My wife surprised me and arranged a one night vacation in Asbury Park last night-- the perfect complement to my guys trip down to Nags Head-- and we were happy to see that the gentrification of the area is proceeding at an extraordinary rate . . . my mother-in-law lived in the neighboring town of Ocean Grove for many years, so we headed across Wesley Lake and wandered the narrow streets-- every tiny front yard planted with bright flowers, every house a different size and color, the tent city still in the shadow of the Great Auditorium, and we were quite shocked to look back towards Asbury and see a skyline of high-end condominiums and the Biergarten . . . quite a change from the 1990's . . . anyway, here's an analogy and a few food/drink recommendations:
1) Ocean Grove is to Asbury Park as Highland Park is to New Brunswick . . . the small and sleepy town receiving the benefits of the gentrification of the larger grittier city;
2) Barrio Costero has incredible margaritas (but go for happy hour, they're not cheap) and high end Mexican tapas . . . the tuna ceviche is essentially sushi-grade tuna on tiny homemade tortilla chips-- super-tasty-- and the al pastor and fish tacos are ridiculously good;
3) Barrio Costero's sister restaurant, Reyla, has excellent Mediterranean style tapas;
4) The Speakeatery has the ultimate hipster sandwich (and fantastic if you're trying to avoid wheat/bread/gluten) which consists of a slab of General Tso's chicken sandwiched between two sticky rice "buns" and some broccoli and slaw as condiments . . . it's delicious and totally weird;
5) The Chat and Nibble is across Main Street but worth the drive if you like chorizo with your eggs.
Memories Shade the Corners of My (Front) Yard
Long time readers of this blog might recall a detailed J. Peterman-style critique of the outfit I wore while striking a triumphant pose because I brought down a large dead limb with a rope attached to a football . . . Whitney wrote that incisive comment eight years ago, and since then, while my fashion sense may have improved (negligibly) the state of that tree did not; the limbs and main trunk continued to decay, to a state so precarious that we had to have some professionals take it down yesterday . . . and so I'd like to thank the tree, which provided much blogging and neighborhood entertainment: we'll miss you, big rotten hollow behemoth that housed squirrels and raccoons, dropped limbs on our driveway and our roof (but never our car . . . thanks!) and provided me with one of my proudest moment as a homeowner . . . I hope your dismembered and chipped parts get to mulch a beautiful garden, burn brightly in a stone hearth, and-- maybe, if you're really lucky-- smoke some home-made bacon.
Three Loony Questions
Three questions about this imminent solar eclipse, in which New Jerseyans are supposed to see 73% of the sun blocked by the moon:
1) do I have to get excited about this event?
2) is it safe to watch the eclipse through glasses my wife bought at Walmart?
3) since the eclipse is going to last for several hours and we'll be down at the beach during this time, do I only need to put 27% the required amount of sunblock on my children?
1) do I have to get excited about this event?
2) is it safe to watch the eclipse through glasses my wife bought at Walmart?
3) since the eclipse is going to last for several hours and we'll be down at the beach during this time, do I only need to put 27% the required amount of sunblock on my children?
Flu in the Summertime? No Class . . .
When you've got the flu-- which I do-- watching Arrested Development is the best medicine (besides Tamiflu, which I am also using).
Southern Mysteries, Real and Fictitious
I am mired in the South . . . I just got back from Norfolk and North Carolina, just finished Tom Franklin's novel Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter-- a Mississippi mystery that takes you on a journey through time and race, with plenty of snakes and a satisfying (if predictable) conclusion-- and I just started the serial podcast Up and Vanished which reinvestigates the unsolved disappearance of Georgia teacher and beauty queen Tara Grinstead (the podcast was highly recommended by my wife and by my son Alex . . . Alex has a number of theories on whodunnit).
