Dearth of These in Central Jersey

Every time we visit Vermont, we envy all the delicious restaurants-- I don't understand why we don't have a hip Mexican inspired counter-service place like Mojo Cafe in our vicinity-- we have plenty of great authentic Mexican food (like the new place in Highland Park, El Sol, which I love)-- but Mojo Cafe is one of those places where someone with excellent handwriting writes the menu on a big chalkboard and they serve local produce and play cool music and have a million different bottles of hot sauce that you can sample, it's a hipster joint, certainly, but the food is really, really good . . . I also wish we had a organic deli like The Moon Dog Cafe . . . there's local produce for sale, amazing baked goods, and excellent and creative soups and sandwiches; I'm not sure why we don't have places like this in Middlesex County, as our population is much denser than Vermont, so someone check out the websites and open something similar . . . thanks in advance!

Famous Last Words (Dave Does Risk Assessment)

You're going to want to read the entirety of this rather long-winded sentence, if only because if I die, then you can say "I told you so"; this week in Composition class, we prioritized and classified our worries and anxieties, and then we took a look at the evidence and determined if there was any logic behind our assumptions; this is a good assignment for high school seniors, with graduation and the real world looming in the immediate future-- and how the students order the things they are concerned about makes for entertaining debates (such as the girl who was more worried about shark attacks than the possibility of never finding true love); to get this going, first I review some basic probability, and then we use specious sources from the internet to do back-of-the-envelope calculations, and, finally, we place our topics in one of three categories (Harmless, Don't Panic, and Red Alert); we learned that the chance of being killed by an meteorite is phenomenally low; same with bee stings and lightning; if you apply to more than five colleges, it's fairly certain that you will get into one; and if you're a guy, there's one thing to be concerned about: passing a kidney stone . . . the project also helped me out with one of my anxieties, a thick tree branch has partially cracked off a tree in my yard-- my neighbor had to point it out to me, as the dangling log is very high up (so I can't use my usual method to take it down: tossing a football with a rope duct-taped to it over the limb and then yanking . . . I did get to explain this feat in class and show my students this awesome picture) but after I did the math, I learned to stop worrying and love the log: there are 1440 minutes in a day, and the children and I probably spend three of them (if that) under the exact spot where the log would hit the ground-- my kids play at the park more than in the yard, and if I'm watering the plants in the yard, then I make a point not to stand under the "death spot," so the chance of one of us being hit by the log on any given day is miniscule . . . 2/10ths of a percent-- to put it in perspective, it's less dangerous than something else I worry about: me or one of the kids getting injured while we are skiing/snowboarding-- the chance of that happening is 6.97 injuries per 1000 visits, or 7/10ths of a percent every time you go to the mountain.

It's Happening Again

I am rapidly turning my newish (2008) Toyota Sienna minivan into my beloved and but heavily abused 1993 Jeep Cherokee . . . three years ago, when I bought the van, it was in perfect shape, but now it is missing a hubcap, there's a big scratch on the side from when I scraped my friend's car in the school lot, and the back latch is broken so you can't open the hatch, so I have to get all my soccer stuff out through the sliding doors . . . I'm worried that soon enough I'll be crawling in through the passenger side and using a boot as a cup-holder.

New Words and Old Rules

The oldest rule of discourse is this: never discuss religion or politics (this rule is slightly older than the second oldest rule of discourse: never speak when your mouth is full) but I'm going to make an exception today; the Lutheran Church near my school has this phrase on its placard: JESUS SWALLOWED UP DEATH FOREVER and while I readily admit that religion has never worked its magic on me . . . I'm not sure why this is the case, but jazz doesn't work on some people and ballet doesn't work on others and I don't want to get into why some rhetorical and aesthetic forms work on some people and others work on other people-- it's just the way of the world-- but I can't imagine how this aphorism would attract anyone to this particular church-- it's a weird and morbid and disturbing image-- and I did some research and placard is taken from a phrase in Isaiah 25:8, so it has its basis in the Bible (but so does the phrase "of these you may eat: locust, katydid, cricket or grasshopper" . . . Leviticus 11:22 . . . but you don't see that on any church placards) so I understand where they're coming from, with Easter and the resurrection, but it still seems like a really odd thing to put on a sign; tangentially, on the political front, I learned a new word in Rick Perlstein's book Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus . . . this is the first book in his trilogy of how modern conservatism was formed (I highly recommend the second book, Nixonland, and I'm loving this one as well . . . Perlstein writes dense, high energy prose from a tactical perspective on how conservatives got their hooks into America; his third book just came out and I plan on reading that one as well) and the word is normally a religious one: "chiliastic," which is a very specific adjective that describes "millenarianism," or the doctrine of Christ's expected return to earth to rule for one thousand years . . . but Perlstein uses the word in a hyperbolic and secular way (which is certainly his style) to describe how activists perceived the fight between the light and darkness of Communists and the anti-Communists-- anyway, I think "chiliastic" would be a great word to put on a church placard, as it would certainly make people curious about what was going on inside (especially since it contains the word "chili," which evokes heavenly deliciousness).

