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As the winter of 2004-2005 winds down here in Madison, the rhythms of our lives are changing.Dalla’s Spring Fur Explosion has begun in earnest. Usually, this means our house is absolutely coated in dog fur for several weeks. This year, we’re taking a different tack. In addition to brushing the dog regularly, we’re also vacuuming the dog. We use a canister vac with an upholstery attachment. If we’re careful to keep the attachment from sucking up skin instead of fur, Dalla really gets into the whole affair.

Sarah and I have been planning our gardens. We applied to get a plot in a local community garden since there are very few (read: none) good spots in our yard for a garden since almost no location gets what would be defined as “full sun.” If we don’t get a plot in the community garden, we have a contingency plan that involves a raised bed, some tilling of new gardens, and plenty of hope.

Ira should come out of the fridge tomorrow into his cleaned and renovated indoors tortoise house.

Of course, with the weather we’re having, I might just put in outside for a few hours. Today we had highs in the mid-sixties and tomorrow is supposed to be even warmer.

I pulled out the grill tonight and dinner (a chicken) is roasting away on it while I write this. It will be very good to eat grilled foods again. The broiler is a sorry substitute for a good charcoal grill.

Recently, I ordered two pairs of blue jeans from LL Bean, my blue jean supplier of choice for the last ten years or so. However, LL Bean seems to be following the trend of making blue jeans bigger. That is, a 34″ waist is no longer truly 34″. I first noticed this with a pair of Lands End jeans. I got a 34″x34″ pair as a gift. That is the same size I’ve been wearing for the last ten years, and it is the same size I recently ordered from LL Bean. Apparently, the inch the folks in Dodgeville, WI (where Lands End is based), and Freeport, ME, use a different inch than the rest of us. In both cases, the jeans are noticeably bigger than they used to be. It like they started making 35″ or 36″ jeans and marketing them as 34″ jeans to make people feel better about getting bigger.

My fantasy baseball team drafted last night and I got a variety of players from the Minnesota Twins, which made me happy. I like to have players on my fantasy team from my favorite team in real life. That makes it easy to cheer for both. Like last year, I held to a hard and fast rule against drafting any New York Yankees. There are plenty of suckers to draft those bums.

On the Madison Freecycle list yesterday, someone sent a pair of e-mails to the list offering up some dwarf hamsters for adoption in one e-mail and some computers for parts in the other.

Once they had some responses to their e-mails, they sent another e-mail to indicate that the various items were spoken for. That e-mail carried the following, unintentionally funny, subject:

PENDING: Hamsters and Computers for parts

Yesterday, I heard this song [mp3 sample] for the first time, and while it is just another in a long line of “talking set to a beat” songs, the lyrics are insightful and funny all the same.

I’m organizing an on-line fantasy baseball league again this year. We’re playing on ESPN’s website and the cost is $30 per team. It’s a casual league and no one in our league is particularly good at it, so if you’ve wanted to join a fantasy league in the past, this would be a good opportunity to get started.

If you’re interested in joining the league, drop me an e-mail and I’ll send you the particulars.

Last night, Sarah and I drove to Fort Atkinson, WI to see Richard Shindell and Tracy Grammer play at the Cafe Carpe.We had never been to the Carpe before, so we had no idea what to expect. The last time we saw Richard Shindell and Tracy Grammer play together was at a local venue named Luther’s Blues.

Luther’s Blues is a venue that holds many a several hundred people with a pair of bars, an elevated stage, bar tables and bar stools. It’s not much to look at, but it does book reasonably big name acts.

The Carpe, as its regulars call it, is a very different venue.

First, it isn’t located in the heart of a university of 40,000+ students. It is located one hour east of our house in a town of 11,000 people.

The Carpe has a very casual seating and ticketing arrangement. You call them for certain shows to purchase tickets. Then, if they have seats, you send them a check. They send you nothing in return. The night of the show, you walk in the door and check-in at the bar. They ask if you called in beforehand to get tickets and if you paid. You answer, “Yes.” A waitress then shows you to your seats.

