NYC: Yin, Yang, and a Lot of Grime

We went to the city today and it was a study in contrasts: after a brief brisk walk from our tree-lined, bosky town, we boarded a grimy Jersey transit train-- a classic slow-boat-to-China affair with the brown seats and the faux wood paneled decor-- then we walked through an incredibly loud construction zone and climbed up onto the High Line, which is absolute oasis from the pandemonium below-- and they can't build enough high end surreal apartments alongside it (we liked the Zaha Hadid, but you'll need to pony up 5 to 50 million per condo) and then we plunged into the frantic food frenzy at Chelsea Market and had tacos and crepes and there was the usual lack of seating but a few blocks later, we found plenty of seats and views and comfort at the Whitney, although the art ranged from beautiful to scary and everything in between, lots of abstract stuff and a floor devoted to Vietnam protest art and a special exhibit by Jimmy Durham which featured Native American themes amidst absurdist expressionism (and a particularly satisfying endless video installation featuring people bringing Jimmy mundane things-- food, toys, household items-- and Jimmy, who is wearing a three piece suit, then proceeds to smash the things with a big rock on his office desk and then stamp a receipt for the person who brought the object, and this goes on and on and on . . . we watched for twenty minutes and finally decided to leave, though we weren't bored, it was oddly compelling) and then we went to The Meatball Shop and the meatballs were very very good (rivaling my wife's beachhouse meatballs) and the homemade ice cream sandwiches were better, and then we took a grimy New York subway (it's a not a trip to the city if you don't ride the subway) to the 9/11 Memorial pools and the Oculus-- and the Memorial Pools are quite breathtaking, we had never seen them before and I got teary eyed reading all the names and thinking of my two fraternity brothers who perished in the attack and then we entered the cold sci-fi austerity of the Oculus, a spiked dinosaur of a building with an interior out of Bladerunner 2049 . . . so it was particularly anticlimactic when we boarded a disgusting, hot and crowded PATH train in the bowels of the beast, which dumped us out at Newark Penn, which was also crowded, and we made the usual mad dash to catch the Jersey Transit (another filthy classic train) but I did buy the tickets on an app and show the conductor my phone, so though the decor of train itself was 70's kitsch, the method of payment was kind of sleek . . . and once we finished this epic in contrast, there was only one movie to watch: The Fisher King, which juxtaposes the byzantine underworld of filth, mental illness and grotesque illusion with the stark angles of corporate Manhattan and resolves this contradiction the way only a Terry Gilliam film can.

Vacationing in a Geographical Analogy

My wife surprised me and arranged a one night vacation in Asbury Park last night-- the perfect complement to my guys trip down to Nags Head-- and we were happy to see that the gentrification of the area is proceeding at an extraordinary rate . . . my mother-in-law lived in the neighboring town of Ocean Grove for many years, so we headed across Wesley Lake and wandered the narrow streets-- every tiny front yard planted with bright flowers, every house a different size and color, the tent city still in the shadow of the Great Auditorium, and we were quite shocked to look back towards Asbury and see a skyline of high-end condominiums and the Biergarten . . . quite a change from the 1990's . . . anyway, here's an analogy and a few food/drink recommendations:

1) Ocean Grove is to Asbury Park as Highland Park is to New Brunswick . . . the small and sleepy town receiving the benefits of the gentrification of the larger grittier city;

2) Barrio Costero has incredible margaritas (but go for happy hour, they're not cheap) and high end Mexican tapas . . . the tuna ceviche is essentially sushi-grade tuna on tiny homemade tortilla chips-- super-tasty-- and the al pastor and fish tacos are ridiculously good;

3) Barrio Costero's sister restaurant, Reyla, has excellent Mediterranean style tapas;

4) The Speakeatery has the ultimate hipster sandwich (and fantastic if you're trying to avoid wheat/bread/gluten) which consists of a slab of General Tso's chicken sandwiched between two sticky rice "buns" and some broccoli and slaw as condiments . . . it's delicious and totally weird;

5) The Chat and Nibble is across Main Street but worth the drive if you like chorizo with your eggs.

