One busy day after another . . . I can't wait for the dog days of summer-- yesterday we drove up and back to Muhlenberg for Ian's pre-registration and counseling-- this place is the exact opposite of Rutgers-- they really spell out exactly how everything is done and insist that your kid will be advised and counseled and will get through this experience-- it's really nice but kind of weird, after watching Alex learn how to navigate the many campuses, buses, gyms, cafeterias and bureaucratic snafus of Rutgers . . . it almost feels like this is our first kid going away to college-- because he's actually going away (a little over an hour) and not living up the road-- Catherine and I are also excited to explore the Allentown region-- you can walk to the city from the campus and there's a big Amish farmer's market along the way-- so long day up there-- lots of various sessions for parents and kids-- and then we went to a block party when we got home . . . this Sunday needs to be a day of rest.
Long Full Day
Long Half Day
The high school students had a half day today because of the air quality-- our school is not fully air-conditioned and it was fairly hazy inside the building yesterday-- but the teachers were required to stay until contract time . . . they had a short meeting at 1:35 PM to insure that we didn't bolt with the kids-- and then when I walked out to my car to leave (and while it wasn't quite contract time, it was in the ballpark) my car would not turn over, nor were the electric locks working, and so I assumed it was the battery and Stacey and I tried to jump it, but had no success-- so then I had to call roadside assistance and while there was a high volume of calls, once I got through, the guy got there fairly quickly, and he was able to jump the battery with his supercharged portable battery jumper-- but he said I needed a new battery so I drove straight to my mechanic and dropped the van off there and then walked home through the haze-- and since it was a long half-day, I decided I deserved a treat so I stopped at the coffee place and got a cold brew ($5.86 for a cold brew? yikes) and while it was expensive, it was very delicious-- but what a weird couple of days here in Jersey-- I guess this is what it's like when you live in L.A.-- and I can't wait for some typical hot humid rainy weather; also, my students taught me about the "point five" feature on my phone camera-- which allows you to take a wider picture--but it's "point five" on their Apple phones, but on my Oneplus 8-- much to my students' amusement-- it's "point six".
And It Was All Yellow
AI vs. the English Office . . .
The EBHS end-of-they-year party is fast approaching and Kristyn and I have to defend our hard-won cornhole tournament title . . . the bag-tossing competition is fierce but the competition for clever team names is lame-- people usually go with cliche monikers like "The Cornholios"-- but I wanted our team to have a more creative and unique title . . . so I asked Bard AI for some cornhole team names and, sadly, I got a bunch of bullshit . . . stuff like this:
--Corn on the Cobb--The Kernels of Truth
--The Maize-ing Masters
--The Cornhole Ninjas
--The Bean Bag Bandits
so I told Bard I needed even funnier names and the AI gave me:
--The Cornhole Whisperers--The Cornhole Crüe
--The Cornhole Mafia
--The Cornhole Jedi
I Feel Like a Crippled Waterfowl
Teaching seniors in June is like being a lame-duck President-- you're still the President but you can't enact any new legislation and you don't hold any actual power-- you're just a figurehead.
