I am listening to "Ballad in Plain D"; it is such a beautiful song. The bell rang; lunch is now over. Students are coming into my class; they will be finishing their narratives. A student just rang my bell; its sharp ting hurt my ear.

New York.

My wife, Robyn, sat on the end of the bed and complained that our son, Jack, would have trouble getting to sleep. We were in New York with my parents. A friend from college was getting married. We had eaten bowls of fettuccine and marinara. It was Paul Newman’s marinara. His face on the jar was rugged and his hair was gray. He looked good.
“Jack’s going to have trouble getting to sleep,” said Robyn. She was sitting on the bed reading a People Magazine. Jack had made his way under the hide-a-bed.
“Maybe we should put him in the bathroom,” I said.
“Really?” asked Robyn sardonically. “You really think it would be a good idea to put him in the one place people are going to be going in and out of through out the night?”
“Or we could put him in the elevator with a do not disturb sign on the crib,” I said covering some from the bathroom suggestion I’d thought made sense. Robyn shook her head some. My jokes weren’t amusing her.
“What time do you want to leave for Brent’s?”
“I’m not sure, I’ve got to call him.”
“Maybe you should do that now,” she said.
“I’ll call in a little bit,” I said.
“You guys should take a cab,” said my mom from the kitchen. She was washing dishes.
“The subways are safe, mom,” I said.
“We don’t want you getting mugged,” said my mom.
“Where’s it at?” asked my dad. He was looking at a plastic tourist map we’d bought from a drugstore earlier in the day.
“They live on Riverside Drive,” I said. My dad squinted at the map. He had trouble seeing in the dim light. Jack pulled at something on the floor and put it in his mouth. I think it was a string of carpet. “You guys get to go right through Harlem,” said my dad.
“Really?” asked my mom. I think she was hoping he was pulling her leg. “Yeah,” he said.
“We love Jackson, but we don’t want to raise him,” she said half-joking.
“I’d love to raise Jackson,” said my dad.
“Jeez mom,” I said.
“You know what I mean.”
“We’ll be fine,” I said.
“Gosh, Debby,” said my dad. We all laughed.
“You know what I meant,” she said.
“Do you have money in your wallet?” asked Robyn.
“I’ve that money we took out earlier.”
“That’s right,” she said.

I fixed my dark gray beanie in the elevator mirror on the way down. The floor ticked away electronic and red. The song Seal sang for one of the Batman movies played soft. It was quiet and intense. Very melodramatic. It sounded like it could’ve been in a high school production of Phantom. That’s how you talked about musical theater. Les Mis, Phantom… one word was all you really needed. It was a New York thing. New York tourist vernacular. Like Urkle or Tim the Tool Man.
“Which way do we go?” asked Robyn as we stepped into the cold night. It reminded me of walking into the produce section at Costco.
“59th street,” I said. “The Columbus Circle.”
“Do you know what that is?”
“No.”
* * *

pumpkin patch and octoberfest!

we went to the pumpkin patch with the pools, parents, poppo, and sister. we also watched the great pumpkin and ate meat at a german restaurant. i also had a reunion. andy smith and the pools crashed it. fun. fun. robyn is sick. pray for her to become not sick.

the dodgers lost. i'm still busy. i'm not sure what else. i'm resting after the half-marathon. i will rest for about a week and start running again, i guess. not much else.

i was in class for the game tonight. andy was sending me text messages. they were mostly lewd remarks about larry bowa. not much else. the classes are time consuming, but i should be completely finished by april--except for btsa--a fun beginning teacher support program full of busy busy work. lame.

i'm also getting ready to apply for grad school in the fall. the program will allow me to keep working. it looks to be rad. we'll see.

we'll also be in new york in a couple weeks for the wedding. should be super rad.

we also may (hopefully) be living in the new place next week. my uncle is giving us a player piano with a bunch of old rolls. i am excited. i think i'll put the piano from here in the garage for awesome future gentleman's jams.

