Kate Beaton's autobiographical graphic novel Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands is heavy, viscous stuff; Beaton heads from Nova Scotia to Alberta to make some money and pay off her student loans, but working in the man's world of the oil sands, she experiences environmental devastation, loneliness, drug and alcohol abuse, sexual harassment and rape, and numerous existential crises-- all amplified by the insular nature of the oil camps-- highly recommended but not as fun as the last graphic novel I read.
Catching Up
This is the week COVID finally caught Catherine and Ian-- but not me! . . . or not yet-- and earlier in the week the principal caught Ian going out to lunch when he wasn't supposed to (because he left through a door with an alarm on it) and so Ian can't go out to lunch for the rest of the month and then on Wednesday afternoon, a state trooper caught Alex flying down the Turnpike, doing at least 90, weaving in and out of traffic, without using a directional and he was so appalled by his driving that he gave him three tickets and made him call his mother-- even though he's eighteen and a legal adult-- so the trooper could explain, as a courtesy, just how idiotically he was driving . . . so hopefully we're all caught up with this kind of crap and can now get on with our lives.
Word Word Words
Catherine and I couldn't agree on the difference in meaning between "pocket change" and "pocket money"-- the argument is too ridiculous to transcribe here-- but we did agree that Tanya's "core of the onion" speech about how when you peel away all her layers, there's just a "straight-up alcoholic lunatic" is an absolutely brilliant choice of words.
Next Level
This afternoon, Ian and I played basketball with a big man who could really pass-- it was like he had eyes in the back of his head-- and when he passed, which could happen at any time, in a fraction of a second-- the pass came fast . . . and now my thumb hurts.
Stars, Caves, and Everything in Between
New episode of We Defy Augury up and streaming . . . "Stars, Caves, and Everything" is loosely inspired on the new Neil deGrasse Tyson book but there's also a bit on Carl Sagan-- and I need to edit the audio to include some of this priceless Johnny Carson impression of Sagan, which-- oddly enough, life imitating art and all that-- spawned Sagan's catchphrase "billions and billions."
When Pigs Fly
I never listened to Pink Floyd's Animals enough-- perhaps because of the weird song lengths . . . 3 songs that are over ten minutes and two songs that are under two minutes-- but after a couple of listens, I think it's my favorite one . . . obviously Dark Side of the Moon is incredible, but I think I've listened to that one enough for several lifetimes; Animals is a bit like my favorite David Bowie album, Low-- both albums are heavy on musical interludes and instrumentals and light on lyrics, and the songs seem to have a more chaotic structure than you're typical verse-verse-chorus-bridge-verse.
I Sat in a Teacup Chair on a Little Island
Entertaining day in the city yesterday-- we took an 11:30 AM train in, along with lots of hockey fans going to the Devils/Rangers game (and I saw a few old students on the train-- they were from a dozen years ago so I didn't really recognize them until they identified themselves) and then walked The High Line over to The Little Island . . . pics below of the island, which is constructed of wide-mouthed concrete pylons full of soil-- the plantings are varied and fairly mature but I can't wait to see what it looks like in a few years when everything is grown in-- then we hung out at a great pub called The Blind Tiger and had some delicious nachos and an even more delicious IPA . . . New York brewery Equilibrium's Wavelength-- citrusy and smooth, not sure if they sell it out of state-- and then we saw Colin Quinn's show "Small Talk," which was incredible-- 65 minutes of A-list material and delivery . . . very Carlin-esque, fast-paced, detailed, insightful, funny, and often focusing on language-- one of the best comedy shows I've seen . . . and then-- the best part about seeing a 3 PM show-- we could go out for dinner and drinks and talk about the show-- I hate going to a late show, after dinner and drinks, when I"m full and groggy and have to pee, I'd much rather see the show early and then eat and talk about it: so we ate a Cuban/Chinese place called Calle Dao-Chelsea, which was excellent AND they have Happy Hour until seven on Saturdays and then we made our train and we were home by 9 PM . . . perfect day (aside from the fact that Catherine was coming down with a cold-- she's down for the count now).
We Walked on a Little Island
Colin Quinn has still got it-- more to come tomorrow, but a full day in the city (but MVD . . . Most Valuable Driver . . . to Ian, who drove us to the train station AND picked us up).
Weird Movie
The Banshees of Inisherin is evocative, beautiful, bucolic, awkward, insular, funny and weird-- it will make you evaluate your friends, your landscape, your purpose, and just how clever you really are versus how clever you think you are . . . and though it's a slow burn, you'll eventually fall in love with Achill Island, J. J. Devine's Pub, and Jenny the miniature donkey.
