Dog Bite

Just got bit by a dog at a friend's house. One second it's happy & wagging its tail, the next it's taking a chunk out of my leg. Any dog'll turn - bet on it. It's not horrific, or I'd have better things to do right now than update social media, but he took a nice little morsel of Stud Steak from my upper leg. Lisa says it needs stiches, but "since you're not a a girl, or pretty, I guess you can just let it mend on its own"

Update: it's fine folks. Ugly and swollen and sore to the touch, but I repeat: a weight induced heart attack or stroke will be my undoing, not the bite of some mutt.

Fireflies in the Daylight

My Owie

[REC]2

There was a point in the film [REC]2 when I paused the DVD and literally said "Wow!". With a single short scene this foreign language sequel stepped outside the tired limits of the genre and created something new, a glorious mix of horror staples turned on their head. (and it was scary too). Well done. Well bleepin' done. I am sooooo happy right now; I love a well done story.

Very Bad Men by Harry Dolan

finished reading 'Very Bad Men' by Harry Dolan, a well written and moody mystery set in Michigan. Worth a read.

Behind the Burly Q

Last night Lisa & watched "Behind the Burly Q" a documentary about the rise and fall of Burlesque. While the subject matter is mildly adult, it's a fun and nostalgic 90 minutes, and features interviews w/ Alan Alda (son of a Burlesque dancer and singer) and the daughter of Burlesque comedian Lou Costello (of Abbot and Costello). Fun to watch, but melancholy, as many of the interview subjects have since passed away.

At the playground

@ the fernwood playset w/ lisa, smiley and junie

btw overprotective parents/grandparents SUCK @ a playset. The kid should b able to handle a playset w/out u issuing 500 caveats. If they are dumb enough to die on a plastic slide, then neither God nor Darwin wants 'em around anyhow.

A Certain Point

You know you've reached a certain age and weight when you complain about pain in your arm & your wife asks if u have chest pain too. U know you've reached a certain point in ur marriage when she asks it & sounds hopeful.

My Afternoon

@ the art museum w/ Junie. that went better than expected. Now @ uwm union waiting on the rest of the kids

Vanishing on 7th Street

Saw "Vanishing on 7th Street'. Bad acting, bad everything. I wish this had vanished from my queue.

The Fighter

You know how I've said the Best Picture Oscar should have gone to "Social Network" instead of the overrated "King's Speech"? I take it back. KS still didn't deserve the nod, but "The Fighter" did.  We streamed it last night on Netflix and it was wonderful.

The Viewmaster

in the van, waiting on Lu's return from a scout trip. Junie is in the front seat w/ me, using a Viewmaster I had as a kid to "take picshures" of a doggy in a nearby window. 

April 1st thru the 11th

April 1st

B4 school we sat the kids down & told them plans for Lu to get her own room were scrapped because, vasectomy doc be damned, we found out we were going to have another baby. It was an April Fool's joke and they totally bought it. Still, their reactions were a surprise. YaYa was happy (!?), LuLu was upset, and the two little ones didn't know how to react but seemed pleased. It's a shame it was just a joke.




April 2nd

I just finished reading Felix Gilman's "The Half-Made World". It is a beautiful, lyrical novel that will never get its due because its part of the 'steampunk' genre. But know this: rarely did three pages go by before I was again awed by his ability to capture a moment or a thought with the perfect, economical use of words. Easily the best written book I've read this year.

Lisa, to a Lump dressed in a velvet skirt, mismatched oversized boots she borrowed from her siblings, no shirt, and a large multi-colored bow tie she swiped from a clown costume: "Lump, LuLu's friend is almost here to pick her up. Go upstairs and stay out of sight until they're gone. We need to hide your . . . odd ways."

Lump has dark, beautiful long eye lashes. You're welcome kid.




April 3rd my friend Erv's 37th bday

Maupassant used to advise, “Get black on white.”

James Thurber: “Don't get it right, just get it written."

Lisa bought the two oldest tiny cross stitch kits to entertain them while introducing them to the craft. Sadly, they worked on it for a day before misplacing bits of it.





April 4th

Gotta love the honesty from CBS during halftime of the NCAA Championship game: Worst half of championship basketball ever. Awful. Sad. A competition to see who can play worse. A horrible showcase for the NCAA, etc.

