Why Humblebrag When You Can Brag

Here are a few things great things I'd like to commemorate for time immemorial . . . or as long as the internet lasts:

1) My older son Alex scored the golden goal in overtime last week. He never scores and it was a wonderful shot-- he was a few yards outside the 18 and a cross bounced his way. He took his time, got his knee over it, and half-volleyed it into the far upper 90. 

2) Alex's friend Tyler played me a sweet cross while we were doing a finishing drill at JV practice the other day I scored on a full volley. A cross so good even an old man could volley it in. An even better goal than my son's goal.

3) My younger son Ian finished Ruth Ware's slow burning Henry James modernization, The Turn of the Key. It's an adult-level book, both with pacing and structure. He loved it. It's fun and scary, but often subtle and tricky. He also seems to be doing his reading for school, Catcher in the Rye and The Sun is Also a Star. Being in a sling with a fractured elbow may be helping his literacy.

4) Alex finished Old Man's War, an awesome sci-fi book that I read this summer. If you confiscate their phones enough, kids can be literate.

5) My wife always brings it in the food department during soccer season. I know a cooking-strike is nigh, but as it stands right now, everyone in my department is jealous of my fabulous lunches and the boys and I are always treated to an excellent dinner when we get home from practice. 

Dave is Empathetic About His Wife's Shortcomings (and she should reciprocate)

My wife moves fast and gets things done. A downside of this is that she sometimes misplaces her stuff.  The very first blog post I wrote on Sentence of Dave addressed this:

I am shopping for a new digital camera because my wife has a habit of leaving things on the roof of our car.

I'm proud to say that I'm always supportive and understanding if she loses something. She has her fingers in a lot of pies. No time for serene transitions. She doesn't always have time to fully think through where she's putting her stuff down.

We were already having a wild week-- my car was in the shop getting a new crankshaft position sensor (a big job) and so we were down to one car: our Honda CRV. At some point on Wednesday-- a day we had off for Yom Kippur-- my wife lost her keys. She realized this Wednesday afternoon, but in a casual sort of way. She didn't think anything of it until Thursday morning.

Since my car was at the shop, I drove her car to work. My school is farther away. Her school is only two miles from our house, so she planned on biking there. I leave much earlier than her for work, and once I arrived, I started receiving frantic texts.

Apparently, she had really lost her keys-- the whole set. The house keys, the keys to both cars, the keys to her classroom . . . everything. She had looked everywhere. In the dark. In her pajamas. In the garden. In the garden compost. In our garbage. Yuck.

She assumed someone stole them.

This is what she surmised: she had left the keys on the ping-pong table in our driveway. She had been running around, from Zumba to yard work to acupuncture and then back to yard work. Unlike a normal person-- myself, for instance--she didn't take any breaks between these activities. No snack or cup of coffee or moment to put her feet up and read a magazine. Just one thing to the next. And she was sure that someone had filched the keys right off the ping-pong table and this light-fingered scuzzbag was planning on breaking into our house AND stealing both our cars. There had been a few robberies around town recently, so her thoughts weren't completely unfounded.

When she got home from acupuncture, she put her purse on the hook just inside the door, and then went outside for a moment to pick up the weeds and piles of brush from her garden. She had the keys in her hand, but then put them down so she could put on a pair of gardening gloves.

She also complained that lack of sleep from ear pain may have contributed to her miscue.

I tried to make her feel better about the whole thing. We all make mistakes.

But things went from bad to worse.

It was hard for me to imagine. I was at work, teaching class. I had a working car in the parking lot. I had keys, all kinds of keys. But I could feel it, like a splinter in my mind. My wife was in some weird circle of Hell.

What a morning is right.My wife does too many things! She has too many responsibilities! The horror! The least I could do was figure out a way to make her afternoon easier. I put some deep thought into it and came up with a plan.

A heroic plan.

My wife was appreciative about my solution. She told me that she loved me, and I felt good about supporting her in her time of need. She doesn't screw up very often, and when she does she always feels awful about it (unlike me, I've become inured to it).

So I left school early, drove home and unpacked the soccer gear from the car-- as I would have to lug it down to the field on foot-- then went into the crawl space and got the bike rack. On my way out, I smashed my shoulder on the low ceiling. It hurt, but sometimes heroes have to suffer some pain. I strapped the rack on the car and put my bike on the back of the CRV.

Before going to my wife's school, I dropped off the dry-cleaning. I was running some serious errands. Taking care fo business. Getting it done.

I drove the CRV to her school, parked it in the staff lot, dropped the keys off in the office, took my bike off the rack, and rode home. Now she had the car, which would make it so much easier for her to get to the allergist after gardening club. Mission accomplished!

I got home and dragged the soccer equipment down the hill and ran practice.

What a day.

