It's a Messi PK Friday!
It's a Miracle . . . Now Shut Up and Do Your Work
We were brainstorming topics for an informational presentation in my Public Speaking class and some boys wanted to do a speech about how "Helen Keller isn't real" and I was like "what?" and they told me they just didn't buy it-- how could someone who couldn't see or hear write books and I told them the one thing I remembered about Helen Keller-- that the teacher poured some water on her hand and spelled out "water" and they were like "what about 'the'? how did she learn the word 'the'?" and I was like, "I don't know! go do some research" and this class is split in two by the lunch period, so I brought this up in the English Office and Cunningham was like "yeah! how did she do all that? how could she learn all those words?" and I was like "you need to go sit with the stupid boys in my Public Speaking class" and Cunningham was like "how could she learn all the words?" and I said, "they put stuff in her hand and spelled it" but now I was starting to doubt myself because that sounded absurd . . . and she was like "how did she learn abstract concepts?" and I said, "you pour water over her hand and spell 'water' for a couple days, and then one day you pour hot water on her hand and spell 'betrayal'" and then I spent the rest of my lunch period researching Helen Keller and apparently her teacher spelled millions of words on her hand, and she used a braille typewriter, and she felt cheeks and mouths and lips for vibrations to learn what words sounded like and there were always doubters of her abilities but she repeatedly proved them wrong and rode a bike and flew a plane and went to college . . . and I'm not exactly sure how she did all this, but I'm pretty sure she is real-- but I'm still hard-pressed to explain how it all happened.
BADminton
I debuted my new (and fairly cheap . . . under fifty dollars) badminton racket today at 6:30 AM-- it was certainly an upgrade from the gym class equipment I've been using-- much lighter because it's made of graphite . . . but I saw no marked improvement in my game, perhaps because we couldn't get the basketball hoops up and so we had to tape out a court in the center of the gym-- which made judging things quite difficult (and while my play was, as usual, erratic and profanity laced, my arm doesn't hurt as much as it usually does after one of these sessions).
Liberation Daze
I just put up a new episode of my podcast, We Defy Augury . . . this episode, "Liberation Daze," examines the writing of George Saunders; Festivus makes a cameo appearance, as does Lloyd Dobler from Say Anything.
Too Many Sports . . .
Big Rutgers win over Indiana Friday night, then I settled in at the bar with some friends to watch the Giants, Jets, and World Cup game Sunday afternoon-- Giants should have won but tied-- nothing like watching an entire football game and it ending in a tie-- Jets fell apart on the one-yard line, and England crushed Senegal . . . in the end I don't know how to feel (although I was excited that Argentina moved on, I love that little Lionel Messi chap) but there might be too many sporting events on TV right now for me to handle.
USA? USA!
Here we go . . . should be fun, despite the anxiety and undue concern about the state of Christian Pulisic's nether regions-- there's nothing that can make a guy feel sympathy pain like another guy with a sore groin.
I Cook on Thursdays
No time to write, as I'm about to start cooking . . . yesterday was Catherine's birthday and instead of the usual present: two weeks of cooking dinner, I've decided on something more ambitious-- I'm going to cook dinner every Tuesday and Thursday until her next birthday (and maybe beyond that, we'll see how it goes) and while I won't be able to pull this off during tennis season, the rest of the time it should be fine-- the two weeks of cooking every meal was a mistake-- I would get stressed out, drink too much, run out of things I know how to make-- but this way I can stick to stuff in my wheelhouse and it won't get repetitive and she'll always know when I'm cooking-- on her meeting day and on Thursday, a good night to have a beer while you cook (unless you just had the flu) so I've got to get on with it: blackened mahi-mahi, Brussels sprouts and bacon, and roasted potatoes.
I'm Back . . . And Angrier Than Ever (About Dumb Stuff in a Chick-lit Novel)
I'm on the mend-- thanks to Tamiflu, my immune system, benzonatate, Mucinex, and acetaminophen-- but that flu was a doozy . . . I hope I'll be back to work tomorrow, although I have to teach three 82-minute periods, and Tamiflu screws with my stomach a bit . . . I'll bring some emergency underwear-- and I know I'm getting better because I got an easy read on my Kindle for $3.99 . . . Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid, and while I'm enjoying the cheesy father-daughter Serena-esque sports story and all the chic-lit feminist drama-- I don't think Taylor Jenkins Reid knows shit about tennis-- Carrie Soto is making her comeback at age 37 and all the players on tour hate her because she was a grinder? . . . so they are trying to find a top-quality player for her to hit with and no female players will do it so they have to get a male player who she once slept with and it ended badly-- Bowe Huntley-- who is ALSO trying to make a comeback . . . and Carrie isn't sure about this because she has such a past with this guy and while this is good for romantic drama, this makes ABSOLUTELY NO TENNIS SENSE . . . female tennis players do not require any particular professional male player to hit with-- they could use any male player of Division 1 college quality and beyond because male players are so much better than female players-- they've already done this experiment-- the Williams sisters played the 203 ranked male player and he beat them handily, back to back, while smoking cigarettes between games-- John McEnroe estimated that Serena would be ranked around 700th if she were to play on the men's circuit . . . not that any of this means anything, but the point is that Carrie could hit with any decent men's player and she would be seeing more velocity and spin than with the best woman's player-- how did this bestselling author's editor not catch this?
