Re-Seduced: Minnesota Fringe Festival, Day 2.

On Sunday, we once again rearranged dinner plans slightly to accommodate our theatre schedule. Also, Saturday was just a leeettle overindulgent on the food and booze front, so a later dinner was not a bad idea.

First up, Steampunk! Anyone who knows anything about me knows that a show called Robot Lincoln: The Revengeance (The Musical) is like crack tailored to my specific nerd receptors, so that was our first show on Saturday, back at the Thrust (STOLL!) stage at the Rarig Center. (See previous entry for bitching about the building, but liking the actual space.) As we waited in the traditional second of 2 lines, I tweeted gleefully about the warning sign outside the theatre (guns, strobe lights, adult language, and violence), and broke the rules about no photography (only realized that I was breaking a rule in retrospect; also I'm not sure taking a picture of my program counts as rule breaking, even though I was in the theatre) to capture the Best. Dramatis. Personae. Evar.



Sadly, the show itself was pretty disappointing. The "plot" was convoluted and there wasn't much in the way of fun dialogue. The performers were singing to taped music, which led to a lot of problems. (I feel like an utter shit mentioning that—my homeless, underfunded theatre group had to do the same with a production of Mother Courage and Her Children, and it was a nightmare.) On the plus side, the group seems to have paid a lot of attention to the design, and that paid off. Robot Lincoln's costume was terrific, and there were a number of other great visual touches.

The "love duet" between Booth and Robot Lincoln was everything I think the show could have been with more time and stability for the production. Jason Garton was terrific as Booth, and Libby Slater was hilarious as Mary Todd Lincoln (less so as "Uncle Samantha," but that character was a very sketchy).

From the Rarig Center we were off to the Gremlin Theatre in St. Paul for The Duties and Responsibilities of Being a Sidekick by The Barkada Theatre Project. Other than being a sucker for superhero stuff, we hadn't chosen this show for any particular reason, but I'm so glad we did. The show was really well written (an interesting, compact story—no mean feat with a maximum of 60 minutes), had great fight choreography, and the cast (featuring Randy Reyes, whom we'd loved in Brain Fighters on Saturday) was just great from top to bottom. Also, great pre-show and entr'acte music, even if they DID cut us off on the theme from The Greatest American Hero just when we were taking it to the bridge.

From the Gremlin back to Theatre Garage for Those Were the Days by Blue Umbrella Productions. TV themes arranged swing-choir style with a minimal, but well-done framing story? Yes please! Really great arrangements, great ensemble and solo work from the whole cast (I forgive the mishap with the Jem theme, though it is dear to my heart), fun choreography. I'm not sure I would have done the whole Eight is Enough theme, but it's not my show, now is it? Shutting up, sir.

And finally, back to the Thrust at the Rarig Center for The Smothers Brothers Grimm., by Comedy Suitcase. This was the show we'd rearranged our dinner plans for. It had some great highlights, especially the closing "silent film," but the whole show was uneven.

The framing premise involves Milton, a young boy (wonderful work by Andrew Moy) who has recently lost his comedy-obsessed grandfather, and whose parents are convinced that he is not dealing with the loss. The parents try to get him to sleep by telling fairy tales, but Milton insists on "punching them up like grandpa would." We get Hansel & Gretel as told by Laurel & Hardy. Our group was divided on this. I mostly liked it, but felt it went on a bit long (then again, it's Laurel & Hardy . . .). Next was Rapunzel a la I Love Lucy, which just felt awkward and as if there weren't a lot of there there. Bob Newhart responding to the 911 call from the Three Bears, suffered from not enough Bob Newharty goodness. Some of the interstitial stuff with the parents and lovable drunk uncle were really good, and some fell a bit flat. The epic silent Sleeping Beauty segment was epic.

I was hit really hard by the realization that my fun at Fringe was over. I'm still trying to talk myself off the ledge of crazy renewal of my involvement in theatre.

Re-Seduced: Minnesota Fringe Festival, Day 1

So, I used to do theatre, right? And then, quite a while ago, I broke up with it. Mostly. I mean, sure, I have been doing reviews, but that's safe, right? I mean, it's not like I'd go crazy and see 7 plays in two days and then desperately miss doing theatre, right? RIGHT?

Insert insane cackle here.

So I went to Minneapolis for my bunny-faced friend's birthday, and this just so happens to coincide with the first weekend of the Minnesota Fringe Festival: 168 plays, each no more than 1 hour long, running in rotation at 18 different venues. Um . . . ok, when I write that out, I don't sound like someone committed to recovery and breaking with my codependent ways . . .

BUT NEVER YOU MIND THAT.

We were set up with a 10-show pass and 3 buttons initially, and on Saturday, we were headed to Intermedia Arts for I'm Making This Up as I Go on Saturday afternoon. It was not the most auspicious beginning. The crowd was small and the sets were . . . of uneven quality . . . however, the last comedian, Mike Lester, was bizarre and quite funny.

Next, we were off to the Minneapolis Theatre Garage for Vampire Lesbians of Sodom by Brazen Theatre. I'm pretty sure I saw this show in Chicago more than a dozen years ago, but couldn't remember much about it. Having refreshed my memory, that's not surprising—it's a funny concept with a lot of potential, but the show itself is a bit ho-hum. As for the production: Its wigs were truly magnificent and Mark Hooker/Margo Caprice was fantastic as one of the titular sinners. In fact, he was so fantastic, I nearly failed to suppress my fan-girl-itude when we saw him 112 Eatery later that night. (Fear not, my pathological introversion raced to the rescue once again, and he and his companion were left in peace.)

The highlight of Saturday was definitely Brain Fighters by Joking Envelope on the Thrust stage (aka STOLL!) at the Rarig Center on the U of M's campus. As you can see from the linked photo, this building was forged in the bowels of architectural hell.

When we arrived, there was a line out the door for securing tickets (the system for multi-show pass holders was to hand over the pass for the appropriate number of punches in exchange for tickets), and then we had to trudge through the belly of the beast to wait in a second line into the theater. With no real sense of how big the venue was, we were worried—so worried that we did not get ice cream from the ice cream truck, despite my having loudly yelled "ICE CREAM TRUCK!" upon seeing it. I had tweeted a couple of pictures of the lines and made public my fear of missing the show, but the lovely Sara Stevenson Scrimshaw responded to say that we should not fear, as the theater was large.

And it was! Despite the building being ugly and having nothing resembling a plan for flow of actual people, the space was great and the show was greater. It's a three-person, all-ages show written by Joseph Scrimshaw, whom you may remember from such awesome cruises as JoCoCruise Crazy. (Can someone please tell me why Joseph Scrimshaw is not superextradoublefudgey famous?)

The script was funny and wonderfully paced. The three actors (JS himself, Randy Reyes [whom we'd have the pleasure of seeing in another great show on Sunday], and Mo Perry) worked flawlessly together and nailed the physical requirements of the story (ok, that sounds weird unless you know the plot, which involves being able to turn yourself into anything you can convincingly imagine). Oh, just go see it if you possibly can.

We'd initially had a dinner reservation that would have conflicted with Brain Fighters, but we rearranged our schedule to support our local Sea Monkey. This left us with a 9:30 reservation at the aforementioned 112 Eatery (and I would like to note once again that I DID NOT fangirl all over anyone there) and time to kill in between. We'd intended to go to Moto-I on Friday night, but we were seduced by champagne cocktails, chocolate chip cookies, yoga pants, and Ike, who thinks he is a lap dog.


The downtime between theater and dinner on Saturday gave us, as a group, time for sake and snacks at Moto-I, and me, as an individual, time to contemplate breaking and entering so that I could pet Casper the Great Pyrenees, who IS SO FLUFFY! Really enjoyed the sake flight at Moto-I (Junmai Nama Genshu was the best!), and the many yummy snacks we had that are lost to the mists of the sake flight and the Ginger Mistress.

Fear not, puppy lovers, I did eventually get to cuddle Casper (who, as previously mentioned, IS SO FLUFFY!), however briefly, before we headed to 112.
A word about 112 itself before getting to the good parts: Loud loud loud loud loud. LOUD. I wish that it weren't so loud.

We shared a bottle of a Turley Old Vines Zinfandel and continued our communist ways all through the meal. We had truly amazing scallops with oyster mushrooms, frog legs that are very nearly as good as those at Brigtsen's (I do not say this lightly), the 112 steak tartare (which kind of buried the lede, if one assumes the steak is the lede—it was weirdly chicken salad–like, and we wished we'd gotten it "unprepared"), and fried Shishito peppers (we liked Moto-I's version better). For our mains, we shared the prociutto ahi tuna (amazing), the stringozzi w/ lamb sugo (amazing fresh pasta, but the lamb didn't shine through), and the nori encrusted sirloin w/ ponzu (good . . . not great, though).

For dessert, the butterscotch budino (I don't like butterscotch at all, but this was relatively tasty), the lemon cheesecake, and . . . this is not good: I cannot for the life of me remember what I had. It was good. It was probably chocolate based. it is not on the menu they have up online. Olive oil chocolate cake! (Thank you, bunny-faced one!)

Ok, this is already a bit long, so I'll do Day 2 later on.

You Don't Bring Me Fruit, Flowers, Appliances, Ideas or Symbols Any More: Robbie Fulks' Year-End Wra

Snow all the way down home from 'Tosa and no lights on 294 tried to keep us from Fitzgerald's and Robbie's year-end show last night. Fools! Not even a full-fledged Mayan Apocalypse could have kept us away from our 4th Anniversary with the Half Man, Half Horse. Unfortunately, it DID leave my friend E standing alone at the bar for like 40 minutes . . .

E texted me upon her arrival to give us the heads up: Bill had removed ALL tables and seating for the night. When we were paying the cover, the door guy advised us that they were expecting a VERY full house indeed and suggested we check our coats. Despite lack of seating, E had secured the ideal place for leaning against the curve of the bar. She was also talking to a woman. Said woman:

• was rocking an awesome 40s look,
  
• had a rockin' skull bag after which I have often lusted in my heart (she reciprocated by lusting for my Lexie Barnes skull bag), and
  
• turned out to be with the bass player for the Long Gone Lonesome Boys, who were once again opening!
  

Neither Fitzgerald's nor Robbie's websites noted that they were opening (or, indeed, that anyone was opening), so this was an extremely pleasant surprise. The place indeed began filling up early, putting to rest any fears that the weather would be keeping anyone away.

