The Oscars

Well, I did it: I saw all eight best picture nominees. And I did it a week before the Oscars ceremony. Not bad for a guy with two-year-old twins. I'd like to thank Maya for allowing me to skip out on bedtime to go to the movies a few times. Couldn't have done it without her. Her, and the Academy, of course.

I'm going to present my rankings, but I do so with some reservations. I think everyone, whether they admit it or not, allows their personal rankings - of anything - to be influenced by their audience. I'll be honest: I rarely ever share my favorite this or that without factoring in how my opinion will make me look. And, though I'm not really proud of it, I often judge other people based on their estimations of films, books, albums, etc. I once had a first date come to a crashing halt when the girl admitted, with no apparent embarrassment, that her all-time favorite movie was The Addams Family (1991; rated PG-13).

This year's best picture category is divided between intellectual art films and crowd-pleasing blockbusters (or at least movies that did pretty well at the box office). If my list favors the former, with Roma or The Favourite at the top of the list, then I'm a total snob. If it favors the latter, with Black Panther or Bohemian Rhapsody at the top, then I'm an uncultured rube.

Another disclaimer before I give my rankings: these are in order of how much I enjoyed them, not my estimation of their overall quality. And another one: none of the nominees were actually bad movies. Oh, and spoiler alert.

The List

1 - Green Book

2 - Blackkklansman

3 - Vice

4 - Black Panther

5 - A Star is Born

6 - Roma

7 - Bohemian Rhapsody

8 - The Favourite

My Pick for Best Picture: Green Book

Movie I think will win: A Star is Born

Here are some thoughts on each of them, presented in the order in which I saw them.

A Star is Born was a good old-fashioned romantic Hollywood tearjerker. I think I would have used the word "old-fashioned" even if it hadn't been made three times before. I don't use it derisively, though. The movie didn't really cover any new ground, but it was hard not to get caught up the romance and, in the end, the tragedy. Bradley Cooper was great. So was Lady Gaga. (I see a lot of similarities with Cher. Lots of people were initially skeptical about both of their acting skills. And in the end, both of them silenced virtually all haters.) I'm sure lots of people disagree with me on this point (including my wife), but I found the music pretty forgettable. Even "Shallow," which everyone is raving about. Yes, Lady G can really belt it out, but I could have used more melody. Weirdly, the song that wormed its way into my head was that one she sings on Saturday Night Live - the one that's supposed to be silly and trite, and was supposed to mark her loss of agency and her loss of artistic vision. Whatever, though. Catchy is catchy. Don’t @ Me. Oh, and a lot of people have been talking about Sam Elliott's performance, which was great and all, but the guy I really enjoyed was Andrew Dice Clay. I was not aware he could be so likable.

Even though Green Book mostly earned praise from critics, it also suffered major backlash from some who accused it of being too simplistic in its view of race. An article on Jezebel called it "A movie about race for white people." Huffington Post called it "tone-deaf on race." There seems to be a consensus out there that Green Book isn't "woke" enough, and that those who liked it must be hopelessly square. At least, that's what I'm picking up on. Admittedly, I haven't read much of the negative criticism. Maybe some of it is valid - I don't know. What I do know is that I enjoyed this movie a ton. I cared about the characters. I found Viggo Mortenson incredibly endearing as Tony Lip. I was rooting for him to learn something, and I enjoyed watching the movie's central friendship grow over time. The movie had a spirit and energy - it was downright fun. I loved the scene where Tony introduces Don to fried chicken - and I don't care who knows it. I try not to criticize the PC movement, because I think it's basically well-meaning and because I think there are much better things out there to criticize and because I don't want to have anything in common with the wearers of MAGA hats. But lately, it seems like every movie that deals with race or sexuality must appear in front of a tribunal of PC police who tell the world whether that movie is sufficiently "woke." Was Green Book woke enough? I'll leave that to others to answer that. Did it keep me engrossed for two plus hours? Did I care about the characters? Did I want to see how things would turn out for Tony and Don? Yes, yes, and yes. And that's really all I care about.

