April 5th, 2025

I woke up again on the couch and the first thing I thought about was my dad. I wondered if he ever took me to a movie that he thought was shitty.

He took me to that Robin Hood movie in 1974 that was a cartoon. All the characters were different animals. Robin Hood was a fox. Little John was a bear. Prince John was a tiger and the whole story was narrated by a rooster.

I loved it, but looking back, my Oldman must have been dying to get out of the theater and light a cigarette.

Five years later he took me to another stupid movie called “The Black Hole.” It came out during the Star Wars craze. It was Disney’s answer to C-3PO and R2D2. I’m sure the ice cream cone at Petersen’s in Oak Park was more enjoyable for my dad after two hours watching another horseshit movie.

My dad did take me to “Stripes” when I was in high school. After the movie he asked me if I liked the girl’s boobs at the beginning. Bill Murray’s girlfriend who was moving out and breaking up with him.

It was the first time my dad and I talked about tits together.

The last show that my dad and I went and saw at the movies was “Field of Dreams.” He cried at the end and apologized to me on the way home for not playing catch with me more often.

Now I cry every time I see that movie, thinking about my Oldman crying in the Dadillac. We ended up going to Goldy Burgers after the show and having beers and cheeseburgers together.

Yesterday, I took a day off. Something I rarely do. I went to the show with Hazel and Fritz on their last day of Spring Break. They kind of got fucked this year because Hazel was sick at the beginning and their lovely mother ended up in the hospital.

The highlight of their Spring Break ‘25 is going to see “MindCraft” with their Oldman and then going to Parky’s afterwards.

I learned after all of these years that it’s actually called “MineCraft.” Whatever it’s called, it is taking kids off of playgrounds and jamming them into dark fucking basements.

The movie sucked… I hate Jack Black and Stifler’s mom is in it. She’s playing Stifler’s mom once again. It was a great roll twenty-five years ago. Not so much today.

…And Jack Black played himself once again. All it needed was Adam Sandler playing one of his stupid characters.

Johnny Harrigan told me the week before I met my son George,

“Jumbo…. Get ready to watch movies with talking animals, talking cars, talking toasters, lollipop bushes and dysfunctional royal families played by robots. This is your destiny for the next fifteen years.”

Johnny Harrigan was spot on!

I know Hazel and Fritz had a good time. Big cups of pop, huge buckets of popcorn and two hours of building stuff out of big blocks. All I enjoyed yesterday was the pepper and egg sandwich at my favorite hotdog stand.

It is going to be a dreary and cold Saturday in Chicagoland. Go take the kids to a shitty movie and make memories that will forever outlive your agony….

Today is rugby day…. My Chicago Blaze are down in Indy and my Chicago Hounds are out in San Diego.

Play well Gentlemen

April 4th, 2025

 I have three friends going through chemo. I have another with a bad ticker. My work wife’s wife is in the hospital. I have a friend whose mom just had a stroke and some buddies dealing with putting their mom in assisted living.

…and I was going to bitch and moan because I slept on the couch last night!

My Hazel Marie slept on my bed last night because my ex of a twat wife has found herself back in the hospital.

As much as I hate her, I still have a flicker of love in my heart that makes me worry.

That damn marriage vow about sickness until death do us part….

…somehow didn’t make it in our divorce papers.

Life is fragile….

I gotta figure out why I’m taking a personal day because the one person who brings grief into my life is in a hospital bed?

Oh, I just remembered.

Because she did give me three gifts of love and instead of buying low and selling high today….

…I’m making pancakes and going to a fucking Mindcraft movie.

I’m done bitching and moaning!

Time to go pray for the people I mentioned in the first paragraph.

Google A-84, interesting story that I was going to originally chalk about. Also, think about MLK today.

Tits Up Chalkheads.

April 3rd, 2025

 I will leave you to ponder a little Dr. Seuss this morning and hope everyone in the Midwest made it through the storms.

Today is national Burrito Day. What is your favorite burrito joint?

April 2nd, 2025

 April never gets the respect that it possibly deserves. It is the month that we usually wipe our feet from the winter slop, but can’t hold our breath just yet. It is the month that teases us with a taste of what lies ahead and then rips our hopes with a kick of a winter’s dread.

April was once the month when we’d head to the ballpark for Opening Day. Greed has moved the first pitch well into March nowadays.