Sunday Wrap-up
The end of an action-packed anniversary weekend: my wife and I made it out after getting lost in the Sourlands-- we walked over the bridge to Cuzin's-- and, as usual, the drinks and the seafood (and the eggplant tower) were all fantastic (if a bit pricey) and the vibe in that place is nuts-- as opposed to Salt, which is a bit fancier and stodgier, Cuzin's always has people dressed casually who are there to spend some money-- the people next to us at the bar were particularly amazing-- a very Jersey couple . . . who may or may not have been a couple-- they frequently cursed each other out and referred to each other as "an asshole" and they required a TON of attention from the bartender-- the dude started out with a $55 tequila shot, then he needed to charge his phone, then his date needed the bartender to come around and show her the channel where there was a hook to hang her purse, then they had a lot fo questions about every drink and item on the menu-- but the woman-- who was 37 but didn't look it . . . according to the bartender-- was a particular kind of fit petite peroxide blonde Jersey girl from Manalapan with a fucking priceless "real housewives of New Jersey" accent that made everything she said hysterically funny-- anyway, Cuzin's is a lot of fun if you've got some money to spend-- it's more like a club that serves seafood than a restaurant, especially if you sit at the bar . . . so a good end to our anniversary-- we finished out the night watching the finale of The Diplomat . . . thumbs up on that show, and then this morning I got up early and played basketball with my son before he had to head to work lifeguarding-- and then he dropped me off at the pickle ball courts-- so I played sports for four hours and then came home, did some requisite cleaning of the house, and then took a two hour nap-- and when I awoke, Ian was back from prom weekend and mowing the lawn!-- he actually read my wife's note and did a chore-- pretty sweet-- and now he's sleeping . . . he must have had quite a weekend-- he started out in Wildwood and then ended up in LBI, staying at a rental organized by one of my EB students-- so maybe I'll get some gossip on Monday.
Nothing Says "Happy Anniversary" Like a Blair Witch Incident
Conflict in the Spider-verse
End of Something (Start of Something Else)
Senior Cut Day!
Sports with the Boys (and more)
The (Murder) Mystery of Existence
A new episode of my podcast We Defy Augury is up and streaming-- this was a tough one to make; it's called "The (Murder) Mystery of Existence" and my meandering philosophical thoughts are (loosely) based on Stuart Turton's mind-bending mystery novel The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle . . . Special Guests include: Albert Camus, Phil Connors, and Grant Goodeve.
A Very Windy (and possibly penultimate) Practice
Weekend Review
I went out with the pub crew Thursday night to Steakhouse 85 and Alec leaned too far forward on his bar-chair, so that he was leaning on two legs, his elbow resting on the bar, and the chair legs slid backward on the polished wood floor and the long-legged chair went skittering backward-- horizontally-- and Alec's body suddenly dropped vertically, down below the bar (and luckily, he didn't hit his face on the rail) and though the chair skittered back eight feet or so, toward the host stand, no one was injured; then Saturday Catherine and I drove all the way up to Foxwoods in Connecticut for my cousin Nick's wedding-- and I remarked that you don't hear much about the state of Connecticut-- it's an under the radar state-- and now I know why-- the fucking traffic is terrible-- we stopped in Clinton at Liv's Dockside Grill for some seaside seafood-- and once you get off the highway, Connecticut is lovely-- it looks kind of like Cape Cod-- Clinton is near the end of the Long Island Sound-- you're looking across the sound at East Hampton and Montauk-- but then you have to get back on 95 and it's two lanes and white knuckle driving-- Foxwoods is a wild place, a little bit of Vegas in the middle of the Mashantucket Pequot reservation-- the wedding was lovely but we split the very expensive hotel room with my brother and his (soon-to-be) wife and my brother had a sinus infection and was snoring and making a lot of noise so we got up at 6 AM and hightailed it home-- much better drive with no traffic, but still a long fucking way-- and then I played some pickle-ball, practiced tennis with Ian, and went to a graduation party where I drank a bunch of Corona beer-- great for the day after a wedding-- and Alec and I dominated at corn-hole-- even over the recent college graduates, who were surprisingly bad . . . I asked one college student what the leisure sport of choice was at Reed college-- darts, frisbee golf, corn-hole, spike-ball, beer pong?-- and he said they don't play anything . . . I guess they just go to class and learn stuff . . . kids these days.
I Need to Even Out
We Are Through to Round Two!
