These Metaphors Are Like School in the Summertime . . .

At the beginning of the school year, because educating the youth is such an ambitious, abstract, indeterminate, and unpredictable journey, everyone is always throwing metaphors and similes around-- myself included; here are a few that have come into play over the last two days of in-service meetings (and a few that I will be using tomorrow, on the first day of school with students)

1) our new principal used a bunch of metaphors, including:

--we want to keep the ceiling high for the students but sometimes we have to raise the floor to help certain kids out

-- the world consists of the ratio 10-80-10 . . . 10 percent are leaders, 80 percent can be swayed, and 10 percent are bad seeds . . . you just need to get the leaders to sway the 80 percent and you won't have to worry about the ten percent that complains about everything . . . I think I'm in the 80 percent

--be a coffee bean-- when the water is boiling, don't be a hard-boiled egg or a carrot? get transformed into a magical energetic liquid . . . I certainly drink enough of it

-- Maslow before Bloom

2) during the AI presentation from another administrator, things got very metaphorical; we saw a traffic light graphic for the amount of AI we might allow on an assignment-- red is none, yellow means let the kids use AI for ideas, green means use AI and cite it, and then there was also a blue light on the graphic? these meetings were long and I can't remember what the blue light indicated but I'm guessing that's where we give up that's and allow our AI overlords to program our minds? 

-- also during the AI presentation there was a mustard metaphor? the presenter had a lot of mustard in his fridge and he used AI to help him brainstorm ways to use the mustard? a jet pack was also mentioned-- maybe AI helps you fly like a jet pack? . . . I was spacing out . . .

3) my wife, who teaches elementary school, learned to "keep it simple, build it together, throw Playdoh on the ceiling"

4) our head SSO officer talked about possible school shooter "carnage"-- not a metaphor!-- but then he said if the shooter got into the room you'd need to "open a can of whoop ass," which is not only a metaphor, but a euphemism, to say the least

5) tomorrow, I will use a few metaphors as well, mainly to discourage cell-phone usage and AI usage

--I'll make the case that school is the gym for your brain . . . and so you shouldn't have a robot lift weights for you, or ride an electric scooter instead of an actual bike because we're trying to get some mental exercise

--if you're working in a group, then it's more like a team sport than a business transaction . . . same idea as the previous metaphor, we still play soccer and basketball with limited technological use-- there's a difference between wearing nice cleats and having a flying drone play the game for you

-- I liken cell phones to smoking in class-- no smoking!-- it's unhealthy for you and there's also a proven second-hand cell-phone effect . . . when you're playing with your phone, it certainly distracts you but it also distracts the people around you

--I also compare class to a movie-- no phones in the movie theater!-- albeit class is a rather slow and boring movie with no A-list actors, a script that needs revision, unprepared actors that don't know their lines, terrible special effects (aside from the giant wasps that invade class every so often) and a very boring set . . . but whatever, it's a little bit like a movie . . . perhaps . . .

6) I will leave you with a motto that I recently invented that just might make sense:

"we don't teach kids content, we teach kids to be content".

Last Day of Summer Synopsis

Although my randomly assigned partner Kit and I did not win yesterday's Fords Park 8 AM pickleball tournament (we advanced to the playoffs and immediately lost to a couple of youngsters) I still think I deserve some kind of MVP Award because I got home from the tournament at 10:20 AM and was able to shower and get dressed and make the 10:50 AM train to Penn Station-- the last day of free train transport-- where we met our friends Dom and Michelle and their millennial-aged cousin, a museum curator at the Museum of Natural History (particularly, the hall of mammals) and then we walked the High Line, wandered through Hudson Yards and Chelsea Market, climbed up for the view from Little Island, and visited two fun bars: The Brass Monkey and Crown Alley, and enjoyed good company and good weather-- and I'm quite proud of this for two reasons:

1) I'm not good at making quick turnarounds from one activity to the other . . . I like some transition time (and some nap time)

2) I managed to enjoy the last day of summer instead of fretting about school-- and there's really no reason to fret about the first day of school meetings (aside from this long lecture about lock-downs and school shooters, which is pretty grim-- the SSO Officer has said the word "carnage" several times) because it's mainly boring and tedious and it's better to be tired and spaced-out, rather than rested and focused (but wow does my butt hurt from sitting on this cafeteria table disc seat).