I’m not a superhero movie guy, so I probably wouldn’t have gone out of my way to see Black Panther if it hadn’t been nominated for Best Picture. I’m glad I did, though. It already holds a place in pop culture, and I’d venture to guess that in twenty years, it will be the best-remembered film of the bunch. For a superhero movie, it asked some weighty questions – specifically, does a wealthy nation have an obligation to help less fortunate ones? It was fun, too. I loved the Panther’s trial by combat against the guy from the mountain tribe. I loved the war rhinos, and the car chase in Korea. I loved Andy Serkis as that big South African arms dealer guy. I loved the plot twist involving Forrest Whitaker’s character. I loved Michael B. Jordan as Killmonger, even though part of me had a hard time with him as a villain, mostly because I find the actor so incredibly likable. In the end, it was still just a super hero movie, but it will probably go down as one of the best in the genre (along with The Dark Knight).  Also, after this, Creed, and Fruitvale Station, I’m officially on board with Ryan Coogler: I’ll see anything he directs.

I love that Netflix is now a platform for serious Oscar contenders. I had heard the buzz surrounding Roma, and I made a point of checking it almost as soon as it was available. Midway through its two-hour run time, it dawned on me that I wasn’t enjoying it very much. Yes, it was beautiful and poetic, but it was awfully slow, too. And what was the plot, anyway? I can’t stand the experience of realizing I don’t enjoy a piece of art that everyone else seems to love. Critics and other people with highbrow taste raved about Roma. So if I didn’t like it, what did that make me? I will say I’m glad I stuck it out to the end. It had so much to say about barriers between social classes – almost like one of those short stories by James Joyce, in which you don’t really understand the point until the epiphany at the end. And it had no shortage of iconic scenes: the naked karate demonstration, Cleo’s pregnancy announcement in the movie theater, the big car carefully maneuvering its way into a small garage, the surreal forest fire, and of course the hospital scene, and the final scene on the beach. I’m still not entirely sure I enjoyed Roma, but I did appreciate it, and I expect it to stay with me for a while.

As a regular viewer of The Daily Show during W’s presidency, I was simultaneously repulsed and fascinated with Dick Cheney. I’m usually interested in films or tv about recent history, so I was excited for Vice, even in spite of mixed reviews. Much has been made of Christian Bale’s amazing performance – and rightly so. This man looks even less like Dick Cheney than Gary Oldman looked like Winston Churchill last year. Where did he get the audacity to think he could pull off this role? And he totally did, too. Obviously, the make-up is great, but he nailed the inflections, down to Cheney’s sinister way of speaking out of the side of his mouth. Totally overshadowed was Amy Adams, who nailed Lynn Cheney despite, again, looking nothing like her. For me, Steve Carrell was less convincing as Donald Rumsfeld. There’s an inherent danger in casting an instantly recognizable actor as an instantly recognizable public figure: it doesn’t always work. In all the conversation about bold casting and incredible acting, not enough has been said about this movie’s seriously eccentric style of direction by Adam McKay. He tries everything to shake up the traditional biopic format: fake-out credits less than halfway through, a scene in which Dick and Lynn speak in faux-Shakespearean English, a random cameo from Alfred Molina as a waiter, whose purpose is to educate the audience on political strategy. And also, a major I-didn’t-see-that-coming twist near the end (involving the story’s narrator, played by Jesse Plemons). Some reviewers thought it was a bit of a mess, and I can see why. It was an awful lot of fun, though.

Before I see a movie, I usually have at least some sense of whether or not I’m going to like it. Blackkklansman, though, was a total wild card: I had no idea what to expect. I don’t love Spike Lee. I have enjoyed movies of his – specifically Do the Right Thing and He Got Game – but it’s not like I’m rushing out to see the next “Spike Lee Joint” as soon as it drops. I rented this on Amazon Prime, mostly just because it had been nominated and, wouldn’t you know, it turned to be one of my favorite movies of the year. I’d had it in my head that it was going to be either heavy-handed and political, or else a jokey satire of a Blaxploitation film from the seventies. Instead, it was a tense, tightly structured thriller based a stranger-than-fiction piece of history. I held my breath through most of J.D. Washington’s conversations with those white supremacists. Ditto for every scene that had Adam Driver trying to pass for one of them. This was also an incredibly fun movie – a strange thing to say about a movie that focuses to heavily on Klansmen, but it’s true. The whole ending, culminating in Washington’s final conversation with David Duke, is so eminently satisfying. That means it’s extra sobering when Lee fast-forwards to the situation in Charlottesville in mid-2017. The white supremacists are more prevalent than ever. In fact, we may have elected one president.