New Brunswick: Taco Trucks on Every Corner!

While I realize this is The Marco Gutierrez Nightmare, the town across the Raritan River from me--New Brunswick-- now has a thriving Hispanic population, and with that scene come the tacos and burritos and enchiladas and posole and mole Oaxaqueno and empanadas and chorizo . . . I could go on and on, but I'm already salivating; anyway, here are two recommended options, one upscale and one incredibly cheap:

1) for the best tamales in town-- and they only cost a buck and a quarter-- head to Punto Y Coma; it's on French Street right in the heart of Little Mexico, and you'll have to dust off your Spanish to order, but it's worth it . . . great tacos al pastor, too, in homemade corn tortillas;

2) for something fancier, if you're looking for a real night out, then head to Esquina Latina . . . this place has more of a weirdly lit dance-club lounge feel, but the sangria is amazing and the food is really good too . . . especially the empanadas, just don't pronounce them "empanyadas," or you'll sound like a rube (as I did).

Dave Endorses Taco Trucks on Every Corner

I'm sure diligent readers of Sentence of Dave remember my incredible 2011 Taco Count, but for those of you who don't, here's a quick synopsis: I polished off 200 tacos in one calendar year, and this inspired both my children and my students to comparable feats of gluttony . . . but just imagine how badly I could shatter my own record if Marco Gutierrez's delicious dream of American greatness were to come true and someday, in some utopian reality, there really is a "taco truck on every corner."

A Review of Some Key Moments in the Film Better Off Dead

One of the joys of having children is forcing them to watch movies from your youth; Saturday night we ate tacos and the entire family enjoyed a screening of Better Off Dead, and while everyone remembers the deranged paperboy who wants his two dollars and the hamburger singing Van Halen's "Everybody Wants Some," this movie has a lot more to it than those scenes and it is much weirder than I remembered . . . here are some moments you might have forgotten:

1. Ricky's mom drinks primer and blows up;

2. the Asian brothers with a PA system mounted in their car;

3. one of the Asian brothers is mute, the other speake like Howard Cosell;

4. Lane tries to commit suicide multiple times;

5. Lane's eight year old brother learns to pick up "trashy women" from a book;

6. Lane's eight year old brother builds a space shuttle from household parts, and it works;

7. Lane transforms from a klutz to a ski-pro in the span of a musical montage;

8. Lane's car transforms from a two hundred dollar heap of junk to a perfectly restored 1967 Camaro SS with a shiny paint job, also in the span of a musical montage;

9. Monique the French exchange student next door is both an an ace mechanic and a professional ski-instructor;

10. Ricky and Lane duel with ski-poles over Monique the French-exchange student;

11. Ricky's mom creates a living slime mold when she botches a recipe, she also cooks a stew that contains a very large living crustacean and has waving cephalopod tentacles;

12. though Monique can actually speak English-- a fact she has hidden from Ricky and his mom-- she substitutes "testicles" for the word "tentacles";

13. Charles de Mar (Curtis Armstrong) wears a top hat the entire movie and-- in an attempt to get high-- snorts both jello and snow;

14. at the end of the movie, Lane and Monique somehow drive the perfectly restored Camaro into Dodger stadium, park it on home plate, and make-out (the stadium is empty and Lane has his saxophone).

Happy Gheorghemas! Your Gift = Seven Books

I've got a really annoying post up at Gheorghe:The Blog today in celebration of The Twelve Days of Gheorghemas . . . I have selected my seven favorite books from the thirty-three books I completed this year-- and that number seems to be par for the course . . . thirty-three books falls right in between my 2013 and 2014 totals, as I read 23 and 46 books in those years, respectively . . . I think if I really put my mind to it in 2016, and choose absolute trash to read (which isn't easy, it's hard to find really compelling trash) then I could possibly finish 50 books in one year . . . or maybe I'll just eat more tacos.

Live Vicariously Through Dave!

