Two announcements, gang.
1.
First, to ease the sting of turning 30, I'm spending my birthday in Paris. Kito and I leave on July 31 and return on August 9 (the big day, God help me, is August 2).
2.
Also, I have decided to stop freelancing for Time Out Chicago. I'm looking to clear up a little space in my schedule to pursue the ever popular but always elusive Other Projects. My association with the Chicago Reader will continue unchanged.
That is all.
A look at how I've been diverting myself lately.
Books
READ: The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman; Notebooks by Tennessee Williams, ed. by Margaret Bradham Thornton [interesting, but I don't recommend reading it at the same time as a Holocaust memoir; if you do, you're liable to find Williams's constant, self-absorbed whining somewhat unsympathetic].
COMING UP: Love in the Time of Cholera, some Philip Larkin, The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire [I'm on a Williams kick], The Letters of Noel Coward.
Movies
SAW: My Sister's Keeper [you can keep her, all right; keep her far from me].
Music
PURCHASED: Billy Elliot (original cast recording), Next to Normal (original Broadway cast recording).
MOST RECENTLY PLAYED TRACKS IN MY iTUNES LIBRARY: "Save My Money," Eddie Griffin; "Carrying a Torch," Bernadette Peters; "Wig in a Box," Hedwig and the Angry Inch (original cast recording); "My Father's a Homo; Everyone Tells Jason to See a Psychiatrist; This Had Better Come to a Stop," The March of the Falsettos (original cast); "Man in the Mirror," Michael Jackson.
Current Interests
Mark Sanford, tabloid fixtures, US history, camp, Chicago, female pop stars, the South, right-wingers, Michael Jackson, musicals, advertising, the gays, theater politics, Philip Roth, cubicle life, social media, terrible TV, plays, Kito.
Fool's Four
FOUR STAND-UP COMICS I'VE SEEN PERFORM LIVE:
1. Margaret Cho.
2. Janeane Garofalo.
3. Kathy Griffin.
4. I've only got three; I do not like stand-up comedy.
FOOLISH FLASHBACKS
TWO YEARS AGO: "[S]omeone told me that the last time the bar showed the Jennifer Hudson version, the crowd erupted in protest."
THREE YEARS AGO:
"Number of bare asses I saw (not counting strippers): 3.
Percentage of these that were in assless chaps: 33."
Glitter
Roger Ebert: "Michael Jackson was so gifted, so lonely, so confused, so sad. He lost happiness somewhere in his childhood, and spent his life trying to go back there and find it. When he played the Scarecrow in 'The Wiz' (1978), I think that is how he felt, and Oz was where he wanted to live. It was his most truly autobiographical role. He could understand a character who felt stuffed with straw, but could wonderfully sing and dance, and could cheer up the little girl Dorothy."
ELSEWHERE:
I can't seem to find it online, but my Critic's Choice review of Steep Theatre's The Hollow Lands is in this week's Chicago Reader.
Found around the Web.
PUMP IT UP: What happens when you use a penis pump on your tongue? Hilarity ensues, that's what.
OVERDUE: The blog Awful Library Books scours the stacks for the outdated, the incorrect, and the kitschy [via Boing Boing].
COMICS: Michael Jackson takes over radio (again).
And comic books help an Irish boy through a dull summer.
COMICS (THE OTHER KIND): Mike Sacks interviews five successful humor writers (David Sedaris, Bob Odenkirk, Robert Smigel, Allison Silverman, and Harold Ramis) who spent part of their early careers in Chicago.
YELLOW FEVER: Johann Hari dislikes the "fetid attitude toward women" in Richard Bernstein's The East, the West, and Sex.
AND FINALLY:"[A] lip synching pretty girl is only interesting for so long (just look at Britney Spears)."
I had a funny idea for an entry, but it didn't come off properly so I have had to abandon it. Please accept instead this list of alleged comedians who haven't told any actual jokes in several years (which is something different than simply being unfunny, which any old comic can do; it takes a special gift, though, to retain the job title of comedian even after you've obviously lost all interest in comedy). I figure the list is relevant today, seeing as how Al Franken--the king of comedians indifferent to comedy--finally won the November Minnesota senate race this afternoon.
Rosie O'Donnell
Howie Mandel
Bill Cosby
Dennis Miller
Janeane Garofalo
and, of course, Al Franken
Thank-you.
ELSEWHERE:
My review of The Resonants' The Tragedy of Doctor Faustus is in this week's Time Out Chicago.
I am happy to report that the air in my apartment is once again conditioned. The landlord came by on Friday and fixed whatever needed fixing. Hallelujah.
Now that things have cooled off a bit, I was able to look up that passage from Philip Roth's "Goodbye, Columbus" that I mentioned last time (when I said I was too hot to do anything but complain). Here 'tis:
. . . It was, in fact, as though the hundred and eighty feet that the suburbs rose in altitude above Newark brought one closer to heaven, for the sun itself became bigger, lower, and rounder, and soon I was driving past long lawns which seemed to be twirling water on themselves, past houses where no one sat on stoops, where lights were on but no windows open, for those inside, refusing to share the very texture of life with those of us outside, regulated with a dial the amounts of moisture that were allowed access to their skin. . . . I thought of Aunt Gladys and Uncle Max sharing a Mounds bar in the cindery darkness of their alley, on beach chairs, each cool breeze sweet to them as the promise of afterlife, and after a while I rolled onto the gravel roads of the small park where Brenda was playing tennis.