Superficially, the two movies don’t have all that much in common, but The Favourite reminded me a little bit of Phantom Thread from last year. Both period pieces, both about control dynamics, and both tell their stories in bizarre fashion. (Hm. Actually, maybe they do have quite a bit in common.) I’ll also say that I didn’t particularly enjoy either film while I was actually in the theater, and that only after some reflection a few days later did I come to appreciate them. To me, the most interesting part of the movie was the queen’s character, and the way she was played by Olivia Colman. We would recognize her today as clinically depressed, although they probably didn’t have a word for her state at the time. She cares very little about government and, for that matter, about anything save her collection of seventeen rabbits, each of which reminds her of one of her dead children. Actually, I’m not even sure she’s a lesbian, despite having affairs with both Rachel Weisz’s and Emma Stone’s characters. To quote a phrase sometimes used by Roger Ebert, she carries on these affairs because they “may be evidence that she exists.” Did I love it? No. Too much use of fish-eye lens, too much weirdness for weirdness’ sake. And ultimately, too slow in its plotting. But certainly not without its redeeming qualities.

Like Green Book, Bohemian Rhapsody faced some backlash from the PC Police (God, I sound just like a Trump supporter) for what some called its insensitivity in handling Freddy Mercury’s sexuality. For me, that wasn’t an issue – although again, I can’t say I paid that much attention to grievances against the movie. What was more of a problem for me was that the movie was basically a standard issue musical biopic. It hit all the beats: musical genius, troubled personal life, massive success, corruption from success, turmoil leading to some major hits, and finally, a measure of redemption. I’ve seen it before in Ray, Walk the Line, Get on Up, Love and Mercy, just to name a few. (This formula is also cleverly parodied in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, a criminally underrated comedy in my opinion.) The thing is, it’s an entertaining formula, especially when you’re actually a fan of the musician being profiled. I liked seeing a young Freddy almost get rejected from Queen for having bad teeth. I liked watching the group write “Bohemian Rhapsody” and their other iconic hits. I liked the whole Live Aid concert. And I loved Mike Myers’s cameo which included his ironic comment that kids didn’t want to sit in their cars banging their heads to “Bohemian Rhapsody.” A true Easter Egg for us 90’s kids. By no means did I dislike the movie; I just think that tried and true formula, as entertaining as it is, can only take you so far.

Transcendent Moments

I was asked to deliver a speech to a group of students on the lofty and intimidating subject of "transcendent moments."

Here's what I came up with:

_________________________________________________

“I wish there was a way to know you were in the good old days before you actually left them.”

These are the wise words of Andy Bernard from The Office. Andy knows what he’s talking about: not only is he one of the top salesmen at Dunder Mifflin; he’s also a Cornell man. Almost every character on The Office is meant to be a target of the audience’s ridicule, and about 95% of their supposed wisdom is patently ridiculous. Here, though, I think Andy is on to something.

As human beings, we have a tendency to romanticize both the past and the future, while simultaneously neglecting the present. We can’t help it; it’s just how we’re wired.

When I was in sixth grade, I used to come home from school every day to watch my favorite t.v. show, Saved by the Bell. I watched part of an episode again recently, and it turns out it’s actually a very silly show. At the time, though, I couldn’t get enough. The show follows high school student Zack Morris and his group of friends: Kelly, Slater, Jesse, Lisa and Screech. I enjoyed it, I guess, because it was funny and silly and satisfying, and because Zack was a lovable rogue, whom you couldn’t help but root for. But mostly, I think I enjoyed it because it seemed like a preview of coming attractions; to my twelve-year-old self, Saved by the Bell might as well have been a documentary about high school life. I watched with a great excitement, hoping that one day I too would go to prom. Or hang out with friends at the local diner (just like The Max, where everyone hung out in the show). Or start my own cool band (just like Zack and the gang’s group Zack Attack, best known for their smash hit “Friends Forever”).