The LGLB got started just a few minutes after nine. Sadly, they were missing multi-instrumentalist master Pat Keiner, although they had a friend sitting in on the third harmony part (he was very good, but I didn't catch his name, alas. They opened

with "Small Batch Bourbon" (or "Small Batch Whiskey"?), which I thought was new. The ZK believed that he'd heard it before, but I don't see it on either of their current CDs. Next up (or soon after: they had a special on Blue Moon and I'm only human) was "I Go Commando," which John Milne announced is the title of their soon-to-be-released CD. AWESOME! For 12 months we have repeatedly lamented that there was no recorded version of this available (although I lucked out having heard John perform it solo at the Acoustic Explosion last January).

We also got "King of Beers," "Burning Blue" (a Patrick Penny song that apparently doesn't come up a lot on the iPod [I thought it was new as well]; loved it!), "Wasn't That A Day" (probably my favorite song of theirs, but I reserve judgment until I hear "Knifer Biker" live), "www.lonesome.com," and "I'm Sober and My Woman's True to Me." I'm probably missing a few (see above re: Blue Moon). The set was awesome, which was convenient for me, as I'd talked them up a great deal to E, and she was suitably impressed. The LGLB had a very good crowd (and many folks seemed to be familiar with them if not flat out there to see them), but the place did continue to fill in throughout the break.

Last year, you may recall, there was some unpleasantness at Robbie's year-end show. This year, the overall mood seemed more contented, and it seemed that most of the crowd knew that they were not in for a simple, straightforward Robbie show. In addition, though, it seemed as if Robbie and the band had scaled back the "bits." There was nothing on the year's music (which may be explained by this blog entry), and Robbie later revealed that someone who was supposed to be playing Michael Jackson had to drop out because he'd gotten a corporate gig, and apparently the good people at Walgreen's didn't think that the two performances were compatible.

The beginning of the set was front loaded with what seemed like more music, including "Tears Only Run One Way," "Mad at a Girl," "Georgia Hard," "Cigarette State," "Took a Lot of Pills and Died." Not sure which song ended the first part of the show, but Robbie thanked the crowd for the enthusiastic applause and warned them that they'd put their hands together for the last time—for a while at least. Everyone except Gerald and Robbie beat feet offstage, and the two of them launched into "Rap of the Dead." Awesome as always, although Robbie seemed to struggle more early on than I recall in previous years. Superbonus points for working in "And Then There's Maude" this year.

The political satire was bookended by a wackidy-schmackidy-dooo musical theme "The Year that Everything Changed," which was kicked off by Mike, a delightfully squashy old man hat, and an honest-to-Baal corn cob pipe. It featured a seasonal set up for teabaggers (played by Donna and Beth Kathan) "Do You You Want Some Healthcare? (Yes, We Want Some Healthcare!)." The teabaggers' list of complaints provided the segue into a bit featuring Gerald as a recent immigrant to the US.

(I probably should raise an outcry against typecasting Gerald: Just because the man clearly has to shave out eye and nose holes from his lush facial hair, he shouldn't be doomed to such roles. I probably should do that, but damn, slap a newsy cap on the boy and he's an immigrant from Anyplace, Wide World.)

Robbie, in a lab coat and Buddy Holly glasses served as Gerald's immigrant guide in a number called "The Land of Unmerited Acclaim." Grant, as an AIG executive, Donna as Sarah Palin, and Beth as Paris Hilton helped Robbie to explain to our wide-eyed newcomer that "do" and "make" are really third world concepts.

Just when I was about to lean back to the ZK and say, "Paris Hilton jokes? Really?" Immigrant!Gerald said: "Paris Hilton jokes? Really?" Robbie then explained his fool-proof suburban comedy formula: One subtracts six months of time for every half mile outside of the city; thus, in Berwyn time, Paris Hilton is just now entering the LA county jail.

Robbie and Gerald continued to vamp on the theme of unmerited acclaim for . . . some time. Enough time, in fact, that Robbie had to hang a lantern on the length of time a certain costume change was taking. But it was all worth it when Beth emerged in an uncanny Michael Jackson costume to join Scott Ligon as Roman Polanski on a deeply, deeply wrong number called "We All Have a Child Inside." A number SO WRONG in fact, that this was certainly what caused everyone to leave the stage after Scott harangued Robbie for his cynicism about a year in which real change had been realized. (Of course, Gerald only left because he's a born follower.)

Via internal monologue, Robbie reflected on why he always goes too far. He ended by vowing to not dwell on THAT WAR, but instead to juice himself up to get invested in THIS WAR. It was at this point that the pinnacle of the show was reached with Grant in a metal!hair wig ROCKING THE FUCK out to "War Cry of the Moderates." Far before the end of it, I was in full-on Muttley mode, pounding the bar and trying to retain control of my Blue-Moon-filled bladder. (I'm sorry, but I overshare because I love.)

At this point, it was all over but the audience participation. In years past, the trivia game did tend to drag a bit. Robbie remedied that this year with a game called "Stump Scottie." Gerald wandered through the audience, calling on people to name a band, trying to find one that Scott Ligon would not be able to break into on the keyboards. I was rubbing my hands in glee when they threw a wrench into the works: Pre-1980.

The first couple attempts were weak (ELO, I think . . . and something equally obvious), next someone stumped him with X, which flabbergasted me. If he has that big a punk blindspot, I could have EASILY named a dozen bands. But the biggest fail came with Ready For the World. Bitch, please. "Oh Sheila," was sooooo post-1980. But the props were distributed to the winners, the review was wrapped up, and the band launched into the second half of the set.

This included "Goodbye, Cruel Girl" (I estimate that the opening held note exceeded 12 parsecs [yes, nerdlingers, I know]), "Can't Win For Losing You," "Busy Not Cryin'," and "Parallel Bars." Once again, "I Wanna Be Mama'd," was a phish-adjacent 15 minute jam. Last year, Chris Neville was made into Robbie's keyboard-playing monkey; this year, Scott Ligon had refused this role in an earlier song when Robbie demanded some Thelonious Monk. During "I Wanna Be Mama'd," though, he at last provided the Monk.

Robbie then called on Gerald for a solo. This was not ideally timed, as Gerald was playing with brushes and thus was hard to hear. The bar actually quieted down to near silence while Robbie handed out drumsticks to all the other band members. They then wandered the stage, using all available surfaces and objects as drums. This included their own microphones, which may have angered sound man. (Trust me when I say that you do not want to anger any sound man, but particularly not Fitzgerald's Sound Man.)

I'm not sure if it was before or after this that something dire was going on with Robbie's guitar. The middle basically dropped out of it, leaving a strange hole in his sound that reminded me of my burr coffee grinder. He then proceeded to break a string during, "Let's Kill Saturday night."

Obviously none of this impeded the end-of-show improv during the first encore. Scott Ligon immediately fled for the green room, and Mike was offstage because bassist Brett Simons had reunited with Robbie for an end of the year humbling. This left Gerald as the first victim, but Grant returned to get in on the action as well. And despite his recalcitrant guitar, Robbie he made a valiant attempt to start out "The Buck Starts Here," on Ligon's ukulele and produced something solo adjacent on it.

Bill was sending some seriously mixed signals after the first encore: The lights flicked on briefly, then were immediately dimmed to half. At one point we were sure that we heard the house music come on, but nonetheless, they pulled off Gordon Terry's "Lotta Lotta Women" for their final FINAL encore, during which the ukulele was further abused.

Great show, 100% less drama than last year. Rock star!

Review: Young Frankenstein at the Cadillac Palace Theatre

My review for EDGE Chicago

Review: Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead at Writer's Theatre

My review for EDGE Chicago.

Review: Big Fan + Q & A with Robert Siegel and Patton Oswalt

EATA: Awesome! Video of the Q & A.

ETA: Oops, I butchered the spelling of the director's name in my original post title. Sorry, Mr. Siegel, wherever you are!

I'm not defensive about being a Twitter user, but if I were I would defend it by pointing out the fact that I wouldn't have known that Patton was scheduled to be at yesterday's second showing of Big Fan at the Music Box Theatre. So THERE, STOOPID HEADS?!?! I AM EATING TWINKIES! LOLZ!

I actually didn't know much about the movie at all before we were standing in line for our 9:40 showing. Some of the promotional materials pointed out that Siegel (who wrote and directed this) was the writer of The Wrestler. The ZK then commented that he'd heard this wasn't a "Ha ha!" comedy, but I knew that like Apocalypse Now, BIg Fan was bound to be a gay romp.

Paul, played by Oswalt, is a fan boy. In many ways, the object of his desire seems irrelevant at first: He lives with his mother, has a sad sack job as an attendant in a parking garage. His entire social world comprises a single friend who is nearly as sad as he (Sal, played by the great Kevin Corrigan) and the listening audience of a local late-night sports radio program.

See how I slipped that in there? Anyone familiar with Oswalt and his comedy is probably inclined to call shenanigans at the thought of him as a sad, rabid sports fan. As he put it himself in the post-Q&A "I'm not a sports-waching mouth breather, I'm a Green-Lantern-shirt-wearing mouth breather." So in some sense, it certainly matters that sports is the character's obsession, and specifically that football is where he vicariously lives out his life.

After the Q&A the ZK and I both wished we'd asked how Oswalt had become attached to the project. Certainly sports makes Oswalt at once the perfect choice for the role and a very strange choice for it. On the perfect front, if you've never seen him, have a look. He is built on the Little Teapot model, short and stout. In his stand-up and last night, he's referred to himself as "hobbit," "troll," and so on. Physically juxtaposing him to his hero of heroes, a defensive lineman named Quantrell Davis, is visually hilarious and sad by turns.

On the strange front, as a comedian, writer, and actor, Oswalt is incredibly articulate, obviously a nerd, and if I'd been called on to do so, I'd have bet large wadges of cash against him being any kind of sports fan. Not, I might add, that I think it's impossible to be a nerd AND a rabid, foul-mouthed sports fan, as the significant sideways glances the ZK was shooting me throughout the movie demonstrate.

After the Q&A the ZK and I both wished we'd asked how Oswalt had become attached to the project. It may be that his total lack of affinity for sports is what slotted him perfectly into the role. (And make no mistake, he is perfect for it, and he gives a great performance. Not great for a comedian. Not great with any qualifications. It's a straight-up great performance.)

