Didja Know #1 (Brought To You By Charles C. Mann)

I have a habit of reading non-fiction books that force me to say the ever-annoying phrase "Didja know   . . ." followed by some inane fact that no one but myself cares about-- sorry-- and I'm halfway through another book like this-- 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created by Charles C. Mann-- and (lucky for you) I read his earlier book 1491: New Revelation of the Americas Before Columbus before I began writing this blog, so you won't have to learn the truth about the civilizations that were here when the Europeans arrived, but, since I am on vacation, I will provide you with some interesting ideas from 1493 over the next few days, some of which I knew before I read the book, and some of which you might know as well . . . so here we go: didja know that the most potent form of malaria was imported from the swamps of Southern England to America, and was a major cause of why slavery took root in the South . . . because while indentured servants were cheaper than buying a slave, they kept dying of malaria, while the African Americans, due to sickle cell and Duffy antigen mutations, were more resistant to the plasmodium parasite and so-- though no one knew about the parasite itself-- plantations that used slaves fared better than plantations that used indentured servants and this advantage propelled them to success and gave slavery a strong hold below the malarial Mason-Dixon line (malaria also helped the nascent United States, Cornwallis's army was mainly composed of "unseasoned" Scots and he camped near a swamp before his fateful surrender to malarial resistant Southern troops at Yorktown).

Dave's 105 Books to Read Before You Die (Which Will be Sooner Than You Think)

Everyone seems to have a top hundred list of something, and so here are my top hundred books (plus five bonus books in case you finish the top hundred too quickly) and each author is only represented once, so while Shakespeare and Italo Calvino may actually deserve more than one slot, for the sake of variety there are no repeats; also, there is fiction, non-fiction, and everything else on this list . . . and I should point out that once you finish reading all the books on this list, then you will be much smarter than me, because though I've read them all, I'm not sure I remember anything from them:

1.   Moby Dick by Herman Melville
2.   Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky
3.   War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
4.   The Lives of the Cell by Lewis Thomas
5.   Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
6.   If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino
7.   Tristram Shandy by Lawrence Sterne
8.   Freaky Deaky by Elmore Leonard
9.   Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
10. V by Thomas Pynchon
11. The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
12. 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
13.  Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges
14.  Into the Wild by John Krakauer
15.  Music of Chance by Paul Auster
16.  The Dog of the South by Charles Portis
17.  Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
18. All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren
19. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
20. The Bible
21. Henry IV (part 1) by William Shakespeare
22. The Complete Stories of J.G. Ballard
23. The Stories of John Cheever
24. Will You Please Be Quiet Please by Raymond Carver
25. The Image by Daniel Boorstin
26. Clockers by Richard Price
27. Nixonland by Rick Perlstein
28. American Tabloid by James Ellroy
29. A Peoples History of the United States by Howard Zinn
30. Balkan Ghosts by Robert Kaplan
31. The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles
32. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch  by Philip K. Dick
33.  Chaos by James Gleick
34.  The Society of the Mind by Marvin Minsky
35.  Watchmen by Alan Moore/ Dave Gibbons
36.  The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson
37.  The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer
38.  Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa-Puffs by Chuck Klosterman
39.  Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
40.  Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
41.  Foucalt's Pendulum by Umberto Eco
42.  Solaris by Stanislaw Lem
43.  War With The Newts by Karel Kapek
44.  The Miracle Game by Josef Skvorecky
45.  The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams
46.  Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving
47.  White Noise by Don Delillo
48.  The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
49.  Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell
50.  Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain
51.  Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
52.  Even Cowgirls Get the Blues by Tom Robbins
53.  Bully For Brontosaurus by Stephen J. Gould
54.  The Drifters by James A. Michener
55.  Geek Love by Catherine Dunne
56.  The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker
57.  Human Universals by Donald Brown
58.  Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors by Carl Sagan and Anne Druyan
59.  The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen
60.  The Diversity of Life by E.O. Wilson
61.  The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins
62.  Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
63.  American Splendor by Harvey Pekar/ Robert Crumb
64.  The Memoirs of Hector Berlioz by Hector Berlioz
65.  A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
66.  The Castle by Franz Kafka
67.  Midaq Alley by Naguib Mahfouz
68.  Naked by David Sedaris
69.  Godel Escher Bach by Douglas Hofstadter
70.  The Worldly Philosophers by Robert L. Heilbroner
71.  The Big Short by Michael Lewis
72.  Freakonomics by Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt
73.  Video Night in Kathmandu by Pico Iyer
74.  Monster of God by David Quammen
75.  Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
76.  Safe Area Gorazde by Joe Sacco
77.  Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
78.  Hyperspace by Michio Kaku
79.  Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
80. The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor
81.  Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny by Richard Wright
82.  The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
83.  Manchester United Ruined My Life by Colin Shindler
84.  Soccer in Sun and Shadow by Eduardo Galeano
85. From the Holy Mountain by William Dalrymple
86. A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace
87. The End of the Road by John Barth
88. Neuromancer by William Gibson
89. Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond
90. A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson
91. Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman
92. Some Buried Caesar by Rex Stout
93. The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
94. The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson
95. We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates
96. The Bushwhacked Piano by Thomas McGuane
97. The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
98. Walden by Henry David Thoreau
99. 1493 by Charles C. Mann
100.  Our Band Could Be Your Life by Michael Azerrad
101.  A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
102.  The Life and Death of the Great American School System by Diane Ravitch
103.  Methland by Nick Reding
104. A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
105. Born Standing Up by Steve Martin

