I feared what I would find between the covers of The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations, Christopher Lasch's classic 1979 indictment of America, and while his criticism of both American style capitalism and the progressive liberal agenda of replacing the traditions and hegemony of the nuclear family with that of the state and government bureaucracy certainly still rings true, I was more concerned with falling into the category of a "pathological narcissist" and then having to stop writing this blog to treat the condition, but apparently I don't fit his definition at all-- he sees the dissolution of traditional values, awareness of others, and civic mindedness a result of "fascination with fame and celebrity, the fear of competition, the inability to suspend disbelief, the shallowness and transitory quality of personal relations, and the horror of the death" and, first of all, I don't have any sort of fascination with fame and celebrity-- in fact the reverse is true-- and I certainly love competition for its own sake and continue to compete for absolutely no reason (his chapter The Degradation of Sport is worth reading as a stand alone . . . he explains how antithetical it is for sports to have ulterior "character building" purposes, when actually-- as Heywood Hale Broun succinctly put it-- "sports don't build character-- they reveal it" and so they have a deeper significance than teaching kids to get along with their peers) and I don't make transitory friendships (nor do I have that ability, as I make a terrible first impression, and a pretty lousy second, third, and fourth impression as well) and I don't see too much horror in death and aging, as my mental age indicates . . . and even though I'm in the clear, I still highly recommend this book: Lasch is regretful in respects to what we have lost as a culture, but he lambastes both liberals and conservatives in how they have attempted to combat this, and his prose is oddly prescient, and reminiscent of Marshall McLuhan-- full of sentences like these: "Modern life is so thoroughly mediated by electronic images that we cannot help responding to others as if their actions-- and our own-- were being recorded and simultaneously transmitted to an unseen audience or stored up for close scrutiny at some later time" and "What unifies their actions is the need to promote and defend the system of corporate capitalism from which they-- the managers and professionals who operate the system-- derive most of the benefits . . . the needs of the system shape policy and set the permissible limits of public debate; most of us can see the system but not the class that administers it and monopolizes the wealth it creates."
Know Your Audience
Last Thursday night-- after much celebration-- we were blessed with the opportunity to play with a "musical staircase" at a law office in New Brunswick, and Lynn pounded out an aerobically taxing and rather avant-garde version of "Mary Had A Little Lamb" and I made this clever joke: "I'm going to be like John Coltrane and skip every other step," in reference to his use of the whole tone scale on his classic album "Giant Steps" but I had forgotten that there were no jazz-heads in this particular group of friends, and so the joke fell flat and had to be explained . . . which is a terribly annoying habit; the next time I'm about to make a joke about an obscure musical scale, I will consider my audience more carefully.
Bonus! 2012: The Year in Review . . .
2012 has been a wondeful year-- full of excitement and drama-- and if you want to read my comprehensive review of the biggest stories, head on over to Gheorghe: The Blog.
More Thoughts on Drinking
So I recently reported that when I stopped drinking beer and ate healthy food for a week that I noticed a number of salubrious effects, but this isn't always a good thing-- because I find that it's easier to play with my kids if I'm a little hungover . . . it's easier to enjoy Bulls-Eye Ball or pulling apart stuck Lego pieces or flying a kite, if you're brain isn't operating at full capacity.
So Funny?
Many people have written about the difficulty in expressing tone in electronic communication, and I will add an example to the list; a few weeks ago my son Ian had to go to the dentist to have an infected tooth extracted and I was too squeamish to accompany him, and so I sent my my wife . . . later that day, while I was eating lunch, I had a moment to check my cell phone and read the text my wife sent: "Ian was really brave but it was pretty bad and there was a lot of blood and he cried some . . . I grayed out from migraine effect and had to lie down . . . so funny" . . . so funny? I didn't think this sounded funny at all, in fact, it sounded horrible-- horrible enough to trigger this absurdity-- but, in retrospect, I guess it could have been worse-- my wife might have blacked out (or, if you are a fan of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, she could have "browned out") and in the end, Ian was quite proud of himself and the gaping hole in his mouth and his extracted tooth . . . in fact, he was so proud of his extracted tooth-- which he placed in a little plastic box for safekeeping--that he didn't want the tooth fairy to take it from him-- but he did want some money-- so I suggested that he draw a picture of the tooth and put that under his pillow and see of the tooth fairy accepted the drawing as fair currency, and wonder of wonders!-- the tooth fairy did accept the drawing, which raises some serious questions about fungibility in the fairy world.