Outer Banks Fishing Trip XXIV
On my ride down to Norfolk, while listening to a Malcolm Gladwell podcast, I learned that our annual fraternity get-together in Kill Devil Hills is an act of transactive memory . . . you tell the stories you know and listen to the ones you don't bother to store in your memory because you know that your friends know them better than you do . . . anyway, here's a rundown of what I remember from the trip:
1) the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk has a great collection of art, the cafe has good food (I had a crabcake) and the air-conditioning is kickin';
2) Whitney needs to adjust the feng shui of his oddly placed, unusable foosball table in his apartment;
3) Johnny and I drove down together and he told me the story of his aorta exploding and I nearly passed out;
4) Johnny and I went on a quest for cornhole beanbags and nearly paid 8 dollars a piece for them, until we found some sale bags at the second Ace hardware we visited (Chiefs and Vikings);
5) the cornhole games were so intense that Billy rightly claimed they weren't even fun anymore . . . Dave Fairbanks-- the oldest participant-- won cornhole rookie of the trip;
6) the Willie Nelson joke is a keeper.
7) Jason made the mistake of claiming he really liked a new song by Metallica . . .
8) Whitney claimed he was going to get his weight down to 230 pounds by Thanksgiving and Marston decided to bet him that he couldn't do it and then there was much debate on how much the bet should be . . . Marston wanted it to be enough that it would be fun to win the money, but not so much as to actually incentivize him to lose the weight . . . one hundred dollars was determined to be too low, Whitney would never lose the weight for that, but one thousand would be too motivational; so, appropriately, they bet 230 dollars that Whitney would be 230 by Thanksgiving . . . but then Marlin doubled-down, so that may be the factor that motivates Whit to do it . . . we're all rooting for him;
9) Spikeball made its cameo beach appearance and fun was had by all players . . . but not by the observers, who said the rallies weren't long enough (but it's still got to be more entertaining to watch than cornhole)
10) food and scenery was very good at Blue Moon;
11) Jerry and I walked to Tortuga's, as usual, forgot just how far it was (as usual) and then got soaked by a downpour and had to buy cheap t-shirts on the way . . . I still had the chills at the bar and thought it was due to wet underwear, but I was probably running a fever and though I made it through a day of drinking and beach fun, when I collapsed into bed that night, I had intermittent chills and night sweats from some kind of virus and so once we figured out the sliding picture puzzle of the twelve cars in the skinny sandy driveway and my car was extricated, I packed up and drive home, slightly dazed from the fever . . . eight and a half hours later I was back in Jersey;
12) the rain kept us from playing tennis, but we talked some tennis and watched some tennis and Zman got to illustrate his tennis acumen;
13) thanks Whit, another great trip . . . hope we can do it again next year!
1) the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk has a great collection of art, the cafe has good food (I had a crabcake) and the air-conditioning is kickin';
2) Whitney needs to adjust the feng shui of his oddly placed, unusable foosball table in his apartment;
3) Johnny and I drove down together and he told me the story of his aorta exploding and I nearly passed out;
4) Johnny and I went on a quest for cornhole beanbags and nearly paid 8 dollars a piece for them, until we found some sale bags at the second Ace hardware we visited (Chiefs and Vikings);
5) the cornhole games were so intense that Billy rightly claimed they weren't even fun anymore . . . Dave Fairbanks-- the oldest participant-- won cornhole rookie of the trip;
6) the Willie Nelson joke is a keeper.
7) Jason made the mistake of claiming he really liked a new song by Metallica . . .
