event-- but I don't think I'm going to remedy this any time soon, as going shirtless around school grounds is frowned upon (even if you're as jacked as I am).

We Are Through to Round Two!

Highland Park boys tennis team is the ten seed in our region of the State Tournament, so we took a ride up to Roselle Park-- the seven seed-- and I was a bit nervous because they have an excellent first singles player (Owen Miller-- he's going to play at Susquehanna) but though Ian got spanked (and he hit the ball really well-- their guy was amazing, and an all-around nice guy and captain who seemed to be a real leader on and off the court) the rest of the team really came through-- Michael Cederbaum played the match of his life, as did the rest of the crew (aside from the usual second set space-out from our first doubles team) and we won the match 4-1 . . . but it was a very slow match, as they only had four courts-- so second doubles had to wait-- and, a weird tennis peccadillo that I've never encountered-- all their players, doubles and singles, took the full 90 second rest during switchovers . . . the ref even had to call for them a couple of times-- I'm not sure why they did this but it was weird and boring and it made the match much longer than it needed to be . . . next round is closer, in Woodbridge, and hopefully we will beat them soundly (and quickly).

Nice Job Stacey!

Stacey made a good-old-fashioned worksheet for Hamlet scenes 4.5 and 4.6 and it was just what the doctor ordered.

Shakespeare Motivates Shakespeare?

This year, I'm really getting to the bottom of Hamlet, the most bottomless piece of literature in existence, but this means we might never finish-- which is perfectly appropriate . . . I probably need a ghost (played by myself) to visit and "whet my almost blunted purpose" so that I actually finish the thing before the last day of school (that's essentially what happens in Act III scene iv . . . Hamlet's dad returns in the form of a specter that only Hamlet can see and tells him to stop calling him mom a slut and get on with his revenge on King Claudius, the same way Mufasa tells Simba to quit it with Timon, Pumba, and Hakuna Matata and live up to fate and responsibility and go kill Scar . . . but of course, Shakespeare wrote Hamlet's lines-- so when the ghost (probably played by Shakespeare, tells Hamlet to get on with it-- because we're nearly three hours into the play and the plot hasn't really gotten going yet) this is very strange-- it's the director telling the writer (who are both the same person) to stop going so deep with his character because people have to eat dinner.

Weird and Ugly Tennis Match

This was a difficult situation to process and I am sure this sentence is extraordinarily biased and we'll never get to the bottom of it but we had a tune-up tennis match today against Monroe-- a giant Group IV school with a county champion first singles player-- which our team was treating as a practice for the State Tournament (we got lucky and have a decent bracket!) and it was a no-worries-let's get some practice kind of match because we knew we would get slaughtered but Monroe was missing their first singles player (he was playing in a tournament down in Virginia Beach) so my son Ian was playing their second singles player, who was still much better than him in UTR rating, and while the rest of our players went down quickly, Ian took the lead on their player-- and things were a little weird because this was the Monroe kid's first match at first singles and all his friends were on the fence cheering him on and then something strange happened-- the assistant coach (yes, this school is so big they have an assistant coach for tennis) came over to me and said that he heard our first and second singles players using profanity and he told my son to stop cursing and my son told him to "shut up" and so I stopped both matches and told Ian and Ethan to stop using profanity and then I pointed out to them that this young guy-- who looked like a student manager-- was an assistant coach-- which neither of them realized-- and Ian told me he didn't tell the assistant coach to "shut up," he told the kids who were clapping when he made on error to stop-- and then I watched and saw the deal-- the kids on the fence were really excited that their buddy was getting to play first singles and they thought he had an easy win against a player from a tiny school-- but Ian had eye of the tiger today, and was not going to let that happen-- and I did have a few words for the assistant coach: why the fuck was he talking to MY players during a game about profanity? . . . you come to me first and let me deal with it, especially when they didn't know him from Adam-- and I explained to him that we play in a county park and our kids are used to telling adults to be quiet because we often have lots of them circling like vultures to get on the court-- but the other coaches were having none of my diplomacy and explanations and chit-chat-- they were downright weird and angry, but I think they really wanted their kid to get his first win at first singles-- a singular chance for him-- because they were vociferously rooting for their kid-- which is weird in tennis-- anyway, Ian closed out the match and won 6-4, 6-4-- despite some sketchy calls from Ian's opponent and while I'm not sure exactly what happened, I'm sure Ian and Ethan cursed-- as they are wont to do-- but I don't know why some assistant coach is wandering around acting as the profanity police, especially in a match that means nothing, but I guess this is good practice for States, when shit will get real.

