You may have been tough enough to handle the cringeworthy antics of Larry David on Curb, but can you withstand the exponentially uncomfortable dynamics between Emma Stone, Nathan Fielder, and Benny Safdie on The Curse . . . my advice is to give it a shot: my wife has bailed out, but I am hooked (and this is the first TV show I'm watching all by my lonesome since Saxondale).
Dave Cooks to Order
Apparently, my wife likes her breakfast sausage slice in half longways . . . so she has two thin circular sausages with which to put on her egg-and-English-muffin sandwich.
Dave is Still Standing (unlike his wife)
What a week . . . I had to make numerous parent phone calls to discuss AI issues in student work-- and this got in the way of my planning for my four preps and grading the vast amount of writing that needed to be graded, so I pretty much lost my mind and freaked out quite a bit . . . one of the downsides to knowing your work colleagues so well is that you're not afraid to melt down in front of them . . . I probably need to start working at a place where I am only professionally acquainted with my co-workers because I'm way too familiar with the folks at my current job . . . which I guess often happens to veteran teachers-- I also accompanied Ian to meet the orthopedic surgeon to discuss options and schedule his ankle/foot surgery to fix his tendon and the fact that his foot bone is 40% out of the socket-- and we met with the same surgeon who was soon to operate on my wife's foot so then I had to endure the stress and anxiety of knowing that my wife was going under the knife for Morton's neuroma . . . and now she's laid up for a couple weeks until her foot heals so it's up to Ian and me to do the cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, and general household chores-- but who is going to shave my back hair, which is getting out of control? and then-- hopefully-- my wife's foot will heal and we'll repeat the same ordeal at the end of March with Ian . . . what a week and what a year, already-- and I have made a wise concession to ensure that I can offer aid when necessary: I'm not playing any impact sports than could possibly reinjure my calf (which is feeling great!) until my wife is on her feet again, because if I go down from playing indoor soccer or basketball or pickleball, then we'll really be fucked . . . or maybe not . . . maybe we'll just wallow in our own filth and order lots of take-out, which could be fun.
Very Realistic Nightmare (Warning: Adult Content)
This morning, my alarm woke me when I was in the middle of a very adult, very realistic nightmare: I walked down the steps into my basement, and it was kind of dark, and I noticed that there was a half-inch of water on the floor-- and I was very annoyed and I figured the hot water heater had malfunctioned again . . . ugh! . . . and then I woke up and did that thing where you say to yourself: it was just a dream, it was just a dream, that didn't really happen . . . it was just a dream.
Welcome to the (AI) Jungle
Today a high school student in my friend's English class revealed the secret method he uses so that he doesn't get caught using AI to write his assignments: "I tell it to write like a seventh grader so it's not too smart."
Dave Beholds the End of Civilization (and Is Subsumed Into the Matrix)
I apologize for the hyperbolic title, but I'm truly at a loss for words . . . there are no words . . . but fuck it, I'll give it a shot: so let me begin at the beginning: last week, I ran into a spate of uncited AI writing submissions in ALL of the various high school classes I teach-- the same thing happened around the same time last year . . . kids are on good behavior at the beginning of the year, then they get lazy around winter break, then a few kids get zeroes for cheating, and then-- after seeing the consequences-- they shape up again for a few months-- then they get senioritis and fall apart again-- it's a wonderful cycle-- and while some of these uncited AI writing pieces were in my college-level writing classes, which is a serious academic integrity violation and requires all kinds of bullshit: phone-calls with parents; meetings with the students; emails and meetings with guidance counselors; academic integrity forms . . . it's a terrible and tragic timesuck (and both students and parents cry . . . which is both endearing and kind of funny) but I also got a couple of AI-written assignments in Creative Writing class . . . they were downright awful mock-epic stories-- which are supposed to be funny, but AI is NOT funny-- and with these kids I was more lenient-- Creative Writing is a relaxed elective class-- so I admonished them and told them to do the assignment again for half-credit . . . and one of the students who used AI was absent so I sent her a message explaining that I recognized her piece was AI (and so did Chat GPT Zero) and that she needed to rewrite it and this morning, I noticed a reply to my message in my Canvas Inbox and upon reading two or three sentences of this rather long apology for unethical use of AI to write her mock-epic, I noticed that her apology letter for using AI was definitely written by AI and that's when I felt my corporeal body being digitized and sucked into the metaverse-- and I let out a distorted, electronic scream . . . the very same distorted electronic scream that Neo let out when they were locating his corporeal body and he was being digitized and subsumed-- and then, just to make sure, I asked Chat GPT to write an apology note for using AI on an assignment and Chat GPT went right ahead and executed this task, without noting the hypocrisy and irony, and both the message sent by the student and the Chat GPT letter began with the same weird opening:
"I hope this email finds you well,"
and then the student-- or actually the AI, posing as the student-- expresses "deep regret" and then, and this is where I just need to show you the money-- and I should point out that I would normally never exhibit student work for entertainment purposes, that's just lowdown and mean . . . but this is NOT student work, it's written by AI and it's amazing-- and while the message was longer than this . . . because AI is incredibly bombastic and verbose if you don't give it very specific limits-- this is the heart of it and it's amazing:
Your guidance and support have been valuable, and I want to assure you that your message has resonated strongly with me I am committed to ensuring that our communication reflects the genuine connection and respect that our collaboration deserves. Please accept my heartfelt apology for any unintended oversight. I value our partnership and the trust you have placed in me. Rest assured that I am diligently working on the assignment and committed to re-submitting it no later than tonight. I am grateful for your patience, and I look forward to delivering a thoughtful and meaningful assignment.
and so when I talked to this girl after class today-- and, to her credit-- she told me that she wanted to talk to me after class and I agreed that we'd have to do that . . . and when we met, I realized that she sincerely wanted to apologize and she didn't want the rest of the class to suffer for her mistake and she sincerely wanted to explain to me that she was under a lot of stress and pressure and had a lot of other school work to do and she was sorry that she took the easy way out and that she didn't take the time to do the assignment herself and all that boilerplate-student-crap and I was like: "That's fine, no worries, just don't do it again . . . BUT . . ." and then I asked her the million dollar question: I asked her if she used AI to write the apology and she said, "Yes, I just wanted to send you something to show how sorry I was" and I said, "You know the definition of irony, right? You know how crazy this is-- to send an apology for using AI written by AI" and she seemed to understand that this was an absurd action-- but now I'm wondering if she does know the definition of irony-- and I know if I need to explain irony that I now have the best example in the universe . . .and the saddest part of the story is that if she actually recognized the meta-humor in her action and acknowledged the silliness of using AI to write an apology for using AI, I would have thought it was hysterical and lauded her as the greatest creative writer in history-- but it turns out that she sincerely sent me an AI written apology note for using AI on an assignment, not realizing the hypocrisy of this methodology and I'm fairly sure this is the Seventh Seal of the Apocalypse.
More Dog Shit
If you live in New Jersey, today is not a good day to own a dog-- the rain is torrential and not letting up anytime soon-- but if you do own a dog and you need to step out for a while and leave your dog at home, then you might want to put on "Jon Glaser's Soothing Meditations for the Solitary Dog" so your dog can have a stress-free meditative rest while you are gone (actually, you'll probably want to listen to this brilliant piece of sonic art with your dog . . . but maybe don't listen with young children, as there's quite a bit of profanity).
Uh . . . Etiquette?
Early this morning, before sunrise, my dog and I turned left down 2nd Ave for our usual constitutional to the park-- but we had to beat a hasty retreat because a pack of women was walking an even larger pack of dogs (some-- but not all-- of the women were walking two dogs) and I didn't want Lola to start barking maniacally at all these dogs in the early morning darkness-- no one wants to be woken up like that-- so I did the right thing, put the walk in reverse, and walked back up Second Avenue: back towards my house-- and I know the women saw me do this-- but then when they got to the intersection of 2nd and Valentine, they followed me instead going up to the next block and turning-- so I walked Lola up our driveway and had her sit behind the Mazda to wait until they passed and then one lady let her two dogs lead her onto my lawn and across my driveway, and I mumbled some passive aggressive stuff to Lola: You're such a good girl . . . I'm not sure why this lady is walking her dogs towards you when I obviously walked away from them to avoid a bunch of early morning barking-- she must be very stupid, unlike you, you're a good girl--and I don't really understand where this lady is going or if she knows what the fuck she's doing, but you're a good girl and if I see these ladies again maybe I'll be collected enough to tell them what's what with dog-walking-etiquette . . . or perhaps they will stumble on this post-- but when you see someone turn their dog away from your dog to avoid conflict, don't follow that person, and especially don't follow them and then walk onto their lawn and driveway with your dog, unless you want a bunch of early morning barking.