8) Whitney claimed he was going to get his weight down to 230 pounds by Thanksgiving and Marston decided to bet him that he couldn't do it and then there was much debate on how much the bet should be . . . Marston wanted it to be enough that it would be fun to win the money, but not so much as to actually incentivize him to lose the weight . . . one hundred dollars was determined to be too low, Whitney would never lose the weight for that, but one thousand would be too motivational; so, appropriately, they bet 230 dollars that Whitney would be 230 by Thanksgiving . . . but then Marlin doubled-down, so that may be the factor that motivates Whit to do it . . . we're all rooting for him;
9) Spikeball made its cameo beach appearance and fun was had by all players . . . but not by the observers, who said the rallies weren't long enough (but it's still got to be more entertaining to watch than cornhole)
10) food and scenery was very good at Blue Moon;
11) Jerry and I walked to Tortuga's, as usual, forgot just how far it was (as usual) and then got soaked by a downpour and had to buy cheap t-shirts on the way . . . I still had the chills at the bar and thought it was due to wet underwear, but I was probably running a fever and though I made it through a day of drinking and beach fun, when I collapsed into bed that night, I had intermittent chills and night sweats from some kind of virus and so once we figured out the sliding picture puzzle of the twelve cars in the skinny sandy driveway and my car was extricated, I packed up and drive home, slightly dazed from the fever . . . eight and a half hours later I was back in Jersey;
12) the rain kept us from playing tennis, but we talked some tennis and watched some tennis and Zman got to illustrate his tennis acumen;
13) thanks Whit, another great trip . . . hope we can do it again next year!
That's a 20 Footer
When I was swimming in the ocean today, I inadvertently slapped a fish . . . and I think we were equally surprised.
Pier 39 vs. The Raritan Yacht Club
Lately, my wife and I have been lucky enough to get some additional work running professional development workshops: Amazon flew my wife to San Francisco at the the start of the summer, so she could present on a math platform they've created and she uses, and they're flying her to Fort Lauderdale later this month to do several more presentations, and I got to present near a beautiful body of water as well, on three separate occasions . . . at Perth Amboy Middle School.
Monkey = Rock
I finally finished a song I've been working on for what seems like forever . . . it's about the primitive anger and frustration that's lurking just below the surface of modern life, the feeling that sometimes-- even though it's not appropriate-- you just want to throw shit around and rant and rave, for the stupidest reasons: you're behind a garbage truck and you can't pass it and it smells, or you have to put the laundry away, or it's your turn to cook dinner and you bought shrimp that haven't been deveined . . . anyway, it's called "Monkey Mind," because all the great bands have a songs with "monkey" in the title.
We Survived Dunkirk . . . and the Ride Home
The boys and I saw Dunkirk today and we survived-- but just barely; Christopher Nolan's film is loud, frantic, relentless and visually myriad . . . land, sea, and air-- each with its own time scale-- all of which eventually interlock in a moving but properly anticlimactic climax (this is the story of an evacuation, not a great victory, and while there are incredibly heroic individual acts and moments selfless behavior amongst the general chaos of hundreds of thousands of trapped soldiers being evacuated across the channel, from Dunkirk to England, the brilliance of this movie is that you don't get a clear look at a single Nazi, there are the Spitfires and the U-boats, and Germans occasionally shoot from afar, but this is essentially the story of heroic logistics, represented by Kenneth Branagh's stoic portrayal of Commander Bolton) and after two hours of shell shock and first-person virtual-reality warfare POV, I was fairly shook up . . . I wasn't able to properly relax until my son got the Planet Money podcast going in the car-- a brilliant story about Stephon Marbury's budget basketball shoe, the Starbury-- and I zoned out, listening, happy that I had successfully evacuated my children from Dunkirk, as we sped across the Morris Goodkind bridge on Route 1 and then--suddenly-- I was thrust back into the film, into the first person cockpit view, and something was speeding toward my face, a rock, a rock was hurtling towards my face and I ducked-- I actually ducked-- and the rock glanced off the windshield with a loud clack (chipping it) and the kids were like "What the hell!" and I noticed that the truck ahead of me had a sign on it that read "CONSTRUCTION VEHICLE DO NOT FOLLOW" and so I pulled into the right lane and stopped following it.
The Test 94: The Blues Sisters
The ladies make me sad and mournful on this week's episode of The Test because they don't know nothin' about dem blues . . . see if you fare better: identify the bluesmen and then use the song titles and lyrics to figure out the movie that corresponds to the seven clips, also . . . beware the prophecy!
