9/2/2009

For two weeks at Sea Isle City, we watched the same odd scene enacted over and over in front of the life guard stand: the same burly blond wild man would emerge from the ocean, perhaps by kayak, perhaps not, run towards the stand and do his signature move, a forward roll/flip (no mean feat for a guy this size) and then he would talk for a moment or two to the cute female lifeguards, but soon enough he would erupt into a dance/karate routine, complete with moves running from the crane to the sprinkler to the spin and hair flick-- and I have to remind you that this is a big guy, shaggy haired and burly-- and he would continue the dance routine for a number of minutes, one time even dancing his way backwards into the ocean until he disappeared . . . and our kids thinks he lives in the ocean (Poseidon's retarded son?) but we can't figure what his story is, but it has been an added amusing bonus for vacation, and I'll miss him if we're at a different beach next year.

9/1/2009

After a long day of running, skim-boarding, and beach soccer, I made the mistake of complaining about my bad ankle in front of my wife; she showed no sympathy, played the tiny violin, and wondered sarcastically what she should reply to my complaint . . . maybe something like, "I'm so sorry your ankle hurts, do you want me to rub it for you? You're so brave to continue vacationing while injured" but she was punished for her insouciance, the next day at "Boot Camp" on the beach she sprained her ankle, badly enough that the trainer drove her back to our beach house and made her keep her foot in a bucket of ice water until she nearly screamed and we had to take a trip to the medical clinic in Avalon for an x-ray . . . and though we contemplated gettin one of those giant bubble wheeled wheel chairs to get her down to the beach, instead I gave her a piggy back ride, which was fun on the first three trips, but after the pavement got hot and I had a few beers, it might have been ill advised.

Spelling Tarantino Is Hard Enough

In his new movie, Inglourious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino extends the Indiana Jones quip in The Last Crusade (Nazis . . . I hate these guys) into a tense, rich, satirical, funny, gory, violent and extremely entertaining two and a half hours-- the movie has nothing to do with WWII, it is a thinly disguised Western, with the Jews as John Wayne and the Nazis as Liberty Valence . . . and though the best performance comes from Colonel Landa, The Jew Hunter-- polyglot Austrian actor Christoph Waltz-- Brad Pitt delivers the best line, when he's told, "You'll be shot for that!" and he replies: "No . . . more like chewed out . . .and I've been chewed out before."

Recommended Eating

While we were on the beach, Catherine gave me the rest of her buffalo chicken sandwich and I ate it while standing in the ocean; I highly recommend this.

Bruce Springsteen Was Born To Drive, The Tarahumara Were Born To Run

Part six: so I'm telling my wife about all the new-found knowledge I've learned while reading Born to Run, and I'm especially amped because I've been training barefoot for a few months now (mainly on the basketball court at the gym) and my experience coincides with Christopher McDougall's-- my feet feel better-- and so instead of talking about the book, I'm making grand proclamations about how I'm not going to buy running shoes any longer and I don't really want our children to wear sneakers because I've been observing them while we play soccer on the grass at the pool-- which we do barefoot, of course-- and their running mechanics look very natural and although I think I am making some sort of logical sense, in retrospect, I now realize that what my wife is hearing is: let's send our kids to school without shoes! humans should never wear shoes! humans that wear shoes are stupid! and I'm sort of reinforcing this by saying things like, "Well, you didn't read the book so you can't argue about it, all you can do is listen to me" which is not only an asinine statement, but it is also very poorly phrased (the theme!) and so we had a "discussion" on how I was presenting my ideas and then I apologized and I tried to objectively explain the ideas in the book  and I also told her that I hadn't finished it yet, which makes me think I'm insane because I was making all these grand statements and I hadn't even read the end of the story . . . but now I have, and I highly recommend the book and I'm about to go for a run over to the track, where I will ditch my shoes and see how I fare.

8/30/2009

Alex swam the width of the pool a few days ago in the four foot section (which is over his head) and he used the dog paddle to breathe and the breast stroke to propel himself-- it's as close to drowning as swimming can possibly be, his main problem is lack of body fat . . . if he's not moving forward or paddling furiously, he sinks like a stone; in other news, Alex can ride a two wheeled bike fairly proficiently . . . I have to RUN to keep up with him in the park-- I'm thinking by next summer the kids are going to be on their own in the water and on the land.

8/28/2009

Part five: Born to Run espouses a less is more approach to running footwear, and makes some well researched and valid claims that bulky expensive running shoes lead to more injuries than running with cheap flimsy shoes or with no shoes at all . . . I'm not going to get into it, if you're a runner you should read it, the theme of this serial edition of The Sentence of Dave is: I need to phrase things better.

I Need to Work on How I Phrase Things (Part 4)

Example number four: after I read The Omnivore's Dilemma, I had a meltdown about all the products we were using with corn 2 in them; I freaked my wife out and made her life even more difficult and made her doubt the safety of much of the food we were giving our children . . . and I must admit, I probably went a little overboard . . . especially since there's no way we could feed the entire bloated population of the earth without corn 2 and factory farming, nor can we even afford to switch our entire diet to organic and local stuff, and still have money for the important things in life, like guitars and electronic gadgets.

