Dave's Back! Sort of . . .

In case you've been following my "brutal, crippling quadriceps injury," you'll be glad to know (or-- if you're my opponent this Saturday-- loath to know) that I'm back in action; the combination of a massage, two acupuncture sessions, the purchase of a muscle gun, some exercise biking and stretching, and plenty of rest has given my quad new life; I went snowboarding yesterday with Alex and I played tennis today with Ian . . . I'm stiff and a little sore, but I'm still moving and that's all that matters (although I won't be getting to any drop shots this Saturday, I'm going to have to hit winners).

Dave Keeps It Real

I went snowboarding with my older son Alex today, so we had plenty of time in the car for him to describe his grand plans to become an aerospace engineer and then eventually retire into professorship-- he's the president of the Rocket Propulsion Club and an A.P. Physics kid so these are attainable goals-- but he also took the time to thank me for teaching him to snowboard and play other sports, giving him the ability to "hang out with normal people too."

Hidden Valleys of the Brain

I'm not even going to attempt to summarize Robert Kolker's meticulously reported and compassionately told story of the Galvin family, Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family-- it's one of those books you have to read (like Andrew Solomon's Far From the Tree) plus, it's a family with twelve children, six of which are diagnosed with schizophrenia, so there's no short version of this disquieting saga-- but I did learn a few things:

1) in 1908, Eugen Bleuler coined the term schizophrenia because the root "schizo" implied a harsh splitting of mental functions but this turned out to be a poor choice-- popular culture has confused schizophrenia with the idea of split personality, but this is a mistake: schizophrenia is "a divide between perception and reality . . . it is about walling oneself off from consciousness . . . until you are no longer accessing anything others accept as real"

2) schizophrenia is a multiplex genetic disorder-- it's caused by a number of genes and they also need to be expressed, often by environmental factors or drug use-- and it might be even less tangible, it might be "a collection of neurodevelopment disorders" and not even one single disease . . . it might be like a fever, a symptom and not a disease at all-- schizophrenia might just be a reaction that happens to consciousness when a brain is broken for any number of reasons;

3) the children in the book were born from 1945 to 1965 . . . so they span a wide variety of treatments and a wide variety of failures in treating the disease, every theory more screwed up than the last: shock therapy, institutionalization, madness as a metaphor, madness caused by over-parenting, madness caused by under-parenting, tranquilizers, induced catatonia, medicines that did as much damage as help, the return of a kinder, gentler shock therapy, possible wonder drugs that couldn't get funded (because schizophrenics don't advocate very well for themselves) and finally the realization that there is no magic bullet yet for this disease-- because it is caused by so many genes and so many factors . . . and while wilderness-based youth therapy and therapeutic boarding schools have been found to curb the disease before it fully sets in, these treatments are extraordinarily expensive and only available to the very wealthy . . . as for the rest of us, we have to cross our fingers, avoid toxic environments, and hope for the best.

Hyberbole and a Half

If your dog and your brain don't always obey your commands, you're going to thoroughly enjoy Allie Brosh's memoir/web-comic Hyperbole and a Half . . . but you don't have to go on my word alone-- Bill Gates and Marc Maron both gave the book glowing reviews-- Brosh's intentionally primitive illustrations and candid prose absolutely kill it . . . there's a moment at the start of the book when Brosh reminisces about writing a letter as a ten-year-old to her twenty-five-year-old future self-- the letter is mainly concerned with dog breeds-- but the last line is what seals the deal on just how weird and funny Brosh is (and was)

"please write back."

It's Comment Appreciation Day!

Yesterday was quite a day for me-- I don't handle changes in routine all that well, and I get very nervous when I'm involved in any kind of "special event"-- although I know other people enjoy "special events" and that once I get involved with the "special event," I tend to enjoy it as well . . . but it just doesn't seem worth the trouble to plan a special event, and there are too many things that can go wrong with a special event and people get their hopes up about the special event and then there's a chance that their hopes might be shattered; I should recognize that people are more resilient than I give them credit for, but-- in the end-- this is why I like normal events that turn out a little bit better than expected-- but despite these feelings, yesterday, for the benefit of my students, I got involved in a special event . . . and while it turned out fabulously in the end, I didn't receive much help or credit from my administration, and so once the day was through-- in true melodramatic Dave fashion-- I indignantly pounded out my story and posted it up and while folks could have taken some cheap shots at my mock-epic tone (or ignored my rant altogether) instead I got some awesome comments from my friends Zman and Rob, award winning comments worthy enough of front page status:

first, zman noticed something ironically wonderful in how I wrote my big takeaway . . .

 zman quoted me . . .

