The new episode of We Defy Augury is (loosely) based on the meta-mystery novel Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz . . . get ready to deconstruct the mystery genre and murder in particular; special guests include The Smile, Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, Tom Hanks, and Meg Ryan.
Schools Out! For the Weekend . . .
These five-day weeks are brutal, but I just have to remember: summer is coming, summer is coming . . . and while I'm IN school I'm learning valuable things from my students, such as: anime fans talk with their hands (and apparently, make very specific hand motions) and, according to one of my students today: "I danced so hard in PE class my hijab fell off"-- which we decided could be the basis of an amazing song lyric.
Dave's Head is So Money
Some folks might find the buzz of the Remington Balder Pro annoying-- but to me, the high-pitched hum of the Five Dual Track heads is the sound of money in the bank . . . I shelled out any cash for a haircut in twenty years.
Ahh Dickens . . .
I forgot to bring my Kindle to school today-- so I'm not going to be able to delve deeper into the mud and fog of Bleak House during cafeteria duty . . . unless I deign to read on my laptop-- but I will provide two excerpts from the opening chapter of the Dickens' novel for your amusement and consideration . . . here is a sentence about the mud:
As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill . . .
Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little ’prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon and hanging in the misty clouds.
Catherine's Foot = Step On It
My wife went to the orthopedist today so he could assess how she is healing from her foot surgery and her foot has received "the green light for all activities"-- hiking, pedicures, pickleball, Zumba-- but I assume the orthopedist meant only "foot-related" activities-- as her foot will not be attending cooking school nor will it be caulking the bathtub . . . but still, while feet aren't as dextrous as hands, they are the key to being ambulatory-- and you can't go on a bar crawl unless you are ambulatory.
Upstream, downstream . . . Minnesota 81/Rutgers 70
What a strange and perverse mental illness-- to look forward all day to a time when you will watch a remote event on television that will probably drive you to the brink of madness-- but believe that if you get emotionally involved enough, you will have some influence over the event-- and believe this enough so that you enjoy joyous high and suffer precipitous lows, project streams of profanity, enter existential futility, entertain possible resurrection, and finally go to bed, sweaty, frustrated, and fatigued, though you've only sat on your couch-- and you'll do it again Thursday night because the Rutgers men's basketball team is playing Purdue.
Dave Will Survive
Another boring evening last night-- I really felt like shit, congested and glassy-eyed and all that fun stuff that happens when you have a cold-- so we watched some college basketball and the first episode of Resident Alien-- which I found more amusing than my wife-- but this morning, despite sleeping poorly, I came back from outer space and managed to record some of my new podcast and play 90 minutes of indoor soccer, and all the trotting around helped drain the mucous . . . so I think I'm going to recover just in time to go to work tomorrow . . . blech (and my wife has off because her district budgeted enough snow days, while my district did not-- so at East Brunswick High School there will be learnin' on President's Day).
Lame Weekend (But It Could Be Worse)
All systems: clogged and stuffy-- I've got a cold and it sucks-- I worked all week while fighting off this virus-- and my reward is a lame weekend-- no alcohol, no gym, no indoor soccer, no going out to dinner or sitting in a bar . . . but I'm enjoying Martha Well's Murderbot Diaries, I got genius level on the NYT Spelling Bee last night, we finished watching Mythic Quest-- highly recommended, sweet and very funny . . . in the vein of Parks & Rec-- and we started the new version of Mr and Mrs. Smith with Donald Glover, which seems worth watching-- and I'm still powering through Robert Caro's The Power Broker . . . and reading about how hard Robert Mose's New Deal hires worked during the very cold and snowy winter of 1934 made me happy to have a warm house and sick days to use, if need be.
Too Much Phlegm to Create a Coherent Metaphor
Teaching with a stuffy nose is like competing in a dance recital with a piece of toilet paper stuck to your ballet slipper.
Earworm Obsession (Dave Does Some "Work")
Yesterday, I worked harder than I have ever worked before (and probably after) because I got obsessed with an idea-- today, I will see if it was worth it; in my Music and the Arts class we're going to listen to the excellent 99% Invisible episode "Whomst Amongst Us Let the Dogs Out"-- an episode which investigates the nebulous and foggy history of the Baha Men's earworm "Who Let the Dogs Out"-- and so yesterday morning I started going down the rabbit hole of songs that are earworms, especially songs that just seem to exist in the ether-- you can't imagine the world without them . . . they just sort of show up; so I talked to students and teahcers and consulted the internet and I came up with a list of 50 earworm songs and then I wanted to make this into a quiz for the students-- to see if they could identify the song and perhaps-- although it's often very difficult-- the original artist . . . the only way to do this properly was to download the songs from YouTube and convert them to mp3s and then use Logic to clip the relevant earworm-- as little as possible and usually without vocals-- and then a piece of the chorus-- the "answer" to the earworm-- it took me four hours and as soon as I can figure out a way to share the file, I will-- but I'll certainly turn it into a podcast or something-- I think for people my age (53) that are native-born Americans, it will be fairly easy to identify most of the songs-- although the artists are often difficult-- and I did put some contemporary stuff in there for the kids, so they don't get frustrated-- I'm going to try it out on them today so I'll report how it goes tomorrow.
Welcome Home, Stranger
Every few years I end up reading a book like this one . . . a book where someone in a family that is scattered geographically dies and the family returns to the ol' homestead to mourn and revisit past conflicts and grievances-- Kate Christensen's novel Welcome Home, Stranger fits this archetype, so don't read it if you're looking for a lighthearted comedy, but it's an excellent book: the writing is strong and precise, the narrator-- an eco-journalist named Rachel-- tackles the futility of our decaying environment and her own existential crises with a sordid and mordant wit, and the state of Maine is just as much a character as any of the people in the book . . . nine lobster pots out of ten.
There's No "I" in AI
My newest episode of We Defy Augury, "There's No "I" AI: Good Writing, Intentionality, and a Plethora of Other Shit" collects some of my thoughts and lessons that are (loosely) based on William Zinsser's classic primer On Writing Well (and impacted by the current AI writing revolution) . . . Special Guests include George Carlin, Spirograph, John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Simple Minds, El Guapo, Hefe, and Donald Trump.
Dave Gets It Wrong (Again!)
For a good portion of last night's game, I thought it would be the first time a kicker received the Super Bowl MVP-- two record-setting field goals were kicked, the first (55 yards) by Jake Moody and the second (57 yards) by Harrison Butker . . . and Butker was perfect on the night, booting four field goals-- I think if Butker kicked a long one for a dramatic win/tie in overtime, he would have made place-kicking history . . . but luckily I'm not a betting man because Patrick Mahomes won MVP again-- and that makes three times . . . boring.
In Thirty Years, I Should Run For President?
