Where the Wild Things Are?

I have been accused of having no discernment in my ratings of books -- everything I tend to review has completely captivated me, and thus I praise the thing to death -- but this is because I work really hard to find books that I like; recently I tried to read Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth and Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq . . . and though I can't speak poorly about either book, as I certainly learned something from each, they didn't fully engage me, and so I dumped Jesus in the library book slot, half read, and barely made it through the first chapter of Overthrow, because I had to keep reading the name Queen Liliuokalani . . . and I must say that I do this quite often: take books out of the library because I want to have read them, not because I want to read them (I actually have a book in my house called The History of the Vikings . . . I've never opened it) but I am now fully in the grip of a wonderful book that I will certainly finish in a day or two, it's called Wild Ones: A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story About People Looking at People Looking at Animals in America and it's got everything I love in it: mega-fauna, meta-media, and monomania; I am currently reading a section about photographing polar bears, and the trickery necessary for a photographer to shoot "an image of nature that's already lodged in our heads" . . . the footnote in this section points out that lemmings don't actually run off cliffs -- the folks at Disney propagated this in the film White Wilderness, where they paid a bunch of Inuit kids to round up lemmings, then forced the lemmings to run on a treadmill covered in snow, and then threw the lemmings into the water, and created the sequence that created the stereotype . . . but Chris Palmer, famous wildlife photographer explains that these folks aren't "evil or malicious . . . you're just trying to get the damn shot so you can go home and have dinner with your family . . . so you put the monkey and the boa constrictor in the same enclosure."

This Is The Same Kid Who Won the "Caring Award"?

Though I was pleased (and also rather shocked) that my son Ian brought home a certificate from the principal inducting him to the "Character Honor Roll" for being "Caring," I'd like to report that things have returned to normal; on Sunday, after Ian's soccer game, we walked home so I could make a couple sandwiches for us to eat while we watched Alex's soccer game -- and I made Ian a delicious ham and cheese sandwich with mustard, and as we walked back down to the park, Ian chomped on his sandwich, complimented my sandwich making ability and waxed eloquently on the very concept of mustard -- how it made everything better, including pretzels and fried pickles and sandwiches and even apples (I questioned this one) and then he told me that mustard was also great because there were so many varieties: yellow mustard and honey mustard and spicy mustard and brown mustard, and somewhere in this conversation I said to Ian that if he finished his sandwich, that it would be his lucky day, because he could have another snack with Alex's team (Ian had already had some cookies after his game . . . both teams do post-game snacks, which I'm not entirely in favor of, I'd rather that treats are contingent upon strong and strategic soccer play) and then we got to the game and Ian disappeared into the trees behind the field for a moment and when I looked over, his sandwich was gone, and when I approached him and asked about it, he said that he "finished it" but there was no way in hell that he finished it that fast, and so I told him I needed to know where it was immediately, because it was a "major crime" to litter with food that might attract dangerous animals, and I was able to strong-arm him into showing what he had done (plus I had the dog with me, who was making a beeline for the spot) and he had thrown the sandwich into a hole under the base of a tree stump, because he was full and wanted to get another treat once Alex's game was finished, and so for his disdain for my time spent making his sandwich, and for his cavalier disregard for the value of food, and for littering in a public place, he had to go until dinner without any snacks and wasn't allowed to invite any friends over for the rest of the afternoon, and I'm wondering if I should contact the principal and tell her this story and see if she'll rescind his certificate and give it to me..

Nerding It Up, Tolkien Style

My son Alex, who is in 4th grade, recently finished reading The Hobbit, and he's now deep into the first book of Lord of the Rings trilogy -- and while I must admit this is some impressive and precocious reading, the fact that he's also going to be Legolas for Halloween gives me some cause for concern . . . thank God he's athletic.

I Quietly Make Spelling Suggestion

Though I'm not particularly in tune with the world of the hearing impaired, I would like to make a humble suggestion which I think would vastly improve not only the English language, but American Sign Language as well . . . I think if someone can't hear very well, then you should refer to it as a hearing deaficit (I'm not really sure if this horrible pun will make a difference in how you sign the word, but I'm hoping it does) .

Opposite Day!

For those of you who haven't been taking notes, here are summaries of my two children: Ian is vengeful, competitive, and artistic; Alex is kind, loquacious, and melodramatic . . . and so on Friday, when my wife handed me two certificates, and one was the "Art Achievement Certificate" and the other was the "Character Honor Roll Certificate for Caring," I made the obvious assumption . . . and it's not like I had nothing to go on: Ian won the Art Student of the Year Award in 2nd Grade and Alex is the kid who asks an injured player -- even if he's on the opposing team -- if he's OK, and so I thought my inference was solid but -- miracle beyond all possible miracles -- Alex won the Art Certificate and Ian won the Caring Award . . . and so this makes me wonder if my characterization of my children is all wrong, or too simplistic, but it's too late to restructure things now, so I think I'll forge ahead with what I've got and call this incident an anomaly.

Scary Cetacean

My son Ian's wash pencil drawing of a humpback whale is surreal and almost beautiful, if it wasn't for the glowing red eye.

