2003-04 Vital Source Mag – April 2003
The “Other” Baseball
By John Hughes There you sit, at Miller Park again. The new leaders – Payne, Melvin and Yost – have made a good impression on you, and so, as an act of faith, you have trekked out to the ballyard and paid dearly for parking, tickets, peanuts and Cracker Jack. You are seated in this vaulted structure, which, despite the leaky creaky roof, impresses you. The losing doesn’t torment you like it once did, because by now it’s as familiar as a March blizzard in Milwaukee. But even amidst all the splendor Brewers baseball has to offer, you’re still feeling bad. If you are any sort of baseball fan, this is a scenario not unlikely to play itself out in your life soon. The 2003 season begins while this edition of Vital Source is on newsstands. The Brewers will resume play and you will find yourself watching them, thinking “what is wrong with this picture”? And if you give it a moment’s thought, the answer will come. For all the talk about the market offering the price it’s willing to bear, about these players just getting what they can as anyone else would, it troubles you that they are paid so much. True, it is just one symptom of a greater illness – the mass profiteering of professional sporting organizations on every front, from palatial stadiums to insane merchandising – and salaries are just another side effect. But the magnitude of their income, compared to the rest of us, seems a dishonorable allocation in a sport to which the majority of Americans, most working class, once felt a deep connection. The Brewers’ payroll this year will be roughly $50 million. Their opponents, on any given day, will have a payroll varying from $50 million to over $100 million. So, with 25 on each team, that’s 50 athletes out on the ballfield you’re observing, making $100 million to $150 million, or higher, for laboring from mid-February, with the beginning of spring training, until October 1st, or, if they’re quite good, until around November 1st when the World Series ends (and they are awarded an enormous bonus). That is a stupendous sum of money. In a world in which school teachers and nurses and social workers and construction workers and waitresses do heroic feats daily, and face budgetary pain nightly, to see young men making that sort of money, without even passion to offer fans, makes you feel like an accomplice to a crime each time you pay for your ticket, each time you pay $5 for a macro-beer. The yearning for passionate baseball If you’ve been a fan awhile you can remember Clemente, Yount, Yastrzemski, Aaron, Munson and Seaver, can remember the passion they poured into their treasured craft, and what it felt like to revel in their joy. Now, you feel nausea, or worse, echoes of the ennui that permeates the field below as you watch now. In comparison, players today mostly seem like poseurs, who would rather be at […]
Apr 1st, 2003 by Vital Archives
April 2003
Dear Readers, Between the time this issue of Vital Source was created and actual press time, America entered into war with Iraq. This is one of the disadvantages of being a monthly publication, and our lack of coverage of the war and its implications, for April anyway, cannot be helped. For May, I would love to share reader letters and short essays on the war, especially from people whose lives are directly touched. Please send all correspondence to editor@vitalmilwaukee.com, or by mail to the address in the staff column. The war is being televised, and things are happening quickly. While I feel confident we’ll never fail to support our troops again (a la Vietnam), there are underpinnings to this particular conflict that, if unchecked, will bring fundamental changes to our democracy. In an increasingly technological world, access to information is the key to power. But the stripping of personal freedom and overt censorship are not the answers. Individual liberty, access to due process, and innocent until proven guilty are the cornerstones of our Constitution. Fundamentally, we as a nation agree on two key points: we want our men and women home quickly, and a swift end to the war. But we must take care that, in our zeal to “end oppression” in the Middle East, we do not eliminate oppression’s most powerful natural enemy – a nation of free peoples – our nation, the United States of America, and the democracy for which it stands. A perfect snapshot of our confusion occurred on Oscar Night. Michael Moore, in his acceptance speech for Best Documentary, was met with a mix of boos and cheers (boos were later mostly attributed to Teamster crew members) when he said (speaking on behalf of himself and others present onstage): “… we live in fictitious times. We live in a time when we have fictitious election results that elect a fictitious president… We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons, whether it’s the fictition (sic) of duct tape or the fictition (sic) of orange alerts, we