January 2010
24 posts
A Legend Outlived
J.D. Salinger died last Wednesday. I know this is going to sound callous, but I’m not too broken up about it. Rather than being the enigmatic sage who abdicated public life shortly after writing The Catcher in the Rye, which many consider a seminal piece of American literature, I thought of him a misanthropic recluse, whose writing made him a reluctant spokesperson for disenchanted,...
I Hear You
There is guy who shows up at the gym around the same time I do. He’s young and pale, with a blond buzz-cut. His posture is abnormally straight; he appears, quite literally, to have a rod up his ass. He could have been a poster boy for Hitler Youth, except that I’m pretty positive he’s gay. He goes through his exercise routine- a half-hour on the treadmill, a half-hour on the elliptical,...
Longing
The instrumental lead-in to the song Crash Into Me by the Dave Matthews Band really affects me. Some guy who either legitimately knew what he was talking about or else was full of plausible-sounding shit once told me the song is structured unconventionally, with a 2/4 bass rhythm and a 3/5 melody, so the bass is always trying (and always failing) to catch up. This may not be accurate,...
Mothers Behaving Badly
This past Sunday, Micah informed us that either Sam or I needed to go with him to driving school. Apparently it’s a state law that a parent or guardian of a student driver must attend a two-hour class. In a moment of generosity/weakness I agreed to go, though the very next moment I was kicking myself. Isn’t it enough that driving school is expensive and I have to schlep him there several...
Bonfire Day
Every Christmas Eve, my mother would read us C. Clement Moore’s poem, The Night Before Christmas. Her voice was not loud, but when she read, you could hear a pin drop. This past Christmas Eve, the first without her, we took turns reading the poem. My sister Suzy distributed paper and writing implements and we all wrote her letters. Suzy and I weren’t exactly sure what to do with them...
The (Comedic) Importance of Being Earnest
The other day, I started thinking about what makes for a successful sitcom, and here’s what I came up with: characters you actually care about.
On Wednesday night, I watched Modern Family, a sitcom about an extended family and their three separate but united lives. There’s a divorced and remarried father, living with his much younger new wife, a Colombian babe with a heart,...
Up
I had the day off yesterday, so I drove into Manhattan to visit Hannah, Jake, Sarah, and Eliza. I went for coffee with Eliza. I took some textbooks to Sarah. The three of us walked around the West Village and talked. I had lunch with Jake and dinner with Hannah. And with every hug goodbye, I watched each of them walk away, easily, without hesitation, to whatever their day held next. Four...
Fauxmoir
James Frey messed me up. A few years ago he wrote A Million Little Pieces, a memoir about his addiction to drugs that was light on facts and heavy on fabrication. It didn’t bother me that the book was a sham, but when he fessed up and was summarily shamed by Oprah on national television, it created an image problem for pathological liars with literary aspirations everywhere. See, I’d...
Haiti
I’ve been writing about other things, but Haiti is on my mind. I feel a sense of guilt and futility, which I guess explains why I have avoided writing about it. Guilt is inevitable, because this tragedy has made me acutely aware of being healthy, comfortable, hydrated and fed. My family and home are intact. The sense of futility I deal with by doing the only thing I can; contributing...
The Circle Game
On the face of it, the two least favorite aspects of my parenting experience could not be more different: when I was toilet training my kids and when they were learning how to drive. I was trying to figure out what, exactly, I disliked most about them, and discovered some surprising similarities.
1. In the months before my kids embarked on these endeavors, I was plagued by...
An Ordinary Hero
Last Monday, Miep Gies died at the age of 100.
Gies, along with her husband and several other others, hid Anne Frank and her family and four other Jews during the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam. Gies was also responsible for finding and preserving Anne Frank’s diary.
Gies worked as a secretary for Otto Frank, Anne’s father. When the Nazis began deporting Jews to...
Beside the Point
Yesterday, my daughter Eliza showed me some photos of celebrities and asked me to pick the hair color I liked best for her. I wanted to be helpful, but sadly, I am incapable of separating one detail (like hair color) from other factors. I ended up picking Anne Hathaway’s hair color, which had less to do with the actual color of Ms. Hathaway’s hair than with the genuineness of her smile...
Student Teacher
This past semester I taught Modern American Fiction. I hope I managed to impart some useful information, and that my students gained something other than their frequently stated aversion to Faulkner. To tell you the truth, it’s been a study in role reversal. I frequently found myself scrambling after them from the base of the learning curve.
Along the way, I uncovered a couple...
Karma's a Practical Joker
This is a true story.
A woman went grocery shopping one morning, after which she loaded her bags in the backseat of her car. She was on her way home via a small public park when she decided to pull over to finish the cup of coffee she’d purchased while shopping. The neighborhood was not the safest, so she had a few misgivings, but ultimately decided that nothing would happen...
Awwwww...
Last night Sam and I watched Sleepless in Seattle. We’d both seen parts of it before, but never the whole movie from start to finish. Even though I like Tom Hanks, I found it pretty lame. I maintained a running commentary about how ridiculously farfetched it was. At the romantic or absurd end of the movie, depending on your point of view, as I was rolling my eyes, Sam burst into tears.
...
Sick
This week has been very strange for me. Not only did the triplets turn twenty-one, not only did Rachael leave for Spain, but I got sick. Not just sort of sick, but disgustingly sick with the most heinous stomach Armageddon imaginable. I felt like the guy in the indigestion scene from the movie Alien, only the alien didn’t just bust out from my belly but decided to spilt into halves, one...
Names
As a teacher, I am hardly unique in not tolerating the use of offensive terms to connote race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation. Over the past few weeks, though, there have been a couple of times I’ve overheard students using terminology that may or may not be offensive. For example, one of my students refers to himself as a gypsy, and the other kids call him Gypsy, which he seems...
