Jive turkey.

I'm back in Chicago after a great Thanksgiving trip down to North Carolina. Had a lot of delicious food, hung out with family and friends, shot guns. Very relaxing!







Actually, it really was very relaxing and fun. I love spending time down there.

I got in late Wednesday night. Travel was surprisingly easy and uncongested. I was worried for nothing.

Thursday was all about cooking and eating. Duh. For dinner it was myself, my mother, my stepfather Pat, their friends Joan and Scott, and Joan and Scott's daughter Lauren. Everything was delicious!

Friday morning we biked into town for coffee, relaxed in the afternoon, then went out for another fantastic dinner. We went with Joan and Scott and Lauren and Pat's mother Ann to a local restaurant called Sean's. While biking in the morning, we went past a house that had burned down the day before. That'll put being thankful in perspective for you!

Saturday we did some shopping, some shooting, and saw "Casino Royale" in the evening. Pat convinced my mother to take up target shooting, and none of us could quite believe it. But now that I've gone with them, I can testify that it really is fun. Don't you love my hat in that completely unflattering picture above? And the movie was quite good as well. I haven't been very impressed with Bond since Connery (my favorite would be a tie between "Goldfinger" and "Thunderball"), and while I wouldn't say this one is good enough to rescue the entire franchise, it's a good start and an entertaining movie.

And yesterday I flew home. Good times.

[One downside, when I made my plans, the Bears game was scheduled for 1pm. But it got changed to 4pm, and I ended up missing most of it, and they lost like they always do when I'm not watching. Sorry, Lovie. I take full responsibility.]

Shazbat.

That was the made-up swear word they would use on "Mork and Mindy." I like it better than frak, and if I said hraka, no one would get it.

Anyway, I wanted to get a post in before I leave town tomorrow. Here are some quick hits:

- Here's the promised update: The second date didn't go as well as the first, and I've called a halt to the proceedings. Alas. No fault; I just wasn't feeling the chemistry. That's all I'm going to say about it here.

- The final mainstage show of the semester at Columbia is done and struck. There are two student projects going on this week, but once they're done tomorrow life will be much quieter. Huzzah!

- Had a nice weekend, despite having to be at work a lot. Saw "Stranger Than Fiction" and enjoyed it. Spotted at least six people that I know in the cast (much of it was filmed in Chicago). Had brunch w/ Jason and Kate and Lilly on Saturday, which is always lovely (sadly I'll have to miss Lilly's birthday party while gone this weekend). And I even got to see all of the Bears victory on Sunday!

- My nephew Xavier is on YouTube, reading a Halloween story that he wrote which won a contest at the local library. Congratulations, X-man!

- And now a few things going on in the world that I wanted to draw your attention to:

--- Galactus is coming! (Hilarious parody of what a religious tract might look like in the Marvel Universe.)

--- Obama is cooler than you are. (Politician apologizes for making fun of reporter after finding out that it hurt the reporter's chances with a chick.)

--- Viagra spill revives Lake Michigan. (I never noticed before how much the shape of the lake resembles a flaccid penis.)

--- Comic book science in real life: When you build your own nuclear reactor in the basement, you don't end up a super-villain, you just get written about in the Detroit Free Press.

--- Taco Bell tries to kill video gamers. (Well, actually what they did was offer to give free tacos for life to anyone who would donate their new PS3 system to a Boys & Girls Club, but given the quality of their food, I think that amounts to attempted murder.)

--- Hobo is a funny word. (And that article uses it 11 times!)

--- And lastly, I'd like to talk about a little cultural dilemna I've been having. For those of you who don't know, about a month ago "This American Life" (which is pretty much the best radio show ever, in my opinion - sorry, PHC) finally got out of their contract with audible.com and was able to start offering their program as a free podcast. They are also now selling back episodes on the iTunes Music Store. Which leads me to my dilemna. I was a subscriber to the show on Audible for a long time, and have about 100 episodes of the show stored up. Now I'm subscribing to the podcast and getting even more. And I am gradually accumulating the back episodes because they rerun them a lot. But there are over 300 episodes total! So, the question is: should I bother spending money on collecting the old episodes from iTunes? I must admit that I'm a bit of a completist, and would LOVE to be able to say that I have every episode. But would I ever even listen to them all? I don't know. Anyway, if anyone wants to give me an iTunes gift card for Christmas, now you pretty much know what I would spend it on. : )


And now, here it is - your Moment of Zen:

Young at heart.

