Walker Undermines Courthouse Security

Scott Walker isn't a County Executive -- he's a cartoon.  Every statement, every proposal, every budget he's made since he took advantage of Tom Ament's misfortune to gain an office he never would have otherwise has been an unserious joke, meant only to strike poses for the right-wing base he thinks is going to advance his blind ambition to be Governor.  When Walker proposes something, you know it's not going to happen -- the only question is who is going to be the adult that fixes the mess.

Among the proposed victims of the political document he calls a budget and his grandstanding vetos are the mentally ill, bus riders, lakefront tourists, park users and the entire community, who will suffer increased crime because they no longer have the benefit of the rehabilitation efforts by the highly-successful Community Justice Resource Center.  Also high on Walker's let's-beat-them-up-for-political-gain list are county employees, who will have to suffer through unbargained "furlough" days, and the citizens who expect the services the employees, on random days, will not be around to perform.

And then there are the county employees in the Courthouse itself that Walker doesn't want around at all.  Those would be those who maintain and protect it.  Of course, since Walker spends as little time there as possible -- and, when he does, he spends all his time on the phone with wing-nut radio hosts -- what does he care if the place is cleaned or secure? He probably figures he can get the Merry Maids in there for the $125 a week he plops down to get his house in Tosa cleaned and save money by not having all these annoying county cleaners all over the place.

But, of most concern to me as a daily visitor to the Courthouse is his attack on the security staff that have gotten people in and out of the building since early this decade.  After 9/11, everyone in the country responsible for public buildings went nuts.  In the Courthouse, they put metal detectors at the entrances they left open and closed many others (the Ghandi statue at the MacArthur Square former entrance stares at three permanently locked doors).  It took a while to get the system working -- a fellow lawyer and friend of mine once refused to take off his shoes while entering the building, spurring the current system of security passes that get us trusted regulars in the building without the petty indignities suffered by the thousands of visitors who come to the Courthouse everyday. 

The veteran security staff gets us passed through and the citizens screened in a pleasant, efficient and professional manner.  I am terrible with names in the first place, but I know their faces and they know mine.  Besides waving me in, I can see them dealing with the county residents who come to the Courthouse to conduct business; perform jury duty; attend court hearings; get licenses; drop small claims cases on unsuspecting neighbors; get copies of deeds, birth and death certificates, etc.  They are absolutely superb in getting people through the metal detectors and directed to where they are trying to get to in the complicated three-building Courthouse complex. 

Proposing bringing in third-rate security goons from Bob's Security Service or whatever it would be is insane. The only people who would support it -- other than Bob -- are people who never come to the Courthouse and have no idea what it takes to make the security system efficient and competent.  That would be people like Scott Walker and his roving band of goofballs, who are only concerned with scoring vapid political points and couldn't care less about making the county government work.

The Courthouse is one of the few places where almost the entire community has to appear at some point or other for the important or mundane business of life.  The visting, taxpaying citizens should be greeted by permanent professionals who have a stake in getting them through and keeping the building safe.  The security staff at the Courthouse entrances have grown into a talented bunch who represent our county well.  To lose them to the greedy political ambitions of a opportunistic punk like Scott Walker would indeed be a tragedy.

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band Say Goodbye

At the close of the official set last night -- before the epic multi-song encore -- Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band ripped through a riviting "No Surrender".  With photos from the band's career projected up behind them, they made the subtle explicit.  "There's a war outside still raging/You say it ain't ours anymore to win," he sang, as they celebrated the life of the band as they put it -- for now and probably forever -- loudly to bed. 

Springsteen was serious and joyful at the same time, all night long.  Starting off with the celebration of the mysteriously interesting "Wisconsin night" of "Cadillac Ranch" and ending almost three hours later with a soulful rendition of Jackie Wilson's "Higher and Higher", he was a man on a mission.  No "Are You Loose?" tonight because he wasn't; savoring the last moments of the most-talented band of rock musicians to ever come together by draining each perfect note from every player ready to give it to him.  After three more shows -- in exactly a week -- this tour will be over, with nothing further planned. 

