Can Anyone Recommend Some Light Reading?

I finished Ioan Grillo's book El Narco, which is a portrait of the Mexican drug cartels and the damage they have wrought in both their home country and our own; it works like this: the United States provides many of the guns for the drug warfare . . . and of course we provide the insatiable need for illegal drugs (especially New York City) and the Mexicans-- who used to be middlemen smugglers for Columbian cocaine, until the Miami Vice squad made it too tough to come through Florida-- have taken over as the main producers, shippers, smugglers, and distributors . . . and moved into many other organized crime rackets such as shakedowns, protection money, and kidnapping . . . and because the stakes are so high and there is so much money involved and there are so many poor folk willing to risk it all, things have gotten incredibly brutal, both as the drug gangs fight each other, and as they fight the often corrupt police for a slice of the pie . . . the violence is heinous and terroristic and the trade is global and difficult to trace-- as the drug lords rely on lots of freelance help for assassinations and transport and smuggling and raw materials-- and while good intelligence can help to bring down big players, there is always someone else ready to step in and make the big money, if only for a limited time (the days of Pablo Escobar are over) and Grillo makes the typical case for legalization of drugs-- at least marijuana, but also perhaps cocaine, heroin, crystal meth, and whatever else is coming across the border-- because that is the only way to limit the power of these very organized paramilitary economic insurrectionists who are essentially psychotic . . . there was a time in the '70's when it looked like legalization would happen, but then we "just said no," but perhaps it's time to review drug possession policy again-- considering the mounting death toll and the fact that some of the cartel drug violence violence is creeping across the border (but not much because the Mexicans know what is good for business) may lead to a viable debate about drug legalization . . . anyway, the book is a good read if you want to know the ins and outs of this atrocious situation just South of us: nine Zetas out of ten.

There Was A Kangaroo In My Living Room

Much of what we think about global warming is anecdotal-- it's been hotter than ever this summer . . . it never snows anymore . . . we never had this many jellyfish when I was a kid-- and I have another story for this file: my son Ian found a baby lizard in our living room . . . a Northern Fence lizard, to be precise, and technically this lizard's range does extend up to Central New Jersey, but I've only seen these down in South Jersey, in the Pine Barrens-- until last week, of course, and so now I am waiting for the armadillos to arrive.

The American Dream Is Just That

It turns out that Arthur Miller and F. Scott Fitzgerald were right, there is no "American Dream" . . . if you want your children to have a better chance at climbing the ladder of success, the best thing you can do for them is to pack up and move to Norway . . . the Organization for Economic C-Operation and Development found that the U.S. is well below "Denmark, Australia, Norway, Finland, Canada, Sweden, Germany, and Spain in terms of how freely citizens move up and down the social ladder" and, the developed world, only in Italy and Great Britain is the correlation between what your parents earn and what you earn greater . . . this could be true in America because of the differences in education or because the rungs on our economic ladder are so far apart (and getting farther apart) but the real point is that Elizabeth Warren and Obama's sentiment "that you didn't build that," is true . . . but it's not true because our country's infrastructure helped you to get where you are, it's because your mommy and daddy did.

Dog Days Of Dopiness

I'm into the stage of summer where I probably need to go back to work again; I've lost focus and become a bit lazy . . . I had trouble peeling myself off a lounge chair at the pool the other day, though I was really hot, and barely found the strength to slip into the pool . . . and my reading habits are reflecting this-- I keep switching between three books, one called Lego: A Love Story, a totally frivolous account of how Jonathan Bender gets back into building Lego creations as an adult; another called El Narco, which details the drug war in Mexico and seems like something I should be informed about (but also seems very distant from my life) and a third called It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How The American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism, which also seems like something I should be informed about, and should be able to relate to my students as the election season heats up, but it's really complicated . . . and my students still seem pretty abstract at this point, so I'll probably end up ditching all these books and completing The Ripliad.

Porkocrite

For a guy that claims he doesn't eat pork, I eat a lot of pork (in fact, I may eat a fair amount of pork as compared to a person who actually eats pork).

Barely A Splurge

One of the many horrible things I've learned from Ioan Grillo's book El Narco: Inside Mexico's Criminal Insurgency is that the going rate for an assassination in Juarez is 1000 pesos; Grillo was so flabbergasted by this figure that he checked it with several sources . . . and that's the deal, all it costs to hire a teenage sicario is eighty-five US dollars; this makes sense when you look at the statistics: "120,000 of Juarez youngsters aged thirteen to twenty-four-- or forty five percent of the total-- were not enrolled in any education nor had any formal employment," and so snuffing out someone who crossed you doesn't even warrant a second thought, when life is so cheap that you can hire a hitman and still get change back from a C note.

What Would You Think Of This Guy?

I stepped into my time machine on Tuesday and found my old roller-blades . . . and luckily I've got still got it (it being '90's style) and not only that, but while I was sashaying through the park on my new-old blades, I was singing the lyrics to Madonna's "Borderline," which I just learned on the guitar . . . and while I'm not a terribly judgmental person, I know what I would have thought if I saw this version of me glide by.