Arachnophobes Beware!

My Jeep does not have power windows nor does it have air-conditioning, and I am not very tall, so it's quite a reach for me to roll down the passenger side window while I am driving, but in the summer this is often necessary in order to get a cross breeze and a bit of ventilation, and so the other morning I took the time to do this safely before I began to drive; a moment later, I saw-- out of the corner of my eye, something move in the center of that space where the window was; I turned my head and observed an obscenely large and fat banded garden spider suspended on a web in the space between the side mirror and the roof . . . floating in the center of that open window, and so-- with an effort worthy of Patrick "Eel" O'Brian-- I leaned over while driving and rolled that window up so the spider wouldn't blow into the car (not that there aren't spiders living in my car) and continued driving, glancing over every so often to see if the spider was still hanging on . . . and every time I turned my head, it was still there . . . it hung there all the way through Highland Park, and onto Woodbridge Avenue, and was still holding tight when I got on Route 1 South, and so I sped up as I crossed the Donald Goodkind Bridge, I sped up to forty-five then fifty then sixty, but still the spider held on, so I drove faster (as any police officer would understand, if they had the slightest empathy for an arachnophobe) until , finally, at nearly eighty miles an hour, the spider was dislodged and disappeared, like Vin Makazian, over the side of the bridge . . . and this is disturbing to me, because that means when you walk into a spider web and try to shake the spider and the web off your face and hands, you need to generate a lot of speed to get that thing off of you.

It's Easy Enough To Look It Up

Brendan Gleeson has been in two recent thrillers that owe a lot to Quentin Tarantino . . . they both explore the interstitial time periods that gangsters and cops inhabit between the action; In Bruges (2008) follows the adventures of two Dublin hit-men (Gleeson and Colin Farrell) sent to cool down in Belgium after a hit went horribly wrong-- and whether you like Hieronymous Bosch or not, I highly recommend this movie-- and now Gleeson stars in The Guard, which is equally as good . . . although the gangsters (international drug dealers) can be a little overly clever when they discuss philosophy, but the reason to watch the movie is to see Gleeson (a lazy and disenfranchised Galway cop, who is a good man who could have been a great man, if not for his location and his vices) interact with Don Cheadle-- who plays an FBI agent sent to Ireland to investigate drug smuggling . . . Cheadle can't tell if Gleeson is "really mother-bleeping dumb or really mother-bleeping smart," and neither can we . . . until the end: I won't spoil the ending, but it's easy enough to look it up on the internet, and I give this film two girls from the agency in Dublin out of a possible two . . . you have to see it not only for Gleeson, who is prodigious both in his size and his acting skills, but also for the plot, which makes excellent use of a crotch-infection, and actually makes you think twice once you've finished watching . . . and if you have seen it, remember that the IRA guy in the cowboy hat owes him a favor.

