Yuck

Sunday morning, instead of screaming and smashing it with a thick novel, my wife reached down and picked up a large black hairy spider . . . with her hand . . . her explanation: "I thought it was a Lego."

YouTube and High School Seniors: Perfect Together

The administration has finally unblocked YouTube at my school, and although it can result in pedagogical mishaps like this one, I think I'm cognizant enough to use it as a tool, and not squander valuable class time watching videos of terroristic Brazilian reality shows . . . and I certainly use a lot of video clips in class already, but there's nothing like making a great connection in your brain and then being able to immediately share it with the class . . . here are two recent examples:

1) during Shakespeare's 12th Night, Sebastian -- the twin brother of Viola, the lead, who is in disguise as a man -- is seduced by the lovely Olivia . . . but Olivia has actually never met Sebastian, she has fallen in love with Viola, and the love is unrequited . . . so it is a complete case of mistaken identity; Sebastian has never met Olivia until this very moment, and she approaches him and asks, "Would thou'dst be ruled by me?" and Sebastian takes a look at her . . . and she is attractive . . . and he takes a look at her house . . . and it is magnificent . . . and he sees her ordering around servants . . . and so he says, "Madam, I will" and then she comes back with a priest and he agrees to marry her, and the guys in my class usually understand this wild and spontaneous decision perfectly-- because they are waiting for some beautiful girl to do the same to them-- while the girls think it's a bit insane and impulsive (as one girl said: "What if they don't like the same Netflix shows?") so it leads to a good discussion of gender roles and double standards and what would you do if someone pulled up in a really nice car and they were beautiful and beckoned you to get in . . . and of course the boys say they would get in the convertible with the beautiful woman and the girls say they would think twice about getting in the BMW with the tall, dark, and handsome man, and then -- to further explain this to anyone who doesn't get Sebastian's behavior -- I showed them this clip:



2) and then the very next day, a young lady in my Composition class had the misfortune to be first person of the year to use the word "plethora" in an essay -- and since I teach advanced English classes, this event happens like clockwork, sometime every September, even though I do a lesson inspired by the great William Zinsser about "clutter" -- and there is no word more bombastic and absurd than plethora (other than the word "myriad") . . . and this student used it to describe a bunch of papers, and so I suggested either "pile" or "stack" and then -- after telling her it was "an intelligent person's error" and that someone uses the word every year and not to feel bad, I showed the class this clip -- which always echoes in my mind when I hear the word (and I haven't seen it since college) and, miraculously, the clip holds up . . . the litmus test being that it made a roomful (a plethora?) of serious and smart teenagers laugh out loud.

Someone Always Has It Worse (And He Might Be in the Lane Next to You)

Saturday, I was zooming across the Morris Goodkind Bridge, driving home from Gasko's Family Farm and Greenhouse, with a van loaded with mulch, topsoil, and two Leyland cypresses -- and I wasn't particular happy with plans for the afternoon, which involved some heavy lugging, some digging, and some planting -- but then I heard a loud WHAP and looked over at the car next to me and saw that his hood had flown into his windshield, completely obscuring his view (and shattering the windshield, I'm sure) and, luckily, there wasn't much traffic on the bridge, so he was able to steer onto the shoulder without plunging into the Raritan River, but his engine was steaming and that's no place to be stuck . . . and after seeing that up close, my fate for the rest of the afternoon seemed a lot more palatable.

Form vs. Content

In my Creative Writing class, I teach my students a very important lesson: what you learned in kindergarten is a lie, and it's not what's on the inside that counts . . . in short, sound is more important than sense and form overpowers content . . . and then I play "Delia's Gone" by Johnny Cash and "Good-bye Earl" by the Dixie Chicks to illustrate this -- if the song is in couplets and sounds happy, then even if the content is horrific, the effect isn't going to be tragic -- and then I have the kids experiment with this idea; I have them describe the same event -- usually gruesome and violent -- in both omniscient narrative form and limerick form, so we can note the effect, but before they begin I read them my examples; first a faux-news story about an angry husband who murders his nagging wife with an axe because she makes him clean and organize the shed while his favorite football team is on TV . . . the story is graphic and fairly objective, and then I present the same tale in limerick form, and I am quite proud of my limerick, because it's hard to write a good one with the right rhythm:

A hen-pecked husband named Max
murdered his wife with an axe--
he buried her head
out back by the shed--
and now he can finally relax.

