This Happened? In America? Less Than 100 Years Ago? Yikes

David Grann's book Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI is a tough story in more ways than one; it's a detailed account of two dozen (or possibly more) murders of Osage Indians, who relocated from the Cherokee territory in south Kansas (the ending point for many tribes after enduring the Trail of Tears) to a hardscrabble land of rocks and hills in Oklahoma because they thought the white man would never bother them in such lonely wicked country . . . but once oil was discovered under the Osage land, the white man came in droves, the Osage got filthy rich with headrights to the Osage Mineral Estate, and the atrocities followed one after another-- many of the murders masterminded by William King Hale-- who took advantage of the fact that some of the Osage married outside the family . . . it's impossible to summarize the rest, as the book has a huge cast of characters and also delves into the birth of the FBI, the methods of J. Edgar Hoover, and the storied biography of Tom White, who eventually ran Leavenworth Prison, and while the plot might be a bit byzantine for beach reading, the images of the richest Indians in America-- riding in chauffeured limousines to pow-wows, flying private planes to campfires, and sending their children to the finest European boarding schools, while still being under the corrupt auspice of government guardians and managers-- and these same Indians falling prey to a compromised criminal justice system, while being fleeced and often killed by number of greedy and conniving white men, with the lure of black gold looming in the Oklahoma hills, this all makes for an epic and embarrassing story from recent American history, and there's some new findings at the end, that Grann uncovered in his copious research-- so while this book isn't as fun as The Lost City of Z, it's much more significant, and in the end you will agree that-- as God told Cain-- "the blood cries out from the ground."

Dave is Never Too Old to Learn Stuff (but He'll Never Have a Nice Car)

I went for a run with the dog this morning on the towpath (the narrow park between the Raritan River and the Delaware and Raritan Canal) and I learned several valuable lessons:

1) if you are several miles out on the towpath, and your dog poops, and you bag the poop and then put a plastic bag filled with poop in your pocket (because the canal is a watershed, so you don't want to leave poop near it) and you then run several miles, you'll forget you have poop in your pocket (it cools down) and you'll eventually stick your hand in your pocket to see what's in there-- luckily I tied the bag shut, so I didn't end up with a hand full of poop (although I did smell the bag, in the name of science, and despite the fact that the poop is sequestered inside plastic, it still smells like poop);

2) it's not worth parking in the tiny Landing Lane lot, right next to the towpath, because it's an extremely sharp turn out of the lot and there is always traffic on the other side of the road . . . I cut it a little too sharp and caught the lip of the guard rail and tore a hole in my van . . . I'm going to attempt to fix this hole with some auto body repair tape-- ten bucks on Amazon-- which leads us to lesson number three . . .

3) I am a terrible car owner-- fans of this blog know the stories of my infamous Jeep Cherokee, and I am doling out the same kind of abuse to my Toyota Sienna . . . when it comes to cars, I just can't have nice things.

The Test 89: Music From the Past (for the Future)

Another clever thematic music quiz from Stacey this week on The Test . . . so listen to the song clips, identify the artists, contemplate the lyrics, compile the clues, and then-- in the timeless style of Archimedes-- jump out of the tub, shout "Eureka!" and run through the streets, buck-naked and dripping wet, proclaiming your answer . . . only to find it is wrong (and you are without clothing, in public).

Barrett vs Tolstoy

Lisa Feldman Barrett begs to differ with the opening premise of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way," as she believes that happiness-- like every emotion-- defies categorization and is much more variegated and complex in form (and much simpler than was once thought in content, controlled by two factors: valence and affect) and she points out that "you can smile in happiness, sob in happiness, scream in happiness, raise your arms in happiness, clench your fists in happiness, jump up and down doling high fives in happiness, or even be stunned motionless in happiness . . . your eyes might be wide or narrowed, your breathing rapid or slow . . . you can have the heart-pounding exciting happiness of winning the lottery or the calm relaxed happiness of lying on a picnic blanket with your lover" and this idea connects to Barrett's central thesis, that emotions aren't set pieces waiting to be triggered, they are created on the fly, thus the title of her book: How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain . . . and if don't feel like wading through the text, you can listen to Invisibilia "Emotions Part One."

Ode to Talcum

I've just finished showering the dirt and grit and sweat and talcum powder off my body, accumulated from hiking twenty plus miles-- the exact distance is still being computed; our intrepid gang of ten dads hauled our asses through through Montclair, Glenridge, Verona, West Orange, Eagle Rock Reservation, Mills Reservation, Montclair State Campus and a bunch of places I can't remember, on an urban/suburban/dirt trail adventure, we walked from 9 AM to 6:00 PM-- and I walked over a mile to the train station at 7:00 AM; we saw a fox and Yogi Berra's mansion and the top of Eagle Rock and Thomas Edison's lab; in the middle of the day, we got soaked in the downpour, but we finally made it back to Montclair, had a delicious meal at Le Salbuen, took an Uber home, and-- because of an emergency baby powder purchase mid-hike and very liberal application of said powder, in many public locales-- including along busy roads-- I am happy to report that there was no chafing.

Old Dog = New Tricks

Not only did I eat at a pizza place that I had never tried before (Pasquales . . . delicious, thin chewy crust and they put a bit of pesto sauce on the grandma slice) but I took a shortcut that I never used before to get there (Stratford!) and I attribute my two new tricks (for an old dog) to my students, who advised me both on the pizza place and how to get there as quickly as possible (I had to monitor two exams in a row, so I was really hungry).

Not Quite the Second Coming . . . But Close

Testify and praise the good lord above, because I prayed and my prayers were answered-- that is correct: I found Jesus last night . . . he appeared to me during travel soccer tryouts, and just in time, as my team is in dire need of players (we are switching to 11 v 11 next fall) and no one born in 2005 came to the first tryout, but last night Jesus showed up-- he's born in 2005, his brother was an excellent player for the high school, and he just might be the savior (for our U13 team, not all the sinners on earth).

A Very Important Quiz

I gave my students a final quiz on Shakespeare's comedy "Much Ado About Nothing" this morning; I told them to use all the knowledge they had acquired from the play to answer this multiple choice question:

my wife was arriving at Newark International Airport from San Francisco at 2 AM last night, and she had been gone for five days . . . what method of transportation did she use to get home?

A) Uber

B) I picked her up

and the answer-- which is obvious if you've read the play-- is that I went to sleep at 7:30 PM last night, woke up at 1:00 AM, picked her up, got a little shut-eye, woke up at 5:45 AM, walked the dog, and went to work . . . because all women want is for you to do difficult stuff for them-- that's the true proof of love; in the play, as soon as Benedick professes his love for Beatrice, she immediately asks him to challenge his best friend Claudio to a duel (because he slandered her cousin Hero) thus making him choose between his friends and his lover, and he does her bidding and challenges him to a fight to the death-- thus proving his love to Beatrice-- but luckily it's a comedy and things get sorted out before it comes down to Benedick having to kill his best buddy . . . anyway, I'm very tired now but the satisfaction that I finally understand what women want outweighs my fatigue.

I Did It!

Catherine comes home from San Francisco tonight, and while the house is a bit of a mess, I think she'll be pleased that both her gardens are watered and thriving, and the children are alive, nourished, and (relatively) intact . . . Ian has some ugly bruises on his arm from "birthday punches," but other than that, both boys look the same as when she left.

How To Make a New Ultra HDTV Look Shitty (Like It Should)

We finally got a new TV . .  a 55 inch Ultra HD LG; to break it in, we watched Poltergeist and I had an odd complaint: the picture was too sharp . . . my kids didn't mind, but I felt like everything looked like a movie set (which, of course, is true . . . but you don't want to notice) and the special effects looked cheesy, the spooky tree looked plain silly-- but I learned how to fix this "problem" of too much clarity-- you have to shut off both the motion smoothing (called Trumotion on the LG) and the sharpness enhancement . . . basically, shut off the computerized algorithms that the TV uses to make things sharper than they actually are supposed to be, and Saturday night we watched Raising Arizona with the new settings in place and the film looked properly gritty, much improved by the decline in picture quality . . . the imagery should be a bit fuzzy when folks are saying dialogue like this: when there was no meat, we ate fowl, when there was no fowl, we ate crawdad, and when there was no crawdad to be found, we ate sand . . . you ate what? . . . we ate sand).

Bonus Update: Geeks > Freaks

All this scene needs is for James Franco to show up.