Last week, I made a triumphant return to indoor soccer and I was able to play for 50 minutes before I felt a twinge in my calf--but I must confess, I also felt fat and out of shape on the soccer pitch, I've been going to the gym and playing pickleball and while pickleball may require some burst of speed and plenty of shuffling in a squat stance, it's not really stop-and-go aerobic exercise; this week, I was able to play for a little over an hour-- I got my 10,000 steps and then stopped before I hurt anything-- and wow, was I winded-- and I still felt fat and slow and without good touch, but I did score a nice left-footed goal on the volley, off a looping cross . . . so I am cautiously optimistic about athletics in 2024-- and my wife and I are trying to eat fewer carbs and more protein, so maybe we'll lose some weight this week, which I am assuming will really help my fitness in sports like soccer and basketball (I was annoyed last week, I didn't drink all week-- until Friday and Saturday, or eat dessert after dinner, and I still don't think I lost a pound . . . as I approach age 54 my metabolism has really slowed down-- when I was in my forties if I quit beer and dessert for a week, I'd lose five pounds).
I Love a (fictional) Dead Body
Magpie Murders, a meta-mystery by British author Anthony Horowitz, deconstructs the genre so cunningly that it very well might be the last whodunnit you ever need to read . . . it won't be, of course, because murder-- mystery novel murder, that is-- is just so damned fun.
Two Pickleball Firsts
This afternoon was unseasonably warm, so eight of us got together at Castleton Park for some excellent pickleball and I experienced two new things-- or new to me:
1) I wore calf-compression sleeves-- and my strained calf muscle felt wonderful, safe, secure, and warm inside the tight polyester/nylon tube and I did not re-pull the muscle;
2) when I tried to block a drive at the net, the ball hit the bottom edge of my paddle, caromed, and clipped my testicle-- and though my testicle was safe and secure and warm inside my spandex tights, it did not matter-- and I felt that queasy sickly distinctive sensation that only those people possessing testicles ever have the privilege to feel-- but it dissipated fairly quickly and then I got back to enjoying the warm and sunny February afternoon.
Mystery Solved!
My English 12: Music and the Arts class agrees with me that the Reply All episode "The Case of the Missing Hit" is one of the most satisfying narrative arcs in the history of storytelling-- right up there with The Sixth Sense and Murder on the Orient Express-- except that this story is true, not made up bullshit.
Dave's Body is Haunted by Shit From 2020
My shoulder hurts-- which hasn't been the case since 2019/2020 . . . I aggravated my shoulder trying to hit a topspin one-handed backhand in 2019 and when I finally got an MRI in early 2020, I learned that my right shoulder has some arthritis, some bone cysts, and some swelling . . . not the worst case scenario-- but these elements have gotten organized once again and are making a team effort to make my shoulder sore and swollen and so it's hard to make a right-handed lay-up or hit an overhead smash in tennis and pickleball-- and throwing a football a good distance is out of the question-- but I'm taking naproxen, like the doctor said, and it's starting to work-- and I'm also recovering from a calf strain-- and this is another injury resurfacing from 2020 . . . I hurt it playing indoor soccer and though I played indoor soccer this weekend, I could still feel it a bit, so I stopped after an hour . . . and I guess this is just how it's going to be-- the same injuries are going to resurface when I push my body too much and they will always be there, lingering in the background, and I'll also accumulate new injuries . . . and then I'll get some kind of illness or disease and croak (and hopefully, I will eloquently document it all for your reading displeasure).
The Bell Tolls for Show and Tell
I'm doing something new in Creative Writing class-- I used to begin class with "Show and Tell" . . . one or two kids would read a passage from their favorite book or they would play a little bit of a favorite song and explain why they liked it-- but many of these newfangled digital kids have trouble presenting things in a compelling fashion and because of the fragmented state of art and media, they also don't share much common culture, so there's not much statistical likelihood that what they present will resonate with the crowd-- so I ditched this routine and instead of this, we are beginning each class with a free-writing prompt; today's prompt was "describe yourself in the third person as if you were a character in a novel" and I always tackle the prompt too . . . moments after we began writing, I asked the class if they knew some synonyms for "really really good looking," which made a few students chuckle (of course, I'm sure there were a few who did not detect the irony and thought I was just a vain narcissist).
Note to (Flatulent) Self
You should not consume "egg roll in a bowl" before you play pickleball because . . . cabbage.
Why Is That Lizard Wearing a Fur Coat?
My wife assisted me in some body hair removal today, transforming my back and shoulders from a hairy pelt to lovely smooth skin and changing one of my tattoos from a proto-mammal back into a reptile.
Let There be Light (and Screws)
The sun finally came out today-- which made nearly everything better: dog-walking; dog-bathing; dog-drying; pickleball; and head-shaving . . . the only thing task that was still annoying was my wife's project: switching out all the cabinet handles in the kitchen . . . some are five inches wide, some are five and a sixteenth inches wide, some of the screws are stripped, and -- according to some guy with a very nice woodshop on YouTube-- we might be dealing with some low-quality screws.
Temperature Temperance
I did a roaming coverage today during first period-- so that various teachers could attend IEP meetings-- and I also stopped in a couple of other classrooms along my journey, to visit friends, and I noticed that, from classroom to classroom, there are fairly large temperature swings-- the first class I was in was hot enough to make me dazed . . . so I convinced this teacher to open a window so that I would not pass out-- though she said she felt cold-- which I attributed to some horrible illness and I think I actually convinced her she was coming down with something-- and I wanted to open more windows but there were guys on the roof making a shitload of noise with leafblowers, so I couldn't-- but what do you do when two people have such a different perception of the same temperature?-- there's only so much clothing you can remove or put on-- especially in the workplace-- and the other classrooms I visited were also fairly warm, so then when I got back to my classroom, enraged, I opened all the windows and made it very very cold-- cold enough that the students complained-- so I closed a couple windows, but then a teacher stopped in my room, to give a student a pass, and she said, "this room is nice and cold-- the rest of the building is so hot!" and I agreed with her and felt a great kinship with this lady . . . meanwhile, I felt great disdain for the teachers that were keeping their windows shut, not only were their rooms stifling hot, but they also smelled kind of funky . . . I guess I'm going to have to start carrying around a thermometer so I can point out to people when their perception of hot and cold is ludicrous (and I think people will really enjoy this information, just as they love it when I correct their grammar in real-time).
