Am I This Guy? I Guess So

As an adult, at some point while reading a sci-fi series, you ask yourself:

"Am I really the kind of person who reads an entire sci-fi series?"

and I'm at that point with Cibola Burn, the fourth book in the Expanse series by James S.A. Corey-- this was my favorite season of the TV show and the book fills in a lot of gaps-- a LOT of gaps . . . it's a bit interminable in spots, but there's also so much good stuff: the protomolecule built a ring gate that gives humans access to thousands of worlds across the galaxy, and this book is mainly set on New Terra, a planet that seems habitable and rich in lithium and other resources . . . but it's not habitable at all- there are conflicts between colonists/squatters and official security, there are poisonous slime worms and blindness inducing bacteria, there is ancient technology built by the protomolecule which is starting to awake, there are volcanoes and storms and technologically crippling defense systems . . . so it was a lot of fun, but also LONG, long enough that I wanted to get back to some quality non-fiction or something . . . I will say it's a better fourth book than the fourth one in the Game of Thrones series-- and I was asking myself the same question-- am I really this kind of guy?-- but I forged on and the fifth book was better (I think there are a couple more books slated to come out soon, I'm going to need a recap) and so I might continue on with this Expanse series, I love the characters and all the hard sci-fi stuff, though I think the action scenes could be pared down and so, despite the fact that I'm a grown-ass man, I might be the kind of grown-ass man that finishes an epic sci-fi series.

It's Been a Day, A Birth Day . . .

Today is my younger son's seventeenth birthday, and he was scheduled for his driving test at 11 AM . . . but first, he needed to attend a training for his summer job as a tennis instructor at the Rutgers Prep camp (with the affable curmudgeon Ted Ransom) and we borrowed our friend's car for the driving test because you need a vehicle with an emergency brake in between the seat-- which is rare in new cars, so most people just pay the driving school to use their car, which is a total scam-- anyway, I was slated to do all this stuff with the birthday boy, but first we had an early appointment with Steve the Appliance Doctor-- and his prognosis on our stove was not good, we need a $500 valve to fix the thing-- so then Ian and I drove over to Rutgers Prep and just after we crossed the Landing Lane Bridge we witnessed a car accident, nothing epic and lucky for us it wasn't on our side-- and then I took a walk on the tow road while he trained and I learned a lot-- a friendly fisherman showed me a picture of a fifteen-pound catfish he caught in the canal the other day and he also informed me-- totally new information-- that there are pike and muskellenge in the canal-- musky!-- and I saw a lot of wildlife on my walk: turtles, a big snake, all kinds of flowers, frogs, tadpoles, and little fish . . . and an herbalist, an African American dude decked out with all kinds of harvesting gear and he told me about the powers of elderberry flowers and then I asked him if the plant on the side of the path was poison ivy and he grabbed it and took a look and confirmed that yes it was poison ivy and I was like "don't touch that shit" and he said only sixty percent of people are allergic-- which seems to be lowballing it-- and I have also read that every time you touch the stuff, you increase your likelihood of getting it, so he might have to use some of his elderberry flowers on himself . . . then we went over to the Kilmer DMV, with all our documentation, but one minute into the driving test it was over-- the instructor said that the emergency brake was too loose and that we had to get it fixed and we had two hours to do so or our appointment would be voided-- so we started driving to the mechanic but I knew that was as shot in hell, so I called Ian's driving instructor and he happened to be in the vicinity giving a lesson, so we met him in the parking lot, gave him 80 bucks and he took Ian over in his car-- what a scam, but at least it worked out-- and then Ian had a fairly wild driving test-- he had to slam on the brakes because a lady ran through a stop sign and when he tried to parallel park an old man pulled up right behind him-- but he's a great driver, so he handled it all and passed and then we got to spend some quality time in the DMV-- and though we had every fucking document on earth, it still wasn't enough for their byzantine requirements-- and we had to reprint all the numbers in the little boxes because Ian crossed out a date-- and then they asked me if I had a driver's license and I said yes and that somehow was enough stuff and he got his picture taken, got a temporary license, we went to Don Huang for noodles, and then Ian went to do some yardwork for a lady across town and he drove himself-- which was wonderful-- and then when he got back, we went to the park and played some pick-up basketball with random folks and then settled in to eat a home-cooked meal of Indian food, quite a busy birthday.

