The Wrong Use of the Force

Watch your hands mister!

A Saying of Mine

What other people think of you is none of your business. If God wanted you to hear what was said behind your back, he'd have put ears on your ass.

A New Years Card :)

Elysium

Just finished watching "Elysium" VERY good flick, and well worth the rental.

A Crime to Remember

Greatly enjoying the ID network's "A Crime to Remember", a well done and insightful series that follows crimes of the distant past. Within one of its darkest tales, the gruesome "Career Girls Murders" of 1963, a reminder that even the worst aspects of human life carry within it some purpose: the mistakes made during the investigation of that crime led NY to abolish the death penalty and the US Supreme Court to deliver its "Miranda Rights" decision.

A Follow-up to the (missing?) follow-up

Not sure what happened to it, but I don't see my follow-up on LuLu anymore. It was a sprained ankle and foot. She was fitted with a walking boot and crutches, but they saw no broken bones on the X-ray. :)

Exam Grades

Remember when I said my contract law final was one of, if not *the*, hardest exam of my academic life? Did you think I was exaggerating, or being unduly modest regarding my performance? Think again. The professor emailed the class the results, which account for 100% of your final grade in the course. Of the 80 questions on the exam, the best score (not mine) was 52 correct, or 65%; the worst was 23 correct, or 28.75%. I notched a 36, or 45%, and thanks to the curve created by this collective ass whupping I received a B on both the exam and the class. This, well, . . . . wow. Lisa dismissed the results of the class as evidence it was designed to scare and weed out the weak links of the incoming class, but either way . . . zoinks!

A Broken Foot??

We went sledding today at Pulaski Park and  LuLu may have broken her foot there while snowboarding. Lisa's at the hospital with her right now. I swear, these kids will do anything for attention ;)

Gordon Hinkley

A big RIP to Milwaukee broadcasting legend Gordon Hinkley, who passed away this week at age 88.

Mike Hegan

RIP former Brewer and announcer, Mike Hegan, who also had lent name on a batting cage facility here in Milwaukee. 

Found It!

A Christmas miracle! Out of the blue I found LuLu's long lost Junior vest - missing half a year - folded up neat as can be right where we've looked a dozen times. Lisa credits the big J.C. with the victory on this one, but I object: if he wanted it found, he'd have led us to it months ago. All credit for this one, IMHO, to one Dan Slapinions, aka Tammy Faye Sugarbaker, aka Wonderman, aka Boone Doggie.

Adorable

 Lulu pullin Isaiah around on the sled.. Lol

Playing in the Snow at Ravina

 

Our Snowman

LuLu won!

LuLu is THRILLED with a Monkey-go-Happy she won in a worldwide contest on pencilkids.com! It came all the way from New Zealand! To win it she had to correctly id the foreign city shown in a video, which i identified as Cracow in the first ever use of my eastern European history degree! Lol good for her!

The 2013 Holiday Program

Departing for the 2013 school Holiday program 12-17; I missed it due to a final exam.

Anchorman 2

Home again, after seeing "Anchorman 2" with Lisa, courtesy of $5 Tuesday's at your local Marcus Theatres - with popcorn included in the price. LOL'd a ton, picked up a few new catchphrases, and followed it up by going out for decrepit, moderately burnt coffee at the airport Denny's. 

We finished the date with a flourish:, by stopping at the grocery store for kielbasa that YaYa told us  she needed *at 9 PM*  for a cultural fair at school tomorrow. LOL

Contract Law Final

I'm back from my Contract Law final, and officially done with my first semester of law school. The test itself was a b--ch, right up there with the toughest of exams I've ever taken (for a course where ambiguity is bad and vagueness is a killer, there sure were a lot of vague and ambiguous questions). I still finished after two of the allotted three hours, and I'm reasonably certain I didn't fail. I've taken the night off from work and - if I can get Lisa to agree - strongly desire to party all night, Old School style.

update: He did not, in fact, party all night. Old School. Or New School. 

A Little Light Reading

My contract law flash cards

Joan Fontaine

Some news this morning that made me literally gasp with shock, which makes no sense, as the woman was 96 years old: the GORGEOUS and talented Joan Fontaine has passed away. Since the late 80's, when I was a devoted watcher of the AMC (back when it was an actual classic *movie* station), I have been a fan of her work, and, to be honest, her hotness. Along with Brittany Murphy, she is now enshrined forever in the Dan Slapczynski Eternal List of Five. RIP

 @ Landmark Family Restaurant 

As Seen at Marquette's Bookstore - Ron Burgundy

RIP Quasi

Quasi, our deformed pleco, died overnight. He's been sick for over a week. Not 'ich' sick, but "lets move from the old folks home to the hospice" sick. RIP sir, and may you swim straight forever in whatever pseudo-heaven your soulless self has gone to in the sky.

