Super Sad True Love Story Is Not A Love Story

Gary Shteyngart's new novel, Super Sad True Love Story, presents itself as such, but, like the great film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, it is actually not a love story at all, it is science fiction (if you use my definition) and though the romance between Lenny Abramov (another Russian Jew, but nearly as cool as Misha Vainberg) and Eunice Park fuels the plot, it also fuels Shteyngart's satirical view of the near future; Lenny is embarrassed that he is nearly forty and growing old, that he still likes books and has trouble with the credit rankings and "F*ckability" scores that everyone is receiving on their "äppäräti,"that he occasionally enjoys alcohol and carbs, and that he can't live up to his boss Joshie's dream of eternal youth, while Eunice-- the youngster-- has trouble "verballing" with Lennie and her parents and her sister, can't imagine a place for herself in a rapidly failing America, can't decipher an actual text-- she majored in Images at school and is effectively textually illiterate, though she can read to mine data-- and loves to shop at "AssLuxury," though she doesn't wear translucent "Onionskin" jeans . . . I give it eight credit poles out of ten.

Beans, Beans, They're Good For Your Heart . . .

Catherine made some delicious yellow lentils with sauteed onions and butter in the crock-pot a few days ago, and I took the remainder to work with me yesterday, but because of my lack of Tupperawareness, I packed far more than a single portion into my container, and I also had a sandwich (baked chicken and hummus, which is delicious, but hummus is also made from a legume . . . this will be significant later) so I decided to eat the lentils during my snack-time (around 9:15 AM) and I held up the medium sized Tupperware container-- which was filled to the brim with lentils-- and said to the new teacher, "There's no way I can eat this many lentils this early," but every spoonful was so smooth and buttery and delicious, and so fifteen minutes later the lentils were gone; I felt as if I had swallowed a medium sized tortoise, shell and all, but I had to go teach Henry IV, and I guess I didn't realize that lentils are in the bean family and have the same digestive effect, and it probably didn't help that later in the day I threw the chicken and hummus sandwich on top of this mound of beans, but luckily it wasn't bitterly cold outside and I was able to open my classroom windows, so no students suffered the consequences of my gluttony and I have learned a valuable lesson.

I Finally Impress My Son

This blog is usually about my social failures, awkward moments, and general nerdiness but-- although I know it's not as entertaining-- I would like to write about a moment of triumph, so please bear with me; we took our children to the H20 Waterpark in the Poconos over the break and one of the attractions is the Komodo Dragon, which is defined as "an indoor Flowrider for Riding Waves"; it's a plastic hill with water jetting across its surface and you can boogie board or surf on it while the people in line watch you wipe-out . . . the surfing is especially non-intuitive and difficult and of all the people we watched, no one was able to remain on the board (except the employee running the thing) and after my son Alex rode on the boogie board, I tried my hand at the surfboard and I was able to remain on it for quite a while-- perhaps because of years of skim boarding and snow boarding, although everything worked opposite as far as turning and balance-- and my generally grouchy six year old son, who is rarely moved by anything his parents know or do, said, "I was impressed Dad, you were the only one who didn't fall."

Do Me A Favor

I wouldn't mind if two particular possessions of mine were stolen: 1) my snowboard . . . which I got at a Burton factory sale for fifty dollars eight years ago; the board features now defunct strap-less bindings and I hate them because I never know if I'm completely locked in and sometimes I find out that I'm not locked in while I am hurtling headlong down an icy mountain 2) my 1993 Jeep Cherokee Sport, which features no A/C, no cup-holder, self-hiding seat belt buckles, a driver side door that does not open when the temperature drops below freezing, a ripe smell, several colonies of spiders, no driver side sun visor, a burned out differential which creates a lack of Quadra-Trac four wheel drive, and a foam ceiling that is peeling away in strips.

Here's Something Fun To Do If You Live In The Northeast

Go onto the Great Wolf Lodge Reservations page and check the price per night for the Lodge in the Poconos (489 dollars a night) and then check the same days for the Lodge in Traverse City (189 dollars a night) and then tell your kids that you are moving the family to Michigan.

