I’m a firm believer that we’re repeatedly presented with a simple choice in life, every day: “Go big or go home.” And as door-to-door salesmen, Jehovah’s witnesses and curious Alderpeople can attest, you’ll seldom find me at my home.

So I’ve got to respect the 25-year-old Antigo man whose going big at the Mifflin Street Block Party last weekend landed him in Madison Police spokesman Joel Despain’s stack of incident reports – to a point, and not nearly as much as I respect Joel for going out of his way to tell the story simply for the sake of being able to write what he did. Joel’s a busy guy, but he clearly subscribes the the mantra this blog takes its name from.

The story is as such: Antigo was among the hoards of revelers that packed Mifflin for the annual beer blast and got themselves good and overserved. Except, unlike the vast, vast majority of partiers, Antigo wasn’t out to just have a good time. He wanted to start something.

He was “obnoxious” and “rude,” and went out of his way to start a fight. Keeping with the “Kumbaya-Over-a-Kegger” atmosphere of the celebration, the attendees of the house party Antigo was at didn’t let themselves get provoked, but did show him the door in no uncertain terms.

Hellbent on finding a fight and now with a sizeable chip on his shoulder, Antigo set off down West Wash, only to bump into a group of three guys that were happy to oblige him.

The next thing he knew, Antigo was waking up at the hospital, still drunk, still surly, and now with a respectable goose egg to boot. But he wasn’t about to let respect for medical professionals or common decency stop his rampage. And here, I’ll let Joel Despain’s masterful storytelling take over.

From incident report 2010-116431:

“When he regained consciousness, he became very combative, to the extent that three hospital security staff members were needed to restrain him. An officer tried to ask the man: What happened? How were you injured? How did your tooth get chipped?

“The victim responded by swearing at the officer, indicating his injuries occurred when he had sexual contact with the officer’s mother.”

You’ve got to admit, the guy has spunk. I say we award this man a medal for “going big,” and then make him “go home” by banishing him from the city forever. And while we’re at it, Joel Despain gets a ribbon for greatest paraphrasing in the history of police incident reports, ever.

I’d wager a significant portion of my meager paycheck that Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz gets a lot of dumb letters, and I’m talking about a breed of dumb that goes beyond simply misspelling his humdinger of a last name. I’m talking about the kind of dumb that inspires one to carry a gerbil-wheel with one before the entire city council, with more than 50 people waiting in line behind you to address the body, and talk about “nibbling on nuts.” (You have to page down to around 5:50 in Kristin’s notes to catch this Will Sandstrom classic — though I guess his tirade is more a case of “stark raving mad” than “dumb”).

Anyway, if most of us got the kind of letters he does on a regular basis, I imagine we would get into the habit of just chucking most of them in the trash. But not Cieslewicz, apparently. In his latest blog post, his honor the Mayor lampoons the most frequent occupants of his inbox, complaints about Madison’s parking enforcement.

“I am just writing to inform you of the world’s worst injustice which took place in your gulag of a city not too long ago. As a result of this travesty, I have plans to bring Madison to its knees. Let me explain. (Here there are typically three pages of single spaced detail on the person’s every move for the two hours preceding and following the moment of ticketing.)

As you can clearly see from my brief recounting of events, I was wrongly fined by your overzealous officers. If my ticket is not dismissed immediately along with an apology copied to the media, my employer and my mother, I will destroy Madison’s economy by never returning to your city to spend so much as a dime. Moreover, I will tell all my friends here in Toledo and in the greater Toledo area never to set foot in your fascist city…”

I couldn’t help but throw my head back and laugh upon reading this, for several reasons. Firstly, the Mayor once told me he has staffers who check his blog posts prior to their posting and weed out some of the more undiplomatic ones — but admits that, “every once in a while I sneak one past the censors.”

This is clearly one of the latter. As much as people as cracked as me may have enjoyed his candor in this case, somewhere someone is reading it and getting offended right now.

But even funnier to me is the striking similarity the mayor’s fictitious letter of complaint bears to one of my more vehement rants of all time relating to a parking ticket I received after mistakenly parking my motorcycle in a partially unoccupied handicapped stall outside city hall.

