Moving On In

Alex and his girlfriend are finally situated in their studio apartment in New Brunswick and the move made me realize that putting queen-sized mattresses and box springs on top of the van and then carrying them up several flights of stairs is a young man's game-- my body is sore-- but we were able to use the handicap access elevator to bring a bunch of other things up-- though a resident complained that that was only for handicap use and not for transporting dressers and such-- and, fortuitously, we were also able to fit both dressers, side-by-side, into the closet-- very tight fit . . . we had to lift one dresser up and lower it; today I tool Alex for an epic starter grocery store visit to get all the essentials-- normally Catherin would do this but she was at a dance recital . . . Cat and I did get to celebrate our 24 year anniversary amidst all this moving and shopping, we went to Salt last night and had a delicious, albeit pricey, meal and during the move I did learn something new about my wife as well . . . she told me to look for a Jersey Mike's gift card in her purse to give to Alex and I found out that she is a gift card hoarder . . . I thought we always utilized gift cards right when we got them, but apparently not (and I think elementary school teachers get a lot of gift cards at various times of the year) so we've got some random lunches and shopping to do next weekend.

I Washed (Some Very Particular) Dishes!

Yesterday, when I got home, my wife was having a rather heated discussion with our son about the difference between the communal act of doing the dishes and the selective and annoying act of doing only your dishes-- and the happiness from Happy Hour evaporated.

Tools are Cool

Yesterday, Alex and I went to New Brunswick to buy a table from a college girl for twenty bucks-- Alex is moving into an apartment with his girlfriend next weekend-- and the table was perfect but we were unable to get it out of the little room it resided in . . . and even if we could, there was a warren of hallways and a narrow staircase to navigate, so we needed to take the legs off the table, but this college girl had zero tools-- no pliers, no wrench, no hammer, nothing-- so we had to head home and get some tools and I advised the college girl to get a toolbox and start populating it . . . I was like: "Start with a hammer and a screwdriver" but the real lesson here is you should never leave home without a plethora of tools.

The Fat Lady Has Sung

That's it: tennis season is officially over (aside from the pickleball/pizza/uniform collection party next week) and we put in a good showing against the Group 1 powerhouse Edison Academy . . . my guess is that they will win it all-- and it's always nice to lose the to the ultimate winner-- but my kids played great today, probably because they were such underdogs that there was no pressure; our final hands-in we said "Henry" on three, as that's our only senior and he's the best dude around-- so now that season has concluded, I will have the time to pursue random activities after school, such as utilizing my upright weed-puller on my moss and clover back lawn, trimming the bamboo, digging a dry well, and attending Friday happy hour. 

I'm Tired and I Didn't Even Play . . .

Longest day and longest tennis match ever . . . we left at 2:45 and got home at 7:45 . . . Roselle Park only has four courts-- but we won and advanced to the Group 1 semi-finals, which will occur tomorrow (we play Edison Academy and, barring some kind of miracle, we are going to get whipped).

A Plus in Unattendance

The joys of senior cut-day . . . 100% absenteeism in my three senior classes!

Whitney, Elaine, Zoom, Schwartz, Profigliano, etcetera

Catherine and I made the long haul home today from Virginia Beach-- we were down there for my buddy Whitney's third wedding (or the third wedding Cat and I have attended . . . maybe he's also had a few secret weddings) but, as they say, third time is a charm and his new wife Elaine is totally charming-- it's the Goldilocks magic of threes-- too hot, too cold, just right . . . so this one is going to last-- anyway, too tired to write a coherent sentence but some quick recollections: the wedding band was amazing . . . they are called Full Moon Fever and they are a Tom Petty Tribute Band-- I could never stray too far from the dance floor because they managed to play several hours of Tom Petty, each song better than the last . . . and we went from the wedding venue-- Whitney's dad's place on a gold course (or more like IN a golf course) to Aloha Snacks in downtown Virginia Beach-- the shuttle ride was chaotic and claustrophobic but the shuttle did have two stripper poles inside-- people were definitely three sheets to the wind at the afterparty but we did rustle up a game of "Zoom" -- Cat took some video because she had never seen it live . . . it's the reason girls didn't really talk to us in college-- then we took a LONG and SLOW walk back with Zman to our Airbnb on 19th Street-- Catherine's feet were killing her because she had been in heels for seven hours-- the next day, yesterday, was lovely-- we went to the beach twice, in the morning after walking through the ViBe Creative district-- which is full of colorful painted murals and eating some delicious breakfast treats from Prosperity Kitchen and Pantry-- highly recommended . . . especially the pizza and the Vegan chocolate chip cookie, which was suggested to us by the yoga girl in the peach Lululemon outfit-- and then we met Stu and a few others at Atlantic on Pacific for the best happy hour I've ever been to-- it's every day from 3 PM to 6 PM and the deals are fantastic-- then we met the gang on the beach at 58th Street, had a few beers, and walked to the lawn at the Cavalier Hotel before saying good-bye and taking the long walk back to 17th Street, where we got some excellent ice cream at Lolly's Creamery and then went to bed so we could arise early today and beat the traffic . . . and excellent weekend, amazing wedding, congrats to Whitney and Elaine, and it was awesome to catch up with all the folks at the party.

I Also Got Kneed in the Quad

I completed a classic Quadrathlon today: I finished teaching Act IV of Hamlet; biked to the park; played an hour of pickleball; and then played two hours of full-court basketball with my son Alex and a bunch of youngsters . . . and now I wish I turned the A/C on before I left.

The Tennis Team is Hot

My tennis team eked out a 3-2 victory over Bound Brook today, in the heat-- we ran out of water but the other team graciously provided us with some, and one of our players ran out of gas and lost in a tiebreaker because his opponent doggedly ran down every shot, despite the unseasonably scorching temperatures-- but our first doubles team came through I the clutch and we live on to play another match next week when it should be cooler (and then, once we got back to Highland Park, my son Alex and I went down to the park and played some two-on-two basketball with some guys that played tennis in Highland Park back in the day-- and we shot poorly but sweated superbly).

I Should Get My Van License

Another long day: and there's nothing worse after a hot traffic-clogged tennis match van ride (in which the van driver, a cute little middle-aged Hispanic lady with a very liberal sense of lane maintenance, kept getting lost-- I spent three seconds texting zman and when I looked up we were going the wrong direction down Route 1 . . . serves me right for texting and passenging) than arriving to find the opposing team only has four courts-- because you have to play five matches, so that means things are going to take a while-- but the opposing coach and I did get fairly close to a mangy (and probably overheated) fox-- and once we got back to the school, the bus driver told me to complain to the van company because they "never fix the A/C" and she's right-- none of the vans we take to matches ever have working A/C but most of the season is fairly temperate-- and even though we only have one or two more matches, I'm going to call and complain, for her sake, because she's got to drive people around in circles in that thing all summer.

Beer Gives Me Strength to Carry On

Long fucking day-- I worked every minute of the school day (due to coverage periods) and then I raced to a very hot tennis practice, where I learned that after school my first singles player stepped in a hole while chasing his friend's car, hurt his foot, and might be out for our State Tournament Match-- so this sentence is brought to you by a couple of well-deserved beers-- without them, I might not have had the persistence and gumption to sit down at the kitchen computer and write this half-assed description of what I did today:

Period 1: Special Ed coverage-- the kids did some work and then we did all the puzzles . . . Connections, the Mini, Wordle, and the Monday NYT Crossword-- which is easy-peasy;

Period 2: mock-epic examples, including some Mark Leyner and rites of passage-- so that they could read "Honey Harvest" and I could do my fake-bee-in-the-cup routine;

Period 3: in my new sophomore class (because Denise had to go and have a baby) we did some Emily Dickinson poems that feature portrayals of death (I Heard a Fly Buss When I Died, Because I Did Not Stop For Death, and I Felt a Funeral in My Brain) and I also showed them a clip from Meet Joe Black and Bill and Ted's 2;

Period 4: Shakespeare intro and 12th Night coming attractions.