The stage at the carpe is a small, ever-so-slightly elevated platform probably sixteen square feet in area. Most of that area gets filled up with microphone stands, monitors, extra guitars, and the like. So, the performers stand near the front of the platform and near the audience. Seating for the audience consists of chairs, old rows of movie theater seating and bar stools along the walls. The room might hold twenty or thirty people.

We had been looking for an opportunity to see Shindell again, so we called early in February to get tickets for last night’s show. As such, we had probably the best seats in the house. We sat about four feet away from the performers in the very first row.

Most of Grammer’s set was devoid of memorable moments. She is touring with another folk musician, Jim Henry, who plays a variety of instruments and sings back-up. They are not touring with a sound technician and it showed. For the first couple of songs, it was difficult to hear Grammer’s voice over the instruments and they often had to fiddle with the Carpe’s amplifier located behind the stage.

In addition, Grammer indulges herself in tuning her guitar after every song. This not only slows the pace of the show, but it also affect her rapport with the audience. She attempts to tune her instrument and chat into the mike at the same time and ends up doing neither well. Her talk ends up sounding something like this, “This next song…[twang, twang, twang]…was something…[twang, twang, twaaannng]…that one of my…[twang, twang, twang]…friends….[twang, twang, twang]…sent to me…[twang, twang, twang]…to play…” You get the idea.

Grammer’s set did have some high points. The songs “Shadows of Evangeline” and “Preston Miller” off her new album “Flowers of Avalon” were real winners. Both have a real driving beat and interesting lyrics. Both Grammer and Henry really seemed to enjoy playing them, as well.

Shindell’s set was less canned and less irritating. He tuned his guitar before starting his set and tuned just one string a second time during the show in a quick and efficient manner.

He also launched into a funny and seemingly spontaneous rant about how he recently decided that folk singers ought to swear more. Wisconsin Public Radio taped the show last night for broadcast on a future date. I’m sure they’ll have to edit out that portion of the evening’s events. Maybe they can edit out all of Grammer’s tuning and chatter, as well.

Shindell takes requests during his show which is fun. The guy next to me had a written list of requests that had to be thirty songs long. It was like he took every song of Shindell’s last three albums, sorted them by some system, and then wrote them down. In the end, one of his requests was granted.

Shindell performance of “Transit” was rushed as though he’s tired of hearing it. “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy” was strong; as was the evening’s finale (which was performed with Grammer playing violin) “So Says the Whipporwill.”

Sarah was sick most of last week with a really nasty cold. In my usual understated fashion, I took to calling it “The Plague.”Before either of us would leave, I would make sure to collect a “Plague Kiss” from her. Unfortunately, I must have collected too many Plague Kisses, because I got the Plague last Wednesday.

Delightfully enough, I still have the Plague today.

In addition to rubbing our noses raw, Sarah and I have been busy. Last Saturday, we started dog sitting while some friends of ours went to Spain for two weeks. Maya, a six year old reddish Golden Retriever is staying with us through next Monday. She’s a different personality than Dalla. While Dalla couldn’t care less about chasing Frisbees, Maya lives to grab Frisbees out of the air. Dalla generally doesn’t care much for toys unless they have some value to another dog. Maya places a very high value on toys. So, for the next week-plus we’ll have two dogs to follow our every move in the kitchen.

Friday night, I sold programs for the UW/Alaska Anchorage Men’s Hockey Playoff game at the Dane County Coliseum. The building was built in the late sixties or early seventies, so it’s definitely past its salad days. Compared to the Kohl Center the Coliseum looks especially dated. My initial thought as I walked around the building was, “What a dump.” That thought was shared, out loud, by many of the people entering the building. After a while, I realized that the Coliseum isn’t really a dump, it just isn’t as new as the Kohl Center. In fact, compared to The Maracaná in Rio de Janeiro, the Coliseum is actually a marvel of modern American sports construction. For instance, let’s compare a men’s room in the Coliseum to one in the The Maracaná:

What I realized was that all these people probably had no basis for comparison. They probably thought, “Compared to the Kohl Center, this place isn’t very nice.” But, most of them probably don’t realize just how nice they have it.

