The Specter of Walt Disney Raises Awkward Dave from the Grave

In the past decade, I've tamed Awkward Dave to some degree, but he still occasionally rears his ugly, awkward head; one of these times is when adults-- grown-ass adults--  proclaim their love of Disney World; this boggles my mind and-- unfortunately for my awkwardness-- we've got a bunch of these people in our school (and there are several in the English department!) and some of them visit Disney every year-- it's like a religious pilgrimage-- and some of them visit Disney World and they don't have children . . . and while I understand taking your kids there once so they don't feel alienated and neglected-- although my wife and I refused to go and swore we would never take our kids until finally my parents actually dragged us all there and footed the entire bill . . . I had a lot of problems with the experience, but I'm an extra-high-maintenance pain-in-the-ass . . . but that's not what this sentence is about, it's about the awkward fugue-like state I enter when adults mention their love of Disney World . . . I start saying crazy, insulting, and awful things right to their faces, and these are people I work with and see every day; here are some examples of things I start spouting to perfectly nice co-workers: 

-- I rant and rave about how lame it is to share a bunch of antiseptic engineered memories with the rest of the Philistines in the park; 

-- I explain how happy I was when an alligator ate a small child at the Disney Grand Floridian Resort and Spa because it injected some reality into the fantasy;

-- I told someone they were totally fucked in the head because she was touting the merits of the Epcot food and wine festival . . . I told her for that amount of money you could go to Italy and have real food and wine!

-- I like to call out people who claim they are feminists yet worship the princess culture;

so I've decided this can't go on . . . if people want to spend their hard-earned money on Disney vacations, so be it . . . I need to be more tolerant; also, I don't think they can help it-- I wish I could claim to have noticed this myself, but it was Chantal who pointed out that all the devout Disney worshippers are practicing Catholics . . . so maybe there's some tie-in between actually practicing religion and loving Disney-- and we all know you can't control whether you have that "belief" character trait . . . I don't have a lick of it and I think it saves me a lot of trouble (in fact, I just read a great little piece in The Atlantic about how politics has replaced religion in America . . . and Disney is better than politics, I suppose).

Thick Masks and Liquid Skin: More New Shit

     

Like many people, I'm struggling to adapt to the new pandemic world order-- but I'm doing my best to learn new tricks; for example, the new mask my wife bought me was a bit thick, so I used scissors to remove the extra layer . . . but I cut myself with the scissor (which makes me wonder if my tetanus vaccine is up-to-date) and the cut was on my guitar-playing/typing/poking-things finger and it made it difficult to do those tasks but wife recommended using some "liquid skin," a weird substance that reminds me of medical crazy glue . . . and while it works, it's one more thing to remember before heading to work-- I've raced back into the house in the morning for my phone, for a mask, for my coffee, for my lunch, for my backpack, for my loop pedal . . . and now I've raced back into the house to apply some "liquid skin" . . . this added excitement is one of the benefits of returning to in-person school.

Daylight Saving Time: Catastrophe and Miracle

Yesterday, I was running late-- of course-- because we had just sprung ahead for fucking Daylight Saving Time and though I was bleary-eyed, I still noticed (possibly because it was dark) that ALL the interior lights were on in my van-- and they had certainly been on all night; luckily, the battery was okay and the car started but I couldn't get the lights to turn off, even when I was driving; my son had borrowed the car the day previous and he was the last to drive it so he had obviously done something egregious, but I didn't have time to run in the house and wake him up and ask him, so I called my wife (waking her up, as she was taking a day off) and told her to get Alex on the phone; Alex denied pressing any buttons and while all I could say was "THINK!"-- because I was driving down Route 18 with a bunch of other over-tired drivers-- but my wife actually thought for a moment and told Alex to go down to the computer and search how to shut the lights off on a 2008 Toyota Sienna; miraculously, he figured out what he had done . . . there is a weird button with three settings behind the steering wheel: OFF/DOOR/ON; this button toggles the interior lights from always off to turn-on-when-doors-are-open to always on . . . and he had somehow hit this button-- this button that no one has ever pressed in the history of driving-- and permanently turned the interior lights on (why this button exists confounds me, it is as equally unexplainable as the existence of Daylight Saving Time . . . which may be headed the way of the dinosaurs . . . which would make me very happy, almost as happy as when I put a piece of duct-tape over this idiotic button so that no teenager can ever press it again).

