Little Girl With a Big Voice
Last night's "battle of the bands' was very entertaining, but I did not realize that part of the responsibility of judging the contest was that I had to offer feedback to the bands after each song, American Idol style-- luckily, though there were three judges, I was the first to speak each time so I could grab the low hanging fruit and comment on it . . . and while all the bands were talented and fun, it wasn't really a contest, because the sophomore who was on The Voice had assembled an incredible band and she can REALLY sing, she just belted out her songs-- including Toto's "Hold the Line"-- very impressive, so much sound coming out of a little kid!
The Opera Isn't Over Until Dave Says a Bunch of Annoying Shit
I am judging a "battle of the bands" tonight at my high school, and apparently, there is a rubric to help us judge each band, but as the official English 12: Music and the Arts teacher, I feel it might be necessary to point out to whoever is running this event that musical taste is extremely subjective and depends upon how you perceive and value certain musical elements-- such as rhythm, melody, lyrics, authenticity, and timbre-- I'm all about timbre . . . but someone else might not value timbre the way I value timbre-- and then there's is how much novelty you can tolerate-- Ornette Coleman's free jazz isn't for everyone-- so in a sense it's almost impossible to judge music from a variety of genres-- you've got a better chance of making a qualified aesthetic assessment if you are only focusing on one particular genre: prog rock or hip-hop or boom-bap or UK trap . . . but I'm probably just going to keep my mouth shut and just check off the boxes.
Looming Precipative Dread
How can I concentrate on writing a sentence when an impending cataclysmic snowpocalypse is headed our way?-- especially when my wife's district budgeted ZERO snow days into the Edison school calendar (someone needs to tell her school board that the mandatory SEC warning applies for winter weather as well as stocks: past performance is not indicative of future results) and so she will most certainly lose days off her Spring Break-- and my district budgeted one measly snow day . . . I'll go out on a limb here (out on an icicle) and predict we will have three days off due to this storm . . . and it's not even February.
Headlines Fit for the Onion (If Only They Were Fictitious)
I don't know whether to laugh or cry lately when I read the Times . . . absurdity is hard to reckon with-- but I'm going to record a few actual updates and headlines for posterity:
Six Prosecutors Quit Over Push to Investigate ICE Shooting Victim's Widow
U.S. Stocks and Bonds Fall as Trump Ramps Up His Threats Over Greenland
Trump Wanted a Nobel, Now It's Greenland
and, of course, the only fitting place for our dickweed of a POTUS in Greenland . . . unemployed.
Teenagers, They're (Coco) Nuts
Last Tuesday night, just before bed-- after a long day of fitness: I played basketball in the morning and then went to PT for my hamstring in the afternoon-- I suffered something new, a hamstring cramp-- I've had calf cramps in the night, but never a hamstring cramp-- it was a painful and frightening two minutes-- and when I told my senior English this news, two bros, Frankie and Nico-- a wrestler and a weight-lifter-- insisted that I needed to drink Vita Coco coconut water because it contains lots of potassium and keeps you from cramping-- and I always like to take the advice of teenagers, more for the humor than the sagacity, so I bought a bottle and drank some today before playing pickleball and I am going to give those two students a firm talking-to because Vita Coco is disgusting in both consistency and flavor (and I love coconut) so I guess I'll have to stick to eating bananas (and this incident, as zman cleverly pointed out, is nearly a mirror image of a previous, rather awkward moment of Dave).
Picaresque Pairing
We finished a picaresque TV show last night-- The Lowdown-- which is about Lee Raybon, a rogue journalist (played in masterful Lebowski-esque fashion by Ethan Hawke) who tries to uncover the sordid truth about Tulsa . . . and I just finished a picaresque novel today-- Tim O'Brien's America Fantastica, which is also about a journalist, but a washed-up, ruined compulsive liar of a journalist, who travels through conspiratorial America, trying to make sense of nothing, O'Brien narrating the tale in the manner of Charles Portis, hurtling from one location to the next, one character to the next, in broadly derisive but always entertaining absurdist satire.
Hot and Cold
Saturday night, my son left the oven baking at 450 degrees all night-- he heated up some late-night pizza and then forgot to turn it off, so I awoke to a very warm kitchen (but luckily, the house did not burn down) and then two days ago, my wife came downstairs for breakfast, and it was freezing cold-- because my son left the sliding door open all night . . . perhaps his next mistake will make things just right.
Magical Micrographia
We Exist in an Afterthought
Today, after we watched a TED Talk about how bad architecture has ruined American cities, suburbs, and public spaces, I took my students on a "field trip" the the English Office, the cramped, claustrophobic, cluttered, and windowless space designated for the twenty English and Special Ed teachers that live upstairs in our high school to eat, socialize, plan, and rest between teaching class-- it's truly a soulless and ugly space and the fact that some paid adult with an architectural degree actually designed this space as an office for teachers is mind-boggling and very sad.
Out of My Depth
After attending morning basketball for the first time in a few weeks (the steroid shot in my knee seems ot be working) I am covering a Senior Health class today-- a number of students and teachers are out of school because the service for the student that got shot and killed is in Paterson today-- and I'm not sure if I could actyually teach this class with a straight face: there's a handout on the teacher's desk and the first words on it are "fetus" and "semen" and the kids are doing some project about contraception-- my only advice was that children are very expensive, especially if they drive a car or go to college.
Quite a Monday
Today was a long and emotionally taxing day at school—but there were emotional support dogs.
Ugly Monday Looming . . .
Not looking forward to going to school tomorrow: apparently, an East Brunswick senior was shot and killed yesterday by another teenager in Sayreville-- it's going to be a sad day, not sure how the seniors are going to react to this.
To Prepare, I Took a Long Nap
My friend is having a 60th birthday party tonight, and it starts at 8 PM . . . that's nearly past my bedtime, and I'm only 55!
Some Good TV
Some high-quality TV recommendations:
1) if you're looking for something dark and artsy (and filmed in Italy in beautifully rendered black and white) and you don't want a ton of unnecessarily loud special effects (e.g., Stranger Things), then check out Andrew Scott as Ripley;
2) if you're looking for a different kind of alien apocalypse and some phenomenal acting from Rhea Seehorn, check out Pluribus;
3) if you love The Big Lebowski, then check out Ethan Hawke playing a shambolic character loosely based on the Tulsa citizen journalist Lee Roy Chapman in The Lowdown.
GoldiDave
As I get older, I like the cold less and less-- I used to love it, but now it makes my knee ache and my body stiff-- but because it was unseasonably warm today and our school building's heating system is ancient and defective, the English Office was HOT . . . roasting hot, hot enough that we were sweating while eating lunch-- and thusly I remembered that I don't like the heat either . . . I'm only happy when the temperature is just right.
Poem of Dave
When I get old and pass away,
this is all I want them to say:
there was a guy named Dave
and he wrote a sentence every single fucking day.
Dave Mans Up in Front of the Ladies
I'm hoping that this doesn't become more frequent than an annual tradition, but I once again went to the sports medicine doctor-- Dr. Navia-- and (once again) she said that the best way to fix my knee was to stick a giant needle in it, full of some kind of steroid (cortisone? I didn't ask) and once again, she had an intern with her-- and while Dr. Navia is young, her intern appeared much younger-- childlike, a female Doogie Howser-- and, on a positive note, things were better than last winter, when my knee was full of fluid and also needed to be drained-- this time, I was more proactive-- and (once again) because it was two young ladies diagnosing me, I agreed to let them stick a large needle in my knee (I didn't want to look like a coward in front of them, but I think if it were a dude, I would have passed) and then Dr. Navia asked if it would be okay for the intern to administer the giant needle, and while my brain was saying "NO!" my mouth said, "sure," and then they talked some shop about where to stick this big needle-- I'm not sure if the intern ever did this before-- and my hands were sweating, as I gripped the examination table, and I looked at the wall instead of at the big needle-- but they numbed me up pretty good, so all I felt was a bunch of pressure-- not all that much shooting pain-- and then it was over and I limped back to the car and went home and fell asleep early and then woke up in the middle of the night, totally amped and hyper-- that's one of the side effects of getting a steroid injection-- but miraculously, today my knee feels great and I can run again and I'll be playing pickleball this Friday and basketball next week . . . so it looks like a I won't need gel shots for a couple of years, unless I really fuck it up.
