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  • It’s the good advice that you just didn’t take

    June 21, 2012
    Uncategorized

    IB Wisconsin’s David Blaska has advice that, like mine, is unlikely to be heeded by the Democratic Party:

    I have been looking for signs that adherents of the Democratic party have learned the lessons of the great Wisconsin Recall debacle, which failed to remove the governor from office but instead catapulted Scott Walker to national acclaim.

    I have sifted the rubble of the June 5 election and its aftermath for evidence that our liberal/progressive adversaries have picked up a clue, bought a vowel, taken the hint. So far, the pickings have been leaner than a vegan bicycle racer at a Texas barbecue.

    B+ Dave Cieslewicz. So often, simple is best. (K.I.S.S., anyone?)

    “We lost because they like the other guy better,” the former Madison mayor writes. “The public isn’t buying what Democrats have to offer and it’s time we stopped whining about it and complaining about how stupid our customers are.” True, that. …

    You’re right that people in un-Madison (which is to say, the rest of Wisconsin) don’t chant much outside the occasional monastery. But you sell language too short, for a would-be blogger. Language is a means of conveying ideas. Substitute the word “ideas” and you’ve got it: “In politics ideas matter, and the ideas of the Left don’t resonate … .”

    Advocating a total ban on handguns, as you did a couple of months ago, fer instance, ain’t going to cut it. You either trust The People to make good decisions or, like New York’s Mayor Bloomberg, you infantilize them in the nanny state. People are either causative agents or helpless victims, dependent on government sustenance, like Barack Obama’s “Julia.” …

    D — Marty Beil/Mary Bell. (Can you prove they’re not one and the same person?) Announce that “The Kathleen” Falk is Big Labor’s candidate without consulting their members. Throw $5 million of their dues at her doomed candidacy, drive to Milwaukee to diss the eventual Democrat(ic) nominee. Whoever said Big Labor is top down, tone deaf and out of touch?

    When some AFSCME members attempt a coup, Marty responds, with typical grace, “I’m sure there’s some Monday morning quarterbacking going on. There’s a whole bunch of people who all of sudden become political experts.”

    Compared to your sorry performance, Marty Bell, so are the baggers at that DeForest grocery.

    D — Little Man Tate. Chairman of the State Party. Openly hopes that the governor of Wisconsin is sent to prison. Statesmen need not apply! I’ll believe the party of my youth is on the mend when it fires spokes mouth Graeme Zielinski, lifetime winner of PolitiFact’s PantsOnFire Award. A little civility, Democrats, wouldn’t hurt. Go to that DeForest supermarket and watch how no one is cutting ahead in line and everyone pays their own way. (Send Mike the bill!) …

    F — John Nichols. Need I say more? Well, O.K., if you insist.

    Encouraged the Siege of the Capitol, ignored its inevitable excesses (Pink Dress Guy, Segway Boy, the Walker Stalkers), campaigned for the recall more fervently than Tom Barrett, cried racism in a crowded theater, and wrongly predicted “the only people who buy the argument that Walker is a safe bet to win are national pundits who have not been near Wisconsin.” Are we forgetting the Marquette Law School poll and its director, UW-Madison prof. Charles Franklin? Or does it not fit your narrative? Now holds that the stupid electorate was fooled by Citizens United. Price check in aisle 3, John!

    F-minus — Matt Rothschild. Openly eschews the ballot box in favor of mob rule.  Teamsters should shut down the Interstate highway system, “Every union in the state could have caught the blue flu.” (The link, here.) Yeah, that would work. Not!

    Even Dale Schultz would call out the National Guard.

    Wobblies like Comrade John and Matt Rothschild are weighing down the Democrat(ic) party. Wisconsin, indeed, America, does not want to look like Greece. We want to live within our means. We do not resent success, we aspire to it. The private sector is not doing “just fine.” Hiring more government workers and giving them better compensation than sustainable in the private sector is voodoo economics. People are not stupid, they can sift and winnow their way through the political advertising just fine.

    We’ll take the Tea Party, you can have Mr. Ed, Jesse Jackson and Hippie Bongstocking. (MacIver has the full video interview. “It’s so difficult being an anarchist in America,” she laments. Try being a taxpayer, Ms. Bongstocking. Hilarious!)

