Last night, terrorists broke into my house and forced me at gunpoint to watch \”Music and Lyrics,\” a romantic comedy starring Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore. After the movie was over, a disorienting sensation came over me – I realized that I actually now liked Drew Barrymore. After a lifetime of abhorring every movie she came within 20 miles of, suddenly I found myself taken. Maybe I just need to rent \”Charlie\’s Angels\” to get my life back.

This is disquieting, to say the least. When I awake on Friday, I find it equally plausible that I will:

1. Be a woman
2. Be running the Sharpton for President campaign, or:
3. Not find mustaches funny anymore.

As for the movie itself, it really wasn\’t all that bad save for a preposterous ending. I think I actually even liked it more than my wife, who has \”Volver\” all queued up for us this weekend.

Volumes have been written about the societal impact of music and lyrics, and I wouldn’t even pretend to know where to start. But seeing as how I have been of rap for as long as I’ve owned a tape player, I thought I’d toss in a couple of moderately-considered points, given the recent controversy surrounding rapper Ludacris\’ upcoming appearance at Summerfest.

I will concede off the bat that rap music may have a different meaning to me than it does to its target audience, African-American males. I’ve always been a white suburban Catholic kid with two parents that drilled me – often painfully so – with lessons of right and wrong. I’ve always consumed rap music, rather than allowing it to consume me. I’ve always been able to compartmentalize it as mere entertainment. That being said, there’s nothing Ludacris or anyone else today that’s doing anything that hasn’t been done for 20 years in rap music.

I don’t listen to much anymore, because not much of it is really any good. Outkast, The Roots, Rhymefest, Ghostface Killah – all making quality contemporary hip-hop. Rap music is a young man’s game, and the themes don’t really interest me all that much. But while the lyrics often are foul and ignorant, the overall theme of youthful rebellion is one that is attractive to young people. The overarching theme of rap is a swagger and confidence that appeals to people – in rap, you can say all the things you want to, but can’t. Ludacris exists because old, white conservatives hate him. And the more he can do to offend the old folks, the more popular he will be. Take him out now, and we’ll be having this same discussion about someone else a year from now.

But for normally right-thinking people, rap music provides escapist entertainment, just like any other numbers of mediums. The academy award for Best Picture last year went (deservedly) to The Departed, a movie featuring foul language, drug use, illegitimate pregnancy, and a boatload of grisly shootings. Yet nobody is picketing the outside of the theaters showing it. The best television show I’ve seen in the past few years has been The Wire, which certainly depicts inner city life in an unflinching manner. I concede that each of these examples are miles ahead of Ludacris in terms of artistic value, but each are also replete with the same glorification of sexuality and violence found in rap music.

Furthermore, there’s plenty of “white” music that deals in the same themes as rap. Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer” managed to become one of the cultural landmarks of the 1990s, despite its refrain of “I want to f*** you like an animal.” In the late ‘90s, teenage boys flocked to see appalling rap-metal bands like Limp Bizkit, whose lyrics make Ludacris sound like Camus by comparison. Yet no protest of any kind took place, with the exception of people with taste. It wasn’t until Eminem started ridiculing homosexuals that he ever got any public attention.

Granted, all the goth and rap-metal concerts aren’t accompanied by much of the violence and shooting deaths that have been seen at rap concerts. This is where my understanding might diverge from an African-American rap fan. In many fatherless inner city homes, there may not be the teaching and discipline I received growing up, so many of the anti-social themes might sink in to minds that didn’t have anyone to teach them better. There might be more of a proclivity to actually live that lifestyle if one isn’t exposed to any alternative. But whether rap music reflects the African-American community or whether the African-American community reflects rap music is anyone’s guess.

Sadly, complaining about foul rap lyrics now is just a signal to the black community that white people are completely out of touch with their situation. If I were African-American, I would be skeptical of any white person that acted like they just learned – GASP! – that there was swearing in rap music. I might wonder what else about black culture those white people had been ignoring for the last quarter-decade. I’d also laugh at all the attention Ludacris is getting, since there are rappers that are a lot raunchier and less talented that could be made examples of.

The most salient point about modern rap music is the one often discussed after the Don Imus controversy – that it\’s hypocritical to call for Imus\’ firing when rappers are selling millions of records by degrading women. Naturally, the rules of society take into account the context of the message and ethnicity of the messenger when deeming something appropriate, when in fact none of those qualifiers should make any difference.

Will I be attending the Ludacris concert at Summerfest? Ummm… no. I hope for everyone that it’s peaceful. But if it’s not, I would tend to blame the people who instigate the violence, rather than the artist who is there giving those people what they want.

Big trouble in the Town of Thorp, where a new nude dancing establishment has drawn the ire of local residents. Many long-time residents are objecting to the opening of Chubby\’s, a new \”gentleman\’s club\” in the Town (and nothing says \”gentleman\” like a guy throwing money at a woman to see her chest.)