You Are What You Run

I went out and did some sprints instead of taking a jog, because Olympic sprinters look much more bad-ass than Olympic distance runners (the distance runners have big alien-like heads and their bodies look fetal).

The Weird Stuff

My son Ian asked me: "What is the weirdest thing you've ever seen?" and I should have said "you" but, alas . . . esprit d'escalier . . . instead I answered, "Recently?" and reminded him of this incident, and then my wife and I got to talking about the all time weirdest thing we ever saw, and we decided it was the whole "oryx in the bathroom in the middle of the Syrian desert practical joke," which I explain near the end of this speech and won't retell here because I think most of you have heard the story.

The Song List

As a mental challenge, I am trying to memorize the chords and lyrics to 100 songs on the guitar, and, for easy reference I am going to keep the running count here on the blog; here is the list so far . . .

1)  Space Oddity (David Bowie)
2)  You Don't Know How It Feels (Tom Petty)
3)  Carmelita (Warren Zevon)
4)  Time After Time (Cyndi Lauper)
5)  Loving Cup  (The Rolling Stones)
6)  King Of Carrot Flowers (Neutral Milk Hotel)
7)  Ramblin' Man (The Allman Brothers)
8)  Dead Flowers (The Rolling Stones)
9)  The Cave (Mumford & Sons)
10) Heavy Metal Drummer (Wilco)
11) Hang Fire (The Rolling Stones)
12) Rich Girl (Hall and Oates)
13) Life During Wartime (The Talking Heads)
14) Eye of Fatima (Camper Van Beethoven)
15) Cripple Creek (The Band)
16) Lodi (Creedence Clearwater Revival)
17) Five Years (David Bowie)
18) Every Rose Has Its Thorn (Poison)
19) Borderline (Madonna)
20) Delia's Gone (Johnny Cash)
21) Holland 1945 (Neutral Milk Hotel)
22) Bad Things (Jace Everett)
23) Bananas and Blow (Ween)
24) Thunder Road (Bruce Springsteen)

Netflix Loves The Olympics

Using only anecdotal evidence (my Netflix viewing habits) I am guessing that Netflix is saving a boatload of money on postage right now, as people are watching the Olympics and not churning through mail order blu-ray discs, and I am wondering if there is some way to take advantage of this in the market and if some clever investor capitalized on the world's love of Olympic Sport (and people really do love Olympic Sport, you can even cajole people into watching synchronized diving, as long as there's the Olympic stamp of approval).

Pros of a Hangover

I'm not sure if this applies to everyone, but nothing inspires me to tackle mundane tasks more than a hangover-- last Friday, after a late night at the pub, I knocked off an entire "honey-do" list-- including dismantling a bomb-proof wheelchair ramp, hanging four framed pictures that had to be clustered together, making some phone calls, unloading the dishwasher, procuring some items at Home Depot, fixing a sink spigot, and cleaning out some crates-- and I still had time to bike with the dog and give my kids a tennis lesson . . . and that was all before noon; I attribute this paradox to several causes:

1) when I have a hangover, my brain functions just well enough to do the tedious tasks that otherwise drive me crazy;

2) when I have a hangover, I'm not particularly inclined to write sentences, play the guitar, start working on my novel, film a Lego movie, animate a cartoon, or any of the other myriad artistic pursuits and hobbies that generally occupy my mind;

3) atonement . . . I feel better about my debauchery if I get some stuff done;

4) my wife: I have trained to her to understand that a late night of drinking will actually increase my production around the house, and so she encourages me to go out and drink.

Water Polo is Boring

There's a good reason the summer Olympics only come round every four years . . . it takes that long to forget how tedious a water polo match is (and yes, I understand that they are tremendously fit and yes I understand that it takes great skill to do anything while treading water, but it's a horrible game-- they swim down the pool with the ball, toss it around the perimeter a bit to show that they can, and then someone whips it at the goal . . . rinse, lather, repeat ad nauseam . . . I humbly suggest adding jet-skis and hungry sharks to the mix).

My Son Ian Should Go Into Politics

Unlike my son Alex-- who has an opinion about everything-- my son Ian holds his cards close to his chest, and so it was a rare moment last week when he revealed his position without any prompting: we were riding in the car, listening to the radio, and he said to me, "Dad, I don't like static."

