The Future of Anxiety?

In the '50's we worried about Communism and in the '60's we worried about Civil Rights and in the '70's it was the environment and in the '80's we worried about nuclear war (remember The Day After?) and in the '90's it was AIDS and in 2000 it was terrorism; these were all serious issues, but I hope in the coming decade we will choose something more entertaining to worry about . . . such as angry poltergeists or giant ants from the center of the earth or Ice 9 because, as George Lang says in Mamet's The Spanish Prisoner: "Worry is like interest paid in advance on a debt that never comes due."

Once Again, I Unleash My Super-Potent Rhetorical Forces

You may be aware of my super-potent rhetorical powers, and I have been forced to use them once again; this time I have unleashed a rhetorical tornado upon Roger Goodell, the commissioner of the NFL, in an attempt to get him to move the Super Bowl to Saturday (and also to make it a home game for the team with the best record) and you can read my extremely persuasive missive over at Gheorghe: The Blog-- and I guarantee you will be moved to my opinion on the matter.

Despite My Disappointment, Zack Snyder Probably Made a Good Decision (But What Do I Know?)

My wife and I watched Zack Snyder's epic treatment of the graphic novel Watchmen, and I assumed that my wife would need my help with the plot-- because she didn't read the graphic novel-- but, oddly, she was able to follow the film without my insight, which leads me to believe that Zach Snyder did a good job for the lay person, and I also think he did a good job for people familiar with the graphic novel-- but don't say this to Watchmen fanatics . . . for some reason they hate the movie, but I can't figure out why-- as in my humble opinion, the movie looks like a comic book and feels like the world of the Watchmen and Malin Akerman, the chick who plays Laurie Jupiter, is about as super-heroic looking as it gets (she's a hotter version of Linda Carter) and Dr. Manhattan, glowing radioactively and sporting a swinging blue tally-wacker, blends naturally into the scenes, which are more like sequences of loosely connected tableaux, but they do the trick and get across the plot . . . and though I was disappointed that the ending varied from the graphic novel, the movie ending is probably more elegant and requires less explanation and back-story, and so, in retrospect, after my initial disappointment of not getting to see a giant octopoid faux-alien transported into downtown Manhattan, I agree that the new ending makes more sense . . . and I give the movie nine blood covered smiley faces out of a possible ten.

I Appreciate Those With A Sense of Style

I had to return a pair of jeans to Kohls on Saturday (I am less fat than my wife thought . . . a 36'' waist is too big) and and this errand made me remember why I generally dress like a hobo: buying a piece of clothing is insanely difficult . . . I wanted to exchange the jeans for a similar pair a size smaller, but they didn't have any that were exactly the same in the smaller size and because the price was different, I had to go to customer service, and she suggested I try the "kiosk" and order on-line-- but this was too difficult as you had to enter your address, credit, and shipping information by selecting letters with a key-pad (and I had already been three places to find some indoor soccer shoes, so I was shopped out) and so I finally elected to get store credit and try my luck on the racks, and I soon found myself lost in piles of 569's and 505's and 520's and 560's . . . and each number had different variations in style-- Loose Fit, Relaxed Fit, Slim Fit, Comfort Fit, Relaxed Straight Fit, Flamboyant Fit-- and also variations in color: distressed, faded, black, blue, blue with weird gold thread . . . which leads to billions of permutations of jeans . . . I tried on ONE of these billions of permutations and got fed up and left the store . . . and so now I see just how difficult it is to have style (unless you're rich and pay a stylist to pick out clothes for you, like Ralph does for Howard Stern) and although I will never have the patience to have style and I will continue to dress like a hobo rather than repeat shopping experiences like this . . . I now truly appreciate what it takes to dress well.

An Unexpected (And Possibly Rude) Request

While I was handing cash to the gas station attendant at Raceway, he made a strange request . . . he said, "Do you have any extra?" and I was confused-- it was very early in the morning-- until I saw that he was looking into the back of my Jeep, where I still had a bag of soccer balls from the fall season, and it took me a second to realize he was asking if I could spare a ball for him, because obviously I had too many balls for one man (despite the fact that a cheap soccer ball costs one quarter the price of a tank of gas) and once I understood his request, I answered: "They're not mine, they're the school's soccer balls," and this seemed to satisfy him . . . but I think this a breach of etiquette . . . when you are paying money for something, the person you are paying shouldn't ask you for some of your stuff, right?

Watchmen Makes You Earn It

I finally finished Watchmen, the heralded graphic novel that treats super-heroes as realistically as a Henry James novel treats consciousness, and it was an engrossing read-- it requires total commitment to get through a page-- the level of detail in the frames is astounding, the shifting genres are always perfect in tone, and the plot is dense and complex . . . and if you suffer through the cold, dark, corrupt world-- including the comic book within the Watchmen universe, the tale of the Black Freighter-- then there is a reward at the end: some traditional comic book fun . . . I can't wait to see how they did it in the film version.