Bonus: Stunningly Ironic New Year's Resolution Development!
The 2011 Taco Count is over (I ate my 200th last night) and I have moved on to a more abstract resolution for 2012-- to Care More About Canada-- and I gave myself one "Caring About Canada Credit" simply for writing a sentence about this topic, but apparently-- according to an actual flesh and blood Canadian (Thanks Melody!) I spelled "Ottawa" incorrectly in this sentence where I vowed to profess a sincere interest and curiosity in the giant country just north of us, and this irony is not lost on me, and so I am resetting my Caring About Canada Counter down to zero, where it belongs, and I will humbly proceed from there . . .
Loath and Loathe Revisited
Two things I should be loath to admit that I do not loathe: 1) spinning class-- because of plantar fasciitis, I am going light with the soccer and basketball for a few weeks, and so my wife convinced me to try spinning while I am healing, and I must admit the time goes very quickly and the work-out is intense-- though I feel very goofy biking to the beat 2) the Marky Mark song "Good Vibrations," which I was actually pleased to hear during the aforementioned spinning class.
These Might Be The Best Sentences of 2011
Last year I introduced the "These Might Be The Best Sentences" feature, in which a completely biased and rather lazy judge (me) hastily attempts to choose the best sentences of the year . . . and though this year I am still just as biased and just as lazy, I am introducing a number of categories and a Grand Prize Winner to make this feature seem more dramatic and legitimate:
1) in the "Generating The Most Passionate Discussion" category-- all of it vitriolic and all of it directed towards me-- my "miraculous" sentence 'What Balls May Come?" earns a spot on the list;
2) the winner of the "Personal Revelation" category is "I Use Probability to Solve A Marital Mystery";
3) "I May Have Given These Words of Wisdom to My Students" wins the "Pithy Maxim" award;
4) "No Principles=Happiness" is the hands down winner in the "My Wife Is Just A Little Bit Insane" category;
5) The Mystery of the Year is "A Brief But Inconclusive Tale of a Tail";
6) we have a tie in the Best Idea of Dave category between "Dave's Second Best Idea Ever!" and "Peacock Tail= 1959 Cadillac Eldorado Tail Fin";
7) in the Best Idea of Dave That He Can't Remember Conceiving Due to the Influence of Alcohol category, the winner is this gem of a sentence;
8) in the When the Odds Are Against You, Make A Sperm Joke category, the winner is this inspirational tale;
9) in the For Once Dave Actually Deserves an Apology category we have a rather prolix masterpiece, entitled "The Potato Chip Incident";
10) Krystina's Best Idea Ever wins the Best Idea by Someone Other Than Dave;
11) The Most Awkward Moment of Dave is this hypothetical and unusual entry;
and the Overall Grand Prize Winning Sentence (and also the winner of the prestigious Sentence That Made T.J. Make the Same Comment Over and Over Award) is not a single sentence, but instead an over-arching category of sentences that thematically dominated Sentence of Dave in 2011 . . . the award goes to The 2011 Taco Count! (and my wife is making tacos tonight as an appetizer for the party we are attending, and so-- God willing-- I should eat my 200th taco of 2011 sometime this evening).