Imagine This Sentence In The Voice of Steven Wright

I enjoyed Prefontaine, but it's been fourteen years . . . when are they going to make Fontaine?

Unresolutions for 2011

I am proud to say that I successfully complied with my 2010 Resolution--  not once did I create an ersatz Yogi Berra quotation in 2010 . . . so I have kicked that habit; for 2011, I am going to pay homage to the great Geoff Dyer (who wrote the ultimate un-book, Out of Sheer Rage, which is ostensibly a biography of D.H. Lawrence, but actually a treatise on procrastination and motivation; he never actually writes the biography-- although it is found in the BIO section of the library) and instead of resolving to do things this year, I am resolving to not do things, and Geoff Dyer put this better than me in this passage-- you should read the whole thing-- but if you're lazy, he essentially boils it down to this aphorism: Not being interested in the theatre provides me with more happiness than all the things I am interested in put together . . . and so here is my list of things that I resolve to remain "not interested in" for the year of 2011:

1) The theater (expensive, time-consuming, and it's for old people);

2) Golf (ditto);

3) The NHL;

4) Reality TV (even Jersey Shore);

5) The phrases "It is what it is," and "You know what I mean";

6) Tron nostalgia;

7) Going to PTO meetings (thanks Catherine!);

8) Baking;

9) Organizing the crawl space (thanks Catherine!);

10) Oprah's Book Club.

These Might Be The Best Sentences of 2010

 After seven minutes of half-assed deliberation, I am awarding The Best Sentences of 2010 to this sentence, this sentence, and this sentence . . . hope you enjoy them the second time around.

Some Advice For Giants Fans

It is the job of the athlete to forget what the fan will always remember . . . so maybe the Giants can forget the last two games and beat the Redskins next week and-- with help from Chicago and New Orleans-- make the play-offs, where the season begins anew . . . but as a fan, it's going to be tough to forget the past two seasons of Giants' football (a 41-9 elimination loss to the Panthers last year and this year's collapse against the Eagles and 45-17 loss to the Packers with everything on the line) and so my advice is this: to enjoy the rest of the season, invoke the spirit of John Starks, who never let the past rattle him, even after five awful shots, he chucked the rock at the hoop again-- with no memory of what came before; root like an athlete, not like a fan and perhaps the Giants will gain new life in the play-offs.

Whitney's Favorite Awkward Moment of Dave

Today we'll take a trip down memory lane and visit another Awkward Moment of Dave; this is Whitney's favorite and it took place in college . . . Whitney and I needed to volunteer for six hours of psychology testing in order to get credit for a Psych 102 class and it was coming down to the deadline so we signed up for what was available: an experiment for people who claimed to be "date anxious"; we convinced the professor that we were indeed "date anxious," which was probably true since neither of us really did much "dating," and as part of the experiment we actually went on "dates" with other "date anxious" folks and then filled out surveys about the experience; for our first "date" we picked up some underclassmen in Squirrel's little dirty car and our plan was to take them to the movies to see Harlem Nights-- which seemed to be an easy way to ensure that we wouldn't have to talk to the girls, which was important because we were both quite hungover from some serious partying the night before-- and it was extremely cold and the ground was covered with snow and ice, so we were all bundled up, Whitney driving, me sitting shotgun, the girls huddled in the back-- wondering about the two terse strangers that they were now at the mercy of-- and I must point out that sometime in the late night partying the night before, I had consumed a 7-11 microwave burrito, which I had doused with 7-11 chili and 7-11 jalapenos and 7-11 cheese, and I was having some stomach troubles and so I found it necessary to open my window and let some fresh air into the car, some very very cold fresh air, but also very very important fresh air, if this date was to continue without incident, but the girls in back took the brunt of the cold wind and yelled at me to shut the window, and Whitney turned and asked me what the hell I was doing and all I could think to say was: "Just wanted to check how cold it is out there."

The Tivo Parallax Effect (Do Jets Fans Love Braveheart?)