Note to Self (in March)

 This is what I learned yesterday: don't install a screen door on a windy day.

Game, Set, Match (Dave Beats the Drowned Man)

Yesterday was the last day of the winter men's league-- and while most of the guys are signing up for the spring session, I will be playing outside with my kids in the coming weeks, in preparation for the high school season; I finished strong, beating Barry in my last match-- though I won handily, Barry is troublesome (especially for a 65-year-old!) as he gets to everything and has a decent serve; while I started this league hustling and fit, I ended it wearing a brace on each knee, basketball shoes (more support than my tennis shoes) and tape on my two sprained toes; this winter I certainly improved my game . . . to some degree, I learned to stop chasing drop shots (for fear of injury) and stop diving at the net, I learned to serve to the backhand side, I learned to hit forehand winners and a hard cross-court two-handed backhand, I learned to hit my slice backhand deep, and-- just in the last match!-- I learned the proper ready position grip (from my wife, of all people) and this enabled me to wallop some forehand service returns . . . and if I can keep this up for fourteen more years, I will be quite happy-- I aspire to be like Barry, who went skiing last weekend in Beaver Creek and was back on the court a week later (although his neck was hurting him from the accident . . . what accident? . . . the drowning . . . you rescued someone? . . . no, I drowned this summer, I was painting my garage and it was 97 degrees and I forgot to drink water all day so I was completely dehydrated and then I dove into my pool to impress my grandkids and I never surfaced . . . my wife had to pull me out and I was blue and close to death. . . four days in the hospital . . . Barry is the bomb).

It's About Time . . .

Lydia Millet's novel A Children's Bible is a modern, environmental take on the classic-- finally!-- and while Biblical elements abound . . . a flood, a plague, a surprise birth a crucifixion, an exodus, some kind of weird rapture, an angry force from above, a bunch of wild animals living together, innocence, corruption, revelations, etc . . . there are also plenty of modern references: cell phones, Amazon Prime, MDMA, and Fendi; the adults have given up even attempting to worship creation and have instead turned hedonistically inward, while the children who have inherited the earth need to deal with all the problems . . . and one of the youngsters-- Jack-- actually reads a children's Bible and tries to connect the old narrative to the new issues that arise (my family--a bunch of Philistines-- struggled with this . . . they really hated the title of the book and thought I was actually reading a children's version of the Bible and no amount of explanation could convince them that the book IS a new bible . . . allegories aren't for everyone, this book is surreal and symbolic and reference-laden, but it's also a beautifully written dramatic page-turner . . . give it a shot).

Stopping by the Snow Bank on a Warm Afternoon

 

This snow is lovely, dark, and deep.

This Land is Your Land, This Land is Nomadland

Jessica Bruder's book Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century is an eye-opener to another America, an America of a wandering people, who-- usually due to some setback-- are houseless (but not homeless) and move through our nation "like blood cells through the veins of our country" in tricked out camper-vans, small RVs, handmade trailers, and converted house-cars . . . these people-- who are mainly white . . . perhaps because it's hard to "boondock" as a person of color-- meet at desert rallies like the Rubber Tramp Rendezvous and move from one grueling temporary job to the next-- the sugar beet harvest, shelving and scanning items at the Amazon warehouse, cleaning the toilets at campgrounds, short order cook at Wall Drug . . . the work is hard and you are reliant on your tribe of van dwellers, your own resilience, Advil, and the ability of ride to endure wind and weather; the financial crash of 2008 sent many of these people on the road, but so did lack of pensions and unions and healthcare, lack of decent lower-middle class jobs and lack of a safety net to care for these folks-- and these are spirited people, many of whom are over sixty, and couldn't bear to live without freedom; Linda May has dreams greater than living in a van, she purchases some desert land in Arizona to build an Earthship homestead-- a self-sufficient, off-the-grid house; she's a grandmother of 64 and wants some place to call her own, but she struggles with how to go about it . . . these are her words:

