Sunday, May 28, 2006

Oh, You're Gonna Be in Trouble

Owwwwwwwwww!!!

Beck is Back!
She hits the Sack
She sleeps too long, but I'm glad that she's back
Yes I'm getting used
To the noose
That keeps my antics in line
She been lookin' at fish fry
And three weeks have gone by
Forget the hearse, cause it's do 'til die
She's gotta save lives!
Cat's Eyes!
SOAPing every one of them and running wild

Beck is Back!

Welcome back Werby! We dropped the rental car off last night and grabbed some dinner, then crashed at the casa. I spent yesterday finishing up the Daily Show stuff and cleaning the apartment; I got about half-way through by some mystery of time vanishing and/or forgotten distractions. Anyways, the West End of the house looks dope. Today the East Wing. Tomorrow, por supuesto, the world.

Anyhoo, it's good to have the Beck back. The dogs are mad happy. They stayed in until 6:20 this morning, as opposed to the 5 AM wake-up call they've been giving me these past few weeks. Further proof that they are out to get me.

Saturday, May 27, 2006

Death of a Legend. A Gas Guzzling, Distinctly Male-Odored Legend.

The materially real elements of the past week got the same job done and should be therefore be stored in the same lost basement as Maggie Gyllenhall's razor blade collection - achingly painful, not entirely real (she was "acting" after all), but at least they keep the teenage girl in both of us in the realm of the feeling. I'll go backwards because it's simpler to remember things this was and it has the added bonus of destroying any semblance of suspense, something for which all writers strive.

Friday - Fun times. Drove the rental car into school to meet a student at 7:30 who has been MAD struggling with a History paper. When I first met her, I got the impression of a racecar in the red, the MFing Guns of the Navarone, a mushroom cloud-laying mofo, mofo. She seemed like she was about to simultaneously blow and implode, so I hid my razorblade collection accordingly. But Friday morning, ella fue calm and collected, a shining example of someone benefiting from something I would, were I a real estate selling midget twin, call "Maximize Your Humanoid Potential Via the Magic of Calm, Rational Evaluation and/or, er, Synergy." Or, a little something Marcellus Wallace may have summed up as "Chill Them N$%^&^%s Out 2006." Anyways, if this whole teaching gig fails (which, by most accounts of relatives / relatives-to-be, it already has), I can always become a ledge-talker-offer. Seriously, yeah, I'm actually pretty happy with the way things have worked out, she has gone from near incident-to-be-documented-in-an-agenda-serving-Michael-Moore-documentary to just another kid who's going to graduate from high school. On second thought, maybe the notoriety and fame would have been worth it... but so yeah, we put the finishing touches on her paper, she turned it in, and is in all hopeful likelihood high school degree and therefore college / rest of her life bound.

Then I helped with some fetal pig dissection. I cannot answer questions like "where is the inguinal ligament" with a simple "there it is;" I find myself compelled to get my education on. Hey, you don't spend 100K on a tutoring training program for nothing. This, natch, leads to a truckload of fun moments where I am talking to 16 year old girls about why docs ask boys to turn and cough. The over-under on the date of my termination for "Explicit scientific language" is November 12, 2006. Place your bets, ladies and gents.

Fairly normal rest of the day, class, education, SAT tutoring, confirmation of right-brained kids' inability to grasp the concept of natural logs. Good times. After school, threw the frisbee with Corrine, her hubby Jarod and Spencer, eventually joined by a slew of other students. Impromptu Ultimate game exploded, and despite the grapefruit of fluid that has taken residence in my right knee, I had a great time. As an added bonus, I taught the kids how to do hilarious spikes, and so a new generation of poor sportsmanship is well on its way. Screw it, it's funny. A torrential downpour (what else carries the adjective "torrential?" I mean, besides illegal downloading?) brought our fun to a screeching halt, so I drove home soaking wet to my empty house. FUn evening despite that - read, watched some of Indecision 2004, and basically put off apartment cleaning until Saturday.

Thursday morning started at 5 - I decimated the house in a failed attempt at finding a happy combo of a bicycle lock and its key. No such luck. I even tried using a bic pen on the lock I did find, but I didn't have the correct model. Of lock, not pen. I mean, really, you think I needed the bic 2006 and I only had a '98 lying around? So after hurriedly getting ready (dressing, walking pups, etc.), I decided to just bike to Ben's house and get a ride with him to the train station. But the bike was clunking with gear changes, so I walked instead, 2 miles up Rte. 122 to Ben-Ali Manor. Got a blister, hoo-ah. Ben took me to the train station; I rode to Natick; Walked to School. More Fetal Pigs. Paper help.Good class. Win took me to Avis Rent-a-Car, where I stood in line with some cocky mofo surgeons. They were awesome dudes and well aware of their status as awesome dudes; treated the counter clerk accordingly. Ugh. I had reserved a sub-sub-compact POS, and they didn't have one, so I got to drive a Pontiac G6 for Thursday-Saturday for the SSCPOS rate. Home, dogs, back on highway to Cambridge for an Ultimate game...

Roid successfully pulled a G'N'R in the early nineties tour act, meaning we went on stage 3 hours late if at all. Unfortunately, the game ended after an hour and a half, so we got our collective ass handed to us, 15-9 or so. The game was a joke on several levels - Magazine Beach right on the Charles (windy), played between two tee-ball games (20 yards wide, 50 yards long field), did I mention the majority of Roid (everyone other than of Ben, Cork, Kelvin, Lisa and me) did not show up. J-ette was getting beat by a newbie; that was the kind of hustle that was going down. It was horribly frustrating; I felt like I was right back in the classroom with people who could not be talked into working hard. On top of that, the idiocy of Youth (the other team was BU-laden) resulted in some terrible calls AND a guy pulling the classic pansy move of jumping into the lane to stop my cut. Won't get into it; I am vowing not to talk on the field any more. We'll see how long that lasts. As an added bonus, I spent 2 hours in the car getting to this game, and had an hour ride back. Sub-excellent.

Wednesday morning I drove Ben's new car to work, which gave me a little bit of that nice Captain Kirk feeling, what with the *ridiculous* GPS system on board. More (or less, since this thing is chronologically backwards?) fetal pig dissection - I shouldn't gloss over this, as I had a pretty great time helping kids slice and dice. More tutelage, lots of faculty lounge antics - really, on the social front, I had a great week, even engaging in some banter with various counter clerks and delivery men. I think this was the day where a certain ballet-dancing student gave me sassback in class so I laid into her (verbally, natch), ultimately putting the fear of a polygamy approving god into her. She stopped the sassback instantly, so as dumb as I feel chewing out someone half my weight, it got the job done. We're covering logs and exponents this week, and it's a hopeless endeavor. The whole round peg, round hole concept is not flying. Sigh. Faculty meeting, in which Win and I were essentially insulted and left unappreciated. I'm not mad, just disappointed.

Went to the library after work, and en route got the call - the jeep is dead, long live the jeep. The engine was bone dry (despite my having changed the oil 2 months ago) and the engine locked up; your classic hilarious sitch where the new engine trumps the blue book value of the car. Actually, just FTR, the Kelley Blue Book is $1015, and I think they probably tacked on that extra $16 to keep me from crying. Anyhoo, hence the car renting, walking and etc. Don't know what I'm going to do about this, but in the near future, I'll just drive the Beckmobile. I'm thinking something small and relatively fuel efficient; an Accord or Corolla would probably do the trick. But wait, doesn't Ben have a... crap, he just sold his Corolla. That's why I was driving his new car; I headed out to Waltham to pick him up after work as he had left the house with his Corolla and was coming home with a cool $6900 cashier's check. We went out to Pepperoni Express and S&S with the alley wolf, and lumbered home to a thrilling night of rental phone calls. Ugh-ness. This was also the night that a grey-haired sapsucker won a recording contract, the kind of thing that would have been banal in the 1950's but today draws 35 million viewers. Given the chance, I wouldn't even want to be the voice of my generation.

