Found this via Face­book.  Appar­ently this actu­ally being served at one of the ven­dors, the Plaza Grill, at Miller Park in the 100 level.

All yours for $9.

This is truly a unique item that one would find only in Mil­wau­kee.  The Beast is a grilled bratwurst sliced in half and stuffed with a grilled hot dog.  Those two items are then wrapped in bacon and grilled to per­fec­tion.  Served with sauer­kraut and grilled onions on–of course–a pret­zel roll.  House made chips and a pickle are also served on the side.

Would be inter­est­ing to know what the calo­rie count is.

Wednes­day. Aaron Rodgers Day is 12–12-12. (No really.)

Seri­ously, I do.

From this morning’s “Politico Play­book” email:

BEST GET: Steps away from Willie Geist’s “Way Too Early” set, Carl Toe­pel, a cheese­head attend­ing his 10th con­ven­tion, handed Playbook’s chief assis­tant a ‘Mit­twurst Lover for Rom­ney’ but­ton. Turns out Mit­twurst is Ger­man for “sum­mer sausage,” a pop­u­lar meat to pair with cheese and crackers.

Dr. Toe­pel — he’s a retired ele­men­tary school prin­ci­pal and admin­is­tra­tor from She­boy­gan — has one of the most impres­sive col­lec­tions of cam­paign swag I have ever seen.  Think of a cam­paign, Repub­li­can or Demo­c­rat (mostly Repub­li­can) and chances are Carl has some­thing — a but­ton, a bumper sticker, a pin — from it.  Carl also makes his own cam­paign but­tons, which he hands out to any will­ing to take one.

He’s a true stu­dent of his­tory, a great guy to share a laugh with, and in 2006 was one of my county vol­un­teers when I was with the Green Campaign.

Glad to see him get a moment in the national press while down in Tampa.

It’s been quite the past cou­ple of days for strange spills on Wis­con­sin roads.  Paint was all over I-43 yes­ter­day near Cleve­land and this morn­ing, honey spilled in Fond du Lac.

Approx­i­mately 200 gal­lons of honey spilled onto the road­way in Fond du Lac early Fri­day morning.

The Wis­con­sin State Patrol said a bee farmer some­how lost at least one bar­rel of honey while dri­ving near US 41 & Wis. 23 around 5 a.m.

That’s a pretty well-traveled area of Fond du Lac, so hope­fully no one gets too stuck for long.

(Sorry, couldn’t help myself there.)

She’s a Cheese­head, was Google employee No. 20, and now head­ing over to Yahoo to run the place.

Not bad for a 37 year-old from Wausau.

Pub­lished reports say Yahoo is hir­ing Google exec­u­tive Marissa Mayer to be its next CEO.

Mayer has been involved with Google’s search, gmail and Google news features.

The New York Times says she’s start­ing at Yahoo Inc. on Tues­day. Mayer was one of Google’s ear­li­est employees.

Ross Levin­sohn, who joined Yahoo in late 2010, has been run­ning the com­pany on an interim basis and had been thought to be the lead can­di­date. Levin­sohn filled in after Scott Thomp­son lost his job in a flap over mis­in­for­ma­tion on his offi­cial biography.

Mayer is 1993 grad­u­ate of Wausau West High School.

It was the New York Times blog, “Deal­Book” which first broke the news.  Meyer also serves on Walmart’s Board of Directors.

Mayer also becomes pos­si­bly the most attrac­tive CEO in Sil­i­con Val­ley.  Here is a pic­ture from 2009 when she was named Glam­our Magazine’s Woman of the Year.

I never went to a 7-Eleven in my life until I lived across the street from one in Arling­ton, VA around March / April 2007.  Never knew what it was about either the fran­chise or the state of Wis­con­sin, but there are no 7-Eleven’s in the state.

Hope­fully, that now will change.  I’ve been mildly crav­ing a Big Gulp for a while now.

Let me begin by say­ing that what Bo Ryan is doing at UW-Madison in regards to the trans­fer of Jar­rod Uthoff is well within the legal rules and reg­u­la­tions gov­ern­ing NCAA schol­ar­ship athletes.

That doesn’t make it right though.

For those who haven’t heard, Wis­con­sin men’s bas­ket­ball coach Bo Ryan is doing all he can to stop red-shirt fresh­man Jar­rod Uthoff from trans­fer­ring to another school, but he sure isn’t mak­ing it easy. Uthoff, a schol­ar­ship player and one-time “Mr. Bas­ket­ball” in his home state of Iowa, has decided that after a year under Ryan, his style of play doesn’t work under Coach Ryan and he wants to go.

A trans­fer would strip a year of col­lege eli­gi­bil­ity from Uthoff, but being red-shirted his fresh­man year, he’d have three years left to play with his new school.

Mean­while, Ryan has put together a list of schools he will not allow Uthoff to go to.  NCAA rules allow for that, after all, a school is los­ing a schol­ar­ship ath­lete they spent the time and money recruit­ing the player, con­vinc­ing his fam­ily your school was the right place for them and so on.

Mind you, I would under­stand if Bo Ryan said to the kid, “You can trans­fer, just not to another Big Ten school.”  That’s under­stand­able.  Your school did all the work, and the last thing you want to see if another school in con­fer­ence poach off of that.

But what Ryan’s doing — which he said in an inter­view on ESPNRadio’s Mike and Mike is not all that uncom­mon in big-time col­lege sports — is bar­ring the kid from play­ing on any team which might appear on Wisconsin’s sched­ule.  So far on a list which was made pub­lic, Ryan barred trans­fers to all Big Ten schools (under­stand­able) and Mar­quette (In-state rival…okay, fine).

