As many of you know (primarily because I won\’t shut up about it), the Virginia Tech Alumni Association sponsored a blood drive with The Blood Center today in honor of the victims of the April 16th, 2007 campus shootings.

At about noon today, I got a frantic e-mail from Todd, the president of the VTAA-WI. He said a TV reporter from a Milwaukee station was going to be down at the Wauwatosa Blood Center at 2:30, and he wanted to make sure people were there so it didn\’t look empty. I think everyone at home realizes that people were trickling in throughout the day, but I can appreciate a good visual, so I agreed to make the trip to do it. On the drive in, I prepared myself for the role of my life: \”Guy getting stuck with needle in background.\”

Let me state up front: I absolutely HATE needles. This is good for the times when I consider trying intravenous heroin, but bad for when I need to give blood. My Mom likes to tell a story about how it took three nurses to pry me off a door frame to get a shot when I was a kid. Plus, I once had a humiliating experience giving blood, which I will describe at the end of this post. But there\’s the setup.

I got to the Blood Center just in time. They handed me the stack of paperwork I had to fill out and sequestered me in one of their little offices, lest anyone catch a peek at my answers. (People would definitely want to cheat off me, since my answers were at least 80% accurate.) For the survey, it took me a while to calculate how many prostitutes I\’ve used in the last few years. I told the nurse there that I\’d need to look at my credit card statements to give them an accurate answer. (That\’s actually not true. Me and my prostitutes always use an Indian-style barter system, where they give me sex and I give them a raccoon hat.)*

While trying to recall how many intravenous drug using men from Cameroon I\’ve had sexual contact with, my phone buzzed. \”Chris, it\’s Todd. The TV guys called about an hour ago and they can\’t come. There was some explosion in Whitewater or something.\”

Great.

At this point, I have to forge ahead, lest I look like a royal d-bag. Plus, you know, giving blood helps people, and all that stuff. The lovely Bonnie came in and pricked my finger for a little blood appetizer. I was wondering exactly how many holes I was going to walk out of there with today.

We walked together to the main room, where Todd was sitting there, already hooked up. He seemed coherent, so I figured this wasn\’t going to be too bad. They sat me in the chair, and I made the obligatory jokes about how they might need a couple needles ready, in case my muscular arms kept bending them. They asked me how much I had to drink today, and I said about a fifth of Wild Turkey. (I actually really am this annoying in person, people.)

In went the needle, and I couldn\’t watch. After about 30 seconds of feeling like I was going to faint, I heard the most dangerous words a blood giver can hear: \”Uhhh… Donna? Can you come over here for a minute?\”

This, of course, meant something was awry and she needed help. I immediately guessed that they couldn\’t find a vein. My sharp mind deduced this from the fact that they were actually fishing around in my arm with the needle. I suddenly had become a pincushion with shoes. A very sad pincushion. But with very nice shoes.

After a few minutes of trying some \’ol crafty bloodletting tricks on me (putting the blood pressure pump thingy on me, getting me to squeeze a ball, leeches) they gave up. After wiping my tears away, the blood drawing technician told me that I should have had more to drink during the day before I came in. I told her that 8:30 AM Chris appreciated her advice.

She told me I had two options: A) We could call it a day and try it some other day, or…

\”I\’ll take A,\” I whimpered.

I walked into the waiting area, and Todd was there, smiling and drinking a water. I told him that there was no luck, since my blood ran cold with the revenge I would seek on him for making me do this. He looked at the scrolling news on the TV, and it said that there was nobody hurt at the explosion in Whitewater. So, ironically enough, if the TV reporter really wanted to see someone injured in an accident, he should have stuck with the Blood Drive story. He could see the carnage that was my left arm – it would have been a ratings blockbuster.

We chatted for a little while, and I considered telling him my dumb joke about prostitutes and filling out the forms. But I figured those kinds of jokes in a blood center were probably treated like jokes about bombs in airports. So I held off. His loss.

