Rock On

We just got Rock Band to complement our Guitar Hero set-up. So now we have two fake guitars in the house, on top of the 4 real guitars that rarely get touched.

I like these games, but I can't help wondering if it's the equivalent of the "organized" activities epidemic that have taken all the fun out of kids just playing for the sake of playing. Could Rock Band possible be as much fun a playing air guitar (or in my case when I was a teenager, playing the dog, who very much enjoyed the strange kind of scratching I was giving her) or banging on your leg or table or, again in my case, the steering wheel. Maybe, but as soon as you start scoring and having to do things in a particular way to succeed it seems less carefree.

OK, my STOP BEING AN OLD CRANK alarm has gone off again, so I'll just wish everyone a happy (and maybe just a bit more carefree) new year. I'll be back tomorrow with resolutions and some sort of unsolicited advice.

Never Thought About it Before

I got a holiday card today from a guy who used to work for me. Good employee, good guy. While we were working together his marriage broke up and he ultimately came out of the closet. At the time I was completely focused on holding the office (which was pretty small and close) together while all this was going on. They guy was a mess and made things very difficult for everyone who had to work with him, which was pretty much the whole office since he was in a key position. I spent hours with him in his office trying to talk him through and into a functional state because he really could have pulled the whole operation down.

After a lot of time and effort (of which mine was only a small part) he came out of it, happier and more productive than ever. And he's still doing great. It's something I look back on with some satisfaction as a manager and as a person.

I suddenly flashed on a time in college when I was president of my fraternity and one of the house members suddenly decided to come out. That almost tore the place apart. People had real trepidation about sharing a room, or even a house, with a homosexual. I was very much in favor of keeping him in the frat. He'd been living there for a year and a half and was well-liked (if a bit weird). It took several weeks, and for some reason we never consulted with any of the powers that be at the school, but we ultimately reached an uneasy consensus that the guy could stay, which he did without incident. I was not re-elected president.

Not sure if there's any point to this. Just an odd confluence of events separated by over 20 years. But you've got to accept people as they are, you know? Because it's not your place to change them, and having been a square peg in a round hole for much of my life, I can tell you without a doubt that trying to force your own structure on somebody else just doesn't work very well.

Seriously?

One of the things that I think challenges my students is that I seem very serious one moment and I'm joking around the next, and they don't know what sort of behavior is expected. I actually think that my approach is completely consistent.

A number of years ago, a guy named Russell Baker had a column in the New York Times. Baker was a humorist, an observer, not extremely political but tuned in nonetheless. He was a big favorite of mine. One of my favorite columns of his was about what it meant to be serious. His point was that little kids are inherently serious. They say what they mean and mean what they say, and they take in the world without nuance. Some things are funny, some are not. Some are good and some are bad. It's uncomplicated. In other words, they take things seriously.

Baker suggests that when people go through adolescence, everything gets topsy-turvy and people feel very off-balance, and so they try to recapture the directness and seriousness that they once had but they fail. Instead of serious, they become solemn. These are two different things. You can be serious and still have fun, but there's no place for fun in being solemn. When you hear someone described as being no fun, you're calling them solemn.

I have a tendency to initially take everything seriously and at face value, but I see humor in all sorts of serious matters, and given that people sometimes laugh at my jokes, I'm guessing that others recognize it as well. The flip side of this is that I often take things seriously and laugh at them at the same time. I don't really think there's enough of that in the world. I take teaching math seriously, and I expect my students to take learning it seriously as well. But that doesn't mean it can't be fun.

Ice Follies

I'm not sure what's up with the infatuation these Canadians have with ice. They've chosen to play their national sport on a surface that most people would rather walk around than on. But why would a nice, upscale resort on a fairly steep hillside want to leave the main pedestrian street covered with a sheet of ice? I get the environmental point of not spreading salt, but doesn't it behoove the owners to provide a surface that does not require one falling multiple times on the way to get a cup of coffee? I'm not exaggerating. I think they take the ski-in, ski-out thing too much to heart. They're so obsessed with allowing you to ski down from the slope directly to your room (not that you could stop yourself as you whizzed past your room) that they need to keep things slippery.

Then there's the roads. We rode most of the way back to Montreal on the main Autoroute (like an interstate) and for most of the way the left lane was partially ice covered. Haven't they heard of snow plows? Oh, yes they have. But they're tied up plowing the shoulders, which are completely iceless.

Oh, Canada?

Much as I like Canada, and Canadians for that matter, I keep wondering why they're here. I mean, why would the explorers go so far north when it gets so cold during the winter? Was fur that valuable? Did they all do their exploring in August and it was too hot in, say, Bar Harbor?

Some of the explorers were insane, of course. Henry Hudson was the poster boy for the crazy driven types, and his crew mutinied and let him off in the middle of the Atlantic in a small boat and he was never seen again. But there were lots of people up here. People settled in Canada. So it's not just the explorers, it's the ones who stayed who are the crazy ones.

The Review

We've spent the last 4 days in Mont-Tremblant, a ski resort about 2 hours north of Montreal. We picked it because we only had 5 days because my daughter has 7 !#$%ing basketball games during break so we couldn't travel far. Tremblant was relatively close to home and has a great reputation for and eastern ski area and as a resort town.

The best decision I made in planning this trip is the place we're staying. Many of the hotels and condos here are considered "ski-in, ski out," but I'd been told by a friend that he's stayed in such a place and had to walk up a bunch of icy stairs to get to the lift. I can dutifully report that there are a great number of icy steps here, and people do ski down to their rooms through town. The place we're staying is kind of like a hotel, but there's no restaurant or little shop in the lobby or even a newspaper stand. What it does have is a section with 2 and 3 bedroom condos and a back entrance about 100 feet from the lifts. I've never stayed right on the slope before and it's great to be able to go out the door at 3:00 when then lifts close at 3:30 and get 2 runs in. The ski school and rental shop are even closer.

The skiing is good. The conditions the first day were as good as anything I've ever had in the east, but it rained pretty heavily the first night and after that it was never any better than fair. I actually fell several times today, more than I'd fallen in the past 3 years total. I know I'm older and not in as good a shape as usual, but it think that the conditions had something to do with it. My favorite thing was when I'd fallen (slipped, really) on some ice and lost a ski. I set the ski down and started to step into the binding, but as I did, my feet slipped out and I started sliding down this very steep hill on one ski. Fortunately, I grabbed the other ski as I slid by, because I slid a good 75 feet down the hill before I was able to use my one attached ski to stop myself.

Ice aside, it's a nice mountain, not too easy and not too hard and with lots of fast lifts. The people who work here are very accommodating and the rental equipment is first-rate.

The town is kind of a mish-mosh of resorty type stuff. There are lots of places to get winter wear, which I assume convert to t-shirt shops in the summer. The restaurants are decent, though nothing special as far as I can see. I think they have to cater to the day-trippers and drinkers too much to focus completely on cuisine. We didn't have a bad meal, but there was nothing memorable about any of it. The crepe place is good, and the brewpub has surprisingly good food, though they did a huge plates on tiny tables thing that was more than a little bit irritating. We also ate at a bistro that had a kind of sports bar in the middle, with TV's showing the same hockey game on 2 different channels. The food there was fine too, but the service was awful. Everything came out at the same time, and two of the 4 orders came out wrong. But it was still nice food.

So aside from the ice problem mentioned below, I'd have to give it a thumbs up. If you actually want to know about the hotel, I'll probably review it on TripAdvisor pretty soon.

Resort Living

We're staying in one of these places that's essentially a development. There's a mountain with a ski area and then they built a "town" around it. Part of it is called the old town, but it's hard to distinguish it. It's kind of Disneyesque, or if you've ever been to Vail it's like that. Nobody lives here. The actual town is about 20 minutes away and you go there if you want to go to a supermarket. Driving there was an experience because I went on Christmas eve and it was snowing heavily and it was very very busy at the market. It's also just a little bit stressful driving around in a foreign country (maybe Canada doesn't feel foreign if you're in Toronto, but here everything is in French). Plus we have one of the worst rental cars I've ever had- a Hyundai Santa Fe if you're interested. An SUV that handles abominably in the snow and shimmies if you get over 60 miles an hour. Ugh.

You get a very odd sense of time in these places. Because I'm captive of school schedules, I'm away a lot for Christmas day, so I can see different levels of observance. In Paris, everything stops and it's hard to find anything open or anywhere to eat out (though just like at home, the Chinese restaurants are open). In Costa Rica, they have some mild level of celebration, but it's not a major holiday. In a place like this, the only difference is that the people working in the shops wear Santa hats.

We're staying at a hotel with condo rooms, so we have 3 bedrooms and a little kitchen and a living room with a gas fireplace. There's a panel on the wall where you push a button and the fire turns on and then after an hour it suddenly shuts off. They haven't mastered the slowly burning down thing. The hotel is right at the base of the slope. You walk out the back door and the bunny hill is right there (fun to watch out the window) and the real lift is about 100 feet away. There are ski lockers by that entrance and signs by the elevator that say you can't keep skies in your room. You must keep your skies in the ski lockers. It's a bilingual sign and they spell it correctly in French.

