Saturday morning Milwaukee.

Bronze Fonz, Milwaukee riverfront.

Posted at 12:40 pm in iPhone |
 

46 responses to “Saturday morning Milwaukee.”

  1. Connie said on August 28, 2010 at 12:52 pm

    Saw the face first and thought it was Frankenstein.

    51 chars

  2. Deborah said on August 28, 2010 at 1:14 pm

    I thought the exact same thing Connie. Those stained bronze sculptures give me the creeps. There’s one near where I live, it’s of a guy hailing a taxi. They had to turn it around because so many taxi’s stopped for what they thought was a real fare.

    248 chars

  3. jcburns said on August 28, 2010 at 1:22 pm

    Aayyyyyyyyy!

    12 chars

  4. prospero said on August 28, 2010 at 1:24 pm

    Eddie R. Lawson. Actually, I think the face and crooked smile, and, particularly, the bad hair look a lot like the age- , acid, and madness-ravaged visage of Brian Wilson.

    171 chars

  5. Dexter said on August 28, 2010 at 2:12 pm

    I see a dead-ringer, a perfect capturing of the spirit of The Fonz.

    My favorite statue. Anybody know who it is?
    http://urbanhabitat.org/files/images/tom-johnson-statue.gif

    178 chars

  6. moe99 said on August 28, 2010 at 2:29 pm

    Dexter, the best mayor that Cleveland ever had.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_L._Johnson

    94 chars

  7. Linda said on August 28, 2010 at 2:46 pm

    On the other hand, there is the distinguished-looking statue on Detroit’s Belle Isle, the James Scott fountain:
    http://nighttraintodetroit.com/2010/04/13/practically-blameless-james-scott-and-his-memorial-fountain/

    and the story behind the screw-you practical joke to all the respectable muckamucks in town behind his bequeathment of money to build a big, beautiful fountain.

    Maybe not the greatest philanthropist in Detroit, but a hoot of a backstory.

    459 chars

  8. Dexter said on August 28, 2010 at 3:37 pm

    Linda, thanks so much for the history lesson. I saw the fountain for the first time in 1981, several years after Hollywood spent tons of dough sprucing it up (maybe re-plumbing it, too?) for the fantastic film “Scarecrow”, which endeared me to the versatility of Al Pacino forever. “Scarecrow” was part of the fabulous 1970s movie decade that spoiled us forever…never have so many great films been released in one decade. Scarecrow was shown in theaters in 1973.
    “And I got the money to get us rolling. It’ll be Maxy’s Car Wash.”
    http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/s/scarecrow-script-transcript-al-pacino.html

    624 chars

  9. MarkH said on August 28, 2010 at 4:11 pm

    Strictly OT — Nancy, Jeff B., Kirk, I’m sure you knew this guy. Maybe didn’t know he passed yesterday.

    http://www.webfh.com/fh/obituaries/obituary.cfm?o_id=324423&fh_id=10939&ck=1

    Been gone so long from Columbus, I vaguely remember his name.

    I got this from the CJ page at facebook.

    303 chars

  10. Bill said on August 28, 2010 at 4:38 pm

    The Fonz sorta looks like Sandy Frank (or his wife), America’s creepiest looking couple from Thursday’s NNC.

    108 chars

  11. brian stouder said on August 28, 2010 at 4:58 pm

    So, since Nate Silver’s blog is now part of the New York Times, the question is whether Nate has gone into the “main stream”, or whether he was already there (I vote for the second alternative)

    http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/

    and I agree with those who think the ‘bronze Fonz’ looks like Mary’s monster

    http://i.treehugger.com/images/2007/10/24/frankenstein-jj-001.jpg

    Watched a bit of the Beck-a-Palooza, live on C-SPAN today; missed Ms Palin’s contribution, but saw the rodeo clown himself.

    Honestly and truly, when Shelby asked me “what is he talking about?”, I could not offer an answer. His remarks seemed to be a semi-incoherent and contradictory collection of inchoate anger, remorse, mystical optimism, and Elmer Gantry revivalism.

