Rath of the Times

The Creature from the Black Lagoon speaks against the current zombie craze

Me, Creature.

You, youth of world. Hot demographic.

You like the vampire.

Creature get you like the vampire.

Then you like the werewolf.

Creature get you like the werewolf.

Now you like the zombie.

Creature no get you like the zombie.

Is all so five minute ago. What be next big teen and tween monster craze?

Is simple. Is me!

Creature strong. Creature swim good. Have nice smile. Good personality. Creature make zombie look like suck. Me breath under water. Me have killer abs. Should be called rock-hard six-pack from Black Lagoon!

But not all tinsel, glamour in Black Lagoon. For one thing . . . is black. For me, so so black. Is lonely. Lonely bad. People is yell at Creature from Black Lagoon, “hey, ‘goon!” Is for short. Me no like. Name not goon. Name Creature. Creature junior technically. Me no like names. Me no like bullies! Me gentle tender, yes. Me have complex inner life. Me take, drag bully under water. Ha ha! Bully is no breath under water. See how funny is bully then!

But me no hurt you. Me friend. Me love. But still no sparkle hug girlfriend for Creature, no, no. Lonesome!

So me, Creature you love, is good, yes? Creature like love. Love good yes.

Be friend? You me like.

Or me drag you under water.

-- Creature

No school Nov. 15 or 16? Spend the day CARTOONING at the Bartell Theatre!

CARTOONS AND GRAPHIC STORYTELLING - Thursday, November 15 , 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. – From Pixar to the internet, animated graphics are everywhere! Learn to create your own cartoon characters, have them convey emotion, and tell jokes and stories in this fast-paced workshop. No experience necessary. For students in grades five through eight. Participants should bring a sack lunch and beverage. Snacks provided!

 CARTOONS AND GRAPHIC PERSPECTIVES - Friday, November 16 – 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. – In this all-different class, learn how to make your drawings “pop” off the page! Draw comics that show action and depth. Participants will also learn the fundamentals of animation. No experience necessary. For middle and high school students. Participants should bring a sack lunch and beverage.  Snacks provided!

 The extensive collections of the Chazen Museum of Art will be used in both classes to show that dynamic, graphic storytelling  – cartoons – is an art form that’s at least 3,000 years old.

$89 per student. Advance registration required for each.

Instructor: Madison-based writer and cartoonist Jay Rath, veteran of The Onion, Fantagraphics Comics and MAD magazine; previously taught cartooning at the Chazen Museum of Art, MATC, and Madison’s Hawthorne and Alicia Ashman libraries.

Bartell Theatre, just off the Capitol Square at 113 E. Mifflin St.

For more information or to register, e-mail [email protected]

 Produced by non-profits Millenium Ltd, in association with StageQ.

Reborn Overture still “at the bottom of the trough”

Charitable review decries center policies

Funds are uninsured

By Jay Rath

Documents released this fall by the fundraising arm of the Overture Center for the Arts portray an alarming downward financial spiral, even as the non-profit officially took over management of the center yesterday, Jan 1.

 A lot of ink has been spilled over Overture’s fortunes these last few years, but the reported dollar amounts relate only to its management board, the Madison Cultural Arts District. Little or nothing has been reported about the center’s fundraising organization, Overture Center Foundation Inc. Its responsibilities are now hugely expanded, to cover all aspects of the facility.

Aside from an October audit, the most recent available tax records for the foundation, from 2009, document a net loss of $567,652. In that year the fundraising organization had more than $1.42 million in expenses (including funds expended for Overture programming) but revenue of only $861,694.

Organizations that vet the health of non-profits use tax returns alone. In the case of the Overture Center Foundation, that’s impossible. More than six months into its current fiscal year, the foundation still has not filed a return for 2010.

However, an Oct. 13 audit report by the foundation’s own accounting firm, Johnson Block and Co., suggests that, when it is eventually filed, the foundation’s 2010 tax return will show an additional net loss of $449,917. The foundation’s assets present a similar picture, falling from $1.2 million in fiscal 2008 to $644,810 according to its 2009 tax return.