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  • Presty the DJ for June 21

    June 21, 2012
    Music

    Today in 1982, Paul McCartney released “Take It Away”:

    Birthdays today start with the great Lalo Schifrin:

    (more…)

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  • Insanity, November 2012 edition

    June 20, 2012
    US business, US politics

    Albert Einstein famously defined insanity as doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results.

    Does this mean those who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and vote for him again in 2012 are insane? No. Only wrong.

    U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R–Wisconsin) might suggest those who vote for Obama a second time are insane if they expect a different second term from his first:

    After adding more than $5 trillion to the national debt, it would be refreshing for Obama just to admit the truth – it didn’t work – and that he will try a fresh approach to strengthen our economy and fix what’s broken in Washington. Instead, he insists on staying the course. Does America really want to double down on his policies and accept four more years mired in the economic doldrums?

    When the president was inaugurated, he promised to cut the deficit in half. Instead, government has grown and the deficit has increased. The United States will add $5.3 trillion in debt during Obama’s four-year term, driving our debt to over $16 trillion. Every American’s share of that debt has ballooned from almost $33,000 in 2008 to over $50,000 today. The president calls these trillions of dollars in deficit spending an “investment.” It’s fair to ask what all this borrowing has bought us.

    The Federal Reserve just reported that between 2007 and 2010, families’ median net worth fell by nearly 40%. This is a depressing reality. And the Obama administration has no plan to reverse these enormous losses. Unemployment is on the rise. And while the White House boasts of creating 4 million private-sector jobs, the working-age population has grown by 6 million. We’re losing ground. Hard-working Americans are being left behind.

    The problem is not a reduction in government payrolls. The federal workforce has grown under this administration. Between 2007 and 2010, total federal wages and benefits increased by about 13%, while wages and benefits in the private sector fell by 6%. Nobody wants to underpay government workers for their efforts, but we simply cannot afford to overpay them. Governments at all levels need to benchmark public-sector compensation against that of the private sector.

    My counterpart on Wisconsin Public Radio Friday suggested one reason for the slow recovery was a decrease in public-sector employment. With all due respect to the contributions of police, firefighters, teachers and other government employees, their contributions to the economy are set off by the costs that employing them takes out of the economy in taxes. The only way the economy will improve to a recognizable recovery and noticeable economic growth will be through the  private sector:

    Wisconsin and America cannot afford another four years of increasing debt and growing government. Yet that is all Obama knows, and it is all he is able to offer. We need leadership to reduce the rate of growth of government spending and leadership that recognizes that growing government is not the solution; growing the private sector is.

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  • Presty the DJ for June 20

    June 20, 2012
    Music

    Birthdays today begin with guitarist Chet Atkins:

    Bobby Nunn of the Coasters:

    Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys:

    Anne Murray:

    Alan Longmuir of the Bay City Rollers:

    Michael Anthony of Van Halen:

    Joseph Cathcart of Nelson:

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  • Dogs and cats living together, etc.

    June 19, 2012
    Wisconsin politics

    WisPolitics.com reported that Mary Bell, president of the Wisconsin Education Association Council, said this:

    “Discussing the possibility of working with Gov. Scott Walker, Bell noted that teachers continue to provide input on policy and said if he’s willing to talk and listen, ‘we’re willing to be a partner.’ “

    Milwaukee Journal Sentinel “Purple Wisconsin” (?) blogger Sunny Schubert observes:

    That would be the same Mary Bell who, less than a year ago, childishly refused to participate in the governor’s bipartisan state-wide “Read To Lead” task force to reform reading instruction methods.

    It’s good to know that, even if too many of our children can’t, Bell CAN read the writing on the wall — at least, the message posted there by state voters last week.

    Well, does Bell have a choice? It’s pretty obvious that thanks to the collective bargaining reforms and the school district’s replacing the odious teacher union contract with employee handbooks (which is as it should be), teacher unions either have to play by the new playbook or get left on the bench. It’s also obvious that politically speaking, public employee union stock is as low as it’s ever been right now. When public employee union enemy number one Walker gains in margin in a recall election, well, the losing side needs to rethink its strategery, to quote George W. Bush.