Not to go all Sapir-Whorf on the performance, but it's just possible that Oswalt's complete lack of vocabulary for the subject acted as a substantial aid to his performance. In the Q&A, there were the inevitable questions about how much of the script was improvised. I have the sense that some actors, particularly those coming from comedy, have a tendency to downplay those silly writer people and claim that they are brilliantly making things up on the fly. Siegel was actually fairly sanguine about the questions (which I've gotta imagine are annoying), saying that Patton was free to improvise when he liked, but both acknowledged that it was pretty much a disaster when he tried in Big Fan, as he'd either launch into something witty and articulate that was totally at odds with the character, or the scene would require sports chatter, and both he and Kevin Corrigan (also not a sports fan) would come up completely empty.

So Big Fan isn't the movie for those seeking out wacky Patton. Although very funny at times it's a pretty seriously dark movie. It's also quite quiet, depending heavily on location shoots in Staten Island as well as visual shorthand in his supporting cast. Siegel, a Long Islander, admitted that he'd always found the other boroughs and their denizens exotic. When accused of stereotyping in this movie, he claimed that Staten Island natives laughed at how well he'd captured them, whereas his own landsmen were offended on behalf of the defenseless white trash. Or something.

I tend to be on Seigel's side in the white stereotype debate, but I admit that there were things about the QB character that chafed a bit. On the one hand, it doesn't matter that he's black, as he's readily recognizable as any given high-profile athlete on a self-destructive binge. On the other hand, he didn't have to be black. On the gripping hand, particularly the handful of brief "fantasy sequences" that feature Jonathan Hamm looking manfully, somewhat homoerotically sportsy have a different cast to them, given his blackness and Paul's whiteness. Probably I'm overthinking it in my white, privileged way, but I also think Siegel was underthinking it in his white, privileged way.

As far as bromancery goes, it's not really the point of the movie. But that doesn't mean that the movie doesn't capitalize on the great work that Oswalt and Corrigan do together. In fact, the final scene between them is quite brilliant, not just because they play off one another beautifully, but because it's the ideal capstone (I won't say resolution, because that's also not what the movie is about) to a story that in retrospect could have ended with a giant fizzle.

For me, the evening DID end on a tragically indignant note, as Capone outed Patton as Neill Cumpston. I don't read Ain't It Cool News with any kind of regularity, but I had an epiphany as soon as Patton started to talk about the birth of this alter ego as he watched two 13-year-old boys so pumped by Blade 2 that they were physically beating on one another as they told each other how cool it was: He had perpetrated the infamous I totally camed in my pants review of Sin City. What can I say, except PATTON OSWALT, I TRUSTED YOU!

And while we're airing our dirty laundry, Mr. Oswalt, I do have to tell you that I was very touched when you talked about how Robert Ebert taught you that you didn't have to hate things to be cool, and how much his positive review meant to you. Sincerely, I may have wiped away a tear last night. But it's important to note that no one looks cool when they are enabling Joel Schumacher.

Ahem.

In conclusion: Big Fan is really good. Patton Oswalt is really good in it, and you should go see it and ensure that this movie has legs.

Post-Jub Jub Funk: Wait, Wait . . . Don't Tell Me!

When L was still living in Chicago, we'd say to one another, "You know, we should go to a taping of Wait, Wait . . . Don't Tell Me! some time," but we are nothing if not lazy and disorganized. Many times, it was a matter of me having classes, either to teach or to take, on most Thursdays. Anyway, we never made it. Fast forward a few years to find the ZK and I still failing to get to a taping.

Since the ZK became a commuter, he's become big on the podcasts. They're often so nice that he listens to them twice, once on the train and once in the car so that I can share. You might have guessed that Wait, Wait is one of the regulars, but there are several others in the rotation. Paul and Storm Talk About Some stuff for Five to Ten Minutes (On Average) is definitely right up our alley. (I mean, c'mon, not only are these the men who brought you Og's Official Theme Song and revealed what it would sound like If James Taylor Were on Fire [please note their mastery of the subjunctive there], but every podcast contains a segment called "Poochie Corner.")

Stephen Fry's podgrams show up more irregularly, of course, but when they appear, we're there. In fact, we celebrated our nation's independence this year by listening to his fascinating commentary on British broadcasting as we drove north to 'Tosa for more traditionally American festivities.

Anyway, the upshot is that we're more into podcasts than we've been in the past.

Being into podcasts more, for me, also translates into being more into NPR in general and Wait, Wait, specifically, because (a) I am not Amish, and therefore I only ever listen to the radio when I am in the car and need the traffic report, and (b) I can't listen to NPR in the car, because it makes me sick. That is a literal statement, not a metaphor. It's slightly less problematic if I'm driving, but if I'm a passenger, there is something about the dead, muffled quality of the air on NPR that brings on migraine-like symptoms with an emphasis on nausea. I could not begin to tell you why, but the podcast does not have the same effect. I think that's it for the overture to this post. Onward to the actual taping.

Thursday of this week would be the last Thursday for some time that we'd be available, as school starts for both of us next week. I decided to seize the day without being too picky about panelists and so on. I'd noted that one would be Kyrie O'Connor, but didn't notice the other two. Skipping ahead, I'll reveal the second panelist to be Tom Bodett (and I'll further admit that I was a bit disappointed, as I'd have preferred Paul Provenza, but in retrospect, I'm really glad I got to see a panel with TB, who is quite charming.) The ZK, comedian to the undead that he is, said, "You just KNOW it's going to be P.J. O'Rourke." And lo! The third panelist was shot out of the quantum cannon, and it was P.J. O'Rourke. Bleaaaaagggh.

The ZK, of course, had to work. I had to go down to the department office in the vain hope that my publishers had, you know, sent me the desk copies I've requested three times. (They haven't.) I also ran into the new adjunct, who is a FOAF, and got to shake hands over his hiring, which makes us both happy. Stranger still in the annals of "It's not a small world, but it is a small bourgeois clique," I ran into a woman who'd been on the same critique panel as I'd been back in December. We totally made eye contact in the library, then veered off, because we couldn't place one another, but she later cruised by the adjunct office and we shook hands and wished one another a good semester.

After taking care of a handful of things, I was to meet the ZK at the Argo Tea Cafe at Dearborn and Madison. As I knew he'd taken the Blue Line to Monroe, so when I passed an Argo shortly before coming up on that stop, I had A Moment. I checked the text message, though, and indeed, it said Dearborn and Madison. So that gives you an Argo at Dearborn and Monroe, an Argo at Dearborn and Madison, and then there's the Argo "Theatre District," which, let's face it, is at Dearborn and Randolph. Someone not afflicted with my midgety Neanderthal-like body proportions could surely physically touch all three without even stretching much.

Despite the locational foolishness, though, the ZK and I met up without incident and decided to ask the Jesus phone where to eat via Urban Spoon. We then ignored the JP's advice (oh, don't give me that look, surely He's used to it by now) and decided to try Elephant & Castle. This was sadly heaving with postwork hipsters. Next up was the Wabash location of Heaven on Seven, which isn't open for dinner. Naturally, we came full circle to the Così that was about 25 feet from the Argo.

Individuals wishing to find the Chase Auditorium should not look for it through the entrance that is prominently marked 10 S. Dearborn. This address, like communism, is just a red herring. The next door down is the one you want, and then you want to take the escalator down to what appears to be the world's cruelest food court: Tables, chairs, and booths as far as the eye can see, but no food-purveying establishments in sight.

We presented our e-mail confirmation to the helpful folks at the folding table and received the programs that serve as tickets. What appeared to be a an amorphous crowd in front of us turned out to be a well-organized queue maintaining its order despite the absence of (or, as it turned out, dearth of) velvet ropes. Another member of the team pointed new arrivals to the end of the line and instructed them which way to face, so that we formed an appropriately sinuous line without the benefit of props.

As promised, right about 7, House Manager Don Hall gave us the rundown on the show and after before letting us down into the bowels of the auditorium itself. As I remarked to the ZK, there is something about the auditorium that evokes the room seen in every Impending Destruction of the Earth movie ever made. You know the room: Wood paneled walls, royal blue curtains and upholstery, a curve-fronted stage flanked with flags, a podium or two, and a skirted folding table to accommodate the panel of top scientists who have been gathered to tell us exactly how fucked we all are. Oh, and of course some of the paneled walls conceal doors to allow the Young Turk of a scientist to burst in, waving a sheet of paper and announcing that he has a crazy plan for uploading a virus to the mothership using his grape iBook. Yeah, that's what the Chase Auditorium looks like.

In fact the only thing that distinguishes it from that room is the addition of a low, square table with something along these lines for creating a bit of visual excitement as the And Now Your Chicago Bulls guy introduces the panel, then Carl Kassel and Peter Sagal. (I Did Not Know that aggravating ear worm was by the Alan Parsons project. It seems so obvious in retrospect.)

Peter noted that he'd been told we, as a crowd, were a bit subdued. He attributed this to collective fear that they were going to make fun of our new President. This actually drew a rather confused hush with a few boos and tut tutting mixed in. Peter admitted that newspeople were a little on edge, because the American story has not had the decency to draw to a narratively satisfying close with the Inauguration festivities standing in for the Ewok-infested celebration on Endor at the end of Return of the Jedi, leaving a huge, troubling "What Now?" hanging out there.

Peter then went on to encourage us to be audible in conveying our reactions to the show, warning us not to succumb to our polite, NPR-listening crowd instincts to give a silent thumbs up to jokes and so on. He also asked that we give them an additional 3 or 4 minutes at the end of the show to fix errors made and issues encountered during the course of the taping.

After a bit more joking around with the panel, the taping began in earnest with Carl and Peter recording 2 brief promos for the show. after Carl's introduction to the real deal, Peter introduced the show's focus, which was unsurprisingly the inauguration, introduced the panel, and provided a teaser for the call-in guest, Cindi Leive, Editor in Chief of Glamour, by saying that she would, no doubt, tell him why he was wrong to question whether Michelle Obama's inauguration gown was made from a chenille bedspread or just looked like it.

The opening panel round was pretty inauguration focused, covering Obama's announcement that he's "a lefty. Get used it!", his Booty-bumping a 14-year-old at the Neighborhood Ball, and, of course, Roberts screwing up the oath of office and the nation's cry for a do-over. Although the general tone of the discussion of this last was "what's the big deal about a misplaced adverb," Tom pointed out that Americans are a little touchy after 8 years of having their language mangled.