A few weeks ago I decided to join some Jets fans to watch the Jets/New England Monday night game, and you probably know how that turned out (it's interesting to listen to Jets fans while they watch a game, they have prodigious memories for past failure . . . someone actually made a reference to Richard Todd, and there is a fatalistic sense of futility which you don't find in Giants fans, because the Giants have managed to get to the big show often enough that their fans know it is always a possibility) and it was the first time I ever watched a game on Tivo delay-- I think it was fifteen minutes behind real time because of late arrivals to the party-- and some guys were checking their phones to find out the score in real time while I was trying to enjoy the delayed reality of Tivo Time and then a guy walked in late in the first quarter and made an ominous comment, like Cassandra might, and I urged my friend to fast-forward to real time, because-- unlike Slavoj Zizek-- I couldn't handle the parallax effect that the different perspectives were creating in my brain . . . but in the end it didn't matter because the game went horribly awry for the Jets and we ended up watching some Braveheart, which is a movie I've never seen (and it looked kind of cheesy but everyone urged me to see it . . . maybe Jets fans really like Braveheart).

Thierry Guetta Is Like Marla Olmstead (Except Not As Cute)

If you have kids or you're interested in modern art, then you should watch the documentary My Kid Could Paint That -- it's about a precocious four-year-old abstract painter named Marla Olmstead; the film investigates what defines art as much as the mystery of whether Marla painted her paintings or not-- but now there is a new documentary on the same theme and it is even better . . . it's called Exit Through the Gift Shop and it is ostensibly about documenting street art-- the obsessive Frenchman Thierry Guetta devotes his life to filming these ambitious and talented vandals on their midnight missions to make odd, skillful, often beautiful and essentially disposable art, but like all great documentaries (Capturing the Friedmans, Street Fight, Mr. Death, etc.) the film takes an unpredictable turn . . . Thierry Guetta transforms into "Mr. Brainwash" and the theme moves from the aesthetic to the absurd . . . I won't spoil it, but things might not be exactly what they seem . . . I'm giving it ten spray cans out of ten and I think Banksy-- the faceless and heralded street artist who directed-- will win an Oscar.

A Christmas Version of the Nipple

You may remember the Seinfeld episode where Elaine sends out a Christmas card with a picture of herself (taken by Kramer) that inadvertently exposes her nipple, and now our life imitates Larry David's art: Catherine had some trouble getting jubilant shots of our kids for this year's Christmas card, so instead she sent out a more realistic card with our boys engaged in their typical mischief, but she did get one joyous shot in front of the tree, but when Shutterfly  sent us the finished cards, we noticed that in that in the one photo full of holiday cheer, Alex is exposing a runny booger . . . it's tough to see on the computer, but like the nipple, it's pretty obvious when you look at the card.

Feliz Say What?

So I'm playing a game of darts at the Park Pub with my friend Mose on the Eve of Xmas Eve and the jukebox plays the song "Feliz Navidad," but it's not the typical Julio Feliciano version, and when the singer sings the eponymous opening I distinctly hear him say "Feliz s*ck my c*ck," which totally throws off my throw and I turn to Mose and he's laughing and I say: "Did you just hear that?" and Mose confirms that he heard the same festive invitation to fellatio that I heard, but upon further investigation it might have been some weird acoustical anomaly-- that when this particular song is played on the jukebox and you're standing near the dart-board at the Park Pub and certain shows are on the television and the bar is packed to a certain density, then that's what you hear . . . or maybe it was an Eve of Xmas Eve Miracle . . . either way, I'm certainly glad Mose was there to corroborate the incident, because when we went and sat down with the rest of the group at the bar and asked them if they heard what we heard, they looked at us like we were crazy.

I Love/Hate The Goon Squad

Like Billy Pilgrim, the characters in Jennifer Egan's new novel A Visit From The Goon Squad have become unstuck in time . . . spastic in time, and like a Vonnegut novel, there are elements of post-modernism and sci-fi interwoven through the loosely connected (both in form and plot) tales of The Flaming Dildos and their associates; the book covers over forty years-- from the late 1970s into the near future-- and it covers this time-span in forms as various a story told in PowerPoint slides and an article written by one of the characters in the style of David Foster Wallace; the novel is rich and the though the plot is sometimes difficult to follow because of the form, the theme is apparent and powerful: time is a goon and it's coming for all of us, and, especially in the ever-changing styles and tempos of the music world, our inevitable decay will be shocking and painful, but maybe the wisdom we gain will make it all worth it: ten slide guitars out of ten.