Today I was reading a review of Scott McCloud's "Making Comics" on the Onion AV Club website, and they said:

"Scott McCloud wrote his masterpiece, Understanding Comics, at the age of 33, and isn't likely to surpass it. This complete aesthetic theory in a friendly cartoon format catapulted him out of the comics ghetto and into respectability. It's probably inevitable that his other non-fiction books, Reinventing Comics and now Making Comics, read like supplements rather than new revelations. But there's nothing dishonorable in spending a lifetime exploring the land one discovers in one's youth, and in Making Comics, McCloud gives the industry one of its best how-to manuals, along with a flurry of exercises to spark creativity. And as with his best work, the core insights of Making Comics have application far beyond the realm of funny-books."

What's exciting about this? They refer to age 33 as his "youth"!! Maybe I'm not so old as I've been feeling lately. : )

In the meantime, I've been wandering down memory lane recently in a Gen-X reference-a-thon with a friend via e-mail, so here it is - your Moment of Zen:

Some strange.

Hee hee. I doubt many of you will know what that post title refers to, but those who do have just screamed like little girls. : )

Anyway, I don't have much to say, but there were a few strange stray thoughts I thought I'd jot down:

- I had a date on Sunday! Please don't faint. (She's probably reading this, 'cause it's one of the first things to come up if you Google me, so "Hi, Lisa!") It went really well. We're going out again on Thursday. I'll keep you posted.

- Between the date, and the new job, and the Bears' AMAZING victory on Sunday, I'm feeling fairly lucky these days. Thank goodness I sucked so hard at bowling last night. I was beginning to worry about what kind of payment the karma gods might demand.

- Only a week to go until I can get out of here for Thanksgiving! I can't wait -- I need a vacation!

- I'm re-reading "Infinite Jest" these days -- if you've never read it, it's amazing. Although the ending made me really mad the first time I finished it, it's still totally my kind of book.

- It's time to start getting the Christmas music ready. I just ordered the Aimee Mann Christmas CD that I mentioned here earlier, as well as Sufjan Stevens' new holiday box set (I needed to order both to get the free shipping).

- Ooh, that post a couple of days ago about mentors? It was my 200th post! That doesn't really mean anything, but it's kind of exciting nonetheless.

- Damn... I'm sure there was more I meant to say. I'll update this as I think of it. I must run off to dinner now and then come back to work to watch a student show. Joy.



And now, here it is - your Moment of Zen:


It's not the heat, it's the huge manatee.

Riding off into the sunset.

Sadly, Jack Palance passed away today. Though most people remember him from "City Slickers," or "Batman," or doing one-armed push-ups at the Academy Awards, I will always think of him as the villain from my namesake movie, "Shane." Rest in peace, Jack!

And now, here it is - your Moment of Zen:

Thank goodness for mentors.

No, not for Mentos (the freshmaker). For mentors. You know, the teachers that take a liking to you and help you along your way in life outside of class. Traditionally in literature, they pick one student and groom him to take their place and marry their daughter, but I think that's because it's always the students who write those stories.

ANYWAY -- as you saw in my recent post about the new job, I've been conflicted about the change. Luckily for me, I have a mentor: Sheldon Patinkin, the chairman of Columbia College's theater department and one of the founders of the Second City. Because of Sheldon's connections, the school and the theater have had a close relationship over the years. Whenever I wonder why on earth Second City hired a fresh-out-of-college 22-year-old me and gave me a ton of responsibility (I don't know that I would have trusted me!), I remember that I had Sheldon's recommendation, and that goes a LONG way in this town. In fact, it was more than a recommendation -- as I recall he phoned the producer and said, "I'm sending someone over for you to hire." : ) He saw my potential, supported and encouraged me all the way through school, and helped me land my first professional gig. If that's not the definition of a mentor, I don't know what is.

So, yesterday morning I was at a meeting at Columbia, which Sheldon was also attending, about remodelling the lobby of the studio theater. After the meeting, he pulled me aside to congratulate me on the new job. And then he said something that melted all those conflicts I'd been having. He said, "I knew in advance that they were going to offer you the job; and if you hadn't taken it, I'd have told you you were crazy."

Thanks, Sheldon. That's what I needed to hear, and I didn't even know it. And coming from you, it means more than I can say. You're a good friend, a great director, an awesome teacher, and an unbelievable mentor. Now if only you had a daughter. . . . .

And now, here it is - your Moment of Zen:

Oh, hell.

I was going to write something deep and insightful here, but I just had an unpleasant meeting and now I'm too wound up to do so. So, here are links to some stuff you should read on your own and think about:


MediaShift talks about Stephen Colbert and YouTube and the Viacom scandal.

Mark Steyn talks about supporting our troops and why he thinks it's bad to support them as people but not support their mission.

The Guardian talks to crazy stage director Deborah Warner about her newest shows.

