Saturday, The Feathers Are Gonna Fly!

In case you were unaware, Saturday, April 2nd is International Pillow Fight Day.

 
To find out if there's going to be a a pillow fight near you, you can can follow THIS LINK.

Or you* can just wail on your spouse when they aren't expecting it.

As long as you aren't married to the Michelle Rodriguez type.  B!TCH IS CRA-ZEE!

(Yes, I know I used this video on Saturday, but since no one reads on the weekends, I'm reusing it.)

* Editor's Note: I said "you" could do it.  I'm not pulling that SH!T on Cora.

SHE.
WILL.
KILL.
ME.

No Doubt – This Is Funny

Sometimes, when you can't decide between jokes, it's best to go with both of them.

  
Of course if you are unaware that the braided Jewish bread, "challah" is pronounced with a silent "c", then the joke isn't nearly as funny.

Back Alley Dealings

Chicago is a city of alleys.

Most every block has a back alley.

Garages are off the alley.

Unsightly power lines run down the alley.

Trash and recycling bins are in the alley.

And so are the scavengers.

Since moving in, Wednesday has been using my old desk chair as her desk chair. It was a nice chair that I got from Crate & Barrel (that's the pic of the floor sample I took back when I was chair hunting). Real wood. Real leather. Tilting.

But, one of the caster wheels was loose. These wheels were designed to screw in, but since it was loose, it worked around and totally stripped the threads and would just fall out. And the wood on the back was wrecking havoc on the window sill behind her desk.

And face it, it's not really a teenager's chair. When I bought it, I had really wanted a chair like the "old school" teacher's chair, but with a green leather seat held on with decorative tacks. (My vision was VERY specific.)

Eventually bought a new chair for my desk that was closer to my vision, and had sent the old one into semi-retirement. Until the girls moved in and my daughter needed a desk chair.

Anyway, the chair's stay up in the majors ended two weekends ago, when Cora and bought a new chair for Wednesday @ Target.

Now, we needed to dispose of the old one. So, Tuesday night around 10:00, shrouded in shadows and mist, I crept out the garage, making sure nobody saw me, and left the chair next to our neighbor's garbage cans in the alley. I dashed back in thru the open garage door, and hit the button. The big door closed, like a theatre curtain closing on the scene.

Wednesday morning around 8:00, as I went work, I looked down the alley, and the chair was gone already.

The scavengers do quick work.

Saturday's Short

It's all fun and games until you cross the line with Michelle Rodriguez and dis Cedric.

I think there might have been a zipper or something on the pillow cover under the pillow case.  Those will sting.

Wacky Packages… Where Have You Gone?

Apparently I should have written for "Wacky Packages" as a child…

 
And as I understand it, there is an actual "BR Express" but they do soft serve with toppings out of kiosks.  Once again, the font wars continues.  I really wanted to use the Baskin Robins font for everything, but I could only find it on line for $35 bucks, and face it, the joke isn't worth that.  So, I used a free Calvin and Hobbes one instead.  :-)

They Must Use "ENVY"

Every year for St. Patrick's Day, they dye the Chicago River green. It's a tradition. And a bit of a joke: "If they can dye the river green on St. Patrick's Day, why can't they dye it blue the other 364 days of the year?"

But, let it be known that the un-natural color green that they dye the river on St. Patrick's Day is an entirely different un-natural color of green from it's normal un-natural color of green.

As you can see the river's normal green is much darker.

And 40 pounds of dye does a pretty good job of making the river festive.

I've lived here 20 years, and this is the first time I've managed to get down town in time to see it. Cora, Wednesday, and I took the train down with thousands of our closest friends. We made it in time to see the river greened up good. Greened up real good.

After the river, we made a quick shop at Fanny May for some delicious chocolate. (Fanny May used to be made in Chicago, but after a bankruptcy and a couple of changes in corporate parents, they are made in Ohio.) From Fanny May, we walked up the street a little bit to look into the room where American IDOL had their season 9 Chicago auditions.