When I got home from practice, I did a thorough search around the house. If I found the keys, this I would increase my hero status exponentially. It got dark. I took out a flashlight and looked all around the front yard. I hoped to see the glint of metal.

No luck.

Over dinner, we discussed changing our locks and purchasing a couple of Club brand steering wheel anti-theft devices. And the cost of fixing the mini-van.

Yuck.

Then Catherine had to run yet another errand-- she had to pick up Ian's allergy prescription at Rite Aid. On the way, she had a thought. In her brain. A thought about me, her loving heroic husband.

She remembered that I like gum.

And that on Wednesday, right before I went running with the dog, I asked if there was any gum in her car. And she said, "Yes. There is gum in my car." And I grabbed her keys, to get the gum. And I had the dog.

And I never came back inside.

She checked the CRV's center console storage compartment-- the place where she stores her gum-- and she found her keys.

I had hidden them. Subconsciously.

It was all my fault (aside from the bike chain, which was such an easy fix-- I can understand that she was in her work clothes and didn't want to get greasy, but still).

I was the cause of all the stress. My wife didn't have her finger in too many pies. My wife was fine. I had fucked up. I had lost the keys. I had caused her all the stress. It was all on me.

My only saving grace was the fact that I had been so kind and compassionate when she had lost the keys (even though she had never lost the keys). When we thought she lost the keys. I had been calm and levelheaded and empathetic. We all make mistakes.

All I could ask is that she reciprocate.

P.S. I remembered about the water bottles this morning, and kept Lola from licking them! A heroic act of remembering, if there ever was one.

Shakespeare vs. Rudy Giulani

The New York Times podcast The Daily recently aired an episode about Rudy Giulani's involvement with the Trump administration. 

At the start of the episode, there was a clip from a speech Giulani made just after 9/11:

RUDY GIULIANI (R), THEN-MAYOR OF NEW YORK CITY: We do not want these cowardly terrorists to have us in any way alter our American way of life. This may go on for some time. We have to end terrorism. I believe the United States government is committed to that. And it's going to require us here in America to go about our way of life and not have them imperil it.

Giulani calls the terrorists "cowardly." He's not the only person to do so. I don't think this is an apt description of a group of of people that hijacked four commercial jet airliners with utility knives and then steered the planes-- kamikaze style-- toward symbolic American targets. While I understand the need to denigrate and insult the terrorists, the last thing they were was "cowardly." It shows a lack of understanding of the enemy.

These people were sanguinary and vengeful and zealous and fanatical and lacking perspective and empathy for other cultures. But mainly, they were true believers, blinded by a certain political position. They were haters, haters of American policy, American military deployment in their Holy Land, haters of American capitalist morality, and American unilateral success on the world stage.

But to call them cowards is to sell them short. It doesn't reflect just how fervently they believed in what they believed. They believed enough to kill and die. In doesn't reflect how dangerous it is to believe in something so strongly that you can't look at other points of view.

Whether it's Islamic terrorists, or our own homegrown right-wing variety of fanatic, you need to accurately assess the motivations of these people. And these people aren't cowards. They are willing to commit violent acts, and often willing to die for their beliefs.

Shakespeare understood this, and Giulani would be well served by re-reading the Bard's most famous soliloquy, the one in Hamlet that begins "to be or not to be."

The context of the speech is that Hamlet is royally fucked up, and he's been royally screwed over. He's been through enough betrayal and heartache that he contemplates suicide. He acknowledges-- correctly-- that his life is a shitshow and that he should probably "take arms against a sea of troubles" and end it. It's "a consummation devoutly to be wish'd."

He doesn't kill himself. In fact, the play goes on another two hours. Hamlet might be a coward-- that's another post-- but more significantly, he recognizes why most people don't commit suicide-- and why he's not going to commit suicide. People don't behave that rashly because of "the dread of something after death."

The unknown.

He doesn't want to rush headlong into the undiscovered country" that "puzzles the will." He's not sure what will happen in the afterlife, "what dreams may come" once his life is over. And he's not going to risk it.

Obviously, he has not heard about the 72 virgins.

Hamlet is religious, but still rationally skeptical. The 9/11 terrorists-- and guys like Patrick Crusius-- do not have this fear. It's scary, how strongly they believe in their convictions. There's no shadow of a doubt in their minds.

Most normal folks-- and even folks like Hamlet, folks that are struggling but still rational-- let their "conscience" turn them cowardly. We lack fervor and unshaking faith, and so our "resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought." This cowardice is a blessing in disguise because "enterprises of great pitch and moment . . . lose the name of action."

A lot of these enterprises are downright crazy, and could use reflection and reconsideration. Hamlet takes this to the extreme, and we love him for it.

