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About 100 Madison workers are on the verge of losing their jobs as Sub-Zero Inc. looks for new ways to cut costs.

This is a screenshot of the lovely Barbara Loden on the Mike Douglas show in 1972 with John Lennon and Yoko Ono -- in English with French subtitles. Stream the clip here. Loden is explaining how they became friends at the Cannes Film Festival, where Yoko was showing a film and Loden was showing her 1970 film, Wanda, the first and only feature film she directed, one of the first features in modern times directed by a woman. Loden saw John and Yoko standing alone but was hesitant to approach them. "I'm very shy," she is saying here. "We're shy too," replies Yoko. They overcame their shyness and went on to become friends who admired each other's work. John and Yoko were on the show to promote their friend's film.

Barbara Loden was an actress and protege of Elia Kazan, whose second wife she became in 1969. Earlier, in 1964, she had won a Tony under Kazan's direction for playing Maggie, the Marilyn Monroe figure in Arthur Miller's "After the Fall" at its Lincoln Center premiere.

Wanda was well received at Cannes and continued to have many fans in Europe, but has remained obscure in the U.S. The film has just been restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive. I found this clip when searching for more information after reading the recent NYT story about the Wanda and its director, who based the film on a newspaper account of a housewife who went to prison after getting involved in a bank robbery. In addition, she also drew on elements of her own life. When “Wanda,” a portrait of a passive, disconnected coal miner’s wife who attaches herself to a petty crook, came out, Ms. Loden described it as partly autobiographical.

“I used to be a lot like that,” she told The Los Angeles Times in 1971, adding: “I had no identity of my own. I just became whatever I thought people wanted me to become.” During her short acting career, Loden also did some writing. Kazan encouraged his wife to make Wanda after she wrote the script (although in later years he claimed to have written the first draft). As has happened with other powerful men who both mentor and overshadow their wives (e.g., Alfred Stieglitz and Georgia O'Keeffe), Kazan's support seems to have been a two-edged sword. Kazan both empowered Loden and seemed to erode her self-confidence. Unlike O'Keefe in a similar situation, Loden was not only a wife but a mother, and could not stake out her own territory as easily as O'Keeffe did by regularly getting away to New Mexico. Loden never made another film before her life was cut short by cancer, although she was working on production planning for a film adapted from Kate Chopin's novella The Awakening at the time of her death.

The Douglas clip is nearly 40 years old, but raises relationship issues that are still difficult for couples to resolve. Barbara Loden, directed by a famous director she later married, played the famous wife of a famous playwright in the famous playwright's lightly fictionalized account of his marriage to an icon. She made one movie about a woman with no identity of her own and then made no more films. On the Douglas show she is talking with another famous creative couple who wrestled with the issues brought by disproportionate fame. It's fascinating -- and somewhat painful -- to watch Lennon attempting to be the uxorious self-effacing spouse. One moment he is fading into the woodwork as a supportive spouse and the next he is suddenly hijacking the conversation. It's an awkward dance, and even today, couples are still trying to perfect the moves.

Both Loden and Lennon would die before their time eight years after this show was taped, Loden of breast cancer and Lennon at Mark Chapman's hand. We lost not only a beloved musical artist but a talented filmmaker as well.

This last week saw the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. In May of 2006 Dane101 contributor Kendra Frank visited New Orleans to see with her own eyes the state of a city she has long held a love affair with and has visited multiple times. We are re-posting this entry today in honor of the victims. We asked her to share some words with our readers of her impressions and emotions. More than 4,000 words later, this is her story. - editor

Arlene asked me to tell you about her. First, she asked that I tell my mother, which I explained to her as being totally impossible, so we settled on "someone else, then." Well, it was more like a promise because we shook on it. As Robert W. Service said, a promise made is a debt unpaid and the trail has its own stern code. I'm here to make a payment.

I spent some time last Sunday, Mother's Day, at The Chart Room with a friend enjoying the weather. This is where we met Arlene. She presented as a well-dressed, good-humored, middle-aged black woman who offered to buy the lot of us a round. I nursed a Gin Gimlet and within two minutes the conversation turned to her story and how she lost everything but she's doing alright. I smiled and listened, nodding or giggling as I saw it appropriate. There were moments when I wasn't sure whether to nod or to giggle, because I wasn't sure which response Arlene expected or wanted. After the past few days, this point of confusion wasn't unfamiliar to me. Over the weekend, these conflicts continued to rear their identical heads in different situations.