The first caller, I believe, was Holly Jo from Fort Wayne, Indiana. After thoroughly sounding out the folksy cheer of her name, she shocked panelists, timekeeper, host, and audience alike by announcing that there is still manufacturing going on in the United States. Not that Holly Jo herself does any of it, but she is adjacent to it. Holly Jo was playing "Who is Carl This Time?" and I know the first answer was "President Obama." That stuck in my memory because of the obvious relish with which she said it. I also remember thinking that she must live in a cave in Fort Wayne, because one of the answers was completely obvious, but she needed a hint. Of course, it was so VERY obvious that I've forgotten it.

The next caller, whose name I've forgotten, was from South Jersey. He tried to bait Peter's inner North Jersey-ian by claiming South Jersey to be "much better," a point that Peter completely declined to argue. The Bluff the Listener game focused on the Spears family. I really wanted the story about K. Fed's line of baby wear dissolving on contact with water to be true (the story about the lost Spears doing a hip hop minstrel show in blackface at an off-site inauguration ball—which P.J. screwed up roughly 75 times—was just too ooky for my tastes), but alas, it was about a woman being forced into being a body double for Jamie Lynn at an airport, who is suing for public humiliation.

The call-in was more interesting than I'd thought it might be. We first Established that Peter is definitely not a regular reader of Glamour. (He copped to reading Cosmo, which, by his own admission, pegs him as a wannabe slut, rather than a wanna be second wife [Vogue readers, for the curious].) Peter suggested that Leive get an NPR fashion show up and running. She made polite noises about it being hard to advise him without having seen him. Peter said this was quite obvious, as she had not reacted at all to the first utterance in the history of humankind of the phrase "NPR fashion show."

At this point, P. J., began describing Tom Bodett's outfit in laborious and inaccurate detail, talking over everyone for a good 90 seconds or so, long after the rest of them were trying to move the phone call onward. When the conversation was successfully wrestled back on track, Peter asked for Leive's opinion on The Dress. She acknowledged that the reviews were mixed, but she though it was a "home run," both on its own merits and because she felt that it was a move very emblematic of the "change" theme that the First Lady had chosen a young designer. Peter asked if Lieve felt that Michelle Obama had been upstaged by Jill Biden. Leive commented only on the similarity between Biden's dress and the one worn by Miley Cyrus during her performance, which led to a joke about how OLD Jill Biden is by P. J. O'Rourke. Ha, what a fucking knee slapper.

Leive then said she hadn't been a fan of the Michelle Obama's Day-After dress, but admitted it was a little classless to criticize someone's dress for a Prayer Breakfast. At least someone is getting their memos about class. Talk then turned to Glamour's mission statement, which Leive claims to be a combination of representing a woman's total life and eschewing sulky models who appear to be angry at the readers. Although Leive said she thought that women who already took a financially reasonable approach to fashion would find themselves uplifted by Michelle Obama's lead, it was agreed by all and sundry that it would take more than one woman to render DC fashionable.

Before actually getting into the game, Peter called Leive on the putative "guy issue" of Glamour, which claims to reveal the 15 things men want in bed. Too polite to scream, "SHENANIGANS!" Peter simply said he could think of only 2 things that men want in bed, with number 2 being to have a sandwich afterward. (This drew my eyes, of course, to the ZK. I could SEE the shudder run through him at the thought of crumbs.)

Leive's "Not My Job" task involved questions about the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Despite never having heard of it, she answered correctly the questions about a fighter accidentally taking down a ref, a 200-lb karate champion beating a 600-lb sumo wrestler, and . . . the other question was again lost to time (until, of course, tomorrow morning), as was the name and location of the caller for the Listener Limerick.

The second panel quiz involved research showing that Americans are more likely to survive shipwrecks because they are rude and pushy, a characteristic, coincidentally, endorsed by P. J. O'Rourke. The round also involved two other studies, one about people feeling possessive of items that they had touched, to the point of bidding on them well above their actual value the longer they had held them, and another showing that women who have rich partners are more likely to be sexually satisfied. Tom Bodett seemed extremely surprised by this, which was amusing to the much more cynical Kyrie O'Connor. This revived a conversation begun during Cindi Leive's call-in about Glamour's study showing that men would overwhelmingly rather be short and genitally endowed than tall and less well-endowed. For the record, P. J. requires a 5-inch wallet to stand on.

Leading up to the lightning round, Kyrie was lagging behind at 2 points, whereas both P. J. and Tom had 3. Tom eventually ended up pwning the other two with 7 correct answers and 17 points. During the post-show Q&A, he claimed that this was the highest score ever achieved.

Watching the fixes was a bit trippy. Clearly Carl and Peter (mostly Peter) were being fed the lead-in material through their headphones as they re-read the necessary parts. In a number of cases, Peter would go through several retakes in rapid succession, leading the ZK to ask, "What the hell? Is this being directed by Sam Raimi?" (A reference to our fantastic experience seeing My Name is Bruce and a Q&A with The Chin himself, which I was sadly too busy to blog at the time.)

The panel's post-credit's question was to reveal the contents of the "To 44 from 43" note left for Obama by Bush. P. J. went with a pot joke. Fresh humor, direct from 9 to 5! Kyrie's simply read "Cardinals 24, Steelers 17. Next year, you pick the winner." Tom's: "Look up. They never show this part on TV. Eighty-nine of those pencils are mine!"

The questions during the Q&A were not especially earth shattering, and I have to believe they've been asked them a million times before. Probably the most interesting was about the worst guest ever. Peter said that they have been very fortunate that their bad guest karma has really been concentrated into just one guest: Gene Simmons, with whom P. J. got on swimmingly. Just sayin'. They also collectively revealed that they're fairly salivating to have GWB on the show, to the point that they're willing to give him the whole hour to hit back at them, which they'd consider only fair.

Peter also claimed responsibility for Obama's presidency. After Obama's appearance on the show in 2005, when, he claimed, Jesus could have walked in the other door, announced his second coming, and gotten universally shushed, he said: "That man's going to be President some day!" For my part, I say bless your cottons socks, Peter Sagal!

We did not take the opportunity to rush the stage afterward, as so many did, although the ZK clearly wanted to take Carl to task for pronouncing the sausage "Brat" to rhyme with "Bradtz," rather than "Braht" to rhyme with "Schatz." I also could not talk the ZK into the supercool (albeit pricey) bowling shirt, labeled "Carl." Sadness.

Penguins Are Assholes: John Hodgman and David Rees at Second City E.T.C.

Tonight I had the pleasure of joining about 200 of my closest fellow citizens for an evening filled with snifters filled with Jeppson's Malört.* You may revoke my Swede card now, for I had never heard of Malört before. I have, however, been drinking glögg made with grain alcohol since childhood.

I arrived at Second City E.T.C. at about 5:30, which was later than I'd planned. DO NOT BE ALARMED, my friends, because I had the most rockstar of rockstar parking: A spot not 15 feet from the door of Piper's Alley, meter needing to be fed until 6 PM, 32 minutes remaining on meter at 5:36. Contrary to my expectations, I was not eaten by a bear moments later.

There were probably about 15 people queued up outside the theater, and I sat down at the end of the line to do some reading for class. Someone from Second City came around and handed out tickets, letting us know that they guaranteed us entry, but not any particular seats. A little after six, a SWAT team from The Book Stall swept into action and assembled a retail operation to be reckoned with. Roughly 10 seconds later, I found myself in possession of several copies of More Information Than You Require and a copy of Get Your War On.

There was some instinctive sheep action shortly before 7 PM and this, fortunately, proved to not be too far ahead of them opening the doors. They seated people by party size, and I got an aisle seat next to a table. The slightly hyperactive microgeek on the other side of the table audibly gasped when I piled up my purchases in the course of rearranging my bag so that I could get at my knitting. I got through about two repeats of my pattern (Dragonscales in Shibui sock's mulberry colorway for those of you playing along at home) before the house lights went down and the Hodg-man himself came out in his RNC-provided tuxedo.

A bottle of Malört dangled carelessly from his elegant, Gatsby-esque fingers, and soon that very bottle was circulating through the audience (neither it nor the second bottle ever did make it to my section, though) as John introduced David Rees. David had apparently been promised $500 by the Hodgman if he were to drink an entire bottle of Malört. When he tried to claim a cold, John poured him an Irish coffee mug full (fill it to the rim! With Malört!) and retired to the green room to microwave it. Ravaged by illness, Rees gave way to Hodgman's insistence that he "Enjoy it hot!"

While Hodgman was preparing the toddy of the damned, Rees announced his intention to retire Get Your War on officially as of January 20, 2009. We were treated to an exciting preview of his next venture: Relationshapes. Allow me to say that it was like looking into an expertly shaded, geometric mirror. Having taken a bracing sip of hot buttered Malört ("That tastes like a forest fire"),
he then did GYWO in 9 min, 9 seconds (causal relationship between timing and Malört: indeterminate), and thus conclusively proved that Criswell had exactly JACK on Rees.

Hodgman took the stage again and immediately began flinging monkeys to the middle of the house and abusing lecterns. He then proceeded to borrow a copy of his book from the friend with whom he'd been sitting (and, of course, sharing Malört with) and demonstrated how it can be used as a page-a-day calendar. But most of the presentation was devoted to the trials and tribulations of a famous minor television personality. Without wishing to venture into the territory of what the kids call 5p01lerz, I will simply share the following phrases:

• "Well done, Peter Berg, I wish I had a copy of Frank Herbert's Dune!"
  
• "Pudgy. Portly. Round-faced."
  
• "And I would fall asleep with Rachel Hunter's breath on my cheek. In the sky."
  
• "It is perilously easy."
  
• "Enervating."
  
• "Or lamb sandwich."
  
• "Thank you, Malört."
  
• "Tarmac is from the Celtic for 'you're fucking stuck here'."
  
• "I am tempted to talk about that terrible movie."
  
• "The answer is cream pie. Over."
  
• "Cheese it, it's the cops."
  
• "Ira Glass wrote that to make me sound sympathetic."
  
• "Though I had, in fact, leaned nothing against a fence."
  
• "Shaved men and women roaming the countryside, dripping nutritive slime."
  
• "A child. Taking a picture of me. While I sleep."
  
• "Thank you, Malört, liqueur of digression."
  

