It's impossible to remember what it's like to be a kid . . . your body lives in a world of a different scale and your brain, though ignorant of much of the world, is flexible and free; case in point, last week I was watching my kids play tag, and my youngest son Ian, who is six, was running along, just behind a pack of kids, and without breaking stride, he flung himself into a forward roll and then-- in one motion, reminiscent of Sonic the Hedgehog-- he popped out of the roll and continued running along . . . and now this has become his signature move while running-- his bit of flair-- but when he was teaching his brother Alex (who is only a year older) how to do the move, Alex looked like he was going to break his neck-- and so I gently told him that he might need to practice on a mat in gym class before doing it like Ian at full bore, and Alex, surprisingly, agreed . . . and he rarely agrees with anything-- but even he realized that he was getting older and not quite as indestructibly creative as his younger brother.
Wisdom About Carrying Groceries
As I've gotten older, I have learned that it is usually best to take two trips.
Like Caddyshack, Except With Children
Parents: you might not have time to read this really long, excellent article on raising kids (All Joy and No Fun: Why Parents Hate Parenting) because you are probably busy carting your kids to soccer or to the doctor, or changing over winter clothes or a dirty diaper, or washing out bottles or dirty ears, and so I will summarize the thesis for you: you might not be happy about raising children until you are on your death-bed, but until then it's up in the air . . . and this reminds me of what Carl the Groundskeeper reveals about his golf match with the Dalai Lama in Caddyshack . . . the Lama attempts to "stiff him" on their bet but Carl stands up to him and demands some kind of reward for his victory: "Hey Lama . . . how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know and he says, 'Oh, there won't be any money, but when you die, on your death bed, you will receive total consciousness,' so I got that going for me, which is nice," so-- all you parents out there-- we've got that going for us, which is nice.
Ring the Bells, Ring the Bells . . .
Let is be known that on the eleventh day of the twelfth month of the eleventh year of the Third Millenium Anno Domini (that's right, it is the third Millenium) I scored 101 points on the Thirty Second Blitz mode of Tiger's super-awesome game Bulls-Eye Ball (and my wife and kids thought this to be a super-excellent score, but they need to check out the dude in the video . . . he uses both hands!)
Natural Beauty At Hacklebarney
Last Sunday was absolutely beautiful-- as sunny and warm as a December day could be-- and so Catherine and I took the to Hacklebarney State Park for a hike, and on the way down the ravine we took the low road, clambering over rocks so we could get near all the tumbling waterfalls and when we popped our heads over the crest of a large boulder we saw something unexpected: a girl in a skimpy blue bikini at the base of the falls (pictured above) and I immediately thought: Polar Plunge! but then we noticed a guy with a camera and another guy with a tripod and I thought: Hot Model in a Photo Shoot! but upon closer inspection the "model," sported a couple of ugly tattoos above her flat and rather untoned posterior, and though she was buxom, she also had a protuberant beer belly . . . not that she was hideous or anything . . . but when you see someone doing a bikini photo-shoot in December, you expect her to be a professional; so the question is, why were they taking these photos and how will they be utilized?
Poison Ivy, Jesus, and Leprosy
I'm not a regular church-goer (or even an irregular church-goer) but in preparation for Christmas I do break out our children's Bible and read it to my kids at bed-time, and we were just getting to the verse where Jesus heals the leper when I thought of a way to make this a bit more real for them, so I pointed out that my wife's horrible case of poison ivy was similar to leprosy (perhaps leprosy-lite?) and that it would be nice if Jesus was around to lay hands on mommy and heal her suppurating wounds and then I read them the story and their reactions were ridiculously close to my own thoughts and certainly show that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree: Ian said, "That's not real, that's fake, that couldn't happen," and I told him that we can't be sure because the story is very old . . . but it does seem rather unlikely, and then Alex-- who has never heard me utter these words-- said, "I don't really like stories about crazy diseases because then when I go to bed I start thinking about them and how I might have them," which is exactly how I feel about such stories and the reason I don't read books about medicine . . . but I told him that he doesn't really have to worry about leprosy these days and that poison ivy is a far more pressing matter.