"it's all in the revision and editing . . . very few people do anything good not he first try"

Well said.

then zman reminisced with an excellent anecdote:


zman said...

Parts of this "sentence" remind me of the time I checked into the Fairfield Inn in Raleigh NC, a low-slung place near the airport. I went to my room on the third floor, set my stuff down, started to unpack, and realized that there was a swarm of ants on and around the desk. I brought all my stuff downstairs and told the guy at the desk. He said "Yeah we have ants on the third floor." I asked him why he put me on the third floor given the formic situation and he replied "Well there's no view on the second floor." I told him I would trade the view and the ants for no view and no ants, so he moved me to the second floor. There were no ants in my new room but when I flushed the toilet the bowl didn't fill up and the sink didn't have any water. I called downstairs and the guy at the desk said "Yeah there's no water on the second floor right now." I asked if he had any rooms with water and without ants and he moved me to the first floor. You would think he would've run through all this beforehand.

then I chimed in . . . and Zman graciously gave me permission to do something very weird:

Dave said...

holy shit. i was rushing my post because I had to go to acupuncture . . . i think I may make your comments into tomorrow's post-- they deserve to get front-page treatment that's an exceptional anecdote--i might-- with your permission-- set it to music.


zman said...

You have my permission to make a song out of my experience at the Fairfield Inn. Not only is it near the airport, it's between a Cracker Barrel and a Hooters.

rob said...

i will turn the dial down on my customary snark to say that this is a very cool thing that happened in daveworld and i appreciated hearing about it.

/unsnark


Dave said...

that helps with the setting . . . and thanks for turning down the snark, rob!

his snark goes to 11

thanks guys . . . and understand that these comments have been duly appreciated!

The Things You Find Important? Most People Don't Give a Fuck . . .

I was very excited for school today because-- due to a serendipitous string of coincidence-- my senior English class was expecting a visit from Academy Award-winning director Marshall Curry; Curry won the Oscar in 2020 for his short film "The Neighbor's Window"-- which is based on this amazing true podcast-- but we were having him in because my students watched Street Fight, which is the story of the 2002 Newark mayoral election . . . a charismatic and intelligent grassroots candidate named Cory Booker took on machine politician and uber-charlatan Sharpe James in a profound battle of political rhetoric; the documentary was nominated for an Oscar and it's one of my favorite movies of all time-- if you haven't seen it, check it out . . .

anyway, I've used this documentary for many years at school and it's an excellent primer to teach kids about the reality of elections and political rhetoric-- it's also nonpartisan: both Booker and James are Democrats . . . Republicans aren't really a factor in Newark, so that makes it perfect for the classroom as well . . . so this year I wanted the kids to watch it and connect it to our skepticism unit-- conspiracy theories, fake news, logical fallacies, etc.-- but school is remote, so to ensure diligent viewing, I made an epic forty question digital quiz about the documentary-- it's partly humorous but it definitely checks to see if you fell asleep during the video-- EVERYTHING is in there-- and my friend Ann went to school with Marshall Curry's wife so she has a connection to him, and she sent him my quiz and he thought it was hysterical and offered to visit the class and do a Q and A session . . . very nice of him;

