Snarlin’ Marlin made no bones about his feelings toward members of the media at a press conference today.

“It’s hard for me because you guys jerk me around all the time,” said the Democratic state Rep from Wisconsin Rapids, Marlin Schneider,  “Some days I hate your guts.”

Don’t feel bad, Marlin. There are plenty of days the feeling’s mutual, especially in a broad sense. You clod.

But while it’s obvious that neither side in the age-old battle between policymakers and the watchdog media shies away from trading verbal barbs, it’s just as clear that the numbers on one side of the fight are dwindling. And while Schneider didn’t resist taking the cheap shots where he could, the press conference he was conducting was actually intended to announce a move that could bolster the declining newspaper business.

It’s a decline that was painfully on display today. In something of an ironic twist, there wasn’t a single newspaper reporter at the very presser intended to herald newspapers’ salvation.

That’s awkward.

Granted, the term “salvation” is a bit of an exaggeration. Schneider apparently has plans to introduce legislation exempting buildings owned by newspapers from property taxes. It could certainly end up being a move that infuses some life into the business, though it’s unlikely to staunch the bleeding entirely. There are also questions as to the impact it would have on the already gaunt property tax revenues of budget-crunched municipalities, why radio or television stations shouldn’t also qualify and whether newspapers are even interested in that kind of special treatment.

Most importantly, I would like to see any kind of tax break or other financial package offered as an incentive, not a handout. The corporate overlords at newspapers are interested in the same thing as the corporate overlords at soda giants or automakers or petrol concerns — profit. Without some strings attached to the proposed property tax exemption, there’s nothing to keep them from pocketing that extra revenue and continuing to cut newsroom personnel.

If you don’t believe it, look no further than Madison’s own “two” newspapers, which I’m told have been profitable for some time now, but have been forced to endure further cuts to widen the margins, regardless.

A clause that disqualifies papers that undergo mergers from the tax credit could get Madison’s publications moving on a different track than they have been for the last decade. A minimum staffing level based on circulation could reverse the recent hiring (or firing) trends in Wisconsin’s markets. And a stipulation that only daily publications qualify for the tax exemption could even get the Capital Times eying a return to its former glory as an afternoon paper instead of a weekly.

These are just a couple of unresearched ideas I came up with in 5 minutes at my desk, going on midnight on a Tuesday. Whether they have any value, or whether Schneider’s proposal even warrants the paper a bill would be printed on, is certainly up for debate.

But the important thing is, even though reporters get in his hair in the course of doing their jobs, Schneider recognizes their necessity as facilitators of a broader conversation that society needs to have. While other lawmakers and opinion columnists and windbags will eventually decide whether his proposal has merit, he’s trying to get them to have that conversation. Schneider wants Wisconsinites to sit down and think about what the state would be without their newspapers, whether that’s a state they would want to live in, and what they can do to bring them back strong.

So, I guess, thanks Marlin, for your concern about the slow implosion of the American discourse’s staple for more than three centuries. You big jerk.

The first day of my court battle against an overzealous, unjust speeding ticket in Sauk County was far from epic. Though, quite honestly, I’d be perfectly happy if we could settle the whole thing without ever approaching the realm of the epic.

To recap — In late August, I was enjoying a lovely afternoon at Devil’s Lake with some friends, and prior to striking out for home, I took a friend for a spin around the park on the back of my bike. In the course of our explorations, we rolled through some of the innermost campsites of the state park and got a little turned around. It was at this point one Ranger Lane with the DNR claims his equipment indicated I was operating at 30 miles an hour in a 15 zone.

For my part, I admit no guilt at this juncture. He has his story about a finely-tuned piece of equipment that regulations dictate he calibrates daily, I have mine about an unexplained gravitational phenomenon unique to that space and that time causing a case of extremely localized temporal dilation, lending my bike the appearance of traveling faster than it actually was.

I say let the people decide.

As such, I had to appear at the Sauk County Courthouse yesterday to plead not guilty to the charges. I’ve been partway through this process before, so I knew it wasn’t necessary to go in guns a’blazing, ready with excuses and appeals to decency and prepared witnesses. For most courts, the first step in contesting a traffic citation is as simple as signing a piece of paper declaring your intention to do so.

