Happy Birthday Mom - here's a surprise for you

                            

Today is my Mom's 61st Birthday, and I wish her health, happiness, and another quarter century of the same.

As a small present to her I'm going to post some pictures of her 60th birthday party. They've asked for copies of these forever, but I'd misfiled them on my computer and only recently discovered them. To prove I put some thought into this, I loaded them a few weeks back in preparation for this post.

A word of warning to family: I'm sure I'll mislabel some of the pictures. If you find a mistake don't be a jerk and make a show of it; just drop me an email and I'll correct them within reason.  And yeah, it was my camera, so there's gonna be a lot of pictures of my family. No apologies for that.

And now, on with the show!

I would imagine the next two need no caption

Note the pony in the picture on the table? Back in the '50's a man came through the neighborhood offering pony rides for a fee and my Mom took him up on the offer. My grandma's in the other shot. She passed away the year prior. Still, 59 years with your Mom - not a bad run.

That's my Mom seated with my Great Aunt Mabel, who's talking to my second/third? cousin Brian. My Dad stands in the background and my niece Stacey is by the door. Not sure who the other folk are.

The hottie on the right is Lisa; to her left my Great Aunt Mamie's daughter Rosie (whew!) and her boyfriend, my cousin Pam Brown, my Mom's god-daughter and her life partner.

This my maternal Grandfather's nephew and his wife. I sat with them for awhile.

You know, come to think of it Lisa was FIVE months pregnant at the party. I'm not sure who this gentleman is.

Let's see who's new in this one . .the priest, obviously. I think he's from St. John Kanty. The man with the coat in his hands is my Godmother's son Brian.  I remember playing Matchbox cars with him in the waiting room when his sister was born 25+ years ago. My niece Caitlin stands with her back to the camera.

An overview of the room at some point. LuLu stands to the right of the foreground, my Mom's friends son Max to the left.

You should know who these two are by now: Aunt Mabel and Brian. My father and Uncle George, the photographer of the Danny pics of 3/19, stands next to him.Note the studmuffin at the table in the left background. Next to me is my cousin Pon, who's a go-to guy in my maintenance department. When something breaks around the house, be it a pipe or one of the kids toy's, they say "maybe Pon can fix it".

The lady who's second to the left is my Grandmother's best friend of 70+ years, Gertie. Not sure of the rest.

Gosh these kids are cute. Whoever bred to make them must be spectactular . . oh, wait. They're mine!

Linda,my Mom's friend/mother of Max, and my sister Chrissy.

Yeeeeeeaaaahhhhh . . no clue.

Gertie and Mabel again . . Gertie's late husband Vern lost an eye to the Japanese in the war, something I always found fascinating. Vern, I'd imagine, found it less entertaining.  

My sister Katie with my Dad's side of the family. R-L Katie, Great Aunt Diane, her daughter Doris, and one of my Dad's cousins.

Same table, better light. My mother-in-law sits on the right.

Two shots of my Mom with all her godchildren. That's Linda's kid Anna on her lap, my cousin Becky, Pon's wife, to the left. You've met the rest.

My Mom opening her gifts.

Some random hot pregnant chick.

After the party we tore down the tables and chairs and chatted for awhile. The kids practiced gymnastics, and with some prompting Lisa completed a pregnancy ritual: as with all her pregnancies, she did some cartwheels. I think I tried/did? get some video of the act, but no still pictures.

This next one isn't even from the party, but I had thought it was, until I recognized the background. It's still cute.

I hate to end of a sour note, but before it was over we had an infamous accident. LuLu somehow gouged the back of her heel and it bled profusely and consistently. She nearly required stiches and soaked through bandages for a few days. She still remembers it too, referencing it out of the blue whenever injured.

Still a fun party and well deserved.

Bouncing back to the present - Happy 61st birthday Mom and many more! I love you!

 

Tags: Mom

The Mist, Jumper, and Shooting an Elephant in Burma with George Orwell

You might remember that I read Stephen King's 'The Mist' earlier this year and expressed dismay with the ambiguous ending. Tonight the Mrs. and I watched the movie version.

It was unusually faithful to the original novella for much of the movie but had a few twists and turns of its own, mostly for the best. It got rid of the out of character sexual tryst between the (married) male lead a woman he just met (as his wife was dying/dead).  It kept the military as the 'cause' of the Mist, but removed some objectionable comments  that King, as a child of the '60's, wrote about the soldiers and their death. And of course it elaborated on the ending.