Construction Raises Dave's Spirits (and Property Values)

 

I'm not sure if it was due to my persistent and eloquent emails to the County Parks Department, but construction is underway . . . they are finally resurfacing the tennis courts right next to my house-- and they are adding much needed pickle-ball courts as well . . . there aren't many pickle-ball courts in Middlesex County so this project is going to make the courts 100 yards from my house a real commodity-- and hopefully they will attract a decent pickle-ball scene (and I'm sure these courts will further assist my choice to phase out tennis-- I'm playing tennis today but I'm enjoying the fast-paces pick-up nature of pickle ball more and more). 

Wink Wink Nudge Nudge Revisited

I read the book Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness way back in 2009 and-- like much of rational liberal America, I decided I was a "libertarian paternalist" and bought in-- this was a kinder gentler time in politics, the years of hope and economic recovery from the subprime economic crisis-- which seemed to be a technical crisis more than anything, based on technocratic choices and rules gone wrong-- and now it seemed if we got those technocratic rules right, then solutions and progress could be made by smart little tweaks to choice architecture-- technocratic solutions instead of partisan political chaos and conflict-- but after listening to Mike Hobbes and Peter Shamshiri revisit this book and all the "nudge-like" ideas on their fantastic podcast If Books Could Kill, I realize-- like Mike Hobbes-- I bought into something very silly-- and so I have changed my mind-- especially since the main anecdote supposed to hammer home their thesis is not true-- changing organ donation box default from opting in to opting out does NOT greatly affect the organ transplant system of a nation-- Spain has best organ donation program because of the structural system they put into place-- and when Mike and peter break down, debunk, run the numbers, and point out the illogic and in the rest of the nudge-like examples-- then none of them work or seem to even fit the description of a gentle choice architecture nudge-- aside from the one very simple example-- putting the desserts below eye level in a cafeteria line and promoting fruits and vegetables to a better placement promotes slightly healthier eating-- more telling examples are things like "we know how to fix gay marriage . . . just make ALL marriages a private legal affair-- so essentially burn down the institution of marriage instead of letting gay people take part in it" and "we know the problem with healthcare-- let people opt out of litigation if care goes wrong and then it will be cheaper because all these lawsuits are what's wrong with the US healthcare system" . . . so just downright stupid stuff that I was probably too sleepy to parse back then (because I had two very young children) and in part two of the episode, they really dive deep and point out that co-author Cass Sunstein ended up riding this "nudge" wave to a government position on the creepy Reagan-created Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, an office designed to sit on regulations and block regulations and essentially murder people in a slow methodical deliberate bureaucratic manner-- a real detriment to Obama's legacy and technocratic slow walking of anything against big business-- check out what happened to silica regulations under Sunstein's reign; co-author Richard Thaler kind of rescinded his ideas about the ubiquitous wonder of nudging, realizing that many nudges were scams-- and we are surrounded by scams in America-- and when it comes down to it, the nudges just never seemed to be neutral-- anyway, listen to both parts of the podcast, wonderful and funny and logical and eye-opening-- but the only scary thing is this kind of breakdown makes me not want to read these fun non-fiction books anymore because they play so fast and loose with facts and numbers, and these books have to fill pages with stuff that won't hold up to academic scrutiny-- and I'm not doing academic research in the fifteen minutes before I drift into REM sleep at night so I can succumb to these ideas quite easily (as can entire administrations of the US government . . . and many other governments, who formed "nudge units").

Artificial Intelligence Does My Job . . . and More! So Much More . . .

Yesterday in Public Speaking class, a student asked if AI could grade an essay and I said "sure it can" and then I took his speech-- which was in an incipient stage (read lousy) and I asked Bard (Google AI) to grade it (as Chat GPT is blocked at our school) and Bard said a bunch of nice things about this fairly lousy informative speech about the student's five favorite animals-- so then I asked Bard to grade it like an old angry English teacher and I got some better results-- Bard said it was disappointed with the student because the speech was disorganized and had grammatical mistakes-- and then I had a stroke of genius and asked Bard to grade the essay like "Al Pacino in Scarface" and Bard said "this thing is a D . . . a D" and then there was a parenthetical that said "points gun at student" and I was like "wow, this thing is getting serious and pretty fucked up" and then I had Bard grade the essay like The Dude from the Big Lebowski and Bard basically said, "I'm not going to judge this, man, but I like what you're going for" and I told my Creative Writing class about this today and they were having a field day with it . . . someone had Bard grade their story by a "drunken Joseph Stalin" who called the piece of writing " a disgrace to Russia" and said the student should be "taken outside and executed."