At most the Coliseum holds 10,000 people in climate controlled comfort with concessions regulated by a health agency and a surrounding neighborhood that would never be described as a slum.

The Maracaná holds upwards of 175,000 in tropical heat and humidity with concessions dispensed by random guys wandering the aisles and a surrounding neighborhood so rife with crime, drugs, and poverty that a platoon of Marines might think twice about entering it.

Perhaps some of my fellow Wisconsin residents could use a healthy injection of perspective.

Sarah went to the game there Saturday night with one of her friends, and they both agreed that it is a better place to watch hockey than the Kohl Center. The building is older, but the sightlines are better, the fans are closer to the action, and the piped in music is less obnoxious.

We also jumped into the world of satellite radio last week with our acquisition of a Delphi Roady2 XM Radio receiver. During the six months of the NFL offseason, we just don’t watch much television. We mostly use our DirecTV service during those months to listen to commercial free music (especially jazz since there is no Madison jazz station). Rather than pay over $40/month for a handful of radio stations, we decided to pay less than $15/month for a hundred or more stations. So, for six months, we’ll just have broadcast television and satellite radio. The first year we won’t save much money (though we’ll save some) because of the equipment costs, but the next year we’ll save a fair amount.

The weekend before last we had some gorgeous weather here in Madison. On Sunday, it even got to sixty degrees. That day really awoke the gardening bug within us. Unfortunately, we’ve had nothing but cold, snowy, windy weather since.

Ira is still in the vegetable crisper in the fridge. He is holding steady at 12.1 ounces. I’m ordered him a new heat lamp, and when it arrives, I’ll wake him up for the spring and summer.

Don’t miss the seriously funny story of Hillbilly Dave over at The Streets of Pizza.

We’ve got Trouble right here in the Twin Cities.If you’ve seen The Music Man, then the story of Harold Hill will be familiar to you. His pitch to the citizens of River City about how a boys band can halt the problems of smoking, drinking, and the like amongst the city’s youth will no doubt sound familiar. For just a small investment in uniforms and instruments, all of the citizens’ problems with their youth will be solved.

After a stirring music number (’76 Trombones’ for those keeping score at home), the good citizens of River City take up the cause and drum up (pun intended) money and support for the boys band. After all, Professor Hill will lead them to the promised land if they can just front the money for the trip.

Does any of that sound familiar in the context of the continued stadium debate?

A constantly shifting, hard to perceive, and difficult to define character named “Economic Impact” gets trotted out as a primary reason for public monies to be spent on private needs.

The theory here is that Economic Impact will grow nearly limitlessly and spread his bounty all across a chosen city if we can just be bothered to gather some tax dollars and serve them up to his good buddy, Professional Sports.

Study after study (more often than not performed and/or sponsored by rigorous, independant scientific institutions like visitors bureaus and chambers of commerce) is cited to show that Economic Impact is real, we just don’t know how big he gets once his buddy gets fed. And, even though we don’t know how big he gets, we know that it’s big enough to justify the cost.

But, what if the connection between Professional Sports and Economic Impact isn’t so clear?

According to an article in Milwaukee Magazine:

“There’s overwhelming evidence that there is no economic impact,” declares professor Marc Levine, who runs the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Center for Economic Studies. “This conclusion has almost reached the truism of the Surgeon General’s warning that cigarettes are hazardous to your health.”

So stadiums cause cancer? No, but in Baltimore, Levine claims, hotel usage has actually declined since the advent of the Camden Yards baseball stadium. Economists at Johns Hopkins University estimate that Camden Yards generates about $3 million annually in economic benefits but costs Maryland taxpayers $14 million a year.

But hey, what do those cheese heads in Wisconsin know anyway, right? Let’s ask the good folks at the Independent Budget Office of New York City, an agency that “provides nonpartisan analysis to both elected officials and the public on fiscal and budgetary issues facing the city”:

The primary reason for the additional economic and fiscal activity resulting from new baseball stadiums stems from teams making more money from higher prices and greater fan attendance not from economic development surrounding stadiums.

