The Mil

Milwaukee mortgage broker Debbie McKay,47, was featured in People magazine for her inspirational loss of more than 100 pounds. With her second grandchild on the way, the 261-pound, size-20 McKay worried she wouldn’t be able to help out. So she joined LA Weight Loss, where a counselor put her on an 1,800-calorie-a-day diet and five days a week of step, spinning and weight-training classes. The result: McKay is now a 156-pound, size-8, very active grandmother who is “dancing all the time.”

Skip Forrest is heating up Water Street with NakedModern, a new photography business that shoots curvaceous nudes wrapped around curvaceous modern furniture. An ad in the spring issue of Modernism magazine offered a sneak peek of the bold style, but the local market has been slow so far, admits Forrest. Son of acclaimed interior designer Robert Forrest, Skip owns a 1949 ranch-style pad furnished in “sensual modern,” and tools around in a 1971 280SL Mercedes formerly owned by the late art patron, Peg Bradley,whose home was decorated by the elder Forrest.

Former Milwaukee Buck Jon McGlocklin, long the volunteer board president of Midwest Athletes Against Childhood Cancer, has decided he should start drawing a salary, and his board agreed. So the MACC fund, which already had an executive director, John Cary(who earns $135,000), and a development officer, Colleen O’Neil Moran ($69,000), will now add McGlocklin as “president” at an undisclosed salary. Meanwhile, McGlocklin continues as color commentator for Bucks games, where he promotes the MACC Fund. Will he tell viewers a cut of every dollar raised goes into his pocket?

Attorney Vince Megna signed a one-year option deal with Emmy Award-winning comedy producer/director Doug Wellmanto develop a TV series based on Megna’s book, Lap Dancers Don’t Take Checks: The Truth About Law, Lawyers and Other Trivialities. Megna says the series will be an “always-truthful” yet “irreverent, disrespectful, sarcastic” look at legal types. Is there any other way to view them?

John Eding, new media relations manager for the Milwaukee Art Museum, is the son of Michigan natives and summered every year in that state. The PR man has already committed his first faux paux, telling this magazine, “When it comes to football, there is no room in my heart for anyone but the Michigan Wolverines.” Is there no screening committee at the museum?

It sometimes seems like no financial morass can be solved without the high-paid help

of former Firstar VP and one-time state lobbyist John Yingling. He was just hired as a “turnaround consultant” for Milwaukee County’s deficit-ridden economic development division. He previously helped the Milwaukee Public Museum and YWCA climb out of financial holes. Yingling, by the way, was a key strategist for Marvin Pratt in that bitterly fought race for mayor, and then did his own turnaround to become a key advisor to Mayor Tom Barrett. Flexible fellow.

Nothing quite says Sheboygan like bratwurst, beer… and surfing. Thanks to Larry “Longboard” Williams and his twin brother, Lee Williams,co-founders of the Corona Dairyland Surf Classic, their hometown has become a Labor Day weekend destination for some of the world’s premier freshwater surfers. Started in 1988, the Classic was featured in the documentaries Unsalted and Step Into Liquid, and inspired a character in the animated summer hit Surf’s Up. The surfing season here runs from September until the ski hills open. Just don’t forget your wet suit.

It was another successful summer for the U.S. Bank Championship (formerly the Greater Milwaukee Open) and its executive director, Dan Croak. Son of Fran Croak, attorney and advisor to the late Jane Pettit, Dan made a $140,438 salary in 2006. He knows how to find the green at Brown Deer Park.

While manager of Mayfair Mall, William Tucker would often take time to observe a Denny’s employee with Down syndrome. Tucker was so moved by the young man that he wrote a screenplay and, after hearing it did not have enough “blood, guts or gore” to become a Hollywood film, decided to make the movie Something for Stevie on his own. Shot entirely in Milwaukee with a shoestring budget of $20,000, the movie won honorable mention from the Accolade Awards, the international festival based in Los Angeles.

Celebrity Sightings
Former Brewers slugger Carlos Lee, in town with his Houston Astros, took some time to “look at some hot chicks and party” at Decibel, a bartender there says. Packers great Forrest Gregg and his wife recently dined at Karl Ratzsch’s, eating an all-German repast. Brewers pitcher Francisco Cordero was spotted kicking it at Eve, possibly celebrating his selection to the National League all-star team. And Travis Barker,drummer for rock band Blink 182, along with employees of his clothing line, the Famous Stars & Straps, jammed out at Tangerine. Milwaukee Buck Brian Skinner also made an appearance there.