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2007:12:10:12:52. Monday. SOME PIMPAGE. A couple of friends' new band, the Dan Andreas Fault, will play their first show next Tuesday at the King Club. They're opening for the Attack Ponies, showtime is at 10:00. They're supposedly kind of Wilco-ish, though obviously I haven't heard them yet. Still, I'll be there and you should too.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2007:11:18:17:12. Sunday. DETHKLOK, DETHKLOK, DETHKLOK, DETHKLOK! So we went to see what was billed as a live Dethklok show on Wednesday, but didn't really have any idea what it would actually be -- the promotion was unclear, and various claims found online all differed on key points. Still, the show was free, ...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead were opening, so what's not to like? Well, the Majestic Theatre, for one thing. This was my first show there -- I'd been there for a dance club night years ago -- and I was really unimpressed. The acoustics are horrible. The only place in the balcony where you can see the stage is right on the railing. The fucking house lights were on throughout the Trail of Dead set and partially during the Dethklok set, despite the stunning lack of stage lights. From my perspective it's the worst venue in Madison, and it's not even close. The show itself was much different than the other sponsored free shows we've gone to lately. There wasn't much brand-pushing from the stage -- just a Guitar Hero III contest-winner thing at the intermission -- but there was a screen hanging down at the front of the stage with ads playing on it. This was fine, I thought -- totally ignorable, not a big deal, except they kept the screen in place during the Trail of Dead set, obscuring most of what little view we had from the balcony. It wasn't running ads, just cycling through Trail of Dead album art. That, plus the awful lighting, plus the muddy acoustics, plus the huge security presence, meant it made little sense to try to record anything. However, Trail of Dead were really great. I saw them two years ago on a frigid Party in the Park afternoon and they were really bad; it must have just been the weather, because they put on a tight, fun set and reminded me of why I liked Worlds Apart so much. So then, Dethklok. The music was played by Brendon Small and a live band, with an ongoing story -- essentially a new episode interspersed with music videos -- playing on the screen above them. It was pretty good stuff, and I'd expect it will get released on DVD at some point (there was a notice indicating as much when we walked in the door). The bit for "Murmaider" was probably the best of what we saw -- three gorey, hand-to-hand murderfests between mermaids and some other undersea creatures -- but we left probably halfway through because it was a touch repetitious and we were a touch tired. As much fun as the show is, even in DVD marathon form, it doesn't have the kind of stories that hold up for more than 10 minutes or so.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2007:08:31:23:42. Friday. TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES. We just got back from seeing Karmella's Game at the Annex, and I unfortunately won't have any footage of it to post next week. Despite the fact that I seemed to have fully charged my camera this afternoon, it wouldn't turn on when we got there, but was fine when I put it back on the charger at home; it now claims to be charging again, but we'll see. I hope it will be fine for the SoCo™ Music™ Experience™ next weekend. The last time I saw Karmella's Game I also couldn't record them, coincidentally, because it was in the darkened Corral Room and my old camera couldn't handle the low light. At that show the room was packed, which was not quite the case tonight. As far as I could tell, Emily and I were the only civilians there. Del Monte Carlo of Mad Trucker Gone Mad was there with his ladyfriend, and during the set a few other people went in and out, but I think they may also have been from other bands on the bill. Supposedly the word had gone out that the show started at 10:00, not 9:30, although 9:30 was all I'd heard. When we walked in at about ten after 9:00, all the house lights were on and there was nobody at the door. For about fifteen minutes, we sat in the fully lit main room of the Annex wondering if we were secretly an hour early. Their set was pretty hot, especially considering they were playing for four people and I was the only one who knew their material. Most of what they played was new, apart from one of my favorites from their debut LP and maybe one of the tracks I skip on the album. The new stuff sounded excellent, and I hope they're on track to release it soon. In other tech trouble news, some crazy shenanigans happened while recording the German Art Students last week, and I only have complete audio for one of the three songs I recorded. These are the hazards of shooting without a monitor, extra batteries and the other comforts of legitimate recording, I guess.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2007:06:27:10:21. Wednesday. PANEL. Just a brief announcement: I'll be on a panel discussing local music blogging at High Noon Saloon, tonight at 5:30. Should be a hell of a time.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2007:03:14:13:57. Wednesday. MARKETED.