You Never Get a Second Chance to Make a First Transgression
Yesterday was the first day of the second semester, and so I met my new class of Creative Writing students and we did all the first day of school stuff-- cell phones in the cell phone holder; some first-day activities; name mnemonics on index cards . . . you know the drill-- and after I memorized all the names and recited them several times, I started collecting index cards-- and there were about five minutes left in class but I was obviously done so some kids got up to get their phones and then they started milling around by the door-- these were sophomores and I forget how sophomores behave because I mainly teach seniors-- so I was like: "stop milling around by the door and get back in the general vicinity of your desk because I don't like kids milling around near the door or anywhere near my person or my desk" and they were like: "okay, but someone escaped" and I was like: "wtf?" and I had everyone sit back down and-- lo and behold! one of the desks that was previously occupied was now empty-- one of the sophomores had slithered out the door, probably to go to lunch early-- and because I had just memorized their names I knew the name of the missing girl and I was like: "wow . . . I've been teaching for nearly thirty years and that's a new one for the first day of class . . . some first impression" and I wrote the girl up and sent an email to the girl's parents (no reply yet) and I can't wait to see what kind of second impression this girl makes when I chastise her in person tomorrow.
First Wrist Problems
I like my new Nike Xmas hoodie-- it's a magnetic blue/green color and size XL, so it fits me around my burly chest and neck . . . the only problem are the sleeves-- they're too tight for my thick wrists!
The Fork is Pitched
To commemorate the end of the 28-year reign of Pitchfork as an intellectual, snarky tastemaking mega-God, I'm listening to some of the top-rated electronica albums on the site-- today I did In Color by Jamie xx (which is good stuff to listen to at the gym) and I'm writing this sentence to the weird, jazzy beats of Amon Tobin's album Bricolage . . . I suppose the demise of Pitchfork as the ultimate purveyor of musical criticism was inevitable because the musical landscape has become so fragmented, across time, space, genre, demographics, and the globe . . . I can't remember the last time I thought the same music was good at the same time as a bunch of other people (maybe 100 gecs?) and with the advent of the earbud, you don't even know what people are listening to-- it's not like walking around a college campus in 1991 and hearing Nevermind and Ten pouring out of every dorm room-- or back in the 80s when people advertised their musical taste by carrying a boom box and blasting Van Halen or Public Enemy or AC/DC . . . now, taste is a private affair and you can listen to whatever fucking garbage you want, without the intrusion of music snobs-- it would be fun to know though, like the app Snoop, which Ruth Ware invents in her book One by One-- so you can spy on what people are listening to . . . but we'd never stand for that, just as no one wants to know what number (plus decimal point) that some pretentious music snob assigned an album . . . because what the fuck is an album?
Artificial Intelligence Invades High School English Class
In my new, very special episode of We Defy Augury . . . which is based on my experiences teaching high school English in the age of AI (with bonus thoughts-- loosely--based on three classic science-fiction novels: Theodore Sturgeon's More Than Human and The Dreaming Jewels and They Walked Like Men by Clifford D. Simak) I attempt to answer this question: "Is AI Cheating Our Students Out of an Education?" and while I may not come to a definitive conclusion, somebody needs to address this issue . . .
Special Guests include: Gary Gasparov, Jimmy Kimmel, The Beach Boys, Alan Turing, The Matrix, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, ChatGPT, Bard AI, and Mark "Imprint" Zuckerberg.
Sun, Why Have Ye Abandoned Us?
The last week or so we've been living in a microcosmic version of Ray Bradbury's classic story "All Summer in a Day"-- and if I don't get some sunlight tomorrow, I'm pretty sure-- due to lack of vitamin D-- my bones will turn to rubber (and if the sun doesn't come out by Wednesday, when the second semester begins and I get a new Creative Writing class, I'm going to open class with that story-- no rules or course overview or introductions or name mnemonics . . . I'm just going to start reading about the seven years of rain).
Dave and His Wife are Both Ambulatory
Because my wife started walking again yesterday, albeit slowly, I decided to chance it and see if my strained calf would hold up playing some winter pickleball-- and despite the lousy conditions, my calf felt fine-- although I didn't try anything particularly athletic, instead I'm working on my grip and my two-handed backhand-- I'm trying to get my weight into my shots, like Sabalenka did this morning in her dominant Australian Open victory-- anyway, it was nice to do something competitive with scoring, instead of the futile monotony of working out at the gym-- and I must say, the break certainly helped my knees and shoulder, they felt great-- but BOTH my calves are feeling pretty tight, so I need to learn to rest a day or two after I play . . . I am not good at resting-- I've got to keep moving, there are hellhounds on my trail.
My Wife Stands on Her Own Two Feet
My wife got her stitches out yesterday from her Morton's neuroma foot surgery-- so she's in a medical boot-- but she's walking again, which is good news for me: I'll be relieved of many of the little menial tasks and errands that accumulate when you've got someone on crutches in the house-- can you get my water bottle? I left it downstairs-- and my book and my phone? . . . can you bring the laundry up from the basement? I'll fold it if you bring it up . . . can you grab the remote . . . and a couple of dark chocolate peanut butter cups? etcetera . . . I was happy to oblige her and she was getting quite a bit done, despite the limitations (including chair yoga and chair work-outs?) but it's nice having her walking (and driving) again-- and hopefully, she'll only have to spend a few weeks constrained to the boot.
There Are Too Many Fucking Shows
We signed up for a free Apple TV trial so we could watch Slow Horses (and because my wife is stuck at home healing from foot surgery) and last night we sampled some other Apple TV shows: Smigadoon!-- which was mildly entertaining (from my perspective) and hysterically funny (according to my wife) and two episodes of Mythic Quest-- which we both found witty and compelling-- and then I had to bail out when my wife started some Irish show called Bad Sisters . . . I know this is a first-world-problem, but the amount of shows on all the platforms is actually stressing me out-- we have text threads of recs from our TV-watching friends and while I understand this is the time of year when everyone is watching lots of TV-- it's cold and gray and the holidays are over-- and this is exponentially magnified this year because my wife can't leave the house-- plus there's the Australian Open and college basketball . . . I'm barely reading anything . . . but it appears that winter is over and my wife might get her stitches out tomorrow, so maybe instead of "dry January"-- which is a terrible month to quit drinking anyway-- but maybe instead of that silliness, we need to do "no wifi February" and release our brains from this digital capture.
The Wit of the Parking Lot (l'esprit du parking)
Stacey and I were walking around during our free period today and when we took some stuff to my car, we noticed an egregiously parked car in a spot near mine and I was like "I wish I had a piece of paper because I would leave this person a note!" and Stacey reminded me that she had picked up a bunch of Post-its from the supply room and she handed me one-- and she also had a pen-- so I decided to keep it simple and just go with some classic sarcasm and I wrote "Nice job!" on a pink Post-it and stuck it to the driver side mirror . . . but, of course, there's an element of l'esprit d'escalier to this incident-- perhaps I should have written "I can drive a car!" or "Parallel is just an axiomatic construct" or "Park Outside of the Box" or any number of clever things . . . and if I start carrying around Post-its and a pen, then there's always next time.
