Second Supper 171

FREE Volume 9 Issue 171 July 16, 2009

The HUMAN

COST of HEALTHCARE

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Second Supper vol. 9, issue 171

Leditor

Do This

As I type this introduction, members of Congress should be holed up in meeting rooms or strong arming colleagues or writing lengthy memos or doing whatever it is politicians do to get health care legislation into the books. These tasks will likely occupy their whole summer, but, honestly, they ought to have been doing this for the past 80 years. According the latest White House statistics, some 46 million Americans lack any form of health insurance. That’s one out of every seven people in the United States, but from folks in my peer group — twentysomething, childless, hanging around the poverty line — it seems like it’s over half.

It’s pretty ironic then, that La Crosse is essentially centered around the health care industry.

We have two of the best hospitals on the planet, and they employee more workers than any other industry in the area. Nearly every generation is raised to believe that the United States is the richest, most powerful nation on Earth. So how come my friends can’t afford to get regular checkups and fear an ambulance ride will leave them bankrupt?

This week, Second Supper tries to put a human face on what’s been a pretty policy-oriented debate. We’re not dealing with cost/benefit analysis, patent protections, or provider limitations here. The health care debate ought to be about people — folks who get sick and have others depending on them. Bob Treu’s cover story examines the plight of these marginalized Americans who may not have the most lucrative occupations, but they lead rich lives without a safety net, and that can be a scary and confusing place. And speaking of scary and confusing, read Jacob Bielanski’s account on the birth of his son. He and his wife opted for a home birth, which they found it to be more comfortable, intimate, and dramatically less expensive than a hospital visit. Obviously it’s not a for everyone, but it is one alternative model Congress should consider when opening up such an expensive and inefficient health care industry.

— Adam Bissen

Table of Contents

Kavil ............................................................... 4 Grain Belt ....................... ............................. 5 Y Marks the Spot ....................................... 6 Mommy Madness ........................................7 Home Birth ............... ...................................8 True Crime ...................................................9 Advertisements ...........................................10 Dirty Party ....................................................11 Meat Puppets/Big Wu! ................................12 Tyson ............................................................. 13 More Birth ....................................................14 Crossword ................................................... 15 Community Service ....................................16-17 Rock Out! .....................................................18

July 16, 2009

the top

WHAT: A musical, Lucky Stiff!

WHERE:Ye Olde Opera House, located in Spring Grove, Minn., in the Gray's Barn WHEN: July 15-19 at 8:30 pm The musical Lucky Stiff, based on the book "The Man Who Broke The Bank at Monte Carlo" by Micheal Butterworth, invites into the situation of a shoe salesman named Harry Witherspoon, who has just received an inheritance of $6 million from an unknown uncle. The catch? He has to accompany his uncle's corpse on it's final voyage; a trip to Monte Carlo. As he reluctantly travels to French Riveria, Witherspoon finds that he isn't alone in his pursuit of his uncle's inheritance. Performed outdoors at Gray's Barn in Spring Grove, the seating allows people the chance to enjoy some terrific musical theater while enjoying themselves underneath the stars. There will also be a catered meal available at 6:30 p.m. for ticket holders. So come on down and enjoy a summer night filled with some definitely excellent musical theater.

— Ben Clark

Social Networking

Things that should be covered by health insurance 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

Massages Gym membership Boob jobs Trips to the dentist Medicinal canibus Sweat lodges Birth control

Worst places to sleep 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

Wet sleeping bag Toilet lid With R. Kelly Blood-stained mattress New Jersey In a bush Detox

Goals for the second half of summer 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Get that second softball victory Wake up before noon Find that ice cream truck Go to Miller Park Find a rope swing (or email us about one) 6. Grill a steak 7. Finish spring cleaning

NAME AND AGE: Erin Eide, 26 BIRTHPLACE: Fargo, ND. . . .Yes people are really from there, but give me a little credit I grew up in Virginia.

CURRENT JOB: Liquor clerk, two-timing bartender, X-ray tech in training DREAM JOB: Trust fund baby LAST THING YOU GOOGLED: Michael Jackson jokes... too early?

TELL US YOUR GUILTIEST PLEASURE: Singing and jammin out while driving TELL US A JOKE How do you recycle a tampon? Use Visine, it gets the red out.

IF YOU COULD LIVE ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD, WHERE WOULD IT BE? Australia, but only if I could have a Roo for my pet

IF A GENIE GRANTED YOU THREE WISHES, WHAT WOULD YOU ASK FOR? A permanent paid vacation, Mastercraft Xstar, and for everyone to be more generous (including CEOs and politicians)

WHAT IS SOMETHING YOU WANT TO DO BEFORE YOU DIE? Snowboard in every state with mountains... 8 down and counting

FIRST CONCERT YOU WENT TO: Drowning Pool, Sevendust, maybe Powerman 5000 was there? So long ago

WHAT IS YOUR BEVERAGE OF CHOICE? Milk, it does a body good

WHAT'S THE LAST THING YOU BOUGHT? 15 gallons of overpriced gasoline

CELEBRITY CRUSH: Travis Barker

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE PART OF SECOND SUPPER? Social networking

WHAT BOOK ARE YOU CURRENTLY READING? A Thin Dark Line by Tami Hoag

HOW DO YOU KNOW SHUGGYPOP? He's my Happening's paper boy.

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Maze Efflux by Erich Boldt Second Supper Classifieds 3 Bedroom Apartment Close to campus $750 call 385-8523 Bed: Queen Pillowtop Mattress Set New in plastic $165 Full Sized $135 King Sized $265, Can Deliver 608399-4494 National marketing company seeks full time sales leaders who can sell ice to an Eskimo. Call Lexie at 608-782-8586.

3 Bedroom Apartment on La Crosse Street available for the school year starting June 1st call 385-8523.

To see your advertisement in this space contact mike.keith@secondsupper.com.

Spread the word.

Serving La Crosse, Onalska, Holmen, Barre Mills, Stoddard WI La Crescent, Hokah, Winona MN Second Supper Newspaper, LLC 614 Main St. La Crosse, WI 54601 Phone: 608.782.7001 Email: editor@secondsupper.com Advertising: advertising@secondsupper.com Online: www.secondsupper.com Publisher Mike Keith mike.keith@secondsupper.com

Editorial Editor: Adam Bissen adam.bissen@secondsupper.com Student Editor: Ben Clark benjamin.clark@secondsupper.com Graphic Design: Matt Schmidt matt.schmidt@secondsupper.com Columnists: Amber Miller amber.miller@secondsupper.com Brett Emerson brett.emerson@secondsupper.com Shuggypop shuggypop.jackson@secondsupper.com Contributors: Jacob Bielanski, Erich Boldt, Nicholas Cabreza, Andrew Colston, Ashly Conrad, Emily Faeth, Brandon Fahey, El Jefe, Emma Mayview, Briana Rupel, Noah Singer, Bob Treu, Nate Willer

Marketing/Sales Blake Auler-Murphy blake.auler-murphy.@secondsupper.com 608.797.6370 Tim Althaus tim.althaus@secondsupper.com 608.385.9681 Second Supper is a community weekly published 48 times per year on Thursdays.

All content is property of Second Supper Newspaper, LLC and may not be reprinted or re-transmitted in whole or in part without the expressed written consent of Second Supper Newspaper, LLC.

Printed with soy-based ink on partially recycled paper

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Second Supper vol. 9, issue 171

Freshening up

BEER

Premium Grain Belt Brewing Company New Ulm, Minnesota

Animal House Dart Tourney

Review

I hope you’re sitting down to read this, because I have a major announcement to make.

My favorite cheap beer may not be Pabst Blue Ribbon. It could be a beverage from Minnesota.

Gasp! — I know — but Grain Belt Premium is just that good. I had this realization while camped this weekend among Big Wu fans in the wilds of Minnesota. Naturally I was sipping on some PBRs (whose headquarters is now located in suburban Chicago), but while they all went down with an easy crispness, I began to envy the Loons and their beloved candy beer.

You see, a PBR will drink like oxygen the world around, but Primos, those are a Minnesota treat. Sure, they taste like Corn Flakes when cold and much worse when they’re warm, but isn’t that the joy of gobbling down dessert first?

It seems oddly sacrilegious to pour a Primo into a pint glass, so thankfully Grain Belt packages in clear bottles. Behind the iconic red label this golden brew looks practically perfect, but hold it to the light and the beer looks nearly clear. Still, there’s some great carbonation and a thin but long lasting head. It’s hard to detect much aroma from the bottle, but it’s mostly sweet malts over a few sour grains. Taking a swig, a Premium introduces itself as no other

For All Ages Over 21!

macrobrew. It’s sweet up front then spreads Appearance 6 across the tongue on warming malts. Clearly Aroma: 5 a lot of corn was used to fortify this brew, but Taste: 8 unlike most cheaply produced “adjunct la- Mouthfeel: 6 gers,” here the filling seems almost inspired. Drinkability: 7 This reminds me of one of those Corn Flakesm e e t s - R i c e - C r i s p i e Total: 32 treats, which isn’t especially beer-like but still tastes awesome. As appearances would suggest, the mouthfeel is rather thin, but it’s incredibly drinkable, especially on a muggy day. Although compared to Pabst, Premium’s hops are practically nonexistent, they do have a nice kiss at the finish, one that will leave a smile on your face as you reach back into the cooler. It’s definitely not my Desert Island beer, and it won’t become my Nostalgia beer, but it may be the beer I'll buy when I’m down to my last five dollars.

— Adam Bissen

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Drink Your Pleasure! Cheaply!

Vibes We all appreciate what coffee does for us in the physical sense — it perks us up, makes us more pleasant, and gives us more energy, but it might be true that we often forget about the other things coffee can do. The drink that fills the mugs of millions is an agent of social coherency, in however small or indirect a way. What I mean is that coffee brings people together: people have meetings at cafes, roommates and couples enjoy a cup together in the morning, students congregate around it during study sessions, and God knows beans are a fantastic gift. Coffeehouses provide a means and a location for social bonding.