Peter O'Toole

Actor Peter O'Toole has died at age 81. RIP

Audrey Totter

Audrey Totter, a Hollywood femme fatale I just watched in "The Set-Up" last week,has passed away at age 95. RIP beautiful.

Congrats!

Congratulations to Jolenne K on graduating from college today!

China has landed an unmanned probe on the moon. I . . . am not pleased.

Hot Dog!

To my great shock, it appears that I learned something in Criminal Law and the final went well!  I think that, barring the professor being on the take, I aced 32 of the 45 problems, bombed one, and listed 12 under "maybe" - but I'd go to Potawatomi on the odds of those "maybe's" being largely "correct" answers. This portion of the exam is only 1/3rd of the Final - the other 2/3rd's coming from two 2000 word take home essays I had to hand in to receive today's exam - so the possibility still exists that I stunk it up. But if I did, I stunk it up less than I feared four hours ago.

Quote of the Day

“The better we become, the less conscious we are of our goodness. If anyone admits to being a saint, he is close to being a devil. Jean Jacques Rousseau believed that of all men, he was the most perfect, but he had so many cracks in his soul that he abandoned his children after their birth. The more saintly we become, the less conscious we are of being holy. A child is cute so long as he does not know that he is cute. As soon as he thinks he is, he turns into a brat. True goodness is unconscious.” Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

Yowsers

Smiley may never box, and God willing he avoids street fights, but let me tell you *that boy can PUNCH!* I was working on the bag when he put on his gloves. He stepped in and barraged it with some combinations, then ripped into it with hooks that would rattle any ribcage. Mein Gott, he's got some power for his age.

Nelson Mandela

RIP Nelson Mandela, a giant of our time :(

BREAKING NEWS: The Brewers have traded Nori Aoki to the Royals for 24 year old lefty Will Smith. Aoki was the lone Brewer on my fantasy team, and a good one at that. I'll miss ya!

Christmas Card Time!

Addresses, addresses, I need your addresses! Please...my new phone has no addresses saved from the old one. If you normally get a team slap xmas card, then please private message me your address. If you don't normally, and would like to start receiving the coveted "most awesome family ever" xmas card, then PM your address as well!!! Basically, you don't send your address, you could be crying over the loss later :) Lisa 

A Night of Boxing

Just watched Sergey Kovalev KO Ishmayal Sillakh 52 seconds into the second round . . . wow, that was impressive. Kovalev packs a thunderous punch for a light heavyweight.

update: I just finished watching the main event, the Adonis Stevenson/Tony Bellew fight. Stevenson has freaky power, it's true; but to my eyes (and I'm just a fan, not an expert) he seems very one dimensional in the ring. If he matches up against Kovalev - and from Stevenson's comments, Adonis is ducking that fight - I'd bet on Kovalev.

My Thoughts

RE: the (mild) hue and cry that we should remember the driver of the car too, not just Paul Walker, when talking about the fatal crash:  if you want to be remembered when you die, *DO SOMETHING WORTH REMEMBERING*. If I die the same day a pop star dies, good luck finding my obit. I'm cool with that, in large part because I hope to one day be the somebody that overshadows Joe Blow's passing.

Pitch Perfect

Watching Pitch Perfect with the family and some company. Anna Kendrick is simply LuLu transported to the future and assigned a different name. They look like clones for Pete's sake.

Paul Walker

I didn't know Paul Walker as an actor, haven't seen any Fast & the Furious movies, and don't remember him in Pleasantville. Still, a human is a human, so RIP.

We Blew It (but innocently)

YaYa is upset we put up the tree in her absence. She was there when we bought it but headed out to Grandma's before the decorating. But as I told her, Mom did 96% of it, as she always does, because she likes her tree just so; all the rugrats did was hand her some ornaments and hang a couple at the end. They were also stuck going to Mass, cleaning the yard, and putting away laundry; think she'd still want to trade places with them? :)

Black Friday 2013

Longest line of the day? Joann Fabrics, of all places, where the line not only snaked around a roped off queue but continued down about 40% of the store's considerable length. Second place? Easily Kmart, where the line was awe-inspiring but rather quick. No line of note at Dollar Tree.

