April 14 No "Life On Mars"

One day last summer, my Uncle Fred e-mailed this picture of Michael Imperioli. It was taken in the alley on his block in Queens, NY. The show's producer was going door to door looking for a house to shoot some scenes for an episode of a new show called "Life On Mars". They ended up using a house across the street from my Aunt & Uncle's place. The city cleaned up the surrounding streets and placed 'No Parking' signs for several blocks. The show shot the scenes over a couple of days and the cast was very accommodating to the local residents. When the show began in October, I started watching to see the episode shot in my Aunt's neighborhood. After that, I watched it because it was a good show. It's an American remake of a British show. (Apparently Americans are too stuck on reality shows to actually create a new show) The concept of Life On Mars was a cop in 2008 gets hit by a car and time travels back to 1973. The show detailed how different life in 1973 was compared to today. The music was also a highlight for me. Of course the show didn't do well in the ratings and was canceled. The networks wonder why no one watches their shows and yet they constantly cancel shows before anyone can get into them. This is another example of short sightedness in all of America's mass media. If it isn't an instant success, forget it and move on to the next thing. No wonder kids today all have ADD. The whole country is affected, why write a letter just text a bunch of abbreviations, why call someone just e-mail them, why go to a movie I can watch it on my I-Pod. Where does this all end? My guess is that it doesn't have a happy ending. And if that's true, Hollywood will have to change the ending so the Moron Culture of America will watch the movie version on their fucking I-pods.

April 13 I Don't Like Mondays

"Tell me why"
"I don't like Mondays"
"I want to shoot the whole day down"
First of all, I want to say I did not shoot up a schoolyard today. I really should have titled today's blog "I don't like this Monday", but that's not as catchy. Why? You might be asking. Just look at the picture, for those familiar with the Chinatown ramp off the Dan Ryan Expressway, you already know why. The weather was miserable. All day long. For those that aren't familiar with that exit, on almost any other day of the year, you get a great shot of the entire downtown area of Chicago. Not just the faint outline of the Sears Tower. While sitting at the light, I realized something. I usually say that I enjoy winter in Chicago. I do mean it. I love the change of seasons we get here in the upper Midwest. The problem isn't winter. The problem is that spring sucks here. Sure we get a nice day here and there, but it seems to go from winter to summer more often than not. We don't have a spring season here. The trees start to bud, some real hearty flowers bloom, then it snows or worse it rains on a 35 degree day like today. It's tough to get going on a supposed spring Monday when you are soaking wet and shivering by 9am. Gotta go, "the silicon chip inside my head has switched to overload."

April 12 Easter Sunday

Easter Sunday can only mean one thing. It's time to listen and sing along to Jesus Christ Superstar. I've been listening to the JCS soundtrack since I was a little kid and know all the words. The honest truth is that all I ever learned about Jesus comes from the songs on that album. Over the years I may have expanded my knowledge of the son of God, but the basic story is compliments of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber. As I have learned, they pretty much got the story right and tell it with some rockin' tunes. If you've never seen or heard the play, I suggest you stay home from church next Sunday and check it out. For those that think I'm a total heathen, I did spend time with the Drescher family including an Easter Egg hunt. Then I stopped by my mother-in-law's for a second meal and some laughs with my favorite niece, Kristian. Lastly, this is for Bill Valentine, I did change the oil in my wife's car and changed the oil in the lawn mower while listening to Some Girls by the Rolling Stones.

April 11 Busy Beavers, Dumb Dogs & Loud Dinosaurs

Since my dogs let me sleep until 11am, I felt like I owed them a treat. So off we went to Sweet Woods for a walk through the woods. Along Thorn Creek we came across the handiwork of some busy beavers. There were at least 20 trees that were freshly taken down by the hardly ever seen by me beavers. The wood chips were everywhere, but most of the trees were gone. Several were pretty big trees. I would love to watch the beavers at work. (Go ahead, insert your joke here. I'm already laughing at my last sentence.) It took about 5 tries to get my dogs to pose along the creek. That's why the get the dumb dogs reference today, but they were actually very good especially when we all sank about 10 inches in a muddy ravine on the way back to the car. Later in the day, my long time friend, Mike Crafton & I met Chrissy for dinner at Baja Fresh on our way to see Dinosaur Jr in Dekalb. I've been a big fan of Dino Jr for years but have never seen them live. Tonight they were playing in a small club called Otto's near Northern Illinois University. I happen to love J Mascis's vocals (most people hate his droning on singing style but I think it's perfect for the loud guitar music they play). On the CD's his vocals are out front of the guitars, seeing them live I was afraid the vocals would be lost in the mix. They were. And it was unbelievably loud. J Mascis stood in front of 6 Marshall amps stacked at least 8' high. They could have fill a concert hall ten times bigger than this club. I enjoyed the show more than Mike but I agreed with him that the volume caused too much distortion. It really was a shame because the sound is so clean on their CD's. That's all the time I have today. I have to start learning sign language because I may never hear clearly again.

