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The JackB

"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx

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Archives for June 2009

This Weeks Sign of The Apocalyse

June 24, 2009 by Jack Steiner Leave a Comment

This Weeks Sign of The Apocalyse comes from our friends at Haaretz who report the following:

Is Britney Spears set to star in a Holocaust movie?

“Is American mega pop star Britney Spears set to return to the big screen, seven years after starring in the box office flop Crossroads? According to reports, Spears has been offered a part in the upcoming Holocaust film The Yellow Star of Sophia and Eton, which integrates time travel, concentration camps and a love story.

If she accepts the role, Spears will be taking on the title role of Sophia LaMont, a woman who invents a time machine and succeeds in traveling to the time of the Second World War. According to the script, LaMont ends up at a concentration camp and falls in love with a Jewish prisoner named Eton. However, the budding love story is cut short when both are killed by the Nazis.”

I can’t decide what I like best about this. Britney will be perfect as a genius who invents a time machine that just happens to take her back to WWII so that she can be incarcerated in a concentration camp, fall in love and be killed by the Nazis.

Rumor has it that this film will be followed up by a blockbuster history piece about David Ben Gurion and Golda Meir starring media giants Perez and Paris Hilton respectively.

Oh and did I mention that Spielberg is negotiating with me for the rights to produce a feature film about my life. Stay tuned because in this wacky world anything can happen.

Crossposted on Yourish.

Filed Under: Movies

Musical Morning

June 24, 2009 by Jack Steiner Leave a Comment

Ring of Fire– Johnny Cash & Willie Nelson
Folsom Prison Blues– Johnny Cash & Willie Nelson
Homeward Bound– Paul Simon & Willie Nelson
Don’t Give Up– Willie Nelson & Sinead O’Connor (who thought that you’d see this pairing)
Don’t Give Up– Peter Gabriel with Kate Bush
Everything I own– Bread (Oh those 70s.)
Relay– The Who
Love Reign Over Me– The Who
“How Soon Is Now?” The Smiths
“It’s Been A While“-Staind

Filed Under: Music

Living The Bachelor Life

June 24, 2009 by Jack Steiner Leave a Comment

I am man, hear me roar. Watch as I burp and scratch and revert back to my bachelor life. The family is as they say….Gone!

Here I sit at the computer, unshaved and unwashed. There are a couple of dishes in the sink and newspapers spread across the table. Last night I stayed up well past the witching hour and thoroughly enjoyed the silence and the solitude of my man cave.

I woke up this morning sans alarm, wife and children. In other words I woke up as nature intended. For a moment I wondered if it was all a dream and then I remembered that it wasn’t. With a yawn, a stretch and a big smile I rolled out of the bed and strolled through the house.

The quiet, oh, the blessed quiet.

I paused and looked around and smiled. It won’t be long before I miss the chaos and the racket. It won’t be long before it is almost too quiet, but for now I am doing my happy dance around this joint.

Truth is that it is not particularly messy or cluttered. I don’t like that much, but I don’t have to be the role model so I don’t have to do it all immediately. I don’t have to do anything that I do not want to do.

For a while I was tempted to get in the car and go somewhere. Last night around midnight I played with thoughts of going to Vegas. A short while ago there was no one who could play, but now that life has happened and some of the boys are single possibilities exist.

So at a few minutes past 12 I called and asked if was up for a road trip. I had a full tank of gas and offered to drive. He laughed and told me that he wanted to, but had to be at a dinner meeting today.

I said no problem and he laughed again. He believed that I could get us there and back in time for the meeting, but said that he didn’t think he’d be rested enough for the meeting.

And that my friends is the difference between who we were twenty years ago and who we are now.

Of course I should stipulate that I considered the state of my personal economy and remembered that Obama and company haven’t offered to bail me out. But I’d be lying if I didn’t think about how time at the blackjack table could solve that. With a little luck and a short run I could provide my own bailout.

Maybe next time.

Instead I consoled myself by playing Viva Las Vegas while writing a brief and sending out 1,876,993 emails for work. And then for good measure I wrote three posts that I immediately deleted.

And now I sit here, staring at the computer screen, wondering whether I feel like cooking or barbecuing my dinner. It is summer in LA and in a short time the weather will be perfect for dining outdoors.

All I have to say is that some days it is good to be a man.

Filed Under: Men and Women, Things About Jack

Who Invented Balloons

June 23, 2009 by Jack Steiner Leave a Comment

Here at The Shack we are constantly in search of useful information and answers to the questions you wish that you could ask. If we do our job properly you’ll dominate Trivial Pursuit and be a force to reckon with on Jeopardy. Can’t promise that you’ll be able to use this information to be Macgyver or Roy Hinckley, but who knows.