This is why it’s so important for cafes to have a good vibe — we all know the coffeehouses that have it and avoid at all costs the ones that don’t. “Vibe” can probably be quantified through many factors, surely some of which are unnamable, but exist all the same. For me, the name matters. It needs to have a nice ring to it, and preferably not be boring. “Beanjuice” — unique, funky, funny. “Grounded” — c ute, witty, metaphorical. “Sally’s Coffee Shack” — eh, maybe not so much. A good name with a nicely designed sign is always a good sign…ha. Physical setup is important too — I like a place with

July 16, 2009

options. A trio of small tables for studying, big tables for groups, and comfy sofas for relaxing are ideal.Wall art and color should be engaging and not…stupid; no plain white walls, please.

One of the biggest vibe factors is music.

For Christ’s sake, no Jack Johnson please! I don’t want to hear “coffeehouse music,” ironically. I don’t want to hear some whiny, talentless bum with an acoustic try to be cool. Honestly, Jack Johnson sucks. Jazz is always good, classic rock is nice, French music seems to go over well.

But no Jack Johnson. Jeez.

The vibe factor that is possibly the most crucial — the baristas. Corporate “Welcome to Sally’s Coffee Shack!” smile-pause, “How can I be of service to you today?” doesn’t do right by me.

The rude barista thing can be endearing, to a point, but is often taken too far to be tip-worthy.

The barista-customer interaction is a fragile thing — it can the ultimate coffee bonding experience.

If you’re a regular somewhere, the baristas probably knew your drink first, then your name. And that’s why coffee is a beautiful thing.

— Amber Miller

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Y Marks the Spot

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By Brett Emerson

2501 South Ave. 788-2990

brett.emerson@secondsupper.com

In my mind, the nature/nurture question has long been decided when it comes to human beings. We’re good little monkeys; we do what we’re told. The dizzying advances in communication during the past century have taken this further, all but eliminating one’s ability to completely think outside of party rhetoric. Liberals, conservatives, independents, and apathetics alike have become little more than flesh-covered billboards for each person’s pet ideology or pet reaction. The like-minded clap along with each other, while those with opposing viewpoints bellow predetermined epithets at each other. Little changes.

Thus, political issues bearing life or death consequences for billions of people have been reduced in importance, their only relevance becoming which team wears their jerseys. The same people who a year ago proclaimed this country the greatest on Earth are now rapturously awaiting another terrorist attack, and the old Bush-haters are the new grave-dancing flag wavers. Where the majority of the public is concerned, the election of Obama (or really, any Democrat,) feels little more than halftime in a football game, and the teams have switched sides on the field.

The only unifying principle we have is that civilized man, regardless of any and all divisions, is a malleable imbecile, and ultimately a force of thoughtless destruction.

This is the stereotype, anyway.

A measure of its fulfillment seems to come through in our constant use of buzzwords, given in attempt to stay relevant, to have something acceptable to say to our friends, neighbors, and strangers. As with the political and social issues they represent, the conceptual force behind buzzwords gets diluted with overuse, condemning real ideas to sitcom irrelevance, emotional triggers, the equivalent of inserting a tear-wrenching score to liven up an otherwise gray scene of film.

A list of recent and classic buzzword darlings: terrorist, liberal media, fascist, Nazi Germany, 9/11, waterboarding, wardrobe malfunction, Rick Roll, maverick, Michael Jackson, earmarks, without preconditions, gay marriage, family values, illegal immigration, nuclear testing, Tienanmen Square, Free Tibet, abortion, Kim Jong-Il, Guantanamo Bay, settlements, Intelligent Design. All (okay, most) of these concepts deserve to be considered, debated, and evolved, but more often than not they signal argument for argument’s sake. There's another buzzword: Trolling.

Here are my three least favorite buzzwords of the moment. Third place is Economy, a word which, aside from the Warren Buffetworshippers out there, wasn’t seeing much play until the sudden whoopee cushion blast which heralded last year’s market crash. In a finger snap, we plebeians dusted off our These Troubled Times ballcaps and bitterly lamented our belt-tightening to any cashier within reach.

In second place comes Green, a masturbatory young gem that has captured the imaginations of the unimaginative in recent years. I’d like to note the inherent stupidity and selfishness of a philosophy that (in theory) advocates saving the planet being referred to as a Green Movement, when the majority of the Earth is covered with water, and thus, mostly BLUE. If Not In My Backyard has an equally evil twin, this is it.

Still, if humans need a pop culture campaign to catalyze a devotion to the neighborhood, then perhaps we’re not the worthy (God and/or evolution mandated) masters of the world we claim to be. As for the buzzword itself, I never saw anything wrong with Environmentalism. At least that word is honest and accurate.

The grand champion of retardesque words mixes Economy’s resurgent old school with Green’s novel mutation of an old concept.

I give you — Socialism!

For the better part of the last century, Socialism’s little brother, Communism, was the grand champ of scare words, and with good reason. Psycho killers like Joe Stalin and Mao Zedong were the flag-bearers of government sharing, running any merits of the philosophy into the ground. The Red Scare was in full effect from the end of WWII until Nirvana’s Nevermind made all the bad monsters go away.

The spawn of Karl Marx — especially Richard Marx — lay dormant for the next few years, and aside from old Fidel and a Venezuelan oil baron, it seemed that the Reds were finished.

Appropriately, it was when capitalism suddenly failed last year that the Reds were reincarnated as red herrings. From nowhere, socialism became the catch-all word used by the money mongers and their wool-eyed lackeys, replacing terrorist, liberal, pussy, and faggot.

It seemed to become almost un-American to expect something back from one’s government, unless one’s losses were in the billions. The dirtbags and welfare moms were no longer the poster children of the welfare state; now the threat is all of us who presume beyond our appointed squalor. As Lenin might have said on the set of Blue Hawaii, “Serf’s Up!”

The ideal of governments is to incorporate the best of all political philosophies, be they from the likes of capitalism, socialism, or (gasp) anarchism, into an adaptable creature.

Sorry, greenbackers, but judging from the implosion of the car and banking industries, even down to something as street level as mass entertainment piracy, capitalism’s failing right now.

Adapt and evolve.

The problem is not these words, or their ideas, problems, or potential arguments. The problem is how we are discussing them. When individuals have honest discourse, free of buzzwords and blind brand loyalty, things can improve.When communication breaks down into what we now have, we all swim in an equally distributed socialism of bullshit.

Second Supper vol. 9, issue 171

Mommy Madness

Honesty

By Amber Miller

amber.miller@secondsupper.com Parenting is full of really difficult tasks: potty training is no picnic (I’m not there yet, but I’ve done enough research to be prepared to just change my kid’s diapers until he figures it out… or maybe he can just be a wolf-child and run around naked outside…that sounds promising…), and discipline isn’t so much fun, especially if your kid, like my sweet little booger, knows when he’s done something naughty (i.e. hits you in the face with his toy hammer), and immediately follows it by doing something really, really adorable (i.e. says “hug” and lays his fuzzy little head on your chest — awwww).

How do you deal with that?! Getting a kid to sleep on his own is something that I can’t even talk about, because I never accomplished that goal. Funnily enough, he’ll lay right down and go to sleep at daycare, but at home, he requires 30 minutes of rocking and then eventually comes to sleep in my bed anyway. Trickster. Word has it that the hardest phase is fast approaching for me: the “I wanna do it” phase.

It’s great that children eventually go through an independence phase, but apparently it’s not so great when it takes the mildly coordinated and serverly indecisive child twenty minutes to pick out his clothes, twenty minutes to put them on, and an additional hour to put on shoes.

While it may not be as physically demanding as, say, getting a kid to sit down and eat a whole meal, perhaps one of the hardest parts about parenting is knowing how honest to be with your kid. As the primary source of reality reference for a child, a parent has quite the task: how much of life’s hard (and not so hard) truths do we let the kids in on? There’s a really unique balance of truth and whimsy that a childhood should be made up of that is the parent’s responsibility to construct. Answering a curious little kid’s questions is particularly troubling, especially if you don’t know the answer. I’ve sworn a solemn vow to myself to never use the cop-out answer of “Because that’s the way it is.” But just how much reality belongs in a child’s universe? (And really, no one is all that familiar with “reality” anyway, but that’s an entirely different topic.)

Some situations are more straightforward than others, at least to me. For instance, some people take issue with the whole Santa Clause thing. Is it really right to mislead a child?

The kid’s just going to feel betrayed when he finds out the truth anyway, goes the argument.

But, for one, a childhood is supposed to be full of magic and mystery. Hopefully, you raise a kid that is lighthearted enough to keep believing in magic, even after he knows “the truth,” if only for the sake of continuing the completely materialistic, consumer festival that is Christmas.

(Oops, that’s another topic too, but you know what I mean). Santa is fun and he belongs in a childhood. OK, so maybe not Santa specifically,

July 16, 2009

because that assumes Christianity (isn’t that a trip?) and that’s just not logical. But it’s just an example — parents should build a version of reality that includes magic because that inspires imagination and awe, so whether it’s with traditional methods like Santa or something more creative, I think kids deserve something to serve that purpose.

Other topics aren’t as easy. What about all the body questions a kid is bound to ask at some point? Our culture is extremely repressed and collectively, I think we’re taught to feel ashamed about our bodies and our curiosity about other people’s bodies. That of course is coming from the perspective of someone who (shocker!) went to Catholic school for the entirety of my childhood and adolescence, so that might be skewing my idea of what our general culture teaches about that subject. But I do think that generally, children are denied any useful education about bodies. Is that really healthy or helpful? Personally, I want my son to know about bodies and to know where babies come from and all of that. It’s real; it’s not something that should be a secret. For example, if a boy doesn’t know what the heck a tampon is until he’s 15, he’s a lot more likely to think it’s gross or scary or gross.

