This morning, while I was in the produce aisle at ShopRite, doing the grocery shopping so my wife could relax on Mother's Day, I overheard several women chatting, and they were wondering why the hell they were grocery shopping instead of their husbands-- and I almost said something to them but then thought better of it.
If You Trace a Pair of Shoes, They Look Like a Pair of Testicles
If you ask twenty-one fifth-graders to trace their shadows on the school playground blacktop-- as my wife's colleague did-- then you might end up with twenty-one drawings that look vaguely phallic-- which is troublesome if all the parents are coming to school for the Spring Concert (which they were).
Stay in Your Seat
Sinners is worth seeing in the movie theater, mainly because of one particular musical scene-- and the bulk of the film is a highly entertaining genre mash-up . . . though the final horror sequence is a bit forced, but the best scene happens after the final credits start to roll, so even though the runtime is long, be patient and watch the ending, it's worth it.
Nothing is More Annoying Than a Semi-Super-Power
I'm listening to the new Revisionist History podcast about face blindness, which got me curious-- am I a "super-recognizer"-- I certainly think I'm quite good at recognizing faces-- as a teacher, you need this skill-- and so I took a couple of online tests and what I learned is that while I'm probably not a "super-recognizer," I am quite a bit above average at recognizing faces, according to the two tests I took-- and this makes perfect sense, because I think I'm a super-recognizer, especially when my wife and I are watching TV and I always think I've seen every actor is some other show-- and most of the time I am right, but sometimes I am wrong (and I annoy my wife with this half-assed superpower every time I go down this rabbit hole).
It Is Act Five!
We started Hamlet today in my senior classes, and I taught them a few basic things about Shakespeare and his works, including the fact that all Shakespeare plays have five acts-- and that all the good stuff happens in Act Five . . . and one student asked if it was Act Five of the school year yet and I did some back-of-the-envelope calculations in my head (so my consciousness was the envelope?) and then I said, "Yes, it is Act Five!"
Prophetic Fallacy
I am teaching my sophomores The Great Gatsby and today we acted out scenes from Chapter Five-- the section when Nick arranges for Gatsby to meet with Daisy at Nick's little house for tea, the first time they've seen each other in five years-- and at first Gatsby and Daisy are awkward and embarrassed, while it is raining-- but then: pathetic fallacy alert!-- then the old chemistry comes back and the sun, empathetic to their emotions-- starts to shine (which is a fallacy, the weather does not give a shit about your emotions) so I made sure to have a student play the weather in that scene-- and he's a tall kid so he loomed over the other two actors, it was fantastic-- and then the natural world reflected the book; I stayed up to late last night watching the Knicks' epic comeback against Boston, then dragged myself out of bed for 6:30 AM basketball-- and it was a dark and rainy gloomy day and I was tired and hungry and had a headache from the humidity-- but I went to acupuncture after school, which usually loosens me up and when I got out of acupunture, lo and behind! the sun was shining, and there was a cool breeze, and I was able to sit on the deck in the sun and read my thoroughly joyful and entertaining book (Boy's Life by Robert R. McCammon) so perhaps the pathetic fallacy is not a complete fallacy, it's just selective and relative-- the weather is always expressing someone's emotions, it just might not be yours.
First Period Epiphany
This morning we were discussing the ornithologist Richard O. Prum's text about Darwin's oft-ignored theory of sexual selection and its radical consequences, and I realized that Gatsby is the ultimate bowerbird-- his absurd mansion across the Manhasset Bay from Tom and Daisy's house-- so situated to attract her attention, is the ultimate mating gesture . . . and perhaps if he had a real job and had to worry about survival a bit more, he wouldn't have had the time and energy to enter this realm of ornamental extravagance.
More Celebrating My Dad's Life
Yesterday was the second iteration of my dad's Celebration of Life . . . we had an incredible turnout-- Father Tom, my cousin Greg, and a few of my dad's old friends (and of course, me, my brother and my kids) spoke and reminisced and said wonderful things about my dad-- and though it was something of a somber occasion, my college and high school buddies brought some joy to the weekend (plus we saw a band at Pino's that opened with Sugar's "Hoover Dam," a favorite and quite a rarity).
The Kentuck Derby Gets Political
Thoughts inspired by my buddy Rob: Sovereignty defeats Journalism . . . appropriate, timely, and poignant.
Stream of Consciousness
My buddy Whitney just arrived, so I figured I'd give him a crack at the sentence, so I asked him for something quotable to write, and he said, "Let me think about that while I urinate"-- but then he did come through with some interesting information a bit later: he taught me to pour a Guiness out of the can and into the cold mug quickly, not slowly and then the head dissipates-- a method unlike how you pour any other kind of beer.