The town is on a hill and it rained last night, which pretty much turned the main drag into a big ice slide. During the day they have like a ski lift to take you from bottom to top but it's closed at night, so it took us a very long, wet time to get back up to our room. This also made for interesting skiing today, because there was about an inch of snow on top of a serious layer of ice. You could go really fast. Stopping or turning, not so much. I only fell once and never crashed into anyone, which I count as a major success.

Happy Christmas

I wish everyone to whom this day is deeply meaningful, as well as those from whom it's just a quiet day when everything's closed, a day (or maybe even more) of peace and happiness.

If you like "A Christmas Story"

You should check out In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash, by Jean Shepherd. a collection of stories of life during the depression in Indiana that are excerpted to make up the movie. Shepherd, who narrates the movie, was a monologist. He had a hour long nightly show on WOR-AM in New York from the mid-1950's to the 70's, where he would come on and just talk, play the kazoo and the Jew's Harp along with 30's and and 40's novelty songs, and tell long stories about growing up in a scruffy midwestern town and his subsequent time in the army.

When I was about 11, my parents gave me a clock radio where you could turn on the radio and it would automatically turn off in an hour. This was miraculous to me, and for years I would go to bed around 10 and turn on my radio for just long enough that I could hear Jean Shepherd, who was on from 10 to 11. It was a great way to spend some time in the dark, waiting to fall asleep.

Resort Encounters

In the elevator of the hotel is one of the few places you'll see people in serious cold weather gear and people in bathing suits standing next to each other.

Hard to top the ambiance though

I'm staying in this little ski village in Quebec not only do they have snowmaking on the mountain, but they have it down in the village as well. I've been in other ski towns where they shovel the snow when it falls instead. I guess there's always more than one approach and it does look nice, but I think it's actually snowing out and I can't be sure, which is unsettling.

Update: People actually ski through town. I guess that's why there's snowmaking.

You Know A Great Many Notes

Four words to bring terror to the music lover's heart: Middle School Orchestra Concert.

I have a very acute sense of pitch. Actually our whole family does- one of my kids has perfect pitch, she can sing a note on demand or identify any note she hears. We found out because we had a Casio keyboard with the notes printed on the keys. One day my car alarm went off and my daughter, who was about 5 years old at the time, said "It's making a G sound." Anyway, for people like us, off-key music is literally painful. The concert was mercifully short.

Most Interesting Obituary Ever

Topus obituary

Or at least the most unusual in content and writing style. I don't want to lessen the effect by giving away too much, but make sure you read at least until you reach the word "delicious." And you may be interested in the Maidenform Bra connection as well.

The Failure of Arts and Crafts

Every once in a while I’ll do what might be called a manipulative project with a class. No, that doesn’t mean I teach them to manipulate those around them. These are teenagers and they’re already plenty good at that. What it means is that the students work with some solid object- manipulate it if you will. In pre-Algebra, we use something called Algebra tiles to connect math concepts to physical objects. In trigonometry it might involve using a compass and measuring angles in a circle. In Geometry, which has a more obvious connection to the physical world, we do a variety of things.

This week, we were studying medians. The medians of a triangle are the line segments connecting each vertex (corner) of the triangle to the midpoint (what it sounds like) of the opposite side. There are 3 of these in every triangle. Medians have certain properties, and they happen to all 3 cross at a single point. This is called either the median or the centroid of a triangle. This point, almost magically, is exactly 2/3 of the way from the vertex to the opposite side. It’s also the center of gravity of a triangle, which means the triangle will balance on your finger if you put your finger on that point.

So here’s the project:
1. Draw a triangle (I provided rulers to help).
2. Cut it out (scissors provided)
3. Find the midpoint of each side by folding across and matching up the corners.
4. Draw lines from the 3 midpoints to the opposite corners.
5. Measure the lines to see that the place where they all cross is 2/3 of the way from the vertex to the opposite midpoint.

Pictorial directions are given in the book. The book suggests that this activity should take between 15 and 20 minutes, which seemed a bit optimistic, but I am at a loss to describe exactly what happened when we tried to do this. Let me start by saying that in a room full of normal, reasonably intelligent students, that I was the only one to complete this task in a 30 minute period.

When the period ended, the room looked like a confetti factory and everyone was alternately laughing and tearing their hair out. Some people drew teeny triangles and couldn’t work with them. Some people completely folded the triangle and drew no lines. Some people connected the vertices with random points on the opposite side. Some connected the midpoints to random points on one of the other sides. Some made a drawing mistake and started making new triangles instead of just turning the paper over. I can say with conviction that everyone at least drew triangles and cut them out. Beyond that, your guess is as good as mine.

I blame the system for this epic mini-disaster. These kids have clearly been deprived of the requisite arts and crafts training required to complete tasks requiring small motor skills. My own skills were honed by years of gluing popsicle sticks to each other, making collages, creating potholders with loops, flowers out of tissues and weaving paper baskets. The changeover to electronic toys and the rise of cell phones are yielding disastrous results. Not being a trained arts and crafts professional, as my mentors clearly were, I am at a loss to say how we can improve this situation. I fear for our future.

Music

For those who are unaware, Jack Johnson does a version of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer that sounds just like every other Jack Johnson song.

My new favorite song is "That's Not My Name" by the Ting Tings.

Bumper Cars

Aside from the fact that you can't go into a store like a normal person this time of year, the thing that's most inconvenient for me about the holiday season is driving. I'm not sure what it is- too much Christmas Spirit (or spirits) or too much Christmas Stress, but people drive horribly during December. They're careless and overly aggressive and inattentive. Everybody's in a big hurry, to shop I suppose, and nobody gives a hoot (?) about anyone else out there. Coming home from work yesterday, I was cut off 3 times by the same car, who kept swinging into the left lane to motor on ahead, only to get stuck behind somebody left turning and then swerve back right in front of me.

Okay, I'm starting to sound like a crank so I'll stop.

You canna fool me, there ain'ta no sanity clause

As much as I despise being subjected to a month of ubiquitous Christmas music, I simply can't get annoyed upon hearing Ella Fitzgerald's scat version of Santa Claus is Coming to Town.

Interesting article

I just read an article, written by a colleague's daughter, about the age-old question of science versus creationism (of course, the discussion of how old the age-old discussion is is also age-old, but I'll stop now). One of its main points is that although the discussion of how we've come to exist is sometimes framed as a choice between Intelligent Design and there being a so-called multiverse, that it's usually a mistake to present complex choices in terms of only two options. It's a point I agree with heartily (as does the above-mentioned Dodecahedron from The Phantom Tollbooth).

Here's a link to the article and please leave a comment if you find it interesting. It might help a talented young writer get a shot at a regular column.

Today at the supermarket- Wholegrania and the Mystery of Turkey Ham

My daughter asked me to get her some multigrain bread, and having experienced the tedium that accompanies the use of a solitary grain, I obliged. Of course, the bread aisle is one of my favorite places anyway, so I was pleased to see that it was whole grain mania, where I had a choice of 7 grain, 9 grain, 12 grain and 15 grain, not to mention those mathphobes that just call themselves Multigrain. My daughter likes things to the max, so I went for the 15 grain, despite a suspicion that there really aren't 15 kinds of grain. It appears from the ingredients, however, that there are. And the bread is actually pretty good in spite of all those grains.

Since this same daughter doesn't eat red meat, I went to the deli counter to get some turkey ham. Here's what I don't understand. Regular turkey costs about $6.99 a pound and ham costs about $5.99 a pound. So how is that turkey ham, which I presume is regular turkey with some sort of essence of ham added, is $3.99 a pound? It's already turkey, which is $6.99, and then you've added something to it, so unless there's something really bad in what they've added, shouldn't it cost more? Just askin'

Simple answers

to simple questions.

Is Christmas overcommericalized?

No, it's everything else that's overcommercialized.

Christmas has been very commercial for a very long time, but it's taken a while for the rest of the year to catch up. But now, fortunately, every day is a sell-a-thon.

Disappointing

I just cleaned my car in preparation for the long drive to grandma's house. I don't clean my car very often, so when I do I like to approach it like an archaeological dig, looking for clues about the past. This time, however, it was devoid of interest. Just 16 partially to completely empty beverage bottle, 2 umbrellas, a few receipts and a bunch of Jelly Belly's. What does this say about my life?

Advertisingese

One of the things I learned early into an advertising career was to avoid the idea or phrase "The best just got better." Clients love this message and always insist that it's a good message because it's true (and in some cases it is). But as you all know, the truth is not the point of advertising. The point of advertising is to motivate people to do something. And I'm sorry, but "the best just got better" is not a motivating statement- it's a boast. To be motivating, it requires the customer to first agree that your product is the best and people rarely think about things that way. Just like "new and improved" is a dangerous message because it might make people think, "What was wrong with the original stuff that they had to improve it?"

