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Stimulus Funds Beginning to Appear in Wisconsin
Four months after President Barack Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), the billions of dollars slated for Wisconsin are beginning to appear.

“We’re Ready to Run On Our Record”
Milwaukeean Mike Tate made history in June when he was elected the chair of the state Democratic Party—at 30, he’s the youngest person ever to head a state party, Democratic or Republican.

The Sickening Addiction That May Kill Health Care Reform
If Congress fails to enact health care reform this year—or if it enacts a sham reform designed to bail out corporate medicine while excluding the “public option”—then the public will rightly blame Democrats, who have no excuse for failure except their own cowardice and corruption.

Taking Liberties
With Gov. Jim Doyle and Democrats in control of both houses of the Legislature, long-overdue reforms affecting limits on teacher pay and funding of transit—blocked by Republicans for years—were included in the state budget with little fuss.

Carte Blanche Studios’ Midsummer Night’s Dream
Carte Blanche Studios is immersed in the heat of summer for its production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The forest of Athens comes to life before the show with ambient sounds broadcast amid the occasional crackle from a speaker. It’s an impressive set for Carte Blanche’s studio space.

Red Knife Lottery’s Soiled Soul
Red Knife Lottery opened their debut EP, So Much Drama, with the plotted rape and torture of Travel Channel personality Samantha Brown, paving the way for five more tales of brutality and murder, penned in the vulgar literary style of Edgar Allan Poe and enacted by the terrorizing screams of singer Ashley Chapman.

This Week in Milwaukee
Femi Kuti @ Potawatomi Bingo Casino Rock Stage, Summerfest, 10 p.m. Afro-beat might sound like an obscure style of music (particularly for those who haven’t recently lived on college campuses, where it’s becoming especially popular), but it’s actually quite accessible.

Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Time to diversify your energy sources, Aries. It’s as if you’ve grown too dependent on oil—metaphorically speaking—and have neglected to develop relationships with wind turbines, solar panels, natural gas and other means of generating power.

Art for Art’s Sake
I’m Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain’a? So OK, some of you’s may have detected that my usual heady froth of spewed steam was nowhere vented in last week’s gazette.

Short Orders
You wouldn’t expect to find T-bone and sirloin dinners at a place with stool seating and a location next to a shop hawking cell phones and cigarettes. But one of the city’s most evocatively named eateries, ZaZa Steak Lemonade (4919 W. Capitol Drive), does both of its namesake specialties proud.

SEXPress
How can my wife and I find another female who will have anal sex with the both of us? To read Laura’s answer, visit ExpressMilwaukee.com/sexpress.

Revisiting the West Bank Café
Vietnamese food first arrived in Milwaukee in the mid-1970s at a modest café called The Rose. The main specialties were pho, the Vietnamese beef soup, and steamed fresh rolls.

Expresso
Once again, our friend a Newsradio 620 WTMJ (a subsidiary of Journal Communications) gets the story wrong. On Monday morning, while commenting on the state budget, Charlie Sykes “reported” that the Shepherd Express was designated by the state Legislature as the “paper of record” for the Milwaukee area.

Boris Doris
Movie Madness: A Public Enemies Sneak Peek Speakeasy party at the RDI Stages was jammed with Wisconsin’s movers, shakers and friends of film. Clad in Roaring Twenties attire while checking guests’ secret passwords were actress Emily Vitrano and accountant Tim Grove.

Larry David Works Well in “Whatever Works”
The enduring fantasy of older men is that a gorgeous young woman will fall in love with them, find them sexually arousing and long to imbibe their wisdom while sitting at their feet. That fantasy is the spring driving Woody Allen’s often-hilarious farce, Whatever Works,.

Concert Review
Spoon must be one of indie-rock’s most uneven live bands. That’s a compliment, in a way. Unlike artists who can tour with a miniature orchestra and play two hours of elaborate suites without striking so much as one imperfect note, Spoon plays their rock ’n’ roll loose and sloppy, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse.

A&E
The print and publishing industries may be in flux, but a force has emerged that is making a significant impact on the way we see, or rather hear, the printed word. Despite the well-documented changes in the book industry, it appears that audio books are here to stay—and in the process, they may even save you a buck or two.

Theatre Reviews
American Players Theatre (APT) is celebrating its 30th summer this year. While the core members of the theater haven’t all been around since its inception, many of them have been working together for years.

CD Reviews
The Forecast EP (Gotee) Brown Deer native Brian Reith has moved to Tennessee, but raps with such sweet soul that his hometown should be proud. Fellow white RB crooners such as Justin Timberlake and Robin Thicke may want to watch their backs for B.’s honeyed tenor.