    One question, though: After the debacle that has been Recallarama, why are either Bell or AFSCME’s Marty Beil (pronounced “bile”) still employed?

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  • Presty the DJ for June 19

    June 19, 2012
    Music

    Nothing but birthdays today, beginning with Tommy DeVito of the Four Seasons:

    Elaine “Spanky” McFarlane of Spanky and Our Gang:

    Ann Wilson of Heart:

    Larry Dunn of Earth Wind & Fire:

    Simon Wright, drummer of AC/DC:

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  • In defense of (us) liberal arts graduates

    June 18, 2012
    Culture, media

    Ripon College, a private residential liberal arts college, is holding its Alumni Weekend this coming weekend.

    Chris Rickert of the Wisconsin State Journal feels the need to defend the liberal arts (including a journalism and political science graduate with a history minor whose work you read in this space):

    I can’t open the paper lately without reading about how the American economy is doomed unless we get more kids into the so-called STEM fields — science, technology, engineering and math. …

    As a graduate and employee in two fields ranked among the most useless of college majors — English and journalism, respectively — I admit I’m a little envious of all the love being showered on STEM.

    My personal bias is also that STEM skills started succumbing to the law of diminishing returns some time shortly after the invention of indoor plumbing.

    Nevertheless, it’s clear STEM isn’t nearly as important to solving the world’s problems — economic or otherwise — as the so-called “soft” skills: compromise, empathy, the ability to understand different viewpoints, etc. …

    A lot of people were opposed to [Gov. Scott] Walker not necessarily because they were pro-collective bargaining but because they felt violated by “lack of process,” said Lisa Derr, who as president of the Wisconsin Association of Mediators knows something about process.

    Conflict-resolution consultant Harry Webne-Behrman said it’s important to identify not just the details of a conflict, but how the need for respect, empathy and understanding fuel the behavior of conflict participants.

    The STEM fields don’t always teach that, he said. “You’ve got to learn these soft skills.”

    And don’t forget the world-saving power of all those non-STEM degrees — literature, philosophy, history and others of the oft-maligned humanities.

    “Skills and methods associated with the humanities aren’t soft, despite the convention of referring to them as such,” said Sara Guyer, director of the UW-Madison Center for the Humanities. “The importance of the humanities … is not just about empathy or imagining others, but it is about deepening our real understanding and fostering rigorous, critical analysis.”

    This is not to say STEM is irrelevant to the (maybe-not-so) soft skills. …

    But personally, I’ve learned more about humanity and its discontents from Jane Smiley novels and David Foster Wallace essays than from any STEM course I ever took.

    The path to prosperity may well be paved with STEM graduates — but only if they learn the soft skills and read a few decent books along the way.

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  • Presty the DJ for June 18

    June 18, 2012
    Music

    Today in 1967 was the Monterey International Pop Festival:

    Happy birthday first to Paul McCartney:

    Jerome Smith played guitar for KC and the Sunshine Band:

    Tom Bailey was one of  the Thompson  Twins (which were, of course, an unrelated trio):

    Darren “Dizzy” Reid of Guns N Roses:

    .

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  • Presty the DJ for June 17

    June 17, 2012
    Music

    The number five song today in 1967 …

    … was 27 spots higher than this song reached in 1978:

    Birthdays start with Jerry Fielding, who composed the theme music to …

    Barry Manilow, who writes the songs that make the whole world, uh …

    Kevin Thornton sang for Color Me Badd:

     

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  • Presty the DJ for June 16

    June 16, 2012
    Music

    Dueling ex-Beatles today: In 1978, one year after the play “Beatlemania” opened on Broadway, Ringo Starr released his “Bad Boy” album, while Paul McCartney and Wings released “I’ve Had Enough”:

    The number six song one year later (with no known connection to Mr. Spock):

    The number eight single today in 1990 …

    … bears an interesting resemblance to an earlier song:

    Put the two together, and you get …

    Birthdays today start with Billy “Crash” Craddock, who asks you to …

    Eddie Levert of the O’Jays:

    James Smith of the Stylistics:

    Gino Vannelli:

    Today is also the anniversary of the death of guitarist John Honeyman-Scott of the Pretenders:

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Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog

The thoughts of a journalist/libertarian–conservative/Christian husband, father, Eagle Scout and aficionado of obscure rock music. Thoughts herein are only the author’s and not necessarily the opinions of his family, friends, neighbors, church members or past, present or future employers.