Tuesday? Drove Ben's Corolla in its pre-sold state; that's for sure. Went over the exam in class; read kids riot act about the test corrections assignment. More tutoring. Great guitar lesson; worked on learning notes on the fretboard and faster scale techniques. Hmmmm... okay, now we're getting back too far, as my memory's getting hazy. The next (previous days', I mean) section probably deserves its own entry, anyways. It's upcoming. Not to be confused with, "Up and Coming."

So yeah, a weird week. Dead cars. Multiple outings with up-the-street neighbors (though I think those came mainly Sunday-Monday), but I don't feel like recounting that portion just yet). Backtalking spoiled-brat students. Psychotic parents (an entire subgenre that I pre-edited out). Psychotic teachers. Pop-culture dregs. Episodes of House where scrotums explode. An A+ in the chaotic universe game. As an added bonus, if you google a certain pop music singing contest show and something that said show might make you inclined to do (smash my face against a wall, drink hemlock, tear my pulsating eyeballs from their swollen sockets, etc.), you don't get sympathy, you get things like "OMG, if Jill Smith doesn't win, I am so going to smash my face against a wall, drink hemlock, and tear my pulsating eyeballs from their swollen sockets." Come to think of it, they probably wouldn't say "drink hemlock." Regardless, consider this humble blog a solid vote AGAINST Jill Smith.

Because if you don't vote, how can you complain?

Saturday, May 20, 2006

3/5ths of a Mile in 25 Minutes

Sitting in my car is a souvenir tollway ticket from the MassPike. I will keep it above the sun visor as a gentle reminder of May 19, 2006, when i left Walnut Hill at 3:10 pm... and arrived home in South Grafton at 8:02 pm. The whole situation can be loosely summed up by "That sucked, a lot." Turns out a tanker capsized on the Pike near Millbury at 8:30 in the morning, shutting down traffic on Route 90 all day and diverting it to Route 9, meaning there was essentially no way to get from anywhere along the central artery of all of Massachusetts. Fun times, fun times, because it wouldn't, it couldn't and it didn't stop. I killed a lot of time on the phone, and I think I listened to the new Flaming Lips album At War With the Mystics approximately 7 times. Good disc, by the way. Anyhoo, good afternoon, and the phone convos gave me some things to write about.

1. Aaron still hasn't read my stories. I find this hilarious. I mean, really. Let's all hold a silent pool on this. One penny a day, winner take all plus 20 bucks I'll throw in. I'm putting $3.65 down on the entire year 2047. I'm obviously kidding, as surely the apocalypse will have occurred by then. The astute reader may point out that it's highly likely that Aaron doing me this favor and the apocalypse may be interdependent events. Oh, well. But anyone who puts any money down on a date in 2006 is just throwing their money away.

2. The San Antonio Spurs, lest anyone forget, have won two championships in the last three years. Bill Simmons, occasional moron that he is (no really, give me more stories from the perspective of brain-dead fans, dude! Ha ha homes, you know I dig the BSG) has a nice little concept called the Five Year Grace Period. As in, you need to stop your whining for five years after your team wins a League Championship. He more or less extends the Grace Period to 10 years if you're team happens to have been previously mired in an 80 year drought. If your team could be loosely translated into Hieroglyphics as something that would be loosely translated back into English as "Small Bears from the North Side of the Windy City," that Grace Period should probably hit the 50 year mark or so. Anyways, by the esteemed logic of the Grace Period, Spurs Fans are double bound (it's like a 5 on 3 Power Play) for two years, and still can't say anything for three more years after that - they are effectively in year 3 of the '03 GP and year 1 of the '05 GP. Oh, and just as a gentle reminder, they were technically still in their '99 GP when they won the '03 Championship. In other words, we should have been spared the moaning voices of small market Spurs fans for the past 7 years!!!

So why, pray tell, do I still hear the paranoia rhetoric of about conspiracy theory refs and how "they just don't look like they have it this year?" Nein! Out of bounds comments! Go watch your championship DVDs or something!!!

Just kidding, Spurs fans. Thankfully, they (the Spurs, not the fans) pulled it out in Dallas last night, forcing a Conference SemiFinals game 7 back in S.A. Nice. So I'm excited for you San Antonio, and I hope the gods will smile upon you and grant you another compounded grace period, the metaphorical equivalent of a 5 on 2 Power Play. You certainly deserve it after all you've been through.



























































SA Free Throws SA Fouls DAL Free Throws DAL Fouls
Game 1
30
20
28
24
Game 2
37
26
43
27
Game 3
32
33
50
26
Game 4
32
29
32
26
Game 5
31
19
19
26
Game 6
33
19
20
29
Total
195
146
192
158


Oh, sorry, I take it all back. There's clearly a referee conspiracy.

I mean, damn, don't you hate it when factual information refutes your claims? I guess we don't have to let it bother us. Maybe there's a little George Bush in all of us.

Speaking of - militarized border? I'm the farthest thing from a political science kinda guy, but is he TRYING to construct an Orwellian nightmare? If so, kudos!!!

3. The Polo Conundrum

The only thing I know about polo, other than the shirts, colognes, and general brand-name recognizability, is that you are required to play right-handed, because if people played left-handed there would be a danger of head-on collisions. Beck did not believe me, giving me the stirring feeling of just having yelled "Judas" at a folk singer and/or a very similar sensation to the one that I get on a daily basis in class. I back up my claim with the following hastily crafted photoshop diagram:

I hope this clears everything up.

4. Alright, there were other things that I can't remember. Oh, well. School yesterday was fairly cool - test which people seemed to do okay on, multiple tutoring sessions that went great (one in particular was a students who has been badly struggling with a history paper and in the course of an hour I converted her from hysterics to laughing and smiling about getting the work done. So I may be wasting my life teaching high school*, but at least I'm good at it and every once in a while I make something resembling a positive impact on a young person's life. Of course, it's not about human interactions, it's about degrees, picket fences, nice cars and country club memberships, so I will make my best effort at righting the ship sometime soon.

I also got some great comedy compliments through the course of the day, one being that I should "have my own comedy show like Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert," and I'm pretty sure my colleague actually meant it. Nice! Stephen Hawking! Ha! It's like I'm beating a horse that was recently ridden by a lefty polo player!

What else? Oh yeah, Thursday I hung out after classes with some students and teachers and threw a disc around. I have firmly cemented my rep as an "awesome frisbee player" at Walnut Hill, which means that my throws don't wobble. Self-high-five.

Other news - I've gotten really sick of the sound of my Roland Jazz Chorus 55 amp lately; it's just too shmarmy, too chorus / reverby and just too pretty frilly - I want a much more basic, crystal clean tone, and it just wasn't doing it for me. So I took it in to Daddy's and they offered me $200 for trade in (I think we originally paid between $300 and $350 13 years ago, i was fairly shocked), so I looked around and played with a Peavey Studio Amp that, to my ears, sounds awesome - really clean, pure tones, no frills, with some nasty good lead settings and some nice switch settings between modern amp effects and a pretty solid vintage tube style simulation. So after I got home from the nightmare drive yesterday afternoon, I played for about an hour on it, just to get a feel - and it's just very, very good, combined with a solid DMD makes me feel like a rock star. Oh, and that's Diet Mountain Dew, for the uninitiated.