Oh, about that ending . . wow. What a disturbingly dark, harsh way to end a film. I'm truly at a loss for words. It was a logical and organic extrapolation of what happened at the close of the book, but you lose your breath and walk away . . . disturbed.

Huh. 'Organic' and 'extrapolation' in the same sentence. Aint that a peach.

Two thumbs up, but don't see it if you're depressed when you walk in the door. You're not going to feel better after this one.

* * *  *

The Mist spoiler: this morning I thought back and realized the end might have a deeper meaning. Mrs. Carmody spoke of needing to sacrifice the boy, like Abraham and Isaac, or Jesus and his Father, to end the horror. His Dad kills (sacrifices) him and moments later we learn the invasion is vanquished.

And let's not forget Carmody dying with arms outstretched, like someone else we know.

The book and movie both take care to paint Carmody as a kook, and rightfully so, but in retrospect the ending *could* be construed to validate her preaching.

* * * *

I also saw Jumper lately.

 

A mindless but enjoyable romp with only about a 1000 different plot holes. As a matter of fact on IMDB.com there's a hilarious thread listing the top 100 flaws in the movie.

A sampling: the fact that a public restroom is located right next to the bank vault, enabling the robbery; that 'jumpers' are mortal and can be killed with knives and guns but not when exposed to thousands of volts of electricity; that he's allowed to fly overseas with a backpack full of cash that no one finds suspicious, and that his girlfriend, who has never left her hometown, apparently has a passport at home because she flies to Italy with him on the spur of the moment.

After seeing the movie I went and picked up a copy of the novel that the movie was (loosely) based on.

It's a completely different experience, with different characters, plot lines, and philosophies. Enjoyable and recommended, with a few caveats.

One, author Steven Gould uses the novel as a sounding board against American foreign policy circa 1987, the time the book was written.

To paraphrase: Israelis are equal to terrorists because they 'shoot Palestinian children', the Beirut bombing of the U.S. Marines was reasonable because they were 'occupying their homeland', the idea of encouraging the Iran-Iraq war was abhorrent, etc.. Oh, and don't forget the half page devoted to reminding the American lead that 'not all Muslims' are terrorists, because, you know, all Americans are ignorant asses that think that way.

He's entitled to his opinions, but I thought it was tossed in as extraneous and preachy dialogue.

Which leads to flaw number two: the main character suffers a horrendous loss at the hands of a terrorist. He resolves to track them down and bring them to justice, and at the same time rescue hostages from their murderous captors. While doing so he refuses to even contribute to the accidental death of a terrorist. For instance he interrupts the (life or death) rescue of dozens of innocents to toss floatation devices to a gun wielding madman struggling in the water.

Not that I don't think it noble and all, in a GI Joe 'shoot 'em but no one gets hurt' way, but it strikes me as very unrealistic, especially given the loss that establishes the plot line.

[note: there is one scene made horrific by the events of 9/11. He takes a terrorist to the World Trade Center and jumps off with him, then teleports them both away before impact. The irony of using that horrifying fall as a punishment for a terrorist sticks with you]

Third, his girlfriend is haughty and full of psycho-babble. It was like (Robert B. Parker's) Susan Silverman was tossed in for good measure.

Good grief, I have enough of her in the Spenser novels.

 Still, a good fine read.

* * * *

World Traveler brought me a copy of George Orwell's Shooting an Elephant. It's a tidy little essay of his own experiences as a solider in Burma and how he came to loathe the very empire he served.

It was obviously a life-changing event for him, and carried all sorts of political and philosophical baggage. But what struck me deeply was the ease and simplicity of Orwell's prose, and the raw honesty in which he expresses his opinions, regardless of whether they fit neatly into the notions of right, left, or center.

With one part of my mind I thought of the British Raj as an unbreakable tyranny, as something clamped down . . ., upon the will of prostrate peoples; with another part I thought that the greatest joy in the world would be to drive a bayonet into a Buddhist priest's guts.

The quote above should really be read in context, and I apologize for shortchanging my readers and Orwell. Go ahead and read the (short) essay. You'll come away with new respect for what Orwell could do with a blank sheet of paper.

Tags: Jumper, The Mist, George Orwell

'Me and Dad' by YaYa

A week ago Monday I spent the evening with YaYa.

With Lisa gone at work or dance four nights a week, the hours of 4 until bedtime belong to me and the kids.  It's made me a better Dad, I can tell you that much, and its allowed me to get to know my children better, both the good and the bad. 