High school turned out to be ok, though quite different from Bayside High as it was depicted on the show. Saved by the Bell actually left out a quite a bit. The constant insecurity of wondering who my real friends were. The panic that no one would invite me to go anywhere on the weekends. And the tedium of a fifty-five minute chemistry class. By my sophomore year, I was already starting to daydream about college. Once I got there, I wouldn’t have to check in with my parents all the time. I could play video games deep into the night. If I was so inclined, I could even be free to buy myself a box of Frosted Flakes (which – I swear to God – my mother considered just about equivalent to buying hard drugs).

To be sure, I enjoyed college a great deal once I finally got there. I really loved it for the first two and a half years or so. But in time, I felt I had outgrown the tiny campus in the middle of nowhere. I spent basically my entire senior year wishing I was elsewhere. Gambier, Ohio had become stifling and I couldn’t wait to move to the big city, to meet new people, and to live a more cosmopolitan life.

Now, there’s nothing necessarily wrong with looking forward to the next step in life. And we probably wouldn’t be able to refrain from doing so even if we tried. But I do know that I’ve run into trouble in the past when I’ve taken the current stage of my life for granted, and when I’ve assumed that the next stage in my life would be the best one. That kind of delusion – “I’ll be happy once I get to high school.” “I’ll be happy once I get to college.” “I’ll be happy once I get to the real world.” – can be a dangerous way of thinking. Because it’s been my experience that each stage in life comes with its own wonderful parts and crappy parts. If you’re looking for a Golden Era of your life, where everything goes your way, you’re probably not going to find it.

I think I spend as much time romanticizing the past as I do the future – my own past, sure, but also different eras in history. 2019 seems so bland sometimes. It carries with it none of the romance and glamor associated with, say, the 1920’s. I think about the Roaring 20’s a lot, specifically about my favorite authors, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, living in Paris, writing for hours, strolling the Champs Elysee, and drinking wine at trendy cafes. It’s such a far cry from my own life: grading essays for hours, strolling down York Road, stopping for a latte at Starbucks. My 1920’s fantasy is, I think, a pretty common dream for English teachers and other bookish types. There was even a movie about it: Midnight in Paris, directed by Woody Allen, in which Owen Wilson plays a struggling author who finds himself magically transported to 1920’s Paris. He carouses with Fitzgerald and Hemingway and T.S. Eliot and the rest of their gang, and at first everything is great. But gradually, he realizes, that none of his idols are very happy, despite living in what seems like literary heaven. In fact, many of them are bored of 20’s and wish they lived instead in the late 1800’s, an era called the Belle Époque in Paris. “The grass is always greener on the other side,” the movie seems to say, “It’s human nature to wish we were elsewhere, to wonder what our lives would be like if we had been born in another place and another time. And it’s ok to daydream – but don’t forget about the good things you have.”

Marion Cotillard in Midnight in Paris, a film that always makes me smile.

I’ve taken a while to get here, but the subject of this talk is the “transcendent moment” – in other words, moments in our lives that rise above the ordinary, moments that take us to a higher plane. If you ask me about the transcendent moments in my life, my mind will immediately jump to my wedding day, the day my children were born, the day I graduated from college, and a handful of other major milestones. And to be sure, these moments were amazing and memorable and transcendent. In short, they were everything they’re supposed to be.

But I think most people’s definition of “transcendent” is much too narrow. We assume that the only truly transcendent moments in our lives must be major life events – weddings, births, important birthdays, etc. We assume that a random Thursday in January is ineligible to host a transcendent moment. And as a result, we spend our lives looking forward to, or looking back at just a scant few big moments. And we spend a lot of the rest of the time idealizing both the future and the past.

For my money, one of the most overused clichés is “Enjoy the little things.” Still, it doesn’t get to be a cliché if there isn’t at least some truth to it. The problem with “Enjoy the little things” isn’t that it’s bad advice. It’s that that we’ve heard it so often, we’ve stopped thinking about what it actually means.

I’ve been trying harder to enjoy the little things, lately. And I’ve realized that when I stop to think about it, incredible moments happen all the time.