The subject that I’m most anxious about teaching to my son is a lot more difficult than Santa or tampons — what about when a kid asks, “Why are they cutting down those trees?” or “Why do people die?” How do you explain the harsher facts of life to a kid without crushing him? I don’t want my child to ignore those things, but I don’t want a depressed little existentialist at age six, either. But come to think of it, how do we grown-ups deal with all of that?

Most of us do ignore those things and assume we can’t do anything about it. We shouldn’t teach such passivity, but then again, no one can save the world. What a dilemma. I suppose my method will involve telling him the truth (if only the softened version), but also explaining that we can all do our part to help with the environment or with world hunger or whatever it is that really tugs at his tiny heartstrings, and that trying is the important thing.

Parenting, or good parenting, rather, forces a person to confront some really crappy truths about the world that we live in now.The urge to protect your kid from anything negative is powerful, but you can’t protect him forever. Better to prepare him. Creating a space for a child to grow up in that strikes a balance between the carefree fun of childhood and the empathy and caring of a compassionate human being is quite the task. I suppose that the most any parent can do is to give a kid the tools to deal with reality, perhaps the most effective of which is a healthy imagination that knows no boundaries.

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Family stories

Home Birth

If our ancestors had children in huts and log cabins, why do we think hospitals are the natural place to give birth?

By Jacob Bielanski

jacob.bielanski@secondsupper.com The only thing that could possibly make the birth of my daughter more magical would be the addition of beer.Thankfully, five minutes after her arrival, my father-in-law obliged…by reaching into our fridge.

For many years, studies have been compiled reaffirming what we, as Americans, generally believe about giving birth at home — that it’s a dangerously unnecessary practice, relegated to a more extremist fringe. This allopathic view of home birth seems to stem from the decrease seen in infant and maternal mortality witnessed beginning around the 1940s. The argument is that this decrease is due solely to the transfer of birth from home or other “unsanitary” locations, to hospitals. Tina Cassidy in her book Birth cited statistics that said the number of women opting for home births in the U.S., dropped from 50 percent in 1938 to fewer than 1 percent in 1950. During this time, the millennia-old art of midwifery all but died — less than 1 percent of even hospital-based births were attended by a midwife in 1975.

Who do we have to thank for this? One

would suspect the hospitals and, perhaps, the doctors themselves. Even as recently as February 6 of 2008, the American Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ASOG) has vehemently opposed the practice of home birth, with such even-handed statements as: "Childbirth decisions should not be dictated or influenced by what's fashionable, trendy, or the latest cause célèbre. Despite the rosy picture painted by home birth advocates, a seemingly normal labor and delivery can quickly become life-threatening for both the mother and baby."

We saw two midwives when considering the care of my wife and our future child.

The first was Ellen Broderick, a certified nurse midwife with Franciscan Skemp. Broderick was fantastic, answering all of our questions and showing a general openness to our seemingly strange demands (candles, music, no injections right off the bat). Coincidentally, this may have been due in part to the home birth she herself experienced. The home birth option seemed wildly unnecessary when Franciscan Skemp had, on their staff, such a wonderfully open, car-

ing and warm human being. We stopped considering home birth — until about our fourth visit.

What changed it for me, particularly, was the laughable “birth by design” documentation.

Lauded on television commercials as a customized birthing experience, the program amounts to little more than a series of check boxes and short notes about CDs, family attendance, water tubs and how long to wait before giving into the screaming woman’s demands for pain meds. Serious questions about traditional practices seemed irrelevant. My questions about vitamin K — a vitamin that is often deficient in newborns and thus injected into the baby immediately after birth — were met with confusion. I thought it was a reasonable concern, considering the scrub-clad nature of the birth “designer.” A brief note was scribble in the margin of our “birth plan.”

We further found that our odds of dealing with Ellen on “the day” were about one in five; if she wasn’t working or doing an on-call rotation, then our midwife would be someone

else. I’m not going to speak to the level of professionalism of Franciscan Skemp’s midwives, but if I was paged at home to catch the slimecovered offspring of a person I’d never met, I wouldn’t be particularly “customer-focused,” as the birth by design Web site describes it.

I was skeptical before walking into the La Crosse office of Denise Doerr, the only certified nurse midwife in the area who performs home births. I envisioned patchouli-scented room where an ex-hippie would paint the rosy picture that ASOG lamented in their statement. I expected a push, an impassioned speech about the evils of American Health Care and an explanation of treatments like goat liver suppositories or positive-thinking therapy.

I was, thankfully, very wrong. What we got was a medical professional. Denise spoke as an experienced, certified Nurse Midwife who discussed risks, necessary measures, and health requirements for a successful home delivery.

A rosy picture was not painted; Denise stated

see BIRTH, page 14

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8

Second Supper vol. 9, issue 171

Life in the health care swamp

True CRIME

By Bob Treu "Let’s be perfectly clear about this, the United States Health Care is second to none."

— Richard Fessler, M.D. (upon learning that U. S. Health Care is rated #37) For the penniless man Is the worst kind of criminal, Beyond pity and pardon.

— Bertolt Brecht Everyone knows at least one. Some story of a friend or a friend of a friend caught in one of the Kafkaesque corridors of our health care castle. Sometimes the story was just about being charged several times the actual value of a procedure. Sometimes it was about being sent to a clinic so far away it couldn’t be reached in time to help much. Sometimes it was about suffering through the illness without treatment.

Sometimes (we don’t know how often, given the current disarray of American society) it was about someone’s death. It seems strangely appropriate that Kafka did work for a health insurance company, though from all reports a much more humane and rational affair than what we are dealing with. What follows are all testimonies by various ordinary citizens. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent (and sometimes the guilty).

Zeke, a guitar virtuoso in his 30s, felt a bit off after doing a concert. He checked in at the nearest emergency ward where it was determined he was having a heart attack. Since he didn’t have insurance, he was told to go home and take it easy for a few days. He survived.

Zeke is just one of the growing number of young people who are betting on their native durability to get them through without a health care program.

Like Buddy.At 18 months he is a bundle of red hair and energy. But he was born a month prematurely and for a while his liver didn’t work properly (a very common malady among newborns) and he had a low iron count. His general practitioner sent Buddy to an oncologist where, of course, he was found free of cancer. Overkill perhaps, but defensible. Then Buddy insisted on walking a bit late (about a month later than standard, just enough to slap a label on him). A bit later, all his examining physicians declared him perfectly fine, but because of his checkered past, he couldn’t get insurance. As far as the HMOs were concerned, Buddy was a bad risk and could die in the streets. But then Milton Friedman tried to teach us that corporations are about profit and should not try to be altruistic. Those of us who thought a strictly for-profit system would develop a conscience

July 16, 2009

weren’t paying attention.

Luckily Buddy’s mom, a sturdy, resourceful woman, saw a way out. She got married. Actually, Buddy’s father had wanted to get married for some time. So did Buddy’s mom, though she was hesitant. But after months of spending most of each day in horrible, frustrating conversations with representatives or phone banks of various HMOs, and getting many versions of the same story, which were all about her son not being cost effective for shareholders, she and Buddy’s father got married. Now they are all covered under Dad’s policy. Just why Buddy could be covered immediately under his father’s plan, when his mother couldn’t get him covered by anyone, is one of those insane mysteries of the system. It also illustrates the important disparity between group and individual coverage. If it cheers you up, you can see this as part of the conservative plan to support family values.

Or perhaps not, because if papa is ever out of work, they will be without coverage. Or maybe the family that’s sick together, sticks together.

Then there’s Tony. You may have seen him if you pass by the MacDonald’s across from the mall. He’s the guy who holds a sign that says: “Out of work. Help!” He holds it steadily, day after day, with nearly religious determination.

He’s also the guy who tried to do everything right. He served in Vietnam, after which he entered the new world of technological wonders, mastered many types of software, and got himself a job working computers for Mayo Clinic.

By that time he also had a wife, two children, and a condominium. And of course the entire family was covered by Mayo’s own health plan. But after nine years in the heart of the leviathan, he was canned. Mayo, like so many other corporate entities, discovered cheap technical help in India. As a parting gift Mayo gave Tony (and the other eleven people in his department) 90 days coverage with BlueCross BlueShield. About that time, his marriage dissolved. Tony now lives in one room, gets food from the Salvation Army, and takes day work wherever he can find it. Most of what he makes goes for child support. The good news is, even after BlueCross BlueShield ran out, he was eligible for medical care in the Veterans system.

One of his friends in his old department at Mayo was not so lucky. He was fired at the same time as Tony and is now living on the street in Rochester with his wife and children.

“The United States,” Tony explained, “is Darwinian, it’s all survival of the fittest.” But that raises some uncomfortable questions about me, a retired English teacher with a couple of highly treatable illnesses, the pampered darling of a system whose health care is rigged

to carry him well into his nineties. But even the pampered have problems. I didn’t know until I used more insulin than usual one month that the stuff is rationed. On the box it says “Use as needed,” but that’s a doctor’s advice. The insurance company feels differently. Of course I could get an appointment with the doctor and have the prescription increased, but it was Friday, and when one is facing a weekend with only a little insulin left, the doctor is not much help.

But does my relatively good program make me more fit than Tony? I’m guessing he’s smarter and physically stronger than I am. In fact I’d bet he’s as fit as the Mayo executive who fired him. In fact, our health care system seems more like playing slot machines than doing biology. The truth is, Darwin argued against applying the survival of the fittest idea to society. I know that, but sometimes when I take a shot of insulin, I feel I should have been left on an ice floe while the rest of the tribe marched on.

Most of the time, though, I just feel very lucky.

That doesn’t mean I think my ability to recite Tom Wyatt’s contribution to the history of the sonnet means I should get health care while Tony and Buddy and Zeke do not. Do we really believe these matters should be decided by corporate officials? Perhaps we should develop a slogan that says something like: “You just denied Beethoven health care.” After all, nearly 50 million Americans are uninsured. One of them might turn out to be a great composer.

In the end, my “fitness” stems from my having been employed by the university, a fairly large institution. Group plans are always much better than individual ones, which has to do with the power of groups to negotiate. That is also the real strength of a single payer plan.

