I'm Talking 'Bout Mexican Jell-O, Jell-O o o

Who knew that Mexican jello is far superior-- more rigid, firm, and flavorful-- than American Jell-O?

Can't Get There From Here

If you're looking for podcasts about strange stuff happening in small towns (and you've already listened to S-Town and taken an audio tour of Woodstock, Alabama) then you can't do better than these two:

1) Hysterical . . .  this one investigates a spate of oddball symptoms-- tics, verbal outbursts, twitching, spasms-- that spread virally through the girls in an upstate New York high school in the town of LeRoy-- and the question is: was this mass hysteria, otherwise known as conversion disorder? or was it due to toxic chemicals or something environmental? a great one if you love The Crucible and the Salem Witch trials;

2) Cement City . . . two journalists stumble into a dying Pennsylvania town-- Donara, home to the Donara Smog Museum, which memorializes the Donora Smog of 1948, an air inversion containing fluorine that killed twenty people-- and they buy a house? a house made completely of concrete? and  they get caught up in town politics and what it's like to live in a place with no bank, no grocery store, and no school, but a whole lot of camaraderie;

and while I recognize that these podcasts are presenting a very thin sliver of what it's like to live in a place that does NOT feel like it's the center of the world, and these podcasters have cherry-picked extremely interesting narratives of truly oddball events and these small towns just happen to be the setting, it's still really interesting to inhabit places like these, places that I will probably never truly understand, because I live in a fast-paced, densely populated, and expensive region of the country, with all the amenities and conveniences and ethnic restaurants and parks and high-end grocery stores and sky-high real-estate prices and even if I were to move to an out of the way rural kind of place, I'd never be able to pass as a local . . . you can take the guy out of Jersey, but you can't take the Jersey out of the guy.

A Head Full of Choices (and Ghosts)

A Head Full of Ghosts, by Paul Tremblay, is a genuinely scary (and very transparent) pastiche of Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle, The Exorcist, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" . . . with some modern touches (including a very entertaining blog, written by the lone survivor from the family, Merry-- who mistakenly poisoned her family, while being manipulated by her possibly possessed or possibly mentally ill sister . . . or was the poisoning a mistake? or was Merry possessed? or was the whole family possessed? or was it all a stunt for reality TV? you'll have to read it-- if you dare-- and then decide for yourself).

Dave Does Holden Caulfield Doing Dave on Selling Sunset

Today in my sophomore honors English class, we are having an "emulate Holden Caulfield's voice but write about something modern" but I don't think anyone will write anything as perfect as my model-- in fact, the kids might be so dazzled by it that they might not write anything at all, for fear of not living up to the high standard that I have set-- anyway, my wife likes to watch a reality TV show called Selling Sunset, wherein a bunch of hot ditzy real estate agents flirt and drink and occasionally sell multi-millionaire dollar homes-- and even though I know the show is totally stupid, sometimes I sit down and watch it with her, fully realizing that the tactic used by the agency-- using sex to sell-- is not only working on the people buying houses inside the show, but it is also working on me . . . so here is this topic, from Holden Caulfield's perspective:

The thing that gives me a real pain in the ass is reality TV. If you weren’t aware, it’s not real. It’s phony. But people pretend like it’s real. And if you tell them it’s phony, then they get all touchy and offended, even though deep down they know it’s phony. So if you want to stay alive, you can’t tell people that. And all summer, my mom sat on the couch and smoked cigarettes and watched this show Selling Sunset. My mom has been very nervous since Allie died, and the cigarettes and the TV calm her down. Selling Sunset is about two brothers, twins, Jason and Brett and they run a very high-class real estate agency in Hollywood. They sell very expensive houses to very rich people. It would make you sick to see these houses. Some people don’t have a house at all, or even an apartment, but other people get to live in a mansion. It’s not fair, for chrissakes, but these people don’t seem to realize that state of affairs when they pay twenty million dollars for a house. 

But that’s not even the worst part of the show. The phoniest part of the show is that these twin brothers, they employ very sexy women to do their selling. I have to admit, they are very sexy– and very flirtatious too. But they’re kind of stupid, or maybe worse, they’re pretending to be stupid. But people like to buy houses from these women because they act stupid and flirtatious and wear very tight dresses. They dress like burlesque dancers, because they’re always on camera, but they work in a professional office. And the two brothers, Jason and Brett, they treat this as normal business. And the worst part is that their method works. It works on the guys buying houses and it even worked on me. I’d see my mom watching this show, flicking her ashes into the glass ashtray on the end table, and I would sit down and watch it with her, even though I knew it was stupid and phony, but I’d watch because the women were so good-looking and they were wearing such tight outfits. The only good thing is I think my mother liked having me there, watching the show, even though she knew it was stupid. That was part of the reason I would watch it with her. But it wasn't the only reason, it was also for those women showing off in their tight dresses, good-looking women kill me, they really do.

