The good doctor and I
share the same date of birth--
and for twenty-one years
we roamed planet earth--
our time intersected
we shared the same space,
we breathed the same air
we ran the same race--
but 31 years ago,
the good doctor expired
while I continued living,
he went and expired--
and I hope in good time,
we'll meet once again,
and drink us some beers
and eat us some ham.
My son Alex turned 18 today and he just found out he got into the Engineering School at Rutgers-- very exciting-- but he's not home to celebrate, he's down in Atlantic City for DECA . . . and I thought he could do some gambling down there once he turned 18, but I am wrong on that account: you need to be 21 to gamble in a casino in New Jersey (too bad he's not in Georgia or Idaho).
No new sentence today, I'm trying to write another Seussian birthday rhyme (and I need time . . . I need time).
If you're sad about the end of the Amazon sci-fi series The Expanse, you can do what I'm doing: go back and read the novels that inspired the show: the first one, Leviathan Wakes, is very similar to season one of the show, but it fills in a lot of holes (and there are a lot of holes out in space) and I didn't fully remember the weird and wild ending, especially exactly what happened to Detective Miller, so this clarified things-- I'll probably tackle the next one after I get through the monstrosity that is Cloud Cuckoo Land.
I beat Barry this morning and while he ran me around quite a bit, he's decided that he's aging out of this league-- he's 66!-- but he still gets around and hits lots of weird angle shots and I worked up quite a sweat playing him . . . if I'm still moving around like that fourteen years from now, I'll consider it a life well-lived . . . as far as tennis:
1) I'm serving well-- keeping the face closed in the trophy position and really stretching upward with the left should on the toss;
2) I'm starting to hit some decent drop shots-- you have to stay very loose;
3) my indoor lobs are awful (and I hot a couple overheads right back to Barry . . . not the way to do it)
4) the key to my two-handed backhand is to turn my back to the ball and dip my right shoulder, and then make sure my left-hand goes from top to bottom to top . . . it's NOT a left-handed forehand;
5) as the match wore on, I hit a few forehands into the net . . . I've got to aim three feet over the net on all baseline shots.
I just finished recording and mixing some music-- a song called "What Does It Mean?" . . . it's very profound, with only one joke-- but more of an excuse to play some soukous-style African guitar.
First of all, when you Google "sentence of dave" you get my blog and three examples:
1) Dave thumped the table in frustration.Teachers at my school wore tutus today because the date is 2/22/2022 but I'm not sure what all the excitement is about . . . my sentiment is: call me in two hundred years.
I would write something profound today but I ate a Carmine G sandwich from the Italian sandwich place (Fresco) in Metuchen and I'm stuffed stupid, plus the dog is looking at me like it's that time of day, which it is-- so that's what I'll be doing instead of writing something sagacious.
As the boys and I are finishing the TV show The Expanse-- we've got one episode to go and I think it might be the last-- I am beginning to read the novels on which the show is based-- and it's certainly fun to go back to the very beginning, with Holden and Amos and Naomi and Alex on the Rocinante (and the book fills in a lot of the plot holes, plus I miss Detective Miller and Anderson Dawes . . . we'll see how far I get, I think there are a lot of long books in the series).
I didn't do anything special this morning, aside from keeping the ball in play and hitting the ball high when I was at the baseline and low when I was approaching the net and this was enough to beat a pretty good player 12-1 . . . some of the games were close and he had some interesting shots, but he just made too many unforced errors by hitting the net; I also lobbed well today, which is huge indoors; taking an early lead is critical for me because then I can loosen up and hit the ball, my inside out forehand was pretty effective and I eventually starting actually hitting my two-handed backhand, not just blocking it back; my cut shot was rising a little high, perhaps grip or laziness, but Ketan beat Matthias (the league champ) last week, so I can't complain about the victory-- I've now beaten two weird pusher type players who both beat the league champ, so I'm wondering what's going to happen when I play him in a couple weeks, hopefully I will match up well (and my knees are feelign good from all the backwards stuff).
An odd pub night . . . a coin flip sent us to B2 Bistro in North Brunswick, which was in my old neighborhood and used to be called Sir John's; the new place was insanely crowded (half-priced sushi night?) and while we sat down at the only remaining table in this giant establishment, we took a quick vote and got the hell out of there-- it was going to be expensive and slow . . . so Connell ordered food from Taqueria while we drove back to his place, and then Alec and Connell set up an impromptu Blanton's tasting-- apparently Alec has some rare bottle that can only be acquired overseas . . . and I liked the weakest stuff, the 80 proof Blanton's Black Edition; then we played some metal darts in Connell's basement and I stumbled home fairly early (in the rain) because I had a big teaching day today; at some later point, a large chunk from Connell's living room ceiling fell down (more details on that when I get them).
Live by Night is Dennis LeHane's version of The Great Gatsby . . . bootleggers, organized crime, romance, immorality, parties, decadence, the looming underclass and more romance . . . but it's much more violent and much more fun than Fitzgerald, plus there's Tampa and Cuba; this is ostensibly a sequel to The Given Day, but it's less historical and more of a noir crime novel set in the 1920's-- I'm definitely going to read the third one in the trilogy.