Tennis Tennis Tennis Tennis

We finished out the regular tennis season with a couple of wins over Colonia and Bound Brook and now we just have to wait and see what happens with the state tournament brackets-- it was nice to play a small Group I school like us today, just so my players could remember we're pretty good at tennis-- we beat Bound Brook soundly and Ian actually won quickly at first singles (6-0, 6-0) which was a nice treat for him-- to get on and off the court quickly-- because every other match this season has been brutal-- he played well yesterday against a good player but lost the first set in a tiebreaker, after a very long bus ride to Colonia because there was a truck on fire on Route 1 . . . anyway, the real season starts next week for us, with the single elimination State Tourney-- and it's going to be a real roll of the die determining who we face in the first few rounds.

We Defy Augury . . . Hamlet Style

Tennis season has really slowed down my podcasting output-- I am becoming downright Hamlet-like in my indecisiveness and aversion to action, but I managed to squeak out a new episode (although you might want to wait a day or two to listen because I forgot to include an audio clip so if I get motivated I'll wedge it in somewhere . . . one of the great things about podcasting is that you can go back and revise your audio for an episode) and one of the reasons I took so long is that this episode tackles some very complicated topics about belief, the morality of whistleblowing, and the existence of Deep State surveillance; it's called "Reality Loser" and it is based on thoughts (loosely) inspired by Kerry Howley's book Bottoms Up and The Devil Laughs: A Journey Through the Deep State and Jeff Sharlet's book The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War.

Last Period Ideas

The last 82-minute block is brutal to teach-- especially when you're trying to educate fourth-quarter seniors, but we did come up with a few good ideas today:

1. when a student suggested I get a funny Shakespeare t-shirt (we're doing Hamlet) I said, "I don't wear t-shirts with funny stuff on them . . . I'm the funny one, not the t-shirt" and then we decided that "I'm the funny one, not the t-shirt" would make a great novelty t-shirt;

2. we also decided that words that sound opposite to what they mean-- like "restive" which means fidgety and "enervate" which means to drain energy-- should be banned from the English language.

GMC Monday

Yikes, quite a long GMC Tourney Monday-- we left the school at 7:45 AM (because Jakob was late) but there was no traffic so we made it down to Veteran's Park in Mercer County in record time-- all of our players won their prelim matches (a superset to eight) including-- notably-- Ethan Chen against another HP kid (Jack Shannon, who goes to a magnet school) and my son Ian against a kid from New Brunswick coached by Highland Park alum Felix Rojas-- so some fun small world stuff-- and then Ian advanced another round because the four seed (Edison Academy) dropped due to a hamstring pull and then he was dismissed by an excellent player from J.P. Stevens and our second doubles team also advanced to the second round- Theo and Akhul played the longest possible tournament match you could play, losing the first set in a tiebreaker, then wining the second set 7-5 and then winning the 10 point tiebreaker 10-8 . . . so they got to play the Monroe second doubles team-- a powerhouse school-- but they avoided the double bagel and lost 6-1, 6-1 . . . though they were very very tired-- a fun day had by all . . . nine hours of tennis (the only major error was that I forgot to bring the vinegar and oil for the Tastee Subs we bought last night).

Real Friday Continued . . .

So . . . I finally had a real Friday without tennis and I certainly made use of it (to the chagrin of Saturday) because after happy hour with the ladies at B2 Bistro, I headed home and Catherine and I went to our friends' house for some drinks and corn-hole . . . first corn-hole of the season!-- and we had a good time-- especially since our friends' 23 year old daughter Liz played-- she's a great athlete and very competitive so I took great joy in kicking her butt-- but the drinking continued for a while, along with some gossip, which I will not repeat-- but it led to a walk, led by the youngster, over to this party on our side of town-- and our goal was to crash the party-- really? it seems we're a bit old for that but we were fairly hammered and while Ann and Craig turned back at the last possible moment, they saw their daughter walk in and decided they'd hightail it home, but Liz saw her friend tending bar at the shindig-- a vast and very well-stocked bar-- and Catherine and I wandered in with Liz and got some drinks from her friend-- who we also knew-- and then we saw some people we knew and integrated ourselves into the crowd and then eventually we met the host-- who Catherine had some connection with so we were not asked to leave-- plus I think everyone was drunk-- and then we did some dancing? and then we wandered home-- where I passed out on the couch eating pizza-- and then the kids got home at some later time period and they said I didn't even rouse a bit when they walked in and out of the living room, turned the lights on, etc etc . . . so quite a real Friday but a very fuzzy, uneventful, and unreal Saturday-- I'm too old for that kind of nonsense.