Last Wednesday, I picked up my two-year-old twins from school for the first time. It was the first full day they’d ever spent away from their parents, and my wife and I were both nervous and excited to see how they’d do. When I pulled up to the school at 4 PM, all of the children were running around on the playground. I opened the gate and stepped inside. When my son, who had been playing in the sandbox, spotted me, his eyes got huge. He screamed “DADDDDDYYYYYY!” and rushed to wrap himself around my leg. My daughter, on the other hand, played it cool, giving me only a little grin before running in the direction of the jungle gym. Still, seeing my boy’s eyes light up in that one moment, seeing his unadulterated affection and relief: It was a transcendent moment.

On Friday, I met up with one of my closest friends, whom I used to teach with when I lived in DC. We used to see each other every day at school, and often at home too, since he was my downstairs neighbor in our small apartment building, but it had been about three months since I’d last seen him. We met at a fantastic Indian restaurant in Columbia, about halfway between DC and Baltimore, and for two hours, we caught each other up on our jobs, our families, our upcoming plans. It was just dinner with a friend – nothing too out of the ordinary – but it made me so thankful for our long friendship, and for the comfort I feel with him, even not having seen him for several months. It was a transcendent moment.

And then, on Monday morning at BL, I opened up an e-mail from my boss giving me a heads up that he and about ten parents of prospective students would be dropping in to my first period AP Lang class. When you’re a teacher, this sort of thing happens from time to time. It’s basically the closest thing to a pop quiz I’ve experienced in my adult life. So sure enough, it’s about 8:30, I’m in the middle of a discussion in Lang – we’re grading examples of student responses to the synthesis question on the 2015 Lang Exam. And in walk my boss, the head of admissions, and ten random strangers. “Don’t choke,” I think to myself, “Also, try to act naturally.” It’s pretty nerve-racking – but it’s also invigorating. I’ve found that what often happens in situations like these is that my students feel the pressure too. There’s an unseen fire stoked underneath us, and together, without even acknowledging the situation out loud, we go into overdrive. It’s as though the guys in my class are saying to me, in a voice that only we can hear, “Don’t worry, Mr. Barron. We got you.” They’re totally engaged. They say all sorts of great things. We volley comments back and forth like tennis partners. In short, these guys make a potentially stress-inducing moment into the highlight of my day – and I just love them for it. When the visitors exit the classroom after fifteen minutes or so, we collectively exhale. It’s not even second period yet, and I’ve already had a transcendent moment.

I’m not trying to imply that any of these moments is on par with my wedding or the birth of my children. But they were special in their own right – special enough for me to call them transcendent. If I were to place all of my experiences on a number line, with “zero” being total mediocre blankness, then maybe my wedding is a ten. And maybe picking up my children from nursery school is a five. A five is still transcendent. It doesn’t have to be a once-in-a-lifetime earth-shattering experience, to earn that description.

In the past week, I’ve experienced three transcendent moments – and that’s a conservative assessment. That can only mean one thing: these must be the good old days.

Happy, Non-Offensive, Non-Denominational Christmas Play

One of the unexpected byproducts of a career in teaching is that I have attended many more holiday concerts than I ever thought I would. Most people perform in them from kindergarten up through about fourth or fifth grade, and if they are serious about music, through high school. And then, they don't set foot in a school auditorium again for about a decade and a half, when their own kids are kindergarten age. I, on the other hand, keep showing up to what feels like the exact same holiday concert year in and year out. At school concerts, I really only half pay attention to the execution of the music. Sometimes, I'm impressed with a kid who has some musical talent I wasn't previously aware of. Sometimes, one of the ensembles surpasses my expectations. Usually, I clap politely after each well-meaning number, but my mind is elsewhere.

What I find myself thinking about, more often than not, is the composition of the program. Every song, I've noticed, falls into of these four categories: 1) Explicitly Christian 2) Christmas-themed, but basically secular 3) Hannukah 4) Winter or Other. I haven't made a formal study of it, but I suspect that in the years that I have been attending holiday concerts, the number of "Category 1" songs has decreased and the number of "Category 3" songs has increased, and frankly, I'm not quite sure how to feel about that.