So Many Steps, So Many Trains

An epic last day of summer, which I will recount on district time tomorrow when I write a detailed synopsis instead of paying attention to the first-day-of-school in-service meeting.

I Was Impressed With my Wife's Acumen . . . For a Moment

I was impressed the other day by my wife's theory about the ending of The Sinner (Season1) until we started watching Season 2 . . . in Season 1, Detective Harry Ambrose (Bill Pullman) won't stop until he understands why Cora Tanetti (Jessica Biel) stabs a young man to death on a lakeside beach in broad daylight . . . there's trauma in Cora Tannetti's past and this has induced memory loss, so the show focuses on how she slowly regains her memory of what happened to her, due to the doggedly persistent detective work of Harry Ambrose . . . and this theme is highly appropriate to my wife's spot-on prediction about the twist at the end-- because after we watched the first episode of Season 2, my wife said to me, "I think I saw this" and I was like "what? you randomly watched Season 2 of this show but not season 1?" and then I really looked at her, deep into her soul, the way Harry Ambrose looks into Cora Tannetti's eyes-- and she was like: "maybe I saw Season 1 too . . . maybe that's why I knew the ending, it was my subconscious" and then I was no longer impressed with her prediction and we've abandoned that show and now we are watching Fringe . . . and after the first episode, she is POSITIVE that she hasn't watched it on the sly and then forgotten about it.

A Great Day at the Gym

We went out in New Brunswick last night, to Clydz and Efes, and I probably (certainly?) drank a little bit too much . . . and then I stayed up late watching TV, the US Open-- Djokovic lost to a giant young Australian dude-- and I ate too many late-night cookies that we purchased at the Kapadokya Bakery on our walk home  from New Brunswick while watching this tennis match, but I still dragged myself to the gym this morning at 7 AM and it was well worth it, for three reasons:

1) while I was shooting baskets, basically doing an aerobic work-out that involved tossing a ball beyond the three-point arc, collecting the ball, shooting the ball, and then chasing the rebound and doing it over and over again-- and at one point I drained ten or eleven three-pointers in a row and a dude walking off the court said to me, "You're on fire!" and it was nice to be recognized, it was nice that my fire was noticed;

2) later on, I was doing my balancing exercises on the bosu ball-- that piece of equipment that is half exercise ball, half flat surface: so I stand on the flat surface and balance and do a variety of exercises with a medicine ball while I balance: put it behind my back, do one-armed tricep raises, etcetera . . . anything to throw my balance off so my calf muscles have to work hard and there was another dude next to me on the other bosu ball, just trying to stand on it and he complimented me on my amazing balance and I was like: wtf? when do you get TWO compliments at the gym? and I considered it a very good day

3) while I was working out and getting all these compliments, I was listening to the new episode of "Plain English with Derek Thompson," which is all about the benefits of exercise-- Thompson talks about exercise with Euan Ashley, a professor of cardiovascular medicine and genetics at Stanford University, who boils down the benefits of exercise to a very motivational and succinct statistic:

“One minute of exercise buys you five minutes of extra life” 

so according to Derek Thompson's math: if you work out for one hour a day, four days a week, for 40 years, you would buy yourself an extra four years and nine months of extra life . . . that's a lot of extra life-- and you might even get a compliment once in a while.

A Reason for Short People

My wife and I lucked out the other night at the Waxahatchee show at the Beacon Theater-- our seats were in the second row of the balcony and some very short people sat in front of us, making our seats essentially in the front row of the balcony-- but this is such a roll of the dice . . . if a couple of power forwards sat in front of us, we would have spent the night listening instead of watching-- which is why when you purchase a ticket for a show in a theater with designated seating, you should be required to report your height and the ticket pricing algorithm should reflect this . . . tickets for seats behind very tall people should be a bit cheaper and vice-versa-- and perhaps very short people should get a front row discount because they provide better views for everyone (and boost the self-esteem of people of average height).

