Celebrity Apprentice

watching the finale of celebrity apprentice. Big storm brewing outside update: boom baby! Congrats to John Rich!

The President Is a Sick Man by Matthew Algeo

The President Is a Sick Man: Wherein the Supposedly Virtuous Grover Cleveland Survives a Secret Surgery at Sea and Vilifies the Courageous Newspaperman Who Dared Expose the Truth by Matthew Algeo is not nearly as florid and long winded as the title would have you believe.

It's the true story of the clandestine cancer surgery undertaken by President Grover Cleveland during his 2nd (non-consecutive) administration. It was a time of economic depression and turmoil, fueled largely by the divisive issue of whether to base American currency on gold or silver. Cleveland was entrusted with getting the country back on its feet, and in an era where cancer was seen as invariably fatal it would have been suicidal to his efforts to go public with the surgery.

Which is where the book slips the rails. As evidenced by the title, part of the narrative arc is showing the error and hypocricy of Cleveland's actions.But Cleveland was an unusually honsest politician. He did have legitimate and unselfish reasons to hide the surgery. Yes, one reporter paid the price for the lie, but even he was vindicated in time. All of this is stated and shown to be true in the text.

So, interesting tale, but . . . there is no villian to be found. Which is just as well. It's a swell read without that aspect, and Algeo does an exemplary job of bringing the issues of the past into sharp focus here in the present.

One major complaint - he uses quotes extensively, but provides no footnotes. That irks the history major in me, and I wish it could be corrected.

Finally: above all else the book proves yet again that there are no boring Presidents. Smart ones, brave ones, dishonest ones; but not a dull one in the deck.

outside church, dealing w/ a crying jag by Smiley

Welp. Still Here.

I'm a little alarmed at how disappointed I am that the world is still in business.

Summer Camp!

@ trefoil gs camp, dropping off my girls

Lisa & the kids hit the Milwaukee Public Museum

During Easter Break this year Lisa took the kids down to the Milwaukee Public Museum to see the sights while I was at work.



This is a picture of the Art Museum, by the way, not the Public Museum. Apparently the camera made its way into little hands on the drive downtown.











One of the hightlights of the musuem is the live butterfly room. The kids had a blast enticing the butterflies to land on them.



























Then there was the bug room, full of roaches, centipedes, and worms. Here's how YaYa described the experience on her blog:





i find this so funny lol! we were @ the mpm and I was brave enough to hold beetles, millapedes, and other bugs ! But Ive never had much problems with bugs ' cept ants!





Yech!

Afterwards, Lisa had the Fearsome Four pose for group pictures. Not all the pics were great by our standards, but so what? Given that they featured all four of my youngin's, they were stupendous!

Is this the eve of the End of the World?

YaYa, who even at nine seems poised to eclipse my natural paranoia, is worried about the world ending tomorrow. She says she isn't, & think intellectually she knows better, but I know the signs: frequent 'casual' questions, a look of panic on her face, etc. If it ends it ends; if it doesn't the struggle continues. What's to worry about?

Randy "Macho Man" Savage

RIP Randy "Macho Man" Savage

Delicatessen

If you're looking for that perfect French film about an apartment building full of cannibals who are desperate to kill and cook a circus clown mourning his deceased monkey, look no further than Delicatessen. Quirky, funny, and oddly moving, Lisa and I both loved it.

on a bus en route to holy hill w/ lu

Arlo and Janis, the best comic strip out there. Why aren't you reading it?

- by Jimmy Johnson

Hey - we saw this on The Apprentice, and now its in the grocery store!

What the heck!!!

475 yrs ago today Anne Boleyn was beheaded.

Dis is seeweeousss!

Junie is a huge Wonder Pets fan, and so 90% of her vocabulary consists of "What's gonna werk? Teamwerk!" and "Dis is seeweeousss!".

The MIstress's Revenge by Tamar Cohen

I just finished the Mistress's Revenge [by Tamar Cohen]. It was an advanced reader copy Dan brought home to read, so you might have to wait to buy it, but I highly recommend it. Very easy read, and deff a guilty pleasure, you learn nothing of value. However, reading about someone unraveling thread by nerve wracking thread was very satisfying in some perverse way - Lisa

Enough

All well and good for the world of FB to mock the sincerely held beliefs of others (so long as they are Christian, that is), but I've about had it with the crap being tossed at the End of World folk. I'm sure this lousy globe will be here long past the wknd, but since they're 'warning' me to do nothing worse than live a good life, I see no cause to be a dick.

Macha's got to go!

Nine bleeping losses in a row. Macha has to go. Not because he's the worst manager ever, or because replacing him will magically save the season. He should go because in baseball fans *believe* it will make a difference, and the fans pay the bills. This is even more true here in Milwaukee, where the dramatic Rogers/Kuehn switch took us all the way to Game Seven. So - who's the eventual replacement?

3 movies I saw in '09

So. It's a Zac Efron movie. Co-starring Matthew Perry. About a dysfunctional adult who wakes up to find himself 17 (again), a younger version of himself adrift to deal with the chaos of all the choices he's made over the years. Same sorta/kinda premise as Big. Freaky Friday. That movie with the kid from Wonder Years. You know the drill.

