Winter Gets Seriously Cold (and Seriously Silly)

It's gotten so cold here that I've been trying (unsuccessfully) to wear a scarf . . . how does one wear a scarf?

Ghost in the Machine/ Ghost in My Head

I'm teaching Hamlet now, so whenever I see that little "remember me" check-box that asks if you'd like a website to save your information, I hear it in the voice of Old Hamlet's Ghost . . . remember me.

Dave (Inadvertently) Appreciates Canada!

Back in 2012, I made a New Year's Resolution to appreciate Canada more, but apparently that's not the kind of thing you can force yourself to do . . . despite my abject failure at deliberately appreciating our neighbors to the north, I'm pleased to report that sometimes you can end up appreciating Canada by accident (which seems fitting for a country with a capital city that no one can identify) and I've been doing just that: two years ago I learned to play Gordon Lightfoot's ominous and excellent song "Sundown" on the guitar (and my friend Rob coincidentally learned it as well) and then a couple days ago I heard a snippet of a song on the radio and vaguely recognized it and wanted to learn it on the guitar and so I looked it up, and it turned out to be another Gordon Lightfoot song ("If You Could Read My Mind") and so I did some research and not only is Gordon Lightfoot Canadian, but he is one of the most appreciated Canadians; for example, but Robbie Robertson considers him a "national treasure" and Bob Dylan wishes his songs would all last forever . . . anyway, I like his lyrics more than I like his voice, but he's a hell of a lot better than Nickelback.

I've Seen the Future and It's Ridiculous

My children had their first Twinkie experience Friday night-- my wife's boss heard that they had never tried the quintessential processed treat and so she bought a box of them in order to corrupt their taste buds-- and my kids spent some time just soaking in the smell before they ate them, and while Alex held his Twinkie under his nose, he said to me: "this is the future, a Twinkie attached to a pair of glasses so it sits under your nose and you can smell it all day" and I almost pursued the discussion, but then I thought better of it and let him enjoy his greasy cream filled treat (when I was a kid, I preferred the Chocodile . . . which is a chocolate covered Twinkie and-- according to Wikipedia-- Hostess reissued them in 2014, but in a slightly smaller "fun-size," which seems like a weird appellation, because with something as delicious as a Chocodile, the bigger the better-- so a smaller version should be termed the "less fun" size).

Best Friends Forever (Aside From a 17 Year Hiatus After You Slept With My Wife)

So in the end, True Detectives is a Buddy Cop Show (Starsky and Hutch . . . Marty and Rust) and if you've got a buddy -- even if you're buddy is obtuse and philosophical and cold and obsessive and damaged . . . or drunk and licentious and hot-headed and undirected-- then you can head into the heart of darkness and maybe come out unscathed (or very scathed, but not so scathed that you can't do another season) and I'm wondering if the design of the mystery was so byzantine, like a Raymond Chandler novel, so that you could just sit back and enjoy the weird relationship between Marty and Rust, and forget about trying to figure out who was abducting and sacrificing children in the swamps of Louisiana (which isn't all that fun to think about anyway).

Snow Schtick

As a high school teacher, you occasionally educate your students, but in between the learning, you need a lot of schtick; Thursday during Creative Writing class, it started to snow and the kids reacted in the typical way: "Hooray, it's snowing! It's snowing!" and usually I allow them a minute or so of precipitation celebration before I make them start doing school stuff again, but not any longer--because I figured out how to nip the snow celebration in the bud; I said to them "an old lady just slipped on the ice and broke her hip, a car accident just happened on the Turnpike, and a stray dog just froze to death . . . and you're celebrating?" and a girl said "stop it!" to me and no one mentioned the snow again.