But familiarity breeds contempt, and on that Monday night I caught myself more than content to wile (sp?) away the night at the keyboard while YaYa watched TV in the living room.

And I thought to myself, well, this is one of those wasted moments I'll regret down the road. So I asked her if she wanted to do something.

To my chagrin, she jumped at the chance.

We played dominoes, she lost interest, and we lined them up and knocked them all over, which in the end is the best use for them anyway.

Then she asked if I wanted to work on a book with her. Sure, I said. She wrote the text and did the pictures, I did the coloring.

I'm not very good at coloring.

It was about watching the movie Enchanted, which the whole family adored, although we did not watch it that night, as YaYa wrote.

 

She was quite proud of it in the end, and wanted me to have it bound. Instead, I present it here online.

[please note: I have no intention of flooding you with her work, but I will occasionally post it on Slapinions out of sheer pride. Please note that she was a bit embarrassed that I posted the Fary story, primarily because of her spelling.

In retrospect I think I shortchanged her and that it might have been written months ago. Her spelling tests have all come back with 100%, all of them, and many of the words in this text were written without my help]

I drew the hand on this one:

This one's cheating: I drew the tub and the printing . .  and the coloring. So in other words, I did this one by my lonesome. Quality like this is what prevents me from writing for a living.

Tags: YaYa, Enchanted

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NKOTB on NBC's Today

Well that was a whole lot of hype for nothing. All that for a few minutes of an interview drowned out by screaming fans, no performance . . just the announcement of a May 16th performance on Today, a summer album release, and a fall tour.                                          

                     

Lisa pointed out that during the first segment Jon looked shaky and uncomfortable (remember, he now suffers from severe panic attacks) and that Donnie screened him from the cameras as often as possible.

Naturally, Donnie did most of the talking :) Odd, he's without question the most successful of them post NKOTB (The Sixth Sense, Band of Brothers, the Saw franchise) and yet he's the most eager to reunite.

I guess he really did love performing.

              

Ok, on to May . . I've already taken myself off the work calendar for that day.

Not on AOL/AIM? Comment here

Tags: NKOTB

Prettey Farys by YaYa

This is a 'book' YaYa wrote in February or March. As I've mentioned before, she routinely writes stories in her notebook, usually while laying in bed and ignoring our orders to go to sleep.

The irregular spelling can largely be traced to (well, her age) and the fact that her school stresses phonics over correct spelling until 2nd grade. Following each page I'll provide a translation when needed.

Chapters: Out at the Park, Pretty as can be, and ???

One day I was invited to the ball! And my name is Gem! But I was a maid. My owner said too bad so sad.

No one would believe me, but I saw [a] fairy.

The fairy I see (saw?) has a cat.

The fairy said you can go to the ball. But only until midnight.

No, I completely agree. She so totally left it open for a sequel.

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The MP3 player is up and running, and so is the cost of my cable

                                     

Happy 34th Birthday to my long-time friend Erv. I doubt he's ever  been to this site, but what the heck, this is still cheaper than a card and filled with just as many good intentions.

Yes, I know about the two 'blank' entries. I'm going to let them stew for awhile and then fill them with material that I'll later link to on the sidebar. Or I'll delete them in the near future. We'll see.

I figured out the MP3 player all by myself - take that, youngin! - and now have what World Traveler calls a 'pedestrian' assortment of music loaded on it. Alanis, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Artie Shaw, Joe Mac, Buddy Holly, Bush, Creed, George Michael, Zeppelin, Live, Sam Cooke, 4 Non Blondes, The Cumberland Three, Woody Herman, Black 47, Glen Miller, Michael Jackson, Madonna, GNR, etc . . still to come: a bit more Nirvana and Alanis, some Alice in Chains, Queen, Doors, Cream, Hendrix, NKOTB, and I'd like a little by the Breeders.

Oh, and good news. I discovered Time Warner Cable is having a free preview of MLB Extra Innings, a series of 10 or so channels which broadcast EVERY major league baseball game of the season, until April 6th.

I watched Arod homer against Toronto last night, and quickly approached the Mrs. about signing up for the channels (which is set at $159 until April 7th, $199 after) and she greenlighted it, on the condition that she occasionally be allowed near the TV.

Sure it means I won't pay my electric bill this month to cough up the dough, but priorities people, priorities!

 

1st Pic of the Reunited NKOTB!

Today Katrina, one of my employees,  presented me with a great surprise - a printout of the FIRST PICTURE OF THE REUNITED NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK.