As a Jew, I should probably be pleased that Hannukah songs have made their way into the mainstream. We now have more representation than ever before. Hannukah is no longer just a footnote to the Holiday Season, as I used to sometimes feel it was when I was growing up. Even at the secular, but majority Christian school where I am one of only three Jews on the faculty, a menorah sits on display next to the Christmas tree in the front lobby. I should just call it a win and shut up and move on. And yet...

Call me a malcontent, but I always feel vaguely uncomfortable watching the school choir - composed of about 50% African-American students, and, like, 98% gentiles - singing about the joy of lighting the menorah and spinning the dreidel. It feels a little patronizing, especially when the Hannukah song is first in the program, as I've noticed it often is. "Consider that box checked," the subtext says, "Now that the Jews have been appeased, let's move on to the main event!"

There's also the fact that most beautiful Christmas songs, tend to be the most religious ones: "Silent Night," "O Holy Night," "Ave Maria." Because religion often equals controversy, these songs have become practically extinct from the holiday lineup. That's a shame. Just saying it's a shame makes me feel like one of those Christian conservatives with a bumper sticker that says "Jesus is the Reason for the Season" or "Keep Christ and Christmas."

They're right, though: Jesus is kind of the point. I can't stand the idea that all of the songs that mention him (i.e., the best ones) have been replaced by some generic Hannukah song written last year by a composer hoping to make a buck by selling it to school choral directors. We're not even talking "The Dreidel Song," here. I feel a weird sense of guilt to think that some dopey Hannukah song has supplanted "Silent Night" because someone thinks that we Jews want it that way. I'd love to make a public service announcement next year at my school, maybe in early November, when directors start to put their programs together: "This Christmas, please do not refrain from singing "Silent Night" on my account. I, along with many other Jews, enjoy Christmas carols - even ones that mention Jesus. I also recognize that music is an integral part of the Christmas and season in general, and a less important part of Hannukah. ("Ma O'tzur" is pretty good, and everyone likes "The Dreidel Song," but let's be honest.) As a Jew, I hearby vow not to be offended if you plan your holiday concert accordingly."

Honestly, f I were a school choral director, I'm not sure what I'd do with this kind of feedback. Probably nothing. They're damned if they do and damned if they don't. If they excise Hannukah music from the program, they're be in trouble. If they add the super-religious traditional carols, someone probably ends up complaining. And if they keep things the way they are... well I'll continue to feel vaguely uncomfortable in a way I almost can't put my finger on, but other than that, no harm no foul. All of this is to say, I don't expect any major changes and I think that the vast majority of school choral directors are doing an excellent job.

And with that, I'll put this subject on the back-burner once again, where it will likely stay until next December.

An early South Park episode satirized the idea of the politically correct holiday concert, completely devoid of references to Christianity or Jesus. The result was the "Happy, Non-Offensive, Non-Denominational Christmas Play," with music by Philip Glass (far right).

Modern Romance

in·sin·u·ate

/inˈsinyo͞oˌāt/

verb

1. 1.

   suggest or hint (something bad or reprehensible) in an indirect and unpleasant way.

   
   

   "he was insinuating that she had slept her way to the top"

   
   

   synonyms:

   imply, suggest, hint, intimate, indicate, let it be known, give someone to understand; informalmake out "he insinuated that she lied"

2. 2.

   maneuver oneself into (a position of favor or office) by subtle manipulation.

   
   

   "she seemed to be taking over, insinuating herself into the family"

   
   

   synonyms:

   worm one's way into, ingratiate oneself with, curry favor with;

This was one of thirty vocabulary words my ninth graders had to know for their midterm exam. Rather than have them regurgitate the definition, I asked a question that included the word in context: "How might you INSINUATE to a crush that you'd like to spend some time together?"

Because it was pretty easy to infer the word's definition based on context clues, it turned out to be a pretty easy question that pretty much everyone answered correctly. But what I didn't realize was just how much the answers would tell me about the art of romance. Here are my several answers to this question, thematically categorized.

BASIC

Asking the person to do an activity or go on a date with you.

I might ask my crush if they wanted to hang out.

"Hey, what are you up to this weekend?"

You could hint that you'd like to spend more time together by saying, "This night was really fun and I enjoyed spending this night you."