I Know Why the Enraged Bird Tweets

The New York Times article "How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco's Life" investigates how public shaming in a digital forum can lead to very real consequences for the people targeted-- the article focuses on Justine Sacco's infamous tweet and there is no question that what she posted to her small group of followers was fairly dopey, tone-deaf, and possibly racist (Going to Africa. Hope I don't get AIDS. Just kidding. I'm white!) and though Sacco claims she was satirizing the protective bubble that many white people inhabit, she came off as gleefully "flaunting" her privileged life; Sacco tweeted this before embarking on an eleven hour plane ride, and the by the time she touched down in South Africa, she had been lambasted all over the internet and as a result of the frenzy-- her tweet trended at number one-- she was fired from her job, she was told by authorities that no one could guarantee her safety, and employees at her hotel threatened to go on strike if she stayed there . . . and while I agree that people should be very careful what they post on the internet, as it is a permanent and public forum, I also see an irony in this system, where people are pushed to write controversial and edgy things in order to attract attention, and then the very people seeking these controversial and edgy things invoke unbridled indignance at the author, when they were trawling through Twitter to find exactly such things; this reminds me of Howard Stern's mantra: if you don't like what you're hearing, turn the dial . . . if you don't want to be offended, then get off the internet and read something that's been vetted by a professional editor-- satire is really hard to write (especially in 140 characters) and Justine Sacco failed at it, but the people who publicly humiliated her also failed to take the post in its proper context; the medium is the message here-- the tweet was in poor taste, but it was just a tweet, designed to live and die in a moment-- take flight or plummet into the binary abyss-- not haunt a woman for the rest of her days.

Defense Heuristically

I will guard you to the right until you prove that you can go left.

Icy Stairs vs. Hannibal Lecter

We just started watching another crime show about a serial killer (True Detectives) and this made me wonder how often serial killing actually occurs-- because if you watch Luther and The Fall and Dexter and Hannibal and The Following (I've only seen the first two on the list-- and that's enough serial killing for me) then you'd think that the world is absolutely overrun with psychopathic homicidal maniacs . . . but it turns out (according to Scientific American) that only one percent of the 15, 000 murders that occur in the U.S. each year are the work of serial killers, and the FBI estimates that there are 25-50 serial killers operating at any particular time . . . which is actually more than I thought, but you should still worry more about getting the ice off your porch steps then the chance that your neighbor has a bunch of frozen heads in the freezer.

Snow > Frozen Ice Terrain

A few weeks back I waxed poetically about how much I love to stomp across Donaldson Park in the snow, wearing my Sorel boots, my trusty canine companion bounding and rollicking by my side, tossing the fresh powder into the air with his snout-- but now that fresh snow has been rained upon, and sleeted upon, and it is frozen into a phantasmagoria of icy slicks, jagged chunks, and crusty shelves; my Sorel boots afford no traction on this stuff, and my back hurts from hiking across the uneven surfaces every morning and afternoon, and I'm not hoping for spring, because all that means is mud and rain, and I'm not sure if more snow will help matters, because the snow will be layered on ice, so the only thing I can wish for is that someone offers me a job in Colorado, where the beer flows like wine and the sun always shines and the snow is dry and powdery and you can just brush it off your windshield with a magazine.

Dave vs. the General Public

According to The Week magazine, there is a growing gap between what scientists believe and what the general U.S. public believes . . . for example: 86 percent of scientists think parents should be required to vaccinate their kids but only 68 percent of the general public believes this; also, 87 percent of scientists think climate change is caused by human activities, but only fifty percent of the general public believes this . . . and while I'm not a scientist, I am noticing that my beliefs don't often coincide with the general public either; for example:

1) it seems like everyone in the general public who has heard of Sleater-Kinney really likes their new album, but I find it kind of grating;

2) the general public is fond of skinny jeans, but I prefer them a bit baggier;

3) the general public seems to really enjoy seasonal decorations, and I think they're a hassle;

4) the general public likes cars with hubcaps, but I don't really care one way or the other (and I tend to lose them because I'm an awful parallel parker);

5) the general public couldn't give a shit how they use "lie" and "lay" but I like to use them properly;

6) and finally, the general public likes to dance at weddings, but I don't know what to do with my hands (or my feet).

Great Ideas in Pub History?