It Might Be The Shoes
Big day for our family: after attending a funeral in South Jersey, we stopped at the Jackson Outlets to buy athletic shoes for the kids and me . . . and this was the first time we ever went athletic shoe shopping with the kids . . . in the past, we've been quite frugal, and the boys wore hand-me-downs, or shoes that Cat found on sale and brought home, or-- my specialty-- used sneakers and cleats bought off Ebay and Craigslist, so this was a real test for our family and we passed-- barely . . . Cat had one rough patch, because Ian tried on seventeen pairs of basketball shoes in three stores and couldn't find a pair that didn't squeeze his toes, and I had to explain to her how important good shoes are for tennis and basketball (and I think she was annoyed at the prices, because though she has countless pairs of shoes, a disgusting amount, she's always getting them on sale, for sixteen dollars, but we pointed out to her that 120 pairs of shoes at sixteen dollars a pop is still a lot more money than three pairs at forty or fifty a pop) and everything turned out wonderful in the end, Ian found a pair of Nike Airs on the clearance rack that fit his weird feet and Alex was overjoyed with his shoes and I got a beautiful pair of green tennis shoes and some basketball shoes with arch support, which made me realize I've been playing basketball in three year old sneakers that are totally compressed and have no cushion . . . and there's no question that I deserve some nice basketball shoes, because last night we went to a party in the suburbs and they had a kidney shaped pool with a diving board and on the other end of the pool from the board was a basketball hoop and so we took turns shooting the ball while in mid-air after jumping off the diving board and I was the only one who made the shot . . . it was a weird experience because you didn't get to see the end result of your shot, you'd be underwater by the time the ball got to the hoop, so you had to rely on the other people in the pool to tell you if you were short or long with your shot (and I was surprised they didn't lie to me and tell me I missed when I made the shot, knowing how annoying I am about such mundane triumphs).
Things I Learned at the Bar Last Night
Just because you're drinking beer, doesn't mean the learnin' stops . . . here's a very incomplete, completely abridged, and family friendly list of some of the subjects we tackled and analyzed outside at Pino's last night:
1) when women wear high heels, they've got to be careful of sewer grates;
2) dogs are also afraid of sewer grates, most likely because their paws could get stuck in the holes;
3) Connell's left shoulder contains enough hair to encase my entire body;
4) if someone leaves their glasses behind, it's really funny to take pictures with the glasses being used to clean out various orifices and send those pictures to the owner of the glasses, especially if the owner is Phil;
5) Alec has an idea for a comedy sketch that involves a guy who picks up women in bars and brings them home to his wife, but the twist is that he literally picks up the women . . . with his teeth, and carries them home-- like a cat bringing home a dead mouse-- and then drops the women in front of his wife-- the way a cat drops a dead mouse in front of its master-- and the guy's wife gets really annoyed with this behavior-- just as cat owners get annoyed when their pet is constantly bringing dead mice into the house . . . Alec was very passionate about this sketch idea and he made me promise to write it down, and now I've made good on this promise and so upon my deathbed, I will receive total consciousness.
1) when women wear high heels, they've got to be careful of sewer grates;
2) dogs are also afraid of sewer grates, most likely because their paws could get stuck in the holes;
3) Connell's left shoulder contains enough hair to encase my entire body;
4) if someone leaves their glasses behind, it's really funny to take pictures with the glasses being used to clean out various orifices and send those pictures to the owner of the glasses, especially if the owner is Phil;
5) Alec has an idea for a comedy sketch that involves a guy who picks up women in bars and brings them home to his wife, but the twist is that he literally picks up the women . . . with his teeth, and carries them home-- like a cat bringing home a dead mouse-- and then drops the women in front of his wife-- the way a cat drops a dead mouse in front of its master-- and the guy's wife gets really annoyed with this behavior-- just as cat owners get annoyed when their pet is constantly bringing dead mice into the house . . . Alec was very passionate about this sketch idea and he made me promise to write it down, and now I've made good on this promise and so upon my deathbed, I will receive total consciousness.