What made me think of this was an ad by Comcast for some kind of sound and light show at their headquarters in today's Inquirer, which manages to jam two bad cliches into the same ad. The headline says "The most wonderful time of the year just got more wonderful." So song lyrics aside, how many of you really think this is the most wonderful time of the year? So if you don't think this is the most wonderful time of the year, the ad's lost you already. And if you do think it's wonderful, are you really longing to make it wonderfuller?

So now let's move on to "a New Philadelphia Holiday Tradition." Of the traditions you know, how many of them are new? Well, none of course, because there's no such thing. If it's new, it's not a tradition. All it's missing is "fun for the whole family." And don't get me started on the picture of the girl looking up in wonderment.

Recipe Time

Even the most hard core political blogs have recipes these days, so here's mine. These pancakes are loved by all and have double the eggs and non-fat dried milk to up the protein and calcium.

Frank's Good and Good-for-you Pancakes (makes 6-8 pancakes)

Preheat a frying pan or (better) a griddle on medium-low heat

Mix in a bowl:

2/3 cup unbleached flour (feel free to make some of this whole wheat)
1 1/2 tbsp. sugar
1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup non-fat dried milk

In another bowl (I actually use a measuring cup) mix:

2 eggs
1/2 cup of milk (works fine with lowfat or fortified skim)
1 1/2 tbsp vegetable oil

Pour liquid ingredients into the bowl with the dry ingredients and mix until the the dry stuff is moistened- the less mixing, the more tender the pancake.

Brush butter onto griddle, which should be just hot enough to make the butter sizzle.
Ladle out pancakes. It should take about 3 minutes for the first side and 2 minutes for the second. These pancakes have a nice golden color because of the extra egg, and they're best when they're cooked to light brown. Feel free to add some bits of fruit or nuts to the pancakes (I do this after they're on the griddle).

Enjoy!

Second Annual Doorbuster Survey

As a public service, here is my tally of the opening times of local stores

9am or no specified time 8

8am 1

7am 5

6am 14

5am 12

4am 3

This is a significant increase in both the number of stores advertising and way more stores opening 6am or earlier.

Exciting Evening

When I lived in New York, one of my annual pleasures was to go to Macy's at Herald Square mid-evening on December 24th and sit up in the Mezzanine and watch the last-minute shoppers scrambling around. I feel a little like that as I venture off to the supermarket the night before Thanksgiving. We don't do turkey for Thanksgiving, since none of us actually likes turkey which makes the whole thing counterintuitive. We have something we all actually like, which is breakfast for dinner. So I need to get some eggs and buttermilk and maybe a challah for french toast. And I have to admit that since I only need a couple of things, that I was trying to figure out when the absolute worst time would be. I'm guessing it was around 6 and I missed it, but I'm going to give it a try now. I'll report back if there's anything interesting to say.

Kind of Sad

With one sort-of exception I've never been back to any of my old schools.

Thanksgiving (A self-indulgent blogathon, updated throughout the weekend) Last update 11/27 at 5PM

I'm not a big fan of designating a day to stop and express thanks and list off things that one is thankful for. I am, however, a big believer in doing that on a regular basis.

I've probably rambled on about this before, but in my youthful effort to "find myself," one of the things I discovered is that (1) my immediate response is always to take something at face value, before I start to attach meaning, motivation, or anything else to it, and (2) most people don't do that. I'm not saying one is better than another, it's not like I'm doing it on purpose. It's just the way my brain works and it's something that makes me different. This has many ramifications, not the least of which is my sense of humor, which is very much based on my taking things as they're said as opposed to what they mean.

Another result is that because I have to stop and think about everything, (including, to give a small but absolutely true example, what is the proper response when I pass someone I know and they say "Hi" to me?) that I actually think about everything. I don't recommend this taken to my peculiar extreme; it's exhausting, but it does have the advantage that I never take anything for granted and am therefore thankful for the gifts that life brings me on an almost continual basis. What I would recommend to people is that they at least every once in a while (and once in a while doesn't mean every 4th Thursday in November) stop and think about what happened to you today. There's nothing profound about this and you don't actually have to do anything, but I think if you stop and review your day you'll find many things to be thankful for, even on the worst of days.

So as the weekend progresses, I'll start listing stuff I'm thankful for, in no particular order.

Potato chips (I told you it was in no particular order)
baseball
tape
snow
The Beatles
word processing
comfortable clothes
trash removal
The Coopermarket
flashlights
Monty Python

I'm thankful for Tofurkey. Not that I want Tofurkey, but it's nice to know that if I wanted something turkey-like that wasn't turkey, that I'd have that option.

I'm thankful for the death of the sitcom.

Environmentalismism

I always keep in mind the wise words of the late George Carlin, who noted that the earth was here before we came and will be here after we're gone. What we want isn't to save the earth, it's to save us.

Black Monday

Anybody have a sense that Black Friday is going to be even more insane than usual this year?

I think I'm going to get myself settled outside Walmart right now.

Why our minds are mush

I was in the supermarket today buying bread and I counted, in the bread aisle alone, 81 different kinds of bread. You know bread? Flour, water, yeast, knead, bake. That stuff. 81 choices. This doesn't include the fresh bakery counter, english muffins, wraps, rolls, and other bread related items. There were 17 different whole wheat bread packages.

My hypothesis is that this is way too stressful for people. Back in the day it was fight or flight, or maybe grow something instead of hunting. Now, unless you're an experienced shopper, you can't even figure out what to buy. You know the fortified skim milk? The kind that's "fat free, but tastes like 2%"? There are now more kinds of that than there are regular skim milk. We may think we want this kind of choice, but we certainly don't need (or even knead) it, which makes me think that it's unsustainable.

Simple explanations

Why does the squeeky wheel get the grease? Because squeeky wheels are annoying, that's why.

The application of this concept to real life is that when you are living or working in an group, the best way to make your life easier to is pinpoint the people who can make the most trouble for you and make sure that you keep them happy. This is sometimes easier said than done, but it's a good exercise to at least know where potential problems lie.

Another sign that the end of the world is near

Brown rice Rice Krispie Treats.

Senior Moment

I'm not really old enough to get senior discounts yet, but I do take senior vitamins, which have the advantage of not coming with a childproof top.

Records Day

Today is called "records day," which is when you're supposed to be writing report cards. I am celebrating it by listening to records. We still have a large collection of vinyl albums which we listen to occasionally and I am availing myself of them today. My first choice is Closing Time by Tom Waits, one of our all-time favorites. It's funny to have to get up every 20 minutes and flip the album, but it also brings back memories of great album sides, a unit of music that has disappeared from consciousness. The second side of the Beatles' Abbey Road is the gold standard, but don't diss the other greats, including the second sides of Who's Next, Steely Dan's Countdown to Ecstacy, Talking Heads' More Songs About Buildings and Food and Elvis Costello's This Year's Model or the first side of Paul Simon's There Goes Rhymin Simon. Of course this is all older stuff, 'cause they just don't make 'em like they used to.

Light blogging of late

The blog is seeming like too much responsibility this week. I did have an interesting school experience I'll recount at some point in the next couple of days when I ought to be writing my report cards instead.

The Beast is Released

The new toaster oven broiler is now online, the plastic bags have been disposed of safely, the cord is not dangling and I'm keeping it as far from the oven as possible. I've used the oven part of it successfully, but I have not yet tried to simultaneously cook and dry bread.

Crowd Control

I was kind of blown away to hear that there would be over 1 million people in Washington for Obama's inaugural, and then I remembered that's about half as many as came to the Phillies parade.

Needless Complexity, Part 3.2.11 (updated)

One of the things parents tell kids is that they don't have to worry about the big stuff, that the adults take care of that. This may be true, but it doesn't mean that adults don't have to deal with the small stuff too. In fact, most of what any adult deals with is small and even tiny. But that doesn't make it unimportant or boring.

For example, we got a new toaster oven. The old one had a door that kept separating from its hinge, so we gave up on it. So as part of my mission to document the mundaneness of being an "adult," I will take you though the as yet uncompleted process of incorporating this device into our lives.

The box warns that for my continued enjoyment I should read the instructions and I'm in this for the long haul, so I'll commit to the instruction book. The instruction book is wrapped in a plastic bag that warns me of all sorts of horrible consequences should I misuse or allow others to misuse the bag. The instructions then, after an opening paragraphs that tell me, among other things, that I am about to experience the ultimate in countertop cooking convenience, provides me with a list of 24 IMPORTANT SAFEGUARDS. The warning labels for appliances have been pretty much completely mined by stand-up comics, so after noting that they begin with the traditional: 1. Read all instructions, I'll skip to the important ones.

9. Do not let cord hang over the edge of the table or countertop where it could be pulled on inadvertently by children or pets...(and by extension, do not dangle unit out of the window where it could be dropped inadvertently onto the heads of passersby).

10. Do not place toaster oven broiler on or near a hot gas or electric burner or in a heated oven (emphasis mine). As I usually do when I don't understand things, I asked my 17 year-old daughter why someone might put a toaster oven in a heated oven and she replied simply, "Maybe to make things cook faster." and I have nothing to add to that.

