The Laugh Track is Wack

A student with good taste in television (The Office, Madmen, Curb Your Enthusiasm) convinced me to watch The Big Bang Theory; I turned it on and the physicists had built a time machine in their apartment, and were racing forwards and backwards in time . . . and it might have been a funny bit, but I couldn't enjoy it because there was a laugh track-- and it made me realize that I can no longer watch any new show with a laugh track (but I can watch an old show with a laugh track, like Seinfeld or Joanie Loves Chachi . . . why is that?)

A Good Retreat Is Better Than a Bad Stand

It started funny but by the middle I just didn't get it, and so-- despite glowing reviews by James Joyce, Dylan Thomas and Graham Greene-- I have given up on Flann O'brien's cult classic At Swim Two Birds; although I did learn what a Menippean parody is (and that anyone who knows what a Menippean parody is and is also a fan of this book, might also be an elitist wanker) and judging by the tone of the reviews for the book, I am wondering if anyone really gets it-- or if it's so bizarre and baffling, but also so highly regarded in learned circles, that no one wants to be the first to say that it's rather tedious and borders on nonsensical (or perhaps I wasn't reading carefully enough, but I'm way happier now-- I'm reading the Amazon.com pick of the year: The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher . . . so maybe I'm just middlebrow all the way).

To 1080p or Not to 1080p?

1080p or not 1080p, that is the question . . . and though it is far less profound than Hamlet's meditation on self-slaughter (but who would want to commit suicide anyway now that there's Blu-Ray?) this technological dilemma is far more pressing than thinking about what dreams may come when I shuffle off this mortal coil-- and those dreams probably won't be in HD.

Special Cake

So my friend took this screwed up cake that his girlfriend was going to toss in the trash, and he decided to decorate it with whatever candy was around her apartment-- and he ended up creating an "animal parade" complete with marshmallow observers, a street paved with jimmies, borders done with candy canes and gum drops, dead marshmallow people that had fallen off the cake, pretzel gates, etc. etc. and though that sounds pretty elaborate, I cannot stress how tacky and awful and downright retarded this cake looked, and when I walked into the office, I had not heard the story of the cake yet . . . all I heard was the very sweet, very nice, very motherly Special Ed. teacher talking to my friend like he was some kind of special needs student, and the more I insulted the cake, the more she complimented him for his "imagination" and cleverness, and really, the whole thing was so cloying that it made me sick (both the cake and the compliments).

Nerding It Up

Here's an example of the nerdy humor in my Shakespeare class-- and to get an idea of the kind of kids in this class, imagine this: once, during a discussion of Taming of the Shrew, I mentioned Douglas Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, and Bach, and two students were so excited by this reference to their favorite author of meta-philosophical conundrums that they actually high-fived each other; and so we are discussing Act IV of The Winter's Tale and the incorrigible rogue Autolycus is describing some of the ballads he can sing, and they are uniformly bizarre, but our favorite was the sad tale of a singing fish: previously, when the aforementioned fish was a lovely maid, she would not "exchange flesh" with the one who loved her and so as punishment for her prudery she was "turned into a cold fish"-- so I said the title of the ballad should be "To His Coy Fish-tress" but then a student thought of an even better pun: "To his Koi Mistress" . . . and perhaps you had to be there . . . or perhaps you had to be there, and be a real nerd.

Legos . . . They Are a Trap

I'll bet there's a negative correlation between time spent playing with Legos and "handiness"-- as a kid, I loved playing with Legos: they snapped together so easily, they could be built into durable and intricate structures without any other medium to hold them together, and you could start building without any structural plan and end up with a masterpiece, and my sons love them as well-- but, of course, real world materials don't behave anything like Legos-- it takes time, patience, forethought, and an understanding of how substances bond, stretch, crack, break, expand contract, and react to make anything lasting and aesthetic around the house or in the yard . . . something I don't have the patience for; and I'm afraid that my sons are traveling down the same path, as they blithely snap together spaceships, schooners, and castles with the greatest of ease.

Unnatural Action

Two animal encounters: over the weekend:

1) while I was running along the Raritan, I saw a blue heron acting in a deranged manner, listing from side to side and then finally collapsing into a heap, where it eyed my warily like some miniature feathered reptile-- and so when I got home I called several numbers until I reached Ranger Headquarters, and I told them the situation, and the next day the heron was gone, but I want to know what happened . . . I should have told the dispatcher to call me back once she had a full report of the incident so I could have some closure . . . can a heron get West Nile disease?

2) last night, our contractor went into the crawl space to retrieve some of his tools and he found a big fat raccoon in there, so he flushed him out, and after the raccoon went down the red and yellow plastic kiddie slide in our yard he climbed over the fence and into the neighbor's yard-- but not until one of the workers tossed a soccer ball at him.

Science!

Last night I learned that the best free thing ever (besides sex, which is never really free, but that's another sentence) is the annual Michael Faraday Physics Demonstration at Rutgers: they must have done fifty experiments in an hour and a half, to a packed lecture hall; it was entertaining enough to keep Alex and Ian's attention for long past their bedtime: imploding chemical drums, flaming balloons, floating magnets, the Bernoulli effect, the physics of lying on a bed of nails, a professor in an old time football helmet on roller skates propelling himself with a fire extinguisher, and, of course, everyone's favorite . . . liquid nitrogen.