U-10 Soccer Players Say the Darndest Things (to their mothers)

Not only is my son Ian's travel team (which I coach) playing some wonderful soccer, but they've also got excellent diction and vocabulary; one player told his mom his favorite part of the Sunday's game was "the anticipation," which is a fairly abstract way to enjoy the sport (although he added that his second favorite part of the game was "getting the ball") and another player confided in his mom that he doesn't need words to get his friend to go where he wants him to go on the field, he uses "telepathy" to communicate with him.

Dave Attell, Artie Lange, and The Menzingers! New Brunswick Was Hopping . . .

Saturday night, on our way to see Dave Attell at The Stress Factory, we passed by The Court Tavern and there was a HUGE line to get in, which I've never seen (especially since bands don't go on until late) and I inquired as to just what was going on and some very happy hipsters said, in unison: "The Menzingers! They usually play much larger places, but once in a while they do a smaller venue!" and while none of us (Stacey, Kristen, Joe, Cat, Mooney, and me) had ever heard of The Menzingers, we were fascinated by the hype and swore we would go back and try to get in after the show; as we walked up to The Stress Factory, we saw a black Nissan Sentra (a rental?) stop in front, and a nerdy-looking guy wearing glasses got out of the car and removed the cone blocking the driveway, and then Dave Attell pulled in . . . we speculated that the guy riding with him was his opening act, and we were right -- his name was Louis Katz and he was by far the best opening act I've seen at The Stress Factory-- but still, you would think the opener would do the driving and the headliner would be in the back seat (of a much cooler car) snorting drugs and consorting with hookers, but I guess both guys live in New York, and Attell offered Katz a ride . . . anyway, Attell was great: smooth, relaxed, quick-witted, and interactive, an old master-- the only time the show ground to a halt was when Artie Lange showed up and did a few jokes and plugged his podcast-- Lange is looking sloppier than ever and his comedy is a bit plodding, especially in juxtaposition to Attell (plus there were some microphone problems) and the night ended with the typical discussion of why there aren't any young break-out female stand-up comics (who aren't lesbians) . . . or, as Stacey pointed out to Kristen, perhaps there are great female stand-ups and you just don't listen to them.

Better Get a Bucket

I thought I was at the end of my crime-fiction binge, but I was able to fit one more "wafer thin" novel into my gullet without exploding like Mr. Creosote-- I read the first Harry Bosch novel over break (The Black Echo) and it is definitely worth starting at the beginning; the plot is wild, convoluted and gripping, and you also find out about why Bosch has been demoted, why IAD is on his tail, and why his sense of humor isn't as keen as that of John Rebus . . . Bosch was a "tunnel rat" in Vietnam, and some of his fellow rats figure prominently in the novel's caper plot; now that I've read a few, I see the general formula of a Harry Bosch novel: there's an investigation that administrators do not want investigated; Bosch gets involved; no one else really wants to follow through the way Bosch does, so he ends up on his own; he is asked to stand down, but he becomes obsessed-- despite the fact that Internal Affairs is watching him for foul-play, breaches of protocol, and corruption-- and he eventually reaches the truth, which is not as neat and/or pretty as he would have liked, and he pays a heavy price for this knowledge . . . but he can handle it because his soul is nearly dead anyway; Connelly's brilliance is in the details-- in the description of the 1970 photo of the tunnel rats, each man's dog tags were taped together to prevent jangling when they went "out of the blue and into the black," and the novel is worth reading solely for the stuff that happens under the ground, in the L.A. sewer system and the spider holes in Vietnam (nearly as good as the Vienna tunnel stuff in The Third Man).


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Spring Break: Cold Weather and Discounts

Our Spring Break in Vermont had very little to do with spring; the house we rented near Weston was surrounded by deep snow (deep enough that walk around the yard, I had to wear snow shoes to avoid sinking in past my knees) and one night there was a snow storm and the next night there was an ice storm . . . the last day was wild, it warmed up and all the icicles were falling from the trees; and because of two excellent discounts, a good time was had by all . . .

