Alex is so skinny that he when he wears skinny jeans, he looks like MC Hammer.
My Son Alex Is So Skinny! How Skinny Is He?
Alex is so skinny that he when he wears skinny jeans, he looks like MC Hammer.
Sometimes You Have To Acknowledge What Is
I was moving towards the register at the Wawa when an absolutely stacked, off the pages of a magazine, Playboy Playmate quality woman -- the kind of woman that doesn't belong in East Brunswick, New Jersey, let alone a convenience store -- strolled in front of me . . . and at first I noticed that she was wearing tight corduroy pants and an even tighter sweater, and then I noticed her high cheekbones and silky hair and then I noticed what she was carrying . . . an entire box of 100 Grand Bars . . . and she placed the entire box of 100 Grand Bars on the counter; she then proceeded to count out ten bars, aloud: one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine-ten . . . exactly one million dollars worth . . . while the cashier and I ogled her . . . and then she paid for them and walked out of our lives forever . . . but she left the box on the counter, as a reminder that she really was just there; once she was gone, the cashier looked at me and said, "That was the strangest and best thing that happened to me all day."
iPod Touch Justice
Last weekend, when my wife was preparing an overnight bag for my children (because they were slated to sleep over my parent's house) she discovered my iPod Touch in the sweatshirt pocket Alex had already packed . . . and so my wife realized that Alex was attempting to smuggle the device out of our house so he could play Angry Birds or Samurai Fruit or whatever else he has on there . . . and this was nothing new, as he had already been caught smuggling the iPod to school (I guess this is what you get when you don't have cable or a video game system) and so my wife decided to teach Alex a lesson . . . she surreptitiously removed the iPod Touch from the sweatshirt pocket and then finished packing the bag; Alex discovered that the iPod Touch was missing that evening when he was at my parent's house, and he assumed that he lost it, and that all holy hell was going to rain down on him . . . which was the exact effect that Catherine intended -- but there was one problem: she did not inform my parents that she unsmuggled the iPod Touch, and so they had to deal with Alex's misery as a reality . . . and he was really miserable because he knew he had royally screwed up . . . but when my parents called us to break the news, we were in the basement of Tumulty's -- which gets no cell-phone reception -- and we got home late and never checked our messages, so it wasn't until the next morning that Alex and my parents found out the truth; we all learned a lesson about the power these devices have over us, and if I wasn't committed to writing this stupid blog for the rest of my life, perhaps I would completely unplug myself and my family from all of them . . . iPods, laptops, televisions, cell-phones, toasters, microwaves, alarm clocks, digital watches . . . all of them!
Sensitive Student Saves Teacher's Job
Last week, I was moved from my classroom for several days because of make-up HSPA testing -- and so when I informed my classes of the change of venue, I also told them that this was a "test of their memory," and if they showed up late to class because they originally went to our normal classroom, then they had failed the test and would have to do ten push-ups . . . and I told them that I was certainly in jeopardy of failing the memory test as well, and many students confessed that they thought they were definitely going to fail . . . because it's really hard to escape "the clutches of the bell schedule" and then I had a great idea, and I told my students that I was going to make a big sign to put on the door with the correct classroom information and the addendum: "YOU FAILED . . . YOU FAILURE" and everyone thought that would be really funny and a great idea, and everyone was speculating on who was going to screw up and have to suffer the sign . . . except one student, who said, "I don't think you should do that because the kids taking the make-up test are going to read the sign and think it's directed at them and it's going to make them feel really bad," and I took a moment to process how stupid a mistake I almost made, and then I thanked the kid profusely and we all agreed that he did me a great service.