Sandwich Choice

 Apparently, if your wife makes you a sandwich for lunch-- especially if she very rarely makes your lunch-- and then you go to work and your boss has purchased a spread of really really good sandwiches from the Italian deli in Middlesex (Sapore) and you make an executive decision and eat the better sandwich (actually sandwiches, I had two) then you should throw away the sandwich your wife made and never tell her you didn't eat it-- this is what my wife suggested when I told her the truth about the sandwiches-- as she was rightfully annoyed that she made lunch for me and I didn't eat it . . .  next time I will prevaricate and dispose of the evidence of my sandwich infidelity.

A Real Friday!

After four tennis matches in a row-- Monday through Thursday-- we all took a much needed day off today . . . and I got up and played Friday morning 6:30 AM hoops-- the games were especially intense and I think my deep squatting stretching exercises paid off, as I felt fairly quick (and had to cover some young folks) and while my outside shot wasn't exactly on, it wasn't totally off either-- and then I covered PE class, so I had 15,000 steps by 10 AM . . . and then, as a rare treat, I got to attend happy hour with the ladies (and the ladies asked me last period if they thought working with so many women made me a better husband and I said, "absolutely" because I learn things like don't enumerate all the hard work you've accomplished in a day because ladies "don't need a fucking list" . . . which is upsetting because I love enumerating all the hard work I've done in a day, even if it's things like "I did my summative evaluation meeting AND I covered a half period and made fifty bucks!" because, as my wife pointed out, "EVERY teacher does a summative evaluation meeting, you're not special."

F%$& Thursday

 There's still another day in this week?

All Kinds of Shit

You may have seen this video where John Stewart lambastes Oklahoma State Senator Nathan Dahm about the hypocrisy of "protecting" children from "drag show readings" while not protecting children from the leading cause of death-- guns-- and while I certainly agree with his sentiment, this little clips are the problem with social media, polarization, and how discourse is conducted today-- because the real discussion is about what people value-- and obviously conservatives value the Second Amendment and the right for manly men (and women) to bear arms and protect their traditional families-- and that's fine-- and they value that more than they value the continuum of gender and sexuality-- but no one wants to come out and actually say what they value-- even though it's inherent in legislation-- for example, New Jersey (and a number of states) value the liberty to get stoned over the mental health of children-- because the legalization of marijuana, long overdue for many reasons, definitely solves one problem-- that of incarcerating people for an absurd crime, but it does cause another problem-- a ubiquitous flood medical grade marijuana products -- and the research shows that marijuana before the age of 24 (or more than twice a week after the age of 24) can have some serious consequences on mental health-- and cause anxiety, schizophrenia, and other mental disorders-- so people need to start having serious and measured conversations about the costs and benefits of what we value-- less rhetoric and more utilitarian logic-- and while I'm rambling, the other things we need to have serious conversations about are cell phones and social media-- there's a great new Shortwave podcast on the deleterious effects of this shit-- psychologists are starting to coordinate causal data about how social media for teens leads to depression, self-harm, suicide, anxiety, and loneliness-- and we need to think about large language model AI-- and I heard this basic premise on the Ezra Klein podcast-- how we might start valuing the product more than the process, especially in writing- when the process is where you figure out that you should be writing about a different topic or you see the holes in your logic-- while Chat GPT can produce a coherent piece of writing about any topic, it's a product more than a process-- and it's the process where we think, revise, create and grow-- the product is just the cognitive journey polished up a bit . . . it would be a shame to lose that.

Here's a Leak to Make You Freak

Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs: A Journey Through the Deep State by Kerry Howley is a book that will make you reflect on the power, pragmatism, risk, and reward of whistleblowing . . . of leaking some information for moral reasons-- the book focuses on Reality Winner and the document she leaked in order to show Americans that there really was Russian meddling in the 2016 election and the blowback from the Trump administration (and the use of the Espionage act) and the book has persuaded me that whistleblowing and leaking are just another check and balance of our government--  because the government (and corporations, of course) can engage in highly secretive and illegal activity that might need to see the light of day before it is unclassified-- and we need to remember these whistleblowers and the price they pay for releasing information-- and let's not forget Daniel Hale, either, who leaked information about the Obama administrations many errant drone strikes . . . while I'm not privy to any compelling government secrets, I did snap a couple of screenshots of this "Pest Issues" spreadsheet, which paints a vividly pestilent portrait of our rather dilapidated and porous school building (and perhaps this will encourage the town to pass the budget in order to build a new high school).