Kids Those Days . . .

Don't expect new book reviews any time soon, as I am re-reading War and Peace . . . super-translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky came out with a new translation a few years ago, and even though I'm familiar with the characters, the first scene, at Anna Pavlovna's soiree, is still brutal: full of French dialogue and explanatory footnotes, historical references, and loads of characters with long Russian names, but if you survive, then Tolstoy rewards you with something more exciting-- a night of drinking and debauchery, including a drinking challenge (Dolokhov chugs an entire bottle of rum while sitting on a ledge) and a prank . . . after the party the Dolokhov, Pierre, and Anatole tie a policeman to the back of a tame bear and toss the pair into the river, so that the policeman flails about while the bear swims . . . and that sets the bar pretty high for drunken idiocy . . . I've never done anything THAT stupid and I doubt my kids will either, so if they ever commit any drunken shenanigans, I'll take a deep breath and remember to compare it to the bear and the policeman.

The Kids Are All Right (Not The Kids Are Alright)

I had a hard time separating the title of this film from the catchy chorus of the similarly named Who song . . . but it only took a moment of viewing before my wife and I were settled into the sun-soaked world of Southern California (the light reminded me of Sideways) and a fairly traditional family drama-- despite a lesbian marriage and a sperm donor; Mark Ruffalo, Julianne Moore, and Annette Bening are such good actors that every beat works; the film is by turns, funny, awkward, dramatic, poignant, and in the end-- despite its hippie sensibility-- traditional: Annette Bening indignantly and rightfully defends her family from an "interloper" . . . nine heirloom tomatoes out of ten.

This Is the Reaction I Expect!

I received a voice-message at work on Tuesday, which is usually something bad-- and the computerized voice said that the message was "80 seconds long," which is a pretty long message, so I was expecting the worst  . . . an irate parent or an administrator reminding me of something important I had forgotten, but from the first moment of the message I knew this was going to be different; it was a woman calling to express her rapturous adulation for my editorial opposing charter schools (which had just appeared in the local paper) and it was so impassioned that it made me blush, there were times when she seemed to be at a loss for words, nearly swooning with emotion toward my "cogency," and to confirm my suspicions about the tone, I let a few other people listen to the message (I've been known, on occasion, to misinterpret the female tone of voice) and they all agreed that I was correct in my inference . . . and I can't reproduce the commentary from the other teachers here because this is a family friendly blog, but you can imagine what went on (and I should point out that the woman-- who no longer has any students in the school-- left her phone number, though she said I didn't have to call her back) and, though it made me a bit uncomfortable, I think I'd like more of these messages, so if you read something wonderful that I've written, this is the reaction I will now expect of you.

Kids Love Earwax and Vomit

Our friends went to Disney last week and they brought the boys back some Bertie Bott's Jelly Beans from HoneyDukes Candy Store; some of the beans are tasty: watermelon, blueberry, and lemon . . . some are bizarre: grass, black pepper-- which is actually kind of satisfying-- and dirt (which left a lingering dusty flavor at the top of my mouth) . . . and some are thoroughly disgusting: earwax, vomit, sausage, rotten egg, and soap . . . and the kids kept selecting the gross ones, so they could scream about how repulsive they tasted and then spit them into the garbage.

Impatience and Convenience Go Hand in Hand

 Whoever invented the mechanism that allows you to remove the coffee-pot while the coffee is still brewing-- so that you can have a cup before the process is even finished-- was a brilliant, impatient man.

Bad Hair Night

Thursday night, minutes before I had to drive my kids to indoor soccer, I noticed some stray and unseemly gray hairs poking from the right side of my head, and I decided that I would trim them with my beard trimmer, but-- perhaps because I was in a rush-- I slipped . . . and cut a dent into my hair just above my right ear, and in my attempts to "even things out," I made the situation much, much worse, but then I felt obligated to make it equally as "even" on the other side of my head, so that at least my new style would be symmetrically bad . . . and in the end, I essentially gave myself a mullet (and a poor one, at that) and though I frantically tried to erase this by trimming randomly around the back of my head, I couldn't fix things and I had to take the kids to soccer and Catherine was at a meeting about charter schools, so I went to soccer looking like a lunatic, which the other parents found highly entertaining, and then when I got home, I was slated to go out for beers, and so I asked my wife if she would fix my hair first but she said, "No way, I'm exhausted, I'll do it tomorrow," and then she laughed at my misfortune and took a picture of the back of my head . . . but I was happy enough to be getting out on the town and so I said, "Who cares what I look like, it's not like I'm going out to pick-up girls," and she said, "Not that you could," and then, luckily (or unluckily for my students, who would have really enjoyed getting a look at my sorry head) we had a delayed opening due to snow and Catherine used a number 1 to shave away my remaining hair and make things look decent again.