Elite Summer Camp, Elite Apartment Building . . . Same Difference
Liz Moore's fantastic novel The God of the Woods is both an excellent thriller and a multi-generational family saga; it feels a bit like a Donna Tartt novel-- although not quite as expansive-- and has something in common with another book I read recently and loved: The Doorman by Chris Pavone-- in both there is the conflict and collaboration between social classes, especially the relationship between the uber-rich and the service industry class that often caters to these privileged rich folk . . . here's what Judy, a female state police investigator-- a real rarity in the 1970s—thinks about the dynamic between these two classes of people:
What will she do now, wonders Judy, if the Hewitts lose the camp? If the Van Laars cut them out entirely, as they’ll no doubt do, snapping the thin thread that has stretched for decades between the Hewitts and Peter the First? And she answers her question herself: They’ll be fine. The Hewitts—like Judy, like Louise Donnadieu, like Denny Hayes, even—don’t need to rely on anyone but themselves. It’s the Van Laars, and families like them, who have always depended on others.
anyway, The Doorman and The God of the Woods are the two best novels I've read in quite a while, chekc them out . . . I've got to head to the sports medicine doctor to get my knee checked out.
But He Deserved It . . .
Yesterday, in the YMCA locker room, an older guy next to me was whistling Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire"-- the chorus AND the verse-- and I'm proud to say that I did not punch him in the face.
Do Dogs Understand Phase Transition?
Yesterday, in an attempt to get some vitamin D and dispel the cold and dark winter blues, my wife and I tried to take a hike at the Rutgers Ecological Preserve-- but the trail was coated in a layer of ice covered by a dusting of snow: it was way too slippery to traverse hills and navigate cliffs-- and so we changed plans and drove over to the Raritan Canal Path, which runs between the river and tow road; we figured even if it was icy, at least the trail is flat-- but there is a small hill at the start of the trail, which leads down to where the first lock used to be-- now it's a stone dam-- and the hill was a sheet of ice, so I let Lola off her leash so she wouldn't pull me over and further destroy my bad knee and she hurtled down the hill and onto the thin ice covering the canal and promptly fell through the ice-- but luckily she managed to get her front paws on the stone of the dam and I quickly skated and slid my way down the hill and pulled her out of the freezing water before she fell all the way in . . . though it all happened very quickly, it was a hairy couple of moments where we thought she might plunge under the ice, never to be seen again-- but she was lucky and hopefully learned her lesson about thin ice (though I did keep her on the leash for the rest of the walk).
Capitalism Undone . . . by Mutants
To kick off 2026, I finished yet another Clifford D. Simak classic sci-fi novel, Ring Around the Sun, and this one is full of big ideas: pristine parallel earths; mutant humans--who may or may not know they are mutants; telepathy with alien races; corporeal temporal stasis; consciousness transfers-- it's too much for one book (from 1952!) but it is mainly a story of scarcity and abundance and how to break our capitalist, materialist consumer society with "forever" products engineered by mutant humans and imported from various parallel earths, to break the supply-and-demand system and allow humans to progress to something transcendent-- but at what cost, at what cost?
There's More to Life Than Table Tennis, Right?
My wife and I rang in the New Year with a trip to the Rutgers Cinema to see Marty Supreme, which was a highly entertaining way to start 2026-- the film is packed with fast-paced dialogue, chaotic action scenes, and plenty of scams and hustles, plus a concatenation of Safdie-style bad decisions . . . and as a bonus, the table tennis feels authentic (although not as authentic as this clip of the actual Marty Reisman defeating Victor Barna in 1949) and though most of the movie is a wild and messy ride, the story has a lovely resolution and moral: there's more to life than table tennis.
2025 Book List
1) The Birdwatcher by William Shaw
2) Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
3) IQ by Joe Ide
4) Save Our Souls: The True Story of A Castaway Family, Treachery, and Murder by Matthew Pearl
5) The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl
6) Never Tell by Lisa Gardner
7) The Loom of Time: Between Anarchy and Empire, from the Mediterranean to China by Robert Kaplan
8) The Secret Hours by Mick Herron
9) The Man Who Fell to Earth by Walter Tevis
10) Dry Bones (Longmire #11) by Craig Johnson
11) The Getaway by Jim Thompson
12) Pop. 1280 by Jim Thompson
13) Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix
14) A Hell of a Woman by Jim Thompson
15) Mastodonia by Clifford D. Simak
16) Boy's Life by Robert R. McCammon
17) Lexicon by Max Barry
18) Pure Innocent Fun by Ira Madison III
19) Dance Hall of the Dead by Tony Hillerman
20) The Future of Capitalism: Facing the New Anxieties by Paul Collier
21) Hang On, St. Christopher by Adrian McKinty
22) Days of Rage: America's Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence by Bryan Burrough
23) The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson
24) The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
25) Gringos by Charles Portis
26) Moonflower Murders by Anthony Horowitz
27) Red Chameleon by Stuart M. Kaminsky
28) A Taste for Death by PD James
29) The Trespasser by Tana French
30) Broken Harbor by Tana French
31) King of Ashes by S.A. Cosby
32) Marble Hall Murders by Anthony Horowitz
33) The Secret Place by Tana French
34) The Likeness by Tana French
35) Hot Money by Dick Francis
36) The Fort Bragg Cartel: Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces by Seth Harp
37) A True History of the United States by Daniel A. Sjursen
38) Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era by James M. McPherson
39) Annie Bot by Sierra Greer
40) Harold by Stephen Wright
41) The Hunter by Tana French
42) Facing East From Indian Country
43) One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad
44) Time and Again by Clifford Simak
45) The Time Traders by Andre Norton
46) Starter Villain by John Scalzi
47) The Doorman by Chris Pavone
And a few mammoth non-fiction books that I've been reading all year on my Kindle, which I hope to finish in 2026. . .
Reaganland by Rick Perlstein
The Vertigo Years: Change and Culture in the West, 1900-1914 by Philip Blom
The Great Divide: Nature and Human Nature in the Old World and the New by Peter Watson
Forgotten Continent: A History of New Latin America by Michael Reid
Back From Philly with the Goods
We are back from Philly, with to-go sandwiches from Reading Terminal (including roasted pork with sharp provolone, peppers, and greens from DiNic's-- my favorite sandwich in Philly) and while I couldn't walk as much as normal while we were there because my knee probably needs THIS again-- yuck-- we still made it out last night-- we went to Double Knot for happy hour drinks, sushi, bao buns, and dumplings-- there was a line to get in at 4 PM and then we stopped at McGillin's Olde (VERY OLD!) Ale House for a couple of O'Hara's, but now I have my knee raised up on pillows, hoping that will stop the swelling, and I will be taking it easy for the rest of winter break.
Crullers, Calder, and Cheesesteaks
Typical day in Philly: donuts from the Amish bakery at Reading Terminal Market, a visit to the new Calder Sculpture Garden and Museum, a cheesesteak at Shay's, and then we retreated to Stacey's apartment so I could rest my stupid swollen knee; last night, we enjoyed dumplings at Emei and beer at Love City Brewing, where we watched the Eagles eke out a victory over the Bills . . . there's nothing like a Philly bar during an Eagles game (even if you're secretly rooting for Buffalo to take it into overtime).
The Stupor Bowl?
I thought of an apt name for today's Giants vs. Raiders game-- both teams sport a 2-13 record-- and so I came up with "Stupor Bowl" but apparently that name is spoken for, and The Stupor Bowl is "an infamous, annual underground bicycle messenger race in Minneapolis, held the day before the NFL's Super Bowl, known for its drinking checkpoints and scavenger hunt format, combining speed with endurance and liver training" and it is real, very real.
The Weather is Winning . . .
The cold weather, my swollen knee, the crusty snow, and the lack of sunlight-- these have put me into hibernation mode-- and even coffee is losing its ability to knock me out of it.
Best For Last . . .
I am assuming Chris Pavone's The Doorman will be the last book I finish in 2025, and it was my favorite-- a thriller with plenty of social, racial, and class commentary; the novel's center is a working-class doorman (Chicky) with working-class problems, and his interactions with the very, very rich residents of the fancy Upper East Side apartment where he works-- and they have very, very rich problems-- and all the problems collide into a wonderfully stressful mess: this book feels like a tightly plotted modern version of Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities, with some Richard Price NYC tone thrown in for good measure-- definitely worth reading.
