Book Review with a Side of Hyperbole, Please . . .

If you're only going to read one book this year, it should be War and Peace, but if you're going to read two books this year, then the other one should be Elizabeth Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History; while the message is grim, the writing is clear and engaging, and Kolbert narrates her own adventures in places as far-flung and varied as the Amazon, the Andes, the Great Barrier Reef, Italy, Vermont, and a littered fossil-filled stream in an undisclosed location near a ball field in the vicinity of Princeton, New Jersey to provide a counterpoint to some shockingly depressing lessons and predictions, and while I shouldn't be doing this, because you must read this book, I will provide a thumb-nail sketch of the content . . . before humans, there were five major extinctions, and "as in Tolstoy, every extinction event appears to be unhappy-- and fatally so-- in its own way"; there was the well-documented K-Pg extinction event (formerly known as the K-T extinction event) which wiped out the dinosaurs sixty-six million years ago, when a huge asteroid hit the earth near the Yucatan Peninsula, but the four other extinction events are more mysterious . . . they may have been because of climate change, shifting continents, habitat loss, and/or ocean acidification (global warming's "equally evil twin") and Kolbert wants to welcome us to the sixth extinction event, the Anthropocene, where all of these forces -- cranked up to a much faster velocity-- are wiping out species faster than we can count them, and there is an apt comparison deep in the book, after Kolbert recounts the story of the brown tree snake, an invasive species that has voraciously eaten every indigenous bird, mammal, and reptile on the island of Guam, and she cites the great nature writer David Quammen for this analogy: "while it is easy to demonize the brown tree snake, the animal is not evil; it's just amoral and in the wrong place . . . what Boiga irregularis has done in Guam is precisely what Homo sapiens has done all over the planet: succeed extravagantly at the expense of other species."

One to Live By

If you're an athletic dad, who believes that sports that don't incorporate a ball are joyless and stupid (swimming, cross-country, biathlon, triple jump . . . but an exception made for snowboarding) then you can't have too many of those little portable air-pumps (unless you're the kind of responsible person who takes care of their stuff and knows where they put everything, which I am not).

Kudos to Emily Dickinson

While yesterday's quiz hasn't gone viral, I have: for the past three days, I've had achey joints, glassy eyes, and I've gone to bed at 7:30 PM and slept until the alarm . . . and aside from slogging through work, I've been a shut-in . . . and now I'm running a fever and my eyes hurt so much that I can't read or watch TV, and so I don't have much content today, as my blog depends on my stupid adventures in the outside world, plus occasional reviews of books and movies; the only wisdom I have gleaned from this illness is that we should all appreciate Emily Dickinson's fantastic imagination, as she was a shut-in for life-- before the advent of cable TV-- and she managed to pump out two thousand wonderful poems (without the instant gratification of the internet).

What Kind of Sentence Are You?

Internet quizzes have become incredibly popular, both as a "data mining tool" and a method of humble-bragging on social media, so I've jumped on the bandwagon and created a quiz of my own to promote the illustrious Sentence of Dave brand; answer the following question and you'll find out exactly what kind of sentence you are . . . to begin, simply choose the phrase that best describes your character:

1) charming and slightly manipulative risk-taker;
2) neurotic worry wart;
3) aimless and lazy couch potato;

if you chose #1 then you are an incomplete loose periodic sentence with several gerunds and a subjunctive clause . . .

if you chose #2 then you are a run-on with several appositives, a sequence of anaphora, and a smattering of ellipses . . .

and if you chose #3 then you are an awkward fragment with inversions, synecdoche, and a mixed metaphor . . .

please pass this along to your friends so they can determine "the facts about their syntax" and achieve internet fun and enlightenment like you did!