11. Do not use this toaster oven broiler for anything other than its intended purpose. This is good advice for almost anything, but I thought I was buying a toaster oven and I've learned by reading the safeguards that there's a yet a third purpose for this device that I had not intended. This worries me. I'd better keep reading.

There's a long introduction, which extols the device's toasting prowess, promised by its "Perfect Timing Touchpad Control." Okay then, this reminds me of when I asked a car salesman how the hybrid car got such good mileage and he said enthusiastically in a thick Scottish accent, "Technology!"

The section notes that if you want to toast bagels or English muffins, to just press the "Bagel" button and "the toaster will add the extra time needed for these baked favorites." I just want to note for the record that English muffins are not baked. That's why you never eat them without toasting them. English muffins are made by letting the dough rise 3 times and then browning them on a griddle (on corn meal, the stuff that gets all over the counter).

I barely have the energy to read the rest of the instructions, much less report on them, so I'll just hit a couple of highlights.

The manual helpfully notes that toasting is a combination of cooking and drying bread.

Users are advised that, when toasting raisin or other fruit breads to remove loose fruit from the surface of the bread, because that will help prevent pieces from falling onto the crumb tray.

The "Perfect Timing Touchpad Control" has a total of 70 toasting permutations, including first defrosting bread, then toasting it to 7 different levels of doneness.

There are a several recipes in the back, the most alarming of which is Dijon Glazed Swordfish. Does anybody cook real food in a toaster oven? Or even a toaster oven broiler? There are instructions in here for roasting a chicken. Does a chicken even fit in a toaster oven? The most sophisticated thing I cook in a toaster oven is Tater Tots.

I'll report back on the toaster oven broiler itself once I've removed it from the box.

Head Scratching

I don't even know what to think about this.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27704926/

I guess it's interesting, like you'd describe food as tasting interesting.

.







Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch...

I don't like to wish anybody ill, but I'm not shedding any tears for Circuit City. Their management deserves whatever difficulties they encounter (as do the heads of General Motors). I haven't shopped at Circuit City since last year, when they laid off over 3,000 of their most experienced customer service workers and replaced them with cheaper, inexperienced workers. Heckuva way to treat your employees, eh? Anyone need a reminder of why labor unions are a good thing? Oddly enough, customers didn't respond well to less competence and they lost business to Best Buy and others. Maybe they'll recover but I wouldn't bet on it.

Pharn it!

My radio was hijacked today. Not stolen, mind you, but I have XM Satellite Radio in my car. I find today that many of the channels have either changed position or name or format or all 3. It's because XM merged with Sirius Satellite Radio and they've finally combined their lineups. Sirius has some good stuff, but they also have the annoying habit of calling their channels things like "Siriusly Sinatra" (and I checked, it's spelled like that too). Maybe I'm oversensitive, but I live in a place where people are absolutely insistent on spelling anything that starts with an F with a Ph and it drives me up a wall. It's the one and only thing that makes me happy about the end of the baseball season is that I no longer have to hear about having the Phillies Phestival at the ballpark.

On the other hand, you may know that my convention in this blog is to use the traditional #*%! to represent swear words, but if I didn't I would definitely use a 5 letter variant of one of the more popular phour letter words.

Wrong Aid

I don't know anyone who likes the designs of the Rite Aid stores, with the aisles at weird angles and such. They've compounded the problem at the one near me by "reorganizing" the store. As best I can see, this means having all the shelves packed with stuff without your being able to find anything you want to buy. Hmm, there used to be razor blades right here and now there's toilet paper and christmas lights. And what happened to all the batteries from the battery display? It looks like someone's following a directive from some central office and giving not a thought to the customer.

The highlight of this trip was the halloween candy section. By now we're up to 75% off stuff, and it's always worth a peek to see what hasn't managed to sell even after a week of being 50% off. There's lots of gummy stuff. I've never really gotten the whole appeal of gummies. If I want something gummy I get gum. Just like if I want something chocolatey I get chocolate. I wasn't surprised to see either the Gummy Body Parts of the High School Musical Gummies left in the bin. And who thought Chocolate Skittles was a good idea?

In The Holiday Spirit

One of the most important things one has to do in this time between Halloween and Thanksgiving is to avoid eating anything pumpkin flavored. It requires constant vigilance and the attention to detail necessary to reject anything with the word "seasonal" in the description.

Philanthropy Throwdown

Tonight I'm going to see La La La Human Steps (a modern dance troupe) in the Perelman Center in the Kimmel Center. I think Perelman and Kimmel are both still alive. Do they like each other? Is it okay with Perelman having his theater inside Kimmel's center? I think these are important questions.

And the funny thing is, I probably know someone who knows the answers.

Grandfriends

It was Grandparents and Grandfriends Day today. Am I the only one puzzled by "grandfriends"? It's not in the dictionary, though it's certainly snappier than "Grandparents and Much Much Older People Who Aren't Related to You Day." Is this a common thing? I don't get out much, but I don't know anybody who has a friend more than, say, 20 years older than them. I'm around 40 years older than most of my students. Does that make me a grandfriend? (Just as an aside, I keep typing "grandfiend" by mistake) I don't have any kind of problem with the concept, I just think if I were trying to expand the potential target for an event, this wouldn't have been the first thing I picked.

Mighty Oaks Come From What?

I've pretty much lost patience talking politics with the Republican kids. If I just want to hear official Republican talking points du jour parroted I can watch Fox News. The latest topic is Acorn and voter fraud. I'll set aside the fact that the most recent people convicted of vote-related crimes are Republican operatives jamming phone lines. I'm just not convinced that it's a greater evil to allow someone to vote who shouldn't than it is to disenfranchise someone. In fact the whole democracy concept (i.e., the idea that the citizens vote for their leaders) implies that disenfranchisement is a pretty bad thing.

Obviously, if there's proof of an organized attempt by a party to consciously allow unqualified people to vote, that's another thing entirely. But so far, the only organized activity has been by parties seeking to make it difficult or impossible for qualified people to participate.

At a loss for words

What a great, great great week this has been.

Election Night

I'm going to be sitting in front of the TV with my laptop at hand. It's not as much fun as a debate drinking game (maverick!). Not sure what I'm going to do when this is over. I mean, baseball's over and that's bad enough (though the ending was sweet) but it seems like the presidential race has been going on for a very long time. I dare not get too hopeful, but maybe it'll be one more sweet ending tonight.

I voted around 11:30 and had no problems, though I was told there'd been 100 people on line at 7:15 (we have 2 machines here) and about half the ward had voted already by the time I was there. We always have pretty good turnout around here, but never 600 out of 1200 by 11AM.

Political Pumpkins

If you want some fun, try Googling that.

Update: One site reports 68% Obama pumpkin patterns downloaded versus 32% McCain patterns

Why This One is Special

I've been a baseball fan since 1962 and during that time have had the good fortune to attend 8 World Series in 3 different cities and 5 different ball parks. In 6 of those Series, I saw the final game. Mets win in 1969, Yankees win in 1977 and 1996, Orioles lose in 1979, and Yankees lose in 2003. I also saw one Yankees-Mets game in 2000 and all the home playoff and Series games for the Phillies in 1993.

So where does this one fit in? I was certainly more excited in 1969 and 1977, but I was a lot more excitable way back then. But this year it just made me really happy. I've been watching this group of players develop for a long time and all this year I've been totally impressed by their focus and resilience and their absolute refusal to get down on themselves or give up. This was the first Series I've seen where one team won primarily because they were stronger mentally. The Phillies overcame every setback and got hot when they needed to be (24-6 in their last 30 games!). And they play really good baseball, fun baseball to watch. It's been a very easy team to root for. So as much as I'm happy as a fan and happy for the city, I'm especially happy for the players.

Which players? Let's see...

I've got no problem with Cole Hamels winning MVP. In many ways, the Series revolved around him and he did everything that was asked of him.

Jimmy Rollins had an inconsistent offensive year, but his spirit set the team's upward trajectory into motion and there's nobody I'd rather have a ground ball hit to with the game on the line.

Pedro Feliz can now say he drove in the winning run in the World Series. Didn't have a job on January 30.

Chase Utley plays the game the way man was intended to. Ryan Howard is a absolutely brutal fielder but an absolutely brilliant power hitter, unlike any I've ever seen, and I've seen a bunch of them.

Pat Burrell was never as great as hoped, but he's been a consistent positive presence in the middle of the lineup.

Brett Myers is the ultimate head case, had the most amazing at bat of the postseason, and pitched way better in the Series than the box score shows.

Brad Lidge, so totally maligned for a couple of high profile failures, had as good a season and postseason as any reliever ever. Read the interview where he talked about how he felt before that last pitch and then marvel at how that state of being led to his throwing as perfect a pitch as you'll ever see. And Ryan Madson suddenly went from pretty good to amazing at exactly the right time.

Carlos Ruiz, who was a net negative offensively all season long, really raised his game when it counted.

Geoff Jenkins, a non-entity all year, especially in the clutch, had a career defining moment.