  • Steve
    • About, or, Who is this man?
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    • Adventures in ruralu0026nbsp;inkBack in June 2009, I was driving somewhere through a rural area. And for some reason, I had a flashback to two experiences in my career about that time of year many years ago. In 1988, eight days after graduating from the University of Wisconsin, I started work at the Grant County Herald Independent in Lancaster as a — well, the — reporter. Four years after that, on my 27th birthday, I purchased, with a business partner, the Tri-County Press in Cuba City, my first business venture. Both were experiences about which Wisconsin author Michael Perry might write. I thought about all this after reading a novel, The Deadline, written by a former newspaper editor and publisher. (Now who would write a novel about a weekly newspaper?) As a former newspaper owner, I picked at some of it — why finance a newspaper purchase through the bank if the seller is willing to finance it? Because the mean bank lender is a plot point! — and it is much more interesting than reality, but it is very well written, with a nicely twisting plot, and quite entertaining, again more so than reality. There is something about that first job out of college that makes you remember it perhaps more…
    • Adventures in radioI’ve been in the full-time work world half my life. For that same amount of time I’ve been broadcasting sports as a side interest, something I had wanted to since I started listening to games on radio and watching on TV, and then actually attending games. If you ask someone who’s worked in radio for some time about the late ’70s TV series “WKRP in Cincinnati,” most of them will tell you that, if anything, the series understated how wacky working in radio can be. Perhaps the funniest episode in the history of TV is the “WKRP” episode, based on a true story, about the fictional radio station’s Thanksgiving promotion — throwing live turkeys out of a helicopter under the mistaken belief that, in the words of WKRP owner Arthur Carlson, “As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.” [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ST01bZJPuE0] I’ve never been involved in anything like that. I have announced games from the roofs of press boxes (once on a nice day, and once in 50-mph winds), from a Mississippi River bluff (more on that later), and from the front row of the second balcony of the University of Wisconsin Fieldhouse (great view, but not a place to go if…
    • “Good morning/afternoon/evening, ________ fans …”
    • My biggest storyEarlier this week, while looking for something else, I came upon some of my own work. (I’m going to write a blog someday called “Things I Found While Looking for Something Else.” This is not that blog.) The Grant County Sheriff’s Department, in the county where I used to live, has a tribute page to the two officers in county history who died in the line of duty. One is William Loud, a deputy marshal in Cassville, shot to death by two bank robbers in 1912. The other is Tom Reuter, a Grant County deputy sheriff who was shot to death at the end of his 4 p.m.-to-midnight shift March 18, 1990. Gregory Coulthard, then a 19-year-old farmhand, was convicted of first-degree intentional homicide and is serving a life sentence, with his first eligibility for parole on March 18, 2015, just 3½ years from now. I’ve written a lot over the years. I think this, from my first two years in the full-time journalism world, will go down as the story I remember the most. For journalists, big stories contain a paradox, which was pointed out in CBS-TV’s interview of Andy Rooney on his last “60 Minutes” Sunday. Morley Safer said something along the line…
  • Food and drink
    • The Roesch/Prestegard familyu0026nbsp;cookbookFrom the family cookbook(s) All the families I’m associated with love to eat, so it’s a good thing we enjoy cooking. The first out-of-my-house food memory I have is of my grandmother’s cooking for Christmas or other family occasions. According to my mother, my grandmother had a baked beans recipe that she would make for my mother. Unfortunately, the recipe seems to have  disappeared. Also unfortunately, my early days as a picky, though voluminous, eater meant I missed a lot of those recipes made from such wholesome ingredients as lard and meat fat. I particularly remember a couple of meals that involve my family. The day of Super Bowl XXXI, my parents, my brother, my aunt and uncle and a group of their friends got together to share lots of food and cheer on the Packers to their first NFL title in 29 years. (After which Jannan and I drove to Lambeau Field in the snow,  but that’s another story.) Then, on Dec. 31, 1999, my parents, my brother, my aunt and uncle and Jannan and I (along with Michael in utero) had a one-course-per-hour meal to appropriately end years beginning with the number 1. Unfortunately I can’t remember what we…