Of course, L-R thats Joey McIntyre,  Jon Knight, Donnie Walhberg, Jordan Knight and Danny Wood.

She herself admits to dumping many of their items when they lost popularity - may the Lord forgive her - but like the Prodigal Son, she now freely admits NKOTB rules. Well, maybe not in so many words . .

Here's a pic from back in the day to compare with the one above:

Less than two days until their appearance on the Today show, and not a single person has come forward with an offer to record it.

Have you no decency?

UPDATE: From an AP article of 4/03/08

Wahlberg said he was convinced to get back together with his former bandmates - Joey McIntyre, brothers Jordan and Jonathan Knight and Danny Wood - when they decided to record new music. Wahlberg said he wrote 80 percent of the new material with McIntyre and Jordan Knight.

"I had no interest going out on a nostalgia tour and singing the same material," said Wahlberg, 38.

But he added, "We absolutely will do the old songs for sure."

Tags: NKOTB

On how there's no Sonic nearby and 23 yr old women are now out of bounds

I don't want to beat this 'man am I getting old thing' to death. With luck, I'm still on the 1st half of this ride. I'm repeating that like a mantra nowadays.

But there were three legitimate moments this week thatconfirmed how far I've travelled since the nostaligic - and largely illusionary - glory of my youth.

About this time last week I was talking on the phone to a woman my own age about a couple who was also our age. She was aghast that they were splitting up.

"X left her for another woman. A MUCH younger woman. It's disgusting - she's like 23!" she said.

Okay, first of all, I felt like saying "Go X!", except that would have been neither diplomatic nor keeping in line with my pseudo-Alan Alda exterior.

I do object to the whole 'breaking up a family and leaving the wife and kids' thing.

But when did 23 year old women become verbotten? Did I miss a memo? Now the're not only out of [theoretical] striking distance but the age gap is so great that people look at you like you're Woody Allen at a middle school?

Really???

The second and third moments came yesterday. I took YaYa to my old alma matter after work yesterday to buy a MP3 player from a guy on Craigslist.

First, the directions he gave me made no sense. He was using campus landmarks, but they'd all changed since my day. The bookstore went by a different name, Wendy's was closed, Bodolino's, home of the infamous 'keep the [9 cent] change' incident, was gone. I understood him, but in the way you understand your own toddler; because I could piece together what he was trying to convey and ignore the gibberish.

When it came time to buy the MP3 he encouraged me to try it out. I did - try that is. He gently intervened and patiently walked me through the process of turning it on and listening to a song. I felt like I was having someone teach me how to tie my shoes.

[which come to think of it, is something I had massive trouble with in kindergarten and still find difficult. Not a day goes by without someone stopping me and saying 'you're shoe's untied'.

I had such high hopes for velcro shoes back in the day]

Then the kicker. Here's this kid that by appearance and conversation seems to be someone I would have hung out with in college, someone into 'alternative' music and -were he of age in '93  - massive amounts of flannel.

"I have some good albums on there. You're welcome to keep them," he said. Then he paused. He stopped and looked at me from head to foot, smiled weakly, and said:

"No, you'll probably want to go ahead and delete them."

I was heartbroken. "My God, I've never felt older in my life," I said.

He laughed, but 'twis true. 

Later that night, after a rousing adventure with Socialist, I went road-tripping with my best friend.

I had dreams of White Castle runs across the state border. 'Matter of fact, I'd mapquested directions to the nearest Sonic, located in Davenport, Iowa, more than 150 miles away, and the closest Jack in the Box, nearly 200 away.

Back in the day we'd have done it in one night and made it to class in the morning.

Last night? We drove around Milwaukee for awhile, and then ended up at a burger joint.

About a block and a half from my house.

Happy April - No Fool's Day joke here

I know this runs the risk of sounding like an April Fool's Joke, but believe me, I detest that lame tradition.

 

On Friday April 4th ALL FIVE MEMBERS of the New Kids on the Block will be performing LIVE on the Today show on NBC.

 

I will be at work at that time, and just as importantly my DVR is still not working well with the HDTV.

 

So I BEG of my readers: Someone, somewhere must record the performances/interview and get me a copy, preferably on DVD. I will of course reimburse whoever goes the extra mile for me should it involve postage, etc.

 

This is not a joke . . PLEASE PLEASE let me know if anyone can do this.

 

Thanks!

 

* * * * *

 

You know that whole "I don't care about this (baseball) season' thing? Yeah, right out the window. When I got home from work I sat down and watched the end of the Brewers/Cubs game, then some of the Twins/Angels game and via psychfun got an update on the White Sox contest.

