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.

Primate-cy: Electric Boogaloo at the MIlwaukee Zoo

It was more than 2 years ago that M and I last ventured to the Milwaukee County Zoo and lost our headgear to wiley moose.

That trip was auspicious for me, because it marked the first time that I actually got to see bonobos, after multiple attempts to do so. In retrospect, it's a bittersweet trip, because it was also the first—and very sadly, the last—time I'd get to see Mitch Hedberg perform. Although I almost never reread anything I've ever written, I peeked into that entry and I'm sad that I wrote so little about his performance. His appearance that night was both a surprise and a real treat. Given how much of Mitch permeates conversations at Telecommuniculturey, he's someone that M and I really do miss on almost a daily basis.

Anyway, it's a long time since it was all happenin' at the Milwaukee County Zoo. Given that my baby brother has just matched at the Medical College of Wisconsin and will be looking for a house, most likely in the zoo's 'hood, it seems unlikely that it'll be that long before our next visit, and that's a good thing.

The holdings of the Milwaukee County Zoo are, somewhat unfortunately, superior to its facilities. And I'm not just talking about the slim pickings in the way of junk food. (Although, as it happens, only the Santa Barbara Zoo, with its repulsively healthy, avocado-featuring offerings, ranks lower.) Their signage is pretty tragic, both in terms of content and literacy (someone had added a much-needed sharpie apostrophe to "It's" on one sign, but I lacked a sharpie to remove one elsewhere; and let us never speak of the mote/moat problem). A lot of the "interactive" signs (you know, where a question is asked and you lift a flap, slide a lever, or push a button to get the answer) are in bad repair. And nothing appears to have been updated in the 2.5 years since we've been there.

In perusing their website, I see that the problems also penetrate that. For example, the Great Apes and many of the Primates are in the same house, so their organization on their list is not simply location based. Leaving aside the fact that Great Apes are a subset of Primates, making the location-based list confusing even if it were accurate, you then have the Orangutan (hint: it's a Great Ape) lumped in with the Primates. And the term "Pygmy Chimpanzee" has no place on any materials that hope to be educational.
These kinds of problems irk me but don't really have much of an effect on what I get out of a visit. For the most part.

After grabbing a bite for breakfast, we made a false start down the wrong path to the house with Great Apes and other Primates and had to backtrack to it. It was quite cold, so all the primates were indoors. There were two gorillas chilling in the indoor habitat, quite possibly the same two brothers we saw the lsat time, but I'm not sure. They weren't doing much, so we moved on to the bonobos.

The first thing that caught my eye was a nearly hairless male bonobo who sat stock still, keeping himself apart from the rest of the group. He was incredibly muscular, a feature emphasized by not being especially hirsute. He just looked out over the rest of the group so calmly the whole time that we took to calling him "The Cooler."

The second thing I noticed was that there were three bonobos as high as they could possibly get in the habitat. Two of these were adults (one male and one female, as it would turn out), and the third was a youngster. The little one was on the move, clearly wanting to get down on the floor where the rest of the action was. The adult male was hot on his/her heels and in fact sped past to cradle him/her on the rest of the way down. The female caught up with the two and elbowed the male out of the way to take charge of the little one. It gradually became clear that she'd lagged behind because she had extremely limited control of her lower limbs, and seemingly none over her feet.

We're going with the assumption that the female was Linda, the oldest of their bonobos and one who suffers from diabetes, and that she is the mother of the little guy/gal was quite possibly the little baby we saw back in '03. Unfortunately, none of the information delineating the individuals had been updated since our last visit, so this is just a guess. The identity of the male remains unknown, although I suspect he might have been the one actively pursuing the mother of the baby in '03. That guess is based on the fact that he was obsessed with both the mother and the little one, and the mother didn't seem especially pleased with or interested in his bonobo-y attentions to either herself or her offspring (and yeah, the adult male went there with the little guy, 'cause that's how bonbos roll). And just to complicate things, any and all of these bets may be completely off based on the fact that the female was sporting a truly giant estrus swelling (and seemed to have actual intercourse with at least two males), which seems out of step with the age of the little one.

So you can see that information—any information at all—on identity, relationships, health status, etc., would have been a real asset. But our confusion was probably nothing to that of the student who was parked on the floor by the habitat, clearly making notes for a school project. She was a bit surly to someone who asked her a question, snapping that she didn't work for the zoo, but we'll right (in fairness to the Milwaukee zoo, I leave my think-o intact, here. WRITE, damnit!) that off to quite understandable frustration.