    • SkålI was the editor of Marketplace Magazine for 10 years. If I had to point to one thing that demonstrates improved quality of life since I came to Northeast Wisconsin in 1994, it would be … … the growth of breweries and  wineries in Northeast Wisconsin. The former of those two facts makes sense, given our heritage as a brewing state. The latter is less self-evident, since no one thinks of Wisconsin as having a good grape-growing climate. Some snobs claim that apple or cherry wines aren’t really wines at all. But one of the great facets of free enterprise is the opportunity to make your own choice of what food and drink to drink. (At least for now, though some wish to restrict our food and drink choices.) Wisconsin’s historically predominant ethnic group (and our family’s) is German. Our German ancestors did unfortunately bring large government and high taxes with them, but they also brought beer. Europeans brought wine with them, since they came from countries with poor-quality drinking water. Within 50 years of a wave of mid-19th-century German immigration, brewing had become the fifth largest industry in the U.S., according to Maureen Ogle, author of Ambitious Brew: The Story of American Beer. Beer and wine have…
  • Wheels
    • America’s sports carMy birthday in June dawned without a Chevrolet Corvette in front of my house. (The Corvette at the top of the page was featured at the 2007 Greater Milwaukee Auto Show. The copilot is my oldest son, Michael.) Which isn’t surprising. I have three young children, and I have a house with a one-car garage. (Then again, this would be more practical, though a blatant pluck-your-eyes-out violation of the Corvette ethos. Of course, so was this.) The reality is that I’m likely to be able to own a Corvette only if I get a visit from the Corvette Fairy, whose office is next door to the Easter Bunny. (I hope this isn’t foreshadowing: When I interviewed Dave Richter of Valley Corvette for a car enthusiast story in the late great Marketplace Magazine, he said that the most popular Corvette in most fans’ minds was a Corvette built during their days in high school. This would be a problem for me in that I graduated from high school in 1983, when no Corvette was built.) The Corvette is one of those cars whose existence may be difficult to understand within General Motors Corp. The Corvette is what is known as a “halo car,” a car that drives people into showrooms, even if…
    • Barges on fouru0026nbsp;wheelsI originally wrote this in September 2008.  At the Fox Cities Business Expo Tuesday, a Smart car was displayed at the United Way Fox Cities booth. I reported that I once owned a car into which trunk, I believe, the Smart could be placed, with the trunk lid shut. This is said car — a 1975 Chevrolet Caprice coupe (ours was dark red), whose doors are, I believe, longer than the entire Smart. The Caprice, built down Interstate 90 from us Madisonians in Janesville (a neighbor of ours who worked at the plant probably helped put it together) was the flagship of Chevy’s full-size fleet (which included the stripper Bel Air and middle-of-the-road Impala), featuring popular-for-the-time vinyl roofs, better sound insulation, an upgraded cloth interior, rear fender skirts and fancy Caprice badges. The Caprice was 18 feet 1 inch long and weighed 4,300 pounds. For comparison: The midsize Chevrolet of the ear was the Malibu, which was the same approximate size as the Caprice after its 1977 downsizing. The compact Chevrolet of the era was the Nova, which was 200 inches long — four inches longer than a current Cadillac STS. Wikipedia’s entry on the Caprice has this amusing sentence: “As fuel economy became a bigger priority among Americans…
    • Behind the wheel
    • Collecting only dust or rust
    • Coooooooooooupe!
    • Corvettes on the screen
    • The garage of misfit cars
    • 100 years (and one day) of our Chevrolets
    • They built Excitement, sort of, once in a while
