ocono.com

Oconocomicon is not the ancient and fictional tome containing  the rituals for summoning the Old Ones, but is, in fact the city’s up and coming comic book convention. To be fair, the event is really called “The Oconocon” and will be held May 4– one week from today. The crazy kids organizing it have one of them Myspaces, and they’ve even gone and set up an internet site over at The Oconocon.com.

Will you be there? Will you remember to tag your photos with “Oconocon?”  Or will your comic-book will be worn too thin from the day’s previous celebration of Free Comic Book Day?

Spring Gallery Night is set for Friday, May 2nd, 2008. Though the description says “visit Oconomowoc downtown merchants…” though with the road construction I’m sure it’ll make for an interesting Gallery Night this time around…

See Also: Update on Gallery Night and Construction

Greener Oconomowoc is a citizen organization working together to learn more about the environment and sustainability.

Join them on April 26th, 2008 from 11a.m. to 3 p.m. at the First Congregational United Church of Christ for the Earth Day and Resource Fair which will feature free educational family activities and highlights the many different facets of being “green.”

See the Oconomowoc Focus for more info about the event and for more information about Greener Oconomowoc.

We’re right in the midst of O-Clean-Omowoc days, though you’d never know it by strolling through the downtown area…

Let’s hope this mess gets cleaned up before O-Clean-Omowoc 2009 rolls around…

The good folks at Help the Victims… remind us that it’s been two weeks since the frightening downtown explosion that left at least one Oconomowoc family homeless.

The initial shock is over but tears are still shed occasionally.
So many people came out and donated when the family needed it the most. The outpouring from the community is amazing!
A huge THANK YOU to everyone who helped, donated, and kept the family in their thoughts and prayers. THANK YOU!

We  congratulate the good people of Oconomowoc for stepping up and helping out a local family in need. Well played, Oconomowoc, well played.

We also want to congratulate the folks behind Help the Victims for tapping the free and awesome power of the internet for the power of goodness. These are the kinds of stories that make our home-spun cybertronic hearts swell

An Oconomowoc Blogger has put up a nice website looking to help the victims of last week’s church explosion.Help The Victims of Oconomowoc has a touching profile of the family that actually lived in the building to the south of former First Baptist Church. We are particularly moved by the “Get to Know the Family,” post with features stunning portraits of each of the four people rendered homeless by the explosion.

The Oconomowoc Focus wrote a very nice story about the family in Tuesday’s paper. The feature can be read at the Living Lake Country site.

Lisa Lemieux was at work in Watertown when she heard over the news about the explosion of the church that has stood on the corner of Wisconsin Avenue and Worthington Street for nearly a century.
Lemieux quickly got into her vehicle and began the trek back to her home at 20 S. Worthington Street, the southern neighbor of church.
The only thing on her mind during the drive home was hope that her home wasn’t going to be completely destroyed.
She had only lived there for 2 1/2 weeks.

If you have the financial wherewithal, or even if you don’t, please consider lending your hand to these folks in need. They list the info for making donations at their about page. These are real people, who don’t have things like toasters, scrapbooks, or familiar, clean clothes.

They had them up until last Wednesday.

Now all they have is Wishlists.
Help this family rebuild.

Photos courtesy of She’s Not Ther’s Flickr Stream

Flickr user She’s Not Ther posted this photo with the title “My sisters house is gone” (This photo was taken just over a week ago.)

It was right next door to the First Baptist Church that exploded on April 2nd, 2008.

Oconomowoc was a complete and total mess, due to the road construction, and the disaster, so they were re-routing traffic everywhere. It’s a great loss for the city to lose a landmark, and a great sorrow for those who lost their homes.

Did you guys see anything good on TV this afternoon?

Our hearts go out to those affected by today’s tragedy.
For the latest updates, use this link to hit up Google news.

The pending closures of Wisconsin Avenue downtown (From Main to Walnut street) give us a moment to take pause and reflect on an aspect of the city of the Five O’s we think about a lot, but rarely discuss.

The city’s Web site on the Downtown Reconstruction Project, frankly, sucks.

The Downtown Reconstruction page offers little more than a few grainy GIFs, some horrific clip art, and a handful of telephone numbers.

This is not the web. This is a travesty. An embarrassment. This says to people viewing our city from the outside: “We have $24 million to give to rich developers, but not one cent to spend on keeping the people informed.”

We hope nobody is paying for this site development, because an unfinished, ugly, non-functional site like this being heralded as the go-to spot for up-to-date info on a major reconstruction project is not only embarrassing, it’s an insult to the people of Oconomowoc.

It’s not as if Oconomowoc needs a site as comprehensive as the site built for Milwaukee’s Marquette Interchange project, but for those of us who rely on Wisconsin Avenue every day, this project is at least as important.

Seriously, City of Oconomowoc. Call us. We’ll hook you up. Our rates are reasonable, and we’ll teach you. You’ll come away a better city for it.

We wish they’d hurry up and do _something_ with the abandoned Burger King in Oconomowoc’s downtown. We know there are a lot of factors that keep that from happening, but, see, the thing is, without a Burger King one of the classic Oconomowoc jokes is broken.

Two tourists were driving through Wisconsin. As they were approaching Oconomowoc, they started arguing about the pronunciation of the town’s name. They argued back and forth until they stopped for lunch.

As they stood at the counter, one tourist asked the blond employee. “Before we order, could you please settle an argument for us? Would you please pronounce where we are… very slowly?

The blond girl leaned over the counter and said, Burrrrrr, gerrrrrr, Kiiiing.”

This old chestnut popped up recently at Travel Jokes Humor and Satire. Frankly,  if you change the punchline to “Aaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrbbbieeeeeeees!” it just isn’t as funny.