I got to ask a question over the walkie talkie, and I was relieved that my stage-managing fu did not fail me in using the walkie talkie, unlike SOME audience members I could mention. I was also NOT the audience member attempting to bogart the walkie talkie at the end. The line for book signing extended down to the main floor and I got yet more knitting done. Both gentlemen were gracious and gentlemanly while signing. (If you recall from my encounter with Sarah Vowell, wherein I unsuccessfully attempted to employ a beard, I can't seem to embrace the notion that just because I've bought a stack of books, I have the right to enslave these individuals and monopolize their time.) Hodgman was even kind enough to express relief when I reassured him that I was NOT having him sign a book for a serial killer.


*Please note that this Flickrer is mistaken when sie claims Malört is the most repulsive spirit known to man. That honor goes to Chinese sorghum liquor. No. Srsly.

Mixing it up, Toughing it out: Webb Wilder @ Fitzgerald's

So, M has a little bit of a Kristen Schaal problem. And by "problem," I mean a part of him retired permanently to his bunk when she did the Wonder Woman bit on the Daily Show. So when we learned that she was performing at the Lakeshore Theater (a venue that brings joy into my simple heart regularly by sending me e-mails addressed to "Dear Jonathan Coulton [REAL LAST NAME],[REAL FIRST NAME]"), we thought to pick us up some tickets. Do you sense a plan gone wrong?

She was performing on both Friday and Saturday. I decided to go with tickets for Saturday on the grounds that M wouldn't then have to rush up there by public transit, hauling his stuff from work. Of course, as soon as I bought the tickets for Saturday, Webb Wilder came out of his quantum state and scheduled a gig for Saturday at Fitzgerald's. Aggravating! But what're you gonna do, right?

Well, what I was going to do was hitch my Saturday wagon ever more firmly to Kristen Schaal's star. When I was volunteering at the resource center on Thursday night, my cov-olunteer confessed that he'd basically done an Og: He'd off-handedly volunteered to do Saturday shifts if no one else signed up, and Colby took him at his word. This meant that on the 2nd, he was scheduled to work from 1-5 in the resource center, then from 5:30-10:30 at Teen Open Mic. He also went for full points on difficulty by being triple booked: His son was also supposed to be spending the weekend with him.

So, being the kind-hearted soul I sometimes pretend to be, I offered to take his resource center shift. He demurred on the grounds that I live so far away, etc., until I finally said, "Look, I'm not actually a nice person. If it was an imposition, I wouldn't have offered. I'm going to be up here anyway for a show. I'll have my husband come up and meet me, we'll have dinner before it. It's all good." He laughed and asked if I would just come in from 3-5, figuring that he'd send his son and son's friend to see a movie at the Davis, and then they could grab some food or whatever before heading over to Armitage.

As soon as that part of the plan was settled, Kristen Schaal's health came out of its quantum state, and by morning I had an e-mail that she had to cancel both shows. (But they're offering a free ticket for every ticket already bought for when she reschedules; I'm not sure how that math works. It may really be quantum.)

So there were to be no underoos, no poison, no garbage bags filled with testicles, and no fighting of injustice for us on Saturday. However, there was really no reason not to have a visit with the last of the full-grown men. The decision to go see Webb on Saturday finished off the quantum cascade: I still went up to Lincoln Square, even though my evening was ending up in Berwyn, and it turned out that J's son didn't come to spend the weekend after all.

But now that this lengthy prologue is behind us, how was the show? Excellent, Pinky. We had dinner at Wishbone and were seated at a table just behind Tom Comet, Jimmy Lester, and Bob Williams. Of course, we didn't know it was Bob Williams at the time, as we've never seen him play with Webb before (and, frankly, I knew as soon as Webb introduced him that I was going to have a hard time with the name, because of its Will Roberts potential). Also, there was another guy with them, but I have no idea who he was.

The opening band, Not Without, was a mixed bag. Their lead singer has a gorgeous voice (although she's going to kill it with the overuse of the yodel technique), and their violinist was great. At least what we could hear of her was great, given that the drums and guitar were about 8 million times too loud. That unfortunately prevents me from saying much about their songs (beyond "far too much drawn-out guitar wanking" and "set was overburdened with drawn-out instrumentals") as I could almost never hear the lyrics or what the songs were supposed to sound like as a whole.

Also, they started quite late, at least partly because band members were still milling around socializing long after the designated start time. Furthermore, many of the people that were there to see them were extremely discourteous during Webb's set. One guy (and I think he was their "roadie") would go to the big table crowded with "their people" at the front of the club, take one person to the back, and then stand there talking extremely, EXTREMELY loudly, paying no attention whatever to the band on stage. This process was repeated, and I am not exaggerating, about 20 times. Rude. This did not leave me with a warm fuzzy about them.

Annnnnyyyway. Webb and the boys got on late, but they seemed relaxed, rested, and in fine form. They opened with "One Taste of the Bait," then went into "She's the Only One." Other selections from the early part of the set included "Human Cannonball," "Horror Hayride," "Poolside," and "Looking for a Fool." I'm sure there were a couple others in there before the first, much-anticipated patter break, which was devoted to Jim Ford. Webb said he'd come across two songs separately, decided he really wanted to learn them, and only then realized that they were both Jim Ford creations: "Changing Colors" and "Juju Man." Really nice choices demonstrating just how far and wide his songwriting ranged, and terrific versions of them, of course.

Later in the set, they did some more from About Time, including "Lonely for a Reason," and "I Had to Laugh." Also, the most soul-wrenching version of "Jimmy Reed (Is the King of Rock and Roll)" yet. (I realize that you all think I'm obsessed with that song, but it's not just me, man.) These were interspersed with older favorites that have often appeared at the end of the set, including a performance of "Baby Please Don't Go," with extended storytelling in the middle (storytelling that included the term "Dumbass," which clearly indicates that Webb has not escaped unscathed from multiple performances with me and JRH in the audience). Webb explained that they'd moved stuff around so that they could approach these numbers "with renewed vigor." I'm for it.

"Louisiana Hannah," made an appearance, too, and just as I was thinking that I hadn't heard that performed in a while, Webb explained that Hybrid Vigor, which had been out of print for a while, was now available on iTunes. That's the first Webb CD I ever had, and it's a bit alarming to realize that it's gone out of print and resurrected in digital form since I've been a fan. I mean, I know it's been a while (in fact, M, who thinks he's a funny, funny guy, tried to argue that seeing Webb at Fitzgerald's could arguably be construed as our first "date"), but sheesh!

Bill only held them to two encores. Apparently, he reserves the dread triple encore for the badly behaved Robbie Fulks. I find that I didn't blog that, but at Robbie's New Year's Eve Eve show, which is now the official New Year's Eve show, rather than its dress rehearsal, Bill didn't bring up the lights or start the background music until he'd rung three encores out of them. That in itself makes not blogging that show a hanging offense, so I probably shouldn't disclose that my failing to blog that show deprived you all of the (second hand) experience of the Possum Hollow Boys (formerly the Possum Holler Boys, but not these Possum Holler Boys, hence the name change) doing performing "Darling Nicky."

But I digress. Webb's encores included "Meet Your New Landlord," apparently at Jimmy's request, and "Stay Out of Automobiles." "The Rest (will take care of itself)" appeared earlier in the set, as did "Tough it Out." If they'd done "Big Time," (which, as far as I'm concerned, they're contractually obligated to do; M foolishly disagrees and claims that Webb is not my monkey), I would have been wholly content with the known and new content (there were several more new songs he did, but my dumb cracker mind has lost them in a sea of Guinness).

Oh, who am I kidding? I was more than content. It was a great, energetic show. We got to see a terrific new addition to the band (and fortunately Webb introduced him early, so we only had a few minutes to consider the possibility—unlikely in the extreme, but disturbing nonetheless—that the new guy was actually Tony Bowles with a hair cut). There was a (nearly) perfect blend of stuff we love and stuff we will love in the future. Also, Webb-a-palooza beats the impostor palooza with a stick.

Satyrnalia? Manos: The Rock Opera of Fate by the New Millennium Theatre Company

I am tragically behind in . . . well, being a human being. One could argue that this is partly attributable to the fact that we were quite the social butterflies last weekend. Instead, I like to blame the mountain of grading. But your gratification shall be delayed no longer! You will hear of Manos: The Rock Opera of Fate. It is the only plan of action of which the Master will approve.

Unfortunately, our story begins sadly. The National Pastime Theater in the old speakeasy is more or less at Irving Park and Broadway. It's not in Boys Town, it's not quite in Edgewater, and whatever some Chicago city sites claim, it's not in Wrigleyville. So it's this area of the city that I just don't know a ton about, but the job of choosing the restaurant fell to me.

The cast list for the evening included my Pal M, the FD, mi esposo M (natch), and our friends B the lovely G, who were driving a long, long way for some lumpy knees. The assembled company requested something not too expensive and not too loud. Tragically, Rick's Cafe on Sheridan and Irving Park seemed to meet our needs and not much else in the neighborhood did. We had what was one of the worst restaurant experiences of my life. It was certainly one of the most protracted restaurant experiences of my life, as we got there at 7:30 and very nearly had to leave before we got any food at all so that we could make our 10:30 show. Add in a passive-aggressive douche bag of a manager and, well, it seemed like the whole evening was going to be a kind of anxiety dream.

But! All was forgiven when we got to the show. The lobby of the NPT was quite crowded, first of all because the first show was being cleared and the set for M:TROOF was being assembled, and second of all because Torgo's knees were in the house. This would turn out to be confusing because this Torgo-about-town, jauntily sipping drinks among his public, would turn out not to be the Torgo, but merely a Torgo.

There were nonalcoholic beverages for sale in the lobby, and the helpful house manager pointed us toward alcoholic beverages in every direction. Given that we'd just had the dinner lasting longer than the Donner Party's journey, we were more in coffee mode. M and B thus headed to 7-Eleven to procure stimulants. I took the opportunity to peruse the wall of show art and head shots. The latter included one of Hal Warren, actor, director, writer, producer, fertilizer salesman, denture wearer.

In seeing the poster for Boomstick!, I was reminded that (a) Ooh! I really want that soundtrack if I can get it; (b) I'm very old and thus have already gone through two separate periods of Evil Dead love—one when I thought the first two movies were the scariest thing EVAH (special thanks to the FD for her baleful look and reassurance that I'm well and truly old when I made this admission to her) and a second when I learned to stop worrying and love Bruce Campbell faithfully and ironically; and (c) that I'm a FOOL for having already missed so many of New Millennium Theatre Company's highly delicious offerings.