Like Dungeon Master Like Son

I've been really proud of my boys the past week-- it seems they've forsaken the behaviors that dominated this school year: fighting, insubordination, vandalism, candy smuggling, not looking both ways when crossing the street, getting ISS, losing all their shit (Ian lost five lunch coolers!) and forgetting to do homework . . . this week has been different; Alex has managed to organize a large Dungeons and Dragons game with a number of his friends . . . and he included his brother . . . they've been cooperating, planning, setting things up together, and Ian contributed to the game by getting a game mat and some mini-figures for his birthday and while there's been six or seven 6th and 7th grade boys in my house quite a few times lately, they've been really focused and well-behaved and they sound super-smart, they're talking probability (Ian figured out that opposite sides of the twenty sided die all add to twenty-one) and poring over arcane tomes, learning crazy vocabulary (mace, flail, druid, laying hands, melee, etc.) and speculating about very weird stuff-- can a human have sex with a dragon?-- and while there's been the occasional argument, they've been battling each other in the game more than in reality . . . the thing I like the best about the today's session is that my son Alex-- who is the dungeon master-- made a "phone bin" and forced everyone to turn off their phones off and put them in the bin, so they could focus . . . the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

This Needed to be Said

The US1 Flea Market, for those of you who have never been, was the living embodiment of Ebay.

Dave Discloses His Personal Business (for the Good of Future Scientists)

I used my last personal day yesterday, and I'm going to document what I did with it, so anthropologists in the future have an example of what a middle class homeowner and family man might do with a random day off . . . it's lame stuff, by any standard, but the document might become incredibly important for this very reason, for the extraordinary mundanity, so here it is, in chronological order:

1) I walked the dog and listened to Planet Money;

2) recorded some music;

3) wrote a post for this blog about Planet Money;

4) assembled a fold-out futon . . . this took nearly three hours and the finished product is certainly imbued with this psychological fallacy;

5) did NOT remove the basement refrigerator door and straighten it because I was so tired from building the futon . . . took the dog for a bike ride instead;

6) fixed the side screen door, which wasn't fully closing, by pounding selected portions of the metal lip on the side of the door with a rubber mallet;

7) took all the cardboard packaging from the futon and mattress to the recycling dumpster;

7) tried to take a nap, but couldn't sleep because of the jackhammer . . . our neighbors are putting in a deck;

8) signed the delivery slip for our new TV-- this was the actual reason I had to take the day . . . the only window for delivery was 8 AM to 1 PM;

9) assembled and hooked up our new TV . . . it's smart;

10) ate some sushi for lunch;

11) went to Costco for wine, beer, and easy to cook food . . . Catherine is headed to San Francisco-- Amazon is flying her out there for some educational software summit-- so the boys and I are on our own for the weekend;

12) purchased two pairs of pants at Costco . . . this really worries me-- more than the fact that I went to Costco of my own volition-- because once you start purchasing clothes at Costco, it's the beginning of the end (and the worst part is they're nice pants . . . Tommy Hilfiger, and they fit perfectly . . . this indicates that soon enough I'll spending two or three days a week roaming the aisles, pushing that giant cart at a snail's pace along with all the other geriatrics, buying random bottles of vitamins and ugly walking shoes, feasting on the free samples, and wondering if I could use more razors).

Three? Why Not Four?

There's a cottage industry of journalism that operates by taking the absurd shit that Donald Trump says seriously and then spinning out the policy that could make it happen . . . the latest iteration of Pretending-Trump's-Words-Actually-Mean-Something-Journalism analyzes Trump's promise to grow the economy three percent per year (or even four percent! why not? if you're just saying completely unfounded bullshit, why not ramp it up?) and the new episode of Planet Money is a perfect place to start investigating this great great beautiful premise; here is a fast and loose summary of the some of the ways we could spur our economy to three percent growth and beyond:

1) we take in 40 million immigrants . . . essentially take in the same number of immigrants the country has absorbed in the last 80 years, but we do it in ten years  . . . more people means more workers, more stuff, more consumption . . . but Trump and his supporters would probably find this antithetical to Wall politics . . . he'd have to switch his rhetorical symbol to a giant Water Slide across the border;

2) incentivize people to work longer; America is aging-- the cohort that brought us all the growth, the Baby Boomers, are retiring and that is costly and a major impediment to economic growth-- if we could get old people to stay in the workforce longer, making money, consuming, and not taking their pensions and social security and retirement benefits, that would help . . . especially if they died before retirement!

3) make everyone work . . . zero point zero unemployment-- but this means no stay at home moms, no stay at home dads, no lazy people, no one can stay home to take care of a sick or elderly relative, and rich people and incarcerated people will have to work full time as well . . .

4) America invents something so groundbreaking and essential that everyone needs it . . . like the computer or the electrical grid  (and the appliances that go with it) or the highway system . . . but the problem is we've grabbed all that low-hanging fruit and there doesn't appear to be some groundbreaking invention on the horizon, just incremental advances in the technology we have (but one can always dream of teleportation and nano-assemblers)

5) we just pretend we have three percent growth and accuse anyone who says otherwise of being part of a liberal media conspiracy designed to bring the President down.

Put Your Bugs Where Your Mouth Is

Every spring, our house gets invaded by these tiny little ants, and while this really bugs my wife-- she does her best to eradicate them with traps-- I try to embrace the little fellas, and refer to them as "nature's cleanup crew" and so when I noticed that there were a bunch of these ants in the bristles of my toothbrush this morning, I decided that I had to roll with it, and so I rinsed them off and brushed my teeth . . . but perhaps I should have left them on the brush . . . if I could train a bird to live on my body and eat ticks, then perhaps I could also train a bunch of little ants to live in my mouth and eat all food decaying between my teeth.

The Test 88: Fear the Reaper

Despite the proximal whirling scythe of grim-visaged death, we prevail and present you with this podcast full of grim shit; special guest Mike gets the last word in (actually a number) and Cunningham breaks new ground in depression therapy . . . as a thematically related bonus, Stacey threatens to kill Dave.
 

The Shawshank Inspiration (for blood-sucking parasites)

I need to train a bird (like Brooks had in Shawshank) to patrol my body and eat the many ticks that end up residing on me after I run in the orchard.

Sooner = Meta-cheater

Perhaps you're a clueless on this topic as I was yesterday, but "Sooners" is a more offensive nickname than "Redskins" . . . the University of Oklahoma nickname celebrates jumping the gun in one of the most infamous land grabs in American History . . . it's bad enough that men and women were trampling, shooting, knifing, and generally denigrating their fellow man in a mad rush to be the first to one of 42,000 parcels of Indian Territory . . . this was enough of a disaster for the Cherokee, Choctaws, Cheyenne and Apache, but a "sooner" is someone who tried to sneak across the boundary line early-- so they could claim a prime parcel before anyone else-- so a "sooner" is another level of cheating, where you're trying to cheat the people who are cheating the Native Americans . . . sooners are meta-cheaters, and apparently, a few people recognize what the name signifies and are taking action, but I would have never known the meaning of the nickname "sooner" if I hadn't started reading Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, a fascinating account of Indian land rights, oil, and murder; the book is by David Graham, who also wrote The Lost City of Z, which I highly recommend.

Someone Should Have Told Me This Two Months Ago

It's so much easier to shave when you use a new razor.

Never Mind What It's Called . . . Eat This Food!

This is a bit local, but there's a great authentic Mexican restaurant right across Route 18 from East Brunswick High School, and I want it to survive . . . but it has a lot going against; it's tucked in a small strip mall that's difficult to turn into off the highway (but you can access it from the side streets) and I'm not sure what the place is called . . . it might be called La China Poblana (which probably means "the porcelain dishware from the Puebla state of Mexico," but you shouldn't have the word "china" in the title of a Mexican restaurant) or it might be called Mary's Mexican Grill or it might be called Mary's Grill Pizza . . . anyway, the food is inexpensive and delicious-- the tamales with green sauce are crumbly and light, with white meat chicken inside; the chorizo is tasty but not greasy at all; and the al pastor is loaded with spices and pineapple . . . plus they give you an excellent little black bean dip with your gratis chips and green salsa . . . so if you have a chance, pull in and try the food so that this place stays afloat until it can figure out a better name.

Dave Gets Extra About Extra!

I'm often amused by the slang words high school kids sprinkle into their lexicon; I enjoy hearing them use "swag" and "lit" and "salty" and "ratchet" in context, but I rarely use these words myself (except for comedic effect) because there's nothing sadder than an old man trying to be hip to the young folks . . . however, despite my general dictum on avoiding the vernacular of the youth, I have adopted one new term because it works so well in so many spots, and it doesn't sound particularly absurd when I say it: recently, when kids want to say something is melodramatic, they use the word "extra," as in Keanu Reeves is so extra when he fights Agent Smith in The Matrix or just because you failed the physics test doesn't mean you have to get all extra about it . . . I'm hoping this one sticks around, it's especially useful for Shakespeare, where folks like Hamlet and Iago and Don John get extra about all kinds of things.

