40 Bucks! It's like The Jerry Lewis Telethon now!

Remember when I asked you to help me raise $500 by July 31? I know you do, you're just being shy. Well, we've got $40 bucks so far. That's generosity at it's finest people.

So now, let's keep it going. My intention is to work on folding my arts blog through MKE called Artsy Schmartsy into this one in the coming days. But I need your help to do that. Right now, that means helping out with some resources. I'm asking for your cold, hard cash. But most of all, I'm asking you to spread the word.

The more the merrier in this grand little experiment. I mean, hell, we're already 8% of the way there, and it isn't even July 1 yet. I'm hoping you can help, and I'm hoping you can send your friends to my blog to lend a hand, too.

I'm gonna keep this post up and not post anything else for a few days as kind of a reminder that I can use your help with my little Chip In do hickey over to the right hand side of your computer screen. (I can feel you clicking away right now, good person that you are.)

Chip In rocks. And so do you. Thanks for helping spread the word about my blog and my need for your cold hard cash. I'll put it to great use, promise, promise, promise!

Taco and midget bowling bliss!

I have a new favorite restaurant in Milwaukee. And it's on wheels.



Look at this menu. Cheap does not begin to describe this experience. Friends and I bought about 80 tacos, and a dozen cups of beans with pork, avocado and cheese from what I believe is the single cleanest restaurant in Milwaukee toady.

Now, I'll admit I didn't order the chitlins last night, but I can feel them coming to my belly soon.



As if this wasn't enough of an evening of joy, I ended it all at Koz's Mini Bowl. I bowled a 229 and a 224. And I never hit or bribed one of the high school boys resetting the pins.

Run, don't walk, to El Charrito Tacos usually parked at 7th and Becher. And bowl at Koz's with the little balls and the local drunks.

It makes me proud to be a fat Midwesterner on nights like that.

This will happen to me, I know it.

I just joined Twitter. Gulp.

I know that this will happen to me. Gulp. Gulp. Tweet.

Am I a rifle man, or will that bump me in the head while I'm sleeping?

Well, the Supreme Court has said I can have a loaded gun in my house. Well at least most of them. That's the top row group. You can see their wisdom. It's just pouring out of their bloated faces. All of this, of course, means that I have a mighty reason now to consider what kind of gun I should get.



That's the Beretta Stampede 45LC, 4.75 Inch, Deluxe. It's only $659.99. And did you know that you can buy it on-line? Thanks to the good people off Impact Guns in Utah, I can outfit my home with all the necessary instruments to blow a gaping hole in my stomach, or even my children.

If you're not into the old West and the Beretta styling, check out something for your next ghetto war.



This semi-automatic machine gun costs $17,000. That's a lot of crack vial sales, sure, but the Supreme Court said I can have one, so by gum, I'm gonna put my good old American work ethic to sale and save my drug money for one of these babies. The on-line wording for this beauty promises that it is "very clean and shoots great." I feel more American just thinking about this powerhouse being shipped to my nearest certified Federal Firearms Dealer who will do the background check and paperwork necessary to make me armed like a Minute Man (though I think this might be somewhat more effective than a musket).

Sheesh, guns. I have too many other things to clean up around my house. I don't need to add the dangling remains of my foot when I shoot it off some night thinking it's a burglar.

Too gay? Too funny.

Cubby Bernstein. That's all I'm saying. Watch this. Brilliant. There's more of these on YouTube, and they're all pretty hilarious, but this one has the mark of genius.

Hooters girls in training?

Last evening, I pedaled over to The Chill on The Hill sponsored by The Bay View Neighborhood Association. It's a weekly must in the summertime funning of my clan. My two-year-old daughter and my wife stayed home, while my five-year-old and I navigated our Trail-a-bike over to the Humboldt Park Band Shell. The main event last night was the Milwaukee American Legion Band. They were as tight as you can expect an American Legion Band to be, showcasing one dizzying arrangement of South Pacific tunes that was longer than the actual show.

But the opening act last night was something to behold. The Daly Debutantes threw done and bedeviled the masses. They are a good natured, wholesome hearted group of youngsters who twirl batons, grin and make old people long for the "good old days". They made me think of Hooters girls.

The leap from Daley Debutante twirling a baton for civic pride and a Hooters girl shaking her tatas for an extra tip for that order of fried clams and picture of Miller Lite is not as obtuse as you might think.

Here's the Debs. They just make you feel proud to be Irish American don't they?












Here's the Hooters girls. They just make you want to take a shower, don't they?
















But a few similarities to consider:
1. Both sets of ladies smile. A lot.
2. Bot sets of ladies were nude colored tights with their "performance outfits."
3. Orange is a prominent color in the tastefully appointed outfits of the Debs and the garish trailer trash dress up of the Hooters girls.

That's proof enough for me to believe that the Debs are just some youth squad in training for the Hooters girls.

