Mark Leyner vs. The Internet

 

Take a trip back to the '90s in my new episode of We Defy Augury . . . the internet didn't quite work yet, but the movies were awesome.

Back to Belleayre (But Better)

Last spring, Alex and I took a trip to Belleayre Mountain to do some snowboarding in celebration of his acceptance to the Rutgers Engineering Program but the weather was weird-- rainy then balmy then frigid and icy-- so we did more hiking and eating in Phoenicia than snowboarding but this trip was far more fun . . . we were luck to get ANY snowboarding in this year because the winter was so lousy for snow so my son was very happy that things worked out-- he's on Spring Break and tennis season isn't ready to start yet because of the weather; anyway, we drove up to Kingston on Saturday night, ate some cheap pizza and crashed at the Best Western-- we had to have our room moved because 

1) our window claustrophobically faced an indoor arcade/pool courtyard and all the kids were screaming;

2) the people in the room next door were chain-smoking cigarettes and it was seeping through the door-- we ratted them out and the management put us in a very quiet room with a window facing the river;

Sunday was sunny and beautiful on the mountain and there was still fresh snow from the last storm and it really didn't get that crowded until after lunch-- we put in a long day and my feet and calves hurt-- first time using those muscles this season-- and then we drove down to Phoenicia, wandered around some, and ate at Brio's Pizzeria, which is highly recommended for incredible pizza (with sesame seeds ont he crust!) and beer and pulled pork burritos and everything else-- we watched some college basketball and then headed to the Starlite Motel to crash-- but first we learned that Rutgers would NOT be making the Bog Dance-- very sad but they didn't have enough out of conference wins and crumbled down the stretch in the Big 10-- this morning, we woke up to a wonderful surprise-- it snowed a bunch on the mountain, so we got to ride some fresh powder . . . so we ate our leftover pizza and headed to the mountain and the place was empty-- a great trip (aside from when I slipped and fell on some ice while getting on a lift and nearly got decapitated by the chair-- but I was able to pop back up and the lift attendant slowed the chair down enough so that I could hop on without injury or mishap) but the ride home was ugly-- the snow turned to rain and I'll actually have to deal with the stupid time change tomorrow.

 

Socks Suck

 Enough said.

My Boss is the Best

Yesterday, I had leftover tilapia for lunch and I needed some gum before I went back to class and breathed on the students and even though my boss was on the phone when I barged into her office, she fished some gum out of her purse and gave it to me (she said she went into multi-tasking mode, like she does when dealing with her two pre-school age children).

Cold Times in Laramie

If you're looking for a grim, bloody, disturbing podcast that investigates the unreliability of memory and the possibility that all first-person accounts are distorted and tainted-- a podcast that will make you question your own memory of the life you thought you knew, then check out the newest Serial production: The Coldest Case in Laramie . . . but it's a fucking bleak story set in a bleak place and I've listened to seven of the eight episodes and I doubt there will be a satisfying resoution.

A Podcast is Worth 10,000 Words

I converted one of my podcasts to text (using Otter.ai) and then cleaned it up and made it into a blog post and it turns out that a podcast is a lot of words, a whole lots of words . . . so if you want to read a whole lot of words, here it is: "Tomorrow I Will Play Video Games, Tomorrow."

Adulting 201

Lynn Steger Strong's novel Flight is a reminder of how difficult it is to be an adult-- to deal with money, finances, children, death, real estate, discussion about money and finances, substance abuse and parenting, and complex relationships within a family . . . the book reminds me of an ensemble cast Robert Altman movie-- Short Cuts or Gosford Park-- in the opening moments you don't think you're capable of keeping track of all the characters, but then, inevitably you do.

Delayed Reaction Dave

So I was going up for a rebound Saturday and some kid continued to box me out, even though I was in the air, and I took a hard horizontal fall but I felt okay yesterday-- good enough to play pickle ball (but not soccer) but this morning I felt like I'd been hit by a train-- mainly on the right side of my body, where I hit the floor, but I was also having trouble turning my neck-- but after trudging through my day, I went out with Ian and hit some tennis balls and then we played a game of 21 and though we weren't playing hard, i almost beat him-- got to 19, made one free throw and then missed the next one, sending me back down to 11 . . . anyway, I'm drinking a Swamp Donkey Pale Ale right now, and hoping when I wake up tomorrow I feel a bit less sore.

Anyone Seen This Guy Lately?

A couple of pictures of me circa 1993 (courtesy of my buddy Neil) when we went out to meet our buddy in Tahoe-- apparently thirty years ago the hair on my head hadn't migrated to my chest and I was still light enough to get some air on a snowboard (although I did jump up and slam a pickleball today). 

 

Yikes

I went up for a rebound today while playing four-on-four basketball with my son and somehow got my legs swept out from under me and hit the floor hard-- and my body was horizontal-- I think I came down on my right elbow and right arm and my right hip . . . I hot so hard my glasses flew off, but-- miraculously-- I did not hit my head on the floor and after a moment to shake it off, I was able to get up and continue playing-- but I might be sore tomorrow.

Sports: The Great and the Terrible

I got one sporting birthday gift for my birthday, and one sporting slap in the face:

1) Alex and Ian played together in a volleyball tournament yesterday and they did NOT get into any kind of altercation . . . unlike the last time they played some sports together . . . so this made me very happy, the fact that they played together on the same team, cooperated, and had a good time-- wonderful stuff;

2) then, once the boys got home, we sat down to eat chicken parm and watch Rutgers basketball close out the Minnesota game-- Rutgers had a comfortable lead the entire game, and we were all sitting there-- like old times-- so our dog Lola was incredibly happy and content to have her entire pack together at last-- and then Rutgers imploded and there was much yelling, even from my wife, and Lola got scared and Rutgers blew a ten point lead in the last minute-- I'm not sure why they didn't pressure the ball at the end of the game, or why they had guys in the paint when the only way they could lose was the three-pointer, but they figured out a way to squander that lead, it was like the fever dream of Reggie Miller when he scored 8 points in 8 seconds to beat the Knicks.

