Dave vs. The Looming Specter of his Mortality

I was in a lousy mood last week. January really dragged-- lots of gray and damp weather. No joyful snowfall. The park is a muddy goose-shit filled swamp. The ticks haven't even gone dormant. And I was scheduled for an MRI on my shoulder on Friday. I expected bad news, as the doctor suspected a tear in either a rotator cuff injury or a labral tear. A rotator cuff injury would require serious PT and a labral tear would most likely need surgery.

My shoulder has been injured since the summer. I hurt it during a tennis match, screwing around with a topspin one-handed backhand. I can't get any juice on my serve (and I can't chuck a football with any velocity either). This shoulder injury (and my impending 50th birthday) have been really weighing on me. I'm not ready to hang up my racket yet. Beating my kids is too much fun-- and I've only got a few years left where I'll be able to do that (consistently). Or perhaps my run is over-- my shoulder burnt out-- and I won't get a chance to fade away.

I played indoor soccer well last Sunday, which should have bolstered my spirits-- but when I was crossing the ball, I caught the lip of a gym door with my toe-- and while I didn't hurt myself enough to stop playing, my ankle and knees were sore for days. I felt really old all week (until I drank too much Thursday night . . . oddly, Friday morning my knees were no longer sore).

I'm no dummy, so I started preparing for the worst a couple weeks ago. There's only one way to fight the looming specter of mortality: keep busy. My first project was to use my left hand as much as possible. Brushing my teeth, driving, pulling the wet laundry out of the washer, etc. I even started shooting darts left-handed-- which actually works fine unless I'm trying to hit the bullseye-- and I played tennis left-handed a couple times with my son Ian. My groundstrokes are pretty much the same-- I could always hit a decent lefty forehand and a lefty two-handed backhand is similar to a righty forehand-- but learning to serve lefthanded is a bitch. I went down to the park and practiced and I felt like a spaz. This article inspired me to keep at it. My left shoulder still has a lot of gas left in the tank, but I'll need a lot of mental fortitude to develop the fine motor skills necessary to play well lefty.

I've been preparing in several other ways for my impending midlife crisis. I don't want to resort to the typical shit: prostitutes, alcoholism, drag-racing, and dog-fighting, so I've implemented a preemptive strike on my mid-life crisis.

Project #1:

I've switched my DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) from a PC to an iMac. I'm using Logic now instead of Cakewalk Sonar. I'm watching tutorial videos at the gym and learning a lot. I still don't know what I'm doing with Smart Tempo and Flex-Time, but I'm trying. Learning the new platform is keeping me off the streets and keeping my brain away from early onset dementia.

Project #2:

I'm reading some big books. I normally value quantity over quantity (aside form War and Peace, Brothers Karamazov, and Infinite Jest). I'm barrelling through Uncle Tom's Cabin-- it's gripping-- and then I've got Tom Jones queued up on my Kindle.

In meatspace, I'm reading this absurd book.

This is mainly to irritate my fellow Philosophy teacher Stacey-- I've claimed that once I finish the book, she's not allowed to teach the class any long (unless she refers to me as The Philosophical Overlord). When I know Stacey's about to come into the office, I like to put my feet up, read something obtuse aloud, and brandish my new knowledge. A.C. Grayling is actually pretty entertaining-- for a philosopher-- although I skimmed the section on Empedocles.

Project #3:

Apparently, Google Play Music is going extinct. I've already been through this once with Rdio.

Remember Rdio?

No?

Serendipitously, my buddy Whitney just gave me a gift voucher for Spotify, so I've switched over. It's great, but I'm transferring playlists and massaging the algorithm-- so I'm spending a lot of time "hearting" songs and putting them on various playlists. I'm impressed with what Spotify spits out once you spend a little time on it. This project is not keeping me off the streets-- I use Spotify while I'm walking and driving-- so I'm working hard not to screw around with it while I'm driving and to look up once in a while when I'm crossing the street.