According to the Wisconsin State Journal this morning, McDonald's and the City of Madison have agreed to a settlement of $312,000 due to a case of sign obstruction. The article reports:

"In 2006, the city offered McDonald's $56,000 in compensation for traffic disruptions and accessibility changes caused by construction. McDonald's appealed in 2008, claiming damages of $408,900. Because of the large gap, assistant city attorney Doran Viste wrote in a memo, the case is scheduled to proceed to a jury trial beginning Sept. 20."

The city and McDonald's met Aug. 9 and agreed to settle for $312,000..."

In 2009, it was estimated that the city of Madison has a population of 235,626. By my math, that means this settlement amounts to roughly $1.32 per resident. While I can sort of empathize with the franchisee owner's pain, especially considering few people actually use the Good-Idea-in-Concept Pedestrian Bridge, people aren't going to like hearing that the city is bailing out a corporation in this economy. The burger company should consider giving every citizen of Madison a coupon good for one item on the 3051 E. Washington Avenue McDonald's dollar menu.

Can they do some promotion without giving the Dems more chances to accuse them of dirty politics?

After work I wait for the bus with one of the organizers of Madison's sci-fi/fantasy conventions, Oddcon, and he never fails to be amazed at how ignorant I am of sci-fi literature. I've only read one Neil Gaiman book and have never read any Peter David or Gene Wolfe. However, he was pleased recently to see me reading Larry Niven's Ringworld, a classic of the genre. I think it won every sci-fi award there was back in 1971 including the Hugo and Nebula.

The novels main protagonist is Louis Wu who is celebrating his 200th birthday by teleporting from time zone to time zone in an attempt to A) prolong his birthday and B) not have to spend too much time with anyone. It is the 29th century and Wu is 200 years young owing to boosterspice, a drug which increases longevity. A hop to Seville turns out not to be and Wu is instead in a room with an alien named Nessus of the species called Pierson's Puppeteers. Nessus enlists Wu to accompany him on a secret mission as well as to recruit another two candidates. The only hint as to the nature of the mission is a blurry photograph of a sun with some kind of ring around it. The crew is filled out by Speaker-to-Animals, a Kzin, and Teela Brown, a young woman who is 20. The Kzin are a vicious species who have as of late been engaged in wars with humanity. Teela, it turns out, is incredibly lucky and it is hoped that her presence with be propitious for the mission.

It is revealed that our heroes are to pilot a super-advanced Puppeteer ship and investigate the Ringworld. You see, many stars at galactic center have gone supernova and the radiation is due to wipe out this part of the galaxy in 20,000 years time. The Puppeteers are thinking ahead and looking for alternative homes with the Ringworld as a candidate. Of course, the Earthlings and Kzin will also be forced to flee. In exchange for helping the Puppeteers reconnoiter, they will receive the technology needed for them to flee the galaxy.

As it happens, their ship crash lands on Ringworld after a wing is sheared off somehow. The place is enormous. The ring has a radius of 93 million miles and a circumference of some 600 million miles. It is nearly a million miles wide and has walls at the rim which are 1,000 miles high. This place is really big. Mind-bogglingly big. It has oceans, mountains, etc. – a very Earth-like geography. A separate ring composed of plates improbably connected by a filament of extraordinary tensile strength. This one rotates at a different speed than the main ring and provides a day/night cycle.

All in all an engineering marvel.

As I said, their ship crash lands and they decide to make for the rim where there are docks for spacecraft. They travel on these ultra-speedy land cruiser bike thingies which are like mini-RVs with food supplies and semi-comfortable seats to accommodate the driver/pilot. Along the way it is discovered that there is a native population that had survived some catastrophe. There had been floating castles which were home to the Ringworldian aristocracy who lorded over the villeins below. Power had evidently been cut as most of these castles had crashed to the ground.

Ringworld is a lot of fun when our explorers are exploring. What is this world? Who are its inhabitants? How did disaster befall the place? I enjoyed reading it as the pieces to the puzzle were put into place. Unfortunately things get sidetracked when Niven takes on tangential issues. For instance, The Easy Rider-like trek comes to a halt when Nessus reveals that the Puppeteers had manipulated the Human and Kzinti gene pools for their own purposes which leads to a lot of enmity towards him. The ill-will is understandable but it only leads to Nessus becoming an outcast, as opposed to, say, lending much thematic heft to the story. Wu has to meet with Nessus surreptitiously instead of simply chatting him up on the intercom.

