Madison, Wisconsin

VFLOAB was busy over the weekend away on what we’re calling our “Liberal Retreat” in Madison, Wisconsin. We were actually up there to attend the Sister’s graduation from the fine university in the Wisconsin state capital. The graduation itself was nice, they did the best they could with the number of people graduating, moving the ceremony along quickly and giving out some good advise in the process: “Be Yourself”. We here at VFLOAB liked that advise. We also learned things like... UW-Madison is the best research school in the nation and has just as many Fortune 500 CEOs as Harvard. It also sends more alums to the Peace Corps and is up there in the number of grads it sends to Teach for America. So lets hear it for the Badgers.

(Our favorite part of the graduation? When the UW band started playing “Varsity”, “On Wisconsin”, “You’ve Said It All” (‘When you say WISCONSIN!, you’ve said it all’, set to the old Budweiser jingle), and other various ‘football’ songs and watching the kids in their cap and gowns dancing and enjoying it all. Very cool. Unfortunately they didn’t stop the ceremony three quarters though and play “Jump Around” but next year… and no Bucky but we aren’t talking about that.)

But back to our “Liberal Retreat” basically we spent our nights on State Street, killing babies, smoking dope, helping the poor, drinking our faces off, talking to girls, cleaning the environment, reading the works of Chavez and Gore, brats, organizing Unions, providing free quality education and health care, promoting individual liberties, and marrying gays. I’ve never had so much fun. Liberal Retreats are AWESOME.

Okay so we didn’t do much of that. But you get the point. Madison really does rock and we’re going to miss our annual treks up there to catch a Badger game, throw down a few brats with a Leinenkugel or Miller Lite, and check out the progressive pamphlets they’re handing out on State Street. And maybe if we’re lucky, we met and end up talking to some bizarre intellectual at a café or bar about the problems with conservative thinking.

Which reminds me, what would one do on a conservative retreat? Make one guy the 'leader', give three guys all the money, and then help the 'leader' spy on other on the retreat? So everyone is spying on everyone in the name of the 'retreat' for the 'leader' while they praise the rich guys for working 'hard'?

Just kidding.

ANYWAY, to top it off there we am sitting at ORD on Monday and what do we see next to us... that day’s full Guardian! Talk about Liberal Density... I guess some awesome Brit left it for someone like us to pick up and read like it was the Bible. And read it we did, we got full coverage of the FA Cup and Steven Gerrard’s amazing performance. We also read about Hugo Chavez’s trip to London and a few Op-Eds The Guardian’s physical format has changed a bit since we read it in London three years ago… it’s smaller now, just a little smaller than say the New York Times and it makes a world of a difference, just a very pleasant read with it being that little bit smaller. It isn’t a gawky and demanding to read… pretty sweet. And yes we’re THIS CLOSE to saying the Guardian is the best newspaper in the world.

All in all, another wonderful weekend in Madison. It is, with out a doubt, the number one city on our list of places we’d live that doesn’t have a professional sports team… what’s this a list? Of course. Here are the rules… top five midsized cities or towns that VFLOAB would live:

5) Bellingham, WA – We’ve never been to Bellingham, but it seems like the kind of place we’d like. It’s between Seattle and Vancouver, it’s in the Northwest, and it gets high rankings in all those ‘great places’ to live things. So we’ll take a flyer and guess that we’d really like Bellingham. Though I’m sure there is probably some kick as city on the Califorina cost that we’d like more… but whatever.
4) Newport, RI – It’s just an awesome town with some awesome houses. It’s been years since we’ve been there, but we loved it then and I’m sure we’d love it now.
3) Savanna, GA – We’ve got a thing for picturesque Southern towns, and Savanna is defiantly that. From the sheer amout of green, the beautiful houses, and weaping trees there’s lots to love in Savanna.
2) New Haven, CT – We had heard that New Haven was a rough town when we were making our way up there for the first time back in September. And sure it has a rough side of town… but most of the town is great. Nice shops, great pizza, good restaurants, a colional feel, the huge green/common, and of course Yale University. Great town.
1) Madison, WI – We pretty much summed it up above, but what’s not to love? Cheap beer, great brats, nice shops, the state capitol, those two lakes… it doesn’t have the ‘beautiful’ houses that the other towns on this list has, but it’s got a lot more… Madison is just awesome.

And yes we love the coverage that ESPN is giving the Champions League Final… we aren’t taking the day off like we did last year, but if we did, we’d give you a minute by minute report. You’ll just have to wait for the World Cup (that’s right circle the US vs Italy match up on Saturday the 17 of June right now).