Project #4

So I was all depressed Thursday, because of the MRI on Friday. I drank too much and stayed out too late, and by the time I raced out of school and got to University Orthopedics, I was groggy and tired and hungry. They had a cooking show on in the waiting room. Guy Fieri ate various kinds of barbecued meats. By the time they called me, I was salivating.

They took me in, I put my valuables in a locker, and the guy told me the machine was a little loud. He handed me a pair of earphones. I lay on the sliding bed, my shoulder in the cup, and he slid me in. He gave me a little emergency switch and told me if I had any problem, to press it. I wondered why. Until I got in there.

I'm not sure if being tired and hungover was bane or blessing. The top of the cylinder was an inch or two from my nose. And the machine was LOUD. Not a little loud. SUPER-LOUD! Science-fiction loud. Weird grinding and banging and revving noises. And the music in the headphones was awful. Cheesy piano, occasionally interrupted by ads. Yuck. I didn't press the little button (or move at all) but I wanted to. Twenty-five minutes later, I was out and on my way to talk to the doctor.

While I waited, I could see the inside of my shoulder on the desktop. Looked fine to me.

Turns out I was right. Sort of. Fairly good news. No labral tear, no serious rotator cuff injury. Some arthritis, some bone cysts, and some swelling. Routine stuff. I didn't even need PT. I just had to do a bunch of exercises. And the doctor said I could play tennis! Right-handed! He said it might hurt a bit, and we could try a cortisone shot-- but I wasn't going to rupture anything. I would just be sore. If I really hurt it, I would know it.

This made me happy enough to get back to a project I've been putting on hold. I need a new tennis racket, an arm friendly one. If my right shoulder still hurts with the new racket, then I may still pursue playing left-handed. But I don't have to. I went to the gym today and did a bunch of shoulder exercises and I'm sore as hell. But I've eluded the looming specter another day.

I also think I need to make a doctor's appointment-- the appointment you make when you turn fifty-- and I think this is the appointment when the doctor will stick his finger up my ass.

Can't they just stick my ass in the MRI machine?

If You Seek Me, You Shall Find Me (Not Eating Potato Chips)

I'm turning 50 in March, and I'm trying to preempt the stereotypical mid-life crisis-- so I've been running more in an attempt to improve my mile time. This might be an exercise in futility. I'm certainly building up my endurance, and also, by running more, I'm playing basketball less, so preventing injury. But it might not matter.

I'm still heavy. I ran an 8 minute mile in the summer, and I weighed 195+. Now I'm down to 192 or so, but I'm still too heavy to really move around the track. So I've got to shed a few pounds, but I refuse to diet. I do too much exercise. I'm hungry all the time. And I love food. And beer. I try to drink less beer, but it never lasts. Tequila and seltzer is light and less caloric and it tastes great, but it's not beer.

Then, yesterday, my friend and colleague Stacey pointed out that the worst food to eat was potato chips. I did not realize this. I knew they weren't good, but I didn't know just how bad they were. And, if you exercise a lot, they can be useful. They contain potassium. But when you get old, there are better ways to obtain this mineral. And you probably only need a few chips. That's not how I eat chips.

Because I am addicted to potato chips. I eat them all the time. Almost every day. If they are in the house, I eat them. Inhale them. If I stop for coffee at Wawa, I get a pack. I eat them without realizing it. I eat them all, the whole bag, no matter the size.

So I'm quitting them. As best I can. Hopefully, I'll have the same result as Jameis Winston. I will keep you posted.

