August 9, 2010 by kim.

The San Rocco Festival took place this weekend (and a couple of days before) in Fort Lee, NJ, (as it has for the last 82 years here), and in many different cities around the country. It’s a festival celebrating Saint Rocco, the patron saint of pestilence, where he was said to have prayed for and cured many of a disease that had struck Italy.

There’s your history lesson for the day.

The festival consisted of food, music, and games in a 3 block area of the town. Yesterday was the day of the procession of Saint Rocco.

A statue is carried around the town, and money is pinned to it to raise funds for the Italian American Mutual Aid Society. Here are a couple of videos of the procession:

Pretty cool, no?

Other than that, it was a pretty small affair. We didn’t go on any rides (too expensive) or play any games (you know how fair those games are), but we walked around and did get plenty to eat:

Italian Sausage with onions and peppers

Deep Fried Oreo

Corn

Cannoli (we shared this)

Dippin’ Dots (ice cream that tasted like Nerds candy – we tried a little, but didn’t eat much of it)

Popcorn (we shared this)

Sno-kone (blue-raspberry flavor – shared it)

Cotton Candy (blue-whatever flavor – again, we shared it)

Surprisingly, we weren’t sick after eating all that junk food. We really did like the deep-fried Oreos, although we initially weren’t too sure about it. Deep-fried? Oreo? It’s not something I’d eat every day, but it was tasty.

Next month – Feast of San Gennaro in NYC!

Posted in Fun, Entertainment, Celebrate, Food, Happy | No Comments »

July 18, 2010 by kim.

This is one of the amazing things you can see in New York City:

These two creatures are one of four in a group called the Xylopholks. According to their website, all are well-schooled in music and play different venues around the city to entertain us human folk.

The clip I provided doesn’t really do them justice (I was only using my camera video recorder), so check out their website (www.xylopholks.com) and see how wonderful they really are!

Posted in Video, Fun, Entertainment, Animals | No Comments »

July 2, 2010 by kim.

How to Ruin Your Boyfriend’s Reputation

Simone Elkeles (the author of the aforementioned book), submitted Chris’s video for her book How to Ruin Your Boyfriend’s Reputation to the ForeWord Reviews Book Trailer Contest, and it WON!

Here is a blurb about it:

You can actually view the video if you click the link at the top of this post.

GREAT JOB CHRIS!

Posted in Video, Entertainment, Celebrate | No Comments »

May 15, 2010 by kim.

Even Matilda:

See?

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April 16, 2010 by kim.

No, not the stand-up kind. I’m talking about comic strips. Sunday funnies. The Green Sheet for those of you who remember the old Milwaukee Journal.

I love reading the comics in the Sunday paper. I don’t often buy a paper myself, but my mom will save up the comics from the paper she gets and will mail them to me. That may seem a bit silly to you, but it makes me happy to no end.

So, I was catching up on the comics the other day, and I actually had to look up some of the words I saw. I wasn’t even reading anything heavy like Doonesbury or solving a math riddle given by Jason in Fox Trot. The comics that I got hung up on were Baldo, Get Fuzzy, and Sally Forth (archives).

Let me show you.

First up is Baldo. I wasn’t familiar with this comic, as it must have come from another paper (not my usual Fond du Lac Reporter):

Cascarones was the word that threw me. Initially, I thought that they were throwing hard-boiled colored eggs at each other. After looking it up, I see that they were throwing confetti eggs. Eggs that were hollowed out, rinsed, dried, and filled with confetti. Fun!

Next up – Get Fuzzy:

Being familiar with the characters, I knew that Robert was probably talking about the sport of Rugby. Didn’t mean I knew what he was talking about, though. Here are the definitions:

Scrum
-noun
1. a Rugby play in which, typically, three members of each team line up opposite one another with a group of two and a group of three players behind them, making an eight-person, three-two-three formation on each side; the ball is then rolled between the opposing front lines, the players of which stand with arms around a teammate’s waist, meeting the opponent shoulder to shoulder, and attempt to kick the ball backward to a teammate.

Ruck
-noun
A play in Rugby in which a mass of players gathers around a ball dropped by a tackled ball carrier, with each player attempting to gain possession of the ball by kicking it to a teammate.

Maul
-noun
A play in Rugby in which a mass of players gathers around a ball carrier being tackled and attempts to gain possession of the ball when it is released.

Finally, we have Sally Forth:

DSM-IV? Never heard of it. Is that some sort of texting shorthand? No. It means Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition.

Really? Who would have gotten that? A psychiatrist, I suppose …

Point is, you can always learn something new. Even from something as seemingly simple as the funny pages.

Posted in Fun, Entertainment, Happy | 1 Comment »

October 31, 2009 by kim.

For your scary Halloween entertainment, a video featuring yours truly (video created by the husband of yours truly):

Photography by Ann Brown – www.annbrownphotography.com

Boo!

Posted in Entertainment, Holiday, Art | No Comments »

July 5, 2009 by kim.

Chris and I went to the Taste of Chicago on Friday afternoon, which is a 10-day festival where restaurants offer up different dishes from their menus. You buy tickets when you enter the park and exchange them for food and drink.

One sheet of 12 tickets goes for $8.00. We bought 48 tickets, or 4 sheets. That works out to be $.66/ticket. Food is between 2 – 10 tickets each. We did the math.

1 slice of pizza – 8 tickets – $5.28
1 20oz soda – 5 tickets – $3.30
1/2 of a cheeseburger – 4 tickets – $2.64
1 corn on the cob – 5 tickets – $3.30

I never said it was cheap!

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June 10, 2009 by kim.

My Uncle Topsy had a birthday last Friday and a gathering on Saturday at his studio to listen to his new RUSH Tribute Band, Vital Signs (http://vitalsignstribute.com/). Awesome as always!

Vital Signs

Topsy

Vital Signs members: Dan (Goober) Lautenschlager, Walter (Topsy) Phillips, Brian Le May

It also turned into a kind of impromptu Phillips Family reunion, with five of the seven siblings in my Dad’s family present as well as numerous cousins:

Back Row: cousin Brad, dad Dana, uncle Dave, uncle Bill, uncle Topsy, cousin Michael, cousin Robert, cousin Craig

Front Row: cousin Krystle, me, brother Kari, cousin Mark, aunt Linda, cousin Keith, aunt Patty

Rock on!

Posted in Fun, Entertainment, Celebrate, Happy | No Comments »

December 16, 2008 by kim.

by Simone Elkeles…
Perfect Chemistry…
Es un libro, yo!
It’s a book.

It is, too (and a racy one, at that)! Chris was recently hired by Simone Elkeles (author of teen novels) to write, direct, and edit a rap video to promote her new book, ‘Perfect Chemistry’. You can see the video on her website (www.simoneelkeles.net) or on YouTube.

Look:

It was the only one on the shelf and I bought it! Sold out at Books-A-Million!

There is a funny little story about that rap, too…

Chris and I were recording the demo in his office one night. We had headphones on and were rapping at the top of our lungs with a lot of gusto. We didn’t really think we were being all that loud, but we couldn’t actually hear how loud we really were (what with the music blaring though our headphones and all).

In the middle of our rap, the phone rang. It was our landlord (he and his wife live below us - really nice people). He very delicately asked us if everything was okay, because it sounded like we were fighting. Chris laughed, apologized, and explained that we were rapping. I can only imagine what it sounded like coming through the floorboards!

Check your local library,
Hot on the shelf,
Just open up a book,
Enrich yourself -

READ!

Posted in Entertainment | 1 Comment »