The Singularity vs. Nightfall

Ian Morris begins his massive history of Eastern and Western social development, Why the West Rules-- for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future, at the very beginning --15,000 years ago, deep in prehistory-- and he runs through the typical Guns, Germs, and Steel stuff (with more details about Chinese history) but he comes at this massive scale of time from the perspective of an archaeologist, and on the "maps vs. chaps" debate, he's firmly on the side of the maps (unlike someone like Paul Johnson, who goes more for the chaps) which might be offensive to some because he takes the humanity out of history, and views the span of human achievement as something of a Civilization computer game, with an algorithm for social development based on energy capture, urbanization, information technology, and war-making capacity . . . so you're going to get a lot of numbers, as societies advance, which is sometimes disconcerting but it all eventually makes sense and if you can't figure out how to break through the hard ceiling-- perhaps this occurs at a social development index of 24-- then you don't get to stagnate at whatever glory you have achieved, instead things tend to spiral out of control and your civilization collapses . . . you can't turn away the four horsemen of the apocalypse: climate change, famine, state failure and migration (occasionally, there is a fifth horseman: disease) and you need particular resources to defeat these horsemen, and of your geographical and technological situation doesn't possess them, then you're screwed . . . no matter who is making the decisions . . . but with great collapse comes great resilience and great recovery-- so you might as well embrace the impending apocalypse, because while a few good decisions might head off or postpone a collapse, if it's going to happen, no individual human-- brilliant leader, scientist, thinker, moral crusader, or whatever-- is going to defeat the lazy, scared, concerned masses . . . you might be able to temporarily plug the dike, but you're not going to stop the flood . . . and Morris doesn't see any inherent superior value to Western culture-- there's no cultural bias here-- the East surges ahead of the West at times (541 AD to 1100 AD in particular) and then hits a hard ceiling and it takes the Industrial Revolution for the West to make the big move ahead and it really didn't matter who invented what or when (Stigler's Law of Eponymy) and then, finally, Morris gets to now and that's when the book really takes off-- he explains the economic marriage of America and China (we buy Chinese products and China buys our debt, making the America dollar more valuable and the Chinese renminbi less so and if we stopped buying Chinese products, they could dump all the US dollars they own on the market, thus totally devaluing our currency . . . so we're stuck with each other) and how we are headed towards an uncharted future as far as social development-- we might hit 5000!-- which could result in cities of 140 million people or more, but we're hitting a hard ceiling around 1000 points, and we can't go on this way-- all the citizens of earth can't live the way the richest countries live-- we're burning too much fossil fuel, contributing to what Morris calls "global weirding" and as the world becomes smaller and flatter, developed nations are becoming more concerned with immigration (a prescient prediction of Trump's victory and Brexit . . . the book was published in 2011) and because we are at such a technological high point, the stakes are infinite . . . we may see a transformation in the next fifty years that makes the Industrial Revolution look like the domestication of the goat, a singularity situation where AI and energy capture make the world so small that geography and nations are meaningless . . . or we may be staggering towards a collapse like no other, where-- as Einstein pithily predicted-- we fight World War IV with rocks . . . the scary thing is that, with the technology we now possess, it only takes one thing to go wrong and then we are shrouded in nuclear winter or enduring the desert of the real, while it will take incredible diplomacy and cooperation to make everything go right, so that we break through the next hard ceiling and propel ourselves into a phenomenal future . . . I'm rooting for humanity to do it, but I'm not sure we've got it in us, but if we don't succeed, there's always the hope that some other life form-- cockroaches? rats?-- will step up to the plate and eventually swing for the fences . . . anyway, this is a must read, but when you get bored of the ancient Chinese history, skip a bit brother, and get to the conclusion (which a good hundred pages in itself).

Is Sloth Contagious?

Senior-cut-day has infected my brains and robbed me of my initiative . . . hopefully we'll all be back in gear tomorrow.

Dave Embraces the Future

In honor of finally finishing Why the West Rules-- for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future, a monstrous tome of massive erudition by Ian Morris that I purchased over two years ago on my Kindle, I embraced the culture that will probably supersede our own (if there's not a nuclear apocalypse first) and after a truly epic Sunday-- I played pick-up soccer in the morning, then built a gate for our fence, then coached a soccer game, then went kayaking in a tiny kayak that I barely fit into and which spun in circles if I didn't paddle with perfect synchronicity (difficult to do while drinking a beer) then switched out of the aforementioned kayak because my legs were cramping up inside the tiny hull, and attempted to stand-up on a very small paddle board, designed for folks 150 pounds or less, toppled into Farrington Lake several times, finally got my balance and stood up and slowly paddled it back to the put in, navigating a stiff breeze with the tail end of the paddle board underwater-- so when I got home I was cold and wet and really really hungry and Cat and I decided to go to Chef Tan, the fairly new upscale authentic Chinese place right in town, so I could scarf some food down; we've been several times before and so we got some of our favorites: the Dan Dan noodles-- which come in a spicy peanut sauce with minced pork; the scallion pancakes; the dumplings-- homemade and crispy; and then we decided to try something new . . . Minced Pork with Mustard Greens, a heaping plate of chopped greens and tender lean pork chunks, but very spicy, just loaded with chopped skinny red hot peppers, and Catherine ate a reasonable amount and then waved the white flag and admitted defeat but I was really hungry-- I had an epic day!-- so I soldiered on, until my lips were numb and my nose was running and I couldn't take another bite . . . but it was so tasty and there was that weird amount left on the plate-- too little to take home but too much to leave-- so I finished it . . . and my stomach was pretty beat up this morning, along with the rest of my body because of my epic Sunday, and so I decided to go to the Chinese massage place in town, where I had once told the proprietress that "strong" was fine, and so now every time I go there, she does it a little stronger, and I'm not sure if this is authentic and I'm embracing the culture, or if the chef at Chef Tan and this lady are just giving me a taste of future Chinese domination, but either way, I'm preparing myself.

Butt Dial Plus

Thursday night at the bar, I had to confirm to a friend that I had butt-dialed him, and he sent back a text that said, "I thought I heard your ass" and while I assume he was speaking metaphorically, I had consumed a fair amount of beer, so he might not have been speaking metaphorically . . . and even if he hadn't literally heard my ass, and was only joking, I am sure there has been-- at some point in the history of cellular phoning-- a flatulent butt-dial, and that is wonderful.

Watching the Matrix Inside the Matrix

We were watching The Matrix last week in my senior composition class, and we had already covered the philosophical implications of the film: we connected early scenes to Plato and Camus (The Allegory of the Cave and "The Myth of Sisyphus") and so all we had left to discuss was the ending, when conflict and drama inside and outside the matrix build in masterful intertwined lock-step . . . Neo appears to be dead in the simulation, the sentinels have breached the hovercraft, Morpheus is about to detonate the EMP, and Trinity finally uses her oracular knowledge and some tongue to resolve things; this is when I used my brilliant analogy-- and analogy almost as brilliant as Plato's cave . . . I explained that the final structure is analogous to when they are in class-- the matrix-- pushing the rock and trying to live and succeed in the false reality of academia, and their cell-phone is buzzing, bring them information and messages from the real world, the world outside the matrix-like environment of school, the world which they desperately want to learn about and enter . . . but they're not supposed to be using their cell-phones in the school, they're supposed to ignore the outside world, stay inside the cave and focus on the shadows on the walls, but they want to graduate and see the light and fly around in the sky with cool sunglasses to awesome heavy techno music (and they're going to be sorely disappointed).

Ballsy Bootlegger

When we got home from soccer practice last night, Catherine greeted Ian with the statement: "I found something in your bookbag" and Ian immediately went with the classic contraband trope-- he threw his friend under the bus and said, "I was just holding it for X so he didn't get in trouble with his parents" and I said, "Okay, no problem, we'll just call X's parents and straighten it all out" and after a moment of reflection, he walked over to my wife and told her the two giant bags of gummy candy were his-- he had bought them at Rite-Aid-- and, after the usual web of lies, he finally admitted they were just for his own gluttonous consumption-- so we confiscated the bag, gave him the perfunctory lecture about sugar-- we had just been to the dentist the day before!-- and then I advised him that if he had just bought a little bag of candy, consumed it, and threw away the evidence, no one would have been the wiser, but three pounds of candy was rather excessive-- dealer level weight-- and then we thought we were in the clear with parenting dilemmas, as the long weekend was almost upon us, but today Ian used his green hair paint to spray a giant pair of green genitals in the boy's locker room (the frank and the beans) and he not only had to clean the school locker rooms but he also did a bunch of manual labor around the house to atone for his profane vandalism . . . I guess I shouldn't have let him watch Superbad last weekend (although he did nice job weeding and mulching . . . not that I want him to get in trouble, but it is a big help with the chores when he does).

