A list, some congrats, and a nasty howling wind

As I write this the wind is howling like mad outside my window, battering against the glass as if I were living in a moody Gothic novel set on a Scottish moor. It is easily the most aggressive windstorm I've experienced since moving into this house.

[We were 'supposed' to get up to six inches of snow Sunday, an amount then downgraded to two to four inches, and then to none as the storm never bothered to arrive. It's like the meteorologists are trying desperately to validate my tongue-in-cheek column, but I'll gladly thank the heavens for nixing the white stuff, thank you very much.]

There is beauty in most things on this Earth, and the wind is no exception. I was reading Smiley a book when I glanced up through his skylight. The bare tree branches were an impressive sight as they fought against the wind, a sight that took our attention off the pages for several minutes.

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Kudos to my father, who told me today that he'd re-enrolled at UW-Milwaukee in hopes of completing his degree. It's contingent on financial aid, but I'm very proud of him.

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YaYa is compiling a list of all the books she's ever read, mimicking my own efforts. For the sake of keeping the obsession alive, and because it was a school assignment for her, here are all the books we read to LuLu in March (or rather, all the books we could find when I set out to make the list):

Dora: The Windy Day by Quinlan B Lee
Lady Lovely Locks and the PixieTails: The Golden Ball by Harriet Marcelle
Five Little Monkeys Sitting in a Tree by Eileen Christelow
Walt Disney's Cinderella
Clifford's Puppy Day's: A Snowy Christmas by Quinlan B Lee
Dear Barbie: Too Many Puppies by Lisa Trusiani Parker
Disney's Beauty and the Beast - The Teapots Tale by Justine Korman
Disney's Enchanted: Before the Fall by Tennant Redbank
CareBears: What Makes you Happy? By JE Bright
Goodtimes Storybook Classic: Snow White by Carl Baldassarre
Barbie: Freckles by Mona Miller
Clifford's Spring Clean-Up by Norman Bridwell
Disney's The Little Mermad See/Hear/Read Book
Goodbye Geese by Nancy White Carlstrom

One and just in case I don't get around to a Smiley list: we read Rooftop Christmas tonight.

Happy Birthday Mom!

Before much more of the day slips away I want to go on record and wish my Mom a Happy 62nd Birthday. I hope you have many more Ma! We love you!

Where da Lump? There she is!

Or 'Ginger', as that nickname for her may just stick.

A little bit of this and that

Smiley stole a lit incense stick of ours and strolled around the house waving it like a sparkler. Natually, I took it away the minute Lisa caught sight of him.

No big deal, but you'll have to remember that Smiley still deals with a very bad speech problem. Because of this he ran around in tears yelling "Me dick mama. Me dick. Dada 'ook me dick", and growing increasingly angry when we laughed.

Good thing we didn't take it away from him in a crowded mall, huh?

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April Fools to me: My DVR failed to record Lost while I was at work, citing a scheduling conflict between High School Reunion and Whatever, Matha. *&#@#$

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To all friends/family - my cell phone is on the fritz. Sprint is replacing it free of charge, but until Monday or Tuesday you'll have to reach me on the landline.

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Because Lisa and I both worked until late Friday evening, we found ourselves with the kids scattered among the grandparents and not one left at home. Hot dog! For the first time in years we hit the road and went out for dinner after midnight, winding up at Jalisco's ~1 a.m.

It was glorious. Not the food (which was good) but being out and about with no little booger-maker to slow us down. :)

This Week's American Idol

Curse my DVR. I have to stop staying up so late to watch this show, especially since it was mediocre at best last night. I feel miserable this morning.

So should 1. Anoop, who was fine vocally but looked awkward on stage. Usher? Are you serious? Lisa said it's a shame that people don't take him seriously because he's Indian, but I don't think that's it. There are a 1000 Bollywood stars who'd do fine in the role. Anoop however, just looks like the uptight computer guy in a college road trip movie, the guy who 'breaks loose' on stage once he's accidentally fed some pot brownies and hilarity ensues. Usher just doesn't work with his image. What's next, a Pussycat Dolls tune?

2. Megan - gag. The allure is gone, is it not? Go home.

3. Danny - I thought he did ok, but nowhere near as good as the judges thought. Could be just me, but I wasn't blown away.

4. Allison - I agree about the outfit. Awwwwfuuuullll. But her voice was strong and showed maturity in the quieter opening of the song. She should stay.

5. Scott - Enough America. To quote President Bush, there is such a thing as discrimination via 'the soft bigotry of low expectations'. If this guy had 20/20 vision he'd of hit the road long ago. His decision to bring out yet another piano ballad reinforces his limited range as an artist, and no, I don't think his vocals are that strong. Was it better than last week? You betcha. That . . doesn't say much. And for gosh sakes, why compliment his 'look'? His family should be all over the AI crew that works on him. He had John Parr (St. Elmo's Fire) hair - and it's not 1985 anymore people!