When You Win, Rub It In

The closest thing to hitting the lottery during a day of teaching high school is when your prep period gets extended for some unforeseen reason (such as the PSAT taking much longer to administer than planned) and the thing to do when this happens is to drop by your friends' classrooms, while eating a snack, and complain about how you don't know what to do with all your free time.

The Rule Gets Bigger and Better

One of the wonderful things about teaching is that you get to expand and develop ideas that you barely fleshed out the year before . . . unlike real life, you get as many chances as you need to get it right; several years ago I extemporaneously introduced this important life rule to my class, but then I forgot about it until last Tuesday, when a number of students who were absent before the holiday weekend came into class and did the typical -- just before class, one at a time, they approached my desk, and asked me "What did I miss?" and once I explained to one student, then another materialized and asked the same question, and this reminded me of my rule, and so I delivered a monologue that I will approximate here:

"I'm going to introduce you to a rule that does not just apply to my class, or education in general; this is a rule that you need to learn if you want to participate in our American educational system, and it is also a rule that you need to learn if you want to participate in our American economy . . . if you wish to move to the woods and live like Thoreau then you don't need to listen this, but everyone else, please pay attention . . . if you are ever absent -- from school, from work, from a team meeting, from a committee -- from any event, and you need to find out what happened at this event from your superior, then when you ask, you must provide some piece of information about what you missed, you need to ascertain some piece of information about what you missed, and include this when you ask your superior what to do about your absence -- and this is to show you care  about what you missed, and so you will approach me and say, "I was absent on Friday but I know we had to read an essay and write a page about the theme, and I was wondering if there's anything else I need to make-up?" and if you don't approach me like this, with some piece of information about what happened in class when you were away, then your failure will be epic and monumental, because there has been no generation in the history of mankind that has been more connected technologically then your generation, no generation where information has been more accessible, whether through Facebook or texting or e-mail, and so your neglect in having any idea of what went on in class is both insulting and irresponsible . . . I realize that in past times, when you needed to beat a drum or send smoke signals, in order to communicate that the plague is coming, or some other horror, that it was much more difficult to share information -- but now you have the wherewithal to at least pretend that you care, it's easy to fake it, and I fake it all the time -- I'm a coach, so I get to miss all kinds of meetings, which is one of the things I love about coaching: I get paid to miss meetings and be outside and run soccer drills, but when I meet with my superiors, I pretend that I am interested in what I missed . . . I say, "I know I missed the diabetes presentation, and what can I do to make this up?" even though I don't care about diabetes, because that's what you do in order to pretend to show that you care," and I know my monologue hit home, because the next day, when a girl who was absent for the monologue asked me what she missed in class, the students erupted in a chorus of "Don't say that!" and then they quickly filled her in on the life-lesson from the day before.

I Would Be a Narcoleptic FBI Agent

I am watching the first season of 24 on Netflix -- but in order to fit this into my busy fall schedule, I've been staying up a little later than normal, and this has taken it's toll . . . I can barely get up in the morning, though I've gotten eight hours more sleep than anyone on the show . . . in fact, if I were Jack Bauer, I think all I could muster would be 14 and then I would need a nap (or perhaps there is a surprise episode, where everyone crashes . . . if you've seen the show, please don't reveal any napping spoilers).

This Market Sentence is More Fun Than Yesterday's Market Sentence

If you watched Trading Places when you were a kid, you probably didn't understand what happens on the trading floor at the end of the movie -- I certainly didn't . . . you might remember that it has to do with commodity trading and orange juice futures-- but now you can revisit the scene and the other financial aspects of the plot in this 99% Invisible podcast, entitled Episode 84b: Trading Places with Planet Money; Roman Mars interviews some actual commodity traders, reviews the legality of all that happens in the film, and plays plenty of clips . . . and now I have a much better idea of how to "sell high, and then turn around and buy low" and I also understand why they had to insert an "Eddie Murphy Rule" into the Dodd-Frank Bill.

If You Are Invested in the Stock Market, Do Not Read This Sentence

Yikes . . . Justin Fox's book The Myth of the Rational Market, which bills itself as a "history of risk, reward, and delusion on Wall Street" is enlightening, but not fun to read -- it has plenty of history . . . chronicling a century's worth of market economic theories, and a huge cast of characters (from Roger Babson to Milton Friedman to Daniel Kahneman to Benoit Mandelbrot) and plenty of delusion . . . with market theories that attributed to swings in value to "spots on the sun" or "animal spirits" or "irrational exuberance" or -- the most popular -- an omniscient and very efficient market . . . but in the end, though the theories of dead economists resurface, and one school of thought quickly succumbs to the next (very much like the field of education) there is still no way to tell the difference between "speculative excess" and an "entirely sustainable boom" . . . in other words, no one knows how to value a stock accurately . . . but though you may lose your shirt in the market, there's still a positive moral in the last paragraph of the book: "the countries that have better-developed financial markets really do better."