Crokinole Christmas!
My wife and I had a lovely Christmas Eve with the boys and Ian's girlfriend Kyla-- my wife made chicken cordon bleu and some fantastic mac and cheese-- and the evening was made even more lovely by my impulse Christmas purchase of a crokinole board-- I broke it out on Christmas Eve, and I don't know how we've lived our lives without this classic Canadian game of masterful flicking and dexterity-- while the board is a bit large, I'm even thinking of bringing it to my mom's house for Christmas Day-- while there were certainly many other fabulous gifts given and recieved today, crokinole might actually be one for the ages.
Like Old Times . . . But Older
Yesterday, Ian and I picked up Alex in New Brunswick, we ate some cheesesteaks, and then we all went to the YMCA and played some three-on-three hoops-- my two sons and I against some youngsters (one of whom was very tall and could dunk with ease)— and even though Ian was out of practice and cramping and I am old, Alex was able to pour in a bunch of three-pointers and mid-range jumpers and we beat the seventeen-year-old several games in a row (after I bested my children in a game of 21, due to some excellent free throw shooting) but today does not seem like old times for me . . . it just seems like I am old because my knee hurts (although the boys went back to the Y and played more basketball, but I had to lift weights and ride the bike . . . boo for old age).
The Truth Doesn't Always Sound Good
I made a musical trivia quiz today for my Music and the Arts class and part of the quiz was about which artists were popular in each decade, and I learned that the artists that sold the most albums in the 1990s were not the artists I thought were popular at the time (aside from Nirvana) because I thought everyone was listening to Pearl Jam and The Pixies and Soundgarden and 2Pac and Biggie and the Wu Tang Clan and Rage Against the Machine and Weezer and Radiohead and Beck and Jane's Addiction and Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul and the Beastie Boys and the Chili Peppers and Smashing Pumpkins but I was in my twenties and demographically skewed . . . here's the actual top ten selling artists of the 1990s:
Céline DionMariah Carey
Garth Brooks
Whitney Houston
Nirvana
Michael Jackson
Metallica
Backstreet Boys
Shania Twain
Madonna.
Trump = Don Quixote?
Donald Trump-- in one of his most deranged moves to date-- continues his quixotic battle against windmills, halting five developing wind farms off the East Coast and essentially, according to the New York Times, "gutting the industry" and vaporizing ten thousand jobs and jeopardizing billions of dollars in investments . . . Trump cites fabricated "national security concerns" as the reason for ending these green energy projects, which were supposed to power 2.5 million homes and will instead reduce the efficiency of the electrical grid and make us more reliant on traditional (and expensive) energy sources . . . what is wrong with this man, and why isn't anyone in our government standing up to him?
(Slightly) Brighter Days Ahead
Today is the Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere and thus the darkest fucking day of the year . . . but tomorrow we will have a couple more seconds of sunlight and by January-- and this has something to do with the tilt of the earth and angles and lag time and ellipses . . . way above my pay grade-- we'll be gaining two minutes of sunlight each day . . . which will be fantastic because when it's dark like this, I want to go to bed at 7 PM.
Follow the Link For the Recs . . .
I did my usual "Seven Books for Reading" post over at Gheorghe: The Blog today . . . if you're looking for a good book, check it out.
Not Following Directions (Because They Are Insane)
Does anyone actually:
1) rinse and drain quinoa thoroughly in cold water before cooking?
2) determine doneness by the visible germ ring on the outside edge of the grain?
because these are the specific instructions on the back of TRADER JOE'S Organic Tricolor Quinoa, and while I like to follow food hygiene instructions and recommendations--
1) quinoa grains are much too tiny to rinse in a colander-- they would go through the holes!
2) quinoa grains are way too small to examine in such a precise manner;
so WTF?
Enough With the Time Wars . . .
I'm not sure how-- serendipity, I guess-- but I just finished another sci-fi book written in the 1950s that details a war being waged throughout time . . . this one, The Time Traders, by Andre Norton, is much faster-paced than Simak's Time and Again-- although it features an American rehabilitation prison/time traveller program, a hostile advanced alien race and the Russians, and everyone is at odds with one another, this is really more of a Bell Beaker-era (2000 B.C.) survival tale, with some interesting anthropological details (and a bunch of sci-fi action) and the usual cautionary lesson, that when you fuck with the past, things are going to get ugly-- but with the additional idea that there may have been great technological wonders in the past, whether alien-made or human-made, that were lost in the haze of the millenia-- modern humans have only been around for 300,000 years . . . in the millions and millions of years of life on earth, advanced technologies could have risen and decayed and left no trace (although this is highly unlikely-- they probably woudl have left some chemical fingerprint or isotopic anomaly).
Dave "Works" From Home
I decided to give working from home a try today-- I've got a cold, and I'm losing my voice, so I didn't feel up to inspiring the youth to write without "help" from AI . . . despite my illness, I did sweep, vacuum, and mop the floors and I cleaned three bathrooms, but no matter how much you clean the floor, there's still dog hair-- it's very resilient stuff.
Even With Some Help, I Don't Think Our Brains Will Ever Work This Well
Time and Again is more profound and serious than most of the Clifford Simak books I've read (Mastodonia, They Walked Like Men, The Goblin Reservation, City) and while the book has some fun sci-fi tropes-- a war throughout time, androids that can chemically reproduce vying for human rights-- it also has that 1950s transcendent evolutionary vibe that seems naive today . . . the idea that humans will eventually, possibly with the help of alien intelligence, become something mentally more, something psionic and telepathic and revolutionary . . . and maybe I'm being pessimistic and thispsychological transcendence is possible, but I'm more of the feeling that the huan race is going to be perpetually stupid until we exterminate ourselves.
Are People Actually Working at Home?
Despite the cold and the ice and the preponderance of delayed openings in the surrounding counties, Middlesex County schools did NOT have a delay this morning-- so I'd like to send a big FU out to anyone who "works from home."
Ignoring the Unspeakable
Today was an apt day to finish Omar El Akkad's book One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This (a title which reminds me of a book I read about the Rwanda genocide called We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families) since the news is filled with unspeakable gun violence and mass shootings-- which Americans will be ignoring soon enough-- Akkad wants people to stop looking away from the horror, especially the horror in Gaza, perpetrated by what he views as the ugly business of imperialism, supported by the U.S. military industrial complex, political machinery, and media . . . here's a passage from the end that gives an idea of his tone:
One day there will be no more looking away. Looking away from climate disaster, from the last rabid takings of extractive capitalism, from the killing of the newly stateless. One day it will become impossible to accept the assurances of the same moderates who will say with great conviction: Yes the air has turned sour and yes the storms have grown beyond categorization and yes the fires and the floods have made life a wild careen from one disaster to the next and yes millions die from the heat alone and entire species are swept into extinction daily and the colonized are driven from their land and the refugees die in droves on the border of the unsated side of the planet and yes supply chains are beginning to come apart and yes soon enough it will come to our doorstep, even our doorstep n the last coded bastion of the very civilized world, when one day we turn on the tap and nothing comes out and we visit the grocery store and the shelves are empty and we must finally face the reality of it but until then, until that very last moment, it's important to understand that this really is the best way of doing things. One day it will be unacceptable in the polite liberal circles of the West, not to acknowledge all the innocent people killed in that long-ago unpleasantness.
it is rough stuff and an especially controversial topic around my area because we have both a sizeable Jewish and Muslim population, there are people on both sides of this issue, and I don't see any resolution other than more violence, suppression, terrorism, displacement, starvation, military incursions, explosions, and horror.
More War
Another dark episode of We Defy Augury . . . some thoughts (loosely) inspired by Daniel A. Sjursen's book "A True History of the United States: Indigenous Genocide, Racialized Slavery, Hyper-Capitalism, Militarist Imperialism and Other Overlooked Aspects of American Exceptionalism" -- I got so bogged down in the shit in this one that I've decided to take a break and perhaps pursue a different idea for a podcast-- because I really don't want to make an episode based on the book I'm reading now, Omar El Akkad's indictment about the liberal media and governmental response to the Israel/Palestine conflict One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This . . . his point, that the logical, moral position is not halfway between the right and the left-- as they are both ignoring reality-- and the center is as morally repugnant in it's policy and more milquetoast and unfocused, especially when atrocities are being committed and a people are being displaced and destroyed . . . I'm about two-thirds of the way through and I don't see a happy ending to this story, now or in the future.