What really intrigues me is this: How can this possibly be a profitable marketing strategy for Jack Daniel's? Allow me to describe the extravagance of the evening. The High Noon holds 400 people -- including staff and roughly 100 VIPs, Jack Daniel's and Isthmus, the local sponsor, had 250 tickets to give away by random drawing. We won two sets of two, but that's probably not a good indicator of how many people's contact info they got for future spamming. We also opted out of future spam, as I imagine most entrants would have. In exchange for gathering these e-mail addresses, Jack Daniel's paid (in whole or in part) for: rental of the High Noon with full staff and with only Jack drinks available at the bar (and only Jack bottles on display), two free drink tickets for everybody in the building, OK Go to play a show with no gate and only a tiny merch area, local act Cats Not Dogs to open, a Peavey guitar as a door prize, an assload of t-shirts with all the dates on the Jack Daniel's tour on the back (about 30, with ours listed as "Madison, IN"), a smaller pile of t-shirts with "Madison" and "March 13" specifically on them, a huge pile of hors d'oeurves, tons of Jack-branded 1" buttons (some with "Madison" on), tons of Jack-branded guitar picks, many sets of Jack-branded drumsticks, Jack-branded regular pens, Jack-branded light-up pens, a searchlight and air-compressor-powered inflatable Jack bottle outside, and the loathsome "Jack Daniel's girls." Probably also some other giveaway trinkets that I'm forgetting. Also, custom Polaroid film, such as that seen above, which I imagine is the only way Polaroid can sell film anymore. The Jack Daniel's marketing team I'm sure has a good explanation for all of this: They're trying to cement brand loyalty among young consumers and become the liquor of choice among, if not hipsters, than at least yupsters. They also have a couple new malt beverages to push (which, FYI, are horrible), so putting some freebies in the hands of the cool kids might be a good idea, assuming they have confidence in their product. Looking around the room, though, you'd be hard pressed to find the kind of people they wanted. If there's a market out there looking to get hooked on the PBR of whiskeys, it's not going to show up at an OK Go show at the High Noon Saloon. More likely, the real reason this event happened (and why it will happen again, presumably) is that the marketing industry is a house of cards, which everyone's actions dependent on nothing so much as their perceptions of their competitor's actions. They may not actually gain anything in terms of sales or market share following this spending spree, but sweet Christ, think of what might've happened if they hadn't done this! Maker's Mark would be eating them alive!
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2007:01:29:16:38. Monday. MONDAY CAT BLOGGING. Ghost cats!
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2006:11:01:14:03. Wednesday. MADISON MUSIC PROJECT. A couple weeks ago, Isthmus put on a live showcase for its Madison Music Project, featuring four local acts at the High Noon Saloon, and hired me to produce some online videos of the show. The first, featuring Sean Michael Dargan and his band, is up today at thedailypage.com and the others will be rolled out on Wednesdays to come.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2006:04:23:19:20. Sunday. THE BIRDS AND THE... BIRDS. Zöe and Reggie have a nest under a bookshelf, where they have eggs and stuff. That's not a big shock -- they're both cockatiels. But now, Franny and Dinner have a nest. If you haven't followed the bird posts in the past, this is Dinner:
Dinner is a parakeet. This is Franny:
Franny is a green-cheeked conure three times Dinner's size. And yet, we walked into the birds' room today and found Dinner humping her and her going crazy. A little while later she was back in her nest. So... yeah.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2006:04:05:15:39. Wednesday. FINALLY! Well, it's been a long three years, but the troops are finally coming home. The policy-making power of 24,000 Madisonians has done what Scott Ritter, Joe Wilson, Pope Jizzy Pizzy, the Democratic Congressional Caucus and tens of millions of protesters couldn't -- forced the Bush Administration to end its long-term treasure hunt in the Middle East. Wait, that's not the case? So the non-binding resolution to bring the troops home that attracted a whopping 15% of Madison voters yesterday has no binding effect? Ever get the feeling you've been cheated? I voted yes on the referendum yesterday, but I steadfastly refused to sign petitions for it last year when people were trying to get it on the ballot. Why? Because a 69/31 win for this referendum, in Madison, was a foregone conclusion. It tells no one anything that they didn't already know. How much time, money and effort went into this whole thing? How much of that could've been spent on candidates who could've actually effected policy change? "Winning" this resolution carries with it no benefit. Losing would've been disastrous (frankly, I think winning with only 69% is pretty close). How much did all those lawn signs cost? All the lit drops? How much more beneficial would Democratic control of the 110th Congress be?
