Is It So Weird to Do a Little Research?

My students found it odd that I was reading Over-Dressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion and when I told them that I was reading it because I was about to go on my first solo clothes shopping trip ever (not that I've never bought clothing before -- but usually just an individual item, and most of my clothes are either gifts or hand-me-downs from my brother, father, and even a colleague's boyfriend, who lost weight and gave me all his fat pants) because all of my clothes, shoes, and belts wore out at once a few weeks ago and so I was in serious need of everything . . . and one of those 30% off Kohls coupons came in the mail, so I went for it -- and it was a disaster, of course; I pulled over a rack of women's nightgowns, nearly walked into the women's dressing room, bought pants that were too long, lost my cart innumerable times, and had trouble finding the items I needed -- and then they wouldn't let me use my wife's charge card (they probably figured: there's no way this idiot is married) and so I had to get my own card in order to use the coupon, and I somehow lost my driver's license in this transaction (though it turned up a week later) and while I learned a lot about the big picture of globalized fashion from Elizabeth Cline's book, it didn't help me at all with actual shopping, and my students thought the only thing weirder than me reading a book about fashion was me reading a book to prepare to go shopping at Kohls . . . but what's wrong with doing a little research?

Dave Writes a Fashion Post!

The moral of Elizabeth Cline's elegantly written expose Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion is grim: "We own more clothes than we can wear, the quality and craftsmanship of our wardrobes is at an all-time low, and the U.S. manufacturing base can't compete on wages with the developing world, costing countless domestic jobs," but Cline does find hope in two places: the first is when she learns the joy of sewing . . . she finds a subculture of folks who won't stand for cheap "fast-fashion" clothes and won't pay inordinate designer prices, so they either make their own clothes or modify the ones they have, and while I don't think I'm going to go out and buy a sewing machine, this book has made me look at where my clothes were made and examine the stitching and material a little more closely . . . and the second place she sees hope is in fair trade companies that are making quality clothes in America with organic materials for a reasonable price (although a hell of a lot more expensieve than H & M or Forever 21) and I highly recommend this book if you are like me and know next to nothing about clothes and fashion, and it might even be interesting to someone who is a fashionista because of Freakonomics-style global take on the topic.

What is the Opposite of Fasting? Gluttony, Of Course . . .

I have put back on nearly every pound that I lost on my brief two-day-a-week-fasting-diet -- not only was I completely wrong about my ability to eat 600 calories every Monday and Wednesday for the rest of my life, but I also think the fasting triggered some reversal in my metabolism and I've been eating like crazy ever since -- I had an especially gluttonous twelve hours last Thursday night all the way into Friday; I ate a late night cheeseburger from The System at midnight on Thursday night (Pete wouldn't even let me in the bar with it because of the smell -- I had to eat it outside) and then the next day at work, bloated and gassy from beer and the burger, I was reminded that I was judging the Foods Workshop Celebrity Cook Off . . . nine courses, in the style of celebrity chefs such as Bobby Flay and Rachel Ray and Masahara Morimoto and Julia Child; the kids finished their dishes in an impressive chaotic rush, food they had ben preparing for weeks and we judged on presentation, taste, and creativity -- and I am proud to say that I was the only teacher on the panel to eat every bite of all nine courses (plus seconds on a couple) we had chicken parm, lasagna with home made noodles, quesadillas, enchilidas, tie-dye cake, butter cake, chcolate eclair, hamburger in an egg roll with dipping sauce (drunk food!) and super spicy chicken and rice . . . and I had to teach the next period and it was 90 degrees in my room and I seriously thought I was going to upchuck on some unlucky student in the front row, but then I took the kids to the library -- which has AC -- to work on their presentations, and I was able to stave off a public vomiting (though I was so full that I couldn't sit down) and I am hoping that I get an invite next year so I can repeat the endeavor.

Kids Don't Know Shit

I can't refer to The Matrix any more in class -- my students haven't seen it-- and when my older son, who was involved in some inane either/or scenario debate with his younger brother, asked (with all sincerity) "Do you mean a pool or a pond?" I (of course) immediately said, "A pond would be good for you" but neither of them knew what I was talking about (so then I showed them the clip, but out of context it doesn't make much sense, so then I had to explain the clip to them, and then I found this ridiculous video . . . maybe I should just give up and only make allusions to stuff they've seen).

Things You Might See in Donaldson Park at 5:45 AM

An older man in all white, with a headband, hitting tennis balls rather poorly . . . tennis balls being served up to him by a giant boxy robotic tennis ball serving contraption (and you'd think someone with that outfit and that contraption would have a much better stroke).

What The Kids Are Watching

Here are some YouTube videos the high school seniors recommended; despite the age gap, I still found them entertaining.

Watch Out Guys . . . Here Comes Maya, Carrie and Sarah!