Except this one is really, surprisingly good.

It's funny for one thing. I don't mean a chuckle here and there, or a half-hearted smile, or even worse yet the pee-your pants laughter you'll sometimes get watching a raunchy comedy. No, this one actually makes you laugh because it has a script and acting that *work*.

Efron (whodathunkit?) plays the role of the bitter-man-in-teen-body with aplomb, and sometimes I got the impression he really was a crochety middle aged man. Perry's part is much smaller and not as impactful, but he still does well. And the love story that provides the emotional turmoil/chance for redemption throught the movie? Well done, sweet, and honest.

Did I mention this was a good movie? Go out and rent it already. I *really* liked it.

* * *



Sad to say, my memory refuses to remind me of whether or not I've already reviewed Hamlet 2. I don't remember much of the plot details, as I saw this two years ago, but I know a whackadoodle teacher writes and produces a sequel to Hamlet for his drama class to perform.

It was funny, and I remember liking it, but obviously it didn't impact me enough to retain anything past the gist of the story. Still, worth a rental.

* * *



Unrest is a horror film about a med student whose cadaver refuses to accept its death, leading to our heroine to believe she's a) going crazy or b) needs to investigate the cause of the death in order for the soul to be at rest.

It's not as cheesy or predictable as it sounds, and it does use genuine human fears (of death, of cadavers, etc) to ratchet up the viewer's paranoia and fear.

I liked it, even if I was grossed out at times, and I'd rate it a decent way to spend 90 minutes - if you enjoy devoting them to B movies. Which I do, so there.

~ Dan

Vahalla Rising

I just watched Vahalla Rising. It's an art film about a one-eyed Norseman who is bound for the Crusades, but somehow lands in Canada, a land his group mistakes for hell. (Understandable). It has rave reviews & is considered a masterpiece by some, but I thought it pretentious, violent & pretty damn boring, all things considered.

AI

Normally my interest in AI wanes near the end of the season, as I prefer the pre-top 12 stuff to all this rigamarole. BUT tonight's show- WOW. It was a dang cage match between Lauren and Scotty. [Haley is very attractive, but lacks maturity and discipline in her voice. She didn't factor into it for me]. I give the edge to Scotty Agree/disagree?

why are flags on the south side @ half mast? I know of no death or anniversary worth the honor.

The City of Death

Last night I watched the Doctor Who ep "The City of Death" w/ Tom Baker. Excellent script by Douglas Adams (credited to a pseudonym), full of humor and wit, and a grand villian played by the marvelous Julian Glover. It was a hoot.

God's Batallions by Rodney Stark

God's Battalions by Rodney Stark is, as its subtitle states, a justification of the Crusades. Maybe that's a poor word choice; I don't think Stark advocates war as a hobby, nor would he encourage you to march off with a cross to free Jerusalem in 2011. Rather, his thesis is that by the standards of the time, the Crusades were not only acceptable but necessary and that, a century of Political Correctness be damned, they actually did some good.

If you listen to the self-loathing spiel of the modern historian, the Crusades were the first wave of European colonialism. They were military expeditions launched for the love of plunder and a desire to force Christianity down the throat of the unwilling.

As Stark - no strong personal proponent of Christianity, by the way - details, that isn't the case. The Crusades were launched to check the rapid and violent expansion of Islam. North Africa, once home to Saints and a cornerstone of Christianity, had fallen under the sword. Apologists who write of merciful Muslim rule ignore evidence that Jews and Christians were treated with contempt. No public preaching or acknowledgement of their beliefs were allowed. Persecution was rampant, churches were leveled, and no further construction was permitted. In 1032-1033 there were over six thousand Jews murdered in Morocco, one of many mass killings recorded at the time. The future of Europe and Christianity was in doubt.

That isn't to say Christian nations of the time were gentle and compassionate. This is 1000 years ago, and the it is folly to impose the morals and standards of one era to another. Stark merely points out that there was much to fear from Islam at the time, and more than enough justification for war.

Some points really spoke to me. The first, that the so-called Dark Ages are a fabrication of later historians who force their own view of the world upon an entire era. It isn't an age we'd care to move to, but nor is it as bleak as we are led to believe.

Second, it argues against the notion that the Crusades sowed the seeds of a long standing grievance between the West and Islam. This seems to be a modern invention of convenience, as for much of the last millennia the Crusades were seen as either a Muslim victory, a localized war against the Turks, or both.

Finally, and most powerfully, the refutation of the oft-referenced idea that Muslim expansion touched off a wave of learning and discovery that resonates to the present. I read of this in nearly every general history book from elementary to high school. Not so. Much of this heralded information came not from Muslim intellectuals, but from Christian and Jewish scholars forcibly converted to Islam, and from the plundered intellectual wealth of libraries and monasteries that fell at their hands. 'Arabic' numerals are in fact Hindu, and many medical 'breakthroughs' were the product of Nesorian Christians.

A brave, intelligent work of socio-religious history. Highly recommended.


~ read in 2009

Smiley Finds a Slug in the Backyard