February 29, 2012

You can use "a name of your choice" to reserve a spot at the play about the Sterling Hall bombing.

And you won't need to show an I.D. at the door. I was wrong about that, I've been informed.
You simply need to get your name on their list and then tell them your name at the door. And if you don't want your real name on their list, you can use "a name of your choice."  Like... I don't know... Robert Fassnacht... or Leo Burt.
With no I.D. requirement, appropriated names suggested, and a play whose playwright asks "why do most of us think that [those who broke the social norm] weren’t [justified]?," wouldn't you expect some theatergoers without reservations to attempt to get in using a name they think somebody else might have chosen?

51 comments:

Tim said...

"Paging Scott Walker...paging Scott Walker...paging Scott Walker..."

Hilarity ensues.

Trolls are so easily amused.

Matt Sablan said...

What's stopping me from ginning up a dozen or so GMail accounts and reserving with a bunch of fake names? I don't see how they think this is a good idea.

Also, most people, when they hear you need to make a reservation, their first instinct isn't: "Hey, I'll give a fake name to maintain my anonymity."

It's actually part of most confidence building tricks; telling someone your name unprompted and asking theirs.

I wonder: Has anyone ever, previously, made a reservation (and had it been honored!) under a fake name at this theater before.

How fake a fake name can I give?

If I say I am Annie Onymous, will they honor it? Barack Obama? Ronald Reagan?

Ann Althouse said...

Why can't they just sell tickets in the normal way?

It's such an intrusion on one's privacy to have to email and get your name on a list!

Matt Sablan said...

Are they selling the tickets?

I thought that they're offering them for free, but recommending a donation. Probably something to do with receiving government funding/bookkeeping reasons.

Wince said...

New Rule: If you want to bomb a government building and get away with it, chose a building where math is conducted at a higher level than adding up how much people owe in taxes.

In 2010, near the fortieth anniversary of the bombing, several tips on Burt's possible location were received by the FBI, including a sighting at a Denver homeless shelter. Some have speculated that he could be in the St. Catharines area of Canada, an area he had visited during summers in his youth. Numerous anonymous tips have also indicated sightings in Lakewood Washington as recently as 2010.

chickelit said...

Go to the play. Bring a camera. I wish I had brought one 30 odd years ago when I went to the screening of The War At Home at the Union Terrace Theater.

edutcher said...

The smugness is palpable.

Tim said...

Ann Althouse said...

"Why can't they just sell tickets in the normal way?

It's such an intrusion on one's privacy to have to email and get your name on a list!"


For a local, piss-ant community theater, sure.

Try buying a ticket for a major production or sporting event, and Ticketmaster will, more than likely, be the vendor, and they'll certainly require quite a bit of personal information before they sell you the ticket.

pst314 said...

"why do most of us think that [those who broke the social norm] weren’t [justified]?"

Because most of us did not support the Stalinists that America was fighting.

pst314 said...

Ann Althouse 9:39 AM "Why can't they just sell tickets in the normal way? It's such an intrusion on one's privacy to have to email and get your name on a list!"

Let me guess: They are sympathetic to the Stalinist-loving bombers of Sterling Hall, and thus are fond of collecting lists of names.

NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...

Try getting in as Abbie Hoffman. It's totally appropriate.

Ann Althouse said...

"For a local, piss-ant community theater, sure."

The play will be at the Rotunda Studio at the Overture Center, which is a very glamorous and huge arts center here in Madison. Over $200 million was spent building this place. This isn't taking place in some hole in the wall.

And the play was written within the Oral History Program at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, which is a major, gigantic institution.

Ann Althouse said...

"... which is a major, gigantic institution."

I know. I'm one of the inmates.

The Drill SGT said...

Go and take photos

take two photos of any 65 y/o white guy's that turn away

edutcher said...

Tim said...

Try buying a ticket for a major production or sporting event, and Ticketmaster will, more than likely, be the vendor, and they'll certainly require quite a bit of personal information before they sell you the ticket.

They want you to start an account.

Then they can bomb you with emails about all the swell stuff you're missing.

PS The one thing Blogger has to fix in WV is the fact you don't know where the @#$%^*(*%#$ cursor is.

MadisonMan said...

