Lost in the Fun Home

Alison Bechdel's autobiographical graphic memoir Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic is by far the best existentialist illustrated Joycean tour-de-force bildungsroman about the coming of age of a artistic lesbian living in a Victorian home perfectly and obsessively restored by a closeted gay dad/ mortician who may or may not have committed suicide by stepping in front of an eighteen wheeler (truckicide?) setting off a recursive labyrinth of a narrative that ends where it begins like the Ouroboros . . . in fact, if I were a coming of age lesbian, I would be so intimidated by the artistry of this thing, that I would take up some other art form, like abstract steel sculpture or origami, instead of trying to compete with the brilliance of Bechdel's insight, allusions, and aesthetics.

Catfish Smells Fishy

I can't put my finger on exactly what it is about the documentary Catfish, but the story seems too neat, too contrived, and too perfectly captured -- every important moment is caught on film, everyone in the story bestows "documentary gold" into the hands of the filmmakers, and Vince's metaphor about the catfish keeping the cod nimble may be a parallel for Angela "schooling" the city boys . . . schooling them in a sad manner, but deceiving them for enough time to make them confused and embarrassed . . . but it may also work in the way that the film fools us . . . in the end, it doesn't matter if it's real or fake, or some odd combination of both (which is probably the truth of the matter . . . I think the creators knew there was something rotten in Ishpeming at the start, when they were "opening" the box that contained first painting) because the film isn't brilliant or all that moving, and it doesn't raise profound aesthetic questions, like its kissing cousin, My Kid Could Paint That, but I still think it's worth watching Catfish: though Nev is immature and annoying, his chest hair is something to behold.

Chucker vs. Shooter

Sometimes, when I am in an existential mood, I wonder: Am I a chucker or a shooter? but this is one of those intractable philosophical conundrums, because no one possesses the exact percentage when a shooter turns into a chucker, and -- as the old saying goes -- every chucker has his day . . . and then, however briefly, he imagines himself a shooter, until The Law of Averages exacts statistical revenge and The Scales of Justice are balanced once again.

The Gospel According to Alex

According to my eight year old son, the three wise men brought the baby Jesus "gold, Frankenstein, and myrrh."

When In Doubt, Blame It On Your Wife

I certainly have no problem blaming things on my kids that are actually my own fault, but there are times when it's much more logical to throw your wife under the bus; last week, I had to take my mini-van to the dealer to get a key transmitter -- and it's already humiliating enough for me to deal with mechanics, because while I teach kids how to write poetry, mechanics get to use powerful pneumatic tools and have extremely manly work-clothes -- but to add insult to injury, when the guy in the overalls asked for my registration and insurance card so he could take down the VIN and some other information, I couldn't find either . . . I searched the glove compartment, the cup-holders, the ashtray, and the floor . . . but no luck, and I finally told him, "My wife drives this car and I don't know what she did with everything," but that's not true, I drive the mini-van, but I had no idea where any of that stuff actually was, and (after I called my wife) what I didn't realize is that there is a second glove little glove compartment above the big glove compartment, and that's where we keep that stuff . . . and the bright side is: at least this ignorance didn't occur when I was being pulled over by a cop for a moving violation.

The Yellow Birds: Catch-22 Without the Jokes

The Yellow Birds, a novel written by Iraqi War veteran Kevin Powers, has a scene reminiscent of Catch-22: as I raced to the finish of the story, I couldn't help but think of when Yossarian shows up in formation butt-naked to receive his medal because Snowden has bled all over his uniform . . . and Powers' novel also has a Snowden-like scene of graphic gore and violence at its heart, but while Yossarian moves through a mock-epic collection of eccentric soldiers, insane officers, and colorful whores in a picaresque and often hysterically funny manner, Powers' narrator John Bartle reminds me more of a detached and lost Hemingway character, who has become unhinged by war and can no longer relate to anyone who hasn't been there . . . Catch-22 is a lot more fun, but the last eighty pages of The Yellow Birds is powerful, vivid, and memorable . . . it makes the slog through the earlier chapters well worth it.

One of the Many Wonderful Things About Knowing Whitney Even Longer Than I've Known My Wife

I recently pointed out that one of the wonderful things about being married is the verbal shorthand you have for memories -- a short and simple phrase can evoke an entire scene -- but I should also point out that I have known my friend Whitney even longer than I have been married to my wife, and Whitney's memory is nearly as prodigious an an elephant's . . . but, unlike the relatively unbiased elephant, Whitney seems to remember the things you'd most like to forget . . . so he recently reminded me of another "bringing stuff back to the table episode". . . my wife was in India with some of her lady-friends, and I met up with John, Whitney, and Mose in Amsterdam; we were catching up in a cozy tavern, sitting at a little wood table in the corner, and it was my turn to buy a round; I walked up to the bar, purchased four pints of beer, turned and saw my friends deep in conversation, and decided I didn't need any help carrying the four pints -- so I nestled them into a square, put my hands on each side of the square, applied a bit of pressure, and lifted . . . and (miraculously!) the square of four pint glasses, held together firmly, and so I proceeded across the barroom floor in this manner, happy with my independence and my aptitude, until I got several feet from the table; at this point, John, Mose, and Whitney simultaneously looked at me, and their combined facial expressions conveyed so much anxiety and disbelief, such a unified and abject lack of faith in my endeavor, that I doubted myself and slightly adjusted the pressure I was placing on the four pint glasses -- despite the fact that I had applied the perfect amount of pressure for ninety percent of the walk -- and with this slight increase in pressure, the pint glasses shattered (and so did my ego, but not my ability to create zeugma) and then I had to endure much humiliation and ridicule, despite the fact that it was their facial expressions that caused the entire mess, and then, just when I had forgotten the entire incident, I had to relive it not once, but twice: when Whitney brought it up in the comments, and when I took the time to describe it here.