I Could Have Told You This Without Doing A Study

A recent study done at The University of California asserts that people enjoy mystery and suspense stories more if the plot is spoiled . . . and this makes perfect sense to me, because I usually enjoy something more if I have more information about it; it is easier to process and less stressful . . . which is why I am vehemently opposed to surprise parties, which have nothing to do with the victim's enjoyment of the party and are all about the selfish, egotistical party-planners, who think they are so clever, withholding information from the person who is supposed to enjoy the party the most, but, of course, the victim doesn't enjoy the party the most . . . the planners enjoy the party the most, because, as the study illustrates, they are in the know, and the victim doesn't enjoy the party because the victim is either A) genuinely surprised, which as the study shows, is not particularly enjoyable and can be a lot to process-- I was genuinely surprised by a party on my 30th birthday, and it took me an hour to get over the fact that we were no longer (and never had been) going to my favorite mexican restaurant or B) not surprised because the victim sussed out the party, and then has to deal with the stress of acting surprised, which, unless the victim is a professional actor, is not fun and rather stressful . . . and so let this be a lesson to all of you potential surprise party planners: people enjoy knowing what's going to happen next . . . especially if it's something fun like a party, so don't deprive someone of all the happy and enjoyable preparatory thoughts about a party in their honor just because you feel the need to exercise your sinister desires to spread disinformation and skulk about . . . you're not being ingenious, you're being iniquitous.

Geeks, sportos, motorheads, dweebs, dorks, sluts, buttheads... they all think he's a righteous dude.

Alexandra Robbins' new book The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth: Popularity, Quirk Theory, and Why Outsiders Thrive After High School doesn't break any new ground with its thesis: the traits that you might be bullied, ridiculed, and ostracized for in high school are the very same traits that may lead to success when you leave the cliquey, rigid walls of school and enter the real world . . . but the book is well worth reading for the stories of the kids she follows . . . it's an eye-opening non-fiction update of The Breakfast Club, and while it's not quite as harsh as Mean Girls (which was based on a similar book called Queen Bees and Wannabes) it is still a rough road for Danielle (the loner), Whitney (the popular bitch), Eli (the nerd), Blue (the homosexual gamer), Regan (the weird girl), and Noah (the Band Geek) as they navigate the difference between being liked and being perceived as popular, and it makes you remember how cruel it is to ostracize someone . . . and even though I deal with kids this age all day, they are different in class, and so if I am assigned cafeteria duty this year, I'm going to keep my eyes open and see if I can figure out what's actually going on in there . . .

 

Romantic Getaway?

My wife and I took a quick childless vacation to Philadelphia last week . . . a night of romance at The Thomas Bond House, a quaint, historical, and affordable bed and breakfast in the heart of the city's historical section . . . although our itinerary was anything but romantic: we began at The Mutter Museum, which is housed in The College of Physicians and contains a collection of stomach turning medical oddities from the 18th and 19th century . . . and while I won't go into detail describing them, I will tell you this: you should be glad you're not hydrocephalic . . . then we saw a very un-romantic movie (The Guard with Brendan Gleeson . . . the most romantic part is when he has some fun with two girls from "the agency" in Dublin and contracts a genital rash . . . and while I am being un-romantic, let me talk about money: the movie theater, like everything else in Philly, was cheap . . . it was only 6.50 for a ticket) and we ate at two excellent places that certainly can't be described as romantic-- The Good Dog, which has the appearance of a neighborhood dive bar but makes amazing sandwiches, and Dmitri's, which is tiny, crowded, noisy, and spartan, with a black and white checked floor, tables, and nothing else inside . . . but the octopus and shrimp and hummus and avocado citrus salad are excellent . . . and then we finished our anti-romantic romantic getaway at Eastern State Penitentiary-- claimed to be the first modern building in America and the first penitentiary in the world-- and the place is truly creepy, especially when you listen to the audio tour, which is narrated by Steve Buscemi, and highly recommended (and if you've seen Twelve Monkeys, several scenes from the film were shot inside the prison walls).

Who Needs Anything Else?

The plots of the HBO comedy Bored to Death are pretty thin, but you don't need a plot when you get to watch Ted Danson and Zach Galifianakis pretend to get stoned in a car (when Galifianakis asks Danson a question about time, Danson claims ignorance because he's on "marijuana minutes.")

Motion Trumps Emotion

There's nothing like getting your ass in gear for combating apathy and/or anxiety . . . and once you get your shit moving, all the other bullshit just seems to fade into the background (and if you are appalled and offended by my liberal use of profanity today, then read this . . . I'm relieving both the pain and the stress in my life without using drugs and/or alcohol or physically abusing my loved ones).