A Fun Wedding (Sort of)

My wife and I almost had a fun and relaxing time at my wife's niece's wedding yesterday afternoon . . . almost . . . the wedding was down the shore in Asbury Park at the Asbury Hotel and we were sleeping at my brother-in-law's house in Long Branch-- a beautiful spacious place with an ocean view (and we pretty much had the run of the place because Bob and Wendy were staying at the hotel-- father-of-the-bride stuff) and it was a beautiful day and we read our boys the riot act-- we wanted to have a relaxing time without incident-- Ian was supposed to help Alex move out of his dorm-- drive the minivan over and help him clean out his room- and then Ian was supposed to go to a sleepover and Alex was going to take care of the dog and then return to his dorm for the night-- but during the wedding service-- which was lovely and happening on the rooftop of the Asbury Hotel-- we got a call from Alex . . . he was getting some of his girlfriend's stuff on College Ave and then he needed to come over Landing Lane Bridge-- a skinny bridge full of traffic and he cut the turn too sharply and hit something on the edge of the bridge and popped the tire and so then he drove the van into the park on the flat tire and parked it but the spare was at home in the storage area-- we gave up on trying to get the spare back to where it belonged because the 2008 Toyota Minivan has the most inaccessible spare tire contraption known to man-- we've already had our problems with this thing-- and we had the spare in the back of the van for a while but then when tennis season started I removed it because it took up too much space-- and we didn't want Alex waiting forever in the park for roadside assistance so he walked back to his dorm and then biked home to take care of the dog-- which-- if he communicated with Ian-- he didn't need to do because Ian's sleepover was cancelled-- Ian was home and now going to a party around the block and we weren't all that happy about this development because we knew that party would be out-of-control and it seems it was-- but what could we do? we were down the beach . . . anyway, everyone survived their ordeals (although we're pretty sure Ian had too much to drink at this party) and the wedding was wonderful and the band was great-- so we had a good time, despite worrying about the kids and the state of the van-- and we rushed home in the morning, headed straight to the park, found the van, removed the warning ticket, managed to change the tire-- despite some very tight lug nuts (next time bring a rubber mallet!) and get the van to Mavis, where they replaced three of the tires but could not do the fourth because Alex bent the rim so badly that the car needs to go to an actual mechanic tomorrow to get that fixed-- so now we are driving it on the spare and hoping we can finish this project tomorrow (we did need new tires so this expedited that purchase -- yuck) and the moral is just because your kids are in college (or nearly in college) doesn't mean that they are smart.

Rain Redux Broom Dementia Redux

It's been raining all week at 3 PM . . . tennis got canceled earlier in the week but today I was able to sweep away the puddles with my big push broom and we were able to play the match-- but I left the fucking push broom at the courts again-- I am an idiot. 

Million to One Shot, Doc . . .

 

I bit into my soup dumpling and the juice shot right into my wine glass!

Rainy Round Trip

Yesterday, we had an away match against JFK (Iselin) who slaughtered us 5-0 last time-- and we were scheduled to have four matches this week, so I told my players to treat the match like a practice and just work on one thing-- hitting backhand winners, drop shots, big first serves, whatever-- because I didn't want them to get worn out in a match we couldn't win-- my son Ian was playing an excellent player, maybe the best in our division (and the seven or eight seed in the county) so I made a point to not watch him because I tend to make faces that annoy him when he hits dopey shots-- and when I passed him by in the second set (which he was losing) all I said was "have fun, you're first serve looks great" and then I found out from the other coach that Ian had WON the first set 6-4 and meanwhile our third singles won because JFK was missing a player and second singles was doing well (doubles were getting smacked) and Ian lost the second set 6-3 (but he had never taken a set off this kid before) and then in the third Ian took the lead-- he was crushing his first serve-- so he was up 5-4 -- but he eventually lost 7-5 . . . he ran out of serves-- but still, a great outing for him-- first singles is no joke-- so he was very sore today for North Brunswick-- a match we could win-- but we took a ride over to my hometown and while it wasn't raining in Highland Park, it was raining in North Brunswick-- so we pulled up, I got out and chatted with the coach for a minute, and then we turned around and headed home . . . very annoying but you can't play tennis in the rain-- so now we have four matches in a row next week.