You Look Sorta Famous

We had an excellent trip to the city on Tuesday . . . we found some stuff in the Met that I've never seen before (mainly in the aboriginal art exhibits-- big scary head-dresses and ritual boats) but if you bring your kids to climb inside Tomas Saraceno's interactive sci-fi fun house sculpture "Cloud City," which is installed on the roof, then be forewarned-- to participate, kids have to be ten years old and 48 inches tall-- and though my kids gamely lied about their age, my son Ian (who just turned seven and is definitely forty-eight inches, on the nose) was just shy of the counter-top, which the museum staff claimed was forty-eight inches tall . . . but they were definitely skeptical about his age; I find this ridiculous, that a kid who has gone on every roller-coaster at Knoebels and conquered Disney's The Tower of Terror without a whimper wasn't allowed to wander around in a mirrored steel sculpture, but-- on the other hand-- there were a lot of old people inside "Cloud City," murmuring things like "it's disorienting, but not terribly organic, like the city itself," and so maybe it isn't the place for my children, who got into a dust up on the rooftop pavilion over an apple . . . anyway, from the Met we hiked down to the Central Park Zoo, which was quite impressive for a small zoo-- especially the sea lion show-- and then, as we trekked diagonally across the park, on our way to Columbus Circle, stopping at playgrounds as we went, we had a celebrity sighting . . . but it took a while to identify the celebrity . . . at first I thought it was Ellen Barkin, but my wife disagreed, and then I remembered it was the woman from the David Lynch movies who also had a small role in Jurassic Park III and a famous dad, but it took another fifteen minutes to remember her name: Laura Dern!

This Book Will Give You A Stomach Ache (But In A Good Way)

Chad Harbach's novel The Art of Fielding begins as an inspirational under-dog baseball story-- I was especially entertained by the aphoristic writing of the fictitious (but suspiciously resembling Ozzie Smith) short-stop Luis Aparicio in his meditative and eponymous tome The Art of Fielding . . . Aparacio writes like a mix between Gabriella Garcia Marquez and Confucius, and though he is highly abstract, he has supreme influence over the books most enigmatic character-- literal, monosyllabic, and taciturn phenom short-stop Henry Skrimshander . . . but the book takes a dark turn, and I think it will seem even darker for sporting fanatics, as the super-talented, super-dedicated, super-underdog Henry develops a case of the baseball "yips," the strange tic that afflicted Mackey Sasser and Chuck Knoblauch . . . and so other characters in the book make terrible choices-- which I could deal with, we all do it-- but I had a very hard time reading about Henry's disintegration . . . it literally hurt to read about the errors he commits . . . we all dream to have the kind of talent Henry possesses and it's brutally hard to watch it implode: ten PowerBoost shakes out of ten.

A Musical Mid-Year Resolution

In order to stave off early onset Alzheimers, I have decided to memorize one hundred songs on the guitar-- more on this over at Gheorghe: The Blog-- and to kick off the challenge, I played three songs at the local open mike in Highland Park; I was very nervous-- playing in front of strangers is totally different than playing songs to high school students in class (high school students are very encouraging when I pull out my guitar, as they know that if I'm playing a song, then they won't be writing an essay) but I made it through all the chord changes of Bowie's "Space Oddity"-- though I didn't sing very loud-- and then a fast version of Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time" and finally a louder and more confident rendition of Tom Petty's "You Don't Know How It Feels" . . . and while at times I felt out of my league-- there were some very accomplished musicians there (including a guy who played Radiohead on a cello and some very good jazz players and some folks who could really sing) but getting to follow a flamboyant dude with a mustache who sang show-tunes helped my confidence a bit . . . and since the purpose of playing music is to attract chicks, I definitely accomplished my mission, as I acquired some cute back-up singers (none of whom is my wife!) who have promised to sway and harmonize along to Cyndi Lauper at next month's show . . . and I have also started to learn Madonna's "Borderline" so I can use them on that song too . . . as I want a shitload of people to go up there with me, it's far better that way (and thanks to my buddy Connell, who came and tapped on the skins while I played . . . though he's not a drummer . . . he went up there with me just to gave me some accompaniment).

Knoebels vs. Disney Revisited

Another nice thing about Knoebels Amusement Resort is that, unlike Disneyworld, the folks that run the place don't try to teach you anything . . . aside from: getting dizzy and wet is fun!

Tough Triples

I always thought sorting out sanguine, consanguine, and sanguinary was the toughest task in the English language, but it might be equally difficult to distinguish between baccala, baklava, and balaclava . . . how many can you properly define?

Dave Conquers 80% of the Ripliad!

At the start of Patricia Highsmith's fourth Tom Ripley novel (The Boy Who Followed Ripley) our asexual Gatsby of murderers has settled down comfortably in Belle Ombre, his French estate, with his native wife Heloise . . . but he soon acquires a protege-- an American runaway teen who confesses that he murdered his wealthy father-- and Ripley actually attempts to coach and counsel the boy, who not only feels guilt over the murder but is also lovelorn, but in the end Ripley isn't particularly successful-- you'll have to read the book to see why-- and while this isn't as much of a page turner as the others in the series, there is a wonderful tour of the gay bars of West Berlin, their flamboyance heightened by the looming presence of the Wall, and my favorite moment of the novel is when Ripley feigns sleep on a plane so he can pretend to stretch and trip an unruly American boy who is running amok in the aisle . . . the passenger across the way sees through Ripley's ruse and nods subtly at him in approval of the elegant method he used to exact his punishment: eight wheelchairs out of ten.