Manchesters Fictitious and Real

Although it is well-acted, impeccably structured, and beautifully filmed, watching Manchester by the Sea is about as much fun as following the Manchester Ariana Grande bombing . . . but since Manchester by the Sea didn't actually happen, why put yourself through unnecessary tragedy?

Did I Finish This Book?

If you're a fan of big data, breezy writing, fun facts and sex and sex and sex and sex, then you'll certainly enjoy Seth Stephens-Davidowitz's new book Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are . . . his theories and information are extracted from the digital confessional, the place where people are the most honest, the place where people think no one else is listening . . . he studied massive troves of Google and Pornhub searches; here are some of the things you'll learn about:

1) how racist America really is . . . and where the racists live (closer than you think)

2) the truth about Freudian slips and phallic dream imagery (neither means shit)

3) the six most popular story structures (as determined by an algorithm)

4) why 99 percent of teenagers who reported having artificial limbs on academic surveys were pulling the researchers' legs (pun provided by Dave!)

5) why parents wonder if their son is a genius and their daughter is overweight;

6) why were not as polarized as we think (Stormfront users love the NY Times)

7) how we are lying about how much we want to judge and keep up with our friends, how much we care where and how products are produced, how much we want to watch midgets having sex with porn stars, and how much we want to learn about political policy;

8) how most people are overestimating the amount of sex they are having per week (male and female estimations don't add up, and even more damning, the condom sales don't add up)

9) the ethics of using all this data . . . we don't want to end up like Minority Report, with precogs predicting crimes before they happen and then pre-crime units preemptively abrogating people's rights-- or . . . if we could avert something like the recent Manchester bombing . . . maybe we do;

10) why non-fiction conclusions don't matter (most people don't finish non-fiction books).

Decisions in Basketball Have No Bearing on Decisions in Life

Pick-up basketball night is all about making quick decisions with the ball, and my son Alex is certainly getting better at that-- he made a couple of nice outlet passes and is getting better at catching and shooting the ball in one motion-- but his decision making off the court has improved not so much . . . before we left for the gym he was hungry so he put a bunch of cereal in his pocket, so he could eat it when necessary-- and when my wife and I questioned the rationality of this strategy, he told us: "these are clean shorts!" and when he got home, he filled a cup with cereal and milk, and went into the living room while drinking his concoction-- and he's got terrible allergies right now-- so he ended up choking and spitting cereal and milk all over the place (and he's got poison ivy on his face because he fell in a bush during Nerf wars and he also nearly asphyxiated at his soccer game on Sunday because his allergies were so bad-- we had to take him at half-time and the doctor gave him a steroid shot-- not that he can control his allergies . . . but he's quite the thirteen year old trainwreck right now).

The Test 87: Brothers From Another Mother

Another brilliant and creative test idea from Stacey this week, and she thought of it all by herself . . . without the help of a man . . . astounding; first you'll have to endure our tales of curing cancer and Cunningham's perplexity about a disgusting mystery of the human body, but this is a sun-dazed episode the whole family will enjoy (and kids might perform better than adults) so give it a shot, keep score, and see how you fare.

Applying the Bard to the Beautiful Game

We had a low turnout for this morning's travel soccer game in Flemington; we were missing several key players and had only one substitute-- who was not only sick, but had a sore quad from Saturday's game-- and we were playing a team with several big, fast players and an eleven year old goalie the size of an adult (he could punt the ball nearly the length of the field and he caught everything cleanly) and we were down 1 - 0 at the half so I paraphrased Shakespeare's St. Crispin's Day speech from Henry V to inspire them: I began with the mathematical division of glory . . . the fewer the players, the greater the share of honor, and then reminded them that they had showed up and and if they did something remarkable then those players who were not in attendance "should think themselves accursed they were not here, and hold their manhoods cheap" and then my very tired crew went out for the second half and immediately gave up a goal, so we were down 2 - 0 and things looked hopeless, and then they got inspired by something-- whether it was my speech we'll never know-- but they came back and tied the game and came damned close to winning it . . . if it wasn't for that giant goalie, but it was certainly a David vs. Goliath performance . . . the other team had eighteen players and we had nine and a half, and I was very proud of their effort.

It's Saturday and It's Raining . . . Again

Last week one of my students said, "It rains every weekend" and I pedantically pointed out how irrational her logic was-- how the weather does not possess consciousness and can't possibly be aware of what day of the week it is-- although it is Saturday and it's raining again, and we have a soccer game and I need to build a new gate for our fence and my wife is getting soaked at a bike rodeo and so my evidence may be anecdotal and also suspect to confirmation bias, but I'm starting to believe her.

R.I.P Grunge

I am usually unmoved by celebrity deaths but Chris Cornell's death is more symbolic . . . grunge is now truly dead: Cornell joins Kurt Cobain, Scott Weiland, and Layne Staley-- and while I've seen the meme about protecting Eddie Vedder at all costs, as he is the last remaining frontman of grunge, I never considered Pearl Jam a real grunge band, they're more of a pop act and most of their songs annoy me-- anyway, the age of grunge was the last time I could listen to pop radio and enjoy it (my friends and I saw Soundgarden and Circus of Power in Asbury Park in the late 80s-- the Louder Than Love tour-- and it was as billed, so LOUD, we couldn't hear for days afterwards and in a few short years grunge was everywhere-- Nirvana was ubiquitous and in 1993, the fantastic, extemporaneous and acoustic Alice in Chains album "Jar of Flies" reached number one on the charts . . . signifying something awesome about that time period . . .Dave was 23 and Kim Thayil said, in some interview in a guitar magazine, "It doesn't matter if you're playing a major or a minor chord when your sound is this loud and distorted" and all that is over now, especially for me, as I can't take loudness these days and if grunge resurfaced I wouldn't be able to tolerate it).

The Sixth Grade Scoop

I'll warn you at the start, this is hot stuff, salacious even, so put on your oven mitts and handle it with care: last night my son Ian and I went to the sushi place for dinner together-- Catherine and Alex went to the Asian place a few doors down-- so it was just me and my younger son, a sixth grader who is 11 going on 12, and while usually his older brother Alex dominates the conversation, this situation gave Ian a chance to air some things that were baffling him . . . he mentioned the fact that some people in his grade were "going out" and that "these things usually didn't last long, only a week or so" and that his buddy "wasn't doing that well" because he had a fight with his girlfriend, and so I asked him what they were fighting about and he said, "Shoes" and so I pressed him and he explained,"You know, if his shoes were cool or not" and I said that sometimes women cared about fashion-- that wasn't uncommon-- and Ian said the consensus among the sixth graders was that girls are "a complicated species"-- he used those exact words-- and I said that was certainly true, and he said that kids are also using the term "third wheel" for someone who is hanging around a couple, trying to get in on the action, they called it "third wheeling" and I said that isn't so uncommon either, and sometimes it's okay to be the third wheel and sometimes it isn't and then he said that his friend had "hugged his girlfriend when he was over her house' and her parents brought the hammer down and banned all hugging and hand-holding and Ian said he was not interested in partaking in any of this stuff in any way, shape, or form and I told him that was fine and that he had plenty of time before he needed to get involved with the "complicated species."

That's Recycling!

I haven't put together a will and last testament yet, so this sentence is going to have to suffice: when I die, I want to have a sky burial . . . I had never heard of this practice until yesterday, when a student of mine who had been to Tibet and seen it firsthand described it-- apparently, after you die they drag your corpse up onto a mountain, put you on a slab of stone, and let the scavenging birds eat you, so that your immortal soul and your decomposing flesh get to fly around in the sky for a while (and then get defecated back to earth, I suppose) and this environmentally friendly, chemical and flame free burial really appeals to me . . . if you want to see a video-- and warning, it is very gross, click here-- otherwise, when I shuffle off this mortal coil, someone needs to make this happen (and if you do, you can have my CD collection).

Thucydides Saw It Coming . . .

The South China Sea may end up being a battle between the submarines and the "slum encampments on stilts," between China and the rest-- and American Cold War dominance, relatively simplistic national game theory, will "likely have to pass . . . a more anxious complicated world awaits us" a world where, according to Thucydides, the real cause of the Peloponnesian War was the build-up of Athenian sea power, which made Sparta very nervous . . . so read Robert Kaplan and try to sort out Asia's Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific . . . you're going to have to understand the Law of the Sea and how it applies to land masses and the nine-dashed line, and how we should react to the nine-dashed line and the domestic politics that the countries affected by the nine-dashed line (Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, The Philippines, China, etc) and how they will react to our reactions and so on . . . the book may make you throw your liberal ideals out the window and start thinking in Realpolitik terms like Kissinger and it will certainly make you aware of the complexity that is modern southeast Asia (plus it has a few good maps at the start of the book, which I needed to look at constantly . . . there's a lot of countries and islands packed into a small area!)