I wandered over to the cookies and juice staging area, and wondered what their policy is for unsuccessful blood givers. Sure, my blood was still safely in my circulatory system, but I was pretty thirsty. So I grabbed a Diet Coke and sprinted out of the place.

So, in sum, I drove three hours for a staged media event that never occurred, and my reward was that I got jabbed in my veins for no reason. It appears that I will be able to selfishly enjoy the delicious blood running through my veins all by myself. None for you, future motorcycle accident man.

On the plus side, they did say that a few people had come in or called about giving blood since the drive started. So even though I was a flop, we helped some other people down the road.

Oh, and I should explain my trepidation about giving blood in the first place:

After my freshman year at Tech, I was home for the summer. Having too much time on my hands, I decided to be a do-gooder and go to the Red Cross and give blood just because I thought I should actually do something good for mankind for a change.

A few weeks after I gave, a letter from the Red Cross showed up at my house. It said that my blood was unusable, since it was infected with something. Or, at least that\’s what I think my mom said it said, when she marched into my room crying, opened letter in hand.

Thinking I had contracted some kind of horrible sexual disease, my mother demanded to know all of my sexual activities up until age 19. Fortunately at the time, my list of sexual experiences was about as long as a list of \”Great Eskimo U.S. Presidents.\” But having to explain to your mother that you\’re a total loser is something I wouldn\’t wish on the inmates at Guantanamo. Alberto Gonzalez couldn\’t even justify that.

When I called the Red Cross for clarification (I thought it unlikely that I could contract anything from Cinemax), they just said that I probably had a mild cold or something when I gave. In other words, I wasn\’t dying. (Although after discussing my sex life with my mother, I kind of wish I had.)

So while I realize giving blood is a safe and useful thing to do, you can understand the trauma I have felt in my adult years about the process. On the positive side, if you need to tell someone they\’re dying of a killer STD, my mom is now available to do it for you.

—————————————————————

*-SIDE NOTE: So if you\’re caught publicly with a prostitute and decide to one day give blood, what do you do? Are you instantly disqualified? \”Sorry Mr. Spitzer, not today.\”

I will admit up front that I am extremely sensitive to groups using last year\’s tragic shooting at Virginia Tech as a platform to espouse their political beliefs. I don\’t think the Tech shootings make the case for or against gun control, and I bristle at attempts to use the tragedy for political advantage. That\’s why I went nuts on former Senate Majority Leader Judy Robson for using the shootings to push for more UW funding during state budget negotiations.

I was hoping to get through today\’s one year commemoration without having to address this, but it looks like the peaceniks are forcing my hand. Apparently, a group of peace activists is participating in a \”lie down\” in Milwaukee today to push for more gun control – and climbing over the graves of the Tech victims to make their point. State Representatives Jon Richards and Leon Young should be ashamed of themselves for taking part in this classless charade.

As mentioned in my last post, the Virginia Tech Alumni Association has organized a blood drive to commemorate the shootings. We thought this would be a much more positive way to recognize the dead than to have some sort of political demonstration. Naturally, the Journal Sentinel is on the spot to cover the demonstration, without any mention of our efforts, which were actually intended to help people.

I sent the following e-mail to Journal Sentinel reporter Linda Spice, to clarify some points in her Blog Post:

Here\’s a \”Here and Now\” segment I filmed last April, where I make essentially the same point about groups piggybacking their own cause on the shootings:

UPDATE: The Journal Sentinel has added an article about the VTAA-WI\’s blood drive effort. Thanks to Linda Spice for following up on this.

In remembrance of the April 16, 2007 shootings at Virginia Tech, the Virginia Tech Alumni Association – Wisconsin Chapter is sponsoring a blood drive this Wednesday. Details below:

As part of the Day of Remembrance activities scheduled for Thursday, April 16th, the Wisconsin Chapter of the Virginia Tech Alumni Association is partnering with the BloodCenter of Wisconsin to host a Virginia Techforlife Blood Drive at numerous locations throughout SE Wisconsin. Our blood drive is part of a broader campaign launched by Virginia Tech (under the VT Engage program) which has spurred alumni association blood drives across the nation throughout the month of April (and beyond).

