While the title of the new episode of We Defy Augury sounds a bit bleak-- "Looming Existential Dread: Robotic and Real"-- there is fun to be had with these thoughts (loosely) based on Kate Christensen's novel Welcome Home, Stranger, the first two installments of The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells, and Hamlet . . . and there are a plethora of Special Guests, including but not limited to: Billy Joel, Ween, David Tennant, Kenneth Branagh, Greta Thunberg, Marvin the Paranoid Android, Brother Maynard, William Shatner, Woody Allen, Amy Poehler, Phyllis Smith, Queen, and The Prodigy.
Post-Birthday-Blues
Yesterday's birthday-get-together at Jersey Cyclone was very fun-- a perfect way to spend a rainy afternoon: the brewery is located in an industrial park and it's spacious inside, plus you can bring your own food-- Catherine made some of her incredible special sandwiches; we had a good crowd, and the beer was delicious, and we pretty much had the place to ourselves . . . and the bartender was an EBHS alumni, so Chantal and I had fun remembered folks from high school in the mid-aughts . . . and while all the varieties of beer were very delicious, and so were the sandwiches and the desserts-- my body can no longer handle that kind of stuff in large quantities-- luckily we stopped drinking around 6:30 PM so I suffered through my hangover around four hours later and then slept soundly . . . but today I re-tweaked my calf muscle playing pickleball-- I think I really need to let it heal for a couple weeks and it is HOT outside, which is kind of fun, but also reminds me just how much I hate the heat . . . Donaldson Park is still swamped and muddy, but today it is packed with people, all kinds of yahoos, and most of them drove int and are parked all over the place, in the mud, etcetera . . . and I have turned into a very aggressive walker-- if I see a car coming, I get myself and the dog into the croswalk, don't make eye-contact with whoever is driving and then I amble across the street-- hoping the car will stop-- and I know this isn't mentally healthy or physically safe but I'm sick of people in enromous cars ignoring stop signs near my house and in my park, so the least I can do is fuck with them . . . and if I get hit, I'll miss a few days of work and maybe some idiot will feel guilty about their shitty driving and realize cars are destroying this once great nation.
What Do Theodore Geisel, Dave, and Daniel Craig Have in Common?
It's here once again,
it comes without fail--
for rich and for poor,
the next coffin nail . . .
for Bryce Dallas Howard,
for the Wu's Method Man,
for me and Bon Jovi--
the occasional is grand:
We are still alive!
our lifetime rolls on!
and one year from now
we may well be gone . . .
But perhaps these trite rhymes
will outlive my frame--
The Good Doctor is dead
yet you still know his name . . .
and the folks he invented,
that lived in his books:
Yertle the Turtle,
Thing One and Thing Two,
The Grinch and the Lorax
and, of course, Cindy Lou Who--
you know all those souls,
though they never lived--
you might know them much better
than your very own kids!
So here's to creation--
to birthdays and rhymes--
to writing it down,
before there's no time.
Local Recs to Treat Yo Self
Yesterday, in honor of my upcoming birthday, I took the day off from teaching the youth and I got a massage at Lucid in Metuchen-- they have an incredible deal going: five hour-long massages for 200 dollars -- my calf is still sketchy and I strained it a bit playing pickleball on Tuesday and the massage really helped . . . plus, my acupuncturist broke her arm and so she's been on the IR and now I realize how much those needles keep me loose-- and then Ian and I met Alex for lunch in New Brunswick-- he turned twenty today (and I turn 54 tomorrow) and so it was his choice of food for a birthday lunch-- he wanted Mexican food so we perused the plethora of Mexican places in New Brunswick-- oh yes, there are a plethora of authentic Mexican places in New Brunswick, some filled with pinatas-- and since La Catrina was closed until four PM and Taqueria Maria's transformed into a bakery (without informing us) we ended up at a place called La Placita-- which does NOT translate into The Place . . . placita is a little square-- and we loved it . . . I had chorizo enchiladas with mole sauce and the kids had al pastor tacos and everything was superb-- so if you're looking for a cheap "treat yo self day" there you go.
Irony Noted
I was stuck at the crowded intersection of Plainfield Ave and Route 27, by the Tastee Sub and amidst the plethora of bumper stickers on the Subaru in front of me, I noticed one that read "Abuse an animal, go to jail" and then the light changed and I drove past the Burger King and the irony was not lost on me that we live in a country where many people profess progressive attitudes about animal rights/animal consciousness, yet fast food franchises dot the landscape (though it may have been lost on all the factory-farmed beef patties and ground-up nugget sized chunks of battery-caged, debeaked chickens inside the Burger King deep freeze).