Bad Smells Come in Threes

I took a day off last week, in order to get a few things done, and one of those things I needed to get done was the pickling and preserving of all the peppers from my wife's garden, and this turned out to be a more time-consuming and difficult job than I imagined, because the pressure cooker and canning set I ordered from Amazon contained a broken pressure cooker (I should have opened the box ahead of time) and so in order to sterilize and seal my produce, I had to do it the old-fashioned way and boil the jars in pots of water . . . and the canning process is grueling and rather smelly -- lots of boiling vinegar and capsicum -- and once I finished I thought I had made my quota for bad smells in one day, but that was not how things went down . . . I had barely any time between canning and practice, just enough to walk my dog -- The Best Dog in the World -- and because he is The Best Dog in the World, I let him off leash in the park, and he immediately took off running towards a specific spot of grass and began intently rolling on this patch of grass, as if he wanted to absorb the very essence of this patch of grass -- and I thought: what could smell so good that you want to embody its essence? and the answer to that question, if you are a dog -- even The Best Dog in the World-- is rotten meat; some wild animal must have raided the park garbage and found some uncooked chicken thighs and ribs, as that's what Sirius was rolling in, and he was also gnawing on a meaty bone -- which I yanked from his mouth-- and then the stench hit me, and amazing palpable stench, invasive and offensive, a wet stink of decay, and so I dragged him home and tried to clean him with wet-wipes because I had to get to practice, but wet-wipes didn't even dent it . . . so I had to give him a bath-- which he hates-- but even after soap and warm water, he still reeked . . . but I had to leave for practice, so I put the cushions up so he wouldn't befoul the couch and left (when my wife came home, she immediately noticed the awful stench emanating from him, and promptly sprayed him with Febreze brand air-freshener . . . please don't tell the Humane Society) and even when I got home from practiced, I could still smell something nasty -- while I sat at the very desk where I wrote this very sentence-- but I had to go to my next soccer practice, so I couldn't wash the dog again, but then when I got home from Soccer Practice #2, I realized that the smell was emanating from my right cleat, which had fecal matter caked between the studs, so I used Windex Vinegar Spray (ironic!) to loosen the shit and clean the bottom of my cleat, and I don't think there's a moral to this story, but I still wonder why my dog wanted so desperately to roll around in a pile of rotten meat.

On the Rarity of Switch-Hitting Authors

Someone smart and well-read could develop this idea into a full-fledged essay, but I don't have the time or the mental stamina for that, so I'll just offer my thesis and maybe someone will run with it: I just finished the new David Sedaris book Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls: Essays Etc. and while I loved the essays -- typical Sedaris . . . forays to the dentist, the taxidermist, the British countryside the airport, and the bar car of a train -- I did not love (and mainly skipped) the "etc." which are short fictional pieces in which he wrote in the voices of a woman, a father, and a sixteen year old girl with a fake British accent; this brings me to my thesis: there are certain writers who I will only read their non-fiction, though they may have written novels and fiction; David Sedaris is one of these writers -- I only want him to be himself -- and it is the same with Chuck Klosterman -- I read his non-fiction fanatically but I haven't read any of his novels, not one word . . . I just want him to be Chuck Klosterman . . . it's the same with another favorite of mine, Geoff Dyer -- I'd love to read more by him, but I won't even open his four novels . . . and then there are authors who I will only read their fiction and could care less about their life and actual voice: Elmore Leonard, James Michener, Umberto Eco, etc. and then there are those rare authors who are masters of both forms: George Orwell, Mark Twain, and James Ellroy immediately come to mind . . . and though I often contemplate writing a great sci-fi novel, I think that I am a member of the first category, and probably can only muster the Voice of Dave with any consistency and energy.

Soccer

Soccer . . . soccer soccer soccer soccer soccer . . . soccer . . . soccer soccer . . . soccer . . . sometimes when you say a word too many times, it starts to sound weird.

Jersey Vernacular

I took a day off from school Thursday, and so I was able to walk the dog at a reasonable hour (7:30 AM) and on my return . . . on my way down South Third Avenue . . . I saw another guy walking a dog -- and he was coming right towards me -- and it's always easier to avoid other dogs, because Sirius can be annoying when he's on his leash and meets and greets another dog, because he'll want to posture and play, but as I started to cross the street, the guy -- in his twenties -- said, "Don't worry, I'm going in," and then he walked up onto his porch with his dog, and so I said, "Yeah, my dog can be annoying when he's on leash, he'll drag you . . ." and before I could finish my sentence, he yelled to me: "My dog is an asshole too . . . come on puppy" and then he went inside his house -- and he said this loudly and clearly, and in a perfectly friendly way that only someone with a lifetime of using profanity in public could pull off . . . and maybe he said it because it was raining, and so there weren't any children or old ladies on the street, or maybe that's just the kind of language you can hear early on a Thursday morning if you walk your dog in Central Jersey.

Revenge Porn Solution

The media claims that California's Anti-Revenge Porn Bill doesn't have enough teeth, but there's an easier way to deal with this problem -- every American that uses the internet should be required to submit a nude photo, and also required to update this photo yearly, thus preempting any nude-revenge photos and also watering down all the viewable pornography on the internet to the point where it won't be worth even trying to find anything aesthetically pleasing to look at, saving billions of dollars in wasted time and also saving an entire generation of children from the perils of salacious images.

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.