For all of you folks that have to work in the summer, here's a quick recap of my family beach vacation in Sea Isle City:

1) for several days, hundreds and hundreds of dolphins-- several pods?-- swam southward along the shore; at one point they were so close to the beach that the lifeguards had to pull everyone from the water . . . my father insisted they were porpoises but I took my cousin's paddleboard out to get a very close look, and they were definitely dolphins;

2) the AC broke in our condo, and it took five days to fix, so we spent a lot of time on the beach;

3) the day we took a break from the beach, we went to Stone Harbor and saw Ant-Man and-- shockingly-- it was very entertaining . . . Paul Rudd is charming and the special-effects and humor are somewhere between Honey I Shrunk the Kids and Iron Man . . . and nearly as entertaining as the film was the massive leak in the roof during the movie-- a huge thunderstorm rolled in during the opening minutes and all the people on the left side of the theater got soaked and there was a flood down the center aisle which we had to wade through when we left;

4) we really enjoyed eating at Hank Sauce, the restaurant named after the super-excellent hot sauce-- the pork tacos and the fish tacos were both excellent (and the sauce is the best);

5) I did not enjoy the lack of AC and wifi at Red White & Brew Coffee Shop;

6) while I was travelling from the Outer Banks to Sea Isle City-- twelve hours or cars, trains, taxis and buses-- Catherine and the boys saw a fisherman pull in a shark and a large stingray;

7) I nearly cried while carrying my cousin's paddleboard back to their beach house . . . that thing is heavy!

Bucket List: 1) Make a Bucket List

One of my students-- a senior-- recommended to the class that they make a "bucket list," and she reminded them that it didn't have to consist of extraordinary accomplishments and events (summit Mount Everest, win a Nobel prize, circumnavigate the globe, etc.) but could instead be fairly mundane (see the sun rise over the ocean before attending school) and then I polled the class and it turned out that about half the students had "bucket lists" of things they wanted to accomplish; I was in the no-bucket list group and I'm wondering if I should be concerned about this-- maybe I need to focus on some specific goals in order to achieve more in my life; I'd like to finish recording my album and I have some vague ideas for a sci-fi novel, perhaps if I put them on a bucket-list, then I'll work harder on them . . . but two things does not a list make, so I'll be taking suggestions for other things to put on this hypothetical list and then I will post it and then I will accomplish everything on the list . . . or maybe I won't (I did accomplish one specific goal a few years ago: I ate more tacos).

Tamales and Rocks and Things

If you like big rocks stacked on top of little rocks-- and who doesn't?-- then Pyramid Mountain is the hike for you; while rocks of all sizes are plentiful for the entire hike, there are two in particular that stand out: Bear Rock, which is huge and balanced precariously on its side, and Tripod Rock, which is a really big rock sitting on top of three smaller rocks . . . either a glacier or some very industrious Native Americans did this, and it's got a Stonehenge type feel to it; you can do a loop, climb the mountain, see the big rocks, and then return to the parking lot along rocky cliffs overlooking Taylortown Reservoir . . . this is one of the best hikes I've done in New Jersey and I highly recommend it; it was steep enough in spots that the discussion turned morbid and we ended up making a bet about how many people died trying to summit Mount Everest; I said 72, Catherine said 89, Ian said an even hundred, and Alex went high and said 150 . . . the stakes were five dollars a head to be spent on Birnn Chocolate given to the winner; you can make your own guess and then read this to see if you would have won; luckily, we did not die on the mountain and so we got to stop for lunch in Morristown on the way home at Macho Nacho, awesome chorizo and carne asada tacos and gigantic pork tamales for cheap (and Ian had his first ever chimichanga and pronounced it good).

When Someone Makes Soup, You Eat It

When your wife slaves all day over a batch of home-made chicken soup, then come dinner, you eat the soup (I made the mistake of making a few tacos with the leftover chicken, instead of partaking in the home-made soup, and she was really pissed at me).