But it wasn't just about the band.  Springsteen also engaged his other partners in his life's work -- his fans -- in every song.  He pointed to various people in the crowd all night long, waving "hi", pretending like he was encountering long lost friends.  He also gave up his body more than he has since he was crawling up the aisle during "Spirits in the Night" back at the Uptown in his famous first trip here in 1975; running down the side of the crowd to a small riser in the middle of the floor and letting the crowd in the front pit pass him back up to the stage during "Hungry Heart".  Always the earnest populist, Bruce knows his strength as a showman has always derived from his abilty to connect, and he made the most of it this night.

The centerpiece of this show was the end-to-end playing of Born to Run, one of the greatest albums ever made.  The idea of playing a whole album is an interesting one in concept, but less so in practice.  Sure, you get eight of the best songs in anyone's catalog, in their original context.  But the spontaneity of a usual Springsteen show is out the window for 50 minutes as one song follows the other.  Also, some of the treatments of the songs have changed so much through the years -- I'm thinking of "10th Avenue Freezeout" -- that you wonder why it was ever placed between "Thunder Road" and "Night" in the first place.  "Born to Run" seems jarring in the middle, unless you remember that it led off Side Two back when there were two sides to an album and you had to get up and flip the thing over.  After watching the same exercise to much the same effect the night before at the Steely Dan show -- Royal Scam, all the way through -- I think I'd just as soon these guys go back to trying to surprise me.

Which he did, after he got back in control towards the end of the set.  "Into the Fire", the most explicit of the The Rising's 9/11 songs and "The Rising" itself set a surprisingly serious tone before the "No Surrender" pseudo-finale. 

But the highlights were both in the encore, with a long "Kitty's Back" and "Rosalita".   During "Kitty's Back", Bruce led the individual band members in their solos, giving guest trumpeter Curt Ramm some extra time to stretch out and giving pianist Roy Bittan his full attention for a solo that must have gone on for over two minutes.  It reminded me of the first time I saw him at the Bomb Scare show back in '75, when he left the stage and sat in a seat in the first row while he just admired his band.  There was something he wanted to get from Bittan last night, and he was getting it.  Again, savoring the moments.

With old age, Clarence's health, Max Weinberg's TV career and numerous projects pulling the E-Streeters in different directions, they'll never put this thing together again.  Since they reunited from the last major break in 2000, Springsteen and the band has produced some of the greatest concerts of their career, as the strength of The Rising as a record and the incredible Rising tour gave them a momentum that carried them all the way through to last night. 

They've done all they need to do and said all there is to say.  There ain't no more, and there doesn't have to be.  Springsteen will be out with various solo projects and maybe he'll be able to cobble together a better replacement band than he did in '92 or stumble into another interesting project like the Seeger Sessions.  But Springsteen with E Street Band was a once-in-a-generation happy accident, both for him and for us.  And they shared the results with us last night, one more time, with joy and pride and passion.

UPDATE: The most pleasantly chaotic moment of the night is up on YouTube.  After the first bow, Bruce sees a sign for "Living Proof", a song about the joys of fatherhood from one of his non-E-Street projects in the misbegotten early '90s.  The band acted like they never played or heard the song before (if so, what's this?) and they fumbled around like a rehearsal until they found the groove -- or a groove, anyway.  Bruce holds up 1, then 4, then 5 fingers to let the band know where he is in the I-IV-V chord progression.  It was an interesting way to watch he and the band work.  The next song was..."Kitty's Back".

The Company They Keep

I don't know about you, but I always thought that the concept of "guilt by association" has gotten a bad rap.  I think you can judge a person -- certainly a politician -- by who they choose to hang out with and use to advance their political careers. In fact, as secretive and unknown as some of these people are, sometimes that's all you have. 

Take right-wing darling Rep. Paul Ryan from Janesville.  Ryan has been a rising star in the Republican galaxy for some time now, if only because he is one of the shrinking party's' few congressional members who can appear on TV without triggering the gag reflex.  At least that's what I hear from others. I still have throat trouble when I see his slick head of hair and boyish smirk appear on yet another talk show, but then I have always had trouble laughing and swallowing at the same time.  If you want a good laugh, check out his recitation of the GOP's health care "plan" to maintain the status quo.  It's a riot.

Anyway, in this morning's paper it is reported that Ryan has caught some flack from his constituents for attending an event presented by the Federation for American Immigration Reform.  FAIR has been called out by the Southern Poverty Law Center for its racist leaders and funding sources, but continues to be one of the many questionable places where Republicans like Ryan go to soak up attention and contributions.  You might even feel sorry for GOP glory-hounds like Ryan who have to patronize the well-funded rapid-right activists in Washington to gain street-cred with their dwindling base. I mean, you can't swing a stick in a room full of those people without hitting someone who is racist, homophobic, anti-feminist or some form of offensive. 