The Power Broker: Chapter 18 Rules!
After many pages of politics and politcal strategy-- mainly centered around NY Governor Al Smith vs. Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1928 Democratic primary-- Robert Caro's The Power Broker offers up something slightly different: "Chapter 18: New York City Before Robert Moses" and if you like Depression-era anecdotes, urban decay, Tammany Hall Corruption, and grand plans for improvement, then you will love this chapter- in fact, it's a set piece, and if you have access to a copy of this intimidating tome and you don't feel like reading the whole book, turn to this chapter and enjoy the disaster: half-completed skyscrapers; breadlines; tired and hungry school children; a corrupt and paralyzed city government; a vice-squad involved in racism, bribery, and graft; laid off teachers and other city employees; absolutely disgusting, dangerous, and despicable "parks"; politicians privately using public land for parties, housing, and financial gain; rotting unpaved narrow bridges and roads; extraordinary traffic; playgrounds unfit for children; Central Park full of dung and stumps and weeds and mud; a lavish city casino at the edge of Central Park where the elite and the mayor could frolic while the rest of the citizens starved; and a man with a plan . . . an ambitious, populist plan to link the citizens of the city to refurbished parks, to better roads, to New England and New Jersey . . . a monumental plan to preserve the last open natural spaces of the city and to make them available to the people . . . or particular people: people rich enough to own a car, the middle class, those people who had enough money to burn some fuel.
Snowing, It Is?
It's not epic-- it's not even all that impressive-- but it is slippery . . . and for the first time in what seems like (and may very well be) years, it is snowing in Central Jersey and, right now, it's actually accumulating, so there are a few kids on the sled hill, Lola got to frolic in the park, and my afternoon tramp was far more enjoyable than the typical 42 degrees and muddy.
Too Easy
I walked out of my house the other night and there were four teenage vandals on my lawn, tampering with my wife's giant inflatable Christmas decoration (a snowman, penguin, striped pole, and holiday gift tableau) and so I yelled, "Hey, get off our lawn! Don't mess with that . . . it's the holidays for Christ's sake" and then, instead of booking away, the delinquents sheepishly apologized: "sorry sir . . . sorry" and then one of them said, without any prompting: "It's Mason . . . you know my brother Tyler," and I was like: yikes, that was the quickest, least compelled confession in the history of crime.
You'd Like to Go Second? No Problem . . .
THREE . . . count them, THREE-- that's right, I generated three great moments in education over the past two days-- for an average of 1.5 great moments per day; so without further fanfare-- because this is already too much fanfare-- here they are:
1) yesterday, a girl in my College Writing class asked me a strange question: she wondered if I knew anything about the PE mid-term . . . and though I told her that I did NOT know anything about the PE mid-term-- why would I know anything about the PE mid-term?-- but I told her I was totally willing to hypothesize about what I thought should be on the PE final, and then I went into an impromptu monologue about something I am fascinated with-- the sundry and miscellaneous rules of in-bounds and out-of-bounds in various sports . . . and while the girl that asked the question tuned out immediately-- before I even finished contrasting tennis and basketball!-- some of the athletic boys in the class got involved, and we went through a number of sports, hashing out when a ball or player was considered in-bounds or out-of-bounds and we agreed that knowledge of these rules would make an excellent PE final and we had a generally excellent time speaking on this topic-- especially because our hypothetical final monumentally annoyed the girl who originally asked the question;
2) in Public Speaking class this morning, we were about to present informational speeches and when I asked for a volunteer to go first, once again-- and this happens all the time-- a girl asked if she could "go second"-- this is a common and logical request in Public Speaking class . . . the kids are great-- they actually signed up for Public Speaking so they like to speak in public . . . but they still don't want the pressure of leading-off, so I'm always getting requests to go second or third-- but someone has to go first . . . and today, in another great moment of teaching, I finally solved that dilemma-- a girl asked if she could "go second" and another student quickly claimed "going third" and someone else actually claimed the fourth spot-- so we were all lined up and ready to roll, but someone needed to go first and then I had an epiphany, a stroke of brilliance and I said: "Ok . . . I will go first" and the kids looked at me like: "Wtf?" and then I drew a line on the board and I said: "Tennis" and, once again, they were like "Wtf?"