If You're Getting Up Early, You Might As Well Shoot the Ball
While I normally avoid Route 18-- it has been under construction for years-- I will sometimes gamble and take it when I'm playing early morning basketball, as there's less traffic at 6:15 AM-- but today, instead of lane closures, the entire road was closed and so I arrived at basketball late and angry and had to sit the first game-- but this did give me time to warm up, and either the extra shooting practice or my road rage inspired me and I made my first five shots, all three pointers-- so five in a row for the fifty-five year old-- which made the youngsters very excited . . . but they also started switching off and covering me very tightly . . . so I took a couple more NBA range shots, which oddly, went long, perhaps because I've been ingesting creatine and I'm super jacked-- but whatever, it's quite fun to have the hot-hand once in a while.
Trump: Making China Even Greater
I'm not sure I fully understand all the layers of irony and absurdity in the latest economic news, but Trump seems to be offering American farmers (particularly soybean farmers) a 12 billion dollar bailout because they have been adversely affected by his unilateral implementation of tariffs-- especially on China, which used to buy U.S. soybeans-- so we're using taxpayer money generated by the tariffs, which decreased exports, to bail-out the farmers-- who will have to store the soybeans or sell them at a deep discount-- creating market instability and the need for government assistance; meanwhile, China has found other suppliers and has also made its way into other markets, partially fueled by the absence of the United States in these markets because of Trump's tariffs-- so China has increased its trade surplus by over twenty percent, to the tune of a trillion dollars . . . meanwhile the United States is running its usual trade deficit (which doesn't seem to be influenced in any particular way by tariffs and has to do with other economic forces) and apparently many large businesses have been absorbing the costs of the tariffs but come January there may be cost increases to reflect this . . . this is all above my pay grade but it seems to me we should want China to be buying stuff from us-- such as soybeans-- but I also understand that globalization has its costs (thus, our populist president) but I think the genie is out of the bottle and it's too late to turn back the clock, so we want to be as involved in the global market as we can be . . . but what the fuck do I know, I'm just a dog (sometimes, for an extra treat, Dave has me write his blog).
Everyone Got Some Help
After listening to many episodes of Andrew Hickey's "History of Rock Music in 500 Songs" and reading a fair amount about the influences and origins of Shakespeare's plays, one thing is clear: art is collaboration, often with the people who came before you (even if you don't want to give them any credit).
Youth . . . It's Determined by When You Were Born
Today, one of the morning basketball players said to me: "You're a veteran teacher . . . when did you start teaching?" and I said, "1995? 1994?" and he said, "OK, that's two years before I was born-- so how has teaching changed since then?" and I gave him a rather long-winded answer, which involved living through the digital revolution, starting out with books and paper, ending with computers, on and on and on-- and by the end of my answer, I was ready to retire (but instead I went to my Music and the Arts Class and told them they needed to have more arguable points in their essays—they were being very hesitant to offer their opinions, so I told them, "look, we're not talking about abortion or politics, it's just music" and then we read Carl Wilson's essay "Celine Dion and Me" and I had all the students write some music on the board that would thoroughly embarrass them if other people heard them actively listening to this particular music-- like if they were blasting it out their car windows-- and we all had a good time . . . although several kids wrote 100 Gecs, and I love 100 Gecs—but I still wasn't offended because it's only music).
Heading Out to the Park
Singing "walking the dog, walking the dog" to the tune of Judas Priest's "Breaking the Law" makes taking my dog out in the frigid weather slightly more bearable.
I Live in a "High Brow" Town!
Highland Park (and my buddy Craig) recently made Fox News-- because Highland Park High School has a "Socialist Club"-- but the best thing about the utterly pointless article isn't that my town is full of radical liberals (although it IS the most liberal town in Middlesex County, yet we still have Turning Point USA Club . . . you can't prohibit a school club for political reasons) but the best part is that our town is referred to as "well-to-do" and "high brow"-- which is absurd, considering close to 40 percent of the school students are on free-and-reduced lunch and our grocery store isn't a Wegman's or a Kings or a Whole Foods or even a Trader Joe's, it's a SuperFresh (nor do we have a Wawa or a 7-11, we have a Fresh Mart) but it's still very nice of Fox News to inflate the worth of our real estate . . . thanks!
Ardnakelty: Things Behind Things Behind Things
In Tana French's thriller, The Hunter, the rural Irish mountain town of Ardnakelty reminds me of the newish Bon Iver tune "Things Behind Things Behind Things"-- and retired Chicago cop Cal Hooper is pulled farther and farther into these rings within rings (this is the second book in the series, the first is The Searcher) and you know what happens once you get pulled in, it's tough to reach escape velocity; an evocative, slow-burn about how gossip and history and small-town mores can sometimes fuel animosity, violence, and worse (and I believe I have now read the complete of ouvre of French, who many conisder our greatest living mystery writer . . . I think I am one of them).
Carbage
After lunch, I walked out to my car because I knew I had some gum there, but when I reached into my little gum pouch, I realized that the thing I felt was a used piece of gum that I had stashed there and never tossed out, not a fresh piece, which was both gross and disappointing.
Common Nothing
Years ago, I would give my students on "life quizzes"-- little fun tests on facts that most of society considered common knowledge . . . and I remember they would always struggle with the boiling point of water (in Fahrenheit) and I could understand why-- 212 is not the most memorable number-- but I recently learned that now the vast majority of high school students also do not know the freezing point of water . . . they were in the ballpark with their guesses, which usually ranged from 16-30 degrees but only about a quarter of them knew that it was exactly 32 degrees Fahrenheit-- so perhaps they are quietly quitting the American system of measurements and adopting the metric system?
Very Short and Cheap Field Trip
Today in my English 12: Music and the Arts class, the kids were diligently reading and taking notes on a chapter from Susan Roger's excellent book on the formation of musical taste, This Is What It Sounds Like: What The Music You Love Says About You, when a student raised her hand and said, "Spotify Wrapped came out today . . . can we get our phones out and look at it? This is a music class!" and I thought for a moment and overcame my aversion to ever letting the children touch their cell-phones and said, "Sure" and we grabbed our phones and went outside into the freezing cold-- because Spotify is blocked on the wifi inside the building and we don't really get cell reception inside (unless you are close to a window) and we stood in the brisk winter air and shared our favorite genres (Jazz Funk for me) and our favorite artists and and our most listened to songs and all that and it was a lovely five-minute field trip (until we all got very cold and went back inside to watch the morning announcements).
Sage Advice from Ferris Bueller and Hamlet
It's twenty years to the day since my youngest brother passed away-- this time frame is shocking to me, but as Ferris Bueller reminds us: "Life goes pretty fast, if you don't slow down and look around once in a while, you could miss it"-- so here's to slowing down and enjoying the time we have, and as Hamlet reminds us (after he survives his pirate adventure and prepares to duel Laertes) sometimes we can't slow things down, they become impending and inevitable so "the readiness is all"-- we don't know what life will throw at us, or when things will happen, so all we can do is enjoy the good times and be prepared for the worst.
Right Back To It
We now enter the three-week slog before Winter Break-- and while some of us teachers might not make it until the end and will end up crying under our desks, broken and despondent, amidst piles of ungraded essays, I am determined to give it the ol' college try and try to teach through these dark days with energy and alacrity-- but today was rough, I attended the 7 A.M. early morning faculty meeting (to avoid staying after school) and then planned and graded my ass off during my prep, essentially became a game-show host second period for a spirited lyric-fill-in game, and then taught Creative Writing mock-epic tone and fairy tale tropes so they could have some fun writing a story, and then went back to grading synthesis essays during my study hall duty . . . my back hurts, my eyes hurt, my brain hurts . . . and that's only day one.
Happy Birthday and Happy Thanksgiving . . .