Three Cold Incidents
Three things happened today that were only interesting because it's winter:
1) my wife insists she heard people playing pickleball at the park this morning-- at 5:30 AM-- which is very weird but not impossible because the courts do have lights-- but it was 18 degrees!-- so those players were some real diehards . . . I did NOT hear the cold-weather pickleball players because I was downstairs and you can only hear the pickleball courts from our bedroom window, which faces the park, and only when it is very quiet and there are no leaves on the trees;
2) I was dealing with my own cold weather dilemma-- Ian came home at midnight last night and our dog Lola wanted to go outside, so he let her out and then he did not close the glass sliding door when she came back in and then Ian went to bed, so when I went downstairs in the morning it was butt-cold, freezing cold-- the thermostat read 54 degrees-- so I had to turn on the space heater to make things bearable;
3) at 4 PM-- right in the middle of writing this sentence-- Ian called and said he had just finished work and the van was dead-- he was over on the other side of town, at the chocolate factory-- so I drove over there and we tried to jump the van with the Mazda, to no avail-- we got the engine running twice but then the van quickly died-- and the battery was so dead you couldn't even shift it into neutral-- so then after a very long phone call with roadside assistance-- they really want a lot of information!-- a tow truck was dispatched towards my location, so I walked up and down the street to keep warm while I waited, and then the tow truck arrived, put the chains on, pulled the van onto the bed, and we drove to Edison Automotive and I filled out the little envelope and hopefully Mike will be able to resuscitate the van tomorrow-- and because I missed going to the gym, I walked home from the auto shop- briskly, becauss it was so cold-- and when I got home, Ian was cooking dinner (because Catherine was upstairs working) and so I had a hot meal waiting for me-- which makes sense because if things come in threes, then the cold pickleball and the cold ground floor and the cold wait for the tow truck satisfied that superstition and so the hot meal was a perfect ending to a day filled with cold incidents.
Acting! And Floating . . .
The last episode of The Curse is so epic it might be worth the whole ordeal of signing up for a free trial of Paramount + just to see it-- and while you should watch the other episodes-- which are strange, slow, awkward, and don't resolve a hell of a lot-- the show is really all building to this last episode, which starts with what seems like a realistic send-up of “The Rachael Ray Show”-- featuring Rachael Ray and Big Pussy from the Sopranos-- and then things get really wild, like really, really wild-- like Stanely Kubrick-star child, Tim burton wild-- and it sort of makes sense in the context of the show and it's certainly allegorical-- but it's also downright fun-- a very advanced, opposite version of "the lead game" . . . and now I've seen Emma Stone do a lot of acting lately-- weird, compelling, not exactly relatable acting-- in this show and in the film Poor Things and while I have no idea how to judge great acting-- other than to know that Kate Winslet is really good at it-- I think Emma Stone has also got an incredible ability to get a lot across without saying anything.
My Dog Rocks
For the first time in quite a while, Lola and I were able to take a snowy hike in the Rutgers Biological Preserve . . . and Lola is also working on a prog-rock album and she needed an album cover so I snapped this photo-- notice the shadows, the detached thousand-yard stare, and the ominous intrigue of what lies beyond the frame-- it's classic.
Put Your Money on Wild Honey
I've never fully understood the venerated status of The Beach Boys . . . I've tried to listen to The Smile Sessions and all that but the music never quite did it for me-- but I've been listening to A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs by Andrew Hickey-- which is apparently one of the most voluminous and epic literary/audio/historical endeavors ever attempted-- and this got me interested in The Beach Boys oeuvre again and I found an album I really like-- Wild Honey-- it's only 24 minutes and it rocks: distills the surfin' psychedelia into garage band tempo . . . if you're like me and you've never understood the fascination with The Beach boys, give this one a shot.
Magical Marker Mystery Tour
A relatively fun book cover design Creative Writing lesson (inspired by this rather annoying TED Talk) was nearly thwarted by a magic-marker-mystery . . . this morning I went to school dog-tired because last night, instead of sleeping, my wife endured what she described as "the worst pain I've ever felt"-- and she's pushed two children out of her vagina-- but this was some of sort of post-operative nerve pain in her foot and it just wracked her with monumental shooting, fiery agony-- so I didn't get much sleep either (and this sentence is going to reflect that) and when I went to grab my bin of markers and my bin of crayons, off the cabinet, so-- after perusing som excellent book covers and some downright awful book covers-- the kids could draw their own book covers for their current narratives-- to my dismay, my markers and crayons were missing!-- so I ran upstairs and asked the English teachers if they had seen them and I went down to the supply room but they were out of markers, so I borrowed some from Stacey-- and then I used my patented interrogation techniques on my first period class and my homeroom, to ascertain information-- but I highly doubted that a student would steal a bin of markers-- they'd have to carry it around the school!-- so I assumed it was a teacher, perhaps during detention-- and then when I went across the hall to ask the students in there if they had seen them, I saw both bins on the psychology teacher's desk, and I was like "my markers" and he was like "I wondered what these things were doing here" and his answer seemed very sincere-- and he's not the kind of guy to filch some markers without asking, he's as by-the-book as they come-- so while the mystery was half solved, there still some intrigue as to how the bins got across the hall-- janitors?-- who knows . . . I'm too tired to speculate.
Snow and Ice (apologies to Robert Frost)
she uses slang, that's her desire--
but she has no love for ice,
salted, sharp, and slick . . .
for destruction, it will suffice:
as it makes walking, both for man and beast,
not nice.
Infinite Wellness
My newest episode of We Defy Augury takes the most annoying book I read in 2023 and uses it as a lens to enhance the best book I read in 2023 . . . special guests include: Gandalf, Morpheus, George Costanza, Jerry Seinfeld, Simon Sinek, and Giannis Antetokounmpo.
Completely Curb Your Enthusiasm
You may have been tough enough to handle the cringeworthy antics of Larry David on Curb, but can you withstand the exponentially uncomfortable dynamics between Emma Stone, Nathan Fielder, and Benny Safdie on The Curse . . . my advice is to give it a shot: my wife has bailed out, but I am hooked (and this is the first TV show I'm watching all by my lonesome since Saxondale).
Dave Cooks to Order
Apparently, my wife likes her breakfast sausage slice in half longways . . . so she has two thin circular sausages with which to put on her egg-and-English-muffin sandwich.