Many of the victims of the Virginia Tech shootings needed immediate blood transfusions and are alive today because of blood donors like you. Help us honor those who were lost on April 16th by donating blood to save lives here in Wisconsin.

There is an immediate need for most blood types. To participate, simply schedule an appointment and donate at any one of the BloodCenter of Wisconsin’s donor centers. If you are unable to donate on April 16th, you can still donate through the end of the month and have your donation counted towards our Day of Remembrance campaign.

Call 1-877-BE-A-HERO (1-877-232-4376) to schedule your appointment. You can also find donor center information and schedule your appointment online at www.bcw.edu. When scheduling, please reference code #004256 to be registered under our Day of Remembrance campaign. We have designated the BloodCenter of Wisconsin in Wauwatosa (next to Children\’s Hospital & Froedert) as our primary donation center, however donations can be made at any of the other 11 centers located in Milwaukee, Waukesha, Kenosha, Brown Deer, Greenfield, La Crosse, Manitowoc, Marshfield, Racine, Sheboygan, and West Bend.

Every two seconds someone in the United States needs blood, and more than 38,000 blood donations are needed on a daily basis. Every single donation can save up to three lives!

PLEASE SIGN-UP TODAY!

Note: For those that don\’t have a BloodCenter of Wisconsin donation center in your area, please reach out to the American Red Cross (ARC) or any other blood donation center to donate. The ARC is working with VT on other campaigns across the country, and welcomes your donation as part of the Virginia Techforlife campaign. Additional information will be sent via email next week — if we are able to establish other donation sites elsewhere in Wisconsin, we\’ll include that information in the subsequent update.

Thank you,

Wisconsin Chapter – VT Alumni Association

This weekend, I happened to catch a question and answer session Justice Antonin Scalia did with local D.C. area high school students. Naturally, it is outstanding. For those of us Scalia enthusiasts, it is like mainlining heroin for an hour.

You can watch it here.

SIDE NOTE: The high school kids are from Thomas Jefferson High in Northern Virginia, which is a public school for geniuses. One of my best friends growing up went there, and TJ was in our conference for sports. I actually once went 2 for 2 with 2 doubles against them in a high school baseball game. This isn\’t relevant in any way, but I rarely played, so it\’s my one chance to brag.

For those of you looking to get in on the Guns n\’ Roses tribute band phenomenon, look no more. I received the following e-mail last week:

\”Nearly five years ago, Guns N Roses cover band Mr. Brownstone stormed into Madison to deliver it\’s first blistering Halloween performance. In July 2007, a second GNR cover band named Paradise City played the Club Tavern, which according to a blog commenter (who must be the little brother of a band member) was \”at capacity.\”

Thus, \”Mr. Brownstone v. Paradise City\” displaced \”Roe v. Wade\” as the new national debate that dominated the public discourse…until now.

In a development that could completely change the \”Mr. B v. PC\” dynamic, a third GNR cover band has emerged and it will be playing in Madison on April 17th. \”Appetite for Destruction\” will be rocking the Majestic on Thursday, April 17th. (Doors open at 7:30. Show starts at 8:30. $10.)

Judging by their website, these guys tour all over and this is more than just a hobby for them.

Consider this: there are twelve songs on the album Appetite for Destruction. Mr. Brownstone and Paradise City are two of them. Could it be possible that a band that has named itself after the whole album is twelve times better than the other bands named after only one song? After rigorous statistical analysis, the answer is: probably.

Anyway, even if they stink, you wouldn\’t want to miss the beer-fueled audience mayhem that accompanies a GNR cover band show.

