That night, lying flat on her back, Claire heard someone moving in the dark around her bed. She could hear breathing close by. She feared it might be the men who had beaten him, who had just come into the house. There was a leap, and Dorn's dog, who had been deciding from which side to enter the bed, burrowed next to her under the covers, its claws towards her. For a while it was still, and then, wanting more space, it pressed the claws gently, then more firmly, like tuning forks into her back.
--Michael Ondaatje, Divisadero
Tuesday, May 1, will be the second birthday of my dog, Lucy. William Shakespeare--whose plays, by the way, exhibit signs of an anti-dog bias--famously wrote that there are seven ages of man. Based on my experience with canines pre-Lucy, I would argue that there are three ages of dog:
frisky
regal
comatose
Following a puppyish period lasting from one to four years, dogs enter a dignified (yet stinky) middle age before reaching their twilight years, during which they get 23.5 hours of sleep per day. Lucy is still at the frisky stage--though heaven knows she can nap with the best of 'em. Here's a recent photo of her taken while she was conscious:
I've been on a sort of health and fitness kick lately. I've made efforts to minimize my consumption of flour and processed sugar, and have even resumed a modest weightlifting regimen at the gym.
In other words, I'm hungry and sore. Is this how healthy people feel all the time? Because it's hell.
A while back I set out to buy a trench coat, probably because I had read one of those fashion articles listing items every man should have in his closet. I am a sucker for those. They just seem so authoritative, you know? I mean, the people who write them are presumably the experts on these types of things. If they say my closet is deficient because it lacks a sheaf of crisp white oxford shirts and at least one pair of jodhpurs, who am I to argue with them?
Still, I think maybe the cut of the trench coat I chose is wrong for my body shape. Whenever I put it on, what I see in the mirror reminds me less of GQ than of Miss Jane Hathaway from The Beverly Hillbillies.
ELSEWHERE:
My review of City Lit Theater's Opus 1861 is in this week's Time Out Chicago.
Melancholy Play (Grey Ghost Theatre). Sarah Ruhl's first play--a comedy about the allure of unhappiness--is slight, but shows flashes of insight and wit. The same goes for Grey Ghost's inaugural production. Through May 13.
Fish Men (Teatro Vista). A young man takes on some chess hustlers, and the game takes an unexpected turn. The first act is entertaining, but the second packs a wallop. Through May 6.
Little Shop of Horrors (Street Tempo Theatre). A dark take on Howard Ashman and Alan Menken's campy musical about a nebbishy florist and his man-eating Venus flytrap. Directors Brian Posen and Kory Danielson try too hard to be edgy, but their staging is admirably bold and never boring. Through May 13.
The Improv Play (InFusion Theatre Company). Playwright Randall Colburn goes backstage at Chicago's improv theaters. A funny, unexpectedly poignant group portrait of some people beginning to realize their dreams won't come true. Through May 20.
For Earth Day, here are some lines about the names of the creatures who live here. This passage comes from Darlington's Fall, a novel in verse by Brad Leithauser.
Tonight's his chance
For glimpsing how Life's story might be put
In sentences, and every species but
A single word, with spelling variants.
(Though as for that, what gorgeous words they are:
Aurochs and oryx, gorilla and gazelle,
Ouzel and zebra, jaguar and jacamar,
Zebu and emu, lemur, philomel;
Saber-toothed tiger and scarlet tanager,
Golden tamarind, paradise flycatcher;
Langur and lamprey, quoll and quokka,
Thrips and thrush and foraminifera;
And the prodigal, sprung from winter's forge:
The yet-glowing ember of the rouge-gorge.)
(But as for that, what great plug-ugly words
They are: numbat, meerkat, muskrat, sprat;
Boobies and boobooks, warthogs and wattlebirds;
Milk snake, natterjack, muntjac, jackass; flat-
head catfish, wrasse, and trogon; grunion and pout,
Potoroo, rudistan, and red-necked grunt; black
Crappie, white grub, screwworm, screech owl; snout
Beetle, bettong, dugong, and stickleback;
Slug, quahog, dogfish, earwig, pug,
Pogy, pig-footed bandicoot, stinkbug.)