Instead of dealing with a single, often poorly informed individual, the health care industry would be negotiating with the government.

That also explains why losing one’s job is usually more traumatic here than in Europe, even though the present economic crisis is worse there in many ways. The bust has caused less misery in Europe because of the national plans that cover everyone. In Germany, for example, Buddy would probably not be sent to an oncologist because of a low iron count, but any illness he encountered in his entire life would be treated.

But while most Americans favor a single payer system, they probably won’t get it this year. The health industry is using its gigantic profits to engineer an effective lobbying effort.

We need to understand that in the long run, no meaningful reform of health care can happen without radically reducing its profitability.

As Arnold Relman, a professor of medicine at Harvard, wrote recently (New York Review of Books, July 2, 2009): “Private, investor-owned, insurance plans are a failed experiment and should be phased out or marginalized.” President Obama is trying to edge us in the right direction, but very slowly and without much success.

Of course opponents of change praise the freedom of the market system, but no market where the buyer’s life depends upon the purchase can justly be called free. How free is a system where retirees can’t move near their children, where infants can’t be insured if they might need care, where people can’t change jobs easily, and where marriage decisions are made on the basis of health care? Nonetheless, conservatives will attack any serious change as socialized medicine, warning that a single payer system will turn us all into surrender monkeys, but that argument is wearing thin. Eventually things will get bad enough that people will demand real change.

Another abiding myth about health care is that “the system is broken.” It’s not. It would be almost comforting if it were, because that would mean it might be fixed. In fact it is running efficiently and performing its assigned task admirably. It is continuing to make huge profits for its investors. That’s what sold Nixon on the system originally and that’s what keeps some congresspeople defending it.You can only think the system is broken if you believe its primary objective is to provide care for all Americans who need it. But a system that is the most costly in the world by far and ranks 37th in quality isn’t broken. It’s perverted and needs to be replaced.

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Mud, Mud Glorious Mud The BoRyeong Mud Festival is a one of a kind festival here in Korea. It has been held annually in July since 1996 and attracts nearly 2 million visitors each year to the small town of Bo-Ryeong. The crowd at BoRyeong is nearly as diverse as the crowd you might find at a Festival of Nations celebration.

A majority of the weekend tourists are foreigners living in Korea (an estimated 80,000), with a majority of them being American GIs. However during the week the festival is a different

July 16, 2009

kind of monster, attracting a much more native crowd.

At the festival, patrons get a healthy dose of mud, booze and salt water. During the week the festival is billed as a skin-purifying event, with the health benefits of covering your body in the mineral rich mud being the main attraction. Bo-Ryeong’s mud is said to be high in germanium, which boosts the body’s immune system as well as protects the body against minor cellular abrasions, whatever that is… Perhaps Mr. Clark can do a full column about laundry list of health benefits of germanium.

Most festers cover themselves from head to foot in mud and wander around like giddy "Encino People." The main areas of the festival are geared towards the mud.

There are several stations of tubs filled with mud and paintbrushes so you can paint yourself with mud, or if you’re like most you just scoop handfuls of the gray watery stuff and rub it on anyone within a five-foot radius of the mud station. There are also several other popular ways to cover yourself and others in mud. My personal favorite is the giant mud pit, which is mostly used for impromptu wrestling matches and hugging random girls. There is also a mud slide and a mud prison.

I have had the pleasure of attending not one but two Mud Festivals. And both were two of best weekends I’ve had here in Korea. My first trip happened way back in '07. The weather for the whole weekend was a balmy 80 degrees and sunny. The Bo-Ryeong Mud Festival is held on one of the nicest beaches in Korea.

The beach is about a mile and a half long, and is located on South Korea’s west coast. There is one main "mud" area and a smaller family "mud" area. They try to keep the small children away from the drunk masses. I spent the entire weekend covered in mud meeting new people with the help of my friend Mick's trusty beer bong, Sally. It was a great day of weekend of tanning, mud wrestling, swimming and fireworks.

My second trip west was much more subdued, but equally surprising and fun. . . . The weather for the weekend was a huge disappointment.A typhoon rolled in mid weekend and put a huge damper on the outdoor excitement. It started to rain in the late afternoon on Saturday and has yet to stop. Because of this the mud stations were closed early, but a surprise visit by one Andy Caulum with a jug of Strip and Go Naked made the weekend. The weekend was also hampered by a huge mix up with our hotel bookings.My room which was booked as a four-person suite, turned into a seven person sardine can by eve-

ning's end. But a Zombie Dance (it’s exactly like you’re imaging it to be) party broke out on the beach in between downpours and concluded with an obviously intoxicated fellow stripping and running naked across the main stage.

The Bo-Ryeong mud festival is a rather unique festival here in South Korea. Most South Korean festivals have a small sprinkling of foreigners amongst a huge crowd of Koreans. This festival is full of patrons from around the world.

The atmosphere at the festival reflects that of most music festivals around America, a very jovial vibe and a sprinkling of drunkenness with a healthy dose of muddy fun.

— Nate Willer

11

Concert Reviews

Treasures On Main

The Meat Puppets 7.10.09 The Warehouse, La Crosse, Wisconsin

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Last Friday’s show at the Warehouse stood among La Crosse’s most hyped shows of the year, and when the Meat Puppets showed up, they played to a sold-out building. Considering the usual youthful audiences that inhabit the Warehouse’s all-ages concerts, the diversity of spectators to climb the stairs this night was a bit surreal. Youth certainly put in its face time, with shirtless kids pumping fists and chorus lines of headbangers going through the prescribed motions, but what was most strange was the abundance of middle-aged people who hadn’t climbed the Warehouse’s steps in years, if ever. Parents brought their preteen kids, and the munchkins scrambled through the halls before the Meat Puppets took the stage. When the show began, the old school shucked and jived, and a few hunched over their feet and grooved.

Young or old, the Meat Puppets gave each audience member something to get excited about.The band played a no-frills show devoted wholly to their songs with almost no nonmusical interaction with the crowd.While drummer Ted Marcus kept the beat and bassist Cris Kirkwood bobbed and rambled about the stage, the

maximum radius of frontman Curt Kirkwood averaged a few steps behind his microphone, his eyes locked onto his guitar while his hands burned it. The rest of the band kept up and rounded out the music, but the virtuosity of Curt Kirkwood’s guitar was the Meat Puppets' centerpiece.

It tends to speak well of a band when its best known songs are eclipsed by the rest of the set.The Meat Puppets played through many of their popular songs, including a snarling rendition of “Lake of Fire,” but the band was at its best when it roamed away from its radio fare.The long instrumentals that jumped up between the punk and jangly country tunes had as much force and coherency as those more standard structures. Yet the aggressiveness of these free forms, having more time to build, hurled the audience into a more satisfying fury.

By comparison, popular songs like “Backwater” felt rather conventional.

Businesswise, the Warehouse delivered its show of the year. Musically, it delivered about the same.

— Reid Young

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Hell yeah the Big Wu Family Reunion was this weekend, and if you didn’t go you missed the best festival of the summer. This was some real OG shit right here. Recognize — the Big Wu wrote the book on the Midwest jam scene, and if you think Umphrey’s McGee is up to something today then you don’t know the pace of the North. This was the tenth — count ‘em, 10 — Family Reunion, which puts it before Bonnaroo, Wakarusa, 10KLF and all those other hyped-up festies by at least a half decade.

So say what you want about the Big Wu, they know how to throw a party.

Park the van, cross the lot, enter a grove of oak trees and you might as well just hand your keys over to the Big Wu. They’ll be in charge for the weekend. Unlike all those other custy festivals, the Family Reunion is pretty much stress free. Attendance was capped at 1,500 people — about half capacity — so there was plenty of room to camp and all the stages were near. The grounds were kept spotless, the scenery was gorgeous, and they even had fire dancers and two adventurous home brews on tap. Could there be a more perfect place to rage?

While previous Family Reunions introduced unheralded national acts like Sound Tribe Sector 9, Yonder Mountain String Band, and the North Mississippi Allstars, BWFRX

(whose early bird tickets cost $30) was pretty much confined to Midwest bands. As per tradition, the fest kicked off with an inspired set by the Jones Gang, who were probably the greatest Grateful Dead tribute act I'd ever seen (and I’ve seen more than I care to admit). Minneapolis’ Histronic and Madison’s Steez also played hot sets, but the gems of this fest were bluegrass. Pert Near Sandstone owned face — as they always seem to do — during their dusty afternoon set, while the Pistol Whipping Party Penguins and the High Strung String Band played after-hours acoustic shows that were alternately whisky-drenched and wine-bagsoaked.

Then there was the Big Fucking Wu! Prodigal guitarist Jason Fladager appears to have returned to the group after a long exodus in God Johnson, and his dual guitar lines were appreciated after the Wu’s unfortunate fiveyear experiment as a quartet. And what can I say? Over two nights, they killed it like the days of ole. “Southern Energy,” “Shantytown,” “Two Person Chair,” and “Break of Day” all stood out.

The hilarious encore of Night Ranger’s “Sister Christian” could have been the highlight of the Reunion, were it not for the dramatic pie eating contest held earlier that afternoon. House of Wuuuuuuuuuuuuu!

— Adam Bissen

Second Supper vol. 9, issue 171

Reviews: Your Guide to Consumption

er’s n g i s De Drugs The

Two words: Shit Sandwich.

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the release of the glorious mockumentary, This Is Spinal Tap, the fake band featured in that cult classic has released what amounts to a retread of the original soundtrack. While there are a few new songs tossed into the mix, 11 of the album’s 19 tracks — appropriately enough — are re-recordings which sound like they were made by a too-glorious Spinal Tap tribute band.

It’s hard to determine whether this grab for cash is clever and ironic, or stupid and cynical.

Knowing the band, it’s probably both, but Back from the Dead is still less “Sex Farm” and more “Gimme Some Money.”