It's been hotter than blue blazes in my apartment the last few days--or, as my father would say, "hot enough to boil an owl." Why does he say this? you ask. Excellent question, I answer.
The point is, it's hot. The air conditioning system has gone on the fritz, you see, and with temperatures here in Chicago hovering around 90, all I want to do when I'm home is dim the lights, take off all my clothes, open every window, and wait for a cool breeze to pass through like absolution.
This reminds me of a quote from Philip Roth's "Goodbye, Columbus," but I'm not going to look it up for you because it's way too hot to go looking stuff up. I don't even want to have sex, you guys. Cheyenne Jackson himself could saunter into my apartment right now and be like, "I would like to have sex with you"--and, yes, I would go through with it, but only to avoid hurting his feelings (I see no need to abandon manners, heat stroke or no).
I keep thinking, what did they do in the olden days, before air conditioners were invented? I mean, no wonder they never smiled in photographs and were racist. They were cranky from the heat! If someone took a photograph of me right now, I wouldn't be smiling either. And you know what else? A little piece of me is starting to dislike the Dutch.
Do you see what a lack of conditioned air is doing to me? I can't live like this!
ELSEWHERE:
My short review of Annoyance Productions' Sodomites!! A Musical of Biblical Proportions is in this week's Chicago Reader.
PREVIOUSLY:
1. "But what if I had reason to suspect[," says Olive, "]that I had been sent, through the ordinary postal system but with no postmark and no return address, Andrew's suicide letter, the latest in a string of strangers' suicide letters that I had received over the course of several weeks for reasons unknown and that I had begun to suspect, further, that my mailbox has become some kind of supernatural repository for the final thoughts of depressives about to off themselves[?]"
2. "Tell me what's wrong," says Hedy Weiss, "or I'll have my husband, Chicago Tribune theater critic Chris Jones, perform his one-man show, 'Jonesin': Music and Laughter from across the Pond.'"
"All right, all right!" says Olive. "I'll talk."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Hello," says Olive, upon picking up the phone.
"Olive, hello. It's Chicago Sun-Times theater critic Hedy Weiss."
"Oh, hi, Aunt Hedy," says Olive. "What's up?"
"I wanted to let you know that I checked on the names you gave me," says Hedy Weiss. "The ones from the suicide letters you've been receiving through the mail."
"Hold on," says Olive. "I am getting a text."
She balances her office phone between her ear and shoulder and reaches for her cell phone, where she sees this message:
ttyl, crool world!
katie m, 1991-now
Great, thinks Olive. Now I am receiving suicide texts.
"Anyway," continues Hedy Weiss, "I checked our archives, and obituaries for each of the names you gave me did indeed appear in the paper."
"So they really are dead?" says Olive.
"Yes," says Hedy Weiss. "Which seals it: you're getting letters from dead people."
"Couldn't somebody just be playing a cruel trick on me?" says Olive.
"That is what I suspected at first," says Hedy Weiss, "but then I was able to verify in some way that this was not the case."
She then explains how she was able to do this.
"Well," says Olive, "I guess that settles that. But what do I do now?"
"You said that the only letter-writer you personally knew was this Andrew person, correct?" says Hedy Weiss.
"Yes, I knew him," says Olive, "but only barely. We shared an office for one day."
"Well, it seems to me your best bet is to find out as much about Andrew as you can," says Hedy Weiss, "and hope that the rest falls into place. Let me know if you need my help. I like this lady-investigative-reporter stuff. It makes me feel like Brenda Starr."
"I do not know who that is," says Olive.
Stuff I've dug up.
Here's an excerpt from a diary entry I wrote on today's date sixteen years ago. I was 13.
June 22, 1993
Day 5 [of family vacation in Florida]
Today it rained. I was forced to go shopping because of this unpleasant outburst of precipitation. We ate at The Back Porch. The End.
Rainy Day Reactions
Question - How do you feel about not being able to go to the beach today because of the rain?
Dad - Bummer.
Eric - Sad.
Mom - Oh, what a loss, what a loss.
Kelsey - Well, I wanted to go down to the beach, but I had fun today anyway.
Nicole - I feel you're really getting on my nerves.
Eden - I feel really sad.
"Sometimes, having a conversation with you is like talking to a dick." --Kito, to me, during an argument
Talking to a dick? That sucks!
No, wait. I can do better.
Talking to a dick? Don't make me gag!
Still no good? How about this:
The trouble with talking to dicks is that they're always shooting off at the mouth.
Yeah, that's the one. Tip your waitresses and so forth!
I have begun to grow my hair out again, so naturally the unsolicited, not terribly polite comments from not terribly close acquaintances have begun to trickle in. Someone has already pointed out that I resemble Shaggy from Scooby Doo, somebody else asked if I am trying to look like a Jonas Brother, and several people have told me to get a haircut. My favorite comment so far came from a co-worker who said it was okay with her if I grew my hair out (I did not ask for permission), but next time I shouldn't use so much product. As there was very little product in my hair at the time, I took this as an indication that I probably shouldn't have foregone washing my hair that morning.
ELSEWHERE:
My short reviews of Halcyon Theatre's Bounty of Lace and Fucking Parasites (both part of the Alcyone Festival) are in this week's Chicago Reader.