And then there's the scrap heap, most of whom we owe Pat Gillick thanks for. J.C. Romero (released last year- 2 Series wins this year!), Jayson Werth (the best offensive player in the Series), Shane Victorino, Scott Eyre, Chad Durbin (not so great of late, but a huge contributor in the first half when they were scuffling), Greg Dobbs, and last, but certainly not least, Jamie Moyer, who looked finished both before the Phils got him and again at the end of last year (and several times before that).

As an aside, I really liked the way Fox showed each individual player reacted to the final strike.

So now we're left with that game they play once a week. Just think how differently football would be played if they had to play 6 games a week for 162 games. It would look almost nothing like what we see now. And once that's over a couple months of guys rushing back and forth between nets and then in mid February we start all over again. I can't wait.

WOW!WOW!WOW!WOW!WOW!

A Bit More Baseball Commentary

I had finally settled down about how miserable it was at the ballgame last night, and was happy not to have to go there tonight. Then I read something on the Phillies site that got me all riled up again. It's a quote from Bob duPuy (doo-PAY), MLB's president and CEO, talking about how well the Phillies (and by proxy, MLB) handled dealing with ticket policies:

On Tuesday, DuPuy said fans were given ample notification on Monday night to retain their tickets in case of a rainout or suspension. Traditionally, stubs are needed to obtain tickets to another game during the regular season.

"Our tickets say that," DuPuy said. "The club announced it. They announced it as soon as we went into the delay. It went up on the board and they announced it again when the game was suspended. I think the club handled it very well, and I hope that the fans did in fact hold their tickets.

So let's say I'll stipulate that all baseball tickets say that the ticket is to be used in case of a rainout and I'll note that I did keep my ticket. But there was NO announcement of any type at any time regarding the delay, only an announcement when they suspended the game. In fact, my biggest frustration (aside from the obvious actual baseball-related one) was that nobody had any information. It's nice they put it on the board, but if you're in the concourse to get out of the rain, which is where most of the people were, you can't see the board, especially when it's so crowded. We actually left as soon as we saw the radar weather on TV, so we never heard anything.

There are monitors all over the park. None had any useful information of any kind. Most just had a note to FOX affiliates to run their own programming. Fortunately, I'm a partial season ticket holder, so I got an e-mail telling me what the procedures were, but that was after I was already home. It was very poorly handled and I don't think they oughta be patting themselves on the back.

Secret Information

In case anyone was wondering what it's like in the Faculty Restroom (at least the one on the ground floor), here's a summary:

It's kind of a big empty thing, even bigger than it needs in order to be "accessible," so there's lots of floor space. The light turns on automatically when you go in. There's the usual sink and toilet. Adjacent to the toilet is a rack full of small brown paper bags, I guess in case you want to pack a lunch in there. There are 2 soap dispensers, right next to each other. One is the regular pump kind and the other is the fun kind where you put your hand under it and it squirts you a dollop of foam. I'm not used to a 2:1 soap dispenser to sink ratio and make sure to use each kind of soap equally over the course of a day.

There are also 2 paper towel dispensers- the kind with the pre-folded brown towels and the integrated trash chute (though this one lacks the actual towels), and also one of those new fangled ones where you pull down from the center and the roll is used from the inside out. It's clear, so you can see the paper move. It also periodically rips too high up and there's no towel sticking out to grab. It's an imperfect technology.

Finally, there's a map telling you which way to go to get out of the building in case of a fire or fire drill (boy, are fire drills easier in a building that's up to code). It tells you to turn right and if you can't turn right, then turn left. The wall's straight ahead, so that's all the options.

As I write, I've decided that I will begin to decorate this room. I'll keep you posted.

Argh!

So I'm sitting at this ballgame, getting wetter and wetter, and my wife says to me (very nicely, by the way) "I thought you said there was only going to be a tenth of an inch of rain." And I said, well, that's what Accuweather said, but maybe I made a mistake and looked at Inaccuweather by mistake."

Reminds me of a Far Side cartoon where two guys are in the jungle and covered with bugs. One of them is holding a spray can whose label says "ON" and the other one is yelling, "You idiot, you brought the wrong stuff."

In any event, that was a truly miserable experience, though the first 3 innings were fine.

Just never enough time

Did you know that there's Australian-style yogurt? What in the world could that be? I'd like to investigate, but the flight's too long.

Mind Control

I was listening to one of my favorite songs yesterday while I was driving and realized that the last time I'd heard that song I was driving in the same place. Why in the world would I remember something like that? What possible purpose could retaining where you heard a song have? What biological imperative is served by retaining your song hearing location. Did this somehow cause my ancestors to flourish while others died out?

Actually, I've come up with something. I remember that last time I was so into the song I took a curve too quickly and ended up swerving around a little. So was it some 5ht degree survival instinct? Hard to know.

And referring back to something a said a few days ago, if you think you're in control of your brain, how come that song's been stuck in your head for hours now?

Political question

When was it exactly that religion became so completely intertwined with American politics? I seem to recall that that wasn't the Founding Fathers' idea of how it was supposed to work. I'm not really going that deep here, but why do politicians all have to mention God so much?

Economics

I saw in the paper that sales of existing homes fell last month. Is there a big market for homes that don't exist? This seems like a business with a potentially high profit margin.

End of Preschool (revised to include more graveside musings)

Starting next week, we have full school weeks for the first time since September. It'll be a relief to actually be able to teach something. It's hard to keep any kind of focus when you're constantly interrupted, so although I like the time off, I'm ready to get going.

I went to a funeral today for someone I never met, the father of a colleague. It was truly interesting. He sounds like the coolest guy ever and I'm sorry I never met him (not that there's any reason I would have). This is the second time I've had this experience. The first was a friend's father who died much younger, so the funeral was much bigger because most of his friends and relatives were still alive. This is not so much the case with a 97-year-old. When you go to a funeral of someone you know, you think about the person who died. When you don't know the person, you start thinking about yourself.

Oh man, I really need to buy a burial plot.

This place is pretty nice. But there are a lot of dead people here.

I wonder where else you could get buried.

Who'd come to my funeral?

I need to expand my circle of friends so more people would come.

No, that's ridiculous. Why do I care who comes?

Oh man, I'm going to die.

And of course, the big question...

What would they say about me?

Sometimes I find it hard to draw a distinction in my motivations between doing stuff because it's the right thing to do and it'll make someone else feel good, and doing it so people will like me, think well of me. I really tried to give that stuff up long ago, and have been fortunate to find that in many cases if you do the former, the latter will follow. But I don't want to overly trust my motivation because it seems easy to slip into doing unselfish things for selfish reasons.

So I guess I'd like to hope that lots of people will come and say lots of nice things about me, but I think it's better if I kind of don't care. Being a good person is more important than being well-liked in the larger scheme of things, and you can't really control how anyone feels about you anyway. And if you don't believe that, how good are you a controlling your own feelings about other people?

Feel The Beat

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I've complained about how every "R&B" song has the same beat and is therefore boring. I've reconsidered. And I've amended my opinion to include the idea that this is perhaps a conscious strategy, to mine every last dollar out of a particular microstyle of music and then move on once it runs dry. Kind of like the aliens in Independence Day without the cool space ships and death ray.

I got 3 Mitch Hedberg CDs for my birthday and if you've never heard him, I highly recommend him, though he's definitely not to everyone's taste. My favorite so far: "A friend of mine showed me a picture and said, 'This is a picture of me when I was younger.' Every picture is of you when you were younger. If you show me a picture of you when you're older, I'll say, let me see that @#$%^&*! camera."

Bar Mitzvah Report

Reader Discretion Advised - Contains some complaints and downright whining

I had the opportunity to attend a Bar Mitzvah this weekend in New Jersey. It was an upscale affair, with a Beatles theme (when I was a kid, the theme was always "Bar Mitzvah"). The room was decorated in a very cool way and the music was excellent and the DJ's dancers were early rounders from So You Think You can Dance. The kids were cute and funny and had a really good time. Everything was well done and terrific and I hated it.

It was nothing about this specific event. I've never been to one of these parties where I wasn't generally put out. I tried to figure out why, aside from the ridiculous music volume (I'm sorry, does anybody really want it that loud), and the best thing I could come up with is that I have issues with authority. I don't like people telling me what to do. "Get up!" "Dance" "Raise Your Arms Up" "All the men on the floor!" "Everybody up here for a picture!" And if someone tells me to do something and I don't, I really do not want the next words out of their mouth to be "Come on..."

Plus it's always the same. Who decided that a half hour of a party should be devoted to lighting candles? All good parties have their own momentum and nothing kills momentum like sitting for 30 minutes and listening to an extended Academy Award acceptance speech. That's why they have reminder music at the Oscars, but here they play the music and then the honoree just starts right up again as soon as the music's over. So if it's always the same and they play the music too loud to talk to anyone (I swear I'm bringing earplugs next time), what do I do?