Discount # 1) Okemo Mountain's Spring Skiesta Card . . . this is the best deal going, for $109 dollars you can ski every day from March 20th until the end of the season; the boys and I went to the mountain five days in a row, something I have never done before-- it was the perfect set-up for spring riding-- which is fun, but can be slushy and exhausting-- because if you get tired, you can just leave and come back the next day instead of trying to tough it out, which is never a good idea when there are high speeds, trees, and cliffs involved (our legs were jello by the fifth day, but we took the six person covered lift to the top anyway-- the ride was surreal: the mountain was enshrouded by a cloak of thick fog, the trees were covered in ice, and we were viewing it all through the curved orange plastic of the protective bubble, which was coated with a thin sheen of rime; the limited visibility made for a scary ride down, but we survived and unanimously decided against going for a sixth consecutive day);

2) my wife, inspired by this podcast, asked for a "good guy discount" at the Vermont Country Store in Weston and got ten dollars off a pair of Rieker Daisy clogs that she had her eye on (which were already on clearance . . . think of all the money she saved by spending all that money!)

The Truth About R2D2

According to my son Alex, the reason R2D2 makes all those beeping sounds is because he only speaks in profanity, and so he's beeping himself to insure that Star Wars is appropriate for kids (this does make sense . . . if I had to spend that much time with C3PO, I'd curse a lot too).

Music For Winter and Spring

Two new seasonal Slouching Beast songs:

1) "Long Winter" is a testament to just how long and brutal this winter was . . . I recorded it back in February and my voice sounds even raspier than usual . ..  because it was so cold and dry for so long; check out the bass riff, I played it on my short scale Danelectro Longhorn, and the song was inspired by a Christina Gutierrez line from Serial;

2) "Shining Incident (Averted)" is my tribute to spring, or to making it through the winter without going Jack Torrance on your family . . . while it's not exactly Vivaldi, the vocals are a little more chipper and there's a full-fledged jazz interlude at the bridge . . . happy spring break!

 

What Doesn't Kill You, Might Make You Dumber, But You Also Get Some Good Stories

Much has been written about the inspirational power and profound consequences of having a good teacher-- but there's a dearth of information on the importance of having a few bad teachers along the way: truly mean people (like my fourth grade teacher) and incompetents and weirdos may not put us pedagogically ahead of Finland and Japan, but these folks do make our kids tougher, more jaded, and provide them with loads of entertaining stories that they can pass along to their own children (I lost twenty-five points once on a test because I didn't have the proper heading . . . and if you had a certain gym teacher in our high school, it was pretty much a forty-minute free-for-all melee with the floor hockey sticks, day in day out . . . and then there was the guy who made the high school kids race around on those little scooters . . . etcetera, etcetera).

There By The Grace of God, Goes My Snowboard

I'm glad I showed some compassion towards a mom and her son who were rudely blocking a main thoroughfare on the ski mountain-- my first impulse was to tell them they were sitting in a horrible location (and it was a horrible location, they were blocking a long flat narrow cruiser trail which you need to ride through with some speed in order to get up the incline to make it to the trailhead) but I saw that she was dealing with a meltdown: her son-- approximately six years old-- had taken off his snowboard and appeared to be done for the day, even though there was a LONG way to the base lodge, so his mom told him to walk down and stay to the side of the trail, and then she turned away so she could see her phone better, in order to call her husband, and in that moment her son dropped his snowboard and it went rocketing down the hill and he went running after it, screaming and wailing and crying, and the mom missed all of it, including the climax, when the board shot over the lip of the trail, catching some air before it plummeted over a cliff and into the woods . . . and I had to be the bearer of bad news-- "Miss! Miss!" I yelled, and then I told her what happened and by this time she was actually on the phone with her husband and she launched into an expletive laced description of what happened, and my kids, who got to watch the whole thing, and really enjoyed it, especially all the F-bombs, but on the way home, we stopped at the ski store and bought a pair of snowboard leashes (which I had gotten out of the habit of using) so that Alex and I would never have to endure that particular humiliation (and not only is it humiliating to have your snowboard race down the mountain without you, but it can also really hurt someone).

