Fool's Gold Coast

I Loved Lucy

All this talk of Lucille Ball's 100th birthday calls to my mind the period in junior high when I was obsessed with her. Not only would I watch as many episodes of her shows that I could get my hands on (even The Lucy Show and Here's Lucy, in which she looks more and more like a tired old drag queen and sounds more and more like Harvey Fierstein combined with a concrete mixer). I also read Lucy biographies (she was a bitch evidently), cut Lucy photos and articles from magazines, and collected Lucy memorabilia. Around the time when this fever for mid-20th century, Vivian Vance-assisted slapstick was at its height, my parents gave me a plaster bust of the red-headed comedienne, an item I displayed proudly on the bookcase in my bedroom, even after one of the eyes had fallen out.

And STILL my parents acted surprised when I came out of the closet.

ELSEWHERE:
My review of The Side Project's Cut to the Quick: On Location is in this week's Chicago Reader.

Road Warrior

I haven't posted an entry since Monday because I've been on an out-of-town business trip. No, really! Me--your ol' pal Zee, conducting business in an out-of-town locale. I had to fill out an expense report and everything.

It isn't all complimentary continental breakfasts and airline mile accrual for we jet-setting corporate types, however. There are also drawbacks to a life on the road, chief among which is that you have to eat in restaurants by yourself and while you're doing so you don't know where to look or what expression your facial features should assume that won't make you look pitiful or creepy and, c'mon, there's only so much interest you can feign in reading the Equal packets.

ELSEWHERE:
My review of Factory Theater's Black and Blue is in this week's Time Out Chicago.

Overripe

Tomorrow is my 32nd birthday. For serious, y'all. Thirty-two. I was born in the '70s and everything. I have memories from, like, 1983. I think of 1992 as the recent past. I remember Paul Tsongas, for heaven's sake. Hell, I remember Michael Dukakis. In fact, I voted for him in the mock election in fourth grade and faced ostracism as a result.

Sometimes when I feel bad about not having done anything momentous with my life, I console myself by thinking of late bloomers. I especially like the ones who bloomed later than the age at which I currently find myself. George Eliot didn't publish her first novel 'til she was 39, I remind myself. And: I'm still younger than Jesus was when he died on the cross!

I guess at some point I'm gonna be like, what about Grandma Moses? And who knew anything about Estelle Getty before she was cast in The Golden Girls?

A Case of Mistaken Identity

The other day I was walking my dog, Lucy, when we crossed paths with a Latino man of about the same height and build as my partner, Kito. Now, Lucy tends to greet everyone with enthusiasm because it's just how she is--joyful. But from the whole-nother-level of jubilation with which she reacted to the sight of this Latino stranger, I could draw no other conclusion than that she actually mistook him for Kito and that, furthermore, in her little crackery eyes, all brown people look the same.

I was appalled.

ELSEWHERE:
My short reviews of Walkabout Theater's Within and Eclipse Theatre Company's The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek are in the current issue of the Chicago Reader.