Highland Park boys tennis team is the ten seed in our region of the State Tournament, so we took a ride up to Roselle Park-- the seven seed-- and I was a bit nervous because they have an excellent first singles player (Owen Miller-- he's going to play at Susquehanna) but though Ian got spanked (and he hit the ball really well-- their guy was amazing, and an all-around nice guy and captain who seemed to be a real leader on and off the court) the rest of the team really came through-- Michael Cederbaum played the match of his life, as did the rest of the crew (aside from the usual second set space-out from our first doubles team) and we won the match 4-1 . . . but it was a very slow match, as they only had four courts-- so second doubles had to wait-- and, a weird tennis peccadillo that I've never encountered-- all their players, doubles and singles, took the full 90 second rest during switchovers . . . the ref even had to call for them a couple of times-- I'm not sure why they did this but it was weird and boring and it made the match much longer than it needed to be . . . next round is closer, in Woodbridge, and hopefully we will beat them soundly (and quickly).
Nice Job Stacey!
Stacey made a good-old-fashioned worksheet for Hamlet scenes 4.5 and 4.6 and it was just what the doctor ordered.
Shakespeare Motivates Shakespeare?
This year, I'm really getting to the bottom of Hamlet, the most bottomless piece of literature in existence, but this means we might never finish-- which is perfectly appropriate . . . I probably need a ghost (played by myself) to visit and "whet my almost blunted purpose" so that I actually finish the thing before the last day of school (that's essentially what happens in Act III scene iv . . . Hamlet's dad returns in the form of a specter that only Hamlet can see and tells him to stop calling him mom a slut and get on with his revenge on King Claudius, the same way Mufasa tells Simba to quit it with Timon, Pumba, and Hakuna Matata and live up to fate and responsibility and go kill Scar . . . but of course, Shakespeare wrote Hamlet's lines-- so when the ghost (probably played by Shakespeare, tells Hamlet to get on with it-- because we're nearly three hours into the play and the plot hasn't really gotten going yet) this is very strange-- it's the director telling the writer (who are both the same person) to stop going so deep with his character because people have to eat dinner.
Weird and Ugly Tennis Match
This was a difficult situation to process and I am sure this sentence is extraordinarily biased and we'll never get to the bottom of it but we had a tune-up tennis match today against Monroe-- a giant Group IV school with a county champion first singles player-- which our team was treating as a practice for the State Tournament (we got lucky and have a decent bracket!) and it was a no-worries-let's get some practice kind of match because we knew we would get slaughtered but Monroe was missing their first singles player (he was playing in a tournament down in Virginia Beach) so my son Ian was playing their second singles player, who was still much better than him in UTR rating, and while the rest of our players went down quickly, Ian took the lead on their player-- and things were a little weird because this was the Monroe kid's first match at first singles and all his friends were on the fence cheering him on and then something strange happened-- the assistant coach (yes, this school is so big they have an assistant coach for tennis) came over to me and said that he heard our first and second singles players using profanity and he told my son to stop cursing and my son told him to "shut up" and so I stopped both matches and told Ian and Ethan to stop using profanity and then I pointed out to them that this young guy-- who looked like a student manager-- was an assistant coach-- which neither of them realized-- and Ian told me he didn't tell the assistant coach to "shut up," he told the kids who were clapping when he made on error to stop-- and then I watched and saw the deal-- the kids on the fence were really excited that their buddy was getting to play first singles and they thought he had an easy win against a player from a tiny school-- but Ian had eye of the tiger today, and was not going to let that happen-- and I did have a few words for the assistant coach: why the fuck was he talking to MY players during a game about profanity? . . . you come to me first and let me deal with it, especially when they didn't know him from Adam-- and I explained to him that we play in a county park and our kids are used to telling adults to be quiet because we often have lots of them circling like vultures to get on the court-- but the other coaches were having none of my diplomacy and explanations and chit-chat-- they were downright weird and angry, but I think they really wanted their kid to get his first win at first singles-- a singular chance for him-- because they were vociferously rooting for their kid-- which is weird in tennis-- anyway, Ian closed out the match and won 6-4, 6-4-- despite some sketchy calls from Ian's opponent and while I'm not sure exactly what happened, I'm sure Ian and Ethan cursed-- as they are wont to do-- but I don't know why some assistant coach is wandering around acting as the profanity police, especially in a match that means nothing, but I guess this is good practice for States, when shit will get real.