Catching Up On Significant Events

Between school and coaching two soccer teams, I've been too busy to follow the news, but -- luckily -- on the bus ride back from Spotswood, the varsity coach got me caught up on some important global events: bikers acting like wolves; a masseuse acting like a goalie, and a referee and some fans acting like savages . . . and after viewing the following videos, I've decided to stop following world events, and instead continue concentrating on local soccer.

I Don't Want to Dress Like a Holiday

I usually wait a few days to write about current events -- I like to detach myself and let my thoughts solidify -- but I'm going to tackle this one while the iron is hot; yesterday, three people told me that I needed to "dress like a holiday" next Friday, as part of some school-spirit competition that pits the different departments against one another . . . and while I gamely wore a green shirt last month (although I was still chastised because I didn't score the maximum five points, which would have entailed wearing FIVE green items) I really don't like dressing out of the ordinary, nor do I like celebrating holidays, and so I was going to quietly avoid participating in this part of the competition -- but there is a sign-up sheet in the English office, and apparently people have been reading it closely, and these people noticed that I didn't select a holidays . . . and I sometimes have a hard time judging if these people are actually angry at me, or just joking around -- but one teacher said that "it wasn't fair" and she was going to "tell the school secretary to remove me from the department" and then she left the room before I could figure out if this was real or feigned anger, and now I'm in that weird spot where I might have to not "dress like a holiday" out of principle . . . because I would never force anyone, against their will, to dress like Kwanza or Flag Day or Boxing Day (just a few of the holidays left from which I might choose) and while I should just placidly suck-it-up and dress like something easy, such as Father's Day, there's a part of me that feels like we shouldn't win this competition anyway, since it's not skill based (if it was inter-department corn-hole, I'd be as ardent as they come) and I really wish this entire contest would evaporate and I could just go back to teaching Shakespeare (but not dressing like him . . . as that's always weird and awkward when the teacher comes to school dressed as the historical figure that you are studying).

Arachnohirsutaphobia

After a long day of coaching soccer, I found a dead spider entwined within my leg hair.

Badly Broken

I'm writing this at 7:51 PM on Sunday night, an hour before the Breaking Bad finale -- and I am very excited, as this is a rare occurrence . . . watching something "live" on TV . . .before this, the last television finale I watched in real time was the end of Seinfeld-- but I also have no expectations as to what is going to happen in the final episode; things have broekn so bad, that though I was rooting for Jesse Pinkman to come out of the series alive, the penultimate episode makes me wonder if that's possible (and I was especially pleased to refer to the penultimate episode as "the penultimate episode," after which my wife said, "What?" and I got to explain the word, which I very rarely get to use in context) and so I am just hoping for a fantastic, action-packed episode, with an ending that resolves things --no meta-junk like the Sopranos or St. Elsewhere-- and I liken my mood to that same feeling you have when there are two teams are in the Super Bowl that you don't care about, and so you just want to watch a really good game.

More Past Dave Nostalgia

A student that I taught at the start of my career became a teacher and was hired in East Brunswick during the period I spent in Syria -- and she was coaching softball with my friend and colleague Kevin and made the mistake of confiding in him that she had a crush on me way back when I was her English teacher . . . which Kevin relayed to me (in front of this teacher) but then he also told me her reaction when she saw me again, after so many years . . . she said to Kevin, also confidentially: "What happened to him?"

To Infinity and Beyond

While teaching is a fulfilling and generally entertaining job, there are scary moments of repetition that remind me of Matthew Broderick in Election -- at the start of the movie, there is a time-lapse montage of him running round and round the school track, and then he monotonously reviews the executive, the legislative, and the judicial branches of our government . . . year after year, class after class; I had one of these moments last Friday, as I walked down the math hallway: I heard two teachers repeat the exact same phrase, in perfect chronological juxtaposition, and their words certainly reflected today's theme: "all real numbers are represented, from negative infinity to infinity" . . . I could almost hear the word "infinity" echoing down the hallway, forever (and while teaching English is a bit more dynamic than math, there are certain jokes and phrases that I use year after year after year, because they work . . . but the price of practicality may be my conscious soul).