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2006:01:13:22:00. Friday. REGGIE.
We got a new cockatiel today. His name is Reggie, he's about 16 years old and he came to us from a friend of a friend who can't keep a bird around their new baby for some reason. I wanted to change his name to Elmo (to go with Zöe) but he seems pretty set with what he's got. He's never had another bird around, and it's clear that he now wants to nail Zöe in the worst way. She doesn't loathe him the way she did Franny at first, but she is kind of leary. We'll see how it goes.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2006:01:11:17:59. Wednesday. ATTACK OF THE MAD(TOWN) BOMBER. Madison is under attack by what appears to be a serial bomber.
Authorities are investigating three suspicious items found around downtown Madison on Wednesday.
Police said that two suspicious items removed from Madison's sewer system aren't related to an investigation into a string of pipe bombs found in a parking ramp in recent weeks. At a late afternoon press conference, police spokesman Mike Hanson said that two of the items were uncovered by a bomb squad in the sewer system about a block from the state Capitol. The objects were removed at the intersection of Webster and Main streets. These two objects were described as resembling piping, WISC-TV reported. So, there's that.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2005:12:10:14:34. Saturday. "EMBARRASSED [AND] DISAPPOINTED." We're going to the Saturday game of this year's Tech at Wisconsin series. So what happens in the Friday game?
The top-ranked Badgers had talked all week about avoiding a letdown. But talking isn’t playing and No. 1 Wisconsin was upset 4-2 by Michigan Tech in front of 12,718 at the Kohl Center Friday night.
UW started off on the wrong foot and never recovered as the Huskies used three special teams goals—including two short-handed tallies—and an empty-netter en route to the victory. “We lost the battle of human nature,” UW head coach Mike Eaves said. “It’s tough when people are patting you on the back. It happens at every level—it’s tough to battle human nature.” Just two minutes into the game Chris Conner, Tech’s sparkplug, jump-started the Huskies with a short-handed goal that knocked the wind out of the Badger crowd. Tech always plays way above themselves in Madison, though, so maybe they'll be able to get it done again tonight.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2005:11:25:12:22. Friday. BFF. We went out into the shopping madness this morning for a couple hours, looking for two things. One, a secret present for Emily, they still had at Circuit City. The other, a 200GB hard drive for $30 at Staples, had been sold out since they opened. Apparently 200 people were lined up at 6:00 AM to buy as many as they could. Meanwhile, Pricewatch lists the same thing for as low as $73, so I'm not that broken up about it.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2005:10:22:14:05. Saturday. AH, CRAP. Last night's New Pornographers show at the Barrymore Theatre got "postponed" right at the last minute.
I am very sorry to report but after last nights show in Chicago for the New Pornographers, John Collins, the bass player, suffered from an appendix attack. He ended up having to have it taken out and the band will be canceling their last two shows in Madison tonight and Minneapolis tomorrow.
The band has been racking their brain to figure out a way that they can play without him but they have exhausted all possibilities. This is a postponement. The date will be replayed as soon as possible. Ticket holders should hold on to their tickets. Tickets can not be refunded until a rescheduled date has been announced. Check our website (www.barrymorelive.com) over the next few days for more information and updates as they become available. We apologize for any inconvenience, and hope to see you at the rescheduled show. Along with last summer's Head Automatica "postponement," due to an attack of Crohn's, that's two shows I really wanted to see that are probably lost to the ages; presumably there's a third coming.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2005:09:30:12:42. Friday. WANTS TO WIN THEM OVER. We saw Mates of State last night at the Annex; it's our fourth time seeing them, including the show at which we first met. Before their set, Emily went up to the stage to tell Kori, the keyboardist/singer, how we'd met and ask if they would dedicate a song to us -- and she did! Emily picked "Whiner's Bio", and it was the fourth or so song of their set. When they talked about us, they asked us to point ourselves out, and then had us come up on stage and dance during the song. This was OK, except I kind of wanted to digicam that song, and I couldn't really do it while dancing. I did get her intro, though -- 10MB MPEG video here. Later on, everybody kept asking us if we were the two that met at the show, and some guy wanted to buy us beers. So now we're famous.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2005:09:15:00:07. Thursday. PIGEON. Here's what happened.
