I walked out of my house the other night and there were four teenage vandals on my lawn, tampering with my wife's giant inflatable Christmas decoration (a snowman, penguin, striped pole, and holiday gift tableau) and so I yelled, "Hey, get off our lawn! Don't mess with that . . . it's the holidays for Christ's sake" and then, instead of booking away, the delinquents sheepishly apologized: "sorry sir . . . sorry" and then one of them said, without any prompting: "It's Mason . . . you know my brother Tyler," and I was like: yikes, that was the quickest, least compelled confession in the history of crime.
THREE . . . count them, THREE-- that's right, I generated three great moments in education over the past two days-- for an average of 1.5 great moments per day; so without further fanfare-- because this is already too much fanfare-- here they are:
1) yesterday, a girl in my College Writing class asked me a strange question: she wondered if I knew anything about the PE mid-term . . . and though I told her that I did NOT know anything about the PE mid-term-- why would I know anything about the PE mid-term?-- but I told her I was totally willing to hypothesize about what I thought should be on the PE final, and then I went into an impromptu monologue about something I am fascinated with-- the sundry and miscellaneous rules of in-bounds and out-of-bounds in various sports . . . and while the girl that asked the question tuned out immediately-- before I even finished contrasting tennis and basketball!-- some of the athletic boys in the class got involved, and we went through a number of sports, hashing out when a ball or player was considered in-bounds or out-of-bounds and we agreed that knowledge of these rules would make an excellent PE final and we had a generally excellent time speaking on this topic-- especially because our hypothetical final monumentally annoyed the girl who originally asked the question;
2) in Public Speaking class this morning, we were about to present informational speeches and when I asked for a volunteer to go first, once again-- and this happens all the time-- a girl asked if she could "go second"-- this is a common and logical request in Public Speaking class . . . the kids are great-- they actually signed up for Public Speaking so they like to speak in public . . . but they still don't want the pressure of leading-off, so I'm always getting requests to go second or third-- but someone has to go first . . . and today, in another great moment of teaching, I finally solved that dilemma-- a girl asked if she could "go second" and another student quickly claimed "going third" and someone else actually claimed the fourth spot-- so we were all lined up and ready to roll, but someone needed to go first and then I had an epiphany, a stroke of brilliance and I said: "Ok . . . I will go first" and the kids looked at me like: "Wtf?" and then I drew a line on the board and I said: "Tennis" and, once again, they were like "Wtf?"
3) then I did an informational speech on the topic of "In? Or Out?" and first I went through sports where the ball is "in" if it hits the line-- soccer and volleyball and tennis-- and then I discussed the anomalous nature of basketball, where the ball is "out" if it touches the line-- and we also reviewed how the sides and top of the backboard are in-bounds-- but not the supporting braces up top; we talked about football and the fact that if your foot hits the line, you are out; I outlined the complication of pickleball: the ball is "in" if it hits the line, unless the serve touches the non-volley zone line, then that serve is "out"; I brought up darts and what happens if the dart splits the wire (you get the higher score) and that started a whole debate on if darts and bowling were even sports at all (they are) and then I broke down the weirdness of baseball-- the ball can roll foul but if it rolls back into fair play before the base, then it's a fair ball-- and if it hits the foul pole then it's fair, so yu should call the foul-pole the "fair-pole" and then I actually learned something new from the lacrosse girls in my class-- and this rule seems plumb-fucking-crazy-- in lacross, if the ball goes out-of-bounds after an unsuccessful shot, when the ball crosses the end line, then the team whose player/player's lacrosse stick is closest to the ball is awarded the ball . . . wild stuff-- and now I'm making this extemporaneous informational presentation into a Google slideshow, entitled "Is it IN? Or is it OUT?" so that next semester, when a student asks to "go second" the class will be in for a real surprise (and perhaps no one will ever ask to go second again . . . but maybe I need to prepare a number of these boring and technical speeches, so that any time I don't get a volunteer to go first, the entire class gets tortured . . . there so many great topics I could present on: Transcendentalist Philosophy in American Literature, How to Keep a Salubrious Sleep Schedule, Here Are Some TV Shows Old White Guys Like, Seven Ways to Improve Your Pickleball Game, and -- of course-- How Robert Moses and the Automobile Destroyed Our Once Great Nation).
While I mainly think New Year's Resolutions are silly and indiscriminate-- why are you going to stop drinking in January? it's the coldest and most depressing month of the year, the month when you need a drink or two to make it to spring . . . plus it's not like you're putting on that bikini for a few months so why are you so gung-ho about the gym?-- and maybe I would make and keep New Year's Resolutions more if I lived in the Southern Hemisphere . . . it's certainly easier to start a new routine when there's more sunlight-- but, despite all these complaints, it seems that every year, I make some absurd or half-hearted resolutions, so I will continue the tradition: I resolve to keep making my podcast-- I just finished a new episode: "Traveling Through the Dark: Reflections on "Reality" in which I discuss an educational resolution too complicated to explain in this sentence-- and I also resolve to make the episodes a bit shorter and more focused . . . I also resolve to focus on flexibility more-- I have a strained calf right now and it sucks-- so I see much stretching in my future-- which is a really, really boring resolution-- so I need to add a more exciting resolution: perhaps I will try to resurrect my idea for a string of TikTok videos (the only problem is that I need my calf to heal to execute these videos so this resolution is going to have to wait a bit).