Read My Lips: No New Resolutions

I'm going to be honest here: the only New Year's Resolution I ever followed through on was in 2011, when I resolved to eat more tacos (but I can't even be sure that I ate more tacos than usual, because in any given year, I eat a lot of tacos-- the experiment/resolution lacked a control year-- and, empirically speaking, the only thing I actually accomplished was to count the number of tacos I ate that year) and the rest of my resolutions have been ironic or farfetched, and so this year I resolve to do nothing other than do more of the same-- just a little bit better: I'm going to eat a little healthier, drink a little less in quantity-- but make up for it in quality, exercise a little more, lose my temper less, appreciate my wife more, coach a little more creatively, teach a little more effectively, record music more consistently, practice my guitar more diligently, tuck my elbow straighter when I shoot a basketball, take the dog on longer walks, find slightly better books to read, play a few more board games with my kids, cook dinner a few more times than I did last year, and-- finally-- and this is the biggest one on the list, and the wholesale change that I'm making in 2015 . . . read my lips for this one: no more pleated pants (for the most part, I have switched to flat-front pants, but I still had a few remnant pairs of pleated pants-- from the '90's?-- in my wardrobe and once in a while I would wear them, to the dismay of my wife and colleagues . . . but I donated them all last week, so I'm locked in to this particular resolution, which I'm sure is a good thing).

The Significance of #47

Having this blog has made it easy to keep track of the important things in my life, such as the number of tacos I ate in 2011 (200!) and the number of books I read in 2013 (22) and I am very proud to say that this year I more than doubled last year's book count (mainly because I read a lot of quick reads: crime-fiction and travelogues and slick non-fiction) and I just finished my fifth Don Winslow novel of the year (The Gentlemen's Hour . . . plenty of surfing, corruption, torture, and murder . . . plus some big Serial type issues, such as how the prosecution and police often "massage" eyewitness reports and confessions in order to get what they need for a conviction-- whether it's the right guy or not) and that's book number 47; for the entire list and my seven favorites, head over to Gheorghe: The Blog. 

Birthday Weekend Takes the Cake . . . A Rambling Summary of the Busiest Weekend of My Youngish Life

My wonderful wife arranged a surprise one-night getaway for my birthday last weekend (though I discovered the surprise a bit early, because we share an e-mail) and we met some old friends Friday in Greenwich Village, and my friends were nice enough to meet me in a "Dave friendly bar" -- and so Catherine and I made our way from the Hilton near Penn Station to the High Line, and then walked a bit up there . . . which is phenomenal and highly recommended, and then we hit the Chelsea Galleries-- which are directly below the High Line and which are also patently absurd -- and we saw some really bad modern art and some really scary modern art by David Altmejd, who essentially builds sculptures of horror movies, which is cool, but also begets many questions, such as: who buys this stuff? where do they put it?-- and though we found no answers, we did find some delicious pork and pineapple tacos in the Chelsea Market, and then we found Kettle of Fish, the "Dave friendly bar," which means: cheap, wood panelling, dart boards, pinball, dive-like and similar to the Park Pub . . . except this place was also full of beautiful young people, including some super-models hogging one of the dart boards, which was fun to be near at first but then got more and more annoying, but once Whitney and I got on the other board, no one was able to knock us off, a great birthday present, we won in ridiculous and dramatic fashion over opponents that were probably more skilled than us and did this for a good four hours straight, from 8 -12, until things dissolved . . .  and then after more drinking and pizza, we made it back to the hotel at 2 AM, got up the next morning and took the train home for soccer practice, then got ready for my oldest son's birthday -- he was born a day before me -- and went to Medieval Times, and though I could barely keep my eyes open, it was quite fun, sort of like professional wrestling (and our knight won!) combined with bizarre dinner theater (and Whitney reminded me of the best line from The Cable Guy, which is spot on: "there were no utensils IN medieval times, hence there are no utensils AT Medieval Times") and then we hosted a sleepover for a bunch of ten year olds and then on Sunday morning, I had to wake-up my younger son and his buddy from the sleepover at 6 AM so we could get dressed to play three indoor 8 v 8 soccer games, and then after coaching that insanity, we rushed to the basketball play-off game, as I am the assistant coach on that team, and we won and advanced in the play-offs, and then I finally got to take a birthday nap.

Perhaps These are the Best Sentences of 2013!