    We started on the C-Span live coverage about 15 minutes before the end*, and after it was over the cameras remained and you could listen to the murmers of the passing crowd. One older woman told her husband (two or threee times) “Let’s find a patch of shade”. I think she had the best thought of the day.

    *plenty of time to hear Beck mangle some of Lincoln’s Gettysburg address, repeatedly exclaim that “We made a mistake”, and state that our “sacred” national treasures(?) in “clay pots”(???) for eternal preservation.

    edit: speaking inchoate and contradictory, there’s this article –

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38891505/ns/politics-more_politics/

    featuring this quote from a guy who attended:

    Ricky Thomas, 43, a SWAT team police officer from Chesapeake Beach, Md., brought his 10-year old son Chase to the Beck rally. “I wanted my son to see democracy in action,” Thomas said.
    He said he wants government to stay out of people’s lives. He acknowledged that he works for government, but said it’s “a part of government that helps people when they are in trouble.”
    Beck has given voice to those angry and frustrated with President Barack Obama and other Democrats this election year, especially members of the tea party movement.

    You can’t make this shit up; a genuine, real-live, proud “black helicopter” guy, saying he wants “government to stay out of people’s lives”.

    Huh.

    2191 chars

  12. Rana said on August 28, 2010 at 6:30 pm

    brian – I bet Jeff (tmmo) can fill in more, but the metaphor of clay pots holding spiritual treasure is pretty common in the Bible.

    131 chars

  13. beb said on August 28, 2010 at 6:52 pm

    That is one scary statue.

    25 chars

  14. Deborah said on August 28, 2010 at 8:26 pm

    I’ve steered clear of the Beckapolooza today. I’m stuck at home trying to give my foot/ankle a rest. If I can’t walk, I can’t do anything. I was perusing the internets today and learned something. Have you folks ever heard of Juggalos and Juggalettes? I honestly had never heard of this until today. These are super marginal young people who have a cult following for a terrible musical group called the Insane Clown Posse something or other, or at least they started that way. I have no idea how long this has been going on but it is really, really creepy. A bunch of young meth heads with no grasp of reality and very little intelligence spouting violence in the most gruesome way. Where does this stuff come from?

    716 chars

  15. Deborah said on August 28, 2010 at 8:52 pm

    As I said I’ve not had much to do today but peruse the internet… I know there are some Laura Ingalls Wilder fans here so I thought I’d pass this along from Wendy McClure a Chicago blogger who is very funny (she started the site called Candyboots which is pee your pants funny about Weight Watcher recipe cards she found in her mom’s basement). Anyway she attended a conference about LIW and posts about it on her blog http://www.poundy.com.

    442 chars

  16. brian stouder said on August 28, 2010 at 8:55 pm

    Deborah, I think your reference to the Insane Clown Posse just provided the perfect encapsulation of the whole Beckapalooza thing; substantive thread victory, I’d say (although Cooz may yet pop in with a farm animal homily, and win the laugh-out-loud portion of the program)

    Here’s hoping your ankle gets to feeling better. I’ve had a huge headache all day (could this be pollen-related?)

    391 chars

  17. Deborah said on August 28, 2010 at 9:13 pm

    Brian it’s the magic of the internet, you can go from Insane Clown Posse to Laura Ingalls Wilder in just a couple of clicks. AMAZING.

    133 chars

  18. prospero said on August 28, 2010 at 10:02 pm

    Brian, but what about the Jugalos. Does this men you can be a desp9cable p12c3=0f sh5

    ICP, sorry but that is just acting like assholes and making money. These guys heard about gg allin and tried to act like that,
    and thee Jugsloos, This would seem to be the tea party version of music, and it’s truly, really bad.

    In my opinion, these guys are assholes and if you want to act like an asshole, or you can act like a Jugalo, or you can play play “God Save the Queen? ” Actually musicians.

    What women do not seem to think about

    So Jugaloo. We’re morons. Tadda, yadda. There’s no possibility of being stupider than we are. Well. We can’t be any stupider. We can’t be more offensive to half the people on the face of the earth. What I’d like to point out, some of would like to have sex with somebody we really liked before we ever thought

    What about attraction
    with 8n the first place.

    c.ue wove have beenbfk..uv
    In some cases, y’all are are wonderful.I don’t have clue,
    r

    .

