Very Fine Gradients of Class Warfare

I know this isn't the best trait -- as a coach or an athlete -- and it has probably been handed down to me from my father . . . but whenever my team has away game in a town that appears to be much richer than my hometown, I ineluctably feel extra-motivated to give them a beatdown, and so as we entered lovely Basking Ridge, and drove past the rolling hills of Basking Ridge Country Club, I said to my son Ian, "We've got to kick these rich kids' butts today" and then -- as punishment for my classism -- when we got out of the car and Ian took a look at the opposing team, he said, loudly, in front of several Basking Ridge parents: "they don't look like rich kids" and I had to explain to him that we shouldn't say things like that (even though I did) but still, I am happy to report that we did indeed kick their butts, a great victory of a lower-upper middle class town over an upper-upper middle class town.

Boogers Part II (in 2-D)

While not nearly as epic as this booger story, this is a cautionary tale for students and teachers alike: I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that every educator has lost a student's assignment at some point . . . whether it was misplaced or tossed aside by another student during peer-editing or fell under the desk or got picked up by another teacher . . . so I always give kids the benefit of the doubt when they tell me that they handed something in; this scenario was playing out last Wednesday, and so I did the first thing I always do, which is check the pile of papers -- because sometimes I forget to grade one, or a student mistakenly staples another kid's paper to his own . . . and we found the girl's paper in the pile, but it was connected to another student's (graded) paper not by a staple, but by a booger -- or I'm 75% sure it was a booger, I didn't any testing to determine exactly what it was, but it sure looked like a booger, and we don't use rubber cement in high school.

Killing Is Worth It!

The first two seasons of AMC's The Killing focus on two Seattle homicide detectives trying to solve the murder of a high school student -- Rosie Larsen -- and the writers kept me guessing until the  last moments of the last episode of the second season . . . I think the ending of the case rivals that of the best final TV episode ever made (The Shield) . . . the solution is both surprising and perfectly logical; Mireille Enos plays Sarah Linden perfectly . . . she's a homely, unmedicated and possibly more neurotic (but in a realistic way) Seattle version of Clare Danes in Homeland . . . and though the show is dark, rainy, and bleak, unlike Danes, Linden has someone she can rely on, her partner -- Stephen Holder (Joel Kinnaman) -- and they bring the buddy genre to new levels of weird awkwardness (and since I'm making absurd analogies, I will also say that at times Holder and Linden look and act like the bizarro world Moulder and Scully).

My Son Successfully Sails the Seas of Cheese

We commanded our children to make my grandmother a hand-made card for her 91st birthday, and in less than a minute my nine year old son Alex came up with this corny Hallmark-style stanza:

No matter how old,
no matter how young,
I will always be
your great grandson.

Dave's Weather Report (Including the Sinuses)

Unusual weather for central New Jersey today: sunny and dry, with clear skies and low humidity . . . and a 70% chance of boogers.

What Did Birders Do Before the Internet?

There is a bird in my yard that says "cheeseburger! cheeseburger! cheeseburger!" and it only took me three minutes to learn that it is a Carolina Wren (and not a black-capped Chickadee) though both these birds say "cheeseburger," but the Carolina Wren says it much faster and clearer . . . but why I am I wasting my time using langauge to explain this . . . watch the Youtube video!

That Point Doesn't Count . . . The Ball Was Dead and I Wasn't Ready and the Sun Was in My Eyes

My seven year old son Ian is the king of the "redo," which is short for "do-over," which is short for "I love to cheat."

More Fun Things About Owning a Dog

That's a strange ball in the middle of the living room . . . I don't remember the kids playing with that . . .  it's kind of oblong and fleshy-looking . . . and it smells really good in here . . . I think I'll take a closer look . . . hmm, that's not a ball . . . it's a chicken carcass, stripped to the bones . . . I suppose the lesson here is that if you own a dog, you can't leave the house for more than ten minutes if you've left a rotisserie chicken on the counter (and I won't go into detailed consequences of this feast, but I will say this: the next day, when I arrived home from work, I had to carry the rug outside and hose it down).

Graveyard for Resolutions

Every so often I notice that I still have two failed New Year's Resolutions prominently displayed on the top of the sidebar (to the right of this sentence) and while I was going to remove them, I have decided to keep them for the time being because I like the reminder that most of our "deep plots do pall, and that should teach us"; I may not have become an expert in Canadian culture, or committed a 100 songs to memory, or become a virtuoso at the banjo . .  and I may not continue to fast on Mondays and Wednesdays for the rest of my life, but the important thing is that I gave it "the college try" and not only that, I learned a few things about Canada (and also learned that I have oceans of ignorance about our neighbor to the north) and I memorized the chords and lyrics to a few songs, and I discovered that even though I don't play my banjo any longer, my wife won't let me sell it, because she likes the way it looks on the wall . . . and so I will attempt to eat nearly nothing on Mondays and Wednesdays, though I know that most days, I am doomed to fail, as are most people are when they make resolutions, but that's okay . . . we would be a sad species if we never made them at all.

Dave Cannot Assess the Situation (Even Though He Refers to Himself in the Third Person)

I have gotten so busy living my life, that I don't consume the same amount of literature, television, film and pop-culture as I used to . . . and I'm not sure if this is making me wiser and more experienced, or simply tired and dull.