Bosch vs. Rebus

I think I've reached the end of my detective fiction binge-- in a New Yorker article, Joyce Carol Oates recommended Michael Connelly and Ian Rankin as masters of the genre, so I read a few Connelly books and an Ian Rankin (Standing in Another Man's Grave) and I liked both authors and will read more of them . . . here is my breakdown of Harry Bosch (Connelly) and John Rebus (Rankin) . . . they are both no longer married and each has a daughter, but Bosch's daughter is a chip off the old block (a chip off the old Bosch?) and wants to be a detective like her dad, while Rebus is almost estranged from his daughter; both detectives are old school and willing to bend some rules to get their man, but while neither are corrupt like Vic Mackey, Rebus seems more willing to associate with the underbelly of society to get what he needs; Bosch seems more obsessive and unrelenting (although Rebus can be a bit obsessive as well) while Rebus is more willing to down a few pints or some Highland Park scotch to unwind; both men like music, but Bosch loves jazz while Rebus likes classic rock (and is prone to making Led Zeppelin jokes) and though it's hard to tell, because I read random books in each series instead of starting at the beginning, both men seem to be surrounded by women that they have history with . . . anyway, thanks Joyce Carol Oates . . . if you have any other recommendations, just leave them in the comments.

Do You Drive Your Car, or Does It Drive You?

I drive my Toyota minivan like a 1993 Jeep Cherokee Sport (because that's what I drove for the twenty years before I got the van) but I saw a lady in the high school parking lot with a brand new sporty Jeep with a jacked up frame and removable doors, gingerly poking in and out of her parking spot to avoid rolling one of her giant tires over a low concrete lip (not even a curb).

Nemesis

My dog, who is normally friendly and good-natured, absolutely despises the black poodle that lives on our block . . . it's worse than Maggie and the baby with one eyebrow (and far more embarrassing, this neighbor must hate our dog and hate us as well, he must think we've trained him to be a wild and vicious killer).

Clash of the Titans: Sheryl Crow vs. Maroon 5

We had a heated musical debate in the English office Wednesday, and it wasn't typical (Beatles vs. Stones) or elitist (which Radiohead album is the best?) or hip (I'm too old to make an allusion here) and I'm happy to say I precipitated the discussion, first by bringing up a new singer I like (Courtney Barnett) and then comparing her to Sheryl Crow, and then revealing that while I was cooking the night before, I drank too much beer while listening to Sheryl Crow, because her music-- a guilty pleasure of mine-- always makes me feel a bit giddy . . . one of the younger teachers enjoyed the image of me bopping around the kitchen, slightly tipsy, singing "Soak Up the Sun" (although she wished I was drinking a Leinenkugel Summer Shandy instead of beer) and I was able to fully satisfy the role-reversal because I was also texting my wife and reminding her that dinner would be ready soon and she needed to get home . . . anyway this led to an odd debate where the older folks in the office were lauding the merits of Sheryl Crow, and Kristen the youngster was defending Maroon 5 . . . I'm not sure why she chose to pit Maroon 5 against Sheryl Crow, but it resulted in everyone pulling up songs on their phones and Chromebooks and playing them at once (especially "Move Like Jagger," which even Kristen detests) and while we couldn't convince her that Maroon 5 was awful (she kept defending these hypothetical and unnamed deep tracks . . . "the ones they never play on the radio") everyone else united in the defense of Sheryl Crow, and I think it comes down to this: neither one is Led Zeppelin, but Sheryl Crow has more good songs that Maroon 5, and less awful songs than Maroon 5, and it's way more fun to drink beer and cook while listening to The Very Best of Sheryl Crow (which doesn't even have Steve McQueen on it) but Kristen will never understand this because she associates Sheryl Crow with her mom and light FM, not Lilith Fair.

Let Them Eat Two Pieces of Cake

I'm hoping my wife skips this sentence, because I don't want her to revisit this event and the emotions surrounding it, but I'd like to make a full confession to my readers, for the sake of honest self-reflection; last Tuesday, after a very cold and windy soccer practice, I got home, ate some dinner, and then noticed that there was some leftover chocolate cake on the counter (my grandmother ate dinner with us the previous night and she baked a chocolate cake) and it was very cold and windy at soccer practice, so I had really worked up an appetite and I saw the cake -- two pieces of cake-- and without really thinking, I ate both of them . . . then I sat down to watch some TV with my wife, and when I got up to get a drink, she said "Can you get me a piece of cake?" and I turned and said, "Uh, there isn't any more cake . . . I ate the last piece" and she said, "There were two pieces! And I told you to save one for me!" and, though I didn't hear her say this, apparently she did indeed ask me to save her some cake (she roused Alex out of bed to confirm) and it didn't really matter if I heard her or not because -- as she pointed out-- there were TWO pieces of cake, one for each of us-- and she also didn't buy my story that the cake was dry and she wouldn't have liked it anyway and I did her a favor by getting rid of it, because she had eaten a piece the night before and knew the cake was delicious . . . and the event became a metaphor for my entire self-centered existence and I had to buy her some good chocolate from the expensive chocolate store to make up for my transgression, and then -- the icing on the cake-- the  next day in Creative Writing class, purely by coincidence, we read the William Carlos Williams poem "This Is Just to Say" and I had a perfect anecdote for my class (but it wasn't worth the lambasting . . . next time, I'll leave a piece of cake . . . I swear).