If you're looking for a mash-up of Alice in Wonderland, Frankenstein, and a self-reflexive, autonomous, meta-Pygmalion (with the addition of a bunch of freaky sex scenes) then Yorgos Lanthimos' movie Poor Things fits the bill . . . Emma Stone should win the Oscar for her revolutionary and evolutionary performance; Mark Ruffalo is rakishly entertaining; and Willem Dafoe does his usual creepy thing; my favorite line: "Now I must go punch that baby."
As I was plodding through Rober Caro's The Power Broker yesterday morning, I wondered whether Caro will eventually pluck the low-hanging-fruit and make the pun I am anxiously awaiting-- will he compare urban planner Robert Moses, who parted the neighborhoods of New York City to make way for superhighways (including the Cross Bronx Expressway) to the Biblical Moses-- who parted the Red Sea so the Israelites could get to the Promised Land-- if he does make the pun I'll be satisfied and my expectations will be fulfilled, but I'll also be disappointed-- because Caro is such a classy writer and this is such an obvious and rather stupid pun (Robert Moses implemented his projects by learning the ins-and-outs of political bureaucracy, soft power, and acting without permission-- and not asking for forgiveness either!-- while Moses was the recipient of an Omnipotent Miracle from an All Powerful Lord) plus puns are the lowest form of humor . . . I've got 950 pages to go, so the much awaited resolution to this sentence won't be happening for a while.
Today was very Monday, a caricature of Monday-ness, beginning with a torrential storm that soaked Lola and me thoroughly on our morning walk-- I was so wet, I actually had to change my underwear-- and then, after a long day of helping kids revise their expository essays, we had a department meeting, the most Monday of all meetings, the one where we analyze data from our grade books-- and Stacey said her reaction to looking at everyone's data-- the number of grades, the grade breakdown, the averages-- is that she either cries or acts like an asshole . . . but she did neither, so that was a win, I guess . . . anyway, we'll try it again on Tuesday.
All good things must come to an end, and so much like Linsanity, The Tommy-Devito A.K.A. The Cutlet Kid Winning Streak has run its course . . . fun while it lasted.
Here's some shit I learned today:
1. you're not going to get much done with a regular-level senior English class on the penultimate Friday before Winter Break . . . and the stupid 82-minute block period exacerbates this . . . I might have been able to maintain my patented veteran-teacher level of anger/motivation/self-deprecating humor/patience/flexibility/resilience/persistence/sardonic mockery/wittiness/intelligence for 42 minutes but there's no way to keep that shit up for 82 minutes;
2. both my wife and my older son Alex have a Pinterest page?
3. very few people know how and why the Northern Lights occur;
4. I really hate it when teachers stop in the hallways-- and they tend to be female teachers-- and complain about how overwhelming and tough the holidays are . . . because from an outside perspective, it sounds like they're complaining about how grueling it is to buy things and cook things and eat things-- but I keep my thoughts to myself (and my students, who are a captive audience and therefore must listen to my rants about the rampant materialism, environmental devastation, and unnecessary stress and traffic of the holidays . . . and complaining about this stuff is the only thing that alleviates the weird stomach-ache I have until Xmas is over and done with and we can go back to appreciating political stability and hot water and heat and basic miraculous conveniences)
5. if you do a bunch of one-legged squatting exercises from random YouTube videos, you're going to be sore for a couple of days.
Last night my wife whipped up some Indian food-- chicken tikka masala and daal tarka and some other lentil thing-- and then she realized we didn't have enough naan in the freezer and so I suggested we use some tortillas-- chicken tikka tacos!-- and then, satisfied that I had really helped out with dinner, I went back to drinking my beer and listening to music and watching her cook . . . and then Ian got home and I talked to him for a bit and then I saw that Catherine was doing something weird with flour on the counter and I asked her what she was doing and she said, "I'm making some homemade naan from scratch" and I was like WTF? and a Troy Barnes moment from Community popped into my head: after behaving abominably in the video game competition for the inheritance, Pierce's half-brother Gilbert says "Family can make a person do a lot of crazy things" and Troy answers: "I understand . . . I have an uncle who makes his own pizza."