Poop It Forward

Friday, I took my kids, one of their friends, and my dog for a hike at a local nature preserve that will remain nameless for reasons I will soon divulge, and during our hike my son had to poop but the bathrooms were closed, and so I pointed him towards a good log to sit on, conveniently located near a pile of fallen leaves -- and he went and did his business and called it "the grossest thing ever" and then we hiked for a bit and my dog pooped but we were nowhere near a garbage can, so I bagged it and left the bag on the side of the path so I could pick it up on our way out of the woods and deposit it in the dumpster next to the locked bathroom (but I forgot that we weren't returning on that path and so the bag is still there, on the side of the path, full of poop, and it's my fault) and while all this poop related nonsense was happening, I could occasionally spy through the trees, across Route 1, the chain restaurant where my younger, childless colleagues were enjoying happy hour sans poop, and then, on Saturday night we had a few families over for dinner and the theme resurfaced: our children got sent to bed early because they found several bags of poop in the park and did the only logical thing: they threw the bags of poop at the other kids (and though I think there was some reciprocation, I'm pretty sure my kids started it, and so Alex's totally gross experience of pooping in the woods faded very quickly and had no lasting effect on him, and so now we have a new rule in our house: if you find a bag of poop at the park, don't pick it up and throw it at anyone . . . and, yesterday, to try to cosmically balance the scales of karma, I found the bags of poop in the park my children were chucking, and tossed them in the trash, and though it's highly unlikely that the person who may have hypothetically picked up the bag of poop I left in the woods, and selflessly carried it to a trashcan, just to make the world a better place, is reading this sentence, at least my dedicated readers know that I've paid my debt and evened the score).

Am I a Comic Genius or Just Going Senile?

Back in the '80's, I distinctly remember Robin Williams doing a bit about the ten week conflict in the Falkland Islands; his joke was that when a British newscaster says, "here we are in the Falkland Islands" it sounds like he's saying "here we are in the fuck'n islands," and I've used this bit in class when we talk about George Orwell's essay "Shooting an Elephant," which is about the decline of the British Empire . . . I like to ask my seniors where the last remnant of the Empire is located and then I say (in my best British accent, which is horrendous and Kramer-esque) "the Fuck'n Islands!" and then spell it for them and show them where it is on a map and tell them about the "war" in 1982 between Britain and Argentina over these pathetic sheep-covered windswept patches of grass in the ocean, but I've searched and searched for the original Robin Williams bit and I can't find it or even any reference to it, and now I'm wondering if I made the whole thing up, if I imagined that Robin Williams might do a bit about how the word Falkland sounds like Fuck'n when spoken with a British accent-- or maybe I actually saw a British broadcaster say this on the news in 1982 and thought it was funny . . . and so perhaps this is my bit, but I'm not sure: does anyone remember this?

I Hate Umbrellas and Minor Tragedies

When I visit weather.com, I want to know if I'm going to need hat and gloves, or if I should carry an umbrella (actually, I hate umbrellas, ellas, ellas, and would never carry one) but instead I find myself reading salacious headlines such as "16 Year Old Dies After Half Marathon" and "Honeymoon Ends in Tragedy" so I'm going to switch over to the homelier (but more accurate) alternative: weather.gov.

Another Reason I Should Probably Get a Smart Phone

When my son asked me if a tyrannosaurus rex could bite its own tongue, I wanted to give my boilerplate answer to ridiculous kid questions, which is "That's a really good question, but I don't know the answer -- why don't you look it up on the computer, and then tell me what you find" but we were on a long car ride, so I had to pause my podcast and discuss dinosaur tongues for twenty minutes, and this may be reason enough for me to break down and get a smart phone for our cross country trip this summer.

Slow Ride From Billings to Lincoln (But Worth It)

Nebraska is slow-paced and laconic, but don't let that put you off -- it's an awesome movie: funny, entertaining, and full of arresting imagery and faces that you don't usually see on a big screen; my favorite line is when Bruce Dern, playing Woody the senile alcoholic dad in search of a specious million dollar sweepstakes prize, slips away from his son to the bar . . . when his son attempts to drag him out of the joint, Woody claims "beer ain't drinking."

Will the Streak Continue? Let's Hope Not . . .

My son Ian has come so close to good behavior at school the past two weeks -- both weeks he had good days Monday through Thursday, but both weeks his teacher sent a note home on Friday, and both notes detailed an "f-word" violation; two weeks ago he wrote the f-word on another student's notebook (he claims he was dared, not exactly a great defense) and last week he said the f-word in music class when a fellow third grader "lied about him and left him out" and while this is quite an impressive streak, I'm really hoping it doesn't continue, and I'm wondering if I should pull him out of school this Friday to break the juju.