Dave Returns to Normalcy

Yesterday was absurd, but back to normal today: I got up early and finished a new episode of my podcast-- "Stayin' Alive: Could You Survive the Apocalypse? Would You Want To?" and then I walked the dog and collected some very green and moist moss from under the bleachers in the park, to continue propagating my backyard moss garden, next I rode my bike to the pickleball courts, played for a few hours, came home and grilled burgers for the family, and went upstairs for a two-hour nap, and now I've finished my stupid lesson plans for all my classes tomorrow (I teach an extra prep on A days right now) and in a moment I'm going to plant some creeping thyme and then settle in for the Knicks/Pacers game seven (and the Timberwolves/Nuggets Game Seven) . . . today is far better than SuperBowl Sunday.

The American Dream?

My wife and I were doing it like "real" Americans today . . . we woke up kind of hungover-- our friends' daughter Kayleigh put on a much better show than the Knicks last night-- sweated out the booze at the gym, and then headed to the Jersey Shore Premium Outlets? what? yup, it was time for my quinquennial clothes shopping spree-- I needed clothes for a couple of weddings, new golf shirts for work, running shoes, etcetera-- so after a grueling couple of hours of shopping, some advice from Yolanda at Banana Republic, and a whole lotta teacher discounts, we went to lunch at a fairly lousy nearby deli and then headed home, took a nap, and started doing our normal morning chores-- laundry, vacuuming, bathrooms, gardening-- at night!-- and this is stuff we never do at night-- we're morning people-- but I just ate dinner-- at 8:00 PM!-- and I imagine that there are people, right now-- at this late hour-- buying stuff in malls and grocery shopping and heading to Home Depot-- but every five years is plenty for this kind of living.

Do I Get to Choose This?

If I had my druthers, this Olympians song "Sirens of Jupiter" would be my life soundtrack, walking-in-the-room, signature tune (but it's probably not up to me, it's probably chosen by some random cosmic force, and-- just my luck-- it's probably some Jethro Tull bullshit).

A Message for the Children

Children of the world: stop making orthodontist appointments on game days!

Teacher Appreciation Week Belated Bonus

I was driving on Hart's Lane, en route to the gym from my high school, and the light turned yellow at that awkward moment when your only options are to either come to a screeching halt or blow through the intersection, though the light is going to turn red-- and although I saw a cop car waiting at the right-hand junction, I decided to blow through the light anyway (what was I thinking?) and sure enough, when the light changed, the cop pulled me over but when he walked over and saw me (and I was wearing my school ID but I think he just recognized my face) he said, "Oh sorry, I played soccer, graduated in 2020-- I remember you-- I just pulled you over because of the light" and I tried to apologize but he didn't even want to hear it, he just said, "Take it easy, have a great day" and so all the schedule changes this week, the short lunch, the fights, the new classes, all that crap-- this made it worth it.

I Haven't Felt This Way Since the O.J. Interruption

No time to write a lengthy sentence because I've got to watch the Knicks!

You Can Buy Weed in California (But Not If You're Too High)

I thought I had seen it all and then a man in painter's garb walked out of the garage of the house that is under construction down the street from me . . . and he was wearing stilts (which, apparently are illegal in California).

Tiny Houses and Prehistoric Fish

My wife and I attended my cousin Lindsey's wedding in Asbury Park on Friday night-- it was an incredible event in the upper room of Tim McCloone's supper club-- and then we stayed over Friday and Saturday night at a guest house in the quaint and historically restored town of Ocean Grove-- and though the weather was a little wild, we had a great time wandering around the generally gentrified Asbury Park and through the odd Victorian architecture of Ocean Grove-- and we stumbled on a charming tiny house with excellent signage, a historic car show (really historic-- cars from 1903) and a dead, endangered prehistoric fish-- the Atlantic sturgeon-- apparently these things have occasionally been washing up on Jersey beaches.

 

Carbs = Appreciation

In an effort to finally feel appreciated, I ate half a bagel in the office this morning-- apparently, the administration bought us a bagel breakfast for the final day of Teacher Appreciation Week-- and I definitely felt the appreciation, especially because it was a blueberry bagel (but, oddly, Stacey said she does NOT appreciate the blueberry bagels and instead chose a raisin bagel, which makes me question my friendship with her) but this was not my favorite part of Teacher Appreciation Week-- my favorite part happened yesterday when the vice-principal alerted the students that it was Teacher Appreciation Week and that though they might not fully appreciate their various teachers now, they would appreciate their teachers at some future date and they should anticipate these future feelings and thank a teacher at some point in the day-- because-- and this happens every year-- right after the announcement, there's always a student that possesses a bit of wit and this student invariably thanks me in the dryest, most sarcastic manner possible-- which is so perfect because that's how teenagers thank people when they've just been commanded to thank someone-- and I say "You're welcome, now get out your books, it's time to read some Shakespeare."

Dave's Lunchtime Planning Bites Him in the Ass

This year, I epically failed at Teacher Appreciation Week: Tuesday the administration bought us sandwiches but I never saw the sign-up email (and I had to take a half day to move Alex out from Rutgers) so I totally missed that and Wednesday Chick-fil-A delivered us a truckload of free chicken sandwiches, but my wife made me a delicious salad with blackened chicken-- so while I tasted a bite of Terry's chicken (first time I ever had Chick-Fil-A . . . pretty good) I didn't go to the cafeteria and procure an entire fried chicken sandwich because I was all full of healthy salad and today our boss bought us these delicious Italian sandwiches from this Italian Deli in Middlesex (Sapore) but I packed a bunch of super-tasty leftover Mexican food from La Casita (although I did manage to eat one little sandwich . . . on top of all the Mexican food, and then I could barely teach Hamlet the last period of the day) so next year I need to plan better (or plan worse!) and not bring lunch all week.

Every Clout Has a Silver Lining

Wild day at East Brunswick High School-- but though it was ugly, some good did come out of it-- so during homeroom, there were some serious fisticuffs between two students (apparently over a girl) just down the hall from my room-- I watched the security guards and vice-principal break it up while I ushering kids into my room-- and then apparently some subsidiary fights broke out in other parts of the building (and there were all kind of unsubstantiated rumors about possible weapons) and it got so chaotic that the police came (and an ambulance) and we were locked down in homeroom for quite a while (40 minutes or so?) and I had one student in my room that belonged in another homeroom, but when there's a lockdown, you stay put-- so I wanted to call her homeroom teacher and tell her that the student was safe and with me, but when I checked my phone directory sheet on my bulletin board, I noticed it was from 2014-- and the room numbers have all changed since then (I also noticed that two of the teachers on the list are deceased) and so after informing my students of this (some students found this humorous, others started to question all the authority figures in their life) I had a smart student help me find and print out a more recent phone directory, which I tacked to my bulletin board . . . and then I called the other homeroom teacher and told her the location of her student and then I called my friend Cunningham and told her the good news-- the silver lining of these fights-- that they had motivated me to update my phone directory sheet and now I could call all different rooms in the school and chat with my friends and she said, "Dave! They gave us one of those on the first day of school!" and I said, "You're missing the bigger theme here."

Nietzsche's Eternal Recleaning

You do the dishes-- load the dishwasher, run it, wash the cutting boards, scrub the pots and pans but then-- magically and moments later-- the sink is full of dishes again.

6 Servings Per Container? Bullshit . . .

My wife really needs to stop buying Pringles-- because once I remove that foil safety seal, there's no stopping the gluttony until the canister is empty of chips and I'm pouring the crumbs down the tube into my gaping maw.