Hot Town, Summer in the City

My wife and I went into "town" yesterday, which is how Tom Buchanan refers to New York City in The Great Gatsby, and both the hot and humid pathetic fallacy in Gatsby and The Lovin' Spoonful certainly came to mind-- though the weather yesterday was even worse than both works of art imagined-- we certainly got dirty and gritty, walking from the train station to our hotel to store our backpack (The Gallivant . . . the first room we were assigned was already occupied-- luckily the guests were out of the room and not in flagrante delicto when we stormed in; the second room had a broken floor unit AC and was broiling, but the third room had a window AC and was quite chilly-- third time was a charm) and then we continued walking around, through throngs of people, clouds of humidity, and wafting billows of strange odors-- we went to lunch at Bonsaii Tapas and Wine Bar-- delicious-- and then we trekked up to the Museum of Arts and Design and enjoyed their exhibits and AC and then we went and checked in at The Gallivant-- a long process involving three elevator trips-- and then we showered off the grit and grime, read for a few minutes, and then headed back out-- we needed to get to the Beacon Theater, which was uptown, Central Park West, and it was still steamy outside, so after getting caffeinated at Tiny Dancer coffee-- which was located underground, in a little warren of shops near the subway station (including See No Evil Pizza, which is rumored to be fantastic) and then we walked a bit and stopped at a bar, Tanner Smith's on 55th Street-- but it was loud as fuck, so we had a beer and then walked on, and we ended up at Ella Social, another tapas bar-- and we just caught the tail end of Happy Hour-- they took away the Happy Hour menus just after we sat down, so we lucked out and were able to get an order in, and then we sat there for a while and ordered various delicious tapas and then we went to the show: the opening band, Woods, had a great sound-- psychedelic alt country?-- but the singer couldn't quite pull off what he was going for (Jeff Mangum? Mark Coyne?) so it was more enjoyable when they got deep into instrumental and then Katie Crutchfield and her band Waxahatchee took the stage-- and Katie Crutchfield really took over the show: she has the best voice I've ever heard in person . . . I felt like I was seeing Alabama's version of Celine Dion or something-- and my wife and I could really see, because we were in the second row in the balcony and the three people in front of us were SO SHORT -- score!-- they were like five foot nothing, so we had an unobstrcuted view-- more on this tomorrow-- anyway, Crutchfield played almost every song from her new album, Tiger's Blood, which is fantastic and a couple of songs from St. Cloud, but none of her older straight ahead rock stuff or the indie stuff that sounds like Liz Phair-- she's really doing the alt-country thing full tilt-- a great show and her voice is awe-inspiring (and I think her bass player also does some amazing backing vocals as well) and then when we got out of the Beacon, at 11:30 PM, it was still very fucking hot-- unlike the Lovin' Spoonful song-- and we started walking back to the hotel and I suggested an Uber but my wife said it wouldn't take that long-- which was NOT true . . . it took so long that I had to stop for a slice of pizza-- but we finally made it back to The Gallivant-- over 12 miles of walking in the hot hot city-- even though were trying to keep things concentrated-- but the Big Apple is a very big fucking apple-- and then we got a nice breakfast and caught the train back to New Brunswick-- which was free! as was the train to the city . . . all Jersey Transit trains are free this week, for some reason, so they are quite packed . . . but now we're home again and the house is in one piece and the Appliance Doctor just fixed our stove door and the weather has improved and become seasonable and calm, but I must say, there's nothing like the overstimulus of Manhattan, especially on a hot day when everyone is out on the streets instead of in their apartments.