Emily called me this morning from the Wednesday market in Milwaukee. She said there was a flock of pigeons poking around some old popcorn and that one of the pigeons was, in fact, a yellow and green parakeet. A few hours later she called me again to tell me we had a new bird; some lady had managed to toss a sweater over the bird, which then squirmed out and flew up to Emily's arm. It looks pretty young to me, and/or a little beat up. I can't tell if it's male or female, but it seems pretty OK around people and the other birds. We have named it Pigeon.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2005:06:01:20:50. Wednesday. PIMPER KNUCKLE.
[Video here, 19.7MB Quicktime.]
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2005:05:22:13:00. Sunday. MASTERFUL. I became a Master on Friday and saw "Revenge of the Sith" on Saturday, so it's been a good weekend. After I've had a chance to see it again I'll comment more on how it completes the puzzle, but I will say that it's probably the best film that could've been expected. It not only sets up "A New Hope" terrifically, but it subtly complements "Return of the Jedi" in ways that I suspect Lucas won't get much credit for.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2005:05:19:12:22. Thursday. FORWARD! Tomorrow afternoon I defend my thesis and (hopefully) turn into a PhD candidate. The paper is called "Sound and Fury: Discovering Empty Language in Political Communication" and you can download it here if you so desire.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2005:05:01:13:44. Sunday. SNOW MORE. It snowed a little bit today, which is odd, because the same thing happened exactly 52 weeks ago. I can't figure out why the weather here should be so much odder than it is in, say, Green Bay. [UPDATE: Early evening brought hail. Hail? WTF?!?]
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2005:04:03:22:30. Sunday. HAPPENINGS. Zöe has laid some eggs.
Franny has eaten some apple.
We have visited the Forevertron.
That is all.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2005:03:18:11:27. Friday. IT'S A HIT! Well, only about a third of the class was there (because it's the Friday before spring break and we had a blizzard last night) but they seemed to like the lecture. One student even came up at the end and said she really enjoyed it and found it easy to follow and understand. If, for some reason, you want to learn about political PR and new media, you can check out the slides here.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2005:03:17:18:46. Thursday. BY THE END OF THIS CLASS, TWO OF YOU WILL BE MURDERED. I've giving my first lecture tomorrow. It's on political PR and new media. Hooray!
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2005:01:30:23:52. Sunday. ENTERPRISE JOURNALISM, STARRING EDWARD R. BAKULA. Well, the story ran tonight, and it was pretty weak. In fact, the anchor's cutesy alliterative introduction was almost as long as the story itself. "'Blog' was the word of the year! Look what they're doing in the modern university!" So, I'm not going to digitize it -- I was only on screen for one sentence (the same as the professor and student who were interviewed at the same time). However, you can read the text version here -- if you like watching very low quality commercials for US Cellular you can also watch the piece in lo-fi, streaming Windows Media. This episode puts me in mind of this metapost on the nature of blogging, which I don't believe I've ever posted here, but which struck at the time (and still does) as a good starting point for a real discussion on what blogging means. I found it while writing a short paper on the difficulties in conceptualizing "Internet use" (it's actually a revised version of an academic conference presentation). In that paper, I wrote that the Internet "is as much a media infrastructure as it is a medium," and I think blogging is our first clear evidence of that. Given the infrastructure, a handful of people came up with similar tools to exploit that infrastructure, and a new set of communication standards and practices arose to exploit those tools. This local TV report (the third recent local media report on this exact subject, for the record) does not begin to discuss what blogging means for education in the future, whether it requires different skills of students than other teaching and learning methods or even what a blog is -- Greg Downey, the professor in question, is given exactly 16 words on-screen to describe what a blog is. Those 16 words are correct, but the many other words that were cut out are the ones that really tell you what blogs do. Not surprisingly, while I watched the reporter set up his camera and tell his interviewees to focus on an imaginary point on the wall, I found myself thinking the same thing I thought during my interview last spring: I knew there was a reason I never had any interest at all in broadcast journalism.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2005:01:29:16:35. Saturday. ELECTRIC BOOGALOO. I'm being interviewed for a local news piece about blogging tomorrow -- not so much because I'm a hip, happening blogger, but because I'm a hip, happening mass communication researcher. It's the same station that interviewed me last spring as the TA strike was about to start, and I guess I impressed them enough for a callback (well, that, and one of our faculty recommended me).