The Anecdote of the Jar

No one wants to hear parents bragging about their kids, so I'll make this quick and then get to the conspiracy theories: my six year old son Ian used pastels to draw the clay jar pictured above while he was at his art class; the shading is first rate, and his teacher was so impressed that she put a picture of it on her web page . . . and my first reaction when Ian brought this piece home was: "You didn't make that!" and Sentence of Dave has investigated artistic manipulation enough that I at least have to entertain the idea that Ian didn't produce this very competent still-life . . . but then who did? . . . at first I suspected his art teacher Jill, and that made sense, because if we perceived her as an excellent teacher, then we would keep sending Ian back to her for lessons, but, unlike Marla Olmstead, Ian will produce quality art in front of anyone (and also, unlike Marla Olmstead, you can usually tell what it is he has produced) and so the hoax must be more sinister . . . I am guessing that Banksy is posing as my six year old son-- his ultimate piece of performance art-- and meanwhile my actual son roams the earth with his mentor Mr. Brainwash, doing graffiti art, and eventually they will reveal the swap and bask in the glory of media fame . . . and the price of both Banksy and Ian's art will sky-rocket.

This One Comes Together At The End

So last Monday night Catherine and I were supposed to see the new Planet of the Apes movie, which is called Rise of the Planet of the Apes and purportedly details how genetically modified intelligent apes defeat the humans in a war for species supremacy . . . and judging from the reviews, the film uses the usual science-fiction trope of giving the human race exactly what it deserves for experimenting where it shouldn't . . . but though my mom got the kids on time, one errand led to another and we missed the movie and instead went to The George Street Ale House for food and drinks . . . but we got more than we bargained for: a young man at the table behind us decided to attempt to eat "Das Burger," which is two 1 pound hamburger patties, four fried eggs, four slices of pork-roll, a slab of Gouda, apple-wood bacon, and four onion rings all served on a giant bun . . . if you finish "Das Burger" in under 30 minutes then it is free, but if you don't, then it costs 29 dollars . . . and though the guy started strong, never putting the burger down and using water strategically to help his mastication, it still came down to the final minute and, with his friend cheering him on, he was able to shove the last bit of meat and bun in his mouth under the wire, but then he bolted towards the bathroom in what I thought was a joking feint to go vomit . . . it wasn't a joke . . . but he choked his vomit back down . . . TWICE . . . and officially ate "Das Burger" . . . and judging by this event, I don't think the demise of human civilization needs anything as radical and dramatic as genetically modified intelligent apes, we're doing fine on our own.

Aphorism Week is Canceled!

Due to yesterday's atrocious aphorism, The Sentence of Dave Board of Directors has decided (wisely) to cancel Aphorism Week . . . expect the usual drivel tomorrow.

Aphorism Week Begins!

It's aphorism week here at Sentence of Dave, and here is #1: Follow your dreams, even if they lead you down into a deep, dark and sticky abyss from which there is no escape . . . and once you have fallen down so deep into your own particular dream-pit that there is no way back to the light, once you are trapped, your arms and legs stuck to the walls, and the only possible way to escape is by hacking off your limbs Aron Ralston style, then you know you must continue to follow your delusional fantasies-- to become a world renowned graffiti artist or pass the audition for American Idol or pilot a hot-air balloon around the world-- and so you continue them though you are blind, isolated, and friendless, and you do this until you die, but in the moments before your death you feel great satisfaction that you lived life as your own man, bowing to none, listening to none, forging your own path, and this feeling makes it almost worth the fact that there is no one to mourn your passing, in fact, there's not even anyone to pay for your funeral and you will be buried in a pauper's grave.

A Full Day in NYC (Including The Whitney)

Though over 1.5 million people live in Manhattan, it felt like a small town last week when we arrived at the 81st Street Subway Station and found a note taped to the column outside the Museum of Natural History entrance that read "Gabov and Akos . . . We went to get some beers" and though we never caught up with Gabov and Akos at the bar, my two sons enjoyed the giant mamenchisaurus exhibit-- the museum staff actually built one of these creatures, with muscle and organ cutaways . . . very illuminating and highly recommended . . . also highly recommended (thanks Zman!) is lunch at the Shake Shack-- which is on Columbus between 77th and 78th and so a very short walk from the museum . . . the Shake Shack has awesome burgers, fries, and shakes and it is far cheaper than museum food, and they'll let you back into the museum after you go eat there (warning: get there before noon or you'll wait in a giant line) and after the museum, we trekked across Central Park to see The Whitney-- The Museum of American Art, not the all around fun guy that lives in Norfolk-- which had an exhibit of Lyonel Feininger's colorful expressionist paintings-- which we all enjoyed-- but I think my kids liked Cory Arcangel's "Pro Tools" exhibit more . . . he creates weird technological installations, such as Various Self Playing Bowling Games, which is a bowling alley consisting of large-scale projections of bowling games from the late 1970s to now, with each bowler only chucking gutter balls . . . there was also an optical illusion he created with metal carts that made Catherine and I question our sanity and a film of hundreds of different people on YouTube playing a Paganini piece, stitched together note by note . . . it almost gave me a epileptic seizure but it is SFW, so check it out . . . and we ended the day by taking a taxi ride back to Penn Station . . . Alex and Ian fell asleep the moment their heads hit the dirty, germ encrusted taxi seats.