So yeah, i think I'm finally killing my San Antonio KZEP/KISS metal-glazed roots and trying to get into some cleaner, less chunkified and less goofed with tones. For better or worse, I tried all the amps with a Fender Strat 60th Anniversary edition yesterday - and I may as well have shot heroin. I had the best time playing on the guitar as I have had in quite some time - it just had a great inspiring feel. Not to say my Gibson isn't top line awesome - I came home and rocked the face off the neighborhood in pure bliss last night - but there's just something about the Gibson that works really well for that thick, low-end heavy classic rock, metal, or even the other direction, jazzy and/or "alterny" swelling sounds, but something about the Strat that just locked right into the punk-but-clean vibe I've been digging of late (doesn't hurt that it's the "Dylan goes Electric" sound of choice, either). Plus it had a nice wide neck and wide spaced strings that helped a lot with my somewhat chubby fingers.

Suffice it to say, something may need to be done about this. On the one hand, I hesitate, because I'm hardly in the position to be spending money on food, let alone guitars. But, in my defense, as crappy as I've been allowing myself to feel for an indefinite chunk of the past, I'm inclined to jump on any thing that gives me an inkling of inspiration. I'll be smart and budget oriented about it - no need to get an actual *Fender Strat* - but I think I definitely have to do something about this. I haven't been that excited about doing anything in a long, long time.

"This has been "Power Rationalization and Justification Techniques" with your host, Nyet Jones. Tune in next week, when we sit around with Republicans and laugh at schizophrenic homeless people, shouting all the while, "If you had just worked harder, just developed your Puritan work ethic!!!" Meanwhile, some Democratic passers by will roll by in their new $75,000 "Ford Primes" and throw some change to the streetbound, giving dirty looks at the GOPs and muttering "Tsk, tsk.""

* - Come on, you know you're thinking it.

Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Team N would lose to Team B&N by A LOT.

Just an odd, odd week. Backdrop of buckets of rain, 10 inches in the past week or so, which caused me to tell someone I felt like I was living in London without all the falsetto vocals. Failing that, Seattle without the hair or angst. Crickets, per usual. But really, it's just been a miserable weather week, resulting in a slew of cancelled Ultimate events, no running outdoors, and a general air of pent-up, cabin-feverish nastiness from pretty much everyone at work, students, administrators and all. That is probably also largely due to something I will dub "The May Effect," the fact that seniors have one foot out the door, everyone has recitals or shows to put on, parents are freaking out because children are not passing, teachers are sick of said children not passing... it's a whole bag of badness. I have tried to put on a happy face, and as a consequence have been lighting up the faculty lounge with my comedy stylings (this week alone, a bit on "Wendy Works" and her stripping career, a response to Ben Gregg's "Science: All the Facts, None of the Truth" with "Humanities: All of the Fluff, None of the Stuff;" multiple other psycho-cynical commentary that has kept the giddy rain-bound educators giggling. Seriously, to quote Ariel Santos, I've really been on lately. Stephen Hawking*!!!

All comedic glory is really the fluffy pillow cover of hatred and pain, so you know it hasn't been a crystal clean evening at the improv. One of my students essentially bearched me out in front of the entire class, so I had to resort to a nasty "are you quite finished?" at the end of her rant accompanied by a Daytime Emmy worthy glare. The message was loud and clear, but i followed it up with an e-mail to let her know that such insolent behavior was plainly unacceptable. I think I may have even used the phrase "your tone of voice" at some point, which shows you how deep the teacher cult has sunk its mind-melting talons. As long as I don't hand out gold stars, I think I'll be alright. Anyhoo, it was just bad, nasty, one of my normally reliable great students just being so ridiculous, so it's put a damper on the entire week.

And just to bring up the comedy level of the week in the classroom - MK, who lacks what you might call "da social skills," announced out loud in front of the class, "Can we meet in private again? That was really fun." AC responds to this with a perfectly appropriate and timed "Awk...ward." Egads, man. JH gave another "spellt" quote, and KL and ATT combined for this great one on Monday, after I had accidentally knocked a box of markers off the board:

KL: "Dude, everything you touch... just dies."

ATT: "Yeah, you're like "Negative Minus."

This would be the same student who answered a question with "Negative Zero" earlier in the semester. FTR.

So yeah, the classroom has not been a haven this week. Grades are not great, kids are griping and arguing about lates and absences, it's basically Baba O'Reilly all up in my face. Neko Case can, um, keep That Teenage Feeling.

On the not plus side, beck has been gone for 11 days now. It's a wonder the house hasn't exploded. She's still working 14 hour days and sends me cryptic messages like, "Argh, horses horses EVERYWHERE," which usually strike me as very bad Coleridge parodies. So yes, the extended absence of the Beck has been exceedingly lame. Come home soon kwia!!! Only 10 days...

Really on the plus side - it's been raining for ten days straight! I haven't touched a frisbee since Thursday! I love New England!

Actually on the plus side... spent the last two evenings having Lasagna dinner good meals with Ali and Ben. Very much a blast. I am something resembling happy to have peeps to hang up with up the street.

Speaking of *up* the street - I ran from our apartment up the hill to Grafton center, down Millbury street to Ben and Ali's and back here. Week point five without running so I go out and do 5ish miles. I am a idioto grande, with cheese.

All I got. Mainly I'm too tired to type right now. Puppies are good. Spurs, not so much. Buenas noches.

* - Ariel once told a lot of jokes over the course of a tournament, a lot of which were funny, but he ruined the entire effect by saying, "Hey guys, I was really on this weekend, I mean, I was hilarious, right?" during the car ride home. He then made up for this faux pas with a brilliant out-of-left-field non sequitur: a bike was riding by with a trailer attached, and Ariel in all seriousness said, "What do you think is in that trailer? Stephen Hawking?" It really is a pantheon joke. And I won't even throw out, "You had to be there," because I wasn't there, and I still give it an A+. So phbbbbbbt.

Saturday, May 13, 2006

Mos Def and Ben and Ali

Happy birthday to the other A-child! Little did I know that Ali actually shares a birthday with my bro, as yesterday was her b-day plus one. This is not a cosmic coincidence, just the inevitable consequence of knowing multiple people, and perhaps the lusty aura of early August nights. Regardless, Ali turned 30 this weekend, and Ben threw her a bash last night.

Fun times, fun times - I walked into a room full of people I didn't know at about 7:40 with a crate of beer in hand. Gravitated to the Sprecher brothers, the younger of whom (Evan) just won Ultimate Regionals with Harvard and is headed to Nationals in sunny Columbus, Ohio in a few weeks, so we insulated ourselves from the usual vet banter with vet-banter's nasty and equally alienating-at-parties cousin, Ultimate stories. Good times - Evan really powerfully reminds me of a combination of Mike G and Dan's friend Gabe. These sentiments are only meaningful to me. Solid guy, and good luck to him at natties.

The rest of the night, for me anyways, was miscellaneous wandering around and jabbing jokes at people. Ali had invited a mish-mash of people from various walks, so the vet-party effect was not as prevalent as usual - props to the newly three-decaded. Ben's friends and family were tres cool, as were Ali's misc friends, and her gym buddy Dietrich brought the house down with a well-rehearsed story about "1 O'Clock Naughty Pirate Game," a tale managing to ridicule not only Japanese culture but also quadriplegic kids who ride down slides in burlap sacks. I'm not going to even try to go further with that - she used to teach ESL in Japan, and apparently, them's some really f'ed up genes floating around in the Far East / Nearer West.

So my job for the party was beer provision, so I showed up with Sam Summer, Nevada Pale Ale and Guinness, earning high praise from the 3 to 4 people who cared. Self back-pat begun and ended... now.

Around 10:30, suburban bliss turned back into a squash and people started to head out. I chatted with Ali and Ben a bit and came back to the den of Spark and Wrigs and, despite my SNL plans, crashed to sleep instantly. How DO I afford my rock n' roll lifestyle? So a solid 7 hours later, the dogs woke me up and here I am.