There are plenty of applicable insults to aim at terrorists. They are rabid and crazed and virulent. But they certainly stand by the courage of their convictions, and that is the problem. They are the anti-Hamlet. They actually complete these suicidal actions, and this -- according to Shakespeare-- is the reverse of cowardly. All us cowards go on living our day to day lives, suffering "slings and arrows," not sure what is to come. That's civilized behavior

Though being devoted is often considered a positive trait, I believe we all need to be a little less loyal, a little less faithful, and a little less principled. It leads down a dangerous road. Instead, let's try to be a little more capricious, a little more detached. Let's be skeptical and occasionally disinterested. Maybe even a little more cowardly. If the terrorists adopted a few of these negative characteristics, the world would be a better place.

Mini-Thursday is Monday in Disguise

We have off this Wednesday for Yom Kippur, and since I'm not Jewish, I don't have to worry about fasting and atonement. It's just a day off. Because of this mid-week break, I declared to my wife this morning that it was "mini-Thursday." 

A cause for celebration.

I explained that tomorrow (Tuesday) is mini-Friday, and that our day off (Wednesday) is a mini-weekend, and then it's normal Thursday, normal Friday, and the regular two-day weekend. An excellent week (or two weeks mini-weeks).

My wife did not buy this. She told me that it was Monday and there was no getting around it. I ignored her, and it cost me.

I got it into my car to go to school, and all the check engine lights came on. One said "TRAC OFF," another cryptically informed me "VSC" and the regular engine block light came on. Then the temperature gauge starting floating from past the H to below the C. Back and forth, back and forth. 

This is not the kind of stuff that should happen on mini-Thursday.

I got to school and found out we had a faculty meeting. I had no idea. And I had to coach a game after school. There are never meetings after school on Thursday, but apparently mini-Thursday is fair game. I talked to my boss and we agreed that I would stay for a little bit and then race home to coach soccer. 

I ran over to the library on my free period, to pick up a couple of reserved books, but the library was closed. On Mondays it doesn't open until 10 AM. Most mornings it opens at 9 AM. But at least my car was driving fine, despite all the cautionary lights. I called my mechanic and made an appointment for Wednesday (the mini-weekend). 

Before the faculty meeting, I ran to the library a second time. Then I watched an especially boring presentation about proctoring the PSAT (which I could ignore-- my son is taking it, so I am not allowed to proctor-- so sweet). Then I raced out of the meeting so I could get home to Highland Park to coach.

On Route 18, my van starting making a weird sound. It stalled out on the stretch of highway through New Brunswick, but I managed to get it going again. Then it stalled again on the hill up to Highland Park. I got it started but it was ugly. It stalled for a final time in the road in front of my house. I was trying to pull into my neighbor's driveway to turn it around, so the van was perpendicular to the road. I had to coach in twenty minutes. Some guy walking by helped me push a bit, but we needed more people. Something about the car smelled really bad. Something was burned out. My van was dying. On mini-Thursday! My son Ian showed up. He's wearing a sling (fractured elbow) so we put him in the driver's seat. We pushed more, to no avail. There was no power steering. Ian couldn't turn the wheel (with his one good arm). Then my son Alex showed up. This was manpower (kidpower?) to get the job done. We pushed the van into a parking spot on the street (facing the wrong way) and then unloaded the car of all the soccer equipment: balls, corner flags, pinnies, cones, my giant coaching bag, etc. We carried all the equipment down to the park for the game. It's lucky I live walking distance to the field. Most coaches would have been totally screwed.

My wife managed to get the car started and drive it to F&F Auto (highly recommended). She said it was about to stall the whole drive, but she caught all the lights. My team played poorly, and my son-- who was the hero of the game on Friday and scored the winning goal in overtime-- didn't get goal-side on a couple of key plays. Yuck. Friday he was a hero, but this was Monday kind of stuff.

I'm drinking a couple of beers now and pretending it's truly a (mini) Thursday night, but it's hard to get into the Thursday night groove. Too much Monday stuff happened. Hopefully tomorrow-- mini-Friday-- will have better karma.

Despite Trump, Things Are Getting Better

The new episode of "Making Sense," a conversation between Sam Harris and Andrew McAfee, is generally positive and inspirational (despite how boring Harris can be . . . you've got to get past his introductory bombast). 

McAfee discusses what he calls "the great uncoupling," which the modern phenomenon of progress with less resource consumption. Bits not bolts. Once upon a time, progress came with incredible costs. The industrial revolution wreaked havoc upon the environment, cities, families, and society. But, according to McAfee, now things are different.

The discussion runs the gamut: technology, UBI, the future of developing world, global warming, nuclear power, and the pros and cons of capitalism. And while capitalism has been getting a bad rap of late, it does seem to be the best way to raise all ships-- as long as there is a responsive government to deal with externalities. And one of the biggest externalities to capitalism and market economies is pollution. Your pig farm may be doing incredible business but if your pig shit rolls down the hill into my backyard, I need to be compensated for my loss. 

