Hey Michael Lewis! In A Book Titled Boomerang, Shouldn't You Visit Australia?

In his new book Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World, Michael Lewis is more cavalier with is opinions than he was in his last book, the longer and denser The Big Short . . . Boomerang is more of a travelogue with some finance thrown in, and at times you get the feel that he's winging it, relying on his good name in each country, but he's an engaging writer and the book is a lot of fun-- considering it's about a depressing topic-- because for each country he visits, he tries to link their national character to the type of financial disaster they are experiencing: corrupt and tribal Greeks refuse to band together for the sake of their country; feral Icelanders treat high-risk banking the same way they treat fishing in the cold and dangerous waters of the North Atlantic; stoic Irishmen shoulder their country's debt with tight-lipped penitence, though they should have acted shamefully and defaulted; rule abiding Germans don't notice the filth under the sheen of the bonds they have bought (and here he takes a scatological side-trip into "the German's longstanding special interest" in "Scheisse (shit)" and tries to extend the analogy to the financial crisis, claiming that the Germans "longed to be near the shit but not in it," and although this is entertaining, I think his logic is stretched thin and that you could find loads of "Scheisse" jokes in every culture--  Mr. Lahey from Trailer Park Boys comes to mind-- so even Canadians stoop to this sort of humor); finally Lewis ends up in America, searching for the state that is the biggest financial disaster . . . and banking analyst Meredith Whitney determines this by invoking the logic of "the tragedy of the commons," she explains: "companies are more likely to flourish in stronger states; the individuals will go where the jobs are . . . ultimately, the people will follow the companies . . . Indiana is going to be like, NFW I'm bailing out New Jersey . . . those who have money and can move do so, and those without money and cannot move do not, and ultimately rely more on state and local assistance," and Lewis asks her, "What's the scariest state?" and I hoped her answer wouldn't be New Jersey, but she "only had to think for about two seconds" and then she said, "California."

Jamming Econo

The Worldly Philosophers, by Robert Heilbroner, is in a class of its own; it is a history of economic thought from medieval times through Keynes and Schumpeter and it includes all the greats-- Adam Smith , Thomas Malthus, John Stuart Mill and the Utopians (which is a great name for a band) David Ricardo, Thorstein Veblen, Karl Marx and crew-- and Heilbroner has done all the reading, so for each man, he presents you with an overview, a few entertaining and telling anecdotes, some pithy quotations, and a logical summary of their theory and how accurate it was . . . and his conclusion is that all these men were prescient and discovered something new about the economic workings of their own world and were able to predict into the near future, but as times and technology changed, their theories fell by the wayside (David Ricardo and globalization) and Heilbroner wonders if it will ever be possible to make such predictions again, as he sees the world now as a combination of economics and politics that is well near impossible to unravel.

Comment Away . . . You Might Become Slightly Famous

I was poking around the software that monitors visitors that come to this blog, and I noticed that several people had googled the words "residual glee" and ended up at Sentence of Dave, but I did not remember writing those words and it turns out I didn't write those words-- my friend Eric (who is an award winning writer) wrote those words in a comment, and somehow that comment became the top search entry on Google for the phrase "residual glee," and although this only lasted for a few hours, it's still weird to think that you could write a comment on my third-rate blog and end up tops on Google-- something companies pay marketing firms loads of money to accomplish-- and now, what is even stranger (and more meta) is that Eric's post about his comment is now the top search when you type "residual glee" into Google (and, also, on an unrelated note: I think Residual Glee would make a good name for an indie band).

They Accepted the Challenge!

Last night, the LED placard on the side of the Springfield Inn advertised three special events:

1) $3 COORS LIGHT  4 PM to Close

2) $3 TWISTED TEA 4 PM to Close

3) TODAY ON THE DECK . . . CHALLENGE ACCEPTED;

and I imagine the band meeting where the guys (had to be guys, right?) decided on that moniker went something like this:

Dude #1: Dude, we should name ourselves the stupidest thing possible and see if we can still get gigs!

Dude# 2: Challenge Accepted!