Soon enough, our boys were back with coffee, soda, etc., and we were filing into the theater itself. There's no stage in the space (at least for this production), which is pretty large. There are chairs on risers along the east and north walls. There's one narrow exit from the "stage" on the west side of the north seats, and the main door to the space is in the south east corner.

The stage, such as it was for this production, was a black-draped proscenium about 15-feet high. This was set up at a NW-SW angle in about the middle of the floor, and all the props and costumes were set behind it. Flats were moved out to form the stage right vertical of this to suggest different interiors within "The Place, and various pieces of "furniture, were pushed through the center curtain. The "cars" for both the family and the "Make-Out Couple" were hinged plywood frames with rope handles on the inside so that they actors could carry them around.

The ceiling in the space is high, and there is a loft atop the south wall that is divided up into niches. Our story began with a spot illuminating one of these to reveal The Narrator. The Narrator, played by Chris Hauser, was a magnificent collision of 80s hair band awesomeness and every John Hughes character ever played by either Anthony Michael Hall or Jon Cryer. He had beautiful rock hair entirely held together by the bandana encircling his head and was, of course, shirtless beneath his black vest. He was also stringy and pasty and impressively weanie and pathetic looking, especially for someone who seems, in reality, to be a perfectly attractive, normal-looking person. His opening song was very much in the spirit of the off-the-rails DVDA version of "What Would Brian Boitano Do?", assuring us that we should have our fast-acting inhalers handy if we were allergic to awesome.

The Narrator started out as a very good idea, very well executed. The focus returned to him at random intervals throughout the show as he powers his way through his Bears-themed case of Miller Light. Toward the end, the business with him did get a little drawn out and worn, but his balladeer bacon was saved during the big group medley ("One Day More" from Les Misérables brilliantly rewritten for one dysfunctional family, 2 Brides of Manos, one Torgo, one cop, and the Master) when the spot found him completely passed out during his bit.

Still, even if the gag got a little drawn out, this was a clever way of giving the rest of the cast and crew time to accomplish set and costume changes, etc. Furthermore, if any story needed some built-in coffee breaks for the purposes of sharing a group WTF?, it's Manos, and Hauser is a gem of a performer, gamely dismantling his costume while whaling away on an acoustic guitar (which is so totally a telecaster in his mind's eye) and improvising (at least I assume a lot of what he's doing is improvising) like a champ.

Other than these welcome interruptions by the narrator, the opera follows the plot storyline action stuff that happens in Manos pretty faithfully. There's a screen on top of the proscenium (a nice nod to the opera part) that serves a multitude of functions: When our family makes their first appearance, exciting driving!footage! from Manos itself plays across it giving a new twist on terrible rear projection; elsewhere it bears exciting fonts! and exclamation points! no doubt stealing jobs from the PAs who normally incite the live studio audience to frenzy. By the end, when the opera has wisely abandoned all pretense of following the movie in favor of one of what the literature assures is a dozen different endings, the Karaoke lyrics for the finale of Les Miz are projected.

In my meandering way of covering the musical content of the show, I may have inadvertently given the impression that M:TROOF is slapped together and improvised. Not so! The musical numbers range from mixtures of bouncy, recitative-adjacent trios for our family to "window songs" for Torgo, a flashy Andrew Lloyd Webber/Parker & Stone-worthy rock anthem for the Master himself, and a complex, beautifully executed harmony-heavy trio ("Great Manos, Hear My Prayers" for the wives.

The performance of the 2 parts of "Family Time" was a little rough, but the incredibly dark lyrics set against music that evokes the demented, teeth-grittingly cheerful theme from Santa Claus Conquers the Martians renders the performance almost irrelevant. The main issue with how "Family Time" came off is that Tory Crowe (who is unspeakably, jaw-droppingly brilliant as "Maggie") has a powerful, lovely voice, whereas Sean Harklerode (who clearly landed Hal Warren's plum role on the strength of his creepy, plasticine, Herb Putterman impression [this is a high compliment, in case my gentle reader has just fallen off the turnip truck]) isn't much of a singer. The actors and director wisely came to the conclusion that he should smarmily sing-talk his lines and embrace a kind of Thurston-Howell-on-Ecstasy style of delivery. This worked beautifully in the bigger group numbers, but the road was a little rough and rocky earlier on.

To be honest, the "Torgo Inside of Me," wasn't quite up to the snuff of some of the other material in the show. I suppose that's appropriate, though. The window song always snatches the Oscar from more deserving competitors, often within the same movie. In this case, "TIoM" is decidedly overshadowed by "I Said Manos, HEY HEY Manos" (aka "Manos! Fuck Yeah!") and "You Have Failed as Torgo." Really, it's dirty pool to compare the latter to anything else, because (a) it is brilliantly set to "Lily's Eyes," from The Secret Garden (Torgo is ZOMG eleventy funny if you're picturing him played by Mandy Patinkin) and (b) it takes place in Torgo's room, which is the most brilliant set ever devised. (I am torn between wanting to avoid spoilers and needing to share about this, so I will simply say KITTEN CALENDAR!)

The mix of originality and parody, silly and serious in the music is reflective of what makes M:TROOF so terrific. Writer/Directors Andy Grigg & Steven Attanasie not only get Manos, they get that real parody takes work and love and maybe the tiniest bit of pixie dust. This isn't some craptastic assembly of sight gags, it's a deft mixture of homage and satire much more akin to the original Airplane than to its degenerate (supposed) descendants.

That approach centers on Tory Crowe's 100% earnest, 1000% spot on performance as Maggie, the be-kerchiefed wife. Crowe can do no wrong. Her body language, her tone of voice, her jerky, eerily hinged movements are funny. every. time. I could listen to her begin every sentence "MuhIIIIKe!" until the last trumpet sounds.

But Manos wouldn't be Manos without Torgo, and again, Adam Rosowicz plays it relatively straight Torgo-y. His advanced TV Parkinson's is perfect, and he does not overplay the relentless toRgO VibRaTo. Some of the business of him trying to get up from the floor got a little protracted, but otherwise, he is magnificently pathetic and off putting.

Although most of the show avoids any fourth-wall shenanigans, the decision to have Nathan Sanford (the cop) embody the collective despair of the cast of the original movie was a good one. He enters his scenes with one leaden footstep after the other, barely able to summon the energy to hold aloft the tiny, flashing keychain that represents his squad car. By the time he arrives on the scene to disrupt the hilarious, obscenely loud and smacky make-out session for a third time, he is in tears over the violent death of his career. As he runs off stage, a spot travels up to the narrator who tearfully salutes him and says, "May we all find that kind of courage." Funny stuff, adroitly played.

The three wives, played by Leslie Kerrigan, Rebecca Gallagher, and Lisa Adams (who bravely doubles as "make-out girl") play extremely well off one another with Kerrigan as the straight woman (we cannot kill the child!), Gallagher as the grasping youngest wife (uh, yes, we can!), and Adams finding the schizophrenic happy medium. They're strong singers and, really, their number is damnably hummable. We were all gratified to see the nightgown fight so expertly enacted, too.

Adam Mack is a pleasingly imposing, strutting, porn-star-moustache-sporting Manos himself, and he's got a great bass-baritone voice that's put to excellent use. By the time the story gets to the master, he's rather an anticlimax, which I'm sure is deliberate, but there might have been a touch more characterization for him beyond terrific off-foley slapping of everyone in sight. As it is, there's a tendency for him to be upstaged by his magnificent Hell Hound, which sits in a glass case next to the flat for Torgo's room in the Set and Props Hall of Fame. I sooooo wish they were auctioning off the Hell Hound at the end of the production, because he would be mine. Oh yes, he would be mine.

I cannot in good conscience close this entry without bowing down before Matt Russell (at a considerable distance for reasons that will become clear momentarily). In the program, he is credited only as Make-Out Guy. That would surely be enough, because he wears his cardigan with style and his open-mouthed, tongue-standing-proud attacks on Adams will be featured in my nightmares for decades to come. However, we lucked into the surprise Labyrinth ending that featured him doing his David-Bowie-IS-Jareth-King-of-Goblins impression. This was a truly unspeakable privilege. No, I mean, really, I cannot speak of his outrageously stuffed dance belt without a lawyer present and a medical professional on hand.

Speaking of the end of things, the show's run ends tragically soon, so if are within a 500-mile radius and haven't yet seen this, run, do not walk, to the national pastime theatre. Seriously. I'm not above coercion.

Awooo! Werewolves of Birthday: Strange Tree Group's Mr. Spacky, The Man Who Was Continuously Followed

As you may have noticed, we at the Telecommuniculturey don't usually need an excuse for a night out. So, naturally, it being my birthday, we decided to doubly indulge with a tasty dinner and a night at the The-ah-tah. Plus, delicious, delicious ice cream pie

I'd originally wanted to try the Dining Room at Kendall College, because I'm a firm believer in both education and gluttony. However, their only reservation was for 6 PM, which would have been pushing the 8 PM curtain for the show. We may, instead, try to go to the Monday night dinner when the chef from Courtright's is on the menu, as it were. We went to Courtright's for the second of our second anniversary dinners (our first two anniversaries having been on Sunday and Monday, when many fine dining establishments are closed, forced creativity on our parts—also, see above re: gluttony), and we had a great evening, despite my skatewing tasting of ammonia.

Anyway, we wound up at West Town Tavern. That's not exactly a hardship under any circumstances (Fried Chicken Monday Nights! With Biscuits!), and it happens to be very near the Chopin Theatre, which is where we were headed afterward.

We were headed thusly because I had seen a poster for Mr. Spacky, the Man Who Was Continuously Followed by Wolves in the window of a business up in Lincoln Square. Both the design of the poster and the title caught my eye, and I actually noted and remembered the theater name and checked their website to find out more about the play. (Obviously this was last week, before senility officially set in.)

I've actually been on a hunt for a show to take my niece to for her birthday, but 13 (13?!?) is kind of a rough age. Having now seen Mr. Spacky, I'm actually not ruling out a repeat visit with her.

The Chopin, at least in the lobby spaces, is in significantly better repair than the last time I was there. (And I don't think it's entirely painful memories coloring my experience.) There are vintage sofas and chairs scattered throughout, a nice little cafe on the way to the downstairs theater, more high-end thrift store furniture in that lobby, and just plenty of pleasant spaces to sit and talk about social versus cultural controls, environmental determinism, the fallacies of libertarianism, and so on, as we are wont to do of a celebratory evening. There were also snacks, wine, and water to be had for a modest donation.