Weird Weather
Foggy and unseasonable warm this week, which is annoying as far as snowboarding conditions go but a great week for our hot water heater (and radiator heat) to be broken.
The Futility of Chasing the Shuttlecock
I was playing badminton yesterday morning-- singles-- and I was heading to the right but the shuttlecock came back more to the left and I unwisely lunged back in the other direction and rolled my ankle-- it hurt, but not enough to stop whacking around the shuttlecock, so I kept playing-- but that might have been ill-advised because now my ankle is swollen and sore (although I still got my steps in today-- I covered PE class and we went outside . . . it was a balmy 65 degrees . . . weird) and I guess I have implement the analogous lesson that I learned while playing competitive tennis-- even if you get the drop shot-- and with some extreme hustle, you might-- you're still going to injure yourself and not be able to hit the next shot . . . in badminton it's not the drop shot, it's the erratic weird shot that goes a strange direction-- and I'm too old to make sudden lateral directional changes.
Livin' La Vida Lapvona
A weird episode about a weird book: in "Livin' La Vida Lapvona", I try to make sense of Ottessa Moshfegh's repugnant folktale Lapvona . . . and while my analysis might be lacking, I am proud of the title.
School Returns with a Vengeance
My wife and I had to teach today, despite the fact that it was a federal holiday, while Ian got to sleep in; Alex didn't get in until two AM because he's off for college break; the road was desolate on the ride to East Brunswick, and though we were all tired, the kids were in good spirits (I made them stand up and announce New Year's resolutions after I bored them with my thoughts on digital minimalism, stretching, and eating less sugary treats) but last period things got a bit hectic, as we were saying resolutions a girl slid out of her desk onto the floor and had a seizure-- luckily, I'm right next door to the nurse, so while a student cleared the area around her head I ran and got some assistance and then we cleared out while they tended to her . . . then when I got home, Alex informed me that the tankless hot water heater was totally broken so we went to the gym, worked out, and I showered there, but then when I got home, I went down and turned the thing on and really banged the circuit board with my hand a few times and now it's working again, for the time being (or not . . . just broke again . . . and Catherine just got home and she had quite a day as well, the elastic in her tights broke-- she was wearing a dress so she didn't moon anyone but she was doing a lot of shimmying) and then I tried to light our gas grill with a long wooden match, but I turned all the burners on at once before I struck the match-- God knows why-- and a fiery plume shot forth and burned all the hair off my right hand-- but my skin didn't get burned, scary and weird, but I seem to be unburnt.
Feral Hogs + Atlanta = Awesome
We just finished one of my favorite TV shows ever: Atlanta . . . my son Alex finished ahead of Ian and me, but Alex watched the last few episodes of season four again with us (while annoyingly pointing out all sorts of stuff about the background music) and though I loved the last episode-- which is loads of fun and might explain the surreal nature of the show-- I enjoyed the penultimate episode most of all; Paper Boi has some wild adventures with a tractor and my favorite villainous creature-- a feral hog!-- what more could I ask for?