I shot poorly again at basketball this morning, the second week in a row-- so it must be my glasses-- I haven't had an eye exam for a long time and I think my vision has gotten worse, so I booked an appointment, and there's also the fact that I'm playing in progressive lenses-- while they're great for switching from driving to reading, but they are a little weird for sports . . . my brother got LASIK surgery years ago and it worked wonder but I'm trepidatious about someone, even a licensed physician, shooting a laser at my eyes, so I don't think I'll be going that route.
Approximately three years ago, in February of 2020, we went into the city for my friend Connell's 50th birthday-- we went to Turntable Chicken Jazz and sat in a low-ceilinged room and ate Korean fried chicken and drank beer and then sang karaoke in a small crowded private room in a Koreatown fifth floor karaoke bar-- several weeks later, the world shut down and it was a miracle that we all didn't get COVID from this trip to the city . . . but perhaps some of us did-- and Connell reenacted this trip last night for his wife Lynn's fiftieth and the city seemed more crowded, chaotic, noisy and crazy than usual-- the train ride was slow and crowded, Penn Station was absolutely nuts, the streets were packed, as were the bars and restaurants, our Uber ride home was through bumper-to-bumper traffic. . . we should have just waited for the train, although we did get to witness an altercation from our slow-moving cab: a young guy on foot kicked or bumped or did something to a parked Tesla and an older guy, a big older dude, got out of the car and started beating up the younger guy and pinned him to the ground and I think he was strangling him when a bystander broke it up-- and as we inched away, the peroxide blond wife was yelling at this young guy as well, for doing something to their car-- my friends blamed this ubiquitous insanity on "SantaCon," which pulls in a weird, drunkenly stumbling holiday crowd into the mix but I think quite a bit of the perceived chaos is because I am getting old.
Before I left to play pickleball yesterday afternoon, I got a whiff of something stale and sweaty and I had to play a most malodorous game: what on my person was exuding a bad smell? my socks? nope, the knee brace on my right knee? nope, the knee brace on my left knee? nope, how about my shirt or my shorts?-- sometimes the laundry smells weird because it didn't fully dry . . . nope, my breath? nope, my pullover, which gets several wears before I wash it because I always take it off after three points of play? nope, my shoes? nope . . . with most of the sports I play-- basketball, soccer, and tennis-- I'm so old that I can't play them two days in a row, so most of my stuff is clean before I play again, but I can play pickleball two or three days in a row before my knees and feet give out, so sometimes my stuff starts to smell-- but I went through everything and couldn't find the odor . . . except . . . the brim of my hat? the call is coming from inside the hat! yuck . . . so I switched hats and washed the offender and next time I will check my hat first, as it is the closest thing to my nose and so if it smells, then it's going to seem like everything smells.
A few weeks before Winter Break, there is some festive "door decorating" in our school building and the homerooms are responsible for this; I've now been with the same homeroom for three years and I know some of the students quite well-- I've taught them in actual classes and such-- so when a pair off them volunteered to decorate our homeroom door I thought they might actually listen to my suggestions . . . I told them I wanted our door to feature a rapidly melting snowman saying to an elephant-- the symbol of the Republican party-- "There's no such thing as global warming, right?" and I also wanted a bunch of elves clear-cutting the rainforest while Santa loads the illegally sourced timber into his magic sleigh-- but they rejected both my ideas and instead decided to go with the image of a multicultural scarf with a bunch of nations on it or something . . . and they gave me three reasons why my ideas were verboten:
1) the door decorations were supposed to avoid religious imagery . . . but at this point, is Santa religious? or is he just a symbol of rampant consumer culture?
2) they decided you were probably supposed to avoid overtly political stuff as well and I conceded that this was a good point;
3) they told me I was the Grinch.
Catherine is away on a lady-hiking-trip to the Blue Ridge Mountains, so it's just me, Ian, and Lola in the house . . . Ian is eating pizza and watching "The Regular Show" and I'm drinking a beer, and writing this sentence and then I'm going to play a game of online chess and fall asleep at 7:30 PM, most likely (I've been staying up late all week watching the second season of "Fargo" with my wife, that is one intense show).
A few days ago I decided to read Eleanor Catton's giant literary tour-de-force The Luminaries, but then 99% Invisible announced a year-long podcast "book club" in honor of Robert Caro's much-lauded 1200-page biography of Robert Moses, The Power Broker . . . and I've always wanted to read The Power Broker but I could never pull the trigger and buy it-- it's expensive and I think you have to read it in hardcover because the font would be too small in paperback but now Conan O'Brien has convinced me so I ordered the book from Amazon as a Christmas present and soon enough I'll be reading TWO gigantic books for a long long time.