Unfortunately, I'm no longer allowed to do what I did when I was younger, which is to misbehave. I saw lots of kids behaving miserably but everyone thought it was cute. Nobody would think it was cute if I laid down on my back on the stage and started screaming. Why is that? I'm just as cute as any 5 year-old. But I can't even act like I want to misbehave because it will upset people. And I don't even get a hoodie.

Okay, I've said it. Now I feel better.

Monday Brain Dump

Had a birthday 2 weeks ago. I'm now a bit more than 7 1/2 in dog years.

Here's my update on living in our new home:

People have kind of settled in and figured out how to live with what we've got. If this means carrying desks from room to room or accepting that it's not physically possible to walk around the classroom, so be it. For a not very organized person such as myself, the worst part is getting to the other building and then realizing that you've forgotten something. On the positive side, we had a nice chance to use the outdoor space at the school today for Israeli dancing and balloon animals, allowing us to hear music during lunch and popping balloons for the rest of the day.

As for the teaching side of things, we seem to have gotten past the whole white board controversy and now feel that we can write with impunity.

This past week I decided I would take the other staircase (known affectionately as Stairs 2) to see if I saw different people there, and I did. It's maybe a little scruffier over on that side of the building, though I don't think it has anything specifically to do with the stairs. In fact, the staircases are completely blank. No decoration, no message boards, though in Stairs 1, there's a wall of glass bricks that is blindingly bright in the morning.

Do you get the sense that I'm running out of things to talk about? It's a building. Buildings don't change quickly (as long as the architects didn't make any rounding errors). I've managed to cover my new desk with unsorted paper, and we still have good coffee in our office, but sometimes it feels like we're just passing though the building, while at the old place it kind of felt like we were living there (though, of course, we were not the only life forms living there). Maybe I'll have more of a sense for it once we have more than 2 school days in a row at some point.

Greetings of the Season

One of my favorite things about Halloween is that you get to see ads containing the word, "Spooktacular."

In fact, I will personally eschew using the actual word and use only "spooktacular" between now and November 1.

Any more advertising speak I ought to be incorporating into my vernacular?

And speaking of ads, is there any other baseball fan out there who is ready to tear down every DirecTV dish they see until they stop running that "Poltergeist" commercial. It's on 3-5 times, every single game. Ugh! Don't buy the media if you don't have enough material to run. Even a clever concept gets tired if you beat people over the head with it.

Speaking as a Spectator

Is there anything that can compare with the experience of watching a middle school field hockey game?

Matt Bleeping Stairs

I've been playing Rotisserie baseball for 25 years now, since the year the original book came out and probably 10 years before anyone invented the name "fantasy sports." It's an American League-only league, which is nice because I can root for the Phillies without having to root against my own team. This also means that I know every player in the league. of course, most of them are just stat lines to me, not personalities. Matt Stairs is different, I guess just because he's such an unlikely-looking player. Watching him run after a ball in right field is pretty comical, similar to the way John Kruk used to run. And he was always a mid-season pickup in our league when you had an injured player and needed to add some home runs. So I couldn't be happier for the guy. It's my favorite personal story so far this year.

I should also add, I don't think I've ever heard a player interviewed after hitting a home run and having them say, "Yeah, I was trying to hit it out." They always mumble something about just trying to make good contact, or looking for a pitch to drive, because it's bad form, I guess, to be swinging for home runs. And every baseball interview has been ruined for me by Bull Durham, so this is very refreshing.

I was afraid if I started on baseball I'd never stop, but here's just one more thing- just as important as the home runs was the pitching performance of Eyre and Madson in the 6th inning. The Phillies could have fallen apart after yet another atrocious Ryan Howard error, but Eyre and Madson got out of a second and third, nobody out situation without giving up even one more run. I don't have the relevant books on runs scored in these situations, but I know that if you have a runner on 3rd and nobody out he scores over 90% of the time, and I think the average runs scored from that situation is around 2. So stopping them there was key. As lousy as it felt being behind, it was only 2 runs.

Baseball Blogging

I haven't written much about baseball because there's such an overload of baseball-related material online that I can't imagine that I have much to add, but I went to the first 2 LCS games and so I guess I'll give it a try.

Here are a few postseason observations:

I don't care how much people boo him and I'm certainly not rooting for him at this time, but I enjoy watching Manny Ramirez hit more than anyone else in baseball.

The Phillies have gone this far with zippo from Howard, and if that doesn't show you they're a TEAM, then nothing will.

The most important play in the NLCS game 1 was Victorino busting it down the line to force the hurried throw from Furcal. The previous inning, we were talking about how dominant Lowe was, and then he just suddenly lost it. Baseball's odd in that it's the only sport where the defense has the ball, and if the guy taking care of the ball falters, the entire game changes in a heartbeat.

During game 1, the Phanatic smashed a Dodger helmet with dreadlocks hanging off the back. When asked about it, the guy who plays the Phanatic said, "I had some dreadlocks in my office and..." Anybody else out there able to make that statement?

I'm always grateful to get through a game and not see some now word that really starts with 'f' started with 'ph.'

People actually take a rooting interest in the cartoon train race they sometimes show during pitching changes.

They did "Guess the Attendance" at game 2 and the choices ranged from 45,200 to 45,800. They must have thought there was too much skill involved when they spread them out a bit more. "Naw, there couldn't possible be more than 45,600 people here!" BTW, crowds are slightly smaller than during the regular season because they've made one whole section into an extra press box.

And finally, if you missed the Red Sox-Rays Game 2, you missed something special And did you know they have a big tank out beyond centerfield with actual rays in it?

Gatekeepers

I remember the Watergate scandal, well enough to know that there was no actual gate involved, but I never anticipated that every political scandal from that moment on would get the word "gate" attached to the end.

Politics as Unusual

I'm not that old, but I've lived through a number of elections and this one is odd by any calculation. We have a historically unpopular (for excellent reasons) lame duck president, and a black man who defeated a former First Lady running against a cranky old guy and his running mate, who, depending on who you talk to, is either unfit or merely unprepared for the vice presidency. And thanks to the Internet the whole affair is public in real time with an absolute flood of information and commentary.

So this brings us to the big question. Why are there undecided voters and who in the world are they? I was thinking about this watching the debate last night and hearing mostly familiar talking points and wondering if there was anyone hearing this stuff for the first time. I mean, 42 % of the TV audience was watching the debate and were they really seeing something new? You really have to be consciously avoiding information to, for example, not know Obama's position on Iraq. I mean, I know all about Project Runway without watching it, just by being alive in America. It's cultural osmosis. Can you really miss all this stuff just by not being interested?

So it seems to me that these people must be doing this on purpose. Perhaps they're desperately lonely and crying out for attention, so they really like getting phone calls from both sides. Maybe there's money in it. I'm sure they're all hoping that the creators of "undecided voter" focus groups will seek them out and ask them to be on TV or to hold the little dials that CNN gives to those mysterious people in Ohio. As Henslowe says in Shakespeare in Love, I don't know. It's a mystery.

Update

I swear I didn't see this (from The Daily Show) until after I'd written the above...

John Oliver polls undecided voters (a large portion of which fall squarely in the 'stupid' category) to find out what issues are important to them.

"Let's look at the latest numbers. Right now, nationwide, it's Obama 49, McCain 43, Undecided 8. Those Undecideds can still break either way. But who are they? As you can see, they fall into a variety of categories: Attention seekers; racist Democrats; the chronically insecure; and "the stupid. That is 45% of the Undecideds, John. They are the swingiest of the swing voters. And they, as they always do, will decide this election."

I Can't Help Myself

I don't understand how people can actually have a serious conversation about Sarah Palin without suddenly breaking out in uncontrollable laughter. I have never seen anything like this. There's a part of Isaac Asimov's classic "Foundation" trilogy where a diplomat from the powerful people comes to visit the planet of the less powerful (sorry for the lack of detail, it's been probably 30 years since I read it). He does a great deal of talking during this time and when he leaves the general feeling is that he was supportive and consrtuctive and that relations will be better. Then linguists analyzed what he actually said and found that everything he said was canceled out by something else he said and that in total, he had said absolutely nothing. I felt this way sometimes during the vice presidential debate.

Those grueling two-day weeks

I know everyone's waiting to read my continuing saga of the New School Building (actually I know no such thing, but it sounds good), so here goes.

The biggest change in the "school life" seems to be the cafeteria and lunchroom. The room is beautiful- bright and spacious. It's a pleasure to be in there. And having actual food available for lunch has altered the way people come to school. I'm not sure if anyone anticipated how many people would want to buy their meals. The food is good, but what's more interesting is how everyone ends up in this nice room together at the same time. As much as the larger/split quarters is missing the intimacy of the old school, having a community gathering point helps to bring everyone together.

For the faculty, who have a nice little side area with booths reserved for them, it has turned out to be a great opportunity to spend time together. I've eaten lunch and talked at length with people I've never said more than "Hi" to in the past. It's such a nice thing that I actually have nothing snarky to say about it. Oh, wait. How about, we've gotten to spend so much time together that the topic of conversation has moved beyond "what route did you take to get here and how long did it take you?" There, that feels better. I actually did learn a better route from one of these conversations.