Getting Your Money's Worth Will Cost You

My friends were discussing the great museum scene in DC, and how there's no pressure to get your money's worth-- the museums and the zoo are free, so-- as the always sagacious Zman put it: "You can run into the Museum of Natural History for 20 minutes just to see the Hope Diamond, some dinosaurs, and a basilosaurus (and its tiny hip bone) without feeling pressure to get your money’s worth" and I'm a big fan of this-- not getting your money's worth-- as getting your money's worth almost always leads to frustration, injury and disaster; I have no problem leaving sports events and concerts early, to avoid the mad rush and the traffic; when I go snowboarding, I get off the mountain sooner rather than later, because getting your money's worth with a lift ticket leads to fatigue and injuries . . . and when we were in college, we were obsessed with the all-you-can-eat Wendy's Superbar and it led to some supreme gluttony (including a day where we were ostensibly studying for exams, but we started the studying at the all-you-can-eat Shoney's Breakfast Bar, then-- after stuffing ourselves on pancakes, sausage, grits, and French toast-- we took a long nap, then headed back out with our books and our bloated stomachs, and sat for many hours at the Wendy's Superbar, repeating the same charade . . . we got our money's worth and it cost us dearly).

Getting Your Money's Worth Will Cost You

My friends were discussing the great museum scene in DC, and how there's no pressure to get your money's worth-- the museums and the zoo are free, so-- as the always sagacious Zman put it: "You can run into the Museum of Natural History for 20 minutes just to see the Hope Diamond, some dinosaurs, and a basilosaurus (and its tiny hip bone) without feeling pressure to get your money’s worth" and I'm a big fan of this-- not getting your money's worth-- as getting your money's worth almost always leads to frustration, injury and disaster; I have no problem leaving sports events and concerts early, to avoid the mad rush and the traffic; when I go snowboarding, I get off the mountain sooner rather than later, because getting your money's worth with a lift ticket leads to fatigue and injuries . . . and when we were in college, we were obsessed with the all-you-can-eat Wendy's Superbar and it led to some supreme gluttony (including a day where we were ostensibly studying for exams, but we started the studying at the all-you-can-eat Shoney's Breakfast Bar, then-- after stuffing ourselves on pancakes, sausage, grits, and French toast-- we took a long nap, then headed back out with our books and our bloated stomachs, and sat for many hours at the Wendy's Superbar, repeating the same charade . . . we got our money's worth and it cost us dearly).

Not So Humblebrag (Wait for It)

While I'm really proud of my son Alex-- he's in 9th grade and he's not so big (I think he's just starting to hit puberty) and he really scrapped his way up the tennis ladder this season (despite chipping his thumb playing goalie for his travel team) and-- because of injuries and school trips-- he got to play in a number of varsity matches; Highland Park is a tiny school but we have an exceptional tennis squad, so in the county we play in the highest division (Red) against the biggest and best schools and this prepared us for the state tournament, where we play schools our size-- and for the first time in eight years they won the entire state in their group (Group 1)  and while Alex traveled to those matches, he didn't play-- but this enabled the team to play in the Tournament of Champions against the winners of all the groups and because of an injury, Alex got to play second doubles-- and while the entire team got beaten soundly, they played well and Alex learned a great deal-- but I'm most proud of myself, because I trained both my kids-- despite the fact that I'm not a tennis instructor and I didn't even play high school tennis (although my brother played in college, which has helped) and over the weekend, I analyzed Alex's serve and fixed it, and he said he served really well today and the only time they won was when he was serving . . . so while I can't figure out if I'm more proud of Alex for his skill and tenacity or myself for my patience, accurate practice hitting, and ability to glean tennis information from YouTube, this is a good problem to have (I just wish I could give myself a lesson and smooth out my own two-handed backhand).

The Red Bulls Game Was the LEAST Exciting Part of the Night (or Hostage Situation at the Carpark)

