Please Tell Me Your Kids Do This
Saturday, we went for ice cream after Alex's soccer game, and while we were waiting for the lady to scoop the cones, Alex, who is seven years old, scraped a sprinkle off the counter-- out of a streak congealed ice cream that had been sitting in the unseasonably hot sun-- and nonchalantly popped said sprinkle into his mouth, as if he was sampling a bar snack . . . and I chastised him for his decision, but I am wondering if that's just typical behavior for a hungry second grade boy.
If You're Angry and You Know it Clap Your Hands
I've read a few books on the current economic crisis and watched the documentary Inside Job, and while these works explained the complexities of the collapse and certainly assigned some blame, none of them channeled the powerless frustration and anger that I have towards both our government and big business . . . but Matt Taibbi addresses this in his book Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That is Breaking America, which began as a Rolling Stone article; he points fingers, calls people "morons" and "assholes" and far worse, and refers to Goldman Sachs as "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money" . . . he skewers Alan Greenspan and Hank Paulson and Lawrence Summers and Obama and Reagan and Clinton and both Bush presidents and everyone else involved in making decisions about our economy . . . and the result is frightening and comprehensive condemnation of our economic system, portraying it as an unregulated, backroom dealing casino that rewards the super-wealthy at the expense of the taxpayers, and, sadly, there seems to be no simple solution . . . there's nothing we can do, no party we can vote for, because the result will be the same . . . and while we debate red and blue state issues-- while half the nation rails about "overweening government power" and the other half protests against "corporate excess"-- the real problem is that our system is a combination of both these problems, and the media is never going to extensively cover complicated and boring issues like the repeal of the Glass-Steagall act and the loosening of the Commodity Exchange Act and the actual ramifications of ObamaCare, and so instead we debate about abortion and health-care and tax cuts-- we argue about if gas prices have increased because of demand from China or because we need to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge-- while the real business of America is done between the mega-banks and the government and the usual suspects, behind a green curtain that shields them from the democratic process that is more show than substance.
A Good Rule To Know
My son Alex told me that at school last week, he had to write a safety rule on a star shaped piece of paper, and that the teacher then put all the stars on the wall . . . he also said that most kids copied rules from the movie that inspired this lesson . . . Captain Buckle, a police officer, reminded the students to "always go places with a buddy" and "look both ways when you cross the street"-- but Alex was proud that he thought of an original rule-- a rule Captain Buckle did not mention . . . a rule his father taught him . . . and so his star on the wall reminds people of something very important: "no metal in the microwave."
A Joke That Doubles As An IQ Test
Here is something fun and annoying to do to your friends: explain that you are about to tell a joke, but that the joke also doubles as test of their intelligence-- this will make them anxious to get the joke, but chances are that they won't-- and then say, "A termite walks into a bar and asks, 'Where's the bartender?'"
Synco-what?
Though I pride myself on my large vocabulary, I've had my troubles recently . . . and now I'm faced with writing the most difficult sentence in my career, and it is about learning the clinical term for something that afflicts me, but I really do not want to write this sentence, for reasons I will soon explain-- and I suffer this solely for you, my diligent readers; last Wednesday in the English Office, my colleague Rachel said a string of words that sounded nothing like English: "He had a vasovagal response . . . it's a syncope," and so I asked her to explain and during her explanation, I started feeling lightheaded and my fingers started tingling and I got a strange sensation in my chest and I felt very nervous . . . almost as if I was going to pass out . . . and that's when I learned the truth: I often suffer from vasovagal responses, especially when people are talking about blood and fainting, which is a common trigger for the response . . . not that I mind actually seeing blood-- but I have trouble thinking about it (probably due to my gigantic imaginative brain) and so even as I write this sentence in the school library, I feel as though I might plant my face into the keyboard, but I soldier on anyway, dizzy but validated, because my response has a definition and and so I am not a freak.
Death Be Not Proud of A Turtle
The boys and I took a trip to Sandy Hook last Thursday, and despite the rain, poison ivy and mosquitoes, we had a good time, especially out on North Beach; Ian's highlight was the dead terrapin he found in a foamy and debris filled tide pool-- he poked it with a stick and when the head bobbed to the surface, we noticed that the eyes had been eaten out of the skull-- and this grisly image must have stuck with him because on the car ride home he said, "I'm proud that I found that turtle, but I'm not proud that it was dead and had no eyes."