I was REALLY excited for this event-- I had the kids draft questions and I sent a detailed email to the principal explaining my lessons on political rhetoric and how I connected the film to them, and I gave him examples of the assignments the kids were doing-- the kids always love the film and do great work-- and I wanted to alert him that we were getting a surprise visit from a very successful director; oddly, the only thing I got back from the principal was a forwarded email that said "Fill out the guest speaker form" . . . that's it . . . nothing else . . . no "wow!" or "cool!" or "these are really great lessons and I'm impressed that you managed to get an Oscar winner to come to virtual school" and while I shouldn't be surprised-- it's rare that anyone cares about what you care about-- the disconnect seemed pretty weird; he should have at least feigned some enthusiasm; so I filled out the guest visitor form and sent it to the vice-principal in charge of guest visitor form (and received no "nice job!" or kudos from him either) and I set up my Teams Meeting, sent the link to Marshall Curry, put his phone number in my phone-- in case of emergency, he graciously provided it-- and then met with my class a bit early and set up a Google Doc Question Queue so we wouldn't have any dead time or repeated questions . . . and then 10 AM rolled around and . . .

he couldn't get in . . . despite the fact that we had tested the link from an outside email, it wouldn't work . . . so I had to set up a Zoom Account and meeting on the fly-- I had to click on captcha boats and stop signs to get things running;

in the end, we got a meeting going and Marchall Curry and my students were fantastic; he talked a lot about how taking 200 hours of film-- captured over five months-- and eight months of editing (and learning to edit because he couldn't get a grant) made him a much better writer . . . he learned that everything is perseverance and revision and his words of advice: "you can fix something, but you can't fix nothing," will work really well in all my classes;

anyway, after the presentation, I emailed the vice-principal and told him my guest visitor couldn't get into the meeting (despite the fact that I had filled out the form) and he wrote back, "yeah, we've had some trouble with that" and while I refrained from sending a follow-up email, I was seriously wondering why he didn't tell me that BEFORE my guest visitor . . . but despite the apathy of my admin for such a cool event, everything went as well as it could and hopefully it will be something the kids remember in a very monotonous year; my big three takeaways are this:

1) it's all in the revision and editing . . . very few people do anything good on the first try;

2) choose a topic that has a narrative arc built into it-- like an election;

3) you can fix something, but you can't fix nothing.

And Now For Something Completely Different

I made a vet appointment for my dog weeks ago, and I thought I scheduled it during a "B-Day" of remote school-- because on B-Days I have a free period before lunch . . . but I didn't realize that we started back from break on a B-Day rather than the more logical A-Day so my math was thrown off . . . long story short, I had to take my College Writing class on the road today, I ran my Team meeting on my phone while I drove to the vet . . . and as I was driving, a snow squall blew in-- so I was conferencing with a girl about her thesis, discussing Anand Giridharadas's explanation of the plutocratic tendency to "Pinker" things-- to take the long view of history and claim that because the human condition is improving, individual inequalities are not important-- and how this connects to the unfettered emergence that Steven Johnson is mesmerized by (but is Johnson a thought leader or a public intellectual? who knows? I was trying not to veer off the road) and I'm happy to say that I helped the girl through a rough patch of writing, I made it through the blizzard intact, and Lola had a successful visit at the vet . . . who knew I would be able to do all these things simultaneously?

Go Ahead, Listen to Some Old School Hippie Hip Hop (in the rain?)

Hanif Abdurraqib's rambling and perceptive "love letter to a group, a sound, and an era" inspired me to listen to a number of old school hip-hop albums-- most of which I am familiar-- but a few of which I never heard; his book, which Zman recommended to me and I recommend to you, is called Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to a Tribe Called Quest and it astutely points out the difference between the gangsta rap of NWA and the mellower musings of A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, and the other Native Tongues rappers is that the members of NWA were “absolutely rooted in some idea of what would make young white people most excited and old white people most afraid”, while the Native Tongues rappers were “absolutely rooted in some idea of what would make young black people most curious and old black people most welcoming”;

Abdurraqib explains that the jazz samples of The Low End Theory was the first hip-hop that he could really play around his parents without fear of criticism; I also learned that the hip hop magazine The Source only gave their coveted five mic rating to a select group of albums:

• People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm – A Tribe Called Quest
• Let the Rhythm Hit 'Em – Eric B. & Rakim
• AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted – Ice Cube
• One for All – Brand Nubian
• De La Soul Is Dead – De La Soul
• The Low End Theory – A Tribe Called Quest
• Illmatic – Nas
• Life After Death – The Notorious B.I.G.
• Aquemini – Outkast
• The Blueprint – Jay-Z
• Stillmatic – Nas
• The Fix – Scarface
• The Naked Truth – Lil' Kim
• Trill OG – Bun B
• My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy – Kanye West

and while I've listened to most of these, I missed "One for All" from The Brand Nubians-- it's a clever, allusion laden rhymefest-- and I never listened to "De La Soul is Dead" much either because it's not on any streaming service-- but my son pirated that album and 3 Feet High and Rising and he somehow got them both onto my Spotify as local files, so now I can stream them . . . I also noticed that The Chronic is also available now on Spotify, so they must have cleared the samples for that one.

Dad is Extra

I might have been a wee bit melodramatic yesterday when I arrived home from my tennis match with a pulled quadricep muscle; I called the boys downstairs to break the news to them and once I had assembled them in the living room and I told them the news-- the fact that their father was injured-- indefinitely injured, perhaps even crippled-- and that they would have to pick up the slack around the house: help their mother, walk the dog, take out the garbage, play tennis with each other, get jobs, help pay the mortgage, look after the bamboo and the sapling I planted, etcetera-- once I had told them this tragic news (and the fact that I was very sad because I had disappointed the family-- I wouldn't be able to take Alex snowboarding next week, I wouldn't be able to hit tennis balls with Ian, and I had abandoned the tennis match, leaving my poor opponent without anyone to play after a measly twenty-minutes of tennis) the kids took a look at my pathetic figure on the couch and laughed at me; Alex said, "Jesus Dad, the way you called us down, I thought someone we know died from covid . . . you'll be fine, just rest it" and he was right-- I took some Advil and a nap and today it feels a bit better-- I'm still going to take two week off from tennis and I ordered a roller and a thigh wrap-- and then after some consultation with the sports medicine people at the dog park-- I purchased a "muscle gun" . . . these things are supposed to work wonders and now I know that I need to REALLY warm-up before competitive tennis-- not just some light stretching, but some vigorous stationary-biking and some short sprints . . . so I'm in a better mood today and I'm going to use this injury as a portent for changing things for the better in my life, I'm done wallowing in misery for now).

Tennis Notes . . . I Am an Idiot

I was really looking forward to my tennis match this morning with Bill-- who is a consistent grinder a few years older than me-- because while I thought I would be able to win handily, I would get a lot of practice hitting slice backhands and cross-court winners, which are shots I need to work on . . . and when I took the lead 3-0 on him he started to mix things up and he hit a beautiful drop shot and my brain said It just might be possible to get to that and then I was sprinting and while I did get to the shot, I pulled my left quad on the way there-- something went "ping" in there-- and while I tried to continue the match-- I didn't want to put Bill out-- it was starting to hurt more and more and I couldn't push off so I abandoned ship and drove home and now I'm in pain and laid up and miserable-- tennis was my favorite part of the week!-- and while I can't complain, because I'm alive during a pandemic, I have learned that I need to REALLY warm up before I play-- I did some light stretching but that's not enough, I need to ride the bike and take a jog and make sure I'm ready to roll before I start sprinting around like a madman for no good reason.

Could This Book Explain That Book?

Now that I have begun Robert Kolker's Hidden Valley Road: Inside The Mind of An American Family, I am wondering if the mysteries and enigmas of the last book I read-- Piranesi-- could be explained by schizophrenia (an affliction that 1 in 100 people will suffer from at some point during their life).

Piranesi

Susanna Clark's elegant new novel Piranesi is a major departure from her last book; Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, which she published in 2004, is a massively footnoted faux-historical tome on magic during the Napoleonic Wars-- it's fantastic-- but I think her new work is something special as well; it reminds me a bit of Nabokov's Pale Fire . . . or a more abstract Eternal Sunshine . . . or Inside Out for adults . . . or none of that, it's unusual and surreal, but precisely written-- I'm not sure if I fully understand the mystery-- or if that's even possible, but I will say this, without spoiling: it's the perfect book to read in quarantine.