No Sex or Drugs, and Not Even That Much Rock'n'Roll
If you're looking for something similar to Hammer of the Gods, then do NOT read David Byrne's new book How Music Works . . . there are no sordid tales of fish-sex, drugs, and hotel orgies . . . instead Byrne offers his theories on how the context and setting of music is just as important as the composer, and he peppers his insights with anecdotes from his long, varied, and very experimental music career . . . here is an exercise that his dance choreographer, Noemie Lafrance, used during dance auditions, when they had to whittle a room of fifty hopefuls down to three lucky winners:
Rule #1) Improvise an eight count dance phrase to the music playing;
Rule #2) Once you have an eight beat phrase you like, then loop it . . . repeat it over and over;
Rule #3) When you see someone else with a stronger phrase, copy it;
Rule #4) When everyone is doing the same phrase, the exercise is over;
Byrne said it "was like watching evolution on fast forward" . . . the room started in chaos, and then pockets of order formed, and finally certain pockets "went viral" and within four minutes, the dancers were moving in perfect unison . . . and I feel like I could use this in class -- maybe with verbal chants and/or hand gestures rather than dance moves -- and it also sounds like a fun game to play at a party or in a bar (if you could get everyone to participate) and I tried to search on YouTube for an example of dancers doing this, but I had no luck . . . so if anyone has any ideas on how to implement this in a classroom, or does the exercise at a party or in a discoteque, please inform me of the results.
Meta-Debate
I missed the presidential debate last Wednesday -- The Walking Dead trumps politics . . . and remember, there won't be any politics once the zombies come . . . as Sheriff Rick says, "This isn't a democracy anymore" -- but I did enjoy the aftermath of the debate, especially the debate about who won the debate, and I even started a debate about who won the debate about who won the debate.
New Jersey Is Not San Diego
Every summer, I make grand plans for our back deck; I envision installing a retractable awning, or screening it and adding a roof, or even simply buying a pair of those giant, heavy duty umbrellas . . . but I never get to it, and then summer ends and I realize that the weather in central New Jersey is so disgusting that there is never a good time to sit on the back porch anyway . . . it's either too hot and humid, or too damp and humid, or too buggy, or too cold . . . and so we have this wonderful back porch, but the only resident who uses it much is the dog, who isn't as particular as the rest of us, and there's no way I'm buying a thousand dollar umbrella for him.
PAH!
As of now, I am still the sole member of PAH! (Parents Against Halloween!) but please take a moment and reflect: are we really going to do this again? the sugar meltdowns? the costumes? the aimless wandering around the neighborhood? the eating of all the extra candy? the diabetic comas? . . . and I'm willing to negotiate with the children . . . I'm willing to offer them firecrackers and BB guns and an go-carts, if they are willing forego this "holiday" . . . I'll even buy them a couple of candy bars-- but let's put our collective feet down -- they're only children and we can stand up to them and give All Hallow's Eve back to the witches and satanists . . . I'll even carve a jack'o'lantern . . . but I just don't want to deal with that giant bowl of processed sugar . . . I can't handle it and neither can they. I'll even give them 100 bucks!
Sometimes You Need To Let Your Head Breathe
I don't have a problem with wearing a visor, and you shouldn't either.
Exotic and Spicy Mystery Story
Last weekend, we got Indian food delivered from Delhi Garden, which is usually very accurate and reliable with to-go orders and delivery . . . but this time, when I brought the food inside, I noticed we were missing our uttapam, our nan, and one of our samosas . . . and so I sprinted out of the house, accompanied by my faithful dog, and caught the delivery guy before he drove away; I told him the story and showed him what we had, and so he called the restaurant, and then he called some of the other houses on his delivery run -- thinking that he gave someone an extra bag of food, but no dice-- and so he had to drive back up Route 27 to fetch the rest of our food . . . and the next morning, Catherine "solved" the mystery when she found a bag of Indian food in our vestibule; she assumed that one of the neighbors realized they had an extra bag of food and left it on our front porch, and that I had stupidly put it in the vestibule -- which already smells awful because of the piles of shoes, cleats, neoprene braces, and shin-guards -- but she assumed that when I got up to walk the dog that I didn't think about the malodorous combination I was creating, and instead of tossing the old Indian food into the garbage, I lazily chucked it into the shoe pile . . . but this was not the case . . . no one returned that bag of food: it was there the entire time, and then I remembered that I was late getting to the door to pay for the food, and the delivery guy opened the screen door and went into the vestibule, and then I opened the door, and the dog was running around, and in the confusion of the transaction -- I'm not really sure when, he must have put that bag down, or dropped it, or I put it down to pay him, and then we both forgot about it . . . I'm not sure if I ever noticed it at all, and he certainly must have forgotten that he handed me two bags, but that fact of the matter is that Delhi Garden was reliable in its order and delivery and we got an undeserved sack of food . . . but unless they read this blog, they will never know the truth.