3) then I did an informational speech on the topic of "In? Or Out?" and first I went through sports where the ball is "in" if it hits the line-- soccer and volleyball and tennis-- and then I discussed the anomalous nature of basketball, where the ball is "out" if it touches the line-- and we also reviewed how the sides and top of the backboard are in-bounds-- but not the supporting braces up top; we talked about football and the fact that if your foot hits the line, you are out; I outlined the complication of pickleball: the ball is "in" if it hits the line, unless the serve touches the non-volley zone line, then that serve is "out"; I brought up darts and what happens if the dart splits the wire (you get the higher score) and that started a whole debate on if darts and bowling were even sports at all (they are) and then I broke down the weirdness of baseball-- the ball can roll foul but if it rolls back into fair play before the base, then it's a fair ball-- and if it hits the foul pole then it's fair, so yu should call the foul-pole the "fair-pole" and then I actually learned something new from the lacrosse girls in my class-- and this rule seems plumb-fucking-crazy-- in lacross, if the ball goes out-of-bounds after an unsuccessful shot, when the ball crosses the end line, then the team whose player/player's lacrosse stick is closest to the ball is awarded the ball . . . wild stuff-- and now I'm making this extemporaneous informational presentation into a Google slideshow, entitled "Is it IN? Or is it OUT?" so that next semester, when a student asks to "go second" the class will be in for a real surprise (and perhaps no one will ever ask to go second again . . . but maybe I need to prepare a number of these boring and technical speeches, so that any time I don't get a volunteer to go first, the entire class gets tortured . . . there so many great topics I could present on: Transcendentalist Philosophy in American Literature, How to Keep a Salubrious Sleep Schedule, Here Are Some TV Shows Old White Guys Like, Seven Ways to Improve Your Pickleball Game, and -- of course-- How Robert Moses and the Automobile Destroyed Our Once Great Nation).
Remembrances of Ween Past
Wow . . . fifteen minutes into 60 Songs That Explain the 90s: "Santeria -- Sublime, Rob Harvilla really gets off topic and, starting with a quick discussion of King Missile's "Detachable Penis" and then he launches into a passionate paean about the greatness of Ween (particularly the live version of "Dr. Rock") which brings me back to this particular Ween concert in Asbury Park, where it all went down.
One Resolution Down, Too Many to Go . . .