Awkward (and Impulsive) Dave Amuses His Students
Today during first period, while I was showing a movie clip-- so it was dark-- a young lady in a denim jacket entered my room, but just barely entered-- and she asked if she could talk to one of my students-- and my student got up and the two of them talked in the hall-- I figured it was something about homework or a computer charger or something-- and then the student came back into the room, but the young lady continued to lurk and then said something else, so I shushed her . . . Thomas Haden Church was explaining The Scarlet Letter to his class in Easy A-- crucial for our assignment about the evolution of mate choice and gender norms and the ever-changing aesthetics of attraction-- and then the young lady in the denim jacket said, "I just need Tanvi to go to room 1618 . . . I'm a school aide . . . I work here" and I was like: "I'm so sorry I shushed you-- you look so young, you look just like a student!" and she said, "I'll take that as a compliment" and then she left and my class laughed at my rudeness and embarrassment and I said to them: "Notice how I used gender norms and aesthetics to get out of that awful situation-- you can't go wrong telling a woman she looks young" and we all learned some valuable lessons.
Creepy Parking Lot Zombie Humans
I like to do the "pull through" in the school parking lot so that my car is facing out and I can make a quick escape at the end of the day-- I get to school early enough to do this (because I never want to "back in" when there's traffic in the lot-- I hate when people stop fucking parking lot traffic because they are determined to back-in to their spot) but the one thing that spooks me about the pull through is when I wedge my car between two other parked cars and look over and one of the cars still contains a human-- they're usually just sitting there, deadfaced, fucking with their phone and it's weird-- I start wondering: did I park too close and trap them in their car? are they going to get out at the same time as me? should I wave to them? are they breathing?-- so I'd appreciate it if people, after they park, immediately get out of their car . . . or if not, at least open the window and hang your arm out, so that someone pulling in then recognizes that there's a human inside the car you are about to cozy up to.
Got To Be the Calf Sleeves
I played indoor soccer for 90 minutes yesterday and then I played pickleball for two hours this evening-- and while I think I looked fairly athletic playing both sports, if you could see the awkward and ugly effort required for me to pry off my shoes, socks, calf-sleeves, and knee sleeve/braces after I finished playing, you'd wonder if I was capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time, let alone actually doing something athletic, graceful, and coordinated.
A Noteworthy Parking Offense?
A few weeks ago, I noticed an egregiously parked car in our school note and left a mildly censorious Post-it note on it-- and while this might have been mildly obnoxious behavior, there was no question that this car was poorly parked. . . ANYONE would agree that the parking job was awful and that this car encroached on BOTH parking spots on either side of the vehicle-- the car was OBJECTIVELY poorly parked; yesterday morning, my wife and I went to pick up the Mazda, which we left on Adelaide Avenue overnight after we took the train to Princeton to meet my brother-- we were several drinks over the limit so we did not drive it home and instead walked from the train station back home on Friday night-- and when we got the car on Saturday morning, we noticed a note tucked into the driver side door handle-- the note said:
2 Vehicles can fit here. Next time, pull closer to the driveway in front or behind you.
and while I understand the sentiment-- Catherine parked the car in the middle of a small strip of curb between two driveways-- and obviously the note-writer wanted to park right in front of their house-- but I don't think this parking event was noteworthy for several reasons:
1) Adelaide is a long street with plenty of parking;
2) if my wife had pulled the Mazda all the way up to the next driveway, there might have been enough room to squeeze another car behind it-- but why do this? why encroach on someone's driveway when there is plenty of parking on this street?
3) this is not an objectively poor parking job-- it's a subjective desire by someone lazy and inconvenienced by the fact that they could not park exactly where they wanted;
4) this note is boring and didactic--
if the offended party would have written something funny or clever . . . "Pull up or pull out, dick" would have sufficed-- then I might have empathized more with the put-out parker who had to walk eleven yards farther than normal . . . but because of the moralistic tone, I will seek that spot out the next time we drive to the edge of Highland Park and foray into New Brunswick and I will park exactly in the middle of that strip between the two driveways and perhaps I will keep this note and adorn it with dicks and place it on my windshield.
Meta-Magical Mystery Tour
The new episode of We Defy Augury is (loosely) based on the meta-mystery novel Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz . . . get ready to deconstruct the mystery genre and murder in particular; special guests include The Smile, Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, Tom Hanks, and Meg Ryan.
Schools Out! For the Weekend . . .
These five-day weeks are brutal, but I just have to remember: summer is coming, summer is coming . . . and while I'm IN school I'm learning valuable things from my students, such as: anime fans talk with their hands (and apparently, make very specific hand motions) and, according to one of my students today: "I danced so hard in PE class my hijab fell off"-- which we decided could be the basis of an amazing song lyric.
Dave's Head is So Money
Some folks might find the buzz of the Remington Balder Pro annoying-- but to me, the high-pitched hum of the Five Dual Track heads is the sound of money in the bank . . . I shelled out any cash for a haircut in twenty years.
Ahh Dickens . . .