On the flip side, the NCAA Tournament would conclude by March 31st. That is why it is called “March Madness.” Nowadays the nets are cut down well into April.

Most of the time we are done binge watching television programs by April 1st. Nobody wants to stay in and watch TV when there is daylight until seven thirty at night.

I’ve decided to rewatch “Ted Lasso” again. After a long dreary winter filled with war and politics; I am going back to the last television series that left me with that feel good sensation.

I haven’t watched the evening news on a regular basis for some time now. The only highlight lately has been the weather girl’s skirt length. Everything else has been muddled by local teams in last place and dirty politics.

The month has finally arrived to watch the grass turn green. Soon the trees will explode with leaves and the bushes with flowering sensations.

I miss dandelions.

So many lawns are drenched with poison to kill weeds that also sweep out the little yellow treasures.

Kids today don’t have the pleasure of bringing their mommy a bouquet of dandelions from the front yard.

Dandelions, butterflies and lightning bugs have all dwindled away and have been replaced with twenty-four hour news stations.

Yeah!?!?!?

April showers bring May flowers and coincidentally the hard morning winds have just brought raindrops pelting against my bedroom window.

Time to tackle the middle of the week and slide into the first weekend of the month.

I woke up to the news of Val Kilmer passing away.

Don’t worry….. I’ll be your Huckleberry.

April 1st, 2025

 You would think that I would relish in all the activities the first day of April will bring….

…I do not!

From the fake snakes and plastic mice to the disappearing toilet paper in all the crappers.

It all went downhill in the mid 1990’s when I bit into a McDonalds cheeseburger that had a Tampax between the bun and the burger.

I was standing in the trading pit. We sent the trade checker over to grab twenty-five cheeseburgers. Two of them were boobie trapped with tampons. Mike Joubert and I were the foolish souls to get handed the trapped sandwiches.

Mike embarrassingly laughed it off. I flung my burger back at the douchebag that set me up.

Fuck April Fools’ Day and all the bullshit that’s about to occur in the next twelve hours.

It will be all shits and giggles from television reporters to politicians.

And yeah, I’m guilty for stupid pranks during my life. I sure hope I don’t have to go to purgatory for the shark fins, gum traps and twenty dollar bills attached to fishing line. I could burn in hell for the many times the CBOT phone operator paged Michael Hunt or Phil McCrevis.

I forgot…. People that never worked on a trading floor don’t know what a "shark fin" is.

You take a trading card and rip an angle on it to represent a shark fin. Then you fold the straight end and tear the fold halfway. The tear and fold enables you to place it under the collar of a trading jacket just below the nape of the victim's neck.

It usually happens to the kid on his first day working on the trading floor. One guy shakes his hand and welcomes him to the Chicago Board of Trade while the other guy places the fin onto the victims brand new trading jacket.

When the new guy walks away, the entire floor starts warning everyone to get out of the water. Some guys scream out “Shark.” Some guys start acting out the old SNL skit “Landshark.”

"Shark.... Get out of the water!"

"Get out of the water, there is a shark! Shark!"

Finally a grown up, usually a female who despises the immaturity around her, pulls the shark fin off of the victim's back and hands it to him. She then welcomes him to the Chicago Board of Trade and warns him to get used to all the bullshit and assclowns.

Happy April Fucking Fools Day…

Today, I’m celebrating sourdough bread day. I have told you Chalkheads that I’ve met a lovely baker that makes incredible sourdough bread?

Let me know and I’ll hook you up.

Try and take today with a grain of salt. Most of these pranks today will be harmless, but beware of the loosely wrapped McDonalds Cheeseburger….

…hopefully today’s quote will leave you earwormed.

March 31st, 2025

 When it is all said and done, I’m not going to remember March of twenty-five fondly.

I am going to blame the portal between the eclipses for the negativity and bad ju-ju.

Let’s get this somabitch over with and flip the calendar on the kitchen wall.

I’m going to go listen to the breeze on an early Monday morning. It might blow in the answer to that million dollar question.

Stay Gold Ponyboy….

March 30th, 2025

Today's quote popped up on a meme recently. It comes from an Edgar Allan Poe poem titled "Annabel Lee."

I was given the task as a seventeen-year-old boy to do a paper on this poem. I can still read the words from that assignment in my head forty years later. It would have been a better grade if I had the wisdom and experience the last forty years has brought.

