Fool's Gold Coast

All That Glitters 137: Year-in-Review Edition

A look at how I diverted myself in 2011.

Books
FAVORITE BOOKS I READ OR REREAD THIS YEAR, listed in the order I completed them:
Timon of Athens by William Shakespeare, ed. by Anthony B. Dawson and Gretchen E. Minton
How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain de Botton
Twenty-Eight Artists and Two Saints by Joan Acocella
Call Me by Your Name by Andre Aciman
Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago by Mike Royko
We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live by Joan Didion

Plays
FAVORITE SHOWS I SAW THIS YEAR:
1. Church/Pullman, WA (Red Tape Theatre).
2. Solo Works (Theatre Zarko).
3. Moby-Dick (The Building Stage).
4. Waiting for Drew Peterson (The Annoyance).

For a complete rundown of the year's theatrical highlights, please see the post dated December 11, where you will find The Coasties: Fool's Gold Coast's Second Annual Non-Monetary Awards Recognizing Achievement in the Dramatic Arts.

Movies
FAVORITE MOVIES I SAW THIS YEAR:
1. The Tree of Life.
2. Of Gods and Men.
3. Cave of Forgotten Dreams.

Art
FAVORITE EXHIBITS I SAW THIS YEAR, listed in the order I saw them:
Erik de Bat, "Risk and Reward" @ Hilton Renaissance
"Nulla Dies Sine Linea" @ Instituto Cervantes
Matt Irie, "You Are the Vanishing Point" @ Ebersmoore
"Windows on the War: Soviet TASS Posters at Home and Abroad, 1941-1945" @ Art Institute of Chicago
Charles James, "Genius Deconstructed" @ Chicago History Museum

Primary Interests
US politics, female vocalists, my family, my dog Lucy, comedy, books, movies, theater, Chicago, pop music, Kito, the Internet, the BFF.

Glitter
It's New Year's Eve. Go nuts!

Happy 2012, everybody!

All That Glitters 136

A look at how I've been diverting myself lately.

Books
READ: We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live by Joan Didion [seven of her nonfiction books--from Slouching towards Bethlehem to Where I Was From--collected in one volume]; Shakespeare's Poems, ed. by Katherine Duncan-Jones and HR Woudhuysen [everything but the sonnets--i.e., Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, and various attributed scraps].
COMING UP: Alexander Waugh, Michael Ondaatje, Gunter Grass.

Movies
SAW: It's a Wonderful Life [as part of the Music Box's annual Christmas show], The Descendants [on Christmas day, because my mom thought Warhorse was going to be "too sad"].
THIS WEEK'S MOVIE NIGHT PICKS:
MINE: Another Earth.
KITO'S: Friends with Benefits [you get to see Justin Timberlake's ass several times].
NEXT WEEK'S THEME: Overbearing Mothers.

Current Interests
GOP presidential candidates, comedy, my family, my appearance, Patti LuPone, Hillary Clinton, children's literature, year-in-review listicles, movies, the closet, the holidays, Beckett, Mike Royko, pop music.

Fool's Four
FOUR REJECTED NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS:
1. Come to terms with something or other.
2. Temper my use of Sriracha.
3. Watch less TV.
4. Pull myself together.

Flashbacks
ONE YEAR AGO: "A look at how I diverted myself in 2010."
&
"In 2011, I resolve to attend every party I'm invited to."
TWO YEARS AGO: "A look at how I diverted myself in 2009."

Glitter
The only show I've seen in the last three weeks is the national tour of The Addams Family. Talk about your doldrums.

Resolution 2012

In 2011, I resolved to attend every party I was invited to, presumably in a misguided effort to combat my reclusive tendencies. By February 1, I had already RSVP'd "no" to two or three get-togethers. I guess you can't fight your own nature.

For 2012, I'm setting a goal more in line with my true interests.

I resolve to attend at least one extracurricular theater show per month.

By "extracurricular theater show" I mean a show I wasn't assigned to review for the Reader or Time Out Chicago.

I also intend to eat more vegetables, attend a yoga class, get a facial, and give up diet soda.

Happy New Year, everybody!

Wal-Art

While Kito and I were in Arkansas for Christmas, we paid a visit to the new Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville. It contains numerous works--from the colonial era to the present--acquired by Walmart heiress Alice Walton, who evidently really likes 19th century landscape paintings. Those are nice and all, but I preferred the portraits by John Singleton Copley and Thomas Eakins and a sexy boxer painted by Marsden Hartley and a luminous moon by Arthur Dove and Richard Caton Woodville's 1848 War News from Mexico. And I'm delighted that they're all in northwest Arkansas.