Does root@mouse-potato.com still work as a generic email?

(Tries it: Nope)

Ah for the days of anon.penet.fi

Mr. Forward said...

Just to remind everybody. This play is an oral history. Karlton Armstrong is on record admitting he thought the building was probably occupied. Will that quote be in the play? After determining that the building was most likely occupied by more than one person, Armstrong parked what was at that time the biggest truck bomb in the history of the world, snug against that same building. Then they tried to lure the cops there to increase the body count.
The mythology in Madison is this was designed to be a "non-violent" protest.

Wally Kalbacken said...

Leo Burtowski?

MadisonMan said...

I think Bart Simpson could give you some good names to use.

dhagood said...

anon.penet.fi was a great service.

you are also dating yourself...

William said...

I wonder what their feelings are concerning voter ID?......Until very recently most historians who wrote about the Civil War had a southern bias. That is because the Civil War was a much bigger deal for southerners than for northerners. They really obsessed about it.....A similar dynamic goes on with sixties protests. The people who write and make movies about those protests have a uniformly pro-protestor mentality. The bet here is that the movie will feature someone sensitive and slender talking about how they were driven to this unfortunate act by the dark forces that were in possession of our country. For balance and historical perspective, they will find someone morbidly obese and feature him in a tight close up explaining why hippies should be rounded up and killed.

Chip S. said...

I plan to attend as "garage mahal", and I expect to get a really good seat.

Geoff Matthews said...

So blowing up buildings is now just violating a social norm?

Ann, you have a greater tolerance for this than I would.
And I don't mean that in a snide way, even though it could sound like it. I just couldn't think up a word other than tolerance.

Tim said...

The Overture Center for the Arts said...(online, anyway...!)

http://www.overturecenter.com/tickets/how-to-tickets

"In person

Located in the main level of Overture Center's Rotunda Lobby at 201 State Street, the Overture Center Ticket Office is your place to purchase tickets, learn more about performers and venues, even pick up tickets before a performance.

Hours of Operation
MON - FRI
11 AM - 5:30 PM

SAT
11 AM - 2 PM

The office will be open additional evening hours and on Sundays for ticketed performances. The ticket office may also open early for particular promotions and events.

Will-call tickets may be picked up day of show at the designated ticket office window with a form of ID."


So, according to liberals (they run the arts too, don't we all know?), you need a form of ID to buy a theater ticket, but not to vote.

I'm sure America's Dairy Cow has a detailed explanation as to why this is entirely fair, reasonable and appropriate.

Tim said...

Chip S. said...

"I plan to attend as "garage mahal", and I expect to get a really good seat.

Nope.

You can vote as America's Dairy Cow - you just can't go to a performance in the very glamorous and huge, $200 million Overture Center there in Madison as him.

And he's totally down with that, undoubtedly.

Chip S. said...

Damn. There goes my chance at a luxury box.

Tim said...

William said...

"The bet here is that the movie will feature someone sensitive and slender talking about how they were driven to this unfortunate act by the dark forces that were in possession of our country."

"Jenny? Things got a little out of hand. It's just this war and that lying son of a bitch Johnson and...I would never hurt you. You know that."

-- Forrest Gump

Rusty said...

Ann Althouse said...
Why can't they just sell tickets in the normal way?

It's such an intrusion on one's privacy to have to email and get your name on a list!



It's only for the party faithful.
You understand.

Bayoneteer said...

Maybe the playwright here thinks of injuries and death and the loss of the building as unfortunate but unavoidable collateral damage, just like numerous civilians killed when LBJ and Nixon bombed and bombed and bombed Vietnam with more explosives than were dropped in WW2.
That's not a case I would want to make or defend though.

chickelit said...

Maybe the playwright here thinks of injuries and death and the loss of the building as unfortunate but unavoidable collateral damage, just like numerous civilians killed when LBJ and Nixon bombed and bombed and bombed Vietnam with more explosives than were dropped in WW2.

LBJ and Nixon were tried in court of public opinion. They're dead anyway.

Leo Burt still walks around, unarrested. Leo Burt probably still has friends who would cover for him, man.

Matt Sablan said...

"Maybe the playwright here thinks of injuries and death and the loss of the building as unfortunate but unavoidable collateral damage."