 

Oh, and the kicker, the moment when I knew my protests had all been smoke and mirrors? When I was on the phone with work and the Brewers gave up a 3 run home run in the bottom of the 9th to tie the game (which they won in 10 frames)

 

Right there, with my work Nextel glued to my face and a fellow manager on the phone I screamed . . well, some very colorful words. 

 

I'm baaaack.

 

* * * * * *

.

 

A quiet night at home with the Mrs. Then right at the end I managed to slip and fall down the entire length of the basement stairs. These would be the same stairs that stand in legend among my parent's generation, as my Great-Grandmother took a serious tumble down them thirty or more years ago and the story is still in circulation.

 

I wound up in a heap on the basement floor, and even knocked a shoe off my foot.

 

No harm really, as it was by and large just an embarrassing and inconvenient moment. I emerged with only a neckache, some scraped and sore arms, a nasty cut and welt on my lower back, and a tidy little scrape right down the middle of my plumbers crack.

 

I'm grateful I got off easy. When 300 pounds goes flying down a flight of stairs, the shockwave of the impact alone coulda killed me.

 

* * * *

 

I got Lisa a mp3 player for Mother's Day last year and spent much of the last two day's filling it with songs she loves. I love not having to trip over CD's at every turn.

 

* * * *

 

Celebrity Fit Club: Boot Camp is a pretty fun show to watch. It's nice to see Willie Aames again, as my Mom was a huge Eight is Enough fan in the day. And might I just say, Tina Yothers . . well, I never thought she was attractive on Family Ties but I've had a change of heart.

 

It's probably the hair. I'm a sucker for a woman with short, dyed hair.

Tags: NKOTB, New Kids on the Block, Eight is Enough, Tina Yothers

Baseball Season is Here!

                                      

The Major League Baseball season starts today for the Brewers, with my home team taking on the Cubs at 1:30 down in Chicago.

 

{hey Psychfun – here’s to 100 golden years and many, many more to come!} 

 

I just can’t get into it this year. I’m trying, I’m trying. I bought a fantasy baseball guide but never opened it, I thought about renewing my XM subscription but didn’t – hell, I didn’t even know it was Opening Day until a co-worker whined about her husband taking a vacation day for the event.

 

Two Red Sox championships in four years did a lot of damage to my soul. The @$*7& Cubs taking the division in ’07 didn’t help. The Yankees post-season woes continue to dishearten me. And the Brewers epic collapse last year – while predictable – was another nail in the coffin.

 

Have steroids dampened my interest too? Heck no. It was all fun and games when Barry Bonds was the sole target, but now that there’s accusations to go around I find steroids a non-issue. I mean, does it really matter? There’s white guys being accused for pete’s sake!

 

That’s sarcasm, by the way. Save the angry letters for another day.

 

I can’t let this continue. I love baseball. I wrote my senior thesis about it. Someday I might get around to finishing my book about the subject. I collect baseball instruction manuals. I own an Arod jersey two sizes too small and I still proudly wear it, rolls and all.  I angrily rebuked Lisa during YaYa’s labor in 2001 because the Yankee’s were on TV.

 

Seriously. I did. In the delivery room.

 

This apathy cannot stand.

 

So I asked my Dad if he wanted to join a fantasy league. Already in one, he said. Why didn’t you invite me? I asked. Didn’t think of it, he says.

 

He doesn’t have to like me, but he should at least do a better job of pretending.

 

I should venture over to Baseball Think Factory, ignore the snarky anti-Bush/anti-Dusty Baker/anti-Jim Rice/ anti-everything comments and bask in the great content.

 

I should find a fantasy league of my own on Yahoo and sign up for a quick, computer run draft.

 

I should bite the bullet, suck up the XM fees, and renew my radio.

 

I should overcome my aversion to going to the ballpark (a newfound dislike, barely a year old) and go out and see a game.

 

I should think about hopping out to New York to visit Yankee Stadium in this, its last year before it closes.

 

I shoulda/woulda/coulda.

 

Or I could ignore all that and just go on with the busy and contended life that I’ve led for the duration of the off-season and pretend it’s still the dead of winter.

 

Hmm.

 

Whining me damned, I’m sure I’ll be angering Lisa by watching game after game on the TV before October is over. It’ll just come naturally, even if there’s nothing else to recommend the season to me.

 

Nothing else at all.