Sam Harris Adds Clarity . . . Lawrence Wright Adds the Anecdotes

The new Sam Harris podcast An Insurrection of Lies provides some clarity of thought about the storming of the capitol; Harris is worried about two misconceptions, one on the right and one on the left . . .

he is worried that the right is falsely equating the storming of the capitol with the riots, looting, and burning that occurred during the BLM protests-- and while Harris believes that the media did an abysmal job reporting on the chaos that occurred during those protests, that the media bent over backwards to not appear racist, and that Biden and Harris could have criticized the criminal behavior more overtly-- he still thinks you can't equate the natural eruption of mob criminality that happened in certain instances with a sloppy and disgraceful coup spurred on by a sitting President who knows he has a cult-like following of misinformed and delusional zealots and backed by a number of Republicans who fully well know that the election was not stolen but kowtow to Trump for strategic reasons . . . especially since this is an embarrassment on the world stage and perfect proof for regimes in Russia and China that democracy is bullshit;

he is worried that the left is equating the police action during the siege as more proof of white supremacy and systemic racism . . . that if this was a BLM protest, folks would have been treated differently; he brings up the point of the black cops being pursued by the white mob . . . these black cops weren't complicit in the siege, they were in an untenable situation-- fearing for their lives-- and a white woman was shot in the neck and executed by police . . . if this happened at a BLM protest, it would have been cause for further rioting; there may be a sinister conspiracy as to why the police presence was so small (or it might be the fault of the DC mayor, who didn't like the heavy-handed tactics of the National Guard at the BLM protests) but Harris is worried that the left will racialize this event instead of using as a starting point for laws instead of norms for the president-- he's hoping Biden enacts some laws to make the Presidency "psychopath proof" but of course the best way to avoid this is to NOT elect a psychopath;

his main thrust is that if you wholeheartedly believe everything you hear from either the right OR the left, your thoughts will achieve a cult-like conformity . . .

for another podcast that gets into this listen to the Joe Rogan featuring Lawrence Wright-- I enjoyed all three hours of the dialogue; Lawrence Wright knows his stuff on this topic-- he interviewed the son of Jim Jones (that's quite a story) and he wrote "Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood & the Prison of Belief" and "The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11."

Excursions of Dave

I'm reading Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest by Hanif Abdurraqib so today I'll let Q-tip do the talking:

Beats that are hard, beats that are funky
It could get you hooked like a crackhead junkie.

Tennis Notes

I took it easy this week-- alcohol-wise and exercise-wise-- because I thought I was playing an excellent in the Saturday morning tennis league . . . last week I had an easy match where I got to practice various serves and shots (as I destroyed my opponent . . . he had no killer instinct) which was kind of a nice break because the scouting report I received on Manoj was that he tough to beat, especially if his first serve was on-- but I arrived at the club this morning and found out that Manoj pulled his groin and hurt his elbow-- so he is out for the rest of the season-- and I was playing his replacement, a guy with a Russian accent named Alex . . . this was a bit of a letdown as I was amped up to see how I would fare against Manoj-- but when I started warming up with Alex, I realized I was going to have my work cut out for me anyway-- Alex was hitting the ball hard in warm-ups-- a strong forehand and a big first serve and he wanted to take a bunch of overhead smashes, which he killed . . . then we started playing-- and while his first serve was intimidating (he even aced me once) I noticed he didn't have a great backhand, it was a spinning slice shot which skipped low, nor did he have a great second serve and he sometimes made unforced errors-- and so instead of attacking the net and trying to hit winners-- which wasn't working all that well (after some long games full of errant shots, we were tied 4 to 4) I started concentrated on something simple-- keeping my eye on the ball-- and I hit my serves to his backhand, kept the ball in play, and watched him run around his backhand and feed me hittable balls . . . with this simple strategy, I won the next seven games straight and beat him 11-4.

Dave Reads His Second AI Novel in as Many Months

I am becoming a bigger and bigger fan of sci-fi writer Becky Chambers . . . I loved her novel The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet-- her future world is a topical and wry combination of Star Trek and The Hitchhiker's Guide, from a feminine perspective-- and her second book in the Wayfarers series, A Closed and Common Orbit, is something special; it's more of a spin-off than a sequel, told from several interesting points-of-view in two distinct time frames . . . and while I recently read a funny and poignant book written from the perspective of an AI, which I thoroughly enjoyed, this one is more detailed, developed, and profound about the nature of consciousness-- artificial, enhanced, cloned, and alien . . . and it's also quite clever about how these various cultures might exist together:

"Why don't different species sit together?" she asked . . . 

segregated transit cars didn't mesh with what she'd read of Port Coriol's famed egalitarianism . . .

