8/4/2009

Cheers to the chatty old optometrist who gave me an eye exam last week-- when I told him I hadn't gotten new lenses in eight years, and that I had gotten the lenses in Damascus, he said, without missing a beat, "Did the son check your eyes?"-- which is a reference to the fact that Hafez Assad's son, Bashar, who took over the job of supreme honcho just as we arrived in Syria, was originally trained as an ophthalmologist; now perhaps I shouldn't be so impressed, because maybe all optometrists know this little tidbit, as Bashar Assad may be the only oppressive dictator who was first trained in optical medicine, but still, this guy delivered the line so effortlessly (and he was pretty damn old!) that it was almost as if he had been waiting all these years for someone to mention Syria and optometry in the same sentence (this can't be typical conversation, right?) and so I am giving him the coveted Sentence of Dave Off-Handed Quip by Someone You'd Never Expect to Make a Joke Award, which has previously been awarded to no one, because most of the stuff people say (myself included) is drivel.

Live Update from Sea Isle City

Up until 2:30 last night watching the greatest cover band in the universe, fronted by Mike LeCompt, play their usual summer Sunday gig at the Springfield Inn: they played too many songs to list-- Beatles, Stones, The Who (Baba O'Riley, Pinball Wizard, Love Reign Over Me, Behind Blue Eyes) Bruce, Elton John (Levon-- who covers that?) Billy Joel, La Grange, Hamilton, Joe frank and Reynolds-- Don't Pull Your Love, Brandy, You're So Vain, So Lonely, Tom Petty, Styx, Maggie Mae, Suspicious Minds,and many others, unrecoverable because of the alcohol, but I figured out their trick-- they play every song faster, heavier, and better than the original-- I don't like Elton John, but I like LeCompt covering Elton John.

8/3/2009

Although Ipods, Itunes, file sharing, MP3s and digital music are vastly superior to compact disks in so many ways-- storage, accessibility, categorization, etc.-- there's still something to be said about making a snap judgment about someone's entire character from the glimpse of a couple of CD's in their car or on a shelf in their living room: Fine Young Cannibals? Lynch Mob? Steely Dan? Jethro Tull? Yanni?

8/2/2009

Some music commentary: 1) I am wondering if this is the demise of Wilco, though their new album is pretty cool, they get all eponymous and use their name in the first track-- and unless you're a hip hop artist, where dropping your name is de rigueur, this could be a bad omen 2) Charlie Mars alludes to my theory of why Pink Floyd has sold 7.7 copies of "Dark Side of the Moon" . . . on top of it being a great album, it's also a favorite with druggies and stoners, who often lose it while under the influence and then have to buy another . . . because what aficionado of psychedelia can do without it?-- and so the song goes, "If you want to come over, come over and get high, we can listen to the Dark Side of the Moon" but there's nothing in the lyrics about searching to find it while high, which would be a much better and more realistic song.

8/1/2009

Guinness is the only beer that doesn't make me poisonously flatulent . . . thank you Guinness!

7/31/2009

Ian has discovered the joy of lying: last week at soccer camp he had five kids (all older than him) searching the playground for a yellow poison arrow frog-- and I had to break it to the kids that Ian might have been fibbing, and that poison arrow frogs are not indigenous to South Brunswick, New Jersey . . . although, oddly enough, later that day Ian did find a big crayfish in the muddy grass on the soccer field, which isn't as anomalous as a poison dart frog in New Jersey, but it's still pretty weird, so who knows, maybe he did see one.

7/30/2009

I love this fact and now I've read it twice, so it must be true: the first personal computer was sold by Neiman-Marcus and it was called the Honeywell H316; it was intended for sorting recipes-- this was 1969-- and the thing had built in counter space, cost 10,600 dollars and had no monitor-- just toggle switches, so to categorize your recipes you needed to learn hexadecimal code.

7/29/2009

Catherine bought an antique dresser from the town furniture man (although she can't remember how old it is-- so who knows if it's really over a hundred years old . . . and I'll tell you what: if I bought something old I would at least inquire how old, just for conversation's sake) and he refinished it with a two tone marble type finish, tan with deep red fractal streaks and cracks, which looks pretty cool until your child says, "that dresser looks like a person bleeding with so many cuts" and then it looks more like something that belongs in The Amityville Horror (I've included an actual picture of the item, in case anyone wants to purchase it, as I can't really think of it as an inanimate object any longer).

7/28/2009

I've finished Robert V. Remini's slightly liberal A Short History of the United States (336 pages short) and I'm working my way (481 pages of 1000!) through Paul Johnson's much longer and slightly conservative A History of the American People, which is fun because it's from a British point of view, but for those of you who don't feel like reading 1300+ pages of American history, I am offering here, for the first time ever, a very special presentation from the people here at The Sentence of Dave . . . that's right, you guessed it, a One Sentence Summary of American History, so without further fanfare, here it is: once upon a time, there was a country filled with natives, but then new natives came and killed the old natives, and then the new natives killed the people who wanted them not to be native and then the new natives killed each other, and then they freed the natives from another place, and then more new natives came and worked hard and got everything organized when the old natives prohibited booze and a whole mess of the natives went overseas to help out and lots of them died and then folks were content for a while but then a bunch of new natives kept on coming but the old new natives didn't like that so much so they built a wall, but it didn't matter so much and then Britney Spears shaved her head.