Stupid Lunar Calendar

We finally have off from school for Rosh Hashanah . . . and it's about time.

Hey Kid, You Know About Google?

My son Ian spends plenty of time on his phone, but I'm not really sure he understands its capabilities because he's always asking me oddball questions-- questions about furniture restoration, amplifiers and subwoofers, and-- today-- how to preserve a crayfish in a jar . . . I usually humor him for a moment and say some bullshit before I'm like: "I have no fucking clue . . . why don't you Google that?" and he gets a definitive answer (and so I take no credit for the fabulous job he did restoring this old cabinet he procured for free on garage sale day).

What's on the Menu? Pain

A rainy miserable Sunday and a rainy miserable Jets game, so my wife and I decided to watch The Menu- a satirically horrific haute cuisine film in which a bunch of rich people gets their just deserts . . . or perhaps they're just desserts-- typographical pun intended-- which is exactly what they deserve . . . the film is beautifully shot: a crisp, lavish, and grotesque send-up of the upper class, an amalgamation of The Bear, Triangle of Sadness and Saw-- Ralph Fiennes is compelling and tortured and you can't help rooting for Anya Taylor-Joy . . . a messy but satisfying meal.

Dave = Mr. Green?

Despite the wet weather the past few days, I've continued my greenery project: removing dead and unsightly maple and Leyland cypress branches; planting clover in the backyard; cultivating moss along the borders of the yard; and transplanting some clumping bamboo to the spots I cleared out with my buddy Connell's little chainsaw . . . so I think I've earned the title Mr. Green and no longer have to suffer as Mr. Orange (but we'll see if I can convince my recalcitrant student).

Why Do I Have to Be Mr. Orange?

This morning during first-period senior English class, I made the font on my projected whiteboard announcement extremely small, so small that the kids couldn't read it, and then I started talking very obtusely about writing while drawing some cryptic and vague symbols on the whiteboard, and then I went behind the projection screen and drew something but neglected to pull the screen up to show the students what I drew and then I talked in circles a bit more, pausing at one point to slowly drink my coffee-- and once the students reached the required state of befuddlement, I enlarged the projection so they could see that we were working on the openings of our personal narratives and our goal was to write a strong, specific, compelling, and suspenseful opening-- unlike the piece of performance art that I had just perfectly executed-- and they actually got the joke, which was nice-- oftentimes kids just don't get my brilliance-- and then we looked at iconic openings of books and songs and successful introductions to actual college essays and then they wrote their own and while I was talking to one student, who was writing about a person ahe knew in middle school who embodied the color red, I made the mistake of asking her what color she thought I embodied and she stared at me for a beat and and said, "When I look at you, I see orange" and I said, "Orange? Ugh . . . I hate the color orange! I don't want to be orange!" and she said, "Well, then maybe yellow" and I was like: "Yellow! That's just as bad, I hate yellow too . . . can't I be green or black or blue?" and she said, "Black isn't a color and no that's not you" and then I realized what the fuck was going on, I realized that we were reenacting, by accident, but perhaps subconsciously and definitely serendipitously, so perfectly serendipitously, the "Mr. Pink" scene from Reservoir Dogs and so I showed them the scene and we all agreed that you really can't choose your own color because everyone will want to be Mr. Black.

Horror Movies Have Rules, Don't They?

The Scream franchise suggested some rules about horror movies:

The first movie taught us how to survive a basic horror film . . .

Rule #1: Never have sex
Rule #2: Never drink or do drugs
Rule #3: Never ever say, “I’ll be right back”

the sequel, Scream 2, reminded us that things change in the sequel . . .

--The body count is always higher
--more blood and carnage
--Never assume the killer is dead

and Scream 3 gave us tips on surviving the final chapter of a horror franchise . . .

The killer is superhuman
Anyone, including the main character, can die
The past will come back to haunt you

and Paul Tremblay's new book Horror Movie plays with all these rules-- and this makes sense because he is balancing three timelines so we're going to need three kinds of horror; the first time period is 1993, when some young auteurs decide to film a low-budget, artsy horror movie and things go horribly wrong; then there are moments from the next fifteen years, as the legend of the "cursed film" grows; and finally, a reboot of this cursed film that was never released, though a few scenes were leaked on YouTube-- and the reboot will contain a cameo from the one surviving actor from the original, the Thin Kid . . . and the screenplay of this cursed horror movie is interspersed between scenes from these three time periods and the screenplay is both aware of the rules of horror and circumscribed by them . . . as is the novel-- this is the first Paul Tremblay book I've ever read  and I truly enjoyed it (and now I'm reading The Cabin at the End of the World and that one is even more compelling-- both books highly recommended if you like the horror genre).