Weird Hair Day

There are days when I always feel like I have a spider in my hair.

Dave Learns Something! Maybe Even Two Things!

Although I am a self-proclaimed Master of Vocabulary, every so often a student stumps me with a word (and I'm not talking about slang . . . I learn slang from the kids all the time -- my favorite new term this year is "ratchet") but last week I learned about word that's in the actual dictionary that I never dreamed exist -- a girl in my Creative Writing class wrote a poem about working in a shoe-store (she actually works in a shoe-store) and she used the word "brannock," and apparently a brannock is the device used to measure someone's shoe size.

My Children Are Both Overachievers

I didn't think my boys were capable of it, but this year's school pictures are the worst yet.

Third Grade Forensics

My son Alex gave me the lowdown about what was being debated on the playground Monday: cougar vs. owl in a fight to the death . . . and the setting was "the plains" and this occurred "at night," probably because both animals are crepuscular (Alex didn't use the word "crepuscular," but judging by his conversational topics, he will be soon).

More New Music from The Moving Rocks

The Moving Rocks are on a roll -- here is the second song from the very-low concept album I am working on; it's called "Many Lives" and the lyrics are over at G:TB . . . I recorded this song after reading this book and so my recording process was different than usual -- I started out by creating some rhythmic loops and interlocking them in various patterns, and once I had this musical framework, then I wrote the lyrics and added the guitar -- and this theme was certainly an influence as well, but that's probably obvious.

Spring Issue of Lifewild

Spring is here, and with it a new issue of Lifewild Quarterly . . . an online magazine that my friend Adam puts together . . . I have written a carefully researched article about Canadian geese and their feces, and there is a piece by my friend Eric as well, along with some cool art: check it out if you can (there's also a Winter Issue).

Beer Might Be Like Jazz

My new favorite beer in the universe is Switchback Ale, a delicious amber brewed in Burlington, VT and sold in 22 ounce bottles -- and I was surprised that BeerAdvocate gives it a fairly run-of-the-mill review, but then I remembered tasting this highly reviewed "world class" beer, which was way too hoppy and bitter and fruity and spicy for my primitive palate . . . and so I think my taste in beer, like my taste in jazz, might not be that sophisticated . . . I love Miles Davis and Charlie Parker, but have some trouble with Sun Ra and Ornette Coleman; if you are unsophisticated as well, then I highly recommend Switchback: it is smooth, delicious, high in alcohol, unfiltered, and has a scent and flavor vaguely like Magic Hat #9, but not as fruity.

It's a Great Time for Wealth Inequality and Music

Unemployment is high and the the environment is going to hell in a handbasket, but if you like music, then times couldn't be better: I heard a snippet of some rhythmic Latin jazz on WBGO  Wednesday morning, but didn't hear who the artist was . . . and forgot about it until Thursday, and then I went to WBGO's web-site and found the playlist and learned that it was an Eddie Palmieri song called "Listen Up" and so I popped that into Spotify (which now streams at my workplace) and I was suddenly immersed in some phenomenal Latin jazz by an artist I had never heard before . . . this is a vast improvement over the methods we used when I was a kid (putting a cassette in the boom box, and then racing to the radio to hit record whenever a good song came on) and while I know there are folks that will lament the loss of the mixed-tape or the album . . . or even the investment of paying for a record, which forced you to really listen to it, I still prefer the magic of the internet over those antiquated auditory customs (and I'm sure there are those hi-fi purists who hate the fact that most music is listened to on crappy computer speakers these days).

It's Hard to be a Man in the 21st Century

Last month, I helped a female teacher create a "Manliness Survey," and making the survey was so entertaining that we discussed the issues in my English class -- it was fitting because we were in the middle of Hamlet, and while there is no question that Hamlet is intelligent and eloquent, there is debate over his machismo -- and this resulted in another student and me having a one-armed push-up competition in front of the class, and during this display of unbridled masculinity, the girls were yelling "We don't care! This is stupid!" and the guys were yelling "It's all about push-ups!" and while this was a lot of fun, it made me remember that on that same weekend, Catherine made me take the kids to Target, in order to shop for the two birthday parties that they were attending, and we bought some Squinkies and Pokemon cards, and while I was doing this, I saw my friend Rob, with his kids, doing the exact same task . . . and we said "Hi" to each other and then went our separate ways without commenting on how unmanly we were behaving . . . it was Saturday morning and we should have been chewing tobacco and using power tools, but instead we were both pushing shopping carts at Target, and I was learning the distinction between Squinkies and Zinkies.

Two Choices Make Things So Much Easier

If I could be the star of any TV show, there are only two choices that come to mind -- I would either want to steal David Hasselhoff's role on Baywatch or be Jeremy Wade on River Monsters . . . and I'm pretty sure that for heterosexual males, these two choices are the archetypal options for this hypothetical question -- they've got everything covered . . . you can either travel the world, hooking into giant freshwater fish with a rod and reel, with a dedicated staff helping you find the action . . . or you could run around with a bevy of hot lifeguards, saving the day every episode, with the added bonus of beautiful California beaches and weather . . . so which do you choose?