By asking when she's free

DIRECT

Say, "You are pretty cute, you know."

You are pretty and cute. I was wondering if you wanted to go for a drink sometime. (He's fourteen, so I'll assume he means a Starbucks or something.)

SHY

You could send her a secret note.

EXTREMELY SHY

Send an e-mail through a bunch of shell accounts, so she somewhat knows it is you, but not a hundred percent. You can claim the e-mail was yours or you could say it was someone else's e-mail if something goes wrong.

SMOOTH

One could slyly hint at going to get food or something of that nature.

"I'm kinda bored because all my friends are on vacation and I have nobody to hang out with."

"Oh, we could meet up and do some homework together."

Say something like, "We gotta study more often if we're gonna pass this quiz."

You might say that you think their dog is really cute you'd like to meet the dog, hinting that you'd like to spend time with them.

You might show your crush a bad test score and try to get yourself invited over to "study" with them.

TRENDY

You could give them your snap and start a streak. (Had to ask around about this one. Apparently, it refers to Snapchat, which is a big part of romantic courting for a of teenagers. I'm so out of touch.)

CONCERNING, but SELF-AWARE

I would insinuate this by following her around anywhere she goes. That might come off as a little creepy though.

Three Facepalm Anecdotes

And now, for no real reason, here are three unrelated anecdotes that rendered me dumbfounded.

#1 - I'm riding a Bolt Bus from New York to DC. It's a full bus, and there's a guy about my age sitting next to me. He is asleep for almost the entire trip. The bus stops in downtown Baltimore, where the bus driver tells the passengers that the trip will begin again in ten minutes. My seat-mate gets off the bus to smoke a cigarette: I can see him smoking out the window. He finishes the cigarette and boards the bus, which soon resumes its trip to DC. Immediately, he falls asleep again. About an hour later, the bus is in downtown DC, making its way towards Chinatown. My seat-mate wakes up and groggily looks out the window. I notice a concerned look on his face, which soon turns to panic. For the first time on the trip, he turns to me.

"Are we in Baltimore?" he asks.
"No," I say, after a brief hesitation, "We're in DC."
"I thought this bus was going to Baltimore."
"It did," I said, and then, because I couldn't resist: "You got out there to smoke a cigarette."

And there you have it: the man who missed his bus-stop - one of only two stops on the route - despite exiting the bus at his stop to smoke a cigarette. I assume that after he realized his mistake, he eventually took a train from Union Station back to Baltimore - although with his navigational skills, there is no guarantee he isn't still riding the train to this day, Charlie on the MTA style.

#2 - It's probably bad form to tell a story in which one of my former students is the butt of the joke. But this happened a long time ago, at a different school, and I actually liked the kid. And also, it's just too good not to share.

I handed essays back to my students one day. Rather than writing letter grades on the last page, I had written corresponding number grades: 92/100, 90/100, 88/100, etc. To a girl in the front row, I handed back a paper marked 88/100. For a moment, she looked at the grade, furrowing her brow to try to make sense of it. And then, she got our her calculator and typed in 88 / 100 =. Predictably enough, 88 came up on the screen. She smiled to herself and deposited the paper in her English folder, pleased with her 88.

Fortunately for her, the essay didn't assess basic understanding of percentages. And just as fortunately, I didn't pass this on to her math teacher.

#3 - If you or I wanted to take food out of a microwave before it was finished microwaving, we would most likely either press the "Clear" button and open the door, or else, just open the door. But in college, I knew a girl who had a mind-bogglingly strange way of turning off the microwave. She was observed punching in: TIME --> COOK --> 0:00 --> START. As it turns out, this convoluted method will actually turn off a microwave. But... why?

She was baffled when we brought it to her attention there was in fact another, simpler way of turning off a microwave. Whether or not she changed her method from that point on, I have no idea.

No Gratitude for Magyver

Today at the zoo, we witnessed a little girl accidentally drop her portable water bottle into the rhinoceros pen. Immediately, the girl was inconsolable, even though her mother kept assuring her that it wasn't worth shedding tears over. Everyone in her family tried to reach through the bars of the fence to retrieve it, but it was just out of their grasp. (The bottle was nowhere near the animals, and there was no possibility of a person getting through the fence, so no danger.) They had given up and were about to notify the zookeeper, when I pointed out that they could fashion a hook out of a removable piece from their stroller. (I knew it was removable because we have the same stroller.) The grandpa took my suggestion, and sure enough, it worked.