Lord knows why the Swedes at Spotify like to wrap up the year November 29th, but whatever-- it's Spotify Wrapped Day-- and apparently I listen to the same music as people in Burlington, Vermont (Waxahatchee, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, and the Grateful Dead) and this year was one of obsessions-- 100 gecs, Waxahatchee, Easy Star All Stars, and-- lately, so the data won't be counted-- Oingo Boingo . . . four of my five top songs were Waxahatchee tracks from the album Saint Cloud . . . I listened to 34 thousand minutes of music and 1500 artists-- and my number one artist was The Brian Jonestown Massacre, followed by Waxahatchee, Easy Star All Stars, perennial favorite The Talking Heads and finally, 100 gecs . . . my main podcast on Spotify was 60 Songs That Explain the 90s and apparently I like to listen to albums all the way through, an unusual trait in this fragmented day and age-- anyway, enough about me . . . how did your Spotify wrap up?
This morning at 7:45 AM, minutes before first period and just after I got out of the coach's room shower, my phone rang and my wife asked me if I had both of the van keys and I realized that yes I did have both van keys-- last night I drove over to Rutgers because Alex had mistakenly retreated back to college with my wife's credit card and the van key and when I picked up Alex and Ava- they needed a ride to College Avenue-- he put the credit card in my wallet and van key on my chain for the safe-keeping of both objects and then I kept them there safely until this morning, when I took my wife's car to school because Ian needed a car to go to a job interview and we try not to let him use the nice car, so he was supposed to take the minivan but since I had both van keys, my wife had to bike to work and my son had to bike to his job interview at Birnn chocolate-- and my wife got to work on time and my son got the job, so obviously biking places-- even if it is very cold and windy-- builds character and works out in the end (even though when I walked out of the school building this afternoon, my first thought was holy shit, I would not want to be biking in this kind of cold, windy weather).
My wife and I just watched two Mike Birbiglia one-man shows on Netflix . . . and though we watched them in reverse chronological order, I think that may be the way to do it-- or else you might be kind of pissed off about The New One, like this NYT reviewer . . . but if you start with the more recent piece-- The Old Man in the Pool-- you'll be better prepared to handle some of the existential gripings in The New One-- because if you've had kids, you've been there . . . and might still be there-- and you also have to remember that while Birbiglia is a stand-up comedian, these shows are slightly different than pure stand-up-- the minimalistic sets both come into play at times and there's more of a character arc to his persona in each-- but mainly, while there are dark and desperate portions of each show, on the whole, they are hilarious, profound, and well worth watching.
I vacuum the house and two hours later, my wife asks me if I vacuumed the house-- because our dog sheds so much hair . . . and don't even get me started on the bathrooms-- you clean a toilet and the next thing you know, someone is spraying urine all over it-- I think for a day or two after you clean a bathroom, people should have to urinate out back in the yard.
I hope people are being mindful of their consumption today and not buying unnecessary goods . . . but I guess nothing dispels Thanksgiving gluttony, overconsumption, and hangovers like buying some useless shit.
Alexander Plumbing came to the rescue this morning-- on FaceTime-- we had some work done Wednesday afternoon to stop the leak in our tankless water heater and the plumber also showed me how to rinse off the magnet filter that removes the iron sediment from our water-- but this morning our forced hot-water radiators were cold and winter weather is headed our way and I couldn't figure out the issue-- the hot water was on and the heating pumps were pumping; I bled the radiators but there was no air in them, just cold water-- it was a mystery so my wife gave it a shot and texted the guy who was at our house yesterday and though it was Thanksgiving, he called us back and took a moment to have her FaceTime the various valves around the tankless heater and he guessed-- correctly-- that he forgot to switch both dials back to green that surrounded the filter-- so it was a quick and easy fix and a Thanksgiving miracle that we have both heat and hot water (and no leaks) for the holiday weekend; I then went to play pickleball while my wife prepared several Thanksgiving dishes and when I got home, my wife assigned me one simple Thanksgiving chore-- go get a good bottle of wine to bring to Jim and LouAnne's place (my brother's inlaws) so I went to the Rite-Aid, found a good bottle of wine, and while I was paying I noticed that the young lady behind the register had a serious case of the hiccups and I was tempted to go into my whole "hey, hold still, hold very still, there's a spider in your hair" routine-- which always works on my high school students (and scares the shit out of them) but there were people in line so I went with something more economical and said, "Hey there's a big snake behind you!" which didn't make much sense inside a Rite-Aid-- the only things behind her were cigarettes, vapes, chewing tobacco, and little airplane bottles of liquor . . . so my ploy didn't work and she said said she wasn't scared at all, not even . . . hiccup . . . a little bit.
I found the breezily philosophical book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck entertaining (and so did my son) but I probably didn't read it as closely and critically as Michael Hobbes and Peter Shamshiri-- because that's their job on their very funny podcast, If Books Could Kill . . . it's big fun but if they tackle a book you've read and kind of enjoyed, get ready to cringe at the silly stuff your brain will readily consume when it's not paying close attention to the details.