Alas, the one item I needed to buy on Black Friday I failed to procure, and off-sale I may not be able to pull it off this Christmas. Won't be the first time I've had to improvise, but . . . sigh. I did get a few deals on smaller items last night, and *fingers crossed* my co-workers hopefully scored on two items for me earlier this morning. So far today we've cleaned and rearranged the living room and we're gearing up to go buy a Christmas tree, with some talk we may cut one down ourselves. 

Happy Black Friday everyone.

Jane Kean

RIP 90 year old Jane Kean, aka "Trixie"  from the Honeymooners :(

Wow

A video for the song "The Way" by Ariana Grande just came on the TV. I swear to Gawd, for weeks I've heard this on the radio and thought it was a surprisingly good Mariah Carey tune. That girl has some pipes!

Frustration

"Tolzein would have been on his back or throwing INT's [today], we saw 3 losses with him, I don't need to see anymore" You're an idiot, sir. This is a poorly constructed, shoddily coached Packers team, currently led by a QB [Flynn] that is a favorite of the coach despite being laughed off the roster of many a better team. Where are all the Matt Flynn/Ted Thompson fanboys now?

Chicken Soup

Best Dang Chicken Soup we've found at the grocer

The Day of the Doctor

small SPOILERS: It was my great honor to re-watch "The Day of the Doctor" today, this time with all four kids. Not only did they watch with rapt attention, they asked to watch a Doctor Who special afterwards, even when I gave them free reign of the remote. They also displayed copious amounts of Whovian knowledge - OJ spotted the re-numbering of the Doctors, and called out the apparent conflict with the canonical # of Time Lord regenerations; YaYa spotted the fourth Doctor and asked for a copy of his scarf, and Junie, God Bless her, asked: "How can it [the TARDIS] be biggah on the inside?" :)

Doctor Who - The 50th Anniversary

Following exactly one day after JFK’s assassination, another event that loomed large in my childhood took place: Doctor Who, a low budget children’s sci-fi show, premiered on the BBC.

As with Kennedy, I didn’t become aware of the phenomenon until the 1980’s. By that time, if I can get my own memories in sync with the chronology, they were already on the Fifth incarnation of the Doctor (Peter Davison) and it had become a worldwide cult favorite.

I don’t remember where I saw my first Who, or when, but I remember gobbling up the slim Target novelizations of each episode and imagining what the companions looked like, so it was at best a fleeting glimpse of the show itself.

Later, a PBS station here in Milwaukee began playing Doctor Who in chronological order every night at 10pm, one half hour episode at a time. I’d often pull up a chair in my Grandma’s kitchen and watch it with her – oh! The sacrifices she made for me! I enjoyed Hartnell, was not as in love with Troughton as most people seem to be, adored Pertwee (still my favorite Doctor) and was fond but not overjoyed with Tom Baker, etc.

Did I mention I fell immediately in love with Sarah Jane Smith, and still feel a pitter-patter at the mere mention of her name?

Around the time the PBS station caught up with the Davison era I stumbled upon a Madison affiliate that was broadcasting the very first episode of the 7^th Doctor! It was probably a year old by then, but no matter; to me I was blown away at the “awesome” special effects, which seemed sooooo much more advanced than the rubber suit monsters I’d been watching every night!

I joined a national Who fan club and subscribed to their newspaper, once writing in and objecting to their casting the BBC of the “enemy”, and getting a personal response in turn. I had a Doctor Who mug, and a Tardis key on my key ring. My Mom crocheted me a reasonable facsimile of Tom Baker’s scarf that I still use. For my 15^th birthday my Grandma bought me a retrospective of the show’s first quarter century. I frequented the Turning Page, a niche bookstore on the East Side that specialized in Who, and my Dad let me drive all the way there when he was teaching me to drive.

I LOVED that show.

And then it was cancelled, packed off forever into the land of reruns. Our PBS station refused to pay for the rights to the show and it was dropped from their schedule. The Turning Page closed. A Fox TV movie introduced us to the 8^th Doctor but did nothing to revive the series.

Life went on.

I was happy to hear the show was returning in 2005 but was no fan of the overwrought, cynical acting of Christopher Eccleston, and let’s not get into how awful John Barrowman is as an actor. I barely paid attention to the series.

And then came Tenant . . .

He brought the show back to life for me. The charm, the wit, the excitement and the humor, it was all there again, in spades. He never quite trumped Pertwee for me but man, it’s close.