Then it just gets strange.

Uthoff grew up in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, but since Iowa is a Big Ten schools, Ryan also barred Iowa State Uni­ver­sity — which plays in the con­fer­ence for­mally known as the Big 12.  He’s also barred Uthoff from going to Florida, in the South­east­ern Con­fer­ence or SEC (it just signed con­tract for a home and home series with Wis­con­sin), as well as the entire Atlantic Coastal Con­fer­ence, or ACC, because any of that conference’s schools could play Wis­con­sin in future “ACC / Big Ten Challenges.”

Uthoff is set to meet today with UW Ath­let­ics Depart­ment offi­cials to deal with an appeal of Ryan’s con­di­tions of the transfer.

What exactly is Bo Ryan so afraid of with this kid?  I have no idea.

While this sort of thing hap­pens more often then we care to admit, it’s the Wis­con­isin — Uthoff case which has ele­vated it to national promi­nence.  Such so, that turn on a national sports / talk show over the last two days and you’ll hear Bo Ryan get­ting crucified.

Part of the rea­son Ryan’s get­ting creamed is his atti­tude about it.  He’s never been good with deal­ing with a hos­tile media and it’s show­ing in spades these past few days.

Sec­ondly — and most impor­tantly — the Wis­con­sin — Uthoff case is being used by peo­ple (myself included) who think the NCAA is a bro­ken, money-grubbing, hyp­o­crit­i­cal, and unfair orga­ni­za­tion when it comes to its treat­ment of student-athletes.  For many big-time sports pro­grams, the ath­letes who play the games are noth­ing more than replace­able cogs to the money machine in which the play­ers will never receive a dime from.

Then to add insult to injure, if they take a dime from any­thing, they’re ruled inel­i­gi­ble.  Mean­while, the school is cash­ing checks from tele­vi­sion and apparel deals worth mil­lions. In the case of the Big Ten schools, the Big Ten Net­work has the poten­tial to make that amount billions.

As for the coaches them­selves, the sys­tem is set up to ben­e­fit them for suc­cess, but pun­ish a recruit who wants to fol­low the very coach they know and trust to their next gig.  Say if Ore­gon, Wis­con­sin native and Vir­ginia Commonwealth’s head coach Shaka Smart got the Illi­nois men’s job (was rumored, didn’t hap­pen) and a num­ber of his cur­rent play­ers wanted to come with him.  Chances are, VCU would block them all, and those they did allow would have to sit out a year of eligibility.

Mean­while, Smart can prob­a­bly cash a big­ger pay check, enjoy a larger office, and have bet­ter recruit­ment ameni­ties like the big­ger arena and so on to fur­ther his career.

Now, I don’t begrudge the coaches or the schools for the sys­tem they’re exploit­ing.  It’s how they treat their play­ers (who are unpaid and there to get an edu­ca­tion — in the­ory) like they’re their employ­ees which needs to end.  Bo Ryan is treat­ing this kid’s schol­ar­ship like it’s a non-compete clause in an employee contract.

The sim­ple real­ity is despite what all ath­letes do for the school money-wise, they are kids.  And these kids are not employees.

The NCAA needs to remem­ber that some­times.  That they’re deal­ing with kids most of the time and these kids are going to make dumb, self­ish, and other such deci­sions like any­one else — but with­out the mil­lions of dol­lars at stake.  Because of that, they should change these insane rules and only allow a coach to for­bid inter-conference trans­fers and not be able to hold a recruit who wants to leave hostage.  They should also allow for kids to trans­fer with­out penalty if their coach leaves their school for a bet­ter job elsewhere.

As for every­one else, let the kid leave Madi­son.  He clearly has des­ig­nated he wants out and is only ask­ing to go to where he wants to go to school, like any other col­lege stu­dent.  There’s no guar­an­tee he’s even going to make the bas­ket­ball team or get a schol­ar­ship at his new school for the time being.

As for Bo Ryan, do for your­self what you ask your play­ers to do on the court, that you do what’s right and nec­es­sary to achieve the best out­come possible.

Oh, and that you finally man up.

For many, the only vot­ing that counts at the moment.

So much for a reprieve for Clin­tonville.

CLINTONVILLE — The booms have returned in Clin­tonville, report­edly louder and longer than before.

“Between the times of 10:35 and 10:50 p.m., we received 60 phone calls from res­i­dents indi­cat­ing that they were again hear­ing very loud, boom­ing, rumbling-type noises,” said Clin­tonville City Admin­is­tra­tor Lisa Kuss to News­ra­dio 620 WTMJ’s Nick Iannelli.

“Some were indi­cat­ing that it was even louder than it was last week.”

Last week, Kuss announced that geol­o­gists had dis­cov­ered earth­quakes of as high as 1.5 on the Richter scale in an area not known for them.

Accord­ing to Kuss, these may have been more pow­er­ful, and extended for a longer period of time.

“Some­one indi­cated that it seemed worse than last week.  It also appeared that the rum­bling dura­tion lasted longer,” said Kuss, who explained that the quakes of recent weeks had sub­sided over the weekend.

“It seemed like it was a lit­tle bit dif­fer­ent in dura­tion.  Clearly, the inten­sity is back, whereas Fri­day, Sat­ur­day, Sun­day and Mon­day, there (were) no events that gen­er­ated that vol­ume of calls.”

Kuss tells us that the U.S. Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey had not given any infor­ma­tion yet to show that these were earthquakes.

No infor­ma­tion yet if these were earth­quakes, huh?

I’m return­ing to my orig­i­nal the­ory that it was aliens.