– W. Axl

I appeared on the \”Here and Now\” show this week to discuss the new Wisconsin Government Accountability Board\’s actions with regard to campaign advertising. Before clicking on the video below, be warned: it might take a couple viewings to figure out exactly what happens. Be prepared to say: \”Did he just do what I think he did?\”

Oh yes. He did.

When the State Legislature finally decides to completely de-fund Wisconsin Public Television, this video clip will likely be the final nail in the coffin.

Also, yesterday I participated in a Milwaukee Public Television roundtable discussion about Wisconsin\’s tax level. It will air on the \”4th Street Forum\” show at the convenient times of 10 PM on Friday night on Channel 10, and at 3 PM on Sunday afternoon on Channel 36. Video will be made available online via podcast at some point, so I will link to that when it goes up.

In an effort to strengthen the state’s abysmal record in enforcing election law, the Legislature last year implemented a new board to review campaign activities. The new Government Accountability Board was set up to enforce elections laws and to handle campaign finance reports.

Yet since the new board was implemented, the GAB has seemingly had trouble with the very laws it was intended to enforce. Just this week, the Board had to remove two members who violated the State Constitution by serving on the Board before their terms as judges had expired (even though they had resigned their positions.) In their press release, the GAB called this constitutional provision “obscure,” as if the Wisconsin Constitution were somehow hard to track down. Fortunately, the state’s Attorney General was able to find his copy under his couch cushions and point out this violation to the Board.

In one of their first actions, the Board announced their intention to regulate campaign advertisements for upcoming elections. Apparently, they believe a board of political appointees should be the ones serving as the speech police for Wisconsin campaigns. Yet nothing in the Wisconsin statutes gives them the ability to regulate the timing and content of political speech. When Legislators passed the law instituting the Board, they thought they were authorizing these unelected bureaucrats to enforce existing laws, not to make new ones up out of thin air. This would be like going to the doctor for an ear infection and ending up with a vasectomy.

Of course, courts continue to rule that the suppression of issue advocacy during elections is a violation of another obscure constitutional provision, known mostly to scholars as \”The First Amendment.\” Then again, why would the GAB start worrying about our founding documents now?

As their denouement, it appears the GAB is now going to move to suppress free speech before three of their members are even confirmed by the State Senate (as is seemingly required by the law). Three of the members have been confirmed by the Assembly. The Board knows that their appointees would have a difficult time mustering the 2/3rds vote necessary for Senate confirmation if their stated purpose was to regulate campaign speech. So some members may try to serve on the Board and vote to regulate issue ads before the 2009 session begins, when they will require confirmation. It appears they are going to serve almost as if they as “recess” appointments, since the Senate is not currently in session.

As a result of the GAB’s actions, Wisconsin will have an unelected, unconfirmed group of bureaucrats who will be putting themselves in charge of political speech for all upcoming state elections, in violation of their statutory authority. If you think the weeds taking over your front lawn this spring are a problem, that pesky clover has nothing on the Government Accountability Board. Someone needs to get the sprayer out and rein in this out of control board, before it chokes off meaningful political discourse.

-April 11, 2008

I thoroughly enjoyed this piece by Andy Moore (my \”Here and Now\” producer), in which he bemoans the decline in hitchhiking as a standard practice in America:

Hitchhiking is dead. It\’s hard to say which came first, drivers who no longer pick up hitchhikers or people who no longer hitchhike. But I bet you couldn\’t fill a booth at the Rathskeller with college students who have even once thumbed a ride.

It is what it is, but it\’s too bad. A whole generation and, it seems, generations to come will miss out on one of the defining legs of the American journey.

Back in the 1970s and 1980s, hitching for me was an aerobics course in expectations. It began with an act of sheer positive thinking, a belief cast in blind faith that complete strangers, traveling in their own arc, would enter my life and take me further on.