“Ignorance of the law is no defense against it, I get that. Not seeing the sign is a mistake anyone can make, albeit a one-hundred dollar mistake in the City-of-the-Perpetually-Offended. And if I had in some way inconvenienced someone who had a deserved right to that spot, I would take a deep breath, clutch my manhood in one hand and my wallet in the other and pay the fine without complaining.

But WHO in HELL was I inconveniencing by using up the remaining three feet of that parallel parking spot? When I emerged from that horrid meeting three and a half hours later, the same gray van was parked in front of me, so it’s not like any passing disabled motorist even got the impression the spot was claimed. And what other use was there for the remaining space I took up? After all, I find it highly unlikely a paraplegic motorcyclist was going to come along and park there…“

And it goes on to get more outlandish and ridiculous from there, though the exaggerated hyperbole was intentional.

So yes, it’s easy and even popular to complain about Madison’s parking enforcement — I’m certainly no trailblazer when it comes to my views on parking or traffic tickets. I salute the mayor for unflinchingly dishing the BS right back, but hope he understands that it CAN get tough to make a living that pays very little and often takes one into the “danger zone” of Madison parking downtown.

I’ve literally paid hundreds of dollars into Madison’s city budget through parking tickets — not quite a thousand, but certainly in the ballpark of five hundred. Some of them I deserved, some of them were questionable. Either way, it gets overwhelming, and if no one’s going to name a wing in city hall after me for my generous financial contributions, the least I can do is waste some public official’s time with an incoherent letter.

Of course, if Mayor Cieslewicz dismantled the entire parking enforcement division, he could be rid of the complaint letters altogether. It’s a plan I’d like to implement, and I figure if the mayor gets to take an occasional crack at being a wiseass, I should get a shot at running the city every once in a while.

Have you thanked a 911 dispatcher this week?

Because, honestly, if you haven’t, you might want to consider it. I know when I heard the following recording, I thanked the next 911 dispatcher I talked to, which happened to be Rick at the Dane County 911 Center.

The recording comes to us courtesy of our friends at the Dodge County Sheriff’s Department. The story’s actually a couple weeks old, and I meant to post on it then, but I was busy with other things (like trying to get this new website together, for starters). But the audio is so golden, and there’s so much more to be taken away from this morality tale, that I think it warrants a bit of our time, even two weeks after the fact.

The set-up is simple, really, and happens all the time in agricultural Wisconsin. A handful of cows escaped their enclosure in rural Dodge County. Where normally a farmer would have called up some relatives and neighbors to come out and help chase them back in (and yes, I’ve been a part of one of these “posses”), this woman instead dialed 911 and asked the operator to send out the cavalry.

When she was told that sheriff’s deputies had bigger fish to fry on this particular day, she tried another strategy, and was far from gracious when it failed. Note: this version of the call is UNCENSORED.

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When your career is centered on helping other people, I imagine it’s really frustrating to come across someone who so stubbornly refuses to help herself.

Sadly, these kinds of calls are not at all uncommon for the folks on the other end of the 911 line. It’s like there’s a segment of humanity that believes calling 911 is an automatic solution to any problem, big or small. Just last March, a Madison woman called the 911 center to report an idling car on the street outside her home, when she could have just as easily peaked inside it and potentially saved a man from carbon monoxide poisoning.

When I worked in Portage, Columbia County Sheriff Dennis Richards told me about a car accident on a snowy stretch of road where a carload of three high-schoolers was killed instantly. In the sport utility vehicle that became fused to the car’s driver’s side, a Baraboo man and his wife sat, injured and trapped in their vehicle. The Columbia County 911 center took several calls from other motorists reporting the accident, but only one of them stopped to help. When the state patrol got to the scene to investigate the cause of the crash, they estimated about a dozen cars had driven AROUND the accident, destroying the evidence investigators had hoped to photograph on the shoulder.

There were people who showed up to help that snowy afternoon on Highway 33 — a neighbor who was fortunately a doctor, a couple of drivers who were eventually waved down to help. But in speaking with the Sheriff about it weeks later, he told me that the number of people who actually stop and offer help has dropped off steeply in the past decade.

“A lot of people feel like they’ve done their part just by notifying law enforcement of an emergency, and nowadays they can do that with a cell phone,” Richards told me. “They don’t have to stop or pull into a house or business… They can keep right on driving.”

Having that extra set of eyes and hands at the scene of a crash, or any other emergency, can be a big help to first responders. Richards encourages those who are so inclined to offer rudimentary first aid, hold hands, reassure the victims that help is on the way and distract or shield them from any carnage.