Air pollution is one of those externalities, and McAfee explains that there is a legitimate question about such an externality.

Has the Clean Air Act of 1970 gone too far? Are the costs more than the benefits? Are the regulations hurting business and the economy more than they are helping people avoid asthma, lung cancer, and other respiratory diseases?

And he explains that we have definitely answered that question. The answer is:

NO

Especially in New Jersey. But God only knows why, our current pussygrabber-in-chief loves air pollution. He loves it more than big business love it. He loves increased auto emissions as much as he hates California. It's weird, because everyone has to breathe the air, red or blue, rich or poor, immigrant or lily-white Trumpist. I get it when he bends the tax laws to punish the blue states. We're not his people. But the air is for everyone. What the fuck?

While you can't do much about the lunatic in the white house, you can help the problem. Burning wood fires is a major contributor to air pollution as well. I'm sure Trump supporters will react to this with disdain, but it's another externality. If my neighbor lights his fireplace, my kids suffer. So cut it out. Hang some LED lights on your deck like I did, and enjoy clean low wattage smoke-free lighting. And support nuclear power, because despite the excellent entertainment value of HBO's Chernobyl, the next generation of nuclear is the next step in the great uncoupling. 

Last Licks (A Life Lesson)

I walk our dog every morning at 6 AM. It's pitch black. I take her down to the park because the lights by the tennis court are always on, so I can let her loose and usually see where she defecates. Lola loves to chase deer, so when we find a few in the soccer field adjacent to the courts, so I let her loose. It's a little scary when she vanishes into the darkness, but once she runs off the deer, she always returns.

This morning, the deer were on our neighbor's lawn. They ambled away when they saw Lola, but not very quickly. Could they sense she was on the leash? They trotted into the park and we followed them. I shined my flashlight down the hill and into the darkness, looking to see if the deer were there. They were gone.

We went down to the spot, and I let Lola roam a bit. Then, as we were walking home, a group of three runners passed us. Young Asian guys. I had seen them before, but I still forgot what I should have remembered.

We reached the point where the running path met the sidewalk and it happened. Again.. These runners leave their water bottles on the edge of the sidewalk. And it's dark. And they are unattended. So morning after morning, we stumble upon the water bottles, and-- almost every time-- Lola licks them before I can steer her away.

At first I felt bad about this. I wondered if the runners could taste dogbreath and saliva when they hydrated. But now I've decided that it's on them. You shouldn't leave a water bottle unattended in the park! If you do, dog saliva could be the least of your concerns.

I might have to stop these kids and explain this, but I'm sure I'll come off super-creepy. "Hey dudes? If you leave these water bottles here, my dog might lick them, or you might get roofied and abducted by a guy in a van. And no one will ever know, because it's so dark down here."

I'll keep you posted on how it goes.

Spotswood Redux

As far as coaching goes, I have a pretty sweet deal. I now coach my hometown JV team. The field is two hundred yards from my house (sometimes I forget the corner flags on the field and run down there the next morning to grab them). My children are both in high school now, one is a freshman and the other is a sophomore, and I am coaching the two of them (and many of their friends). I am lucky as a coach and as a dad. I know this probably won't ever happen again.Many years ago, I coached girls soccer at Spotswood High School with my friend and fellow English teacher Kevin. We would teach our classes at East Brunswick, then race over to Spotswood to coach. Now that I coach for my hometown, Highland Park, we occasionally play Spotswood. It's always nostalgic to head back there, as that's where I spent my formative coaching years. You never forget that stuff-- especially coaching high school girls. They are nuts (and far more civilized than boys).

Last Wednesday, we had an away game against Spotswood. It's always a good test for Highland Park, because Spotswood is out of our division and twice our size. So I was excited for the game. I also wondered if I would remember anyone-- even though I hadn't coached there for fifteen years. 

While I didn't recognize any coaches or administrators, the fields were the same. Both the varsity and the JV took early leads, so it looked to be a nice afternoon. Then my younger son Ian-- who's barely 100 pounds and has been getting killed this year-- got tripped from behind and went flying. The ground was rock hard (lack of rain). I knew as soon as he hit that he didn't land well. His right arm crumpled as it hit the dirt. I assumed it was a bad break.

I jogged out to him-- the injured player jog is the worst jog in sports-- and found Ian was in a lot of pain. He also thought his arm was broken. The trainer checked it this way and that and thought it might be fractured. Then another trainer drove over in a golf cart, and also gave Ian a second inspection. In the middle of it-- I was kneeling on the ground and he was bending my son's wrist-- he looked at me and said, "Is your name Dave?" 

I nodded.

"Didn't you used to coach here?"

Someone remembered me!

My mom was at the game, so she received the chore of taking him to the urgent care for x-rays (Catherine was at Back to School Night). They couldn't tell if his elbow was fractured and recommended an orthopedist. Ian went yesterday, and he's got a small fracture in his elbow. He's in a sling for two weeks.