At Least There's a Name For It
I was going to look up the weather on the internet -- to prepare for my son's soccer game -- but, as usual, I forgot where I had planned to drive on the digital super-highway, and I got lost on a back road and found this incredibly appropriate sniglet . . . Netheimer's: when you go to do something on the internet but forget what you were going to do.
Tracy Morgan Is NOT Tracy Jordan (Or Is He?)
The actual comedy of Tracy Morgan has very little to do with the endearingly bumbling sack of non sequiturs that 30 Rock calls Tracy Jordan . . . or at least that's what I surmised from Morgan's show at The State Theater in New Brunswick last week; Morgan's material is too profane for me to quote on this blog, and while it was very funny at times, and Morgan is astounding mimic -- whether he is singing Michael Jackson or the theme song from Good Times -- the show also had some remarkable low points . . . some strange Michael Richards-esque rants (which Morgan is known for) and a monologue where he came off as just shy of crazy (he seems to sincerely believe that the Moon landing is a hoax and that dinosaurs never existed . . . and there were no punch lines to this portion of the "comedy" act) and while I didn't love the show, I did love the conversation Connel, Craig, Anne and I had at Tumulty's after the show . . . but that was even filthier than Tracy Morgan's brand of humor, and so I can't transcribe it here either . . . but there was plenty of discussion about bestiality, swinging, and this amazing Dear Prudence column (also, Morgan's body refutes the old wive's tale that the camera adds twenty pounds to one's figure . . . he looks much fatter in person).
Stop Reading This And Go To Bed!
Here are some of the things I learned while reading David K. Randall's book Dreamland: Adventures in the Strange Science of Sleep . . . and while his lessons are often commonsensical, he provides descriptions of how these truisms were scientifically proven:
1) We often dream about what bothers us;
2) We often dream the same thing over and over;
3) While dreams don't have symbolic meaning, they can help us solve actual problems in a creative fashion;
4) Better to sleep than to cram;
5) The West Coast team has an advantage when playing Monday Night Football;
6) You need sleep to synthesize new information;
7) If you are deprived of enough sleep, you die . . . from lack of sleep;
8) Friendly fire deaths in the military are most often caused by fatigue;
9) The biggest hurdle in the military is not technological, it is sleep deprivation;
10) If you didn't get a full night's rest, take a nap;
11) You can kill someone in your sleep, and depending on the interpretation of the law, you might either get life in prison or get off scot-free.
12) Teenagers have different Circadian rhythms than adults;
13) Highschools that pushed their start time to 8:30 had higher SAT scores, better attendance, less fights, and a number of other quantifiable improvements;
14) Some popular prescription sleeping pills don't actually improve sleep all that much, they just give the sleeper temporary amnesia, so that it improves the perception of how one has slept;
15) The electric light, the TV, and the computer are enemies of sleep, because they fool our brains into thinking it is still daylight, and thus ruin our Circadian rhythm;
16) Before the advent of the electric light, the computer, and the TV, humans had two sleeps: a first sleep from when the sun went down until around midnight, then there was an hour or two of wakefulness, where people often ate or fornicated or talked, and then a "second sleep" until morning;
17) Sleep apnea is scary . . .
and the final thing to take away from this book is that sleep is really, really important for humans-- important for our health, our minds, and our stress levels-- yet even though we know this, married couples usually share a bed that is too small for the two of them and sleep together despite snoring, flatulence, kicking, blanket-stealing, late night reading, and general disruptions . . . and studies found that women primarily do this because they want to feel safe and that men do it because you never know when you might get lucky, and nothing improves your luck more than proximity.