April 10 Johnny Cakes

Instead of skating with the Sudden Death club tonight, I played hockey with the Twardy brothers who rented the ice for a pick up game with friends. Unfortunately I showed up 1-1/2 hours early because Matt Twardy told me 10:40pm not the correct time of 11:40pm. Luckily some of the Sudden Death guys were still at the rink. So I joined them in their locker room. Since they pay the rink for that room, they fixed it up and the rest of us who use the public locker rooms call it 'Manadu' or the 'Boyquarium'. Anyway, Rick Voss, (who has had several derogatory nicknames over the years and is now known as Johnny Cakes from a character in the Sopranos) was holding court in Manadu. Rick was telling stories about a recent ski trip to Utah with Walter. Rick is one of the funniest guys I know(see Feb 24th Post). Over the years we have worked together on & off, but always have called each other with stupid shit that would make each of us laugh. Those calls can really help when you're having a bad day on the job. So tonight, Rick got on a roll, just rapid firing stories about mutual friends for about 40 minutes. He had me laughing the whole time which made me forgot how pissed I was at Matt for telling me the wrong time. As you can see from the pictures Rick is the whitest motherfucker on Earth. When he changes into his hockey equipment we have to look away, it's like looking into the sun, you get blinded. One of his many nicknames is "Whiteness", a take off on the Chapelle Show's Rick James skit. That's one of the youger players, Mike, probably not believing half the stories he heard, but they are all true. You couldn't make up shit like that. I did have a good time playing hockey until 1:40am and then having breakfast at Round The Clock with Jimmy Drescher (see yesterday's post). But it was Rick's storytelling that I thought I'd write about today.

April 9 Our Dining Companion

Over the 25 years I've known my wife Chrissy, we've had many dinner companions. You know, the one person or couple that always says yes when invited out for dinner. When we first started dating, it was Jim Drescher. The three of us went out often and sometimes Jimmy would bring a date. Then Jim got married and had kids, moved to Bumfuck, IN and we hardly see him anymore. After we got married, my friend Nick would always seem to stop by our apartment at dinner time. He had a job going door to door selling cable TV and found a way to be at our house when the food was cooking. Nick moved on to a better job that wasn't in our neighborhood. Then Chrissy's best friend Karen started dating Jim Cloghessy and they became our dinner partners. Of course they got married, had kids, disappeared from the face of the Earth. Todd & Vicki were not only good for a last minute dinner date, they were also great training partners at the local gym. Alas, they too had kids and moved to Bumfuck, IL. During this time we had our most reliable dinner companions, the Delgados. They were perfect since their daughter Kathy, had moved to California. We could stop by their house at noon, have lunch, sit in the yard, order pizza for dinner and stay until 11pm watching a movie. They were always up for a night out at a local eatery. I guess it's true, all good things come to an end. They retired to SoCal. Luckily they live near my parents and are still good for a night out. That brings us to Chrissy's Great Uncle Mike and his wife Ann. They were always up for a dinner, maybe a little earlier in the night but so what. We had a blast with them. They might have been twice our age, but it didn't show at dinner. Well Mike passed away at the age of ninety last fall. So that leaves Ann. She has the attitude of someone 60 years younger than her. I love spending a few hours having dinner and great conversations about any topic weith her. She usually gets me laughing and sometimes the conversation gets going and I talk like I do which includes words some people find offensive. Ann never says a word about it, she just keeps on talking. I have a lot of the same values and ideas about the world as Ann does, so it's nice to know that getting older won't change my perspective on things. I just hope to be as full of life (and piss & vinegar) as she is when I'm in my eightys.

April 8 Nutting Up & Fitting Pipe

If you read the comments on this site, you know I've taken some crap about being a man. I try to be honest about what I do each day or the things I believe in. So now I will defend myself and prove a point. Believe it or not, this is a true story. I had a job today in a predominately black neighborhood. I had a diesel suction pump losing it's prime between sales due to a bad check valve. I had to take the pump off the island to repipe the suction line with a new check valve. The weather today was sunny and warmer than the past few days. So I rolled down my truck window and played music from my satellite radio while I worked on the piping. You could say I was a pipefitter today. I wasn't really paying attention to the customers getting gas until I heard someone yelling at me. I turned to ask him what he needed and he asked me if "that was the new Prince joint playing on my radio." I started laughing and said yes it was. And I swear to you Bill, he said "turn that motherfucker up!" I couldn't make this shit up Bill. God works in mysterious ways. If this isn't funny to you, read the comments Anonymous left on April 4th.