 

Certainly not a big screen TV.

 

A big screen TV in my living room.

 

A big screen TV in my living room across from my couch.

 

A big screen TV in my living room across from my couch with HD.

 

A big screen TV in my living room across from my couch with HD and 500 channels to choose from, many broadcasting games from different time zones so you can finish one game from Atlanta, bump over to the end of a contest in Chicago, and then wrap it up with a game from Seattle.

 

Yeah, it’s gonna be a good year.

A conversation with a neighbor

The baby was up a lot last night, but at least she finally seems to have kicked the flu.

* * *

I mentioned yesterday that someone was knocking on my front door. Well, one visit was my mother-in-law, another was a neighbor.

After some hiccups last spring when we moved in (we were reported to the city for a parking violation and for running a 'day care' - sorry for breeding but it isn't a daycare, they're all mine) we've become friendly with quite a few folks on the block.

The family to our north has shoveled my walk and I've returned the favor, the guy two doors down has visited and given the kids some DVD's ('DVD Guy!' they call him), and I'm on conversational terms with some houses across the alley.

The guy to the south is still the guy to the south, but not wanting to be my buddy isn't a sin. At least not in this state.

[irrelevant aside: DVD guy has a bad habit of knocking whenever I'm sans shirt, man boobs visible to the world.  To point out how much this bothers me Lisa often says, half seriously, that she's confident I'm not having an affair because it would tend to include taking my shirt off in front of someone new.]

Anyhow, while selling Girl Scout cookies with YaYa Lisa meets some old guy down the street and winds up sitting in his kitchen talking to him for half an hour.

It turns out he knew my Great-grandparents (the prior owners of our house) and much of my family, including my maternal grandfather.

In 2002, for my Grandmother's 79th birthday,  I wrote a book about that Grandfather entitled Little Grandpa. I self published a few copies at a local print shop and submitted it to a few places. Rejections across the board, although one editor was kind enough to include a note saying it had potential but didn't meet their needs.

And so it stood for six years.

Back to the present. Lisa dispatches YaYa home for my copy of the book, no questions asked. She then borrows the guy my book, not realizing it is the only remaining copy I have my hands on, and that the digital files were corrupted in the intervening years.

I was . . . annoyed.

But true to her prediction he returned it and was one of the visitors yesterday. We went to his house and talked for awhile in his kitchen.

"So what did you think of the book?" Lisa said.

"To be honest, it's full of inconsistencies," he says.

Well. Okay then.

Apparently he was friends with my Grandfather's stepbrother and was bothered by his absence in the book, and some factual errors about who lived where in the city and who married when, etc.

"Well, he says right at the start that it's the remembrances of a 9 year old boy. It was never intended as a history book," Lisa said.

"Sure, sure," he says.

Ok, enough sour grapes. Whatever my opinion of his review, he was still a friend to a hero of mine, a hero I last saw in 1983.

Turns out they were both lathers and worked for my Great-Grandfather Iggy. They'd meet him on 13th and Lincoln each morning to get their assignments, often accompanied by their daily pay in a cash envelope. They'd take turns driving to the job site.

Considered the equivalent of the starting lineup, my Grandpa and my neighbor would often start an empty room and put up the ceiling and top layer of the walls.

He was quick to point out that my grandpa was a friendly and well-liked man, right in line with my memories, but also quick to say that he wouldn't 'take guff from anyone' and had a mouth when need be.

Most of the time I remember him bowing to my Grandmother's wishes, but come to think of it some kids once tossed a brick at his car and danged if he didn't u-bang and go after them, arthritis or no arthritis.

He also said Iggy was a fair and well-liked man. That's good to hear. I don't hear much about my Great-Grandfather.

So I suppose I'll go visit the neighbor again, this time with recorder in hand, and maybe fix some of those 'inconsistencies'.

* * * *

Lacking a better place to put it, if you are in Milwaukee and a Time Warner customer, channel 201 is a great nostaligic station, playing endless old TV shows interrupted only by commercials of the era.

May I say two things: One, The Mary Tyler Moore Show still holds up as a well-written and funny sitcom nearly forty years later (but c'mon - Murray wasn't gay?) and two, in her previous stint in The Dick Van Dyke Show . . well, thank God for capris. No wonder she was popular. ;)

Oh, and #532 is non-stop PBS Kids. Smiley loves it.

 

Hello to Kazakhstan

Hi,

I wanted to ask whoever is routinely visiting this site from Kazakstan if they could please email me at slapinions@aol.com.