After they carted him off the field, it was hard to coach the rest of the game (we did pull off a nice victory) but in retrospect, it was good to be there, in the thick of it. There's only a few more years of this, and I enjoy seeing all of it close-up and personal. I'm hoping he makes it back for the tail end of the season, but even if he doesn't, it was still great to coach some games where my kids were passing the ball to each other.

The Last of the Tomatillos: A Narrative of 2019

This had better be the end of summer (not that threatening the Weather Gods has ever been successful or mentally healthy). I really tried to make the most of the hot weather over this  long weekend, but I'm done with it. I strung some lights on our porch, in anticipation of cool fall nights. I used up the final harvest from my wife's garden: I made green salsa and slow cooked pork and tomatillo tacos. Here's the recipe, it's an easy one (if you have a shitload of fresh tomatillos).

I took my son out to Sandy Hook today, to do some surfing. The waves weren't great, but the water was warm. The dog had a great time. We made it home for soccer practice and the turf was scorching hot. Tomorrow we have a game, and it's supposed to be 90 degrees. Thursday, the meteorologists say that fall is coming. I am ready for it. Enough fresh vegetables and hot weather, I'm primed for the mosquitoes and the ticks and the leaves to die. I'm fortified for cold barren dark days. I want the horde of cave crickets in the bike shed to freeze. I'd like some frost on the pumpkin, and some ice on the Raritan. One more day . . . that's all I can tolerate. One more day. You hear that, Weather Gods? One more day . . .

Unemployed! In Greenland!

The other day, a couple of guidance counselors came down to my classroom and explained the ins and outs of applying to college. Once they were through with their very thorough presentation, I said to my students:

"You could go to college . . . or you could read this book. It explains EVERYTHING about the world. And it's a lot cheaper."

I held up Tim Marshall's Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World.

The book is rather deterministic in its thesis: you can't escape the rivers, mountains, flatlands, harbors, oceans, and jungles in your country. And they will determine how you interact with your neighbors and how you will interact within your own country. You may have great natural resources, but no rivers and easily built roadways with which to interconnect your cities and towns-- which is much of South America. You may be at the mercy of the flatlands to your east, which is why Russia is always mucking about in the Ukraine. You might be-- like South Korea-- constantly worried not only about the threat of war, but also about a massive flood of refugees. In Africa, rivers don't go very far before they plummet downward in waterfalls. In the Middle East, borders were drawn up after World War I and don't correspond with geography (not to mention the Sykes-Picot agreement).

In America, our rivers are navigable and they lead to safe harbors. We also don't have ot worry about out neighbors (unless you're Donald Trump). Canada doesn't have enough people and there is too much desert between us and Mexico for that border to be a military threat.

And as the ice melts, there will eventually be employment in Greenland.

While Marshall's unabashed realpolitik might annoy some advocates of free will, I didn't mind it.

The best thing about the book is it contains lots of maps. I love looking at maps, and I don't have a very good visual memory. I can look at a map, and then two paragraphs later, I'll have to turn back a page and look at it again. Where is Sweden? Oh there it is. Got it. Wait? Where is it?

Big Jay Oakerson Works the Crowd

Going to The Stress Factory in New Brunswick is always fascinating, especially when there are several opening acts. We went this Friday with some folks (most of whom were present for this incident) and we were treated to the entire continuum of comedy. 

If we're talking basketball, then the host-- who did five minutes-- was akin to a pick-up game at the park. Nice hustle, trying hard, but some awkward pauses and all that. Then Zach Martina came on, and it was like a good high school game. Loud, some good moves, a little inconsistent, a few puns, and fairly lowbrow.

Next was Sal Vulcano, from Impractical Jokers. Class act. Like a great college game. Not as long as a pro-set, but accomplished, comfortable, and A list material. He was really funny and consistently entertaining. I recommend him.

The headliner was Big Jay Oakerson, and he was something else. A total pro, he made it seem as if he had no bits at all. He just went to work with the crowd. Several moments into his set-- while discussing relationships with a couple in the front row-- he mistook a woman for a man. You could actually see the gears spinning when he realized he got it wrong, and then he adjusted his material for this ambiguous-looking lesbian couple and got back into it.

Oakerson is the white version of the late, great Patrice O'Neil. He weighs about the same as O'Neil did, and prefers sitting to standing. His refusal to do bits-- aside from his last meta-bit, which is too filthy to recount here-- was so fascinating that my friend Stacey and her brother went back Saturday to see if the show would be completely different. They report that it was (besides the closing bit, which-- unfortunately-- is too filthy to recount here). You'll just have to go and see Big Jay for yourself, and what you'll see won't be anything like what I saw.