Let's Get Our National Priorities Straight
Once again, my wife has contracted a serious case of poison ivy and I am wondering what the hell our government is doing about this stuff-- which grows everywhere in New Jersey and inspires far more terror in me than any other threat I can think of . . . I can't walk in the woods without feeling paranoid that I'm going to get it, and shouldn't our great nation-- which is determined to fight the good fight against terrorism-- be working hard on a cure or inoculation or something for this incredibly toxic urushiol oil, which is so potent that it only takes a quarter ounce to give everyone on earth a rash (according to this, it only takes one nanogram to give some people the rash, and it is the most common allergy in the country) so let's take this stuff seriously and either try to eradicate it, cure it, or weaponize it . . . who is with me?
Where's Johnny?
Catherine's 40th Birthday Bar Crawl went wonderfully . . . and though we only crawled to three bars (Doll's Place, The Golden Rail, and The Corner Tavern) a good time was had by all-- plenty of conversation, beer, darts, pool, and fake mustaches and some first-timers got to experience the Rutgers Grease Trucks (who knew you could order a BLT?) and the only hitch in the evening was when we realized we had lost Johnny G. somewhere between eating grease-truck sandwiches and walking past the train station-- we assumed Johnny was with Marls and Sarah, trying to catch the last train . . . but when they came down from the platform there was no Johnny-- but after a cryptic text to Whitney, he was able to flag a cab down and beat us home-- and Whitney and Jenny had already broken into our house because they couldn't muster the energy to make the walk back and had also flagged down a cab . . . perhaps I will organize a bar crawl with more peregrinations for my 42nd Birthday, which is coming up in March: just enough time for me to recover this crawl.
Girls are Gross
Paul Feig-- who wrote the fantastically funny memoir Superstud: Or How I Became a 24 Year Old Virgin as well as numerous other excellent TV shows and films . . . including Freaks and Geeks-- entered a competition of his own creation with his new movie Bridesmaids . . . he obviously set out to out-raunch the typical male gross-out comedy-- with females-- and he certainly succeeds; the result is very funny but don't watch it the way I did, while eating a bowl of chocolate pudding, or you'll come close to retching.
New Tricks For an Old Dog
You can teach an old dog a new trick, but it's not fun to watch him learn it . . . in fact, it's downright painful, but after a tutorial from one of my 8th-grade players and close to a million awkward, ugly, and clumsy tries, I finally successfully completed the "around the world" soccer juggling move . . . I did it twice in one day and I haven't been able to do it since (mainly because my right knee is killing me, due to all the failed attempts).
Fear . . . That Wonderful Motivational Tool From the Past
Teaching is harder now than it once was-- educators have to be engaging instead of handy with the paddle.
Short Term Memory Problem
I rounded the corner yesterday morning and found my son Alex attempting to shove the bathroom door open, but Ian-- while in the act of defecating-- was pushing the door the opposite direction, an impressive feat while seated on the commode, and so I asked Alex why he felt the need to get into the bathroom while Ian was engaged in his morning constitutional and Alex said that he needed to brush his teeth and he couldn't wait "because he would forget to do it" and so I told Alex that it is a "rule of the world" that you never interrupt anyone in the act of defecation and the fact that he couldn't remember to brush his teeth in five minutes was his problem, and that he needed to work on his memory and not bother Ian, and Alex told me that he had a hard time remembering to brush his teeth because he had "so much to do, like get dressed and eat breakfast" and I guess that is a lot of things for a seven year old to think about, but I didn't have the heart to tell him that as he grows older, it will just keep getting worse and worse.
Taco Lunch With All The Fixin's Makes Dave Happy
Last week, with some help from my wife, I brought a complete left-over taco lunch to school, and I ate it at cafeteria duty; I think my fellow cafeteria monitors were impressed and jealous when I finally finished pulling out the array of small containers and plastic bags from my lunch cooler: taco shells, fresh home-made roasted tomatillo salsa, guacamole, yellow rice, taco meat (which I heated in the cafeteria microwave) and grated cheese; my Taco Count is up to 190 so I'm going to take it slow for the next month so I can eat my 200th taco as 2011 winds down . . . and my New Year's Resolution for 2012 is going to be more abstract and require a lot less less counting.