Fun and Easy Prom Themes

This week, the juniors are voting on next year's prom theme and I'm going to buttonhole the junior class president and spitball some ideas . . . here's what I've come up with so far:

1) Reservoir Dogs warehouse vibe-- easy and cheap (aside from the gruesome clean-up)

2) Grosse Point Blank assassin high school reunion vibe-- ditto . . .

3) Flash Dance and Sweatpants;

4) Toga, toga toga!

Chores are a Bore

Too many chores for a Saturday: pool clean up day-- which involves raking leaves, sticks, and horse chestnuts; dumping all the debris in the woods; spreading a towering pile of mulch by the grills; sawing off branches and trimming all kinds of brush; carrying and scrubbing many picnic tables and benches, and a bunch of other awful chores-- but you do get a sandwich and some free guest passes; then at home, vacuuming the house, bathroom clean-up, laundry, moving Alex out of his disgusting unpacked and disorganized dorm room and storing his crap in our house until his apartment lease starts-- June 1-- and Ian is still in a cast, so all he could do was sit in the van while my wife and Alex carried stuff out of his room (but Ian did manage to get his girlfriend to clean his room) and then we've got family stuff tonight-- so I'm glad it's going to rain tomorrow, so that I can't use my new leaf blower to get rid of all the pollen and maple whirligigs so that my moss can grow without interruption.

Like Shawshank But Reverse

Over the years, I have pilfered a number of large stones from the park by my house to outline my wife's garden and our back fence and my friend Stacey fondly refers to this endeavor as The Reverse-Shawshank-- Andy Dufresne removes rocks from his cell wall tunnel to seek his redemption, while I surround myself with more and more rocks to feel freedom and absolution-- pretty weird and ironic-- but lately, I've been less concerned with rocks and instead I have been purloining MOSS from various secret locations, in an attempt to grow a carpet of moss in the shady areas of my backyard, where grass will not grow . . . and I guess, even though moss is not fungi (it's a non-vascular plant) we're still going to refer to this tactic as the Reverse-Last-of-Us.

Students and Cellphones, Together Forever?

For the first time in years, I had to confiscate a particular student's cellphone-- I've been trying to be diligent about getting the kids to put their phones in the caddy at the front of the room, but some of the kids smuggle them back to their seats, where they place them behind computers and book bags so that they can watch videos and do whatever teenagers do on their phones all-the-fucking-live-long-day-- or the screen addicted give popular rationales such as they need to charge the phone or text their mom or get a particular photo for a project that can only be accessed on their phone and then the next thing you know, they're on Snapchat or TikTok-- it's an exhausting battle and I wish our school would ban the damned things, especially since there is definitive research that phones are making kids dumber AND even if you don't use your phone in class, if someone near you is using their phone, it ruins your concentration as well-- I liken it to smoking-- not only is it bad for you, but it's also bad for the people around you breathing in second-hand-smoke-- and I certainly feel this secondhand effect teaching-- because even though I'm vigilant about not using my own phone in front of the kids-- I really try to set a good example-- but once I suspect a kid is illicitly screwing around with their phone (which shouldn't be on their person to begin with) then I lose concentration-- anyway, it usually doesn't come down to having to confiscate the phone-- that only happens every few years, but when it does, the student (who always seems to be female) inevitably flips out, cries, and curses at me . . . which is why this is such a hard policy to enforce because teens have so much emotional attachment to their phone-- once they freak out I tell them I'm not trained to handle this kind of emotional breakdown and addiction and they need to head to guidance for some guidance-- for example, and the student who had her phone confiscated once showed me that she does 16-18 hours of screen time a day on her phone-- which doesn't even seem possible and definitely requires some kind of professional guidance-- anyway, I get the fact that some teachers give up and don't enforce any kind of cellphone policy, because they're burned out and scared to face these kind of consequences-- but I'm trying to fight the good fight and maybe someday we'll get an administration that has done some reading on this subject and will just outright ban the things-- because they don't belong in school.

Dave Knows His Audience

Yesterday, several players and I were sitting on the bench watching the last tennis match of the afternoon, and one of the players was lamenting the fact that his friend had drawn a little penis on his white Crocs, so I said: "I guess you need to remove the 'r' when you talk about those things" and-- after a long pause-- they all started laughing.

I'm Mister Snow Miser

My buddy Whitney responded to yesterday's sentence with an interesting question: "If you could get rid of either the wicked humid heat of summer or the fiercely bitter cold of winter, which would you pick?" and while I must admit that the older I get, the less I like the bitter cold, there is the fact that when it gets cold, you can always put on more clothes-- or buy a really nice jacket and pair of gloves-- but there is no escaping the humid heat . . . no matter how much back hair my wife removes, it doesn't matter, it's inescapably awful, claustrophobic and oppressive, demoralizing and debilitating, and it just sucks to be a sweaty mess . . . so while it's more of a decision victory than a knockout, I'm awarding the win to the bitter cold of winter.

Summer Is Coming

The jury is out about how much the human mind remembers pain, but I know for certain that every winter, I forget how much I hate the heat . . . until it rears its humid head again.

What Is It Like to Be a Dog?

On this very special episode of We Defy Augury, I interview my good friend and fledgling author Rob Russell . . .we discuss his new book "JoJo the Small Town Hound: Volume 1, Leesburg, Virginia and the Curious Case of the Dog Money" and although the book is for children aged 7-10, Rob and I get into some fairly deep topics: the subjectivity of consciousness; structural racism and systemic prejudice towards black Americans, human and canine; the principles of drama; and the fleeting nature of our mortality-- and by the end of the episode, we develop an idea for the greatest children’s book that will never be written . . . Special Guests: Rob Russell, Method Man, and George Costanza.

Slurry Time!

No time to waste writing sentences, because I've got to mix the moss I scraped off a concrete block at the park with some yogurt and beer to make a "slurry" and then paint it on our concrete planter-- apparently in six weeks, the moss will flourish . . . I promise to keep you posted (although this project might not be great for blogging material-- the only thing more boring than watching grass grow is watching moss propagate).

A Riddle Wrapped in an Enigma That is Broadcasting Tomorrow is "Tuesday" Vibes

This week was so long and busy that it has inverted itself into an endless loop, turning my Friday energy into overwhelming Monday Mobius strip bewilderment.

So Many Steps, So Many Racket Sports

Another successful GMC Tennis Tourney-- everyone advanced through the first round except Theo, who was exhausted from Passover fasting (that's what you get for properly worshipping the lord) and we also had some fun in between matches playing pickleball . . . and then when I got home I went down to the park and played some more pickleball and now-- 25,000 steps later-- I am very very tired.

The Pathetic Fallacy, Pregnancy Edition

Today at work the ladies organized a "sprinkle" for a teacher who is very pregnant with her second child (and leaving at the end of the week) and it took me a couple hours to comprehend the term for the party . . . you have a baby "shower" for the first kid and then for the next kid, it's not as big a deal, so you tone the weather down a bit . . . and I guess for a third kid, you just get a "mist" or a "fog."

Sometimes, You Need To Strap Them On

Sometimes, when you're a homeowner, you need to strap on the ol' aerating shoes and march around on your lawn to make tiny holes for clover seed-- because you're trying to transform your shitty crabgrass lawn into a beautiful dog-urine proof clover lawn . . . but then someone mentions "moss" and you're like: should I be thinking about moss? should I have a moss lawn? should I have moss-covered stones to prevent erosion in the corner of my yard by the bike shed? and then you go down to the park and grab some river stones so that you can start propagating moss, by mixing some of your existing moss in a blender with yogurt and then painting the rocks with this slurry . . . and then you're like: does any of this shit even matter? which is a pretty common homeowner question-- when you stare at decay in its ugly, futile, desiccated face and realize that the whole thing, your house, your roof, your lawn, your deck, your siding, your interior and exterior paint, your wood floors, your carpets, your cabinets, and your furniture . . . it's all falling apart and there's no way to maintain it-- and this isn't even considering the appliances and planned obsolescence-- but anyway, I'm trying to grow some clover in my yard.