The security guards were a bit overzealous for my taste, though. As in every art museum on earth, they're retirees and members of racial minorities. At Crystal Bridges, they enforce a strict 3-foot perimeter around every piece of art in the building, which presents a challenge for we myopic gallery-goers. I kept getting chided for leaning in too close. One guy even reprimanded me for brushing against a wall that had no discernible art affixed to it--not so much as a single Dan Flavin fluorescent tube. "Please don't touch any wall," he said, "even if it doesn't have art." I got the feeling that the museum's ideal guest would be one wearing a hazmat suit.

Which is not to say the guards aren't helpful and informative. I heard one man stationed near Norman Rockwell's Rosie the Riveter repeatedly tell passersby that Rosie's muscular body was inspired by a painting done by "Michael d'Angelo."

I assume he's a relative of Beverly's.

A Little Girl from Little Rock

Kito and I have returned from our Christmas trip to Arkansas, which is where I grew up. Before arriving at my mom's house in Springdale, we spent a couple of days with my youngest sister, who lives in Little Rock. Let's look at pictures of some buildings there!

The William J. Clinton Presidential Library, which I think is supposed to look like a Bridge to the 21st Century or something, but actually looks an awful lot like a double-wide. Two words I couldn't find anywhere inside: "Monica Lewinsky."

The Old State House, Arkansas' former capitol building.

Little Rock Central High School, site of the well-known 1957 integration crisis. Across the street, there's a small museum where I guarantee you will cry your eyes out.

The current State Capitol.

The Villa Marre, which was used for exterior shots of Julia Sugarbaker's house on Designing Women. It doesn't look right in person.

Okay, that's all. Take it away, Carol Channing!

ELSEWHERE:
My short review of The Addams Family (currently at the Cadillac Palace Theatre) is in this week's Chicago Reader.

I'll Be Home for Christmas

Tomorrow morning Kito and I leave for Arkansas to spend Christmas with my family. We'll be in Little Rock, Bentonville, Jasper, Springdale, and points in between. You can expect a new entry here shortly after I return to Chicago on Monday. In the meantime, have a lovely holiday and I'll see you soon.

Christmas Wish List 2011

I want . . .

--a pair of those gloves that let you operate touch-screen devices without having to use your bare fingers
--visible abdominal muscles
--a leather jacket
--the ability to pull off wearing a leather jacket
--a facial (not the dirty kind)
--perfect pitch
--lost time regained
--chicken nuggets (always)
--a cat
--new glasses frames--or, better yet, 20/20 vision
--my own pinball machine
--Ryan Gosling
--a very long nap
--a head massage
--good things for those having a hard time
--a Roseanne reunion
--an Obama victory in 2012
--a happy New Year

Merry Christmas and may God bless us, every one.

Wreck the Halls

I returned home from my office holiday party on Friday night to find that my stocking, although still dangling from its little hook, had been stripped of each and every one of its adornments. The circumstantial evidence points to my dog, Lucy, as the culprit. She's the only one who had the motive, means, and opportunity (the motive: incorrigible naughtiness).

"Why would you do this?" I asked upon deducing her guilt. "I have been nothing but nice."

She showed no signs of remorse and tried to lick up my left nostril. As I recall, those are the two surest signs of sociopathy.

I Wonder As I Wander

I'll tell you what bugs me about that show The Wonder Years. The voiceover narration by grownup Kevin Arnold, performed by Daniel Stern, sounds nothing like the voice of childhood Kevin Arnold, performed by Fred Savage. I could let it slide in the early episodes, when Kevin Arnold was still prepubertal and his voice hadn't changed yet, but how do you explain the later seasons, when the mid- and post-pubertal voice of Fred Savage remained far from that of Daniel Stern?

They could have easily thrown in an explanation somewhere. Like towards the end of an episode, after Winnie Cooper had committed her weekly bit of frustrating cockteasery, but before whatever Baby Boomer anthem started playing over the credits, Daniel Stern could say, via voiceover, "All of this happened before I had the nodes on my vocal cords removed." Bam. Cue The Byrds or the Archies or whoever.

Would that have been so hard?

ELSEWHERE:
My short review of The Fine Print Theatre Company's Christmas in Chicago is in this week's Chicago Reader.

It's Christmastime in the City

According to a friend of mine, a former Chicagoan of his acquaintance told him that the thing he missed most about Christmas in the Windy City was "black people in Santa hats." Just going about their daily business--walking down the street, riding the bus--while wearing Santa hats.

When my friend first told me this, I thought he was crazy and vaguely racist. And ever since, when December rolls around, I see black people in Santa hats everywhere I look.

And now so will you.

Happy holidays!