Another annoyance is Wu's love for and sexual relationship with Teela. While it's nice to see a 200 year-old guy getting a 20 year-old piece of ass, the whole thing just comes across as a leftover of 1960s hippie-dippie free love BS. For the most part, Teela's character is developed as simply the embodiment of naivety which the old and wizened Louis Wu can comment upon. And the comments aren't all that interesting.

Also not super-interesting is the Ringworld itself. Yeah, it's big and mysterious but it's mostly flyover country for our heroes speeding along on their craft. And it's inhabited by just some vaguely primitive people living in a rather Edenic post-lapsarian scenario. Contrasting them with Wu, Teela, Nessus, and Speaker doesn't really give the reader much to care about. They are essentially cardboard cut-outs which provide obstacles for our heroes and their pursuit to get off of Ringworld and return home.

As I said above, the parts of the book where Ringworld is being investigated are a lot of fun. For his part, Niven writes well with a good balance of character development/plot and explanation of the science. . I just didn't feel there was a payoff in the end.

This is another one of those foods that forces you to wonder what exactly the first daring eater was thinking; infected ears of corn puff up, turn purplish-black, and grow fuzz. The Aztec name for this freaky-looking cob is cuitlacoche (also frequently spelled "huitlacoche"), which likely meant "sleeping shit." Wrapped in the husk, cuitlacoche does look a bit like a swaddled turd. So, naturally, it's what's for dinner.

It's good to see Ron Johnson is worried about health care rationing. It's just too bad he doesn't call it out the real villains: Insurance companies.

"It's called being ironic, Göring."

Good stuff.

The Isthmus Guest List is back with another round of free tickets to amazing concerts, shows and more fun events around Madison. This week's contests include tickets to: Last Summer at Bluefish Cove by StageQ; the Chocolate Chase in Middleton; Christian Finnegan at the Majestic; Mark Olson, Michelle Shocked, and Menomena at the High Noon; and more!

During last December's blizzard, while most residents were safe at home waiting for the storm to pass, City managers were in the Emergency …

BBC4 is commissioning a TV version of Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently.

Although the channel’s press release doesn’t reveal much in the way of info (like actors, f’rinstance) it does name Misfits creator Howard Overman as the man doing the adaptation duties.

Director is Damon Thomas who also made First Men In The Moon for BBC4. The pilot will be 60 minutes long, and the project was originally being developed for BBC3, but quite why there’s been a shift of channels isn’t clear.

Philip Glenister should play Gordon Way.

This editorial was submitted by Henry Sanders who is running for Lt. Governor in the state of Wisconsin. Any candidate from any party running to represent Dane County citizens on the local, state, or federal level may submit editorials to dane101. Candidates are limited to one editorial per week.

People often say state government should run like a business, or that the people in charge of the budget should approach it as they would their own family finances. As someone who runs a small business, I see that logic. In truth, it’s quite a bit more complicated than that, but government spending has some things in common with business and household budgets -- namely, you get what you pay for.

Say I’m shopping for a car. I could buy the cheapest car on the lot. But chances are I’m going to spend some extra money for added safety, better handling, better gas mileage, and more leg room. Besides all that, if I buy the cheaper car, I know I’m going to have to spend more on maintenance in the long run. We all know from being burned once or twice that cheapest is not always the best value.

After reading this article I must ask are Republicans not being genuine when they answer pollsters questions, or are they clueless?  I also must ask how deranged can white America get over having a black President?  After all, this reeks of pure racism!  For all the pious faces that listened to the heavenly call of  [...]

Throughout 2010, the Madison Police Department will be participating in a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration sponsored alcohol …

America is under attack from violent religious extremists with no respect for human life. They hate our freedoms and stand against liberty. They do not respect our laws and would dismantle our Constitution. They commit crimes against Americans regularly, speak out against our system of law daily, and spread their hatred through internet chatter every minute of every day. They seek nothing less than the takeover of our nation, so they can force us all the live under the oppression of their religious laws.

Damned Christians.