 

Did Jesus Tell Off-Color Jokes With His Bros? Probably Not . . .

One of the primary and profound questions that the play Hamlet explores is the opening line: "Who's there?" and so in class today we were examining how Shakespeare illustrates Hamlet's behavior in Act I Scene ii in quick succession with his family, alone, and with his friends-- and in each situation, Hamlet exhibits different personality traits-- with his family, he is sarcastic, passive-aggressive, and resentful; alone he is depressed, world-weary, and disgusted by the corruption in the world and particularly in his mother; and when he sees his buddy Horatio he is cordial and warm and even makes a couple of jokes . . . so my students were describing their different personalities in different situations-- at work, as captain of the baseball team, in Calculus, etcetera-- and we agreed that it is often the situation that determines our behavior, not our personality-- we don't seize the moment, the moment seizes us . . . but I did acknowledge that there are a very select group of folks that behave the same in every situation-- but the only examples I could think of were Jesus, Buddha, and Godzilla.

Amazon . . . When You Need 5 Pounds of White Dutch Clover Seed NOW!

Like many environmentally conscious lawn owners, I am converting my lawn to clover . . . clover doesn't require much maintenance or water; clover doesn't need any chemicals to thrive; clover attracts pollinating insects; and clover is resistant to dog urine-- and I'm having success with the seeds that I planted last week, they are starting to sprout, but I need more seeds to spread on the rest of the lawn-- not just the parts Lola killed with her urine, so I ordered a five-pound bag yesterday from Amazon before I went to play pickleball and when I returned from pickleball, there was a five-pound bag of white clover sitting on my porch-- which strikes me as nuts . . . is there a guy driving around with bags of clover in his car, waiting for the call? and honestly, I actually didn't want the seeds that quickly-- if I wanted them NOW I would have gone to Home Depot, but I didn't really feel like seeding the lawn yesterday because my legs were tired and first before I spread the seeds, I was going to walk around with these special spiked shoe attachments I borrowed from Stacey and aerate the lawn-- I'll get a picture of these things once I strap them on and use them and I also bailed today-- we were out late last night (not drinking and not dancing . . . we were at a Pakistani wedding) and I realized that sometimes you don't want things shipped to you that quickly because then you've actually got to do the chore, like seeding the lawn or fixing the toilet, and you envisioned doing the chore in a few days, not RIGHT NOW . . . so be careful when you order from Amazon because you might not get the lag time you were looking for.

Strange Winds: A Meditation on Contamination

A long podcast episode deserves a long title-- and my newest episode of We Defy Augury is my longest episode yet-- so I have titled it "Strange Winds: A Meditation on Contamination" and it also has a long sub-title . . . "Examining Our Fears of Infection, Infiltration, and Impurity . . . Ideological and Otherwise" and this epic piece of audio is based on a strange coincidence-- I read four books in a row that deal-- directly and indirectly-- with our everchanging fears and anxieties about impurity and contamination . . . these are the books which my thoughts are (loosely) based on: Nelson DeMille's Cold War spy novel The Charm School; Dean R. Koontz's 90s tech thriller Dark Rivers of the Heart; Jonathan Blitzer's stellar book on the border situation-- Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis-- and Silvia Moreno-Garcia's horror novel Mexican Gothic . . . and there are also plenty of special guests: Elizabeth and Philip Jennings, Dave Chapelle, John Cougar, Phil Connors, Bob Dylan, The Scorpions, Kansas, Sting, Long Duk Dong, General Ripper, General Turgidson, President Merkin Muffley, John Mulaney, Donald Trump, Marco Guttierez, Ivan Drago, and Tommy DeVito . . . so if you have a long car ride or you're training for a marathon, then give it a shot-- despite the length, I think it's got a fairly coherent argument.

Minor Expectations (by Edmund Wells)

Lowering the bar makes you less likely to trip over it.

Pickleball Rule #1

If it's your wife, don't give any advice.

Dave Almost Gets to Be Smart

I recently learned (when reading The New Analog: Listening and Reconnecting in a Digital World by Damon Krukowski) how noise-canceling headphones work . . . apparently they have microphones on the outside of the headphones that record the ambient noise around the headphone user-- then the headphones actively generate equal (but opposite) sound waves which reverse the polarity of the ambient noise . . . and I was excited to share this newfound knowledge with my Creative Writing class (after I told a girl to remove her giant noise-canceling headphones and enter reality) BUT I forgot something important-- so when I asked the class "Does anyone know how noise-canceling headphones actually work?" the majority of the class looked at me in bewilderment, aside from one girl, who raised her hand and reeled off the answer that I was so excited to tell the class . . . I had forgotten that the valedictorian is in my Creative Writing class-- she locked it up earlier in the year and so was slumming in an elective-- and becoming valedictorian of a giant high school like East Brunswick is no mean feat and it shows . . . she certainly took the wind out of my sails!

Dave's Calf Blooms Like a Spring Flower

This morning I made my triumphant return to 6:30 AM before school basketball-- we only had nine so we were playing full court four-on-four and my legs were NOT ready for this-- apparently PT and a bit of pickleball are not training for full court sprints with young people . . . but I survived, my calf felt good, and I even made a few shots (but missed far more than I made) and it was nice to get a work-out in before a long day of teaching Shakespeare and then riding in a van to Iselin to coach high school tennis.

The Gloves Will be Off

So exciting: my friend just published a children's book . . . even more exciting: in two days, I get to write a candid review of my friend's children's book!

Bring the Noise!

I just finished an excellent book on the financial, philosophical, and aesthetic implications of our collective move from analog audio to digital audio: The New Analog: Listening and Reconnecting in a Digital World by Damon Krukowski-- the drummer of the spacey alt-rock band Galaxie 500-- but I found it quite ironic that I was reading the book on my new Kindle Scribe-- because the book begins like this . . .

THANK YOU FOR READING this analog book. It requires no additional hardware, uses no power, and is 100 percent recyclable. You will find that it is possible to read, or not read, any of this book’s pages in any sequence. While its pages have been numbered sequentially to assist in navigation, there is no reason to consult these numbers if you do not wish. Should you like to highlight a passage, you will find that you can mark the page with most any implement at hand— even a fingernail will do. The paper of this book is also soft enough to be folded, torn, or even shredded if that gives you satisfaction, without special tools. You are free to share this book, resell it, or donate it to charity.

Backpack Vacuum!

I love our new Hoover Shoulder Vac backpack vacuum so much that I made a little home for it in my study-- vacuuming is so much better when you're not pushing around a clunky machine and instead, the apparatus resides on your back, making you nimble and agile-- and has this thing got suction?-- fuck yes it does.

All the Kids With Three Letter Names are Out Today

Our match got canceled today due to some fortuitous wind and rain-- fortuitous because one of our players (Kai) is at Model UN and the other (Udi) is "out of commission" because when he was riding his electric scooter in the rain yesterday, on his way home from our match in Johnson Park, he skidded out and hit the pavement, scraping up his hands and knees (but he's not completely injured-- he's my neighbor and I saw him today and he looked to be in decent shape-- although he was walking home from school, not riding his scooter) so we'll reset on Monday and hope for better weather (and not so fortuitously, we all had to evacuate my high school today during the rain storm because of an elevator malfunction-- the fire trucks had to come-- if the weather was decent it would have been the best delay of class ever, but because of the cold spitting drizzle and gusty winds, students and teachers alike wanted to get back to class and do some learning).

