Honoring JP Deuce (FoFF)

ROME.- A giant bronze sculpture portraying Pope John Paul II is displayed outside Romes Termini train Station on November 19, 2012. The city of Rome has inaugurated the revamped version of the statue after the first one, unveiled in May 2011 was widely criticized.
AFP PHOTO/ Filippo MONTEFORTE.

The text is from Art Dali.org
The red pun and the title are from Paul Slangiverio. His acronym–FoFF–stands for Friend of Father Frank.
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The eldest son, my father, is standing behind his parents. My godmother is standing to his right. The small boy in the center is my namesake. This blogger's jpeg archives entitled the photograph Ten Oliverios but only nine are visible.
My grandmother was soon to give birth to the future Monsignor Oliverio, better known to me as FATHER FRANK.
When I re-photographed this family heirloom at his house, my Uncle said

When this picture was taken, I was minus four months old.

On the eve of Thanksgiving, I am grateful to my grandparents for having existed. They gave birth to both Slang-iverio and Math-iverio.


Blogger's Note
I am also grateful for the good people at artdaily.org. They provided the perfect springboard for Godfather of Math blogpost #500

The Wright Angle

I took lessons in bicycle riding but I could only afford half of them. Now I can ride a unicycle.
Steven Wright






Not only but also...

My neighbor has a circular driveway. He can't get out.

When I was five years old I was on a merry go round. There was a gunshot nearby. The horses stampeded. There I was running down the street on a purple wooden horse.

The sun got confused about daylight savings time. It rose twice. Everything had two shadows.

It's a good thing we have gravity, or else when birds died, they'd just stay up there. hunters would all be confused.

I took a course in speed waiting. Now I can wait an hour in only ten minutes.

The Bermuda Triangle got tired of warm weather. It moved to the North Pole. Now Santa Claus is missing.

The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard on duty.

My theory of evolution is that Darwin was adopted.


And then some.

Stoned Introduction To...South-Central Los Angeles. The Year Was 1981

With a bunch of friends in Newport Beach, we drove up to Los Angeles.
We had "field-level seats" which wasn't exactly true.
Yes, we were on the field at the Los Angeles Coliseum but there were no seats there, only yard-markers. When we arrived, the whole stadium was booing. Somebody up on stage was running around in his underwear. He was the opening act and his set just ended.
If the stage was the end zone, we were on the fifteen yard line. But at five-feet & five-inches, I was what you might call "height-challenged." I saw more of swaying shoulders than Rolling Stones.
But a splendid time was had by all with the possible exception of the booed boy in his underwear. His name was Prince.

No one said it at the time but the neighborhood around the stadium was South-Central Los Angeles. I wouldn't be teaching there until six years hence but Jefferson High School was less than one mile away from the Coliseum. Charlie Watts would definitely have appreciated the school.

When the Rolling Stones' drummer was growing up in London, his musical idol was Charlie Parker, the legendary saxophonist.
As a kid, Charlie Watts would roll up a newspaper and play pretend sax in front of a mirror. Then he heard a jazz drummer named Chico Hamilton and stopped rolling up newspapers. Chico inspired Charlie to get a drum kit and the rest is rock & roll history.

Chico Hamilton attended Jefferson High and was a prize student of Samuel Rodney Browne, the school's world famous music teacher. Mr. Browne would be most appreciative of this Chico Hamilton tune because it is the obvious offspring of jazz and classical music.

Other Times...

Some mornings, I think up to nine before getting out of bed.
I simply reach for a pencil and a Sudoku puzzle.

And then I reach for a pool hall fantasy.
All the lights are dim except for a floodlit pool table.
And it is my shot. But instead of a pool cue, I've got a pencil.

<–– I'm gonna sink a 3 in the lower-left corner




The game must go on.

Sometimes

Some mornings, I have to count up to ten before getting out of bed.
The easy part is to start with 1
But then that thing called "memory" makes it impossible to reach 10

Once upon a time, I had a math professor named DiMaria and a theology professor named Seamster. On the wall behind Dimaria's desk, there was a picture of Lewis Carroll, sitting on a fence. On the wall behind Seamster's desk, there was a picture of Jesus Christ, hanging on a cross.

Seamster/DiMaria memories are bouquets of pleasantries and wisdom for my body and mind, which I've had for all of sixty-three years. However, when the old noggin starts knocking down the kingpins of common sense, that's where the easy stuff gets uneasy.

DiMaria convinced us that between any two numbers, there exists another number. The Simple Theorem is what he called it.
"Halfway from one number and halfway from the other number is the midpoint, which exists as the other number. Q.E.D."

If all I did was count my fingers, I'd get from one to ten before you could say snap-diggity-dog. I'd jump out of bed and get on the good foot then do the same with the other foot. But, let's keep my feet and my fingers out of the picture.

I start with "1" but before I say "2" there is the midpoint to consider and I say "1 and 1/2" which leads to another midpoint between that number and "2." The halfway between "1 and 1/2" and "2" is "1 and 3/4"... This process repeats itself infinitely until I fall back asleep.

Once upon another time, Seamster opened the back door of DiMaria's room while he was quoting THE SIMPLE THEOREM.
He said "Between any two numbers, there is another number."
She screamed "Between any two humans, there is God!"
We all turned around but the screaming theologian was gone. After that, all Dimaria said was
"If not God, there is Godette. Class dismissed."

If not Etta Seamster the elder, there is Etta Seamster the younger. Ditto for Daniel DiMaria.
Life goes on.


Blogger's Note
Long before there was a Professor Seamster, there was a Sister Mary Margarita. At the St. Luke's sock hop, when couples were dancing too close together for a slow dance, she would always tell us to "Leave room for the Holy Ghost!"

Thank Emo

When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a bicycle. Then I realized that the Lord doesn’t work that way and stole a bicycle. Then I asked him to forgive me.
Emo Phillips