“The last couple years have been pretty tumultuous,” says Overture president and CEO Tom Carto. It began with good news in June 2010, when Overture and its banks reached a forbearance deal to eliminate $28 million in debt left from the liquidation of the center’s trust fund.

At the time, the entities that make up Overture “were all facing the specter of foreclosure or bankruptcy because of that looming, very large debt,” says Carto. The debt is now settled, but reserves were tapped out to make a down payment on the forbearance agreement. “There’s no question that we’re at the bottom of the trough and have been for about a year, because of the elimination of the debt,” he says.

It’s a complicated financial picture. Many entities make up what the average person thinks of as “Overture.” The Overture Development Corporation built the center. The Madison Cultural Arts District (MCAD), an appointed board, managed it through December. The City of Madison employed most Overture administration and operations staff.

Overture Center Foundation Inc. is a non-profit corporation created in 2001. It was originally named the 201 State Foundation. The official mission of the foundation has been “to cover operating and debt service expenditures of the Arts District.” As part of the deal that paid down debt in 2010, the foundation took over management from MCAD yesterday. (It’s yet to be decided whether MCAD will subsequently be dissolved.) City of Madison employees who work for Overture will now become foundation employees. The foundation has already hired more employees and taken on one-time costs related to the transition. The foundation is also taking over MCAD’s finances.

While the bottom lines of both MCAD and the foundation were tapped to pay off debt, the foundation paid the greater price. Officials expect that remaining MCAD assets will give the foundation a lift.

“It’s been planned to be that way, in anticipation of comingling of all the funds,” says Carto. “It was quite deliberate for the foundation board, in tandem with MCAD, to draw down its principal to make sure that those [debt] commitments were met.”

Overture’s annual report, released in October, already merges MCAD and foundation figures. Viewed that way, there’s some improvement. Overture began its 2009-10 season with net assets of $172,360,713, and ended the season with $188,628,994. MCAD’s increased value will in part offset foundation losses -- at least on paper.

The financial picture is complicated even here. According to a MCAD audit report prepared by Baker Tilly Virchow Krause, the increase in MCAD net assets was “due primarily to the debt forgiveness” and other changes.

Other concerns are revealed by foundation records, and by the Johnson Block audit, including $245,980 in foundation cash that is not insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. That is, the foundation has too much money in too few banks; the FDIC insures cash balances only up to $250,000 per financial institution.

Then there are taxes. The foundation’s fiscal year runs from July 1 through June 30. Its tax returns are due Sept. 30 each year. Filing late is a habit for the foundation, muddying timely assessments. For example, the 2008 return was received by the Internal Revenue Service more than three months late, on Jan 6, 2010. The 2009 return was received by the Internal Revenue Service more than seven months late, on May 9, 2011.

“I think there was just a – I don’t want to say a mess, it’s not the right thing to say,” explains Cindy Hughes, a financial consultant who has served as the foundation’s interim chief financial officer since August 2010. “But there has just been such a challenge and they were just so short-staffed, is probably what the biggest issue was.”

While she adds that the late filings are not uncommon in her work with other clients, it has been a challenge. “It took us months to get things back in shape to be able to produce financials.”

Given the confusion, an outsider’s view would be helpful. Charity Navigator is a nationally renowned non-profit organization that assesses the health of other non-profits for the benefit of potential donors. It’s been endorsed by Smart Money magazine and Reader’s Digest, as well as the South Carolina Secretary of State and the Massachusetts Office of the Attorney General. Forbes magazine named its searchable website “best of the web.” PCWorld calls it, “the Consumer Reports of the non-profit world.”

Charity Navigator uses only tax returns in assessing non-profits. The organization has never assessed the health of Overture Center Foundation Inc. It recently took a look at the foundation for this article.

“They do not have many of the proper policies and procedures in place,” says Sandra Miniutti, Charity Navigator vice president of marketing and chief financial officer.