Short and Old

The more my kids have grown, the more they've gotten into basketball-- and while they're not very good, they have long arms and can kind of play now, and when we play one-on-one, their arms are so long that I can't shoot over them unless I step back to Steph Curry range, so I have to bang forward and try for hook shots, which is exhausting and ugly . . . but I'm glad they're getting into hoops again so that they can play pick-up ball in college-- it took me four years of playing on the ugliest team in intramural basketball, the Nicks (named after Nick Huth) to achieve any kind of skill in the sport-- and now it's all downhill for me.

It's Friday, I Think

The closer we get to the end of the year, the more time becomes elastic and the longer the 84 minute block schedule classes seem . . . this week felt beyond eternal, every moment a mini-infinity, so that when Friday finally ended, it seemed as if the year reset and it was a dry September afternoon in 2022. 

Epic Hump Day

My buddy Jeff cajoled me into getting up early this morning to play badminton with the 6 AM badminton crew-- the last time I did this was in the late '90s-- and though it was very early, it was also very fun-- and I was still able to whack the shuttlecock with some accuracy and power, despite the twenty-three year hiatus; we played until 7:15 because a few of us had the first period of the day off, giving us time to shower-- but I got called for a first period coverage, so I had to rush to get my clothes on and get over to K Hall . ..  and then I realized that I had forgotten my belt and I've lost some weight so my pants are quite loose-- they don't mention the down side of shedding a few pounds: you might get fired for indecent exposure . . . but Stacey came up with a solution and I used some of her knitting yarn to cinch my pants together and I made it through the day without showing the students my underwear; then I had to rush home to get ready for the end-of-season tennis party-- which turned out to be great fun; in addition to MVP and Coach's Award, I gave out a bunch of wacky awards (such as "Most Likely to Crash His Skateboard Right Before a Match and be Unable to Play" and "Best Use of the Headband") and the kids played some corn-hole, ate pizza, and a few are still here in the driveway playing ping-pong . . . I couldn't ask for a nicer bunch and I'm a little sad that this will be the last time I coach both my kids on the same team.

I Have a Dream . . .

I have a dream to make the side of my backyard like the back of my backyard . . . to make a similar leafy green wall of fargesia clumping bamboo along the fenceline so I can't see my neighbors and they can't see me-- but I suffered for my dream today, while I was transplanting a smaller bamboo plant to a cramped slot behind a plastic storage chest when I bent over to shape some soil around the roots of the plant and a pointy bamboo stalk poked me in the eye; it hurt, my hands were covered in dirt, and I needed to shower to get the remnant of the stalk out of my eye socket . . . but it will all be worth it in a couple of years (but why didn't I do this years ago?)

The End is Nigh

In class today, Hamlet-- who recently returned to Denmark from a near-death adventure with pirates-- confronted Yorick's skull today and the inevitability of decay . . . and my seniors, who returned from their near-death adventures over prom weekend, must now also face their own imminent decay-- they are graduating and growing older by the minute and will never look this way again (also, I'm writing this over the din of professional lawncare equipment-- that shit is so LOUD).

Crowded Bridge, Noisy Bridge, Deserted Bridge, Little Bridge

Yesterday's Man Hike (led by Dave Tulloch) started out reminiscent of the day my wife and I spend in New York a few months ago but the reason this is called the Man Hike is not sexist-- only men would be stupid enough to spoil a good day in NYC by walking way too far (although not as far as this one and better weather than this one) and so while we started out in known territory-- we took the train to the Oculus, carefully examined the treescape (pretty incredible irrigation system) and the survivor tree at the 9/11 Memorial (and then saw a clone of the tree that inspired Anne Frank and the church where George Costanza attempted to convert to Latvian Orthodoxy) and then we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge with the throngs of people-- this was the crowded bridge-- then did NOT stop in DUMBO for pictures, beer and food-- instead we zipped right back across the noisy bridge-- the Manhattan Bridge-- shouting above the roar of the train-- beautiful views, anyone who was anyone was riding around on their yacht in the East River-- and then we walked a bit (and Pete and I lost the group when we stopped for Asian pastries) and crossed back into Brookly on the Williamsburg Bridge (which was empty) and walked through Greenpoint and other Brooklyn neighborhoods and saw ALL the hipsters and young people, out and about, we stopped for some amazing pizza, and then crossed the small(ish) Pulaski Bridge into Queens-- and I had never really wandered about in Queens so that was new and then we made out way to the a park on the water near Roosevelt Island and caught a ferry all the way back down to Wall Street, had a few beers and a burger, and hitched a ride home with Doug, who took a shortcut through Staten Island . . . so we visited four of the five boroughs, walked some 35,000 steps, and only neglected the Bronx.