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2005:01:28:18:25. Friday. JOHNSON AT PARK, STYLIN'.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2004:12:13:14:17. Monday. ADVENTURES IN WIRELESS IDIOCY, PT. 3: WIRELESS GENIUS? The city of Madison wants to install a wireless network that would cover the airport, the convention centers and a 1.5-mile radius around the Capitol:
Many of the wireless hubs could be outfitted for light poles, meaning there will be no large towers incorporated in the plan, according to Twigg. The RFP requests interested vendors to lay out their construction and outfitting plans for the hubs. Vendors would cover the construction of the network hubs.
The winning vendor for the initiative will pay the city, county and state for the right to run the wireless-fidelity (wi-fi), Twig added. No taxpayer dollars will be required in the project. �The county, city and state working together provides for a seamless, wireless system that will provide great service at no cost to our taxpayers,� Falk said in a release. �Wi-fi will allow people to move about our community for business, study or pleasure and access the Internet.� Free access to a handful of local websites would be available, and full Internet service will be available for a selected fee. Users could pay for a daily, monthly or long-term fee to access the service. Meanwhile, near-campus locations not covered by university networks (i.e., the one coffee shop left on State St. that doesn't have its own wireless coverage) would now be covered, and the university could license access for students, rather than paying to expand its own coverage. I can't tell yet if this a great example of the public good being served, or a hackological disaster waiting to happen.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2004:12:06:11:58. Monday. RANDOM DIGICAM BLOGGING.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2004:12:02:22:24. Thursday. SMARTER THAN MOST PEOPLE. I was on a bus with two teenage hookers today. I got on and one of them was talking about her friends getting tested for AIDS. The other said she was "smarter than most people" -- she gets tested every month for STD's. The monthly tester is also a lesbian, apparently. She kisses "other females" with no regard as to whether they've recently sucked any dicks, etc., etc. It occurred to me as I was getting off the bus that they might be cops, doing a really involved undercover job where they pose as teenage hookers, ride the bus all day, and arrest whichever pervs overhear and approach. But I suspect they're actually just regular teenage hookers.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2004:11:26:14:25. Friday. BUY NOTHING DAY.
We bought a Sony Cyber-shot (DSC-P73) at Best Buy today, then bugged out and bought a bunch of basically free blank CD-R and DVD-R media at Office Max. This came after a ridiculous sidetrack to Radio Shack, where we wanted a Casio Exilim EX-Z4 until we found out it was "mismarked" and they wouldn't give us the "wrong" price. We also picked up a little straw hat for Franny -- just 29¢! Unfortunately, she had to be, let's say, coerced into wearing it. Oh well.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2004:11:02:08:21. Tuesday. NUMBERS. Just voted. Arrived before 7:30, stood in line about 25 minutes and was the 175th person to vote in the precinct. Voted Democrat in all the important races, Green in a couple of no-chance county offices and No on a city referendum to expand waterfront-wrecking authority. The line grew while I was there but so far they seem prepared for the turnout. A few people looked at the long line and left, but who knows why. More tonight. [UPDATE: First early exit poll shows Kerry up 52-43 in Wisconsin; many voters reportedly challenged in Racine, GOP vans' tires reportedly slashed in Milwaukee. Everyone go vote.]
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2004:08:27:19:55. Friday. FRANNY.
This is our new, bought-on-a-whim green-cheeked conure, Franny. He (or she?) seems to be quite a bit of fun so far, but is not yet hand-trained, so we're working on that. In addition, here is a picture of Ezra wearing a fez.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2004:06:17:08:56. Thursday. A LOVELY GARDEN PARTY.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2004:06:16:11:57. Wednesday. FIVE THOUSAND WORDS.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2004:06:14:12:33. Monday. OUR LOVE GOES CRAZY ALL THE TIME. Well, we did it. My scanner's on the fritz, so this is the only picture I have ready right now:
It's me eating the cherry from our cake. Hooray! More to come.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2004:06:08:10:24. Tuesday. TWO RINGY-DINGY. We bought some rings yesterday at a couple stores on State Street. They are, shall we say, untraditional. I look forward to our mothers being annoyed.