Dave is Still Standing (unlike his wife)
What a week . . . I had to make numerous parent phone calls to discuss AI issues in student work-- and this got in the way of my planning for my four preps and grading the vast amount of writing that needed to be graded, so I pretty much lost my mind and freaked out quite a bit . . . one of the downsides to knowing your work colleagues so well is that you're not afraid to melt down in front of them . . . I probably need to start working at a place where I am only professionally acquainted with my co-workers because I'm way too familiar with the folks at my current job . . . which I guess often happens to veteran teachers-- I also accompanied Ian to meet the orthopedic surgeon to discuss options and schedule his ankle/foot surgery to fix his tendon and the fact that his foot bone is 40% out of the socket-- and we met with the same surgeon who was soon to operate on my wife's foot so then I had to endure the stress and anxiety of knowing that my wife was going under the knife for Morton's neuroma . . . and now she's laid up for a couple weeks until her foot heals so it's up to Ian and me to do the cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, and general household chores-- but who is going to shave my back hair, which is getting out of control? and then-- hopefully-- my wife's foot will heal and we'll repeat the same ordeal at the end of March with Ian . . . what a week and what a year, already-- and I have made a wise concession to ensure that I can offer aid when necessary: I'm not playing any impact sports than could possibly reinjure my calf (which is feeling great!) until my wife is on her feet again, because if I go down from playing indoor soccer or basketball or pickleball, then we'll really be fucked . . . or maybe not . . . maybe we'll just wallow in our own filth and order lots of take-out, which could be fun.
Very Realistic Nightmare (Warning: Adult Content)
This morning, my alarm woke me when I was in the middle of a very adult, very realistic nightmare: I walked down the steps into my basement, and it was kind of dark, and I noticed that there was a half-inch of water on the floor-- and I was very annoyed and I figured the hot water heater had malfunctioned again . . . ugh! . . . and then I woke up and did that thing where you say to yourself: it was just a dream, it was just a dream, that didn't really happen . . . it was just a dream.
Welcome to the (AI) Jungle
Today a high school student in my friend's English class revealed the secret method he uses so that he doesn't get caught using AI to write his assignments: "I tell it to write like a seventh grader so it's not too smart."
Dave Beholds the End of Civilization (and Is Subsumed Into the Matrix)
I apologize for the hyperbolic title, but I'm truly at a loss for words . . . there are no words . . . but fuck it, I'll give it a shot: so let me begin at the beginning: last week, I ran into a spate of uncited AI writing submissions in ALL of the various high school classes I teach-- the same thing happened around the same time last year . . . kids are on good behavior at the beginning of the year, then they get lazy around winter break, then a few kids get zeroes for cheating, and then-- after seeing the consequences-- they shape up again for a few months-- then they get senioritis and fall apart again-- it's a wonderful cycle-- and while some of these uncited AI writing pieces were in my college-level writing classes, which is a serious academic integrity violation and requires all kinds of bullshit: phone-calls with parents; meetings with the students; emails and meetings with guidance counselors; academic integrity forms . . . it's a terrible and tragic timesuck (and both students and parents cry . . . which is both endearing and kind of funny) but I also got a couple of AI-written assignments in Creative Writing class . . . they were downright awful mock-epic stories-- which are supposed to be funny, but AI is NOT funny-- and with these kids I was more lenient-- Creative Writing is a relaxed elective class-- so I admonished them and told them to do the assignment again for half-credit . . . and one of the students who used AI was absent so I sent her a message explaining that I recognized her piece was AI (and so did Chat GPT Zero) and that she needed to rewrite it and this morning, I noticed a reply to my message in my Canvas Inbox and upon reading two or three sentences of this rather long apology for unethical use of AI to write her mock-epic, I noticed that her apology letter for using AI was definitely written by AI and that's when I felt my corporeal body being digitized and sucked into the metaverse-- and I let out a distorted, electronic scream . . . the very same distorted electronic scream that Neo let out when they were locating his corporeal body and he was being digitized and subsumed-- and then, just to make sure, I asked Chat GPT to write an apology note for using AI on an assignment and Chat GPT went right ahead and executed this task, without noting the hypocrisy and irony, and both the message sent by the student and the Chat GPT letter began with the same weird opening:
"I hope this email finds you well,"
and then the student-- or actually the AI, posing as the student-- expresses "deep regret" and then, and this is where I just need to show you the money-- and I should point out that I would normally never exhibit student work for entertainment purposes, that's just lowdown and mean . . . but this is NOT student work, it's written by AI and it's amazing-- and while the message was longer than this . . . because AI is incredibly bombastic and verbose if you don't give it very specific limits-- this is the heart of it and it's amazing:
Your guidance and support have been valuable, and I want to assure you that your message has resonated strongly with me I am committed to ensuring that our communication reflects the genuine connection and respect that our collaboration deserves. Please accept my heartfelt apology for any unintended oversight. I value our partnership and the trust you have placed in me. Rest assured that I am diligently working on the assignment and committed to re-submitting it no later than tonight. I am grateful for your patience, and I look forward to delivering a thoughtful and meaningful assignment.
and so when I talked to this girl after class today-- and, to her credit-- she told me that she wanted to talk to me after class and I agreed that we'd have to do that . . . and when we met, I realized that she sincerely wanted to apologize and she didn't want the rest of the class to suffer for her mistake and she sincerely wanted to explain to me that she was under a lot of stress and pressure and had a lot of other school work to do and she was sorry that she took the easy way out and that she didn't take the time to do the assignment herself and all that boilerplate-student-crap and I was like: "That's fine, no worries, just don't do it again . . . BUT . . ." and then I asked her the million dollar question: I asked her if she used AI to write the apology and she said, "Yes, I just wanted to send you something to show how sorry I was" and I said, "You know the definition of irony, right? You know how crazy this is-- to send an apology for using AI written by AI" and she seemed to understand that this was an absurd action-- but now I'm wondering if she does know the definition of irony-- and I know if I need to explain irony that I now have the best example in the universe . . .and the saddest part of the story is that if she actually recognized the meta-humor in her action and acknowledged the silliness of using AI to write an apology for using AI, I would have thought it was hysterical and lauded her as the greatest creative writer in history-- but it turns out that she sincerely sent me an AI written apology note for using AI on an assignment, not realizing the hypocrisy of this methodology and I'm fairly sure this is the Seventh Seal of the Apocalypse.
More Dog Shit
If you live in New Jersey, today is not a good day to own a dog-- the rain is torrential and not letting up anytime soon-- but if you do own a dog and you need to step out for a while and leave your dog at home, then you might want to put on "Jon Glaser's Soothing Meditations for the Solitary Dog" so your dog can have a stress-free meditative rest while you are gone (actually, you'll probably want to listen to this brilliant piece of sonic art with your dog . . . but maybe don't listen with young children, as there's quite a bit of profanity).
Uh . . . Etiquette?