Geoff Dyer Gives Up on Giving Up

Geoff Dyer-- famous for Out of Sheer Rage, his anti-biography of D.H Lawrence, which becomes a mediation on procrastination-- has written another weird and wonderful and obscure and profound book, The Last Days of Roger Federer and Other Endings . . . I often struggle with some of his references, and he alludes and refers widely, from literature and jazz and French film to soccer and tennis and Beethoven and Nietzsche; but mainly this book deals with something from a Joy Williams story, when an adult tells a young girl:

"I hope you're enjoying your childhood. When you grow up, a shadow falls. Everything's sunny and then this big goddamn wing or something passes overhead."

and this book is Dyer contemplating life under this shadowy giant wing, as the end approaches-- the end of his tennis playing, the end of Roger Federer's career, the end of movies and films and books and musical pieces, the never-ending non-ending of Bob Dylan, the odd endings that happen when some people are still young-- such as Bjorn Borg and fighter pilots in WWII-- the end of stealing shampoo, the end of artistic purpose, and the end of The Tempest . . . the book ultimately asks the question "when should a creator stop creating?" and the answer is never, never stop until you stop.

Hamlet is Perfect for Seniors in June

It must be getting near the end of the year, as we finished Act IV of Hamlet today; Ophelia finally met her tragic, but beautiful, flower-strewn, mermaid-like demise . . . and after three hours of planning, procrastinating, and pontificating, you'd think that the play would be near the end-- but Shakespeare really lost his mind with this one: he figured out how to get Hamlet back to Denmark-- oddly friendly pirates!-- but he isn't quite ready to resolve things, Laertes still needs to do the whole jumping in the grave thing, Hamlet needs to do "alas poor Yorick" and "the readiness is all" and we also need the weird interlude with Osric (played by Robin Williams in the Branagh version) before we get the final violence and the endless last words . . . it's a perfect play to do at the end of the year because it seems as if it will never end and the seniors keep asking what we will do in class after Hamlet and the answer is "the rest is silence."

The Last Days of Tennis (Like This)

All things must come to an end . . . and endings are worth meditation-- as evidenced by Geoff Dyer's fantastic book The Last Days of Roger Federer; and so I must note that the end of this wonderful high school tennis season is coming to a close-- we lost last night 3-2 in the continuation of our Group I State Semifinal match to Shore Regional and this was a match that had more controversy than usual because of a rain delay, a religious delay (we have two observant Jewish players) and a Memorial Day Weekend delay-- I even got some weird flak from a Shore parent, who insisted on showing me his phone to prove that it didn't rain on Saturday (which it most certainly did) but I explained to him that the reason we were playing last night was because we had two Jewish players who couldn't travel or play on the Sabbath and that the tournament director decided the match couldn't be played on Sunday or Memorial Day and thus pushed it all the way back until Tuesday . . . and then we couldn't play at the normal time on Tuesday because of the heat restriction so we had to play at 7 PM . . . he asked me if the match would have been postponed if players were sick and I countered with the fact that the match would have been canceled if it were Easter and then I told him he was acting weird and insinuating something and a detached myself from the situation-- one of the HP parents said the guy also said something about how his kid tried baseball but that tennis was one of the last "white sports" so there was a strange vibe out there; anyway, Ian came back and beat his kid at first singles and our second doubles team won handily but the center of the line-up was trouble-- there was no way Alex could beat their second singles-- he actually seemed better than the first singles player, and Boyang was facing a classic pusher (who actually had a higher UTR than first and second singles, slightly fishy) and he struggled to stay patient enough to find the perfect net shots to beat him . . . first doubles became our last hope, the two Jewish kids, but they were facing two tall dudes who could hit overheads-- they lost the first set but went up 5-0 in the second, only to lose in a tiebreaker 7-5 . . . which might have been for the better because they would have had trouble winning a third set . . . anyway, we've got two more matches to make-up, which will be nice so we don't end on this oddly elongated loss and it was truly a pleasure to coach this group of players (and two of my children) and it will be the last time, after many many years of doing so, that I will coach BOTH my children on the same team-- this happened for many years in soccer and just once in tennis and I've got to say, it's a wild experience-- you're invested as a coach and a parent so it's pretty emotional, but I think I navigated it as well as I could and I was proud of what good sports my team was during the match and once it was all over.