Last night, Catherine, Alex, Ian and I went to Red Bull Arena to watch Wayne Rooney and DC United take on the Red Bulls; Rooney put in an understated performance, playing a number of great one touch passes (and demonstrating that his vision and decision-making is miles ahead of the MLS players) but he never took on the defense in full Shrek-rugby-fashion (and he had a perfect opportunity at the six and cranked it over the crossbar) and the Red Bulls combined well, generally controlled the ball, moved forward with purpose, should have scored three or four goals, and made do with a one-zero victory . . . we thoroughly enjoyed the game, but the problem with watching the Red Bulls is the transportation situation: you can't park in Harrison, where the stadium is, because it's a traffic nightmare, so you can either take the train to Newark and then the PATH, or drive to Newark, park in a lot, and then do a rather treacherous walk along the (very polluted) Passaic River, then cross into Harrison over the Frank E Rodgers bridge . . . we elected to do the latter, because if you hustle out of the stadium and walk fast, you can beat all the traffic; we took off right as the injury time ended, and I warned the kids to take it easy and be careful because it was dark and this was not a well-marked or evenly paved stroll; despite my warning, Ian bit it hard when he tried to jog up to Catherine to ask her something-- he caught his toe on the stand of a portable traffic sign that happened to be on the sidewalk, he fell hard (and nearly into traffic on Raymond Blvd) and scraped up his knees, hands and elbows . . . he was bleeding and crying and had some glass bits in his rapidly swelling elbow, but he got up and we hobbled on towards the Edison ParkFast on Market Street . . . when we arrived, there was only one person working and a number of people waiting for their cars, and you had to pay at a machine and then give the guy the ticket, then he would get your key and drive your car around to the front of the building-- it was fairly disorganized and difficult to determine the line or what was going on, but Catherine fed our ticket into the machine, ran her credit card, was charged $20, and out popped TWO tickets . . . so she handed the guy both tickets-- and he immediately took one of the tickets and ran it over to a car that he had already pulled around and handed it to the driver and then he went back to getting cars so I told Catherine that we might have given him the wrong ticket and he wasn't getting our keys and when she explained this to him and how the machine gave us TWO tickets, he said that the machine couldn't take two tickets and that we had to pay and we explained that we HAD paid and that the machine DID spit out two tickets and he said this was not possible and then ran off to pull around another car and this is when I realized that we were going to have trouble resolving this issue-- it was an issue with the machine and the attendant had no clue how to solve it; Catherine tried to explain again-- she said that maybe we paid for the other person's ticket or something, or the tickets got jammed, but that we had paid but the attendant turned a deaf ear and continued serving people who had come after us because he didn't understand the situation-- and while all this waiting is going on, Ian is bleeding from his knees and elbows-- and the guy, who, judging by the accent, might have hailed from Trinidad, was not getting it and Catherine was getting pissed off that he kept ignoring her and he was getting pissed off that we were interrupting his work; things got more and more heated, and a random guy stepped in, took out a twenty, handed it to the attendant, and said, "Will this resolve the situation?" and the attendant said, "Yes" but Catherine was having none of that-- she took the money and handed it back to the guy and said, "We're not paying $40 for parking" and, while I admire her principles, I would have paid twenty bucks at that point to get the hell out of Newark, but Catherine tried another tactic-- she pulled up her Wells Fargo account and showed the guy that we had paid $20 at the Edison ParkFast at 9:27 PM but he wouldn't even look at the phone and ran off to pull more cars for people who had got there after us, and then Alex got vocal with him and he said, "I don't talk with children" and this pissed me off, so I told the guy the kids were people too and he was putting them out as well as Catherine and I and he said he would deal with this problem later because he was busy so Catherine laid it on the line and said, "Are you giving us our keys? Or do we have to call the police?" and the guy-- getting very defensive-- said, "Call the police" and so Catherine did-- and then another random guy made an excellent suggestion; he said, "Run the ticket again on your credit card and then call the credit card company tomorrow and say you were double charged," and that is exactly what we will do next time this happens (God forbid) but at this point Catherine was angry and determined and she saw a cop car across the lot and so she walked over to it, meanwhile, Alex got a complimentary bottle of water and we cleaned out Ian's wounds . . . right in front of the attendant's little booth, and perhaps this moved him, or the fact that the police were coming, but he gave me the ticket and said, "Write an explanation of what happened on it and your phone number" and I did so-- then Catherine got back and told me to put a fake phone number on it and the police were on their way-- but at this point, the guy had caved, he realized that we weren't going away and that he was holding a bleeding child hostage in his lot, and so he took the ticket-- with my hastily scrawled explanation on it-- and pulled out car around; that was when an officer showed up, and we told him that we had finally resolved the situation and thanked him for coming to lend a hand . . . all told we were at the lot trying to get our car for over an hour, but there is a happy ending to the story; we crated Lola before we left, she still isn't great about being left alone, and we were worried that with the delay, she might have peed in her crate, but she was fine and dry and happy to see us.