Book List 2022
Here are the books I finished (possibly with some skimming) this year . . . I started plenty of others and quit them because . . . well because I wanted to . . . that's what's great about reading-- if you've got access to a library, you aren't beholden to any particular book:
1) Depth of Winter by Craig Johnson
2) Lazarus Volumes 1-6
3) Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law by Mary Roach
4) Kindness Goes Unpunished by Craig Johnson
5) The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain by Annie Murphy Paul
6) The Given Day by Dennis LeHane
7) Live by Night by Dennis LeHane
8) A Little History of the World by Ernst Gombrich
9) Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey
10) Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
11) Caliban's War by James A. Corey
12) Batman: The Long Halloween by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale
13) The Nineties by Chuck Klosterman
14) Tochi Onyebuchi's Goliath
15) We Are Never Meeting in Real Life by Samantha Irby
16) Abbadon's Gate by James S.A. Corey
17) The Paradox Hotel by Rob Hart
18) The Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
19) One-Shot Harry by Gary Philips
20) The Last Days of Roger Federer and Other Endings by Geoff Dyer
21) The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow
22) Cibola Burn by James S.A. Corey
23) The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West by David McCullough
24) Harrow by Joy Williams
25) The Quick and the Dead by Joy Williams
26) Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead
27) The Foundling by Ann Leary
28) Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America by Jill Leovy
29) Fugitive Telemetry: The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells
30) Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen
31) Last Orgy of the Divine Hermit by Mark Leyner
32) The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era by Gary Gerstle
33) Tracy Flick Can't Win by Tom Perrotta
34) Dark Matter by Blake Crouch
35) Nemesis Games by James S.A. Corey
36) The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
37) The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells
38) City on Fire by Don Winslow
39) Happy-Go-Lucky by David Sedaris
40) what if? SERIOUS SCIENTIFIC ANSWERS to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Monroe
41) Enemy of All Mankind: A True Story of Piracy, Power, and History's First Global Manhunt by Stephen Johnson
42) The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music by Dave Grohl
43) The Tomorrow Game: Rival Teenagers, Their Race For a Gun, and The Community United to Save Them by Sudhir Venkatesh
44) Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon
45) A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller
46) Blacktop Wasteland by S.A. Cosby
47) Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby
48) Liberation Day by George Saunders
49) Upgrade by Blake Crouch
50) Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid
51) Adrift: America in 100 Charts by Scott Galloway
52) Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport
53) Pines by Blake Crouch
54) The Rise and Reign of the Mammals by Steve Brusatte
55) Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh
56) Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization by Neil deGrasse Tyson
57) Fantastic Four: Full Circle by Alex Ross
Bizarro Four
Fantastic Four: Full Circle is a psychedelic journey into a Bizarro World anti-matter negative energy universe, where some weird doppelgänger of The Thing resides (although he surfaced on our planet, full of grotesque half-creatures and somehow existed in both time frames) and though the ending may indicate that we are just figments of some other world's imagination, this is highly unlikely, because the artistic imagination of Alex Ross-- the colors, the perspectives, the layout of these pages-- must indicate that we are controlling things here in our world . . . and it is that other anti-world that is a figment of our imagination . . . or at least that is what we need to believe, that we have autonomy when we get a midnight snack.
The Essence?
At a party last night, we played a game called "The Essence"-- but instead of "the Asker" asking questions like that, we just free-lanced it . . . it was quite fun but it could probably go down a dark road if there was some animosity in the house (and I couldn't help taking it down an absurd road: if this person were an apocalypse they would be zombie . . . if this person were an organ, they'd be a spleen, etc.)
THAT Was Fun
It's weird when your kid comes home from college for Winter Break-- there is certainly an adjustment period: they are used to a totally different schedule, they are used to interacting mainly with college-aged people, and they are not used to whatever family dynamics have developed since they have been living away from home-- and perhaps that is why Alex and Ian nearly got into a battle royale the first time we tried to play some pick-up basketball at the Piscataway Y . . . Alex is used to playing a certain style of pick-up with kids at the gym over at Rutgers, Ian is a bit too competitive when he's covering his brother, and the two of them have grown quite a bit and Ian, although he's very athletic, does not have complete control over his long arms and bony elbows when he's playing basketball; anyway, they talked it out and we went back and played again today and we played four-on-four with some decent players and Alex, Ian, and I were on the same team and this made a world of difference-- we killed the other team; Alex and Ian both rebounded, Alex drove with confidence and made a lot of touch shots around the basket; Ian blocked some shots with his long arms and took advantage of a mismatch inside; I shot a bit from outside; and the fourth guy on our team was an excellent player who know how to move the ball . . . it was very fun and everyone got along smashingly and then we met Catherine for lunch at Mr. Pi's and ate some sushi-- and they are both certainly better at pick-up basketball than I was at their age (when I played basketball in the same fashion as I played rugby).
Charismatic Megafauna!
New episode of "We Defy Augury" is up . . . thoughts loosely inspired by Steve Brusatte's book The Rise and Reign of the Mammals" but plenty of tangents, asides, cameos, and even a musical monologue.
Almost Fun . . .
Alex, Ian, and I went to the gym at 10 AM to play some basketball and we got a three-on-three game going but Alex and Ian were the tallest players, so they had to split up and cover each other-- which I should have known would be a disaster-- and Ian swatted at the ball for a steal with his long arm and hit Alex in the lip, drawing blood and scratching his face-- and then the two of them were at it, and they finally got into some kind of scrap over a rebound and Alex tossed Ian to the ground (he's bigger) and Ian punched his leg and Alex decided he'd had enough and walked home . . . they sorted it all out later but they might not be able to cover each other until they reach an age of enlightenment (they are seventeen and eighteen now . . . maybe in their mid-twenties they'll mellow out?)
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