The (Appliance) Doctor is Appalled

The hinge on our oven door has been broken for quite a while now-- how long? . . . I'm not really sure-- but it's been getting worse . . . a few months ago, Ian knew how to jiggle it back into place and I knew how to force it into place but in the last few weeks, the situation has become more dire and more specialized-- it seems I'm the only one who can the door to close if you open it too much, and I do this by inserting a butterknife or scissors in between the two parts of the hinge, from the inside out and then twist and pry and lift the door up very quickly-- this is difficult enough when the oven is NOT in use, but when the door is very very hot and there's 425-degree heat billowing from the open oven this task becomes downright dangerous-- so once I suffered a minor burn I decided it was time to call Steve, the Aplliance Doctor . . . he has a doctorate in appliances!-- and Steve came over and took a look and said we were going to need a new hinge and then he asked me a pointed question, an appliance doctor type question . . . "how long has it been like this?" and I hemmed and hawed for a moment and then said "Quite a while"and he was properly appalled and told me some nightmare stories of people who had used broken appliances until they were beyond repair, when they could have just called an appliance doctor and gotten them fixed up before things got atrocious-- it was like he asked "How long have you had this softball shaped goiter protruding from your neck?" or some other medical question where you know you should say "ten minutes and I immediately called you" but instead you have to try to explain why you let this thing go-- why you let this goiter grow and fester even though you knew it was getting worse and wasn't going to get better-- but hopefully we called him in the nick of time and he'll be able to replace the hinge and in the future, if an appliance is acting weird, I'm going to immediately call the appliance doctor (and I'm going to go to the dermatologist again too).

Insane in the Mundane

A new episode of We Defy Augury in which I explore thoughts (loosely) inspired by Halle Butler's novel Banal Nightmare  and I also ask the controversial and incredibly significant question: "How do YOU pronounce 'banal'?"

Special Guests: Ween, OK Go, Morrissey, Pink Floyd, The Beatles, Suzanne Vega, Bill Bryson, and The Kids in the Hall.

I'll Be Watching This One Alone

So the British mockumentary series Cunk on Earth-- in which Philomena Cunk (Diane Morgan) bumbles her way through human history with deadpan aplomb and absurdist non-sequiturs-- will have to be tossed into the "shows I think are hysterically droll and entertaining but my wife can't watch a single moment or she actually gets angry at the show, the writers, the actors, the network, and TV in general" category . . . along with Saxondale, Flying Circus, Kids in the Hall, Knowing Me Knowing You and-- of course, the archetype of this category: I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson.

I Can Feel It Coming Back Again

Today, for the first time all summer, I can feel it, in the offing . . . SCHOOL . . . it's looming out there in the dim mists of next week, looming like rolling thunder, like a force from the center of the earth . . . like a monolithic beast, made of bricks and tile, full of teenagers-- and I'm going to have to confront it (but at least they pay me to do so).

Three Mysteries (Two Solved, One Pending)

This won't be my most lucid sentence-writing, and you will learn why soon enough-- but I was involved with three mysteries today (so far) and while two of them are resolved, I'm going to need your help with the third:

1) I just finished Anthony Horowitz's mystery novel The Sentence is Death, which is fantastic fun . . . except for the ending . . . not the actual ending of the book-- that's compelling and full of twists and turns-- but my experience while reading the ending was quite unpleasant;

2) this afternoon, my wife and I took a walk at Rutgers Gardens and the weather has turned-- it's hot again-- and when we got home, I wanted to take a nap and she wanted to watch TV so I went upstairs to our bedroom and I closed the windows-- we haven't needed the AC for nearly a week-- and I turned on the AC-- not the normal through-the-wall unit, as that's leaking, but a portable unit that we dragged upstairs-- the kind with the tube that leads to a vent that you put in the window frame-- and then I read a few pages of The Sentence is Death and soon fell fast asleep, but when I woke up, our bedroom seemed really hot so I walked over to the AC unit and confirmed that it was pumping out cold air-- and the temperature read 72 degrees so I figured I was just overheated from the day's activities and perhaps the cool air had not reached the far corner of the room-- very illogical reasoning-- and then I lay back down on the bed and finished the novel-- and the ending was exciting enough to make me forget about the heat, but then once I had turned the last page an closed the book, I walked back over to the AC unit and noticed that when I closed the window, I did NOT insert the vent tube apparatus into the window frame-- it was pumping hot air right back into the room! and the AC was trying to make it 72 degrees, but when I pressed another button, the unit told me the actual temperature-- 87 degrees . . . mystery solved . . . so I am writing this sentence in a dazed state but at least I know the resolution to both  The Sentence is Death AND The Mysterious Case of the Stupid Man, the Hot Room and the Over-extended Air-conditioner