1) in the "Generating The Most Passionate Discussion" category-- all of it vitriolic and all of it directed towards me-- my "miraculous" sentence 'What Balls May Come?" earns a spot on the list;
2) the winner of the "Personal Revelation" category is "I Use Probability to Solve A Marital Mystery";
3) "I May Have Given These Words of Wisdom to My Students" wins the "Pithy Maxim" award;
4) "No Principles=Happiness" is the hands down winner in the "My Wife Is Just A Little Bit Insane" category;
5) The Mystery of the Year is "A Brief But Inconclusive Tale of a Tail";
6) we have a tie in the Best Idea of Dave category between "Dave's Second Best Idea Ever!" and "Peacock Tail= 1959 Cadillac Eldorado Tail Fin";
7) in the Best Idea of Dave That He Can't Remember Conceiving Due to the Influence of Alcohol category, the winner is this gem of a sentence;
8) in the When the Odds Are Against You, Make A Sperm Joke category, the winner is this inspirational tale;
9) in the For Once Dave Actually Deserves an Apology category we have a rather prolix masterpiece, entitled "The Potato Chip Incident";
10) Krystina's Best Idea Ever wins the Best Idea by Someone Other Than Dave;
11) The Most Awkward Moment of Dave is this hypothetical and unusual entry;
and the Overall Grand Prize Winning Sentence (and also the winner of the prestigious Sentence That Made T.J. Make the Same Comment Over and Over Award) is not a single sentence, but instead an over-arching category of sentences that thematically dominated Sentence of Dave in 2011 . . . the award goes to The 2011 Taco Count! (and my wife is making tacos tonight as an appetizer for the party we are attending, and so-- God willing-- I should eat my 200th taco of 2011 sometime this evening).
O Canada!
Counting tacos was fun, but it did get a bit tedious (plus, I prefer tamales to tacos, and there were a few times when I had the opportunity to order tamales and would have preferred to eat tamales, but I ordered tacos just to up the count . . . the sacrifices I make for this blog!) and so for 2012, I am resolving to do something a bit more abstract, although I will still attempt to assess my progress here at Sentence of Dave . . . and the reason I choose this particular resolution, which I will reveal shortly, is because of an embarrassing conversation I had with my son's soccer coach-- who is Canadian-- in which I revealed a shocking ignorance of Canadian geography and culture, and-- when I was pressed-- I could not name the capital of Canada (and I am not retarded geographically-- I can name loads of obscure capital cities from countries such as Syria, Jordan, Turkey, Qatar, Ecuador, Bolivia, etc. and I present myself as fairly well-traveled individual, which made this exchange even more embarrassing) and so, for my New Year's Resolution in 2012, I swear to Care More About Canada and I will keep a counter of times when I care about something Canadian . . . when I research a fact about Canada or make an attempt to listen to a Canadian musician or watch a Canadian film or TV show or follow some part of Canadian politics or sports or culture . . . and I am confident I can care more about Canada than I did in 2011, when I did not care about Canada even once (I did care about friends that I have in Canada-- I taught with a number of Canadians when I was in Syria-- but that doesn't count . . . I'm going to try to care more about Canada itself, the nation just to our north with which we share a 3,987 mile border).
The Second Hardest Working Man
Lest you think I stumble upon all the great books that I review here, or, as I have been accused, simply give a fantastic review to every book I read, let me explain to you how hard I work to find something good to read . . . and I realize this "hard work" is probably easier than changing over the children's clothing, or putting up the Christmas lights, or painting an "accent wall" in the living room-- all of which I neglected to lend a hand with because I was "working hard" on finding a good book to read, but we all have our special skills . . . but before I raced through The Talented Mr. Ripley, by Patricia Highsmith, which I will a perfect give ten scuttled boats out of ten-- this thriller from 1955 is a hundred times more thrilling than the ubiquitously popular The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and you get to travel to places more scenic than Hedeby and Stockholm . . . Ripley is a combination of Richard III and Dexter-- before reading this masterpiece, I read hundreds of pages in other books, all of which were pretty good but none of which completely captured my imagination and to prove this to you, I offer you a list of Recent Books I Bailed On:1) Following the Water: A Hydromancer's Notebook (beautifully written but too many dead turtles); 2) Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search For the Origin of Species (excellent mix of science and the adventurers who made it possible, but too much biographical minutia for my taste); 3) Inferno, The World at War, 1939-1945 (I wanted to read an overview of WWII but this book is for the WWII buff, a massive tome beyond my scope); 4) The Beauty and The Sorrow: An Intimate History of the First World War (a great concept, tell the story of the war through common people, but again, I need to read a clear overview before I read this one); 5) The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (I always love Steven Pinker and this one is no exception, but the font is small and the book is huge, and some of it is a review for me, so I doubt I'll finish it before it's due back to the library); 6) The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in An Age of Diminishing Expectations (extremely insightful classic from the seventies, but I'm afraid if I finish all 250 depressing pages, and truly understand the book, then that I'll have to stop writing this blog).
