News Net Restaurant Magnus makes room for giant, clam-having oyster bar

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.

• If the closure of Restaurant Magnus left a giant clam-shaped hole in your heart, fret not—Madison restaurateur Henry Doane hopes to fulfill to your oddly specific longing. He’s planning to remodel the old Magnus location to open the Tempest Oyster Bar, a seafood emporium with flourishes like a giant clam shell that will house a party booth, and a 37-foot shucked raw shellfish “shotgun bar” where patrons can go all Roger Sterling and eat entirely too many raw oysters before that big business meeting. Doane hopes for an April opening date, assuming he can quickly decide whether the waitstaff will be forced to dress up as pirates or servants of Poseidon.

• After tasting Super Bowl victory, plenty of Badger football fans are left sadly pining for a universe where both the Badgers and the Packers emerged from their 2010 season as champions. If only the score could be settled with those damn frogs. Apparently Badger coach Bret Bielema feels a similar lust for revenge, as he jumped at the chance to line up a rematch with TCU as the Badger’s season opener. Sadly, TCU Athletic Director Chris Del Conte wasn’t so enthusiastic, passing on the idea primarily because it would be a one-time Badger home game, meaning money and attention for the Badgers that TCU wouldn’t get in return. It’s also probably because all horned bullfrogs are yellow.

• Plenty of seventh-graders become big boobie supporters at their age due to confounding hormones. But the Sauk Prairie School District has taken issue with their latest expression of that interest—the “I Heart Boobies” bracelets associated with the “Keep A Breast” breast cancer awareness campaign. Administrators banned the bracelets last month, claiming that some middle school students don’t have the maturity to wear them without the bracelets becoming a distraction. As preposterous as the idea is that middle schoolers would laugh at the word “boobies” may be, the school district might want to tread lightly. After one student was told she could no longer wear the bracelet in support of family members with cancer, her family told on the administrators—to the ACLU.

• Speaking of precocious young scamps engaging in civic discourse, a class of fourth-graders from Mukwonago has been lobbying for cream puffs to become Wisconsin’s official dessert. The students have already collected 275 signatures and started an online campaign supporting the measure, and they’ve enlisted state Sen. Mary Lazich (R-New Berlin) to introduce the proposal to the legislature. For the kids, it’s all a great lesson in the economics of local business and how government works, but do we really want to give Conan O’Brien more ammo to call out Wisconsin’s enthusiasm towards dairy-based excess? We should be teaching these kids PR techniques about how to deal with an image problem by making our state dessert an apple or something.

• Clay Matthews has gone from tackle machine to public appearance machine, with his most baffling walk-on yet planned for the Grammys this weekend.

• Unofficial Madison band Screeching Weasel has released a new single, “Beginningless Vacation,” off the band’s upcoming album, First World Manifesto, which will be its first in more than 10 years.