Sweet Dreams Are Probably Not Made Of This
Last Wednesday night, when I checked on my children to make sure they were tucked into bed, doing some reading before lights out, I found my younger son reading a large age-inappropriate biology text . . . and he was studying-up on vampire bats -- there was a photo of a vampire bat sucking on the teat of a cow and several repulsive close-ups of squashed vespertilion faces and pointy vespertilion incisors -- and so I gave him a kiss on the forehead and made a quick exit . . . I don't need to look at stuff like that before bed . . . and then I crossed the hall to check on my other son, and he was reading a book called Gross Body Facts and he told me he was looking for the chapter about "stinky armpits" and I pretended to be proud of his curiosity and inquisitive disposition, and then beat feet out of his room as well . . . and I am happy to report that neither child had a nightmare . . . nor did I (but my children never have nightmares . . . even after catching giant spiders and then reading books about giant spiders . . . which makes me wonder if they are actually part spider; that would explain a lot).
That Look . . . You Know, That Look . . .
I am sure all of you are familiar with the sensation of getting "that look" from someone who passes you by in the hallway at work . . . that look that says: hey, there's something off about you, but I'm too polite to say what it is, and so you'll just have to interpret this look and figure it out . . . so you inspect your nose for boogers, make sure your fly is zipped, and ensure that you don't have semen in your hair (a.k.a. "There's Something About Mary Syndrome") . . . but when I received "that look" last Tuesday morning from a colleague, it was directed at my chest and so I was able to dismiss the usual suspects and instead assumed that I had a stain on my shirt . . . and when I looked down, I did see an odd "U" shaped stain on the right breast of my burgundy golf shirt . . . but upon further inspection, this turned out to be stitching-- I was wearing my shirt inside-out . . . and neither my wife nor several other teachers noticed this, and if it wasn't for "a look" from a random dude, I would have taught first period wearing my shirt in this ridiculous manner (because once you start teaching with your shirt on inside-out, there's no turning back . . . because though it's embarrassing if your students tell their parents that their teacher wore his shirt inside out, you don't get fired for doing that, but if a student goes home and tells his parents that their teacher took his shirt off in class -- whatever the reason -- you are getting the axe).
The First Rule About Fight Club Is You Do NOT Blog About Fight Club
Read any article about how to write a successful blog and the first tip will be something like this: STAY ON TOPIC or CHOOSE A UNIQUE TOPIC or DECIDE WHAT YOU ARE GOING TO BLOG ABOUT . . . and perhaps that is why Sentence of Dave is not particularly successful, because the Topic is "Dave" and that's not very specific . . . but there are certain areas where Sentence of Dave excels -- according to the Blogger Statistics-- and so here are the most popular searches that lead to this godforsaken corner of the internet: trigonometry, peccary, Chatham Bars Inn, balls, emo, Andrew Strong, giant wasp, and . . . drum roll please . . . elephantitis.
You Never Know How Big A House Is From The Outside
After my son Ian surprised me with his ability to read a rather difficult book out loud, he explained, "My head is little, but my brain is big."
Horror and Meta-Horror All Wrapped Into One Movie
The Cabin in the Woods is the horror movie you've seen a million times before, except that it's not . . . so don't be fooled by the B+ actors and B+ plot . . . this movie turns out to be what The Hunger Games should have been; it's in the same satirical genre as Scream, but I liked it better, mainly because of two memorable scenes: one shows what happens when a confluence of elevators arrive at a particular floor-- a confluence of elevators full of an astounding bestiary-- and the other juxtaposes a celebration of technicians and hilly-billy zombie beatdown in a ironic cinematic kaleidoscope; nine mermen out of ten.
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).
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