Fuzzy Wet Balls

Rain and tennis are not a good combination-- the court gets slick, the balls get wet and skip instead of bouncing, and the ink runs in the little book where you write down all the match information-- but I was impressed with the tenacity of my third singles player today, who was in close but meaningless match-- we had already lost-- but kept at it in the steady drizzle until we made him stop because the concrete was so slippery . . . but he's a hockey player so the surface probably seemed totally normal to him.

Your Butt, A Pizza, Same Difference . . .

I don't know if everyone does this, nor do I know if it actually makes a difference-- but when I get take-out food such as pizza or burgers and I'm using my wife's car to pick up the food-- a Mazda CX-5-- I place the food on the passenger seat and I use the seat warmer to keep the food warm while I drive home.

Post-modern Medicine (YouTube It!)

I won't go into gory detail, so as not to disconcert the more squeamish readers (like myself) but my wife and my son successfully removed the AmbIT pain control pump catheters this morning from my son's leg-- and more difficult and painful than sliding the long black-tipped needle from under his skin was pulling and cutting off all the tape and dressing-- he definitely lost some leg hair on the way . . . I played the role of the first assistant, handing my wife scissors and alcohol swabs and such-- and we watched a YouTube video before we attempted this very post-modern procedure-- where our healthcare system entrusts a bunch of amateurs to do the work, offloading some of the insane insurance costs of a hospital stay or another doctor's visit-- and then, once you remove the catheters and the tubes, you pack up the pumps in postage-paid envelopes and send them back to the surgical clinic-- and while doing this seemed kind of sketchy, it did save us a difficult car ride-- it's hard for Ian to get in and out and certainly not good for his ankle.

Totally the Latter

Which is more fun-- looking at the eclipse or looking at the people wearing the silly glasses used to view the eclipse?

Tomorrow, Keep the Ball Low

Tennis practice tomorrow is during the eclipse's maximum solar obscuration . . . so we will not be practicing overheads.

Traction . . . So Classic

Yesterday, when Ian's ankle was really hurting him, he wanted me to hook up a rope to the ceiling to hold his leg up-- and I knew exactly what he meant: classic hospital traction-- but I didn't have the equipment for it . . . and the way health care is now, instead of keeping you in the hospital for a few days after surgery, in traction, which would be helpful and ensure that your limb healed properly-- instead-- because hospital stays are way too expensive and inefficient-- they send you home with a couple of ambIT electronic pain control system pumps connected to catheters in your leg (sorry Rob) which deliver numbing medicine on a regular schedule and then in three days, you remove the catheters yourself . . . which seems fucking crazy, but I'll tell you how it goes on Tuesday when we remove unfasten from Ian's left leg (which is especially skinny, and perhaps the reason why they were leaking yesterday).

Prediction? Pain

Long day for Ian-- he woke up in postoperative pain at 3 AM and it got so bad we had to go to the ER, where they drugged him up until he finally stopped writhing and spewing profanity, and thus slept through the rumbling earthquake that shook the hospital as well as the rest of New Jersey; then at noon we were able to take him from the ER to the surgical clinic where, the day before, they operated on his ankle and the head anesthesiologist came in and fixed his numbing catheter pumps and redid the nerve block and now he seems to be doing better (and anything is better than puking in a vomit bag in the waiting room of the surgical clinic because you had too many meds and car rides in succession).

Ankle Surgery Part II

Ian survived his rescheduled ankle surgery-- although apparently, he was in some serious pain right afterward . . . which was remedied by a couple doses of fentanyl-- and now his ligaments and tendons are repaired and his ankle contains a screw and wedge that will hold things in place . . . and hopefully he will heal quickly and be back on the basketball/tennis court soon.

Brian Selznick

Two days ago our acting principal (our actual principal just retired) came to me and asked if I wanted to take my English class to meet the author/illustrator Brian Selznick-- he was being inducted into the EBHS Hall of Fame and then he was going to speak to a small audience in the media center-- of course, I said "yes," because anything is better than teaching seniors the last period of the day-- especially when it's been training for four days straight-- and while I wasn't 100% certain who Brian Selznick was when the principal invited my class, I figured he was the guy who wrote and illustrated The Invention of Hugo Cabret because I knew that author was from East Brunswick and it turns out I was right-- and what a treat, Selznick is an excellent speaker, compelling, smart, and funny-- and he uses lots of gesticulations-- first he summarized his weird and wild career . . . illustrating books; writing books with illustrations; doing surreal puppetry that reminded me of Being John Malkovich; writing screenplays; seeing one of his creations turned into a Scorcese film; etcetera . . . but it was no fairy tale story-- he spent fifteen years illustrating small-time children's books before he took three years off from that gig to write and draw The Invention of Hugo Cabret-- which was a real favorite in my house . . . and we got the book before we knew the author graduated from East Brunswick-- Selznick also spoke on creativity, where good ideas come from, his constant desire to change things up artistically, what it was like to be gay in high school in the '80s (very different than now-- he was impressed by all the rainbow flag posters around the school promoting LGBTQ+ clubs-- back when he was in high school it was like The Replacements album . . . Don't Tell a Soul) and the fact that when you are in high school, you are focused on the present and it all seems normal, but when you look back at it, it's always kind of strange . . . and he mentioned the casual homophobic slurs and racial stereotypes in Sixteen Candles as an example-- anyway, it was a good time-- and the fact that one of my student's dad graduated with Selznick, and Selznick remembered hanging out with him back in the day sort of brought the whole shebang full circle.

Rain or Shine, the Mail Gets Delivered and the Dog Gets Walked

Long as I remember the rain been coming down-- clouds of mystery pouring confusion on the ground- good men through the ages trying to find the sun and I wonder, still, I wonder who'll stop the rain . . . and more importantly, who will walk the dog in this rain-- and the answer to that question is: me.

I Prefer Mary Anne

 I do not like (nor am I competent at) peeling ginger.

And after the Third Week of PT, Dave's Calf Rose Again

On this fine Easter morning, my wife and I played some pickleball to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus . . . and even more miraculously-- the resurrection of my strained right calf.

You Can't Piss (or Serve) Into the Wind

I am sorry to say, but nobody learned nothin' at yesterday's tennis practice-- aside from the fact that you can't really play tennis when there are 30 mph wind gusts . . . although we tried our best and one group even played an entire set of doubles-- but it was ugly, very ugly . . . the wind is a bitch.

The Secret? You Should Be Hitting Lots of Overheads . . .

Time to go teach my second singles player how to beat a "pusher"-- and not a drug pusher-- a tennis player who likes to mimic a wall-- because he had a frustrating loss against a kid who barely looked like he was interested in hitting the ball-- the kid just kept bopping it back, with very little pace, until my guy would get frustrated and blast it deep or hit the net-- it's frustrating to play a wall-- you have to adjust your game radically--Mitch Hedberg said it best: "The depressing thing about tennis is that no matter how good I get, I'll never be as good as a wall."

Can Someone Drive Me to the House I Need to Paint?

Apparently, in the US, depending on the state you live in, you might need a license to paint nails but not to paint houses.

Earworm Exorcism!

I have finally finished my most ambitious audio project ever, the top secret project that I erased earlier in the week-- it is a new episode of We Defy Augury titled "Earworm Exorcism" and it is an obsessive, comprehensive, and digressive deep dive into how these insidious auditory creatures worm their way into our brains, wrap around our cerebral cortex, and make us susceptible to suggestion of the catchiest kind-- a veritable shitload of the sounds that capture our consciousness-- and the theory and philosophy of why and how they do this-- but be warned: your brain might not survive unscathed . . . this many earworms have NEVER been assembled in one place before; three fantastic podcast episodes inspired this project:

"The Case of the Missing Hit" (Reply All)

"Whomst Amongst Us Let the Dogs out" (99% Invisible)

"Louie Louie: The Strange Journey of the Dirtiest Song Never Written" (Lost Notes)

but I don't think anyone has ever assembled this many earworms in one place-- here's a visual of all the clips . . .

and while I'm happy to be done, people keep reminding me of earworms that I forgot to include-- so I either need to edit them into this episode or start working on a sequel.