You Are Where You're At

I finished two powerful and poignant books (and thoroughly enjoyed both) on vacation that hammered home the exact reason you go on vacation-- because when you locate yourself to a different place, you become a different person-- there are many conservative folks that bristle at this, people who believe in choices and autonomy and free will, and while I will acknowledge that it certainly might be good to believe you have control over your life, it probably isn't true;

1) Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America by Jill Leovy, uses one South Angeles murder to look at the big picture-- black-on-black violence in traditionally African-American enclaves like Watts and Compton are generally under-policed and justice is rarely meted out . . . Leovy turns cause and effect on its head, proving that it's not because these places are inhabited by gang members that make them difficult to police . . . instead, because they have never been policed with much intensity and intent-- unlike white neighborhoods in the same city-- the denizens have learned to solve their problems outside the aegis of traditional authority, witnesses-- fearing injury or death-- have learned not to testify, and it has come to be understood that in these places-- whether it be the Wild West, the territory of the Yanomami, or South LA-- that the state does NOT have a monopoly on force and violence . . .

"take a bunch of teenage boys from the whitest, safest suburb in America and plunk them down in a place where their friends are murdered and they are constantly attacked and threatened . . . signal that no one cares and fail to solve murders . . . limit their options for escape . . . then see what happens"

and if the book sounds depressing, in the end it is not-- because there are select police that work homicide in the ghetto in an inspirational manner, and this details such a case and the men that solved it-- and this is a case that has to be solved, because it is the murder of Bryant Tennelle-- 18 years old-- the youngest son of a highly respected Los Angeles detective Wallace Tennelle . . . a principled officer that chose to live where he worked and paid the ultimate price for it; the book might change your mind about how gangs work (far looser and more disorganized that you might think) and how murders are handled when they are insular and comprised only of African-American men, and it will remind you that you really can't control where you are born and where you live . . . or often not until it's too late;

2) Sherman Alexie tells a similar story of growing up in a difficult, possible barren and futile environment in his YA novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian . . . my wife coerced me and the kids to read it for a family "book club" and we all loved it; Alexie tells the semi-autobiographical story of Junior's life on the Spokane reservation and his daring "escape" to the nearest white high school off the rez-- 22 miles away-- because Junior recognizes that though he loves his family, his people, the land, and his best friend Rowdy, that the setting is inevitably hopeless, fostering alcoholism and endless repetition of the same losses and drama . . . this is the story of his commute and his very real adaptation to a new setting-- Alexie says the book is 78% true and it rings true, it's gross, sincere, candid, hysterically funny, and really moving (plus it has lots of basketball, so I was getting choked up fairly often, because sporting stories are the only ones that make me cry).