News of the Weird
In another, she wrote: “Reminder: I am the quintessential professional! Decorum and common sense are my bylaws!” Kim Schroeder, running for vice president of the Milwaukee (Wis.) Teachers’ Education Association in May, promised a five-point program.

Rishi Tea’s Refreshing Innovation
Enduring the summer heat can take on many forms, but few are as refreshing, convenient and wholesome as Rishi Tea’s recently introduced Natural Tealeaf Powders.

Theatre Preview
In the era somewhere between the sexual revolution and the popular realization that indiscriminate sex can kill, a young David Mamet wrote a play about the sex lives of young, urban Midwesterners. Some 30 years later, the once controversial Sexual Perversity in Chicago is being staged at the Alchemist Theatre on South Kinnickinnic Avenue.

Sports The Fairly Detached Observers
The Observers reconvened this week completely refreshed—Artie by a couple, three days of swatting insects in the Northwoods and Frank by 2,200 miles of driving to New York and back. Topping their agenda: the NBA draft, the Milwaukee Bucks’ annual rebuilding job and the Bucks’ chances of reaching the .

“Away We Go” In Search of Meaning
Away We Go, a droll comedy-cumdrama by director Sam Mendes (American Beauty), perceptively explores the lives of more-or-less ordinary 30-somethings lost in a world without much meaning.

Book Reviews
The beautiful black-and-white photo of Vivien Leigh on the cover of Molly Haskell’s compelling new book, Frankly, My Dear: Gone With the Wind Revisited (Yale University Press), casts an eerie shadow on the dust cover.

Off the Cuff
American Players Theatre in Spring Green will inaugurate the Touchstone Theatre, its new indoor venue, on July 10 with In Acting Shakespeare, a one-man show adapted by and starring Jim DeVita.

Bizarre Bazaar
2 BR lower in a 4 unit bldg available July. Brand new furnace A/C, newer kitchen flr, large master BR. Bldg well maintained. Appliances off st. prk. incl. Tenant pays own utilities. All appl. thoroughly screened. $650, plus security deposit. No smoking preferred.

Event of the Week
Unlike its predecessor, the Obama administration has at least demonstrated a willingness to re-examine the U.S. economic blockade of Cuba. To help make the case for change, Pastors for Peace, an interreligious association of activists, is applying pressure to end this federal policy toward the island nation.

Heroes of the Week
Milwaukee-area youths convened in Lincoln Park on Saturday as part of the “Operation Clean Air” campaign to turn Milwaukee’s parks into smoke-free areas.

Book Preview
As the lengthy title of his second book would suggest, Les Leopold, author of The Looting of America: How Wall Street’s Game of Fantasy Finance Destroyed Our Jobs, Pensions, and Prosperity and What We Can Do About It, aims to do two things: describe...

Milwaukee Color
July 3 in Milwaukee draws legions of patriots to the bluffs and shorefront of Lake Michigan for the city’s yearly fireworks show. As people drive, stroll, bike and rollerblade their way through the East Side to the lakefront, they’re crossing land that was once occupied by one of Milwaukee’s three civil war camps.

Art Review
In 1998, Debra Brehmer curated an exhibition called “Sweeping and Cleaning: Order and Chaos in Domestic Life.” Included in the catalog was the following line from Emily Dickinson: “God keep me from what they call households.” I like households, however, having lived in approximately 40, some shabby and some splendiferous.

Art Preview
When the fireworks fade from the skies in early July, the visual art in Door County will continue to sparkle. This holiday weekend sees a round of art events and gallery openings on the peninsula that will last through the end of summer.

Agitate! Educate! Organize! American Labor Posters
(Cornell University Press), by Lincoln Cushing and Timothy W. Drescher Relatively cheap to reproduce and easily circulated, a good poster is an effective way to flag a message.

Classifieds
Living! 1 Bedroom, 1 Full Bath East Side condo. Only $119,000. This trendy kitchen features hardwood floors,granite countertops, maple cabinetry, breakfast bar and stainless steel appliances. Spacious custom built storage in both bedroom and bathroom closets.

“Cheri” Explores Love in the Beautiful Age
During the era known as the Belle Époque, the Beautiful Age, the corsets of Victorianism loosened. A caste of courtesans, elevated above the more proletarian prostitutes, traded sexual companionship with aristocrats and magnates for lives of bejeweled glamour.

Classical Music
When he emerged as part of New York’s edgy “downtown scene” in the 1970s, Philip Glass became the target of vituperative put-downs by the older generation of modernist composers and critics in their thrall, who composed and appreciated music according to the dictates of increasingly sterile intellectual theories.

Music Previews
In 2003, Milwaukee-based Decapitado released their Blacked CD, a collection of ridiculously heavy (yet also surprisingly catchy) songs that instantly marked them as a band to keep a close eye on. But year after year passed, and next to nothing was heard from the band.