Ryan’s Place

I’ve had a bone to pick with the city of Madison for a while. They built the amazing Monona Terrace a while ago, and I frequently walk to the roof of it to look at Lake Monona or take pics or both. It’s a neat little place. There’s benches and chairs and bathrooms. It’s a public place, much like a park.

Well, there’s certain nights where I’ll be wandering around and decide to head up there. All too many times, the gates to get up there are closed. The signs informing you of when it closes change almost daily. Little pieces of tape cover up the original closing time of midnight. Now, it says it closes at 10:00 PM. Which is hardly that late. Over the summer it closes at that time too, and it’s barely been dark at that time during July.

Ross and I headed over there today only to find out that the terrace is seemingly closed for the winter. Does it make any sense to bar people from going up there in the winter? The only reasoning I can think of is that they don’t want to have to do snow removal in the area. Well fine, then leave it open until it snows. If they can go around ticketing people like crazy for not abiding by alternate parking rules, then they certainly can lock the gate for the terrace on the way.

On certain occasions I’ll reach my arm over the gate to unlatch it and go in when I’m not supposed to. I’ll usually do this when it’s 9:30 and the gates are closed, yet the sign says it closes at 10 PM. Technically, I’m doing nothing wrong if I let myself into something that’s says it’s open anyway, right?

It just seems silly to build this huge facility, yet close it off to the public at such weird hours and times of the day. I’ve been meaning to write to the city to tell them they’re crazy, but haven’t gotten around to it. Does anyone else agree with me on this?

I said there were lots of things I did while my page was down last month, so I’ve decided to put up one of those things in an effort to keep my site interesting. This event happened on November 9th, 2003.

It wasn’t until recently that I realized how politically active Al Franken was. I guess I knew he did a few things here and there, but to me he was always Stuart Smalley. After seeing him and Bill Oreilly go at it on Book TV over the Summer, my perception of him was completely changed. After reading in one of the newspapers around here that he was going to be in town hyping his book, I decided I need to see this Franken guy in person.

I headed over to the local book store which was selling tickets to the event. I decided to buy his book “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them,” which got me a free ticket to the event. I took my camera, of course. I guess I was in a psuedo-press role for this event cause I decided my seat in the balcony wasn’t good enough so I moved up front and stood in front of some people to get some of my shots.

I had read the first chapter or so of his book while waiting, and as he started to talk, I realized he was just regurgitating his book. Despite this, he was stilly funny, and it put the rest of the book into context for me.

At the end of his talk, people were allowed to come up to get their books signed, so I used my position way up front to get a good spot in line. I didn’t have anything interesting to say to him when he signed it other than “Nice to meet you,” but I guess that’s better than saying nothing at all. I got a handshake and his signature out of it.

I stuck around to get some shots of Franken interacting with fans, and got one interesting story out of it. Some guy thought that for an extra $3, he could get his book personalized. While I was in line, he was asking everyone around him if they had change for a $10. When he got up to Al, he was ready to hand over his $3, but got a funny look instead of a personalization. I guess the funny part is how tacky it would be to walk up to the guy and give him some money to write your name on the book in addition to just signing it. Maybe you had to be there.

His book turned out to be amazingly funny. I might put it into the category of “funniest book I’ve ever read.” You’ve got to be on the liberal side like me to really like it, but then again, what conservative would even pick it up. I laughed out loud numerous throughout the book, and it’s hard to make me do that when I’m just reading something. I highly recommend anyone with moderate intelligence and a small amount of political knowledge to pick this up and read it.

I scanned through Bill Oreilly’s book at Walden’s the other day. I noticed the pages were pretty close to triple-spaced to make it seem like a longer book. I guess Bill wants to provide the public with his ideas in small increments. From what I know about him, and what I read in his book, I want nothing to do with him.

That “strep throat” I had the other day really turned out to be an aphthous ulcer – a canker sore in lay terms. There’s really no cause behind it, although some websites suggest it could come from stress. If that’s the case, I blame Cam.

The doc prescribed some cream to put on it, but my wonderful insurance company (United Healthcare) decided that it didn’t think I am worthy to receive that drug. It ended up costing (my dad) $28 for a little 5mg tube. The stuff better work for that price.

I shot my first photo assignment for the Daily Cardinal today. James Dale was at the Union Theater speaking about the trials and tribulations related to him getting kicked out of the Boy Scouts for being gay. Nothing like a “wholesome” organization like the BSA spreading closedmindedness and ignorance.

To put it simply, his situation is better than his speaking ability. While he wasn’t a horrible speaker, it seems that he just wanted to touch on any current issue he could get his tongue on. By the time a Q and A session came around, I was ready to head out of there – and I did.

One of the shots I took should be on the front page (above the fold) of the December 2nd Daily Cardinal. This’ll be my first time there since Halloween ’02.

Taking some shots with their camera made me wish I had an endless supply of money. I guess many things make me wish that, but this is just one more to add to the list. Surprisingly enough, my camera possesses the same quality and image resolution as the paper’s camera, however theirs generally looks more professional. I think I’ll have to get a battery grip to at least fill the thing out a bit. The bigger the camera, the more important you look, right?

In addition, they have a nice selection of lenses. For those of you taking notes, a new Canon 100mm f/2 USM lens would be great about now. You’ve got $375 to spare, right?