    • A wagon by any otheru0026nbsp;nameFirst written in 2008. You will see more don’t-call-them-station-wagons as you drive today. Readers around my age have probably had some experience with a vehicle increasingly rare on the road — the station wagon. If you were a Boy Scout or Girl Scout, or were a member of some kind of youth athletic team, or had a large dog, or had relatives approximately your age, or had friends who needed to be transported somewhere, or had parents who occasionally had to haul (either in the back or in a trailer) more than what could be fit inside a car trunk, you (or, actually, your parents) were the target demographic for the station wagon. “Station wagons came to be like covered wagons — so much family activity happened in those cars,” said Tim Cleary, president of the American Station Wagon Owners Association, in Country Living magazine. Wagons “were used for everything from daily runs to the grocery store to long summer driving trips, and while many men and women might have wanted a fancier or sportier car, a station wagon was something they knew they needed for the family.” The “station wagon” originally was a vehicle with a covered seating area to take people between train stations…
    • Wheels on theu0026nbsp;screenBetween my former and current blogs, I wrote a lot about automobiles and TV and movies. Think of this post as killing two birds (Thunderbirds? Firebirds? Skylarks?) with one stone. Most movies and TV series view cars the same way most people view cars — as A-to-B transportation. (That’s not counting the movies or series where the car is the plot, like the haunted “Christine” or “Knight Rider” or the “Back to the Future” movies.) The philosophy here, of course, is that cars are not merely A-to-B transportation. Which disqualifies most police shows from what you’re about to read, even though I’ve watched more police video than anything else, because police cars are plain Jane vehicles. The highlight in a sense is in the beginning: The car chase in my favorite movie, “Bullitt,” featuring Steve McQueen’s 1968 Ford Mustang against the bad guys’ 1968 Dodge Charger: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMc2RdFuOxIu0026amp;fmt=18] One year before that (but I didn’t see this until we got Telemundo on cable a couple of years ago) was a movie called “Operación 67,” featuring (I kid you not) a masked professional wrestler, his unmasked sidekick, and some sort of secret agent plot. (Since I don’t know Spanish and it’s not…
    • While riding in my Cadillac …
  • Entertainments
    • Brass rocksThose who read my former blog last year at this time, or have read this blog over the past months, know that I am a big fan of the rock group Chicago. (Back when they were a rock group and not a singer of sappy ballads, that is.) Since rock music began from elements of country music, jazz and the blues, brass rock would seem a natural subgenre of rock music. A lot of ’50s musical acts had saxophone players, and some played with full orchestras … [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CPS-WuUKUE] … but it wasn’t until the more-or-less simultaneous appearances of Chicago and Blood Sweat u0026amp; Tears on the musical scene (both groups formed in 1967, both had their first charting singles in 1969, and they had the same producer) that the usual guitar/bass/keyboard/drum grouping was augmented by one or more trumpets, a sax player and a trombone player. While Chicago is my favorite group (but you knew that already), the first brass rock song I remember hearing was BSu0026amp;T’s “Spinning Wheel” — not in its original form, but on “Sesame Street,” accompanied by, yes, a giant spinning wheel. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qi9sLkyhhlE] [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxWSOuNsN20] [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9U34uPjz-g] I remember liking Chicago’s “Just You ‘n Me” when it was released as a single, and…
    • Drive and Eat au0026nbsp;RockThe first UW home football game of each season also is the opener for the University of Wisconsin Marching Band, the world’s finest college marching band. (How the UW Band has not gotten the Sudler Trophy, which is to honor the country’s premier college marching bands, is beyond my comprehension.) I know this because I am an alumnus of the UW Band. I played five years (in the last rank of the band, Rank 25, motto: “Where Men Are Tall and Run-On Is Short”), marching in 39 football games at Camp Randall Stadium, the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis, Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor, Memorial Stadium at the University of Illinois (worst artificial turf I had ever seen), the University of Nevada–Las Vegas’ Sam Boyd Silver Bowl, the former Dyche Stadium at Northwestern University, five high school fields and, in my one bowl game, Legion Field in Birmingham, Ala., site of the 1984 Hall of Fame Bowl. The UW Band was, without question, the most memorable experience of my college days, and one of the most meaningful experiences of my lifetime. It was the most physical experience of my lifetime, to be sure. Fifteen minutes into my first Registration…