Target at Target (Awkward Dave Goes to the Store)
This is embarrassing and it's taken over a week to process, but since I'm sorting out the situation this morning, I might as well summarize what happened:
last Friday, the day before we went to Sea Isle City, Catherine sent me to the store to buy a few last minute items for our vacation . . . she sent me to the store . . . I do all of my shopping with Amazon Prime now, so even planning for this was an adventure-- I needed peanut butter, granola, spandex underwear for the kids, and a small cooler for beer and snacks-- and so I made a detailed list of these items, with notes, and I figured I would go to a grocery store and a sporting goods store, but my wife said no, I could get all these things at the local Target;
I drove to Milltown, parked the car in the giant parking lot, and went into the store, a brightly lit vast cavernous space full of all kinds of new items (if you haven't been to a store in a while, I would describe it as a living version of Amazon, but all jumbled up) and the first thing I'd like to say is that I did a fantastic job shopping-- I selected an appropriate sized cooler (and there are a lot of coolers to choose from, I felt like Navin in The Jerk with his extraordinary thermos) and I found some multi-colored spandex underwear for the kids, to prevent chafing from the sand and surf, and I chose two different kinds of granola (there are a lot of different varieties of granola, each one healthier than the next, and the packaging is very enticing) and I got the right kind of peanut butter (Skippy Natural, No Need to Stir) and while I had certainly relied on my notes-- there's a lot of extraneous stuff in stores to distract you-- I had done it, mission accomplished, and now all I needed to do was check out;
I went over to the line area, which is pretty chaotic at Target, you have a number of slots to choose from and each slot has a near cashier and a far cashier, and I didn't know the etiquette, if you could just jump to a far cashier, but I did it anyway and the lady greeted me, she was middle-aged and portly and had some kind of foreign accent (Slovakian?) and she asked me if I wanted 5% off my purchase and I said "Sure" and she said all I needed was a Red Card-- which I assumed was one of those little doohickeys you keep on your keychain and they scan it with your items and you get a discount, I have one for our local grocery store-- and then I was immersed in answering a number of questions on the credit card charging screen, and they were fairly detailed questions-- the little screen wanted to know how much I earned annually and my address and my social security number-- which seemed kind of crazy, just to get a little discount card, but the cashier-lady with the accent kept distracting me, so I couldn't process how weird and detailed these questions were . . . ske kept asking me questions about my purchases, she was really interested in where I got the spandex underwear, as she wanted some for someone in her life (her husband? I don't know, I have a hard time doing two things at once, and it was traumatic enough to be in a store) and I kept telling her that I found the underwear in the boys department, and then I pointed towards the blue hanging sign that said "Boys" and she wanted to know if they had these in the men's department, and I told her I didn't know, and then I finally finished answering all the questions on the screen and fended off all her questions about the kids spandex underwear and then she she said, happily, "You've been approved!" and she informed me that I had just signed up for a brand new Target credit card and I told her that I didn't want a Target credit card, that I had just come to the store for four things, not FIVE things . . . a Target credit card was not on the list and she looked at me, perplexed, and I asked if I could cancel it and she said she didn't know how to do that, and I told her not to use this card on the purchase, that I didn't want to save the 5% and then I got on my high horse and told her she should be more clear about the fact that this Red Card was a credit card-- I was stern, but too confounded to really let her have it, although I was quite pissed off and felt I should have;
then I drove home to tell my wife the news, and I knew she wasn't going to be happy and she wasn't . . . she was like: I send you to the store for a few things and you come back with a new credit card, I don't want to worry about that!-- and then when I told this story at the beach, to my cousins and family, my mother pointed out that Target did a great job employing folks with special needs as cashiers, and I realized that this woman didn't have a Slovakian accent, she had a learning disability or a speech impediment, and she had preyed on me and probably gotten some kind of bonus because she signed up a customer for a credit card, and so though I'm annoyed that I've got to call Target in a few minutes and cancel this thing (it just came in the mail) at least I know in my heart that I helped out someone that needed a helping hand (inadvertently . . . and I did chastise her a bit) and I will never go inside a store again (except for looting, when this whole consumerist nightmare fall apart).