Zero Dark Thirty is intense and usually feels very real (although at times some of Maya's dialogue is action-movie schlock . . . "I'm the motherf*cker who found him . . . I'm going to smoke everyone involved in this op and then I'm going to kill bin Laden") but I think Kathryn Bigelow's previous war movie -- The Hurt Locker -- is much better . . . Zero Dark Thirty recounts an event, and lets us watch how that event unfolds in a most gratuitous fashion, but there's not much beyond that, while The Hurt Locker has a lot more going on under the surface; on a more interesting note, I think there is a new archetypal character in the world of drama: the obsessive and intelligent female working in a world of men, who is the only one who believes in an idea, and is considered far too crazy and too risky to ignore, though no one wants to side completely with her because she's a neurotic, anti-social bitch . . . The Killing, Homeland, and Zero Dark Thirty are all fueled by a female of this archetype: Claire Danes as Carrie Mathison -- the bipolar CIA officer; Mireille Enos as Sarah Linden -- the obsessive and paranoid Seattle detective; and the aforementioned Maya, the young CIA officer who becomes obsessed with stalking bin Laden.

The Answer Is . . . No! Not Even a Little Bit!

It was really hard to feign excitement when the boys ran into the house and shoved a yogurt container under my nose and said:"Hey Dad, do you want to see the giant spider we caught?" and it was even harder to get into the spirit of things when the spider jumped out of the container and hid under the carpet . . . but the one positive from this incident is that I have been trying hard not to pass my arachnophobia to the boys, and it looks like I have been successful.

Internuts

You know how sometimes you go on the internet for one reason (to look up how to marinate octopus before you grill it) but you end up doing something completely different (watching Brazilian ghost-prank YouTube videos) and then you totally lose your train of thought and forget why you even went on-line in the first place (I still don't know how to marinate the octopus).

Nothing But Terror

Yesterday, I finished teaching Henry James' ambiguous ghost story "The Turn of the Screw" and I also finished reading The Looming Tower: Al -Qaeda and the Road to 9 / 11 . . . and while both works focus on the theme of terror, they are a study in contrast: 

"The Turn of the Screw" is purposefully obtuse, and relies on the reader's imagination to create the terror, while Lawrence Wright's account is definitive, comprehensive, and precisely detailed . . . and though you know exactly what happens at the climax, his description of 9/11 is so photo-realistic that it brings back all the terror of that day; in short, when you finish "The Turn of the Screw," you know nothing -- except that human perception is a bewildering puzzle to untangle, while at the end of The Looming Tower, you know why Osama bin Laden  was able to get his jihadis to die for him (and now I understand that Arab man who approached my wife and I when we were at a gas station in the vast desert between Syria and Iraq and said, "You like bin Laden?" and then handed me his cell phone, which had a cartoonish graphic of the World Trade Center getting hit by a plane and collapsing, followed by a caricature of bin Laden smiling . . . creepy, especially when you are taking a service taxi, so you can't leave the premises until the driver is done buying candied dates) and now to complete my month of terror, I am going to finish watching Zero Dark Thirty and then watch Argo, both of which I have on Blu-ray from Netflix.

As a School Teacher, I Am Sad to Admit That This Doesn't Make Me Feel Confident At All

Airborne . . . created by a school teacher?

Maximum Testosterone

I agreed to dog-sit two dogs over Memorial Day Weekend -- Norman and Sniffer -- essentially turning our house into a dog park, and though this was a bit chaotic for Catherine and me, my children thought having three dogs really increased the awesomeness of the house . . . as we increased this most-significant ratio to 6 to 1.

I Am Not Sure Which Alternative is More Disturbing

Lawrence Wright's dense and definitive book The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 is full of disturbing stuff (and I'm only halfway through) but nothing comes close to this: after an assassination attempt on Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's life,  Egyptian security forces made a concerted effort to rid Egypt of radical islamists, and to obtain information about Mohammad el-Zawahiri -- one of the leaders of the al-Jihad movement -- they captured Ahmed Sharraf, the thirteen year old son of Mohammed Sharraf (a high ranking al-Jihad member) and then they drugged the boy and sodomized him, and when he awoke they showed him photographs of his homosexual activity and threatened to show this to his father, if he did not cooperate . . . which, of course, he did -- and the security force did this to several children of radical Islamists in order to turn them into "boy spies," and while I obviously don't condone this fiendish but effective method, I am curious: did the sodomizer and the photographer take turns, or was one security agent always the sodomizer and the other always the photographer?

I Suppose You Had to Be There

Though I doubt many of you care, I beat Dan (the Unbeatable Dan) on Thursday night: I shot an 8 in the 9th to beat him by two -- 42 to 40 -- an unprecedented event which no one cares about except me, and needs to be noted here so that I can refer to this when I am very old, as it will probably never happen again.

Stryper Never Made It to Saudi Arabia

One of the most disturbing things I have learned while reading Lawrence Wright's book The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9-11 is that if Osama Bin Laden heard music, he would literally plug his ears, and he declared that "music is the flute of the devil."