An ad for new Pronto condoms -- possibly the greatest boon to safe sex since regular condoms.

The Bears blow it every time I leave town.

Ringling Bros. caves to the lowest common denominator and the Tribune hates it.


And now, here it is -- your Moment of Zen:

Wedding bells.

There weren't actually any bells at the wedding I attended in Pittsburgh this weekend, but it sounded like a good title for the post.

My old friend Chris Sutton (who came through Chicago not long ago in the national tour of "Spamalot") got married to his girlfriend Lyn Philistine on Saturday. Kingston and I decided to fly down for the festivities. We expected to be joined by another old friend from the summer stock days, Shaun Morgan, but at the last minute he ended up not being able to come.

It was an interesting couple of days. Kingston flew out on Friday, and was there for the rehearsal dinner, but I had a Galileo show that night in Chicago. I flew out on Saturday morning, although I ended up wishing I had been there on Friday because it sounds like it was a lot of fun. It also would have been nice to get to know folks Friday night so I didn't feel so overwhelmed at the reception on Saturday. It was a HUGE wedding, and I only knew a few people there, and I don't do well in big crowds, so although I had a blast the whole rest of the time, the reception itself left me a little nonplussed -- but most of them do. It was an amazing dinner, though, and the desserts were the best I've ever seen.

The wedding itself was absolutely beautiful. It was in a very old, very pretty church.




The bride and groom are such a great couple, and were so obviously overjoyed to be marrying each other that you couldn't help but smile.



I did feel underdressed, especially since a) my electric razor turned on somehow in my bag and was totally out of charge when I went to shave, and b) because Kingston looked so killer ("Follow the money," indeed).



The roaming mandolin player at the post-wedding, pre-reception hors d'oeuvres was one of my favorite parts of the trip. Lyn's family is VERY Italian, and this was a great touch.



Those are all the pictures I have. What else can I say about the trip? Chris's family is an amazing group of incredibly nice, funny, good-looking people (three daughters and four sons). It's enough to make one jealous, but they're all so charming that you can't help but like them. I had met most of them, but it was years and years ago, so it was great to see them again and get to know them as adults.

There was much eating, much drinking, some poker playing, and a lot of good conversation. It was a fun weekend!

Color me conflicted.....

.....but then send me flowers anyway, because I've got some good news: I've got a new job! Or, I will have a new job on January 11th, when I take over as the resident stage manager of the Second City ETC. On the one hand, yay! But then on the other hand, now I have to leave Columbia. I've gotten better and better over the years about not being so wishy-washy, but the fact remains that making a choice always involves making a sacrifice. That, and I'm just bad at endings. Quitting a job and breaking up with a girlfriend are quite possibly the two things I hate most in the world.

Questions that this huge change in my life raises:

-- Will I actually be happier at this job? I've lost count of how many "dream jobs" I've finally landed, only to be bitterly disappointed with the reality. Wait, no I haven't -- there've been five.

-- If you work for a company that has a MySpace profile, are you morally obligated to add it as your friend?

-- Will I survive the changeover? I've promised Columbia that I will stay until they find a replacement, or until ETC goes into the process of writing their next show (currently scheduled to happen in April). But that could mean as much as 3 months of working both jobs! Good for the checkbook, not so good for the sleeping.

-- Will this affect my social life for better or worse? On the one hand, I will be more likely to hang out with my co-workers. On the other hand, I will never be able to go out on a Friday or Saturday night again. On the third hand, I might end up a bitter alcoholic.

-- Will it matter if I end up a bitter alcoholic, as long as I get my name on the big alumni list in the front window of the theater? The day I first see my name up there on the same list with Bill Murray and John Belushi, et al, will be a high point of my life.

-- Can self-promotion serve as a Moment of Zen?

And furthermore...

Updated yesterday's political post this morning.

If you're wondering why you can't follow the link I put up about the fake boarding passes, it's because the FBI has shut the site down. The point of the site was that there's a hole in the security system. Shutting down the site doesn't fix the hole. Morons.

In other news, it looks like maybe it is too soon for our bowling team to be named the Stingrays.

And now, here it is - your Moment of Zen:

Poli-ticks.

Well, heck. I had run across the following passage awhile ago, and wanted to tell you about it, but I thought it was too long. Then I ran across the second item in today's Utne Newsletter. So, I'm feeling a little bitter and you are going to be forced to listen to it.

From "Assassination Vacation" by Sarah Vowell:


"I can never make up my mind whether Maryland is off-beat or just off-putting. I probably would have felt the same way if I were passing through in the 1860s too. While technically Maryland remained in the Union during the Civil War, it was the border state, a schizophrenic no-man's-land with the North at its door and the South in its heart.