last Friday, the day before we went to Sea Isle City, Catherine sent me to the store to buy a few last minute items for our vacation . . . she sent me to the store . . . I do all of my shopping with Amazon Prime now, so even planning for this was an adventure-- I needed peanut butter, granola, spandex underwear for the kids, and a small cooler for beer and snacks-- and so I made a detailed list of these items, with notes, and I figured I would go to a grocery store and a sporting goods store, but my wife said no, I could get all these things at the local Target;
I drove to Milltown, parked the car in the giant parking lot, and went into the store, a brightly lit vast cavernous space full of all kinds of new items (if you haven't been to a store in a while, I would describe it as a living version of Amazon, but all jumbled up) and the first thing I'd like to say is that I did a fantastic job shopping-- I selected an appropriate sized cooler (and there are a lot of coolers to choose from, I felt like Navin in The Jerk with his extraordinary thermos) and I found some multi-colored spandex underwear for the kids, to prevent chafing from the sand and surf, and I chose two different kinds of granola (there are a lot of different varieties of granola, each one healthier than the next, and the packaging is very enticing) and I got the right kind of peanut butter (Skippy Natural, No Need to Stir) and while I had certainly relied on my notes-- there's a lot of extraneous stuff in stores to distract you-- I had done it, mission accomplished, and now all I needed to do was check out;
I went over to the line area, which is pretty chaotic at Target, you have a number of slots to choose from and each slot has a near cashier and a far cashier, and I didn't know the etiquette, if you could just jump to a far cashier, but I did it anyway and the lady greeted me, she was middle-aged and portly and had some kind of foreign accent (Slovakian?) and she asked me if I wanted 5% off my purchase and I said "Sure" and she said all I needed was a Red Card-- which I assumed was one of those little doohickeys you keep on your keychain and they scan it with your items and you get a discount, I have one for our local grocery store-- and then I was immersed in answering a number of questions on the credit card charging screen, and they were fairly detailed questions-- the little screen wanted to know how much I earned annually and my address and my social security number-- which seemed kind of crazy, just to get a little discount card, but the cashier-lady with the accent kept distracting me, so I couldn't process how weird and detailed these questions were . . . ske kept asking me questions about my purchases, she was really interested in where I got the spandex underwear, as she wanted some for someone in her life (her husband? I don't know, I have a hard time doing two things at once, and it was traumatic enough to be in a store) and I kept telling her that I found the underwear in the boys department, and then I pointed towards the blue hanging sign that said "Boys" and she wanted to know if they had these in the men's department, and I told her I didn't know, and then I finally finished answering all the questions on the screen and fended off all her questions about the kids spandex underwear and then she she said, happily, "You've been approved!" and she informed me that I had just signed up for a brand new Target credit card and I told her that I didn't want a Target credit card, that I had just come to the store for four things, not FIVE things . . . a Target credit card was not on the list and she looked at me, perplexed, and I asked if I could cancel it and she said she didn't know how to do that, and I told her not to use this card on the purchase, that I didn't want to save the 5% and then I got on my high horse and told her she should be more clear about the fact that this Red Card was a credit card-- I was stern, but too confounded to really let her have it, although I was quite pissed off and felt I should have;
then I drove home to tell my wife the news, and I knew she wasn't going to be happy and she wasn't . . . she was like: I send you to the store for a few things and you come back with a new credit card, I don't want to worry about that!-- and then when I told this story at the beach, to my cousins and family, my mother pointed out that Target did a great job employing folks with special needs as cashiers, and I realized that this woman didn't have a Slovakian accent, she had a learning disability or a speech impediment, and she had preyed on me and probably gotten some kind of bonus because she signed up a customer for a credit card, and so though I'm annoyed that I've got to call Target in a few minutes and cancel this thing (it just came in the mail) at least I know in my heart that I helped out someone that needed a helping hand (inadvertently . . . and I did chastise her a bit) and I will never go inside a store again (except for looting, when this whole consumerist nightmare fall apart).