Early this morning, before sunrise, my dog and I turned left down 2nd Ave for our usual constitutional to the park-- but we had to beat a hasty retreat because a pack of women was walking an even larger pack of dogs (some-- but not all-- of the women were walking two dogs) and I didn't want Lola to start barking maniacally at all these dogs in the early morning darkness-- no one wants to be woken up like that-- so I did the right thing, put the walk in reverse, and walked back up Second Avenue: back towards my house-- and I know the women saw me do this-- but then when they got to the intersection of 2nd and Valentine, they followed me instead going up to the next block and turning-- so I walked Lola up our driveway and had her sit behind the Mazda to wait until they passed and then one lady let her two dogs lead her onto my lawn and across my driveway, and I mumbled some passive aggressive stuff to Lola: You're such a good girl . . . I'm not sure why this lady is walking her dogs towards you when I obviously walked away from them to avoid a bunch of early morning barking-- she must be very stupid, unlike you, you're a good girl--and I don't really understand where this lady is going or if she knows what the fuck she's doing, but you're a good girl and if I see these ladies again maybe I'll be collected enough to tell them what's what with dog-walking-etiquette . . . or perhaps they will stumble on this post-- but when you see someone turn their dog away from your dog to avoid conflict, don't follow that person, and especially don't follow them and then walk onto their lawn and driveway with your dog, unless you want a bunch of early morning barking.
The Power Broker: Chapter 18 Rules!
After many pages of politics and politcal strategy-- mainly centered around NY Governor Al Smith vs. Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1928 Democratic primary-- Robert Caro's The Power Broker offers up something slightly different: "Chapter 18: New York City Before Robert Moses" and if you like Depression-era anecdotes, urban decay, Tammany Hall Corruption, and grand plans for improvement, then you will love this chapter- in fact, it's a set piece, and if you have access to a copy of this intimidating tome and you don't feel like reading the whole book, turn to this chapter and enjoy the disaster: half-completed skyscrapers; breadlines; tired and hungry school children; a corrupt and paralyzed city government; a vice-squad involved in racism, bribery, and graft; laid off teachers and other city employees; absolutely disgusting, dangerous, and despicable "parks"; politicians privately using public land for parties, housing, and financial gain; rotting unpaved narrow bridges and roads; extraordinary traffic; playgrounds unfit for children; Central Park full of dung and stumps and weeds and mud; a lavish city casino at the edge of Central Park where the elite and the mayor could frolic while the rest of the citizens starved; and a man with a plan . . . an ambitious, populist plan to link the citizens of the city to refurbished parks, to better roads, to New England and New Jersey . . . a monumental plan to preserve the last open natural spaces of the city and to make them available to the people . . . or particular people: people rich enough to own a car, the middle class, those people who had enough money to burn some fuel.
Snowing, It Is?
It's not epic-- it's not even all that impressive-- but it is slippery . . . and for the first time in what seems like (and may very well be) years, it is snowing in Central Jersey and, right now, it's actually accumulating, so there are a few kids on the sled hill, Lola got to frolic in the park, and my afternoon tramp was far more enjoyable than the typical 42 degrees and muddy.
Too Easy
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.
You'd Like to Go Second? No Problem . . .
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).
Remembrances of Ween Past
Wow . . . fifteen minutes into 60 Songs That Explain the 90s: "Santeria -- Sublime, Rob Harvilla really gets off topic and, starting with a quick discussion of King Missile's "Detachable Penis" and then he launches into a passionate paean about the greatness of Ween (particularly the live version of "Dr. Rock") which brings me back to this particular Ween concert in Asbury Park, where it all went down.
One Resolution Down, Too Many to Go . . .
Two days into the New Year, and I've already accomplished one of my resolutions-- I laid this out in the new episode of We Defy Augury: Traveling Through the Dark, but in short, I was determined to inject some "reality" back into my classroom and bring back some of my weird social experiment trickery that fell by the wayside-- so today I executed the "bee in the cup" social experiment-- where, after reading a rite-of-passage narrative about a troubled kid who learns to be a beekeeper and has to endure an increasing number of self-inflicted trail stings-- I ask a volunteer from the class to undergo a rite-of-passage and get stung by a bee in front of the class . . . and I always get a volunteer-- this year the girl who came up, after asking if this was "principal approved?" and I said, "Not at all!" rolled her sleeve up and closed her eyes-- she was really nervous-- so she didn't even see that it was a fake bee in a paper cup, attached to the lid by human hair . . . and in the same class I also set up the poem "Traveling Through The Dark" with a specious tale at the start of class-- I told them that I was running late for work because my son left me the car with very little gas in it-- which was true-- but then I found a dead cat at the end of our driveway and when I went to pick it up and put it in the trash, I noticed that it was pregnant and full of kittens, one of them struggling to be born-- but I didn't have time to call the vet or do a C-section, so I threw the cat in my neighbor's trash-- a great touch that always gets them-- and while the debate about what I did wasn't as uproarious as in the past, it still generated some discussion . . . anyway, I kind of stopped doing these weird social experiments a few years ago-- around COVID? or when kids got addicted to cell phones and it was hard enough to pull them into reality-- but I'm determined to bring "reality" back into my classroom-- or some fictitious version of it and I'm also determined to have kids put their cell phones in the holder in the front of the room-- I usually get lazy and stop doing this a few weeks into the year and then get pissed off at the kids for taking out their phones, but I'm going to remain consistent for the rest of my teaching career and get those damned things as far away from the students as possible so that I can lie to them and trick them more . . . and they seemed appreciative of my efforts at trickery today, so I will carry on with my resolution as planned and try to execute a few more of these experiments (and again, if you're truly interested in this, listen to the new episode of We Defy Augury . . . I reflect on a full career of these weird moments).
Happy Arbitrarily Chosen Day in the Middle of Winter
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).
The Books Dave Read in 2023
1) The Candy House by Jennifer Egan
2) The House Across the Lake by Riley Sager
3) Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton
4) Hark! A Vagrant by Kate Beaton
5) Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
6) Death by Video Game: Danger, Pleasure, and Obsession on the Virtual Frontline by Simon Parkin
7) The Quiet Boy by Ben H. Winters
8) Flight by Lynn Steger Strong
9) The Revolutionary: Sam Adams by Stacy Schiff
10) How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix
11) South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation by Imani Perry
12) Hit Makers: The Science of Popularity in an Age of Distraction by Derek Thompson
13) This Is What It Sounds Like: What the Music You Love Says About You by Susan Rogers and Ogi Ogas
14) The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War by Jeff Sharlet
15) Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs: A Journey Through the Deep State by Kerry Howley
16) The Other Side of Night by Adam Hamdy
17) The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
18) Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton
19) The Little Friend by Donna Tartt
20) Carmageddon: How Cars Make Life Worse and What to Do About It by Daniel Knowles
21) The Ghosts of Belfast by Stuart Neville
22) Shakespeare: The World as a Stage by Bill Bryson
23) 1215: The Year of Magna Carta by Danny Danziger and John Gillingham
24) If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio
25) Ringworld by Larry Niven
26) My Murder by Katie Williams
27) Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead
28) The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley
29) The Godwulf Manuscript by Robert B. Parker
30) God Save the Child by Robert B. Parker
31) Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century by J. Bradford DeLong
32) Mortal Stakes by Robert B. Parker
33) Promised Land by Robert B. Parker
34) Under the Eye of Power: How Fear of Secret Societies Shapes American Democracy by Colin Dickey
35) Counterweight by Djuna
36) Judas Goat by Robert B. Parker
37) The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
38) Pet by Catherine Chidgey
39) Let's Talk About Love: Why Other People Have Such Bad Taste by Carl Wilson
40) Tourist Season by Carl Hiaasen
41) The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
42) Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith
43) Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right by Arlie Russell Hochschild.