During the rummage sale, we brought Lassie outside to play, since her wings are still clipped. She ran around in the yard a bit and sat in a tree, which she seemed to like. She also kind of freaked out a little girl from downstairs.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2004:06:04:14:08. Friday. BUY OUR CRAP!
Today's the first day of our two-day rummage sale -- with about two hours left, we've taken in almost $100, which adds up to about $70 profit once the classified ad is taken into account. I'm expecting at least as much tomorrow, since all the people with jobs will be out to shop. Also, I'm posting this from out in the lawn.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2004:06:03:08:36. Thursday. HEY.
Emily and I went up to Upper Michigan last weekend to, among other things, go through my grandparents' storage unit. I found a rain bonnet from Houghton National Bank that I thought was quite stylish.
Later we ate at Houghton's formerly best, and now worst, Chinese buffet. Emily took a private meeting with a stoic but fair Buddha. Our marriage ceremony will take place on June 12. It will consist of three people signing a piece of paper and four people watching them do it. On August 22, we will have a party in our new house, so don't worry about us not getting a ton of free stuff.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2004:05:21:22:31. Friday. BUY US PRESENTS. We are now registered at Target -- buy things for us. Thank you.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2004:05:20:20:53. Thursday. SOMEBODY, SOMEBODY, SOMEBODY, SOMEBODY, SOMEBODY.
We're getting married for the free insurance. More to come.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2004:05:02:10:15. Sunday. MAYDAY! MAYDAY!
We woke up this morning to a blizzard. A fucking blizzard! It's May 2, for Christ's sake! Now it's started to melt and there's a ton of water running off the roof.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2004:04:28:15:54. Wednesday. STREET THEATER. Some sights from day two of the walkout:
On the bridge is the big sign that elicited numerous honks from University Ave. traffic. It had to be taken down a few hours into the picket because the high winds broke the wooden support structure. Whoops! In the late morning, some kind came riding his bike down the sidewalk where we were marching and had a sign pinned to his shirt that said "Unions Support Communism." As he passed, I yelled, "Yeah, communism!" and everybody cheered.
Union workers at UPS had agreed not to cross picket lines to make their deliveries; thus, nothing got delivered yesterday. Today, a UPS truck showed up at the Vilas loading dock just as our shift was about to end. We quickly reconvened the line but it didn't matter: The guys hauling the packages were Brown management. Ha ha ha.
Right after the UPS thing, this RV drove by. According to some of the stuff painted on it, it seemed to be connected to Granny D. In the foreground stands my advisor, who joined us on the line for a little while.
As we were heading to Dottie Dumpling's Dowry for beer and burgers, this crowd of people stormed the bridge over University Ave. They had a bullhorn, which we weren't allowed to use for some reason, and a lot of people compared to any other single picket group. Turns out they were undergrads, probably the ones who nearly got arrested several times during the morning. They were trailed by several cops, three of whom stood watch from one of Vilas's weird ledges and another of whom took up a perch right next to the guy with the bullhorn. Hooray for speech without intimidation!
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2004:04:27:19:27. Tuesday. MEDIA DARLINGHOOD.
I've digitized the clip of my interview. It went pretty well, though I forgot to explicitly connect TA recruiting to quality of education for undergrads, and I couldn't wedge in the fact that our proposal is $300,000 cheaper than the state's. If you'd like to deal with a 43MB download, click here. Oh yeah, by the way, my VCR doesn't play well with the antenna, so it records fuzzily. The clip looks better than the still. How about some more pictures?
This is Monday night's press conference. The questioner is Paul Blume, the guy I dealt with from NBC 15. Coincidentally, he had given a guest lecture that very morning in the class I teach.