Hey Books . . . Stop Trying to be 100 gecs

I can't get a break lately with the mystery books I've been reading lately-- I'm done skewering books on my podcast (If Books Could Kill does a better job and I just want to read things that are smart-- I don't have the time and energy to debunk idiotic stuff) but I keep reading mysteries that turn into weird shitty sci-fi/horror/paranormal adventures (notably The Quiet Boy and The House Across the Lake) and not only is Adam Hamdy's The Other Side of Night a mystery gone wrong (that starts with typical mystery tropes, a tough female cop, dismissed from her job because no one witnessed a chase gone wrong-- but it wasn't her fault-- and she gets involved in a weird case because of a cryptic note in a library book, a possible suicide -- or possible death by misadventure, as they say in England-- and an abandoned child with a secret) but then turns into a shitty sci-fi novel with time travel and a total misunderstanding of the "block universe" theory-- the narrator, a physicist, writes "I embrace the block theory of the universe, because if time doesn't pass, if all moments exist simultaneously, my son and his love are out there right now, somewhere in the gathered multitude of moments"-- but obviously the author is NOT a physicist and normally I wouldn't have thought much of this sentence, just chalked it up to sci-fi mumbo jumbo, but I have been serendipitously listening to  the new Sam Harris episode, which  features a REAL physicist-- Tim Maudlin-- who explains some misunderstandings about this block universe theory- and the fact that time still passes within this theory and within this four dimensional space of the block-- all four dimensions means is that you need four coordinate points to locate an event-- the outlier being time-- and so I'm going to implore these genre writers to stop treating books like 100 gecs songs-- songs can mix genres easier than books because songs are shorter and you have less time to think about what's happening-- but if you have a moment to contemplate, then going from realistic crime fiction to ridiculous oversimplified time travel and sci-fi appears very silly and absurd.

Monday is the Day You Forget Shit

I keep a big push-broom in my car so that before tennis matches, I can sweep water and/or tree catkins (green fuzzy pollen shit) and samaras (helicopters) off the court-- I had to sweep quite a bit of tree debris today and then I put the broom in the corner and promptly forgot about it-- but one of the friendly adults who always plays on the courts once the match is finished reminded me to take the broom home and I thanked him for the reminder, and then in the midst of cleaning up all the other tennis equipment, I forgot the broom and I had to drive back to the park-- and then when I got home for the second time I noticed that my son Alex's glasses had arrived -- and his dorm is back in that direction but still, I'm not driving out there again.

gecs!

Last night, my wife and I, my son Alex, and his girlfriend Eva made a foray into the heart of Brooklyn-- to the Avant Gardner concert/warehouse/event space in Bushwick-- to see 100 gecs . . . because of the awful weather, we drove in and we hit some traffic on the way there (and we took a route through Staten Island I've never driven-- kind of nuts in the rain, especially because there were these DOT trucks with crazy flashing lights, sirens, and hypnotic symbols that were weirder and more stimulating than the light show at the concert . . . I need to contact someone about these fucking things) but we made it, parked in a strange little lot with an entertaining old and slow-moving attendant-- Mr. Green-- who my wife had a long conversation with in his little attendant shack while the rest of us stood in the rain-- apparently Mr. Green has nine kids and usually one of them runs the lot at night but she was sick so he was doing it-- and then we walked through some sort of warehouse district to the venue and there was a fair bit of line waiting and pat-downs and a futuristic bracelet that you linked to your credit card so you could get beers and such without using cash; the interior of the warehouse was expansive and gritty-- exposed beams and boards and brick-- and the crowd was a wide-ranging, gender-fluid whimsically dressed and pierced group-- very fun to people watch-- but the opening band: Machine Girl . . . two dudes who play insanely loud industrial punk rock (it doesn't sound like that on Spotify!) was a bit beyond my noise tolerance (luckily we brought some earplugs) and then the gecs came on and pretty much played every good song from their first two albums, plus a few others-- their songs are short so they crammed them all in, at an even faster pace than the recorded versions-- I was a bit disappointed in the fact that they rarely played guitars (a couple times) and used a lot of loops and computer recordings but my son pointed out that their sounds are so weird that if they tried to reproduce them live it would get muddy and sound awful-- and they did sound crisp and clear and really fun and fantastic and Laura Les put on quite a show, between her insanely autotuned singing and her silly banter, while Dylan Brady wore his giant wizard hat and played keyboards and weird synth drums and synched computer parts and occasionally sang-- we didn't get out of there until midnight, but the ride home was much faster than the ride there . . . a good night and probably something that won't happen very often: we went to see a band in a really hip space that both my son, my wife, me, and my son's girlfriend all enjoyed-- quite the miracle.

