Frank Mantooth was a genius of the 20th century that most people never even knew of. People remember a Miles Davis, or a John Coltrane, or a Charlie Parker... but "people" don't remember a Frank Mantooth; and that, I assure you, is a very sad thing.

I was very fortunate, my time spent in the MTU Jazz band (despite it being a tech university) allowed me to meet/play with some amazing heroes of mine in Jazz. Bela Fleck, Victor Wooten, Wynton and Branford Marsalis. However, in february of 2003 I played with a name I had never heard before.

The Frank Mantooth quartet with guest Byron Stripling (one of the jazz masters of michigan) rolled in to town; and unlike some of the other performers we'd host, they immediately wanted to go out and hit the bar and hang with the band. We raided The Library (one of our favorite local pubs) and took it over for a good 4 hours. I feel bad for not remembering the drummers name, but Frank and Kim Park (the saxophone player) were a . . . Read More..

In elementary school, I thought I was the shit at chess.  My brother or Dad probaby taught me the 3 way move and I used to kick the crap out of everyone in elementary school.  In order to pull this off you basically move the qeen into position as well as a rook in order to trap the king in three moves.  I never found anyone who could figure out a defense....

That is, until I met Theresa Wozniak....

She totally ripped me a new asshole one day and the three way move didnt even phase her.

I couldnt believe that this girl took me out of the tournament when I was very close to winning.  Little boys dont like girls beating them in anything.  This was one of the many reasons why I hated Theresa when I was in elementary school.  We reconciled our differences a few years later....

I especially love her now cause she is posting memories....

I was a freshman in college and very worried about my grades because my parents were paying my tuition and told me if I didn't do well I would have to pay the tuition myself. I really wanted them to know I took this expensive education seriouly.
I had a really cool english teacher who was pretty casual about things. He was getting ready to test us on grammer principles and things relating to that. He went over the review and kept telling the class we didn't need to study because the information was so basic that 1st grades could wing it.
When I got home I went over the materials and burst into tears because it looked so difficult to me. I thought about what an idiot I was that 1st grade material look extremely hard. I was so scared about looking completely stupid in clas,s so I studied for 3 days, staying up until the wee hours memorizing the info. My friends all talked about how relieved they were to have one less thing to study for thanks to our wonderful english teacher. I didn't say a thing.
Well, testing day arrived and I felt confident I had finally mastered first grade grammer that somehow I missed way back in first grade. I wizzed through the test and was so relieved that no one would find out what a dumb blonde I really was.
The following day the results were in! Much to my shock I was the ONLY person to even pass the test! I got 100% while eveyone else failed. The teacher thought I was brillant. He couldn' understand why no one else passed. Maybe because he told us not to study? Anyway, I learned it never hurts to study even basic things in life.

Sometime before Christmas my mother made a comment about the box in the dinning room. Through simple clues, mostly Ben's stupidity, I could tell it was a unicycle for me. So, on Christmas I got a unicycle to ride.

Now, the weather was good at this point, so Ben and I went out to try and ride it. Ben went first and found a painful secret, it can hurt a lot. I found it not to be too bad, but harder than any thing I have done before.

I kept on practicing though and have so far gotten almost nowhere. I learned a little bit about it, but not much. At one point I got Josh trying it, Although he was bad, he too kept trying. So, when the weather gets better, Josh and I stall do are best to learn to ride a unicycle.

From (Growing up Through Elementary School) Original Memory Interview Question

His Response:

You don't tug on Superman's cape; You don't spit into the wind; You don't pull the mask off an 'ole Lone Ranger And you don't mess around with Jim

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