Today we decided to spend some time talking about balloons. No, not the hot air kind, but party balloons. So we searched high and low on the web and discovered that a number of sources say that Michael Faraday is responsible for the invention of the balloon. Yes, the same Faraday who discovered electromagnetic induction is the man to thank. (Editor’s Note: If you are doing a school report double check this information, the Shack isn’t really designed to be in your bibliography.)

However, there are other sources that say that there are challengers to Faraday. If you head over to Beermasters you’ll see that the Aztecs made good use of their cats:

“The first use of balloons at a festive event dates to the Aztecs, whose empire in central Mexico was from the 14th through 16th centuries. Their balloons were not the fun-colored latex or Mylar one sees today, however. Their balloons were made of cat guts. Feline intestines were sewn together, filled with air and then twisted into funky shapes–as if an inflated mass made from cat guts wasn’t funky enough.

Function

Aztecs placed their balloons at the altar during festivals and ceremonies as an offering for the gods. They may have wanted good luck, a victory in battle or any number of other wishes that the sacrificial balloons would help bring. They may have even asked for more guts to make more balloons. If a large batch of cats were diseased and dying, the Aztecs sacrificed humans and used their intestines as balloons to ask for more cat intestines.”

Balloon Headquarters has similar information as well as information on the art of Balloon Modeling, in fact if you go there you can find out about The National Association of Balloon Artists (NABA) and the International Balloon Association (IBA). In fact you can even read about T&JAM 1999 – The convention dedicated to balloon twisters.

Don’t forget to take a look at the photos.

Who says that we are full of hot air.

Filed Under: Useful Information

Goodbye Ed

June 23, 2009 by Jack Steiner Leave a Comment

CNN reports that Ed McMahon has died. It has some interesting information. I was unaware that he served as a Marine in WWII andKorea

Filed Under: Life, People

What Are You Doing In There?

June 23, 2009 by Jack Steiner Leave a Comment

The dark haired beauty looks up at me through a mass of dark curls and giggles. She is up to something, I know it and she knows that I know it. The key question is what has she done and why are her eyes sparkling.

I won’t have to wait long for the answer. In a matter of moments she’ll be unable to contain herself and she’ll confess. I already know from experience it is unlikely to be serious because when she thinks she is in trouble she remains silent. Of course her older brother is usually happy to try and tip me off, getting the little sister in trouble remains one of the joys of being an older sibling.

Of course it goes both directions as she is more than happy to try and tweak his nose. They are typical siblings and exhibit the standard behavior of love/hate for each other. Most of the time they get along beautifully, but they have their moments. Ah, the joy of children.

*********************

Sometimes when those moments come I find myself asking questions that many parents ask, such as why didn’t I wear 19 condoms or if I leave now can I be in Vegas before nightfall. A half second later reality sets in and I go to the second set of options.

That famous second set which consists of wondering how long I let them try to work it out before I get involved and if I get involved, how many years will I ground them for.

It is a serious thing. You have to teach them how to cope when things don’t go the way that they want. You have to help them learn how to share and negotiate their way through life. So when I wonder how long I need to wait before interceding there is an educational component to it. But there is also the question of my sanity.

How long can I listen to them kvetching at each other. And of course the joy of having a home office is that during the summer you have substantially more exposure to the joys of your life.

*********************

Sometimes if you are me you have also adopted a strategy of heading off to the second office. You can blame this on having watched Happy Days as a kid. Fonzie always took Ritchie into the bathroom and we all know that he was the coolest guy ever, at least until he jumped the shark.

Anyhoo, there have been some occasions when I have opted to answer the call of nature during these little dust ups. And upon occasion inquiries have been made as to whether I really was busy or not as it seemed far too convenient for me to be in there at moment.

I of course have always offered to provide proof and was always turned down, until recently. That dark haired beauty decided that she wanted to see for herself. Standing outside the door, she asks me to open it so that she can see for herself. I pause for a moment and suggest that she find something else to do.

Without missing a beat she tells me that she is almost five and besides she has seen boys go to the bathroom before. So I open the door and just as I am about to tell her what I think about all that she starts laughing because she knows that she has gotten me.

Then for good measure she steps inside, sniffs the air and proclaims, “it doesn’t stink in here, you are just hiding from us.”

And people ask me why I am losing my hair.

Filed Under: Children, Things About Jack

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