I was most amused by the reaction of local mother Kristine Rudnick:

Kristine Rudnick, a mother of four boys who has lived near the Chubby’s site for 26 years, fears club owners will be lenient on keeping underage patrons out.“I am scared to death,” Rudnick said. “I have a 17-year-old. What stops him from going to the parking lot and looking at the prostitutes.“He already saw a stripper and told his friends she had a nice body. He found that exciting,” she said.

That sound you heard was Rudnick\’s 17 year old son jumping off a bridge out of embarrassment. Can\’t imagine he\’ll hear about that at school. MOM!

The article concludes with this epic passage:

“The strip club will cause friction in marriages and the area will see a steep increase in divorces. There is nothing we can benefit from this,” Nitz said.

Karen Koltis, who operates a mental health clinic in Stanley, says she has already seen effects of the new business.“It makes my heart bleed knowing the corruption that is occurring and that I might not be able to help,” Koltis said. She said that on Monday a young couple came to her facility seeking counseling because of the strip club.“She was crying because her husband might go there,” Koltis said. “They are truly hurting and destroying this community and that is not fair to us God-fearing people.”

Just having a strip club near your house causes divorce? I would think a more realistic cause of divorce is having a wife that\’s so crazy, she actually thinks having a strip club in the town affects your marriage in any way.

Can you imagine this poor guy whose wife pulled him into counseling because she thinks he might go to the strip club? If this guy actually agreed to go see a marriage counselor, then this woman has nothing to worry about. I would have paid the counselor by stuffing a wad of singles into her underwear.

Just imagine what\’ll happen when Kevin Bacon rolls into town and starts dancing.

I was sick as a dog all weekend, but I have to admit that Prince Fielder’s trash talking of the Pirates’ Matt Capps had to be a high point of my year so far. You know the story – Saturday night, Capps drilled Fielder with a pitch that almost hit him in the head. On Sunday, Fielder came back, hit two home runs (and barely missed a third), and scored the go-ahead run when Bill Hall singled off Capps. After he slid home, Fielder jumped up and started screaming at Capps – the TV announcers kindly said he was merely excited, but it was clear he was screaming at the Pirates’ pitcher, who was standing behind home plate. The replay clearly showed Prince was politely accusing Capps of engaging in intercourse with one of his closest relatives.

I, for one, applaud Prince for his trash talking. It wasn’t like he didn’t back it up – he came out like a man and got it done. And after watching the Brewers sleepwalk through a morose two decades, it’s great to see some fire and emotion back in the team. Unfortunately, it’s too late to retroactively name my son “Prince.”

Of course, the Brewers, despite their league-best 21 wins, still remain invisible to ESPN. I turned on “Baseball Tonight” last night at 6:00 to catch some highlights. The hosts talked about Roger Clemens’ return to the Yankees (currently in last place) from 6:00 to 6:18. When they went to commercial, they promised “more on the Roger Clemens” signing later in the show. Sure enough, at 6:30 we got a live update on the Clemens situation from Michael Kay, the Yankees’ broadcaster. They squeezed in a few highlights from the day, then finished up the show with – you guessed it – more Clemens news.

It goes without saying that anything in baseball outside of New York and Boston doesn’t merit coverage from ESPN. But this is ridiculous. When Christ finally returns from the dead to forgive us of our sins, he better sign with the Yanks or the Sox – otherwise, nobody will ever know.

ESPN also deserves criticism for their reporting on a poll they conducted that shows divergent opinions between blacks and whites with regard to Barry Bonds. The poll shows that by a nearly two to one margin over whites, African Americans take Barry Bonds’ side on everything. For instance, 76 percent of whites believe Barry Bonds knowingly used steroids, while 37 percent of blacks believe he did.

Of course, through ESPN’s view of race, the only conclusion that could be drawn from these numbers is that whites are unfairly treating Barry Bonds. They inexplicably brought on Stephen A. Smith to hammer this point home.

They don’t even consider the flip side of the equation – that 63% of blacks are willingly deluding themselves into thinking Barry Bonds didn’t knowingly use steroids. Let’s back up for a moment – Barry Bonds has admitted to using steroids. That isn’t in dispute. He contends that he was somehow tricked by his trainer for years into taking the cream and the clear, which contained human growth hormone. The question is whether you believe that he knew what he was taking or not – and 63% of blacks must believe Bonds is the dumbest man alive.

I read “Game of Shadows” cover to cover. It documents Bonds’ steroid use in great detail, year after year. If you believe Bonds didn’t knowingly use steroids then you either haven’t looked at the evidence or you are willingly fooling yourself. Reasonable people can disagree about what that steroid use means, or whether Bonds is being unfairly targeted, but to argue that he didn’t knowingly cheat says more about yourself than about Bonds.

In trying to convince you you’re a racist if you abhor Barry Bonds, ESPN ignores another monumental fact. Part of what’s so galling about Bonds is that he’s about to steal the most sacred record from Hank Aaron. Hank Aaron is… black. Yet Aaron handled his career with grace and dignity, which is antithetical to Bonds’ entire being. So we’re unfairly injecting race into our opinion of Bonds because he’s about to steal a record from another African-American? How does that make any sense?