On other fronts, there's still plenty of discussion about how tight the classrooms are. The big thing, for the teachers at least, is the white boards. There's something not quite right about them. Not as far as the color is concerned. They're white. But certain markers, almost unpredictably, seem determined that their markings will live on forever. And the erasers that came with the boards do no such thing. This has led to the creation of a family of urban legends about what kinds of markers to use and how to erase them.

Some of the classrooms are not carpeted and have rolling chairs for the teachers. This is great fun. I can easily propel myself from one end of the room to the other, (I have a lot of practice from late night chair races back in my advertising days). I'm looking forward to developing a technique to draw full board-length parallel lines in Geometry.

On Friday I got all the way to the athletic building for a class without The Phantom Tollbooth and had to scurry back and fetch it. That's a long way to scurry.

Sightseeing

I went to the Royal Dockyards today. They refer to themselves as the "most visited sight in Bermuda." The place was completely deserted. I wonder how the second most visited sight was doing. There was even a huge cruise ship in the harbor.

The Dockyards are a former British fortress, abandoned relatively recently. A big chunk is a museum and the rest is, you guessed, shopping! I walked around the grounds of the museum without entering any of the buildings. In spite of this approach, I can tell you with absolute certainty that inside the buildings are models of ships, photographs of ships, pieces of ships, things that used to be on ships, paintings of ships, and pictures of and stories about people who used to work on ships. There, I've saved you the same kind of time I saved myself.

My favorite thing I saw was in the bathroom. The electric had dryer had a sign on it that said, "This hand dryer is censored. Place hands under dryer to start blower." I've very much against censorship, but here I'll make an exception.

Just One, Please

I think it takes a certain, peculiar type of person to enjoy traveling alone. I don't have any illusions about my own peculiarity, but it's interesting that it works well with traveling.

Traveling by itself involves getting lots of curious looks from people. Restaurants obviously would rather fill a table for two with 2 people, not one. Last night I sat in the restaurant where I was the only solo diner and the only person at a table with an odd number of people (you have time to notice this kind of stuff when you're alone). You have to not feel uncomfortable in a situation like that, because it happens all the time. When I arrived here, the customs guy sent me to get my bags searched, rather than just waving me through. I asked him, "What did I do to deserve this?" but I know the answer, I didn't have my family with me. Who's gonna check a 52 year-old schoolteacher traveling with a wife and 2 kids? But the same guy by himself, and not on business, stands out enough to get noticed.

Business travel is the best preparation for that kind of treatment, and I have plenty of experience with that. In fact, a business hotel, weekdays in a busy downtown area or at an airport, is the only place you can be by yourself and not feel out of place.

I'll talk more about the kinds of feelings this evokes later- I've only been away for 24 hours.

The View

I don't think we see the horizon enough. I guess people who live in hilly areas never see the horizon, but seeing it conveys something about the scale of things. There are plenty of reminders in the world of how small we are, but this is a particularly gentle and pleasant one.

Ow, It Hurts!

Painful as it may be to admit, US Airways was right. I'm in Bermuda right now to get a little bit of the rest I never got over the summer. The forecast yesterday was for the weather to be terrible here- 50+ mph winds and rain, and I thought I might like to change my flight to tomorrow, but US Airways said they weren't ready to waive their penalty, so I decided to wait and see, and it all worked out okay.

Go Phillies!

Four-eyes

There's something that seems exceptionally dorky about texting wearing reading glasses.

Back to some school or another

We're a 3 school family, including the one where I work, and so I have the privilege this week of doing 3 so-called back-to-school nights in 4 days. I've never been quite sure to whom the "back-to-school" part is referring, the students or the parents, but I guess that's not important.

This is an exhausting experience by any measure, but it will put me in the unique position of comparing the highs and lows of parent communication at three of the area's finest independent schools. I'll check back in later.

And on the menu today...

Is Mushroom Barely Soup actually Mushroom Barley Soup or Barely Mushroom Soup?

A Quick Dip Into Politics

My favorite line about Sarah Palin's incessant lying about everything from "Troopergate" to the Bridge to Nowhere to her own pay is anything that starts, "Sarah Palin, if that's her real name..."

What Happened to the Bloom on that Rose?

One of the first things I train my students to do is to not just raise their hand and call out, "I don't understand." My response to that is always, "What is it that you don't understand?" They are expected to think through and formulate a question. "Why does it equal 3?" for example. That's a question that can be answered and it's not one that's beyond the ability of a middle-schooler to ask.

It's a mindset of who's primarily responsible for a child's education and what are the goals of a school. Clearly, the ultimate responsibility is with the child. The teacher is there to facilitate and to help the student learn to learn. Obviously, more is expected of a 12th grader than a 7th grader, but the earlier good expectations and goals are established, the more sense the whole process makes to the students when they're required to learn new skills. That's why, when students ask the old "what I am I ever going to need this for?" question, I often respond "Nothing, but your life will be better in many ways if you understand math."

So we're in the second week in the new school and people are kind of settling in. This is a process that seems to repeat for people at various points in their life. A major change takes place and is met with some level of giddiness and dread and optimism and curiosity and adrenaline. Then there's a stage where information begins to overtake infatuation and people begin to make adjustments. Many of us have had experiences like this with personal relationships and we're in that stage here at the new school.

The most obvious example is the behavior of the seniors. In the old building, there was a senior lounge of sorts. Some of the lockers were in there and there were a couple of couches where the students often lounged in inappropriate proximity to each other. There's nothing like that in the new building. So the seniors appropriated this odd area underneath two crossing staircases and turned it into a lounge. The administration keeps threatening to take it away, but so far it's still there.

On a less picturesque basis, there are all sorts of petty annoyances here. They really are petty, so we all overlooked them for the first week and eventually they'll either be taken care of or we'll internalize them and won't notice anymore. But for the moment, the lack of copiers and available computers and the transsoundancy (? whatever the sound version of transparency is) of the walls in the Athletic Building and the tightness of some of the classrooms are getting on people's (students and teachers alike) nerves.

This brings me back to my point about how people respond to major change. Permanent infatuation is not an option. The only way for a new relationship to endure is if you want it to. As you gather information, there are always plenty of reasons to reject and turn away, but if you want to make something succeed, you can learn to sort out what's important and what's not, to formulate questions and seek solutions rather than complaining, and to keep your ultimate goals in mind. The new school building isn't perfect, but nothing is. If we keep our minds on the ultimate goal of creating a first class educational institution, a lot of the annoyances become just background noise. I make it a point, especially with the students, to truly listen to their concerns, to empathize with them, but to never be negative about the way things are and where we're headed.

Modern Living

I just did something I bet you didn't do today. I vacuumed my freezer. All I'll say is that it involved grated parmesan cheese.

Getting Ready For The Second Week

When I think about going back to school this week, the first thing I think of is that I have to bend down to unlock the door. I'm not very tall, so either the card reader's too low or the shoelace holding my card is too short. We have these funny little ID cards that have our heads peering out of a white background. They're supposed to open the doors, take attendance for the kids, and debit our meal accounts. We found out quickly that they meal part doesn't work, so now our cards are actually two cards pasted together. I'm not sure I know anyone else who has this kind of thing.

For me, the biggest problem, if you can call it that, is that I don't see everyone every day the way I used to. When there were only 2 floors in the main wing and only 2 staircases, I saw pretty much every student multiple times each day and most of the teachers as well. Now, I'm not even sure how many staircases there are, and the classes are on 3 floors in one building and 3 in another, so it's become less certain that I'll see all the people I like.

My only other complaint, and I promise I'll stop here, is getting there. I've been incredibly spoiled. When I ran my own little advertising shop, my office was 1.1 miles from home. The old school was 1.1 miles in the opposite direction, so I haven't had a commute of more than 4 minutes since 1993. Even when I lived in LA, my commute was 3 miles through a beautiful canyon and then 5 miles down Pacific Coast Highway. How do people do this every day for years? It's awful. And I'm only going about 6 miles on reasonable attractive suburban roads. I hope I can get used to it. The nice thing is that I have every important shopping spot on the Main Line right on my way home. I look forward to stimulating my area's economy.

Things I really like, aside from the obvious things like beautiful grounds (a 'duck' pond, sans ducks) and air conditioning, are, in no particular order, free coffee for teachers at Starbucks, bells that don't make me cringe and/or jump 3 feet in the air when I hear them, matching desks in our office (we're now on our second set of desktops, but they still all match each other), which used to be a workout room (and we have a mirror wall to prove it), 2 mezuzas in the classrooms with 2 doors, all kinds of unfinished high tech looking things that promise all sorts of excitement, and of course, the kids, who are just as great in the new place as they were in the old.

I'm sure there will be plenty to report on in the days to come, so stay tuned.

David Foster Wallace, R.I.P.