Let’s talk about “Sex Farm” for a bit longer. Though most of this album’s re-recordings are only louder and lamer renditions of the originals, this track is one of two that were mangled into a new style. Rechristened “(Funky) Sex Farm,” the song becomes a brass-choked Parliament imitation that would have been tolerable if it weren’t for the usual aged hipster vocals, which are complimented by super bass harmonies in the choruses and a breakdown rap in the interlude. The transformation of “(Listen To the) Flower People” from '60s psychedelia to unimaginative reggae is more of a lateral move, but the defacing of “Sex Farm” is unforgivable.

Medium: Album Stimulus: Spinal Tap — Back from the Dead Anno: 2009

The new songs on the album are easier to enjoy, though they tend not to be anywhere near the quality or humor of the original songs.

The inclusion of three “Jazz Oddyssey” tracks serves as a nice in joke to fans of the movie, but these tracks aren’t much more than that.

With a little tweaking, however, the goofy organ spooks in “Rock & Roll Nightmare” could have made for a sweet B-52s song. “Warmer than Hell” is a silly rock song about the Devil hanging out in England, and “Back from the Dead” sounds like a '70s lounge tune as it goofs on flipping off the Grim Reaper and jumps into a “Stonehenge”-grade monologue. And it’s appropriate that the longest song on the album, a strutting tune about miniscule women, is titled “Short & Sweet.”

Nevertheless, it seems as though Spinal Tap couldn’t decide between shitting and getting off the pot. This album would have been much better off as a straight remaster of the original soundtrack or a disc of completely new songs, done with a little less of the guest star excess that bogged down 1992’s Break Like the Wind. But the greatest fake band in the world shat and got off the pot at the same time, and here is the result.

Shit sandwich.

— Brett Emerson

Spellbound (2002) Director: Jeffrey Blitz Starring: A bunch of spelling bee kids Since ages past, the spelling bee has been the prime instrument used to expose the extraterrestrials that walk among us. The founders of America’s foremost spelling bee tournament, Misters Scripps and Howard, were actually federal agents under the direct employ of Theodore Roosevelt, who charged them with the containment of insurgent aliens before they could sabotage Roosevelt’s vaunted Panama Canal. Being of species of higher intelligence (except for the damn hillbilly Xooms), the aliens were natural linguists, more proficient with the Earth’s languages than their native speakers. The inaugural Scripps & Howard Spelling Bee made short work of these smarty bastards, and the Panama Canal was saved.

The years to come would find the national spelling bee thwarting all manner of alien conspiracies: the Cthorian plague of 1919, the Vikardian body snatchers of ’57, and the Technocracy Civil Rights Movement that bitterly spilled over into the nation’s discotheques — only averting disaster via mass misspelling of the word “discotheque.” It was a running joke in Hoover’s FBI that “Onomatopoeia” was the password for a quick dissection at Area 51.

In spite of America’s victories, however, the creeps of the universe continue to infiltrate our frail planet, causing havoc and disorder wherever they can.

Spellbound is a documentary of the bravest sort, diving headlong into this unibrowed, orthodontic nightmare. Eight extraterrestrial

July 16, 2009

spawn, chosen for their aptitude, awkwardness, and Klingon-like cranial structure, were culled from the multitude to be profiled. While most of these dictionary double agents fluttered by as unassuming children with crazed sport parents howling them on, two of these creatures posed especial threat to the Earth. Angry Ted hangs out on his farm, many loaded firearms in tow. He’d be prime school shooting material, but rumor has it that he bought the farm (the one with angels and baby Jesus) a few years back. It’s just as well; Angry Ted couldn’t do half the damage as Harry the Robot, who’s about the most spastic bowl-cutted extraterrestrial the Earth is likely to meet, a truly frightening specimen.

As the eight cosmic gladiators converge upon the nation’s capital in search of an Independence Day moment, the weak among them are cut away like chaff and fed to the ravenous Slarghhs (or a bell politely chimes them away; I can’t remember which). Under the auspices of the Spelling Bee King, the lispy George Thampy, a champion is chosen — and, I’m sad to say, the American authorities could not prevent the insurgent from receiving a $10,000 scholarship check. A sad day for mankind, to be sure.

But Planet Earth will not go quietly into the night. We shall stand up, hoist our rayguns to the sky, and scream, “Revenge! R-E-V-E-NG-E! REVENGE!” Tori Spelling shall be the first to feel our wrath!

— Brett Emerson

Oh hi, right now I’m having my socks rocked because there is actually music being played on MTV. I haven’t had cable since the early '90s, until I moved into my current apartment about a year ago where it’s included. I found out first hand that the rumors were true, the channel I grew up on had turned into trashy teenybopper dramas that appeals to a demographic younger than myself featuring mostly over the top douchbags and skanks. Way to make me feel old, MTV. Anyways, starting in April, they brought back the steeze that put them on the map originally, music videos. They are calling their music video programming block AMTV, and you can catch it at the choice time slot of 3AM til 9AM Mondays through Thursdays, competing with infomercials for Extendz pills and the Total Gym. As for the music itself, it seems they rotate about 25 songs, so you hear the same stuff again and again. And of those 25 songs, it seems Kanye West makes a guest appearance on about 10 of them. T-Pain must be on vacation, because that used to be his niche the last time I caught up with the pop music world. I’m not a person who keeps up with the happenings in the pop world very closely, which is odd, seeing as how I write a music column and should probably be familiar with what the masses are listening to. I know the names Rihanna, Lady Gaga, and Taylor Swift, but can’t tell you what their chart topping songs

are.This week AMTV has become my late night way of getting in touch with the top 40 masses.

Or I’m assuming this is what is on the top 40.

Some of these songs are catchy, some of them I have a strong distaste for, and some don’t even register even though I’ve probably heard them several times the past few nights as part of my AMTV research. They have been playing a lot of old Michael Jackson videos as well, given the media saturation surrounding his death. Say what you want about his bizarre life choices, his videos blew my mind when I was a kid, and watching "Beat It" again for the first time in probably 20 years reminds me of just what an impact it made on me back then. MTV used to be groundbreaking in the music it played, helping expose hip-hop to suburban America, hyping the grunge craze, and overall dictating the tastes of high school America before the rise of the Internet. I don’t see their selections being nearly so groundbreaking anymore, but instead they play a few guilty pleasures at best.

I will take these guilty pleasures over the reality shows with Paris Hilton and Tila Tequila that are normally on that once relevant channel. At the very least, it’s good to see that YouTube hasn’t completely nailed MTV’s music video coffin shut yet, if only for the sake of childhood nostalgia.

— Shuggypop Jackson

Tyson (2009) Director/Writer: James Toback Documentary Whenever I hear Mike Tyson's name, my mind's ear impulsively plays the audio clip of him screaming, "I want your heart. I want to eat your children." Then I picture Tyson ripping out Lennox Lewis' heart while clenching an infant in his hand like a submarine sandwich, ready to chow down.You, on the other hand, might think of the 1997 incident where he bit off a chunk of Evander Holyfield's ear. Or maybe you're reminded of his rape conviction, or his facial tattoo, or the seminal NES video game bearing his name. There are so many classic Mike Tyson moments that it's really hard to choose which one is the weirdest.

They're all soberly recalled by the man himself in the documentary Tyson. Here's a chance for an older and somewhat wiser Iron Mike to look back and present his side of the story. His calm, articulate narration works in counteracting the circus image in which the media has forever trapped him, but it doesn't excuse him completely. While it's clear he was often a victim (of a poor upbringing, of ma-

nipulative managers, of drug addiction), Tyson admits that he has nobody to blame for his downfall but himself. It provides a sympathetic look at a troubled man who had to fight for everything, literally, and who was his own worst enemy in the end.

It makes me wonder if and when Mike Tyson's life story will be made into a narrative biopic. This rise and fall documentary is as captivating and tragic as any sports drama, or any drama in general, but it feels too much like a History Channel special. There are so many now-legendary moments in Tyson's life — the lonely boy whose pigeon is killed by a bully, the touching relationship with trainer Cus D'Amato, any one of his explosive knockout victories — that a major motion picture might be the only chance he has of any retribution before a large audience. It's a shame to think that most people will pass up this documentary because they think they have Mike Tyson figured out. They don't.

— Nick Cabreza 13

...BIRTH, cont. from page 8

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that about 10 percent of her clientele ended up transferred to a hospital, with about 10 percent of THAT group requiring serious care. My questions about vitamin K were met with photocopied articles from industry journals and a frank discussion about risks and assessments.

Nettle leaf tea was recommended — because nettles are naturally high in vitamin K.

But Denise did paint a picture of information we hadn’t previously been given. It was a vision of birth as a natural thing — something women were designed to do. With a cesarean rate approaching 35 percent in the U.S. (20 percent above the World Health Organizations recommendations and light years beyond the rates of most countries), it would seem that the ASOG and traditional medicine view childbirth as an operation best left only to trained professionals and the toughest two-thirds of mothers. It begs the question: how did we do it for the thousands of year prior to obstetrics?

Suddenly, research began turning up that suggested not all of the things hospitals did were lauded as “best practice.” Fetal health monitors — a probe that is shoved onto the child’s skull, while still in utero — was suggested to cause more problems than they reportedly prevented, when compared to the usage of a simpler, unobtrusive fetoscope. This is according to a March 1, 1990 article in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Long after our decision, we found out that the United States has one of the most abysmal infant mortality rates among its peers. What’s more shocking are the countries which are performing near or above our levels in birth.

According to the U.N. Population Division, the United States (6.3 deaths per 1,000 births) is still just behind New Caledonia (6.1), Cyprus (5.9), Brunei (5.5) and — get this — Cuba (5.1), in infant mortality; however, we narrowly beat the powerful nations of Croatia (6.4), Malta (6.6), and the land of my ancestry, Poland (6.7).

I’ve been to Poland — I find it disturbing that my child was only slightly less likely to die here than there.