Busking for Ice Cream

The kids and I jammed a number of times on the porch last week in Sea Isle City: I played guitar and Ben accompanied me on drums, we all sang, and Nick played the ukulele and the keyboard . . . but it wasn't until financial gain entered the picture that my son Ian took up the bongos . . . the boys decided to do some busking out in front of Steve's Grill Cheese and Ian happily joined the band; they made enough to buy lunch (and Steve's gave them a 15% discount) and then they returned at night and busked again (I'm taking great pleasure in using the word "busk" as many times as possible) and they made enough money to buy some ice cream at Yum Yums . . . they called themselves "The Beach Bums" but I think "Busking for Ice Cream" is a much better name and they played a number of songs, the best being "House of Gold" by Twenty One Pilots.

Anticlimactic Clinking

My wife was in a "I'm-going-to-get-a-lot-of-shit-done" mood over the four day Rosh Hashanah weekend . . . and in the midst of getting lots of shit done, she decided to take our two big jars of change to Stop and Shop; they have a CoinStar machine there and if you choose to get a Stop and Shop gift card, then you don't have to pay the 9% counting fee . . . you receive one hundred percent credit for the change you dump in the machine, an admittedly good deal, but this defeats the purpose of a change jar -- which is supposed to be "mad money" to be used for something frivolous (such as a pet monkey or the world's largest chocolate bar) -- to spend it on food . . . especially mundane grocery store food disappointed me (perhaps if we spent it on some kind of exotic food, like a dozen century eggs, then I would have approved) and so to make the event slightly more exciting, we all guessed how much money the jars contained: Alex said fifty dollars, Ian said sixty, I guessed two hundred and twenty dollars and Catherine -- ever the optimist -- estimated three hundred and seventy five . . . but when my wife returned from the store, she said that the machine was broken, and she couldn't cash in the change, and I am regarding this as an omen, and hoping that we will get to use the money for something more fun . . . perhaps I will finally get this (and if you don't think the title of this post is a great name for an indie band consisting of two nerdy percussionists, then you are a fool and I pity you).

Lesson Learned (I Instigate an Awkward Moment at the Pub)

If you are at your local pub, and an inebriated stranger approaches you and asks whether he should play Molly Hatchet or The Allman Brothers on the jukebox, the correct response is, "Whatever, man, they're both awesome!" but that's not what I said; instead I took a moment and sincerely thought about the question and told him, quite sincerely, that I couldn't recall any songs by Molly Hatchet so I wasn't qualified to decide, and this really astounded him-- that I wasn't familiar with Molly Hatchet-- so much so that he sang an a capella version of "Flirtin' With Disaster" to me and several of my friends, really belted it out, holding a fake microphone and everything, for an awkwardly long time, but I couldn't bring myself to walk away because he really wanted me to appreciate Molly Hatchet (but, of course, this had the opposite effect, as now any time I hear the name Molly Hatchet, I will associate the band with this horribly awkward moment).

Spacehog: Things Get Eponymous

A notable Topic of Interlocution at the Park Pub last night-- we attempted to determine the best eponymous song . . . in other words, the best song with the same title as the band that played it; here are some of the contenders:

1) "Bad Company" by Bad Company;

2) "This is Radio Clash" by The Clash;

3) "Black Sabbath" by Black Sabbath;

4) "They Might Be Giants" by They Might Be Giants;

5) "Minor Threat" by Minor Threat;

and there was only one song that was not considered; this song was brought to the attention of the panel by Roman, but despite the fact that it was Roman's name day, "Spacehog" by Spacehog was pronounced not only downright awful, but also very silly.

Probably Not

Is Heavy Meta a good name for a band?

Plants/Birds/Rocks/Things/Heat/Hot

I was feeling pretty bad about the quality and content of yesterday's sentence, until I turned on the radio and heard the second worst song in rock and roll history-- the worst is Jethro Tull's "Aqualung," of course-- but the two chord classic "Horse with No Name" by America is a close runner-up; hearing their infamously vague lyric "there were plants and birds and and rocks and things" made me feel so much better about my own writing-- as did the phrase "the heat was hot" . . . but what can you expect by a band named after a geographic location, as they fall in with such ilk as Asia, Boston, Chicago, Alabama, Kansas, Europe, The Georgia Satellites and Styx.