Brotherly Love/Fatherly Rage

I guest-coached my older son Alex's travel soccer game today and they were short-handed (short-footed?) and so my younger son Ian had to guest-play on the team to give them 11 players; we were in North Plainfield, playing a scrappy Hispanic team and there was only one ref instead of the usual three, and this ref pretty much took a laissez faire approach to calling the game (except offsides, he called a goal back on a play that was clearly not offsides) and the other team took advantage of this-- they elbowed, grabbed, tossed, and two-handed pushed our players often (frequently after the play was over) and when our sweeper was grabbed by the shoulder and chucked and then the ref called a penalty kick on our team, I ran out onto the field to complain and he immediately red-carded me and sent me packing . . . I then had to get phone updates and watch the game from afar and it just got worse and worse, one of our players got elbowed so hard it bruised his ribs, and the opposing coach screamed at him to get up and insisted he was faking the injury and delaying the game-- at this point, our team was ahead 2 - 1 but the other team had 18 players and our 11 were exhausted and banged up, and the attack was pretty much relentless, corner kick after corner kick, cross after cross, and then my younger son Ian got two-handed shoved to the ground by an opposing player, and his older brother Alex ran to his rescue and punched the kid in the stomach, and a general melee erupted, the opposing coach ran onto the field and may have pushed one of our folks (a high school senior that was running the lines, a sibling to our sweeper) and, luckily, the ref actually listened to my younger son when he explained what happened and give the kid who pushed him down a yellow card . . . and moments later, the ref blew the long whistle to signal the end of the game, an epic and epically ugly win for the Eagles, with no subs and a lot of insanity (and I will say that after the game, the North Plainfield parents that I talked to were quite nice and quick to forgive me for getting a red card-- and apparently they apologized to our parents for some of the rough play on the part of their players-- and they certainly understood just how high emotions run during a soccer game, but I'm going to really try to calm down and take some deep breaths-- God only knows if I'll even be able to coach my own team tomorrow, or if I'll be suspended or something).

Dave Crushes It at the Gym

Lately-- due to my foot injury-- I've had to resort to using the various aerobic exercise machines at LA Fitness; my favorite contraption is the rowing machine but I can't row for a sustained length of time due to a dire and rather discomfiting situation: the machine is lacking an infographic diagram on an essential technique, a necessary procedure in arrangement that I just can't seem to master-- and apparently many people share this same problem-- what happens is that I'm rowing along, minding my own business, but every third stroke or so I squash my testicles.

Beach Injury #2

If you feel the need to sneak up on me, whether to knife me in the abdomen because I owe you money or to sting my leg (presupposing you are a greenhead fly) then I suggest you do the sneaking up on my left side (because I can't swivel my head fluidly to the left, I hurt my neck while running on the beach, or during doubles tennis, or swimming in the ocean or -- most likely-- sleeping on a soft and sloping beach house mattress).

Family + Isolation = Here's Johnny!

Catherine keeps interrupting me while I write this sentence, but I'm trying to keep my cool . . . I'm trying to avoid bashing her brains in with an ax (all work and no play makes Dave a dull boy) and I'm going to crack open a beer soon (all work and no play makes Dave a dull boy) because it rained today and so we holed up at the house and watched The Shining (streamable on Netflix) and I realized the true moral of the film is Don't go on the wagon while you're isolated on a mountain with your family . . . Jack could have used a little actual alcohol (not ghost whiskey) to soothe his nerves and then maybe he wouldn't have lost his mind . . . anyway, Catherine and I are staying flexible and mentally resilient, despite the wild swings in the weather-- yesterday we hiked all the way around Lowell Lake, the trail went from balmy to treacherous depending on the sun exposure, one moment we were walking on soft pine needles in the warm sun, the next we were being frozen by the spray of a snow-fueled stream while navigating ice fields; I was a little nervous that I might pull a muscle, but the kids loved it-- they said all the obstacles kept them more occupied and "confuzzled," so they didn't have time to bicker . . . the dog also loved the mixed terrain, and Catherine and I survived without injury; today we had to beat a hasty retreat from the mountain because of the rain and fog, but after we finished The Shining, we came up out of the basement to see the sun again, so I stopped sharpening my ax and we went outside and played some snow football.

Litmus Test For Trump: Black Lungs or Clear Water

The Obama administration scrambled to finish the Stream Protection Act, a set of rules that detail how to enforce environmental protection laws already on the books-- the rules are 1200 pages long and fifteen years in the making (for more detail on the story, listen to the new Planet Money) and so now the question is whether Trump will utilize the rarely used Congressional Review Act to repeal the rules; the last time this was used, President Bush repealed Clinton's Workplace Injury rules and the backlash was fairly ugly . . . so keep an eye on this, as it will be a real litmus test as to just what kind of asshole Trump is going to be . . . and remember, there are two kinds of assholes: people who divide folks into two kinds of assholes and people who don't.