Sitemeter has recorded at least two seperate visits from that country in the last few days:

ISP		Kazakhtelecom Data Network Administration
Location		Continent  :  Asia Country  :  Kazakhstan  (Facts) State/Region  :  Qostanay City  :  Qostanay Lat/Long  :  53.1667, 63.5833 (Map)

I haven't used any BlogExplosion credits in that time, so I'm just curious who you are, what brought you to Slapinions, and how you like the site.

Oh, and thanks for visiting!

* * *

If you think SiteMeter is intrusive, I don't intend it to be so. You can get halfway detailed info if you want (I once tested it out and could tell when my friend in Alaska visited via his work or home computer) but again, that was a test and I pulled the Kazakstan info because it was so unique.

99.999% of the time I'll venture on just to glance at the visitor count and world map.

I love seeing my English readers on the map! Hello all!

Zach and Cody, Credit Scores, Photobucket, and some groovy mind trips

We got our credit scores today. Since the purchase of our house my score's jumped a whopping 50-70 points depending on the agency, while Lisa (who's score was well ahead of mine) had a more modest 20 point jump.

That's good news, and a VERY pleasant surprise. Prior to the house purchase we were mainly a 'cash' paying family with no revolving debt. I assume that's the reason for the big increase in our score.

Why, it almost feels like we're grown-ups now.

* * * *

Sad news to report: Disney is pulling the plug on The Suite Life of Zach and Cody.

 

Disney has a habit of canceling sitcoms whenever they reach the 65 episode benchmark, but Suite Life proved so popular it will end with 88 under their belt. A Slapinions family favorite, I've long argued that it was a good enough show, with some tweaking, to have held its own on the networks.

Plus Lisa loves the Mom's hair:

Disney does some fine sitcoms. Besides Suite Life, Hannah Montana, Phil of theFuture, and That's So Raven were/are fine shows. Wizards of Waverly Place is growing on me, desite being a Harry Potter knock-off, largely because the two oldest kids are fine actors.

Cory in the House is an embarrassment and should never EVER have been greenlighted.

Good news tho': a spinoff entitled SuiteLife on Deck, set aboard a cruise ship, is in pre-production.

* * *

Here's a disturbing fact about Phill Lewis, who plays manager Marion Moesby on Suite Life.  In the early '90's he was convicted of manslaughter for killing a woman in an automobile accident while intoxicated. Sentenced to 5 years in prison, he served one before his release.

Assuming he learned his lesson and is leading a good life, I wish this father of two continued success.

* * * *

Typing on this yogurt damaged keyboard is HELLISH. Z, Y, space, B, and T stick one time out of four.

Ugh.

* * *

Did you ever look at a baby and notice her instantly and nonsensically become ecstatic at the sight of you? 

 Did you ever wonder right then, with a little bit of fright and awe, if  100 years from now her spirit didn't let go and slip back to inhabit that moment?

As if perhaps her last desire on earth was, just for a moment, to slip back to a time in the beginning when just being was enough to make her happy, when the ordinary sight of a (to her) long deceased parent was a thing to celebrate?

Yeah, probably not.

* * *

Very few things make me as instantly happy as popping in a copy of Pearl Jam's Ten.

Nevermind that  wasn't the best album of the genre, or that PJ would go on to make better songs (but not a better album, imho). It was this cassette that my friend Atta gave me in high school as an introduction to 'modern' rock, and I was instantly and permanently hooked.

Today I played it in an otherwise quiet house once the kids were asleep.

The album instantly took me to dark and moonless night in the mountains of Tennessee. The only light inside the car was from illumination on the radio, relentlessly noting the time as each song played. A mist covered the road before me and swallowed my headlights, and the wind from the slightly open driver's window chilled my shoulder. Lisa lay asleep in the passenger seat, her face towards me and her mouth open just a crack, her hands beneath her cheek like a child who fell asleep mid-prayer.

It was as clear as if I was living it in the present.

* * *

For those of you wondering, none of this post was written while drunk or high. I do plead guilty to being in a weird, tired, funky place, but no more.

* * *

Photobucket rocks. Kudos to Ronnie aka Veronica for suggesting it. No more 20 minute waits for AOL to upload a single pic; Photobucket will do half a dozen as fast as AOL does one, and you can automatically set it to upload to a specific size, such as one perfect for an AOL Journal.

Plus it has storage and sharing options galore, and free editing software.

If you journal or just enjoy digital picture taking, please check it out.