The Gang Storms Bolton Valley

Last weekend, I received a most excellent early birthday present: old friends and shitloads of snow.

Neil, John, Mose and I ventured up to Bolton Valley Vermont to see our buddy Rob, who is now damn close to being a Green Mountain native (although real Vermonters say you need seven generations to qualify . . . which is absurd. In Jersey, we take anyone).

 

This trip set the bar for a men's outing. We arrived Wednesday night and Rob had already set up the condo he rented for us. Food, beer, snacks, PA system, guitars, amps, wah pedal. You name it. Plus, we all had our own space. Good for sleeping and flatulence.

                                                     

We drove up in Neil's Land Rover. Total luxury. And as we arrived it started snowing, and it did not stop for the duration of the trip. Thirty inches of snow fell while we were there. Freak lake effect storm off Champlain. Best conditions in years. Outrageous.

Not that everything was perfect. You need some suffering to recognize how good you have it. We lost power on Thursday. The lifts stopped running, and we got stuck down at the lower Timberline Lodge. But folks at Bolton are really nice. It's a small, family-oriented livable mountain community. The lady working at the Timberline Lodge gave us a lift back up to the upper lift. She gave us a lift, not a Lyft. 

On the ride she told us all about her plans to be a primitive biathlete, skiing with a recurve bow.

After riding down to the condo from the upper lodge, we had to wait out the power outage in the condo. We passed the time enjoying the gas-powered fireplace and forgetting that various appliances (coffee maker, electronic drums) needed electricity to function. Occasionally, the guys grabbed snacks from the fridge-- cavalierly opening the door and letting all the cold air out. I had to lecture them on food safety, which they endured (barely). None of these lunatics knew about the two-hour rule. Or listeria. Total animals.

Once the lifts got going again, we ventured out on the mountain. Deep and heavy snow. The only option was to barrel down black diamond trails, otherwise, you'd lose momentum and get stuck. 

There was only one place to eat and drink after boarding, the James Moore Tavern. Perfect place. All the Vermont beers on tap. Some of our favorites were: Fiddlehead, Focal Banger, Catamount, Switchback, and Zero Gravity.  Plus good food. And a great view of the slopes.

Best of all, the slender and lovely bartender totally understood my frustration with the boys' disturbing lack of awareness of food safety and decay. 

                                                    

                                                     

                                                      

 At night, we played music. 

                                      

We also played music in the morning. You can tell it is morning because Neil is wearing his pajamas.

                                       

Friday morning, there was even more snow. We put a lot of time in on the Vista Peak. Then we went to the tavern. 

                                                

After downing a few beers, we went back out on the mountain (which is not always recommended). I decided I wanted to head back to the condo to make coffee and go to the bathroom. I separated from the gang (which is also not recommended, especially in a blizzard). I needed to cut across the mountain toward the Timberline Peak and then dive into the woods off the Timberline Run and find the third set of condos. We had done this once, with our tour guide Rob, and I thought I could manage it on my own.

I screwed up the first time down, and the gang saw me from the lift. At this point, things were still comical.

"I went the wrong way!" I yelled up to them. We all laughed.

Then I took a shortcut and ended up in some very deep snow. I was trapped. I got my snowboard up even with my hips-- a real abdominal work-out-- and spent a long time trying to unstrap. I was lying on my back, in a depression of snow, the board above my head, blindly trying to finagle my way out of the bindings.

Eventually, I got it done. I was free. I tried to step forward. The snow was up to my nipples. And my right foot went through a layer of snow and I felt . . . nothing. Air. One of my feet was in some kind of weird pocket of air under four feet of snow. I was going to fall through and suffocate. And die. I was going to die alone in the snow, and I really needed a bathroom and a cup of coffee. This was no way to go.

I leaped forward and got both my arms on top of my board and crawled forward. The board kept me afloat. I was able to inchworm to a cliff under the lift line. I strapped in and took a long rest. I was winded. Some people riding by on the lift inquired as to my state of being.