One Thing At A Time
When trying to improve at a sport, it's best to focus on one skill at a time: in the heat of competition it's near impossible to remember anything, let alone two separate things . . . and so I gave my son Alex one thing to improve during his soccer game on Sunday, and I think the "one thing at a time method" worked, as he played well and assisted in his team's only goal . . . what skill did I ask him to work on? . . . just before he ran onto the field, I told him to try to avoid prolonged holding and "adjustment" of his genitals during the course of play-- as this not only made him lose focus on the ball, but was also inappropriate in mixed company-- and while he wasn't perfect in this endeavor, he was certainly more successful than in the previous game, and that's all you can ask of a seven year old boy.
Bite Me?
Last week during first period, one of my students announced that she had successfully passed her Road Test and was now the proud owner of a New Jersey Probationary Driver's License, and another girl turned to her and said, "Did you get somebody to bite it?" and I found this statement odd and said so, and she explained that it's good luck to get someone to bite your new driving license . . . but none of the other kids had heard of this tradition, nor had the students in the class next door . . . but I did find this reference to what must be a rather obscure practice, which may stem from biting a gold coin to tell if it's real (and the resultant Olympic tradition of biting your gold medal).
A Contradiction So Bottomless That Even Dave Cannot Resolve It
I love the television show Community and I love claymation . . . but I hate the claymation episode of Community.
Thanks Dan
Lately, I've been obsessed with the TV show Community . . . it's a sitcom satirizing traditional TV Tropes (and if you haven't been to the TV Tropes web-site, block out a few hours and check it out) and creator and writer Dan Harmon, in an interview in Wired magazine, explains his method of organizing beats, scenes, episodes, and entire seasons of the show; he calls his graphic organizer an "embryo" and he ensures that the elements are present at every step before he moves on . . . and so last week, while I was teaching narrative writing in my composition class, preparing kids to write their college essays, I told a number of stories (not that I don't tell stories the rest of the year) and I found that my stories subscribed to Harmon's organizer, as did the narrative models we used from the text (Orwell's "Shooting an Elephant" and "Salvation" by Langston Hughes and "Me Talk Pretty One Day" by David Sedaris) and so here is Harmon's embryo, in case you want to try it out:
- 1. A character is in a zone of comfort
- 2. But they want something
- 3. They enter an unfamiliar situation
- 4. Adapt to it
- 5. Get what they wanted
- 6. Pay a heavy price for it
- 7. Then return to their familiar situation
- 8. Having changed
and while all stories don't conform to this pattern-- especially once you get modern and post-modern and characters never adapt (Kafka) or fail to get what they want (Hemingway) or do not pay a heavy price (Nicholson Baker) or remain static during the course of the story (Camus)-- I think that the most satisfying stories-- whether your talking Into The Wild or Moby Dick-- usually do follow this archetype.
Asymmetrical Asynchronous Control
My parents have a pinball machine in their basement, and my Dad was impressed that my son Ian could use the flippers independently-- apparently even some adults have trouble with this skill-- but Ian mastered this when he was three . . . and he seems to have some weird control over both sides of his body-- he kicks lefty and throws righty-- and he's always had the ability to raise one eyebrow, and in a far more natural manner than Mr. Spock.
Dave's Second Best Idea Ever!