Another funny statistic seemed to align with this information — the rate of midwife attendance in all births in other countries. Simply put, most countries make the midwife a standard fixture in all healthy deliveries, whether in a hospital or not. The World Health Organization said, as early as 1985, that midwives should be a staple in normal births — a practice which the United States seems to be at odds with.

This incidence of midwives seems to align quite nicely with the low infant mortality rate, perhaps because midwives hit pay dirt when a birth goes perfectly — obstetricians and pediatric surgeons, by contrast, thrive on the sort of “problem” that allows them to practice their craft.

Denise was tough — she wanted my wife to be fit, to eat well (not in quantity) and be ready for her pregnancy. Far from the view that gestation is a time for lax goals, terrible eating habits, and high levels of pampering, our midwife made it clear that pushing 6 to 12 pounds of baby through a cervix was going to be “intense.” Like a marathon, someone would be waiting at the end and water would be readily available, but the race was all up to her and the baby.

When the day came, we rushed to the phone. Denise answered, asked how far apart the contractions were and then told my wife

to relax; have a glass of wine.We relaxed, timed contractions, had a bit of wine and turned on the T.V. We even went to bed. The next day, as the contractions began coming closer, Denise came to our home with her assistant.

For those who think that maybe I’m biased because we “got lucky,” please think again — my wife proceeded to labor for almost 17 more hours, nine hours of which was spent in transition (a phase that normally lasts a much, much shorter amount of time). My in-laws and I watched over 12 hours of The Simpsons episodes between applications of pain relief measures. At one point it was discovered (without advanced equipment) that the baby’s head was slightly cocked, preventing further movement.

Denise used an ancient trick, instructing my wife to labor on her hands and knees through a few contractions — it worked like a charm.

Upon exiting, my daughter began to lose color and her pulse dropped. With a delicate, measured sense of urgency, Denise sent her assistant to retrieve the oxygen. “With the puppies, we just shake ‘em a bit and they come to life,” my mother-in-law — a long-time veterinary technician — said nonchalantly. Between the gentle shaking and a brief blast of oxygen, a “disaster” was apparently averted. I try to imagine how that moment would’ve looked in the hospital — friends and family ushered away, machinery beeping, medical professionals coaching and giving stern warnings. It would’ve probably been exactly what the ASOG would’ve deemed a “life-threatening” delivery.

Yet under the care of someone who has done nothing but usher in new life for over 20 years, it was little more than a technicality.

Home birth is not for everyone. Clearly the medically disadvantaged — such as those with chronic kidney or heart conditions — will be steered to a hospital birth even by midwives such as Denise. In a free society, people are free to choose their path in life, but it seems that time and again, the much newer practice of laidflat, epidural-in-spine hospital birth is touted as the only choice for the sane.Yet more research is beginning to find that, anomalies aside, home birth under the watch of a trained professional is just as safe as a hospital birth — if not safer.

It’s no wonder the ASOG are running everything but a smear campaign: the cost difference between a “normal” birth at home and a “normal” birth (no cesarean, epidural, stitches, or other major interventions) can be thousands, if not tens of thousands, of dollars.

Frankly, I never try to preach; my experience was great and I forever maintain a natural bias as a result. Regardless of the path we choose — be it a hospital birth, home birth, or even a scheduled cesarean — one consistent facet to good care emerges: a desire to understand our options and to be proactive in our wishes. Neither doctors nor midwives are gods — they possess a great amount of knowledge and should be respected, but not blindly followed.

But as one final argument for home birth, I will say this: we were never uncomfortable.

There was no visitors’ passes, no quiet hours, no other screaming children, no waiting to page health care workers, no shared rooms, no bad food, no $500 Motrin IB tablets and no “coming home”; just our daughter, in our home, in our bed, in our life…with our beer. Just the way God intended.

Second Supper vol. 9, issue 171

I'm Jonesin' for a Crossword "Additive Properties"--you're giving me a headache.

Answers to Issue 170's

"Additive Properties"

By Matt Jones Across 1 Stockpile 6 Zwei times zwei times zwei 10 Ques. response 13 West Coast capital 14 Mrs., in Munich 15 "The Valley Isle" 17 Level draining device, to a Spanish yesman?

19 Bar code on a book 20 Movie response to "Quick, let's hide!"

21 Dec. holiday 23 U.N. secretarygeneral Hammarskjold 24 ___-mo instant replay 25 Fuel additive brand 27 June birthstone 29 Greek letter T 30 Selassie's NYC restaurant, to a Japanese yes-man?

34 Nav. rank 35 Reaching like a puppy 36 President after HST 37 Hotel room list item

July 16, 2009

to a German yesman?

64 Went kaput 65 Concert load 66 Carb-loading dish 67 Craigslist postings 68 Pull-down list 69 Dream on?

39 Contents of jewel cases 42 John Lennon's son 43 Riled, with "up" 44 Went out with the chivalrous type, to a Russian yes-man?

49 First name in

Notre Dame football coaches 50 Hayao Miyazaki genre 51 Damascus's place: abbr.

52 Washing machine dye brand

53 Last letter, in Leeds 54 Tag info 58 Reasoning behind a crime 60 Send out 62 U.S. uncle's "Friday the 13th" character,

Down 1 Gave some help 2 The rest of the U.S., to Hawaiians (with "the") 3 Place to pick up some brews 4 Spanish golfer Ballesteros 5 Russian org. and enemy in Bond novels 6 CIO's labor mate 7 Core 8 "Mad Men" star Jon 9 Heavy marching band instrument 10 "___ not making myself clear?"

11 Index with a composite 12 Legacy maker 16 Fireplace spot 18 Org. that requested the Pet Shop Boys

change their name to the Rescue Shelter Boys 22 Like cacti 26 Feed music through, as with Muzak 28 Rowing machine unit 31 Hawaiian porch 32 "Dallas" family 33 Op. ___ (footnote abbr.)

37 "Funeral Blues" poet W.H. ___ 38 Civil rights leader, in street names 39 "Singin' in the Rain" actress Cyd 40 Word that comes from another word 41 Outline seen in local weather reports 42 1980s "truly outrageous" cartoon 44 In a fog 45 Condition meaning "lack of blood" 46 Spruced (up) 47 Song sung on Sunday 48 Their support is requested on some bumper stickers 55 Get in ___

56 1974 Lucille Ball musical 57 Chris Berman network 59 Company that introduced non-stick cookware 61 Scores that may cause showboating afterward: abbr.

63 NW school that's home to the Beavers

Š2009 Jonesin' Crosswords (editor@jonesincrosswords.com) For answers to this puzzle, call: 1-900226-2800, 99 cents per minute. Must be 18+. Or to bill to your credit card, call: 1-800-655-6548. Reference puzzle #0423.

15

COMMUNITY SERVICE [ Area food & drink specials ] LA CROSSE All StarInn Lanes Alpine 4735 Mormon Animal House W5715 Bliss rd.Coulee 110 3rd st.

Alumni 620 Gillette st.

Arena

ArenaLAX.com

Barrel Inn 2005 West ave.

Barrel Inn 2005 West ave.

Beef & Etc. 1203 La Crosse st.

Brothers Beef & Etc. 306 Pearl st.

1203 La Crosse Big Al’s st.

115 S 3rd st.

Brothers 306 Pearl st.

Sunday 3 games for $5 bucketatspecial starts 8 p.m. $2.00 Domestic Silos $2.50 Jack Daniel Mixers $2.00 Goldschlager

Beer Pong $7.00 4 Cans 8-close

text

2 for 1 cans & bottles during Packer games

2.25 for mini pitcher

Italian beef w/dog meal: $6.69 closed Pizza Puff meal: free pitcher of beer $4.49 or soda with large pizza

closed

The Cavalier Cavalier The 114 5th ave.

318 318 Pearl Pearl st. st.

Chuck’s

1101 1101 La La Crosse Crosse st. st.

Coconut Joe’s 223 Pearl st.

3 games Bud Nightfor6 $5 - CL:

starts atTaps 8 p.m. bottles $1$1.75 Domestic $2$5 Craft Import Taps pitchers $2.50 Vodka Mixers $1 Shot Menu $7 22oz tbone 16oz top sirloin 9.75 sutffed sirloin 8 jack daniels tips 8 $1 shots of Doctor, cherry doctor - 8-cl Happy hour 4-6 $1.75 cans, $2 mix drinks

ARENA

1/4 barrel giveaway 8-11Buck $1 Burgers burgers

77 -- CL CL $1 $1 domestic domestic 12 12 oz oz $2 $2 Stoli Stoli mixers mixers

77 -- CL CL Tequila’s Tequila’s chips chips & & salsa, salsa, $2 Coronas, $2.50 $2 Coronas, $2.50 Mike’s, Mike’s, Mike-arita Mike-arita

$3.00 Domestic Pitchers, $2.00 Shots of Cuervo, $3 Pitchers 1.75 Rails Rumpleminz, Goldschlager

Mexican Monday Guys'$2.00 Nite Corona, out 1.50 silos Corona Light, Cuervo

closed closed

Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Buck Night starts 6 p.m. $2.50 Selectatimports/craft Beers $2.50 Top shelf Mixers $2 Mich Golden bottles

games for $5 Happy3Hour 64-p.m.

