News Net Nick Mortensen’s live apartment fire Tweets provide bright spot, and Capitol balloon comes down

Since sifting through dull newspapers, hyperbolic blogs, and overflowing RSS feeds for meaningful news can be an arduous process, News Net catches and compiles both the amusing and the significant reports that were overlooked over the workweek. Here are some things to think about as the weekend begins.

• Madison comedian Nick Mortensen made admirable use of his morning yesterday, considering he spent it watching all of his earthly possessions being burnt to a crisp in a fire at an apartment building near Capitol Square. Once he had safely fled his apartment, he started the #Madfire hashtag and beganTweeting information and photos from the scene, along with occasional jokes and complaints about ironically timed Wilco songs. Mortensen put on a pretty brave face both in an interview with the Wisconsin State Journal and in Tweets throughout the day, insisting that the total loss “feels a Hell of a lot like freedom. All that stuff was starting to define me.” Those who are looking to help Mortensen and his 26 neighbors will have to trump the Madison Concourse Hotel’s offer of 24 free rooms for displaced residents, a benchmark that can be reached either by covering the fire victims’ bar tabs over the weekend or by reaching out to the local branch of the Red Cross.

• It found enough fame amongst union supporters to spur the creation of official social media pages and a profile in the Wisconsin State Journal, but the heart-shaped Capitol balloon, a symbol of the protests that has been stuck to the ceiling of the Capitol Rotunda since the demonstrations began in February, has finally come down from its perch, pushed to the floors as new air vents were opened in the summer heat. Thankfully someone grabbed it immediately to turn it over to the Wisconsin Historical Society, which has been calling to obtain the balloon as a lasting artifact of the protests worth preserving. Residents can feel a little fuzzy inside knowing that, officially, this time in Wisconsin will be remembered with a vinyl balloon and hundreds of different variations on “Fuck You, Walker” printed on discarded pizza boxes.

• It’s too bad that Madison firefighters had a deadly blaze to battle yesterday morning. Apart from all the resulting property damage, it may have caused them to miss out on helping people that really needed them, like a Fond du Lac man who got his hand stuck in his car’s fuel line while chasing a Snickers bar that had been jammed into the gas tank. Eventually local fire fighters were able to free him by cutting up the entire fuel system. Purportedly the man was simply trying to prevent damage to the car’s engine, but odds are he was hoping that eating the Snickers bar would transform him back into a person who has enough common sense to avoid getting his arm stuck in the gas tank of a car.

• Madison is one of the 10 most rapidly aging cities in America, according to a Brookings Institute study reported by The Huffington Post. The number of people between 50 and 64 years old in Madison increased by 79 percent in the last 10 years, which explains the sharp rise in the number of stores running out of prunes. Most of the shift can probably be attributed to the aging Baby Boomers who have either stuck around the UW since the 1960s or returned after a brief absence—but Madison also has a unique blend of abominably cold nights, sticky hot days, and damn kids with their loud music. As these residents start approaching the octogenarian mark, that will offer Boomers the perfect conversation jumping-off points for complaining to their ungrateful Gen-X children.