There were therapeutic benefits to hitchhiking. Mental-health strategies that people actually pay professionals to learn. Hitching required patience. It demanded you slow down your pace, accept that you\’re not in control of the universe and be okay with that. It asked you to hope for the best and accept disappointment.

While the limit of my patience was tested waiting for rides, I can\’t say I was ever disappointed by my encounters with the people who picked me up. Frightened by them, yup. Intimidated, bored, maybe. Offended, amused, encouraged, and inspired, too.

Oh, and I\’m on the show Friday.

Ever since my trip to the doctor last week, I have made a valiant effort to get my health on. It\’s been a week since I\’ve eaten fast food, and I\’ve run my four mile route four times. I feel like I need to go club some baby seals, just to restore balance to my life. From the depths of my colon, my doctor retrieved the secret to good health – eating right, more exercise, and paint huffing only in moderation.

The eating healthier thing hasn\’t been as bad as I thought it would be. At first, it felt like my best friend had left me. My sweet, delicious, greasy, salty best friend. But when you realize that best friend was secretly plotting to kill you, it makes it a little easier to break up.

The exercise has been much harder. The first day I ran my route, I ended up walking a good part of the last 2 miles. That\’s always so embarrassing, as you feel like the people driving by are laughing at you. There\’s a wicked uphill climb at the end of my route, and I actually tried to motivate myself by saying things out loud, like \”if Kansas can win the national championship, I can make it up this hill.\” In fact, the homeless guy I hired to carry me up the hill thought it was really weird.

But I was stunned at the progress I made after just a couple runs. I can now make it the whole route without hearing the Reaper\’s footsteps behind me. I\’m still afraid to step on a scale, though. I\’m afraid that when the scale sees me coming, it will scurry out of the room. (This has now offically become my audition to start writing \”Cathy\” cartoons.)

So the next time any of you see me, don\’t be shocked when you see that I have the body of Adonis. My next project is to become three inches taller.

I\’m just finishing up Charles R. Cross\’ excellent but intensely depressing biography of Kurt Cobain, entitled \”Heavier than Heaven.\” It\’s an unflinching look at Cobain that doesn\’t spare any detail about his drug use, cruelty, and selfishness. And now I\’m completely bummed out.

Reading this book has kind of given me a glimpse of how book reading will probably be in the near-future. I read a big chunk of it while hooked up to the internet and logged on to YouTube. So when something happens in the book, rather than taking the author\’s word for what it was like, you can often go right to the clip and see for yourself.

For instance, take the time when Nirvana appeared on the British \”Top of the Pops\” show. The producers made the band play \”Smells Like Teen Spirit\” over a pre-recorded sound track, while Kurt sang live. Not quite lip-synching, but close. This irritated Cobain, so he made a mockery of the performance, performing it in a crooner-type style. After the performance, the band had to scramble out of the studio, as the show\’s producers were livid. Later, Kurt said he was merely trying to pay tribute to Morrissey.

Thankfully, in one click, I was able to find the clip:

You can also find a now-infamous clip from British television where Kurt announces that Courtney Love is the\” greatest f*** in the world.\”

This seems to be an interesting opportunity book publishers can use to augment their written texts. When they publish a book, they could have video clips and other materials online to broaden the readers\’ experience. In fact, when I finally write my book exposing Cap\’n Crunch as a war criminal, I\’ll be sure to provide plenty of online supplementation.

Some other observations, as long as we\’re on this topic:

I\’m not really clued in to how books like this are written, but I imagine it takes a lot of cooperation from friends and family of the subject. As a result, the book gives a fairly glowing assessment of Courtney Love. I imagine she allowed Cross access to all of Kurt\’s materials, and it appears the author may have taken it easy on her as a result. This, after all is a woman who admittedly used heroin before, during, and after her pregnancy. While Kurt was missing the week before he killed himself, Courtney was trolling drug houses looking for more heroin, instead of searching for her suicidal husband. All of this is mentioned, but only briefly. (At one point, Cobain\’s manager is quoted as saying something like \”it\’s so unfair that people think you can\’t be an addict and a good parent at the same time.\”)

People forget that Courtney Love essentially wrote the blueprint for the drug-addled, self obsessed train wrecks that we see today in the likes of Britney Spears. She was a crazy addict before it was cool. In fact, the Foo Fighters are still good for one anti-Courtney song per album. (\”How can it be/I\’m the only one who sees/your rehearsed insanity,\” from \”I\’ll Stick Around,\” for instance.)