I've been negligent in writing sentences for the past couple of days, perhaps because it's that time of the school year: the long haul before Spring Break . . . there's no end to the learning in sight; my students have just handed in their third Rutgers college writing essay-- so one more to go-- but I have to grade fifty of these six-page synthetic behemoths . . . not much in the way of news; we're watching Goliath and All of Us Our Dead; I'm reading Live by Night, Dennis LeHane's historical tale of rum-running in Tampa and a hysterical book of essays by Samantha Irby; I ate split pea soup for lunch twice this week because Catherine took it out of the freezer thinking it was verde sauce for enchiladas; there's still snow on the ground, which is good for pulling a sled backwards; apparently the weather is going to warm up soon and spring will be in the air . . . tennis season is right around the corner and I'm certainly nervous about coaching it at the varsity level (and coaching both my children) so things will pick up around here soon enough, hopefully in a good way-- in the meantime, my wife has told me that I've been slacking on doing the dishes, so it's time to get to it (and I have a new phone, which is weird-- it's a OnePlus 8 (Never Settle!) and the screen sort of wraps around the body and you can't insert an SD card and things seem smaller than my old phone, but I'm sure I'll get used to it . . . and if I don't, well then I deserve it, because I tossed my Redmi 9 in the washer).
As a teacher, you have to remember that any one of your students might be going through some shit-- they might be in "super dark times" and you might not be aware of this and you might be trying ot get them to peer-edit or read Hamlet, but they might have other things on their mind . . . Kevin Philips takes this to the extreme in his new coming-of-age thriller Super Dark Times . . . it reminds you that if your son is acting weird, the reason might be that his friend killed a kid with a sword (by accident) and they've hidden the body and are waiting for the shit to hit the fan . . . this review calls the movie the opposite of the nostalgic naïveté of Stranger Things . . . it's a mid-90s version of Stand by Me or River's Edge-- the movie is best just before the super dark times and during the super dark times, once everything explodes into mayhem it becomes more of a slasher/thriller, but it's still worth seeing, there's beautiful imagery, pre-internet cell-phone boredom, menace, some disturbing scenes, and a slow dive into the chaos that must occur (there's also a fantastic symbolic opening scene which I won't spoil here).
When I left the house at 6:45 AM for my 7 AM indoor tennis league, I pondered on what a shame it was that I was scheduled to play indoors on such a balmy February morning-- and then I found out, after the lady called out all the court assignments-- that I had fucked up . . . there was a new schedule because of the snow day, and I had a bye this week . . . but this was a blessing in disguise, because if there was any week to have a bye week it was this one; I headed home, and at 9 AM I woke my younger son up and we went and played outside and it was beautiful-- warm and sunny (and a little breezy) and though I played well and made all the games tight, he beat me 6 - 2 and then beat me in two tiebreakers, but now I will be sharp when I head back inside next week and play old people (and my son has been practicing all winter and he's gotten a lot better-- he's more mature, doesn't flip out when his first serve doesn't work, has good touch at the net, can hit a real cut shot now, occasionally a real topspin blasts a forehand winner, and hit a few of my deep corner cut shots right by me, on the run, off a wristy two handed backhand . . . I may never beat him again).
Warm February day today and though I was a little logy from pub night at The Grove last night (which was wonderful-- great beer, great wings, and excellent 2/3s of a cheesesteak) and the culmination at Pino's (which was the usual, understaffed, the skinny grad school girl trying to serve the entire bar, totally frantic, the music too loud, etc) I was able to get my ten minutes of backward walking in, with Cunningham and Stacey, out on the turf-- we've been walking backward in the hall, on the fields, and on the turf-- all in the hopes that our knees will become limber and bulletproof.
Another day without a cell-phone, so another day with no Wordle or Mini, another day not knowing what's going on with my wife, children and friends, and another day without as much dicking around looking at the weather and the Times headlines-- and it's fitting I don't have a phone, since my Shakespeare class has just begun-- Shakespeare didn't have a phone and he got a hell of a lot of writing accomplished-- but, though the Black Death was always lurking around, Shakespeare didn't have to wear a mask-- and I found out today that reading Shakespeare in a mask is difficult, as he uses a lot of sibilance, rhythm, and loud phrasing so the actors can project his lines-- which leads to a moist and gross mask . . . so I'm looking forward to the end of the mask mandate, which should expire March 7 and we can rip our masks off and burn them and show our stupid faces to the masses (although I try to eat and drink as much as possible in class, so that I don't have to wear mine).
Weird day yesterday, hard to characterize . . . got to school, kind of tired from the snowboarding trip, and found a mysterious envelope in my box; I opened it and found a book called There Are No Accidents: The Deadly Rise of Injury and Disaster-- Who Profits and Who Pays the Price and the author was one of my old students-- Jessie Singer-- and she wrote me a lovely note inside that said:
I have no doubt that without your encouragement and support, I would not be a writer today.
Thank you for being the spark, for helping me see myself, and for convincing me I had this in me.
With Forever gratitude--
Jessie Singer
and I would have taken a picture of the note but I threw my phone in the wash and it's dead, so I need to get a replacement phone ASAP . . . I also went to the wrong duty yesterday at school-- I forgot that it was an A day and went to cafeteria duty and wondered where all the regular folk were-- but Stacey texted me and told me I was in the wrong spot . . . and then Alex and I went to the gym and did some backwards walking and pulling for our knees-- Stacey has also embraced the kneesovertoes guy and she even bought a cheap treadmill to walk backwards on (and his book!) so there will be more of that in the near future . . . anyway, I need to research a new phone and figure out how to survive this week, I'm sure it will be an adventure.