For example, according to the foundation’s 2009 tax return, it did not provide a copy of the return to all board members before filing it. The foundation has no written conflict of interest policy or whistleblower policy. It does not have a written document retention and destruction policy.

“As a result, they'd probably score low on our Accountability and Transparency review,” says Miniutti.

There are still other concerns. The foundation’s 2009 return is still the most recent tax document available. It shows that 36 percent of foundation expenditures went to administration and fundraising, and 64 percent to programming. For a non-profit, the industry rule of thumb is that no more than 35 percent must be spent on administration and fundraising. More than that, and all sorts of red flags go up for potential donors.

“Our calculations confirm yours,” says Miniutti. “And we've found that most of the charities we rate spend at least 75 percent of their budgets on programs/services with only the remaining 25 percent spent on administrative and fundraising costs. So, this charity is less efficient than most of the charities we rate.”

How that assessment might change with the foundation taking on even more administrative responsibilities remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, “Things are very tight, but we have a plan to rectify that over time,” says Carto. “Overture has played it close to the bone because there is no reserve under us at the moment. But the debt is gone. Now the plan, going forward, is to rebuild that reserve. We have budgeted surpluses, and will be budgeting surpluses for the next five years to increase that reserve.”

And Janet Piraino, foundation vice president of advancement, says fundraising is going very well. “We are poised to break $1 million in pledges so far this fiscal year,” says Piraino, a former chief of staff to previous Mayor Dave Cieslewicz.

As for the 2010 tax return, “It’s in process right now,” says Hughes. “I think if anything, what I can assure you is that, going forward, this is all going to be done on a more timely basis.”

A cartoon for summer heat

 

Bob Lindmeier helps guide sunny choral concert

 

Madison’s Festival Choir performed an outstanding concert of weather-related works this weekend, with the help of WKOW television meteorologist Bob Lindmeier.

The Festival Choir is a superb, masterful and inventive ensemble that deserves much more recognition. In this age of “Glee,” you’d think there’d be a lot more interest. There certainly should be.

Saturday’s themed concert, “How’s the Weather,” featured a sometimes wild collection of choral works designed to show off the group’s flexibility, range and sense of humor; Lindmeier linked the pieces with a pun-filled “forecast,” complete with weather map.

Over the years, most of us have only heard the Festival Choir briefly, offstage at the end of the first act of Madison Ballet’s “Nutcracker” – and not even then, if it’s a bad budget year. That’s too bad.

I suspect that musical snobbery is the reason. “Serious” music lovers resist what I’m going to call “wind-pushers.” That includes the closest cousins of choirs: wind bands and pipe organs (also steam calliopes, but there’s no control of dynamics there). That is, they all push air. That’s all any sound is, but these wind-pushing musicalities are close neighbors, in that they can’t depend on contrasting texture -- otherwise offered, for example, by strings.

When well done, the necessary similarity of timbre creates limitations that, to my ear at least, make for the highest levels of musicality; phrasing and duration become critical, and compositional voicing – who does what, when – creates competing blocks of sound that surface and subside in layered windows, offering a whole higher level of more delicate contrast.

Composer Edward Elgar was a master of this, and the choir showed that in “The Snow” and “The Shower.”  Tchaikovsky’s “The Golden Cloudlet” was similarly striking, and affecting: precise and powerful. Handel is always tough sledding, but a selection from “Israel in Egypt” celebrated his trademark counterpoint in fine fashion.

The stand-out work was Scott Gendel’s “There Came a Wind like a Bugle,” based on Emily Dickinson’s poem. It’s an odd piece with odder seven-measure phrasing and fast-changing minor keys. Billed as a world premiere, I wish the program or the choir’s website had more information on the composer and this haunting, compelling work.

The audience adored show tunes adapted to choral settings, including “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” and a snappy, whispery “Too Darn Hot.” While “Soon It’s Gonna Rain” worked very well, I have aesthetic problems with translating individual dramatic parts to full choir.

But that bothered no one else, and the evening’s close, “Blue Skies,” was greeted with an instant standing ovation.