The Real Hangover

I think Catherine and I were the last people on earth to see The Hangover, but no one ruined the gags-- and the movie is a rare thing, a comedy that is genuinely funny and also has a great plot, but I must warn you: it is extremely unrealistic, I am not sure if the writer of this movie has ever had a real hangover, it is difficult to make a cup of coffee, let alone drive a stolen police car . . . and (spoilers!) you never hook up with Heather Graham when you're in black-out mode, it's usually someone of lesser quality and greater mass, plus you can't take a punch from Mike Tyson the night after you've tied one on; so I'm thinking of writing a film called A Real Hangover, which will be very low budget and very boring, mainly consisting of a guy who spends a long time in bed, then moves to the couch to watch TV, then finally walks to a convenience store and manages to buy a bottle of ginger-ale, despite having the shakes, drinks it and takes a fitful nap-- who wants to finance it?-- I think all the budget calls for is a lot of beer and camera.

7/26/2009

Here's something funny to try: after your wife cooks you an elaborate (and delicious) meal and you've finished gulping it down, take a look at the kitchen and say, "Well, you made this mess, time for you to clean it up."

7/25/2009

I clearly remember learning about the Boston Massacre in Mr O'Connor's class in junior high-- especially Crispus Attucks-- but I don't remember learning about the trial, and for this alone it is worth watching the HBO John Adams mini-series-- and from what I read on Wikipedia, the show is fairly accurate (although it left out the loop hole Adams used to get the remainder of the Brits out of the murder charge-- if you could read from the Bible, you could get your sentence reduced from murder to manslaughter, and so instead of hanging, you get a branding on your thumb-- a good deal!)

7/24/2008

Two things that I'm glad are no longer living on my body: 1) my award winning OBFT mustache -- for a look at it, visit http://gheorghe77.blogspot.com/ and scroll down a couple posts 2) my award winning OBFT jock itch, and it's too late to get a look at that, although I think the guy who cleans our gutters might have seen me applying some spray to the aggravated area, so you could always ask him about it.

Reading on the OBFT?

I was able to polish off a book and a play on the Outer Banks Fishing Trip XVI: As You Like It by Shakespeare and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick, and despite the obvious differences-- As You Like It is a comedy and a light one (despite banishment, lions and wrestling) with plenty of funny banter, cross dressing, and trans-gender courting and The Three Stigmata is a precursor to The Matrix and Vanilla Sky and eXistenz, only trippier, with more religion and drugs and transcendence-- but they both have one thing in common, whether you're tripping in an eternal hallucination on Chew-Z or hanging out in the forest of Arden, you're doing it to escape the passage of time, the reality of your body and the status to which you are constrained-- and who doesn't want that once in a while?

Half Wit

I finished Elmore Leonard's new one, Road Dogs, which wraps up Jack Foley's story-- the guy George Clooney played in Outta Sight, and when I turn forty-two, I hope I'm half as sharp as Elmore Leonard is at 84: nine Cuban cocaine dealers out of ten.

7/21/2009

My friend Rob manages a silk-screening office and I gave him a great suggestion, so let's see if he follows through-- and I thought of this extemporaneously!-- ready? here it is: authentic Plaxico Burress football pants with a bullet wound and blood silk screened right onto the fabric, so you always appear to have just shot yourself in the leg . . . maybe it wasn't such a great idea.

OBFT XVI

A few Outer Banks Fishing Trip highlights (in no particular order) 1) Bill sings karaoke to a teeny-bopper song he doesn't know the words to while doing a little jig in between the two other members of the karaoke sensation, The Shenanigans 2) games of "corn-hole" on the deck at Mulligan's and repeated use of the verb to "corn-hole" for the entire weekend 3) man vs. paddleboard: I got hit on the head with it, but surprisingly, it didn't kill me 4) Rob's prediction that the long crew at Tortuga's would be driven home by Lacy, which was exactly correct 5) Chris knocking down Jerry's neatly stacked poker chips 6) Dave getting seven bull's-eyes in a row at darts 7) Dave getting seven of eight washers in a row 8) Bruce sleeping on the roof 9) T.J. and his healthy snacks -- the apple 10) Dave winning the mustache contest 11) seeing all the mustaches around the horshoe bar at Tortuga's 12) trying to figure out who people looked like with their mustache 13) Whit coming out of the surf with his hair slicked back and his mustache 14) many other things I can't recall, but thanks again Whit!

7/19/2009

Driving and swimming have something in common: for most, once they are adequate, they consider themselves expert, and they never seek instruction for the rest of their days (unless they are forced by the Department of Motor Vehicles . . . but there is no such governing body for poor swimmers).

7/18/2009

The Rutgers Swim Club is already a retro-looking place, with a flat roofed blue and white pool shack and a tether-ball court, but when my son Alex started hurling a Track-ball (purchased by a friend at a Kay-Bee Hobby close out sale) with his buddy, I felt like I had been teleported back to my own youth in the '70's.

7/17/2009

My father went overboard and bought a fourteen pound lobster, which the man at the fish market said was over a hundred years old-- and it was delicious-- but I can't imagine how stringy and tasteless a hundred year old human would taste, even if you marinated him.