6. Matt - I love him, but I thought it was weak. The guy is searching for an artistic 'center', and sadly must do so in the public eye. He should stay, but I'm worried.

7. Lil - Her 'edge' wore smooth quickly, didn't it? Old fashioned in appearance and sound, Lil' is quickly slipping into the abyss. Pull it together or risk losing it all.

8. Adam - I dropped out of the Adam fan club after a brief 7 day membership. Wild Cherry is irrelevant and gimmicky today, and no matter how much you may have loved that ho-hum performance it would not fly on a record released in 2009. It just wouldn't. That's a fact. At least the Johnny Cash was edgy. He'll survive, but he's dropped a few pegs.

9. Kris - he rescued the night with a song so damn good it could make the airwaves right now. Excellent job! By far the best of the night.

* * *

Kara is, as the audience shouted out, a 'broken record'. Come up with something other than 'wrong song choice', ok?

* * * *

Who goes? Wow. It was so lackluster a week that many, many people could be on the edge. If it was up to me Megan, Scott, and Lil are on the hot seat (Lil just as a 'warning') with Megan going home.

America will probably put Megan, Matt, and Allison in the bottom three, with Megan getting the ax - but I'm worried about Matt.

Yikes.

Lost "He's our You"

On the eve of another episode I thought I'd go ahead and post a new Lost theory that popped into my head.

A brief recap of the Sayid-centric episode: In 1977 Sayid remains a captive of the Dharma Initiative, despite Sawyer's best efforts to convince them he's not a Hostile spy. Sayid is taken to the jungle and given drugs to force a confession.


It works; he admits everything, but it sounds so outrageous it's dismissed out of hand. Later the group votes to kill Sayid. Sawyer, unable to halt the group's momentum, makes it a unanimous vote.



So much for Sawyer's wonderful leadership skills.

But young 12 year old Ben Linus seeks to befriend Sayid, who quickly notes the abusive behavior of Ben's Dad. Ben apparently lights a Dharma van on fire and sends it crashing into a building as a diversion to rescue Sayid. As they flee into the jungle Jin intercepts them and Sayid renders him unconscious or worse. Referencing a line Ben told/tells him thirty years in the future, Sayid turns to the young Ben and shoots him in the chest, presumably killing the boy.



* * * *

OK. Sawyer: Just as 'reactive' a leader as Jack was and obviously not as stuck on the whole 'don't be a Judas' thing.

But the main development here is the Ben/Sayid encounter and its impact on history. In 'real' life this would destroy the timeline and eliminate Ben and his actions from the life history of the 815 survivors. Personally, I think someone else might have simply taken his place and recreated 89% of his historical actions, but that's neither here nor there.

Why? Because Lost has gone out of the way to emphasize that in their world time cannot be altered. What has happened has always happened, even if we aren't privy to how history eventually conforms to our understanding.

Thus, we have some options.

One - the kid wasn't 'really' Ben, and the Benjamin Linus we know and loathe is an impostor. This is contradicted by prior episodes and the kid's unfortunate facial similarity to the grown Linus. Not a viable theory.

Two - He isn't dead. Could be, but what are the chances a professional killer fails to finish off a little boy at close range? Not viable.

Three: Ben dies. I vote for this one. But does time change? Again, by Lost's 'rules', no. So Ben dies, but somehow comes back to life.

Cue my theory. Ben dies and is resurrected by the island, thus cementing his obsession with the island, his belief in his 'special' status, and his role with the Hostiles.

If we accept that Ben rises from the dead, just as Locke does in the 'present', then it's a good bet that Christian Shepard's manifestation is physical and as complete as either one. Jack's Dad is alive and well on the island.

Here's where I think I *may* have hit a nerve. Locke, Ben, and Christian are 'special' and rose from the dead. Who else among the Losties seems to hold a special relationship [even unwillingly] with the island, a leadership role and ties to many of the other players in the saga?

Jack, who we first see in the jungle, having been tossed from the wreckage and laying apart from the others, his only wound a (Christ-like) piercing in his side.

Was Jack killed in the crash and unknowingly resurrected, leading him to assume the special role of protagonist throughout the series?

Regardless, Ben will 'rise' again. And he will no doubt bear knowledge of Sayid and many of the others with him into the future and force his hand. Thus, the past creates the future, and the future creates the past.

Deep huh? What do you think?

A link to the column

The column is in print and wouldn't ya know it, I actually like the thing. Here's a link to the beast, which in no way excuses anyone in town from picking up a copy.