Sick Sucks
Sickness . . . it's so fucked up-- the Friday after Thanksgiving was turning into one of those wonderful holiday break days-- on Wednesday night, we dealt with the college son returning home and still behaving like he was in college, but we straightened that out and we had a lovely Thanksgiving at my parents-- but I didn't drink or eat all that much-- I don't like Thanksgiving food and I didn't really trust my kids to drive us home because there are a lot of drunk yahoos on the road post-Thanksgiving, plus I was saving my servings of alcohol for the USA/England World Cup Match-- Friday morning I rose early, and got my go-to-chili recipe simmering in the crockpot and then Ian and I went to the Piscataway Y and played some two-on-two hoops against some high school basketball players-- and beat them in two hard fought games-- my two point shot was on and Ian has learned to roll to the basket and his arms are so long that it hard to guard him . . . the Hispanic kid was calling me "Pops," as in-- "make sure you guard Pops outside" which was an absolute delight-- then we went home, got the house set up and thirty or so people of all ages came over for the game-- we had three devices streaming (we had to calibrate the iMac in the kitchen because it was a couple seconds ahead of the smart TV in the living room, because folks were very serious about all cheering being in unison, even though said cheering was totally apostrophic, as the players can't hear us) and the party was great-- a perfect result since we had a number of Brits over . . . and people stayed a bit late and some Scotch was consumed (thanks Adrian!) and then it was time for bed . . . and two hours later I woke up shivering and I've had a fever and a cough and a headache-- which really hurts when I cough-- and body aches and sleeplessness and all kinds of other gross symptoms-- so all my plans to go out with Terry on Tuesday to watch the USA/Iran game have come to nought-- especially since Terry came down with a wicked case of COVID yesterday-- so we'll both be watching the game on our respective couches, cheering softly . . . usa . . . usa . . .usa . . . and I'm headed to the doctor today so I can avoid this typical sequence of events and perhaps I'll get some kind fo drug or diagnosis that will get me better sooner rather than later-- this is the first time I've been really sick since February 2020, and I'm shocked it's not COVID-- but the test was negative so maybe it's RSV or the flu or just some weird virus like I had three years ago.
Costa Rica Shocks Japan
I always root for the Central and South American teams in the World Cup (and Mexico and Canada . . . proximity rooting) and so I was excited to see Costa Rica redeem the nation, after losing 7-0 to Spain, by coming up with a dramatic 1-0 win over Japan this morning . . . and I know it's got to be tough to announce an entire soccer match-- there's a lot of dead time and a lot of just knocking the ball around, but I still think that the announcer should not have called Japan "shell shocked" after Keysher Fuller's change-up chip shot goal, because of the firebombing of Tokyo and the atom bomb . . . "shocked" would have been enough-- that would be like saying, if the US team were to beat Iran, that it looks like the Iranians have been roasted by the Great Satan-- and I don't think you can say that on TV-- but soccer does bring out the hyperbole in many of us (my favorite adjective used by an announcer in this cup was a "tantalizing" pass).
This Is How Old Soccer Fans Party
Fun day today . . . got up early, worked on the podcast, got my game-time chili into the crockpot, went to the gym and played some two-on-two with my son Ian-- and he's started to really roll to the basket, we beat a couple of high school basketball players because I was making my outside shot and Ian was setting screens and rolling, despite the fact that the one kid was calling me "pops"-- then got the house all organized for the USA/England game-party and we had a bunch of people over, of all ages-- and a number of them were British, which added a great element to the event because you couldn't root like a total asshole, you had to keep in mind that the person next to you might be rooting for the opposite result-- and we were all friends-- and a nil-nil tie was actually the perfect result for this party . . . it's a nice metaphor for our country, perhaps I would be more empathetic politically if there was always a Republican sitting on the couch next to me . . . anyway, my chili was a hit-- I've never had a party where the entire crockpot was consumed, and Adrian "neutral" bottle of Glengoyne Scotch was also a crowd favorite-- all parties should start at one and end at 6 PM.