Someone asked why do you want a homestead? To be independent, get out of the rat race, support local businesses, buy only American made. Stop buying stuff to impress people I don't like. Right now I am working in a big warehouse for an online supplier. The stuff is all crap made somewhere else in the world where they don't have child labor laws, where the workers labor fourteen to sixteen hour days without meals or bathroom breaks. There is one million square feet in this warehouse packed with stuff that won't last a month. It is all goin to a landfill. Our economy is built on the backs of slaves we keep in other countries, like China, India, Mexico, any third world country where we don't have to see them but where we can enjoy the fruits of their labor. The American Corp. is probably the biggest slave owner in the world . . . there is nothing in that warehouse of substance. It enslaved the buyers who use their credit to purchase that shit. Keeps them in jobs they hate to pay their debts. 

despite the tone of this section, there is also a pioneering spirit in the book-- there is a shared tone with the favorite pieces of literature of the Rubber Tramp crew; I was proud to say I've read ever book they mentioned as a favorite: Travels with Charley, Blue Highways, Desert Solitaire, Into the Wild, Walden, and Wild; if you don't want to read about all this, definitely watch the movie-- it's a masterful amalgam of the real stories in the book (and the real people) and some quality acting by Frances McDormand . . . and if you don't want to deal with any of this but still want to get the idea, listen to a recent episode of The Indicator wherein they explain that the Simpsons-- once representative of the lower middle class in America-- now live a lifestyle unattainable by that demographic.

Birthday Shots, Cold Showers, Long Lines and a Perfect Score.

Quite a pair of birthdays for Alex and me: on Alex's birthday had a 1:30 PM appointment at the DMV for his road test with a borrowed car (thanks Johanna!) that had an accessible parking brake-- a requirement-- but the photocopy of the insurance card wasn't enough proof for the DMV dude-- and after much searching and fumbling, and we found an old card in the glovebox-- no good-- and got a rejection form with an allowance to come back at 2:30 . . . but at this point, my wife was driving over with ANOTHER borrowed car (thanks Ann!) and Alex had also called his buddy to borrow his car but then Johanna found her current insurance card and sent a photo of that-- also no good . . . we would have needed her passwords and access to her insurance website-- so Alex got in Ann's car-- which he had never driven-- and the other DMV guy with the Irish accent barely looked at this stuff and Alex took his test and passed (and did an A plus job parallel parking . . . which he's been practicing, which has been torture) and then we went over to the main building to get his real license (he has a 60 day temporary license) and the DMV security guy laughed at us and said there were no more appointments and to come back at 5 AM and maybe you might be able to get a ticket and then wait four or five more hours to get in-- so he's got that to look forward to . . . my students have many epic stories about this-- and then yesterday, my birthday-- Catherine and I drove to the Meadowlands to receive our first Pfizer vaccine shots-- and while it took a decent amount of time, everything moved quickly and was very well run-- you DO NOT need to arrive early, you get in line ten minutes before your appointment and it takes about ninety-minutes of various lines and check-ins-- like a Disney ride about pandemics . . . and everyone is very nice-- we were impressed (and I got every fuckign word on the NYT Spelling Bee!) and then my birthday dinner was a Tastee sub I ate on the way home and then I tried to shave and there was no hot water so we had to take the tankless hot water heater apart and clean the airfilter and reset the pilot light and then I was able to take a shower and go to bed . . . but some good news along the way, my cousin Geoff had a bad case of covid and ended up in the hospital but he's out now and feeling better.

If I'm Lucky, I'll Have Another Thing in Common With Theodore Geisel (Thanks Pfizer)

I share my birthday with a cat named Seuss

a man I respect for his creative juice

his rhymes were tight, his mind was loose--

and while the good Doctor liked to imbibe

Prohibition didn't feel his vibe--

I also like the occasional shot,

but on this birthday, alcohol is a NOT--

the shot I partake will go in my arm--

a present from Pfizer that might make me feel warm,

Seuss survived a pandemic: the Spanish flu--

Soon enough I might say: I survived too!

Dog Jenga? Dog Tetris?