Listen to its state song. Sung to the tune of the German Christmas carol, "O Tannenbaum," "Maryland, My Maryland," was written as the Civil War was breaking out in 1861. The first line goes, "The despot's heel is on thy shore." Who is the despot? The new president, Lincoln, who, it's worth remembering, had to sneak into Washington for his inauguration so as to avoid the assassins waiting to jump him in Baltimore, a city which, in the song, is rhymed with "patriotic gore," commemorating the blood spilled on its streets on April 19, 1861, when a mob of local seccessionists attacked a Massachusetts regiment passing through town. "Maryland, My Maryland," the song says, "spurns the Northern scum!" The song also calls for seceding from the Union, to stand by its sister state Virginia, going so far as to allude to that state's motto, Sic semper tyrannis:

Virginia should not call in vain,
Maryland!
She meets her sisters on the plain -
Sic semper! 'tis the proud refrain

Sic semper tyrannis, of course, was the proud refrain hollered by Maryland's own John Wilkes Booth after making good on shooting the aforementioned "despot" Lincoln at war's end. One might think that a state song hinting at presidential assassination would have eerie echoes when that state's native son assassinated said president and therefore it might be headed for the title of "state song emeritus," the dustbin into which Virginia herself tossed its racist favorite "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny." But "Maryland, My Maryland" did not become the official state song until 1939. Despite the occasional nice try to ditch it, it remains the state song to this day.

All of which could be written off as harmless symbolism, almost laughable anachronism. However, careful readers who are also symbolism devotees would have noticed that the date in 1861 when the Baltimore mob clashed with the Massachusetts soldiers was April 19 -- Patriot's Day -- the anniversary of Lexington and Concord, when the first shots were fired in the Revolutionary War. It is also the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995.

When Timothy McVeigh bombed the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, he was wearing a T-shirt. On the back of the T-shirt, perhaps as a nod commemorating Patriot's Day, was the famous quote from Founding Father Thomas Jefferson, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." On the front of McVeigh's shirt was a picture of Abraham Lincoln. Printed under Lincoln's face was the caption "Sic semper tyrannis." McVeigh ordered his shirt from a catalog sent out to subscribers of Southern Partisan, the pro-Confederate magazine. As if McVeigh wearing the shirt isn't disgusting enough, the catalog sold out of most sizes of the shirt after McVeigh made the news. People actually heard that a mass murderer responsible for 168 deaths was wearing clothing celebrating another murder and they wanted to dress up like him. According to media watchdogs Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, by December of that year, the catalog reassured Partisan readers who had ordered the shirt:

Due to a surprising demand for our anti-Lincoln T-shirt,
our stock has been reduced to odd sizes. If the enclosed
shirt will not suffice, we will be glad to refund your money
or immediately ship you another equally militant shirt
from our catalog.

And if the shirts were too big or too small, the readers could have cheered themselves up with one of the fetching, one-size-fits-all bumper stickers like "Clinton's military: a gay in every porthole, a fag in every foxhole."

If the shirt's popularity with readers of Southern Partisan, a magazine on the fringes, seems just that -- on the fringes -- three years after McVeigh inspired the shirt's commercial success, a Missouri senator would do an interview with the magazine announcing, "Your magazine also helps set the record straight. You've got a heritage of doing that, of defending Southern patriots like [Robert E.] Lee, [Stonewall] Jackson and [Confederate President Jefferson] Davis. Traditionalists must do more. I've got to do more. We've all got to stand up and speak in this respect, or else we'll be taught that these people were giving their lives, subscribing their sacred fortunes and their honor to some perverted agenda." And if that random senator still seems on the fringe, what with representing Missouri and/or kookily complaining about Jeff Davis's bad rap, it's worth noting that three years after saying that, the Missouri senator, John Ashcroft, became the attorney general of the United States, which is to say, the highest-ranking law enforcement official in all the land."


See, that's what gets me. The total lack of a sense of propriety that some politicians have. I call it "summer-camp syndrome," they all hang out together there in Washington, and they essentially have their own set of rules and ways of doing things (that's what "privilege" means -- it's from the Latin for "private law"), and they simply forget how we do things out here in the rest of the world. It happened when Supreme Court Justice Scalia wouldn't recuse himself from ruling on whether Dick Cheney had illegally influenced Halliburton getting contracts, despite the fact that Scalia and Cheney are old buddies who go hunting together three or four times a year. Now, I don't know that Scalia acted improperly, but for god's sake Supreme Court Justices should be doing everything in their power to avoid ANY APPEARANCE of impropriety.