"Different species," Blue said, "different butts."

My Son Might Be Smarter Than Me?

During this pandemic, I've seen my kids do number of things that don't seem smart at all-- for example, my sixteen year old son Alex likes to cut an avocado in half while holding it in his hand, with a giant knife, while walking around the kitchen-- and it's exhausting to be constantly suggesting things that seems commonsensical, like "why don't you put that thing on a solid, less fleshy surface, and use a cutting board?"-- so when Alex wanted to watch Primer last week, I assumed it would be a disaster-- Primer is the most realistic (and the most difficult to understand) time-travel movie ever made-- Chuck Klosterman has a great essay about the film in which he lauds it to no end but he also reminds folks that:

"Primer is hopelessly confusing and grows more and more byzantine as it unravels (I’ve watched it seven or eight times and I still don’t totally know how it works)"

so I advised my son to turn on the subtitles, but he refused-- he wanted to "do it the hard way"-- and I told him that it took me a couple viewings to get it, and some charts, and a whiteboard . . . and then we watched the movie and he understood the first time through . . . and not only that, he predicted the existence of the failsafe machine-- a plot device I did not understand until I had watched the film a half dozen times . . . he said that taking A.P. Physics helped him understand the incomprehensible jargon at the start of the movie and the rest . . . well, though this is the same kid that picked up a rotisserie chicken with cloth oven mitts (because he thought you used oven mitts to pick up things that are hot . . . I had to explain that if the item is hot, moist and greasy-- then you DON'T use oven mitts) but despite the e lapses in common sense, I think it's time for me to admit that his brain might function a lot better than mine (he is taking four AP classes this year and aims to be an aerospace engineer . . . maybe someday I'll convince him to read Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow).

To Infinity and Beyond . . .

While we were watching football, my son Ian asked me if you had to kick a field goal through the goal posts and I told him that you did not-- you could kick the ball as high as you like, because the goal posts extend upward to infinity . . . this is also true for the goal-tending cylinder in basketball: I can't think of any other infinite sporting boundaries of significance, but perhaps there are others . . . and I think I might extend this sentence to infinity . . . why not . . . ellipses are cheap . . .

Rule Number One for the Ladies: Don't Compliment Dave

Normally, folder review for the Rutgers Expos Class is at least a little bit stressful; a team of us teach the course-- which is notoriously difficult-- at my high school and if the kids pass, then they can buy the credits and avoid taking the class freshman year . . . folder review is when Rutgers makes sure that we are grading up to their rigorous standards, and while it's always done in an open and academic fashion, any time someone grades your grading, things can get contentious-- my reputation used to be that I was a bit fast and loose with my grades . . . and I often found myself debating on behalf of a student and their paper in order to maintain a higher grade-- but this year we have a new liaison and I met with her today and she obviously didn't get the memo: normally, intelligent women only admonish and counsel Dave . . . they don't shower him with compliments-- because his self-esteem is already bloated and swollen (for no good reason other than using mental health strategies similar to the one the fox used to assure himself that those grapes were sour) so I was quite surprised when the new lady said my grades were "precisely what she would have given" and she said we see "exactly eye-to-eye" and she loved the specificity of my comments and my modeling of close reading and she couldn't wait for my input at the grading calibration workshop . . . this was very fun for a few minutes-- and it was especially entertaining to rub it in Brady's face, as he used to be the grading king-- but now I'm feeling a lot of pressure-- I'm more used to being the amiable screw-up that could use some constructive direction; we'll see how this new role goes.

A Solemn Promise

If I survive this pandemic-- either through avoidance, vaccination, or catching covid and developing antibodies, then I am never washing my hands again (even after using a gas station restroom where you need to get a key connected to a wooden block by a chain).