This was artistic director Bruce Gladstone’s final concert with the choir. He’s to be congratulated, as is American Family Insurance, which helped sponsor the evening.

The concert, at the First United Methodist Church, was attended by around 150. For more information on the Festival Choir, visit www.festivalchoir.org.

Gallery Night boxing match investigates intimacy

 

Madison has seen plays in a lot of odd settings, but one of the most unusual will be the window of Ford’s Gym, 2114 Winnebago St., this evening.

“Hey, Fighter,” a new dramatic work by Erin Elise Hood and Marina Kelly, will be presented in 12-minute cycles from 6 to 9 p.m., as part of Gallery Night.

“You can look and listen to the happenings in the ring from Ford’s front window,” says Hood. Sound will be piped outside. A few audience members can even take part inside.

“Whether inside or outside of the ring, how each audience member positions him or herself will influence how he or she experiences the performance,” says Hood.

“Hey, Fighter” is meant to investigate the constant potential for intimacy and damage in charged spaces between two people, she says. Its creators prefer to call it immersive, rather than interactive.

“It mixes genres so it's hard to name,” says Hood.

Passersby are invited to stop and enjoy show.

Madison handbells concert is outrageously fascinating

 
I confess to liking all that is novel in music. I like circus songs, Spike Jones, calliopes, zithers, the Clicquot Club Eskimos and ocarinas. But nothing ever, ever prepared me for Dave Brubek’s “Take Five” as performed by the Madison Area Concert Handbells.

Outrageous? And fascinating? And beautiful? You bet.

The handbells concert, which will be repeated this weekend, is 2/3 music and 1/3 performance art. Bells are rung, of course, but also waved, cupped, shaken and warbled. You have to see it – and hear it – to believe it.

It begins with long, narrow tiers of tables laid out as if for a bell banquet. There are little bells, big bells the size of peach baskets, mallets and more. Lots of patriotic songs are featured; the concert’s theme is “Americana Celebration!” It all really starts to cook, though, with “Good Vibrations” and Leroy Anderson’s “Plink, Plank, Plunk!”

The Madison Area Concert Handbells is a 14-year old ensemble. They have six octaves of bells, allowing for a rich depth of sound. The group’s 16 members also frequently change the texture of the sound, or timbre. Sometimes the bells sound like a marimba, and often like the biggest damn celeste you ever heard.

Kids will love it because it's all so unusual. Serious music lovers will enjoy it for the voicing and use of overtone series. The chord progressions thoughout make fascinating use of tonal decay – the dying down of a bell’s last sound played against the next new sound. In wind instruments, this is sometimes created as an effect, and is called a “bell tone.” Here, of course, it comes naturally.

The bells are tuned so perfectly that at times it gets a bit twee, or even electronic. Conductor Mark E. Bloedow makes sure that there’s plenty of accompaniment to contrast against, including pipe organ, piano, drums and a fine violin solo performed by guest artist Mishan Han.

This concert is a highly recommended as a look into a corner of the musical world that is too seldom visited.

The Madison Area Concert Handbells will repeat their “American Celebration” concert at 7 p.m. Saturday, May 7, at Asbury Methodist Church, 6101 University Ave. For information, visit www.madisonhandbells.org.

Haydn’s greatest “Creation” thrills

Joseph Haydn’s self-proclaimed masterpiece, The Creation, met with an instant and enthusiastic standing ovation in Madison on Saturday evening.

Around 440 attended the performance by the Wisconsin Chamber Choir and Stoughton Chamber Singers at the Madison Masonic Center.

The Creation is properly termed an oratorio, but in many ways it resembles an opera staged concert-style, complete with characters Adam, Eve and three angels. As we head into the Easter season it would be a fine salute to this year’s 400^th anniversary of the King James Bible, from which the text is drawn (along with Milton’s Paradise Lost). Or it would be, except the English libretto was translated into German for Haydn, and then translated back into English several times.

The work tells the story of Biblical creation and the early days of Eden, foreshadowing the fall from grace. The performance overall was rich, lush and satisfying, presenting great caramel-flavored swirls of sound. The choir was always precise in phrasing, and stunning in its presentation of big, wide-open chords.