My SAT Scores Were Actually Quite Impressive (But There Were No Questions About Wasps)
A true sign of intelligence is learning from past mistakes . . . for example, when I was eight years old and my younger brother Marc was five, we threw rocks at a wasp nest until we struck it, causing an angry swarm of wasps to emerge-- and though my advanced years didn't make me much smarter than my younger brother, I was faster than him, and so he got stung multiple times while I suffered no stings . . . yesterday, when I was forty-seven years old, I was playing tennis with my kids (ages 12 and 13) at the fabulously soft and wonderful courts at East Brunswick High School-- the surface is some kind of padded rubberized acrylic-- and Alex yanked a cross-court backhand and it hit off the scoring tube-- the plastic contraption attached to the net pole that holds a tennis ball for keeping track of games-- and Ian was at the net, near the tube, and he suddenly ran from that spot, swatting with his racket, and when we asked him what was wrong, he claimed that a big wasp came out of a hole in the tube-- so I went over to investigate, and my kids --trusting their dad-- came to see what was up as well, and Ian was right, there was a wasp and it was just sitting there now, on the plastic tube, taunting me with it's venomous belligerence, and so I took my racket, turned it sideways, and decided I would smush the wasp, which had no place on a tennis court-- net play is hard enough-- and just as I struck at the wasp, I noticed that there were several wasps inside the hole, but it was too late-- my smushing stroke was already in motion-- and as I hit the tube, I yelled to my children "RUN!" and a swarm of twenty wasps erupted from various holes in the scoring tube, formed a swirling, buzzing cyclone around the tube, and then splintered off in search of the attackers-- my kids listened to me for once, and they outran the few wasps that flew in their direction, but most of the wasps homed in on me: the most obvious threat to the nest-- so I backpedaled, gracelessly, while simultaneously swinging my racket, and I managed to fend them off . . . by this time my kids had run five courts over, out of range of the angry insects, who then retreated back to their scoring tube/nest so they could terrorize net players on another day (FYI: they live in the tube on the farthest court from the parking lot) and when I joined my kids on the far court, opposite the nest, I told them the story of when Uncle Marc and I threw rocks at the wasp nest in the Poconos and we hit it and ran and Uncle Marc got stung and they said, "Dad, that was when you were a kid . . . you're forty-seven now, haven't you learned anything?"
The Test 93: That Girl is Poison (Ivy)
This week on The Test, Stacey presents something linear, traditional, and very important: a review of poisonous (and venomous) things that can kill you, maim you, and -- worst of all-- make you itchy and uncomfortable . . . as a bonus, Cunningham has an encounter with a mysterious man sporting thick chest hair.
You Had to Be There (Not That You'd Want To)
Mark Bowden's new book Hue 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam recounts the Tet Offensive, the capture of the ancient provincial capital city of Hue by the North Vietnamese, and the ensuing epic 24 day battle waged by the Marines and the ARVN to recapture the city . . . the book is over 500 pages and a monumental day-by-day account of the heroism, atrocities, propaganda, misinformation, strategy, blunders, civilian casualties, destruction of ancient wonders, Communist purges, political failures, and-- amidst great effort and honor-- the futility of top-down command in warfare . . . Bowden interviewed scores of people from both sides, so while he focuses on American perspectives and tells the stories of many, many Marines and reporters who were at Hue and witnessed the bloodiest battle in the war, he also recounts civilian and North Vietnamese perspectives of the tragic month; the sum total of this grueling depiction is the ultimate expression of "I support the troops but not the war," although at times it's even hard to support the troops, who often busy themselves shooting dogs and civilians, prying gold fillings from the teeth of the dead, and committing other acts that could only occur in the moral vacuum of a chaotic, street-to-street, house-to-house plodding assault, where young men watched their friends get shot in the streets, tried to retrieve the wounded, were consequently shot and on and on-- the book graphically describes the many many deaths and injuries-- the Marines were used as fodder and many are still angry about this, none of the people higher up the chain understood the amount of NVA in the Citadel, nor how well entrenched they were, or that their supply chains were intact . . . they didn't understand how well-trained the NVA soldiers