Monday is normally bad enough . . . but I was trying to maintain a positive attitude and think of this particular Monday as more of a Wednesday-- since we have off Thursday and Friday for Thanksgiving so we're already nearing the end of the week . . . but I don't get on the email platform much, and so I found out this morning, just after I resolved to be optimistic, that we had a department meeting after school and then the Monday that I had transmogrified into a Wednesday did a Mr. Hyde and turned back into an ugly and malevolent Monday.
Took me a while, but I finally finished this episode of We Defy Augury . . . it is called "Capitalism . . . 1980s Style: Capitalism Sucks (But It Sucks Less Than the Alternative)" and it is my thoughts on capitalism (loosely) based on three novels published in the 1980s: Carl Hiaasen's Tourist Season, Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities, and Martin Cruz Smith's Gorky Park . . . and the special guests include Oingo Boingo, Lloyd Dobbler, Conan O'Brien, and Anthony Bourdain.
Let it be known: for many many years, the reigning DeVito from Jersey was, of course, Danny DeVito . . . but for one special day (Sunday, November 19th, 2023) Tommy DeVito wears the crown-- in his victory over the Washington Commanders, he threw three touchdowns and his passing rating was 137 . . . more than double his typical passing rating-- and he did this behind the worst offensive line in football . . . congratulations Tommy DeVito for winning the MVD of NJ today . . . Most Valuable DeVito of New Jersey (and I thought I was done watching the Giants this year but if DeVito keeps tossing touchdown passes and quips about living with his parents in Jersey, such as "I don't have to worry about laundry, what I'm eating for dinner, chicken cutlets and all that is waiting for me when I get there" then I'm in for the long haul).
I recently finished two horrific stories-- one fiction and one true-- and both tackled systemic corruption, immorality, and overreach . . .
1) the first is quite fun and I highly recommend it: the Netflix mini-series The Fall of the House of Usher . . . which reimagines the gothic world of Poe through the sepia-toned lens of the filthy-rich Fortunato family and their opiate empire;
2) the second is the new Serial production: The Kids of Rutherford County . . . a fine piece of journalism that uncovers incredible and absurd legal overreach in Tennessee-- Rutherford County juvenile court was illegally jailing children for over a decade, mainly due to a conservative judge, Donna Scott Davenport, who decided to run juvenile justice by her ethical tenets instead of the actual laws on the book . . . and it's also the story of the two underdog lawyers who challenge this insane but entrenched system and finally get some retribution and resolution for these much-maligned children . . . but you'll have to decide if it's enough retribution for the shit that went down.
Every morning, my dog anxiously watches me retrieve her can of food from the study, pour it out, use a fork to scrape out the last few chunks of food from the can, add a little dry food, and then serve it to her-- after she sits and gives me a paw . . . which has evolved into an enthusiastic leaping high-five-- so does she think she's eating all her meals at one of those open-kitchen restaurants where you can watch the chef prepare every step of your meal?
I've been reading three classes worth of Rutgers Expos synthesis essays-- the kids can take the class at my high school and I made the mistake of teaching three sections-- and it's brutal, most of the first attempts are awful, mainly because they don't synthesize-- they don't use evidence from BOTH texts to support an argument-- they summarize one text and then summarize the other text and then call it a day-- so I reminded them that to pass the Rutgers Rubric, EVERY synthesis paragraph needs evidence from BOTH texts and a kid asked me if you could get an NP (Not Passing) if you DID use text from both sources in every paragraph and I said, "Yes you could" because I had a student alternate summaries of the texts within the same paragraph-- no connections or argument-- and then I saw some dry erase markers on the ledge of my whiteboard and I had a brilliant idea-- and it worked out perfectly . . . there was a red marker, and I said this represented the Jia Tolentino text and there was a blue marker and I said this represented the Anand Giridharadas text-- and I did not not mean to assign stereotypical gendered colors, but subliminally I did just that-- and then there was also-- serendiptously, miraculously- a PURPLE marker-- so I drew an essay that had a blue paragraph and a red paragraph-- and then I drew an essay that had alternating blue and red sentences and then I told them that those essays would not pass and to do synthesis, the paragraph had to be purple-- you had to blend the texts and make a new color of your own-- and you could control the darkness or lightness of the purple by how much of each text you used-- that was the artistry of the synthesis and then I felt quite accomplished with my spur-of-the-moment color-coded metaphor so I told the ladies (Stacey and O'Grady) and they laughed and laughed and laughed and told me they had been doing this activity for years-- and they had been telling ME to do it for years-- but I had ignored them-- they always had their kids color code their essays so they could see how much text they were using and then I told them I didn't do it as an activity-- I showed them after they finished and I was grading and they both concurred that I was an idiot (and they also said that telling the kids about shades of purple right after the first essay was way beyond them) and so I am going to pay more attention to the ladies because it seems they have some good ideas (but I still had a really good time in class, especially when I saw that there was one purple dry erase marker and I remembered that red and blue make purple and I still think my diagrams were spot-on).