Here are the new ones that I found in the last few days:

Donald Rumsfeld's summer home, Mount Misery (note that it's located in Maryland), is the former site of a special farm where rebellious slaves could be sent to be broken. Read the article, and this one about Dick Cheney and global warming, and try not to feel your civic spirit shrivel and die.

And now, here it is - your Moment of Zen:

Walpurgisnacht

Random weirdness abounds.

First, here is an obituary from London newspaper The Telegraph that I was convinced for quite awhile was a Halloween joke. The obit, for one Lieutenant-Colonel John Trenchard Pine-Coffin, contains, among other hilarious anecdotes about the Colonel's life, the following:

"In 1963 he was in Nassau when he was ordered to investigate a party of Cuban exiles that had infiltrated Andros Island, part of the Bahamas. His seaplane landed in thick mud and Pine-Coffin decided that his only chance of reaching dry land was to strip off. On coming ashore, plastered in mud and wearing only a red beret and a pair of flippers, he was confronted by a party of armed Cubans. Mustering as much authority as he could in the circumstances, he informed the group that they were trespassing on British sovereign territory and were surrounded. The following morning, when the Royal Marines arrived to rescue him they were astonished to find him and his radio operator in a clearing standing guard over the Cubans and a pile of surrendered weapons."


Second, there's this scary, scary site that aims to point out the flaws in TSA security by letting you print fake boarding passes!


And lastly, reading last week's Entertainment Weekly the other day, I came across this amazing quote, from an interview with Food Network star Rachael Ray in their "Stupid Questions" column:


"EW: Do you ever worry that there can be only so much happiness in the universe, and that every time you smile, a unicorn gets punched in the face?

Rachael: I would smile all day long, every day, if it guaranteed a unicorn getting punched in the face. I find them really annoying."


Now, some of you may know that Mikey B. and I have a bit of a private joke about unicorns, which resulted in my receiving the Avenging Unicorn Play Set for my birthday this year:

But on top of that, unicorns came up in conversation at lunch yesterday (during a discussion of people who believe patently impossible things), and then I came across this today from the Perry Bible Fellowship:


You can even buy the shirt yourself here.

So, what the hell, right? This is like the Peter Pan thing a few weeks ago. Why are there so many unicorns in my life all of a sudden? Intertextuality? Or something more? Is the universe trying to tell me something? I don't know, and I'm not sure I want to know. Leave me alone, fortune cookie gods!

And now, here it is - your Moment of Zen:

A hamburger pumpkin! (The site I found it on called it a Big Mac, but Big Macs don't have tomatoes. So I thought it was a Whopper, but then I remembered that Whoppers don't have sesame seeds. So it's just a hamburger.)

Que es mas macho?

This post doesn't really have anything to do with macho-ness. I was just thinking of the Laurie Anderson song "Smoke Rings" in which she is apparently on a quiz show asking that question of unrelated objects. As in, "La segunda pregunta es: Que es mas macho, lightbulb o schoolbus?" (The answer of course is schoolbus.) Anyway, I'm about to compare two semi-unrelated things. Here we go:


Which are you more excited to hear?

Aimee Mann's new Christmas album,

or

Scarlett Johansson covering Tom Waits?


I'm going to go with Aimee, simply because she covers "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" on it, and I can't think of a more fitting tribute to the late, grrr-eat Thurl Ravenscroft (who sang the original, as well as being the voice of Tony the Tiger). But, I reserve the right to change my mind if Scarlett decides to cover "What's He Building?"

; D

Either way, I think I win. Oh, and PS: Don't forget to "fall back" this Saturday when you go to bed!

And now, here it is -- your Moment of Zen:

Geek out.

Okay, all you norms can stop reading now. This post is only for my fellow geeks and nerds. Did you know, by the way, that the word "nerd" was coined by Dr. Seuss? Well, now you know. And (say it with me!) knowing is half the battle.

So, first stop today is "Arden," the new MMORPG based on the plays of one William Shakespeare. Here is my favorite part of the article:

The game will instantly immerse players in Elizabethan environments, and successful players will, it is hoped, soak in the characters, as well as the plotlines, of Shakespeare's plays.

Castronova is utilizing unusual methods to achieve that goal.

He said one of the more unique elements of "Arden" is that the game will be seeded with Shakespearean texts, many of which will be the most valuable treasure players can find.

"If you collect the 'To be or not be' speech and then take it to a lore master or to a skilled bard, he can then apply the magic to your broad sword or you (could) utilize the magic in a battle situation to give you this massive (advantage)," Castronova explained. "So there (will be) this intensive competition to get the best speeches of Shakespeare in your play book.