Young and Confident
The other morning my wife and I were doing a "reverse Gatsby"; we were discussing when the shortest day of the year-- the Winter Solstice-- would occur, and this confused my son Ian, and so he asked, "So today isn't forty-five hours long?" and he spoke with such confidence that I really had a hard time breaking him the news that there were only twenty-four hours in a day.
Best Christmas Gift Ever: My Wife Got New Knobs!
My wife is an incredibly thoughtful gift-giver, and this year was no exception . . . she got new knobs! what more could any man ask for! a set of new knobs! . . . perhaps I should be more specific, she got new knobs for the kitchen cabinets, because the old knobs had sharp corners, which my shorts would catch on, resulting in several torn pockets, and I constantly complained about these pointy knobs and often called them "an accident waiting to happen" and so-- after I went to bed on Christmas Eve-- she installed the new knobs, and I was pleasantly surprised by them on Christmas morning.
If You Believe They Put A Man In The Moon . . .
My kids and wife insist they see someone, but I just can't make out the "man in the moon."
Holiday Wishes
So the other day I watched my son Alex mule kick his younger brother in the privates, and when I made the mistake of trying to get the bottom of the incident, this is what I learned: Alex claimed he was retaliating because Ian punched him in the face and Ian said he punched Alex in the face because Alex said he was "never going to be friends with him again" and Alex explained that he said this to his younger brother because he-- Alex-- had put a Lego set on his Christmas list and then Ian copied him and put the same set on his Christmas list and Alex told him to erase it because there was no way that they were going to get two of the same Lego set and that he had claimed it first but Ian refused to erase the Lego set from his list and so that exchange caused the chain reaction which resulted in all the hitting and mule-kicking and I would love-- just once-- to give my kids nothing but coal on Christmas, so that they think there is some credibility to this whole "naughty and nice" list . . . because it's obvious that no one is checking this thing "twice" for accuracy.
Grammar Lessons and Musical Confessions
Looks Can Be Deceiving . . . Or Can They?
Several weeks ago we had an unseasonably warm day and so I took my stand-up paddleboard (or SUP, to you paddleboard aficianados) out on the Raritan River for a final trip before I deflated it for winter storage-- and I assumed the water would look the same as it does from the banks-- brown and murky-- but once I got out there, it was more shallow than I imagined, and I could clearly see the stones on the bottom; this was a pleasant surprise, because my friend Connell was sure that I'd get a case of giardia or worse from tooling around on the Raritan, but, aside from a piece of garbage here and there, the water appeared quite clean . . . but my reverie was ruined when I ran into a dead seagull, rotting and bloated, and then a flock of twenty seagulls took off, and once they took flight, they crapped en masse, and their crap landed on the water and spread in an oily slick, which lapped against dead and rotting seagull, and that is the image I carried with me for the rest of my trip.
An Almost Awkward Moment of Dave
Regular readers may be familiar with the many Awkward Moments of Dave . . . and fans of this recurring feature will appreciate how this incident was almost The MOST Awkward Moment of Dave: before I went running on my free period at work on Monday, I changed my clothes in the women's staff bathroom-- which is next door to the men's staff bathroom and has a similar layout, a square room with a sink and a toilet, but no stall or other feature . . . and both these bathrooms open right into "B-Hall," a busy thoroughfare with many classrooms-- and the reason I use the women's bathroom is because there is furniture: a chair and a bureau-- and so while I am changing, I can put my clothes and belongings on the furniture instead of the urine soaked floor of the men's bathroom; it was cold Monday, and so I decided to wear spandex and while I was slipping out of my boxers, I was simultaneously fooling with my iPod and my underwear tangled around my ankles as I tried to flick it off with my foot and I fell, and because my hands were occupied, I fell hard and nearly hit my head on the toilet-- I was just able to break my fall with my left hand-- but if I didn't, and I knocked myself out, then the discovery would have been horrendously embarrassing, especially if it was between classes . . . a half-naked male teacher lying unconscious in the women's bathroom, with a pair of '90's style headphones tangled around his head . . . I was inches from infamy.