Dave Wins the Powerball! And Quits Writing Sentences!

Actually, not quite . . . April Fools . . . neither you nor I are quite so lucky-- I will continue to write this drivel (and I hope you will continue to read it) because I did NOT win the Powerball (and it's not like I'm doing this for the money, anyway, so even if I did win the Powerball, I would continue writing this thing, because the Dalai Lama told me there will be no money, but on my deathbed, I will receive total consciousness . . . so I've got that going for me) but something very, very statistically unlikely happened and I had the perspicacity to notice and the mathematical acumen to figure out just how unlikely this event was . . . I teach Creative Writing, which is an elective that is open to sophomores, juniors, and seniors and I usually have an equal mix of the three grades in each class-- no particular grade is favored, but this year I have a thirty person class which contain zero juniors, and the chance of this happening is highly unlikely . . . there is a 66% chance for a class of one person to have zero juniors in it, and a 43% chance for a class of two to have no juniors in it (2/3 multiplied by 2/3) and a 29% chance that a class of three has no juniors in it, and if you continue in this fashion for a class of thirty, you have to calculate 2/3 to the 30th power, which comes out to 0.0000038576077564 (that's a 1 in 259,228 chance . . . which is pretty tiny, statistically speaking, but not quite as small as your chance of winning the Powerball lottery, which is 0.0000000057142857 or a 1 in 175,000,000 chance) and I'm wondering if there is some other explanation . . . perhaps junior schedules this year somehow prohibit them from taking electives period 7/8 . . . or maybe I should run out and buy a lottery ticket and strike while the iron is hot.

Curves and Blocks

We went to Philadelphia over the weekend and took in two excellent exhibits at The Franklin Institute; the first is called Body World: Animal Inside Out . . . it's an impressive collection of plasticized animals in various states of assembly: a giant squids split in half, cross-sections of a giraffe, a massive bull made entirely of musculature, the circulatory system of an ostrich, the innards of a dromedary (one hump) camel, etcetera . . . it's a wild and gross tour of an astounding variety of animal bodies; the second exhibit is called The Art of the Brick and it is lowbrow modern art at its finest . . . the exhibit features many, many pieces of Nathan Sawaya's Lego sculptures, and while the three minute film featuring Sawaya is pure cheese-- he was a corporate lawyer before he dedicated his life to Lego sculptures and he speaks in corny aphorisms, stuff like "my art is a reenactment of my personal feelings" and "everything is creativity"-- the exhibit itself was surprisingly excellent (and packed with people) and Sawaya's representations of past masterpieces (classic and modern) are suggestive and surreal, while his large sculptures are fascinating to look at because of his use of rectangular blocks to make rounded, complex figures (plus, it's fun to guess how many pieces he used for each sculpture, as there is a piece count for each . . . but I wonder if these counts are accurate . . . did he count every piece he used as he used it, or just approximate at the end?)

None Shall Pass

Last Tuesday, Alex and I went to soccer practice without Ian, because he pulled his quad; practice was a bit chaotic because everyone was sharing the turf-- Donaldson Park is a swamp-- and so once Alex and I arrived back home, at ten of eight, all I was hoping for was some warm food and and some quiet times, but this was not the case; we entered the house and Alex went into the kitchen, where my wife immediately called upon him to recite the months of the year . . . and he failed-- perhaps because he was tired and surprised by the question-- and then he was in deep trouble too, because a few minutes previous my wife had discovered a glaring hole in Ian's general knowledge-- he ddin't know the months of the year-- and so after Alex failed she yelled "he doesn't know them either! this is ridiculous . . . a fourth and fifth grader don't know the months of the year!" but it turned out Alex did know them, he just panicked in the heat of the moment . . . Ian, on the other hand, could not recite them, even with some time to think, and so there is a new house rule: before the boys get any screen time, they have to pass a "life quiz" on some basic knowledge . . . the months of the year, the location of Canada and Mexico in relation to the United States, the air-speed velocity of an unladen sparrow . . . something along those lines (and I lucked out, because my wife also demanded that they know each month's corresponding number and I'm a bit shaky on this, but my wife didn't quiz me, and so I got to watch Parks and Rec).