From the bonobos, we powered past some cuddling mandrills and fairly sedate spider monkeys. The Goeldi's monkeys were completely uninterested in showing us their tiny baby. The two orangutans were kind of canoodling, but with their backs to us. The black-and-white colobus monkeys were looking glum, as they have every right to, and the Diana monkeys were quite huffy at my having mistaken them, based only on a very brief glimpse, for the B&W colobus monkeys.

But the siamang were all up for being entertaining. The group comprised a family: adult female, adult male, and a little one just over a year old. When we first got there, the mother was sitting on the floor, looking despondent, as the little one performed a vaudeville routine. He was trying to walk on the floor, but kept slipping all over the place. This seemed to irritate him, driving him to climb some of the vines hanging over his dear old mum so that he could kick at her head and shoulders in the universal, cross-species dance of toddler frustration. He was so bad at walking bipedally on the floor that I entertained two possible explanations: (1) He was somehow developmentally delayed and not yet strong enough, leg wise, to "walk"; (2) some particularly cruel keeper had actually crisco-ed the floor.

While mother and child were enacting this tender scene, the adult male was at the back of the habitat, looking through the grate into the interior, out-of-public space. At some point, the mother and kiddo moved back to sit near him. He seemed annoyed by the kid and, at some point, seemed to be trying to make some connection (not necessarily a bonobo connection) with the adult female, who whipped around and smacked him, once, twice, upside the head. Although her reasoning was not obvious at the time, when the whole group later moved closer to the glass, his hand appeared to be entirely covered with shit, which might explain some things.

We finally peeled ourselves away from the primates and headed off to see some reptiles and fish. I appreciate herpetological creatures in general, and M is, of course, an a fish person (and pisces), but there was not much that was particularly exciting in here. M reaffirmed his position that poisonous snakes are cheater cheater pumpkin eaters, and we reminisced about the crazy rattlesnake at the St. Louis Zoo. I was then roundly mocked for wanting to know (a) whether said crazy rattler was abnormal neurologically or otherwise and (b) just how much craziness is out there in the snake population waiting to be selected for.

We next hit the small mammal house where river otters did their cute river otter thing, which is just a smidge less cute than the sea otter thing. Most of the monkeys, including the pygmy marmoset, were completely uninterested in being seen by us. The icky, horrible bats, in contrast, were all too happy to make their presence known (and I'm still having nightmares about the one that was loping across the ceiling while upside down). The wild kitty had just been given a treat ball and was being hilariously house-cat like. The bush baby remained cute, although he did not engage in any particularly spectacular locomotive feats this time around.

Our outdoor tour was rather brisk due both to the cold and the fact that we learned our lesson about sudden Wisconsin wind last time. The short list to the outdoors:

• The peacock that was really really bummed about the closed snack bar and perpetually screamed about it.
  
• Australia was a bust because it was under construction and being painted, which might explain the sacked out roos.
  
• Giraffes look totally ridiculous indoors, but being that close, you can see them swallow, which is pretty freakin' cool. Also, their skulls are quite alien looking.
  
• The wussy polar bears went back inside almost as soon as we showed up.
  
• The black bears we saw look surprisingly like the hound, despite the fact that the hound is quite equine.
  
• The "Farm" is generally pretty lame, but we did see:
  
  
  
  • A very twitchy bird of prey being trained and demanding food about every 5 seconds (reason for presence on farm unclear).
    
  • A cow that trotted in for its lunch when called.
    
  
  
• The timber wolves that they have are just completely beautiful. They also very pointedly walked to the glass as we walked away, watching us for as long as they could see us with a look that clearly said "We don't want your kind 'round here, two legs."
  

After some lunch, we swung around the opposite side of the apes/primates to check out Macaque Island where the so-called "snow monkeys" were looking pretty miserable in the cold. Well, most were looking pretty miserable. There was one who was sitting with his legs splayed wide, his erect penis making a jaunty arch and resting on the rock between them like the proverbial third leg.

It was closing in on closing time by then, so we made one more swing through the primate house. This was quite fortunate, because we learned that the adult male orangutan "Tommy" (if that is his real name), suddenly seemed to be in possession of a bucket. We also got to witness all the bonobos going completely mental: They'd run into a deep, out of sight portion at the back of the habitat. For several minutes it would seem as if they had gone inside for the night, but moments later, they'd emerge, as if from a clown car, screaming. Over and over again they did this. Comical, yet mysterious, that's our bonobos.

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."