Two Roads Diverged in a Yellow Wood, and I Took the One With Traffic

While I am driving, I see a lot of folks running alongside major roads -- roads with heavy traffic and no sidewalks -- and usually these roads are adjacent to suburban developments: neighborhoods riddled with winding, low volume 25 mph. streets that would be perfectly safe and pleasant to jog on, and I always wonder why people choose to run on the highway instead of the alternative . . . and so if you are one of these people who run on the shoulder of a busy road, instead of opting for something more serene, can you please explain why?

Good Answer! Good Answer! Survey Says: Stupid!

Last weekend, I walked into New Brunswick with my wife and kids to get some dinner, and we stopped at the Wells Fargo ATM, and my son asked me, "Why is there a headphone jack on the money machine?" which was a feature I never noticed -- but he was right -- there was a 1/8 inch headphone jack next to the little screen, and so I told him the first thing that came into my head: "Well, Alex, maybe if someone is hard of hearing, if they can't hear that well, then they could plug in earphones and hear better" and then continued getting my money, but when I looked up, I saw my wife saw staring at me, with that sad look in her eyes that said: How could I be married to such an idiot? and she said to my son: "Alex, the earphone jack is for people that are blind . . . . people who are deaf can READ the screen, but people who are blind need to HEAR the instructions."

Soccer > Volleyball, Swimming and Musical Theater

In the first days of school, I make a point to learn the names of my high school students and I also try to learn a thing or two about them -- if they play a sport or musical instrument, like to read a certain genre of literature, belong to a particular club or like a certain kind of music -- this comes in handy as a mnemonic to remember their names and faces, and it's also useful when I create hypothetical writing examples, as I tend to use the students and their likes and dislikes . . . but I also end up expressing a lot of my own opinions about their activities and passions, and this year some of my students are volleyball players and swimmers, and though it's not even the end of September, I think I've really given them a hard time about their avocations . . . I've told the volleyball players in my senior English class -- two very sweet, tall athletic girls -- that "volleyball is Fascist" and I don't want to interlock my arms and rotate on command and stand in the same spot and move like  a robot, and that volleyball "stifles the creative spirit" and that if I had time I would write a long essay about how much more expressive and athletic and wonderful soccer is than volleyball, and then I told my swimmers that they might be clinically insane to wake up that early just to splash around in a damp room and that "there is no joy in any sport without a ball" and I'm not sure if the students think this ranting and raving is part of the curriculum or what, but I'm going to try my best to have an open mind about what my students spend their time doing (unless it's participating in musical theater, because nothing is more fun than satirizing musical theater while teaching class).

More Basking and Awesomeness

Some things are more awesome and miraculous than others -- and while this may not be quite as awesome and miraculous as my perfect punt, I think it might be slightly more awesome and miraculous than my ability to update my computer software and pickle peppers simultaneously; for the past two weeks, the JV ball bag has been missing its drawstring, with predictable results . . . balls rolling around on the floor of the bus, balls getting loose in the back of my van, and players having trouble carrying the bag to and from the field without losing a few balls . . . and so I mentioned this to the varsity coach while we were riding home from South River, and he produced the missing drawstring from his bag and, against all odds, I managed to thread that entire drawstring through the mesh channel around the edge of the bag -- no mean feat -- while the bus lurched down Route 18 in rush hour traffic, finishing the task moments before we arrived back in Highland Park, and while I received no high-fives or rousing cheers for my accomplishment, in the end, I know that I made as great a contribution to the Highland Park soccer program as anyone on that bus.