For his part, Ryan blamed his FAIR appearance on a radio talk show host in St. Louis.  It's an interesting defense.  I suppose if Charlie Sykes invited Ryan to some other slimy greed-fest with a cast of unsavory charactors -- Citizens for Responsible Government comes to mind -- Ryan would go and blame it on the radio guy if somebody with any sense found out about it.  This is the way it works with Republicans these days, I guess, getting jerked around on a chain by wingnut radio hosts to take full advantage of the hours of free political advertising mainstream radio currently provides the GOP.

We should take the "guilt by association" meme and move it to its next logical step.  It seems incompetent part-time Milwaukee County Executive and full-time gubernatorial candidate Scott Walker has a free pass to call in to any right-wing radio show in the state any time to promote his candidacy.  It happens on almost a daily basis, on shows large and small. 

If the wingnuts are going to get that involved in the campaign, they should be held up to scrutiny themselves, and Walker should be held to account for the company he keeps.  Hey, Scott Walker -- when you spent a half-hour getting stroked by Mark Belling, did you sit around with him during the breaks and tell wetback jokes and talk about how to prevent obnoxious minorities from creating another Crimeville? Tell us, Scott, do you agree with Sykes that black leaders like Al Shaprton should be referred to as "pimps" and that Lee Holloway is a "thug"?   All of these are fair questions, I think.  And, if the answer is "no" to each, what are you doing hanging around people like that?

Actually, the problem may be for the radio squawkers hanging around with Walker.  Do they really want to be associated with someone who would soak up all these in-kind political contributions from your radio stations without reporting it on his campaign forms?

Jerks of the Week

As if to prove how petty and irrelevant he is to the film fesitval business, Shepherd Express publisher/editor and Charles-Foster-Kane-syndrome sufferer Lou Fortis uses the formerly-interesting Expresso column in his newspaper this week to try to piss on the Milwaukee Film Festival that replaced his vanity-based Milwaukee International Film Festival. It was an embarrassing effort that resulted, as these things often do, in the pee running down his legs and soaking his shoes.

Under the headline "Issue of the Week", Fortis' paper mentions the MFF for the first time; claiming that the first year of the new festival "failed to generate the excitement [well, for Fortis and Dave Luhrssen, maybe] and attendance of the original and very successful [of course it was successful -- just look at it now] Milwaukee International Film Festival".  Fortis gloats that the last year of the MIFF -- which might still be active if he and Luhrssen had only gave up control and allowed the appointment of an independent board -- enjoyed a "45% greater attendance than this year's event." 

Still, an impressive 20,000 attended the event, one of which, you would hope, was Dave Luhrssen. Luhrssen's supposed love of independent film was exposed as a fraud when he failed to cover or even list the films in the festival in the S-E.  If he showed, maybe he would have learned something about cinema itself, or at least bumped into some other critics who could have given him some badly-needed pointers for his own bland, often incomprehensible film reviews.  While Luhrssen ignored the independent films and pounded out tripe about Hollywood product like "Bright Star" and "The Informant!" during the weeks of the festival, much better writers in the Journal Sentinel (your welcome, Duane) and places like OnMilwaukee covered and promoted the films in the festival.  Luhrssen used to cover and promote the films in "his" festival like he was in the midst of film rapture.  Was it about the "love of cinema" or his, Fortis' and the S-E's self-promotion (and finances)?  I think we now have our answer to that one.

The real film-lovers are the dedicated culture-builders like Chris Abele, who justifiably moved their money away from Fortis' ego-enhancement project and built an independent festival to go along with the independent film it celebrates. "The numbers speak for themselves," writes Fortis in his snide jibe at the MFF -- and, indeed, they do.  The numbers go something like this: 20,000 people celebrated independent film in Milwaukee for a couple of weeks in theaters all over town.  2 people -- Lou Fortis and Dave Luhrssen -- spent those two weeks hunkered-down in their bunker, plotting revenge and lawsuits; putting out their dreary 56-pages-and-shrinking lame excuse for a weekly paper.   