Today is my wife's birthday, and there have already been TWO birthday miracles:
1) our local and venerable candy factory, Birnn Chocolate, actually made a batch of dark chocolate raspberry jellies-- they are by far the best in the known universe . . . honestly, most raspberry jellies made in America taste quite gross (apparently these taste more like the European version) but for whatever reason, Birnn rarely makes them and we haven't had them in years-- this is odd, since they are by far the best thing that they make . . . but I am no chocolatier and times are tough on the choclate front-- apparently, because of global warming, ageing trees, and gold mining, there is a cocoa bean crisis and quality chocolate (and cocoa beans) are hard to come by-- I learned this from the Asian lady that has worked at Birnn for many, many years-- she gave me an entire lecture on the current global state of chocolate and cocoa beans;
2) I managed to clip and upload my favorite cinematic Thanksgiving scene-- a moment from the excellent Thanksgiving movie Pieces of April-- if you haven't seen it, it's worth a watch-- excellent ensemble cast, and a funny, poignant, dysfunctional-family-over-the-holidays story with a brilliant plot . . . I'm sure I broke some copyright laws in posting this scene-- I had to pirate the file, then convert it, then load it into iMovie, then clip the appropriate portion-- but I've been searching YouTube for it forever, and no one has ever posted it-- so this is my contribution to the digital disaster-- I hope someone enjoys it.
IT's True, Tomorrow IS Another Day . . .
This morning, I started screwing around with a very special digital something that I wanted to post today, but then I got sidetracked and forgot all about it-- perhaps tomorrow?
Black Friday = Dark TV Show?
We joined my mom yesterday for a fairly mellow Thanksgiving—the first one without my dad—but we had plenty of good Pilgrim food that he would have enjoyed . . . and this morning, on Black Friday, my wife is watching the darkest of shows, a Netflix series called "The Big C," which is about a mom dying of cancer . . . I'm not sure why she's doing this to herself, but she says she likes it— I also noticed that the great character actor Oliver Pratt is once again playing the husband of a victim of cancer (he also played this role in the excellent Thanksgiving movie Pieces of April) but as for me, after reminiscing about my dad and my brother yesterday and all the other folks absent from the table, I'm more in the mood for "The Chair Company" or "The Big Bang Theory."
Thanks, Andrew Hickey!
I am thankful for all the usual things, of course-- family, friends, a steady job, shelter, hot water, a loyal dog-- but I am also thankful that Andrew Hickey, creator of the absurdly detailed and comprehensive podcast "A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs," has finally arrived at Led Zeppelin-- I just finished his two part "Dazed and Confused" episode and it was quite a journey-- at the start he mentioned The Zombies album Odessey and Oracle and I had to listen to that for a few days-- it's fantastic chamber pop-- and a similar thing happened in an earlier episode when he introduced me to The Beach Boys album "Wild Honey," another music rec from Hickey I'm quite thankful for . . . anyway, I think there will be more songs that I'm interested in from this point forward and his song-by-song analysis of the first two Zeppelin albums and the entire story in general illustrates what a wild scene was happenign in the late 1960's-- musicians collaborating, competing, stealing songs from each other, stealing songs from blues musicians, then distorting them, putting their own spin on them, claiming them as their own-- leading to a tangled web of credits and plagiarism and payouts and future lawsuits and fantastic music.
Future Crossing Guard!
This morning, as I was weaving through the back roads on my way to work (because all the main roads have been under construction) I came to a STOP sign in front of a fairly crowded school bus stop and a middle school kid who was crossing the street in order to get to the crowd of kids at the bus stop outstretched his arm and gave me the hold-up sign-- he must have been worried that I didn't see him, or that I didn't know he was about to cross the street and that I would run the STOP sign and hit him-- and then when he got far enough across the street, he gave me the thumbs-up sign, as in: now it's safe to go and you won't hit me and I found this very endearing and helpful and this kid definitely has a future as a crossing guard or an assistant ref or an airport tarmac crewman or a sign language interpreter or some other job that requires well-timed body language.
Two InterestingWorks of Art To Help You Get Through The Week
I've come into contact with two oddball works of artistry this week, and I am enjoying both immensely:
1) The Zombies' 1969 album Odessey and Oracle-- while I knew a couple of tunes on this album: "Time of the Season" and "A Rose for Emily"-- I certainly never listened to the album in its entirety, but I heard Andrew Hickey mention it favorably during his comprehensive, super-detailed podcast A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs and so I gave it a shot and I truly love this album-- although I suppose it's slightly psychedelic, to me it seems more like a cross between The Beach Boys and a less raucous, more baroque version of The Sgt Pepper-era Beatles . . . anyway, I highly recommend giving it a listen, it's a fantastic collection of well-structured, catchy, and genuinely profound songs;
2) The Chair Company, an absurdist Tim Robinson comedy in the style of Detroiters and I Think You Should Leave Now . . . but even more so-- this is a show I have to watch alone, as my wife does not tolerate Tim Robinson comedy, but I find it wonderful-- Robinson plays Ron Trosper, a mall designer who suffers a public workplace fall due to a malfunctioning chair and gets sucked into a conspiratorial corporate mystery-- this is a workplace comedy, but unlike The Office, where the zany antics of Michael Scott and his staff make the workplace into something beautifully hilariously funny, in The Chair Company, work seems to be destroying these characters, reducing them to screaming, cringey disasters-- but there are also slapstick moments, genuinely emotional moments, and instances that are just suprising and laugh-out-loud funny . . . but only if you dig Tim Robinson.
The Miracle of Hot Running Water (and Sanity)
Like most people, unforeseen expensive house repairs put me in a dark funk (although this particular repair was not exactly unforeseen, it was more imminent and inevitable . . . but still, replacing a tankless Navien hot water heater/boiler is not a particularly fun or anticipated purchase-- it's not like buying a dirt bike or a jet ski) and that funk obviously carried through the weekend-- because I went to early morning basketball (which is normally on Tuesday but because it is Thanksgiving Week, we had an unprecendented Monday game) and the main reason I went was so I could take a hot shower before school-- over the weekend, I showered at the gym-- and obviously I also wanted to play some basketball, but my knees and hamstring weren't especially excited about waking up early on a Monday, after playing a few hours of pickleball on Sunday, and I had some trouble getting moving and then when I got to school, I realized I had forgotten my school bag at home-- the very important bag with my school issued computer and my gradebook and all the items I needed to grade-- so I had a choice to make, I could either drive back home and get my bag, and miss basketball-- or I could play basketball, check out a loaner computer, and make the best of it . . . I decided on the latter, which was the right choice-- I had a good time playing basketball and though I had trouble getting the loner computer to do anything I needed, I still managed to print out some guided reading questions, right before class, and teach the bulk of Act IV of Hamlet . . . and show some movie clips-- but I didn't get any grading done-- and then when I got home, I received some good news-- the plumbers were able to install the tankless boiler/heater without any problems, improve the venting and draining, use the larger gas line, and fix everything else that needed fixing, without any additional cost-- and I did remind my students to appreciate the miracle of hot water in their homes and I also told them that I was proud that despite all the financial and cold-water related trauma over the weekend, I managed to hold my sanity together, unlike poor Ophelia.
Spin Cycle Sanctuary
After watching the Giants blow another lead, I took a number of large laundry items-- comforters, afghans, a small rug-- to the local laundromat to be washed in bulk, and I am finding it strangely relaxing here, listening to the hum of the dryers and the slosh of the washers and the chattering of children, while I drink a can of Coke and read my book . . . it's almost making me forget that the Giants should have kicked that field goal instead of gambling on fourth down.
Rutgers Basketball = Jets
My wife and I purchased some cheap Rutgers men's basketball tickets for the game last night-- $15 each for the second level-- and now we know why . . . I had assumed they would slaughter the realtively obscure Central Connecticut Blue Devils, but that was not the case: Central Connecticut played much better basketball than Rutgers-- they had a couple of excellent three-point shooters, they rolled and cut to the basket better than Rutgers, and they moved the ball and executed skip passes (setting up open threes) better than Rutgers . . . so even though Rutgers had more inside presence (Ogbole) and bigger, stronger athletes, it's apparent than Rutgers has NO pure shooters, no offensive rhythm, and no real team chemistry-- so they are going to truly get killed when they start playing Big 10 teams . . . the grouchy old guy in front of us appropriately summed up the situation, just before leaving (early) when he said, "I could have gone to a Jets game."