robyn and jack are still alive. this is a blessing. jack claps, plays kazoo, piano, changes his own diaper, says dada, and opens bottles with his gums. he also recently said the phrase "waz up boi?!" in sort of a new yorkish asian jew type beastie boy voice. it was weird.

i also ordered an all-in-one remote from woot. i have not received it yet. i imagine woot is run from the back of some guy's car in norwalk--that same guy who tried to sell me sweet speakers one time.

i am very excited the dodgers are in a position to be awesome. i was at the clinching game with greg and it blew my mind wide and long.

as far as the games go, i plan on listening to them on the radio--or radio with the tv on and the volume down. this might very well be vin scully's last (potential) world series... really, honestly, the stupid people who run tv world need to let him broadcast the games. he is such a beautiful man.

i met him once. it makes me cry to think of it sometimes. i was supposed to pick darren up from the airport. it was raining and i didn't want to go. i ended up waiting in baggage claim for a while... after a bit, several hard-bodied men began walking toward the rotating metal luggage thing. one looked like gary sheffield. another, like kevin brown... after a few moments of awesome, i realized these greek godesque gentlemens to be the dodgers. i chatted a little with then pitching coach jim colbourn as i had gone to high school with his son and met vin. i was a bit frightened, but felt my life would be a little less awesome if i didn't say thank you... so i did... and shook his hand... and i haven't washed that hand since...

i went to the game last night with greg. it straight blew my mind.

it is early. i have a student helping me sweep up a bit. he came earlier than me. i showed him how to make a blog.

the dodgers are winning games. i am gong with greg on saturday. mike was going to come, but he is a little bummed.

i am listening to bix.

i really don't have any time right now for anything. a lot of school. three classes with a ton of work, my regular grading/ planning/ etc., and i'm in charge of the accelerated reader program--which means i've been spening ever spare minute here at school entering in each of the few thousand students into the system. since the classes are still moving some, there's a good chance i'll have to fix many of them after the fact.

i'm also working toward running a half marathon. i ran ten miles the day before yesterday. today four, tomorrow, two, sunday maybe ten again, rest... i can't afford the race right now, though, so i just plan on running the 13 miles next sunday on my own time. oh well.


i'm also getting stuff together for grad school. there's a program i'm applying to that i can take while teaching next year. it should be rad.

happy fall.

we went to bakersfield. i am sick. i will be working tomorrow and it will not be fun. i am also watching the wire. the last season. it is really good. i am playing a show in long beach on saturday. it's just me and keith. it will be in a park.

the wire is subtle, pulpy, and brilliant. so good.

i want to be here now.

via a pretty arbitrary random espn article on great stadiums:

"40. Dodger Stadium
Location: Los Angeles. Opened: 1962. Capacity: 56,000.

Because if this stadium had a voice, it would sound like Vin Scully and it would tell you about Sandy Koufax, Steve Garvey and Kirk Gibson and a sun-dappled jewel in the Los Angeles hills."

nice, whatever.

i think i'm getting sick, though i really hope not. i'm knee deep in half-marathon training: getting ready for the race and loosing my gut in the process. i am running a lot and it feels nice.

today i hate recycling. here are some notable facts.

* In cases where recycling truly does save resources, such as with large scraps of aluminum, this will be reflected in market prices, and voluntary recycling will take place. Thus, there is no need for the government to mandate it.
* Tree farmers plant more trees than they cut down.
* Government mandated recycling is more expensive than putting the garbage into landfills, which means that this recycling uses up more resources than it saves.
* Some small towns with landfills are happy to import garbage from other cities and states because it provides jobs and tax revenue.
* Today's modern landfills are much cleaner and safer, and much less likely to leak and pollute than the landfills of the past.
* Regarding the claim that the U.S. is running out of landfill space, Tierney wrote, "A. Clark Wiseman, an economist at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Wash., has calculated that if Americans keep generating garbage at current rates for 1,000 years, and if all their garbage is put in a landfill 100 yards deep, by the year 3000 this national garbage heap will fill a square piece of land 35 miles on each side. This doesn't seem a huge imposition in a country the size of America. The garbage would occupy only 5 percent of the area needed for the national array of solar panels proposed by environmentalists. The millennial landfill would fit on one-tenth of 1 percent of the range land now available for grazing in the continental United States. And if it still pains you to think of depriving posterity of that 35-mile square, remember that the loss will be only temporary. Eventually, like previous landfills, the mounds of trash will be covered with grass and become a minuscule addition to the nation's 150,000 square miles of parkland."