Those of us in the j-school picketed around the Humanities building; this is some of us. Tomorrow morning we'll be picketing our own building, Vilas Hall.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2004:04:26:22:24. Monday. WHEN DO WE WANT IT? So, we're striking tomorrow. For two days we will picket about a dozen high-traffic buildings on campus. I'll be doing an interview with the local NBC affiliate tomorrow morning at 6:25. I have never done a remote link-up interview, so that should be interesting. Also, I expect I will become a local celebrity afterwards. Hopefully this will be enough to avert the grade strike. We shall see.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2004:04:15:07:35. Thursday. YOU GOTTA FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHT TO PARTY. I posted last month about a lawsuit against Madison bars that allegedly engaged in price-fixing. The Daily Show came to town last week, which gave Doug Moe the opportunity to call the lawsuit "stupid":
But, let's face it, this is a strange lawsuit. When the Wisconsin State Journal made light of it in an editorial, a UW law professor, Peter Carstensen, wrote a serious-minded guest editorial scolding the paper for failing to realize that if the allegations in the suit are true, "the bar owners have violated one of the most basic principles of American antitrust law."
OK, the suit isn't frivolous. It's just stupid. Allow me, with many years in the trenches on this issue, to list a couple of reasons why. 1. The bar owners made a grass-roots, informal effort to curb the worst of excessive drinking on campus by voluntarily cutting back on specials late on weekend nights. They did this as a good-faith response to a possible 24/7 ban on specials that UW officials were thinking of pursuing. Here's a fact: The last thing anyone needs at 10 p.m. on a Saturday night is encouragement to drink more. The late actor Humphrey Bogart, asked in a deposition if it was true that he was intoxicated one Saturday night at midnight, responded, "Isn't everybody?" 2. It didn't save the bars much money and it didn't cost the kids much, if anything. Most of the bars that are named in the suit are packed on Friday and Saturday nights and don't need to offer specials to get people in the door. Some didn't offer them. Those that did often put off-brand items they couldn't move otherwise on special. I agree that the quality of the claim is sketchy against bars that didn't have specials in the first place. However, to claim that the law shouldn't apply because this case involves the sale of alcohol is ridiculous. "Justice is blind" doesn't just mean that we all receive the same treatment no matter what we look like, it means that the law applies equally in all cases.
Finally, a note to the plaintiffs: Drinking something just because it is on special identifies you as a rube.
Looks like it's been quite a while since Moe was a poor college student. I am a certified vodka snob (the only thing you'll find in my house is Ketel One, which I guess places me on the poor rung of the vodka snob ladder), but if I can get rail cocktails for $2, bring on the cheap-ass vodka.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2004:04:07:11:17. Wednesday. ATTENTION WAL-MART VOTERS. (Yeah, I stole that title from The Village Voice.) For a while now, Wal-Mart has been trying to build one of their insane "supercenters" in the Madison suburb of Stoughton, already home to a non-mutant Wal-Mart; the Stoughton City Council strongly opposed any new big box construction, and refused to allow a city-wide referendum on the new store. Yesterday, two anti-Wal-Mart Council members were voted out of office and two others were defeated for open seats, setting up a 6-6 split on the issue, with the pro-Wal-Mart Mayor breaking the tie. Madison itself already has two Wal-Marts, and the company has plans in the works in other Madison suburbs. Meanwhile, the voters of Inglewood, CA, don't have their heads up their asses:
A bid by the world's largest corporation to bypass uncooperative elected officials and take its aggressive expansion plans to voters failed Tuesday, as Inglewood residents overwhelmingly rejected Wal-Mart's proposal to build a colossal retail and grocery center without an environmental review or public hearings.
With all votes counted Tuesday evening, 4,575 Inglewood residents had voted in favor of Wal-Mart's plan, while 7,049 had voted against it. Wal-Mart hopes to break into California's grocery business by opening 40 such Supercenters statewide. The one in Inglewood would have been Los Angeles County's first. The proposal would've effectively made the Inglewood Wal-Mart a sovereign city. If you're curious why this would be bad, please go here.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2004:04:02:16:21. Friday. TONIGHT ON YOUR LATE LOCAL NEWS: WOLF OUTBREAK! Audrey Seiler is a fraud:
University of Wisconsin student Audrey Seiler made up her original abduction story.