Live Update from the Beach

Sorry to break the flow of the serial story, but here's the quick report on the Lecompt Show at the Springfield Inn: 1) we got to hang out with him for a while before the show, he talked about the Phillies and their unassisted triple play and how when they play in Avalon they have to lighten up their set and how he plowed into someone while using his cell-phone, among other things (in fact he talked so long we wanted him to stop and get up and play, the drummer was waiting) and Dom said he sounded "slow" while Rob said he "sounded like a million other musicians" 2) Lecompt's brother was in town from L.A.-- he is a studio drummer there and he looks to be about fifty five, so Lecompt's claim that he played with Miles Davis might be true, and he played an insane version of "Wipeout" and the regular drummer joined in-- it was like nothing I've ever heard 3) another special guest took the stage (among many, a local cop sang "War Pigs" and some chick sang "Bobby McGee") and the band actually played "Freebird," and when the solo started the special guest, who we later learned played in Lecompt's band Tangiers in the 90's, played the solo in perfect lock-step with the normal lead man . . . and the band did their usual and played until 2:30 AM, and they are playing again Friday night-- so perhaps one more time before school starts?

8/26/2009

Part three: But I have a wife, and she has to live with me after I read a new book.

8/25/2009

Part Two: Sometimes when I read a book, I get really excited and forget there was ever a time before I had read that book, and want to implement all the ideas in the book immediately.

8/24/2009

Part one: I need to work on how I phrase things.

8/24/2009 Live Update From the Beach!

Yesterday, a particularly tenacious Herring gull, attempting to impress the coaches and secure a place on the 65 man roster, blocked a barefooted punt by yours truly, which knocked him into a tailspin, but the scrappy bird recovered gracefully, and was able to continue flying . . . and his effort severely affected the trajectory of the punt, making it land far short of its target.

8/23/2009

My son Ian, who loves the water and has a different swimming stroke for every animal (the caterpillar, the whale, the shark, the squid) often stays in too long, until his bladder is about to burst, but the kiddie bathroom is a bit dirty for his taste, so he insists on putting his crocs on before he goes, which makes for some good comedy . . . watching a kid who has to pee put shoes on, and yesterday, while we watched, Catherine yelled some encouragement: "hold it, hold it" and Ian looked at her and followed her instructions, literally, and grabbed his crotch.

8/22/2009

Whenever you have a party to get rid of excess beer in your fridge, you end up with more than when you started.

8/21/2009

Next summer, in order for Catherine and I to have some peace and quiet, and in order for the boys to have the activities and socialization they need, the boys are going to camp . . . space camp . . . in outer space.

I'm Sure I'll Pick It Back Up . . . or Maybe Not

I needed to take a break from the sardonic wit of Infinite Jest, lest I hang myself like the author did last year, and so I started (and finished, I raced through it, ha) Christopher McDougall's Born to Run: it is the exact opposite of David Foster Wallace's post-modern masterpiece . . . it is non-fiction, it is inspirational, it is clearly written, it is mainly about the Tarahumara, a tribe of Indians isolated in Mexico's trackless Copper Canyons who are notorious as fantastic distant runners, but it is more philospohical than anything else, and I would highly recommend it, especially if you are mired in the self-reflexive meta-futility of post-modern art, as the ideas in Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen will allow you to mentally transcend your body, instead of dwelling on its slow decay.

8/19/2009

62% of the way through Infinite Jest, which is set in the near future, when each year has its own corporate sponsor (Year of the Depend Undergarments, Year of Dairy Products from the American Heartland, Year of Glad) and there is a revolutionary new meta-treatment for cancer, the doctors feed the cancer lots of processed food products, encourage the cancer cells to smoke cigarettes and consume loads of Diet Soda, and voila, the cancer gets cancer and dies . . . but the treatment doesn't work on AIDS, because AIDS is a meta-disease . . . and I'm getting sick of reading meta-fiction: I may have to take a break and read something else-- something short and easy-- before I finish.

8/18/2009

When you want to play darts, the standard operating procedure at The Corner Tavern is to trade your driver's license for them-- and hopefully at the end of the evening, you're sober enough to remember to trade the darts back . . . but what if when you ask for your license back the youngster who took it says she can't find it?-- do you get to keep the tattered darts as compensation?-- do you leave, without your license?-- or do you watch the staff search for a while?-- or does someone finally realize that you should take a look at the license they do have . . . which turns out not to be you, but your wife, because she put her license in your wallet two weeks ago on vacation and never removed it, so you handed the bartender THAT license without realizing it, and then when you tried to trade the darts back, she looked for a guy's picture but could only find female license's . . . and so she was worried for her job and you were worried for your license . . . and who solved this mystery anyway, I don't think it was me . . .

8/17/2009

I debuted as a music producer this weekend, and although I wanted to channel the genius of Paul Martin or Brian Eno, or at least wave a gun around like Phil Specter, I ended up mainly getting stir crazy sitting in a chair clicking buttons, but in between the socializing, a diverse crowd (Whitney, Eric, Liz, Mary, Mose, John, Chantal, Keith) laid down a diverse number of tracks: violin, spoken word, melodies, harmonies, screaming, etc. and the final product should be available by Christmas.