Two days into the New Year, and I've already accomplished one of my resolutions-- I laid this out in the new episode of We Defy Augury: Traveling Through the Dark, but in short, I was determined to inject some "reality" back into my classroom and bring back some of my weird social experiment trickery that fell by the wayside-- so today I executed the "bee in the cup" social experiment-- where, after reading a rite-of-passage narrative about a troubled kid who learns to be a beekeeper and has to endure an increasing number of self-inflicted trail stings-- I ask a volunteer from the class to undergo a rite-of-passage and get stung by a bee in front of the class . . . and I always get a volunteer-- this year the girl who came up, after asking if this was "principal approved?" and I said, "Not at all!" rolled her sleeve up and closed her eyes-- she was really nervous-- so she didn't even see that it was a fake bee in a paper cup, attached to the lid by human hair . . . and in the same class I also set up the poem "Traveling Through The Dark" with a specious tale at the start of class-- I told them that I was running late for work because my son left me the car with very little gas in it-- which was true-- but then I found a dead cat at the end of our driveway and when I went to pick it up and put it in the trash, I noticed that it was pregnant and full of kittens, one of them struggling to be born-- but I didn't have time to call the vet or do a C-section, so I threw the cat in my neighbor's trash-- a great touch that always gets them-- and while the debate about what I did wasn't as uproarious as in the past, it still generated some discussion . . . anyway, I kind of stopped doing these weird social experiments a few years ago-- around COVID? or when kids got addicted to cell phones and it was hard enough to pull them into reality-- but I'm determined to bring "reality" back into my classroom-- or some fictitious version of it and I'm also determined to have kids put their cell phones in the holder in the front of the room-- I usually get lazy and stop doing this a few weeks into the year and then get pissed off at the kids for taking out their phones, but I'm going to remain consistent for the rest of my teaching career and get those damned things as far away from the students as possible so that I can lie to them and trick them more . . . and they seemed appreciative of my efforts at trickery today, so I will carry on with my resolution as planned and try to execute a few more of these experiments (and again, if you're truly interested in this, listen to the new episode of We Defy Augury . . . I reflect on a full career of these weird moments).
Happy Arbitrarily Chosen Day in the Middle of Winter
While I mainly think New Year's Resolutions are silly and indiscriminate-- why are you going to stop drinking in January? it's the coldest and most depressing month of the year, the month when you need a drink or two to make it to spring . . . plus it's not like you're putting on that bikini for a few months so why are you so gung-ho about the gym?-- and maybe I would make and keep New Year's Resolutions more if I lived in the Southern Hemisphere . . . it's certainly easier to start a new routine when there's more sunlight-- but, despite all these complaints, it seems that every year, I make some absurd or half-hearted resolutions, so I will continue the tradition: I resolve to keep making my podcast-- I just finished a new episode: "Traveling Through the Dark: Reflections on "Reality" in which I discuss an educational resolution too complicated to explain in this sentence-- and I also resolve to make the episodes a bit shorter and more focused . . . I also resolve to focus on flexibility more-- I have a strained calf right now and it sucks-- so I see much stretching in my future-- which is a really, really boring resolution-- so I need to add a more exciting resolution: perhaps I will try to resurrect my idea for a string of TikTok videos (the only problem is that I need my calf to heal to execute these videos so this resolution is going to have to wait a bit).
The Books Dave Read in 2023
1) The Candy House by Jennifer Egan
2) The House Across the Lake by Riley Sager
3) Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton
4) Hark! A Vagrant by Kate Beaton
5) Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
6) Death by Video Game: Danger, Pleasure, and Obsession on the Virtual Frontline by Simon Parkin
7) The Quiet Boy by Ben H. Winters
8) Flight by Lynn Steger Strong
9) The Revolutionary: Sam Adams by Stacy Schiff
10) How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix
11) South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation by Imani Perry
12) Hit Makers: The Science of Popularity in an Age of Distraction by Derek Thompson
13) This Is What It Sounds Like: What the Music You Love Says About You by Susan Rogers and Ogi Ogas
14) The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War by Jeff Sharlet
15) Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs: A Journey Through the Deep State by Kerry Howley
16) The Other Side of Night by Adam Hamdy
17) The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
18) Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton
19) The Little Friend by Donna Tartt
20) Carmageddon: How Cars Make Life Worse and What to Do About It by Daniel Knowles
21) The Ghosts of Belfast by Stuart Neville
22) Shakespeare: The World as a Stage by Bill Bryson
23) 1215: The Year of Magna Carta by Danny Danziger and John Gillingham
24) If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio
25) Ringworld by Larry Niven
26) My Murder by Katie Williams
27) Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead
28) The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley
29) The Godwulf Manuscript by Robert B. Parker
30) God Save the Child by Robert B. Parker
31) Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century by J. Bradford DeLong
32) Mortal Stakes by Robert B. Parker
33) Promised Land by Robert B. Parker
34) Under the Eye of Power: How Fear of Secret Societies Shapes American Democracy by Colin Dickey
35) Counterweight by Djuna
36) Judas Goat by Robert B. Parker
37) The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
38) Pet by Catherine Chidgey
39) Let's Talk About Love: Why Other People Have Such Bad Taste by Carl Wilson
40) Tourist Season by Carl Hiaasen
41) The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
42) Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith
43) Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right by Arlie Russell Hochschild.
