When I was back there in middle school

I loved this book when I was a kid. I can't wait to read it again. For free. On my Kindle, baby! Also available as a free audiobook, if that's the kind of thing you go for.

I don't remember much about it, so it will be interesting to see if I can remember why it spoke to me or what it said when it did.

What I remember most about middle school is hating middle school. I remember a kind of creepy PE teacher who, in my imagination, looked and talked a lot like Col. Kilgore. Rumor was, he was still going overseas and flying missions on the weekends.

We didn't have recess; we had "Recreation" every other Wednesday, and it was a pubescent version of the prison yard. There was a kid who was called "Dirt Ball," and he had a game named after him. Somebody would yell "dirt ball!" and everybody would pelt him with footballs, basketballs, baseballs, whatever. And he would cry. I don't know if he was dirty, but I'm pretty sure his family was poor. Ah, the innocence of youth.

Not my scene, even though I wasn't Dirt Ball. I hated it, so I asked Kilgore if I could spend recreation in the library instead. He looked at me as if I were a pathetic, greasy-haired little punk in clothes his mom made him. Which, to be fair, was not far wrong. He let me go, though, probably because I was beneath his considerable contempt.

As an aside: this was recreation, not PE. PE was worse, because Kilgore could not tolerate lazy, idle little schemers who wore their underwear under their shorts rather than a jock strap. There were spot checks. And he was very concerned with cleanliness. After PE, the communal shower was excruciating, and if there was horseplay in the shower, the punishment was to assume the pushup position, unpleasant enough at the best of times, even worse when you're twelve, in shower with twenty other twelve year olds, in six inches of plugged up drain water, holding yourself in the "up" pushup position and hoping your hands didn't slip out from under you in the scummy water. There wasn't a lot of horseplay in the shower under the watchful, watchful eye of the PE teacher.

I loved the library though. The librarian was a younger guy, soft-spoken, patient, tolerant. Polite but not personally friendly. I and a few other unathletic types would sit there and listen to records ... Bill Cosby and Elton John are ones I remember. Once we "accidentally" pulled out the headphone jack while "The Bitch is Back" was playing, and this got us into a little obligatory trouble.

I signed out books by the armload and spent as much time in the library as possible. The librarian let me spend a ton of time in there and made sure I picked books that would make me want to read more books.

For this I am truly grateful.

Air quotes as gang signs?

I like music, but I hate a lot the music I hear. Know what I mean? When somebody tells me about this or that band I'd probably really like, I know that I probably won't actually like them. I try, I really do.

Some people I trust more than others, because they really have my number, tastewise. Other people try passionately, and I try to be openminded, and sometimes it works.

I admit to my prejudices. Just as I'm predisposed to hate any film with a Verbing Proper Name title, I'm not likely to like a band with an apparently ironic one word name title. The exception is Cake.

I suspect that if I'd heard Cake back when I was trying to write songs, I might have just given up, not in despair exactly (as happened when John Popper squashed my harmonica aspirations) but out of ... what? Respect? The vague and probably erroneous impression that they and I would call the same people @$$holes?

Cake is a band I can go for months without thinking of, but now that I hear them weekly over the opening credits of Chuck, which I admit to watching (there are several fairly witty shows on my radar now), I have them in fairly heavy rotation on the old mp3 player. Less insistently whimsical than Jonathan Richman, less nihilistic than Warren Zevon, less oppressively intellectual than Timbuk3 ... good stuff.

Too Tired To Rant

I've heard and read about people falling asleep doing the strangest things. Well, the things they were doing weren't necessarily strange, but the fact that they could fall asleep doing them might have been considered surprising. But I can honestly say, whatever it is, this week I can imagine falling asleep during it.

When I was a kid, my dad raced stock cars at a nearby dirt track. I'd sit in the front row and cheer for him, and often I'd fall asleep during the races. And these races were loud ... not Nascar loud--should I have written that NASCAR, with the italics indicating speed?--but pretty damned loud.

I've also dozed off while getting a haircut--oh, geez, not another haircut entry!--and while having my teeth cleaned. I have some of the crookedest teeth in the developed world, and I floss them like the proverbial emmereffer. And I prefer the good old fashioned mechanical scraping to the screechy ultrasonic water laser thingy they tried on me once. Couldn't sleep during that.

I've fallen asleep at the movie theater, and I've fallen asleep during operas (sorry, Peggy). And I've fallen asleep during more afternoon sitcoms than I care to count (again, apologies where due). Last night I dozed, unapologetically, during an excruciating county band concert in which the progeny performed.

Wait, what? Did you think I said "The Prodigy"? Well, if you insist ...

The Prodigy - New Music - More Music Videos

Same time last year.

If I could I surely would

Monday was a tourism day. We began by driving (being driven) out to Madaba, where there's a famous mosaic map of the region. That was interesting, but the drive out of town was much more so. People we spoke to told us about how real estate prices had gone through the roof outside of town, since many people who had left Iraq with lots of money "no one knows where their money comes from" had relocated there." We also drove past mansions owned by "nomadic" Bedouins, with their tents and livestock in the gardens. Times and fortunes change.

From Madaba we went to Mount Nebo, where Moses was granted his distant view of the Holy Land, and where he died and was buried by God. Needless to say, the view was stunning. The name of the country across the river never quite makes it into conversation, I've noticed: "That hill belongs to Jerusalem" is about as far as one gets.

Coming down from the mountain and heading toward the Dead Sea we saw some really dramatic scenery, and lots of tents without big mansions attached to them. Herds of goats on or near the roads, though I couldn't see anything around for even goats to eat. During a conversation about milking and/or goats, our driver told us, "Goat is the best lamb." My new motto.

On the road to the Dead Sea there were a couple of checkpoints: "What kind you got?" the soldier asked our driver in Arabic (it's great traveling with native speakers). I guess the driver responded with our nationality, since the soldier smiled and said, "Welcome to Jordan" in English. Along that road I saw camels for the first time, and the only armored vehicle I've seen as well. The Dead Sea was, well, still dead. There's salt just lying around down there, and interesting salt crystal growths on some of the rocks. Pretty cool.

Then it was on to the site where John the Baptist baptized Jesus. We met some British folks whose daughter lives just a few miles down the Susquehanna from us. Small world. Set foot in the Jordan river, which, slightly flooded from the recent rain, is barely a creek (and you know, if you know me, that that's pronounced "crick"). But across the river in the neighboring country was an impressive concrete ... thing? bunker? ... looming, impressively, with big flags flying. Assertively to say the least.

I've been asked to say more about the food, and I'll try to do justice to the dinner we had last night in a future post. I did have a revelation last night, not in the mosaic church, not atop Mt. Nebo, and not at the site where Jesus was baptized, but outside the shawarma stand back in Amman. Traffic is insane in Amman, but it works. People drive aggressively and with little regard for people behind them, as I guess is necessary in places where traffic is guided by circles, and where streets have grown organically rather than through planning, but it works. Everybody seems to know that everybody needs to get where he or she is going, and there is apparently some sense of fairness to the whole thing. Double parking is reasonable as long as the inconvenience to others is within reason. It makes some kind of sense.

I'll leave you with one final observation, a followup to not speaking the language: banal pop music on MTV is a lot better when you can't understand the words; it's exotic and compelling. So, that's something.