Things Overheard in the Hallway

One sophomore said to another, "You're like a shrimp . . . you're a shellfish" and this was such a strange phrase that I couldn't ignore it, and so I asked the sophomore why he said it, but the reason he gave for making this odd simile was far less interesting than the phrase itself . . . so I won't ruin it and tell you his explanation.

A Fun Game (if you like loud noises)

A few weeks ago, we converted our spare change into an Amazon Gift Card, and this has led to some impulse purchases . . . the latest is a Cajon Box Drum, which is a large wooden box that doubles as a stool, and you whack it in various spots to get various tones; my family invented the Cajon Box Drum Game, in which several family members play the drum in succession and a person in another room -- who cannot see the drum and the player -- tries to guess who is beating on it . . . oddly, this was easy to do in my family; my wife didn't have much rhythm, my son Alex hits it a bit randomly, Catherine said it sounded like I was "thinking about it too much," and Ian -- the little bastard -- is a natural.

One of the Many Wonderful Things About Marriage

On our way up to Vermont this Thanksgiving, we stopped to eat at Roy Rogers, and my wife said, "Remember what happened at Roy Rogers?" and this was all she had to say, and my mind travelled twenty years into the past . . . when we were returning from a Williamsburg road trip and stopped at The Maryland House to eat; it was very crowded, so Catherine snagged a booth while I put all the fixin's on our burgers at the Fixin's Bar, and then -- while I was carrying a tray of fully fixed food across the wide open brown tiled space between the Fixin's Bar and the booth Catherine had snagged, I had what is affectionately known as a "wardrobe malfunction" . . . I was wearing a pair of shorts that I had stolen from the most notorious clothing thief in our fraternity, so I was quite proud that I had righteously filched these shorts from him and beat him at his own game, but he was thicker than me, so the shorts were loose around the waist, and they didn't have a button, so I was using a safety pin to keep them cinched . . . and the safety pin snapped . . . and the shorts fell to my knees . . . and I couldn't bend down to pull them up, because I was carrying a tray of fully fixed food . . . and at this juncture, I should point out that I didn't bring a whole lot of laundry on the road trip, and I had run out of underwear, so I was "going commando" under the shorts . . . so once they fell to my knees I was, as the English say, doing the full monty (or, as the Japanese say, "sporting wang") but luckily, the only people who saw this were my wife and a fat old black woman -- and both of them immediately burst out laughing as they watched my shuffle as fast as I could to the booth, where I put the tray down and pulled my shorts up; I learned a valuable lesson that day: if you're not going to wear underwear, make sure your shorts fit correctly and have a sturdy fastener . . . and one of the wonderful things about marriage is that it only takes a couple of words to evoke a moment like this, once you've been with someone for twenty years you have a kind of verbal shorthand to access all of these most excellent and humiliating events.

Was Dave One-Upped or One-Downed?

When I mentioned that my dog Sirius requires two bags for his morning walk, my friend Stacey -- who is taller than me, but has a much smaller dog -- one-upped me and claimed that her dog Norman fills THREE bags on his evening walk . . . and while I'm not sure if this "one-upping" or "one-downing," I loved the conversation, because instead of "humblebragging" -- an act that I detest -- we were actually bragging, which is something I love (even if the topic is the amount of fecal matter our pets produce).

Bigfoot vs. Ram Bomjon

There are two types of people: 1) people rooting for a conclusive Bigfoot encounter . . . and if you are one of these types of people, then the Provo Canyon Incident is as believable as they come 2) people who believe Ram Bomjon (the Buddha Boy) was able to meditate for months in a tree without food or water . . . and I am sorry, but you can't have both, as to ask for both these supernatural miracles to be true would be extraordinarily greedy, so you have to choose; as for me, I am rooting hard for Team Sasquatch.

Just Living My Life, Dave-Style

As I was walking out the door on Wednesday morning, I realized that I had forgotten my cell-phone, and so I went back into the kitchen to retrieve it . . . and as I walked by the counter I noticed an overturned yogurt container, a spoon, and an open magazine-- it took me a moment to process the tableau-- and then I realized that this was my mess, that I was the culprit, and I told my wife that I couldn't believe I could be so rude and slovenly -- which made her laugh-- and the odd thing is this: I was genuinely surprised that I didn't clean up after myself, and -- before I saw the evidence-- I certainly believed that I cleaned up after myself once I was done with my breakfast; if someone interrogated me, I think -- even under the strain of torture-- that I would have insisted that I had rinsed out my yogurt container and threw it in the recycling bin, put my spoon in the dishwasher, and put my magazine away in some acceptable magazine storing location . . . yet I did none of this, and so I am starting to wonder about the ramifications of Just Living My Life, Dave-Style.

