Philadelphia: The Cheese Isn't Just on the Steaks
I took the kids to the Philadelphia Museum of Art yesterday, which they enjoyed-- there is a good collection of armor and halberds and pikes and swords and old guns and a decent sampling of all the masters, modern and ancient, including a great painting of Prometheus with his liver being eaten by a giant eagle-- and they also enjoyed the famous view of Philly from the terrace, but when I showed them the clip from Rocky when he runs up those same steps, they didn't seem to enjoy that very much-- maybe because the 70's keyboard in the theme song is exponentially cheesier than you remember.
5/14/2009
Apparently, to get the Magic Bullet to actually chop anything, you have to attach some kind of sharp spinny thing-- otherwise, it just makes an annoying noise (another lesson learned during my week of preparing dinner . . . that was my mother's day gift to Catherine, I thought it would be easy but it's going to kill me).
Ian Gets Stung While Wearing Pajamas
Rough week for Ian: he got bit on the arm by a kid at school-- the biter's teeth made vampire fang marks but luckily the kid had all his shots; Ian also has a cut under his foreskin; and, on top of that, last night, while he was in his pajamas, after story time, moments before he was about to snuggle up in bed, he stepped on a bee that found it's way into out house (probably on my clothes while I was planting a tree) and so we went from serenity to hysteria; I grabbed the bee off his foot and threw it, but I couldn't find the stinger, and then I couldn't find the bee and wondered if someone else was going to step on it . . . but Catherine managed to locate it, and it was dead, and the stinger was lodged between Ian's toes-- a tender spot and hard to get at (kid's toes are tiny!) but he handled it like a little man and definitely know he's not allergic now.
5/12/2009
Wisdom from a jaded five year old to his younger brother: after a LONG Sunday, the boys finally finished their dinner and Alex asked if he could have a treat; I told him that his treat tonight was a shower, and while he was stomping up the steps he said to Ian, "This treat is a rip-off."
Godzilla Movies Are Funny Because They Are Dubbed
Catherine and I started watching the Swedish vampire film Let the Right One In and it was dubbed, so after a moment I switched the audio to Swedish and put on the sub-titles; Catherine then called me "the most annoying person in the world," which I said was a little extreme, and then I told her that everyone switches from dubbing to sub-titles if it's available (except the Italians, who demand all movies be dubbed-- they can't stomach hearing any language but their own) and we made a ten dollar bet about what audio setting the person who recommended the movie used, so this sentence is TO BE CONTINUED (but I am correct, right-- no one listens to the dubbing, do they?)
5/10/2009
I told Alex that some clovers have four leaves and that these are considered lucky, and for a while he searched for one, but was unsuccessful . . . and then he told me that "luck wasn't real, anyway" so it didn't matter (so now I suppose I have to tell him the story of the fox and the grapes).
Use Soap?
At our faculty meeting there was discussion about the swine flu and certain concerns were expressed-- including one woman who brought up the fact that to procure soap from the dispenser, you must touch the metal pump with the palm of your hand . . . and that this could be a vector of H1N1 transmission: despite this possibility, I'm going to follow Tom Hanks' odd and on-the-nose advice to Tawny Kitaen in Bachelor Party . . . he tells her: "Have a fun shower-- use soap!"
5/8/2009
Charlie Kaufman's new film Synecdoche, New York is tragic, but it reminds me of Napoleon Dynamite in one important way: both movies are kind of tough to sit through, but definitely entertaining to think about once you've watched them (but I still prefer Eternal Sunshine and Adaptation and Being John Malkovich, which are fun both to watch and to think about).
5/7/2009
A few weeks ago, Catherine must have put the floss away in the little box that holds deodorant and brushes and I didn't see it in there until this morning . . . so for the past couple of weeks, out of sight truly was out of mind, in fact I had forgot that there was even such a thing as flossing-- normally I look at the floss and feel guilty about not flossing (but rarely floss) but once the floss was removed from my line of sight, it actually disappeared from my brain as well.