Ahh, who cares what people in New York think, anyway? After all, they cheer for the Yankees! DC is going to build a stadium for the Nationals (lamest name ever?). DC is also swimming with economists and budget analysts. They must have figured this issue out. Let me see what the Cato Institute had to say in their October, 2004 report titled Caught Stealing; Debunking the Case for DC Baseball (PDF):

Our conclustion, and that of nearly all academic economists studying this issue, is that professional sports generally have little, if any, positive effect on a city’s economy. The net economic impact of professional sports in Washington, DC, and the other 36 cities that hosted professional sports teams over nearly 30 years, was a reduction in real per-capita income over the entire metropolitan area….DC policy makers should not be mesmerized by faulty impact studies that claim a baseball team and a new stadium can be an engine of economic growth.

If you’re truly interested in getting a new stadium built, let’s at least be honest about the economics of the situation. Spending public money on a stadium is just that: spending public money. It’s not an investment of public money. It is money that once spent, cannot be spent again.

Once you remove the bogus investment variable from the equation of spending public money on a professional sports stadium, the equation gets much easier to solve. It simply becomes a matter of priorites.

Do you want to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a stadium that will be out-of-date in less than thirty years or would that money be better spent on libraries, public hunting lands, health care, transit systems, bridge repair, parks, and the like?

All of this isn’t to say that a city, county, or state shouldn’t spend public money to build a professional sports stadium. What it does say is that if you choose to spend public money in that fashion, you are placing a value on professional sports that places them above all of the other programs and whatnot that public money usually funds and you should be open about that fact. In addition, you should be prepared for others to disagree with how you’d like to spend taxpayer dollars. That’s all part of the messy process by which the public budget sausage is made.

So, shun Harold Hill and his fancy song and dance number filled with big numbers and pie-in-the-sky projections. Ignore the Music Man and pay attention to the facts.

This article originally appeared on the now defunct TwinsTerritory.com website.

The middle infield needs complete renewal.

Once again, Twins fans will most likely see Luis Rivas manning second base when the season opens.

Once again, many Twins fans will shake their heads and cross their fingers at that same fact.
When the Twins let Guzman walk over the winter, there was hope in Twinsville that Rivas would get his walking papers as well. Unfortunately, we were not so blessed.

The continuing presence of Rivas on the team is something of a mystery.

Statisically, Rivas does not seem to be any great improvment over Cuddyer. Their batting averages in 2004 were similar, and while Rivas’ fielding percentage was higher in 2004, his 2003 percentage compares favorably with Cuddyer’s 2004 percentage. It could even be argued that Cuddyer might commit fewer errors if he got the chance to play one position full-time. Using even more important numbers (from the Twins’ perspective), Rivas costs much more than Cuddyer or any of the younger guys clamoring to play infield for the Twins.

Perhaps the Twins kept Rivas around to lend the infield some stability since they will open the season with a new shortstop and third baseman. Maybe they felt Rivas could show the new guys where to stand for particular batters in specific situations. Or, maybe Rivas has some particularly potent blackmail material about Twins management.

Yes, the Twins will field a generally young and inexperienced infield this year. With Morneau playing his first full year at first base and a new left side of the infield, Rivas all of a sudden looks a bit like a rock of stability. However, does it make sense to trot him out there for one year just to watch him get the boot during the next off-season?

I’d like to see Rivas replaced this year. That will most likely mean some botched double plays and mishandled throws as the infield gains experience playing together. That’s the price we’ll have to pay for several years of infield stability going forward.

These halfway measures rarely work out for the best. Let’s suffer some short-term pain in exchange for a long-term gain.

This article originally appeared on the now defunct TwinsTerritory.com website.

Are franchises really that difficult and expensive to come by?Proponents of spending public money on a new stadium for the Twins often trot out two unfortunate pieces of local history: the loss of the Lakers and the North Stars.