The Car: Much Faster Than A Horse

This Thanksgiving, we were able to resurrect an old tradition -- one we haven't done in a few years-- we hightailed it out of Jersey to visit our friends in Bolton Valley, Vermont . . . and, as usual, I was astounded by the amount of traffic we had to endure in order to escape New Jersey on Wednesday afternoon, and I was also -- as usual -- astounded by how much the terrain, culture, and weather can change during a seven hour drive; Rob and Tammy don't live IN the mountains, they live ON the mountain -- five miles up a treacherously steep road . . . their house is even in elevation with the ski lodge . . . and so on Monday, we essentially drove from winter back to fall . . . when we left their house, it was a near blizzard, and several times we nearly slid and fishtailed to our death, but by the time we got back to Jersey, it was fifty degrees and sunny, and we were able to hit some tennis balls down at the park.

My Team Is Losing . . .

In Hanna Rosin's new book The End of Men and the Rise of Women, she uses the stark contrast between how her son and how her daughter get organized for school as the anecdote that illustrates her copious statistics . . . girls are far more equipped to handle the rigors of modern education than boys, and so while her daughter makes to-do lists for tasks that lie weeks in the future, Rosin is doing everything in her power "not to become her son's secretary," and this dichotomy now continues from elementary school right through college, where women outnumber men on almost every campus and certain elite schools are practicing "affirmative action" for the boys, so that the male/female ratio doesn't get incredibly skewed (and I can already see this trend in my own house -- I have two boys-- and the rule is that "the homework isn't done until Mommy checks it" because Daddy is incompetent, overlooks things, and doesn't read directions).

Heady Topper: I Am Undecided

On our Thanksgiving pilgrimage to Bolton Valley, Vermont, there was much mention of the legendary Heady Topper Imperial I.P.A -- a locally brewed and canned beer -- and everyone seemed to have an opinion on it; most folks loved it, and were willing to rush over to the tiny Alchemist Cannery in order to grab a few cans before they sold out, but others were vehemently opposed to this beer that "tasted like a pine tree" and so I decided to try it for myself . . . we swung by the brewery, but they were sold out (of course) so I had to make do with a sample, and while I certainly didn't feel that it was "world class", I did like the first few gulps, but then it got a little sharp and hoppy for my taste . . . I prefer New Jersey's Hopfish IPA . . . which is ALWAYS available at Pino's in Highland Park, and so though it doesn't have the legendary allure of the beer that is impossible to buy (the demand for Heady Topper is so great that it costs $3 for one can and $72 for a case, there's no price break for bulk buying) I like the fact that I don't have to plan my day around an alcohol purchase . . . which seems like a pathetic pursuit for grown man with a wife and two children.

Hurray For Zman! Hurray for Man!

It's a good thing Sentence of Dave super-commenter Zman recommended that I read Charlotte Perkins Gilman's utopian feminist novel Herland, because otherwise when Hanna Rosin asked the question "What does the modern-day Herland look like?" in her new book The End of Men and the Rise of Women, I would not have understood the allusion, and I would have felt like one of the men she was describing: disempowered, penurious, and uneducated . . . I would have felt like a man in one of the 1,997 metropolitan regions of the country that James Chung studied (out of 2000) where young women had a higher median income than young men (and if you want more statistics like that, read the book, as it is chock full of them).

There are Two Types of People

No matter how stupid the idea is, I love it when an essay start with the premise "there are two types of people" and so I will follow suit; there are two types of people: 1) people who talk during movies 2) people who don't . . . and I am a number one all the way: movies are MUCH more interesting when accompanied by my insightful commentary.

Five Years Of Sentence of Dave!

I have been writing this blog for so long, that I can't really remember much that happened before its inception (I refer to these events as pre-Sentence of Dave) and along the way I have evolved my style from its simple and clutter free roots to my current prolix bombasticity . . . my syntax has gone from grammatically correct to convoluted elliptical absurdity, and my diction -- which was once precise -- now often includes superfluous lexical garbage, such as repeated usage of the word ersatz and repeated misusage of the word miracle . . . and all this time, my dedicated fans have stuck with me, and so I would like to offer my sincerest thanks . . . I hope I can wring five more years of material out of the theme "Dave" . . . more fragmented logic and half-baked ideas, more awkward moments, more useless opinionated capsule reviews . . . I'd like to thank all the guys at Gheorghe:The Blog for inspiring this "spin-off" and especially Zman for his diligent and persistent commenting over here; and I'd like to thank my wife, children, and colleagues, both for providing material and for pointing out when I have done something really stupid, which is always the best content of all.

One Man, Two Bags . . .

My dog has gone from being a one bagger to a two bagger, and while this is a good thing in a baseball game, it's NOT such a good thing during his 5:30 AM consitutional . . . if my stomach wasn't empty, that second load would certainly cause an early morning upchuck.