The mud season is here (and the rain along with it) and the dog park has quickly transformed from a winter wonderland into a swamp-- but the larger snowbanks remain-- so in my small, densely populated town, when the rain lets up and everyone takes their dog for a walk at once, there's quite a bit of strategizing and maneuvering on the streets and sidewalks-- no one wants to walk their dog head-on into another dog on a strip of sidewalk surrounded by snow; there are starts and stops, sallying forward and turning tail, heeling and pulling, hopping from the sidewalk to the street and back again and I'm not sure what this is like . . . Frogger? Jenga? Tetris? . . . I don't know-- but it's like something other than walking the dog.

Read Some Allie Brosh! No Excuses . . .

When I tell people to read some Allie Brosh-- a young lady who writes primitively illustrated memoirs that are so funny even Bill Gates laughs-- I get a lot of:

"I can't read things with pictures because I get confused and don't know when to look at the words and when to look at the pictures and I tried to read Watchmen and it was good but just too much stimulation"

and-- quite frankly-- I want to smack these people . . . I just finished her second book, Solutions and Other Problems, and it's funny and dark and weird and profound and full of Brosh's neuroses and her dogs and her existentially overly-energetic brain. . . you can read the words and/or look at the pictures or any combination of those two . . . but who doesn't like funny pictures?

The Tennis Season Wears On

Today I left for my Saturday morning tennis league looking like an athlete long past his prime-- I was wearing two knee braces: a neoprene sleeve on my left knee to keep my recently injured quadricep warm and a bulky thing with straps on my swollen right knee-- I'm not sure why it's swollen, probably a combination of tennis and hiking around with the dog in the slush (which I did repeatedly this week, despite knee pain) and I figured I wouldn't be mobile enough to beat Scott-- an accomplished regular at the club with a fast and whippy serve with a big kick, a killer down-the-line-backhand cut shot, a hard forehand, and good touch at the net . . . and though I was down three games at one point in the match, I leveled things at 8 games to 8 and then we played a tiebreaker and I beat him handily, 10 - 4 . . . this is a nice win for me, especially because I wasn't shifting my weight at the start of the math because of my knees, so I hit a bunch of unforced errors deep-- but I corrected things, backed up on his serve and hit a bunch of forehand winner to avoid having to run around like a maniac (which I did the first match, and I still lost by a game) and now I have to rest my knee for my snowboarding trip in a few days-- hopefully the swelling will go down just in time for me to aggravate it again.

More Behind the Scenes Stuff

I remembered a couple more chores that generally fall in my purview and aren't particularly lauded . . . I tend to fill the gas tanks of both our cars with fuel-- if you weren't aware, most cars need gasoline to power their internal combustion engines-- and I'm also the one who stocks the upstairs bathrooms with toilet paper (if you weren't aware, it's extraordinarily difficult to retrieve toile paper from the side-room once you've committed to a bowel movement in an upstairs bathroom . . . so it's imperative that the toilet paper is already within reach).

How to Clean a Bowl (if your wife rarely reads your blog)

I eat a bowl of Greek yogurt, peanut butter, and granola every morning-- and it's delicious-- but the down side is that it's very difficult to clean the bowl; even the dishwasher struggles to remove peanut butter and yogurt residue . . . so I've found the best, most environmentally copacetic way to remove this residue (without resorting to using a paper towel) is to let the dog lick the bowl clean . . . but my wife finds this gross-- luckily, she rarely reads this blog.

Sometimes Kids Learn Things Without My Help

 

I've taught my older son Alex many valuable things:

1) how to juggle a soccer ball;

2) how to serve a tennis ball;

3) how to throw a football

4) maybe something about writing an essay?

but I certainly didn't teach him how to run a Rocket Propulsion Club, use modeling software and 3-D printing technology, launch rockets into the stratosphere, assign teams to build the various components of these rockets, buy large amounts of rocketry and electronic equipment and get reimbursed for it, work in conjunction with the Rutgers Rocket Propulsion Club and use their facilities, and finally:

propose and win a two-thousand dollar grant (largely aided by him filming and painstakingly editing a really sharp video . . . though he doesn't wear glasses-- he just put some on so he would look smarter)

he learned this stuff all on his own, with no input or advice or help from me . . . crazy right?