Xmas Anxiety Reprieve and Return

While Catherine was away on her fifth grade camping trip last week, I felt like a Hindu or a Muslim or a Jew-- no Christmas anxiety; the kids and I never spoke of Santa or presents or lights or decorations or a tree, and I certainly didn't think about shopping or the forty people that are coming to our house on Christmas Eve . . . but on Friday Catherine returned, and so did reality-- I wanted to put my feet up and rest (I was a single dad for a couple days!) but she was all about making a list and checking it twice and getting down to brass tacks with all the Xmas bullshit (and I know I shouldn't complain, since I don't do much, but I think that makes the anxiety worse).

Reading Time!

We sold our TV last night-- and the kids were pretty good about it, considering they were right in the middle of "The Black Cauldron" when the guys came to take it away.

Who Is That Dancing Bald Man?

Tropic Thunder is best viewed without knowing the cast: it took me half the movie to recognize a couple of the actors (and, despite Ben Stiller, the movie is quite funny).

Plants/Birds/Rocks/Things/Heat/Hot

I was feeling pretty bad about the quality and content of yesterday's sentence, until I turned on the radio and heard the second worst song in rock and roll history-- the worst is Jethro Tull's "Aqualung," of course-- but the two chord classic "Horse with No Name" by America is a close runner-up; hearing their infamously vague lyric "there were plants and birds and and rocks and things" made me feel so much better about my own writing-- as did the phrase "the heat was hot" . . . but what can you expect by a band named after a geographic location, as they fall in with such ilk as Asia, Boston, Chicago, Alabama, Kansas, Europe, The Georgia Satellites and Styx.

I Go Out On A Limb . . . A Nerdy Limb

I know it's controversial, but I told my students anyway because I'm that kind of guy-- if I have an opinion, I speak it and let the chips fall where they may: my definition of science fiction is when the setting-- whether it's based on technology, set in the future, or simply a logical alternative to our own history-- is the main character of the novel or movie-- so that excludes and Star Wars and Godzilla, but does include Soylent Green and The Matrix.

Talking With Himself

I assumed once the addition was done and we were able to use the new dining room, our children would start saying things like "Mother, could you pass the treacle pudding" and "Father, this aspic is divine" but it wasn't that way at all; instead of talking to us, Alex had a forty-five minute conversation (if you call lunatic ramblings, Jim Carrey-esque facial contortions, and out of control giggling "conversation") with his reflection in the bay window and Ian shrieked with laughter at his witty brother.

Peeing Etiquette and a Peeing Paradox

A woman in our department (Kristyna) is pregnant with her first child-- and it's a boy-- and she's definitely the feminine type, so I was giving her some tips on how to raise boys (always be developing their reflexes, constantly challenge them to physical contests, emphasize competition, compliment them on feats of flatulence and gluttony, stress the importance of athletics over intelligence, etc.) but the one thing she said her boy would never do is "pee on a tree"-- because it seems my boys, if they are more than seven yards from a bathroom, find it completely appropriate to drop their pants and water whatever flora is available; this led to a debate about when to and who can pee on a tree, someone claimed that if you let your kids pee on trees once they are over the age of eleven, then you are a degenerate, but I pointed out that if you drive over to Metuchen Country Club and wander onto the golf course, then you'll find well-to-do men over the age of eleven peeing all over the trees.

The Evolution of Beer Pong

Catherine and I played beer pong for the first time on Friday night (or the new version of the game, I remember a game we played with cups of beer on a ping-pong table in college, but we used paddles and if you lost you had to take your shirt off and the other team got to whack you with the ping-pong ball, which didn't hurt much, but it did leave a little welt that lasted for a few days . . . I think we called the game "pong-ping") and Catherine was good.

Bow Down to the Master Dave

Once again, I bow to the master: David Sedaris is the King of the Sentence; though I must admit that at the start of his new book, When You are Engulfed in Flames, I wondered if he had run out of good stories to tell, but that's certainly not the case-- I could read Sedaris-brand sentences about a boil, or a cab ride, or the details of his relationship with his boyfriend Hugh, and they would still make me laugh (and, of course, they did).

You Just Opened Your Gift!

It's the holiday season again, and normally I am wracked by guilt because I know I need to get people gifts and I never do (my wife takes care of it) and also because I have charitable thoughts that never really come to fruition, but this year I am in the clear because I have been giving the gift of entertainment in the form of this blog-- and so as long as poor people have a friend with a computer and an internet connection, they can enjoy my thoughts and sentences the whole year round!

Hey Joe

At school, a small middle-aged man with glasses has been saying "Good morning Dave" to me for several years now, and this has been embarrassing for me because I didn't know his name and whenever I described him (hey, there's this little guy, with glasses, maybe he's fifty or so, wears a shirt with a tie sometimes, do you know his name?) no one could ever give me a definitive answer and then I would forget all about it until the next time I ran into him and he rudely flaunted his knowledge of my name again, but yesterday near the mail boxes, another teacher (I don't know her name either) said hello to him and she also said his name and his name is Joe (but am I really going to start calling him by name now?)

No Cake For Me

There was chocolate cake in the fridge last night and I thought about eating it, but-- get this-- I did not eat it . . . amazing, but true-- instead of eating cake I took three ibuprofen and went to bed at 8:30 because my back hurt because I'm trying to learn this soccer juggling trick called "Around the World" which involves this really violent leg motion after you flip the ball in the air-- you have to whip your foot all the way around the ball and then flip it back up, and although I'm getting closer to achieving this, I may have to quit trying to avoid serious injury.