Sister act: Sue Shaff and Nancy Burke show off matching wristbandsFirst an apology: I'm getting too old to spend six hours bar-hopping, so had to miss more than half the 40-odd great bands who donated their talent Saturday night to the 18th annual Thoughts for Food. But those I did see and hear -- albeit briefly -- were terrific, ranging from folk and blues to hard rock (or whatever it's called these days).
The smiles of the sisters above, and the two guys below were genuine; people were having a great time while also doing good. By early in the evening, the Racine County Food Bank already had a truck filled with non-perishable food donated by the concert-goers.
Dan Taivalkoski had a hint this would be a successful event. It came Friday night, at the "all-ages" TFF preliminary concert for teens at the YMCA, where eight bands played for the non-alcoholic set. The gate there was $350 over last year's $725 -- a total of $1,075.
Update: On Sunday morning, Dan reported these preliminary results for Saturday's 18th annual Thoughts for Food:
Paid attendance was 1,189, compared to 1,122 last year. Total attendance, including volunteers and musicians, was 1,549, compared to 1,493 a year ago. Pounds of food collected: 2,696 compared to 2,588 last year.
More contributions are yet to be tallied from some Tavern League members, and a corporate sponsor or two. This year's numbers will grow. The smiles will get bigger -- and most importantly, more hungry people will be fed.
Food Bank's Dan Taivalkoski and George's David Popoff were all smiles
Saturday Night Preachers at the Eagles
Flat Pocket's Al Kosterman reminded everyone that Thoughts for Food'is all about taking care of people who can't take care of themselves.'
Mean Jake at Chartroom Charlies
Danny Armstrong of Hwy 13 dedicated 'a song for the president.'Um, it was the Beatles' Back in the USSR
Titus, Rench and Wheary at George's
Joel Thierfelder of Lyden Moon has magic picking fingers
Final Approach was smokin' at Coasters -- no, really!
nikdamit rocked the Rhino Bar
The Crispy Brothers played at the Red Line Tavern
JT's Mark Hertzberg got down and dirty to photograph Mean Jake
So Pete, I did see you there! I was other photographer at the Lydon Moon and the Mean Jake shows! It's been awhile... Great pics, Pete!
ReplyDeleteExcellent! Even so, the event doesn't address the inequalities and injustices which are built into our socio-economic system for the exclusive benefit of the oligarchy. (In this sad city, the ermine economic vermin belong to the Waxtrash Corporate Crime Family. The day that vile clan starts spending serious money on helping its victims is the day on which our organizations will treat the rich blight trash with a modicum of respect.)
ReplyDeleteSomone needs a beer...and please step away from the edge.
ReplyDelete4:56AM - I think you might need to lower your expectations on this event. It's not intented to cure the world's ills as you may expect. It's a bunch of VOLUNTEERS trying to raise money and collect some food and make a difference in their corner of the world. If you don't like it, don't attend.
ReplyDeletenOn the contrary, I'm in favor of Thoughts for Food. What's more, I praise it to all and sundry. Even so, events of this kind fail to deal with major socio-economic problems (e.g. hunger) requiring government mandated and funded collective solutions. Although private sector-sponsored charitable ventures are fun and make us feel warm and fuzzy, they accomplish very little. Their futility is one reason that the rich tolerate them--the day that somebody comes up with a private sector fundraiser which actually rights a wrong, the Waxtrash and its lackeys will scream.
ReplyDelete"accomplish very little"
ReplyDeleteTell that to the people that will eat now. It accomplished so much more than your useless communist blitherings posted here repeatedly (unless you have some quantitative documentation proving otherwise). These folks work hard all year for this event and then you post this evil, belittling comment. What a waste of drive space. There is no excuse for that comment!
"Great Job!" to everyone and see you next year!
SDJ
fab photos!
ReplyDeletethanks to all who took part and to all who played, sang and danced up a storm!
thanks to Mark P who started it all!
Dear SDJ,Destroying the present, far-from-pleasant system trumps private sector activities any day. Nevertheless, kudos to Dan and the other well-meaning do-gooders who managed to help some victims of capitalism even though their events failed to undermine and overthrow the status quo.
