Fool's Gold Coast

Istanbul (Not Constantinople)

Tomorrow Kito and I leave for Istanbul, where we'll spend a week looking at mosques and bazaars and such. We'll return to Chicago on September 5, provided we don't wind up in some sadistic Turkish prison. If that does happen, at least I'll know exactly what to say at my sham trial.

Have a lovely week and I'll see you next Thursday (God willing).

Harry Potter and My Waning Patience

I am about halfway through the third Harry Potter book, and based on what I've read so far, I don't think the series has much to offer an adult reader. The wizarding world of the novels seems to me ad hoc and incomplete, pieced together as it is from elements taken from other fantasy universes. Not to mention that many of the rules of the magical realm remain unclear, particularly in terms of how it overlaps with the world of we muggles. And the plots of the books, up to now at least, have adhered to a repetitive and fairly rigid formula, with only minor variations. I appreciate that author JK Rowling maintains a lighthearted tone throughout, avoiding the deadly dull seriousness that mars other fictional fairylands (I blame JRR Tolkien). But as far as I'm concerned, a pleasant tone isn't enough.

When I've voiced these complaints to the Potter fans I know, they assure me that things get better starting with the fourth book. This isn't what I would call a stirring argument for the defense, seeing as how it contains a tacit acknowledgement that the first 900 pages or so of the story are pretty mediocre. As I see it, you shouldn't have to go four books deep into a seven-book series before it starts getting good.

All That Glitters 156

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

Books
READ: The Alchemist by Ben Jonson [I'm with John Dryden: "I admire [Jonson], but I love Shakespeare"].

Movies
THIS WEEK'S MOVIE NIGHT PICKS:
THEME: '70s Comedies.
KITO'S SELECTION: Animal House (dir. Landis, 1978).
MINE: The Jerk (Reiner, 1979) [see Glitter, below, for a clip].

Current Interests
Television, dogs, Istanbul, Republicans, faith, aging, movies, my day job, art, Broadway, Kito, prisons, mental health, Chicago theater, books.

Fool's Four
FOUR THINGS MY DOG LUCY HATES:
1. The back stairs.
2. Sirens.
3. Getting brushed.
4. Babies.

Flashbacks
ONE YEAR AGO: "I still refuse to read Little House on the Prairie."
TWO YEARS AGO: "The best name of any theater critic in town."
FIVE YEARS AGO: "I am relieved to learn that not every blog has a readership composed entirely of Australian sex maniacs."
&
"My mother kept clucking her tongue and remembering that she had always heard that Princeton was awfully fast."
SIX YEARS AGO: "The Last Four Songs Played on My MP3 Player."
&
"I guess you'll just have to stay on pins and needles a little longer regarding who killed Lana Woods, what Bess saw in the dead girl's apartment, and whether Jack will return to sucking cock."

Glitter

Kill It

I always get nervous when a distressed character in a movie or TV drama starts running a bath because if he or she also starts glaring into a mirror it always, always means that character is about to commit suicide. The bath is supposed to help the blood flow freely once you've opened a vein, while glaring into a mirror is meant to symbolize obviousness, as Ralph Wiggum would say.

I feel that it's time to retire this trope, for I suspect that the pre-suicide mirror bit is rarely if ever enacted in real life. While we're on the subject, I also suspect that Hollywood vastly overestimates the number of people who have shattered their bathroom mirrors during fits of self-loathing. Nine times out of 10 you just eat a Baconator from Wendy's and that's the end of it.

ELSEWHERE:
My review of the Hypocrites' The Fall of the House of Usher is in this week's Time Out Chicago.

Stairway to Hell

The apartment building where I live has a small backyard that comes in handy when I need to walk my dog, Lucy, late at night or early in the morning. I live on the second floor, however, and Lucy refuses to go down the back stairs, presumably because she finds them too steep. Seeing as how she only weighs 12 pounds, I don't mind carrying her down, but since I am usually, at most, only 23% awake when it's late at night or early in the morning--and since the stairs are, indeed, pretty steep--I worry that I will trip and send one or both of us flying over the railing. Not to mention that the stairs are metal and therefore bound to get slippery in the winter.

Each time I'm out there, I can almost feel what it would be like. The split-second loss of control. The flash of terror. Lucy's horrible yelp.

I can't decide if this nightmare vision puts me on guard to prevent it from coming to pass or if imagining a terrible thing somehow summons it into existence in the manner of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Maybe I shouldn't regard an architectural feature as an adjunct of my own psyche. Then again, maybe I should take the front stairs.

ELSEWHERE:
My short reviews of Pandemonium Theatre Group's Two Rooms and Theater-Hikes' Streeterville are in this week's Chicago Reader.

Dreamcatcher

My dreams have been especially vivid lately. The scenarios are the usual stuff--scenes of mild humiliation and discomfort--but they've been rendered with the immediacy and crisp detail of real life. I'm considering starting a dream journal. The trouble with keeping one of those, though, is that you have to start writing immediately upon waking unless you want to lose the dream, but it's hard to write in that bleary and discombobulated state.

I kept a dream journal for a brief spell in college after I saw Oprah talking about it on TV. Around the same time, I was taking a performance class in which one of the assignments was to enact a "reaction to a work of art or a dream." Because that's the way the instructor phrased it, I misunderstood the assignment. I thought the second option was to perform a reaction to a dream, when actually the choices were a.) to perform a dream or b.) to perform a reaction to a work of art. I would argue that the instructor is to blame for speaking without precision, but, then again, I am the only one in the class who didn't get it.

In my performance, I read passages from my dream journal and analyzed the entries in a comically neurotic way, assigning the dreams ever more ridiculous and increasingly menacing meanings. From this distance it sounds godawful, but as I recall, it got a laugh, which is all I was going for anyway.