But as I was walking in, I couldn’t help but be goaded on by a member of the District Attorney’s staff. A fella from La Valle, apparently set on the same goal I was, had gotten lost in the courthouse and rapped on the first door he’d found to ask how to contest a traffic ticket. As I approached, the guy who answered (he looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him, which is why I’m guessing DA’s staff) was telling him, “down that hall and to the right, and you tell them you’re going to FIGHT that ticket.”

The quiet fella thanked him and started down the hall, but the DA’s staffer hadn’t made his point yet. “You tell them you’re going to take it to the HIGHEST COURT IN THE LAND!” he hollered after the small-towner, who hustled his step down the hall.

For traffic intake, the courts set it up so all the people issued tickets by certain law enforcement agencies have to plead on the same day. Judging by the officials and the people on hand, I’d say yesterday was for tickets issued by the village of La Valle and the DNR, because it was me, the quiet fella, and a couple dozen or so agitated kids aged 16 to 20, talking about how they were going to fight the drinking tickets they got at Devil’s Lake.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if you’re going to drink underage, the worst damn place you can do it is at a campsite.

So two hours of driving and five minutes of paperwork later, Sauk County knows I’m ready to fight my ticket. Now the ball’s in their court, as I await some kind of contact. The best-case scenario is they’ll offer to drop the ticket — the worst is they call me out and schedule a jury trial. Realistically, the end result will probably fall somewhere in the middle.

Me? I just want to get back to turning over a new leaf as a safe, mature driver. I’ve reformed, damnit! I’m a butterfly crushed on the wheel of society.

I heard the sound of a hundred bucks breaking the other week. It sounded really damn good.

Among the various side projects I keep that include this blog, I drum for a band called Common Swift. It’s a project that’s required increasing volumes of effort, but I don’t mind so much. It’s a good creative and physical release, and when we’re not intentionally driving each other crazy, the other people involved are actually some of my best friends.

Like so many other fun habits, however, this one’s an expensive one. When all you invest into music is 15 bucks to buy a CD, it gets really easy to gloss over the expenses involved, particularly for a band just starting out without any solid source of income yet. All six of us Swifts have had to bust open our personal piggy banks again and again, and while it has no effect on the inherent nature of our music, there’s no denying that dropping some hefty coin has moved our *sound* in a good direction.

Last spring, Clint dropped hundreds of dollars on a new bass guitar and hasn’t looked back. Parker blew more than a grand for a new PC tower with enough oomph to run NASA, primarily so we could do some really professional-sounding live multi-track recording.

But the blessing and the curse of being a drummer is that, unless you’re scratching your entire set and starting fresh, you seldom have to cut a big (and that’s a relative term) check for equipment. Since I started playing again a year-and-a-half ago, I’ve been gradually replacing my set one piece at a time, which is the blessing. The curse is there are a couple dozen things on the set that can break at any time, and when the fundamental nature of your instrument involves brute, percussive force, they do.

Last Christmas, I treated myself to a pair of custom-picked, high-end Zildjian ZBT crash cymbals to replace the generic, stock tin cans that came with the set a decade ago. I played them hard but treated them well. However, if there’s a moral to this story, it’s this: don’t leave your set up after a basement show where anyone who thinks they’re a drummer can sit down and abuse it during the after party.

I’m telling myself it’s that mistake that lead to the eventual demise of my favorite hundred-dollar crash cymbal within nine months of its purchase. Two small cracks appeared on opposite sides of the cymbal, and over the coming weeks spread slowly toward the middle with further play, creating a diameter that would have eventually split the instrument in two. But up until last week, it still sounded good.

I guess that’s one of the differences between high-end cymbals and generic brands. I’ve destroyed generic cymbals before. The damage is haphazard, unpredictable, spreads quickly, and when that sonuvabitch finally goes off, it sends a spray of metal shrapnel like a grenade going off.

Come to think of it, that’s basically what happened with my last high-hat, but that was due for a replacement. I got it from Strutt after doing in the generic hat that came with the set. I don’t think he knows where he got it. It was tarnished, so much that it was almost impossible to read the lettering on it, but we still managed to make out that it was made in West Germany. West Germany. Freakin’ thing was probably as old as I am.

So I finally caved today, with a gig coming up this weekend and a decent package deal at a store on the west side, and bought a new hat and a couple crashes. But as I was checking out at the store, I couldn’t help but laugh when the clerk (shouting over some dopey 14-year-old abusing one of the display sets) offered me a chance to buy “cymbal insurance.”