Costco: Highs and Lows
I went to Costco yesterday to stock up on booze and produce and it was a roller-coaster ride . . . at first it was all highs, they had Menage a Trois wine for 8.79 a bottle-- five dollars cheaper than at our local store-- and then-- even better!-- they had cases of Guinness for 28 dollars a case . . . and they hadn't stocked Guinness for months and months . . .but I did not realize that stacking those two cases of Guinness in the undercarriage of my super-sized cart would be the apex of my bulk-shopping happiness, I was cranked up as high as I could go . . . my plummet began when I couldn't get around some very old and very slow Asian ladies, and when I finally spotted some open space and was able to race by them, I got swept up in a giant crowd of people and found myself in the check-out line though I hadn't finished shopping-- but what could I do?-- so I waited and paid, and then while I was packing my goods into the provided boxes-- which, I should add, were all missing a side-- I launched a gigantic Costco sized bottle of balsamic vinegar over the top of my cart and onto the concrete floor, where it shattered, forming a large, amorphous, blood-colored pool . . . and though I wanted to slink away from the mess I had just made, one of the employees was "nice" enough to send a doddering old man for another bottle of vinegar, so I had to wait next to the giant mess I created-- in shame-- while the antediluvian errand boy waded through the maelstrom of shoppers and fetched a replacement bottle for me, and the store started to smell like a salad and everyone who passed me had to take a guess at what I spilled, and so I had to endure comments like "Soy sauce?" and "Is that wine? Should we get straws?" but, of course, I deserved these remarks-- that is how I paid for the extra bottle of vinegar-- and next time I will forgo the treacherously incomplete boxes and bring bags from home.
A Word To The Wise About A Word
This sentence is about a word that I learned you should NOT to call your wife on a Friday afternoon . . . to explain: my vocabulary lesson began Friday third period, when Eric recommended the movie Super 8 to me-- explaining that it was in adventure in the spirit of The Goonies-- and so I asked him if it was okay for my kids to watch (they are 6 and 7 years old) and he said, "Absolutely," and though he has no kids, he does have a baby on the way, and he once was a kid . . . so I trusted his review and went to the local Redbox and got a Blu-ray copy and proceeded to get my children all amped up for movie night-- a movie that not only would they enjoy, but that mommy and daddy would enjoy as well! and we would order food! and watch the whole thing!-- and then my wife came home and I told her my awesome plan-- to order some food and watch this movie that the entire family would not merely tolerate, but actually enjoy, and she said, "Super 8? I don't think that's for our kids . . . I think that's too scary for them," and Alex, Ian, and I claimed it was NOT too scary and that Eric had recommended it, and when my wife pointed out that Eric didn't have kids, we ignored her logic, and then my wife-- who was already feeling a bit sensitive as a parent because that afternoon my mom and some other teachers gave her a guilt trip about our kids not believing wholeheartedly in the whole Santa myth-- looked up Super 8 on the internet and found some reviews that said the film was a bit scary and inappropriate for young children (perhaps that's why it's rated PG-13) but I found a review by Roger Ebert that said it's like The Goonies and then I called my wife a word that I should not have called her . . . I called her a "buzzkill," which she did not take kindly . . . but because we (meaning all the boys) were adamant that the movie was going to be great, we sat down together and watched it . . . and it really is an excellent film, but it is also mildly inappropriate for young kids: there's an F-bomb (Alex turned to Ian and said, "That was the F-word") and there's some drug use and some major violence and suspense and a fair bit of cursing-- all of which Eric remembered when he was reminded about it, but skipped his mind when he offered his endorsement-- and due to this content, Alex claimed it was "the greatest movie ever" and Ian concurred-- though he hid under the blankets during one scene . . . and every time there was an inappropriate part I had to suffer the withering stare of my wife and her sarcastic, "So I'm a buzzkill?" refrain . . . and though I've banned the use of sarcasm in the house, I let it slide this time because I certainly deserved it.
Something For The Moral Relativists
In his new book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, Steven Pinker traces the decline of human sacrifice, and suttee in particular (the now illegal practice of a Hindu widow "willingly" cremating herself on her dead husband's funeral pyre ) and this was British Commander Charles Napier's brilliant retort to this custom: "You say that it is your custom to burn widows . . . very well . . . we also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them . . . build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows . . . you may follow your custom, and then we will follow ours."
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