All That Glitters 155

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

Books
READ: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by JK Rowling [so are all the books exactly the same or just the first two?], Volpone by Ben Jonson.
COMING UP: Orhan Pamuk, Alastair Brotchie.

Plays
SAW: Eastland (Lookingglass Theatre Company) [the best show I've seen so far this year].

Movies
LAST WEEK'S MOVIE NIGHT PICKS:
THEME: Charles Dickens.
KITO'S SELECTION: A Tale of Two Cities (dir. Conway, 1935).
MINE: Oliver! (Reed, 1968) [see Glitter, below, for my favorite part].

Television
WATCHING: Warehouse 13 (Syfy), Louie (FX), Episodes (Showtime).
STREAMING: Boys over Flowers [I've decided that Jan Di should choose Joo Goon Pyo; Ji Hoo is WAY too emo], The LA Complex.

Current Interests
Chicago theater, movies, books, musicals, conservative Christians, food, dogs, the presidential election, Arkansas, Honey Boo Boo, the gays, crime in Chicago, Wisconsin, Latinos.

Fool's Four
FOUR KOREAN WORDS I KNOW (SPELLED PHONETICALLY):
1. "Anyong" [hi].
2. "Aish" [argh].
3. "Noona" [older sister].
4. "Bibimbap" [wonderfulness].

Flashbacks
ONE YEAR AGO: "If either of you boys get some pussy tonight, I want you to dust that pussy off for me. Dust it off!"
TWO YEARS AGO: "See, this is why new mothers drive their cars into lakes."
THREE YEARS AGO: "What I'm saying, basically, is that our entire office is covered in fecal matter."
FOUR YEARS AGO: "Monday Musical Mystery Solved."
&
"Old or dead comedians who are still funny."
FIVE YEARS AGO: "I'm not saying you have to stay silent during sex, but jeez! Lower it an octave."
SIX YEARS AGO: "Zac remplacera Star Jones."

Glitter

ELSEWHERE:
My short review of 16th Street Theater's All Kinds of Crazy is in this week's Chicago Reader.

Shows Worth Seeing 16

Eastland (Lookingglass Theatre Company). A musical about the 1915 SS Eastland disaster, in which a ship capsized in the Chicago River, killing 844 passengers. Backed by a beautiful, folksy score by Andre Pluess and Ben Sussman, author Andrew White captures the fragility and evanescence of ordinary lives. Through August 19.

Ah, Wilderness! (Eclipse Theatre Company). All-American corn pone, dreamed up by Eugene O'Neill of all people. As the earnest teenager at the center of things, Alex Weisman manages to convey adolescent self-seriousness and satirize it at the same time. Through September 2.

Three Sisters (Steppenwolf Theatre Company). Anton Chekhov's most Chekhovian play can settle into dreamy languor if you're not careful. Director Anna Shapiro seems determined not to let that happen. The results: a contemporary-sounding, context-free adaptation by Tracy Letts and scorching performances by a perfectly cast ensemble. Through August 26.

Reefer Madness (Circle Theatre). Tongue-in-cheek propaganda about the evils of marijuana use. There is precisely one joke in Kevin Murphy's script, but director Matthew Gunnels and a hysterical, high-energy cast milk it for all it's worth. Through August 26.

Proto-Tweets

In the following passage from Volpone, playwright Ben Jonson satirizes Twitter 400 years avant la lettre. The exchange comes from act four, scene one, during a conversation between an English knight called Sir Politic Would-Be and a "gentleman traveler" called Peregrine.

SIR POLITIC: This is my diary,
Wherein I note my actions of the day.

PEREGRINE: Pray you let's see, sir. What is here?
[He reads.]
"Notandum,
A rat had gnawn my spur leathers; notwithstanding,
I put on new and did go forth; but, first,
I threw three beans over the threshold. Item,
I went and bought two toothpicks, whereof one
I burst, immediately, in a discourse
With a Dutch merchant, 'bout ragion del stato.
From him I went and paid a moccenigo
For piecing my silk stockings; by the way,
I cheapened sprats, and at Saint Mark's I urined."--
Faith, these are politic notes!

SIR POLITIC: Sir, I do slip
No action of my life, thus but I quote it.

Anyong!

After I got caught up with Game of Thrones (I vote for turning the Seven Kingdoms over to Arya, by the way), I had some trouble finding a new TV show to work my way through. I considered Breaking Bad, but it looks stressful. Then I decided on Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman but it's not readily available.

Eventually I let the BFF talk me into watching a Korean soap opera called Boys over Flowers. It's about this spunky teenage girl, Jan Di, who gets to go to a ritzy high school as a reward for saving a student's life. Only it's not that great of a reward after all, because everyone at the school is snooty to a sadistic degree and they all look down on her for her middle-class upbringing (her parents are dry cleaners because, like I said, we're in Korea).

Things get worse for Jan Di when she falls afoul of the coolest, most powerful clique in school, known as F4. This is a gang of four ultra-rich "playas" (their word) who walk the halls in slow motion and look like an all-trans boy band. Things must be different in Korea, because this quartet would not have been popular at my high school. In any case, the F4 do not take kindly to Jan Di when she stands up to them, and so they resolve to put her in her place.

Actually, only one of the F4 is legitimately evil. Two of them are just henchmen, and the other happens to be Jan Di's star-crossed love interest. She fell for him when she saw him in the woods practicing his violin in a sexy way. Personally, I think one of the henchmen is cuter--he looks like an Asian Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

The whole thing appears to have been shot on somebody's cell phone and scored using a Casio keyboard stuck on the John Williams Lite setting.

So far I love it.