    1023 chars

  19. Hattie said on August 28, 2010 at 10:19 pm

    Godawful!

    9 chars

  20. Connie said on August 28, 2010 at 10:26 pm

    fave bronze sculpture of my childhood: http://www.city-data.com/picfilesc/picc25326.php . Great part was that a real kid could climb up and sit in his lap too.

    161 chars

  21. Little Bird said on August 28, 2010 at 10:32 pm

    Deborah, don’t forget the god-awful “sculpture”/fountain in what we call Buddha Park. There’s something about those bronze kids that just creeps me out!

    153 chars

  22. brian stouder said on August 28, 2010 at 10:42 pm

    My favorite statue in Fort Wayne:

    http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/imh/105.4/images/percoco_fig2b.jpg

    Between the dog, the book, and the axe, what more could you want?

    183 chars

  23. basset said on August 28, 2010 at 10:59 pm

    Statues? Well, down here in Nashville we have this one in front of a big bank:

    http://www.countrypolitan.com/photo-chet.php

    and this one along I-65 a few miles south of downtown:

    http://www.tennessee-scv.org/camp28/Equestrian_Statue.html

    some moron from a newspaper somewhere in Pennsylvania, think it was Allentown, called me awhile back to complain because the city government had not passed a resolution denouncing that second one. tried to explain, private property, First Amendment, but he wasn’t having any – it offended him when he came through here on vacation and the hell with free speech, if we weren’t such ignorant yokels around here it would have been destroyed by a mob the first day it was up.

    actually it looks a lot more like the Burger King than Nathan Bedford Forrest.

    805 chars

  24. brian stouder said on August 28, 2010 at 11:26 pm

    Basset – my father in law really likes Chet Atkins; in fact they go to the big Opry from time to time – and used to go to the Little Nashville (Indiana) one, before the lady who owned it burned it down.

    As for NB Forrest, a genuine genius with regard to leading men into combat; I bet he’d be completely at home with air-cavalry in 2010. ‘Course, he was also a horrible person, starting from nothing and becoming wealthy from buying and selling human beings. (to say nothing of making war against the United States, and killing many, many loyal American soldiers)

    When you say:

    tried to explain, pri­vate prop­erty, First Amend­ment, but he wasn’t hav­ing any – it offended him when he came through here on vaca­tion and the hell with free speech, if we weren’t such igno­rant yokels around here it would have been destroyed by a mob the first day it was up.

    All I can say is, right on, brother basset. Nobody has to like it, but we should be against destructive mobs of trespassers in any case; just like with that mosque that’s as far away from the site of the WTC as nudey bars and all the rest

    1135 chars

  25. Joe Kobiela said on August 28, 2010 at 11:37 pm

    Someone in Cincinnati is resting with a new liver thanks to the unselfishness of a organ donar in Akron, and my wife and I had the honor of delivering said liver. Those kind of flights give you a sense of purpose.
    Pilot Joe

    224 chars

  26. Dexter said on August 29, 2010 at 12:25 am

    I have been an organ donor card-carrier for many years , and these stories make me want to spread this gospel even more: sign the card.
    Thanks for your service in something I believe in 100%. Good job Joe.

    207 chars

  27. Dexter said on August 29, 2010 at 12:40 am

    “Say what you will of me
    I’ll always have Juggalo family”

    It’s all about being “down with the clown”.
    Yeah, the lyrics are rough, “dead bodies make me happy”, and I ain’t any sort of Juggalo expert, but a lot of this ICP deal is about family group bonding, or cliques, or groups, sort of vague.