Fans of this blog may recall Dave's Best Idea Ever, and might even be familiar with some of Dave's Bad Ideas, and so-- because Dave is a humble man who responds to the opinions of his readers-- I will let you decide which category this new idea of mine belongs, but-- not that I mean to sway you-- based on empirical evidence, I think it should be in the former . . . and I will warn you that this is a Soccer Idea, but I think that even non-soccer folks will appreciate its brilliance . . . The Problem is this: it is difficult to get very young soccer players to pass the ball to their teammates, or even to remember that their teammates actually exist, and so I wanted to create a drill that not only encouraged passing, but also had an element of immediacy to it, and not only that, I wanted the drill to reward passing instead of dribbling, which is difficult to do when the players are young and the skill levels are various, but I figured out the solution to this insoluble problem and I present it to you free-of-charge because I consider this blog to be my public service to the universe (because there's no way I'm ever going to serve hobos at a soup kitchen) and so here is the answer: zombies . . . little kids know how to act like zombies, and so I made one child be the "zombie" in the drill, and this "zombie" must hold a ball out in front of them (which is a bit mummy-like, but no one questioned it, and it slows them down) and then I instructed the zombie that all he or she desires is to zombie-walk at the ball and tag the person with the ball at their feet with their "zombie-ball" and so I put three kids in a box made with cones and told them that they have to keep the ball inside the box and away from the zombie-- but they can't get tagged by a zombie or kick the ball out of the box, or else they become the zombie-- and the zombie moves slow enough for just about any player to have enough time to look up and make a decent pass, but the zombie is fast enough (and usually making scary noises) and this encourages the player to get rid of the ball quickly and to pass it to a teammate . . . instead of just dribbling aimlessly . . . and the drill certainly makes them realize that there are other people on their team, and they understood quickly enough that the best way to defeat the zombie was to stay spread out and kick it far away when the zombie approached, and, for once, they were doing something that approximated actual soccer, passing a ball around from person to person-- and even though they were only avoiding a zombie, it still made them behave in a totally different way than they normally behave on the pitch-- and one group got good enough that I had to introduce a second zombie . . . and now I am dreaming of an entire side of zombies, forcing the children to spread out and knock the ball around like a miniature Manchester United . . . so all I can tell you is, give it a try and enjoy the results, and I am positive you will admit that this is in the running for Dave's Second Best Idea Ever.
A Sight Gag Just For You
You might recall that I permanently damaged my iPod while swimming with it in a waterproof case called an Otterbox-- but I was lucky enough to know a student with an ex-boyfriend who worked at an Apple Store, and, despite the water damage, he set me up with a new iPod, which I did not submerge underwater-- but I still used my old Otterbox to protect the new iPod from rain and sweat, until the Otterbox's head-phone jack broke . . . and now I need a new water-resistant case for my iPod, but until I get one I am using a Ziploc sandwich bag as an ersatz but physically humorous water-proof case, and now I am actually becoming resistant to buying a new case for my iPod because it's so much fun to tell people in the office that I just got a great new water-proof case for my iPod (and most people at least feign some interest because it's a technological subject . . . Katie actually asked if I got an Otterbox) and then once I've built up some interest and drama about my new-fangled waterproof case, I pull out my iPod, in the clear plastic sandwich bag, with the headphones snaking out of the corner, and the people laugh and laugh, and I think to myself: I could have been a great prop comic, just like Carrot Top.
The Rise And Fall of North Eastern Fall
Some folks love the smell of napalm in the morning, but not me-- I love the smell of decaying fungus in the morning . . . last Sunday morning to be specific, I was loving the reeky, sweet, pungent odors of an entire wheelbarrow full of weird toadstools, giant fan shaped fungi, and clusters of long stemmed mushrooms, all of which needed to be removed from my backyard, as they were quickly turning to a bug infested slime . . . and I know I shouldn't complain about things I can't control but this is the worst fall ever-- what happened to late September Sunday morning sitting on the porch in a sweatshirt and sweatpants, drinking coffee in the crisp autumn air, enjoying the rattle of dried leaves, without having to fend off giant jungle mosquitoes?
Where's The Beef . . . From?
Yin and Yang
I stayed out far too late at the Park Pub on Thursday night, and was suffering at school the next day-- and I knew I had a long afternoon in store because I had an away game . . . which equals two long and loud bus rides, Friday afternoon traffic, and lot of waiting around at the school with 21 eighth grade boys -- but I accepted this as my punishment for staying out late and drank some coffee and resigned myself to my fate . . . but then it started to rain buckets and the 9th grade coach told me his game on Saturday was already cancelled and I thought to myself: Odd, the universe is going to reward me for staying out late . . . my game will be cancelled and I'll have the afternoon off but when I went to the Athletic Office to hear the good news, I was informed that my game was still on, and again, I took the news stoically because I felt that the universe should punish me for staying out late . . . and the afternoon wore on and I grew more sleepy, but I received no e-mail cancelling the game, and so I got some candy and coffee on my way to the middle school, parked, carried the water cooler and ice chest into the building, and ran into one of my soccer players, and he was coming out the school door in jeans . . . and he informed me that they made a last minute announcement that the game was cancelled . . . and so I got into my car and texted my wife the news and she informed me that my parents had taken the kids for the night and that it was Restaurant Week in New Brunswick and we were going out for a nice meal . . . so in the end, the universe rewarded me for staying out late, which may seem odd, but I think it is because I accepted my punishment so willingly and with such stolid resignation.