Keeping the Quadrupeds in Line

 Deer bounding across the road are quite menacing when you're on rollerblades.

America's Gun Problem is Impossible

Derek Thompson's excellent and informative podcast Plain English details the four obstacles that impede any solution to the proliferation of guns and-- thus-- gun violence and mass shootings in America:

1) money . . . many politicians are in the pocket of the NRA and guns are big business;

2) cynical love of power . . . some politicians will do and say whatever is necessary to gain votes-- even if it's detrimental to our country;

3) the Second Amendment, fear of government overreach, the desire for freedom and liberty, and the ability to fight oppressors;

4) a genuine love of guns and a genuine gun culture-- this is the hardest one for many people to understand, but there is a whole nation of people out there that love guns-- they love the feel of the metal in their hand, they love shooting, they love talking about guns and buying guns and going places with other people with guns . . . and I think they think of guns the way other people think of cars or video games or whiskey . . . they love these things despite knowing that there are harmful consequences and externalities . . .

these are formidable obstacles and so it seems to me (and the podcast espouses this) that because there is a correlation between gun prevalence and gun violence, the only way to tackle the problem is statistically-- it has to be the same as cigarettes, which are still legal but stigmatized to the point where they aren't as prevalent as they once were . . . so little laws, little taxes, licensing requirements, background checks, etcetera . . . anything to reduce the number of guns will reduce the violence . . . but it's never going away . . . but it could get better-- cars are safer now and technology will make them less and less prone to crashing and perhaps we'll need similar technological solutions to deal with guns.

I Don't Serve on Shomer Shabbos!

 

The boys and I had off yesterday-- we never burned our snow days-- and my wife took off from her school, so this was supposed to be a relaxing day where we could sleep-in, get a few things done around the house, and then play our State Semi-Final tennis match at 4 PM . . . but the weather reports kept getting worse-- and while the other semi-finalist teams decided to play at noon to avoid the rain (Metuchen vs Florence . . . Florence won 3-2) for some logistical or transportation reason Shore Regional could not get out early to play us . . . so there was lots of texting and phone calls and I made a Google doc to figure out what day we could finish the match in case of rain, which reminded me that I have two observant Jewish players who can't really play on Saturday-- or one kid could walk to the courts, which are quite far from his house, but not drive in a car-- and then the weather cleared enough for Shore to come to Highland Park and we started the match, but soon enough a massive storm rolled in and we had to write down the details of every match-- and they were all close, a barnburner . . . except second doubles-- we took a solid lead there; the next problem was when to play, as we HAVE to complete the match by Tuesday, according to State Rules, so that the final match can be played ON Tuesday and then the winner can attend the Tournament of Champions, which is at Mercer County Park on Thursday-- that date is set in stone . . . but just after the match, my Athletic Director, a good friend of mine, got a call from the NJSIAA director and he said we HAD to play the match on Saturday-- no exceptions, religious or otherwise-- even though it was supposed to rain all day Saturday . . . so because we are the higher seed and home team, we had to provide indoor courts-- no easy feat in Central Jersey on Memorial Day Weekend . . . but my AD found some courts at noon on Saturday in East Brunswick and reserved them (with his own credit card!) but my Jewish player said he couldn't get there because he couldn't drive on the Sabbath and we brought this up to the tournament director and he said it didn't matter, so we were just going to have to forfeit that match . . . this still gave us a shot to win, as you only have to win three of the five matches-- so we were going to suck it up and win for religious tolerance and freedom and Walter from the Big Lebowski . . . but then things got interesting, the Jewish kid wrote an email and his father contacted our superintendent and the tournament director-- making the argument that if the next day was Easter, you wouldn't play the match-- you'd postpone until the next available school day, and I think the threat of a prejudicial lawsuit scared the tournament director because then I got another call from my AD and now we are finishing the match on Tuesday at normal time, so everyone can play and it will be a fair result . . . if we win, we'll have to play again Wednesday, so that's tough-- but at least we'll have all our players and the best chance possible . . . and win or lose, this was quite an adventure.