If you expected investigative journalism from me today, obviously you were out drinking last night.

For those reader's with father's in prison looking for answers...

....did I mention you can buy ?

You can, and you can help to support Artsy Schmartsier since I'm part of the Amazon Affiliate program. Just click the link on the right and you go to Amazon and Artsy Schmartsier gets a percentage of your purchase.

You can buy loads of other things there, too. But for now, I imagine a big rush on this one:

My love of children's literature, and the scars it leaves on my children

This is a hell of a read if your dad is going to stir.

Actually, it's a hell of a read regardless of where your dad is or isn't going.

I was at the kiddie library with my daughter's yesterday and noticed this title while perusing the stacks of titles. It kind of jumped out at me, if you know what I mean.

I also grabbed, Did My First Mother Love Me? and Adoption is For Always, but the prose of When Andy's Father Went to Prsion leaves those two in the dust.

It seems that Andy's pa robbed a warehouse to nab some televisions so he could sell them to buy stuff for the family. They sent him away to a prison in Nashville. I'm thinking it was a lot like Cool Hand Luke in there. Andy's dad also had a mustache, clearly the markings of a criminal mastermind.

I tucked these books into the stash of books my kids had picked out and when we made our way to the checkout counter I realized that all of these books would be going on my 5-year-old daughter Dorothea's library card. Ever since she got her library card almost a year ago, she has demanded that she take care of the books being borrowed any time she is present for a library visit. It's the 5-year-old equivalent of picking up the check.

I felt a little dirty throwing my kid book choices in with Dorothea's. Having your daughter check out a book about a father going to the clink and all the drama behind that, is kind of like having your daughter buy you porn. At least it felt that way as the librarian scanned the bar codes of the book about the elephant, the book about the magical adventure through time and the book about the Southern white trash petty crook with the hopes for a country singing career (I'm making up the country singing career thing, but I gotta believe Andy's dad has the music in him).

Later at home while going through our books, Dorothea asked, "Daddy, what are those books?" Dorothea is still at that blissful age where she's on the brink of reading, so it is far, far easier for me to lie to her than I know it will be in a few years. I shrugged and said, "Oh, that's daddy's." She wasn't buying it and probed further saying, "What's it for Daddy?", giving me an eye as if to say she knew I was up to no good.

I told her it was for a project I was working on, and promised to read her a couple extra pages as she prepared for bed and pre slumber story telling. It seemed appropriate practicing the hallmarks of parenting called deceit and bribery when trying to hide my love to kid's prison literature from my daughter. And is was just as easy as breaking into a Southern warehouse to graft some goods and sell them out of the back of my car.

Four percent! Holy Mother of Goodness!

Yep, Chip In is working. I know because I'm four percent closer to being 100% satisfied with raising 500 bucks by July 31. Thanks to my first donor (I'm sparing the name so he isn't crushed by fame) the Chip In meter to your left has some digits. And I promise the first donor was not my mom or my dad.

I'm only doing this because I want to be able to continue and expand upon debate that is going on over at Artsy Schmartsy. If you haven't checked it out, do. People are full of opinions and I hope to bring them over here with your help. Right now, that means participating in my little moola raising experiment.

Chip In. Oh, it feels so good.

I'm an unrepentent beggar

There is nothing all that noble about the experiment I am proposing, but I'm game to try anything once so I hope you'll help me raise a few bucks.

Here's the rub. I want to keep Artsy Schmartsier going and merge the content I have on my MKE blog Artsy Schmartsy into this site. With MKE going bye bye soon along with my modest pay stream from that publication, I'm scheming on ways to raise dough. Can it be done from a merciless plea for cash on this blog?

I think so because you are all smart, lovely, passionate readers. (That's called "stroking" if you aren't up to speed on the hard sell tactic of grubbing for cash.)

So, I'm trying a little experiment with a program called Chip In. It's simple. I set a level of money I want to raise by July 31. That amount is $500. You click the Chip In link I have posted here and the good secure Chip Inners take care of taking your money with the express purpose of me retooling this blog to serve a wider audience.

Remember, it's an experiment. And you love experiments. It's like science class without the dead frogs and rubber gloves.

Try Chip In now! Try it! You want to try it! (I'm hypnotizing you, as you surely can tell, right?)

FOUND A PENNY!

Mitch Teich, WUWM Lake Effect's Executive Producer, is my new best friend.

After super sleuthing (okay, his impeccable use of Goggle) he has connected me with Penny Larceny.

I've humiliated myself to yet another woman by sharing my blog story about my roller derby crush with her. And, classy dame that she is, she wasn't scared by me or thought I was a stalker.

I attribute it to Mitch's public radio street cred. He's totally implicated now and forever.

There's more to come from Ms. Larceny and The Four Eyed Bullet (my skating name, you know). Details coming...

Penny Larceny...I need to know more!