What also struck me while reading the book is that the Nirvana Era might be the last time we\’ll see the best music being made that also happens to be the most popular music in the world. Since then, the music industry has fractured, with many of the best acts having to settle on being marketed to niche audiences. One could argue that Radiohead has gotten close, and I\’m not too much of a music snob not to appreciate some of Dave Matthews\’ best work, but I can\’t think of a recent time when critical and commercial praise were so far apart (with all apologies to Lou Bega.) I am open to being debated about this.

The book also briefly details Nirvana\’s time in Madison, where they laid down some of the first tracks that would eventually become the \”Nevermind\” album – widely considered one of the best albums of the past 25 years. It blows my mind that somewhere in Madison, these tapes are sitting there collecting dust. For music fans, these tapes are like the Shroud of Turin – and they\’re right here in Wisconsin. This should be front page news every day. If these were the original tapes for \”Abbey Road\” or something, Madison would be crawling with poorly dressed Europeans, pining for a peek at them. I demand that the State Historical Society recognize this fact and that we get a day off from work in remembrance.

It\’s also remarkable that the three month-old baby featured on the cover of the Nevermind album is now 17 years old. Spencer Elden\’s Wikipedia page says he was accepted to Princeton for next year (so it must be true). Oddly, I feel some strange affinity for this kid. Not like he\’s my child, but the child of my generation. So I wish him the best in college, as long as he doesn\’t call me and ask for beer money.

UPDATE: A friend e-mails me with a story about the Nevermind tapes in Madison:

\”An old friend/acquaintance of mine who had a band was doing some recording at Smart Studios. He invited me and another friend to the studio. He showed us around, and was talking about all the amps they had that they could just grab and use for the recording. Then he showed us the tape archives. He picked up this tape and said look, this is the original tape of the Nirvana Nevermind sessions. It was labeled Nirvana Master Tape or something like that. The tape was just sitting there on the shelf, like the CD\’s in my basement.\”

For 34 years, I\’ve tried to live a good life. I\’ve (often times) been kind, courteous and giving. Yet this video alone has shaken my belief that God exists. I can forgive typhoid fever and tsunamis. But no benevolent being would ever allow people to see this:

On the one hand, this makes me want to go vote for Obama. But on the other hand, I now know what being a Vietnamese prisoner of war must be like.

MAJOR UPDATE: The McCain Girls have a special, heartfelt message for me.

Back in 2006, the proposed Wisconsin smoking ban was still a hot issue. Those of us working in the Legislature had to field all kinds of calls from people angry that the government was going to take away their right to smoke in bars. Generally, these calls came from people physically present in a bar at the time of the call.

The real gems, however, were the voice mail messages you heard in the morning, when you got into work. Inevitably, some guy would call from his barstool and leave a completely incoherent message at 2 AM.

Here\’s the best one I heard, from the voice mail of now-deposed State Senator Ron Brown. At the time, Brown had sent out a newsletter looking for input on the smoking ban, and this gentleman would like to register his feelings on the matter. This is just one of many that we heard, and I assure you it is 100% representative of the anti-smoking ban calls that we got.

The audio is a little rough, since it was taken off an office phone, but stick with it. And it is not safe for work, unless you work in a bar.

The anti-smoking forces have to be shaking in their boots with a lobbying effort like this. Nice to see this guy exercising his right to petition his government for the redress of grievances. Unfortunately his grievance happens to be the desire to get BLAZED!