Basically, I have 30 days to decide whether to give the store a chunk of cash. If I do, in the event that one of my new cymbals gets wrecked within the next two years, they’ll replace it for free. While the concept of insurance generally leaves a sour taste in my mouth for things like cars and lives, this strikes me as something of a funny deal.

My bandmates are not shy about telling me I play loudly. Nor was my high school band director, who famously voiced during a lecture on dynamic range, “And then there’s Dusty, who tends to be about as subtle as your average act of God.”

A dozen broken sticks laying in the corner, two dead cymbals, the dents in my heads and the blisters on my hands are testament to the fact that my equipment takes a beating. But I can only see a two-year insurance policy on my new cymbals encouraging me to get abusive 11 months from now.

I think I’ll pass on the insurance and try instead to temper my gusto a little.

By the way, Common Swift would love to see you out at Chaser’s Lounge, 6313 24th Avenue in Kenosha. Door’s at 9:00 Saturday night. More shows on the way this fall.

No blog post to speak of here today. Dane101.com hired me on as a freelancer to do an in-depth series on the proposed redevelopment of Madison’s Edgewater Hotel. We BROKE some news about the topic this morning, so why don’t you meander on over and check out part one. Parts two and three will run tomorrow and Wednesday.

I will add that the moment I saw the weekend’s forecast, I started kicking myself. I knew, with a Sunday night deadline, that I was doomed. I suspect I have a rare form of Attention Deficit Disorder that kicks in when the weather is gorgeous. Coupled with an epic penchant for procrastination, I prognosticated Thursday night that I would be pulling an all-nighter Saturday.

I was not wrong. Sunday morning marked the first time since college that I watched the sun come up from behind my keyboard. I haven’t lost “it” yet, but damned if it didn’t get a whole lot harder.

Anyway, thanks to Jesse Russell, Emily Mills and Michael Donnelly at Dane101 for asking me to do the piece. It’s always fun to freelance a little, but it really speaks to the character of the people who run the website that they pay their writers, while they don’t really even pay themselves. It was a pleasure, and I would do it again anytime.

…bloggin’ on ur internetz. And there goes my meme quota for the month, though that one’s so outdated, I don’t know if it counts.

I don’t own an iPhone, or any of those other fancy-pants cellular-telephones-that-are-more-than-telephones. I had planned to be in the research phase of buying a so-called “smart phone” right now, but then a run-in with a Park Ranger at Devil’s Lake a couple weeks ago set me back some respectable scratch, so that plan might have to wait a little bit.

And if I may digress for a moment, but what the hell, Ranger Kenneth C Lane ? Honestly? I’m a nice enough guy. I get where I’m going quickly, but I don’t put anybody’s LIFE in danger. And if I’d known you were going to write me a damn ticket anyway, I’d have told you to stow your lecture so I could ride back to Madison before the damn sun set. You wondered why I was in a hurry. If I’d wrecked myself on a deer that night, you were going to be my first bedridden hospital phone call.

I’ve gotta put at least half of my speeding tickets to date down to simple bad luck and bored cops. You don’t rack up four of them and ZERO other moving violations or accidents without being a driver of stupefying skill and unfathomably bad karma. But thanks to Ranger Lane, I can now claim to have received a speeding citation from every level of local law enforcement — a (Monroe) police officer, a (Columbia) county sheriff’s deputy, a (Wisconsin) state trooper and a (Devil’s Lake) park ranger. I’m not missing any that I know of. If this were GTA, I’d be getting some sort of points bonus right now.

But yes, that’s why I’m not getting a phone with the internet on it any time soon. However, if you’re so inclined to gloat about your technological superiority, here’s the perfect opportunity. You can now view MY website from YOUR mobile device, even though I myself am not equipped to do so.

My web guru MattRock, who doesn’t have my kind of problems, is the guy who equipped the site to look uber-savvy from an iPhone. He was also generous enough to send me some screen shots of what I would be seeing if I had an iPhone of my own.

I’m sure these screens weren’t meant to “rub it in” at all.

The layout’s simple but very readable, but the coolest damn thing about it is the fedora with a press pass icon. That just about knocked me out of my chair when I saw it. In fact, if I had an iPhone, I like it so much I would make it an icon on my home screen, which, by the way, is an option…

Just visit the site as usual and save the bookmark to the home screen. I’d be flattered if you did, but don’t ask me how to do it beyond what MattRock laid out for me here. If you’re using an iPhone, you’re already miles ahead of me.

In the meantime, I’ll just keep writing and saving my pennies.