Note to Self: They Are Called Samaras and I Hate Them
Every spring, I am shocked by the amount of maple tree helicopter whiriligig things that accumulate in my backyard and on my porch and, consequently, in my home-- either I track them in on my shoes or they slip in because we keep the sliding glass door open most of the time (we have a magnetic screen, which keeps the bugs out and allows the dog free reign of the porch and yard) and every year I am also shocked that there is a technical name for these whirligig helicopter thingies: samaras-- but I guess they eventually disappear-- where the fuck do they go?-- and I eventually forget the name for them . . . until spring inevitably returns.
The Old Man Speaks His Mind
I decided today, while I was trying to teach the children, that I kind of wish this whole internet thing . . . the digital revolution, AI, Google searches, cell phones, personal computing devices, all of it . . . that maybe we'd all be better off if it never happened-- while there's more information available than ever, I think it's made the children scatter-brained and ignorant and I think we were all smarter when we were reading books, magazines, and newspapers-- but, unfortunately, I can't turn back the clock so I'm probably just going to be grouchy until I retire.
Roofman!
It's probably best to listen to the Criminal podcast "The Roofman" parts 1 and 2, which tells the story of Jeffrey Manchester, the notoriously clever (and polite) rooftop-entry robber who finally gets captured, but escapes prison, and then lives inside a Toys 'R 'Us and abandoned electronics store next to the Toys 'R' Us for months and months . . . it's a story too good to be true, but listen to the real story before the film version comes out and overly romanticizes it all-- the film stars Channing Tatum and Kirsten Dunst-- so you know what's going to happen between those two . . . I'm sure the story is better told by Phoebe Judge's measured and neutral narration.
The Animals are Acting Like Animals
Yesterday, I was walking the dog in the park, along the treeline, and an old dude with a white beard approached me and said I shouldn't continue in the direction I was headed because there was a rabid skunk over there-- it was reeling and stumbling and out in the daytime and definitely ill . . . meanwhile, at school, most mornings this spring, an angry male robin who lives in the courtyard bordering my room alights on the windowsill near my desk and attacks his reflection in the window, often disrupting the learning with his incessant pecking on the window-- and apparently this is quite common, a territorial maneuver instinctually designed to fend off other male rivals-- and sometimes birds do this to side-view car mirrors and break the glass-- but even though I've explained this to my Creative Writing class, they are kind souls and think the bird is asking to come inside and they want to let him in and feed him, an idea which I have rejected soundly . . . but I did offer a student the option of sitting outside in the courtyard near the window and attending class that way, because I would love to see the bird attack this silly little sophomore.
This Novel Has Got It All!
If you're a sucker for dinosaurs and charismatic megafauna, and you are curious about the legal and political ramifications of time travel, then Clifford D. Simak's sci-fi novel Mastodonia is the book for you.
She's Back (and Fuggier Than Ever)
A couple of weather-related observations:
1) this year, many of my high school students have terrible allergies-- the worst I've seen in my many years teaching . . . even though the weather was beautiful all week, we couldn't really walk very far outside before kids started sneezing and itching and coughing and getting bright red eyes-- not sure if this is a new thing because this generation of kids never goes outside . . . right now it's purely anecdotal evidence;
2) after a prolonged absence, the star of New Jersey weather is back, your hostess with the dampness . . . Mrs. Moist Humidity has returned and taken center stage, as she always does-- and I always forget over the winter just what it's like when it gets soupy and clammy and my feet get so sticky that I won't even attempt to put socks on . . . yuck . . . but perhaps the humidity will impede all the pollen from floating around and my students won't be sneezing as much this week.
An Old Dave Learns New Tricks
I've learned three new things recently:
1) my wife taught me about this weekly workout schedule, and I've adopted it and it seems to be working-- my knee doesn't hurt, and I'm always sore, so those are good signs;
2) I listened to a podcast about the power of NEAT-- NEAT stands for non-exercise activity thermogenesis and basically encompasses all the random walking, standing, fidgeting, and daily movement you do and apparently this makes a HUGE difference in how many calories you burn during the day-- plus, if you take a fifteen minute stroll after you eat a meal, you really lower your glucose and blood sugar levels-- so I've implemented both these strategies and I've actually lost a few pounds (without going on Ozempic, which is what it seems like everyone is doing-- but I really like my big round butt, so I'm not messing with that shit)
3) AND I learned something else today, and I came up with this out of the blue in the middle of teaching-- so here's the scenario: sometimes I have the projector on but I want kids to write stuff on the whiteboard so instead of having whatever Canvas announcements I have projected, I just want whiteness-- I don't want to shut off the projector because it takes a while to turn it back on-- so I search up a white background on Google and I project that version of whiteness and then the kids can write on the whiteboard and their writing is not obscured by the projection-- because it's white-- but today I had an epiphany, and instead of searching up a white picture, which is always weird and has borders, instead of doing that, I chose a little bit of white space that was already on the screen and I used my fingers on my touchscreen and I just kept expanding that white space until the projector was just projecting all this expanded whiteness onto the board-- and then I made the students tell me I was brilliant . . . but the real question is: will I remember to do this the next time I want to project whiteness?