Btw, FYI, IYI, I managed to spend the rest of yesterday reading, playing guitar, video games, writing, watching hockey, giving Ben a ride to the Toyota dealership, driving the wrong way on route 9, and... that about covers it. Solid rainy Saturday, methinks.

Public events tend to depress me through no fault of their own, especially when I don't know many people there - my brain jumps to the meaningless superstructure of suburban culture, mass behavior as destruction of the individual spirit, the relative merit of jokes made about oddly-named cheeses and their (the jokes, not the cheeses') sad predestined tellings. So it was nice to go to a party choked to the brim with meaning. I say that seriously (though you can't be blamed for not trusting me anymore - don't worry, I don't either) - Ali stopped the party midstream to tell everyone how much she appreciated their coming and keeping her going through life and the hard vet school days, and while it reeked more than a little bit of Roquefort, it was a plainly beautiful sentiment. Not so beautiful that it didn't warrant ridicule - but really nice nonetheless. I tip my hand and say I'm jealous of being able to have that feeling. Sorry, "jelly." At the same time, I'm really glad Ali, and the Sprechers, and all those friends, get to have it. (Insert weepy violin piece, preferably played by a Walnut, here).

Just to bring the bitter Nyet back - speaking of music, WTF? No music at a party? Pregnant pauses NOT filled with misunderstood Dylan lyrics? What is this world coming to? Seriously, peeps, if you need some musak for your bash, call Nyet Jones. I used to put on Love Shack at all the appropriate moments.

Addendum: Nothing, and I mean nothing, quite as nice as walking through pouring rain, 4 inch puddles, carrying a mickey mouse umbrella in one hand and a bag of dog poop in the other, conveniently arranged so that every time you have to tug on the dogs' leashes to get them out of the road and away from the oncoming truck that will surely soak you with a splash, you inadvertently end up putting the rose-smelling crap in your face. I mean, we're talking top notch Sunday morning entertainment.

Friday, May 12, 2006

It Was Twenty (Five)Years Ago Today

Happy, happy 25th B-day to the A-Child. Hope it's a good one bro. Of course, I took birthday revenge on you and sent you exactly the present that you sent me! Ha ha ha! As Ralph Wiggum might say, I stoo-stoo-stoop to your level! Mwuhahah. I did manage to call Captain Goober and leave a message consisting of nothing but me saying "Five squared" in "Revolution Number Five Squared" fashion (i.e., "Five squared... five squared... five squared" said in monotone, approximately 48 times). When Aaron called me back, it led to this exchange:

A: That message was crazy.
N: I thought you might like that.
A: When did you get all existentialist like that?
N: Um, what? Not that I'm not existentialist, but...
A: You know, existentialist. Like Salvador Dali.
N: Um, dude, I don't think Dali was an existentialist.
A: Yes he was!
N: I'm pretty sure he was a surrealist.
A: And surrealism falls under the umbrella of existentialism.
N: Uh, oh, but it doesn't.
A: Yes it does! I learned that in school!
N: You sure about that? I'm pretty sure that's not right!
A: It is too right. Dude, I know the art stuff, okay!?!?
N: Okay, whatever dude. It's your birthday.
A: No man, I'm telling you, Dali was an existential... wait.
N: Yeah?
A: I think I meant impressionist.
N: Well, that makes more sense.
A: Right. Impressionism is an umbrella of surrealism.
N: AN inverted, melty kinda umbrella.
A: Huh?
N: Nevermind. It wasn't funny.

Later on, Aaron attempts to reprise my phone message:

A: Square root of 525... square root of 525...
N: Um, dude. Dali. Try again.
A: Huh? Oh, yeah, Square root of 625.
N: I guess Dali wasn't an exponentialist either.

Borderline pantheon joke right there. You may now bask in my self high five.



Life as a Pseudo-Bach has been less than stellar, I must say. I miss the Beck, and she is having some awfully long days up at the equine ambulatory rotation in upstate NY. And Wriggs and Speelarkle have been less than calm in her absence, resulting in a lot of in-and-out-of the bed all night, resulting in a lot of asleep then awake, asleep then awake all night for me. Badness. Combine this with some ill-advised late-night NBA video gameage, movie, and/or chapters of books, and you've got a tired dude. Combine that with some hangage at the chateau Ben-Ali, and last night's Ultimate game followed by Giant Panda Guerrilla Dub Squad show, and you've got someone near comatose trying to teach your children about hyperbolas (a deadly virus, according to one student who, last I checked, is not hard of hearing).

Let's do this thing - BACKWARDS! Rainy disgusting day today, filled with one student showing up late for a 7:45 quiz with the timeless excuse that she had "overslept." Bollocks! Many a snide comment about my own 5:30 wakeup time ensued. And yet, I let her finish the quiz. WTFIUWT, everyone. So then biology with a student, then math SAT, and then class, where I ran what should have been an excellent RPG-style exercise forcing them to solve equations with conic sections. Ah, What Should Have Been and What Never Was - it went well, and then the usual suspects (AC, JC, CU, ATT, etc.) decided to be jackasses about the entire endeavor. There's a heady feeling of May burnout in the air at the 'Nut these days; not coming from me, mind you, but from... my lovely students. More SAT verbal tutorage, a great conversation with Win about these fallible times and the inanity of everyone outside the set that is Win and me, and back home to now. All of this against the backdrop of miserable rain, gray skies and 40 degree weather. Holla, New England, Holla.

Last night, 9 pm-11 or so - live at the Middle East Upstairs with the Giant Panda Guerrilla Dub Squad. Jamie's doing well, and they put on a *serious* show - packed the room on a Thursday evening, all the kids bopping up and down like only the league of elite suburban-raised white dancers can. I kid, I kid - in all seriousness, rocking crowd, and GPGDS has added a keyboardist and some schwank guitar effects since the last time I saw them. Just really a brilliantly solid show - perfect energy, crispness, and Jamie's made this weird from transition to talented, confident musician to straight-up rock star in the best way possible - just uber-confident now and has this air about him that says just let it rip, groove and play. They sounded absolutely fantastic, and like I said, could not possibly have been a better vibe in the club. Awesome stuff, and I think the GPGDS is doing nothing but steepening that upward slope. Keep it up, yo. Saw Meghan and Greg there, too, and shared a few stories under the general category of "Walnut comedy" as we parted ways post-show. Came home, rolled in about midnight, walked dogs, etc., and got not enough sleep (proceed to paragraph 3 for a less Momentous chronology).

Before the ME show, headed down to MIT at 5 to wait for our 6 pm game with the combo team of Mr. Sparkle and Bad Egg, heretofore known as "Bad Sparkle." Now that is a niche audience joke. So raining, disgusting, windy weather, and BS doesn't show with a full squad until approximately 6:55. So we begrudgingly agree to play and proceed to get our asses kicked - we just had a ton of trouble dealing with poaches, couldn't guard their XX's to save our lives, and had a whole lot of clogging / dropping / throwing-away that only enhanced the bad loss effect. I personally played alright, though I am still struggling with hitting girls on incuts (particularly, in my vain and self-centered defense, when they are cutting erratically and not really running). So two turns in those situations, one on a garbage time huck attempt to Andre, but otherwise solid play, including a bunch of near handblocks, some goal-saving poaches, three or four poach-D's and the like. Oh, yeah, and maybe the most brilliant scoober I've ever thrown to Dave Wu - break mark, over two poachers and floated it right into a little pocket out of reach of the stack, hitting him in stride for a 25 yard gain. (Hey, it's my bloggy and I'll brag if I want to). Other highlights - Sprecher went a little psycho on D, and... that's it. Really. A very uninspired performance that can probably be attributed to our lack of ability to get up for a late-starting game. That's not to make an excuse, it's just to say that a lot of Roiders got it into their heads that the game wasn't happening and proceeded to play accordingly. Bah, humbug. Ugly stuff. I took off my soaked clothes and headed to the Middle East. Ben was nice enough to walk the dogs.