The reason to exhume these rotting corpses from the ground of our collective memory is to scare the public into spending tax dollars (in one form or another) on a stadium to keep the Twins in Minnesota.

Proponents argue that cities all across the land are queueing up right now to make a bid for our beloved Twins. Those suitors will woo the Twins with public money, a new stadium, and thousands of fans paying top dollar for giant foam fingers, nachos, and beer.

To keep the grubby paws of all those suitors off our Twins, we desperately need to get a new stadium built. Some will even go so far as to say that they don’t care how a stadium is funded as long as one gets built.

After all, there are only so many sports franchises to go around. We can’t just go out and pick up a new MLB franchise at Cub Foods when we do our grocery shopping on Tuesday night. So, we need to kiss the rings of the Lords of Baseball, build them a shiny new palace, and hope that their local representatives decide to stick around for another ten years or so.

Strangely enough, the preceding argument is often coupled with a second argument that completely defeats the first.

The second argument is that once the Twins leave, we’ll have to pay even more money to get another franchise, a la the Wild and the Timberwolves.

Let me see if I understand this: once your franchise leaves you can never get another because there is a finite number, except on those occasions where someone spends money to get another franchise that is created by the league in question.

Is anyone else confused by that? Either there is a shortage of franchises or there isn’t.

The argument that it is more expensive to get that new franchise also doesn’t hold much water.

Leagues may demand larger franchise fees, but those are paid by individuals, not municipalities. Whether you spend today’s dollars on a stadium or tomorrow’s money on a stadium is really irrelevant.

Today, you may get a seemingly cheaper stadium. It will be built with today’s dollars which will be worth more than tomorrow’s dollars. In addition, it will be cheaper because fewer ammenities will be expected by today’s players and fans than tomorrow’s players and fans, so money won’t have to spent providing those ammenities.

If you build the stadium in the future, you’ll spend more on ammenities and the pile of dollars spent will be bigger for that reason as well as inflation’s devaluation of those dollars.

However, once another stadium is built with newer, better ammenities, players and fans will start clamoring for today’s stadium to be upgraded. That will cost money again.

Take the Kohl Center on the UW-Madison campus. It was built as the home of the Badgers basketball and hockey teams. When it was built, it had a scoreboard that was functional and near state of the art at the time.

This last summer, they spent millions upgrading the arena by adding four huge television screens in the middle of the arena, live video and video replay, and one of those distracting light rings around the second deck.

Once someone else had in-game video replay and some distracting light show, the Kohl Center (which is seven years old) had to spend millions to keep up with the Big Ten Joneses.

Just because you spent yesterday’s money to build today’s stadium, doesn’t mean you aren’t going to spend tomorrow’s money upgrading it once again. There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of savings by building a stadium today rather than tomorrow.

In short, the major sports leagues are no different than OPEC. They both maintain a tight control on the amount of their product entering the market place. By doing so, they hope to keep profit levels high. However, if they are properly enticed, with political or economic biscuits, they gladly loosen the tap and allow a bit more product into the marketplace. There is no real shortage of product.

This article originally appeared on the now defunct TwinsTerritory.com website.

Some random thoughts that are rattling around in my head.Heard on NPR tonight that certain individuals are concerned about the fact that Saddam Hussein might not face the death penalty.

Dummies.

Don’t they remember that our current President was Governor of Texas, the state that has executed more people in this country than any other? Shrub didn’t exactly have a lengthy record of commuting those sentences either.

The seed catalogs started arriving in the mail last week. I can only label them “vegetable porn.” Looking at all those succulent, fresh, ripe vegetables picked at their peak…You’ll excuse me if I relish a few dirty thoughts. (That’s a gardening pun, for those still wondering if what I wrote would pass FCC decency rules).

We had sixty degree weather on Sunday. It is difficult to contemplate the fact that we will probably experience another snowstorm before March is done.

Money simply cannot buy good taste. Money can rent good taste; money can employ good taste. But money cannot get you a good taste infusion.

What have we done to deserve being punished with extensive media coverage of the Michael Jackson fiasco, I mean, trial?