are against this war, Mr. Bush.” All Oscar winners are technically given 45 seconds to speak from the stage. At precisely 45 seconds, Moore’s microphone was cut mid-sentence and the orchestra began to play. Conversely, Richard Martin’s acceptance speech for Chicago ran well over a two minutes, but contained no political references. He was not cut off. And even though Adrian Brody mentioned the war in his four minute accectpance speech, he only went so far as to wish a speedy end to the conflict and to express his support of the troops. Brody was also not censored. This may seem a small event, but all who watched the Oscars witnessed censorship first hand. We must pay attention to these breaches of free speech, whether or not we agree about their content. Consensus is not the point. Free speech is at risk. Please read Paul McLeary’s We The People. It covers […]
Apr 1st, 2003 by Jon Anne Willow
Kelp Chofs Takes GbV on The Road Less Traveled
By Kelp Chofs Sweat. Grime. Arms. Legs. Face. Had the air-conditioning even been working in John’s ’80’s-something Toyota it may not have done much good on that sweltering day in the Summer of ‘97. John and I were bandmates (and still are) driving out of St. Louis toward a show in Iowa City. Were we on tour? Well, technically not. We had left our hometown of Milwaukee the day before to catch a show in St. Louis. Another band’s show. A Guided By Voices show. My first. The plan was to catch GbV (as the hip refer to them) then motor away toward Iowa City to dish out our own brand of rock and roll. The rest of our band would catch up with us there. For me, the soundtrack for that weekend was GbV’s Mag Earwhig! It was the latest addition to their already stunning catalog. That made it a top-pick among their other releases and bootlegs littering the car floor among the remnants of our fast-food sins. After settling into a particularly, um, quaint St. Louis Motel 6, we headed over to the club early for lack of anything better to do. Arriving early did serve a purpose — we had to buy tickets. Well, I did. John had gotten his online before we left. Yup, I was the last-minute addition to his plan. I remember the city streets being exceptionally quiet during those dusk hours. Businesses were all closed for the most part. Hell, we had to walk a mile just to find a bar that was open. We certainly weren’t in Milwaukee anymore. “Two Rolling Rocks, please.” We walked back to the club to find the box office still closed. But John did spot Pete Jameson. Pete was GbV’s right-hand man. Surely if we struck up a conversation with him, explaining how we’d driven 400 miles to the show, he’d make sure I got a ticket. As it turned out, the show was nowhere near sold-out. But as we were to find out, that was a good thing. St. Louis’ The Galaxy club was much smaller than I imagined it. But that was also to be a good thing. After tolerating the unusually pedestrian opening act, GbV began to set up. Who were they? Who played what? Is that Pete Jameson putting an ice-filled cooler of Rolling Rocks on the drum riser? The show started, guitars and cigarettes blazing. Never before had I been treated to such an intimate and powerful rock ‘n’ roll show. This was it. This was the real thing. The intensity. Right in front of me. I could touch it. I could barely contain myself. Wicked voodoo indeed. “Two Rolling Rocks, please.” “Two Rolling Rocks, please.” “Two Rolling Rocks, please…” John and I made several jokes on the trip down about his training me for this show – making sure I was familiar with most of the songs GbV might be performing. And a fine job he did. The revolving door of […]
Apr 1st, 2003 by Vital Archives
The Homeschool Choice
By Lucky Tomaszek “Where do your kids go to school?” “Well, actually, we homeschool,” I answer a little hesitantly. “I really like being with my kids, and homeschooling works well for our family…” I’m trying to be PC, trying not to start another controversial discussion with this well-meaning woman at Chuck E Cheese. But after letting that last sentence trail off, the silence thickens. And I realize that there is more I would like to say. I want to tell her that I have been teaching my children since the day they were born. I know them better anyone else, and know how each of them learns. I am intimately aware of their strengths and weaknesses and I know how to push them a little farther, without pushing them so far that learning becomes a chore. But it seems my opportunity has passed as we both go back to laughing at the antics of our children ascending into neon colored tubes and dropping into the ball pit. After several minutes, she says… “No offense, but why would you want to do that?” To start with, my interest was piqued when a homeschooled child won the National Spelling Bee in 1997, and again when first, second, and third place were all won by homeschooled children in 2000. And a little later in 2000 I read an article by Helen Cordes