On a hot July night in 2006, I saw a woman wearing cats eye glasses jam in a roller derby bout at Skate Key in the Bronx, NY.

I was an immediate fan. I loved the glasses. I loved the skating. That night I had my first roller derby crush on a lady named Penny Larceny.

I came to find out in a round about way that she was a graduate of New York University. Me too. The glasses. The alma mater. Wow. There was just something about Penny Larceny that stuck in the back of my mind.

Until last week. Then something unexpectedly got knocked out.

While enjoying a root beer float at my daughter Dorothea's final day of K-4 with all the other Woodlands School parents wondering how they would deal with a child home for the summer, I noticed a woman sitting on the ground in the school parking lot. There was something about this woman that made me say, "Hmmm. I know her." It could have been the cut of her hair, it could have been the cut of her jib, for all that mattered, but what really really caught my eye were those glasses.

She was wearing Penny Larceny's glasses.

No, scratch that, I didn't think she was wearing Penny Larceny's glasses. I thought she was Penny Larceny.

I shook it off, trying to ignore the fact that this woman in the parking lot of a Milwaukee charter school resembled the woman I, as a mad roller derby fan, thought was the bees knees. It seemed unbelievable to imagine that Penny Larceny, my roller derby crush, was sucking down Milwaukee root beer floats with all the neighborhood kiddos. I went about the business of trying to enjoy my daughter's last day of school and tried to avert my eyes from this mysterious stranger.

It basically worked, this veil of ignorance I decided to put on, due in no small part by my need to guide my two-year-old daugher Carmela through a crush of sugar rushed children clamoring to use the monkey bars. Besides, there's no way that Penny Larceny could have been in Milwaukee at that particular moment. It would just have been too freaky to be true.

And then, things really did get freaky true.

I had to take my daughter back into the school building to clean out her cubby before we skirted off into our summer of fun. We entered the building, started down the empty hall towards her classroom, and noticed two other people standing looking at the art work on the wall. One was a student at the school. The other was (you guessed it) that cat's eye glasses wearing lady I had seen on the playground.

I gulped. Here I was face to face with the woman I thought was the bone crusher I had admired from afar, and I was unsure of what to do. Should I approach? Should I just pass her by and write it off as one of life's unsolvable questions? I must have woken that morning with a bigger sense of bold than I do most mornings, because I decided on the spot that I needed to approach.

Now, remember, I had said that I had a round about knowledge through other sources I had in the New York roller derby league that the woman know as Penny Larceny has attended the same college I had, and I believed that we had been students in the same specialized program. I thought quickly that this was a better intro than, "Hey are you my roller derby dream girl?" That one seemed a little too stalkery.

So, I approached and said, "Excuse me, but did you go to the Gallatin School at N.Y.U.?"

The stranger looked at me and said quietly, "No. No I didn't."

I was crushed and relieved all at once. Clearly this was some other cool looking lady who resembled Penny Larceny, but was just a good natured lover of student art in grade school hall ways. I said, "Oh, sorry."

Here's where the freaky factor multiples by a factor of 57. As I was just about to move on with my life, she said, "No, but I did go to N.Y.U."

Boing! The door was open. I had to know. I blurted out, "Did you also happen to skate in the New York Gotham Girls Roller Derby league?"

A sly grin came across the woman's face, and she said, "Yes. As a matter of fact I did."

Holy Shit! Penny Larceny was in my daughter's grade school hallway and I was standing toe to toe with her.

I stammered something about how I knew someone else in the New York league and about how I had seen her skate as research for a roller derby play I had directed (true story, true story). She introduced herself with a firm handshake and told me her name was Megan.

Megan. Just Megan. Not Marauding Megan. Not Megan Pain. Just Megan. Another "Holy Shit!" thought passed through my mind as I stood chatting for a moment with this very kind and sweet young woman.

As we were about to part, I asked, "So what are you doing here?" It was the question that I was dying to know. What, indeed, where you doing here in a public school hallway in the middle of the Midwest when you could be tearing up the banked track and turning more fans into jelly back in the East Coast.

She looked at me and said simply, "I was in New York for about four years, and decided it was time to go. So I came here."

And that was it. I said goodbye, she said goodbye, and we went about our business of getting off the school grounds on the last day of school. She was met by her friend or relative whom I had since decided was the parent or guardian of the kid she was with, and I scooted Dorothea and Carmela towards summer vacation and out of the confines of The Woodlands School.

But now I need to know more.

Do you know Penny Larceny? Do you know this Megan? I want the whole story. I want to know her whole life's tale? What makes a roller derby maven that I remember from years ago suddenly pop up on root beer float day at my daughter's grade school? I'm not stalking, I'm not going to go to any extraordinary means to find out more about Megan formerly known as Penny Larceny, but if you know any more, let me know.

I owe Penny Larceny a beer, and she's owes me her life story.