ReplyDeleteAs long as we continue to dance and grin like our simian kin, the rich won't take our demands for socio-economic justice seriously. (The plethora of festivals and other nonsense in Racine didn't occur by accident. Down through history, corrupt oligarchs have liked to hear their serfs warble like birdies. A good example would be the incident in A. Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin," wherein the peasants were forced to sing while harvesting cherries in order to keep them from sampling their master's fruit. The Ante-Bellum South's fixation on the slaves' musical talent and exercise thereof also would be apropos. Finally, let's not forget the Austrian nobility's insistence that its domestics be vocalists and instrumentalists.)
ReplyDeleteThe bottom line from a historian's perspective is that elite classes want their underlings to appear cheerful and amuse them. That's why events of this type have always seemed inane to me despite my respect for the participants' good intentions.
ReplyDeleteTo compel our class enemies to respect us and change their ways, we may have to ditch the genial menial masks they've imposed on us and call a halt to any entertainment which may stroke their egos.
ReplyDeleteBack in Czarist days, the Russian nobility maintained entire troupes of serf operatic performers and ballerinas. With few exceptions, the dancers and singers' virtuosity failed to benefit them and their fellow-serfs. Today, the elite and its lackeys promote music and entertainment to keep the rest of us down and distract us from changing the system.
ReplyDeleteNo decent society pushes entertainment the way our warped culture does. (When people are treated fairly and enjoy a dignified life, they don't need festivals and other folderol to render their existence semi-tolerable. To any sociologist or anthropologist who knows what he's looking at, Racine's obsession with festivals during a depression is a scandal.)
ReplyDeleteThis is bordering on harassment.
ReplyDeleteNo, it's merely a statement of historical and anthropological facts. By all means, let us respect those who seek to help others by holding such events. However, may we never forget that Racine's elite and the lackeys thereof dote on festivals while doing damned little to assist the impoverished majority.
ReplyDeleteinteresting "food for thought"
ReplyDelete10:39pm (a.k.a. Mr. Angry) ---- along with all your other political mumbo jumbo and whatever crap that is spewing to your computer screen via your keystrokes, please just STFU! Have a GR8 Day, my friend!
ReplyDeleteSincerely,
Sick of you
Dear Sick of You, If you don't like the truth about capitalism and the crass crooks who profit from it, too bad. Although there is no "Mr. Angry," there are many angry men./ And when we're done, the corp'rate sun shall never rise again./ The Waxtrash in its mansions will loathe the non-corp'rate dawn/'cuz when we're through, the caviar crew to prison shall be gone./ There'll be a spacious residence for ev'ry boardroom louse./ He'll go away fore'er to stay in the people's Big House.
ReplyDeleteWe're here for the long haul, prepared to fight for a Socialist America in which our children won't be equated with chattel cattle by oligarchs like the Carnauba Court. If we must struggle for twenty years to smash the dollar sign dynasties and restore the wealth of the nation to its people, so be it.
ReplyDeleteForget the so-called war on terror. The coming conflict is the class clash.
ReplyDeleteDear Sick of You, Whose side are you on? As the rich grow richer at the expense of the rest, you're going to hear that question early and often. Finally, after capitalism crashes and burns, you'd better have your working class credentials in order, because the new socio-economic system and the people's government will have long memories. What's more, the LAW shall have extremely long arms with which to punish the fallen kleptoplutocracy and its loot lackeys.
ReplyDeleteWho knows, Buddy? You may get to share your den in the people's pen with an ex-billionaire, possibly even a real live Waxcreep.
ReplyDeleteHow would you like Dr. Risk Waxtrash for a cellmate?
ReplyDeleteAll you naysayers - you are dismissed. I am done with you. this is a good event for a good cause. So get a f.....g life.
ReplyDeleteOk lets see here....3/09/2010. At 2:36 whack job responds to Sick Of You. Lets follow the time line of the posts after it (all saying the same BS)...2:36,2:40,2:42,2:49,2:51,2:59.
ReplyDeleteWow, what a lonely, lonely person you are. Why don't you all do us a favor and discover porn or something! Because you really are boring the S%$t out of all of us! Even if I had the vague interest in what you were saying, the approach that you have gone about getting your message out would have turned me to PURPOSELY join the other side. I read you comments and I want to go apply at JWax immediately. I know I'll get some rambling comment to this one, but I don't care. I will pay as much attention to it as I do all your others. Seriously dude, do us a favor and just stop already!! You are just wasting time and space for real comments. Unless your kind of like doing an Andy Koffman and this is all a bizarre joke. If that's the case...AGAIN STOP!! The joke stopped being funny along time ago!