were, the generals thought they could be brushed aside with little collateral damage, they didn't understand that the spider-holes, trenches, towers, turrets, snipers, and occupation of the city created a maze of interlocking fire that just devastated our troops, nor did the people calling the shots understand the North Vietnamese strategy, which was simply to hold onto the city as long as possible, cause as many casualties as possible, and-- though the NVA knew they would eventually lose the battle-- they would win the war, because the American people and media (including Walter Cronkite) would finally realize that it wasn't worth the effort . . . so while the Marines heroically took back the Citadel, the generals (Gen. Westmoreland specifically) didn't realize that the death toll, the destruction of the city and its historical wonders, and the civilian casualties would drive Lyndon Johnson to bow out of the presidential race, and completely change the strategy in Vietnam . . . while the capture of Hue did not foment a fervent Communist uprising, and-- in fact-- many of the people in Hue (an educated, upper-middle class city) tried to stay out of the war and not choose sides at all, many of these people, the ones not killed by the initial battle, were killed by the Communists in purges . . . it was horrible and ugly on both sides, the genetically engineered IR8 rice didn't do the trick, nor did the Hanoi government, and while the war would slog on for several more years, as we tried to "seek honorable peace," the lessons were obvious and while we have gotten mired in places we don't belong, we at least know now that we have to "win hearts and minds" in order to achieve any kind of lasting success in a foreign proxy war (not that we're immune to this sort of thing, despite what we learned, we still managed to concoct Abu Ghraib . . . but that's still a far cry from the treatment of the civilian "gooks" in Vietnam, there was very little thought of collateral damage by the soldiers and the generals, despite the fact that we weren't fighting a war against Vietnam, we were supposedly fighting a war for the Vietnamese people . . . what a fucking mess, read the book).
These Guys Beat Clubber Lang?
We took a midday break from the beach last week and watched Dodgeball-- my kids thought it was a laugh-riot, though I'm not sure they picked up on all the satirical homo-erotic imagery and double entendres-- then on Friday night we caught the last hour of Rocky III and they had no problem recognizing that there was something weird going on between Rocky and Apollo and it was not satirical, this weirdness first becomes apparent when the two of them run down the beach, Apollo wearing a cut-off tank top and the shortest short shorts imaginable, Rocky sleek, buff, oiled, and oddly contemplative -- he is afraid of his feelings-- the montage finally climaxes (after many compressed training sequences to inspirational music) when Rocky triumphantly beats Apollo in a footrace and the two men dance and hug and splash in the water, giggling and laughing like schoolgirls . . . I feel bad for Adrian in these scenes, she's a real third wheel, and she's got to be wondering if this is the same man who screamed her name over and over in the frenzy after he first won the title.
This Post Is Not Beethoven's Ninth Symphny
A couple weeks ago, I brought a stack of books home from the library and told my kids to choose one and start reading . . . Ian chose I Am Legend and really enjoyed it (and then we watched the movie and he was disappointed with the ending, but didn't care for my version either) and Alex started on Kurt Vonnegut's Galapagos but didn't love it and ended up reading A Prayer For Owen Meany-- which he has declared one of his favorite books ever-- and I ended up re-reading Vonnegut's Galapagos, which I will readily admit isn't one of his best, as it's a bit repetitive and probably has too many characters, not all of whom are discernible, but since I first read it-- as a high school kid back in 1986-- I've visited the Galapagos Islands and so the second time around, the book was much more vivid-- I had been to the places and seen the things he was describing and though it was published thirty years ago, the themes are oddly prescient-- there's convenient anthropomorphized AI, the fear of automation, a rapidly deteriorating environment, a fatalistic malaise about this rapidly deteriorating environment, and a general ambivalence for the big brains of humanity, which are capable of so much wonder and innovation, and also so much damage and devastation . . . but don't worry, because in the end, there is a tragically comforting thing that can be said about the demise of nearly each and every one of us, myself included: "Don't worry about it . . . he wasn't going to write Beethoven's Ninth Symphony anyway."
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