Negligent and lazy readers, here is your chance to catch up on a year's worth of Sentences by Dave ^TM and while these "winners" were chosen rather arbitrarily, I think they will give you a good idea of my best work in 2013, which is no worse than my worst work in any other year . . . and so, without further fanfare, here are some of the sentences of the past year that might be better than some of the other sentences of the past year . . . depending, of course, on your personal taste and predilection for this sort of thing . . . as there is no way I could could actually predict what sentences you personally would prefer . . . so let's just say that these are my favorite sentences of 2013:

Best Absurd Question and Answer;

Best Real Question and Answers;

Best Political Commentary;

Grossest Medical Anecdote;

Kids Say the Darndest Things;

Kids Do the Darndest Things;

Best Sentence About Dressing Like A Holiday;

Most Awkward Moment of Dave;

Dave's Greatest Athletic (and Pathetic) Moment of the Year;

Cheesiest Poem of the Year;

Alex Succumbs to Peer Pressure;

Tacos, Racism, and the Circus;

Best Incident Involving Hot Peppers (To Witness, Not Experience);

Best Attempt at a Motif;

Dave's Dumbest Moment of 2013;

Dave's Greatest Moment of 2013;

A Real Moment That People Claimed Was Fictitious;

and finally,

Something Valuable for Children.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Some Restaurants You Should Frequent, Dammit

I'm not going to offer a full review of trader and quantitative analyst turned philosopher and power-lifter Nassim Nicholas Taleb's new book Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder, other than to say that it is evocative, provocative, bold, brash, learned, and contemptuous -- and if you are at all involved in finance, then you have probably read -- or at least know about -- his previous book, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable . . . which explains not so much how financial collapses happen, but how to prepare and even profit from them (as Taleb did with his hedge funds) but I'm using his ideas for more selfish reasons; he often uses the restaurant business to flesh out his "anti-fragile" metaphor, as "restaurants are fragile; they compete with each other, but the collective of local restaurants is anti-fragile, for that reason . . . had restaurants been individually robust, hence immortal, then overall business would be either stagnant or weak," and you can see where this is going -- subsidies and intervention will actually destroy the health of a working system . . . and while logical folks know that opening a restaurant is risky business (though not as risky as urban legend has it) we love the fact that people keep trying, and Taleb explains this in his typical hyperbolic fashion: "in order to progress, modern society should be treating ruined entrepreneurs in the same way we honor dead soldiers, perhaps not with as much honor, but using exactly the same logic" because this person has taken heroic risk that is beneficial to others . . . but BEFORE this happens, please patronize the following restaurants, because they are inexpensive, awesome, and BYOB . . . I don't want them to become fallen soldiers . . .

1) El Gallo Giro 2 . . . a Mexican joint on Route 1 in Edison, just past Open Road Honda . . . they have awesome mole sauce and you can get enchiladas with pork or chicken or chorizo smothered in the stuff, their burritos are ridiculously huge and their tacos and guacamole are fantastic as well, this is our replacement for Taqueria la Juquilita, which changed hands and isn't as good as it once was;

2) Cafe La Terrassa, in New Brunswick, which has a new menu and a new take-out menu . . . this place is amazing, but slightly off the beaten path and never as crowded as it should be, and I will be really pissed off if it doesn't make it, so I am relying on you to eat there (and these reviews are totally unsolicited, as I have received no food, drink, coupons, sexual favors, or preferential seating for my favorable opinions).

Save Your Money AND Eat Well . . .

If you're in the New Brunswick area and want a good meal, you don't need to drop a butt-wad of cash at The Frog and the Peach . . . if you are actually in New Brunswick proper, then my two favorite places are Cafe La Terrassa: delicious Latin American food, ambiance, and reasonable prices (and it's BYOB) and Costa Chica: festive chairs, authentic Mexican (get the tacos al pastor) and pizza . . . and if you are closer to Edison, then try Taqueria La Juquilita on Woodbridge Avenue -- it looks like a little grocery mart -- this place is also authentic Mexican -- the chicken mole is awesome and the chorizo and pork tacos are also fantastic -- get the the tacos "al mano" in the homemade corn tortillas . . . I really want these places to be successful, so please patronize them!