The program for the show comes in scroll form that unrolls to an 11 x 17 sheet. Rather than being hemmed in by conventions like reading from left to right and up to down or attempting to provide information in serial fashion, the sheet is smattered with has limericks, mangled limericks, and out-of-context quotations in lieu of cast and crew bios (my favorite "Can I bum a smoke/ I wish to sound like Tom Waits/ and I need a light"q, love poems to those who deserve to be thanked, and Microsoft-esque stamps promising "Now With More Wolves!" Clever, still provides the info one wants, not bulky, and fewer trees, strange and otherwise, were harmed in the making.

Because we were deep in our deep conversation (and yes, every one of the subjects mentioned above was on the list of topics for the evening), I hadn't had a whole lot of time to peruse the scroll or the smaller paper inserted inside it, which will become relevant later. Soon enough, the cast burst through the house door to inform us in song and dance that the house was open and they hoped we'd come in. Once inside, the dancer on our side of the house was tapping people to their seats. We were wily and seated our selves, so we got a "buffalo."

All the while she was literally framing herself, and I admit I was a little preoccupied with Dead Rising (we bought an xBox 360 today, and thus gaming consoles become the official gift of the Gemini birthday) right up until the band started playing the Violent Femmes ("Add it Up"; and, really, you haven't heard the Femmes until you've heard them on two acoustic guitars, accordion, and banjo) and she stood on her head inside the picture frame and provided bow-legged tap accompaniment. No, I am not making any of that up. If I do return with the niece-let, we'll have to sit at house left because I can't imagine what was going on over there.

In addition to the Femmes, the band treated us to a little Elvis ("It's Now or Never"), Tiffany ("I Think We're Alone Now," with very game participation from an audience member who got well-deserved applause), the obvious Warren Zevon (we were given direction to howl whenever cued with the word "London," which doesn't quite work out as intended, but we awoooed enthusiastically nonetheless). Just before curtain, we got the intro and just a touch of "White Wedding" to kick off the action.

The play is by Emily Schwartz, a transplant from Indianapolis (most of the Strange Tree crew seems to have escaped from central Indiana, to which I and the Bottle Rockets offer a hearty "well done!"). It is, quite frankly, demented. M and I independently thought "John Waters" (and if Kara Klein's Edwina Dumont is not deliberately modeled on some brilliant Egg Lady/Dawn Davenport hybrid, I'm going to have to revamp my thoughts on the likelihood on some arguments for paralllel evolution). Specifically, I thought, it's like Oscar Wilde directed for Samuel Beckett by John Waters. (M informs me that this is why I will never win an Oscar, though I'm unsure how the two are related.) The press release describes the set and production design as "Midwestern Gothic," which works too.

Really, the plot, and it does have one (a crucial point overlooked by many offbeat theater ventures), could be lifted from anyone at any time, from Richardson to Tolstoy to Dickens to DuMaurier to Johanssen. It involves an indeterminate countryside ravaged by an unspecified war. It has unaccompanied women of all ages in obscure locations for ill-defined reasons and almost certainly under false pretenses. It has absent fiancés, eternally disappointed lackey lovers, and a teeny tiny band.

The dialogue is rapid-fire exposition expertly interleaved with meaningful, gothic pauses. The set is at once claustrophobic and cramped and bleak and looming. The musical numbers are exactly silly enough. If there's anything at all negative to say about the play itself, it's that the action leading up the climax is so much fun, the audience participation, which leads into one of two endings, sneaks up on you and then end feels a little abrupt.

So, as a play, it's a nice, tight piece of work. And I will probably be having nightmares about being expected to direct it without ever having rehearsed, because in the wrong hands it would be an utter disaster. Fortunately, Strange Tree seems to have secured the rightest hands possible. The cast is terrific and the direction is excellent.

The downstairs theater at the Chopin is only a theater in the sense that any room can be a theater. It is, in fact, a basement, complete with support poles, acoustics-killing ceiling, and no seating. For this production, the house is set up with kitchen chairs on three banks of risers and a few armchairs and such on the floor. We sat in the center section near downstage left. This put me behind a pillar that made some of the action in the kitchen of Mrs. Dumont's cottage a little hard to see, particularly that of the eponymous "hero?" who was seated on that side through for a long while. But that was probably the worst problem in the house, which says a lot for how cognizant Carolyn Klein must have been of the limitations of the space.

The set was separated from the house on the floor by a line of baskets, crates, and so on filled with random Cracker Barrel-esque tchotckes. The set itself consisted of two levels of floor that was too rickety by half for my tastes (and a conversation with the stage manager after the show, concluded with the secret, bitter handshake of stage managers everywhere, [seriously, what you need to see starts about 2.5 min into that clip, but you do need to see it] reveals that it was also too convincingly rickety for her tastes). The lower of the two (about 6" off the floor) was the kitchen, the upper (maybe 6" above that) was Edwina's upstairs bedroom. These were each only about 6' wide and maybe 7' deep.

The kitchen had window entirely occupied by a weeping, dreary painting of the "Manor House" in the distance. Shelves artfully stocked jams, jellies, cutting boards, and colanders gave the room a close, depression-era mentality feel and that Manor House, dude, that just boded. The exit from the kitchen to the upstairs was curtained off in contrasted to the exit from the cottage (and up to the Manor House for SUGAR mwah ah ah ah ah!) was marked with a few tall, white flats that also served as the wings.

Edwina's room had a window framed by frosty birch branches at stage right, suggesting desolate, frozen grounds around the cottage. Those grounds just happened also to be inhabited by the band/servants/vagrants/wounded soldiers of unsavory reputation. The back wall didn't really exist, save for a strangely surrealist, yet representational painting of a battlefield, making it unclear whether it was a view out another window, a painting on her bedroom wall, or a signpost up ahead.

The entrance to the room, although immediately next to the entrance to exit/from the kitchen, was framed and masked differently enough that, with the help of minimal, but well-designed lighting, the separation of the two spaces was quite clearly conveyed. Really a great design and use of space that could have been a nightmare.

The cast was so note perfect (not necessarily musically, not that that's important, and not that some of them aren't, but I'm rambling now) in handling a challenging script (in the good sense, not in the euphemistic sense), that it's no surprise that the main cast are all members of the Strange Tree Company and seem to have worked with one another and with Schwartz's material before.

Jennifer Marschand (Elizabeth Lyonn, the fianceé marked for death) must have done some serious long-distance running to train for delivering that sheer volume of cheerful dialogue at that rapid-fire pace. She played Elizabeth as a mixture of Rosa Bud and Cecily Cardew with a good deal of real person thrown in. Before things went strangely horizontal with Edwina, she tried to connect with her as a best girlfriend with exactly the right amount of sincerity, rather than exhausting every opportunity for laughs. Nice singing voice, too.

Carol Enoch (Mrs. Agatha Dumont, the would-be sister-in-law, murderess in residence, crazy-priest-manipulating mastermind, and baffled mother of Edwina), in addition to her mad yoga 5k1llz (for lo! She was the head-standing obscene tapper to whom I referred earlier) stared down Marschand's breathless delivery and took pauses that could frighten Pinter. Her preferred mash up seems to have been Mrs. Danvers meets Miss Havisham and they have a voyeuristic, if frustrating day out with the "before" Anna Karenina. Giving her make up somewhere in between the band's scary-and-probably-already-dead look and Elizabeth's fresh-scrubbed face was a good move for the sake of characterization and for masking the fact that she, her "daughter," and said fresh-faced n00b are probably all about the same age.

We liked Scott Cupper in Rogue 8 and loved him here, despite lack of follow-through on the wolves front (we weren't sure whether we were supposed to howl whenever he mentioned the wolves, and the wolves rather fell by the wayside by the end anyway). He and Marschand had a nice "Nobody Outcrazies Ophelia" vibe with one another that created a relationship separate and distinct from his with either of the two ladies already in residence. Other actors and other directors likely wouldn't have bothered to set that up in what is, after all, a highly silly comedy. He also worked the multiple dimensions of crazy nicely, as he was believably hot for Agatha's chilly bod and just-ever-so-slightly-Freudian in his paternal, yet wrong affection for Edwina.

Ah, Edwina. You know how you see Jennifer Coolidge in something, and you never sure whether she is an incredibly brilliant actress, or just completely bug-fucking crazy? Well, I'm pretty sure that Kara Klein is a really good actress, but her Edwina is juuussssst a little bit over into that scary territory. Don't get me wrong, she has to be. I just . . . you know . . . would seek out the closest crowded well-lit space I could if I found myself alone somewhere with her. I'm just sayin'. She and Marschand did great physical work together in a very small (and rickety, have I mentioned rickety?) space together.

All the band members, who really are part of the cast, were great, as well. I'm disappointed that my entry on the Boxer Rebellion's Assassins is 100% Wes Clark free. I recognized him early on (although didn't place him until I grabbed the press release for the show), and he was the one with the most acting to do and the most audience warm-up, and he was great at both.

The best part of the evening, though, and the part that brings us back around to the mysterious slip of paper inside the program was the fact that the whole damned cool set, as well as a whole bunch of really nifty ceramic pieces that had been out and about in the lobby, are for sale. All the objects on the set were found and/or made by artists and contributed to the production. Sales benefit both Strange Tree and the artists. Despite the comprehensive awesomeness of the set, we seemed to be the only ones who took them all up on the offer to walk around it and view the stuff for purchase.

This is when I bonded with Amanda Dravecky, Stage Director and fellow sufferer from on-stage shennanigans and very nearly killed myself by falling from the bedroom into the kitchen, despite the fact that we had just discussed the dangerousness of the floors. Stupid cute backless shoes. A special thank you to Weston Davis, the scary man with the washboard, for saving my life. Also for promising to incorporate me into the set if I had, in fact, died. (Hey, they have a jar of real human teeth [I checked. A lot.] floating in mysterious liquid, I'd fit right in.)

Most exciting of all, we scored the incredibly awesome Manor House painting (no good picture of it, alas, but it's by Sarah McMurray, a member of the Strange Tree company and. AND AND AND my super duper awesome Bloody Soldiers painting. which seems to be by artist/photographer Lee Klawans. This is very exciting to me, after having missed out on the sparkly horse-head chair of my dreams last summer.
. Many of the pieces in the lobby, particularly the "old wallpaper" patterned mugs were gorgeous, too, but seriously, if I buy one more coffee-holding vessel, I think M may leave me.

Anyway, great show, great theater company. Go see it. And lovely birthday. Cool.

