Here's an excerpt from a diary entry I wrote on today's date 23 years ago. I was 9.
11-15-88
Right now I'm watching T.V. Today at school we had fun. At history class it started raining. It rained the rest of the school day. Then we went to piano lessons. The teacher told me to play one song 3 times (because she enjoyed it). When we came home we went to the basement because it was storming and that's where I'll leave you.
Thanks to my iPod, I have at last found a song whose tempo perfectly matches my preferred walking pace and whose lyrics perfectly capture my life story.
I cannot wait to walk to the red line tomorrow morning.
They say that Uptown is Chicago's most diverse neighborhood. There are those, however, who would like to make it less so--who wouldn't mind, in fact, if Uptown became Lakeview II: This Time with a Target. Ald. James Cappleman seems to consider this group his sole constituents.
I do not count myself among their number, for I believe there's something to be said for living in a neighborhood that's not boring as all hell. Still, there are a couple of things I don't like about Uptown:
1. Groups of young men occasionally shoot at one another
&
2. I regularly see people--of all ages and at all times of day, in back alleys and on busy thoroughfares--answering nature's call out in public for all the world to see. I have seen little girls who look about 4 years old squatting in bushes. I once saw a Department of Streets & Sanitation employee pissing behind a dumpster on Winthrop. And just last week I saw a man taking a dump by the USPS mailbox at Wilson and Broadway.
I am begging you, people of Uptown. Please put waste in its proper receptacle.
ELSEWHERE:
My short reviews of Pride Films and Plays' Love Sucks and Chicago Children's Theatre's Goodnight Moon: The Musical are in this week's Chicago Reader.
Here's what I appreciate about lesbians. Contrary to the common misconception that they hate men, they don't, in fact, care one way or another about them in several important areas, including, by definition, the bedroom. This is not the case with the rest of us. The rest of us seem to spend a lot of time thinking about what would make men happy sexually, whether it's because we're men ourselves or because we want to have sex with them. Or both. But lesbians? Not interested.
I admire this freedom from phallocentrism. I don't share it, mind you, but I'm glad to know it's possible.
ELSEWHERE:
My review of Point of Contention Theatre Company's All the Girls Love Bobby Kennedy is in this week's Time Out Chicago.
Books
READ: The Two Noble Kinsmen by William Shakespeare [and John Fletcher], ed. by Lois Potter [a cautionary tale about what happens when the bros-before-hos code is violated].
Movies
SAW: Brighton Rock [the old one].
LAST WEEK'S MOVIE NIGHT PICKS:
MINE: Horrible Bosses.
KITO'S: Water for Elephants.
THIS WEEK'S THEME: Texas.
Art
SAW: "Charles James: Genius Deconstructed" @ Chicago History Museum [omg, that Swan dress, you guys].
Television
WATCHING: Top Chef (Bravo), Community (NBC), Parks and Recreation (NBC), The Simpsons (Fox), The Good Wife (CBS), Homeland (Showtime), Enlightened (HBO) [my current fave], Glee (Fox).
Current Interests
Comedy, musicals, the Internet, attractive men, movies, travel, the 2012 presidential campaign, my health, Chicago, writing.
Fool's Four
FOUR HEALTH-RELATED CONCERNS I HAVE AT THE MOMENT:
1. Halloween candy-induced cavities.
2. Halloween candy-induced diabetes.
3. Regularity.
4. Dutch elm disease.
Flashbacks
ONE YEAR AGO: "Eight rooms of adorable."
TWO YEARS AGO: "There's no sense in letting the evening become a COMPLETE waste; why don't I let a gay guy give me a blow job?"
THREE YEARS AGO: "saw my straight guy neighbor masturbating living room"
&
"Tweedledum said Tweedledee / Had spoiled his nice new rattle."
FOUR YEARS AGO: "Hedy Weiss commits the cardinal sin of newspaper reviewing."
FIVE YEARS AGO: Conduits for truth.
Glitter
Over the weekend, I saw a stage version of Goodnight Moon. This, however, remains my favorite adaptation of the book:
Over the weekend, I had a pain in my upper abdomen that I realize now was probably heartburn. At the time, of course, I attributed it to some imagined esophageal canker, probably corrosive and definitely cancerous. I had scarcely recovered from this scare before I discovered a bump behind my right earlobe--some type of dreadful skin malady, I immediately decided, until Kito took one look at it and declared it a zit.
I always feel silly about wasting time worrying over these things, yet I know that in about five minutes I'll find a new leading candidate for the ailment that turns out to be The One. I suppose that at some point I will land on the correct one, but I do not consider this very consoling.
ELSEWHERE:
My short review of Caffeine Theatre's Or, is in the current Chicago Reader.
Over time, one's longhand signature, like everything else, undergoes a process of decay. We start out writing our names carefully, but soon sloppiness intrudes, then illegibility, until finally we arrive at a state of crude abstraction--with two hastily scribbled loops and a dash serving to represent every name from Joe Smith to Maria Conchita Fernandez-Rosenbloom.
My own autograph has reached the unrecognizable stage. Last night I looked down at a debit card receipt and thought, "Who is this Vicki Thorn whose signature I'm always forging?"
ELSEWHERE:
My review of Teatro Vista's Momma's Boyz is in this week's Time Out Chicago.