Peace
Dear JPM, The class clash is no joke. Neither, alas, is the Waxtrash obsession with art and music at the expense of the people's basic needs and legitimate demands. Although the arts aren't intrinsically evil, fixation on them to the detriment of social justice most definitely is.
ReplyDeleteIf conditions for ordinary people continue to worsen, be prepared for a socio-economic revolution which will knock the heartless artiness out of the erstwhile elite and its flunkeys. Subsequent to de-Waxing by the people's government, Racine will be a very different city from its far-from-pleasant-to the-peasants present self.
ReplyDeleteComing sooner than they'd care to think: a nice long vacation for the Carnauba criminals in Waxjail.
ReplyDeleteThanks so much to all the volunteers - Thoughts for Food is a HUGE effort.
ReplyDeleteThanks RACINE for caring and sharing!
Yes, thanks to Racine's extraordinarily generous ordinary people rather than the elite. Now, if The House of Wax could have spent a tenth of the fortune blown on "Fancy Sleaz-a Mall" to help its victims, we'd have something to celebrate.
ReplyDeleteThey create jobs for those that wish to work.
ReplyDeleteNo, they exploit the poor and the vulnerable whose despair compels them to accept any jobs, even lousy ones which couldn't support a gerbil. (Back in the days before the French Revolution, some employers called themselves "nurturing parents" of the less-fortunate. Apparently, their victims didn't agree with them because factories burned throughout Paris once the common people rose up against their oppressors.)
ReplyDeleteMemo to Dr. Risk: Get out your textbooks from Cornell and read up on the French Revolution. Verbum sapientibus...
ReplyDeleteDear Risk, Cur-t-ass, Yellin' and Crack, Don't blame those who possessed the character and courtesy to warn you when the people's courts send you and your Ivy League myrmidons to prison or the gallows. An anti-capitalist judgment day shall dawn sooner than you care to think and no wealth stashed offshore shall save you. Start seriously sharing your ill-gotten gains with your victims and MAYBE you'll be able buy your high-flying got-loot gang another generation of pride and privilege. However, if you fail to be wise in time, all bets are off. Don't scream at "Mister Angry" (whoever he may be) when a court of law sends you and yours with a firing squad into the woods to listen to the loon before the bullets sing their tune. Like the dead-and-damned Romanovs, your family and its retainers could vanish at the behest of a new regime. Dynasties come, dynasties go. Even so, humanity survives and advances, crushing the oligarchies in its path on its forward journey toward a better future.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the identity of our enigmatic "Mister Angry," I sincerely suspect that we have several men--not an individual--who studied literary research at the University of Wisconsin under the tutelage of Badgerland's "Old Man Eloquent," the late great Doctor Lloyd Kasten. During a career spanning six decades, Dr. Kasten taught thousands of men and a scattering of women a particular style of writing. Since the University of Michigan and Wayne State University possessed an academic reciprocity agreement with the UW System, Dr. Kasten occasionally lectured at those institutions. Inasmuch as the above institutions were extremely friendly with the University of Pennsylvania and Penn State, Dr. Kasten's influence spread to the Mid-Atlantic States. Because some of his star pupils wound up as professors at Harvard, Yale, Princeton and other Ivy League schools, Dr. Lloyd Kasten's literary style spread far and wide.
ReplyDeleteAnother UW-Madison professor who promoted the colorful literary style which we associate with "Mister Angry" was Dr. Elizabeth Brooks. An alumna of the University of Oklahoma at Norman, Dr.Brooks swiftly acquired Dr. Kasten's verbal virtuosity during her struggle for tenure. (It worked--Dr. Kasten cast the deciding vote.) In any event, HER students learned to emulate Madison's "Old Man Eloquent."
ReplyDeleteConsidering that both professors taught thousands of students during their long careers, comments composed using the Kasten-Brooks rules of stylistic elegance and eloquence shouldn't be rare in the region where they spent the bulk of their academic lives.