Silent Movies at the Shepherd Express

You know, I can’t help myself. Every Wednesday, on my way to the Courthouse elevators, I still have to see if the new Shepherd Express is on the sloppy racks on the ground floor, right next to the Milwaukee Courier and Conquistador. By late morning, the next issue is usually there in bright stacks and, ever hopeful, I pick it up. Hey, I convince myself, I have to have something to read before the Onion appears on Thursday.

Alas, the decades-long disappointment of the failure of Milwaukee to develop a decent alternative weekly continues. Lou Fortis’ vanity sheet has fallen into a predictable tediousness, even worse than we last discussed it almost two years ago. Now, to go along with the embarrassing Boris and Doris society column (now attributed to "Shepherd Express Staff"), the shrinking weekly paper features a full-page (or two) sports "conversation" between formerly respectable sports writer Frank Clines (late of the Journal Sentinel) and S-E’s never-funny mascot Rip-Tenor-as-Art-Kumbalek (on the cover this week as one of the potential governor candidates — hilarious, ain'a? Stop, yer killing me!).

It is the most ludicrous kind of half-informed sports-talk, run through the stupid-on-purpose Kumbalek shtick. Who reads this stuff? Who could possibly think it is funny (if that’s what it is supposed to be)? Who has ever read all the way through even one of these dreadful indulgent exercises in amateur prognostication and sloppy yuk-yuk tripe? Imagine an out-of-towner reaching for the S-E with the Packers cover a couple of weeks ago and finding nothing about the Green-and-Gold but....this crap.

Maybe the S-E can run one of its cheap little polls on this issue. No publication in history has run reader polls less creative and more sloppily presented than the S-E. Whoa! Beer is the preferred beverage by 46% of Shepherd readers! Who knew? Who cares? Next week, how about a poll asking: Which regular S-E feature do you like to read more: Boris and Doris or The Fairly Detached Observers? None of the above – 96%!

But, for all that the Shepherd Express isn’t and never will be, I have noticed something else missing over the past two weeks. There is nothing – absolutely nothing – in the S-E about the Milwaukee Film Festival that is wrapping up this weekend at various theaters around town. No listings, no reviews – nothing. The absence of any recognition of the festival’s very existence is another example of the typical thumb-sucking by Fortis and the S-E’s supposed film advocate, Dave Luhrssen, who lost their attempt to control the former Milwaukee International Film Festival for their own self-aggrandizement and as a way to keep the struggling paper afloat and are now taking their ball (the one no one wants anyway) and going home.

Since 2002, we have had the fall pages of the Shepherd filled with puff pieces about the big and small films that somehow made their way to the MIFF, which began as a noble effort led by Fortis and Luhrssen and ultimately crumbled last year under the weight of self-imposed financial problems and Fortis’ outsized ego. The interesting story is told here by film actor Mark Metcalf at OnMilwaukee (skip to this page for the money shot).   For Fortis' self-serving version, there is this last-gasp essay.

The bottom line is the chief financial backers pulled the plug and created a new Milwaukee Film Festival, independent from Fortis’ control and machinations. Fortis responded by getting his friend Ed Garvey to file a lawsuit trying to get money out of the festival idea in a way he couldn’t when he controlled it. The lawsuit is properly languishing in the Courthouse. Question: What’s the first thing you do if you file a lawsuit claiming someone is about to hijack your film festival? Answer: Ask for a restraining order to prevent the new festival from going forward. No such effort from Garvey here, showing he knows the strength of his case. Perhaps the defendants will settle at some point for the suit’s "nuisance value", although it is the community at large that is being annoyed.

In any event, Fortis and Luhrssen’s supposed love and support of independent film apparently exists only as far as they can control it.  Their failure to cover any aspect of the new festival puts the lie any notion that they care about cinema in any meaningful way.  If they did, they would put aside their petty disappointments (and get past the Journal Sentinel's sponsorship) and cover, if not promote, a major cultural event in the city.  That they can't makes them even more irrelevant than they were before  -- which was pretty damn irrelevant. 

The Mighty Mudhens of Milwaukee

The Mighty Mudhens of Milwaukee lost to the Astros in the second round of the playoffs of the Milwaukee Men's Senior Baseball League (47+ division) this past weekend.  The game was tied going into the bottom of the 8th, when the Astros scratched across the winning run on a two-out bloop single with a man on 3rd. 