Two Great Things About Our Basement Shower

When you utilize our basement shower, not only do you get to avoid the queue for the upstairs shower-- and we only have one shower upstairs and it's soccer season, so that shower gets busy-- but you also get to do battle with spiders while you wash yourself.

As a bonus, there's excellent water pressure, so after you squash the spiders, it's easy to sluice their crushed corpses down the drain.

The Turn of the Page

Ruth Ware's new thriller The Turn of the Key certainly evokes the mood and themes of the classic Henry James novel The Turn of the Screw, but the nice thing about  The Turn of the Key  is that it's easy to read. The Turn of the Screw is as dense as a bowl of porridge, and I'm still not sure I understand what went down. Ware's novel is much more rewarding, and definitely a great book to curl up with in a dark room. There's all the good stuff from the original: ghostly presences, malevolent children, neglectful parents, a Scottish country house, looming sexuality, and a clever governess trying to figure it all out. And there's the added bonus of modern surveillance and a poison garden. It's genuinely creepy.

On a barely related note, I remember back in college hearing Gun N' Roses "November Rain" on the radio and informing my friend Whitney that it was based on a short story by Henry James. He corrected me and told me it was based on a story by Del James.

"Del James? Who the fuck is that?"

We speculated that it might have been a guy Axl Rose met in a bar, or perhaps his plumber. A quick search does bring up his name in conjunction with the song. There's not much else to go on. Del James-- while not as prolific as Henry James-- does have one book to his credit on Amazon: "The Language of Fear." The blurb is perfect . . .

"Del James unleashes an extraordinary collection of snapshots from hell—our hell."

You can see why Axl Rose decided to read something written by this James instead of the other, more difficult one.

Spite is Expensive

Last Thursday, I went to the pub after Back to School Night. It was a long day, and I was a bit wound up (although that is no excuse for my behavior).

We shot some darts and then Paul put five dollars into the digital jukebox. I looked over his shoulder at his selection and noticed he was about to play something awful-- The Doobie Brothers or The Eagles or such-- and so I boxed him out, usurped his credits, and told him that I would be handling the music for the evening.

Because everyone loves Dave's eclectically hip taste, right?

I played "Since You're Gone" by The Cars-- not because Ric Ocasek died . . . I hadn't heard the news-- but simply because they were advertised prominently. I played some Ween and some Pavement, some New Order and a funk instrumental by The Meters. I tried to find some Wu Tang, but the jukebox didn't have it, so I settled on A Tribe Called Quest.

The jukebox played my first selection: "Since You're Gone." Then, oddly, it played an old awful Irish country song entitled "Whiskey in a Jar." And then "Eminence Front,"  a song I like but had not selected. A song Connell had played last week.

Weird. 

And then some other songs that I don't recall, but songs I had definitely not selected. And I saw Paul, out of the corner of my eye, his fist raised in glory. Rejoicing. And I knew what had happened.

Musical vengeance.

My so-called friends, fed up with my condescension and musical elitism, had exacted their revenge. While I was pondering over my eclectically hip selections, they had fired up the jukebox app on their phones, paid for a bunch of credits-- enough credits to push my songs to the end of the line-- and played a bunch of shitty songs. Songs designed to piss me off. 

It cost Connell eight dollars to play "Eminence Front" and a few others. He said it was well worth it.

It cost Paul more than that (not that he cared).

Tom realized what was going on and asked Paul how much he had spent on the original credits.

Paul said, "Five bucks."

"And how much did it cost to disrupt those songs?"

"Eight bucks."

"Huh," Tom said, "Spite is expensive." 

But-- according to my so-called friends-- spite is well worth the money. I've certainly learned my lesson. I've got to tone down the musical snobbery, and just sort of lurk about and insert songs I here and there. I can't bully someone out of the way and steal all their selections. That's uncivilized ( even though in the end, Paul conceded that I did play some good music).

High Heels and a Morning Surprise

There's no question that when you're hard at work, it's always exciting to a get an unexpected text from your lovely wife, especially when it mentions high heels and a dress . . . but there wasn't much innuendo in this strand (also, note the lack of punctuation and spelling error-- she was obviously freaked out). I read between the lines and understood that I was going to be the one to remove the eviscerated dead rabbit from the low-ceilinged shed under the porch, which I might add, is populated with billions upon billions of those creepy long-legged cave crickets.

And for those of you that care, the dead rabbit is now in a plastic bag in our trash. I shoveled it out. I'm not sure what got to it, maybe a fox or a raccoon-- or perhaps it was our dog, Lola, as there was a tennis ball placed on top of the corpse--but needless to say, it wasn't pretty (unlike my wife in her dress).