Water, You Can't Live Without It (But You Also Can't Have It Dripping From Your Appliances)
I thought I was taking a mental health day today-- I drank some beers and ate some hot chicken last night, and I had plenty to do around the house, so it was an ideal day to take off-- but then Ian, who was sleeping on the futon in the basement, came upstairs this morning and said, "the water heater is leaking" and, unfortunately, he was correct, so now my restful and productive day has turned into something else: sopping up water with towels, running a fan, the two of use figured out how to shut off the hot water (three levers, which we conveniently marked with black tape many years ago) and now the wait for the plumber to arrive, which will hopefully be sooner, rather than later . . . best laid plans.
AI and Computers, You Can't Live With Them, But They Will Be Our Overlords
I nearly forgot to write a sentence today because I burned my eyes out trying to grade senior synthesis essays about Susan Faludi's "The Naked Citadel" and Hamlet-- a brand new combination of texts which did produce some fascinating ideas . . . but I made the kids handwrite the essays to avoid the whole AI issue and much of their handwriting is close to illegible . . . I'm getting too old for this shit, so perhaps next time I'll make them handwrite and then allow them to type that up, with some revision-- but there's honestly no good answer.
Suspect Signage
A brand-spanking-new sign has been erected by the powers-that-be atop the hill by my house, the Donaldson Park slope otherwise known as the "sled hill"-- but I guess you can't call it the "sled hill" if there's "No Sleigh Riding" . . . although if you're going to be literal, then a "sleigh" is a sled drawn by horses or reindeer and if that's the case, then I completely agree with the sign: there should be no sleigh riding on the sled hill, especially if young children are sledding, as they might get stomped, kicked, or trampled by the ungulates pulling the sleighs . . . but mainly I believe this new rule is unfeasible, impracticable, and unenforceable and some teenagers are going to yank that sign out of the ground and toss it in to the nearby woods very soon-- and honestly, if the winters continue in the manner of the last few years, kids might not even have enough snow to disobey the sign (but let's hope they do, as I want to see how it all goes down).
Socks Suck
I don't know about you, but I am ALWAYS ripping my socks when I put them on-- this certainly happens frequently when I yank on old socks, but it also occasionally happens when I pull on brand-new, quality socks-- such as the sock pictured above (a new sock from the Columbia outlet, with a reinforced heel and toe) and so I consulted the internet, and-- as usual-- I did not like what I found: perhaps I have ill-fitting shoes and there's too much friction, or perhaps-- more likely-- I have rough skin on my feet and so I generate a lot of friction when I pull my socks on and so, according to the web, I should moisturize my feet . . . yuck, that will NOT be happening . . . I do not truck with moist feet-- I might also have jagged toenails, which can compromise the sock's stitching-- and that's certainly possible, while I do a good job keeping my toenails short (because I like to wear open-toed sandals in school) I can't always control jaggedness-- it's hard enough trim my nails at all and some of them are forever fucked up from when I ran that stupid mountainous marathon in Vermont-- and the last suggestion I read, before I gave up and determined that I'm just going to be a person who rips a great deal of socks, is that I could wash my socks separately and delicately, like cashmere or something, and I was like: fuck that . . . I'll just buy more socks.
Monday . . . Oh Yeah
I wish I could spend time writing a witty and entertaining sentence, but I've got to do other amusing Monday-type things, such as rake and bag some leaves in the backyard, unload the dishwasher, then load the dishwasher, and-- finally and most fun of all: take apart the oven door so that I can access the screws to refasten the outer handle.
Betty When You Call Me, You Can Call Me Sir
I am proud to say that I have completed my soccer referee training, and I am now a licensed referee-- today I had to drive to Newark and do the field training, and I learned plenty:
1) there are a LOT of nuanced flag signals for Assistant Referees to master;
2) do NOT blow the whistle when a goal is scored-- because you don't want to draw attention to yourself at a time when the players should be in the spotlight . . . just point to the center of the field, indicating that's where the restart will occur;
3) hold your yellow card straight up in the air, as you are warning the entire field of play what will and will not be tolerated;
4) do not wear your whistle around your neck; keep it in your hand, so as (and I quote) NOT to look like a "seventy-year-old-lesbian-gym-teacher."
Dave's Brain is Crushed with a Metaphorical Falling Goal
I endured seven hours of a soccer referee certification course today-- we viewed hundreds of slides, I took many pages of notes, we watched many videos of entertaining fouls, and now my head is swimming-- I am realizing it's really hard to make the correct call in real time (it's even fairly hard when you can replay a video several times) and one of the teachers -- a British fellow-- was a real stickler for using the proper terminology, which is tough because all kinds of Americanisms have crept into our parlance-- it's properly called the "penalty area" not the "penalty box" and it's a yellow card for "unsporting behavior" not "unsportsmanlike conduct"-- unsportsmanlike conduct is a fifteen year penalty in American football . . . and here's a situation the entire class got wrong: if the goalie has possession of the ball and one of his own teammates punches him in the face, then because this is a striking foul during the course of play, the other team is awarded a Penalty Kick . . . so the moral here is don't punch your own goalie in the face when he has possession of the ball-- no matter what he said about your girlfriend (or whatever prompted this hypothetical insanity) and I also learned when to downgrade a DOGSO red card to a SPA yellow card (and a PK) and other such technical issues, such as the difference between SFP and VC . . . SFP is serious foul play and VC is Violent Conduct-- SFP occurs when there was some attempt to play the ball but the foul is excessive, VC occurs when there is no attempt to play the ball . . . both are red card/sending off fouls but VC is a worse suspension-- you also need to check the five S's-- shirt, shorts, shinguards, shoes and socks . . . and most importantly, make sure the goals are secured with sandbags or spikes, because occasionally players get crushed by falling goals . . . so that's priority number one-- and I'm sure this is a job like teaching, where you need a lot of experience and practice before you start to get things right-- I feel like I'm starting this path a bit late in life (there were lots of teenagers at the course!) but I think i'll get a better idea of what it takes tomorrow when I go to Newark for my field session.
The Ghost is a Meta-Ghost!
What a fucking week-- loads of standardized testing and proctoring, and then actual teaching-- the seniors were not as fascinated as I am by the mind-blowing possibility that Shakespeare played the Ghost of Old King Hamlet and thus, in scene 3.4, when Hamlet visits his mother in her bedchamber and gets very sidetracked by his Oedipal obsession with his mom's sex life with Claudius, he describes her "honeying and making love" in the "rank sweat" of their "nasty sty" and things get so gross that the Ghost visits to remind Hamlet to "whet" his "almost blunted purpose" and exact revenge on King Claudius and leave his mom "heaven and to those thorns that in her bosom lodge" and stop berating and harassing her and get on with killing Claudius-- so the implication here is that the writer and director of this rambling and brilliant play about drama and procrastination gets up on stage and chastises and reminds the main character to get on with the plot of the play because he has lost his way and gone off on a filthy Oedipal tangent-- so he's essentially chastising and reminding himself that this play needs to get back on track and Hamlet needs to fulfill his father's demand for revenge-- the writer and director is directing both Hamlet and himself-- but thsi is a moot point because the play already exists (and has a run time of four hours) so it's actually too late to do anything about the inherent structural problems of the play . . . and perhaps nothing should be done because the structural problems actually lay bare the possibility that most theatrical presentations are contrived and imitate humanity abominably and that perhaps the only way to truly portray a human is to break all structural confines and expose him over four hours and 1506 lines (the most of any Shakespeare character) but it seems even Shakespeare is wary of this, and thus enters as the Ghost to chide Hamlet of his tardiness and push him to move the plot along . . . it's fucking super-meta and very wild but tough to convey last period on a Friday (but the students were fascinated and disgusted by the Franco Zeffirilli/Mel Gibson version of the scene, which REALLY plays up the Oedipal nature of the dialogue-- so at least that caught their attention (and then I went to Happy Hour and the ladies were discussing a hypothetical beach trip to Aruba in which they would all be topless and there was much postulation on how their toplessness would be perceived . . . I contended it would not be a very big deal, and they had already seen me topless, so what's the difference?