The Mysteries of Your Musical Taste . . . Part Two!

 

It's finally up . . . Part Two of my epic investigation of musical taste-- my thoughts are (loosely) based on This is What It Sounds Like: What the Music You Love Says About You by Susan Rogers and Ogi Ogas and Hit Makers: The Science of Popularity in an Age of Distraction by Derek Thompson-- and I weave in loads of musical (and comedy sketch) clips and try to examine how our aesthetics tastes are formed (and possibly the futility of thinking they mean anything all that special).

Put Your Money Where Your Feet Is

Yesterday, my son Ian's feet were all messed up from the previous day's tennis match-- blisters and couple of toenails that looked like they were ready to rip off, so I told him he needed to cut his toenails or they were going to get worse but he said he was too tired and that he would do it in the morning and I said, "No way you're doing that before school . . . I'll bet you ten dollars you don't cut them" and he accepted the bet and-- surprisingly, he cut them-- so I paid out the bet but I told him this was the last time I was paying him to cut his toenails . . . I really hope that's true.

Tomorrow Morning is Double Convergence Friday!

While I'm not happy about the impending rainstorm (and accompanying blustery winds) that's going to make this weekend a washout (and make it difficult to get to the 100 gecs concert in Brooklyn) I am happy that I finally finished part II of my musical taste podcast-- if my podcast site goes back up any time soon, I'll put it online-- and I'm also happy that we've reached Friday in my Year-as-a-Week metaphor . . . tomorrow morning will be the convergence.

Tennis Etc.

So much tennis . . . and some Hamlet and some persuasive speeches in Public Speaking-- and a trip to the vet for Lola's exotic UTI-- hopefully the special urinalysis culture will give us the specific bacteria in her bladder that is causing the infection . . . but summer is coming.

Too Much to Bear

Because of some sort of copyright infringement, my high school had to remove the bear logo from their stadium turf field-- they hadn't paid to use it, so they had the field redone with a new original bear logo but now the bear is gigantic, off center, and far too realistic for a field logo . . . Coach Mckibbin says the bear looks great . . . if you're in a plane flying over the stadium . . . but even from a plane, it still wouldn't look like a logo, it has too many details, several shades of brown, a wide open red gullet-- while I'm not a graphic designer, in my humble opinion, this is a shit show (and who am I kidding . . . I'm not humble and this is not an opinion, it's fact).

From . . . Where Do They Come From?

A long day-- got up early to chip away at the new podcast episode, away tennis match in Metuchen, Catherine took the dog to the vet because she's got yet another UTI-- but we still had time to whip up a Hello Fresh meal and watch the season one finale of From . . . and it's scary and awesome-- we can't wait to check out season two.

Tracy Morgan . . . Back from the Dead

Over a decade ago, my wife and I saw Tracy Morgan perform his very profane, very insane brand of comedy at the State Theater-- the performance was underwhelming and downright weird at times; two years later, Morgan was in a limo that was struck by a Walmart truck and Morgan nearly died (another passenger, a fellow comedian, did die) but he survived, collected 90 million in damages, and returned to stand-up with a decent and celebratory Netflix special . . . Saturday night, my wife and I went to see him in a much smaller venue-- The Stress Factory in New Brunswick and he was much more entertaining-- his joes were too raunchy to transcribe here (but he did do 15 minutes on having sexual intercourse with very old women) and the crowd was either laughing hysterically, looking at each other as if to say "can we laugh at this" or doing both things simultaneously-- anyway, the house was packed, beyond sold out-- they crammed seats in every nook and cranny-- and obvioulsy Morgan is doing this because he loves doing stand-up (or sit-down . . . as he had to take frequent breaks-- he needed help to get on stage . . . unless that was a James Brown act) because he's got enough Walmart settlement money to retire . . . I don't think I'd see him again, but I'm glad he's back on his feet, making sexist, racist, politically incorrect non-sequiturs again-- actually living the life of 30 Rock's Tracy Jordan in reality.

Friday!

I went to school for five days in a row this week, but-- oddly-- I did not reach total enlightenment (nor were any prizes awarded).

My Turn!