Monday, Garfield Style

I normally don't mind Mondays-- my existential woes usually come to a head on Tuesdays-- but this morning I felt Garfield's curse bearing down on me. I walked down to the park with the dog at 5:45 AM, wearing my Oofos plantar fasciitis clogs because I strained my calf playing soccer on Sunday (probably due to the excessive heat, and some dehydration from drinking too much tequila Saturday night).

Lola was off-leash, as she always is at that time of the morning, but a couple of joggers and another person walking a large white dog came down the hill-- at 5:45 AM! On a Monday! The audacity.

So I had to put Lola back on the leash, and I didn't get a chance to pick up her poop, and while I was searching for her poop in the darkness, I stepped in it. Firmly. With my absolutely vital plantar fasciitis clogs. So now they're sitting out in the sun on the back porch, and I'll have to clean them when I get home.

While I was walking back up the hill, scuffling in the grass trying to remove the dog poop, I saw Garfield, in my mind's eye, laughing at me-- because I thought I was above his "Monday blues" humor. But he got his, and so did Monday.

All Downhill From Here?

Congratulations are in order because I've survived the longest week of the school year: a full five days of coaching and teaching (right in the thick of allergy season) plus an extra miniature workday on Thursday night . . . something in the biz that we refer to as B2SN.

And-- heroically-- after Back to School Night, I made it to Pub Night, where my so-called friends enacted a musical vengeance on me that I will detail in a future post.

Despite the unseasonable heat, school (and Back to School Night) went smoothly, but I can't say the same for coaching JV soccer.

Wednesday, one of my players got a red card for saying something profane to an opposing player, in earshot of the refs and the parents. He did not realize the repercussions of a red card: that I could not sub someone in for him and that we had to play with ten men. Now he knows.

Luckily, we held our lead, and-- even more fortunate-- the refs gave my player a stern talking to after the game and then said they weren't going to report the red card (which would have resulted in a two-game suspension). We need this kid on defense, even if he is a little green at soccer. He's big and fast and wins balls in the air.

This particular player was absent from practice on Thursday, which didn't make me happy, after the incident on Wednesday. As I was loading the equipment into my van, I happened to see his mom jogging in the park. I asked her where her son was-- why he wasn't at practice.

She said, "He wasn't with you?"

"Nope."

"Then I'm sure he was doing something he's not supposed to be doing."

On the bus Friday, I asked this player why he missed practice Thursday. He paused for a moment, and then said, "I . . . I had to help my mom out with a family thing."

"No you didn't," I said and told him when and where I had run into his mom. The perks of coaching in a small town.

So our center back started the game on the bench. I didn't want to punish the team all that much, so I planned on putting him in later in the first half. That's not how it went down.

We were playing on a narrow, bumpy, grass pitch in Middlesex against a scrappy, mainly Hispanic team who knew just how to play the bounces. And there was one ref. Nice guy, but he wasn't moving and he wasn't calling anything. It was schoolyard soccer.

The ball went out of bounds on the far sideline-- well out of bounds near the fence-- and our player stooped to pick it up and throw it in. But the ref wasn't paying attention, he never blew the whistle, and the opposing player dribbled the ball around our stooping player and then crossed it into the box. One of their players tried to knock it into the goal, but the ball bounced crazily, and one of my players grabbed it out of the air, tucked it under his arm, and starting walking toward the ref-- all the while yelling that the ball was clearly out of bounds and it was a Highland Park throw and some other things not fit to print.

This player was my older son Alex.

The ref, correctly, called a PK for a deliberate handball and pulled out his red card. We talked him down to a yellow-- I think he realized he had botched the play as well-- but I told him he was totally in the right to call the PK and card our player. You've got to play the whistle.

The ref also found it amusing when I told him the player in question was my son.

I gave my son (and the other players on the bench) some sage words of advice: when you realize there are no rules, you have to play the game that way. This Friday afternoon, on the pitch, there were no hard and fast rules, and so we had to adjust accordingly. I may have also called my son an idiot.

Our keeper made a great save on the PK, but the other team knocked in the rebound. We ended up losing 3 to 2, all junky goals, but I am proud to say that we adjusted to the mayhem and certainly made the game interesting. The varsity team-- who have been playing magically-- lost as well. Same kind of game. This was their first loss of the season.

Our striker Ben got hit in the eye with the ball, and when my wife went to get him an icepack from our car, she locked her keys inside. And I don't carry the key to her car, because I like to keep things simple. Streamlined. So much for that. Catherine got to ride home on the bus with the coaches and all the sweaty sad players.

Once we arrived home, after the whole nine yards, I told my wife that the rest of the school year would be "all downhill from here" and I meant it in a positive way. She disagreed, but for stylistic reasons. She didn't think I could use "downhill" with a positive connotation in that context. She heard "downhill" and thought the rest of the year was going to get worse and worse. Spiral out of control and decay. But I countered, you don't want to fight an uphill battle the rest of the year. You want to coast. Downhill, preferably.