Speaking of Benjamin, on Wednesday I drove with him to the Toyota dealership so he could drop off his car and then headed back to the aforementioned chateau for beers and fun. Ali got home at a reasonable hour, so we went to Sebastian's, a local fish joint. Good stuff. Hilarious times, per usual. We headed back to their place afterwards and watched...

THE WORST EPISODE OF "BONES" EVER.

Bold claim, right? I think they need to teach the May 10, 2006 ep of Bones in script-writing courses on the day they cover "How Not to." The plot was "ripped from the headlines" (a tagline always indicative of true creative genius) and every inch of dialog managed to be terrible and a vague aimless debate on the merits of the Iraq was and the soldier's place in history, etc. I mean, David's lines made Angel's "Buffy, I love you" deliveries reek of Olivier. On the plus side, the Secret Society at Yale is now known as Skull, Ali and Bones. Cause in Aliwood, it's all who you know, and Ali knows Bones.

Somewhere, I'm sorry Mr. Jackson, but you're holding a bowling ball and muttering "Bo knows Ali?" under your breath.

Seriously, really great time on Wednesday. Tuesday and Monday were both spent grading tests, and let's just say the red inkwell runs dry. Students seem to be losing focus, seniors are being jerks, everyone has plays and art shows... we have entered the May of our discontent. Right on schedule.

Alright then - we've had 4 straight days of rain and no sign of letup anytime soon, so this weekend may be an Ultimate Wash. Boo-urns But Ali's 30th is tomorrow, and you know ONLY mayhem can ensue. 'Twill be surely recorded in the annals of web. Until then...

Tuesday, May 9, 2006

Doozer del Dia

So yeah. Exciting day in the classroom. I have a preference of saying that the centers of ellipses and circles and the like is at "x sub 1, y sub 1," but others insist that in order to avoid confusion, we should say (h, k). The problem with this is that there's no real reason to associate h and k with x and y, respectively, whereas there's a rather blatant association between, say, x and x sub 1. Of course, being the good trooper I am, I tried to teach the kids the h, k system today, lest they be confused by next year's textbook or something. And I gave them the easy mnemonic that x and y are in alphabetical order, so h and k just correspond to them (h is before k in the alphabet). Of course, a certain wise, let's call him Add-on, points out:

"Hey, K Y! That's easy to remember!"

Most of the class gets it, the more innocent don't. I give him a "I can't work with you people" prima donna style exit, and come back in a couple of seconds with "have we all gotten that out of our system now?" Only another student comes back with he's so funny; you're just jelly," which is the parlance of their times for "jealous." And, guess what, also fits in with the KY joke quite nicely. So multiple students are making KY jokes, sex jokes, etc., and I'm trying to tone them down, and I brilliantly say you guys are putting me in an awkward position," which only gets more laughs, someone else says "yeah, stop giving him a hard time," someone else chimes in with something along the lines of "yeah guys, KY don't we just make this easier for everyone involved," etc., and eventually I just lose it - I mean, really, I can't pretend that I don't get the jokes, and it's just so ridiculous to me that I'm standing up here trying to act mad when really, the jokes are just begging to be told and laughed at. So i start laughing, and I can't stop. Seriously. I start crying. I eventually leave the room with "just do some math or something; I'll be right back." So, a very bad start to the class. I mean, funny, but not exactly education-oriented. I wish I could remember all the ridiculous jokes; I actually was rather proud of the fact that I managed to not say any of the multitude of things that were coming to mind, and managed to keep a semblance of order after my break up. I actually got a little pissed later in the class, as they were continuing on with the clowning atmosphere and not even really trying to pay attention during the rest of class. Then they pulled a prank where after I turned around from writing something on the board, they were all wearing their hooded sweatshirts over their heads. So I told them that for $40,000 a year, you'd think their artistic minds could come up with something more creative than that. Then a student asked if the hyperbolas that we were talking about were the same thing as the virus, and it took me a couple of seconds to realize she was talking about the ebola virus.

So yes, America, your future is in sad, lubricant-obsessed hands. I hope you're happy.

After that debacle, I came back home through 45 degrees and rain for a good finger-picking, jazz-chord playing guitar lesson. Did I mention that I picked up the Beatles complete score book from Hal Leonard, and that it completely rocks my face? Seriously, every song, note for note, drum beat for drum beat, completely transcribed (with the possible exception, as my dad pointed out, of the symphony from a Day in the Life). Very, very awesome, and I'm in the process of teaching myself A-Z.

In other Beatles-related news - I can't remember if i mentioned this or not, but my left speaker in my car died. And the Past Masters Vol. 2 CD sounds very weird but also kind of awesome with only the right channel playing.

Okay, back to it. Miserable night weather-wise tonight. Beck had a crappy first day at her externship, but I think today is going well. If she has a better KY Jelly story than I do, I will give her mad props.

Spurs tonight... dare I go to Chili's or some such to watch? Dare I? i think if the weather were better I would do so in a heartbeat, but I'm just not enthused to get out from under the blanket, leave the dogs and chat it up with bar clientele. Plus, just ask the Beck what happened last time I tried to watch a playoff game at a bar - I got hit on by an ex-con used car salesman, and I didn't even get to watch the game! Ay dios mio!

Monday, May 8, 2006

Lamentable On-Field Behavior and the Reality of BUDAhood.

Rather mixed bag day of Ultimate yesterday.

Beck pulled out around 10:30, so I hung out with the dogs until 11:45 or so. Headed down to Waltham to find Josh Weinstock's team short on players, so I donned last year's pink jersey and joined them for a bit - tried to play real fade-into-the-background style, and ended up getting a couple of layout D's despite myself. But a real good time, just fun playing with some new people and hanging out and joking. Great. Right? Ummm...

Our game rolls around at 2, and on one of the first points of the game some big dude on their team tries to plow through me, and when I hold my ground and don't bounce off him, he accuses me of grabbing him. I instantly start jawing back, because he was essentially accusing me of cheating when I know I hadn't done anything. And I was overzealous about it, because I'm a raging pinko-commie asshole bastard, and set everything off on a great tone.

Later, I juke my guy, make a hard cut up the line and one of their captains who had been poaching a bit in the lane sees that there's no way he can possibly stop me legitimately, so he jumps into my path, knees jutting out and elbows up in my neck. Again, the bad mood already set (not to mention the fact that I'm not a big fan of cheating attempts to hurt me instead of legitimately defending, and the fact that this was an experienced player who knew better), combined with the fact that I could see it coming... Well, I basically gave him a nice little Ronnie Lott style shot, complete with forearm shiver follow through to keep his elbows out of my face. He flew about five yards backwards and proceeded to scream bloody murder, then got up and yelled foul in my face. I said, "right back at you guy; you know what you just tried to do there. And that's gonna happen every time you try that crap. Fair warning." Said as icily, "if he dies, he dies" style as I could muster. And I called a foul on him, completely legitimately, as he had just essentially attempted to intentionally slam into me to stop me from heading up the line. The big train, natch, won, so you can imagine how enthused their team was about my call.