You Might Want to Refinish the Basement of Your Nest

The subtext of this episode of The Daily: How the Cost of Housing Became So Crushing is this: your children are never moving out . . . you might even think you're an empty nester-- because your kids have flown away to college-- but once they graduate, they're probably going to squeeze back into the nest because housing costs are so exorbitant and there's not enough low-cost housing (and they're not cute little fledglings anymore, they're gawky full-sized birds).

Hands Like Feet, Feet Like Hands?

Low numbers for early morning basketball-- we started with nine but Mcinerney pulled his hamstring-- so we played full-court four-on-four with no subs and it was freewheeling and chaotic, which resulted in me having to occasionally dribble the ball for prolonged periods of time . . . and this cemented the counter-intuitive and absurd fact that I am better at dribbling a ball with my feet than with my hands.

Chainsawing . . .

Once you start chainsawing, it's hard to stop chainsawing (and I wish I still had my van-- it's taking multiple trips with the Sportage to illegally dump all these branches in the park dumpsters).

Mistook!

Yesterday afternoon (or yesternight, as Shakespeare would have it) we went to the Grant Avenue Block Party and I played some cornhole and drank some beers and then it got too dark to play cornhole and I was getting kind of tired so I walked over to my wife, who was in a circle of women under the canopy, embroiled in a conversation, to check and see if I should grab another beer or if she was ready to go and I slid my arm around her, familiarly-- or perhaps even a step past familiarly, as this was my wife-- and then the two of us realized that this was NOT my wife, this was my wife's doppelganger . . . or certainly her doppelganger in this particular instance, in this particular lighting-- and while I was very embarrassed to have sidled up to this lady-- who I do know in passing from soccer and other town stuff-- and put my arm around her, in my defense, she was wearing the same white tank top as my wife; she has the same toned, tan, and freckled left arm as my wife; she was wearing similar glasses to my wife; she has blonde hair like my wife; she was gesticulating in an animated fashion, as my wife is wont to do; and from the angle I approached, she really looked like my wife . . . enough so that I went and found my wife and positioned her in the same spot, next to this woman, so that I could convince myself (and the other people who saw this awkward encounter) that it was a logical mistake and we all agreed that the resemblance was uncanny (and if you enjoy this theme, this recent incident complements this absurd moment of mistaken identity at the gym, from over a decade ago, quite nicely).

Longlegs

Maikia Monroe does a bang-up job playing Lee Harker, the "half psychic" FBI agent, in the horror film Longlegs and while the movie didn't make perfect sense to me, I don't think it was supposed to make perfect sense-- the cinematography is unsettling; the 70s vibe is grainy and the color scheme is dark sepia mahogany; Nicholas Cage is a freakshow as the titular character; and Lee Harker lives in a very spooky wood cabin/house in the Pacific Northwest . . . so scary enough, and sufficiently creepy and moody to keep Cat, Ian, Ian's girlfriend, and me entranced and moderately freaked out throughout.

Despite Our Best Efforts . . .

On Thursday the guidance department "pushed in" to my three senior English classes for half the block to counsel the students on how to apply to college and I recognize that this is a fairly intense and stressful presentation for the students; guidance covers applications, recommendations, college essays, self-reported grading, and all kinds of other clerical tasks that are required when you apply to college, so when I teach the second half of the block, I always try to lighten the mood . . . I play a bit of the This American Life episode "The Old College Try", the part when Rick Clark, the director of admissions from Georgia Tech describes some insane parent emails and how awful most college essay are . . . and during this segment, Clark reviews an email from the parents of a second grader who are already seeking suggestions on how to get their future electrical engineer-- who would prefer a southern culture instead off MIT-- into Georgie Tech . . . and these insane parents claim that their son "will be an Eagle scout by then," which is quite a prediction, considering the dedication and time that it takes to earn all those badges . . . so I asked my students if their parents had any success influencing them in some pursuit, any pursuit-- a sport, musical instrument, pastime, hobby, TV show, movie . . . anything . . . and in three classes there was a surprising, a shocking, lack of influence from parents-- most kids would concede zero influence in their pursuits, but there were a few who admitted some limited influence: one kid enjoyed Dumb and Dumber, which his dad made him watch; another played the drums for a bit and then quit; a senior boy got his love of '90s grunge rock from his mom; and a few kids admitted that they tried to play a sport that their parents liked, but almost all of them quit; and there was actually one kid who was persuaded to continue Scouts during COVID and he's closing in on Eagle Scout status . . . but these few were the exceptions that proved the rule; in all my years teaching, I had never asked this question in class and I found the answers profoundly disturbing-- I may need to do a larger study-- because it seems, despite all our efforts, parents have remarkably little influence on their children (and it actually made me feel quite lucky that my kids played tennis and soccer all the way through high school and both still enjoy basketball . . . I wish they kept up with music and read more literature, but I also got to enjoy quite a few good movies and high-quality TV shows with them and they both still enjoy watching a decent movie . . . and I guess that's all you can ask for, it's better than zero influence, which seems to be the default in this very small, very anecdotal study).