Happy Birthday Catherine (So Glad You're Not Barking Mad)
My lovely, charming, beautiful and-- most importantly-- sane and logical wife turns 40 today . . . and, after watching the new Errol Morris documentary Tabloid, which revisits the story of the "manacled Mormon" and his purported kidnapper and lover, Joyce McKinney, you will realize that the most important thing in a relationship is not the charming and beautiful part, but the sane and logical-- so if you want to appreciate your sane and logical significant other, then spend 90 minutes with Joyce McKinney, who was certainly beautiful and charming, and certainly had a strong and passionate love for a certain chubby Mormon missionary named Kirk Anderson, but as for the sane and logical part . . . you'll have to be the judge; I won't reveal the rest of the story, but it has more plot twists than a John le Carre novel and Erroll Morris captures plenty of documentary gold along the way: five cloned dogs out of five.
Fat Man Laughing (A Bonus Sentence For A Sad Occasion)
Comic Patrice O'Neal died today at age 41 and I will miss him . . . but at least the memory of this altercation will be preserved forever (or as long as Google continues to host this blogging absurdity).
A Perfect Fiction
Though it is satire, this Onion article is so dead-on it deserves a Pulitzer (thanks Jen for passing it along . . . it certainly captures the true spirit of the holidays).
Jake Epping = Stephen King
I finished the new Stephen King novel-- all 849 pages-- in less than a week, and while at the start I thought it was going to be about how history would be different if JFK wasn't assassinated, it turns out that I was wrong-- the book is a love story!-- that's right, I read an 849 page love story, which is certainly a testament to the narrative ability of Stephen King, and not only is it a love story, but there's a lot of dancing as well . . . and anyone who has seen me dance knows that I find dancing far scarier than a killer car or a killer dog or a killer clown that lives in the sewers . . . so all I can say to the Master of Horror is job well done, because I couldn't put it down; this is the first King novel I've read since high school . . . I can clearly remember getting a hardcover copy of It for Christmas in 1986 and then wanting to hide from my family and read instead of participating in holiday togetherness . . . and I had the same feeling this Thanksgiving, though Catherine's brother was visiting and we had numerous social engagements, I did my best to keep my head buried in King's novel-- which is very appropriate because one of the novel's themes is that "the past is obdurate" and "the past harmonizes" and I certainly felt as if I was living in my own past, where I much preferred the company of a good Stephen King novel to the company of living breathing people . . . especially relatives . . . and not only that, like in the novel, I was in a race against time, but I didn't have the luxury of a time portal, and I had to have the book back to the library in three days time . . . but enough about that-- HERE COMES A SPOILER-- I've read a few reviews and most of them are very positive (except for some British lady who writes for the Star-Ledger and totally missed the point of the book . . . she thought King should have spent more time detailing the horrors of racism and segregation) but none of the reviews mentioned what I thought was pretty obvious: Jake Epping, the narrator, will become Stephen King once his adventures in time are concluded, as they are at the end of the novel-- like King, he almost ends up an English teacher, helping kids to love literature and learn to write, but, as King says, "life can turn on a dime" and Epping is torn from the past that might have been-- and I think it's Stephen King reminiscing about his love of the fifties-- and what he might have been had his life not "turned on a dime," had he not become the grisly horror writer we all know and love . . . Jake Epping finally returns to his own time-- realizing that you can't change the past, nor can you remain there forever-- but he also returns with half a novel about a small town, a string of serial murders, and the legend of a clown in the sewers . . . which, of course, meta-harmonizes very nicely with King's past and my own, so I think this will be the last thing I ever read by King, because-- as the novel clearly illustrates-- returning to the past is dangerous and can have unforeseen consequences . . . I lucked out this time, but next time things might turn horribly wrong.
Tradition=Work
One person's tradition is another person's chore (we always string Christmas lights around every tree on the property, it's a tradition! we always bake seventeen kinds of cookies for the holidays! we always get up at three in the morning on Black Friday and shop! it's a tradition . . . my ass, it's another job).
How To Deal With The Grandfather Paradox
Stephen King dismisses the "grandfather paradox" and other meta-logical nonsense (such as the craziness developed in the great but painful to untangle film Primer . . . if you want to read about time travel paradoxes, check out Chuck Klosterman's essay) because King has bigger fish to fry in new fantastic new novel 11/22/63 . . . such as what would happen to the universe if JFK had never been assassinated, and how far would a man go to prevent this event . . . so when the narrator is debating whether to become embroiled in the time travel plot, and he asks Al-- the diner owner who has access to the time portal which sends whoever walks through it back to the same sunny day in September of 1958 -- "Yeah, but what if you went back and killed your own grandfather?" Al simply stares at him, baffled, and replies, "Why the fuck would you do that?"
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