You won't be sorry.

aoljurlAdd, aoljurlAdd_1

Things aren't perfect

This post is heavily edited for content, as I sagely had the Mrs. preview the piece. Not that any of it was awful, but it was, as Lisa said "more appropriate for our scrapbook' then public consumption.

Lest you need a reminder that things are not always golden in the Slapinions household:

I cannot stand the baby at this moment. While 90% healthy now, she is spoiled from all the attention she received and kept me up most of the night.

Naturally then, my work phone rang non-stop at 8 o'clock  on a Saturday morning. The lousy thing about that Nextel - well, except for being REQUIRED to answer it, which is and always will be the 'worst' thing - is that the voice mail is obnoxious. Get a message and it will alert you, loud and clear, every couple of minutes until Christ himself returns to shut it off.

And then someone was knocking on my front door . . Sigh.

Meanwhile we spent all evening/night/most of the morning with no heat on the ground floor, and it was a pretty cold night too. I assumed the thermostat had gone kablooey, as I couldn't see anything wrong with the furnace. Then I had a sinking suspicion and looked at the 'on/off light-switch'  breaker on the side of the furnace. The switch was shiny and new.

That furnace is older than me. Nothing on me is shiny and new anymore, much less something on a device that spends its time in the basement. Sure enough, one of the kids (Smiley????!!!!) had flipped it off. A second later we had heat again.

&^&^%$#

I had managed to farm off the two oldest late Friday eveinng, for all the good that did me. My sister Katie helped them pack their things, and I went upstairs to find her stuffing a comforter set into a plastic bag.

"What the hell are you doing?" I said.

"Packing YaYa's sleeping bag," she said.

"That's not a sleeping bag, that's her whole bedset," I said.

"No it's not, she said that's her sleeping bag"

"I don't care if she said that was a bleeping battleship, have you ever seen a sleeping bag like that? YaYa! Quit messing with your Aunt or you're gonna stay home and go to bed!"

[Just a few hours before she had watched me pick carefully through our full garbage can looking for a $10 bill I'd lost; sure enough I found it.

Kiddingly I roared to her "Did you throw this away?"

She looked at me with distaste. It should be noted that YaYa has a reputation as . . well, part Scrooge when it comes to money.

"Dad, the day I ever throw away money is the day the cats fly"]

She also thought to 'treat' us to a 'snack' of pretzels that she dipped in yogurt and left out to dry. I tried them, and they weren't all that bad. "Oh good," she said. "I was worried. I guess I'll try one now"

Later she also admitted to spilling yogurt all over this keyboard, which was SO much fun to clean up and just VASTLY improved typing. Why, it's like a game - how many stuck keys can you find in a given sentence?

* * *

Oh, btw I just discovered we're out of toilet paper; guess how I know?????

* * *

I have to go, the baby's bawling. &*(&@#

 

The World's Oldest Recorded Human Voice

I'm eager to share the exciting story I read today, but at the same time I want to clarify a few points. I really think the reporters relied too heavily on the press release for the story at the expense of a very important bit of information.

Scientists today released a brief 1860 recording of a woman singing "Au Clair de la Lune". If true, this would predate Edison's recording of a human voice by more than 17 years, placing this as the oldest known recording of a human voice.

It was 'recorded' by Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville, a French inventor who used a device called a phonautograph. It used a hog's bristle to etch a line representing a sound on a piece of paper that had been darkened by lamp soot.

These papers lay forgotten in the French patent office for a century and a half before being discovered and then played with the help of computers

Click on the picture of the phonautograph to hear the recording. If it doesn't work, click here.

What I find mildly deceptive about the reporting (and don't get me wrong, I think it is a crime of laziness or omission, without wrongful intent) is that  the hoopla to cast aside Edison as the 'inventor' of recorded speech ignores an important fact:

The phonautograph was never intended to record sound and play it back. It was designed and used to visually record a sound, to create a record of its existence. It took the knowledge of modern audio historians to realize the implications and create a means of listening to the record.

To me it's like designing the first alphabet, putting together words,  then merrily filing the effort away without ever once stumbling across the fact that you just invented the written language.

Much of the glory is in the practical application of an idea, is it not?

The 1860 recording is impressive, to be sure, and fascinating to a stunning degree, but it was not a prototype of a CD player that was pushed aside in the history books by the conniving Thomas Alva Edison.

Even so, to Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville, wherever you are: congratulations, and well done; you are remembered.

And that is the greatest reward of all.

Tags: Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville, Edison,