    My 15 year old granddaughter was visiting us in June. She attends high school in Las Vegas , Nevada. She asked me why I was playing an ICP YouTube, and I said I just like the music and the graphics. I am also at the deep end of the pool here at nn.c , age-wise; I am old, but I feel I “get” ICP. My daughter in Columbus saw them just for laughs and to get sprayed by 2 liter bottles of Faygo soda pop. That’s part of the act. Anyway, Juggalettes approached my granddaughter who just looks like a cool kid, I guess, and asked her if she was down with the clown. She said no, and told the Juggalettes to leave her alone , and she promptly was threatened to have the shit beat out of her, because that’s the way business is conducted in high schools these days.
    So yeah, ICP is a little outlandish, and they freak a lot of grandpas my age out , but kids my age 40 years ago thought Vincent Fournier (aka Alice Cooper), and Ozzy Osbourne were devils incarnate.
    No, I am not Grandpa Juggalo, but I don’t take ICP as a danger to society.
    Shee-it…my parents’ generation thought Elvis Presley should have been jailed in 1956 just for shakin’ his hillbilly ass.

    1473 chars

  28. moe99 said on August 29, 2010 at 5:11 am

    Bassett, that NBF statue is very, very weird. It does not give me a good feeling.

    I prefer the Seattle type of statutes. First one up, “Waiting for the Interurban.” As originally installed:

    http://tinyurl.com/26u9xpe

    Then, all dressed up:

    http://tinyurl.com/2fygya9

    Then the Fremont Troll:

    http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/2236

    353 chars

  29. basset said on August 29, 2010 at 10:33 am

    Alice is playing here in a few weeks with Rob Zombie, not in the hockey arena that gets the big shows (most recently, Paul McCartney) but in an older, half as large sports hall a few blocks away.

    Brian, I can just see Forrest up at Ft. Campbell running an air assault division… or out-Calleying the whole army at My Lai.

    I’m an organ donor myself, and a ten-gallon blood and pheresis donor just in the last few years… started when I was a freshman at IU, remember going to a blood drive at Alumni Hall and lining up for hours to beat Purdue. Joe, how do they package that liver for transport? Is there a pump circulating blood through it or what?

    660 chars

  30. beb said on August 29, 2010 at 10:45 am

    All I know about Insane Clown Posse is that they’re from Detroit and have been around for quite a while.

    104 chars

  31. Dorothy said on August 29, 2010 at 11:43 am

    I have never photographed this bronze statue in all my trips to Pittsburgh – probably because I usually drive past it instead of stroll past it:

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/24842486@N07/3974733899/

    In Greenville SC they have 9 bronze mice scattered throughout downtown and Mike and I used to like looking for them there. Little kids frequently participate in searches for them and you hear them squeal so happily when they find one. I think the program is called Mouse on Main and they give hints but don’t tell you specifically where they are.

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/bloomingbellies/2821383765/

    http://www.miceonmain.com/

    641 chars

  32. Deborah said on August 29, 2010 at 11:44 am

    It’s weird when my virtual world intersects with the real world. Lo and behold today’s NYT magazine has a piece on the Insane Clown Posse and Faygo. I’m sorry, it just creeps me out. I know that young people have to rebel and they feel the need to up the ante on whatever their parents did, but the violence and the stupidness of it is really depressing. Devolution.

    366 chars

  33. brian stouder said on August 29, 2010 at 12:26 pm

    basset, congratulations on the 10 gallons! I don’t do the whole blood thing (really wipes me out) but instead the apheresis deal, where they give me back the red and keep the platelets.

    We just recently went to the annual dinner for pheresis donors, and my brother was one of several who gave 24 times (the maximum) in the past year. I’m good for 8-10 times/year, and was struck by how many people were recognized for their 100th donation, or (shorter list) 200th, or (much shorter list) 300th, or 400th (one guy).

    This got me wondering, so last week I asked how many I’m up to, and the answer was “81”. So at some point, I’ll make it to 100 donations (the Good Lord willin’ and the river don’t rise)…

    709 chars

  34. Dexter said on August 29, 2010 at 12:43 pm

    If you missed Meet the Press today, msnbc is repeating it at 2:00 PM. It’s hosted by Brian Williams and has Wendell Pierce, Garland Robinette, and Prof. Doug Brinkley. Outstanding Katrina roundtable. Former New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin has been all over the teevee this weekend of remembrance, five years post-Katrina…and you think he’s “done with politics”? Hah.