Why is it so damn difficult to get good Mexican food?

I must have been in an angry mood about the state of the world this week. It just occurred to me that I’ve been listening primarily to political folk, protest music, and music with a message that goes beyond “I love you.”

• Ani Difranco – Fuel

  Except all the radios agree with all the TV's
  And all the magazines agree with all the radios
  And I keep hearing that same damn song
  Everywhere I go
  Maybe I should put a bucket over my head
  And a marshmallow in each ear
  And stumble around for another dumb numb week
  For another hum drum hit song to appear
  People used to make records
  As in a record of an event
  The event of people
  Playing music in a room
  Now everything is cross-marketing
  It's about sunglasses and shoes
  Or guns or drugs
  you choose
  

• Mustard’s Retreat – The Story of Jake and Ten Ton Molly

  Jake arrived at work that morning twenty minutes late.
  His parking spot was taken; he walked four blocks to the gate.
  He missed the coffee wagon; dropped his doughnut on the floor.
  When from the office, his boss called, "Jake, come in and close the door."
  
  Eighteen years at this old drafting board. Isn't that a laugh?
  But they say, "We've lost the contract, and we've got to cut back staff.
  A couple of weeks severance, some vacation pay past due,
  I'm fifty-six years old now. What am I supposed to do?
  

• David Rovics – Saint Patrick Battalion

  It was there in the pueblos and hillsides
  That I saw the mistake I had made
  Part of a conquering army
  With the morals of a bayonet blade
  So in the midst of these poor, dying Catholics
  Screaming children, the burning stench of it all
  Myself and two hundred Irishmen
  Decided to rise to the call
  

• David Rovics – Everything Looks the Same

  I'm just driving down this highway
  Past a shopping mall
  I see billboard after billboard
  Hear the advertiser's call
  I see cars and I hear cars and I smell cars
  All just like mine
  I see a world covered with asphalt
  You're in parking lot G9
  It's just sprawling on forever
  It doesn't even have a name
  It's the land where everything looks the same
  

• Utah Phillips – We Have Fed You All For a Thousand Years

  There is never a mine blown skyward now
  But we're buried alive for you.
  There's never a wreck drifts shoreward now
  But we are its ghastly crew.
  Go reckon our dead by the forges red
  And the factories where we spin.
  If blood be the price of your cursed wealth,
  Good God! We have paid it in!
  

• Ani Difranco – Coming Up

   But I love this city, this state
  This country is too large
  And whoever's in charge up there
  Had better take the elevator down
  And put more than change in our cup
  Or else we are coming up
  

On my way to curling last night, I witnessed the aftermath of a car crash in Madison that resulted in the death of one person and injuries to several others.42,643 people died on America’s roads in 2003, the latest year for which statistics are available. In 2002, 43,005 people died on America’s roads making highway deaths the number one cause of death among people aged 3-33.

If you conservatively assume that 40,000 people have died every year since 1990, over 560,000 people will have been killed.

560,000!!

Everybody and their dog started a Tsunami victims relief fund when 100,000-plus people died in a one-time event. Where is the outrage about five times as many people dying in a series of events that continues right to this very moment?

If you assume 40,000 deaths per year (which is low, but easy to work with), someone dies on America’s roads every 13 minutes. If you commute one-half to work in each direction, four people will die on America’s roads during your daily commute.

What do we have to show for the deaths of 560,000 people? A few new suburbs, a decrepit and nearly bankrupt rail system, bankrupt or nearly bankrupt bus lines, struggling public transit systems, and some very wealthy tire, gasoline, highway construction, and automotive companies. Are those worth the price we’ve paid in human life?

By the time I was heading back to the house after my curling match, the accident had been clearly and the highway had been reopened to traffic. As I passed the accident scene, I looked hard to try and find some sign that marked the fact that someone lost their life on a cold Wisconsin night surrounded by screeching metal and dirty concrete.

The only thing I saw was skidmarks on the highway.

We weeded through the chaff and came up with a few bits of wheat. You too can see some of the pictures we took in Florida last week.