Alec and I are generally full of ideas on pub night, but sometimes these ideas don't sound as good the next morning:

1) last Thursday, I was a bit wound up from playing lead guitar in the Faculty Follies band, and this led to us deciding to form a band (with a rather crass name about a sexual practice that was popular in the '80's and in '80's movies, e.g. Vacation and The World According to Garp) and then make an album and post-date it from the '80's so that people would "remember" us even though we didn't exist-- Pete the bartender/owner shot this one down immediately;

2) moments later someone claimed that the people who are "unboxing" and testing toys and electronics and food and other stuff on YouTube are making "billions," and we wanted in on these untold riches, but realized that most items already have well-followed "unboxers" and so we would need a new niche if we wanted to make our "billions"-- and so we decided we could unbox and test toilet paper . . . I'll spare you the rest of that brainstorming session;

3) and then Friday night we revisited a recurring discussion about Alec's solution to the Washington Redskin nickname controversy-- Alec believes they should shorten their name to "The Skins" and each custom-made super-tight jersey should correspond to the player's skin tone (the numbers would look like they were "painted on" the jerseys in grease-paint) so it would appear that the opposing team would be the "shirt" team and the super-tough Skins would be going bare-chested-- and while I admire the aesthetics of the idea, I think the variety of skin tones on an NFL team  (and thus the inconsistency in jersey colors) would make it tough for the quarterback to pick out receivers (and we've never discussed whether the jerseys would have nipples and belly-buttons printed on them).

Really Explore the Space with the Brake Lights . . . More Brake Lights!

So we were driving home from SpiceZone (an Indian restaurant that is a zone of spiciness) and we got behind a Cadillac Escalade with the largest brake lights I have ever seen-- it was like the car was inside a pair of parentheses (the photo above doesn't do the effect justice, but I couldn't find anything better . . . and if I were a different kind of person I would have snapped a photo with my phone, but I'm not that person).

Faculty Follies

Once again, the Triennial (not triannual, thank God) Faculty Follies were a roaring success-- teachers, administrators, secretaries and hall-aides performed skits, dances, and other entertaining stuff to a packed house (plus there were videos, including an awesome parody of Serial that Stacey made . . . I was the prime suspect) and while I never physically got up on stage-- it's too weird up there-- I performed below the stage in the "house band" (we called ourselves the SATs . . . not nearly as good a name as The Hanging Chads) and it's too bad Weird Al cornered the market in stupid song parodies, because though we only rehearsed once, we rocked the house; here is our set list:

1) Instagram-- to The Beatles "Yesterday"--

2) It's Fun to Guess on the P.S.A.T. -- to "Y.M.C.A"--

3) Take Me to Lunch-- to Hozier's "Take Me to Church"--

4) You're Not the Only One-- to Sam Smith's "I'm Not the Only One."

This is My Future (and it's pathetic)

Last weekend was a harbinger of future parenting; my ten year old son was up later than me on two out of three nights: he went bowling with his friend on Friday and didn't get home until 10:30 -- long after I went to bed-- and he was the only one in the family awake to actually see the anti-climactic final play of the Super Bowl (he was angry that we left the Super Bowl party down the street at half-time, but I had a cold and felt like shit, and when we got home, I took Nyquil and still thought I could remain awake to see the rest of the game . . . but I forgot that no man is stronger than the soporific powers of Nyquil).

Harper Lee: The World's Laziest Writer?

Harper Lee, the author of To Kill a Mockingbird, is publishing a "new" novel on July 14th; Go Set a Watchman is chronologically the sequel to Mockingbird and details the relationship between an adult Scout Finch and her father Atticus long after the controversial trial of Tom Robinson, but Harper Lee actually wrote this story before To Kill a Mockingbird-- Go Set a Watchman contains flashbacks to Scout's childhood, and Lee's editor wisely advised her to write a novel focusing on those flashbacks, and the result is the story that became a staple on middle school curricula across the land . . . anyway, I find Harper Lee incredibly lazy, it's not like she's been polishing this "new" novel for the last sixty years-- she claims that she "lost" the manuscript and that a friend recently "discovered it" (I suppose it's possible that she misplaced the novel, since rumor has it that she's nearly blind, but the most probable scenario is that the royalties from Mockingbird have petered out and she needs some cash to maintain her genteel Southern lifestyle) and so I am warning people not to fall for this ruse engineered by a lazy old bat in a wheelchair (does she even need that wheelchair?) and join my total boycott of this book and the ensuing media events surrounding it; instead, if you're going to read a book by an old bat, then read Skeleton Road by Val McDermid; the book is a fantastic political mystery, and-- more significantly for this particular post-- if you like this book, then you can read one of her twenty-eight other novels . . . so Harper Lee, take that bitter pill and swallow with along with your daily dose of Metamucil-- maybe this prolific literary statistic will inspire you to dust off your Smith Corona, feed in a fresh ribbon, and get back to work.