44) Wellness by Nathan Hill
45) Finite and Infinite Games by James P. Carse
46) All the Sinners Bleed by S.A. Cosby
47) When No One is Watching by Alyssa Cole.
10 Baby Punches Out of 10
If you're looking for a mash-up of Alice in Wonderland, Frankenstein, and a self-reflexive, autonomous, meta-Pygmalion (with the addition of a bunch of freaky sex scenes) then Yorgos Lanthimos' movie Poor Things fits the bill . . . Emma Stone should win the Oscar for her revolutionary and evolutionary performance; Mark Ruffalo is rakishly entertaining; and Willem Dafoe does his usual creepy thing; my favorite line: "Now I must go punch that baby."
Three Better be the Magic Number
Hopefully, the proverb "bad things come in threes" is accurate-- because we had three bad things happen in rapid-fire succession today-- in a twenty minute span-- and now I hope we're in the clear . . .
Bad Thing #1: I pulled my calf muscle playing pickleball today-- totally stupid because my calf has been really tight, some kind of spasm or cramp, and despite this, I played a bunch of basketball with my son earlier in the week, which didn't help, but then I rolled it and rested it and stretched it properly and all that and it felt good today-- too good-- so I stopped taking it easy and played hard and mid-jump something snapped, so I'll be out of commission for a while;
Bad Thing #2: Cat texted her principal something that was meant for her co-teacher and NOT meant for her principal (in fact, it was about her principal) and so she had to do some back-pedaling and apologizing-- this was a movie-like bad thing where you're like "WTF?" . . . than happened?
Bad Thing 3#: while we were playing pickleball, our dog Lola did a bad thing-- when Cat walked up the hill to get the car (because I could NOT manage to walk up the hill with a pulled calf muscle) she found our kitchen and living room all amess with plastic wrappers and powdered sugar . . . Lola got up on the counter and ate an entire bag of pita bread AND a bunch of pizzelle star cookies coated in powdered sugar . . . so her stomach is eventually going to be a mess and I can't even walk her.
Gentrifiers Beware!
If you're looking for a thriller that lambastes rich white gentrifiers, pharmaceutical companies, and government-subsidized business acquisitions-- and has the wildly surreal conspiratorial feel of Jordan Peele's Get Out, check out Alyssa Cole's novel When No One Is Watching . . . but I should warn you: I thought this was going to be a more realistic take on race relations in a gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood-- told from two perspectives, a black woman who grew up there and a white guy who is part of the new wave of property owners-- with a little mystery thrown in for plot . . . but this book is actually a full-fledged, over-the-top, everyone-is-in-on-it hair-raising horror story-- which, on the one hand, is a lot of fun-- with loads of Quentin Tarantino-style "Justified violence"-- but, on the other hand, the race and gentrifying issues lose all their nuance, they are sacrificed on the altar of plot, guns, and vengeance.
Moses = Moses?
As I was plodding through Rober Caro's The Power Broker yesterday morning, I wondered whether Caro will eventually pluck the low-hanging-fruit and make the pun I am anxiously awaiting-- will he compare urban planner Robert Moses, who parted the neighborhoods of New York City to make way for superhighways (including the Cross Bronx Expressway) to the Biblical Moses-- who parted the Red Sea so the Israelites could get to the Promised Land-- if he does make the pun I'll be satisfied and my expectations will be fulfilled, but I'll also be disappointed-- because Caro is such a classy writer and this is such an obvious and rather stupid pun (Robert Moses implemented his projects by learning the ins-and-outs of political bureaucracy, soft power, and acting without permission-- and not asking for forgiveness either!-- while Moses was the recipient of an Omnipotent Miracle from an All Powerful Lord) plus puns are the lowest form of humor . . . I've got 950 pages to go, so the much awaited resolution to this sentence won't be happening for a while.
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