Not the greatest start to the MLB season, finishing today with a record of only 3 -1. Ah well, we'll do better. I speak of course, of my beloved Yankees. My hometown Brewers, OTOH, stand at 0-4. I do count myself as a Brewers fan, but 37 years of dissapointment has tempered my confidence. I'm not a Cubs fan - every half century or so I'd like to see a championship.

Arod, Greatest of the Great, sits at .357 with 2 doubles, 2 homers, 3 walks, and 4 RBI's in four games. I bow to thee!

Oooo! There might be a revival of the late great Goldman's store here in town

April 5th - my Mom's 64th birthday/voting day

00:12: Ok, bedtime folks. If you're in WI, please go out and vote tomorrow (unless you plan to vote for someone other than Stone and Prosser, in which case take a siesta from voting and relax at home with a beer. Go ahead, I won't mind - and future Milwaukee County residents will thank you!)


If you want my predictions for the local election: I think Prosser takes the W, Abele grabs the County Exec, and the Bay View hating Terry Falk keeps his school board seat.



[I was right on all counts, but what a rocky road it would be to get there]

Here are some nature shots I took on the walk home from the polling place





From Lisa: I love you hunny....


April 6th

"We've done really well with teenage death songs"
- Eddie Vedder, on "Lost Dogs" liner notes for 'Last Kiss'



April 7th

Justice David Prosser picked up more than 7,000 votes and took the lead in the Supreme Court case after a reporting flub in Waukesha County. Yowsas - great news, but cue the conspiracy stories.

“Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little.” - Edmund Burke

"I like my beasts fast and my bass down low, put it on my headstone yo!" - Lisa

We just finished watching Christina Aguliera in "Burlesque". I'm not sure why the reviews I read last year were bad. Sure, the plot was predictable, but what, you rented it expecting The French Connection? The music was good, the women were hot, and the romance was sweet. I liked it.

April 8th

Manny Ramirez has chosen to retire from baseball rather than face a ban for testing postive for banned substances. Wow.

off of work and straight to doc w/ Lump for an earache/drainage

[this was a bad infection. She'd complained her 'tooth' hurt for days, and we were waiting for her dentist to return from vacation to schedule an appt, but once her ear drained the way it did - ickily, it ran down her cheek - it was obvious her ear and not her tooth was the problem. She took antibiotics for ten days and on a follow up had a clean bill of health]

April 9th

"Unless you're ashamed of yourself now and then, you're not honest." - William Faulkner

You needed to contain a story like a disease, before it spread. - Edward Conlon

Superstition brings bad luck. —Raymond Smullyan


April 10th

"When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras"

A beautiful warm day, a fresh column off to the paper, a short day of work ahead of me, and then a day off w/out any (known) obligations Monday. Sounds good to me.


April 11th

"The Winklevosses are not the first parties bested by a competitor who then seek to gain through litigation what they were unable to achieve in the marketplace," Chief Judge Alex Kozinski. "At some point, litigation must come to an end. That point has now been reached." - judge rules Facebook settlement stands

Quote

"A few decades ago nobody believed in the confession of sins except the Church. Today everyone believes in confession with this difference: some believe in confessing their own sins; others believe in confessing OTHER people's sins." Archbishop Fulton Sheen

The Life of Reilly

Lisa & I watched "The Life of Reilly", a filmed performance of the one man play by the late Charles Nelson Reilly. We both thought it was informative, moving, inspirational and of course, LOL funny. In honor of the film and the man, I'm temporarily restoring my CNR profile pic.

Junie B!

Update

The CEO of Discovery World sent me an email inviting me to spend a 1/2  hr with him at the museum, discussing various programs to benefit low income families. In the email he mentions he's prepared a letter to the JS editor to refute *another* letter to the editor about my column. I think it's that letter, which propped up Betty Brinn at DW's expense, that has got him worried about PR. Nice of him tho', either way.

Lu's new 'do

FB: April 11th - 14th

April 11th

Tonight LuLu and I hit the road for our 1st ever bike trip together. We went to Howard Ave & back (about 2 miles), w/ a few added detours through the park, around the block etc. Tip: if you need to clean rust off your bike, take a ball of wet aluminum foil to it. Not only will it remove the rust, it doesn't scratch the paint.







April 12th

I took Lisa & Lump to El Beso, the new Mex restaurant in Greenfield (site of the old Champs). The prices were on the high end of avg & there were few items (and little change in price) on the lunch menu. Service was great, food was average, but they had a grease trap truck parked outside the entrance, greeting you w/ sewer odor as you entered and exited. Stick to El Fuego.