Shiny Happy People Read Absurdist Fiction

The Happiest People in the World is a novel by Brock Clarke, and the opening took me by surprise-- I've been reading a lot of non-fiction and realistic fiction and realistic crime fiction lately, and I forgot how absurd a novel can be-- the beginning of the book is observed by a stuffed moose head in a local bar: it is a scene of great violence, and then things just keep getting weirder from there; there are CIA agents, a Danish political cartoonist on the lam posing as a guidance counselor, spies in disguise, terrorists, wannabe terrorists, rogue agents, small town lugnuts, disaffected veterans, and all sorts of other folks, interacting at a breakneck pace-- the plot shifts, the point of view shifts, the tone shifts, and-- despite the absurdity-- it's impossible to stop reading, which is a great reminder that if things are structured right, and the sentences are well-written, then a novel can take you on a far wilder ride than a movie . . . I read a lot of this stuff long ago: Thomas Pynchon and Tom Robbins and John Barth and Italo Calvino and Kurt Vonnegut . . . and then I got old and started reading books about economics and technology, so this was a nostalgic trip back to my old reading ways, when I really had no idea what was going on: both in my life and the books that I read.

Stella Gibson is a Better Swimmer Than Gillian Anderson

In the BBC series The Fall, Gillian Anderson plays Metropolitan Police Superintendent Stella Gibson, who is sent from London to Belfast to investigate a string of serial-killer type murders; she is a cold, weirdly sexual, detached character and when she's not frowning or sleeping in her clothes in the office, she likes to swim laps to blow off steam . . . but while Stella Gibson is the sort of person who does everything with crisp and lean efficiency, apparently Gillian Anderson doesn't know how to swim very well; this provides the only humor (at least I thought it was funny) in an otherwise dark and dour show: Anderson's swimming is hectic . . . she breathes frantically between every stroke, her stubby little arms pumping away, her body rigid, her head snapping violently, over and over in the same direction . . . and all this poor form must have contributed to her "frozen shoulder," which is why-- as she explains in this article-- she used a body double for the swimming scenes in season two (so Gillian, since I'm sure you're reading this, here are a few pointers: you want to take as few strokes as possible to cover the length of the pool, slipping your hands into the water they way you would slip them into a glove and turn your entire upper body to breathe-- you should try to point your belly-button at the sides of the pool with each stroke, and don't cross your arm over the center line, reach out and use your forearm as a paddle . . . and you can thank me in the comments).

A Movie Review in Honor of Groundhog Day

You may have heard the premise of Richard Linklater's new film Boyhood: he got the same actors together (Ellar Coltrane, Lorelei Linklater, Ethan Hawke, and Patricia Arquette) year after year for short shooting stints and then he stitched the scenes together to make a fantastic coming-of-age narrative with the greatest special effect of all-- the actual passage of time; the movie took twelve years to make, and follows Mason (Ellar Coltrane) from elementary school to his first day of college . . . and the effect is in no way gimmicky, though it's always exciting to see how everyone looks in transition, but the story carries itself . . . it is the opposite of the great Harold Ramis film Groundhog Day-- where time stands still for God-only-knows how long . . . in Boyhood time is an uncontrollable flash-flood that sweeps Mason's family across Texas . . . and I am always impressed by works of art like this, where the investment of massive amounts of time is crucial to the outcome: I couldn't make it through Finnegan's Wake but I love the idea that it took Joyce seventeen years to write the book and it should take you seventeen years to read it; I am also reminded of Columbine and Far From the Tree, both of which took a decade to write . . . and then, of course, there's Noah, who took a picture of himself every day for six years.

Dave Does the Opposite

In a shocking role reversal, I cooked dinner on Wednesday night while Catherine took the boys to the barber (and she bribed the boys into going for haircuts with a new toy-- a mini-basketball hoop with an electronic scoreboard) and when she got home, dinner was ready but she started assembling and playing around with the basketball hoop: hanging it on the closet door, testing out the scoreboard, unfolding the structure, etcetera and I had to be the nag and tell everyone that they could play with the new toy after dinner, but that I had been slaving over the food and it was getting cold and they were all being rather rude . . . and I'll tell you, it was no fun being the scold, so I'm going to try to go back to playing with the toys around dinner time because getting nagged is easier than doing the actual nagging.