Two teachers I know have fallen and broken limbs (both elbows, I think?) at school this year and I've heard these things come in threes so I'm watching my step (unlike Arvin and Josh, who hit the deck hard several times this morning during pickleball-- I'm of the mind that there's no reason to dive in pickleball unless you're going to hit a winner-- which rarely happens-- because the speed of play is so much faster than tennis . . . you're not going to have a chance to get back up and hit another shot, so why bother diving in the first place?)
This morning, my wife and I drove on some winding mountain roads to a winding hiking trail that looped around Onteora Lake-- and along the trail, we stumbled on an old car wreck-- there really should be a plaque explaining exactly what the hell happened.
I'm writing this sentence so I don't stress my wife out while she's packing for our trip to the Catskills . . . I tend to pack fast and loose and finish well before her and then I want to get in the car and get going! traffic is building up! I don't want to eat lunch at 2 PM! I want to go on a hike! it gets dark early now!-- but she's a bit more methodical than me (which is why we make a great team).
Like many men, I have difficulty finding things in the refrigerator and on our pantry shelves and I often require assistance from my wife to locate what I'm looking for-- but today at school, I took "refrigerator blindness" to an unprecedented level-- on my off period, I drove over to Mancini's and got two slices of pizza to-go and by the time I had driven back to the school-- the two slices riding shotgun, filling my car with delicious scents of brick-oven baked crust and sweet marinara sauce-- I was salivating and ravenous (I played 6:30 AM pickleball this morning and probably showered in raw sewage-- because did they really flush out the shower in the coach's room?) and so I entered the school with my slices and made a beeline for the English Office, grabbed a seat, and inhaled my pizza-- and then I heard someone mention the word "fridge," which is a sore subject because the administration confiscated all of our department mini-fridges and microwaves over the summer (because of a toaster fire) and I said, "Are we getting a fridge soon?" and the other five teachers in the room stared at me in disbelief and then I followed their collective stare to the utterly gigantic white refrigerator looming right next to the doorway that I had recently barged through with my pizza slices and my boss Jess said: "You know how men can't find stuff in the refrigerator? Dave can't even find the refrigerator!" and she was right.
Yesterday, to end our week of virtual teaching with something joyful, a few of us decided to head over to On the Border, a cheesy Mexican chain on Route 1 that offers a happy hour of cheap beer and free chips (no pay) and it was such a beautiful day that I decided to bike over-- and as the crow flies (if I had a kayak and some cliff-climbing gear) the restaurant is right across the Raritan River from my house-- less than a mile-- but to bike there I had to do a more circuitous three mile trip: I biked across the Albany Street Bridge to New Brunswick, then through Boyd Park-- along the river and south on Route 18-- and that section of the ride was quite lovely, then up the big hill to the Route 19 crossing into the Cook/Douglass section of Rutgers, where things got a little dicier-- there was the usual "you're not driving? fuck you" section of road where the sidewalk and the bike path disappeared-- but on the whole, it wasn't too bad-- there were a fair amount of college kids around, so plenty of pedestrians, and the cars weren't going too fast because of this-- but then things took a turn-- I wanted to head across the old Sears parking lot-- the quickest way to the restaurant, but I had forgotten that this was now a massive construction zone-- they are building an enormous mixed-use complex of town-homes, apartments, a grocery store, and shops-- but that was my only way to get to On the Border-- unless I looped around and biked on Route 1-- which would be suicidal-- so I followed a dump truck down a dirt road into a chaotic maelstrom of dirt piles, concrete and steel building frames, and construction equipment-- to my right an enormous metal plate floated in mid-air, held there by an enormous crane, and to my left were some completed town-homes . . . I was able to make my way across this site without being forcibly removed and then I went over a little temporary bridge that spanned a culvert and took my son's bike (a commuter bike, not a mountain bike) across a jagged rock field and finally I was able to enter the back of the On the Border parking lot-- I locked up my bike with a U-lock . . . I figured I might leave it there and pick it up the next morning because there was no way I was biking drunk through that site in the dark-- but luckily Catherine came to meet us, so I was able to throw the bike into the back of the Mazda and get it home safely-- and happy hour was a blast, it was nice to see Chantal, Terry, Liz and Stacey in the flesh and we all talked about how we had COVID-school flashbacks and would forget that the rest of the world was open while we were virtual teaching-- then once you got off the computer you'd realize . . . oh, the gym is open and we're not in a pandemic, our school is just a decrepit shithole.