A Solemn Vow

I hereby declare that next year I will NOT participate in fantasy football, which is not fantastic at all and actually wallows in its mundanity-- the tenderness of Dez Bryant's knee and the merits of Coby Fleener and the injury status of Eric Ebron-- and so I will NOT let these minor thoughts aggravate my valuable and limited consciousness, and, instead, during the time I would have spent shuffling my digital line-up around, I will brush up on my Spanish or learn to play the xylophone or train my dog to skateboard or even simply take a nap, but next fall, I will be doing something slightly more fantastic than fantasy football . . . you hear this Alec?

Hauling It Home

I will try to eventually write a wrap-up of our cross country trip, but we were so busy that I got behind, so I'll have to squeeze Mesa Verde, the Petrified Forest, Santa Fe, rafting down the Rio Grande, and Taos into one run-on sentence . . . I'm too tired to do that now, but I'm happy to report that despite some minor illness and an injury, we made it from New Mexico to Missouri-- 13 hours of driving-- and I did more than half of the driving, despite a sore shoulder . . . I should warn you that when you cross South Guadalupe St. in Santa Fe, at the Garfield Street intersection, you need to pay close attention, which I wasn't-- I was talking to my son about my used book purchase at Big Star Books and Music and I walked right into a low hanging traffic sign, the thin edge of metal caught me right in the shoulder and it's still kind of sore-- but aside from a few scrapes, that was the only injury on the trip, so no complaints; on the way to Springfield, Missouri, we had a great meal of brisket, fried bologna, hot links, and world famous banana cake at Leo's Barbecue in Oklahoma City . . . this place is very authentic, and on a weird rural road with seventeen churches on it, despite being near downtown; unfortunately, Ian didn't get to keep his meal, he got carsick several hours later-- the minor illness, again no complaints-- and he filled a plastic bag with vomit but didn't spill a drop in the car (well done, Ian!) . . . he ate some mozzarella cheese near the end of the ride, and puked this up into one of the planters in front of the Day's Inn . . . yuck . . . we're going to get him some Dramamine tomorrow morning . . . and, in case you were wondering, I'm out of clean shirts.

Undefeated (and a turtle) defeat The Affair

My wife and I put the nix on the first season of The Affair-- despite the good acting, the show is SLOW-- so after seven rather repetitive episodes, we mailed it back to Netflix and instead watched the documentary Undefeated (Netflix streaming) which tells the story of the Manassas Tigers-- an inner city football team with typical inner city struggles . . . single parents, jail, gangs, violence, poverty, lack of funding, and general apathy towards school-- and the volunteer coach Bill Courtney and his volunteer assistants-- white men from the rich suburbs of Memphis-- and how they build relationships with these predominantly African-American kids and eventually cobble together an excellent team that goes to the play-offs . . . it's just as cliche and inspirational and tear-inducing as Friday Night Lights and Remember the Titans and Rudy and The Blind Side, but there's a much stronger dose of reality (as there should be, as it's a documentary) and there's also an undersized lineman named Money talking about his pet tortoise, which he pulls from a large metal bucket in the yard of his tiny house; his description of the turtle is poetic and metaphorical: "just look at the texture of him . . . on the outside everybody wants to be hard and show their strength, but on the inside it's like they're all flimsy, you know, skin and bones" and that's a lesson that he not only understands, but has to literally endure . . . you'll have to watch the film to find out how, and it's certainly a universal lesson that all football players grapple with, but despite the possibility of injury, letdown, and worse, this story makes a solid case for why we should keep playing football in America.

Warning: Blood and Irony Ahead!

I was opening a box of band-aids in order to tend to all the cuts on my toes (from when I dropped a bottle of beer at the Ween show and some glass got into my sandals and I didn't realize it until later in the evening, when I looked down and noticed that my right foot was all red) and the band-aid box lid gave me a mean little paper cut, right on the cuticle, and so I had to use one of the band-aids from the box to staunch the blood from a cut caused by that selfsame box . . . and this leads me to believe that I am too old to attend rock concerts without sustaining injury.

