Meaner Girls

If you're a fan of Mean Girls (and if you're not a fan of Mean Girls, then you'd better become one) then you'll love Liane Moriarty's new novel Big Little Lies . . . it's the story of what happens when the mean girls grow up and become mean moms; the story is set in Australia and centers around a seemingly lovely beachside elementary school, and from the first pages you know that someone has died horribly (but you don't know who) and that you're going to keep turning pages until you find out: Moriarty is a sharp, precise, and incisive writer-- she moves adeptly from satire to serious to slapstick, from plot point to plot twist; the dialogue is by turns funny and dramatic, and even though this would probably be labelled chick-lit, the dark underbelly of the story kept me up late into the night: not only will you want to find out who died and how, but you'll want to keep reading just to enjoy her keen and clever voice: five trivia nights out of a possible five.

Those Clever Teenagers and Their Electronic Devices

Not sure if this goes into the category of "something I should have known . . . but didn't because I'm old and/or stupid" or if it's a genuinely new and hip life-hack . . . but I learned in class on Tuesday that kids get fairly creative when they want to amplify the sound from their cell phone: one student said she puts her phone in the sink when she showers so she can hear her music over the running water-- and, according to RadioShack, a sink is a legit amplifier-- and another girl explained to us that "you can put your phone in your mouth if you need more people to hear it" which I deemed absurd and unhygienic, but she replied "it's my phone"; I couldn't find anything on-line about the efficiency of the mouth/phone combo amp and I don't think I'm going to try it, so you'll have to do that experiment on your own; another girl said she put her phone inside a big (unlit) candle to get some amplification, and everyone in the class knew the trick of putting your phone in a cup to make the sound louder; coincidentally, the first time I ever saw/heard this "phone in the cup" trick was over winter break, when my friend Rob (who is in his forties) put his phone in an empty coffee mug so that I could hear a song he recorded better . . . and I'm wondering if he learned this move from a youngster or if he figured it out himself-- so I will have to do some further research and report back to you.

At Least I'm Being Reasonable

I wrote a fairly lame post the other day for Gheorghe:The Blog in which I listed and discussed some of the "logic" I use when instructing my children how to behave-- and since writing the post, I have meditated deeply on the issue (and plagiarized a few ideas from the comments) and now I've produced a more comprehensive list . . . if you've got any other good ones, leave them in the comments and I will do the honor of stealing them from you:

1) because I said so;

2) because kids are starving in Bangladesh/China/India/Cleveland;

3) because that's disgusting;

4) because if you don't get it done, mom will go nuts on you;

5) because that's incredibly stupid and if you're going to do that, you need to wear a helmet;

6) because we love you;

7) because you're spoiled and need to suffer;

8) because our family is a team and we need to cooperate;

9) because you never see your mother and me behave like that;

10) because you're damaging our family's reputation;

11) because you don't know good music;

12) because in the Old West, if you cheated at cards, they shot you;

13) because stress kills, and you're killing me;

14) because people who know how to do math actually get jobs and move out of the house;

15) because if you don't get enough sleep, you're atrocious;

16) because you don't belong indoors, so get the hell outside;

17) because that's what you need to do if you own a dog;

18) because screens have ambient light that keeps you awake when you need sleep;

19) because I need a nap;

20) because if you don't wash your hands, shower and eat your fish and vegetables then you'll get scurvy/goiter/Lyme's disease and/or Ebola and your gums will bleed and you'll grow a football sized lump on your neck and your blood will be full of parasites and your eyes will explode.

Candy For Men

Black licorice is slightly more badass than a bag full of Gummi bears.

Did Ajim Suck Out Michael Rockefeller's Brains?

This is the essential question at the heart of Carl Hoffman's book Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller's Tragic Quest for Primitive Art . . . and unlike Serial, this journalistic journey down the rabbit-hole of time delivers a fairly definitive answer to the mystery of what happened to Michael Rockefeller in 1961-- although you're going to have to wait until the last page of the book to get it-- but along the way Hoffman raises plenty of other issues about colonialism and otherness, cultural relativism and morality, the motivations and rituals of subsistence cultures, revenge and balance, the value and acquisition of primitive art, and what connects and separates human culture (think headhunting, chairs and sewage) and while much of this might be anthropological abstraction or a maze of historical detail (I still can't figure out exactly what went down between the Asmat villages of Otsjanep and Omadesep) the narrative is held together by the lurking shadow in the New Guinea swamp, the ultimate taboo: cannibalism . . . and this pervades the story and the Asmat culture-- these are people without access to protein, warriors who believe in a spirit world as much as in the dense, green and watery reality of their actual home, and they are complex people, who have had to deal with an upheaval to their culture, in the form of mysterious white men-- who are generally all-powerful, possessing guns and flying vehicles, white men who made them feel guilt and regret for their sacred rituals-- and while they now profess that they are reformed of their headhunting habits, there are still those living in the villages, elders, who have tasted human flesh, and fifty years ago, when they had the chance to strike at a weak and vulnerable white-man-- not long after they suffered a massacre at the hands of a Dutch colonial-- then the case that Hoffman presents makes perfect sense.