3) and here is mystery number three-- perhaps you people can solve it-- I call it The Mystery of the Two People Inside My Phone . . . and One of Them is an Idiot: 

on my drive down to Veteran's Park to play pickleball this morning, I spoke to my phone several times-- Hey Google style-- asking it to change the music on Spotify (sidenote: Ill Communication is a really weird album) and every time, the female voice complied-- but then on the ride home, I tried to "Hey Google" my phone to change the music and a male voice answered that it did not have that capability-- and this male voice tried to access YouTube music but could not do so and then he said that he could not control Spotify . . . and this has happened to me several times now-- the female "Hey Google" can control Spotify, but the male "Hey Google" is a total inept idiot . . . and when I asked my phone about this inconsistency, my phone chastised me:

"That statement is incorrect and discriminatory. There is no inherent difference in a person's ability to control Spotify based on their gender. Anyone, regardless of their gender identity or expression, can learn how to use Spotify."

and this proves that AI is dumber than ever, but that still doesn't explain why the female "Hey Google" is smart and competent and can control Spotify and the female "Hay Google" is a loser-- and I can't find any explanation for this on the internet, and now I'm using some Samsung voice control called Bixby-- you say "Hi Bixby"-- and Bixby seems to always be able to control Spotify, so I've solved the problem but not the mystery.

Rollerblader's Paradise

As I roll through the piping hot valley of death, I keep turning in circles, making left after left-- but I can't lead a normal life, I need to blade on the street, chasing my shadow, with wheels on my feet . . . on the freshly paved asphalt at the park by my home, wearing old-school headphones so I feel all alone.

The Dogs of Doom Are Howling "No Quarters!"

Normally, I always try to walk into New Brunswick because parking is such a pain-in-the-ass, but yesterday I had to drive because I was dropping my son's broken bike at Kim's and then meeting him and my brother for cheesesteaks at Heavyweights (highly recommended) and so before I left, I sagaciously-- super-sagaciously, I thought-- dug through our change jar and found a bunch of quarters . . . because I have a new (to me) car and so there is no recess full of parking meter change in this car yet-- and I must say, I was really proud of my foresight-- so I chose the appropriate recess and dumped my quarters in, ready for some city parking, and then I picked my son up, we dropped the bike at Kim's, and then we found some parking just off Easton Avenue, on Somerset Street, and when I went to feed the meter, I noticed the quarter slot was blocked off-- WTF?-- and after som investigation, I found this was true for all the meters in the vicinity and my son said, "I guess you've got to use a credit card now . . . but I'll take those quarters for laundry" and while I was pretty shocked at this development, the card did work fine but when I told my wife about this change to no change, she thought that only accepting a credit card was "classist," as some people don't have credit cards, but I figured in this day and age, if you are driving a car, then you probably have a credit card . . . or I guess you could pay cash in one of the parking decks (but I hate those things, they're claustrophobic nightmares).