Rationalize This

The home mortgage income deduction: a ridiculous subsidy to upper middle class and rich folks that will probably never go away because upper middle class and rich folks-- myself included-- will bend over backwards to rationalize it (although Britain managed to phase theirs out over a twenty year period).

The Test 86: Movies in Five (That's Three Sir)

This week on The Test, Stacey presents a brilliant set of cinematic puzzles, but despite the high quality of the quiz, a peeing dog, low batteries, and my newfound psychic abilities send this bad boy into uncharted waters.

Dave Uses the Scientific Method

Thursday night, I was offensively flatulent, and I blamed this-- by process of elimination-- on something in the taco meat; Friday, my wife and kids took off on an overnight band trip, leaving me alone in the house with the dog, and so after going to happy hour with some teachers at Bar Louie (at the mall . . . absurd) where I only drank Guinness, which never gives me gas, I decided to conduct an experiment and finish the leftover meat and see if my intuition was correct . . . and it was . . . something in that meat-- perhaps extra garlic in the spice packet?-- wreaked havoc on my stomach, and due to my inspired scientific zeal and endeavor, I am now close to certain that my hypothesis was correct (and my gassiness has subsided and my wife and kids won't be home until 7 PM so the only people to experience discomfort because of this experiment were me and the dog).

Adrian McKinty Does It Again

Mercury tilt bombs, Castle Carrickfergus, Jimmy Savile, the Troubles, Belfast, Coronation Road, atrocious scandals, a locked room murder, copious pints of beer, plenty of illicit substances, Steve Reich and other obscure minimalist music . . . this all adds up to another excellent Sean Duffy crime novel: Rain Dogs.

Robert Kaplan: More Analogies!

When my wife and I lived in Syria, it made sense for me to read a lot of Robert Kaplan: Balkan Ghosts, An Empire in Wilderness, The Coming Anarchy, Arabists, The Ends of the Earth . . . then we returned stateside, bought a house, had children, and our travels to exotic overseas locales ended . . . as did my obsession with the most literary of geopolitical analysts-- because reading Robert Kaplan takes a lot of concentration, it's not like breezing through a Thomas Friedman book-- but just because I forgot about Robert Kaplan, doesn't mean he stopped writing, and I've decided to catch up: I picked up Asia's Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific in a used bookstore in Vermont and I'm wading through it, trying to sort out analogies like this: "Whereas Hanoi is Vietnam's Ankara, Saigon is Vietnam's Istanbul."

Deer Beer Diary . . .

The lady at the beer store in Ludlow said I should start a beer diary so I could better remember what I like . . . but Gary Taubes told me beer contains quite a bit of sugar, in the form of maltose, and apparently sugar is the enemy-- which makes me very sad-- but now I understand why I gained eight pounds over spring break in Vermont . . . anyway, here are some of the beers I sampled, the remains of which are still hanging about my midriff:

Idletyme Joy and Laughter . . . delicious;

Fiddlehead IPA . . . hoppy and delicious;

Trout River Rainbow Red Ale . . . smooth and delicious;

Farnham Red Ale . . . even better than the Trout River;

Terrapin HI-5 . . . typical;

Idletyme Zog's American Pale Ale . . . another good one;

Uncanny Valley Burlington Beer Company . . . weird cloudy grapefruit juice;

Whetstone Big 'stoner . . . awesome;

Whetstone Down South . . . way too smoky;

Whetstone Off the Rails . . . black but not heavy;

Farnham Double India Pale Ale 78 . . . a better version of the Uncanny Valley cloudy grapefruit juice;

Miller64 . . . nope.

The Enemy is Delicious

Fat is fine, but that's the only good news: the enemy is everywhere, and the enemy is addictive and the enemy is sugar . . . if you want to know why, then listen to the new Sam Harris podcast (but it might be better if you didn't).

The Miracle of the Missing ID

Friday when I got home from work, I unloaded the car-- beer and ice for our Cinco de Mayo party-- and then I took off my windbreaker and noticed that I was still wearing my school ID lanyard . . . but there was no school ID attached to the metal loop-- my ID had fallen off somewhere between school and home-- so I checked the house and my car, but no luck . . . and then Cunningham and Stacey arrived, to do the podcast, so I had to end my search (and I was pretty upset-- we had to sign our life away for this thing, because it's also an electronic card key, and I didn't know if I needed to tell someone at the school that I lost the card, since now anyone who found it could get into the building and I had just gotten in trouble for another security breach: I propped a door open with a chair so i didn't have to keep opening it for late-in seniors) and so an hour later when I received a phone call from the lady at Buy-Rite Liquor, informing me that someone had found my ID on the sidewalk outside the store, I was overjoyed (and told her so, and also might have recounted most of this sentence to her, which my wife and the ladies found very amusing . . . they told me I gave her way too much information, but I was just trying to explain how appreciative I was for the call).

The Gastro-Inevitable

I thought this batch of jalapeno infused tequila I whipped up for Cinco de Mayo was fairly mild (and it was certainly milder than this first attempt) and while some folks at the party disagreed, people liked it enough to finish the bottle . . . which made me think I should step it up the next time-- I can't be making spicy tequila that people can actually consume without clutching their throats and spitting up mucous . . . the only problem is that my stomach thought the mild stuff was more than spicy enough, and no matter how good it tastes, your stomach still has to deal with it later . . . and my stomach is getting old and fed up with stupid shenanigans like that.

Drones: Miniature Paranoia

1990s paranoia was all about unmarked helicopters-- they loomed, they surveilled, they indicated the presence of a mysterious authority-- but you could run from them and you could hide from them . . . Goodfellas and The X-Files come to mind-- but the 2010s are all about the drones: constant, persistent, ubiquitous . . . and there's nowhere to hide; the surveillance and paranoia are constant, so much so that we are inured to it.

Thank You, Stupid Meat Brain

I can't find a specific name for this logical fallacy, but I'm sure you'll understand what I'm talking about: sometimes people desire variety simply for the sake of variety without a perfectly logical rationale . . . and while this is illogical, there's no question that our stupid meat brains fall for this trick time after time-- this is the irrationality that causes trends in fashion and the 24 hour news cycle and the allure of social media . . . everyone knows that they should just buy some quality clothes that will last a lifetime, read Brothers Karamazov instead of an endless slew of stupid tweets, and stop following the daily political morass . . . but we enjoy the constant change, the shiny allure of the new . . . and while I think this is cognitive glitch is generally a swirling time suck, an environmental disaster, and a recipe for prodigality, I will descend from my high horse and admit that sometimes this desire for variety can be beneficial; Pitchfork, the arrogant, judgey, annoyingly opinionated and generally spot-on music site named the David Bowie/Brian Eno collaboration "Low" as the number one album of the 1970s and when I stumbled upon this last week, at first I found the pronouncement to be fairly humorous and completely absurd-- could this album really be better than Led Zeppelin IV and Exile on Main Street and London Calling and Dark Side of the Moon?-- could it even best Ziggy Stardust?-- but despite the silliness of the choice, the probably underserved number one position convinced me to listen to the album and I love it . . . I've been listening to it on repeat for a week straight; it's full of moody instrumentals that combine funk guitar and bass with ethereal synth washes (and limited saxophone, thank goodness) and when Bowie does sing, the lyrics are spare and ambiguous . . . sometimes the album feels like the soundtrack to Lord of the Rings; apparently this is Bowie in detox, after all the excess and abuse, and while I don't think it's genuinely better than Exile and Dark Side, I've played those albums out and would have no problem never listening to them again, so this variety-for-variety's-sake logical fallacy, while an obnoxious move by a hipster critic, got me listening to something I would never have discovered otherwise . . . so thanks Pitchfork, you giant douchebag and thank you stupid meat brain, for falling for this rather obvious cognitive ruse..

Let's Get Ready to (Logically) Bumble!

In honor of logical fallacy week here at SoD, I oversimplified things yesterday and I'm going to make an unfounded, imprecise analogy today: my generation's JFK moment was February 11, 1990 . . . when undefeated heavy-weight champion Mike Tyson lost to underdog Buster Douglas; I remember exactly where I was when I heard the news (the third floor of my fraternity house) and the absolute shock and disbelief that accompanied this information . . . my perception was forever altered: I now understood that nothing was certain, nothing was deserved, and the future was a wicked morass of variability and change.

The Internet (in a nutshell)

When we have access to everything, we don't know anything.