Seiler says that she was not abducted from her Regent Street Apartment Saturday; however, she was abducted from another place in the city at knife-point. However, Madison police say they don't think a suspect exists. The search for Seiler has been the focus of national attention all week. Seiler changed her story when police confronted her with "inconsistencies," said acting Madison Police Chief Noble Wray at a press conference. And The Capital Times has this:
Police also have uncovered videotapes of Seiler in a store buying the items she claimed her abductor used to keep her captive, including duct tape, rope, cold medicine, gum and a knife, Wray said.
And they discovered that two entrances to The Regent apartments had no video surveillance, suggesting that she might have used those entrances to come and go unnoticed after her "disappearance." And he said flatly, "We do not believe there is a suspect at large, period." Whoops.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2004:04:01:21:30. Thursday. 'ROUND HERE, WE ALL LOOK THE SAME. It hasn't taken long for questions about the various parts of the Audrey Seiler story to go mainstream:
Police described the suspect as a white male in his late 20s to early 30s, with a longish rectangular head and chubby cheeks, a prominent chin, a long fleshy nose, and a small mouth with downturned corners. The suspect is about 5'10 or 5'11, with a stocky build, police said.
Yesterday he was 6' tall and skinny.
A law enforcement source outside the Madison Police Department who is familiar with the case said Thursday, "I can't go anywhere in this city without hearing someone say, based on what I've heard, this doesn't make sense. If it doesn't make sense to the average citizen, you can imagine where law enforcement is."
... The source said Madison police burned themselves by jumping to conclusions in previous cases, such as the "Patty" rape case, and do not want to repeat the mistake. "They just can't expose themselves, considering what they've just gone through," the source said. In that case, police in 1997 accused a Madison woman known as "Patty" of making up a story about being sexually assaulted. Later DNA evidence identified a state prisoner as the suspect, and Joseph Bong was convicted of the rape after a weeklong trial in March. Meanwhile, local affiliates are reporting tonight that the woman who first noticed Seiler walking around in the marsh had also seen her walking out there alone the day before:
The Department of Revenue employee who called police after discovering Audrey in a marshy area near her office yesterday, is not talking to the media, but some who work with her have indicated Seiler may have been spotted in the same area on both Monday and Tuesday.
My own theory may be too callous for public consumption. UPDATE [04:02:08:52] - The Wisconsin State Journal has a story out headlined "Police: No reason to think Seiler story made up," which means the possibility is at least being discussed; Seiler's parents have denied that she has a history of drug problems or mental illness.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2004:04:01:09:52. THE AMAZING DISAPPEARING CRISIS. If you follow the national news, you probably know that a University of Wisconsin student disappeared last Saturday. She was one of about 100,000 missing persons in the country, but managed to become an important news item on at least two networks by the beginning of the week. I saw a news van from St. Paul, MN, parked outside her apartment building yesterday around 1:00 and took a picture of it so I could do a post about watching this local story go national from the inside. For some reason my spycam didn't actually capture the picture, but it didn't matter: She was found right around the time I was passing the truck. posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2004:03:24:16:57. Wednesday. CHEAP BOOZE AND FREE MONEY. About a year and a half ago, many of the campus-area bars in Madison, under pressure from the city, got together and stopped advertising drink specials on Friday and Saturday nights. Before this, it was pretty easy to find someplace selling your favorite drink at two for a dollar on any given weekend. Now, some UW students are suing:
A class action lawsuit was filed today in Dane County Circuit Court accusing 24 downtown Madison taverns and the Madison-Dane County Tavern League of conspiring to fix prices on beer and liquor.
The suit, filed by a Minneapolis law firm on behalf of three University of Wisconsin-Madison students, says taverns that agreed to eliminate weekend drink specials - a step strongly urged by Chancellor John Wiley - committed felony violations of both state and federal antitrust law, regardless of their intent. It also accuses UW-Madison of participating. The suit maintains that the victims of price fixing - basically anyone who patronized the downtown taverns on Friday or Saturday nights and paid full price - are entitled to triple damages under antitrust law. As it happens, I have patronized certain downtown taverns on Friday or Saturday nights, so go, lawsuit, go!
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra |
We went to see a free OK Go event at the High Noon last night, put on by Jack Daniel's. This is the second or third such event they've put on in Madison -- they did one with the New Pornographers last year, and there was a Spoon show in 2005 that might've been them too. It was a good show, but I'll have more to say on that when the videos go up next week.