I yelled up to them: "I'm fine! Just got caught in some deep snow."

"Ok, just checking!"

Nice folk at Bolton.

I plunged down the mountain, turned onto the Timberline Run, counted condos, and suddenly found myself down at the Timberline Lift. Fuck! I had missed our condos. The woods were impenetrable. Lovely, dark, and deep. And impossible to navigate.

I went to the bathroom in the lodge, and then I called Mose. No answer. I texted him. Perhaps he could come to pick me up?

No response.

I sent him another text that said: "Fuck it. Don't come. I'm going back up the lift." I came down again, tired as fuck, and missed the condos again. I tried one more time, and missed them again (I later realized because I was on some kind of spur that hit the Timberline Trail below our place). It was 3:45 PM. The lift shut down.

I started stomping up the mountain road in my snowboarding boots. It was less than a mile. I was tired and annoyed. At this point, Mose got my text and was heading out, but then a Bolton employee in a station wagon asked if I needed a ride. Very nice of him. I made it home alive.

Then we went out to see Rob's son little Dom compete at the rail-jam. Rob was already up the hill, watching him. The rest of us were all too tired to hike up the mountain to the snowboarding park, so we rooted for him in spirit in the tavern. When we were leaving, Neil nearly fell on some ice in the parking lot. I laughed. Then my legs went flying up into the air and I landed flat on my back. The wind was knocked out of me, but other than that, I was just drunk enough to not suffer any major damage.

We went to bed early. Just after midnight, a crew of Bolton folks stopped by, looking to party. Rob had gone home hours ago to sleep. Everyone in the house was also sleeping. By the time I roused myself, brushed my teeth and put some pants on, the party train was gone. Back to sleep.

Saturday morning, we had boiled eggs for breakfast. I cooled them off with fresh snow.

Saturday's riding was more of the same. Just incredible. So much snow. We focused on the Wilderness Peak. No one out there but us. Then we hit the tavern, and this time John got lost in the deep snow. Same story: a few too many beers, separated himself from the pack, got lost, and got stuck. The moral here: do NOT leave the group during a storm of this scope.

That afternoon, Rob's wife Tammy was kind enough to bring us groceries and beer, so we were able to cook a big meal Saturday night. Pasta and pesto sauce. The knives were very dull, but Neil heroically chopped the basil.

Saturday night, we put on an epic rock show and stayed up late enough to get a knock on the door and a complaint from the neighbor . . . a very Vermont complaint:

"Hey, I'm in a band, so I get it . . . you know, volume creep . . . but it's pretty late and it's a little bit loud."

No f-bombs. Very civilized.

Sunday morning, it was still snowing, but time to head home.

My son Alex was turning 16. And reality beckoned for everyone except Rob.

Big thanks to all involved in the trip:

Rob, for setting up the condo, setting us up with cheap lift tickets, guiding us around the mountain, and letting me abuse the wah pedal;

Tammy, for groceries and general goodwill;

Little Dom, for tearing it up on the mountain and providing so much good humor and charm;

Neil, for the ride up and back, the drum kit, and the inspirational old-man alpine snowboarding;

Mose, for the rides back and forth from the tavern, holding down the fort, and all the information about music gear and whatnot;

John, for meeting us up in Albany so I didn't have to complain about going into NYC, and for getting fucked up in the deep snow so I didn't feel like the only idiot;

my wife, for dealing with everything on the homefront while I was gone-- she said she didn't stop moving from when I left until I got home (I probably wouldn't have been much help, anyway)

and the Weather Gods, who provided some of the best conditions I've ever ridden in. 

I hope we get this thing together again next year. 