Those with less stomach for an active role can still be of assistance by directing traffic away from the area and by staying on the line with 911 operators, giving them a play-by-play of the scene so first responders know what to expect when they arrive. A good informant at the scene of an emergency can help dispatchers figure out how many ambulances to call, if the scene is safe to approach directly and whether to page out Medflight.

“There are a lot of questions that can be answered if the phone call is made right there (from the scene),” Richards told me at the conclusion of our conversation on the topic.

Dialing 911 is not the end-all, be-all solution to every problem that crops up, though it’s often a necessary part of the fix. In some cases, people utilize 911 as a crutch, abusing the system for their own benefit and draining resources that could potentially save a life if put to better use. Other times, 911 becomes a comfortable way for people to feel like they’ve done their civic duty without really getting their hands dirty.

In either case, people need to stop being so personally helpless and start taking a more active responsibility in their own welfare and the well-being of those around them… and remember that 911 operators have feelings too.

No, I was not delighted at the news that some low life had held up his sixth, seventh or even eighth convenience store in a week. And no, I am not in fact, as some have suggested, moonlighting on the side as the Parka Bandit myself, though in my darker, broker hours… Well, we’ll just leave it at that.

But I was excited to see the Parka Bandit in the headlines because I coined the term “Parka Bandit” on-air in the middle of last week when I first found out some goon was knocking over gas stations with a black coat’s hood cinched down tight over his face. Police spokesman Joel Despain heard it and loved it and ran with it in one of his press releases, and Channel 3 and the Cap Times took it from there.

I had no idea the term would end up being this persistent, but with every store the Parka Bandit hits, it becomes more clear a term is needed to refer to this thug, and I’m pleased mine made the cut.

Again, it seems like a silly thing to get excited over, but I feel like I’ve achieved some legitimate accomplishment, some rite of passage.

Before I go on, it sounds like this slimeball hit a convenience store again tonight, though a little earlier than he usually strikes. It’s the same MO all up and down, though. The suspect walks into a gas station in a black coat, his face covered by the hood, and makes to order a pack of smokes. When he has the clerk’s attention, he flashes his piece, they throw money on the counter and he walks away.

It isn’t brain surgery. It isn’t rocket science. In fact, it’s so simple-minded and myopic that this guy has all but guaranteed he’s going to be caught eventually. Let’s face it. All it would take is an enterprising bystander who realizes that hood cinched down so tight really limits this guy’s peripheral vision to bash him over the head with a heavy jar of salsa, and the Parka Bandit’s reign of terror would be over.

I’ve talked to a few police officials about the case, and they all say the same thing: he’s not the brightest crayon in the box, and he’s probably trying to feed some kind of drug habit.

That’s part of the reason I felt coining a moniker for the Parka Bandit was appropriate. Right now, this guy thinks he’s walking away with easy money, night in and night out, and he thinks he’s pretty tough getting it with a handgun. Others could see his example, and in their own simple, short-sighted ways think they’ve found a great way to earn a few bucks themselves.

In the long-term, the Parka Bandit will be caught, and he will be locked up in jail for a very long time. But until that happens, we as a society need to make it clear that the bandit’s behavior is simply unacceptable. It will not be tolerated. While jail time will make an example of the Parka Bandit eventually, until then he deserves every ounce of our collective derision, accumulated disdain and outright mockery.

Potential copycats need to see that there is nothing glamorous about being a two-bit thug with a handgun, a goofy disguise and delusions of grandeur. Who knows? The Parka Bandit may be a victim of his own circumstances, stealing money to pay off a dangerous debtor or fund his own sick mom’s cancer treatment, but he lost any claim for sympathy when he carried a firearm into public and used it to endanger the lives of his fellow Madisonians.

Because as easy as he is to mock, the Parka Bandit and his ilk are two things above all else: dangerous menaces and timebombs waiting to go off. Every time I see a press release come down the pipe about this guy, I hold my breath and hope this wasn’t the time the clerk wasn’t quick enough with the cash for his liking.

While 95 percent of this sleeze only carries a weapon for show and would never actually use it on an innocent, there’s always that dangerous element that’s too drugged up or too disconnected from reality or just too nasty to let something like decency stop them from crossing that final line.