We've had this linguistic debate before and I'm sure we'll never get to the bottom of it, but I did write a song.

To celebrate the long week, we went to the beach on Saturday. It was crazy hot and the water was warm. The kids surfed, I swam, we all played spike-ball, and the dog drove my wife crazy. We weren't even supposed to have her on the beach, you're not supposed to have dogs on the beach until October-- but I figured: who goes to the beach in September?

Apparently, everyone.

The shore was packed. No parking, festivals everywhere, and the sand was jammed with bodies. Like August. Weird. But kind of fun (aside from the fact that the changing rooms were locked and we had to keep Lola on her leash).

We finally took some heat for having the dog on the beach, but it was just as we were packing up to leave and the cop was really nice about it. I told him we tried to get to the dog beach in Asbury, but the Dave Matthews Band totally screwed us. Then, we ate lunch at 10th Avenue Burrito Co, which is always dog friendly.

It should be smooth sailing from here on out.

Back to School Night Blues

It's impossible to be in a good mood when you know that 12 hours after you show up to school, you're going to do it all again: run through the entire day in miniature, for the parents (although it is fun to see adults stuff themselves into school desks) .

Traffic Cone = Cinema

Heraclitus warned us that "the only constant is change." For many years, the American school system eluded this inevitability, but not this year. EVERYTHING has changed. No textbooks. A new tablet device. We're wireless. And Bluetooth. We've adopted a new learning management system. Canvas instead of Google classroom. OneDrive instead of Google drive. OneNote instead of something else. And there's the looming threat that the winds of change will soon to remove our desktop computers.

Also, I still have stuff on Evernote.

Yesterday, I couldn't even figure out how to play a DVD. Every year, in Honors Philosophy, we read Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" and then we watch the first thirty minutes of The Matrix. Because it's the best visual representation of Plato's allegory.

But yesterday, I couldn't get the DVD to play. Apparently, Windows has removed this function from its Media Player. People stream now. Have you heard of Netflix? Amazon?

Coincidentally, both of these are blocked at our school. Even if you've purchased the movie on Amazon. So I freaked out a bit (in front of the children) and then I downloaded a bunch of weird free DVD players (and probably infected my desktop with some weird viruses . . . now whenever I use the search bar, it sends me through Yahoo! instead of Google).

Then the tech guy came and showed me that there WAS a player on my computer. The VLN player. The symbol is a traffic cone. It didn't open automatically when I put a disk in, so I didn't know it was there. And when the tech guy scrolled down through my apps and showed me the traffic cone, I wondered: why is orange traffic cone synonymous with playing a DVD? But then he started telling me about all the changes in my future-- they were taking my desktop, my DVD player, my big monitor, and my hardwired internet . . . and so I shouldn't even get used to the VLN player.

"They're not making your job any easier," he said, "and they're not making my job any easier either."

And why is the VLN Player logo a traffic cone? There's an enigmatic explanation on Wikipedia, but it adds more to the mystery than it resolves it: "The cone icon used in VLC is a reference to the traffic cones collected by École Centrale's Networking Students' Association."

If anyone can make sense of that, please leave the explanation in the comments.

Do You Respect Wood? I Respect Wood

Do you respect wood?

I respect wood, but-- luckily-- so does my wife, so I won't have to divorce her.  In fact, it's my wife who suggested that I run to TJ Maxx with some of our hard-earned garage sale money and buy a a shelving unit made of genuine Acacia wood so that I have a spot for my amplifier and loop pedal.

The piece of furniture is awesome, shelves on hinges, cool looking hardwood, but when Ian and I got it home, we noticed that there was a crack in one of the bottom pieces. So I took my respect for wood and put it to use. I got some wood glue and a clamp, and went to work. Hopefully, it will set.

All Hail The Town-Wide Garage Sale

It's over. We cleaned out, set up, and raked it in. All day Saturday and half of Sunday, my wife channeled the soul of an Ottoman bazaar storekeeper and turned our driveway and front lawn into a souk. Once almost everything was gone, we put up a FREE sign and hid inside while the vultures picked over the carcass of our sale. Then Alex and I packed up the remaining odds and ends and drove it over to Goodwill.

And while the cash we made was significant, the purging of the house was priceless (as were the arguments between my teenage son and her about exactly what constituted his stuff, the sale of which he could claim full profit on . . . I tried to stay out of the debate and just warned him that you don't f-@% with mom on garage sale weekend, especially since she does the bulk of the set up and organizing).

Never again, my wife says.

I hope she's right (but the fact that the same older son who got into all the debates bought a glow-lamp in the shape of a box turtle doesn't bode well for us keeping the house clear of garage sale crap . . . and I bought an ancient Bakelite View master, thinking it would be worth thousands of dollars, but I was wrong . . . I paid $5 and it might be worth $12 . . . so there's probably another garage sale in our future).