I know many of you have been following my attempts to turn off my phone alarm using my nose with bated breath-- wondering if my Android screen could disregard the "grease, sweat, and snot" on the tip of my nose and register an intentional touch-- and the answer is a resounding and miraculous YES! . . . but you can't "bop" the phone with your nose, you've got to squish your nose into the STOP button-- but that's not the big news of the day . . . the big news of the day is that black is white, up is down, and the deer in my neighborhood no longer behave like deer; on my way back up the hill from Donaldson, just after I successfully turned off my phone alarm with my nose, I noticed a few deer standing halfway down the hill-- and this is always the perfect scenario for my dog Lola-- I let her loose and she chases the deer down the hill into the park and then loops back up the hill to me and we walk home-- and she's always quite proud of herself for driving off the deer-- but we've had so many weird encounters with intractable and obdurate deer blocking our path that when I let her loose, she jogged ten yards up the sidewalk, towards our house . . . in the opposite direction of the deer . . . she was like: no fucking way am I dealing with these insane creatures-- so that is the big news: the deer, they have no fear and they have effectively reversed the order of the natural world.
If you're walking the dog in the cold-- with lightweight cotton gloves on-- and your phone alarm goes off, if you press the "STOP" button while wearing your gloves the phone won't recognize your fingertip . . . and, as I found out this morning, the phone also won't acknowledge the tip of your nose-- and I must have looked pretty stupid, repeatedly bonking my phone into my nose, trying to press that button-- before I finally took my damn glove off and silenced the stupid thing (maybe Apple phones recognize nose tips?)
Not the most impressive day of virtual school for me: while most of my students managed to give speeches in Public Speaking, one kid had to do his with his camera off-- it was blocked-- and so I told him "Pretend you're on the radio!"-- which dated me considerably-- I probably should have said, "Pretend you're on a podcast!"-- but whatever-- and then ten minutes into the second period, my school-issued device took control of itself and turned off the cursor and any sort of track-pad control-- but I could use the touch screen, which turned into a comical sequence of me touching windows and tabs and essentially screwing up the entire Teams meeting-- then the computer decided it needed an update and shut itself down-- I hope no parents heard me cursing it out-- but I was able to boot up the meeting on my iMac-- though Teams has gotten markedly slower since the pandemic-- which is weird and dumb-- and it really slows to a crawl if you share your screen-- so for my final period, instead of doing my slideshow lecture (with loads of musical and artistic examples!) about Modernism and Post-Modernism and then giving the kids a digital quiz, I had the kids do a goofy and barely educational group project that they could present next class . . . I really hope they fix our building soon-- for the sake of the children and the sake of me (and the sake of my podcast-- it's the last thing I feel like doing after a day of talking to a screen).
My wife and I don't drive much-- we both work close to where we live; we bought a house in a walking town; and we hate being in the car . . . but the past few days have given us a taste of what many Americans do on a daily basis-- my wife drove out to Muhlenberg and back on Thursday evening, so Ian could see his friends and go to some Halloween parties with his girlfriend (apparently kids now wear a different costume for each party . . . I'll try to post some pics, but Alex and his girlfriend were Elvis and Priscilla and then characters from Ratatouille and Ian and Layla were a deer and a hunter, two superheroes, and then Shaggy and Scooby . . . absurd) and then on Friday, Cat and I drove out past Trenton to go to an Italian place for my brother's birthday-- it took an hour to get there-- and then we drove Ian back to school on Saturday (with Layla) and we all did some parent's weekend stuff-- saw some football-- going to a Muhlenberg football game is very low key-- and we watched some Sex Education style a capella singing and then we went to a really good restaurant (Union and Fitch) with Layla and Ian for dinner and then they went out and Cat and I crashed at the Holiday Inn, then I took Ian for an x-ray on his weird ankle injury-- no information, he needs an MRI-- and then we drove the hour-plus home . . . way too much fucking driving, I hate being in the car, it stresses me out, makes me sick--I have to drive and chew gum-- and when I get out my knees and hips hurt . . . but I don't even have to do my twelve-minute commute this week because I'm on virtual school because of the water main break in my high school, so I won't have to drive anywhere this week, which will be wonderful.
East Brunswick High School is going to be virtual all next week-- apparently, fixing the water main break is going to be complicated-- rumor has it the pipe is eight feet underground and there may be an old oil tank involved as well . . . but all this is hearsay, the main thing is that we're going to try to do this virtual school thing again, which is annoying-- and this makes me wonder what would have happened twenty years ago . . . would they have crammed us into the middle school or something? or would we have had to make up the days in the summer? who knows-- but this is the best alternative to that stuff, though I hate staring at a screen all day.
Apparently, a shit pipe broke in our rapidly decaying high school, flooding the 1500 hall with sewage, so we're enduring the inanity of virtual instruction today (and perhaps tomorrow) because we can't go into the building . . . and I definitely have PTSD from the bonging sounds of people entering the Teams meeting; I've completely forgotten how to share my screen, run break-out rooms, and generally teach online; and there's a dude in my neighbor's yard with a gas-powered leaf blower making it impossible to hear anything-- the only up side is we get to do parent/teacher conferences on the phone, and not in the building.