In a 2007 article, Michael Munger, the Chair of Political Science at Duke University, wrote, "... if recycling is more expensive than using new materials, it can't possibly be efficient... There is a simple test for determining whether something is a resource... or just garbage... If someone will pay you for the item, it's a resource... But if you have to pay someone to take the item away... then the item is garbage."

couple things:

1. i'm itching to move. just down the street, but still.
2. i'm itching to shoot episode 2 of the tv show. the first episode was just me and jack.
3. i'm itching to punch the man on youtube who sent me this note on the video of me and jack in the tub: "cute hairy daddy. but why does he take a bath in a swimsute?" i deleted it and will soon delete every video of my son on the internet.
4. i'm playing a show with keith in lbc on september 27th at a park.
5. i'm needing to take the gre soon.
6. nothing else.


I could survive for 51 seconds chained to a bunk bed with a velociraptor

Created by Bunk Beds Pedia

death by caffeine:

126.98 cups of coffee. 68.2 nodoz.

we shot some stuff for the tv show last night.

that is all.

one of my favorite people on one of my favorite movies:

bourdain on ratatouille
" "I think it's quite simply the best food movie ever made,” Tony wrote today in an email. “The best restaurant movie ever made--the best chef movie. The tiny details are astonishing: The faded burns on the cooks' wrists. The "personal histories" of the cooks...the attention paid to the food...And the Anton Ego ratatouille epiphany hit me like a punch in the chest--literally breathtaking. I saw it in a theater entirely full with adults--and the reaction to that moment was what movie making was once--a long time ago--all about: Audible surprise, delight, awe and even a measure of enlightenment. I am hugely and disproportionately proud that my miniscule contribution (if any) early early in the project's development led to a "thank you" in the credits. Amazing how much they got "right."

tickle device? maybe?

On Sunday night's 60 Minutes, famed journalist Bob Woodward talked about his new book The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008, about the Iraq war. During the interview, he made a vague reference to a breakthrough supersecret weapon or capability the US military has that he claims is comparable to the advent of the tank and the airplane. From CBS News:

"This is very sensitive and very top secret, but there are secret operational capabilities that have been developed by the military to locate, target, and kill leaders of al Qaeda in Iraq, insurgent leaders, renegade militia leaders. That is one of the true breakthroughs," Woodward told (60 Minutes correspondent Scott) Pelley.

"But what are we talking about here? It's some kind of surveillance? Some kind of targeted way of taking out just the people that you're looking for? The leadership of the enemy?" Pelley asked.

"I'd love to go through the details, but I'm not going to," Woodward replied...

"If you were an al Qaeda leader or part of the insurgency in Iraq, or one of these renegade militias, and you knew about what they were able to do, you'd get your ass outta town."

via boing boing, via somewhere else.

we're working on the tv show tomorrow night. if you want to help, give me a call. we're doing it in silver lake at the other house. it is staring myself and jack. we might need someone to play a female social worker who tries to tell me i am a bad father to my son suri. the character's name is nimphadora and the character will be sprayed with a hose during the episode.

monday. jack cried a lot last night and i couldn't get to sleep for a long time because my body was so wired from running 71/2 miles right before bed. i am training for a half marathon and trying to become less fat. the dodgers keep winning. this is good. and i have work to do.