There's Something Perfect About This (Unlike Driving a Motorcycle on the Turnpike)

There's something beautiful and appropriate about this progression: Highroads Harley Davidson in Highland Park closed down a few years ago, and now the building is a dealership for wheelchair vans.

Mnemosyne Demands a Sacrifice

My wife has to remember a wealth of information on a daily basis-- she has a lot of responsibility at her job and in our community, and she's also the reason our hectically scheduled household operates smoothly . . . and this doesn't end when we go on vacation: she's the primary packer and planner (I'm the chief researcher) so she's bound to forget a thing or two . . . but never has she forgotten three things on one trip, until now-- and I'm not relishing this in any way, shape or form, but I'd still like to record it, in a most unbiased and objective manner, for posterity-- not only that, this event does harken back to the humble beginnings of this blog; so . . . without any gloating . . . here's the list:

1) at the start of our trip, my wife forgot her prescription sunglasses, but we were only a few minutes down the road, so we turned back and got them;

2) while my wife was paying the check at the much recommended Wild Fern restaurant, she put down the iPad on the counter and left it there-- she didn't realize this until we were fifteen minutes away-- but we turned back and luckily it was still there (Heather, the owner/chef/waitress of The Wild Fern knew the house we were renting and said she was going to return it to us there if we didn't come back so we were safe either way);

3) when we were leaving the rented house in Stockbridge, my wife forgot her ceramic-travel coffee mug inside the house, but we had already locked up and left the key inside, so we had to chalk that one up to as a sacrifice to Mnemosyne.

You CAN Tune a Fish!

For those of you who need one more miracle to make it through the holiday season, this will do it for you: this event is described in The Acts of Peter, which is one of the apocryphal acts of the apostles of Jesus and it reminds me of the movie Chronicle, in which some teenage boys gain superpowers and do typical teenage stuff with their powers . . . so here Peter sees a smoked tuna hanging in a window and wants to show some people what the name of Jesus can do, so he resurrects the tuna and throws it into a (conveniently located) nearby fish pond and the tuna swims for hours on end, and people feed it bread and rejoice (this is in The Acts of Peter 5 . . . this book also features a talking dog).

Vacations With Kids Are Not Really Vacations

Another phenomenal Vermont vacation, full of snowboarding, skiing, great local food/beer, and plenty of anxiety (not only anxiety from supervising my children on the mountain, but also in our rented house-- a beautifully converted barn in Stockbridge which contains a couple of spiral stair-cases, which seem excellent in theory-- but spiral staircases with smooth and worn wooden risers are death-traps if you're wearing socks-- I slipped and fell hard-- and while my kids are getting better and better at navigating the mountain, they are also getting good enough to hurt themselves-- Alex whacked his head when he caught an edge snowboarding, but he was wearing a helmet so he only suffered a bump on his head and a bruise on his face, but no concussion, and Ian twisted his knee when a little kid cut in front of him) and after three days straight of riding-- longer days than usual because we met our friends on the mountain and peer pressure really motivates kids to keep on keeping on-- so after three long days, we finally took one off to relax, but we also promised my son Alex that we would play Settlers of Catan on this day off, and not just regular Settlers of Catan, but the new very-advanced "Cities and Knights" add-on that he got for Christmas, and it took four hours to finish the game (which I won!) but we took a break in the middle of the game for some sledding (Alex befriended some friendly Stockbridge locals) and then a trip to Rochester, Vermont to eat lunch at the Rochester Cafe and Country Store, which I highly recommend: the town is scenic, surrounded by mountain peaks, and the food and raspberry/peach pie at the cafe is super-delicious . . . and I hate pie; while I'm at it, I'll also recommend my favorite local beers from the trip: Rock Art American Red Ale and Alesmith IPA (and it's VERY important to have good beer on hand when you're playing a four hour board game with children).