Dave and The Good Doctor Celebrate Yet Another Birthday With Some Doggerel Rhymes

The day has arrived,

the day of my birth--

The day Seuss and I

debuted on the Earth;

And while the good doctor

has passed from this place,

I'm still hanging on

still running the race,

still working the job,

still writing the posts,

still chasing the lob,

still taunting the ghosts--

I've been knocking around

for fifty-three years,

my knees are a wreck,

I can barely quaff beers--

but while I can walk,

stand and not fall,

I'll remain in the game

and play pickleball.

Various Kinds of Door Decorating

 

My older son Alex turned nineteen today (WTF!) and my wife slipped out of work at lunch and went to his dorm and decorated his dorm room door (and dropped off some cupcakes) which was lovely (and my brother took him out to lunch) but it does remind me of some "door decorating" that we did in the fraternity house in college-- my friend Whitney and I threw apples at a door every single day, until a thick crust of apple residue built up on the door and the floor in front of the door, and then we framed another guy so he took the blame; someone else painted a door pink, and the person's whose door got painted pink took a drive and found some roadkill, bagged it, brought it back to the fraternity house, and nailed it their door for revenge.

Contingency Waist Plan

 If I acquire a big beer belly, I'm wearing my friend Cunningham's pregnancy jeans!

Comparing Apples and Fungi

Which was scarier: watching last night's Rutgers basketball game or the new "spooky mall" episode of The Last of Us?

Here It Comes . . . The Long Haul

This is it: the long haul of school that precedes Spring Break-- five-day week after five-day week, tedium and repetition and no breaks in sight-- by the end of this stretch, some teachers and students will be empty husks, others will descend into madness, and very few will learn anything of value.

That's a Lot of Words . . .

I ran my new episode of We Defy Augury through an online transcript generator (Otter.ai) because I wanted to edit it and make it a blog post, but I learned that a 29 minute podcast is A LOT of written words-- 6000 or so-- and so I tried to whittle it down a bit but the post is still over 5000 words . . . it's pretty wild how many words are spoken in a podcast episode-- maybe I'm talking too fast?-- anyway, this is an interesting method of writing something-- first you outline it, then you perform the outline, then you edit the transcript of the performance into clear prose-- here is the result of that process: 

Two Creative Concepts to Help You Be More Captivating.

Sometimes High School Kids Teach You Shit You Didn't Know

Today I learned three things from my students:

1) Chronophoto is an awesome online game;

2) InspiroBot is more fun than ChatGPT;

3) a girl in my Creative Writing class thinks I sound like the BoJack Horseman character Mr. Peanutbutter.

Sometimes High School Kids Are Actually Charming and Entertaining

This morning the students in my first period Public Speaking class crushed their Demonstrations speeches-- I always get nervous before we do 82 minutes of presentations because when they are bad and awkward, time crawls-- but today was wonderful and the variety was pretty astounding: we learned how to do a card trick; rebuild a drag-racing clutch; we witnessed an adept tarot card reading; I followed some instructions on how to do a professional pirouette; a guy demonstrated on the whiteboard how to draw a bunch of cartoon heads; and a girl showed us a slideshow on how to make cake pops . . . and then she gave everyone a cake pop!

Holy Mother of Peanut Butter and Chocolate Miracle!

The College Writing Crew was embroiled in another meeting about the state of the Rutgers Expository Writing Course . . .  which will now by called College Writing because they are removing the Expository element . . . because it's racist?-- so we are thinking the changes Rutgers is making might be informed by documents like the NCTE Position Statement on Writing Instruction in School-- you should really browse through this very "woke" document to get a feel for what the fuck is going on in education . . . apparently writing is used as a "gatekeeping device," which contributes to inequity-- and so "writing instruction" should not focus on "the writing" and we should not "assess and evaluate" this writing-- but instead we should focus on the writers themselves AND if we are teaching kids logic and "reason, order and control, and directness of language" then we are being "Eurocentric" and "white" and we should instead promote "dialect that expresses their family and community identity, the idiolect that expresses their unique personal identity" and "multimodal" projects-- holy shit-- I thought documents like these were the product of super-liberal think tanks or something but they are obviously being adopted by more mainstream institutions . . . this is the kind of softball that keeps people like Jordan Peterson batting a thousand and turns well-meaning commonsensical folks in Republicans-- wild and weird stuff-- and not only is this insane because kids don't need to reflect on their identities any more than they already do-- but it's also going to promote the status quo because rich white parents are going to get their white kids tutored in the "Eurocentric" values of logic and reason and direct language-- and learning to write well which IS a difficult task-- that's why it's a gatekeeping task-- it's hard!-- and while kids do engage in lots of other kinds of writing-- Instagram posts and texts and Snapchat streaks-- that doesn't mean that they are academic writers-- just as we are ALL physicists . . . we can catch balls and accurately judge how objects will fall and understand how to drive a car at high speeds-- but that doesn't mean we should all be able to pass a college physics course . . . anyway, while we were discussing all this and figuring out the best course of action for next year, I sort of lost the thread of the meeting and said, "I wish I had a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup" and Stacey said, "I've got a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup!" and I was like WTF! and she pulled a two pack out of her bag and said, "A kid gave me this before Winter Break, is that okay?" and I said, "Yeah!" and we ate them and they were still totally delicious.