Quest for Pizza . . . Old Bridge Edition

My Quest for Pizza continues . . . my friend Stacey, who is an Old Bridge local, recommended General Saloon and the pizza is pretty good: thin crust, yummy bacon, but a little too much cheese . . . I think if we requested light on the cheese this pizza would have been excellent, and it was quite good despite the cheesiness . . . the place itself has a pleasant and comfortable pub-like vibe-- you can bring the kids for lunch and it looks like a fun place to see a band at night; after a hike with the dog at John A. Philips Preserve, I tried another highly recommended Old Bridge pizza spot: Krispy Pizza . . . and I love the name-- there's nothing more American than spelling shit wrong-- and the pizza is good as well, thin crust . . . my plain slice was a tad greasy, but still very tasty; the chicken on the buffalo chicken slice was awesome, crumbly and tender, and the sauce was fairly spicy . . . but Shanahan's Bakery is still my favorite place to grab a slice in the vicinity . . . who will oust them?

Individuals Tending Towards Savagery Is A Great Name For A Punk-Rock Band

 Sentence of Dave has often discussed risk assessment . . .  it's difficult to decide what to worry about in a world where so much unfiltered information is so readily accessible . . . and so I will place you on the horns of another anxiety-filled dilemma: should you worry more about Individuals Tending Towards Savagery, a radical Mexican anti-technology group that praises the writings of Ted Kaczynski and recently bombed two Mexican nano-technology professors at the Monterrey Technological Institute, or should you worry about their prediction: that nanotechnology research will result in the creation of nano-cyborgs, which will be able to self-replicate automatically without the help of humans and eventually form an exponentially increasing "gray-goo" that will smother all life on earth?

The Waitresses Do NOT KNow What Boys Like (But I Do)

I wish my boys liked getting lost in a good book on a hot summer afternoon, but that's not the case . . . and The Waitresses have got it all wrong, they don't want to touch (or have anything remotely to do with) girls; I thought my son Ian liked winter, because all summer he kept telling me that he couldn't wait for the cold and the snow, so that we could have a snowball fight . . . but sometimes you don't know what you like until you try it . . . and when I saw my boys try it, then there was no question as to what boys like, and I am certain of this because I learned it empirically, through my powers of interview and observation: BOYS LIKE TO JELLYFISH FIGHT . . . last week at Midway Beach, my boys collected buckets of jellyfish and then hurled them at each other for over an hour, and I've never seen them happier . . . and my six year old son Ian explained why: "Jellyfish fighting is better than snowball fighting because a jellyfish doesn't hurt as much as a snowball when it hits you in the face."

P.S. Bucket of Jellyfish is a good name for a trance-band.

2/17/2008

Yesterday, my two sons and I formed a short lived rock'n'roll band, and my son Alex came up with our name: The Junior States (he had a rationale for this but I missed it because Ian had just jammed Legos into the keyboard and it was making a lot of noise).

Sorry Chuck, The Inevitable is Coming

Chuck Klosterman concludes his book But What If We're Wrong? Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past with this thought: "I'm ready for a new tomorrow, but only if it's pretty much like yesterday" and while this is a pleasant thought, there's very little chance of it happening; before he gets to this romantic notion, he speculates on just how much the future will be different from the now, and how that will change the lens through which those future people view our time . . . and he also recognizes that not much will survive the test of time and that we have little to no chance of predicting what those things will be:

1) it's very difficult to predict what band will become the John Philip Sousa of rock'n'roll . . . no one can name another march music composer (and Klosterman points out that in one hundred years Bob Marley and reggae will be synonymous) so you can speculate: Chuck Berry? Led Zeppelin? The Beatles? The Rolling Stones? Def Leppard? who knows?

2) once a genre becomes insular and arcane, it's the "weirdos" who get to curate the art form, and select what is great;

3) American football now seems to be on the outs, as everyone educated knows that the sport is too dangerous because of the head injuries-- but Klosterman points out that this is because football is trying to become the sport for everyone . . . everyone watches a game or two, and almost everyone belongs to some kind of fantasy league or pool and everyone watches the Super Bowl . . . so this is too much exposure for something so dangerous, but there are plenty of sports that are more dangerous-- auto racing, UFC, base-jumping-- but they don't command such a large audience, so football may become less popular, and that may save it-- it may have a core group of diehard fans and  to them, the sport will represent valor and fortitude and toughness and all kinds of conservative values, and the rest of society will look upon it like auto-racing . . . or it may be deemed too dangerous and expensive it may die at the youth levels and go the way of boxing and the dodo . . . we won't know until the future;