When an official with the Middleton Police Department told me it was going to be a while before they knew more details about a string of arsons because the suspects were “still sobering up” at ten in the morning, I knew it was going to be a good story.

Of course, that was more than a week ago on February 13, and as the tale of 23-year-old Christopher Ripp and 19-year-old Collin Tubbs’s (alleged) bender has emerged since, I’ve been proved more right with each detail.

A wise, albeit fictional, man once said, “If you can’t do something smart, do something right.” While there’s certainly nothing intelligent (or admirable, for that matter) about what these two braniacs did, when it comes to history’s great nights of mayhem, their (alleged) actions in the wee hours of February 13, 2009 certainly deserve a page in the book.

Of course, Ripp and Tubbs are presumed innocent until they stand trial for their actions, but here’s the story as I’ve been able to piece it together, mostly through conversations with the Middleton Police Department.

It was Thirsty Thursday, and Ripp and Tubbs were throwing a few back at a house party in Middleton. We may never know what started it, and frankly it doesn’t matter, but in the course of their carousing, a brawl erupted with some other partiers, words were exchanged, fists were thrown, and feelings were hurt.

After a brief breather, the fighters decided to “take it outside,” where the perceived insult became so egregious as to necessitate the introduction of knifeplay into the fray. But stabbing one of the other brawling parties in the hand was only the beginning for Ripp and Tubbs, who then jumped into their car and went tearing through the sleepy, residential streets of Middleton exchanging gunfire with other cars full of window-lickers.

It’s no small miracle an innocent bystander wasn’t wounded in the ensuing firefight, although I’m sure a few of Middleton’s citizenry found perforated mailboxes, garage doors and lawn ornaments the next morning.

After some time, cops say the chase ended without blood, and Ripp and Tubbs returned to their home. That’s where a normal night of mayhem might have ended, as they staggered into the living room and passed out cold, only to awake the next morning with Jaeger on their breath, bulletholes in their car and no idea what connection there was between the two.

But what set Ripp and Tubbs apart from your average drunken losers was the decision they made next. Apparently none-too-thrilled with the new “speed holes” in their automobile, they took to the streets again with a gas can, delusions of revenge and not a thread of common sense or decency.

They threw a burning propane cylinder through the window of a house in Middleton, where a guy who had spent the night trying to mediate between the warring parties resides with his wife, who’s eight months pregnant. To get back at one of the guys they were fighting, they set fire to a five-unit apartment building in Madison, where four other people with no involvement whatsoever lived. For their coup de grace, they tried to get back at another one of the brawlers by torching the outside of a house in Cross Plains.

Right block, wrong house. I don’t envy the family that woke up in the dead of night with no idea why their house was on fire.

All tuckered out, Ripp and Tubbs returned home to sleep the sleep of angels… that is, until they awoke at 7:30 in the morning to find Middleton Police poking around the bullet-riddled car they’d left parked in plain view on the street.

Still drunk, they went charging out the front door yelling at the police, who were in the process of impounding the vehicle as evidence. You have to credit the officers on scene for being able to catch the scent of gasoline on Tubbs and Ripp over the booze they must have reeked of.

If anything, we should be grateful these two menaces made themselves so easy to catch. They’ve been banged up in the Dane County jail since the thirteenth, and the DA’s office is weighing a laundry list of 32 charges against them that include arson and attempted murder.

Personally, I hope they’re charged too with Mayhem, which actually is an imprisonable, if vague, offense in Wisconsin, for no other reason than the morning of the thirteenth is a definition of the term worthy of Webster’s.

I’ve also got some healthy respect for Tubbs’s dad, Capitol Police Chief Charles Tubbs, for leaving his no-good kid to rot in jail this long. Bail was set at 40-grand in cash, and while I’m sure posting it or making other arrangements to get the punk out of lockup are not outside Chief Tubbs’s means, it doesn’t sound like he’s made any effort.

The scope of this little crime spree goes well beyond the realm of poor choices and crosses the line of recklessly endangering innocent lives. If Christopher Ripp and Collin Tubbs are ever to become productive members of society, it’s tough love that’s going to do the job — the kind of tough love that drops like a hammer.

Theirs is the behavior of dangerous children with no connection to the reality they live in, only a simplistic perception of themselves as the stars in their own private television crime drama.