"You've got to know your Shakespeare, but...if you do, collect these texts and you can just playfully kick butt the way wizards do."

Hey, I'm pretty thoroughly familiar with Shakespeare's texts -- I guess I must have a massive... advantage. If you know what I mean (yeah, that's the ticket).

; )

Our next stop is at Worth1000.com - a site for posting Photoshopped images. They run themed contests that folks can enter, and they're never less than interesting to check out. Recently they ran a Star Wars Celebrity Mash-up contest that cracked me up. Here is a selection of my personal favorite submissions (consider it a massive... Moment of Zen):

First up, two choice Rowan Atkinsons.






And now a couple of lovely ladies.






Some random silliness.




And some optional casting for our old pal Yoda.

Movie time - October edition.

It's been a long time since I have seen any movies, so I'm excited to have 3 of them to share with you today.

1) Junebug. I know, I'm behind the curve on this one. But I finally got it, thanks to the miracle of Netflix, and can now join the ranks of the hip and trendy once again. On the other hand, it was a hard movie to watch. As we would say in theater parlance, they made very strong choices, and I respect them immensely for that, but they're not the choices that I would have made. In other words, they did a really great job of making a story that I don't want to see. I'm sure that has a lot to do with me and my current emotional state, but I'm reminded of the Tom Lehrer quote: "I feel that if a person can't communicate, the very least he can do is shut up!" I know that communicating is hard, and I know that a lot of people in the world don't or can't do it. But do I need to watch a whole movie about that? Where's the redemption? At least the scenes with the crazy outsider artist were amusing.

2) Jackass: Number 2. This is just not a movie that you can go see by yourself. Luckily, since there was no Bears game on Sunday, I was able to convince Chris to go with me. Mandy was going to come too, but she fell ill. There's really no point in debating the artistic merits of something like this, but I do have a few things to say. We laughed pretty much constantly all the way through. It wasn't as good as the first one -- among other things, all of the guys except Johnny Knoxville seemed to be regretting their decision to appear. Too much whining, and not enough evil joy (there was some evil joy, but it was always at someone else's expense -- there was very little revelling in one's own pain). And the opening sequence wasn't nearly as good as Number 1's was, but the closing sequence more than made up for it.

3) Little Children. Thanks to Time Out, Mikey B. and I got to go to a sneak preview of this on Monday. Goddamn but it's good! The director, Todd Field, does a great job of blending multiple genres together into something completely new. It's like tasting a new recipe -- full of ingredients that you wouldn't have thought to combine, but delicious nonetheless. The cast is uniformly amazing. There's been a lot of buzz from film festivals about Kate Winslet and Patrick Wilson's performances, but I think Jennifer Connelly should be getting a Best Supporting nomination. The rest of the supporting actors are perfectly cast as well, especially Noah Emmerich (previously great as Jim Carrey's best friend in "The Truman Show") as a frustrated ex-cop, and Jackie Earl Haley (who as a child actor was one of the Bad News Bears!) as the local pedophile. The movie consistently surprised, tormented and delighted me, and I highly recommend it. But please remember, it's just my opinion ; )

And now, here it is - your Moment of Zen:

Takin' care of busy-ness.

When I was in college, I had a couple of friends named Pam and Bill. The three of us were very fond of the joke where when someone says "How are you?" you say, "Busy." I know, it's not really that funny, but there you are. Anyway, eventually that evolved into a new joke where whenever the three of us saw each other, instead of asking "How are you?" we would ask each other, "Are you busy?" And then the other person would say "Yeah, I'm busy. Are you busy?" And we would basically bombard each other with as many uses of the word busy as we could for a few seconds before going on our way. It was silly, but little inside jokes like that can really cement a relationship in a way that few other things can.

Anyway, I've been thinking about that this week as I've been very busy, but whenever anyone has asked me why I'm so busy (or when I try to think of something to write about here), I can't seem to point to any one specific thing that's taking up my time. I've just been bomambarded with busy-ness.

Pretty much all of it has been at work. The first mainstage show of the semester opened tonight. I don't usually have a lot of specific jobs on the mainstage shows, but I try to be around the theater a lot so that I can a) be available in case of an emergency (like when they blew a fuse backstage in the middle of the show on Friday and all the running lights went out), and b) so that I can catch any little details that I see slipping through the cracks. So far this show has been relatively free of big problems. So were the first freshman project of the year and the first student directed project (two of my protege students worked on those, so I wasn't worried about them). But the second student project hit a big snag. I'm not going to gossip, and you wouldn't know any of the people involved anyway, but I saw the trouble coming, and worked to keep it under control; but it blew up in our faces anyway and the hammer had to come down hard. I hate it when the hammer has to come down hard. I'm just too empathic -- I have a very hard time doing something I know will hurt someone else's feelings (especially if I have to look them in the eyes while I do it to them). It was a problem at the Apollo and it's a problem in my personal life, and it's a problem now. I want to believe in actions having consequences, but I just don't want to be the hammer, you know? Does that make any sense?