Let's Continue to Bask in Dave's Awesomeness

My incredible punt last week has propelled me to new levels of confidence and motivation, and so on Saturday I tackled two rather involved tasks at the same time . . . and it wasn't until after I completed both tasks that I recognized the post-modern absurdity of doing these two very different things simultaneously: down in my little music studio, I finally got around to updating my operating system from Vista to Windows 7, and then, of course, I also had to update all the drivers and recording software -- this took hours and required constant monitoring -- and while I was doing this, I was also pickling a bunch of peppers from Catherine's garden -- so I was boiling vinegar and doing lots of chopping . . . and my hands hurt from the hot pepper oil, and there were clouds of vinegary steam floating through the kitchen, prompting my children to hold their noses, but I got the job done -- I pickled a dozen jars of peppers, and each jar has some onion, garlic, dill, and ginger in it as well, so I think they are going to be very delicious (but, according to pickling experts, for peppers to reach the zenith of their pickled flavor, you should wait three to six months before you open the jar, which seems a bit extreme) and so I spent five hours on Saturday racing back and forth between the kitchen and a computer monitor, one task as ancient and primitive as they come -- preserving food -- and the other strange and digital . . . and I think I might have succeeded at both (although I won't know for sure until I eat some of the peppers and don't contract botulism).

Let's Bask in Dave's Awesomeness

For those of you that visit here solely because you relish Dave's awkwardness, failures, pedantry, and bombast, you might want to stop reading today's post right now . . . because today's post is a tale of success, timing, and perfection; last Thursday, I was running my son's travel team practice at the high school turf field, and there was a lot going on: my other son had practice on the far side of the field, and some high school kids were playing a game of touch football in the middle of the field -- which would have been fine, except that every time they punted the ball it came flying end-over-end into our scrimmage by the goal, and after the third time this happened, I had one of my players bring me the ball -- and then --in the typically grouchy and hyperbolic fashion that I adopt after several hours of coaching-- I yelled to them: "You need to stop punting, because you're not good at it, and you're going to kill one of my players!" and then I held the ball out with both hands, tilted slightly downward and to the left, and launched a picturesque high-arcing fifty yard punt, on a perfect spiral, into the arms of the farthest kid (and I know it was a fifty yard, punt because I was at the goal line and he was at the fifty) and though I was probably a bit over-the-top and obnoxious in my tone with them, because of the  beauty of my punt, they apologized profusely (and later on, I gave them a quick lesson on how to punt a spiral).

Worst Song Ever

I'm pretty sure my friend and colleague Kevin is losing his mind; he forced me to watch the Miley Cyrus video for her song "Wrecking Ball," which he claimed is "a great pop song" and, apparently, he finds the video titillating as well . . . but I didn't find it sexy at all, it her attitude seems awkward and feigned -- and those white undies are matronly -- and, more importantly, I couldn't remember the melody of the tune two hours later (or any of the lyrics except "wrecking ball") and it's not like I'm immune to pop ear-worms, as I had that Kelly Clarkson song "Stronger" song stuck in my head for days.

The Most Annoying Thing I've Ever Said

 Before the words left my mouth, I knew I was crossing into shallow and pedantic territory . . . but I said it anyway; my colleague Stacey was describing the house she is attempting to purchase, and she mentioned that when it rains, water runs toward the house and collects near the foundation; as an experienced homeowner, I was required to say the obvious -- which is annoying enough -- but then I went beyond the pale . . . I told her: "Stacey, you know that water is the ultimate enemy of any house, but -- ironically -- humans need it to survive."

Another Shortcoming of Mine

No matter how many times I say it to myself (Shut the hose off when you leave! Make sure to shut the hose off! Don't leave the water on! Walk past the hose, so you'll remember to shut it off!) when I turn the hose on and leave it at the base of my newly planted arbor vitae, I never  remember to shut the water off . . . my wife caught me Tuesday night, and I felt like I got away with one, because she said, "Please don't tell me it's been on since six this morning?" and I could honestly say "No" because I turned it on after soccer practice (a mere four hours) but she doesn't know the half of it (or maybe she does).

Someone, Somewhere Is Doing the Counting

My children asked me to officiate a race in which they ran across the yard (and back) while simultaneously hula-hooping -- but when I announced that Alex was the winner, my son Ian cited Alex for an infraction of the rules (what rules?) and said that Alex's victory "didn't count."