In the poem, Poe talks about a young man in mourn because he lost the love of his life to death.

In my forty years since that C- paper, I only lost love because of a failure to keep it kindled. I found it when it was pure and meaningful, but I couldn't keep it strong. I let it lose its meaning.

I have never been able to truly complete my assignment the way my instructor expected. When we are young, we look at love with hope and romance. We don't see the daily chores that love insists on having to keep it nurtured. Love was lollypops, unicorns, firecrackers and whoopie cushions when I wrote that paper.

I have dated widows, divorcees and never married women since the end of my Exile west of Mannheim. All of them shared a part of their heart with me during our time together.

The widows mourn for their Annabel Lee, the divorced despise their Annabel Lee and the singles search for their Annabel Lee.

I quoted Lord Tennyson in that C- paper. It didn't impress my teacher at the time and it no longer impresses me. I used Alfred's famous line, "It's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."

That is a crock of shit and a complete copout.

The shittiest pain we come across in life is the loss of love. No doubt about it.

The love that I lost to death has turned into a spiritual love that transcends the heavens and masks my grief. I never let go of the loved ones that died because, either due to my faith or the fact that I am simply bullshitting myself, they are all a phone call away. I can't reach them with AT&T, but I can talk with them through prayer.

As for the love I lost due to the pilot light going out and the matches soaked in tears.... I mask that grief with the three things that call me "Dad."

I woke up thinking about a pizza puff. Did you know the pizza puff was invented in Chicago?

I can't have a pizza puff for another month, but it is highly likely....

...my lips will be around one in the merry month of May.

Sometimes I will order a pizza puff instead of French fries.

Don't laugh!

Try it!

Next time you go to your favorite hotdog joint. Try a hotdog with a pizza puff or an Italian beef and a pizza puff. Fucking gourmet heaven.....

This week brings us the month of April. Soon the Jews will be having Seder and the Catlicks will be splitting up jellybeans.

Go out there and compose a "C-" paper that will someday become an "A" due to life's experience.

Annabel Lee

By Edgar Allan Poe

It was many and many a year ago,

In a kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived whom you may know

By the name of Annabel Lee;

And this maiden she lived with no other thought

Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,

In this kingdom by the sea,

But we loved with a love that was more than love—

I and my Annabel Lee—

With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven

Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,

In this kingdom by the sea,

A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling

My beautiful Annabel Lee;

So that her highborn kinsmen came

And bore her away from me,

To shut her up in a sepulchre

In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,

Went envying her and me—

Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,

In this kingdom by the sea)

That the wind came out of the cloud by night,

Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love

Of those who were older than we—

Of many far wiser than we—

And neither the angels in Heaven above

Nor the demons down under the sea

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side

Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,

In her sepulchre there by the sea—

In her tomb by the sounding sea.

March 29th, 2025

 Today’s quote comes from existentialist writer and philosopher, Albert Camus.

I’m not going to get real deep into this quote this morning.

Let me delicately put this in Chicagonese.

“Youse better give a shit today and work your ass off. Do good shit for da guy down the block. Try to go ta mass and don’t bitch and moan.

Why youse ask?

‘Cause God willing… but you never noze about tomorrow. Do today and maybe tomorrow will bring da blessing.

(Read that in a Chicago Brogue)

I will never claim to know the ins and outs of existentialism, but I do know Grawbowskism.

Give everything you have today to God, your Family and your friends. Work your dick off for your employer and take your Christmas tree down before the middle of January.

For years I’ve talked about getting straight F’s in life.

•Foundation: Faith, Family and Friends•

A friend of mine recently told me that you should strive to get a couple C’s in life as well.

•Choice, Chances and Changes•

You must make a choice to take a chance or your life will never change.

C’s and F’s in life….

….wont get you on the honor roll, but it will make today better and tomorrow possibly brighter.

Today is rugby day… The Chicago Hounds are down in New Orleans this evening to punch Nola Gold around the pitch.

Play well Gentlemen.

March 28th, 2028

 The last weekend of March. It’s going to be warm and rainy just like it is supposed to be.

Might be a good time to sweep the sheds and do some spring cleaning.

Chicago baseball season started out with a couple wins yesterday. We have that going for us today.

I’m going to enjoy my coffee as this early morning storm rolls in over the river. The lions are roaring loud this morning and lightning is pounding the horizon.