Happy Thanksgiving
I'd really like to put up this clip from the movie Pieces of April, where Tyrone (formerly Eddies) wishes his ex-girlfriend "Happy Thanksgiving"-- it's one of my favorite movie scenes ever (from a great little indie film) but I can't find the clip anywhere . . . someone get on this . . . wait, I found a pirated version, go to 59:50 and watch the scene!
A Slow Start to the World Cup . . .
Yesterday, I took a half-day and so did my friend, colleague, and fellow soccer coach Terry-- our plan was to find a raucous bar, settle in, and watch the USA vs. Wales World Cup game . . . the first two places we went-- Barca and Tavern on George-- were closed because it was Monday . . . and while I get the whole restaurants-are-closed-on-Monday thing, we're talking about the World Cup-- most countries shut down (except for bars and restaurants) when the national team is playing a cup game-- so we ate lunch at George Street Ale House and talked soccer with a salesman and watched the Netherlands beat Senegal in the waning minutes and then we went over to the Golden Rail to watch the USA game-- there was a bit of a crowd there and the new owner, an enthusiastic Asian guy, was excited about the game-- but the only reason he opened the bar was because he saw that there was an article in the local paper (and the local internet paper, if there is a such a thing) that said that the Golden Rail was a great place to watch soccer-- because the previous owner was British-- so he figured he'd better open; then for the second half, we went to Highland Park and tried Pino's because they said they would have the big projection screen going for the game-- and they did-- but there was also a group of old dudes in a circle in the front of the bar playing folk music (one at a time, taking turns . . . yikes) and there was only one other USA fan in the place, my buddy John, so we watched together and suffered through Zimmerman's unfortunate foul of Gareth Bale and the resulting PK that drew the game-- hopefully there will be more fanfare and festivities on Friday.
Southern Change Gonna Come at Last?
The past couple weeks I have immersed myself in the South, with a capital "S": my wife and I traveled to Charleston; I read a bunch of Battle Cry of Freedom-- the epic James M. McPherson Civil War history-- and I whipped through two S.A. Cosby crime novels that are set in rural Virginia . . . Blacktop Wasteland and Razorblade Tears . . . the result of all this Southern immersion is a new episode of We Defy Augury called "Southbound with S.A. Cosby" . . . there are cameo appearances from Zman and my son Alex (but they are pretty deep into the show-- you've got to have patience in the South . . . check it out and I hope you enjoy it.
Kids These Days . . .
We've had bathroom issues at East Brunswick High School-- vaping, vandalism, hooking up, etcetera-- so kids have to digitally sign into monitored bathrooms and only two students can enter at a time . . . it's a real pain-in-the-ass, pun intended, and in any given period (and we have block scheduling, so our periods are 82 minutes long, so kids are going to have to go to the bathroom) most of the bathrooms around the school are closed and locked, so the kids have to seek out an open bathroom and often wait in line to go-- some kids take advantage of this, they know they can wander the halls of the school with impunity, basically cutting class, but when they see teachers or SSO officers, they just tell them they are looking for an open bathroom; I saw a couple of these "hallway wanderers" pass each other last week, and after they slapped hands, one delinquent said something that might have passed between two septuagenarians: "bro, you're the only guy who get more steps in this building than me."
American Tailgating vs. The Americans
There's nothing like a good-old-fashioned-football tailgate-- but that doesn't mean I like everything about a good-old-fashioned-football tailgate; Rutgers played Penn State today and we have a number of kids from Highland Park that attend both schools (including my son Alex, far right in the photo) so it was fun to see the high school gang back together and the parents brought loads of good food and drink, but it was bitter cold and it was windy-- notice the flags-- and wind ruins everything . . . tennis, biking, golf, tailgating (everything except kite-flying) so while I enjoyed the cold-- especially from a food hygiene point-of-view, I had no problem eating leftovers from this tailgate hours later, because everything was kept at refrigeration temperatures-- I was happy to catch a ride home and watch the game inside my warm, windless house . . . and then when the game broke bad, I was happy to watch an episode of The Americans with my wife . . . and choosing a show about Russian spies over football probably means I'm some kind of pinko communist.
Stuff I Watched, Stuff I'm Watching
If you're looking for a different take on the horror genre, check out His House-- it's the story of a refugee couple from wartorn Sudan who seeks asylum in England and ends up in a not-so-typical-haunted-housing situation . . . these folks have some real skeletons in the closet and some real ghosts in their past; if you're looking for more traditional horror, check out Midnight Mass, a Netflix miniseries directed by Mike Flanagan-- the characters are well-drawn and Saracen from Friday Night lights has a superb role in this haunted island community; if you're looking to be stressed and depressed, watch The Americans . . . we've almost made it to the end of season four, and while the portrayal of two Soviet deep-cover spies who are "married" and have a family in Washington D.C. is compelling, gripping and candid, the show gets dark and then it gets darker . . . we can't stop watching, but it's brutal.
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