The Animals Are Wild

Another crisp wildlife photo from yours truly (and possible good news on the alleged raccoon in the attic front . . . yesterday, I climbed into the attic crawl space-- which is not a fun thing to do, as it's filled with loose insulation-- and I saw that the wire guard around the roof vent had been dislodged and pushed in, forming an entry hole-- so Ian and I pushed the wire mesh back in place and reinforced the wire guard around the roof vent with some staples and then last night, I heard some critter on the roof-- trying to get in, scratching at the wire guard-- but I didn't hear any mewling of babies or any critters inside the attic-- so maybe the creatures-- which I believe are raccoons-- will give up and move on to some other poor soul's house and make a nest in their attic).

 

Spring Break?

Ian and I woke up at 5:10 AM to go for his ankle surgery, but when we arrived at University Orthopedics, the building was surrounded by fire and police vehicles and enough flashing lights to give you a seizure-- after waiting a few minutes at the edge of the parking lot, we were informed that there was smoke in the building and a generator blew, so there would be no appointments today-- which really sucks because we scheduled this to coincide with my Spring Break and my wife's Spring Break-- which is next week-- so that we could take care of Ian while he's incapacitated-- and though I went to bed early, I did NOT get a good night's sleep because it seems that a raccoon has broken into our attic (which happened once before-- quite a tale) and it was making noise through the night-- probably pregnant female making a nest-- and on our early morning drive, Ian and I saw two raccoons strolling along the sidewalk across the street from our house . . . perhaps they are the culprits-- so it seems my Spring Break will consist of scheduling the animal removal guy and the roof guy; grading all the essay I received right before break-- the quarter ends right when we get back; going to PT for my torn calf; rescheduling Ian's surgery, and coaching tennis . . . no wet t-shirt contests for me.

Top Secret Project Update

I am now past where I was before I erased what I had . . . home stretch.

Top-Secret Project Update

It is taking longer than I thought to get to where I was (before I erased my top-secret project off my external drive). 

How to (Rarely) Tie a Tie

 For the rest of my life, I am only getting dressed up if someone I know gets married or dies.

Brief Period of Mourning Followed Renewed Motivation

 I am working on a very special episode of We Defy Augury-- top secret . . . but it involves scores and scores of clips-- and I was more than halfway done with it but then this morning, I somehow erased the entire project on Logic-- and it was stored on the external drive and the Time Machine does NOT back up the drive that the back up is stored on- if that makes sense?-- so it is truly gone . . . and so I'm starting over and I am looking at this as a good thing-- the episode was getting a bit ponderous so hopefully now I will tighten things up (and finish it by the end of Spring Break).

Funny is Funny and That's Funny

I passed by the new liquor store on First Avenue this morning, noticed the lovely new sign, and then my eyes focused on one particular portion of the sign and I knew I had to stop and take a picture.

 

Both Are Better Than Badminton

High school tennis season has begun and I hadn't hit any balls since my son Ian got injured last summer-- it's been all pickleball since then-- and I forgot how enjoyable it is to hit a tennis ball, especially three particular shots: a topspin forehand, a low driving slice backhand, and an overhead smash-- while I love the frenetic nature of pickleball, I also love the grace, style, and thwack of a good tennis stroke.

Just Desserts

After a dinner party on Saturday night, my wife informed me that "dense" was not an appropriate way to describe a dessert, specifically a lemon bar that our friend made-- and that the term "dense" is derogatory in dessert-describing-terms . . . I honestly meant it as a compliment-- the lemon bar was very delicious-- but I was just informing folks that you could not eat two of these lemon bars in one sitting because they had some serious substance to them-- but my wife informed me that the word I was looking for was "rich."

Is This How You Spell "Sisyphean"?

So you clean all the bathrooms in the house-- and it's brutal and gross and exhausting-- and then by the time you're done, you need to go to the bathroom-- which ruins all your hard work . . . or you need to shave or clip your toe-nails or floss (which often flings food particles onto the mirror) or brush your teeth-- it's truly Sisyphean. 

Everything, Everywhere, All at Once?

I've listened to several interesting podcasts lately-- and I also can't help connecting them to the non-fiction texts we read in my College Writing synthesis class . . . I suppose this is because we're constantly teaching the kids to make connections between the texts and to everything else in the world, to support some kind of argument-- eventually, you start to see connections between everything, like the conspiracy theorist with all the diagrams, pictures, symbols, pins, and strings on his study wall . . . anyway, the podcasts are good even if you haven't read this year's College Writing texts, here they are:

1) The Billionaires’ Secret Plan to Solve California’s Housing Crisis (The Daily) is a fascinating conundrum that connects to Stephen Johnson's writing about organized complexity and emergence--the question is: can a bunch of tech billionaires build a model city in California that feels like a European city? a city that feels like it emerged from a culture that values public transportation, locality, walking, biking, and mixed housing-- and does NOT value traffic and automobiles-- usually these kinds of places are built from the bottom up- they emerge from millions of tiny individual decisions of the city dwellers, over time-- and reflect the evolving core values of the city . . . but these dudes want to do it from the top down-- and they are meeting some resistance . . . an interesting investigative journalistic foray into an ongoing story;

2) Lean In (If Books Could Kill) tells the story of Sheryl Sandberg-- who was an upper-level manager at Facebook-- and wrote a book explaining how to move up in a man's world-- but her version of feminism doesn't address systemic issues, it's just very specific (and often lousy or useless) advice for upper-middle-class women trying to make it in a hyper-accelerated capitalist culture . . . and this really connects to Anand Girdharadas's description of Amy Cuddy's journey from academic to thought leader and Jia Tolentino's chapter "Always Be Optimizing," which discusses how she grapples with the unending expectations of modern feminism;

3) How Do We Survive the Media Apocalypse (Search Engine) is Ezra Klein's generally depressing take on the direction journalism, the internet, and the media are heading-- this episode gets into the costs of market-based competition, the unbundling of advertisements and your local newspaper, the benefits of inefficiency and local media monopolies and the idea that news worked much better when car ads and movie ads were paying for war reporting-- these ideas really complement Anand Giridhaardas's book "Winners Takes All" and Steven Johnson's ideas in "Emergence"-- we've collectively created a system that is incredibly and perfectly competitive-- the online world-- where Netflix competes with the best journalism and Pitchfork and Buzzfeed and YouTube videos about losing your belly fat--  and the result is that a bunch of social media companies make money; AI might cannibalize journalistic sources and therefore destroy the ecosystem that it relies on for information; ideas that are bite-sized, palatable, and digestible win out over the truth; and whatever you direct your attention to on the internet-- and in media in general-- is going to survive and what you neglect will die . . . so read some real books, magazines, and local news-- get off those social media sites, support longform investigative journalism, and recognize that the only reason that many of the fun sites that are now going extinct-- Gawker, Pitchfork, Vox, Buzzfeed-- were often supported by venture capitalists and had no real model to make money in this awful media environment . . . what is slowly emerging on the internet is exactly what we asked for and deserve, a bunch of bullshit.

Your Child (yawn) Is Failing . . .

I am amping myself up (with some coffee and candy) to survive the second half of my second long-ass day of this long-ass week-- in a few minutes I will leave for tennis practice and teach the youth how to behave like gentlemen while eviscerating their opponent (or maybe not . . . our team is not very strong this year-- so I'll teach them to behave like gentlemen while being eviscerated by their opponents) and then I will fight through rush hour traffic to get back to school for the 5 PM - 8 PM session of parent-teacher conferences . . . and while I legally can't go into details, I've got some doozies tonight and I'm sure there will be some interesting parent/teacher interactions-- when I'm not yawning in the parents' faces.