Look, I'm willing to accept that there are moderate Christians. Good people who just want to live their lives the way they want. But it's hard to believe that the extremists don't speak for them when they're all so silent on their brethren's crimes. Our wake-up call actually came back in May, when a mosque in Jacksonville, Florida was firebombed by radical Christian extremists. It was overlooked -- called an isolated incident -- and we all moved on, foolishly believing that it wouldn't happen again. We aren't some backwater third world nation, we thought, surely our Christian population is civilized.

Then came the cowardly attack on a Muslim cabbie, the desecration of a mosque with urine, a suspected case of arson, and shots fired near those picking through the wreckage of that arson. Not enough? David Gibson has more:



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A brick was thrown through the window of a California mosque last week and a few days earlier signs were left at the mosque that read, "No temple for the god of terrorism at Ground Zero." Earlier this month, a plastic pig inscribed with messages such as "Remember 9-11" and "MO HAM MED the Pig" was stuffed into the mailbox of another Islamic center in California. (Like Jews, Muslims have a prohibition on eating pork.)

Clearly, they hate our First Amendment freedoms. So far, I've come across one prominent Christian leader willing to speak out against this hate-wave, but even then, the condemnation was conditional.

"The First Amendment guarantees people the right to worship where they live," [Southern Baptist leader Richard Land] said. "I am calling for all people of faith and good will to stand up for the rights of our Muslim fellow citizens."

Land has criticized plans to build a mosque near the site of the World Trade Center in New York City, saying it was too close to the site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

"This is different," he said. "There's no Ground Zero in Murfreesboro."

The message is clear. The jihad against the mosque in Murfreesboro is getting too much attention, so cool it off for a bit. But the fatwa against a Muslim community center in Manhattan still stands. Incredibly, this terrorist leader was allowed to go free and remains at large. Already, fellow Christians openly discuss carrying out terrorist attacks on their extremist websites.

Some Christians may find being tied to the extremists in their midst offensive, but I'd just point out that I'm only applying the unassailable logic of the Christian right to the Christian right. For example, toward the middle of August, jihadi talk show host Bill O'Reilly ran with the familiar theme. In defense of building Christian and Jewish houses of worship, Bill said, "Nobody would be complaining because Christians and Jews weren't involved in the 9/11 attack. Radical Muslims were. And you may remember the Muslim world largely did not condemn the al Qaeda action, while most Christians and Jews did."

But the Muslim world did condemn the 9/11 attacks. They did it right away. So I can only assume that the condemnation must either be universal or come from the leaders of his choosing before O'Reilly would accept it. We must also assume that these leaders have to actively seek out O'Reilly to make those condemnations in person, since it's clear that he couldn't be bothered to actually look for them in news stories. So I'm just holding O'Reilly to the same standard; I've chosen you, Bill. Come over to my house and condemn Christian terrorism or I'll be forced to assume you're a jihadist yourself. Really, it's the only safe assumption I could make. We can't be too careful in these dangerous times. The only wise thing to do is assume a Christian is terrorist until it's proven otherwise.

Think I'm overreacting? Consider this chilling passage from their holy book, "The Bible":

Suppose you hear in one of the towns the LORD your God is giving you that some worthless rabble among you have led their fellow citizens astray by encouraging them to worship foreign gods. In such cases, you must examine the facts carefully. If you find it is true and can prove that such a detestable act has occurred among you, you must attack that town and completely destroy all its inhabitants, as well as all the livestock. Then you must pile all the plunder in the middle of the street and burn it. Put the entire town to the torch as a burnt offering to the LORD your God. That town must remain a ruin forever; it may never be rebuilt. Keep none of the plunder that has been set apart for destruction. Then the LORD will turn from his fierce anger and be merciful to you. He will have compassion on you and make you a great nation, just as he solemnly promised your ancestors. "The LORD your God will be merciful only if you obey him and keep all the commands I am giving you today, doing what is pleasing to him."

Obviously, their holy book calls for the destruction of all infidels, as well as their cities and buildings. The arsonist in Murfreesboro was only obeying his insane god's edict. Unless people like Bill O'Reilly renounce this passage, we can only assume he supports it as well -- as all observant Christians must. Again, it's right there in their holy writings. They cannot deny it.

We mustn't let down our guard, even for a moment. Because if we do, the Christian jihadists will surely see it as a sign of weakness. We are at war with terror, no matter what form that terror takes. If we ignore the fact that we're the target of Christian terrorism, Christians will take advantage of it. It's the logic their leaders apply to the War on Terror, so it only makes sense that we apply it to them as well.

-Wisco


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