The Most Racist Show On Earth?

I attended the Ringling Brothers and Barnum Bailey Circus again last week (the last time I went was almost exactly three years ago) and while I am not a huge fan (I sort of agree with the PETA folks who handed my son Alex a pamphlet about elephant cruelty, and the music is downright awful, and very loud . . . and though I looked over my sentence from three years ago, I still forgot to bring earplugs) but one thing particularly intrigued me about the show this time: when all the performers came out for the opening number, I noticed that the ten unicyclists were all African-American, and this struck me as odd, because the rest of the cast was quite diverse -- and also because I imagine unicycling as a nerdy and very Caucasian past-time, but twenty minutes later I realized why they were all black . . . they were a basketball squad . . . and this offended me a little, as a case of reverse discrimination -- it seemed as if Barnum and Bailey was insinuating that only black people play basketball (or perhaps, more logically, the act auditioned as a troupe, and they happened to all be African-American) but either way, I would love to be the token white guy on that unicycle basketball team . . . on another, less racist note, the best part of the night was the meal we had in downtown Trenton, near the Sun National Bank Center, at a Guatemalan dive called Taqueria el Mariachi . . . if you are in Trenton and you love tacos, you've got to try this place: best salsa ever and delicious al pastor and verde sauce.

Comparing and Contrasting Insane People (with an extra dash of irony)

While I recognize the irony of someone like myself judging lunatics who write lots of words on the internet, I still can't help offering my two cents: last Spring Break we ate an amazing little taco joint in New Paltz called Mexicali Blue, and while the Yelp reviews are generally quite positive, there are also some fascinating narratives sprinkled in the mix, about mischarges for guacamole and enduring loud music -- long competent narratives with loads of details . . . in fact, if they weren't written on a restaurant-review web-site, these people might pass for educated and normal . . . and we spent this Spring Break in Southern Vermont and when I drove through Ludlow, on my way to get some new bindings for my snowboard, I saw a little shack called Taco's Taco's (that's how it is spelled on the sign) and I love tacos, so I checked the Yelp reviews and while I will definitely never visit this restaurant, I am glad I visited the reviews, because while they are bad, they are also wonderfully written, informative, entertaining, and quite funny . . . especially "Tasteless Tacos, Bogus Burritos, and Nasty Nachos," written by David K from Fort Lee, New Jersey, who describes his "first taste of nachos at Rye Playland Ice Skating Rink" and says that they were "totally better" than the nachos at Taco's Taco's . . . he also calls their Spanish Rice "one word: disgraceful" and claims that the rice is not only an insult to Spanish people, but to all people "of Hispanic descent."

Transitions? WTF!

Last week, my wife texted me the following message "U need to pick up the boys from your parents' house on the way home; I took out meat meat for tacos for dinner" and I told her I would pick up the kids and then I chastised her for not using a transition between two very different ideas -- thus creating an abrupt non sequitur of a message -- and I sent this message despite receiving advice NOT to send it from the women in the English office . . . because I thought it was humorous, but my wife thought it was "kind of annoying" and so I suppose that transitions are unnecessary in texts and I won't bring it up again (and of course, my wife used a period, not a semi-colon, in her text but I don't want to ruin the integrity of Sentence of Dave and so I made that slight adjustment . . . I apologize to all parties for being "kind of annoying").

Costa Chica!

In contrast to the all-encompassing logic of yesterday's post, today I will give some exceedingly specific and local advice: if you live in the New Brunswick area, and you like authentic Mexican food, then try Costa Chica Mexican Restaurant and Pizzeria . . . it's right in the middle of the barrio, on Handy Street, and everything we ate there was delicious . . . excellent chips, salsa, and fresh guacamole; tender and spicy marinated pork in the tacos pastor; great verde sauce; spicy chicken mole (although the chicken was on the bone, not a breast, but still super-delicious) and we had some kind of weird sweet tamale for dessert, which was also tasty . . . the place was loud and crowded, the waitress spoke a little English, and the chairs are especially festive and brightly colored.