Vocabulary Woes . . .
Friday afternoon, Liz was scrambling to make photo-copies in the English office, but the machine was jammed, and so I gallantly offered to walk across the school to the copy room and make her the copies (I actually wasn't being that chivalrous, I was hung-over and needed some exercise and a purpose in my life) and she thanked me and said, "Can you judge it for me, also?" and for a moment I was stumped-- I assumed "judging it" was some obscure photo-copy terminology . . . perhaps it meant to shrink down the text and copy it horizontally, like leaves in a book or something . . . and so I said, "I don't know how to do that," but she explained that she just wanted me to attempt the quiz and decide if it was fair-- so as I walked across the building I took a look at it, but when I saw it was a matching vocabulary quiz I nearly lost interest (because as everyone who has the patience to listen to me knows, I claim to be a walking dictionary) but then I noticed that this was no ordinary vocabulary quiz . . . it was only seven words, but these were the words: convivial, congenial, amicable, affable, jocular, levity, and cordial . . . and, you had to discern between seven extremely similar matching definitions, and needless to say, I did NOT get 100% and perhaps my claim that I am a walking dictionary is a bit overblown . . . but perhaps I'm a walking thesaurus.
A Sporting Paradox
I've been reading Soccernomics: Why England Loses, Why Germany and Brazil Win, and Why the U.S., Japan, Australia, Turkey--and Even Iraq--Are Destined to Become the Kings of the World's Most Popular Sport, and one of the many fascinating things the authors point out is that though America is thought of as the great proponent of the "free-market," its sporting leagues are much more socialist and egalitarian than other countries-- we have salary caps and media profit sharing (in the NFL, all television profit is shared equally) and merchandise profit sharing (outside of New York, the Yankees receive only one-thirtieth the profit on each cap sold, the same as every other team in baseball) to ensure that there is some parity in our professional sports, while the countries with far more socialized governments-- countries with a larger "safety net," with unionized labor and government health-care, and cradle to the grave benefits-- let soccer players be bought and sold like commodities on an exchange, and let the teams with the most money (i.e. Manchester United) reign supreme.
Another Movie
If you're single, self-indulgent, past your prime, seeking love, and drink too much, then you'll really dig Mike Leigh's new movie Another Year, and empathize with poor Mary-- but otherwise, you'll cringe during almost every scene, but I still recommend the film . . . the acting is perfect and the actors are imperfect, and the result will make you feel good about your repetitive, mundane life . . . and if it gets you down, then watch a more upbeat Leigh film: Happy Go Lucky.
Even Subjective Questions Can Have Wrong Answers
My Shakespeare class was asking me a number of questions about how Shakespeare's plays were enacted in Elizabethan times, and while I had a few answers for them, I eventually had to admit that one of the best uses of a time machine would be to go back and see a production Hamlet or Twelfth Night at the Globe Theatre, and then I asked the class to speculate on this hypothetical question: if they had two chances to use a time machine to see something in the past (not alter history) then what was the other thing they should see-- besides a Shakespeare play-- and a student quickly guessed the other "correct" answer . . . which is a dinosaur, of course, and a few students debated my "correct" answers-- someone suggested the Lincoln Assassination, which I must admit is a pretty good thing to go back and see-- and I decided to ask my friend and colleague Kevin, who was teaching English next door, if he knew the correct answers to this thought experiment . . . and I am so glad I asked him, because my classes laughed about his answer for the rest of the day (and I will admit that it was before 8 AM in the morning and I caught him off guard, but still, his answer was egregious) and so after I posed the question, he thought for a moment and said, "So it can be anything in the past, personal or in history, right?" and I confirmed this, and then he thought hard, searching for the correct answer and finally said, "Maybe I should see my own birth?" and then he realized what he said, and I said to him, "You want to see yourself coming out of your own mother's uterus! That's disgusting!" and my class agreed that no one should want to see their own mother's distended private parts (and I know Kevin's mother, which made it worse) and Kevin realized his error and tried to back-pedal quickly: "Okay, I take that one back . . . how about a dinosaur . . . I'd like to see a dinosaur" and we all agreed that was a better choice.
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