5/6/2009
I like to think that I try to do a small part for the environment: I've stopped drinking out of disposable plastic, I try to abstain from eating large mammals because of the waste they produce, and--when possible-- I walk instead of drive . . . and I try to convince my students that these small differences make a big difference when everyone changes their behavior, but occasionally I push my luck, as I did last week when I tried to convince my creative writing class--composed mainly of females-- that they should buy one dress that they can use for the prom, their wedding, and any other formal occasion-- and, to drive the point home, I may have even lied and told them that we made my wife's wedding dress into a set of napkins and a bedspread, but, though the idea was met with disgust and repulsion, perhaps it will germinate in their heads and one of them will start a revolution which will cripple the fashion industry but cut consumption of clothing exponentially (and at the very least, this creative writing class, which started out very shy and quiet, to the point that I wondered if they would ever talk, has now become vociferous, outspoken, and often verging on violence because they have bonded in order to attack a common enemy-- which is me).
My House of Cards is Impregnable!
I'm a couple hundred pages into William D. Cohan's book House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street, a minute by minute account of Bear Sterns financial apocalypse-- and while I can't really recommend it, it's technical with a lot of big numbers and the wretched excess and hubris is pretty understated, when compared to The Winter's Tale or King Lear-- I will say this: it seems if that if people think there's a problem with your brokerage house-- if the stockholders or the repo people or the overnight credit people or the analysts or the ratings companies or the SEC or the banks or FED or the writers at Fortune or the rumor-mill or anyone else even entertains these thoughts, then the thoughts can create a mathematical reality and a meltdown can happen at the speed of an idea . . . and the other thing I learned while wading through the numbers, which are all in the billions, is just how funny it is when Dr. Evil tries to hold the world ransom for "one million dollars."
5/3/2009
I'm giving the second season of The Riches one million bloody hammers out of a possible five: Eddie Izzard and Minnie Driver and all the other actors are great, and it is the most stressful show to watch-- while still being funny-- since Deadwood (and it has that same method of starting each show ten seconds after the last show ended).
5/2/2009
After the fat man heard about the shark attack, he puffed his big cigar and said, "That's why I don't swim."
5/1/2009
Little did she know, but the young lady in the lane next to me (who was certainly a college-level swimmer, or possibly a professional swimmer, but most likely some kind of cyborg government swimming experiment-- genetically modified with certain part replaced by machinery) was in the race of her life . . . against me, just a regular human, not even wearing a Speedo-- and that is why I am so sore today.
Last Wishes
I would prefer not to die of the "swine flu," as there is nothing more embarrassing than people repeating "swine flu" over and over at your funeral (if I had my druthers, I would prefer to be eaten by a large carnivore) but there is a more humiliating way to "shuffle off this mortal coil" than swine flu: testicular elephantiasis.
4/29/2009
I guess it is unusual for a dude to buy fabric by the yard at Wal-Mart, but I needed some thick material to staple to the plywood walls in my little music studio to deaden the echo . . . the girl who worked in the sewing and crafts department was so amused by my awkwardness that she gave me an "extra spin" (which is not nearly as dirty as it sounds-- it just means she rolled an extra yard around my bolt of fabric without charging me for it, actually-- that sounds dirty as well).
4/28/2009
I see the appeal of Dancing with the Stars: the girls are really hot and scantily clad, so you can't stop watching because you want to get a clear look at them but you can't get a clear look because they move their bodies so quickly, convincing you that they are wearing less than they are actually wearing, but then once they stop, you realize they were wearing more than you thought while they were dancing-- or maybe some people actually like to watch dance?
4/28/2009
So my students are presenting various ethical dilemmas and how to resolve them, and a group of boys is presenting a case about plagiarism and the kid who is talking has on the exact same green and white striped golf shirt as me, so I very dryly ask him: "But how far do you go with this idea, for instance, if someone were to wear the same exact shirt as someone else, could that be said to be plagiarism? would it be intellectual theft? to wear the same shirt?" but he didn't get it, and neither did anyone in the class; in fact, one smart girl said, "Mr. Pellicane, I don't think that's a very good parallel to their dilemma" and so finally I had to point out my joke, which is not very funny at all . . . and then we had to backtrack and let the boy reiterate what he said because I wasn't paying attention to him, I was just thinking about setting up my brilliant joke, which obviously wasn't so funny.
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