Yet ESPN is willing to throw this hand grenade of race out there, without having either the decency or intellectual capacity to argue both sides. It truly is despicable.

On Jackie Robinson Day, you may remember the wall-to-wall complaining on ESPN about how there aren’t enough African-Americans going into baseball – as if this were a matter of national importance, rather than simply of personal choice. That being said, is it pretty cool that the Brewers have four American-grown black players? Yes it is.

UPDATE: I got home from work at 9:30 tonight, turned on ESPN just in time for SportsCenter. And what was I treated to? That\’s right – Clemens, Yankee highlights, and more Clemens. Incidentally, one more note on the Rocket – in the steroid era, when something happens that nobody has ever seen before, it\’s impossible to believe it. We may never know what substances Clemens was taking (there\’s no test for human growth hormone), but it\’s awfully coincidental that a 45 year old can go out and throw 95 miles per hour – something completely unheard of before he did it. And if someone ever documents his cheating? I\’ll have just as much vitriol for Clemens as I do Bonds.

Frontpage Milwaukee has posted an article this week about the UW-Milwaukee fingerstyle guitar program, complete with videos of some of the students. They are fantastic, across the board – this UW program almost makes up for the existence of Kevin Barrett. Check it out:

See, how great is that? First, the guy\’s name is Cole (my son\’s name), and he\’a a kraut. And I would seriously give up one of my lungs to be able to play like that.

Check this one out, too.

In fact, watch them all here.

Think State Representative Joel Kleefisch will be happy with this representation of his work to punish sex offenders?

The bill\’s author, state Rep. Joel Kleefisch, R-Oconomowoc, has pounded away on sex offenders since he took office in 2004.

I almost coughed up a lung when I saw that. Awesome.

This one goes back a couple of weeks, but is interesting nonetheless:

Remember the Milwaukee woman accused of stealing $306,000 over a period of seven years from a charitable food bank? Here\’s a refresher:

A former employee of America\’s Second Harvest of Wisconsin was charged Thursday with three felony theft counts in connection with $306,000 in cash that went missing from the food bank\’s coffers between 1998 and 2005.

The complaint says Shuntell Whittaker-Tucker, 38, of the 7300 block of W. Florist Ave., used a quirk in the software then used by Second Harvest to record payments from non-profit organizations that purchased food so that the organizations were credited for full payment, but other financial records showed the organizations had paid much less than they actually had.

Did Michael Bolton design this software program for her? Did she stay up all night with Samir looking up \”money laundering\” in the dictionary?

If found guilty, I hope she doesn\’t end up where I think she might.

Ummm…. yeah.

As a friend of mine keeps saying, I\’m not sure whether I can live in a world where the Brewers are the best team in baseball. It\’s totally throwing off my balance. Up is down, left is right. Literally, nothing would suprise me any more. If I got home and the squirrels in my yard started giving me investment advice, it wouldn\’t surprise me one bit. Before you know it, even Neil Heinen will begin to make sense. Once that happens, the universe is up for grabs.

I generally spend at least 45 minutes a day wondering why I root for the Brewers. Now, that time is completely free. I\’ll have to figure out what to do (aside from practicing my robot dance, of course).

And as if that weren\’t enough, the Brewers are getting national attention – not because of their play on the field, but because of this:

Yes, friends – that would be a 12-person beer bong unveiled in the Miller Park parking lot. An engineering feat of epic proportions. This contraption has now replaced the Calatrava as Milwaukee\’s signature architectural monument.

Oh, and special thanks to the Chorizo for showing up for work yesterday.

Good grief.

Everyone who works at the Capitol knows who the most valuable employee on the square is. It\’s not the governor, and it\’s not the attorney general. It\’s not even the speaker of the Assembly or the Senate majority leader. The true cognoscenti know that Omar from Quizno\’s is the most indespensable worker in downtown Madison.

Any square worker can immediately identify Omar\’s mellifluous \”for you?\” accompanied by his machine gun recitation of your possible toppings. Only the most veteran sandwich orderers can get their full order in to Omar without him asking you a follow-up question. The denouement occurs when he smiles and gives you his money line:

\”For herrrrre….

…or to go?\”

Honestly, if you took Omar and stuck him in a legislative office, he\’d be the best constituent service guy in the Capitol. If you took a bipartisan poll of Capitol workers, he\’d be the only political figure to get a 100% approval rating. He knows how to treat the customers, which was evident today.

Omar and the rest of the staff at the Capitol square Quizno\’s are all Latino. There\’s nary a gringo in the bunch. All of them are good workers, at least looking in from the outside. And as I was in Quizno\’s today, you could look out the window and see the big \”Day Without Latinos\” rally on the Capitol steps 100 yards away. Must have been interesting for those folks to be at work watching the festivities. Did they feel awkward by not being at the rally? Did they all choose to come to work because they had to, or because they wanted to?

In any event, rather than saying something negative about the protesters, I wanted to thank the staff from Quizno\’s for showing up for work today. Omar was there, happy as always, ready to deliver me the savory stack of processed lunch meat I so richly deserve. And good for him.