The End of Hope: Jon Stewart Live

With all the nattering I did about Chicago Opera Theater, you might have thought that I locked myself in the house all weekend to contemplate the modernity of the Austro-Hungarian navel and what kind of drugs Ken Cazan has been doing. Not so. I was stalking my TV boyfriend and exploring the fringes of country music. Independent of one another, more's the pity.

On Friday, we journeyed to . . . scenic . . . Rosemont, IL, to see Jon Stewart. The only bad there is that we were not seeing him in Minneapolis with our peeps up there, but after our cross-country journey with the hound, that was just 10,000 lakes too far. This is the second time we've seen him, so we were prepared for his weeness.

This show was more . . . subdued (not quite what I'm looking for) than the last, which I think was in April, 2005. (I seem to recall that it was the same weekend that JPII died.) I'm not sure whether it's fatherhood, 2 more years of the Bush "presidency," or just being in Rosemont that might have sapped his will to live, but the show had a distinct "Fuck Hope," vibe to it.

As seems to be typical (if "typical" can be inferred from 2 shows), he started out political by mentioning the Cubs/Sox cross-town series. (The Sox had just whizzed game 2 down their legs.) Too soon, Jon, too soon. He also introduced the running Barack Obama gag early on and wound up on an Al Gore tangent, courtesy of an audience shout out to which he responded, "Al Gore isn't eating like he's running anywhere. . . . If you see him at the dessert table, remind him that conservation is a virtue." (Without wishing to read to much into commentary on Al's decided doughiness, which I think he wears well [but I would, wouldn't I?], it strikes me that Dear Jon is one of the few male public figures I can think of who might be working through a few body image issues.)

He then moved on to criticize the conservation movement as incredibly optimistic. Because the the world will end not with the Rapture (although that'd be cool, because the rest of us would be left with all the stuff the righteous will leave behind), but in some kind of super sciencey accident and the words "Hey! It worked!"

After some well-spent time on Dick Cheney (how does one edit that down to 6 minutes, I wonder. So. Much. Material.), he worked his way into religion, globally and personally. The midwest collectively embarrassed itself with the resounding silence in response to the awesome Pope/KKK joke. The fact that my honking, horrible laugh was the equivalent of chirping crickets over the silence has nothing to do my assessment of the joke, I assure you. And, dude, seriously, on the heels of the remarkable sanguinity with which the audience received the piñata-fucking story, we just look like the creepiest comedy-goers evar. We can do better, people.

Finally, he did a brief bit on the personal, reflecting on the corrosion of children and the simultaneous evolution of sarcasm. Seriously great story. It had child alcoholism, child larceny, and a Doodle Pro Jihad. And for his encore, after beating down our faith in anything at all, he restored it with a simple anecdote about a homeless guy beating off on his stoop. I smell a Pulitzer.

Mighty Cheesehead Wind 2, Telecommuniculturey 0

Thursday we played hookey and drove up to Milwaukee for the dual purpose of seeing Lewis Black and Dave Attell (M's vested interest) and going to the County Zoo to see their bonobos (my vested interest, obviously). After a near-miss with a whacky misunderstanding over Madison vs. Milwaukee, we were on our way. Getting out of Chicago was a nightmare, mostly because we, as ever, left later than intended and caught the very beginning of rush hour. It was a long time before we were safely across the state line and deep into Cheese/Porn/Fireworks territory.

We arrived downtown and found a place to park for less than the cost of our first-born child immediately, driing home the message that we weren't in Kansas anymore. Even more bizarrely, the Riverside Theatre was actually right next to the river. When you come from the flattest city on earth and it's surrounded by places called "Palos Hills" and "Arlington Heights," you come not to expect truth in advertising.

The unexpected ease of navigation and parking left us with enough time for a pre-show drink. We sat out on Rock Bottom Brewery's patio in the beautiful fall air beside the river and had an excellent Oktoberfest. In telling us about their seasonal beers, our embryonic waiter seemed confused as to why the options were all German. Sigh.

The Riverside is a gorgeous, 30s-style theatre, complete with an ornate vaulted ceiling, balconies, and side boxes. Unfortunately when it was restored, it was redone entirely in mauve and pink, so it looks like a very large ladies lounge in a Vegas strip hotel. They also made the somewhat questionable decision of leaving the bars open throughout the performances. This proved to be an error, as 99% of the audience spent the next 2.5 hours climbing over or being climbed over by everyone else. Do not try to get in between a cheesehead and his Jagermeister.

Mitch Hedberg was a pleasant surprise (to us, anyway) addition to the bill. He led off with a relatively short set and seemed quite nervous for the first several minutes, despite the crowd being fairly enthusiastic. At the end, when the three of them did a few minutes together, he again seemed kinda paralyzed. Poor lamb.

Lewis Black was funny, although I was sweating on his behalf. He did a set more than an hour long in a long leather jacket. He also needs to cut back on the smoking. I thought the first row was going to be showered with tasty lung bits at several junctures.

Although I like Insomniac well enough, I'm not a fan of Dave Attell's stand up. His set was not inclined to change that opinion. One of the things that I like about Insomniac is that, no matter how bizarre or mundane the people he's riding along with are, he seems interested. He's never a total dick to anyone unless they're obvious asswipes. I don't know whether it's a tight directing rein, censorship, good writing or some combination of all of the above, but it works. His stand-up act is completely unoriginal. He's just another belligerent dick. It's also a mistake to bring ironic racist and gay-bashing jokes to America's heartland if you're not prepared for the audience to take them at face value. He wasn't.

Friday morning was chilly and overcast, which looked like a perfect day to hit the zoo, as neither of us is a fan of heat or sun. We made our way directly to the primate house, which is huge and really well done. There are both indoor and outdoor habitats for gorillas, orangutans, and siamang. There is also an outdoor bonobo habitat, but they ran out of money before they could finish the deck that would have wound all the way around, so, when outdoors, you can only just glimpse the bonobos in the distance through the gorilla enclosure.

We spent lots of time outside watching a maturing silverback named Majji and his half-brother Hodari. Hodari was quite obviously hand raised by humans. He spent the majority of his time kicking back in his swing made of firehose and playing with a very long branch. He seemed to be trying to work out how to knock the berries off the tree next to him without having to get up. The rest of the time, he spent boisterously mocking Majji's occasional chest-beating displays, then running away when Majji inevitably advanced with malicious intent.

There was a docent loitering about, looking for someone to whom she could impart her knowledge, and we must have looked in need of information. Earlier, we had seen Majji pushing a stick through the fence to get a particular piece of food. The docent mentioned that food is deliberately placed outside the fence, M said, "What? Just to mess with them? That's so cool!" I smacked him and said, "It's called enrichment, honey." Just then a hoarde of school children invaded the deck, driving us away. The docent actually seemed relieved to be swarmed by urchins. Daft cow.

We went back to the indoor habitats and history was made. M and I have tried on two previous occasions to see bonobos. Once at the San Diego animal park, the guide casually remarked that you could see their troop off to the left, just before the tram accelerated to Mach I. We then learned that the troop was not visible from anywhere else in the park. A year later, we spent a few days in San Diego, mostly with the intention of hitting the zoo and seeing the bonobos. Annoying point the first: That damned zoo is all about the fucking pandas. Stupid fake-thumbed, non-reproducing, lindy-hopping bastards. Enraging point the second: The bonobos were off exhibit because it was raining. I guess they think that rainforest is some kind of government code name.

This time, there were going to be serious casualties if I didn't get some hot bonobo-on-bonobo action viewing. Fortunately, the midwest is safe from my wrath. The exhibit looked empty at first, but it turned out that one was up in a "nest" above our sightline, and tucked away in a secluded alcove were a mother, her baby (probably a few months old) and a juvenile male. The mother seemed exhausted and was lying on her back, occasionally scooting the wandering babe closer. The baby was less interested in wandering than she was in sucking on the male's toe. When she seemed to get tired of that, the male started kissing her all over her head and face.

A bit later, the mother seemed to nod off, and the baby was trying to climb over the tree root separating her from the glass in between us. The male seemed to think it was his responsibility to keep the baby in check until he realized that he was missing out on a golden opportunity to, well, be a bonobo. Accordingly, he shoved the mother's thighs into a sitting position and started kissing her labia and alternately using his finger to probe her vagina. She never woke up. I guess he needs more practice.

After a while the mother took off with the baby for higher points. The male sat forlornly in the window, occasionally kissing people through the glass. The male who had been asleep up in the nest came down looking for all the world like he was in the worst phases of a tequila hangover. He looked at the crowd by the window, turned his back on us, and bent over a ledge. I happen to know that there was a spigot there with a trickle of water, but to those not viewing from my vantage point, it surely looked as if he was worshipping the porcelain god.

They really have a great array of primates in general at Milwaukee. There are several species of new and old world monkeys in the (poorly named) ape house, as well as orangutans and siamang in nicely sized habitats. I thought that they didn't have any prosimians, but it turned out that they were over in the small mammal house with the shunned marmosets and owl monkeys. The marmoset couple had a teensy baby riding on the mother's back. The father seemed to take objection to our gawking though. Anytime she moved so that the baby was visible, he would step in front of her. We foiled him with a diabolical plan, though. It seems that the male was complete fascinated by M's hat. So Mike would hold his hat way out to the side, and the male would charge it, then realize that the baby was exposed and rush back up to it. I wish I had known that there were primates in that house, because it was one of the last places we visited and we got very little time for true bush baby appreciation.

In addition to lack of knowledge of saucy primate action in the small mammal house, our time was cut somewhat short by an unfortunate incident with the zoo's moose. As it happens, the moose and mule deer are in a large, shared enclosure just opposite the very large, man-made lake on the zoo's property. Having lived by the lake for many years, you'd think that I'd have remembered that the landscape around them is prone to sudden gusts of wind. Alas, that knowledge lost the battle for brain space to the lyrics to Soft Cell's "Tainted Love."

So, there was a sudden gust of wind and M's hat (which is some ultra-famed tough hat that can withstand the intestinal tract of an elephant) went sailing off his head and into the enclosure, in spite of the fact that he'd had both the chin and back straps secured. I turned to him in distress and, naturally, another gust took MY hat off and into the enclosure. The zookeepers who eventually came to retrieve them (we were more worried that an animal would hurt itself eating them than getting the hats back) them looked us up and down and said, "You BOTH lost your hats? You ARE a couple, I guess."