The Mil

Here’s a novel scam. A crafty hacker posing as Milwaukee County Board spokesman Harold Mester claimed he’d been “mugged at gunpoint in London.” Hundreds of Mester’s e-mail contacts got a bogus plea for funds. But within an hour, the real Mester was intercepting a wire transfer and resetting passwords. “Fortunately, I got my account recovered in time,” he says. Now, if only he could do something about the bickering between the board and County Exec Scott Walker.

“Scholar Ladies,” a parody of Beyonce’s “Single Ladies,” has won HOPE Christian Schools, its middle school principal Patrick Hurley and its high school principal Tommie Myles some 600,000 YouTube views and appearances on “CBS Evening News with Katie Couric” and BET. It was penned and choreographed by middle school teacher Megan Huff and performed by her students, who hope to hit 1 million views by year’s end.

Maybe this is what our government’s gray-faced Legislative Reference Bureau does for fun: compile a list of all 57 Wisconsin state legislators charged with crimes or ethics violations since 1939. This being Wisconsin, 19 lawmakers were convicted for operating while intoxicated, from current state senators Michael Ellis (R-Neenah) and Russ Decker (D-Wausau) all the way back to Sen. A.J. Connors in 1939. Two of the oddest incidents in “Informational Memorandum 09-2” are former Sen. Bruce Peloquin’s acquittal for stealing bricks in 1978 and former Sen. James Carroll’s conviction in 1942 for assault and battery while trying to evict a squatter.

A chorus of homeless people? Milwaukee’s resource center for the homeless, Repairers of the Breach, has created a chorus made up of current and former clients. They were guests on WTMJ-TV’s “The Morning Blend” in March, led by guitarist Larry Whitfield, lead singer Daryl McDonald and soloist Vickie Partee.“The choir shows what we all know – our people have talent,” says Repairers co-founder and exec director MacCanon Brown.

Like a cat, Darryl Enriquez has had many lives. He got his start as a part-time dockworker for the old Milwaukee Sentinel’scirculation department in the 1970s, then was a reporter for the paper and its successor, the Journal Sentinel,from 1984 until he took a buyout in July 2009. He then campaigned for Waukesha mayor, making some vitriolic anti-Milwaukee comments before losing in the February primary. Now back on his feet, he was just hired as a reporter for the Milwaukee-based

They’re baaack. The Tygers were the Milwaukee band so hot that Les Paul even tried to get in on the action … in 1967. What happened since was forgettable, but in a stunning (or bizarre?) career revival, The Tygers just released their second album, called, er, Second Album.The group will open for Three Dog Night and the Grass Roots at a Milwaukee concert in August.

Let’s hear it for Olympic speedskater Dan Jansen’s... mom. Geraldine Jansen received “Intentional Mother of the Year” honors and was the “People’s Choice” winner from intentionalmoms.com,which encourages moms to parent without regret. She certainly fits the bill. “I have no regrets for having nine children or having them turn out the way they did,” she says.

Local heroes: Milwaukee’s Iron Horse Hotel, the swanky hog-rider haven in a 100-year-old restored warehouse, was featured in April’s Better Homes and Gardens.And Cashel Dennehy’s junior class Irish dancers won world championship honors at an April competition in Glasgow, Scotland, the first time a Milwaukee team has scored such an honor.

Celebrity Sightings
Halle Berry’s ex-husband and R&B crooner Eric Benet hit up Whiskey Bar in May, as did Ray Allen during the Boston Celtics’ April visit to the Bradley Center. Packers teammates Mark Tauscher and John Kuhn were seen at Umami Moto, presumably getting their sushi on, and The Flaming Lips, including lead singer Wayne Coyne, went the red-meat route at Carnevor the night before their April 21 show at the Riverside. Perhaps engaging in a little cuisine reconnaissance, Brewers star and new restaurateur Ryan Braun also dined at Carnevor, as did teammates Randy Wolf, Rickie Weeks and George Kottaras. Rival Chicago Cub Alfonso Soriano was there a few weeks later.

Flashback 25 years
A July 1985 feature, “Scenes from a Marriage,” profiled Jacquelyn Mitchard, then a Milwaukee Journal columnist, and her nonfiction book, Mother Less Child, which discussed devastatingly personal infertility issues. She later became a novelist with The Deep End of the Ocean. In 1996, Oprah made it her first book club selection; it shot to best-seller lists and became a movie starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Whoopi Goldberg. Five of her 17 subsequent novels were best-sellers. Mitchard’s husband Dan Allegretti, whose relationship with her was central to our 1985 feature, died in 1993. She remarried and has nine kids between Allegretti and current husband, Christopher Brent.