Operation . . . for Realsies

I hope you are enjoying vintage commercial/logical fallacy week here at Sentence of Dave, and I will begin this episode with an example of an excellent analogy: Saturday morning, I was about to leave the dog park with Sirius, and I noticed something bulbous beneath his eye-- a dog tick had attached itself to his lower eyelid-- so we hurried home and when I entered the house, I called to my wife: "Catherine? Can you get the tweezers? We're going to play Operation . . . for real" and the next sequence was perfectly analogous the old board game, except the punishment for a miscue wouldn't be a buzzing red light, it would be a one-eyed dog; I held Sirius steady, and after a couple of tentative failed attempts, Catherine nabbed the tick (without damaging the dog's eye) and then I found an old commercial for the game and showed it to my kids-- as I was so proud of my analogy-- and there's a really weird logical leap in the first moments of the ad, when the mom overhears her children say the word "operation" . . . she immediately assumes they are vivisecting the family dog . . . so my question is: what happened in the past to make her think this is the case?

The Straw Ham Argument

In my composition class we're reviewing common logical fallacies, which helped me finally put my finger on the exact reason this commercial (above) has been bothering me for over thirty years-- the wacky uncle hard selling the A-1 uses the "straw man argument" to convince his nephew to use steak sauce on his burger; first, he creates a hollow and idiotic premise (no one actually believes a hamburger is chopped ham) and then he knocks down this moronic argument (of his own invention) with apparent ease . . . a hamburger isn't chopped ham . . . no, it's chopped steak! . . . but, of course, there's no mention of what a hamburger really is: cheap beef parts, laced with E. Coli and salmonella, minced and padded out with pink slime . . . the whole thing goes down so quickly that the rest of the family never questions the uncle's slick (but ham-handed) rhetoric.

The Test 85: Going with the Flow

Please join us this week for a very special episode of The Test . . . I promise you mysteries and surprises, the revelation of a new superpower, and a whole lot more . . . a whole lot more.
 

Quest for Pizza . . . The Best Tomato Pie?

Alex had a game out in West Windsor today, so we got pizza from DeLorenzo's in Robbinsville . . . it is supposed to be the best "tomato pie" in New Jersey and while I've never had a tomato pie before, so I've nothing with which to compare it, it's damn good stuff: crispy, thin, chewy crust; sweet and delicious sauce, and light on the cheese (which is under the tomato sauce and condiments).

Am I Dave?

I am nearly finished with Dan Chaon's novel Await Your Reply-- which Jonathan Franzen calls "the essential identify-theft novel"-- and while I won't spoil anything about the plot, other than to say the book is suspenseful and thrilling and illuminating on identity-theft, I will share this Anais Nin quote that makes it's way into the consciousness of one of the characters:

We see things not as they are, but as we are . . . because the "I" behind the "eye" does the seeing

and I'd also like to note that no one has written the essential "Romeo and Juliet" of cell-phone courtship yet.

Happy BYCTWD! Sort of . . .

Happy Bring Your Child to Work Day . . . or, as we like to call it, Happy Bring Your Child to Work Day Because He Got Suspended From School For Two Days For Getting in a Fight in Gym Class and So My Wife Is Taking Him to Her Elementary School for the Day So He Can Do Manual Labor and Tutoring to Punish Him For His Stupid Decisions Day.

False Advertising or Just Desserts?

When I pulled onto Woodbridge Avenue on my way home from work today, I noticed that the Honda CRV in front of me sported a vanity plate that read "QT JILL" and so when I passed the car, I glanced over-- because I wanted to check out this Jill and determine if she possessed enough cuteness to warrant a celebratory license plate-- but the driver was a middle-aged Indian man with a plaid shirt and thick glasses . . . I assume he's either abducted QT JILL, borrowed her car, or has an amazing sense of humor and dreamed up the best vanity plate prank ever.

Extra Life

I finished Tom Bissell's book Extra Lives today and the last chapter-- a meditation on a short period of his life when he was addicted to the combination of cocaine and Grand Theft Auto IV-- is worth the price of admission; I liked the rest of the book, and honestly felt that maybe, by eschewing video games, I had missed something valuable in the last twenty-five years, but while Bissell finally boils his love of gaming down to the fact that he cherishes these in-game experiences, real experiences, visceral and like no other, they are experiences that take a tremendous amount of time, and this time must be spent at the expense of other things-- athletics, music, literature, family, sleep, sex, podcasts, etcetera-- and while I missed out on the actual adventure of GTA IV, I got to read about it, which was fairly exhilarating and slightly bizarre, and instead of spending 80 plus hours investigating the world, I got to hear about it secondhand, without giving up my own life . . . but perhaps when I near retirement, when my body breaks down but my mind craves excitement and adventure, perhaps then, when I take up golf again (another time consuming habit from my youth) I will also take up serious gaming, and perhaps by then, video games will be regarded as high art, like the graphic novel as compared to the comic book.

Cromulent?

I'm halfway through Tom Bissell's critical analysis of the aesthetics, rhetoric, and narrative structure of modern epic video games, Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter, and it's pretty weird to read about all these games I've never played (I stopped playing video games after I conquered Road Rash on the Sega Genesis . . . although I do enjoy an occasional game of MarioKart 8 on the WiiU with my kids) and it was even weirder to stumble upon the word "cromulent" in the book, a word which sounds both made-up and vaguely familiar . . . and that is exactly how it is supposed to sound.

The Test 84: The Six Degrees of Canine Flatulence

This week on The Test, we explore the limits of human cognition, i.e. if it's possible for three people asphyxiating from dog farts to make random connection between various celebrities . . . it's a very special episode, starring Vin Diesel as Jesus Christ and everyone else as themselves; check it out, keep score, and see how you fare (although to truly replicate the testing environment, you'd need to stuff yourself into a tiny room full of methane filtered through the anus of a terrier).

A Snake to Bring on a Plane

Apparently, there are twenty-two species of snake found in New Jersey . . . and if you grab most of these critters, they'll probably bite you or leave some smelly oil on your hands (or both) but my son Ian caught a Northern ringneck snake yesterday and this is the snake for me-- the scales are totally smooth, the head is small, the colors are bright and beautiful, and this snake made no attempt to chomp any fingers . . . Ian let it go in the underbrush in our yard and I hope it hangs around (if these were the kind of snakes on the plane, the film would have been rated G and Samuel Jackson wouldn't have had to do all that swearing).

Get Off the Internet and Read This Book!

If you're looking to read something completely different, totally memorable, compelling, funny, and downright awesome (I really love this book) check out Christopher Buckley's novel The Relic Master . . . it's Monty Python and the Holy Grail meets Pillars of the Earth, a historical novel that reads nothing like a historical novel (and the plot doesn't bag out at the end, as it does in The Holy Grail) where you'll follow the adventures of Dismas, former Swiss mercenary and monk, who is now a collector of holy relics for both the Frederick the Wise (the Ruler of Saxony) and the Archbishop of Mainz . . . he'll run into lots of other historical figures along the way-- including the great German painter Albrecht Durer, Paracelsus, and Martin Luther-- but I promise you won't learn too much history; you will, however, contemplate faith, forgery, market economies, artistry, aesthetics, and just how the Shroud of Turin became the Shroud of Turin (you'll also learn about the euphemism "translating" as it applies to holy relics).

Rough Road Ahead

It was with great sadness yesterday that I wrote my eleven year old son Ian an IOU for "one pound of high quality Birnn chocolate," which he earned by beating me in a tennis match to 11-9 . . . I made this promise years ago, when I was sure my children would never be able to defeat me, and while I can offer a number of excuses (we weren't playing with real serves yet, we just get the ball into play and then begin the point, and there was some wind at my back, so I couldn't hit the ball as hard as I wanted for fear of it going out) the fact of the matter is that once I thought the game was in jeopardy, when he was beating me 6-2, I took things very seriously and played my ass off, and I couldn't get anything by him-- I was punching shots deep to his backhand and racing to the net, taking him cross-court, and eventually just hitting everything back, certain he would falter, but he was unassailable, didn't make an unforced error, and finally beat me with a wicked forehand winner that I couldn't touch . . . once we start serving for real, I think I'll get another year  or two of victories, but he's getting better and I'm getting worse, and the inevitably of time is rearing its ugly head.

Second Hand Tech

The young lady behind me on Route 18 this morning was completely distracted by her phone, texting at every stop light, glancing at the screen as she drove, and I couldn't stop watching her antics in my rearview mirror, which distracted me, and so instead of looking ahead, I was mesmerized by her distracted driving, which (ironically) made me accident prone as well.