A priest, a bunch of med students, some frat guys, the requisite old dudes and ladies of various races and ethnicities, and a guy with a mullet walk onto a pickleball court . . . and everyone gets along and plays pickleball-- this sport may just save America from polarization, tribalism, fake news, misinformation, income inequality, obesity, and reality TV.
I raced around like a lunatic, badly stubbing my toe in the process, trying to get to 6:30 AM basketball on time this morning . . . and then we couldn't get the hoops to descend-- the internet was out and apparently the internet is required to send the signal to the motor which lowers the baskets (although we learned-- far too late-- that there is a back-up switch in the equipment closet) but the morning wasn't a total loss-- Jeff and I impressed two willing basketball players into a pickleball match and we got some exercise in that manner and now I'm stuck in class forever-- it's a half-day so there's no lunch and I teach the first three periods, which amounts to being in a room with teenagers from 7:50 AM until 11:32 AM so I'm hangry and tired and hating whoever designed this stupid block schedule . . . and I have to be back at school at 5 PM for three hours of parent/teacher conferences-- which should be abolished at the high school level-- so I can't wait until I retire, because I will still show up for AM sports, and then head home to drink coffee on the porch.
The universe did NOT want me to finish the fiftieth episode of We Defy Augury: I had to re-record audio because an unshielded XLR cable allowed electromagnetic radiation to produce an unbearable hum and then a bunch of inexplicable five-second "holes" appeared in this audio when I was nearly done mixing things down, so I had to patch in little bits and pieces of my voice-- I was also a bit ambitious and wove in audio clips and clips of me playing the guitar-- and it was hard to record simultaneous vocal audio and guitar audio . . . basically, this one was a nightmare but I patiently pieced it together and I think it turned out pretty well, despite all the weird obstacles . . . the episode is called "Let's Talk About Celine Dion: Does Your Taste Stand on Solid Ground?" and my thoughts and ruminations are (loosely) based on Carl Wilson's music criticism masterpiece Let's Talk About Love: Why Other People Have Such Bad Taste . . . and there are plenty of special guests: Celine Dion, Huey Lewis and the News, New Found Glory, Robert Johnson, Greensky Bluegrass, The Easy Star All Stars, Bas Gaakeer & Mireille Bittar, Joey Satriani, David Berman, Pavement, Beavis and Butthead, David St. Hubbins, Nigel Tufnel, greasetruck, and Pythagoras.
Quite a Friday-- I awoke very early and solved an audio mystery before 6:30 AM basketball-- apparently the XLR cable I was using to record my podcast was NOT shielded and that's where the annoying hum was coming from-- I must have switched cords when I cleaned up greasetruck studios; then Friday morning basketball was physical and chaotic-- one guy got a black eye and I found myself crawling on the ground for a rebound and intercepting a number of full court baseball style fast-break passes-- I'm too old for that shit-- and then happy hour at the Grove was also packed and chaotic, everyone wanted to come out and rehash the chaos and the consequences of the teacher shortage on the English Department-- and now it's seven PM and heading up to bed.
My room was something of a chaotic mess Monday morning, but that's nothing compared to the current state of the English department-- last week, a youngish English teacher with young kids at home tripped and fell going down the weird flight of three steps in the Media Center (a.k.a. library) and she shattered her elbow on her dominant hand and did some ligament damage as well-- and she was teaching an extra class (so six periods) and she'll be out for 4-6 months so we're going to have to cover her classes-- but the bulk of the department is already teaching six classes so it's going to be a mad scramble . . . and another teacher announced she's pregnant and will be leaving in May, so that will be more classes to cover-- they really need to hire more teachers but I think there might be a shortage (or a shortage of competent teachers) so interesting times lie ahead.
I slept from 8:55 PM last night until 5:56 AM this morning-- nine hours straight . . . no waking up to pee in the middle of the night-- and that seems to be the right amount because I felt great today and did not need to take a nap when I got home from school.
Two new things for me today:
1) I washed a number of filthy baseball caps in the dishwasher . . . top rack, with a knee brace as well-- then I dried the hats with our big floor fan-- and now I've got some very clean hats . . .
2) I dressed like the lion from The Wizard of Oz for my cousin's one-year-old birthday party-- and though my costume was quite minimalist: brown shirt, shoes, and pants; some whiskers painted on my face; and a rather realistic tail my wife made from an old towel-- it didn't matter because the other adults really went all out with their costumes to complete Dorothy's gang so I looked just fine . . .
3) while we were at the party-- which was very loud-- my brother and I watched Rutgers come back from an 18-point deficit to defeat Michigan State and Rutgers did a kicking play that I've never seen work this way . . . the kicker "sky-kicked" the ball and the Michigan player let it bounce before he tried to catch it and by the time the ball came down a Rutgers player was already there-- the Rutgers kid collided with the Michigan State player and just grabbed the ball from him . . . hello!