Eh. I'm rambling. I'm going to shut up now and go to bed. G'night!

Oh, but before I go, here it is - your Moment of Zen:


(Nan will know what this refers to.)

One more quick update.

Here's a link to one final update on RAW's condition. More than $68,000 was raised to help him. I feel proud to have been a part of it. Good work, world. Fnord!

Good work.

An update on the Robert Anton Wilson situation. He got enough money to pay his rent for this next month, which is huge because now he won't have to move. Keep supporting, even if it's just sending good vibes. And if you've never read any of his work, let me know and I'll get some to you.

Quick hits.

Just a couple of things that caught my attention today:

1) Robert Anton Wilson is dying. And he needs financial help to ease his last few months. I've contributed. If you know who he is, and his writing has touched you, maybe you should think about doing it, too. Fnord.

2) This is just cool. When can our country do it?

That's all.

And now, here it is - your Moment of Zen:

JoCo HoB.

Went to see Jonathan Coulton on the House of Blues Back Porch stage last night. It was awesome! First of all, however, let me say how disappointed I am that EVERYONE that I had invited to accompany me backed out. You are all losers.



Now, the weather has not been cooperating all weekend, so although I had not intended to get there particularly early, once I had hiked a few blocks through the pouring hailstorm I decided just to get in and get a seat. One upside of this is that I got in before they started charging, so all I had to pay for was my beer. Another upside is that I got to watch some of the Monday night songwriter round-table they have there. There were 4 singers up on stage with their guitars, and they would take turns singing songs they had written. It was awesome! All four of them were really good. The only one whose name I caught was the only woman: Stephanie Rogers. I may have to go back the next time I have a Monday free.

Then JoCo took the stage. He had a great set -- played some songs I knew and some I didn't. It was nice to hear different renditions of the ones I was familiar with. It turns out that I like "Shop Vac" a lot better when he does it acoustic, but I don't like "Code Monkey" quite as well that way. He played for about an hour, and finished the set off with a rousing sing-along version of "Re: Your Brains"!



Paul and Storm came on next. They asked Jonathan to stay, and jammed with him on his "First of May," serving as both his encore and their opener. I didn't stay for their whole set -- the thing I love about JoCo is that he sings funny songs in a completely serious manner (Tenacious D has a similar modus operandi), but these guys were a little too consciously wacky for my tastes. They weren't bad, just not amazing enough to keep me out that late at night.

One other fun note, Jonathan was in town because he is good friends with John Hodgman. John has a new book out ("The Areas of My Expertise") and has been doing readings and signings to promote it. JoCo has been touring with him and doing music at the readings, and then in some of the cities he does his own gigs. So, John Hodgman showed up at the show! With Peter Sagal! I suppose that I'm revealing myself as an awfully big geek to be getting excited over an author and a public radio personality. But I felt pretty hip to be hanging out at the same bar as they were. I even went over and said hello.

That's all I've got. I'm going to go listen to the new Jonathan Coulton albums that I picked up. And no, you can't have a copy. Because you didn't go to the show with me, that's why. Losers.

; P

Lost Weekend.

Oh, I never wrote about the weekend before last. It was Heather and Henry's wedding reception (that's an older picture of them above). On Friday night, Nan and Shawn flew into Chicago and we drove over to Allegan together. Or rather, they flew in on Saturday morning, since their flight was delayed by 6 hours because of the tornadoes in Chicago. Yes, tornadoes!

So we arrived at Gary's house at 4:15am. We were able to sleep in a little that morning -- I think I got up at around 8:30. The reception went off well. There was no dancing, but a lot of cake. Most of my immediate family was there, so I spent a good portion of the afternoon hanging with my nieces and nephews:





(Despite the fact that I brought my camera with me, I never managed to remember to take it out of the suitcase, so I have a few phone pictures of the kids, but that's it for the whole weekend.)

After it was over, we went to the apartment of Nan's friend Jenny and played some cards. It was nice to just chill out. Of course, even thought we got back to the house fairly early, we stayed up late chatting and didn't get to bed until around midnight. And had to be up at 5am.

Yes, 5am. The second part of the weekend was the blessing of the civil union at Heather's church in Owosso. The service started at 9:30am and was over a two hour drive away. Nan was singing in the service, so she and Gary headed out early, while Shawn and I were able to take our time a little bit.