From there is was on to Macy's Marshall Field's for lunch. (Marshall Field's used to be a Chicago department store chain until it got bought out by M*Cy's. I sense a trend.) There's a little joint down stairs in the basement with a baseball theme called "InFields" ('cuz "InM*CY's" sounds stupid). Good food. No crowds.

After lunch we went to see the parade. Correction: We TRIED to see the parade.

But as we tried to get near the parade, it was too crowded to make our way to the front to be able to see anything. (And the parade is in one of the stupidest, least accessible part of down town, like they don't even want you to see the parade.)

But we still got to see a bunch of Chicago's youth out having fun.

Even if that means standing between two moving L cars so you can have a smoke and a little sip of sumpin'-sumpin'.

And did I mention, the fabulous BeckEye was in town? No? Well, to paraphrase Teri Hatcher; "She's real, and she's SPECTACULAR."

What else do I need to say.

And he launches a brick…

In case you haven't gotten enough basketball, or if you just want to laugh at Michigan some more.

I'm not much of a basketball, but I like laughing at Chris Webber. A lot.

The #1 Reason I'm Glad I Don't Own An iPhone

Good LORD!  There's an iPhone app that now uses the accelerometer to not only measure, and rate the sexy time, but it also plays music to your pace, and
SHOUTS OUT INSTRUCTIONS!

Who the hell needs THAT much pressure in bed?

If you think that answering the phone is a way to destroy the mood, what about when your phone blurts out, "isn't this better with two people"?  I'll stick to my Blackberry and enjoy my "spreadsheets" the low tech way, thank-you-very-much!

And what if the developers were evil bastards and had it place a speaker phone call to anyone labeled "Mom" or "Dad" in your contact list when things hit a certain intensity?

I picked the story up from Gizmodo.  And if any of you iPhone users are interested, here's a link to the app on iTunes Store.

It's Doesn't Take A Rocket Scientist

In honor of Sir William Herschel discovery of the planet on March 13, 1781…

 
They are like Captain Kirk!  They wipe out those pesky Klingons!

DST - 2011

Don't forget, in your hungover, state, that we just "Sprang Forward" and you are now an hour late getting to the in-laws for lunch.  And speaking of hangovers, here's a video that I have "hanging over" from last year.

I could spend an hour or so, and replace the Levi Johnston joke with a reference about Bristol being on "Dancing With The Stars".  But face it, I'm lazy too. 

Now, get up and get moving, today is only 23 hours long, so get moving.

Have I Mentioned Recently…

Have I mentioned recently that my wife, Cora, is…

And that's all I have to say about that.

Super Villain Smack Down – Part 2

See how this is getting harder?  I'm having to explain some of the jokes here, because Galactus the planet eater and most of these guys just aren't household icons.  Anyway, enjoy this last installment.

At least last for a while.

 

Ya see, Dr. Doom is the sovereign of Latveria and… oh, for get it.
 

He's an unstoppable force once he gets moving.  And that goes for his bowels, too.  Ladies and Gentlemen:  The Juggernaut!

And here's proof that not all red heads are sexy…
 

Before you ask, in THEORY, that's Kraven the Hunter…

 
And now a REALLY inside joke for the 3 people that saw Spider-Man 3 or read the comics, I bring you, Venom:

Super Villain Smack Down – Part 1

Yeah, I know I said I was done doing the Super Hero thing on Friday.  But see, these are SUPER VILLAINS!  Totally different.  Plus, my step-daughter asked me to do some of these, and well, how could I resist her?

One of the challenges with doing these is that some of these characters aren't as much of "household names" as a lot of the heroes are.  Don't fret it, I only go for the super-geek jokes on occasion, and that's NEXT time.  This time, I think the only thing you need to know is that Harley Quinn is the Joker's #1 Fan/assistant/girlfriend.  And she's bonkers!