The game just degenerated from there, and I was just out of my head pissed - I don't know if I just got scared at the prospect of having coming so close to having my knees taken out, or whether it was just that Beck was out of town was on her way out of town and I'm non-plussed about the next three weeks alone. But I was in a foul, foul mood, so I cranked it up on all fronts and played some rather psychotically good defense. Of course, this only got people angrier, as they didn't like it when I laid out on their womenfolk and less-good men. I got a D and was being guarded by a gigantor chump, so I smoked him - Deb made a bad throw which I laid out for and made a nice grab, subsequently rolling over the disc but holding on. Said chump, who is now 20 yards away, says that it's down because he saw it hit the ground. Nevermind the fact that my body was entirely between him and the disc, nevermind that he was 20 F'ing yards away and had no business claiming best perspective anyways - and so, tired of it, I let him have it a little bit, ultimately stooping to insulting his lack of ability to play defense with a barrage of quips to which he had no comeback other than to give me a blank look and say things such as "come on, man, respect my call." So I said fine, threw it back to the thrower and said "is that respect enough?" and he started bitching and moaning again, so I schooled him again, caught the score and punted the disc out the back of the endzone in frustration.

It kept going like this - arguments, heckles, everything, and really all that went down was that I to some extent single handedly kicked their ass. Like I said, fairly virtuoso performance, imho, featuring 5 or so handblocks and 6 or 7 layout D's and another 3 or 4 catches. But all the while I was intensely furious, and I unfortunately griped at some of the young guys on my team after the sixth time they couldn't appropriately position the stack. Which pissed them off (I felt horrible and apologized to them afterwards, all is good), and just made for an all-in-all horrible experience.

I just felt like crap for the rest of the day - in part because of the usual ridiculous nature of BUDA games, calls, attempts to injure me, lack of knowledge of the rules, inability to play competitively and not whine like a bitch every time something remotely intense happens. But really I felt terrible because, I 100% admit it, I totally lost it - I went from nicest guy on planet earth in the game with Josh to criminal mastermind out to kill and insult everyone in a 100 yard radius guy for our game. I fed off it well - like I said, I was a pretty demonic defender, for what it's worth - but I just had no interest in playing any more after about the 4thpoint of the game. I felt like an asshole, was an asshole, and I knew I was pissing off everyone, their team and mine, but I just couldn't get myself to let it go. It was depressing, and what's worse, when i think back about it - I mean, one guy falsely accused me of cheating, another tried to hurt me, and another made a rat's ass bogus call. I get angry when those things happen, and with the exception of just turning into an insult machine vs. the third guy, I really don't think it's illegitimate of me to defend myself, whether in speech or physically. So i just feel terrible, because I've got an obvious penchant for monsterhood, one that has gone from the self-hatred of my youth to wanton hatred for my opponents and teammates when i don't feel people are seeing things correctly. And like I said, what makes it worse is that in many of these instances, I feel completely justified - I'm not going to play sports and let people take cheap shots to my throat; I'm just not. I'll still feel terrible about it afterwards, and it will always make me wonder whether I should even be playing anything at all, but really, regardless of how big the dude is, does he really expect me to just let him do that to me?

So I'm clearly writing to attempt to cleanse myself. I think next week I will try pretending like I am playing as a guest like I did for the game with Josh, and hopefully that will help towards chilling me out. All I can do is get back on the course.

Oh, and lest I forget, I made one of the more ridiculous trailing edge layout catches I've ever had on a Julliette huck yesterday. Sweet times.

On the much, much brighter side - we followed up the 2.5 hour melee with a 2 hour Polaroid practice that went AWESOME. Just good stuff all around - Ben playing intense D, Q burning it up, Flor breaking the mark - all kinds of greatness going down. I am trying not to get hope overly up, but it looks like a special season in the making...

So yeah, I'm Nyet, and I still can't control my emotions on the athletic field. It's rearing its head these days as some outright hatred and rather demeaning heckles in the direction of the other team. I will try to be better, and I will in all likelihood fail at some point in the future, but them's the breaks. I've beaten myself up about yesterday more than that team can realize - though that's not any kind of excuse (for the things I did that I believe were actually unwarranted) - and so hopefully I can drop BUDA May 7, 2006 out of my brain and move on with a better "attitude" next time.

But seriously, dude? Don't ever try that cutting me off crap again. Seriously serious; it'll end the same way every time.

Sunday, May 7, 2006

Non-Beck Birthday News from the Previous Week

THE WEEK IN REVIEW

Sorry, just felt a dire need to give my blog a more official feel. SO, what did go on this week? I hardly remember...

On the school front, more fun in the classroom, as the students are gripped in the throes of senioritis and/or bitter laziness. In all seriousness, I think the rigorous performance schedules are getting to them. To which I respond with stories of two-a-days and 108 degree heat, a go-to weapon which no one can defeat. You see, Coach Robbins and Padron, you did make me a MAN - I can face anything, because nothing is *quite* as shitty as the crap you put me through in high school! Thanks for that endearing life lesson. I will now use that en-masculating experience as comedy fodder for the remainder of my days. Now if you'll excuse me, I think it's high time I started forcing teenage Jews to say the Lord's Prayer. YEEHA!!! And for the record, I have recently been reflecting upon the logical brilliance of "If it was easy, everyone would do it," which contains not only improper subjunctive grammar from a supposed "educator," but also the false assumption that everyone's dream is to become a high school football player. Nice!

Wow, where did that come from? Maybe I should find someone to talk to about all that pent up rage? Anyways, yeah, the kids are worn out, but they're also alright. This week featured parents getting angry at me for tutoring charges (which turned out to be a billing department gaffe). On Thursday I got OBSERVED by our department head and threw down an A+ style lecture, complete with off-the-cuff quips, brilliant explanations of theoretical aspects of the problems we were doing (ellipse eccentricity, for the record), and even corrected some bad grammar AND some disrespectful behavior from a ballet dancer who shall remain nameless. En fuego I Fue, just like Kobe's 81. So that was very cool and made me feel decent about myself, huzzah. And it only supports the notion that I would be a nice addition to the permanent fulltime staff of Walnut Hill, something that STILL has yet to be set in stone. I think we are T-minus two weeks from the wrath, incidentally. I might have to go all "high school football" on the administration. I will, la-ti-da, run them until they puke.

Kids were great this week, both in he sense of actually working fairly hard and providing me with comedic fuel. That's right, it's time for : REAL. CLASSROOM. DIALOGUES! (Applause).

Day One.
NJ: Does anyone know who created the Cartesian coordinate system?
Students (collectively): ...
NJ: Okay, I wasn't going to give you any homework, but now I would like you to look up the creator of the Cartesian coordinate system AND tell me what his famous philosophical quote was.
Day Two.
NJ: Alright, who can tell me who gave us the Cartesian Coordinate system?
Students (collectively): ...
NJ: No one did the homework?
S1: Was it Darwin?
NJ: Yes, and his famous theory was on survival of the xy-planest. No, it was not Darwin.
Students (collectively): ...
NJ: Anyone? Bueller? [note the cliched go-to joke]
S2, looking at laptop with WiFI access: I think it was Rene Descartes.
NJ: Thank you for doing your work ahead of time. You all get zeroes.
S3, finally piping up: But I did it. I know it was Rene Descartes!
NJ: Okay, what was his famous philosophical saying?
S3: "I think therefore I am."
NJ: Good. So [S3's name] gets credit, and everyone else gets zeroes.
Multiple S's: That's not fair.
NJ: Really? how exactly is that not fair?
S4: I did the homework, I just didn't remember it.
NJ: Hmmmm. Seems to me that would be a difficult thing to prove...
S4: You can't PROVE I didn't do it!
NJ: Let's put it this way - I think you didn't do it - therefore, you didn't do it.