(Mat Smith ain’t too bad either)

Now the show is more popular than ever, a true global phenomenon. I wish more people realized that the pre-revival Who was darn good stuff worth watching, but I’m not going to argue with success. Today marks the 50^th anniversary of the show, and what a milestone that is! 50 years is a heck of a stretch for a business, a marriage, or even a building to acknowledge; but a TV show???

Wow.

Congratulations to everyone connected with Doctor Who over the last fifty years. I tip my hat to all of you, and wish you fifty more to come!

What an Odd Refusal!

I offered to take in my JFK memorabilia to Lu's class - original newspapers, contemporary magazines, LP's, photographs, books, a plaster bust, etc - to tie in with today's anniversary, but my offer was rejected by her social studies teacher.

"Maybe next year," he wrote.

Yes, yes. Because the *51st* anniversary is the perfect time to use media attention to generate interest in a historical event.

JFK - 50 years later

50 years ago today John F. Kennedy was gunned down in Dallas, an event no Baby Boomer will ever forget.

My own connection to the event began twenty years later, in 1983. I was nine years old that year and had just started the fourth grade when my Grandfather, a man I loved and idolized, passed away. To say that his death put me in a tailspin is almost an understatement, but sometime in the weeks that followed my Mom gave me a book on JFK. It was just a thin children’s book, full of more myth than fact – I particularly remember one scene where Jack fell in love with Jackie when he first saw her over a dinner table – but it hooked me.

I began to read everything I could about JFK. In retrospect it’s easy to see I was simply substituting one fallen hero (my Grandpa) for another (JFK), but in those dark months it was just about the only joy I remember. Somewhere around that time, and I don’t remember if it was with my knowledge or not – my Mom mailed out two letters about my newfound passion. Just before Christmas, two packages arrived in response.

The first, from Senator Edward Kennedy, included a short mimeographed note of thanks and contained information about both JFK and RFK, as well as two 8x10 black and white photographs, one of Jack, the other of Jackie and his children.

The second package was incredible. It came from the Kennedy Library, and included the following handwritten note from William Johnson, the Chief Archivist.

Inside was more information on JFK and his library, and some items I’ve now forgotten. Here’s one I never have: an original copy of Life Magazine dated November 29, 1963 that chronicled the horrific events of Dallas and its aftermath.

 Remember, this was on the cusp of the 20^th anniversary of his death. There were books and magazines and television specials galore, and I collected whatever I could. I accumulated a scrapbook of articles from the Milwaukee Journal’s Green Sheet, a few record albums of his speeches, a plaster bust of JFK, book upon book – you name it.

So on the actual anniversary of his assassination (in 1983 it was a Tuesday, if I’m not mistaken) I took this little collection into my school for show and tell, passing it among my classmates. I’d like to say someone was inspired, or even that it was met with boos – either one makes a great story – but I don’t remember, so odds are it was met with quiet tolerance.

Over the years my adoration of JFK waned. The reality didn't quite match up with the legend, and that’s a hard pill to swallow when it was the legend you fell in love with. My politics changed too, and suddenly a New Frontier that mocked Eisenhower’s admirable time in office held much less appeal.

The pendulum has begun to swing full circle, tho’ it will never reach the zeal I had as a child. JFK and I would disagree politically, but not as much as I once thought; his reputation was pushed to the Left by nostalgia and the far more liberal records of his brothers. He was a fiscal conservative and a cautious Hawk, two qualities I find appealing in a candidate. And even if he was as liberal as some people work hard to believe, it would carry a lesson all its own: that you can disagree with someone’s politics while still admiring them as a human being.

Even 50 years on, JFK’s memory continues to inspire this nation.  Rest in Peace sir; you earned it. 

The Jingle Bus

This evening, while YaYa was at dance, Lisa took the three youngest to Turkey Bingo at their school, then headed down to the Holiday Lights Festival at Pere Marquette Park. There they saw fireworks, sang carols, saw the Mayor speak, and watched Santa turn on all the holiday lights! 

After class I met them there and we all took the Jingle Bus (a charter) around downtown Milwaukee, seeing the sights and the lights (rhyme unintentional).

On the bus they asked for kid volunteer's to sing carols, and Junie was the first to sing a solo, followed quickly by Smiley, and much later, a shy LuLu took the microphone. All three sang "Jingle Bells". 

Other than my fear that our van would be towed from where I sorta/kinda parked it illegally, it was a very nice, very sweet family night. Well done Mom!

Lulu's new bike

I purchased this for $20 at a rummage sale this summer and surprised her with it :)

Sylvia Browne

RIP purported psychic Sylvia Browne, age 77