      

Proud Papa

As many of you know, I'm pretty new to the whole "parenting" thing, only having 8 months of being a step-parent under my belt now, after 44 years of bachelorhood. And I must say, that this week, some subtle steps have been taken by my step-daughter an me. (And I know I've used her real name before, but from now on, I will call her "Wednesday".)

Don't get me wrong, we've always gotten along great. At 14, she's perfectly comfortable walking across the room for a hug, or leaning her head on my shoulder during a movie. And not just a movie at home, about 1/2 way thru "Rango" on Saturday, I felt her head start to nestle in on my shoulder, so I slouched a little, and dipped the shoulder for her to be a bit more comfortable. And she stayed there most of the rest of the movie.

In Chicago, we have public school choice. That's a great thing. That's a scary thing. It means that you are not stuck going to your crappy neighborhood high school. You have a chance to go to a much better school. If you've got the grades or luck, or both. For instance, based on student's standardized test scores (PSAE's), our default high school is ranked 74th in the state. Correction, that's 74th from LAST in the state! Out of 658! Like they can claim, "We're not in the bottom 10%!" Barely! But, due to her grades, test scores, performance on their admissions test, (yes, an admissions test for a PUBLIC non-charter high school), Wednesday got into one of the top 10 high schools in the state. At these top schools, you get 15,000 or more kids applying for just a few slots. Most of them have class sizes of about 200 – 500 students. That's long odds!

Needless to say, the competition, and the stress is massive. Luckily, Cora and I didn't REALLY grasp how competitive and important all this stuff was, or we would be basket cases. "Why are kids talking about high school on the first day of 8th grade?"

Because it matters.

So, all year, Wednesday's been hearing about this aspirational school that all her friends are hoping to get the grades to get in to. And when her teacher's got her scores, they were excited because she could apply there. It's a great school. Over 100 years old. And big. Like 4,000 students. But that means that they can offer more art (her favorite) than any of the other "college prep" school. And it's a mile down the road. And we drive by it all the time. And she got in!

At an informational session last week, they had invited her to be in a special program, that the more I listened to it sounded EXACTLY like something I would have LOVED in high school. It was intense, but had you focused on research and writing technical papers, and following this project thru for 4 years, etc. But it absolutely didn't sound like my step-daughter. AT. ALL. So we decided to skip that, and just let her be in Honors with Art. Accepting that the right thing for you is not always the right thing for the child? I'll take that as a parenting moment.

Also this week, Cora had me help Wednesday with her home work for the first time. It was some math, and I sat down with her, and worked thru the problem. I then made her go back thru her work and find out were she made her error (she used the diameter not the radius). Later in the week, she's had a few issues with the computer in her room. And for the first time, she came straight to me with a problem without going to her mom first.

And then I had her help me with some of my super-villain pictures you'll be seeing later.

:-)

Super Hero Smack Down – Part 5

Dear Lord;

I beg you, let this be the last of these and let me get on to something else.

Yours humbly,

Scope

---

It's Friday.  I'm tired.  You're tired.  So let's get this show on the road.

 

 

 

 

---

And here we finally get to Robin.  I just couldn't decide which version to go with; classic or modern?  So I decided not to decide, and give you both.

 

Super Hero Smack Down – Part 4

Okay, so the first one probably should have been party of yesterday's batch, but I didn't make it until last night.  Like I said, I CAN'T.  STOP.  MAKING. THESE.

Now, you knew I had to eventually get around to doing a Batman, right?

What I find funny, is that I'm much more of a Marvel comics fan, and these have leaned a lot more DC.  Maybe because they have the more iconic figures that more people would recognize, even if they have been updated a little since "Super Friends".

Oh, and look who is teaming up again to save the planet…

Tomorrow, we wrap up this little project.

I hope.

Super Hero Smack Down – Part 3

Today, we're half way through the week.  Hump day.  So, here's a little bit o' sexy, sexy.  Yes, I will be doing these all week.  I've got like, 8 more of these.

I JUST CAN'T SEEM TO STOP!

 

 

 
Yeah, I just had to go Seinfeld / Teri Hatcher on you.