I forgot to bring my Kindle to school today-- so I'm not going to be able to delve deeper into the mud and fog of Bleak House during cafeteria duty . . . unless I deign to read on my laptop-- but I will provide two excerpts from the opening chapter of the Dickens' novel for your amusement and consideration . . . here is a sentence about the mud:
As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill . . .
and here is a section focusing on fog:Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little ’prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon and hanging in the misty clouds.
Catherine's Foot = Step On It
My wife went to the orthopedist today so he could assess how she is healing from her foot surgery and her foot has received "the green light for all activities"-- hiking, pedicures, pickleball, Zumba-- but I assume the orthopedist meant only "foot-related" activities-- as her foot will not be attending cooking school nor will it be caulking the bathtub . . . but still, while feet aren't as dextrous as hands, they are the key to being ambulatory-- and you can't go on a bar crawl unless you are ambulatory.
Upstream, downstream . . . Minnesota 81/Rutgers 70
What a strange and perverse mental illness-- to look forward all day to a time when you will watch a remote event on television that will probably drive you to the brink of madness-- but believe that if you get emotionally involved enough, you will have some influence over the event-- and believe this enough so that you enjoy joyous high and suffer precipitous lows, project streams of profanity, enter existential futility, entertain possible resurrection, and finally go to bed, sweaty, frustrated, and fatigued, though you've only sat on your couch-- and you'll do it again Thursday night because the Rutgers men's basketball team is playing Purdue.
Dave Will Survive
Another boring evening last night-- I really felt like shit, congested and glassy-eyed and all that fun stuff that happens when you have a cold-- so we watched some college basketball and the first episode of Resident Alien-- which I found more amusing than my wife-- but this morning, despite sleeping poorly, I came back from outer space and managed to record some of my new podcast and play 90 minutes of indoor soccer, and all the trotting around helped drain the mucous . . . so I think I'm going to recover just in time to go to work tomorrow . . . blech (and my wife has off because her district budgeted enough snow days, while my district did not-- so at East Brunswick High School there will be learnin' on President's Day).
Lame Weekend (But It Could Be Worse)
All systems: clogged and stuffy-- I've got a cold and it sucks-- I worked all week while fighting off this virus-- and my reward is a lame weekend-- no alcohol, no gym, no indoor soccer, no going out to dinner or sitting in a bar . . . but I'm enjoying Martha Well's Murderbot Diaries, I got genius level on the NYT Spelling Bee last night, we finished watching Mythic Quest-- highly recommended, sweet and very funny . . . in the vein of Parks & Rec-- and we started the new version of Mr and Mrs. Smith with Donald Glover, which seems worth watching-- and I'm still powering through Robert Caro's The Power Broker . . . and reading about how hard Robert Mose's New Deal hires worked during the very cold and snowy winter of 1934 made me happy to have a warm house and sick days to use, if need be.
Too Much Phlegm to Create a Coherent Metaphor
Teaching with a stuffy nose is like competing in a dance recital with a piece of toilet paper stuck to your ballet slipper.
Earworm Obsession (Dave Does Some "Work")
Yesterday, I worked harder than I have ever worked before (and probably after) because I got obsessed with an idea-- today, I will see if it was worth it; in my Music and the Arts class we're going to listen to the excellent 99% Invisible episode "Whomst Amongst Us Let the Dogs Out"-- an episode which investigates the nebulous and foggy history of the Baha Men's earworm "Who Let the Dogs Out"-- and so yesterday morning I started going down the rabbit hole of songs that are earworms, especially songs that just seem to exist in the ether-- you can't imagine the world without them . . . they just sort of show up; so I talked to students and teahcers and consulted the internet and I came up with a list of 50 earworm songs and then I wanted to make this into a quiz for the students-- to see if they could identify the song and perhaps-- although it's often very difficult-- the original artist . . . the only way to do this properly was to download the songs from YouTube and convert them to mp3s and then use Logic to clip the relevant earworm-- as little as possible and usually without vocals-- and then a piece of the chorus-- the "answer" to the earworm-- it took me four hours and as soon as I can figure out a way to share the file, I will-- but I'll certainly turn it into a podcast or something-- I think for people my age (53) that are native-born Americans, it will be fairly easy to identify most of the songs-- although the artists are often difficult-- and I did put some contemporary stuff in there for the kids, so they don't get frustrated-- I'm going to try it out on them today so I'll report how it goes tomorrow.
Welcome Home, Stranger
Every few years I end up reading a book like this one . . . a book where someone in a family that is scattered geographically dies and the family returns to the ol' homestead to mourn and revisit past conflicts and grievances-- Kate Christensen's novel Welcome Home, Stranger fits this archetype, so don't read it if you're looking for a lighthearted comedy, but it's an excellent book: the writing is strong and precise, the narrator-- an eco-journalist named Rachel-- tackles the futility of our decaying environment and her own existential crises with a sordid and mordant wit, and the state of Maine is just as much a character as any of the people in the book . . . nine lobster pots out of ten.
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