Enjoy the end of March

March 27th, 2025

  Summer of ‘78, I was playing catch in the front yard with my new stepbrother. My dad remarried earlier that year and I suddenly had three stepbrothers and a stepmother.

My recently acquired sibling was a couple years younger than me. We were playing catch with a league even though he pleaded to play with a rubber ball.

It was just before dinner and my father appeared from around the corner. He was walking home from the Lake Street CTA. A cigarette was hanging from his mouth. The papers tucked under the arm of his blue sport coat, wrinkled from a long day at work.

I started showing off as he walked closer to the house. Throwing fastballs at my stepbrother who wasn’t very good at baseball. My dad was standing near his new wife’s son. The Oldman knew right away the kid was struggling and told me to take it easy with him.

That’s when I became Nolan Ryan and threw the baseball as hard as I could. It all happened for me in slow motion. The ball left my left hand and whizzed through the warm July air. Passed my new stepbrothers' baseball glove and hit him square in the face.

Blood and tears everywhere.

I was satisfied with taking down some kid that I suddenly had to share my father with. My brand new stepmomster came running out of the house, down the stoop and across the front yard.

She threw her arms around her bleeding son and called me a bully.

She was right, I was a bully. I was a twelve-year-old kid that was moving out of state that summer. Leaving my dad with his new wife and her three sons.

I had a shit ton of aggression to get out of my system before the move to Indianapolis.

My chest was pumped with pride as I replied that I was wasting my time teaching her crybaby son how to catch a baseball.

That triggered my Oldman. His briefcase hit the sidewalk. He flung his half smoked cigarette onto the street and his folded up Tribune flew up in the air. Coming apart and littering the parkway of our neighbor’s yard.

The Oldman clenched his fist and walloped me in the face. Now I had blood running down my face, but I didn’t have tears.

I tucked my mitt under my arm and walked towards the Ridgeland el stop. The same CTA stop my Oldman just came from after a long day in the Loop.

I had about seven bucks in my pocket and a few CTA tokens that I kept in my wallet. It was one of those new fancy wallets that was made with nylon and closed with velcro. I just got it for my birthday, from my dad’s new wife.

I jumped on the first el that arrived at the station. This would have been an even more adventurous story if that train was heading into Chicago, but this one was a westbound heading to the end of the Lake Street line at Harlem Avenue.

I went west towards downtown Oak Park. It was dinner time, so I walked to the diner across from the bank.

I sat down and ordered a cheeseburger and fries. The waitress noticed the blood on my shirt and secretly called Oak Park’s finest. My supper never arrived, but the police sure did.

Instead of enjoying dinner by myself, I was escorted to the back of a police car. I was back at 220 South Lombard about forty-five minutes after I walked away.

Sitting on the front porch was my dad. Smoking a cigarette and reading the tribune that blew down the street during the aftermath of my fastball incident.

“Good evening officer….”

“Good evening Mr. Shepley, he was sitting in the diner on Marion Street ordering dinner.”

“Thanks for getting him, you might need to call a mortician and Father Harris.”

The police officer laughed as he headed back to his car. You could say shit like that back in 1978. Today, my Oldman would have been placed in the back of that squad car.

I never apologized to that kid or his mother. A few days later I joined my mom in our new home that was one hundred and seventy-six miles away from that front stoop at 220 South Lombard.

I drive by the house often and the first thing I think about every time is the Oldman defending his stepson.

I’m still bitter to this day. Maybe I should have gone to a shrink, but back then we bowed our neck, lowered our shoulders and barreled through.

Almost fifty years later and this Chalkboard is my therapy.

This story is today’s flashback because yesterday, George and I had a lifetime moment that might just be George’s bad memory.

I didn’t punch him, but I threw a water bottle at him in the middle of Lincoln Avenue. Instead of the CTA, George walked over to the Metra. Riverside police snagged him up for me before the train came.

That’s all I’m going to say about that.

The point is….

…all families are dysfunctional and have bad days. You gotta have the bad days to cherish the good days. Now you know the story and I hope it helps a Chalkhead find some settlement in a moment that hurt their past.

Time is getting shorter and all we have is each other.

Today is opening day at Sox Park. I’ll be watching the ballgame on television this year.

Don’t be ashamed of things that happened in the past. Unless your team lost 121 games last year. That is something that can never be healed.