A Song Contest!

Anyone and everyone with an ounce of musical talent: head over to Gheorghe: The Blog for the First Annual G:TB Song Contest, sponsored by Almighty Yojo Productions . . . you just might win The Grand Prize.

Mine Shaft

I highly recommend a visit to The Sterling Hill Mining Museum in Ogdensburg, NJ . . . it is the self-proclaimed "Fluorescent Mineral Capital of the World" and you will not be disappointed in this regard . . . the museum (Zobel Exhibit Hall) contains a startling array of valuable minerals, fossils, and mining equipment-- in fact, it was recently burgled-- and the pièce de résistance is a giant wooden periodic table with cubbyholes containing samples, ore and examples of every element (there should be one of these in every science class . . . but the guy who built it said it contains 25,000 dollars worth of stuff) and when you do journey down into the historical Sterling Hill Zinc Mine, perhaps you'll be lucky enough to have an older gentleman named Bob as your guide . . . he calls the men "Ace" and the women "Sweets" and speaks in staccato sentences that begin with information about the mine but end with anecdotal non sequiturs about twenty dollar bills and driver's licenses, motel rooms and electrical outlets, and the importance of a good dentist . . . he's also not afraid to tell a joke or two (e.g. what side of a cow has the most hair? the outside) and every time someone sneezed he high-fived their snot coated hand and said, "God bless you and God bless me," and, if you are still not understanding the value of having a guide with dementia, remember that it's a two hour tour deep into the bowels of the earth, so having Bob as a guide only adds to the excitement, as you're not sure if you will ever return to the surface again.

A Geography Question

Is it better to live in Hoboken and have a view of the Manhattan skyline . . . or spend the extra cash and live in Manhattan, and have a view of the Hoboken skyline?

The Peeing Tree

I assume you are familiar with Shel Silverstein's tale of sacrifice called The Giving Tree, but that's nothing compared with what "The Peeing Tree" had to endure on our camping trip . . . the tree was named this for obvious reasons, as four boys under ten years old need to urinate a lot when they are in the woods, and the tree absorbed their micturates without complaint or offense . . . but (also for obvious reasons) the stories do not end in the same manner . . . you wouldn't want to sit on or anywhere near "The Peeing Tree."

Two Strikes on China Mieville (But A Home Run for Rex Stout)

For the second time, I have given up on a China Mieville novel . . . I tried to read Perdido Street Station and loved the wild imagery, the inter-species love affair, and the detailed bestiary of New Corubuzon, but got bored with the repetitive plot, and now I have given up on his new novel, Kraken, which happens in an bizarrely imagined version of London and recounts a "squidnapping" and-- among other things-- a Giant Squid Cult, a strike among magical familiars, people who can be folded up like origami, and other cool Philip K. Dick-esque (Dick-ian?) conceits, and although there is plenty of action, once again, the plot is rather lame and repetitive and so three hundred pages was enough for me . . . but the book I switched to-- a Nero Wolfe mystery called Some Buried Caesar, by Rex Stout-- is worth reading: a plot worthy of a Raymond Chandler novel, hard-boiled wisecracks worthy of Dashiell Hammett, and the near idolatry of a prize-winning bull named Hickory Caesar Brindon . . . a bovine protagonist always referred to by his full moniker: ten prize orchids out of ten.

A Fantastic Ratio

I finally polished off George R.R. Martin's second novel in his epic The Song of Fire and Ice . . . A Clash of Kings is long, bleak, and complex-- it's definitely got the "Empire Strikes Back" groove-- and I have figured out the secret of how Martin retains his magical lack of whimsy: his proper name to adjective ratio is ten to one.