4) folks in the future may look at The Matrix as a seminal film not because of the groundbreaking "bullet time" effects, but because the Wachowski Brothers transitioned and became the Wachowski Sisters, and so the world-within-a-world theme takes on an entirely new (and possibly more compelling) spin for future generations;

5) Klosterman concedes that important art from our time should reflect the most important elements of our time and he gives a list of these possibilities, while admitting that we see these through the cloudy and low vantage point of the present, but here are a few . . . and while I don't use quotes, I am usually using his exact words, just truncated: the psychological impact of the internet, the prevailing acceptance of nontraditional sexual identities, the deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of white police officers, an unclear definition of privacy, a hatred of the wealthiest one percent, the artistic elevation of television, the recession of rock'n'roll and the ascension of hip-hop, a distrust of objective storytelling, the prolonging of adolescence;

BUT, while I love Klosterman and had a great time navigating his ambiguous, philosophical arguments about how we can't predict the future, or how the future will view our present, Kevin Kelly does present a convincing counter-argument in his new book The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future . . . I'll save the summary of his most interesting predictions for another sentence, but, Chuck Klosterman, I'm warning you: tomorrow is going to be nothing like today, and the day after that is going to be exponentially even more wild . . . we've leapt over the edge and into the realm of the zillions . . . zillions of bits of interconnected information, zillions of smart objects, zillions of interconnected screens, zillions of hyperlinked pages, zillions of sprawling dendritic tendrils, stretching across the earth, in an ever-expanding, self-revising smart tangle of digitally connected humanity, so strap yourself in and get ready for a wild ride: we'll be in the future before you know it.

Remember When Your Biggest Concern Was Being Attacked by Feral Hogs?

Back in October of 2019, I was worried about this impending menace:



I was so wound up about feral hogs that I wrote a long post about them.

I was enthralled by a vision of giant fecund razorbacks ravaging their way across our country, tearing up crops, fields and ponds, thundering through suburban yards, slowly making their way towards the coasts. I even (temporarily) changed the name of my one-man-band to Feral Hogs at the Strip Mall.

Those were simpler times.

I've since changed my Soundcloud moniker back to The Moving Rocks, but I did finish a song celebrating this possible porcine apocalypse. I updated the lyrics some to reflect our current situation--obviously, the feral hog scourge has been pushed to the back burner-- but there's no question that as we invade various spaces on our planet, we're going to uncover some nasty creatures. Not all of them can be shot with an assault weapon.

The song is safe for work, home, working at home, and listening when there are kids in the room, so check it out. I'm quite proud of the guitar riff, I had to use some unusual scales and chords to get the groove I wanted. The sound is certainly inspired by the wonderful and creepy song "Ghost Town" by The Specials.

Feral Hogs (at the Strip Mall)

Feral hogs at the strip mall
Feral hogs at the mall
These little piggies are having a ball
These little piggies want it all

Pangolin in the market
Horseshoe bat in your soup
Rhino horn in the basket
Circus cat, flaming hoop

Crocodiles in the sewer
bedbugs roam between the sheets
Snakehead fish in the river
Multiply while you sleep

Batting A Thousand (Sort of)

I saw three ex-students out-of-context in the span of three days and nailed all of their names:

1) saw a girl I had many, many years ago at a concert at The Saint in Asbury Park-- where her younger brother was playing drums in a band with one of my colleagues-- and though she is over thirty and has a kid and a house and a mortgage, she was far more surprised that I have kids and a house and a mortgage . . . "Mr. P. is all grown up!" was her reaction;

2) saw a dude I taught a few years ago stocking beer at the fancy beer store -- although I this one was a Texas-leaguer, as I only remembered his last name;

3) and, finally, an easy one . . . I saw a girl I taught last year lurking in the high school parking lot (there's nothing lamer than hanging around the high school once you've graduated, but -- to her credit -- I think she was waiting to give someone a ride).