44) Wellness by Nathan Hill
45) Finite and Infinite Games by James P. Carse
46) All the Sinners Bleed by S.A. Cosby
47) When No One is Watching by Alyssa Cole.
10 Baby Punches Out of 10
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."
Three Better be the Magic Number
Hopefully, the proverb "bad things come in threes" is accurate-- because we had three bad things happen in rapid-fire succession today-- in a twenty minute span-- and now I hope we're in the clear . . .
Bad Thing #1: I pulled my calf muscle playing pickleball today-- totally stupid because my calf has been really tight, some kind of spasm or cramp, and despite this, I played a bunch of basketball with my son earlier in the week, which didn't help, but then I rolled it and rested it and stretched it properly and all that and it felt good today-- too good-- so I stopped taking it easy and played hard and mid-jump something snapped, so I'll be out of commission for a while;
Bad Thing #2: Cat texted her principal something that was meant for her co-teacher and NOT meant for her principal (in fact, it was about her principal) and so she had to do some back-pedaling and apologizing-- this was a movie-like bad thing where you're like "WTF?" . . . than happened?
Bad Thing 3#: while we were playing pickleball, our dog Lola did a bad thing-- when Cat walked up the hill to get the car (because I could NOT manage to walk up the hill with a pulled calf muscle) she found our kitchen and living room all amess with plastic wrappers and powdered sugar . . . Lola got up on the counter and ate an entire bag of pita bread AND a bunch of pizzelle star cookies coated in powdered sugar . . . so her stomach is eventually going to be a mess and I can't even walk her.
Gentrifiers Beware!
If you're looking for a thriller that lambastes rich white gentrifiers, pharmaceutical companies, and government-subsidized business acquisitions-- and has the wildly surreal conspiratorial feel of Jordan Peele's Get Out, check out Alyssa Cole's novel When No One Is Watching . . . but I should warn you: I thought this was going to be a more realistic take on race relations in a gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood-- told from two perspectives, a black woman who grew up there and a white guy who is part of the new wave of property owners-- with a little mystery thrown in for plot . . . but this book is actually a full-fledged, over-the-top, everyone-is-in-on-it hair-raising horror story-- which, on the one hand, is a lot of fun-- with loads of Quentin Tarantino-style "Justified violence"-- but, on the other hand, the race and gentrifying issues lose all their nuance, they are sacrificed on the altar of plot, guns, and vengeance.
Moses = Moses?
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.
A (Photographic) Xmas Miracle
Christmas morning, I remembered that months ago I had bought one of those mini-phone-tripods and never opened the box . . . so I gave myself a Christmas present that was entirely symbolic of the holiday-- I opened some random shit I ordered online in the summer and literally forgot about because we live in the land of plenty (I bought the tripod because I had an idea for a series of TikTok videos but I never really got started on them because . . . well, that's an insane thing to get started on) and when I opened the mini-tripod box, I found that not only did I get the mini-tripod, but I also got a mini-remote . . . so that we didn't have to do the phone-timer photo thing-- which is a random nightmare and rarely produces a good picture-- but instead I could trigger the phone-camera by Bluetooth-- a fucking Xmas miracle if there ever was one-- and so I was able to take these pictures and also be in the picture-- and I'm going to declare that these photos are probably my greatest photographic accomplishments in a lifetime of not really accomplishing very much photographically.
The Boys Do Good Stuff
A couple of pleasant holiday moments:
1) I picked up Alex from Rutgers yesterday-- he survived his engineering exams but in regards to them, he said, "That was the hardest thing I've done in my entire life" but then we blew off some steam playing hoops at the Piscataway Y-- last night we just shot around and this morning we kicked some butt playing three-on-three . . . despite my sore calf muscle . . . I shot from outside and let Alex handle the athletic stuff;
2) while Ian can't play basketball with us until he undergoes his ankle surgery-- a fact which makes all of us very annoyed and sad-- he still made a clutch play last night . . . he's now working on the production end at Birnn Chocolate, a venerable candy factory on the north side of town, and my wife and I put in a couple of gift orders for some dark-chocolate raspberry jellies, as they are unequivocally the best around-- but they were all out . . . Ian said maybe they were going to make some today but you can't go to Birnn on the day before a holiday-- the line is too long-- but then when he got home from work last night, red-cheeked from biking in the cold, he plopped down three boxes on the counter . . . he made the jellies himself-- obviously he knows how to do that now-- he poured out the jelly onto a sheet, used some giant cutter than makes the jelly into little rectangles, and then dipped the individual jelly rectangles into the dark chocolate . . . a Christmas miracle!
AI Won't Replace Dave . . . Yet
It seems AI will replace low-level sports journalism-- AI can already do a serviceable job summarizing and analyzing the box score of a particular event and it will only get better at these tasks-- and this had me worried so I asked Bard AI if it would also be replacing ME and my personal blog, but Bard said no, that blogs like "Sentence of Dave" contain "the human touch"-- and thats true, I often really fuck up apostrophe usage-- and Bard says that personal blogs also possess "creativity and storytelling" but I feel like AI is catching up on that front and the last thing that Bard says it can't replicate is "community" and this is probably true-- until the AI is embodied and you can meet it at the pub . . . what would this blog be without the comments? and the correcting of my apostrophes?
Good Students = Actually Having to Teach
My College Writing students are hard-working and wonderful this year, which-- on the one hand is a good thing-- but on the other hand, it means that during these last days before the essay is due, they ask me a lot of questions on how to synthesize these disparate non-fiction texts we read ("The Myth of the Ant Queen" by Steven Johnson, "The Critic and the Thought Leader" by Anand Giridharadas and "Always Be Optimizing" by Jia Tolentino) and they have me look at a lot of thesis statements and topic sentences, and so by the end of the day, my brain is swimming in ants and emergence and self-organizing systems and million-ball billiards tables and new feminism and ever-increasing beauty standards and increasing plutocratic influence and shrieking daemonic mini-programs and the costs of evolutionary solutions and the convergence of MarketWorld and decentralized ant dynamics and the polluted miracle of Industrial Revolution Manchester and the dystopian potential of the cyborg and the juxtaposition of a hundred other strange concepts and while I am wholeheartedly behind the Rutgers model of non-fiction synthesis-- of making children aware of these big contemporary ideas and having them grapple with the terminology and concepts of the post-modern world (even though Rutgers seems to be abandoning the model they created and dumbing down the course because kids have lost their minds since COVID and the cell-phone revolution) I still miss teaching books while I like the abstract and conceptual conversations we have about this stuff-- and the connections we make to reality-- the top-down and bottom-up power dynamics really applies to what is happening with abortion right now, etc.-- it will be nice to switch over to something like Twelfth Night.