Respect the Speck

Hockey is hard enough to watch on TV, but if there's a black speck on the TV-- or several black specks on a couple of TVs-- then things can get really confusing . . . sometimes you're following the puck, sometimes you're following the speck, and sometimes-- like that magical moment on The Office when the DVD logo hits the corner-- the black speck intersects with the actual puck and reality breaks down into an inception of the matrix.

Whew . . .

I was nervous all day for our first state tennis match: we earned a bye in the first round and we had to play Point Beach today-- last year's sectional champ-- and while we matched up well against them, it's tennis, so you never know who's going to lose their mind, play poorly, smash their racket, start double-faulting . . . there are so many ways to fall apart in this stupid game . . . but we came to play; Ian had the toughest match, against a very solid player, and he beat him 6-0, 6-0 . . . and Alex, Boyang, and our very consistent second doubles team of Ethan and Patrick all won handily in two sets-- but we still can't figure out the perfect first doubles team-- they lost-- so we're going to experiment tomorrow and see what happens and then we'll probably play Shore Regional-- who is excellent-- in the semifinals on Friday.

The Horror, the Horror!

The year is winding down but we're still not done with Hamlet . . . or at least I'm not done with Hamlet-- one of my senior students looked like she was attentively following along with the play, holding her book in the classic two-handed meditative literary pose, but then I noticed that she had her cell-phone inside the book-- as we used to do back in the day with comic books (most notably, School is Hell by Matt Groening) and so I made her put the phone into the pocketed phone holder in the front of the room; apparently she was shopping, some prom dress algorithm blocking the text to one of the great works in the canon, which is exactly what those folks at Amazon are trying to do.

Crime and a Whole Lot More in 1963 L.A.

One-Shot Harry, by Gary Philips, certainly evokes Walter Mosely . . . Harry Ingram, a black journalistic photographer/ Korean War veteran, attempts to navigate a slew of issues in 1963 Los Angeles: the fishy death of his war-buddy-- a white jazz musician; racist police; radical leftists and a radical romance; a photographic blackmail scheme; some typical heavies; the Nation of Islam; power and politics; and a plot against Dr. Martin Luther King . . . the prose is clear, the plot is thick, and the perspective offers a counterpoint to James Ellroy's take on this particular time and place.

Ian = Work

Ian put in some hours working this weekend; Saturday he went to his county trail maintenance  job with his brother and the heat was so brutal that they let them go home after lunch-- but that was enough time for Ian to ruin his gloves and consequently have to throw them away-- they were at some park in Old Bridge and they ended up cleaning up a homeless encampment and-- by accident-- Ian touched a bag of homeless person poop which ripped open (or something like this, he told me the story at a family bbq and I cut him short because I was eating) and then Sunday morning Ian worked for a lady, weeding and mowing her lawn, and then he went and mowed another lawn and then he called Ed Ransom, to see if he could work at his tennis camp, and Ed Ransom, a veteran teaching pro, said he needed to take a look at his game because he wanted someone to teach the advanced kids so we met him at a nearby park and the job interview turned into a tennis lesson (and Ian passed the interview, got the job, and improved the kick on his second serve) and now he's taking a well-deserved rest.

AITA?

There's a forum on Reddit called AITA (Am I the Asshole?) and I wanted to put this incident on there (but forgot to post it) but I got into a bit of a beeping/traffic situation in the school parking yesterday afternoon, so I wrote that one up and posted it on Reddit . . . check it out and upvote me!