I'll post the entire piece here in a few days.

Another column to be published Tuesday in the paper

Tuesday's Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel will feature another column of mine. If you're in Wisconsin or upper Illinois kindly pick up a copy.

I got the news tonight in two different emails. In the first, the editor wrote she'd be publishing my column 'X'. In her follow-up she apologized, but said her editor didn't like the piece for a few reasons and that they'd run another of my columns instead.

Lisa thought the second editors issues would upset me, but I welcomed the advice. The guy's paying me to write, so critique away kind sir. I just wish I could remember what the content of the backup column is before I see it in print.

* * * * *

Recently I ran into my grade school principal Sr. Kathleen and my first grade teacher Sr. Virigina (the latter being the woman who taught me to read. Thanks!)

Sr. Kathleen brought up my last column and said she'd recognized my name right away. She then asked all the usual questions about my parents, sisters, etc.

Anyway, I just wanted to point out that Sr. Kathleen looked all of sixty or sixty five years old, with Sr. Virginia maybe five years her senior. Not a big deal - except that as a kid I thought they were sooooo ancient. I'd have laid money down, right up until seeing them last week, that they'd easily be in their eighties now.

Huh. Next thing you know I'll discover my childhood crush Chrissy G. wasn't a dead ringer for Farrah Fawcett.

Match Game

A happy but long buried memory: coming home from grade school a little after three each day and catching The Match Game in progress.

One of the great things about our newly updated cable is the inclusion of the Game Show Network. That enabled me to eagerly seek out reruns of The Match Game, just to see if that memory lived up to the hype. I wasn't dissapointed.




The Match Game was more like a cocktail party at your house than a true game show. Irreverant guest stars, risque but not dirty questions, a boisterous and vocal crowd, a host willing to tell the stars to stifle it or call a contestant's answer "dumb", and of course Gene Rayburn's signature Sony ECM-51 telescoping microphone.





'My' era of Match Game featured McLean Stevenson of M*A*S*H as a staple, but thanks to GSN I'm now able to craft a much better lineup. I'd take Richard Dawson in seat five, an able and quick witted star with a knack for entertaining the crowd. Charles Nelson Reilly would be in seat three, with Fannie Flagg in seat six. (forget Patti Desucht (sp?)).

You HAVE to keep Brett Sommers, wife of Jack Klugman, front and center in seat two. That leaves two slots open. One I'd like to see filled with Bill Dailey from The Bob Newhart Show, who just excudes humor on TMG. The last one I'd grudgingly rotate between whatever star wanted to come on the show and plug their movie, but my eyes certainly wouldn't mind seeing Gina Hecht of Mork and Mindy sitting up there as often as possible.

I'd love to see another revival of TMG, but it probably isn't going to happen. Once they crossed into the late '80's all bets were off and the answers slipped from naughty but proper into straight raunch. That's fine in context, but half the fun of the show was thinking dirty and then being forced to come up with a clean reply.

And besides, I have to admit its fun playing along and trying to figure out the social context. Answers that are glaringly obvious in 2009 (or 1979) aren't in existence in '73 and '75, and personalities and news items from '76 are now lost to the ages. And I dig the contestants who say they moved west to be an actor or a singer, full of confidence and certain success. In a way it's sad of course, to know that Rita Mae McDonald never did win that Emmy she desired, but it's also fun to speculate on whether she at least carved out a living in the field.

It's a bleepin' time machine is what it is.

Check it out, twice a day, on the Game Show Network.

The Circus in Winter

It is nearly impossible to explain how deeply I enjoyed Cathy Day's The Circus in Winter, a collection of eleven interconnected stories tracing the history of the fictional circus town of Lima, Indiana.

I read it, cover to cover, in a single sitting on New Years Day.

In the late 1800's, as his beloved wife passes away, Wallace Porter abandons a safe and respectable existence to purchase a failing circus. For the next half century the circus calls Lima home, and in the half century after its collapse the town still echoes with the blessings and ghosts the circus has left upon the memory of the land.

There is pride and pain, loss and triumph for the characters we visit. There is the young family stranded in the attic of their home as flood water rises, an elephant drowning helplessly beneath their window. A century later their granddaughter chafes under the oppressive weight of her mother's judgement, and the accidental death of an elephant trainer at the turn of the century echoes across the decades.

Through it all we are kept spellbound.

It's fascinating to trace how the tiniest incident can magnify over time to change the course of someones life, someone who's grandparents had yet to be born when it occured.

The Circus in Winter is a powerful book by a writer with true talent. I obtained my copy in a local Dollar Tree, read it, loaned out my copy, and ran back to get a pristine version to place in my collection.

I encourage you to hit BN.com and pick up a copy. You won't be disappointed.