In the Ear? Again?

On Sunday evening, after the Giant's pathetic loss to the Commanders, my wife and I watched an episode of Fringe-- on DVD -- and then we wanted to watch an episode of English Teacher-- which I had saved on YouTubeTV . . . and switching from our DVD player to the Firestick requires some button pressing and digital navigation and when I was halfway done with this task, perusing the array of choices on the YoutubeTV home screen, I remembered that my brother had sent me a text earlier that mentioned another Trump assassination attempt and I saw an image related to that event on our TV so I mentioned my brother's text to my wife and clicked on the image with Trump and we started watching a news brief about the assassination attempt . . . and after a few moments of watching this: Trump at a rally, dodging gunfire, raising his fist in triumph, his face blood-streaked face and his ear blood-soaked, my wife said:

"He got shot in the ear again?"

and I was like: "I guess so . . . I guess if you're aiming for his head there's a good chance you'll hit an ear"

and then my wife said, "Wait, he got shot in the ear and one person behind him got killed again? that's a crazy coincidence"

and I was like: "I don't think anyone behind him is dead, there's no commotion behind him"

and my wife said, "It feels like we're going back in time . . . wait, the time on this isn't right, it's not 9:45!"

and then I realized that I had clicked on an old news report of the previous Trump assassination attempt-- and I had never seen the footage so it was all new to me-- and then my wife took the remote control from me and said I was no longer authorized to use it.

That's Not Where That Belongs

When I looked out my bathroom window yesterday afternoon and saw a piece of furniture on my roof, a wooden stool, I instantly knew this was due to the fact that we have a nineteen-year-old man-child living in our house-- our youngest son Ian-- and so I texted him to find out exactly why this wooden stool was perched on our roof and he said wasps were coming into his room and he was looking for the nest . . . but I wonder if he was taking our "no smoking of any kind or any substance in the house" rule rather literally-- although he insists that is not the case (but would you trust a nineteen-year-old-man-child?)

 

Dave Silences the Angry Mob!

At the start of Monday's department meeting, I had a moment of conversational triumph that made me quite happy-- it doesn't rival this anecdote, but it's still one of the rare times when I said the right thing at the right time-- all the English teachers were assembling in Stacey's room for the meeting and it was HOT in there and she didn't have any windows open nor did she have her AC on (which I understand, the thing sounds like a jet engine) so I climbed up on the radiator and started opening windows-- which is awkward and dangerous but it's the only way to get the upper windows open-- and while I was clambering around up there, I was also complaining loudly-- and everyone else was complaining about me, complaining that I was complaining too much, that I was causing a ruckus, that I was going to kill myself or knock over a bunch of Stacey's school stuff that was stacked on the radiator . . . and then Krystina walked into the room, waving her hands around her flushed face, complaining about how hot it was and nobody yelled at her-- they empathized with her and treated her kindly (this is typical behavior in my department, the other day when I played some King Gizzard and the Wizard Lizard for Stacey and Cunningham while we were driving to Wawa, they yelled at me the whole ride for "inflicting" this awful music on their ears but when I told them that Matt liked King Gizzard-- Matt is a very nice and intelligent middle-aged lawyer/finance guy who went to Princeton and is now taking up teaching-- they were like: "oh, it's probably music for smart people and we didn't get it") and then, after seeing how hot and bothered Kyrstina was, I had an epiphany, which I loudly delivered from my lofty perch to the room full of teachers and my boss, "Let's remember what our new principal said on the first day of school: Maslow before Bloom!" and everyone was shamed into silence because they remembered this moment from the opening meeting and it's true: you can't focus and learn anything when you're sweating, sticky and uncomfortable, Maslow's hierarchy of needs comes before Bloom's taxonomy of intellectual thought.

Dig This

Spotify's infinite algorithmic bounty (which is as overwhelming as it is generous) recently introduced me to the psychedelic pop/rock of White Fence, but the album I'm obsessed with-- Hair-- is one layer deeper-- as it is a collaboration between White Fence and another musician I was not familiar with: Ty Segall . . . anyway, Hair is a garage psychedelia masterpiece, rapidly moving from jangly pop to overdriven fuzz to deconstructed punk, often without transition-- and the vibe is simultaneously counterculture relic and indie rock experiment, a real treat.