The Road to Recovery: Don't Stop in the Middle of It

I attended the first Physical Therapy session of my life today and it was very productive-- once I completed, by hand, that damned paperwork that I've filled out a thousand times before . . . isn't the fact that I'm allergic to penicillin in some database-- and if the Russians know this, am I in danger?-- anyway, once I got done scribbling, I learned some stretches and some strengthening exercises, had some heat applied to my calf, and a nice lady massaged the muscle until it loosened up a bit (while we chatted about East Brunswick schools-- she lives where I teach) but I do have some advice for the woman driving the Honda in the parking lot-- and this advice applies to many more drivers than this particular woman: if you need to do something in your car that requires you to stop driving-- find some paperwork; text your daughter; count the change in your ashtray-- please, please pull over to the side of the road or into a parking spot, don't just stop in the middle of the road until someone beeps at you . . . is this a new thing or have people always done this?

Dave Fights Through His Day Like Mike Tyson Will Fight Jake Paul

I am home and I have survived the longest day of the school year: I got up early, despite Daylight Sucking Time, to work on my podcast; went to school and taught; drove back to Highland Park and coached tennis (first day of practice!) and then drove back to East Brunswick, fighting the rush hour traffic, for 5 PM to 8 PM parent/teacher conferences . . . and now I am home once again-- counting down the days until Spring Break (and retirement . . . this shit is for young people).

Daylight Sucking Time

Everything always feels topsy-turvy the first Monday after Daylight Fucking Saving Time (otherwise known as I Had a Vivid Nightmare Saturday Night That the Government Stole Time From Me and Sunday Morning It Turned Out It Wasn't a Nightmare Day) and so while I was at school and then the gym, I watched the latest political polarized shitshow in reverse chronological order and I think it made more sense that way: first-- in the English Office-- I watched Scarlett Johanssen's SNL send-up of Senator Katie Britt's absurdly melodramatic SOTU response; next, while riding the bike at the gym I actually watched Katie Britt's entire seventeen-minute oddly unhinged, trad-wife, transitionless, tone-deaf kitchen-centric monologue; and then I watched President Biden's fairly energetic and topical SOTU address . . . and I've decided to cryogenically freeze myself until next December so I don't have to live through this stupid rematch.

Dave Loves a 6 PM Comedy Show

My wife and I took a one night vacation to Manhattan yesterday, and despite the weather we had a great time: we took the train to Penn Station; dropped our backpack at the Ace Hotel-- we got a good deal on Hotwire and I heartily recommend this place, it's funky and weird and has an enormous and dark bar and lounge on the ground floor reminiscent of the speakeasy in Sleep No More-- and then we walked up to the MoMA, where we saw a number of new and wacky modern art exhibit (Shana Moulton's strange surreal film Meta/Physical Therapy was awesome, as was Montien Boonma's "The Shape of Hope" and the Michael Smoth's "Government Approved  Home Fallout Shelter Snack Bar-- plus the usual "classic' modern art that lives there permanently) and we met Stacey at the museum . . . she was whiling away some time while her husband got an elaborate tattoo-- then we had some lunch and a few drinks at the Judge Roy Bean Public House, great little dive bar with good food-- and then we walked back down to the Ace Hotel-- it was starting to rain at the point, but not the weather hadn't turned awful-- though that would occur soon enough; we got soaked on our walk over to the 6 PM show at the Gotham Comedy Club-- which was raucous, filthy, and very funny-- going to comedy clubs is my favorite thing to do in the city . . . it's relatively cheap, the drinks are generally good, and the 6 PM "let's get this shit over with and go to dinner and then get to bed by ten" show is right up my alley . . . after the show it was really coming down in sheets, cold sideways sheets of water-- but the silver lining is all the rain erased the pungent smells of the city streets-- and we ate some incredible Mexican food at Casa Carmen-- the empanadas made of plantains and filled with black beans with the rich, chocolate black dipping sauce were astounding, as was the rest of the meal-- and then we trudged back through the rain and flood to the Ace Hotel, warmed up and went to bed . . . the next morning we decided to brave the line at Best Bagel & Coffee-- and it was worth the wait, my jalapeno/everything bagel was indeed the best bagel I've ever eaten (but the coffee was nothing special . . . I guess the "best" only modifies the word "bagel" in the title of the place . . . the next time I'm in Manhattan, I'd like to find a place named "Best Bagel and Best Coffee").

Anxieties of the '90s

If you're looking for an ambitious thriller that brings you back to the anxieties of the 1990s: hackers, secret government agencies, X Files-type conspiracies, the beginnings of web-based technology, Hannibal Lecter-esque "civilized" serial killers, and a time when the government seemed more powerful than corporations, a time when you could still disappear into the ether, and time when it still seemed possible to resist Big State Surveillance-- then check out the 1994 novel Dark Rivers of the Heart by Dean Koontz.

Professor G. Truck and Doctor C. Morton

I'm proud to say that I stopped reading random articles on the web and I went to see an actual doctor today-- Kinshasa C. Morton MD, to be precise: he's an excellent sports medicine specialist (I've seen him before for my shoulder and my knee) and he was much more authoritative and knowledgeable than the internet . . . he lubed up my leg and used an ultrasound machine to locate a tear in my right gastrocnemius-- which I believe is my upper calf muscle-- and while he said I'm going to need some physical therapy to help heal, he was also very positive and said I could continue to walk and cycle and row-- I should just avoid all the fun stuff: soccer, basketball, tennis, and pickleball-- until after a few weeks of PT . . . so it will be a weird start to tennis season next week-- I can't really hit with the kids-- but hopefully I'll be on the mend soon enough.

Massage the Kale! Fold in the Cheese!

Today in Creative Writing class, we were investigating the power of carefully selected adjectives (this episode of We Defy Augury describes the lesson) and our free-writing prompt at the start of class was to use several sentences to describe a scene, object, or person-- but you could only use one or two adjectives, which you had to underline-- and I had never done this prompt before so I was quite proud of what I produced; I described helping my wife cook our meal last night and how she trimmed and pounded the chicken and sliced and baked the carrots, while I was tasked with putting the kale in a bowl with some salt and olive oil and then "massaging" the kale . . . and I explained that I did not like massaging the kale because this activity made my hands moist and greasy-- two visceral adjectives I am not particularly fond of.

The Home Stretch is Uphill

I'm almost finished grading the third College Writing essay-- but then we have to collect one more and grade it before the end of March so we can submit the grades to Rutgers; I'm about to collect the synthesis essays in English 12 class; several teachers have come down with some crippling stuff-is-coming-out-both-ends norovirus (which shut down an elementary school in town two weeks ago, apparently the nurse was traumatized from all the shitting and puking) and tennis season starts next week-- so it is full-on survival mode until Spring Break.  

This Episode is More Fun Than It Sounds

While the title of the new episode of We Defy Augury sounds a bit bleak-- "Looming Existential Dread: Robotic and Real"-- there is fun to be had with these thoughts (loosely) based on Kate Christensen's novel Welcome Home, Stranger, the first two installments of The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells, and Hamlet . . . and there are a plethora of Special Guests, including but not limited to: Billy Joel, Ween, David Tennant, Kenneth Branagh, Greta Thunberg, Marvin the Paranoid Android, Brother Maynard, William Shatner, Woody Allen, Amy Poehler, Phyllis Smith, Queen, and The Prodigy.