    • Keep on rockin’ in the freeu0026nbsp;worldOne of my first ambitions in communications was to be a radio disc jockey, and to possibly reach the level of the greats I used to listen to from WLS radio in Chicago, which used to be one of the great 50,000-watt AM rock stations of the country, back when they still existed. (Those who are aficionados of that time in music and radio history enjoyed a trip to that wayback machine when WLS a Memorial Day Big 89 Rewind, excerpts of which can be found on their Web site.) My vision was to be WLS’ afternoon DJ, playing the best in rock music between 2 and 6, which meant I wouldn’t have to get up before the crack of dawn to do the morning show, yet have my nights free to do whatever glamorous things big-city DJs did. Then I learned about the realities of radio — low pay, long hours, zero job security — and though I have dabbled in radio sports, I’ve pretty much cured myself of the idea of working in radio, even if, to quote WAPL’s Len Nelson, “You come to work every day just like everybody else does, but we’re playing rock ’n’ roll songs, we’re cuttin’ up.…
    • Monday on the flight line, not Saturday in the park
    • Music to drive by
    • The rock ofu0026nbsp;WisconsinWikipedia begins its item “Music of Wisconsin” thusly: Wisconsin was settled largely by European immigrants in the late 19th century. This immigration led to the popularization of galops, schottisches, waltzes, and, especially, polkas. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yl7wCczgNUc] So when I first sought to write a blog piece about rock musicians from Wisconsin, that seemed like a forlorn venture. Turned out it wasn’t, because when I first wrote about rock musicians from Wisconsin, so many of them that I hadn’t mentioned came up in the first few days that I had to write a second blog entry fixing the omissions of the first. This list is about rock music, so it will not include, for instance, Milwaukee native and Ripon College graduate Al Jarreau, who in addition to having recorded a boatload of music for the jazz and adult contemporary/easy listening fan, also recorded the theme music for the ’80s TV series “Moonlighting.” Nor will it include Milwaukee native Eric Benet, who was for a while known more for his former wife, Halle Berry, than for his music, which includes four number one singles on the Ru0026amp;B charts, “Spend My Life with You” with Tamia, “Hurricane,” “Pretty Baby” and “You’re the Only One.” Nor will it include Wisconsin’s sizable contributions to big…
    • Steve TV: All Steve, All the Time
    • “Super Steve, Man of Action!”
    • Too much TV
    • The worst music of allu0026nbsp;timeThe rock group Jefferson Airplane titled its first greatest-hits compilation “The Worst of Jefferson Airplane.” Rolling Stone magazine was not being ironic when it polled its readers to decide the 10 worst songs of the 1990s. I’m not sure I agree with all of Rolling Stone’s list, but that shouldn’t be surprising; such lists are meant for debate, after all. To determine the “worst,” songs appropriate for the “Vinyl from Hell” segment that used to be on a Madison FM rock station, requires some criteria, which does not include mere overexposure (for instance, “Macarena,” the video of which I find amusing since it looks like two bankers are singing it). Before we go on: Blog posts like this one require multimedia, so if you find a song you hate on this blog, I apologize. These are also songs that I almost never listen to because my sound system has a zero-tolerance policy — if I’m listening to the radio or a CD and I hear a song I don’t like, it’s, to quote Bad Company, gone gone gone. My blonde wife won’t be happy to read that one of her favorite ’90s songs, 4 Non Blondes’ “What’s Up,” starts the list. (However,…
    • “You have the right to remain silent …”
  • Madison
    • Blasts from the Madison media past
    • Blasts from my Madison past
    • Blasts from our Madison past
    • What’s the matter with Madison?
    • Wisconsin – Madison = ?
  • Sports
    • Athletic aesthetics, or “cardinal” vs. “Big Red”
    • Choose your own announcer
    • La Follette state 1982 (u0022It was 30 years ago todayu0022)
    • The North Dakota–Wisconsin Hockey Fight of 1982
    • Packers vs. Brewers
  • Hall of Fame
    • The case(s) against teacher unions
    • The Class of 1983
    • A hairy subject, or face the face
    • It’s worse than you think
    • It’s worse than you think, 2010–11 edition
    • My favorite interview subject of all time
    • Oh look! Rural people!
    • Prestegard for president!
    • Unions vs. the facts, or Hiding in plain sight
    • When rhetoric goes too far
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