Horowitz and meta-Horowitz Do It Again

I am a sucker for British mystery novels and a sucker for meta-fictional humor and in The Sentence of Death, Anthony Horowitz once again provides both-- it's the usual set-up, there's a murder-- a high-profile divorce lawyer is bludgeoned/sliced to death with a wine bottle and the police hire the rather unlikeable, rather shady, but incredibly brilliant ex-detective Daniel Hawthorne as a consultant to the case-- and the meta-fictional version of the actual author Anthony Horowitz tags along to document the case . . . Horowitz is pulled from on location of a shoot of the TV show Foyle's War-- a show that the real Horowitz actually created and wrote-- and now meta-Horowtiz is involved in a "real" mystery and a "real" murder . . . and while folks tolerate Hawthorne (barely) they are really annoyed that there's a writer shadowing Hawthorne, taking notes on all that is said-- so you get wonderful scenes, with layers of meta-fictional irony (amidst a complex mystery with loads of clues, characters, and red herrings) like this one, when possible suspect Akira Anno-- a celebrated poet and writer-- realizes that Horowitz is writing a book about this investigation, she says:

"He's putting me in his book? I don't want to be in his fucking book! I want a lawyer in this room. If he puts me in his book, I'll fucking sue him . . . this is a fucking outrage! I don't give him permission. Do you hear me? If he writes about me, I'll kill him!"

and for a moment, I was like: Oh shit, Horowitz put her in the book-- I wonder if she sued? and then, of course, I was like: but this is ALL made up . . . or mostly made up, not the Foyle's War stuff-- that's real--  and some of the other Horowitz stuff . . . but the Hawthorne stuff, that's all made up . . . good stuff Horowitz (and meta-Horowitz).

I Would Have Used the Word "mundane" (for obvious reasons)

You're going to feel one way or the other about Halle Butler's novel Banal Nightmare  . . . the millennials that wander about this Midwestern college town are insufferable, trapped, and repetitive in a surreal No Exit sort of existential ennui-- but there is deep dark satirical humor amidst the emo-anguish and there is a beautiful cutting precision to Butler's language-- so if you like the following sentence, you'll like the book:

"There should be an Aesop's fable where a little ant jumps back and forth eternally between two spinning plates to teach us about the pitfalls of getting stuck in two conflicting and endlessly circular trains of thought, thought Moddie, but the only Aesop fable with ants, as far as she knew, was about how you deserved to die if you enjoyed your summer vacation."

Newer Delhi, Just Off the Turnpike

Today my wife and I did NOT travel to the above Hindu temple in New Delhi . . . instead, we did the next best thing and drove to Robbinsville, NJ-- thirty-five minutes south on the Turnpike-- and visited the recently opened BAPS Swaminarayan Akshardham Hindu mandir . . . it's the second largest Hindu mandir in the world, 213 feet tall and situated on an incredible 183-acre campus of land full of many buildings and structures made of intricately carved marble, sandstone, granite, and wood . . . the place was built by experts and volunteers, over a 12-year span and the main portions were finished last year but there is still much construction going on . . . it's free to enter and take a tour and there's also a busy vegetarian cafe-- we didn't eat there but heard that it is good-- the temple is mainly dedicated to Swaminarayan, a manifestation of Krishna, who at age 11 started a seven-year journey-- from 1792 to 1799-- walking the length and breadth of the subcontinent, barefoot and poorly clad-- stopping at one point to stand on one leg for over two months . . . this seems all the more impressive to me after we walked around the interior of the temple for 45 minutes, barefoot, and my feet started to ache . . . and I managed to stand on one leg for the length of a picture, not that impressive . . . but if you're ever in Central Jersey and in the mood for some inspirational three-dimensional art, head to Grounds for Sculpture and this temple-- they're fifteen minutes (but many worlds) apart.