The final line elicited laughs from everyone, ESL or no. My first universally successful joke of the semester, and it's only May! My other mind-bogglingly solid joke from the week -

NJ: [Bob Smith], where is your textbook?
BS: I forgot it. Can you help me with how to do problem 17? I don't remember the formula.
NJ: I gave you guys a handout yesterday with all the formulas you'll need for this section. It also explains step by step how to do problems like that.
BS: Oh, but I don't have it.
NJ: Did you get it yesterday?
BS: Yeah, but I left it at home.
NJ, frustrated, as this is the 17th time Bob Smith has done this: Hrrrrrrrmph. [Waits]
BS: Can you show me how to do the problem?
NJ: Bob, you're frustrating me. I need to tell you something, but I need to make sure it comes out the right way. Hold on.
BS: Okay.
NJ: [waits 30 or so seconds]. Bob?
BS: Yeah?
NJ: Bring your stuff to class.

Nice! And that was by far my best comedic timing of the year. Other funny things happened. And you might never believe me, but it was actually a fairly excellent week education-wise. So good times all around.

First mid-week Roid practice was Thursday, and it went very, very well. I think the new era can be summed up by one event. We were playing 5-pull, a drill where the team splits up into two squads and the loser of the drill has to make up the difference in points with sprints. My team won 5-0, meaning the other team was going to have to run 5 sprints after a hard drill. I didn't say anything, just got on the line with the other team to runt heir sprints with them - and EVERYONE on the TEAM did TOO! Very cool, definitely the best "we're all in this together" moment I've had in a sports environment since days with the Tuftsmen. In all sincerity, something that can be hard to find on the blog these days, it was a sublime moment. I think things could potentially be very cool this year.

Friday night was fun; Beck was dead-tired so i hung out with Ben, ate some pizza and watched Tivo's Daily Shows and Colbert reports. Fun times fun times. FYI, the May 4, 2006 ep of the Daily Show was surreally excellent.

And just so they don't get lost in the mix:

Here is a video of one of the most ridiculous skies I have seen in Ultimate. Please excuse Beau's very Ultimate-esque language.

Here is a skit called "The Evolution of Dance" that is hilarious - please excuse the scantily-clad women ads on the sides.

Have a great week folks. And remember, don't take anything too seriously. TNSLFAFNSA.

Beck's Prime

We're gonna party - like it's your... oh, wow, how easy it is to trick people into thinking this is a Fitty-Cent blog.

Yesterday was the first of Beck's many 29th birthdays, and I think we pulled it off in pretty solid fashion. SHe went to the hospital in the morning to visit her "new boyfriend," apparently a horse who's really cute and nice and only occasionally tries to bite and / or kick her. Do you see how easily I lost that competition? It makes me cry. So after her A.M. tryst she came home to reliable me, and she opened her birthday presents. I got her an update for her MasterCook software, the Brokeback Mountain DVD (review pending!), and a copy of Diana Gabaldon's 6th book of the Outlander series (something, incidentally, to which I am morally opposed, that something being the sex-romp-time-travel-genre, but apparently I am all bark and no bite, unlike her new horse boy-toy, and I caved to her wishes). My parents got her a gift certificate to Williams-Sonoma and an ice cream scoop, about which she was psyched. So good times in the gift-giving department.

We headed to IHOP for Brunch and stopped for coffees on the way at Black Diamond, and I think I have found the sweet elixir of the new millennium, the white chocolate iced mocha. Beck was quick to point out that the drink was so removed from the traditional coffee aesthetic that I may as well be drinking a milkshake, to which I replied, "So What?" Somewhere, Miles Davis is smiling. And probably shooting up heaven's version of heroin. Anyhoo, brunch was great (I don't think we've been to IHOP since we've been in Massachusetts), and we came back to nap the afternoon away. We made reservations for a 5:00 dinner (we so hip it hurts), then skipped out on our reservations and went to Naked Fish instead.

Naked Fish was excellent. The Westborough version of this restaurant has a very cool dark ambiance and plays great traditional South American music. Hearing the Spanish-speaking vocals reminded me of eating at restaurants back home, and when I mentioned as much, Beck replied, "In a good way?" And if you're in the know, you realize that she just unintentionally made one of the best jokes ever. If you don't get it, or are feeling left out, well now you know what my average high school Friday night felt like. Nyet Jones, providing vicarious experiences since 1978. Beck had rainbow trout and a mojito, I have diet cokes and fish and chips. I think beck's mojito was supposed to be a tangential homage to a mint julip, in honor of the Derby yesterday. Awesome stuff, and we skipped out on dessert in favor of...

Shoops and Whirls! Great dinner, and we stopped at Stoops and Squirrels on the way home for a soft-serve dipped in chocolate and a chocolate-Peanut Butter Cup Flurry. If you don't know, Soups and Girls is just like Minnehan's in Conesus, only exactly the same. After ice cream, we came home, took the pups for a walk, and watched Brokeback and then a little Mad TV, which actually managed to be quite funny. I somehow got Beck to enjoy her birthday in total, forcing her to stay awake until 11:50 and watch some stunningly dumb comedy courtesy of Tom Hanks and the SNL cast. And then to bed. Beck heads out to Rochester today for the next three weeks, and it remains to be seen whether I will survive an encore of pseudo-bachelorhood. So I'm glad we got to spend a nice Saturday together. (Awwwww....)

Tuesday, May 2, 2006

Suck it, May Day!

Holla web-fools! And yes yes, it's Tuesday night, and you know what that means! Hells yes, it's another arbitrary label for an arbitrary time signifying nothing but the relative positions of suns and planets and stars, which are natch, themselves, relative. To Something else. And something else. Etc.

Solid guitar lesson today - turns out I'm picking up finger=picking faster than expected. Which is nice. Because turn your head and cough, and I'll be my generation's Bob Dylan before you blink. Without the talent and/or the harmonica. Well, the talent.

Feeling very poetic, case you didn't catch it, which if not, who could blame you (he added, without a question mark), I mean, seriously, I just listened to Hello Nasty by the Beastie Boys and it came across like a religious experience for the first time. Maybe something about it just struck me as grand, the fact that these dudes release an album every 6 years and then play the "we's the coming apocalypse" card like it's the jack of hearts. I mean, unstoppable, really.

Good day all around. Started with an impromptu session on sex education aka the biology of the reproductive system, and as we all know, any day that starts with 57 deliveries of terms like "penis" and "vas deferens" to a teenage audience is miles short of awkward. Seriously, the impulse is to say, "you know, the corpus callosum is engorged with blood during an erection. You've seen an erection, haven't you?" And said urge is job-savingly suppressed. Actually, in all honesty, i did a pretty wicked job of glossing over phrases and concepts that should've elicited ewwws. And hopefully the student learned something. Grades shall indicate.

Followed by a stand-up (i.e., I was stood up, he said passively) and then a hearty SAT math tutoring session. And then a trig class in which, I must brag, I was spectacular. Explained, joked, drew diagrams, snap. Unstoppable as a Beastie. And even mocked a student for claiming that my ellipse with a tail looked like a sperm. It didn't; the head was far too large. Proportionally speaking. And then taught them the difference between ellipses and ellipses (aka, dots). On fire was I.

And then another tutoring cancellation (headache related causes), and so I left work early. And so I went to Barnes and Noble to peruse, look for a b-day present for the werby and kill time until my guitar lesson. Then, as mentioned, said guitar lesson was great. Then to the gym, bench and biceps stuff, got ripped. Then home, for 5 minutes of contact with my highly better 2/3rds, Werbakeuh. She is on duty tonight, and I, as a consequence, am cold kicking it with S & W, the novel Ender's Game and the front end of a House, M.D. "event." A taste of the weeks to come, which you would know, were you in the know.

(Side note - public apology here to the iPod MM for cursing at the Fox news reporter for his misuse of the subjunctive tense. I had really, after that night's Family Guy episode, jus thad enough of the intellectual degradation of Western Civ. On a side note, I did win a bet with Margie over whether the term "sex offenders" would be brought up on that night's newscast, which, for the record, is about a 99.7% chance on any given evening. As Bart would say, it's like selling depression to teenagers).