The Interestings is Interesting

The Interestings, by Meg Wolitzer, details the lives of a group of friends that meet as teenagers at an artsy summer camp called Spirit-in-the-Woods; the novel has a Joyce Carol Oates type feel -- Wolitzer is great at capturing the inner lives of all these people, as they grow and change from 1974 to the present, from teenagers into their "thicker, finalized adult selves, with almost no chance for reinvention" -- and while only one of the initial group achieves greatness (as a Matt Groenig-esque animation mogul) this is enough to change all of their lives in strange, subtle and profound ways . . . imagine if your best buddy created The Simpsons . . . or better yet, read the book and see how Meg Wolitzer imagines it, as she is a professional imaginer.

Old and Proud

While the usual inclination in our youth-obsessed culture is to never admit how old you are -- or at least to massage the number a bit -- the opposite is true at my weekly men's soccer and basketball games: people loudly proclaim their age, the older the better . . . as a rolling stone gathers no moss (until it hits another boulder and cracks into tiny pieces . . . and that's how I felt yesterday, after playing basketball and soccer on consecutive days, I thought I had the flu or something, but it turns out i was just old and sore).

Folk Music is Boring (and so are Folk Movies)

The only thing more boring than listening to folk music is watching a movie about a folk musician -- and while I normally love the Coen brothers, their new movie Inside Llewyn Davis is so slow, melancholy, and plotless that I welcomed any time the movie circled back to the "missing cat" sub-plot; I must admit that I didn't finish watching, so something really cool might happen in the final third, but I doubt it.

You Can't Coach Height . . . or Warmth

God knows why, but everyone decided to have soccer practice on Thursday night, though it was below freezing and extremely windy, but I did a truncated session and ended after an hour, and went over to check on my other son -- who was supposed to continue practicing until 7:30, and when I saw him in a drill, shivering, I asked him if he was cold . . . and this was like asking a toddler if he got a boo-boo . . . just saying the word "cold" to my son opened the floodgates; he said "yes, I'm so cold!" and started crying hysterically, so I got him out of there and the lesson is this: it's much windier out on the turf than it is in the driveway.

As American as Basketball and Enchiladas?

A recent study found that negative social media posts can have a domino effect on the mood of readers, sending them into a moody spiral of downbeat posting and grouchiness . . . but the opposite is true as well, and so I'm going to focus on something positive today to brighten the collective soul of the internet . . . while I know the expression is "as American as baseball and apple pie," I think I experienced something equally or even more wonderfully American on Wednesday night: I played basketball for an hour and a half-- a sport that is arguably now more American than baseball-- and then I came home and ate a late dinner of some insanely spicy and delicious home-made enchiladas (made by my Irish wife) while watching "Shameless" on Blu-ray on my giant HDTV . . . sports, deserved gluttony, Mexican food, and a big TV . . . you can't get much better (or more American) than that.

Life Changing Error

Wednesday morning, I reached into my pocket for my cell phone, and mistakenly pulled out my wallet -- so I reached into the same pocket again . . . and pulled out another wallet; I had inadvertently taken my "going out" wallet to school instead of my cell phone, and so now I was walking around with two wallets in my pocket, instead of my wallet and my cell phone, which was silly, but also a great visual gag, so I made sure to tell everyone the story, while enacting it, and the producing of the second wallet generally got a laugh, so I'm quitting my job and going on tour as a prop comedian, like my hero, Carrot Top.

Not Including Sex, Dancing or Defecation

Two things that people make funny faces while doing:

1) shooting darts;

2) opening a jar with a very tight lid.

My Wife and I Take a (Small) Step Upward Towards Adulthood

For the past six months, my wife and I have been contemplating the purchase of a bed (and maybe even a bedroom set) because our old bed, which we brought back from Syria, fell apart -- and we got the rest of our ancient bedroom furniture twenty years ago when my Aunt Theresa died (and that furniture was ancient back in 1993) but we lucked out, and staved off the spending of any money on furniture (why start now?) because at the pub on Thursday night my friend Alec was describing his new bed, which has a padded headboard (actually he was describing how he got heartburn when he drank beer in his new bed while leaning against the padded headboard, but that's another sentence) and I mentioned that Cat and I had been sleeping on the floor for many months, and he said that he still had his old bed -- which happened to be queen-sized-- and he was willing got give it to us for free . . . which is a hell of  a lot cheaper than buying a new bed, so we went out and bought a box spring, tied it to the roof of the car, managed to get it down Route 18 without a mishap, and now we're sleeping up in the air again, like civilized adults, and hopefully this whole spending-money-on-a-bedroom-set idea will fade away like a kid's drawing on a foggy car window.