Future Tense Water Feature Freak Out

Friday afternoon Terry was nice enough to host a small get-together of English teachers-- his wife and kids went to visit the grandparents in Florida so he had the house to himself-- and he specified that this was a"no children" party, which may have offended a few people, but it's really much nicer to lounge in a pool when there are no children-- and we're teachers, we're going to see kids soon enough (and I can barely tolerate adults) and Terry has a beautiful in-ground pool, complete with a rock waterfall water feature spilling into the deep end . . . and I guess it was a serendipitous set of circumstances that led to this incident; I was doing a few laps, some underwater, when Terry was telling a particular story about his rambunctious seven-year-old son Caleb, but anyway, when I surfaced all I heard was "You can dive off the rock waterfall!" and so I got out of the pool a little drunk, thinking to myself "Awesome! I can dive off the rock waterfall!" and I walked over and dove off the rock waterfall and my hands sort of grazed the incline from the deep end to the shallow end, but I recognized that might happen and made sure I did a shallow dive, but then when I emerged from underwater everyone was yelling at me-- they were saying the opposite of what I heard: "Terry just said NOT to dive off the rock waterfall!" and I was like "what?" but I guess I was underwater for most of Terry's story and then when I popped up all I heard was the end of a statement that probably went something like this: "my crazy seven-year-old dives off the waterfall and it's only six feet deep so it's totally dangerous, but he won't listen to me, he's going to break his neck . . . I mean, maybe if you move to the side it's a little safer to dive off those rocks next to the waterfall, but it's still not safe, it's too shallow but if you're as crazy as my son Caleb and you want to badly injure yourself then"-- and here's where I must have surfaced-- "you can go ahead and dive off the waterfall" so I think the moral here is that if you put a bunch of qualifiers in front of a statement, understand that if someone is underwater for the first half of your sentence, they could really fuck themselves up.

Pickleball . . . More like Clique-el-ball

Let's bask in the beauty of the title of this post for a moment because the rest of this experience will probably be a letdown . . . after all, no one wants to hear about another bald-goateed-fifty-something's pickleball exploits, but this is my blog and my life, and now that I've finally purchased a used car, I'm using the used car . . . 

so yesterday my buddy Jesse-- an EB grad who seems to play pickleball three hours a day, got me an invite to an impromptu tournament run by Ming's pickleball TeamReach group, a highly organized, tightly run group of quality players-- a dynasty of pickleball, if you will-- that mainly plays in Fords . . . and in this ten team tourney, you got. partner randomly assigned to you-- but they tried to make the teams fair-- so I was paired with this dude Kyle, a tall athletic 30-year-old bartender who was a little hungover and operating on three hours of sleep-- they knew I was a solid player but perhaps thought I wasn't as spry and athletic as some of the other folks because I'm on the older side (and not as slim as many of these pickleball guys) but if you pair me with a tall athlete, even if he's a little rough around the edges, there's going to be trouble-- so we went undefeated in group play, winning five or six and row, and ensuring top seed and then we had a close game in the semi-final-- one of the players was excellent, but we had beaten them once in group play and knew how to target the other guy-- and then we won the final game 11-1 . . . same deal, one excellent player and one mediocre player and then Kyle and I were awarded a first place medal and I was given the official invite to the group-- the secret password to the TeamReach account-- so I'm glad to be a part of that crew and will get to play some excellent pickleball with them . . .

then this morning, I was given the OK to return to my brother's elite 4.5 group that plays sometimes on Saturday morning-- I played with them a few weeks ago and I did well, so I was invited back-- but this is a weird world-- so when I was playing this morning I saw this guy Don I had played with a few times with my brother in the past when I was down at Veteran's Park and Don and I recently decided we were going to play a tournament together-- at the 4.0 level . . . I've never played in an official tournament (and I've only played in one unofficial tournament, which I won) and then he was like "I'm trying to sneak into this group because I didn't get an invite, even though I've played with these guys!" and I was like WTF, now I'm involved in some cliquey bullshit-- but I got him into a few games because I said we were going to play a tournament together . . . still, I was kind of amazed at the weird insularity of these pickleball groups-- Don is an excellent player but maybe he doesn't have a 4.5 rating, I don't know-- because I have no rating because I haven't played in any official tournaments, I was just lucky to have my brother vouching for me but Don and I played quite well against some great players so maybe I helped him get into this group or maybe I've doomed myself because I stirred the pot and got out of my lane and all those metaphors, and I'll never be asked back again . . . if you ask my wife, I'm the guy who always invites everyone, I hate excluding people-- especially the one black guy, and Don is the one black guy . . . not that this is a lily-white crew by any means, Indian guys and Turkish guys and Asian guys, so don't get me wrong, there's no racism going on here, pickleball is very inclusive of social class, ethnicity, race, etcetera . . . more so than perhaps any other sport-- because with pick-up basketball you can get some reverse-racism--  but I digress, and I guess the moral here is if you want really good pickleball games you've got to have some organizer like Ming or whoever organizes my brother's group and they need to be a bit exclusionary . . . so once again we return full circle to my fucking brilliant title of this post.