How to Combat Winter Madness: A Video Tutorial

The weather just jumped the shark here in New Jersey-- the lovely blustery snowflakes transformed into large pellets of 33-degree rain-- so here a few suggestions for combatting Winter Madness:

1) Watch the "Winter Madness" 30 Rock episode . . . duh

2) watch Nomadland . . . it's streaming on Hulu and it's not as depressing as you might think; if you're feeling a little stir-crazy in your house, imagine if your house was a van . . . Frances McDormand isn't homeless, but she is houseless-- after her husband's death, she becomes untethered from all her social connections and there's only one way to go . . . down the road.

Behind the Scenes?

The other day, I was explaining to my wife all the "behind-the-scenes" kind of stuff I do around the house to keep the show up-and-running . . . and while she had a good laugh about this, I was able to provide a couple of examples of these key-grip backstage-type chores:

1) I clean up the dogshit in the yard-- which is not an easy task when we've got so much snow and ice down on the ground-- and I also cover up the pee spots with fresh snow so that the view is pristine and snowy white when my wife looks out the window;

2) I frequently take out the trash and the recycling;

3) I tighten the cabinet door hinge screws, which seem to come loose every three days;

4) I make the coffee before she comes downstairs in the morning, and I often make her some afternoon coffee as well;

5) I put on music when we are preparing dinner;

6) I do the taxes;

7) I'm sure I do a bunch of other stuff as well-- stuff that's not as prominent and eye-catching as cooking a fantastic three-course meal or doing the grocery shopping or cleaning out the refrigerator . . . but don't you worry, I'm toiling away behind the scenes so that the house runs as smoothly as a seventeenth season Cats production.

Even More Tennis Notes

Today was the first day since I injured it that my leg felt 100% . . . which was a good thing as I had to play Uday, the best player in the league-- but I wasn't at full speed because I jammed my toe on a piece of molding and ripped the nail off, so I decided that I was going to play a power game and hit winners (since I've gained some weight and lost some mobility since I pulled my quad) and I went up 2-0 on him . . . but his net play, consistency, and big first serve were eventually too much for me-- I lost 9-7, a result I'm perfectly happy with (especially because last week I played Rey-- probably the second-best player- and he slaughtered me-- I hit the ball, okay but I was slow and stiff, and he punished me for it . . . this is what made me realize I've got to start hitting winners to hang in with these club players) and Uday showed me what I need to work on:  I need to hit a deeper two-handed backhand, I need to follow the ball to the net more-- not just get to the center of the court-- and I need to go for it on my first serve more (and I need to go for it whenever a hard first serve is in my wheelhouse).

It's Time For Everyone To Leave the House

Last night at 10:30 PM I was woken from a sound sleep by my older son-- who was on a Zoom call playing Monopoly with his friends and found it necessary to yell at the top of his lungs-- so I trudged downstairs and watched Serena Williams lose to Naomi Osaka in the Australian Open . . . then this morning around 10:30 AM, while I was teaching school in the study-- because of a winter storm I was remote today-- I heard my younger son Ian screaming bloody murder . . . it sounded like a bad burn or a broken bone, and I charged up from the study and my wife ran up from the basement-- where she was teaching-- and we found Ian shrieking on the floor in the aftermath of a fistfight that began over some gummy worms and a two-for-flinching-game, and ended in punching, biting, kicking, and a knee to the groin . . . I directed every expletive in the book towards my children-- who had an actual snow day . . . something which doesn't even exist in my district any longer . . . they had no responsibilities at all-- and luckily both my wife and I had ended our class meetings, or some student would have called DYFS; now the kids are doing chores all day and buying us dinner tomorrow night; the takeaway is that we all need to go back to school and get out of each other's hair . . . I have been back for a week or so and though everything is worse in school: the internet is bad, my room was 50 degrees, the technology is wonky, it's impossible to teach kids in the room and virtual kids simultaneously, etc etc. it's still better to be out of the house; I get way less work done and but I'm much happier, sharing my misery with my colleagues, and far from my children (they went back for a day this week and Catherine actually had the house to herself for a few hours!)