I don't want to give you the impression that I ogle men in public restrooms or anything, but now and then when I'm standing at a urinal I'll catch sight in my peripheral vision of a guy running his forefinger and thumb down the shaft of his penis as if it were a slide whistle. It's a fairly common occurrence. The movement seems to take place at the tail end of a piss, after the customary two or three vigorous shakes to dispense with the final driblets. I assume that the sliding motion is intended to have the same effect--i.e., to coax out the last beads of urine from the urethra.
It seems excessive to me. As far as I'm concerned, more than three shakes and it's playing with yourself.
Kito and I attended a wedding on Saturday. Later, he told me that he overheard another gay couple who were attending the reception get into a tiff because one of them didn't want to slow dance with the other on account of he wasn't comfortable with that level of man-on-man PDA. And so Kito wanted to thank me, he continued, for unashamedly joining him on the floor to sway through "At Last" performed by Etta James.
Now, of course I love Kito and don't care who knows it, but I have to level with you: I do not remember this out-loud-and-proud terpsichorean interlude. At that point in the evening, I was, as my late grandmother would say, "drunker than ol' Cooter Brown." In that state, I would have slow danced with Rick Santorum and for all I know, I did.
ELSEWHERE:
My reviews of Motherhood the Musical (GFour Productions) and Fish Men (Goodman Theatre/Teatro Vista) are in this week's Time Out Chicago.
I did my taxes last weekend. It's always an onerous task because part of my income is from freelancing. No payroll taxes are taken out of those checks, you see, so I end up owing the government. I could pay the feds in advance via quarterly installments, but then, I could do a lot of things.
This year I had my return prepared at H&R Block by a toad-shaped man with an unpleasantly coquettish demeanor. He kept telling me how youthful I looked and at one point said he wished he was as svelte as I am, only he pronounced it "shvelt" which should be a Yiddish word if it's not already.
I was pretty sure he was into me. I don't want to brag, but if there's one demographic this brand appeals to, it's unpleasantly coquettish toads. Unfortunately, I was not able to parlay his interest into a favorable outcome on my tax return. I still ended up having to write checks to America and Illinois for around $600 and $140, respectively.
ELSEWHERE:
My short reviews of InFusion Theatre Company's The Improv Play and Street Tempo Theatre's Little Shop of Horrors are in this week's Chicago Reader.
Books
READ: Fathers and Sons by Alexander Waugh [a witty, dry-eyed autobiography of the men in the Waugh family].
COMING UP: JK Rowling, Orhan Pamuk, Philip Roth.
Movies
LAST WEEK'S MOVIE NIGHT PICKS:
MINE: The Skin I Live In.
KITO'S: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close [that kid was the worst, am I right?].
Food
ATE: Cicchetti (Italian small plates)--including pork tongue with salsa verde, broccoli with chili and lemon, olives-feta-grapefruit, and pesce in saor (sardines)--and a shrimp tramezzini (a little crustless tea sandwich) @ Bar Ombra [loved the intimate atmosphere, and small plates are always fun to order--but the food was just okay].
Television
WATCHING: Community (NBC), 30 Rock (NBC), The Simpsons (Fox) [did you hear? Springfield is in Oregon], Bob's Burgers (Fox), The Good Wife (CBS), Glee (Fox) [see Glitter, below, for a clip from tonight's episode].
Current Interests
Kito, the Muppets, Glee, conservative Christians, the presidential campaign, books, travel, my childhood, technology, musical theater, Arkansas, Chicago, movies, my dog Lucy, Sarah Palin, the 1990s, money.
Fool's Four
NUMBERS WITH SIGNIFICANCE FOR CHICAGOANS:
1. 312.
2. 23.
3. 90/94.
4. 588-2300.
Flashbacks
ONE YEAR AGO: A brief synopsis of "Critic's Notebook," "my serialized story about Hedy Weiss getting framed for the murder of Mary Schmich--and the efforts of Janet Davies to uncover the truth."
THREE YEARS AGO: "Strange noises come from the apartment above mine."
FOUR YEARS AGO: Packing for a move: "it's like an archeological excavation of your own heart."