Bonus Sentence: The Lorax Needs to Write This Article

Here is the Star Ledger article about the car chase that started on our street; apparently a local dude was caught with drugs that he was intending to distribute and took off in a hurry-- and though the chase ended when he crashed into a police car, the article explains that no one was injured . . . which I suppose is technically true, but I think the writer should mention that there was some flora that suffered injury-- my beautiful tree that I planted and tended for its entire life . . . who will speak for the trees?

Can Duct Tape Really Fix Anything?

Yesterday afternoon, a bit after six PM, Ian and Catherine heard a loud bang on our front lawn-- they were in the kitchen-- and so they ran outside and saw the tail end of a wild car chase . . . a white car drove over the No Parking sign in front of our neighbor's house (causing the loud bang) and then raced across our lawn, clipping one of our trees; this caused the car's bumper and side mirror to come off (and he also knocked a huge chunk of bark off my tree . . .  more on that later) and then the car turned back onto the road and continued south on Valentine, pursued by five police cars (marked and unmarked) and though I was in the room closest to the incident, I missed the entire thing (I was in my music studio, wearing headphones, editing a podcast) and finally, from what we heard, the car plowed into a police road block on Benner, injuring the officer that was in the car . . . I can't find an article yet, but I will link to one when I do; Cat was freaked out because they were out on the front lawn five minutes before, unloading from a day at the pool, and I was freaked out because my beautiful tree, that I planted when Ian was born, suffered a severe injury, but the web tells me that if you duct-tape the bark back to the tree, the tree has a much better chance of surviving, so though it looks weird, I did it and I hope it works.

Mea Culpa?

Martin Seligman, who wrote Learned Optimism, asserts that it is mentally healthier to sublimate rather than ruminate-- if you suffer a setback, blame an outside force instead of yourself . . . this is how you avoid depression; I may have taken this to the extreme on Sunday, when I stubbed my toe on the short flight of stairs leading from the study into the kitchen (stubbed it hard, hard enough that I crumpled into a ball) and immediately blamed my wife for the injury, claiming that it was her fault because she "talked to me while I was climbing the stairs" and -- in my throes of pain-- I told her she shouldn't engage me in conversation until I was in front of her and stationary or that it could result in injury . . . I recognize the absurdity of this logic now, but it did make my toe and my ego feel better during the incident-- instead of being a comically injured spaz, I was an indignantly wronged victim.

My Dog is in the Doghouse (and a Raccoon is in MY House)

We take good care of our dog, and he has an excellent life: plenty of walks, the occasional backwoods vacation, and lots of love . . . but apparently he doesn't appreciate this, because he has one responsibility-- protect the house!-- and in this regard, he has failed us . . . last week, the insulation guy was finishing up the job, running the cellulose hose into the attic, but he had to beat a hasty retreat from the attic when a mother raccoon, who was protecting a litter of raccoon kits, hissed at him-- kits which are feeding and shitting and urinating right above our bed; I am tempted to toss the dog through the attic access hole, but I know he'd get his ass kicked, so he's lying in a sunbeam now, letting any kind of vermin onto our property and into our attic, pretending not to understand all the grief I've been giving him (and, to add insult to injury, because of the dog's negligence we had to get a "raccoon guy" to spray some male scent up there to encourage the mom to relocate, and apparently-- as I haven't met him-- my wife thinks he's hot . . . so I'm sure she's going to be hearing raccoon all over the place so she can invite him back to "spray his scent" . . . and, honestly, if the scent gets rid of the raccoon, then I'll gladly let my wife flirt with him . . . or whatever it takes-- she did manage to get a "cash" discount from him and I'm inquiring as to how-- because the raccoon are still up there and neither my method-- blasting a radio at them-- nor my son Ian's method-- blasting his trombone at the ceiling-- have had any effect on them . . . the above photo was taken by the raccoon guy and this is the actual raccoon in our attic).