The tough 9-8 loss left the Mudhens with a season record of 10-5 in a break-out season.  The Mudhens formed three seasons ago, a motley collection of middle-agers, most of whom hadn't played real hardball since high school -- if then.  I saw a story about the MMSBL in the Journal Sentinel in September 2006, visited the website, made a phone call and ended up playing in a pick-up game in Sheridan Park the next weekend.   I played baseball all of one year in high school, and not very well; pitching badly and hitting even worse.  I thought I might have learned something from 5 years of Little League coaching -- what if I did what I was teaching the kids to do? -- and gave it a try.

The Hens evolved out of those pick-up games somehow, and we started play as an expansion team the next spring.  We had a couple of informal meetings, picked our team name (in honor of Corporal Klinger's home team) and invested, as the middle-aged with Field of Dreams asperations will, in the kind of mahvelous uniforms we always wanted as kids.  Most of us were strangers, some from far-flung parts of this corner of Wisconsin.  In the dead of winter, we practiced in a converted aluminum warehouse in West Bend, just long and wide enough for a couple of mesh batting cages.

We were a joyously miserable team that first year -- revelling in the joys of dirt, grass, and leather; the snap of the ball hitting the glove; and getting used to the metal chink of ball on aluminum bat.   Although we held our own most innings, we always had that one or two innings a game that produced 6 or 7 runs for the opposing team.  We didn't win a game that first year, but most of us believed that a bad baseball game was better than most anything else we could be doing (kids, grandkids and spousal units notwithstanding).  In the second year, we brought in some fresh blood and improved a bit, winning two games and keeping a lot more closer.

When I showed up at my first spring practice this year, though, I knew our fortunes were about to change.  As I stepped in for batting practice, a tall stranger was throwing like no one I'd seen in the entire league.  I blamed it on the late evening shadows, but I never saw any of the ten fastballs he threw me and flailed helplessly at the curveball that dropped out of nowhere.  His name was Dave Boinski, a star pitcher back in the day at Pulaski High School, and he gave the Mudhens instant credibility.  In the first few games of the year, as I stood playing 1st base, the 1st base coach from the other team would try to get some information.  "Where'd you get that guy?"  I just smiled and shrugged.  I didn't really know, and didn't much care.  We were now in every game. 

Dave's pitching was great, but what really let us take advantage of it was good hitting.  We scored 10 or more runs in 6 of our 10 victories.  And, as with most of the 47+ teams, the key was the top of the order. Original Hen and lead-off hitter Craig Kennedy hit an outrageous .636 and stole 17 bases.  Rookie co-All-Star Steve Andrasic covered a lot of ground in center field and hit a timely .490.  Dave Boinski batted third (.561, and our only 3 HRs), gaining a lot of respect from opposing teams with 10 walks, many of them intentional. Second-year catcher Al Gramlow not only proved a great battery mate for Dave, but also provided left-handed power in the clean-up slot.  And yours truly, batting fifth, managed to bat .412 for the year after a horrible slump early in the season was solved by the revelation of an open batting stance.

Jeez, now I started mentioning names -- don't want to leave anyone out.  Suffice it to say Coach Dave North (out for most of the year with a shoulder injury, batting .533 in the last five games) got the best out of us and everyone up and down the order had their moments during the year, which is one of the great things about baseball. It was a year of old-man maladies -- everything from bad shoulders, knees and ribs to blood clots and prostate cancer.  We couldn't beat the two perennial top teams in the league (who look like they do nothing but play baseball, but I know that's not possible at our age...is it?), but we played every game with heart.  I reconnected with an old friend who I hadn't seen for 20 years and suddenly popped up on the team (finishing the year with crucial emergency work behind the plate in the playoffs).

In the late innings of the Mudhen's first-ever playoff victory, Dave Boinski launched what must have been the longest home run in MMSBL history, blasting a ball completely over a 50-foot tree located just over the left field fence at the Wisconsin Ave. field.  It was an incredible thing watch and something we take with us into next year.  Thanks, Mudhens, for a great season.  See you next year.

Plaisted Plays -- Tonight at Y-Not III

Friday Night at Y-NOT III, 1854 E. Kenilworth, Milwaukee.

With ERIC BLOWTORCH and DJ LANDO LAND.

Plaisted sets at 10:30 and Midnight. Theme: KICKIN' IT OLD SCHOOL!