    All this Katrina programming these past few days has me starvin’ for oysters and crabs and shrimp and creole gumbo. It’s because I estimate 3/4 of the coverage has been focussing on food, the re-building of restaurants, the essence of that area. It seems to me that New Orleanians eat the worst diet possible, most things fried in batter, chicken, fish, fried oysters—but it surely looks great on a plate.

    782 chars

  35. Bill said on August 29, 2010 at 3:38 pm

    Brian, Basset: I’ve donated platelets 101 times. Had to quit when the cardiologist put me on blood thinners.

    109 chars

  36. Deborah said on August 29, 2010 at 3:42 pm

    OK one more thing about the Juggalos and then I’m done with it. They have a mark or “logo” of what they call a “hatchet man” who inexplicably is running with a meat cleaver. This is what I mean by stupidity. They don’t seem to know the difference. Done.

    253 chars

  37. moe99 said on August 29, 2010 at 5:35 pm

    Ancient Greek statutes were painted.

    http://io9.com/5616498/ultraviolet-light-reveals-how-ancient-greek-statues-really-looked

    130 chars

  38. Dexter said on August 29, 2010 at 6:31 pm

    I tried to donate blood after I was solicited to do so by blood-drive volunteers, but I flunked the questionnaire.
    Seems they wouldn’t take folks who had been in malaria zones, which I had been in for a while.

    211 chars

  39. Joe Kobiela said on August 29, 2010 at 6:45 pm

    I recieved the liver packed in dry ice, in a cardboard box. The wife and I packed some sandwiches to eat on the way down to Cincy, I told her to make sure she got stuff out of the correct cooler.
    Pilot Joe

    206 chars

  40. Dexter said on August 29, 2010 at 10:41 pm

    We got any liver and onions? I’m starvin’ here!

    47 chars

  41. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on August 29, 2010 at 11:04 pm

    Re: clay pots — http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2+Corinthians+4&version=NIV

    Disc’n in church this am: Beck’s speech was a hot mess. General agreement, varying levels of bemusement, disappointment, and a certain measure of irritation. As a public speaker myself? I was stunned not at any point of content, which is a book itself, but at the fact that it was utterly obvious he had not prepared himself to deliver a speech that afternoon. It was a rambling meander around the same posts he usually trots past, with a mental note “don’t mention pink elephants” politics-wise.

    Seriously, that was so “not prepared” it was scary/funny or funny/scary. He had spent millions to draw hundreds of thousands of people together (I know, I know, the point is he wanted to draw a crowd, and he did), and he didn’t prep a speech? Sarah Palin was Cicero next to Beck’s wallow in bathos.

    Was he expecting an archangel to deliver his address on a fiery chariot, or is he just that arrogant? Either way, he’s kicked his disturbing quotient up another notch.

    1072 chars

  42. Denice B. said on August 30, 2010 at 12:23 am

    Frightening!

    12 chars

  43. Rana said on August 30, 2010 at 12:55 am

    Man, blood donations always make me feel guilty, especially since I’m O-neg. Unfortunately, just filling up the little tube for the quarterly cholesterol tests makes me light-headed. I think I have low blood volume or something, since it’s not queasiness that does it. But I have signed my donor card; if I’m dead, I’m not needing the parts, so someone ought to get something good out of it.

    394 chars

  44. Deborah said on August 30, 2010 at 8:57 am

    I used to give blood as often as possible because I’m A-neg. But I haven’t done it in years, ever since I had a bad experience giving. I feel like I’m too old now.

    163 chars

  45. brian stouder said on August 30, 2010 at 10:31 am

    Deborah – you’re never too old!

    31 chars

  46. LAMary said on August 30, 2010 at 10:52 am

    Jeff TMMO, John Stewart played a clip of Beck earlier this week. Beck basically said he had only prepared bullet points since he did not want to block any messages God might want to send through him. Seriously.

    I can’t give blood because I’m anemic. I trot down to the blood bank from time to time to see just how anemic I am.

    329 chars