Dave (Reluctantly) Gives Away Another Great Idea

This idea is even better than my Second Best Idea Ever but I should warn you that it is also soccer related; one of the biggest problems with training little kids to be skilled soccer players is that at the early ages, skill isn't really rewarded -- size, speed, and the ability to kick the ball far are the most dangerous weapons a young player can have . . . but these abilities lose their effectiveness once everyone gets a bit older and stronger . . . so you have to create drills that are fun, but also slow the defense down in some way -- because when you are little, it's much easier to play defense than it is to control the ball with your feet -- and so my new brainstorm, which I am reluctant to reveal because I don't want other teams using it (but I'm also so egotistical about Dave's Brilliant Ideas that I can't stand to let one stay secret)  is to do this: 1) make a decent sized grid (square) and place three players in it with a ball 2) send a fourth player into the grid carrying a soccer ball in his hands 3) the player with the ball in his hands is the "chucker" 4) in order to NOT be the chucker, the chucker has to chuck his ball and hit the ball that the other three players are dribbling and passing around 5) the chucker CANNOT touch the ball in play with his body, the only way out of being the chucker is to chuck his ball and hit the other ball 6) if you kick it out of the grid, or your pass gets hit with the ball, then you become the chucker . . . but it's kind of fun to be the chucker, because you're just running around chucking a ball at another ball, so kids don't mind it too much . . . and what this encourages is shielding, because you can protect the ball from being chucked at with your body and butt, and it encourages spreading out and controlled passing, in order to get the ball away from the chucker . . . and it eliminates the usual rugby scrum that kids create on defense because instead of charging in and kicking at the ball, the defense has to take their time and line-up and chuck the soccer ball . . . so it affords the offensive player more time to think, which is exactly what they need at a young age to develop the soccer skills that are going to be useful later on in their soccer career (and diligent readers of this blog will realize that this is the third use of the word "chucker" at Sentence of Dave, and each time I have used the word in a different way . . . how will I use it next?)

Silver Screen vs. Silver Book

I was thoroughly entertained by the dysfunctional crew in David O'Russell's movie Silver Linings Playbook -- despite the fact that my wife was obsessing a bit on the differences between the book and the movie (and, of course, in her opinion the book is much better) -- so I had to tell her to stop making comparisons and contrasts, because she was f*@#ing up the juju of the movie for me, and I just wanted her to sit and watch and enjoy it and spend some quality time with me on the couch, eating crabby snacks and home-mades, not saying anything to disturb the good vibe that we had going . . . and eventually, she was able to settle back and relax and enjoy it, and -- of course-- everything turned out great in the end.

You Can Eat an Orange Like an American or You Can Suck It

For the most part, my fellow colleagues in the English Department aren't terribly diverse, but we do have a lovely Jamaican woman named Audrey -- and she has the onerous task of representing "the rest of the world" in our mainly white-bread crew -- so last week, when I saw her take a knife to an orange and skillfully peel off the thick skin, leaving only a bit of white rind around the fruit, and then cut it in half and start sucking on it, I was curious and questioned her method . . . and so she patiently explained to me that "this is how the rest of the world eats an orange," and even though she told me this in a Jamaican accent, I was still skeptical: and after some internet research, I'm not sure that she speaks for the rest of the world on this . . . I think her method is how Jamaicans eat oranges and if you follow the link you will understand why Jamaicans have to do this to their oranges (which are actually green and yellow) but I don't think many other countries do this with their oranges, and the lesson here is that I'm going to be a lot warier when Audrey tells me this is how something works in the rest of the world, because I'm from America and I don't believe anything anyone tells me.

Stern Artistic Advice

I showed my friend John this charcoal drawing my seven-year-old son Ian made and he said to me: "He's a talented kid . . . whatever you do, don't give him any advice."

The Most Racist Show On Earth?

I attended the Ringling Brothers and Barnum Bailey Circus again last week (the last time I went was almost exactly three years ago) and while I am not a huge fan (I sort of agree with the PETA folks who handed my son Alex a pamphlet about elephant cruelty, and the music is downright awful, and very loud . . . and though I looked over my sentence from three years ago, I still forgot to bring earplugs) but one thing particularly intrigued me about the show this time: when all the performers came out for the opening number, I noticed that the ten unicyclists were all African-American, and this struck me as odd, because the rest of the cast was quite diverse -- and also because I imagine unicycling as a nerdy and very Caucasian past-time, but twenty minutes later I realized why they were all black . . . they were a basketball squad . . . and this offended me a little, as a case of reverse discrimination -- it seemed as if Barnum and Bailey was insinuating that only black people play basketball (or perhaps, more logically, the act auditioned as a troupe, and they happened to all be African-American) but either way, I would love to be the token white guy on that unicycle basketball team . . . on another, less racist note, the best part of the night was the meal we had in downtown Trenton, near the Sun National Bank Center, at a Guatemalan dive called Taqueria el Mariachi . . . if you are in Trenton and you love tacos, you've got to try this place: best salsa ever and delicious al pastor and verde sauce.