Used Car Shopping: Phase FOUR!

Though my wife and I were feeling beaten and beleaguered by our used car shopping expeditions, we got on the road again this morning, hoping to seal a deal . . . we headed back to the Raceway Kia in Freehold, the first dealership we visited on our tour of New Jersey, and where we thought we had a decent deal pending on a red 2020 Kia Sportage Ex which was in good shape and had new tires-- we didn't love the initial salesman that we interacted with, he was a bit abrasive and pushy, but the manager seemed was a cool guy and got us near where we wanted to be-- $21,500 out-the-door . . . and my pickleball buddy Tony, a used car purchaser and salesman said this was a very good price, which we had confirmed by checking out 2020 Kia Sportages all around the Garden State-- many of which did not run orr smelled like cat pee-- but when we checked on this particular car in the morning, the price had mysteriously gone up by two grand, so we expected the worst-- although the dealership did have an S model from 2021 which we thought might also fit our needs, but that only had 25k miles on it and it was a year newer so we didn't know if that would be in our price ballpark-- anyway, when we got there, our initial salesman hadn't gotten into work yet-- he was late, and the manager Ufuoma took care of us for a bit and told us to give this guy some shit for being late-- then when he did get in, he told us the red Sportage was sold and gone, but we could take a look at the other car-- but my wife's Spidey-Sense alerted her to some possible subterfuge-- this dude didn't check his computer he just cavalierly said the car was no longer available-- and so while he was going to get the other car, we checked online and then gave a quick call to the other side of the road, Raceway Nissan and apparently the red Sportage was NOT sold, it was still available-- and we told Ufuama the manager this and he was pretty pissed off at his late abrasive sales guy and there was some conflict when he got back and my wife said that she really hadn't liked this guy from the get-go and he said, "I'm right here! You're talking about me in front of me" but that's how it goes in these used car dealerships, they're set up for drama-- so then we were handed over to another young man, who was the first guy into work and the first guy that greeted us, and he turned out to be an East Brunswick graduate-- the school I teach at-- so we hit it off, but once we got down to nuts-and-bolts it turned out that the general manager would NOT approve the $21,500 on the red 2020 model, Ufuoma's price was TOO aggressive and so we thought we were back to square one, but we said how about the 2021 S model, which still had everything we needed-- but no keyless entry and no powered rear hatch-- which we did NOT care about, we just wanted roof racks-- and then the CLIPBOARD came into play-- I had been taking copious notes on a clipboard and although they could have all been bullshit, they were not, and Ufuoma took a look at the clipboard and what the Honda place in Old Bridge offered us on a 2020 S . . . $21, 342 and he said, "If I can do close to that, what do you think?" so we drove the 2021 S and it drove well and was immaculately kept and had a clean CarFax and we did all the wacky bullshit and at some point we all hugged it out-- Ufuoma is a very amicable and very jacked dude . . . in fact, so was the East Brunswick grad sales guy-- he showed us some videos of him working out with some ripped Instagram influencers-- and I should say that there were some pretty clear gender roles in the used car world-- the salesmen are bros and the service guys are dudes and the money and clerical people are nice ladies-- absurd-- and I should also say that we spent WAY too much time in these places, including nearly five hours to finalize all this and we all learned way too much about everyone and everything in this dealership, but we ended up getting a deal that made us all happy, we paid $21,750 out-the-door for a gray 2021 Kia Sportage S with 25k miles on it, but it was not fun and it was not easy and there was more hugging than I'm normally comfortable with, but I like the way the car drives, I like the dashboard, and the color and type of car is definitely an under-the-radar type model, so I'll have no problem sneaking out of work early, without being identified, which is the main reason to own your own car.