Read My Lips: No New Resolutions

I'm going to be honest here: the only New Year's Resolution I ever followed through on was in 2011, when I resolved to eat more tacos (but I can't even be sure that I ate more tacos than usual, because in any given year, I eat a lot of tacos-- the experiment/resolution lacked a control year-- and, empirically speaking, the only thing I actually accomplished was to count the number of tacos I ate that year) and the rest of my resolutions have been ironic or farfetched, and so this year I resolve to do nothing other than do more of the same-- just a little bit better: I'm going to eat a little healthier, drink a little less in quantity-- but make up for it in quality, exercise a little more, lose my temper less, appreciate my wife more, coach a little more creatively, teach a little more effectively, record music more consistently, practice my guitar more diligently, tuck my elbow straighter when I shoot a basketball, take the dog on longer walks, find slightly better books to read, play a few more board games with my kids, cook dinner a few more times than I did last year, and-- finally-- and this is the biggest one on the list, and the wholesale change that I'm making in 2015 . . . read my lips for this one: no more pleated pants (for the most part, I have switched to flat-front pants, but I still had a few remnant pairs of pleated pants-- from the '90's?-- in my wardrobe and once in a while I would wear them, to the dismay of my wife and colleagues . . . but I donated them all last week, so I'm locked in to this particular resolution, which I'm sure is a good thing).

Dave Has a Miraculous Post-Christmas Vision!

When your mind strays outside the established box-walls, then you will certainly suffer disdain and criticism, even from those who profess to love you . . . but you must carry on, bravely,  faithfully, into the pale; so let it be know that upon the 26th day of the twelfth month of the Year, 2014, the day after the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ (or maybe not, but that's a whole other historical conundrum) I was delivered a post-Christmas vision in the form of a mini-van packing strategy: instead of building upwards in the back section of the van, the way I would normally stacketh our belongings, leaving a small "cavern" for the dog-- instead of this precarious and vision-obstructive pile of luggage, I would buildeth horizontally and create a "floor" of luggage, coolers, equipment, instruments, and victuals and I would layeth the dog's bed and a blanket on this "floor" of stuff and then the dog would have much space in which  to cavort and frolic and the driver would also be able to see out the rear of the van . . . and when I announced this vision to my wife, she said unto me, "I don't want the dog lying on my bag!" and I pronounced to her that I would bury her bag deep in the "floor" of mine own construction, under a blanket so that our dog would not lieth on her bag (despite the fact that our dog is liething all over everything in our house) but then when she saw my handiwork, she pronounced it good and renounced her doubt in my vision (for this particular incident) and the family did rejoice (until we were fifteen minutes down the road and my wife announced she forgot her sunglasses, so we had to turn around and get them . . . which raises an interesting philosophical question: how far down the road do you have to go before you don't turn around and go back for sunglasses?)

A Book For People Who Thought "The Road" Was Too Depressing

Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel, adds nothing new to the apocalypse trope-- in fact, I think she keeps it simple on purpose: a killer virus wipes out the bulk of humanity-- but the book is deserving of all the accolades (National Book Award Finalist, Amazon Sci-fi Book of the Year) and then some . . . it's vivid and completely gripping from page one, it's beautifully written, and there are scenes of great violence and decay-- of course-- but unlike Cormac McCarthy's The Road, there are also moments of beauty and poetry and hope . . . it's The Walking Dead if the zombies were replaced by actors, musicians, and prophets; while it's not a super-idealistic noble-savage view of humanity, it's also not an illustration of Hobbes Leviathan . . . it's somewhere in between: more "literary" than hard sci-fi, but still a perfectly imagined world and I highly recommend it (especially, as an English teacher and a musician, because this book gives me hope that I might have some small but valuable role in a post-apocalyptic environment . . . "survival is insufficient").

Some of the Best Sentences Ever Written (By Me . . . This Year)

Once again, it's time for me to arbitrarily choose my favorite posts of the year; I hope you enjoy them and perhaps 2015 will provide more excellent material for me to condense (or refuse to condense) into sentence form . . . so without further fanfare, here are some of the best sentences ever written . . . by me . . . in 2014:

Greatest Holy Miracle (Involving Balls)

The Commenter of the Year's Favorite Sentence of the Year

The Sentences That Produced the Comment of the Year

Human Consciousness Explained and Illustrated

A Most Titillating Sentence About Racks and Knobs

The Best Advice for Ebay Sellers

An Ironically Woeful Sentence

An Unsolved Mystery

Best Before/After Incident

Least Awkward Moment of  Dave

Prank of the Year

Crackpot Theory of the Year

Most Educational Use of Facial Hair

An Actually Woeful Sentence

A Sentence That Contains Two of My Favorite Places in the Universe 

Most Surprising Cameo (and Comment) of the Year

A Mystery Solved

Angriest Sentence of the Year

Most Reflective Moment of Dave

French-kissing Your Sister (the Best Tie Ever)

Best Paean to Sarah Koenig and Serial

A Fashion Statement

and, finally . . .