I May Have Finally Defeated Daylight Savings Time

The only way to short-circuit the absolute absurdity of "springing ahead" is to stay up really late the night before the clocks change, destroying your circadian rhythm, so that you can go to bed at 7:30 PM on Sunday to prepare for the ugly Monday morning wake-up (but even though I did this, I still felt like shit all day Monday . . . which isn't that unusual for a Monday, so I don't know what to think).

The Holy Mother of All Miracles (involving Balls)

Zealous readers of this blog might recall that I am often at the heart of miraculous occurrences -- especially miracles involving balls -- and last Thursday, the gods were at it again, placing me in what may be the most miraculous expression of simultaneity in the history of human consciousness; this all happened in the span of one shortened half day period, the last period the day . . . my friend Stacey was once again searching for a red milk crate full of various balls, and this milk crate of various balls -- which had been missing for seven months -- was usually located under the table in the English office, but it had gone missing way back in September and now Stacy needed the balls for a fun class activity, but after much searching she finally determined that they were long gone, and needed replacing, and so she went down to the gym to beg some balls from the PE department, and while she was down there, on a lark, she inquired about her red milk crate of balls and the PE teachers said that they had "definitely not" seen a red crate of balls, but they did have some random balls that they found -- but they were "definitely not" in a red milk crate, but Stacy looked in the cabinet anyway, just in case, and there it was -- the red milk crate full of balls that was "definitely not" in the cabinet . . . some overly zealous janitor must have taken the ball crate from the English office and put it where it "belonged" down in the gym . . . and while the finding of this crate might be deemed a minor miracle in some circles, I would not pronounce it so, BUT, if you juxtapose this event with what was going on simultaneously in my classroom -- and I mean to the minute -- then this event becomes an integral in a yin-yang shaped whirling vortex of serendipitous beauty . . . and so, while Stacy was seeking the balls in the gym, my friend Laura was searching for copies of Outliers, and so she came down to my classroom because she knew that I taught the book the year before, and I was able to locate a few copies in my cabinet, but I told her that there was definitely a box of them somewhere -- as I had lay witness to the box in the English office with my own eyes-- but I "definitely didn't have it" and Laura said she had asked around upstairs but no one knew where the box was, and so I cursed the name of the amnesiac hoarder who had taken this box of books, and refused to give them to her,  and I promised Laura I would keep my eye out for them (as I wanted them for later in the semester) and that I would smote the person who had them and then she went back upstairs with the copies we found, and then . . . moments after she left, Stacey walked into my room, jubilant and triumphant and told me the news -- she found the red milk crate full of various balls!-- and there was much rejoicing, and then she took a quick look around the mess that is my room, noting that there was a box of dusty soccer uniforms on one cabinet, and she wondered what was in the other box on top of the other cabinet and I said "softballs," and she said, "awesome, can I have a few for the milk crate?" and I said, "sure, they're not even mine, they're Kevin's" and so she got on a chair and took a look inside this cardboard box perched high atop my filing cabinet (Stacey is tall) and then she said, "you idiot, this is the box of Outliers," and she was correct, it was the box of Outliers that Laura had been looking for, the box of books I denied was in my room, and while I was denying that the books were in my room, at the exact same time, a PE teacher was denying that the red milk crate of balls was in the cabinet-- and we were both miraculously wrong in our certainty, and so Stacey and I rejoiced even more over this nested sequence of ball-related miracles, a sequence abetted by the limits of human perception and memory, and by my utter stupidity (and not only that, but my good metal water bottle was inside the box of Outliers as well, so now the universe is resolved and at complete stasis and rest . . . aside from what's happening in the Ukraine).