Standardized Testing . . . Ugh
New Jersey's NJSLA adaptive field test was delayed due to technical issues with the testing platform, but that didn't stop the state from implementing a statewide field test of some non-adaptive version of the test . . . so the sophomores and juniors in my school have been testing for three days, totally screwing up the schedule and stealing hours and hours of class time from ALL the classes (the seniors get to come in at 10 AM . . . wahoo!) and the long and short of this is: we are never going to finish Hamlet . . . which is fitting and totally on brand for the level of procrastination in the play, but I guess to truly enact this I would have to sabotage and destroy the test, but not until all the time was wasted and the test was in its final throes of evaluation . . . my wife is also suffering through this-- she teaches fifth grade-- and her kids had to write for two hours straight yesterday. . . you would think a fifth grader would need to LEARN more stuff, at that point in life, and that regular class time would be very valuable . . . who wants to read two hours worth of fifth grade logic?
The Rockettes Got Legs (and they know how to use them)
Yesterday, one of my colleagues-- who was a serious competitive dancer-- was lamenting the fact that the Rockettes have recently removed the height requirement-- if they had done this years ago, she hypothesized, her entire life could have been different (but I'm deeply dismayed by this development . . . I think a Rockette should be lithe, long, and leggy).
So Close to REAL Literary Perfection
I had a wicked headache today-- probably due to a combination of playing morning basketball, the drastic change in the weather, and not enough caffeine-- so I went to the nurse's office for some Tylenol; on the way out of the office, I nearly smacked a student with the door-- the door opens out into the hallway traffic . . . poor design-- and I said to the student, who luckily was not on his phone and dodged the heavy slab of wood, "I nearly sent you to the nurse's office . . . with the door of the nurse's office! Talk about irony!" and he laughed-- probably because the door did not hit him (and perhaps because of my briliant comment, even more brilliant because I delivered it while enduring a headache) and now there's a small part of me that actually wants to hit a kid with the nurse's office door, just hard enough that so the kid has to go to the nurse's office (but no harder, I'm not heartless) because it would be such a wonderful example of irony.
Doing What the Lady Told Me . . .
Although my wife and I have returned to our regular, mundane lives, the memories of Gettysburg linger-- especially the Cyclorama-- a 19th-century form of visual entertainment featuring an enormous panoramic, 360-degree immersive painting, often with dioramas around the base of the painting to add a degree of three-dimensional realism . . . the Gettysburg Visitor's Center has one, painted by the French artist Paul Philippoteaux and his team of artists, depicting Pickett's Charge, the climactic and farily suicidal Confederate attack on the Union forces in Gettysburg on July 3, 1863-- the Cyclorama was completed in 1883-- and several copies were made-- and the paintings toured various cities and were viewed like a movie-- fantastic experience . . . and I will also remember the stories of the Shriver family-- we took a tour of their house and the old lady giving the tour was enthusiastic and grisly in her descriptions of the horrors of war and the tragedy surrounding the Shrivers-- they were slated to open a basement saloon and ten pin bowling alley, when war reared its ugly head and George left to serve the Union, and then, as the Battle of Gettysburg loomed, the house was abandoned for a bit, and used by Confederate sharpshooters (who were shot themselves-- there is still blood in the attic) and George Shriver ended up in the notrious and terrible Andersonville POW camp, where he starved to death . . . anyway, if you go to Gettysburg, be sure to tour this house and be sure to see the Cyclorama-- and at the end of the tour of the Shriver house, our tour guide implored us to read the diaries of the Shriver family and she said we should be writing down the mundane details of our own lives, because you never know what future generation might find interesting . . . and I have been!
There's No Offside on the Battlefield (but there should be)
No Civil War-related material today, as we drove home from Gettysburg this morning, and now I am slogging through my soccer referee modules-- which must be completed before my referee training next Saturday . . . perhaps I'll understand Law 11 by then (Offside).
The Battle is Over
Earlier today we finished touring the Gettyburg Military Park, and just moments ago I finished James McPherson masterful and massive Civil War history book "Battle Cry of Freedom" and now I am going to take a well-deserved nap, glad that I own many pairs of comfortable shoes and will not have to take part in Pickett's Charge.
Gettysburg: A Whole Lotta History (and beer)
Some of the Gettysburg experience: Seminary Hill, Cemetery Hill, Pickett's suicidal Charge, Little Round Top, Big Round Top-- with my sense of direction, I would have definitely gone to the wrong Round Top-- thousands of corpses to bury . . . before the pigs got to them (and they weren't discerning between dead bodies and nearly dead bodies) a stench of bodies so bad it could be smelled several towns over, so many smells that paranormal experts insist that these ghostly scents still pervade the battlefield to this day, hastily assembled rock walls, the lone civilian casulaty Jennie Wade, philandering Dan Sickles and his amputated leg, the Dobbin House and a pile of amputated limbs, many monuments to many men, and so many bars and craft beers-- at one stop a rather inebriated lady asked us if we had been daydrinking and then said she had been to 17 bars in one day (maybe not this day) and then she proceeded to compare random people at the bar to celebrities. . . we saw faux-Freddy Mercury and an impoverished man's version of Rocky's trainer Mickey, then today we went for a rugged hike in Caledonia State Park and saw 19th century furnaces and hearths, and of course, many old houses-- made of stone and brick-- and we have read many placards, listened to many historians and guides-- and I've been plowing through some Civil War books, so in the end it is far too much history to digest (plus the film and the museum!) but the Military Park is very well-marked and quite easy to navigate (for its vast size and scope) and you really can understand how this infamous and pivotal battle went down.
Got a Whole Lotta Plants
Longwood Gardens is a horticultural wonderland, but it is NOT a quick stop on the way to Gettysburg-- we were waylaid there for quite a while (and we could have spent more time there had we planned it . . . the place is vast and has indoor greenhouses and outdoor meadows, forests, fountains, lakes, landscapes, farmhouses, and intricate wood structures-- we will have to stop there again in a different season, right now it's all about various chrystanthemums).
War, What IS It Good For?
After You Bring Her Back, Do You Have to Bring It Back?
Bring Her Back, the new Australian horror film by directors Danny and Michael Phillippou, tells the story of a foster mother named Laura who adopts two children-- Piper (who is blind) and her older step-brother Andy . . . but it turns out Laura wants the blind child as a vessel to resurrect her own dead child-- and she has learned how to perform this sinister (and disgusting and very scary) ritual from a sketchy VHS tape, which she often consults during the film (the tracking is terrible on this tape) and I was wondering where exactly she rented this VHS tape-- it doesn't seem like the typical Blockbuster fare-- but if you search that question on the internet, you'll end up down a weird rabbit hole as there is apparently an ARG (alternate reality game?) about the film . . . but I was quite satisfied (and totally petrified) by the film itself-- I had to watch an episode of Big Bang Theory once it was over, to erase the spookiness, and I don't think I'll be investigating this ritual any further-- but the real question is: after you "bring her back" and transport a deceased soul from the netherworld to this mortal coil, then if and when do you have to bring it back, the VHS tape, to the rental store?
Finally, Our Special Purpose is Unveiled
I'm not sure if other people do this, but my friends and I have a text strand where we text each other our puzzle results-- Wordle, Connections, Framed, etcetera-- and though we occasionally banter about other subjects, it's mainly puzzle results, and I know this is a waste of cloud storage and energy consumption and that we are taxing data centers across the nation and contributing to the environmental devastation wrought by these data centers, which need massive amounts of electricity to operate and use massive amounts of water to cool the massive amounts of computers in these centers-- but now we have transcended puzzle results, and as my friend Craig texted, "we finally made it to the interpreted art phase of the Wordle" and perhaps this is what separates us from all the AI that also resides in these data centers with all of our puzzle results and so I will continue to interpret my Wordle patterns in creative ways for the good (and calamity) of humanity.
Alcohol is Less Fun When You're Old
We went out with friends last night, and I was a bit foggy this morning, and I wasn't sure why-- I didn't drink that much last night-- but my wife informed me that she only drank one glass of wine at dinner and that I consumed the rest of the bottle-- and I guess the wine atop an espresso martini and an IPA is more alcohol than I can handle these days . . . note to self.