Happiness

My wife was extremely pleased with the Jets after last week's victory, but not because she is a fan . . . her pleasure came from from the spectacle of enormous grown men running around the field with their arms out, pretending to be jet-planes.

Will Success Go To My Head?

My editorial on charter schools was published in both the local paper (The Sentinel) and the regional paper (The Home News/Tribune) and some students told me their parents read it and agreed with my views . . . so the question is: will my successful foray into local activism go to my head? will I become a serious participant in local educational reform? will I start attending PTO and Board of Education meetings? will I continue to write editorials in an attempt to influence legislation? will I continue to fight the good fight? . . . or will I go back to recording psychedelic music with annoying monologues and make videos for them with stop-motion dry erase animation? . . . I would bet on the latter.

Am I A Narcissist?

I always assumed I was a narcissist (exhibit A: this blog) but perhaps I am wrong; Jennifer Senior's article "The Benjamin Button Election" defines a narcissist as someone "impatient, vainglorious, easily insulted, and aggrieved: they'd never dream of making sacrifices on anyone else's behalf, unless it simultaneously advanced an agenda of their own" and I don't really think that describes me at all-- I am certainly not easily insulted and aggrieved, and I sacrifice plenty for my kids . . . but to make sure of this, I took an Online Narcissism Test and I scored a 13 out of 40, which is actually below the average score for an American (15) . . . but I wonder: does taking time to take an Online Narcissism Test automatically make you a narcissist?

Some Aid For Governor Christie

I've been very critical of Governor Christie's treatment of teachers, so in the spirit of fair play, I'll give him some ammunition to wield in his next attack on us: teachers are paid in salary and benefits, but we are also paid in moral superiority and no one accounts for how much this is worth monetarily when they are computing school budgets . . . I know when I'm done teaching a lesson about Shakespeare's Henry IV pt. 1-- one of great works of Western Civilization-- that I feel pretty damn superior; my self-esteem is riding high, my body is full of all kinds of positive hormones, and I feel as though I'm contributing something fantastic to the world . . . and that's worth a lot of money . . . of course, I don't feel as morally superior as one of those doctors without borders or someone who volunteers to work with the homeless or a scientist who has just cured leprosy . . . but I certainly feel morally superior to a gun runner arming a genocide or a guy who tranches synthetic CDO's or an elephant poacher.

An Elegant Grocery Analogy

My wife called the new H-mart on Route 27 in Edison, "Wegmans for Koreans," which is Donald Draper-like in its poetic brevity . . . and I recommend taking a stroll through the store: it's full of weird sea-food (much of it alive!) and exotic packaged food, unusual produce, rows and rows of dumplings, employees giving out free samples, stacks of strange condiments and Asian conviviality.

David Mamet and I Share A Moment

Once you wade through the nautical terms (including the most awkward word in the English language: fo'c'sle . . . and a rope splicing term that will make you blush) then Patrick O'Brian's novel Master and Commander is less about sailing a brig in the Napoleonic Wars-- although there is plenty about sailing-- and more about how Commander Jack Aubrey navigates his great authority over men, while still being under the authority of his ranking officers; it is the first book in a series of twenty-one and I will certainly read more of them, though they are, as David Mamet calls them in a Times article, "Humble Genre Novels," but he argues that they will last longer than any of "today's putative literary gems," and then Mamet decides he will write a fan letter to O'Brian, thanking him for the great series, only to read in the newspaper that O'Brian has just died . . . and this reminds me of when I "discovered" Mitch Hedberg on a comedy DVD from Netflix, thought he was brilliantly funny, and went on-line to check if he was coming to The Stress Factory any time soon, only to find he had just died.

Some Predictions

My clairvoyance is well documented, so pay close attention to my Predictions for 2011: jeans will get even tighter, the accordion will NOT make a comeback,  the debate over how much a corporate entity can tranche a synthetic collateral debt obligation will bore people, Americans will forget about soccer until the next world cup, Leonardo DiCaprio will not make a screwball comedy, many people will go on diets, and I will eat more tacos.

Charter Schools and Vouchers: The Math Doesn't Add Up

Once again, I have written an argument against charter schools and vouchers, but this might appeal to more conservative minds, as it deals with the financial consequences of Governor Christie's legislation; please read it, get involved, sign the petition, write letters to the newspaper and your political representatives, and I promise to return to my usual stupidity.