For the record - road music today was SP's Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness. Class music was GD Live From Fillmore East, complete with a rawking cover of "Second that Emotion."

Will miss the Beck tonight - this on-call night was not entirely expected, so I am bummed. On the plus side, it means no tones of Idol ringing out from the Pink House this evening, which can only be a chalk mark in the plus column for Western Civ. Kiss your sisters, gents, it's gonna be a long winter. Summer. Or something. Sexy. Kinda.

Oh, and speaking of House, M.D. (I mean, not recently, but earlier), last week's religion-themed episode was nothing short of brilliant. I mean, I've vomited my way through a fair amount of House episodes, what with its inexplicable desire to enforce the ER dictate of having doctors date their residents, but that casual dismissal of the religious universe, complete with the "tie goes to the mortal" line, ranks as a golden-ager to me. I'm not gonna go hook line and sinker and start saying "the most brilliant character on television" type nonsense, but at least his antipathy comes off a lot edgier than say, Sam Malone-cum-M.D.

Seriously. Nyet Jones, M.? You *didn't* laugh at that? Gold, Jerry, gold.

Monday, May 1, 2006

And the one-sided conversation begins anew.

A long silent week, as though things weren't happening. Oh, they are. They are.

On the job front - things look good for next year. In all likelihood 5 classes if not 6, plus benefits and advising kids and all kinds of cool stuff. Good deal. Students were relatively great this week, the ones I tutor and my class and everything. I mean, they did their share of griping about tests, didn't show up, got 60s on quizzes, etc., but they were altogether amiable. Plus I had a great conversation about Brave New World one day during a calculus session, so you know we're set.

Margie (that's iPod Mary Magdeline, for those of you not in the know) (aka Ma Searl) has been in town this week for an art conference down in Boston. We had a great dinner at the aptly named "Westborough Korean Restaurant" on Wednesday, and I mean great, best Korean food I've had in my life type great. People should be warned though, that they apparently lace their soy sauce with crack or something equally addictive; Beck hit that stuff and asked for refills like Old Faithful, only at smaller intervals and with fewer fat Midwesterners around. Behold; it was a sight. So much of an addict was Beck, btw, that she returned to the Westborough Korean Restaurant twice this past weekend. INSANITY! We went Saturday night with Ben and she went Sunday night with iPMM while I stayed at home, graded papers and ate pizza. Oh, and watched a great Simpsons episode (on Principal Skinner's opinion on wymen's inherent inferiority in math and the resultant scheme by Lisa Simpson), followed by a just god-awful, violently terrible episode of Family Guy. I just posted my Searl-Board monologue on why I think it's somewhat unfair to compare the Simpsons to the Family Guy, but last night's FG episode just hit on everything I dislike about it, and something South Park ripped on not too long ago: the fact that a lot of FG's "humorous" non-sequiturs amount to pointless pop-culture references. Actually, not really much references so much as referential insert capsules that add nothing to the show and worse, fail to make me laugh - I'm thinking specifically of the "that time Moby Dick stayed with us" scene from last night. Ugh, guys, ugh, and the gay marriage plot - Seth MacFarlane, the voice of 18 months ago.

Ultimate yesterday was a mixed bag: an easily won but thoroughly stupid BUDA game (including, among other things, my being called "superhuman" in a derogatory fashion, Dave being accused of not drinking his coffee, a guy claiming to have heard a sound from 60 yards away *before* he saw something from said 50 yards away, another dude catching a disc a solid 4 yards out of the endzone, stumbling forward, and then claiming to have landed in the endzone 7 seconds later) (there were others, you can call me and ask about it if you'd like) followed by a very hard but invigorating first practice of the Polaroid season. New pickups include Ben, Jason and Ethan on the men's side, all of whom look solid + and give us a sweet variety of go-to guys. Pumped we are. So good times ahead, hopefully we'll have a fun season.

Beck's rotations continue to go well; she has one more week in large animal surgery and then it's off to Rochacha for an externship. Did I mention Greg and Meghan took us all out top dinner at Blue Ginger on Friday? Also awesome, and we ate with Fred and Nunny, friends of the Searls from their Cooperstown days, and Meghan and Margie made a boatload of gastroenterologist jokes, none of which (I am sure) Fred had ever heard before. Numerous other jokes were made about "Beck's wedding," where I apparently am in the loop enough to be granted the DJing job. Huzzah! And when Nunnny asked us how we were going to handle religion in the ceremony, I said I thought we would pass out the opiate of the masses and just let everyone smoke it. Then Nunny bumped into Ming Tsai, quite literally. We also learned that Ming Tsai's wife is named Pauli, which answers all kinds of questions regarding her college major. All in all, a solid night.

What else? I watched, or rather started to watch, "What the Bleep Do We Know?" And you may be asking yourself why I'm not reviewing it, and I respond - because I did not watch it. WTBDWK has the dubious distinction of being one of two movies IN MY REMEMBERED LIFE that I have sat down intending to watch in entirety and not bothered finishing. The other was The Thin Red Line, another mind-numbingly dumb movie that, as an added bonus, was 3+ hours long. As a side note, that's pretty good - I mean, I even once sat through Now and Then, a film that I am fairly confident will forever reign supreme as my least favorite movie ever. Getting back to it - WTBDWK was quantum physics as explained to the brain-dead, followed by people giving their opinions without giving their credentials. Not that I could throw down and rap metaphysically and follow that up with my credentials (I mean, what the hell, Nyet Jones, M.?), but seriously, if you're going to wax rather unpoetically about physical reality ("I mean, man, what I used to think was real isn't, and what I think wasn't real is, man!"), then you should at least give us your name. Instead, the film showed us a bunch of the quasi-qualified, complete with beards, books behind them, wild hair and Indian accents. Basically, the whole thing was a tragically failed attempt to blow my mind, and amounted to nothing much more than a bunch of "woahs" and "it's really your mind that forms your reality" type commentary. Oh, and follow that up with some hideously moronic plot about an artist photographer and her anxiety pills, her meeting with a quantum cute black kid on a basketball court, numerous Tron-esque effects and miscellaneous equations, and, the kicker, a completely bullshit story about the Caribbean inhabitants and their "inability to see Columbus's ships because they had never seen one before" - ridiculous. I had heard that this film was some kind of cultish propaganda film, so I was entirely shocked by the lunacy contained within, but geez... not so much that they were wrong or manipulative, but just the sheer pathetic film-making that went into this. Sadness. As to the ridiculousness of the claims, I found another blogger who hits it pretty much on the head, so here is WTBDWK getting its deserved ripping.

Wigwee's nose is looking better every day, btw. Long blog, so I'll leave with you an A+ conversation I had with a student:

S: This number is really ugly.
NJ: Well, without ugly numbers, there would be no pretty numbers.
S: What?
NJ: It's like if everything were blue, we would have no word for "blue."
S: Wow, you're getting all philosophical today.
NJ: I'm always philosophical.
S: Always?
NJ: Well, at least when I'm talking.
S: (Rolls eyes). Well, that's pretty obvious.
NJ: Of course.
S: Of course what?
NJ: Of course it's obvious. As a teacher, that's my job.
S: What's your job?
NJ: To point out obvious things to the ill-informed.
S: Ha. Thanks a lot.
NJ: That was a joke.
S: I know.
NJ: I was just pointing out the obvious.
S: No, I know.
NJ: And now I'm pointing out that i was pointing out the obvious.
S: Yeah, and ...
NJ: And now I'm pointing out that I was pointing out that I was pointing out the obvious.
S: I get it! I get it!
NJ: I can keep this up all day.
S: But I got it the first time!
NJ: Only because I'm such a SWEET teacher.
S: (Smiles, chuckles).
NJ: That was a joke.