ReplyDeleteMy gut feeling is that we've got dozens of "Messers Angry" eager to pound the plutocratic porkers to a pulp. Let's never forget that Drs. Kasten and Brooks taught more than literary style to their pupils. Although Dr. Kasten's clan once owned a prestigious jewelry establishment in Milwaukee,he was no fan of the fiscal fiends who patronized the place. As for Dr. Brooks, her sad experience as a Dustbowl dirt farmer's daughter and scholarship student permanently embittered her against the elite. (Graduates of posh prep schools soon learned to conceal their hyper-privileged and advantaged antecedents from Dr. Brooks. Those who failed to cook up stories about non-existent menial summer jobs frequently wound up with Cs or worse.)
ReplyDeleteIn any event, if you studied under Drs. Kasten or Brooks, you learned a lot more than English grammar and the effective use of a thesaurus. For both of the above professors, SOCIALISM formed an important--nay, essential--part of the curriculum.
ReplyDeleteNo - there are just two Mr. Angrys out here. You know who you are!
ReplyDeleteDon't you wish!
ReplyDeleteNo, 2 are 2 to many!
ReplyDeleteNo, two hundred are too few! Needed: ANGRY men dedicated to crushing the capitalist system and its kleptoplutocratic elite.
ReplyDeleteYOurs for a WAXFREE RACINE and a SOCIALIST AMERICA: MANY Angry Men!
ReplyDeleteComing sooner than the Waxclan may care to think: strong, radical UNIONS.
ReplyDeleteWhen Mistress Toughtoes gives Ms./Mr. Yellin' Waxtrash Leap-And-Grab-Hold a genteel public flogging atop a Cherokee Red scaffold on Money-Mutt Square, I hope that all the LABOR LEADERS will have front row seats. Subsequent to the ferocious fustigation, I pray that UNION ORGANIZERS may treat the raw and bleeding Waxbutt with a nice warm poultice made from genuine Brazilian CARNAUBA WAX, after which the Waxwitch will kiss the WORKERS' feet and promise to permit the UNIONIZATION of what's left of the Waxempire.
ReplyDeleteThis should be more entertaining than the stuff we feature at our taverns and other music venues.
ReplyDeleteHey, don't knock musicians. Since those poor Joes and Janes need to earn a living, we'll have bands perform during the flagellatory festivities to drown out the Waxwitch's cries.
ReplyDeleteAnyhow - - - as a musician, it was fun playing TTF. We do it every year (2 times) Fun to watch all the socialists comment about hatred though - Thanks to all the fans for coming out!
ReplyDeleteHatred of capitalism is love for humanity. The sooner our downtrodden toilers learn to loathe the Waxtrash,the better.
ReplyDeleteIf our ancestors had been less individualistic, they would have smashed the Waxlords back in the Dirty Thirties. Unfortunately, the fools fell for the myth of success and the nightmarish American dream, thereby allowing the oligarchy to retain and expand its control over our increasingly corrupt society.
ReplyDeleteCollective problems require collective solutions. If Lincoln had freed the slaves one at a time, slavery would still be legal in our land. Anything that involves individual effort is bound to be worthless where socio-economic reform and revolution are concerned.
ReplyDeleteNo more self-reliance lies./ Emerson's dead. Soon WAX dies/ seized by Fed'ral government./Risk will wonder where wealth went.
ReplyDeleteHey Mr. Angry - was that you dancing outside of George's because you didn't have any food to bring in. Ha, ha!
ReplyDeleteNo way! I'm NOT Mr. Angry. Anyhow, I wouldn't wander around Racine after dark if I were you. Between the gangsters and the unorganized criminals, this sorry city isn't safe.
ReplyDeleteWe just had another murder in this evil little scum-pany town...
ReplyDeleteGiven our high poverty statistics, there'll be plenty of robberies gone bad and other homicide-inducing events in the near future. Soon, many Racine neighborhoods won't be safe during the day, never mind the night.
ReplyDeleteThe Alliance and Slaywax, Anti-Porker-ated strongly advise the public to eschew unnecessary nocturnal activities in and around Racine for the duration.
ReplyDeleteNeeded: Government termination/ of ceraceous aggravation! The sooner the Feds send Risk far away for a long stay, the better.
ReplyDeleteAs a lifelong victim of the vicious Waxtrash, I work for the glorious day when the dollar-sign dons will be dullard-swine cons confined in a blink to the clink.
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