D.P. Phone Home
So yesterday I believed that my crappy-Android-phone fell out of my pants pocket and was lying prone on the pavement in the high school parking lot, most likely run over by automobiles multiple times-- and once I realized this, when I got home from school, I decided not to drive back to the school and rescue my phone from this fate because
1) I hate driving
2) my phone is an ancient piece of shit
3) pickleball--
so I figured I would leave it to whatever fate befell it and then when I got to school today, I would see if someone picked it up and turned it in or if it was still intact on the ground near my parking spot-- but when I used Find My Android this morning, Google no longer reported my phone being in the school parking lot but instead just outside my house . . . weird . . . and so I thought maybe it fell out of my car when I got home-- and this would explain why the podcast played all the way home yesterday-- so I set my phone to ring and then went outside and it turned out my phone was not outside my car, but inside it-- it fell down under the driver seat-- and while I swore I looked in the car yesterday, I guess I didn't look in this spot and I also think I should get a different colored phone case (mine is black) because it blends in with the interior of my car and the main thing about this stupid incident is I won't be getting on iPhone anytime soon so for the foreseeable future my wife will have to deal with all the GIFs in the basketball group chat.
What Comes Around Phones Around
I confiscated a student's phone today, which is always an ordeal, but it's the fourth quarter, and at this point, they should know better-- and then when I got home from work, I couldn't find my phone-- but I knew it was either in the house or in the car because I listened to a podcast on the way home . . . but when I used Find My Android, the computer reported that my phone was still in the East Brunswick High School parking lot . . . which was weird but I guess my car downloaded the podcast and played it even though my phone fell out of my pocket-- and it definitely fell out of my pocket because I had it in this weird little phone pocket in my work pants-- usually I wear cargo pants that have velcro sealed pockets but I have this one pair of Dickie's pants with a weird little open pocket and this morning, I was going to put my wallet in it this little pocket but I was like: "my wallet's going to fall out of this stupid pocket" and so I put my phone in the stupid pocket, because I don't care about my cheap-piece-of-shit-Android-phone and it turns out I made a good decision . . . and I didn't feel like driving back to school and searching for my phone because I had a pickleball commitment so I'll find out tomorrow if my phone is intact and in the parking lot, or crushed in the parking lot, or in the school office-- and if it's crushed or lost, then perhaps I will get an iPhone so I can join the AM basketball group chat and my wife won't have to get so many stupid GIFs from all my basketball buddies.
Who's Pipe Burst?
Yesterday, I had to return to teaching, but my wife's school had the day off . . . although it was not much of a day off for her-- she had to wait around for both Steve the Appliance Doctor AND the Rob and Keith the plumbers-- and while Steve the Appliance Doctor healed our fridge's drain blockage without too much trouble, the plumbing job-- which involved replacing a leaky portion of our main sewage line-- was a bit trickier . . . apparently they couldn't find the main water shut-off and so I was receiving texts about this at work during lunch and frantically trying to remember which valve shut off all the water but then my wife texted me that something was wrong with the washer and that seemed strange, but maybe the shut-off valve was behind the washer?-- but something was stripped back there and it was a problem-- so now I was very concerned that we'd also need a new washer/dryer combination, which was expensive and very very difficult to get into our basement-- and when I got home, my wife tried to explain all the different things that were done to our house and appliances, and all the things that needed to be done to our house and appliances, but I was very tired from my first day teaching and kind of spaced out and our conversation turned into a home-owner's version of the Abbott and Costello bit "who's on first?" . . . I kept asking if they found the shut off valve and my wife kept saying something about the washer and the little closet and I was like "behind the washer?" and she was like "not THE washer, a washer" and I was like "what?" and then she said "I never said THE washer . . . I said a washer was stripped" and I went back to her text messages and she actually DID say "something with the washer is stripped" and I misintepreted this message and thought there was something wrong with our washer/dryer but it was actually the other kind of washer, a small flat metal ring, in the main water shut-off . . . so now they're going to have to shut the water off at the street juncture so they can fix this stripped washer in the main water shut off valve, which is not nearly as funny as the "who's on first?" routine.
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