Another Week: Number 164

This was a week when lots of disturbing things swirled around at once and did not settle.

For example, the kidnapping of Nancy Guthrie stretched on for a second week, with news organizations reporting regularly every hour from outside her Arizona home. On Tuesday, some video from her doorbell camera was retrieved and released, showing a man with a mask and gloves, a gun and a backpack puttering around her front door. Later that night, authorities took a man named Carlos into custody, and CNN went into nonstop coverage mode — but then Carlos was released again by Wednesday morning. Next, a black glove was found in the area, and the rest of the week was spent speculating about the backpack and the glove.

On Tuesday night, news broke that the Donald J. Trump Justice Department failed to get a grand jury indictment of the six Democratic members of Congress who released a video last November reminding military personnel that they must not follow illegal orders. Trump had said this behavior was punishable by death — yet not a single juror would even indict them.

On Wednesday, a 10-day air traffic ban was suddenly declared around San Antonio — and then cancelled a couple of hours later. Trump administration officials initially blamed drones and drug cartels, but the actual threat was apparently four mylar balloons that we shot down with secret lasers.

Also on Wednesday, Attorney General Pam Bondi sat in front of the House Judiciary Committee and shot down every attempted question from Democrats with hissing, growling insults and rage, like someone with serious emotional problems.

The Winter Olympics are underway in Milan, but I haven’t really been watching. I did see Lindsey Vonn crash.

I also didn’t watch the Super Bowl — but I did tune in for Bad Bunny’s highly-anticipated halftime show. I’m not familiar with his music at all, but it looked like a very fun 14 minutes.

I walked 6.75 miles this week.

Divi 5 Migrator not ready for prime time

For years, I have used Divi as the framework for most of the websites I build, including this one. For over three years, the people who make Divi — Elegant Themes — have been developing Divi 5 as a momentous new version of their ingenious website builder.

I have used Divi 5 on new websites, with good results.

However, existing websites built in Divi 4 will have to be converted to the new version using the Divi 5 Migrator. Before I attempt that on clients’ sites, I wanted to try it out on my own fairly large website first.

It did not go well. When I finally got the conversion to complete, after hours of stalled starts, the new version of my website was missing many key parts that would have to be replaced one-by-one.

Screw it. Wisely, I made sure to have backups on hand with which to restore Divi 4 — wasting several more hours of my life.

I’ll brace myself and try again some sunny day.

Song Sung Blue: Lightning, Thunder, and Greg Kohs

When my mom enjoys a movie, she often likes to watch it again right away. On Friday evening, she suggested Song Sung Blue, which she had seen the night before. I was familiar with the basics from watching Milwaukee local news — but I was not expecting a several-day odyssey backtracking through the personal lives of two singers in a small house near Mitchell Field.

Song Sung Blue is a 2025 movie starring Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson as “Lightning and Thunder,” a Neil Diamond tribute act that played the Milwaukee-Chicago area from 1987 to 2006, and yet completely escaped my radar until the movie’s release last fall.

On the heels of recent musical biopics about Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, this one traverses a familiar path cratered with clichéd pitfalls and manages to skirt some of them. It’s a wacky tale of misfits in love following their dream and finding both success and bitter tragedy. Jackman is magnetic and deft, but he remains Hugh Jackman wearing a wig. Kate Hudson draws from down deep to express Thunder’s insecurity and grace. The moment the two of them first sing together in her living room is spellbinding. The actors playing their kids are great. It’s an engaging movie with likability outweighing clumsiness — and there’s plenty of Neil Diamond music.

But: This 30 million-dollar movie was preceded 17 years earlier by a documentary also called Song Song Blue. That movie is now streaming for free on YouTube. I watched a little with my mom, then finished the rest at home the next morning.

The documentary is a classic — right up there with my favorite slice of oddball Milwaukee artistry, American Movie. Instead of debonair Hugh Jackman, we get to witness the feral, real-life Mike “Lightning” Sardina in all of his chain-smoking, coffee-chugging, pantless splendor.

Sardina’s soul is fully invested in his show business dream. His mother-in-law, Frances Stingl, has her walker securely planted in life’s bleak realities. Bridging that chasm, Claire “Thunder” Sardina is also trying to raise her two kids in a tiny, chaotic house.

Then there is the astounding story of Greg Kohs, the director who financed the original film out of his own pocket and shot it over eight years on monthly trips to Milwaukee from his home in Philadelphia, simply in an attempt to help Lightning & Thunder catch a break. That story is written by Kohs himself on his Real As Dirt website. It’ll give you goosebumps — and a profound admiration for Eddie Vedder, who is an absolute mensch.

Seeing the Hollywood version first, followed by the documentary, and then Kohs’ story, felt like the correct order, with each work building on the previous material.

Taken as a whole, this was a deeply rewarding expedition.