I'm not really an avid reader of great writers. It's too much work and I possess too much of that impossible combination of laziness and freneticness that dogs many people in my generation to sit down and read a 1000+ page novel, half of which is written in 6 point type footnotes. But just reading two collections of his essays was enough to establish David Foster Wallace in my mind as one of the great living writers. He had an unsurpassed command of all aspects of the English language and displayed such sharp wit and observational skill that it is a huge pleasure to read any sentence he's written. I can't do him any justice by writing about him. I'm just terribly sad he's gone. Here's an overly lengthy excerpt from E Unibus Pluram, an essay he wrote about how totally wrong writers are when they think they are voyeurs gathering observations of humanity by watching television:

Illusion (1) is that we're voyeurs at all: the "voyees" behind the screen's glass are only pretending ignorance. They know perfectly well we're out there...What we see is far from stolen; it's proffered- illusion (2). And, illusion (3)...what young writers are scanning for data on some reality to fictionalize is already formed composed of fictional characters in highly formalized narratives. And, (4), we're not even seeing "characters" at all: it's not Major Frank Burns, pathetic self-important putz from Ft. Wayne, Indiana; it's Larry Linville of Ojai, California, actor stoic enough to endure thousands of letters from pseudo-voyeurs berating him for being a putz from Ft. Wayne. And then (5) it's not even actors we're espying, not even people; it's electromagnetic-propelled analog waves and ion streams...throwing off phosphenes in grids of dots not much more lifelike than Seurat's own post-Impressionist commentaries on perceptual illusion. Good Lord, and (6) the dots are coming out of our furniture, all we're really spying on is our own furniture, and our very own chairs and lamps sit visible but unseen...

Many of his essays, describing everything from luxury Caribbean cruised or getting caught in a tornado while playing tennis, are funny. But it's his quest for truth and insight and his ability to translate that into written words that made him exceptional. I'm really saddened by his death. And I will finally get around to reading his 1000+ page novel.

The First Week of School

I know that some of you will want some help in describing the first week of school, so I'm here to give you a hand.

Let's start with the building. The building is beautiful. It still looks kind of like a conference center, albeit a conference center for small people carrying books around and cramming lots of stuff into little metal compartments. I think that will change over time, though it may take longer than we'd expect, given the administration's insistence on keeping it clean. We'll see. The laws of nature are pretty insistent on everything approaching a state of entropy, or complete disorder, but at least we can try.

For me personally, there are a few things that stick out. First, my office is on the ground floor, which is arguable a basement but I won't quibble. Most of my classes are on the 3rd floor. There's an elevator but I refuse to use it, and I am already developing quads of steel. Our department head had the inspiration to refuse to have our room carpeted, which makes my nice new chair with wheels much more fun than I would have anticipated. There's a large gap in the wall that separates my desk from the guidance office, but I haven't heard anything exciting yet.

The door to our office is always locked and they installed the lock wrong so you can't unlock it. So they took the glass pane out of the door and if the door is closed you have to reach through and open it with the inside handle. There are a few classrooms like that. Apparently they installed the cylinders upside down. Now I know all you math people will say, "How can you install a cylinder upside down? That's like saying you drew a circle upside down. It's symmetrical." I don't know, it's a mystery.

The biggest complaint I've heard so far is that the building is big and spacious, but the classrooms are cramped. I guess that's kind of true, but I don't think it's anything that you can't get used to. I really like the rooms that have 2 doors. It adds an element of surprise to things.

The other complaint is that there's a walk between the 2 buildings. I don't think this is unique to the school. In most cases, if there's two separate buildings you must walk to get from one to the other. It's not a long walk, but it's not a short walk either. We have a bunch of umbrellas, but sometimes, if there are lots of people in transit, one building or the other runs out and students are late because they're waiting for an umbrella. I know there's a oke here but I can't put my finger on it. As for finding a way to get the students from one building to the other more quickly, my first suggestion would be to use pressurized pneumatic tubes, like they use at the drive-in tellers. This is how the first subway in New York operated. Huge fans created air pressure to move the trains. (No, I'm not making this up). If that's not practical, a moving sidewalk will do.

People are concerned because kids aren't staying on the crosswalks. This suggests to me that the crosswalks are not placed correctly. Especially in inclement weather, people will always choose the shortest distance to walk. If the crosswalk isn't there, they won't stay on the crosswalk. Some of you may have heard me mention that when the University of California built their new campus in Santa Cruz. At UCSC, home of the Banana Slugs, (not making that one up either. Photo here), they build no paths the fist year. They waited to see where the students walked across the grass and built the paths there.

Be Afraid

I'm guessing I'm not alone in this, but when I was in my early to mid teens, there was nothing in the world more frightening than a group of pretty girls, walking together and talking very loud and very fast. Though I was, like most boys that age, completely stupid about almost everything, I knew this was something that I was attracted to but could not approach. I didn't need to be told that girls mature faster than boys. I could see it and feel it.

I'll be perfectly honest here and tell you that, even though I have teenage girls of my own and work with teenagers, I still refer to these groups as "scary teenage girls." I'm not in any way afraid of them and would be perfectly comfortable walking up and talking to them if I knew one of them. But somewhere there's still a part of me that remembers being 13 and scared to death.

This has been a long introduction to a short observation. I was at Starbucks this afternoon and as I came out I could hear the sound of one of these groups. Again, I'm around kids all day long, so it's not hard to recognize. But I looked over and these girls could not have been older than 11. But they were wearing makeup and jewelry and cool clothes and talking a mile a minute and they were like a miniature version of the real thing. And I thought, man, I thought it was scary when I was a kid, I have great sympathy in advance for the preteen male of the species.

Shu Mu

I suppose Whole Foods can call it whatever it wants to, but nothing with dried cranberries in it should really be called Mu Shu Chicken.

Off the Hook

I haven't written much about music lately. I'm sure there's plenty to say, but I simply do not listen to music as much during the baseball season, thanks mostly to that infernal XM radio, which broadcasts every game and has a baseball talk channel with lots of good hosts. But I do have some questions and comments.

First of all, can Rihanna sing? I've probably heard a dozen of her songs and I still don't know the answer. I can't say that she definitely can't sing, but I've heard no proof that she can either.

The next thing worries me, because it runs the risk of throwing me into old fogey territory. I don't understand how people don't get bored with the current pop out there. It's not that it's bad or unpleasant. Don't worry, I won't say "how could you listen to that noise?" which is what my parents (who were actually more tolerant than most) used to say. It just all sounds very similar. Every so-called R&B song has exactly the same beat. Most of the songs that have any real melody use the Ne-Yo, Chris Brown, weird synthesized voice. And whiny-boy rock hasn't changed since the 70's. Why do you need to own more than a couple of these? That's what makes songs like Sweet Escape stay popular for so long, because Gwen Stefani can actually sing and brings a unique personality. The only other things I like are fun novelty songs like "Low."

The number of American Idol finalists lurking around the top 20 is jarring. American Idol has a pernicious effect on pop music, because contestants have figured out that there's a formula for success, (eye contact, slow build, the big flourish). This can translate into actual pop success if the singer has any talent (like Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood and maybe Jordin Sparks), but Clarkson and Underwood didn't really follow the formula once they left the show. And you can't play to the camera on the radio.

Political

My favorite thing about the steady barrage of Sarah Palin oddities is that if you wanted to, you could make up something completely ridiculous about her or her family and if you told people they'd probably believe you.

Back To School

The words that send a chill up the spine of every self-respecting kid. For adults it's a bit more complicated, and for me even more so because I'm going back to school too.

So let's catch up. I had a lousy summer. No need to elaborate, we'll just stipulate that it was lousy and move on. My kids trickle back into their schools this week. What's with the first day half day thing? My kids go to two different schools and they both do it (on different days yet). T come up with a half day schedule, people have to be thinking, okay, we're going to disrupt everyone's nice summer lives by making them wake up at 6:15, but we don't want to give the parents the benefit of a full 6 hours without their kids. I guess this what we call "child-centered" thinking. To this I say "Bah, humbug." I have two teenagers and they do more than enough child-centered thinking for all of us. I don't need the school doing it too.

One of these schools even has a half day the last day before winter and spring breaks. This to me shows a distinct lack of decisiveness and generally muddled thinking.

"Should we have a day off before the vacation? No, that would be silly, but we don't want to start the vacation when the vacation would naturally start, because that might imply that we haven't been giving it any thought, so let's just make it a half day."

Or something like that.

For me personally, the start of school is a prolonged case of the butterflies. My style of teaching is very much dependent on my getting in sync with the class, and having to tune into 4 new classes at the same time is hard work. This year in particular, I'm teaching relatively few students that I've taught previously, and only 2 that I've taught for a full year. Last year, by contrast, I had taught nearly half of my students previously including one entire class. This is not a problem, really, but I'm always a bit on edge until the parents come through for back to school night.

On the other hand, it's exciting to be going to a new building and making a new start in a lot of ways. The first order of business will be to find the bathrooms. After that, anything goes. As teachers, we have either inservice, in service, or in-service, depending on who you talk to. That always seemed kind of gramatically sketchy to me. Should one have in-service or should one be in-service. I guess it depends on what the meaning of the word "in" is.