A Fashion Dilemma.

Unwarranted Death Stare

So I'm walking down the hall, minding my own business, trying to get to my period 10/11 Creative Writing class on time and in front of me is a nice little girl that sits in the back right corner of the aforementioned class, and she's walking along with another nice little girl from the class, and Nice Girl #1  happens to turn around and she's sees me and makes eye contact and gives me the meanest glare imaginable-- a death stare-- and then she turns back around and walks into the class and I follow her and when I get into the room, I say to her "What was that for?" and she says, "I'm sorry, I predicted that you were absent because I didn't see you when I walked by class, so I told my friend you weren't here and then when I saw you in the hall I got really mad that my prediction was wrong."

If You Have a Cool Jazz Voice, Then You Don't Need Transitions

If you've got a cool jazz DJ voice, like Venus Flytrap or Gary Walker (from WBGO out of Newark) then you don't need to use transitions-- everything is smooth and cool, so last Wednesday, after Gary Walker finished playing Grover Washington Junior's groovy saxophone version of Stevie Wonder's "You Are the Sunshine of My Love," in one long flowing sentence, in his deep, gravelly signature voice, he explained that Grover Washington was a good friend of WBGO and that they love his music, and also, that fifteen years ago on "this very day" Grover was in Manhattan to do some recording for CBS and he "bent over to tie his shoes and he collapsed and died" and, then, all in the same breath, he informed folks that alternate side of the street parking would be in effect and to make sure to feed the meters.

A First World Conundrum

Does anyone else have trouble napping when the cleaning woman is doing her thing?

New Rack vs. New Knobs

My wife is wonderful and amazing just as she is, but that doesn't mean she can't occasionally improve things . . . so this year, for Christmas, she got a new rack (just for me!) and this is even better than her incredibly thoughtful gift back in 2011 (a set of new knobs) because she really didn't want (nor did she need) a new rack-- but she knew that I wanted her to accept the fact that we both might enjoy a new rack . . . because everyone loves a new rack . . . in the kitchen, of course, not the bedroom; in fact, we don't even have an old rack in the kitchen-- my wife likes to keep all the pots and pans in a set of deep drawers-- but I don't have the patience nor do I have the skill to successfully dig them out or stack them in . . . I like when everything is visible and easy to grab-- and this applies to both knobs and racks-- and so I always wanted a hanging rack for the pots and pans and she finally agreed to indulge me (and not only that, she bought it for me in secret and got our handyman to come over and install it . . . the best Christmas gift ever . . . even better than if she actually got a new rack . . . which is a recipe for back problems, if you ask me).

Seriously, Sirius?

So I'm walking my dog and it starts to rain and it's cold and damp and I'm hurrying home and he pulls me to a complete stop so he can urinate on a fire hydrant and I'm like really? that is so cliché and I tell him this, but it doesn't seem to make an impression-- so I guess it's actually a thing: dogs like to urinate on fire hydrants, even if it's raining (and my dog hates the rain and generally refuses to go out in it or stay out in it, so he must have desperately wanted to urinate on this fire hydrant).

Fell On Black Days

Sunday was the Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, and thus the shortest day and longest night of the year-- if you care to know how any of this astronomical crap works, here is a link-- but don't ask me about it, because I was too tired to comprehend any of the details of the article due to the fact that the lack of daylight sends me into a semi-dormant, totally idiotic state; on the bright side, the days will be getting longer now, but if you live in New Jersey don't get too excited-- because spring is rainy, cold and miserable (a fact I always forget) so not only is it going to be a long winter, but there won't be any decent weather until next fall.

The Significance of #47

Having this blog has made it easy to keep track of the important things in my life, such as the number of tacos I ate in 2011 (200!) and the number of books I read in 2013 (22) and I am very proud to say that this year I more than doubled last year's book count (mainly because I read a lot of quick reads: crime-fiction and travelogues and slick non-fiction) and I just finished my fifth Don Winslow novel of the year (The Gentlemen's Hour . . . plenty of surfing, corruption, torture, and murder . . . plus some big Serial type issues, such as how the prosecution and police often "massage" eyewitness reports and confessions in order to get what they need for a conviction-- whether it's the right guy or not) and that's book number 47; for the entire list and my seven favorites, head over to Gheorghe: The Blog.