Soprano Deanna Horjus-Lang was bold and athletic; bass Brian Leeper presented a fine anchor throughout. Madeline Olson, as Eve, performed with bright ease. J. Adam Shelton was a stand-out as the angel Uriel, with his fine, clear tenor.

Many of the soloists were drawn from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, as was conductor Robert Gehrenbeck, who led the choirs and fine orchestra in a spare, effective manner.

The auditorium of the Masonic Center revealed itself as an excellent space for live classical presentation, with little or no amplification evident or even necessary. The center is too seldom-used, despite its history as a home for the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra’s annual presentation of Handel’s Messiah in the 1980s.

Let’s hope for many more concerts there from the outstanding Wisconsin Chamber Choir and Stoughton Chamber Singers.   

The concert was made possible in part by support from the Dane County Cultural Affairs Commission and the Overture Foundation.

For a previous article on the Masonic Center’s performance space, see my Isthmus article at http://www.thedailypage.com/daily/article.php?article=29485.

*  *  *

On a side note, portions of the copyrighted program notes, by UW-Whitewater Department of Music chair J. Michael Allsen, appear identical to the work’s entry on Wikipedia.

For example, take Allsen’s assessment of The Creation: “It was also quite obviously an act for this deeply religious man, who appended the words ‘praise to God’ to the end of every completed composition. He later remarked that: ‘I was never so devout as when I was at work on The Creation: I fell on my knees each day and begged God to give me the strength to finish the work.’ ”

The Wikipedia entry reads, “It was also a profound act of faith for this deeply religious man, who appended the words ‘Praise to God’ at the end of every completed composition. He later remarked, ‘I was never so devout as when I was at work on The Creation,' ” etc.

Again, from Allsen’s program notes, reporting the work’s unveiling and reaction by impresario Johann Peter Salomon:

“The performance was sponsored by a group of noble citizens, who paid Haydn handsomely for the right to stage the premiere. (Salomon briefly threatened to sue, on the grounds that the English libretto had been translated illegally.) The performance was delayed until late April – the parts were not finished until Good Friday – but the full oratorio was rehearsed before a full audience on April 29.”

And from Wikipedia: “The first performances in 1798 were sponsored by a group of noble citizens, who paid the composer handsomely for the right to stage the premiere (Salomon briefly threatened to sue, on grounds that the English libretto had been translated illegally). The performance was delayed until late April  -- the parts were not finished until Good Friday -- but the completed work was rehearsed before a full audience on April 29.”

 The Wiki entry is not footnoted. It appears to be based in part on 2009 program notes created by the European Culture Society of Vienna, which in turn appear to liberally quote the liner notes from a 1969 recording by the Berlin Harmonic.

- # -

How I came to lead a global expedition

 
Believe it or not, a lot of thought goes into The Washburn Expedition.

The world’s first Facebook novel began when friends nagged me to join the social media site. I did. And then I rapidly decided that my life was not interesting enough to make constant updates.

So I created a fictitious life.

As a result, I “lead” an expedition sponsored by the University of Wisconsin Washburn Observatory (which is real) and Museum of Natural History (which is fictitious). It’s a serial novel updated twice each weekday, set sometime between 1890 and 1947 – we’re never quite sure when.

Part of it is based on the adventure novels of Zane Grey. Part of it is pure Indiana Jones (who has made several unrecognized appearances in the expedition, as has his ingénue, Marion Ravenwood). Part of it is based on Bernard Heuvelmans’ On the Track of Unknown Animals. Most of it is a direct lift from Mark Twain’s Innocents Abroad; our party similarly consists of arrogant Americans who are viewing the world through parochial eyes.

 
Early on, we established that the expedition was underwritten by the father of Rita Rennebohm. She began as merely Rita, and she was meant to be Rita Hayworth. Somehow I have yet to get around to using Hayworth’s images. But blame Rita herself; she’s grown to be an even worldlier character, usually portrayed with images of Anita Loos.