Spiders and Snakes Oh My

My son Ian came home from the woods yesterday sporting two garter snake bites-- one on his hand and one on his finger, both fairly impressive and bloody, the teeth marks visible on his skin-- and not only did he catch two rather angry garter snakes, but he also nabbed a beautifully colored ring-necked snake (they are mildly venomous, but harmless to humans because their fangs face backwards and they have a very calm disposition) and in this regard my son is just like me, I loved catching snakes when I was a kid and couldn't get enough of stalking them; on the other hand, I'm not particularly fond of spiders, but my boys think they are peachy keen . . . while we were on vacation in Vermont, Alex chose to sleep in the basement of the house we rented, two floors away from the rest of us, and he even did this after we watched The Shining, and in the middle of the night, he said he woke up and felt something on his face, and it was a giant spider, so he killed it, and then went back to sleep, and I was astounded at this, that he had no nightmare, that he didn't come upstairs screaming, that he just shrugged it off as business as usual when you're sleeping in a basement in a cabin in the woods in Vermont.

At Least It Was Bob (and not a Bot)

My friend Bob showed me a demonstration video for the Electro Harmonix Synth 9 Synthesizer Machine Pedal (a guitar pedal that makes your guitar sound just like a variety of 80's synths!) and, in a manner of seconds, I went from not knowing that such a piece of technology existed to absolutely needing to possess it-- which is absurd-- but at least I can take solace in the fact that it was my friend and fellow musician Bob who recommended this item to me, because he knew I would love it, and not some advertising bot that predicted my predilection because my internet provider sold my search data to some company (for more on the evils of technology and how it will most likely be a bot and not your friend Bob who controls your future, listen to the new Sam Harris podcast, in which he discusses the philosophical implications of technological platforms that essentially want to monopolize our time far more than our mental health can tolerate-- Sam Harris is close to insufferable, especially when he talks about meditation and the stupid meditation app that he is designing, but he's also very smart and his guest, Design Ethicist Tristan Harris, is brilliant on this subject).

This Game Needs a Name . . .

Alec and I collaborated on a fantastic new party game last night and we even persuaded a few people to participate . . . the rules are a bit ambiguous and we haven't come up with a name, but the gist of it is this: you name two bands or musicians, and then triangulate the average-- there are no definite right answers but there are certainly wrong ones, and when you hear a really good answer, you know it's correct . . . for instance, everyone agreed that when you triangulate Michael Jackson and Mick Jagger, you get Prince; here are a few other notable answers from last night:

Neil Young + Bob Dylan = Tom Petty

Metallica + The Indigo Girls = PJ Harvey

Jimi Hendrix + Steve Perry = Lenny Kravitz . . .

I kept trying to introduce new elements to the game-- food and actors and book titles-- to make it more complicated and surreal, but this really offended one lady, who was quite knowledgeable about music and took the game very seriously (she offered a rather longwinded logical and detailed explanation of why Neil Peart is the triangulation of Keth Moon and Phil Collins) and so all I can say is the next time you're at a party, give it a shot, at the very least it will provoke some conversation . . . and if you want to get people involved, start with Michael Jackson + Mick Jagger = Prince before you move on to triangulations like Mozart + Weezer = Camper Van Beethoven.

A Bit More Serenity Than Yesterday . . .

Last day of the ski/snowboard season was a memorable one-- Okemo kept the Jackson-Gore Peak closed all week and opened it yesterday, so while the main mountain was a treacherous obstacle course of slushy snow, dirt patches, large rocks, ice, and crevasses, Jackson-Gore had a few perfectly groomed runs with full snow cover . . . and the weather was sunny and fairly warm, the snow was soft and forgiving but not slushy, there was nobody on the mountain, and my kids didn't get into a fistfight in the lodge (although later in the day, Alex punted a soccer ball into the back of Ian's head, knocking him to the ground, where he curled into the fetal position, wailing loud enough that I heard him from the other side of the house).

Serenity Almost

The scene: early morning in the ski lodge, snowy mountains stretched across the front windows, clusters of people quietly chatting, sipping coffee and buckling boots, and I have just ascended the stairs from the bathroom, and I am walking across the wide open main room, which is pleasantly uncrowded-- it's the end of the season-- and I notice, at the far side, near our table . . . no at our table . . . two small people fighting, some fists are thrown, a headlock is poorly executed (because both small people are wearing helmets) and I increase the speed of my previously languid stride because these are my children, and some random old guy is about to break them up, but I get there first, stop the brawl-- Ian is crying because he smashed his nose on Alex's helmet-- and they can't really explain the origin of the fight, Alex said something and Ian whacked him on the head and Alex lost his temper . . . and so I give up on that course of action and I make them look at the scene, look at the room and the mountains and the quiet people and the general serenity, and try to convince them how absolutely absurd they looked fighting in this scenario . . . and they agree with this sentiment, that they are spoiled awful human beings with no appreciation for the finer things in life and no clue how good they have it, and that there are children in Syria, refugees, who are starving and without medical care, who would give anything to be in a situation as wonderful and beautiful as this, and then we proceed out to the lift, laden with the guilt of living in a first world country and not fully appreciating it, and enjoy the spring conditions.

The Test 83: Going Viral

This week on The Test, Cunningham proudly presents "the dumbest thing she's ever made," and while she doesn't know what the answers are, or even what she's looking for, Stacey and I have no problem meeting her half way . . . so see if you know what's up with the youngsters, and what it takes to earn yourself a plaque and go viral.

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.

Interesting Coleopteran Information

Love Me Do! The Beatles Progress is regarded by many credible sources as the best book about the Beatles and while I'm not the one to dispute this-- this is the only book about The Beatles I've read-- I think this is a great book on its own merits, an in-the-moment meditation on fame, mania, art, and celebrity-- The Beatles stuff is just icing on the cake; anyway, Michael Braun accompanies the Liverpudlians for several weeks of a world tour in 1963, just as Beatlemania is taking hold of the world-- and The Beatles present a telling contrast to Elvis and Cliff Richard, two of the big stars at the time-- both crooners who were very male and rather sexual . .  Frank Sinatra is another artist mentioned frequently; meanwhile, no one over twenty could understand what was going on with The Beatles, teenagers, mainly girls, flocked to anywhere that a Beatle might turn up, and Braun was there to document it all . . . this is a quick read and I recommend you go along for the magical mystery tour and read the book, but if not, here is a quick and messy look at the things I highlighted on my Kindle:

there are plenty of quips and quotes, and many of them reveal the archetypal character traits that become more concrete later in their careers;

Ringo Starr, 23 years old . . . "I don't care about politics . . . just people";

George Harrison, 21 years old, says: "I wouldn't do anything I didn't want to, would I?" and then explains his ambition is to design a guitar;

Paul McCartney, 22, would like "to be successful" and wants "money to do nothing with, money to have in case you wanted to do something";

John Lennon, 23, explains: "The more people you meet, the more you realize it's all a class thing";

then some trouble with visas when they came to America for the first time, but they were eventually  granted an H2 visa, a step above the H3 trainee visa, but below H1, which was reserved for "persons of distinguished merit and ability";

there are, of course, moments that seem prescient now . . . such as, in New York, before the Ed Sullivan appearance, Cynthia Lennon wanted to go out shopping but was afraid to venture out into the city alone, and she noted "the fans here seem a bit wackier than in England";

Braun actually delves into the intellectuals and their attempt to understand Beatlemania, instead of dismissing it . . . he describes how the critics spoke of pandiatonic versus diatonic, unresolved leading tones, false modal frames, and dominant seventh of the mixolydian . . . but the appeal was more than musical . . .

well known television psychologist Dr. Joyce Brothers offered her two cents as well, explaining that teen revolt is perfectly normal and unavoidable in a country which allows "social change, individualism, and free choice of lifestyle" and parents may fight back against this rebellion but it's because they have blocked out how difficult and traumatic it is to be a teenager in such a world, adults "honestly cannot believe that we ourselves were ever that unreasonable, sloppy and goonish . . . and so from generation to generation, the war wages on . . . the Beatles are a marvelous symbol to adolescents of their rebellion against adult society"

and Dr Renee Fox, sociologist, discussed their dual roles as male and female, adult and child, and how appealing this was, and how-- because they can barely be heard above the shrieks of the audience, they almost play the role of mimes . . . a play within a play . . .

and I'll end with one last bit of interesting coleopteran information . . . George Harrison made the mistake of telling fans that he liked to eat "jelly babies," a British gummy candy that takes the form of a plump infant, and so fans constantly pelted the band with these sweets, sometimes leaving them in the bag . . . Ringo Starr said getting hit with bag after bag of jelly babies felt like enduring "hailstones"

and the while the band's high jinks are tame and clownish by today's standards, Michael Braun can tell there's something big and bold in this popular rebellion, and The Beatles had the wit, talent, looks, and ability to ride the wave all the way to shore.