A) My left knee is killing me. Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to sit on my a** for four months then abruptly bike 2+ miles B) I'ts the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War. RIP Union soldiers. C) I'm in the paper today. Pick up a copy


April 13th

Erin Gray circa 1979 = Yum

The virulent (e)mails generated by my voter ID column [in the paper] don't bother me, but the fact that they CONTINUE to come in (3 today alone) is surprising. And I do mean angry, sometimes vulgar emails, not legit disagreements. One of the letters is as long as the original column. Geesh.

* * * *

This is the editorial the Sentinel printed the day after the Civil War began.

The vociferous cry of "The Union, the Constitution and Enforcement of the Laws" kept up in 1860 by those who opposed the election of Mr. Lincoln, has since been changed by those who then used it, for that of "No Coercion," which, being interpreted according to the rules of common sense, means "No Union, no Constitution, no Enforcement of the Laws."

In 1860, the prime object of the cry was the prompt capture and return of fugitive slaves; but in 1861, it is taken up by the very men against whom it was directed as a lying insinuation less than a year ago and there is both reason and force in their use of it; for since then, many of the very men who made such loud professions of their fidelity to the Union, the Constitution and the Laws, have broken up the Union, trampled the Constitution under their feet, and are this day arrayed in open defiance of the laws. If a Negro was rescued by men whose natural sympathies revolted against the execution of a statute which required the poor trembling wretch to be carried back to bondage and the lash, these men who are now steeped to the lips in treason, together with their Northern sympathizers and allies, held up their hands in holy horror at such a terrible infraction of law, and such treason to the Union.

Now, however, when every conceivable form of hostility to the government and the laws are openly and boldly practiced - courts abolished, custom houses seized, forts, arsenals and navy yards taken possession of and turned against the government; when treason of the boldest and rankest kind has banished all law from a large portion of the country, we must bear it all meekly - there must be no coercion - it will never do to talk about enforcing the laws - it would offend our "Southern brethren" - it may drive Virginia out of the Union - it may lead to bloodshed!

We have had too much of that kind of talk; and it was high time that a determined stand were taken by every man, who is not a traitor at heart, to stand up for the Union, the Constitution and the enforcement of the Laws, and we rejoice to believe that we have a man at the head of the nation who will be faithful to the great duties imposed upon him.

* * * *
I watched the Eastwood/Damon film "Hereafter" tonight. I don't know quite what to make of it. I guess it was like a lazy river ride at a theme park. It was nice, and well done, and you don't regret paying your admission, but it takes damn near forever and it does nothing to speed up your pulse.

My column from Tues. generated a fair share of hate mail. I was called mindless, a cracker, racist, a hater of "colored folk", and told I should leave Wisconsin. Apparently the far left interprets any mention of criminal behavior to = African American, which says a hell of a lot more about them than it does me.



April 14th

Yikes, these nightmares are getting out of hand. Some of it was the typical "makes no sense in the light of day" variety, but part of the 'plot' was my hunt for a killer who then got the jump on me. In order for him to spare my family I had to cut off the fingers on my right hand with a pen knife. I woke up with my hand hurting, which was either the cause or effect of the dream. I am, apparently, going nuts.

Dominance by Will Lavender

I read "Dominance" by Will Lavender. 17 yrs ago a lit student cleared a man of murder by revealing the identity of an anonymous, world famous writer. Now it seems she may have been wrong; the killings have begun again, only this time her friends are the target. It was ok, but I guessed the killer & in the end it was just a pedestrian, James Pattererson-ish book. My streak of great reads has come to an end.

Betty Ford

RIP Betty Ford, age 93, a woman of courage and triumph over addiction. 

Two Great Books - one of which may crack my "all-time faves" list

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention reading "The Ridge", a great new horror novel by Michael Kortya. 

I also read "The Sisters Brothers" a wonderful new Western that might rank as one of my top 10 or 20 books fave bks ever; a stunning, lyrical novel. Kudos to both authors for transcending the boundaries of the genre, publishing in hardcover and getting mainstream press attention. This one . . . wow. 

The Art Musuem

@ art museum w/ YaYa and LuLu

YaYa Art

The Last Space Shuttle Flight

The whole family just watched the final space shuttle launch. I do not mourn the loss of a program that stagnated our potential for 30yrs. I do mourn the loss of manned flight & the increasing decline of NASA. RIP human potential.