Wet and Data-driven Monday
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.
Thus Endeth the Streak
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.
The Holdovers: Old Walleye Does It Again
Chalk it up to Paul Giamatti (pun intended) to portray the most curmudgeonly, yet compellingly human grouch of a private school ancient studies teacher in cinematic history . . . a bitterly disappointed educator with one glass eye, trimethylaminuria, hyperhidrosis, a tendency to drink too much, and a habit of insulting the students with various elevated vitriol-- troglodytes, fetid philistines, hormonal vulgarians, etcetera-- but despite this, and because of Giamatti's brilliance, The Holdovers has just the right amount of sentimentality and just the right amount of angst . . . the tone reminded me a bit of Catcher in the Rye, told more from someone like Old Mr. Spencer's point of view.
Dave Learns Some Shit on a Penultimate Friday in December
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.
A Stupidly Tilting Planet
Once again, it's the time of year when I wish I lived on the equator-- sunrise and sunset in Quito are always around 6 AM and 6 PM, respectively, which is the way to do it.
I Have a Wife Who Makes Her Own Naan
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."
Blame It On the Glasses
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.
Blame It On Robert Moses?
Escaping the city on Saturday night was damn near impossible-- and while my friends blamed SantaCon for the volume, there's also a more historical reason-- the power broker, himself: fucking Robert Moses . . . here's what Robert Caro has to say on it:
To build his highways, Moses threw out of their homes 250,000 persons -more people than lived in Albany or Chattanooga, or in Spokane, Tacoma, Duluth, Akron, Baton Rouge, Mobile, Nashville, or Sacramento. He tore out the hearts of a score of neighborhoods, communities the size of small cities themselves, communities that had been lively, friendly places to live, the vital parts of the city that made New York a home to its people.
By building his highways, Moses flooded the city with cars. By systematically starving the subways and the suburban commuter railroads, he swelled that flood to city-destroying dimensions. By making sure that the vast suburbs, rural and empty when he came to power, were filled on a sprawling, low-density development pattern relying primarily on roads instead of mass transportation, he insured that that flood would continue for generations if not centuries, that the New York metropolitan area would be--perhaps forever an area in which transportation--getting from one place to another would be an irritating, life-consuming concern for its 14,000,000 residents.
Blame it On SantaCon?
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.
The Most Malodorous Game
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.
Rejected By the Youth
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.
When the Cat is Away, Dave Gets Sleepy
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).
Dave Will Soon Be Drowning (Figuratively Speaking)
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.
Dave Journeys From Irony to Sincerity . . . Damn!
I played 6:30 AM basketball this morning-- and I played poorly to boot, missing three lay-ups and most of my outside shots-- so I figured I'd just do a tongue-in-cheek sentence and go take a nap . . . I was going to claim, with my impeccable dry wit, that Sugar's song "Hoover Dam" is probably in the top five songs about dams (and probably the best song about the Hoover Dam) but then I got to poking around on the internet and the internet's giant digital mega brain reminded me that the song "The Highwayman" has a verse about a workman who slips and falls into the wet concrete of the Hoover Dan and is buried "in that gray tomb that knows no sound," which is as dramatic and evocative a blue-collar death as they come and so now I've got to decide if Sugar's "Hoover Dam" is a better song than "Highwayman," which is a tough one-- I certainly like Sugar's song better-- and I've been listening to "Copper Blue" quite a bit recently-- and "Highwayman" merely uses working on the Hoover Dam as one stop in a journey of reincarnation, from brigand to sailor to worker to starship captain to drop of rain-- the dam is not the main image of the song-- while Sugar's "Hoover Dam" is a vertiginous cinematic yawp about existence, purpose, and perspective that begins:
Standing on the edge of the Hoover Dam
I'm on the center line, right between two states of mind
And if the wind from the traffic should blow me away
From this altitude, it will come back to you
and then, after much existential meandering, the song ends "standing on the edge of the Hoover Dam"-- and this is repeated over and over, it's quite catchy-- and now that I've really thought about it and done some research, I am going to sincerely claim that Sugar's "Hoover Dam" is the best song about the Hoover Dam.
Dave Sets Sail into a Deep Literary Sea
Let it be noted, that I, Dave, with unwavering resolve, have determined to embark upon an arduous literary journey and read a most voluminous tome penned by Eleanor Catton-- The Luminaries-- a work upon which was bestowed the illustrious Booker Prize-- and if you would like to join me in consuming this weighty tome, I invite you to join me in a most erudite book club, which will convene in one month time on the goldfields of Hokitika-- South Island, of course-- so mark your calendars, bibliophiles, and we will unravel the threads of this intricate and byzantine literary tapestry, together, despite the obtuse astrological symbolism and the antiquated prose and when we are finished, we will achieve enlightenment of some substantial kind and content, until then there will only be the sound of turning pages.
Top "Golf"
Yesterday, in honor of my wife's birthday, we went to TopGolf . . . and while TopGolf is a fun place-- with loud music, Angry Birds style range-target games, surprisingly good food and drink, and a WIDE variety of golf swings-- the things that are happening at TopGolf are only tangentially related to the sport known as "golf."
Get Out? Or Stay In? The Choice is Yours . . .
The new episode of my pretentiously titled podcast We Defy Augury is called "Get Out? Or Stay In?" and I took some notes from the Colleague-That-Was-Formerly-Cunningham-But-Now-Goes-By-O'Grady and tried to get more organized and start in with the book sooner and then slowly delve into my bombastic tangential ramblings-- anyway, this one includes thoughts (loosely) based on Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle and the Special Guests are The Allman Brothers, The Eagles, Uncle Henry, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and Andre Heyworth.
The Perfect Ending to this Piece of Shit Story
It's dark and cold and rainy and gray, but I still had to walk the dog-- so I put on my rain jacket and we took a stroll through the park and on the way home, I noticed a perfectly appropriate symbol for the moody, ominous weather: there was a dead squirrel in the road, right in front of my house . . . and so I embraced the spirit of this ugly day, went inside and found a plastic bag and put it over my hand, took our half-full garbage bag into the road, hefted the dead squirrel by the tail with my plastic-sheathed hand into the garbage bag, and tossed the bag into the trash bin . . . yuck.
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