The rhino isn't really the point of this story, but for what it's worth, it's my favorite part of the Baltimore zoo.
Also, a thumbnail of a rhino is an attention grabber.

Once the bottle was safe and sound, the family unanimously declared that Grandpa had saved the day. "Way to go, Grandpa!" "Our hero!" The little girl stopped crying and gave him a big hug. Someone even compared him to Magyver, for solving this difficult technical problem. Which seemed like a slap in the face, since all he'd done was what I told him to do. Meanwhile, no one said a word to me - not even a word of acknowledgment, much less thanks.

Of course, a good deed should be its own reward, but I was a little annoyed anyway. It was such an otherwise-satisfying moment of ingenuity (if I do say so myself), and, for this predominantly right-brained thinker, kind of a rare one. Plus, some basic gratitude feels nice - even if you're just holding a door, or letting another car in on a busy street.

It's more than a little shameless to openly fish for accolades in reaction to a relatively trivial moment that no one even witnessed, other than my wife and almost-two-year-old twins (who seemed indifferent). But hey, I'm not above accepting them. I'm still pretty proud of myself.

Nice Shiner, Dude

Choose one of your favorite pictures of yourself and post it to your blog. Your assignment is to tell the story behind the photograph. Your tone should be casual and conversational, but try to include plenty of detail about the moment itself.. Min. length - 500 words.
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I was almost thirty before I suffered my first and, to date, my only black eye. Those thirty years included about ten as a wrestler and three as a coach. I wish I could say I got my eye blackened during the heat of battle. I wish that I had been doing something cool, or daring, or at least interesting. Instead though, I was playing Ultimate Frisbee. This was during my third year of coaching wrestling at Wootton High School in Rockville, MD. On Friday wrestling practices, before Saturday matches, it was our custom to let the boys play a spirited game of Ultimate Frisbee instead of our usual practice in the wrestling room. I joined in the games too, despite not being particularly fast or adept at throwing or catching a frisbee. On this day, a recently-graduated alum was playing with us. During his career as a wrestler, he had never lacked enthusiasm, but sometimes lacked the requisite good judgment and common sense to succeed in a sport that requires constant quick decision-making.

I don't remember the exact situation, but I'm pretty sure that he and I were on the same team. When one of our teammates threw the frisbee directly to me, the boy - we'll call him Arnold - unexpectedly lunged in from several feet away, to attempt to make the catch. The top of his skull made direct contact with my right eye socket. I saw a flash of light, and I was on the ground. I don't think I lost consciousness, but I remember being shocked both by the suddenness of the collision and by how much it hurt. From the ground, eyes still closed, I heard one of the boys say, "Whoaaaa, look at his eye!"

Truthfully, I was playing it up a little by closing my right eye to make it look like I physically couldn't open it. Still, it was a pretty nasty black eye.

Here's the strange part, though: once the pain subsided (after just a few minutes), and once I was back in the boys' locker room, looking at my rapidly swelling eye in the mirror, I felt a perverse sense of amusement. My black eye was a work of art: an angry black purple blotch, almost chrome-tinted. (I could see, finally, why they called it a "shiner.") It was a badge of masculinity too: proof to the world that I was a daring, dangerous badass. Once back at home, I placed a frozen pack of peas on it to stop the swelling - but I also sat in front of my computer taking selfies, trying to find the angle that made it look the nastiest. Certainly, I never thanked Arnold for crashing into me, but I can't say I was particularly angry with him either. 

As everyone knows, a black eye gives you serious street cred - or maybe not. But it's certainly a good conversation starter, as I found out when I went out that evening. Strangers commented on it all night. The 270-pound bouncer at a bar told me, "Nice shiner, man," before handing back my ID. "Got it during wrestling practice," I told them, keeping the details deliberately vague. And then, because I couldn't resist, even though it was the most obvious cliché: "You should see the other guy."

Cleaning blood off the mat during a break in the action.