CL- 9 p.m. M-F at Silos 7 p.m. $2starts Domestic $2.50 Sparks $2.50 Premium Silos $2.50 Three Olive Mixers $2. Goldschlager

$1 softshell tacos $1 shots of doctor, cherry doctor to 83361

free crazy bingo buy one cherry bomb get one for $1 specials batterfried cod, fries,

$6.00 AUCD

3 p.m. - midnight 25 cent hot wings $1 shots of Dr. 25 cent wings Dollar

AUCD Taps and Rails

2 for 1$5 All Mojitos taps

77 -- midnight midnight Ladies: Ladies: 22 for for 11 Guys: $1.50 Guys: $1.50 Coors Coors and and Kul Kul Light Light bottles bottles

7 - midnight 7 - midnight $1 rail mixers $1 rail mixers $2 Bacardi mixers $2 Bacardi mixers

77 -- midnight midnight $2 $2 Malibu Malibu madness madness $2 $2 pineapple pineapple upsidedown upsidedown cake cake

closed closed

$.50 domestic taps, $1 microbrews, $3 domestic $.50 taps Domestic 3.00 pitchers, pitchers $6 microbrew pitchers

$2$2 Tuesdays, Tuesdays,including including $2 import taps,taps, beer $2bottles, bottles, import pong,pong, apps, single mixbeer apps, shot single ers,mixers, featuredfeatured shots, and shot 50 cent taps shots, and 50 cent taps

WING 1NIGHT-$1.25/LB lb. of wings = $1.25, BUFFALO, SMOKEY BBQ, PLAIN $1 PBR/PBR Light bottles $1.00 PABST PABST $1.50AND Rolling Rock,LIGHT BOTTLES$1.50 ROLLING ROCK $2 JUMBO rail mixers, BOTTLES$2.25 Bud Lights $2.25 BUD LIGHTS $1.00 $1 Shot of the WeekSHOT OF THE WEEK

chicken & veggie OPEN-CL fajitas $2 U "Call" it for two

7-CL:night football domestic beer: $1.50 $1.50 domestic Mexican beer:rails $2.00 pints, $1.50

7-CL: chicken $1.50 domestic primavera pints, $1.50 rails

7-CL: shrimp $1.50 domestic pints, burrito $2 craft pints, $1.50 rails

chicken & veggie fajitasown Build your 5200 Mormon for Mary two Bloody N3287 County Coulee OA 16oz Mug - $4.00

football night domestic beer:Pizza $1.50 Homemade Mexican beer: $2.00 & PItcher of Beer

FiestaHollow Mexicana Fox

Goal Post Gracie’s Gracie’s Howie's

1908 1128 Campbell La Crosserd. st.

Huck Finn’s The Helm 127 108 Marina 3rd st dr.

$9.00 $5.99 gyro fries & soda

1904 1908 Campbell Campbell rd. rd.

9-cl- NBC night. (Night Before Class) $3 pitchers of the beast Happy Hour 4-9 p.m.

9-cl- $5.99 gyro $3.50 Domestic fries pitchers & soda

$1.75 domestic bottles

$1.75hour domestic happy 4 -7 bottles $2 domestic cans

$1.75 domestic bottles

$1.75 domestic bottles

W4980 Knoblach Rd.

JB’s Speakeasy 717 Rose st.

16

$1.75 domestic bottles

HAPPY HOUR 6 AM - 9 AM Buy one gyro free baklava, ice beer pong 6 p.m. get one free wings 6or p.m.

- 9 p.m. cream sundae $8.95 16 oz steak half price with meal Buy$1one gyro free baklava, ice 9-clrails, $2.50 $5 AUCD get one cream or sundae pitchers, Beer Pong half price with meal

$1 cherry bombs $1Keystone silos

Italian beef meal: $6.15 2 Chicago meal: Italian beefdog meal: $3.00 Bacardi mixers/ $3.45 $6.69 mojitos $2 Cherry Bombs 2 Chicago dog $1.50 $1 Bazooka Joes $5.89

meal:

bloody marys

FAC 4-8 pm.: $2 taps, $2 rails, $2.50 11Miller a.m. Lite - 4pitchers p.m $3 Bacardi mixers $3 Three Olive mixers $3 Mojitos, $2 Cherry Bombs , $3 Mojitos, $2 Cherry Bombs $6.75 joes $1 Bazooka joes $1 Bazooka 50 cent taps 4 - 7 (increases 50 cents per Great drinks! hour) $1 rails

Great drinks!

Happy Hour 12 - 7

After ClassMixers $3 $2.00 Captain Pitchers $1.75 Rails

12-3: Buy one get Jaeger, one $2.00 Malibu, $2.50 domestic $3.00 Jaeger beer Bombs Holmen Meat Locker Jerky Raffle

Wristband Happy Hour 7 - 9. $2 for all single shot mixers and all AND beers. $2.50 JUMBO CAPTAIN NightNight $2.50 JUMBO Captain Morgan mixers Wristband FLAVORED BACARDI MIXERS $5$5COLLEGE I.D. $2.50 JUMBO Bacardi Mixers (all flavors) COLLEGE I.D. $3.00 JAGER BOMBS $3 Jagerbombs general public $9$9general public Karaoke Karaoke $1 shot $1 shot specials specials

live live DJ DJ $1 shot $1 shot specials specials

7-CL: chili $1.50 domestic pints, verde $2 craft pints, $1.50 rails

HAPPY HOURshrimp EVERYDAY 3 - 6 chili chicken primavera $1.25 Bucketburrito of Domestic verde 25 Cent Wings BURGERS Cans 5 for $9.00

HAPPY specials HOUR All day (everyday!) $1.25 Old Style Light $1.50 LAX Lager/Light $1 shots of Dr.

Bloody Mary specials 10 - 2

JB’s Speakeasy $1.75 domestic Irish Hills bottles 717 Rose st.

$1 cherry bombs $1Keystone silos

pepper & egg sandwich meal: $4.50, fish sandwich meal: $4.99, pepper & egg sandwich ItalianCaptain sausage meal: $3.00 mixers/ mojitos meal: $6.15$5.00 $2 Cherry Bombs meal: Italian sausage $1 Bazooka Joes $6.69

$2.00 Cruzan Rum Mixers, $2.50 Ladies'Jameson Nite outShots, 1.50 $3.00 Raill Mixers mixers/ $2.50 X bombs

$3.00 Patron Shots $2 Pearl Street Brewery beers

Ladies Ladies Night Night buy buy one, one, get get one one free free wear wear aa bikini, bikini, drink drink free free

5200 1914 Mormon CampbellCoulee rd.

garlic

All day, everyday: $1.00 Shots of Doctor, $2.00 Cherry Bombs, $1.75 Silos of Busch Light/Coors All day Everyday: $1 Doctor $2 Silos. M-F: Happy Hour 2-6 $.50 off everything but the daily special

Topless Topless Tuesday Tuesday

Fiesta Eagle'sMexicana Nest

beans, and bread $5.50

Cosmic Bowl starts at 9Mixers p.m. $2.50 X-Rated $2 Captain Mixers $2 Premium Grain Belt $2 Snake Bites

shrimp dinner

$1 6Dr.8shots $3$1.50 Jagertaps Bombs

$1 $1 Kul Kul Light Light cans cans

411 3rd st.

Karaoke starts at $2.50 Bomb Shots happy hour $2.50 Ketel One Mixers 9 p.m. $2 Retro Beers "Your Dad's Beer"

$4.50 domestic pitchers barrel parties at cost $4.50 domestic pitchers Pitcher and Pizza $10

HAPPY HOUR 4 - 7 closed

$4 $4 full full pint pint Irish Irish Car Car Bomb Bomb

Dan’s Place

Saturday

Cosmic Bowl & 3-7

$5 bbq ribs and fries AUCE wings $5.00

bucket night 6 for $9

Bucket Night 6 beers

Import night $2 Silos starts at 7 p.m.

Stop in for Value Menu too big to list here

to receive

for $9meal: Italian beef $6.15 Chicago chili dog: Italian beef meal: $3.45 Thirsty $6.69

Friday

shots of Doctor hamburger meal: 8-Midnight grilled chicken$6 sandmeatball sandwich $3.69 wich meal: $5.29 meal: $6.15 HAPPY HOUR 3 PM - 8 hamburger PM cheeseburger Polish sausage or meal: grilled chicken meal: sandmeatball sandwich 2 dogs meal: $ 5.25 10 cent wings (9 - CL) $3.89 cheeseburger meal: $3.99 $2.50 wich meal: meal: $6.69 Wristband $1 High Life$5.29 bottles $3.89 Blatz vs. Old Style Chicago dog: Polish sausage meal: $1.50burgers, rail mixers$2.60 Tuesday 2meat Chicago dogs meal: $1.25 soup orNight saladw/dog bar makechili your own $2.25 Italian Beef orpitchers marinara $2 Guinness pints $3.89 $4.49 $5.89 FREE with entree or meal: $7.89 tacos, $4.75 taco salad cheeseburgers, $2 off spaghetti: $3.45 sandwich until 3 p.m. $2.25 margaritas, $2 large10 pizza, fries cent $1 wings "Thirsty Tuesday" Italian sausage: $4.95 $5 AUC2D $2.50 Blatz vs. Old by itself) off large pizza with anyHigh pizza $1 Miller Life bottles, ($3.95 $1.50taco U-Call-its $2.50 SoCo and Jack Style pitchers $1.50 rail mixers Martini Ladies' Night Martini Madness James Martini: vodka, triple $2 off all martinis sec, orange juice

114 5th ave.

CheapShots

Monday

Ask 2server 3-9: for 1 for details domestic bottles and rail drinks

Karaoke Karaoke OPEN-CL $2 U "Call" it

Ask server for details

$1.25 domestic taps HAPPY HOUR 3 - 8 GREEK ALL DAY buy one $8.95 16 appetizer oz. steak buy oneHOUR burger HAPPY get one half price appetizer half price 5 p.m.

10 p.m. get one- half price $8.95 1/2 lb. fish platter with meal 9-cl $2 bacardi $1.25 domestic taps 9-cl -$2 captain mixers, GREEK ALLmixers, DAY 9-cl $1.25 rails, buy one appetizer $2 domestic pints, $1.50 $2 bottles/cans, $3 jager appetizer buy one burger half price $1.75 bottles/cans bombs get one half price shots blackberry brandy get one half price with meal

EVERYDAY 3 -7 and 9 - 11 $1 Vodka Drinks $1.00 12 oz Dom.Taps $1.25 12oz prem. Taps $3 Orange Bombs

HAPPY HOUR 5 - 7 Steak and golf $14.95

HAPPY HOUR 5 - 7

Second Supper vol. 9, issue 171

Area food food & & drink drink specials specials ] COMMUNITY SERVICE [Area LA CROSSE

Sunday

Monday

Tuesday Wednesday

closed

closed

closed

$1.00 SHOT OF THE WEEK $4 DOMESTIC PITCHERS 1 LB WINGS = $1.25

Sunday Fun Day ~ Wristband Night

closed

$1 Domestic Taps & Rails 1/2 price Tequila

$2 Double Rails & All Bottles

223 Pearl st.

123 3rd st.