Spring Break Vermont: Hot as Daytona, But No Wet T-Shirt Contest

Some highlights from this bizarrely warm snowboarding trip:

1) fun this morning at Okemo, but got extremely slushy and thus exhausting . . . it's supposed to be even warmer tomorrow, so that might be it for the mountain;

2) the nearby Buttermilk Falls are all roaring from the snowmelt, and I came to a revelation while the boys and I were trying to hit a piece of blue Styrofoam spinning in the whirlpool at the base of one of the larger falls-- we were chucking rocks like mad, but not connecting-- and then I realized the most accurate method was "cornhole style" and tossed one like that which nearly hit, but Ian mimicked me and hit the foam with his very first cornhole type toss;

3) Catherine and I went snowshoeing into the woods (I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt and still sweating) and we found the creature that Sirius treed the day before-- it was a porcupine and it now lay dead at the base of a hollowed out tree . . . we're not sure how it died, or if it was this particular porcupine that was alive the day before, or perhaps a relative . . . but there's no way Sirius attacked this thing, because it was all full of sharp quills . . . perhaps the winter hibernation was just too much for it;

4) the people that own this house have similar taste to us in high quality board games-- Carcassonne, Settlers of Catan, Bananagrams, Ticket to Ride, etc. . . . in fact, they already owned almost all of the games we brought (except for Exploding Kittens, which is a silly card game that is totally inappropriate, with lots of butt and genitals jokes and, of course, exploding kittens . . . my kids found it on their shelf and loved it) and we tried one of their other games, Seven Wonders, and it had way too many pieces for Ian and I, but Catherine and Alex think it's the bees knees, so even among board game snobs, there are major disagreements as to what constitutes excellence.

Spring Break Vermont!

Weird winter wonderland up here in Southern Vermont: we are staying at our favorite rental property, it lies in a pocket of deep snow between Weston and Andover and though at the bottom of the mountain there are only slushy piles of the white stuff, at the top of the hill-- where the house is-- the snow is several feet deep; we've built a long and dangerous luge run that ends in a pit I dug . . . and if you pop over the far wall of the pit then you run into a rock wall (not recommended) and we went over to Okemo Mountain today for some snowboarding, and while the bottom runs were slushy, up at the top the snow was perfect . . . tomorrow is supposed to be even warmer than today, so I'm not sure what's going to happen, but we'll probably be acting like we're out west, skiing in t-shirts and slathering on the sunblock (I might even toss my bra into that tree full of lingerie).

What the High School Kids Think Is Funny

A student told me this joke, and I fell for it hook, line, and sinker:

How did the turtle cross the freeway?

Hint: take the "f" out of free and take the "f" out of way . . . punchline in the comments.

Spoilers, Ancient and Modern

If you haven't listened to S-Town yet, you should . . . and if you haven't read (or watched) Hamlet yet, then you probably never will and it would be silly for me to recommend it (sort of like recommending that you check out the Bible) but I'd like to point out some interesting parallels between the podcast and Shakespeare's most famous tragedy:

1) both contain themes of suicide, Hamlet contemplates suicide but chickens out-- though he can barely stand the "slings and arrows" life has sent his direction-- and John B. actually makes good on his promise to remove himself from the picture because he's just so "tired" of dealing with all the shit;

2) bother John B. and Hamlet see themselves in an "unweeded garden" of corruption and betrayal;

3) Brian Reed, the narrator and reporter in S- Town,plays the same role as Horatio-- he goes on a trip to investigate a death and ends up as an involved bystander in a world that is both intellectual and depraved;

4) Hamlet and John B. both believe that "frailty thy name is woman";

5) in both works, there is family intrigue and alliances, oblivious to the machinations of the outside world, and in the end, Fortinbras and the Burt family  operate in the same manner, swooping in to take over the land;

6) there is the distinct possibility that both protagonists are insane, and rereading or relistening makes this more and more apparent;

7) there are plays within plays in both works-- the back room in the tattoo shop, the needle play, the dramas within dramas of John B.'s relationships;

8) there is the theme of time and time dilation . . . no one can figure out how time passes in Hamlet, the span may be much longer than we think, and the same with S- Town-- John is involved with his horological studies, but it's impossible to trace when his mercury induced insanity began, when he went from trying to improve the town with his friend the clerk to feeling betrayed by everything, and if Brian Green ever knew him in a time of sanity;

9) both pieces contain plenty of dark humor amidst the tragedy;

10) both protagonists are most certainly geniuses;

11) both John B. and Hamlet have weird relationships with their respective mothers, and odd stances towards sex;

12) I really like the podcast and the play.

Memories . . . Light the Corners of My Mind?

Dan Chaon's new thriller Ill Will will make you question everything you think you know about your past, and while elements of the novel are predictable, Chaon's experiments with structure are enough to discomfit any normal narrative experience . . . whatever that means . . . and if you're gullible enough, you'll fall for everything, and if you're not impressionable, then you'll certainly be horrified, so however you enter this story, you're bound to be disturbed.

I Am Valuable

Although I'm certainly not the head chef in our kitchen, there are certain things at which I excel during dinner preparation:: I am a good chopper of vegetables, and (of course) I am good drinker of wine and beer, I select the best of the best when it comes to cooking music (although I sometimes get a bit lost in the selecting process) and I recently discovered another culinary skill that I possess . . . I am phenomenal at reading a recipe aloud, enunciating the measurements, so that my wife can execute the instructions without consulting the computer-- and this skill dovetails perfectly with the drinking and the musical selection, so it's a win-win-win!

Jimmy Gluestick Fingers

Our family just watched the 1990 Tim Burton classic Edward Scissorhands, and while we enjoyed the visuals: the brightly colored antiseptic suburbs, the dark contrast of the castle, the extent of the whimsical topiaries, the odd menace of Anthony Michael Hall, and the steampunk chic of Edward himself, we had some problems with the logic of the story: Mister Scissorhands occasionally eats, but he doesn't seem to actually require sustenance to survive, and he never goes to the bathroom--  he's obviously never removed his leather skinsuit (one of the problems of having scissors for hands) and he seems to be immortal-- as indicated by the ancient Winona Ryder at the end of the film-- but it's never explained what his energy source is . . . my kids thought maybe he generated power with the constant clicking of his scissorhands; we also speculated on possible sequels . . . Jimmy Gluestick Fingers, Johnny Tape Hands, Martha Marker Nails, Philip Fork Phalanges, etcetera.

To Distribute or Not to Distribute

My two favorite wonky podcasts have recently done episodes on healthcare (The Weeds, Common Sense) and the takeaway is this:

1) Americans pay a ton of money for healthcare and we don't get very good results-- we may be the greatest country in the world for lakes, but we are not even in the ballpark when it comes to health outcomes-- not only do we pay more, but we get less, and-- most significantly-- for a developed country, we die rather young;

2) we have taken the worst aspects of free markets and government subsidized healthcare and combined them, and at every step of the way, players are trying to squeeze profits from the system-- and without the government to negotiate prices, the patient is screwed;

3) Republicans care more about giving a tax break to rich people than actually reforming the system;

4) we may be subsidizing medical innovations for the rest of the world with our high drug costs . . . or that's what people who work in the industry would like you to believe;

and Dave's theory is this:

it all comes down to what William Gibson said: "the future is here-- it's just not evenly distributed," and how America decides to apply this sentiment to the population, as there's plenty of incredible medical advances, knowledge, drugs, and treatments and if we distributed these to the majority of Americans, we'd have a much healthier country . . . or you could take the Paul Ryan route and try to make the distribution as lumpy and uneven as possible, which might save money, or might allow for some advances for certain people, but wouldn't give everyone access to the future that is already here . . . and it seems that the disagreement over Gibson's idea breaks down along party lines; I know I'd rather have everyone getting access to all we have available now, even if that meant there wouldn't be as many innovations in the future, especially if you could decouple health care from employment and allow people to move around the country and switch careers without fear of losing benefits, as that would really spur the economy (as would a healthier populace) and maybe convince a few folks that coal mining is the only way to make a living (despite the particulate matter and mercury poisoning, which are quite costly, from both an environmental and healthcare perspective) but there are plenty of people-- rich people, conservative people, lobbyists, people in the medical business-- that would like to see things continue as they are, or even get less evenly distributed and make the industry more about economics and free markets . . . but the important thing to remember is that good health is a temporary state, no matter how well you feel, the reaper's scythe will cut you down to size soon enough . . . cheers!

The Test 82: Fill in the Trump

The bigliest, most beautiful, classiest Test ever, inspired by this Car Seat Headrest song . . . a great great test, I'm certain you're going to love it.

The Problem is You, Dave

More often than I'd like, I jack my phone into a charging cord that is not plugged into any sort of electrical outlet, and then at some unspecified later time, I get really annoyed and think my battery doesn't hold a charge.