Less Synth, More Zippers
As usual, at the gym today, I was simultaneously working out AND trying to expand my musical horizons-- multi-tasking!-- and today I was exploring various prog rock albums (I wandered down this avenue by listening to the Alan Parsons Project album I, Robot . . . which combines yacht rock and Dark Side of the Moon sci-fi psychedelia) and I was giving the Genesis album Selling England by the Pound a whirl and I was not really digging it, but my phone kept falling out of my shorts when I moved from machine to machine so I utilized the secret zipper pocket but when I went to take my phone out to switch my music, I found that the zipper was stuck, and even though I was jacked up on weight-lifting and creatine, I could not budge said zipper and so my phone was inaccessible and I was stuck listening to this godawful Genesis album until I finished working out and got in the car and used "hey Google" to switch back to The Alan Parsons Project and then I had to use a pair of scissors to cut this secret pocket open and retrieve my phone-- so fifty years ago, bands could make prog rock, full of synthesizers, fantastical instrumentation, advanced recording techniques, incredible mastering, and layered sound-- but now it's 2025 and we still can't make zippers that work consistently and smoothly.
Dave Begrudgingly (and Apathetically) Participates . . .
This year for Halloween, the English Department decided to dress as various book titles-- e.g. Rachel wore a catcher's mask and carried a loaf of rye bread for The Catcher in the Rye-- and while I do not like to dress up in any kind of costume . . . or generally be festive in any way other than drinking alcohol and eating good food, I didn't want to suffer the ire of the department and last year I managed to skate by with a minimalistic "costume" and avoid public shaming, so I tried the same tactic this year-- I dressed as I often dress: khaki pants, a light-weight short-sleeved button down shirt, and knock-off Birkenstocks BUT I also brought in a cowbell-- and I told people I was dressed as Ernest Hemingway (close enough) and I was portraying For Whom the (Cow) Bell Tolls and while I was mildly shamed for lack of effort, once I explained myself, the ladies pretty much left me alone-- which is all you can ask for in this kind of situation.
There Comes a Time in a Man's Life When He Must Give His Regards (to Alan Parsons)
I'm always surprised when I stumble upon some music-- whether new, old, or obscure-- that mesmerizes and enthralls me . . . the past few weeks it's been W.I.T.C.H. and "zamrock" and the past few days it's been The Alan Parsons Project-- why, O, why? did I disregard Alan Parsons for all these years?
At the Buzzer
As I was about to fall asleep, some subconscious beacon from deep in my brain reminded me that I did not write my sentence today, and now I have shut that beacon off and I can slide into a dream state.
Pained Epiphany
I needed a break from reading the dense and detailed (but very well-written) slog that is James M. McPherson's Battle Cry for Freedom: The Civil War Era, and so I dove into the 2025 Arthur C. Clarke award winner Annie Bot by Sierra Greer-- Annie Bot is a sci-fi novel about the perfect android girlfriend, and while the book starts with a light, technologically provocative tone (warning . . . or perhaps selling point? there are robot/human sex scenes) but as I got further int othe story, I realized that though I was trying to read some sci-fi to escape the disturbing rationalizations, racism, and inhumanity of the Civil War, that Annie Bot and Battle Cry for Freedom are both ultimately about slavery and autonomy . . . but my NEXT book is going to be fun!
Monday Monday, Can't Trust That Day
The natives (i.e. the high school students) were annoying today-- restless, sleepy, and chatty . . . perhaps because the PSAT is tomorrow, so there are no classes?-- who knows, I don't pretend to understand these hormonal teenage creatures, but-- in an attempt to defeat the Monday Blues, I whipped up a crockpot of chili, which is now simmering away and should be ready in twenty minutes.
Two Letters Make a Big Difference . . .
My wife and I finished watching Fisk-- a deadpan, often cringingly awkward, but ultimately heartwarming Australian workplace comedy-- and we are now watching Task, and though the two titles are a slant-rhyme, that's the only similarity . . . Task is something completely different from Fisk: relentlessly bleak, Pennsylvania rural, and full of characters that are hopelessly mired in poverty and pain.
Perp Walk? Poop Walk . . .
If you see me walking my dog, but I'm doing a strange shuffle, forwards, backwards, sideways . . . dragging my feet through the grass, exerting maximum friction, that means I'm doing the "poop walk" and that I previously stepped in dog poop and I'm trying to-- as the Rolling Stones sing in "Sweet Virginia"-- "scrape that shit right off" my shoes . . . this is my method: after I step in poop, I usually immediately take off the shoes and put them on my deck in the sun-- as it's no use trying to get the shit off when it's still moist and sticky, and then the next day I will go out on the porch and don the shoes and do the poop walk around the park and then I rinse and repeat for a few days and usually after three poop walks, the shoes are clean again.
Let's All Get Along, Fellow Companions (and Spell Words However We Want)
There's nothing more American than spelling stuff however the fuck we want to spell it; this goes for brand names, of course: Kwik-E-Mart . . . Froot Loops . . . Chick Fil-A . . . Lyft . . . Kool . . . and there are plenty of words that we spell differently than the British: center instead of centre, gray instead of gray, defence instead of defense-- but in the end, who cares?-- brands use different spellings so they can secure copyrights and garner attention, and language is a river and these little differences are water under the bridge . . . BUT my buddy Whitney, who is a spelling and grammar egghead, actually pointed out a spelling anomaly that is quite interesting (thanks, Whit) and-- after I've been challenging my classes, fellow teachers, random strangers and even my wife to this oddball spelling experiment and-- unlike most etymological word origin accounts, this one is NOT stupid and boring (did you know that the word "stupid" comes from the Latin stupere, which means to amaze or confound, but it suffered from typical pejorative semantic drift and by the 16th century it meant someone mentally slow . . . and that the word "boring" stems from the verb "to bore"--a repetitive and tiresome motion of drilling a hole by hand . . . see what I mean? stupid and boring . . . perhaps even shallow and pedantic) BUT try this experiment and see if you get the same results as me . . . ask someone to spell the word "camaraderie" and you should get some interesting results-- "camaraderie" is the French version of the word and an acceptable way to spell it, but in North America the spelling evolved into "comradery" and this change probably happened because of Communism and the Cold War and the assumption that these unified Russkies loved to call each other "comrade"-- or at least they called each other that in the movies and on TV . . . and whether or not this is how the alternate spelling arose, what I have found is that most people now use a hybrid spelling and use bits and pieces of each word and often spell the word "comraderie"-- or something close to that-- and I speculate that this will be another acceptable spelling in a few years . . . I hope you are stupefied and amazed by this etymological conundrum and do not find it stupid and boring (in the modern sense of those words).
Mystery Solved (Crystal Clear Footgear)
If only there were a method—some mnemonic . . . a way to jog my memory—to remind me which pair of my hiking shoes is waterproof.
Dave Escapes the Silo . . . and Laughs and Laughs
My life has improved exponentially since I quit watching the boring, colorless, slow, pedantic, ponderous dystopian TV show Silo . . . what a drag-- since then I have been mainly watching comedies : Fisk, Platonic, Pokerface, and my guilty addiction: The Big Bang Theory . . . Fisk is an Australian, female-oriented version of The Office-- but it's much shorter and the story arcs are fast, furious, heartwarming, and fucking hysterical; Platonic sounds cheesy but actually tackles some fairly intricate issues about marriage and relationships in a zany madcap fashion . . . and Rose Byrne is a comic genius, and Kitty Flanagan, who plays Helen Tudor-Fisk, is the Australian version of Rose Byrne; Pokerface has a dark underbelly but Natasha Lyonne always brings the laughs, even when things get perilous; and when I tell people I'm watching The Big Bang Theory, they react in two ways: totally condescending or "oh yeah, that show is hysterical" and I'm siding with the latter opinion, I find the show utterly wonderful-- I never saw a single episode before last month and watching Jim Parsons play Sheldon and recite those incredibly long and bombastic punch-lines is mesmerizing-- and apparently it was NOT easy for him to memorize those lines, he really had to work at it, every single episode-- and I also feel like the show owes quite a bit to Seinfeld . . . it's often about nothing, the relationships rarely change (so far) and Howard Wolowitz looks like a miniature version of Jerry, but he has the self-absorbed concupiscence of George-- and he's ostentatiously Jewish-- and yes there is a laugh track but it doesn't really bother me (in fact, it might enable me to watch this show alone, something I rarely do . . . I'll watch live sports alone because it feels like other people are there but I will rarely watch a TV show alone . . . but maybe I just needed a laugh track to keep me company).
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