Post-Birthday-Blues

Yesterday's birthday-get-together at Jersey Cyclone was very fun-- a perfect way to spend a rainy afternoon: the brewery is located in an industrial park and it's spacious inside, plus you can bring your own food-- Catherine made some of her incredible special sandwiches; we had a good crowd, and the beer was delicious, and we pretty much had the place to ourselves . . . and the bartender was an EBHS alumni, so Chantal and I had fun remembered folks from high school in the mid-aughts . . . and while all the varieties of beer were very delicious, and so were the sandwiches and the desserts-- my body can no longer handle that kind of stuff in large quantities-- luckily we stopped drinking around 6:30 PM so I suffered through my hangover around four hours later and then slept soundly . . . but today I re-tweaked my calf muscle playing pickleball-- I think I really need to let it heal for a couple weeks and it is HOT outside, which is kind of fun, but also reminds me just how much I hate the heat . . . Donaldson Park is still swamped and muddy, but today it is packed with people, all kinds of yahoos, and most of them drove int and are parked all over the place, in the mud, etcetera . . . and I have turned into a very aggressive walker-- if I see a car coming, I get myself and the dog into the croswalk, don't make eye-contact with whoever is driving and then I amble across the street-- hoping the car will stop-- and I know this isn't mentally healthy or physically safe but I'm sick of people in enromous cars ignoring stop signs near my house and in my park, so the least I can do is fuck with them . . . and if I get hit, I'll miss a few days of work and maybe some idiot will feel guilty about their shitty driving and realize cars are destroying this once great nation.

What Do Theodore Geisel, Dave, and Daniel Craig Have in Common?

It's here once again,

it comes without fail--

for rich and for poor,

the next coffin nail . . .

for Bryce Dallas Howard,

for the Wu's Method Man,

for me and Bon Jovi--

the occasional is grand:

We are still alive!

our lifetime rolls on!

and one year from now

we may well be gone . . .

But perhaps these trite rhymes

will outlive my frame--

The Good Doctor is dead

yet you still know his name . . .

and the folks he invented,

that lived in his books:

Yertle the Turtle, 

Thing One and Thing Two,

The Grinch and the Lorax

and, of course, Cindy Lou Who--

you know all those souls,

though they never lived--

you might know them much better

than your very own kids!

So here's to creation--

to birthdays and rhymes--

to writing it down,

before there's no time.

Local Recs to Treat Yo Self

Yesterday, in honor of my upcoming birthday, I took the day off from teaching the youth and I got a massage at Lucid in Metuchen-- they have an incredible deal going: five hour-long massages for 200 dollars -- my calf is still sketchy and I strained it a bit playing pickleball on Tuesday and the massage really helped . . . plus, my acupuncturist broke her arm and so she's been on the IR and now I realize how much those needles keep me loose-- and then Ian and I met Alex for lunch in New Brunswick-- he turned twenty today (and I turn 54 tomorrow) and so it was his choice of food for a birthday lunch-- he wanted Mexican food so we perused the plethora of Mexican places in New Brunswick-- oh yes, there are a plethora of authentic Mexican places in New Brunswick, some filled with pinatas-- and since La Catrina was closed until four PM and Taqueria Maria's transformed into a bakery (without informing us) we ended up at a place called La Placita-- which does NOT translate into The Place . . . placita is a little square-- and we loved it . . . I had chorizo enchiladas with mole sauce and the kids had al pastor tacos and everything was superb-- so if you're looking for a cheap "treat yo self day" there you go.

Irony Noted

I was stuck at the crowded intersection of Plainfield Ave and Route 27, by the Tastee Sub and amidst the plethora of bumper stickers on the Subaru in front of me, I noticed one that read "Abuse an animal, go to jail" and then the light changed and I drove past the Burger King and the irony was not lost on me that we live in a country where many people profess progressive attitudes about animal rights/animal consciousness, yet fast food franchises dot the landscape (though it may have been lost on all the factory-farmed beef patties and ground-up nugget sized chunks of battery-caged, debeaked chickens inside the Burger King deep freeze).

Awkward (and Impulsive) Dave Amuses His Students

Today during first period, while I was showing a movie clip-- so it was dark-- a young lady in a denim jacket entered my room, but just barely entered-- and she asked if she could talk to one of my students-- and my student got up and the two of them talked in the hall-- I figured it was something about homework or a computer charger or something-- and then the student came back into the room, but the young lady continued to lurk and then said something else, so I shushed her . . . Thomas Haden Church was explaining The Scarlet Letter to his class in Easy A-- crucial for our assignment about the evolution of mate choice and gender norms and the ever-changing aesthetics of attraction-- and then the young lady in the denim jacket said, "I just need Tanvi to go to room 1618 . . . I'm a school aide . . . I work here" and I was like: "I'm so sorry I shushed you-- you look so young, you look just like a student!" and she said, "I'll take that as a compliment" and then she left and my class laughed at my rudeness and embarrassment and I said to them: "Notice how I used gender norms and aesthetics to get out of that awful situation-- you can't go wrong telling a woman she looks young" and we all learned some valuable lessons.

Creepy Parking Lot Zombie Humans

I like to do the "pull through" in the school parking lot so that my car is facing out and I can make a quick escape at the end of the day-- I get to school early enough to do this (because I never want to "back in" when there's traffic in the lot-- I hate when people stop fucking parking lot traffic because they are determined to back-in to their spot) but the one thing that spooks me about the pull through is when I wedge my car between two other parked cars and look over and one of the cars still contains a human-- they're usually just sitting there, deadfaced, fucking with their phone and it's weird-- I start wondering: did I park too close and trap them in their car? are they going to get out at the same time as me? should I wave to them? are they breathing?-- so I'd appreciate it if people, after they park, immediately get out of their car . . . or if not, at least open the window and hang your arm out, so that someone pulling in then recognizes that there's a human inside the car you are about to cozy up to.

Got To Be the Calf Sleeves

I played indoor soccer for 90 minutes yesterday and then I played pickleball for two hours this evening-- and while I think I looked fairly athletic playing both sports, if you could see the awkward and ugly effort required for me to pry off my shoes, socks, calf-sleeves, and knee sleeve/braces after I finished playing, you'd wonder if I was capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time, let alone actually doing something athletic, graceful, and coordinated.

A Noteworthy Parking Offense?

A few weeks ago, I noticed an egregiously parked car in our school note and left a mildly censorious Post-it note on it-- and while this might have been mildly obnoxious behavior, there was no question that this car was poorly parked. . . ANYONE would agree that the parking job was awful and that this car encroached on BOTH parking spots on either side of the vehicle-- the car was OBJECTIVELY poorly parked; yesterday morning, my wife and I went to pick up the Mazda, which we left on Adelaide Avenue overnight after we took the train to Princeton to meet my brother-- we were several drinks over the limit so we did not drive it home and instead walked from the train station back home on Friday night-- and when we got the car on Saturday morning, we noticed a note tucked into the driver side door handle-- the note said: 

2 Vehicles can fit here. Next time, pull closer to the driveway in front or behind you. 

and while I understand the sentiment-- Catherine parked the car in the middle of a small strip of curb between two driveways-- and obviously the note-writer wanted to park right in front of their house-- but I don't think this parking event was noteworthy for several reasons:

1) Adelaide is a long street with plenty of parking;

2) if my wife had pulled the Mazda all the way up to the next driveway, there might have been enough room to squeeze another car behind it-- but why do this? why encroach on someone's driveway when there is plenty of parking on this street?

3) this is not an objectively poor parking job-- it's a subjective desire by someone lazy and inconvenienced by the fact that they could not park exactly where they wanted;

4) this note is boring and didactic-- 

if the offended party would have written something funny or clever . . . "Pull up or pull out, dick" would have sufficed-- then I might have empathized more with the put-out parker who had to walk eleven yards farther than normal . . . but because of the moralistic tone, I will seek that spot out the next time we drive to the edge of Highland Park and foray into New Brunswick and I will park exactly in the middle of that strip between the two driveways and perhaps I will keep this note and adorn it with dicks and place it on my windshield.

Meta-Magical Mystery Tour

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.