In Madison, Wis., the King of Quirks

I'm beginning to realize that this quirky guy comes from a quirky state. And despite all of the trendy, arty sophistication of Madison, the state's quirks shine through.

The ultimate arty side of Madison is within view of the Capitol: the Overture Center for the Arts.

Madison was already a Midwest center for arts and culture when native son W. Jerome Frautschi and his wife Pleasant Rowland, creator of the American Girl dolls, decided to donate a record-breaking $200 million to expand the downtown center.

The completed first phase includes a 2,257-seat, state-of-the-art performing arts theater with walls and panels that shift and move by computer, to maximize acoustics for various types of performances. When the second phase is finished next spring, the center will house nine resident arts groups, including an opera company, a ballet company, a symphony orchestra, a chamber orchestra and theater companies.

The addition, designed by architect Cesar Pelli, comes highly acclaimed. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Symphony Orchestra musicians who performed there proclaimed it better than any hall they'd ever played.

I return to the center that evening and during a performance of Carl Nielsen's Fifth Symphony by the Madison Symphony Orchestra, I hear and feel in my bones the results of world-class acoustics. The well-regarded resident companies do full seasons at the center, which features seven performance and five visual-arts spaces.

Most of the seats in the center's main hall are 19 inches wide. People of extreme girth may request the section with seats that are 22 inches wide. No extra charge -- just reveal your backside needs when reserving tickets.

After a quick tour of the center during our day together, Feldman and I stroll up State Street, which connects the Capitol and the campus.

Feldman, who grew up in Milwaukee, arrived at the Madison campus as a freshman in 1967, just in time for the last panty raid. Within months, the antiwar movement exploded. Feldman points out Bascom Hill and remembers when National Guardsmen violently clashed with student protesters.

"Today, it's where kids nap between classes," says Feldman. "We're in a period of student rest. Actually, Madison is a hotbed of student rest. There's still an occasional protest, but it's usually about beer permits."

Feldman has been here so long, he says, that he's beginning to see members of his class return for retirement. During his years here, he's driven a cab, taught at an alternative high school and did a volunteer gig on a Friday night radio call-in show for "the undateable, bedridden and geriatric" -- Feldman's description. One thing led to another until 1985, when he launched "Whad'Ya Know?" Twenty years later, he says the show is about everything he knows how to do: free-associate, use a microphone, write jokes and take phone calls.

We walk into the Rathskeller in the student union, where student agitators used to hatch their protest schemes. The walls are a sooty, nicotine brown.