that said that homeschooled children are accepted to Stanford at “twice the rate of conventional schoolers.” I did a little more research and discovered that the average homeschooler scored in the 75th percentile on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, compared to conventional schoolers who scored in the 50 percentile. I must admit that the tragedy at Columbine High School in April 1999, and all the other shockingly similar tales weighed in to my decision making. Of course, there was also the personal journey I made as a mother. I stay home with my kids, and I have devoted a lot of time to guiding them through childhood and helping them become loving, generous, and freethinking little people. When my oldest daughter turned five, I put her into kindergarten. I had obviously thought a lot about homeschooling, but in the end I decided that it would probably be better for her if she went through conventional school. We gave it our all! We bought the cute ‘first day of school’ dress and the box of crayons. We took a lot of pictures that day, and she was adorable. The first week went well, she seemed to enjoy school and had lots of new songs and finger plays to teach us at dinner each night. The second week was a little harder. She was more reluctant to go to school in the morning, and when I picked her up after school she had less and less to say about what she was doing all day. “What did you learn today?” I would ask. “Nothing,” she would respond. The third week was worse; […]
Apr 1st, 2003 by Lucky Tomaszek
St. Thomas
By Jeremy Saperstein I’ve gotta start this review with the same thing I’m sure every other review will start with: singer/songwriter Thomas Hansen sounds remarkably like Neil Young, in lyrics, delivery and musical construction. Okay, now that’s out of the way… If you’re already fond of the works of Mr. Young, the odds are good you’ll very much like St. Thomas as well. Formed in Norway, the band’s record is like nothing so much as country music or Americana, but from the land of the fjords, not Fords (sorry, I couldn’t resist). Without knowing him personally, I’d have to guess that English is not Hansen’s mother tongue, which leads to some inspired lyrics like: I’ve never seen a cowboy before Never told a story so sore Hey, baby, take a look at me I think I’m ready for the kick-down I can never give you in Have you ever seen my chin An umbrella is dancing on the corner Now everything is beyond her But it’s easy to poke fun at people who don’t use English well (late night talk show hosts prove that about our president every night). St. Thomas is exactly the sort of record to listen to in your car as you drive I-94 late at night between LaCrosse and Tomah, or in the echoes of your empty house after your lover has left, or if you can’t understand why other people think your Nick Drake records are depressing.
Apr 1st, 2003 by Vital Archives
Nuna
By Jeremy Saperstein This Milwaukee trio delivers an extremely energetic and catchy disk that seems to defy pigeonholing under any convenient label. Because they’re a trio and their music offers many of the dynamic shifts that Nirvana (and the Pixies before them) did in their ascendancy, I’m sure most critics will identify them as grunge, but there’s a quality to the songs that transcends easy categorization. While leader/singer/songwriter Nuna Minch has a tendency to use the ‘f’ word as a conversational stop gap (like some people say ‘uh’ ), he has a definite way with a pop tune as evidenced in the lilting instrumentation and sing-along melodies in “Nose Candy”. While Headcase is a fine disk on its own, I’m looking forward to watching Nuna grow and expand (and to seeing them live – they play in the area fairly frequently, according to their website).
Apr 1st, 2003 by Vital Archives
Collections of Colonies of Bees
By Brian Barney The latest from Collections of Colonies of Bees is comprised of musical murmurings that crescendo to eclectic swellings with acoustic guitars and analog keys. Each song seems to fade into the next with a fluid motion that mimics a boat drifting down a stream, occasionally bumping flotsam represented by sharply picked harmonics and blips of carefully manipulated notes from the keyboard. Chris Rosenau handles acoustic and lap steel guitars along with keyboards while Jon Mueller adds percussion and miscellaneous noises. This journey toward serenity in track after track of image shaping music sounds like Ravi Shankar spending an afternoon with Pink Floyd, where the occasional pop of a snare drum or rattle of a sundry percussive device shakes the listener out of a pleasant state of rapture. While probably best-suited for ambience, the occasional thud, or electronic swell of pitch causes a deviation from the flow, leaving the listener peering around the corner in anticipation of what might happen next. "fa.ce (a" will be a welcome addition to any new age collection.
Apr 1st, 2003 by Vital Archives