Pettibone Boat Club 600 S Pettibone dr.

Players

$1 off fried chicken

Kids eat free with adult

Price by Dice

2 for 1 Happy Hour ALL NIGHT LONG

214 Main St ,

Ralph's

In John's Bar 109 3rd st. N

Ringside 223 Pearl st.

Schmidty’s 3119 State rd.

Chef specials daily Mighty Meatball sub $6

CLOSED

CLOSED

breakfast buffet $9.95 10 a.m. - 2 p.m.

BBQ Sandwich

Karaoke @ 10 p.m.

2-4-1 Happy Hour 5 - 10 AUCD Rail mixers @ 10 p.m.

Karaoke @ 10 p.m.

2-4-1 Happy Hour 5 - 10 $1 Pabst cans, Dr. shots @ 10 p.m.

chicken parmesan sub $6

Italian sandwich w/ banana peppers and parmesan &6

open 4-9

Top Shots 137 S 4th st.

Yesterdays 317 Pearl st.

LA CRESCENT

Crescent Inn 444 Chestnut st.

WINONA Godfather’s 30 Walnut st.

July 16, 2009

Wristband Night & Beer Pong Tourney BBQ Night $1 off 2-4-1 Happy Hour 5 - 10 $2 Capt. mixers $1.75 domestic beer, $1.50 Rails, $1 Pabst cans @ 10 p.m.

Southwest chicken pita $5

HAPPY HOUR 4 PM - 7 PM cheeseburger HOOP DAY!! MAKE YOUR SHOT AND YOUR ENTRÉE IS FREE!

$3.00 JUMBO Svedka Mixers $2.50 Corona bottles $2.50 Cuervo shots

$2 Jonestown shots

$3 Bacardi Mixers & Jumbo Long Islands

$3 Three Olives Mixers & Jumbo Long Islands

Pettibone Fish Fry

Prime Rib

2-4-1 Happy Hour 3 - 9 Best Damned DJ'S @ 10 p.m.

2-4-1 Happy Hour 3 - 8 Best Damned DJ'S @ 10 p.m.

Chicken salad on rye w/ lettuce, tomato, onion $5 $6.99 FISH SANDWICH FOR LUNCH, $7.99 FISH SANDWICH FOR DINNER, $9.99 ALL YOU CAN EAT FISH FRY ALL DAY

happy hour all day long! $1.00 OFF WILD WINGS, $1.00 PHILLY STEAK AND CHEESE.

LUNCH BUFFET $6.95

Buck Burgers

801 Rose st.

601 St. Andrew st.

AFTER COMEDY: PINT NIGHT $1 PINTS OF RAILS MIXERS AND DOMESTIC TAPS $2 PINTS OF CALL MIXERS AND IMPORT TAPS $3 PINTS OF TOP SHELF MIXERS

Chili Dogs

Tacos

Fish Sandwich

12 oz. T-Bone $8.99

Fish Fry $6.95

All day (everyday!) specials $3 Double Captain & Cokes $2 Double rails $1 Cans of beer

Sports Nut

Train Station BBQ

double $6.50

Tacos

120 S 3rd st.

1019 S 10th st.

$6.99 AUCE Pasta

2 for 1 Burger Night

Shooter’s

Tailgators

Saturday

Shots of Doctor $1 all day, everyday

324 Jay st.

The Library

Friday

$2 domestics and rails, 4-8

The Joint Legend’s

Thursday

happy hour all day

$4 domestic pitchers

Tacos $1.25

15 cent wings

HAPPY HOUR 10 AM - 12, 4 PM - 6 PM $2 Bacardi mixers

$2 Spotted Cow & DT Brown pints

Bucket Night 5 for $9

closed

11-3: Extra side with sandwich 4-9: $1 off rib dinner

Special varies

11-3: Barn burner $7.95 4-9: Hobo dinner (serves 2) $30.95

$1.75 light taps and Dr. shots

$1.50 Bud/Miller Lite/ PBR taps all day $1.75 rails 10 - 1

$2 domestic bottles 7 - 12, $2.50 Skyy/ Absolute mixers 10-1 $2 Dr. drinks

$1 Point special bottles

$2.50 pints Bass & Guinness

$1.75 domestic bottles

$2.25 Pearl st. pints $1.50 PBR bottles

Sunday

Monday

Tuesday Wednesday

$2 Rolling Rocks $2 domestic beer

8 - CL $1.50 rails $1.75 Bud cans

$1 shots of Dr. $2.50 Polish

Sunday

Monday

Tuesday Wednesday

ask for great eats

Fiesta Night 7 - 12 $2 tequila shots $2.50 margaritas

family buffet 5 -8 kids under 10 pay .45 cents per year of age

$1 domestic taps $3 Jager Bombs

5 domestic bottles for $10, $2 Bacardi mixers, $1.50 rail vodka mixers 10 -1

$1 Dr. shots $3 16 oz Captain mixers 11-3 $7.95 Chicken on fire 4-9: Bones & briskets $13.95

$2 Long Islands, PBR bottles, Captain mixers

15 cent wings

$1 Dr. shots $3 16 oz Captain mixers 1/2 Chicken 3 bones $12.95

$2.75 deluxe Bloodys ‘til 7, $5 lite pitchers 7 - 12

$1.75 rails $1 PBR mugs

Thursday

Friday

$2.50 Captain $2.50 Jager Bombs & Polish

$2 u-call-it (except top shelf)

Thursday

Saturday

Friday

Saturday

any jumbo, large, or large 1 topping pizza medium pizza up to 5 $9.99 toppings: $11.99 (get 2nd large for $5)

17

Ã

Entertainment Directory 7/16 - 7/22

Thursday, July 16

July 18 continued

Cruz-In Adam Palm

7:00

Popcorn Tavern Roster McCabe with Violent Hippie

10:00

The Root Note Open Mic Night

7:00

Nighthawks The Northwood Bar-B-Que Boys

10:00

Popcorn Tavern Two Many Banjos Nighthawks Dave Orr's Damn Jam Starlite Lounge Kies & Kompanie Howie's Karaoke Del's Bar Nick Shattuck North Side Oasis Open jam with Dead Set

Nighthawk's Bad Axe River Band

Thurs., 7/23

Mos Def

First Avenue

Sat., 8/1

5:00 Ike's Jabber Jaws Palm Sunday Jam with Adam 8:00

Tori Amos

State Theatre

Wed., 8/5

8:00

The Moody Blue

Target Center

Thurs. 8/6

Fleet Foxes

First Avenue

10:00

10:00 7:00

Popcorn Tavern Som'n Jazz

Riverside Park Jazz Party and Art Show

Popcorn Tavern Shawn's Beach Party Jam Howies Karaoke

10:00

8:00

8:30

Saturday, July 18 The Root Note The New X Art Ensemble

8:30

JB's Speakeasy Lollipop Factory with jEHAD 10:00 Howie's Illusions, The Show

9:00

Yonder Mountain String Band Rod Stewert The Pretenders

8:00

Tues, 7/21

Sun., 8/9

Minnesota Zoo Amphitheater

Sat., 8/15

Target Center

Mon., 8/17

Minnesota Zoo Amphitheater

Wed, 8/19

Tuesday, July 21 10:00

Popcorn Tavern Mitch's Open Jam

10:00 7:00

10:00

Riverside Park Bandshell La Crosse Concert Band 7:30 The Warehouse What Happened in Vegas, BetweenThe Trees, Goot,

Live Music Every Night

8:00

Wednesday, July 22

6:00

Got a show?

Let us know!

We'll put it in, yo. editor@secondsupper.com

18

8:00

Houghton’s John and Mike Caucutt

North Side Oasis Cheech Hall

9:00

10:00

9:00

The Root Note Jazz Night

10:00

11:00

George Street Pub Adam Palm's Summer Jam

10:00 Popcorn Tavern Paulie

8:00

10:00

Monday, July 20

Howie's Karaoke

River Jacks Rode Hard

387,970

Target Center

The Joint Open Jam

Bucky's Burger Barn Clock with Billy Hembd

Jamie Foxx

Sunday, July 19

The Warehouse Threat Signal, The Autumn Offering,The Agonist, Sybreed 7:00

The Joint Derek Ramnarace and The Soapbox Project

population

First Avenue

Train Station BBQ Muddy Flats and the Hepcats 7:00 Piggy's Blues Lounge Mississippi Blue

Minneapolis Sonic Youth

10:00

Friday, July 17 Popcorn Tavern The Moon

Ã

s o j n a B Two Many

Gartman on vocals and banjo, Dave Carroll (Trampled By Turtles) on vocals and banjo, Jillian Lantry on fiddle/vocals, Karl Anderson on upright bass/vocals and the percussion wizard Lane Prekker (Charlie Parr) - washboard.

July 17..The Moon................10PM July 18..Roster McCabe.....10PM www.popcorntavern.com Second Supper vol. 9, issue 171

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Downtown La crosse, above fayzes - 782-6622

top shots joke of the week How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb?

Only one, but the light bulb has to WANT to change.

Good People, Good Drinks, Good Times $2.00 - 1 Player, $3.00 - 2 Players 50 Cents Off Drinks, $1 Off Pitchers

$1.75 - Light Taps $1.75 DR. Shots

Saturday July 16, 2009

$1.50 Bud/Miller Lite $2.00 Domestics 7-12pm & PBR Taps $2.50

$1.75

Skyy/Abs. Mixers 10-1AM

$2.00 Dr. Drinks

$2.75 Deluxe Bloody Marys ‘til 7:00 PM $5.00 Light Pitchers 7:00PM - Midnight 19

20

Second Supper vol. 9, issue 171