 My kids like to take turns . . . getting in trouble (euphemistically known as experiential learning).

English Department Defeats Google . . . In Bed?

The other day I was racking my brain because I knew there was some situation where you insert the phrase "in bed" at the end of a sentence, for humorous effect, but I couldn't remember when you did this (and I was kind of mixing it up with Michael Scott's catch phrase "that's what she said") and I Googled it and it didn't come up so I thought I was losing my mind and that maybe I fabricated this idea and it was not a thing in the reality of our known universe but during lunch I asked my fellow English teachers and they said this was what you did with the little nugget of wisdom inside a fortune cookie and I was like "yes!" and I have no idea where this tradition originates but that's what I was thinking about-- "you will never hesitate to tackle the most difficult problems . . . in bed."

TV . . . It's What's On TV

Catherine and Ian were resistant to watching a new show-- they wanted to forge ahead with Money Heist (which is good, bit it's five million episodes so I wanted some variety) but I reminded them that in the old days you might watch a different show every day of the week and my wife conceded that point (although Ian didn't know what we were talking about) and so we started TWO shows-- both seems similar:  The Society and From . . . both shows are about being trapped in a town, both shows are creepy, and both shows are compelling-- I like From  a little better-- we ended up watching two episodes-- the pilot is pretty amazing-- and I think they will both provide a nice diversion from the infinite money heist.

The Raider Bird

A few hiccups today-- no Ian at first singles (got in some trouble at school) and Jakob was very late (Patrick retrieved him) but we still managed a 5-0 win over my alma mater, North Brunswick.

Your Musical Taste . . . Part One!

New episode of We Defy Augury up and streaming . . . "The Mysteries of Your Musical Taste: Part 1" . . .  the premise of this one is thoughts (loosely) based on This is What It Sounds Like: What the Music You Love Says About You by Susan Rogers and Ogi Ogas and Hit Makers: The Science of Popularity in an Age of Distraction by Derek Thompson, but I included so many examples and clips-- Glenn Gould, Little Richard, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Billy Joel, Vulfpeck, Rage Against the Machine, The Shaggs, Steely Dan, Lightnin' Hopkins, Ornette Coleman, Herbie Hancock, The Crystal Method, The Flaming Lips, Pavement, Johnny Cash, Sonic Youth, Adele, Tom Petty, Jason Aldean, Bob Dylan, The Chemical Brothers, The Wu Tang Clan, Hamilton, and N.W.A.-- that I had to stretch it into two episodes.

Talk to the Bus Driver: He Might Be Famous

On the way to tennis matches, I always make a point to chat with the van driver-- because I'm sitting shotgun and it would be rude just to stare at my phone-- and the conversation is usually the standard drivel-- which is annoying but tolerable-- but today was different: our driver was a large fairly corpulent black dude who looked to be my age, and on the way to the match we got to chatting about punk rock venues in the New Brunswick, indie bands from back in the day, the industrial band Ministry, and other related nostalgia-- then our team played the hottest tennis match ever (in April-- record-setting heat) and we beat Sayreville 4-1 . . . Ian lost to another dinker but the rest of the team came through-- and then on the way home the bus driver and I chatted about the ruins of Amboy Cinema and the great movies of 1999 and we got on the topic of superhero movies and comic books and he mentioned Luke Cage and then he mentioned that the guy who played Luke Cage-- Mike Colter-- actually played him in a movie and I was like "what?" and he said, "I'm famous" and it turns out that he was not fucking with me, our van driver was indeed famous; his name is Daryle Lamont Jenkins and he's a political activist who is credited with pioneering the technique of "doxing" bad actors-- he goes after neo-Nazis and he is a proud leader of the Antifa and Mike Colter (Luke Cage) played him in a film called Skin . . . so the moral here is: normally when you talk to the bus driver, it's going to be about traffic and property taxes and car maintenance, but once in a while, you'll run into something completely different . . . so go ahead and roll the dice (the other thing I learned on this ride is that one of our tennis players is on the Highland Park Board of Health . . . he informed us that a particular restaurant did not have permits).

So Much For Spring

Hottest April tennis practice in history . . . but we played a fun game to make the points go quickly: tiebreaker to 7, you get one serve-- so you are hitting a second serve-- but returner has three shots to win the point-- if the server can get it back in play three times, the server wins the point-- very fun and taught kids to engineer and win points quickly, with a hard deep return or a drop shot, or get to the net and finish . . . hopefully this will pay off tomorrow when we play in the 90 degree heat.