Poor, naïve boobs that we are, we never recognize Rita’s true, lusty character. Her exclamations of “Um! Ow! O!” are taken from the comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberand; Nemo always woke from his fantastic dreams with those comments.  

Rita’s last name is drawn from the late Wisconsin governor and drug store magnate, Oscar Rennebohm. In the context of the expedition, her father is Lord Rennebohm, always portrayed by robber baron J.P Morgan. At last report, he was fleeing police. He’s emerged as our arch enemy.

Rita took over the estate after a brief stay at home, during which Lord Rennebohm “fell on a knife, several times.”

Dr. Allenby, the expedition’s secondary leader, is based on British Brigadier General Edmund Allenby. We often hear about the doctor’s “wretched pet,” Jocko. When Jocko rarely appears, we see that he is a stork – Gen. Allenby’s actual pet, and the photos of the two of them together are real.

Young Reggie is our naïf, a university student that we’ve taken along. Contrary to the belief of many readers, he is not British. He’s merely a New England kid who desperately wants to pretend that he’s Ivy League. Constantly trying to impress, he begins his entries with “toujers,” and closes with real Latin phrases. In between, he always refers to something as “rummy old” – another attempt of his to sound upper crust.

Reggie’s fraternity, Omega Lambda Chi, has the same name as the hoax fraternity created by American composer Charles Ives, when he was a student at Yale. Ives even created a marching song for it. Speaking of Yale, in the novel I sometimes recall my student days there, during which I met our last cast member, Billie the Cowboy. Barely literate, it’s never explained how Billie was able to enter Yale. Still, my college roommate is an accomplished pilot who has saved the lives of all in the expedition many times.

 
When portrayed as a cowboy pilot, Billie is portrayed by images from Sky King, a radio and early TV adventure series. Otherwise, he is almost always portrayed by Broncho Billy Anderson, silent film’s first star. Anderson was a producer/actor/director, today too-seldom remembered. Interestingly, our first filmed hero of the Old West was a Jew. Once in awhile, Billie the Cowboy is also portrayed by a youthful Will Rogers.

Before The Washburn Expedition settled into a permanent format, color photos were sometimes featured. That will never happen again. We are stuck in the age of black and white photography. When I can’t find a good black and white image, I have to manipulate a color one to make it appear that way. The only exceptions are the early red telegrams, or “Marconigrams,” by which we receive new orders from headquarters.

My own portrait is that of Harold Lloyd, from Professor Beware, an early talkie of the silent film star’s. The curator of the Washburn Observatory and Museum of Natural History is Prof. James Watson, and in fact he was an early and real director of the actual Washburn Observatory. He was famous in his day as one of the discoverers of the planet Vulcan, which supposedly existed between the sun and the orbit of Mercury.

There are lots of hidden jokes throughout. Somehow, no one ever figured out that our visit to Howell Island and its benevolent host, Thurston, was a reference to Gilligan’s Island. Edgar Allen Poe’s Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym was also an early allusion.

Writing the expedition began as a lark. More than 1,200 posts later, it sometimes is a chore. We’ve visited every continent and even inner earth!

 
But so far we remain on the trail, encountering new, “savage” natives and marveling at the last unmapped spots on the globe. We “discovered” the Nile, claimed it, and named it “New Potomac.” We took a V-2 to Paris, and mistook its residents as strange Moon creatures. Soon we’ll go to London, to take part in an unspecified royal wedding. (Definitely not in 2011 – but who knows when?)

Welcome to The Washburn Expedition of the University of Wisconsin Washburn Observatory and Museum of Natural History.

Welcome!

    

This will be a place for me to collect and share the various areas of my work, including cartoons, commentary, reviews and news. It's a broader continuation of an earlier column and blog I wrote in Madison, Wis., "The Rath of Madison."

I've worked for The Onion, Disney, MTV and many publications. I recently won an award from The Milwaukee Press Club for best analytical reporting. I also write the first (and only?) Facebook novel, a serial dime-novel parody called The Washburn Expedition.