-- It's not collateral damage when the intention is to kill the civilians, which it sounds like it was if they knew people were inside the building. I know nothing but what I read here, so I could be wrong.

Bayoneteer said...

Atrocities were committed on both sides ChickenLittle. Object to the play then by all means, don't go.

chickelit said...

Atrocities were committed on both sides ChickenLittle. Object to the play then by all means, don't go.

I won't go because I'm not "there."

But let's see...atrocities committed by Americans in Vietnam...balanced by atrocities committed by Vietnamese against Americans in Vietnam.

Then we have atrocities committed by Americans against Americans in America balanced by...Vietnamese atrocities against Vietnamese in Vietnam. You follow the symmetry?

The Sterling Hall bombing was committed by Americans who thought the establishment ("pigs" in their vernacular) were out to get them. It was asymmetric warfare.

chickelit said...

@KenK: Even Bernadine Dorhn dug the pig vernacular, dig?

chickelit said...

@KenK Though I would be the first to admit that somebody should put a fork in what Bernadine Dohrn said at the time.

C R Krieger said...

People should go as Bobby or his widow.

Regards  —  Cliff

Chuck66 said...

Can you use the name "Tim McVeigh"?

I mean, just to stay in the spirit of the event.

Bayoneteer said...

You could go as Kim Phouc .

Chuck66 said...

"I think Bart Simpson could give you some good names to use."

Hugh Gash
Dick P Ness
Harry Butts

pst314 said...

"Atrocities were committed on both sides"

A little moral equivalence, comrade KenK?

Bayoneteer said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Bayoneteer said...

The concept of "moral equivalence" mattered little to the cannon fodder (on either side of the cold war) who ended up maimed. And not all to those who died. War is not a tea party. But Americans until very recently haven't had to deal with that unpleasant fact.

chickelit said...

The concept of "moral equivalence" mattered little to the cannon fodder (on either side of the cold war) who ended up maimed.

Someone had to face down Soviet expansion in the 1940s and 50s in Europe. As for Asia, how much longer will North Korea stay blacked out of prosperity?

What is the current thinking in Vietnam regarding the American war? I don't read about much seething hatred there.

I'll bet you thought Jane Fonda was cute too. You and Ted.

Harry Phartz said...

Chuck66 said...

"I think Bart Simpson could give you some good names to use."


You talkin' to me?

chickelit said...

Opposition to the Soviet Union on the part of the old American left is probably their weakest position ever. It's indefensible. And yet--you still find people once and a while who will give it a spirited defence--it's matter of face saving and staying connected with their roots, I think.

chickelit said...

I meant:
[Opposition to] Support for the Soviet Union on the part of the old American left is probably their weakest position ever. It's indefensible. And yet--you still find people once and a while who will give it a spirited defence--it's matter of face saving and staying connected with their roots, I think.

ElPresidenteCastro said...

You should organize a Fassnacht-in. Two hundred reservations in the name of the murder victim might question whether the terrorist [violation of the social norm] was [justified]. Even better if you all showed up in Fassnacht masks.

rcocean said...

"Atrocities were committed on both sides"

Yep, just like WW II. You had Jews that didn't like Nazi's and vice versa. Same with the Japanese and the Nanking Chinese.

There was wrong on both sides.

Who's to say the PLO wasn't justified at Munich? It's all really complicated. Really.

Tim said...

KenK said...

"Maybe the playwright here thinks of injuries and death and the loss of the building as unfortunate but unavoidable collateral damage, just like numerous civilians killed when LBJ and Nixon bombed and bombed and bombed Vietnam with more explosives than were dropped in WW2."

Yes, indeed, maybe the playwright does think such things, but that would make him/her an idiot, wouldn't it?

Kirk Parker said...

EDH @ 9:41:

"Numerous anonymous tips have also indicated sightings in Lakewood Washington as recently as 2010."

Really? Just a few miles from here? What are you quoting from?

pst314 said...

KenK "But Americans until very recently haven't had to deal with that unpleasant fact."

The Stalinists we fought were waging a consciously chosen war of terror against all who were in any way reluctant to support their totalitarian aims. But you still haven't dealt with that unpleasant fact. I'm sure you will make excuses for every new Stalinist who comes along in the future, too.