Raise Your Hand If You've Done This

Occasionally, when I am waiting in line to pay for groceries, I start ogling the cleavage of the cover models of magazines such as Vogue and Cosmo, and often I forget that these are not real three-dimensional women, and crane my neck to try to see further down their skimpy blouses . . . only to realize that I am looking at a two-dimensional representation and that no matter how I tilt my head, I'm not going to see a nipple.

Bonus Picture! The Spooky Shack

A student showed me how to send a picture from my cell phone to the computer: here is the spooky shack.

A Bike In The Woods Is Scary

Yesterday I decided I would return to the strange little cabin I found in the woods because I wanted to snap some pictures-- and despite discussions of the Long Island serial killer in the English office at the end of the day, I steeled myself for my hike-- but when I got near the downed trees I saw a black bicycle parked against a tree, and like the sticks and stones in The Blair Witch Project, a black bicycle-- which isn't very scary on the street, in context, is a good deal scarier when it's standing against a leafless tree in the middle of the woods . . . but, with nerves of steel, I approached the bike, which was weathered and had a duct taped seat and some weird contraptions on it, and then walked past it and into the downed trees; I figured that the hobos had company, and that was why the bike was parked a bit outside their hidden dwelling, and so I shut off my iPod and crept closer, to the entrance-way of the fort, snapped some pictures of the house with my cell phone . . . and then I got out of there; I'm not sure if anyone was home or not and you're going to have to wait to see the pictures because I can't figure out how to connect my cell-phone to my computer to download them (and I have a new plan: I'm going to go there after the first snow and then I'll know if there's anyone inside because I'll see footprints) so this story is to be continued . . .

I Discover Something Strange

Two weeks ago I was taking a walk by the lake near my parents' house and the trail was blocked by some fallen trees, which I climbed over and then I had to traverse a little dirt hill over a log and duck my head under a branch and then I turned a corner and-- suddenly . . . almost magically-- I was inside a little fort of downed trees and there was a low slung house hidden in this fort, about two feet high with a shingled roof and steps down to a dug out door, probably four feet down into the earth, so if you were inside the house, the ceiling might have been at the height of a grown man, and there was a little basement style window set in the wood walls but no light was on (which I pointed out to my wife as proof that no one was home, but she countered with this statement: "It's not like the house has electricity!" and I must admit that she's right) and when I first saw the house I was listening to a creepy techno song by Daft Punk from the new Tron soundtrack and I didn't have the common sense to take off my headphones, and so I kept thinking someone was behind me and I left the fort fairly quickly and started to walk back to my car, but then I turned around and went back, I felt a weird and anxious need to check it out more, though it reminded me of the final scene of The Blair Witch Project (or a meth-lab or the Unabomber's cabin) and so walked back-- with my headphones still blasting-- and I took one more good look: there were several bicycles and an assortment of bike parts within the confines of the fort and a rusty boat hull attached to the roof with a bike lock and there was a padlock on the solid looking wood door; finally, I got out of there, but I still feel compelled to go back and check it out again so if I disappear without a trace, you know where to start the search.

I Retire From Professional Sports

I have always been a Giants fan, but after yesterday's epic fourth quarter meltdown (why did Matt Dodge punt it to DeSean Jackson?) I have decided to stop watching professional sports altogether, and only watch sports movies, where the team you are rooting for either wins the big game (Hoosiers, Invictus, and almost every other sports movie) or if they do lose the big game (Rocky and The Bad News Bears) then they learn a valuable lesson . . . but there's no way I can watch another event where the plot summary is this: a team led by a dog-torturer persists against all odds in the fourth quarter because of heroic play by the aforementioned dog-torturer . . . that's an absurdly unsatisfying twist with no clear theme, moral or lesson . . . and I hope it's not a resurrection of this Absurd Miracle, which was a harbinger of hard times ahead.