The service was very nice. Nan ended up doing ALL of the music, as their regular guy had to go to the hospital. And I stepped in briefly to fix some problems with the sound system. But once things got started, it all went smoothly.

And then we drove back to Chicago. I dropped Nan and Shawn at the airport, returned the rental car, went home and slept like a dead man. I have no idea how they had the stamina to keep travelling, but they got home safely.

All in all a fun but exhausting trip.

"I've got things I'm thinking...

...but why would you care? Who am I?" (from "The Microphone Song" by Canasta)


Well, whether you care or not, here are some things I'm thinking:

- A while back I wrote about commercials in the theater. Now they're in books, too!

- Reading an article today about the proliferation on pornography in modern society (in Utne magazine), I was struck by the following quote:

"Powerful portrayals of evil are risky but morally valuable, precisely because they help dispel the comfortable notion that evil is wholly other. That notion tends to beget the thought that what we are doing cannot possibly be evil, since we are the ones who are doing it... The comfortable, secure belief in our own innocence is the most insidious temptation of all. Next to that, the seductiveness of sex is pretty tame."

- There has been a weird proliferation of Peter Pan connections in my life lately. First, I purchased and was blown away by Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbe's "Lost Girls" (great review here). Then I bought Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson's "Peter and the Starcatchers" (the sequel to which also came out just recently). And now today I read that the "official" sequel to Peter Pan, "Peter Pan in Scarlet" will be released this week. Not sure how I feel about that last one. I approve of J.M. donating the rights to the book to a children's hospital. I don't approve of the decision that the UK made in 1988 (when the rights were supposed to expire) to extend those rights INDEFINITELY. I also don't approve of their threatening legal action against the "Lost Girls" folks mentioned above.

- And in personal news, this has been/is a busy week for me. I've joined a bowling league, which started on Monday. I stage managed a benefit for Gilda's Club on Thursday. I went to an art extravaganza on Friday. Saturday, Mark and I went to the Cubs game against Colorado (Cubs lost in the 14th inning):



Yesterday, my first time ever in Soldier Field, I went to the Bears game against Seattle (Bears DECIMATED them!):



Tonight, Jonathan Coulton will be playing at the House of Blues. And tomorrow, Mikey B. is in a show called "War is Bad: Sock Puppet Euripides." Phew!

How weird is it for me to see two professional sporting events in the same weekend? I've never been a huge sports fan. As a kid I abhorred them. They seemed the antithesis of the life of the mind that I was trying to build (a perception that was largely influenced by movies and books, I must admit -- see below). In high school I discovered the social aspects of attending a game (and even became friends with our school quarterback), which carried over to WMU, but Columbia doesn't do sports, so they were totally off my radar for a long time (except for the riots each time the Bulls would win a championship). But about 6 years ago, I started watching football. It started again for social reasons, but after a while I got caught up in it. And now I've learned enough that I can appreciate what's happening on the field, and I can finally say that I'm a football fan! Not a huge one, and mostly just the Bears, but enough of one to really enjoy going to the game.

And now, here it is - your Moment of Zen:

Mountain Goats

Hey there. I guess I should write something about last weekend. I'll get to it soon, I promise. In the meantime, check out this AMAZING review of the Mountain Goats show in Toronto last week. Really well written, in depth stuff.

And now, here it is - your Moment of Zen:

Scarlett for president, anyone?

Grad School Confidential.

A number of people have mentioned to me that they didn't find at all surprising the statistic I cited a few weeks ago about people with graduate degrees being twice as likely to cheat on their spouses as people with only a high school diploma. Various theories were floated, including my favorites that a) people with only high school diploma are more likely to be religious, and b) that the amount of challenges as disappointments faced in completing grad school makes you crave validation so much that you turn to multiple sources. But now, at last, I believe that I have found the answer:

Women with graduate degrees are also twice as likely to have orgasms during intercourse.

; )



And now, here it is - your Moment of Zen:

Consume!

Because I'm a patriotic American, here are some things you can buy that have piqued my interest lately. I doubt I'll ever purchase any of them, but you never know with me. Remember the Plague Plushies?

1) The Remember Ring. When you purchase this ring, you specify a date. Each year, 24 hours before that date, the ring heats itself up to 120 degrees for 10 seconds every hour to remind you that your special day is approaching. It powers itself from the heat generated by your hand, which is pretty cool, but my question is, if you're forgetful enough to need this, will you remember why your finger feels like it's on fire next year?

2) Giant Anglepoise. Anglepoise makes desk lamps -- the kind with the crazy angled arm that always breaks and has to be held together with binder clips. But to celebrate the anniversary of their invention, they've released a giant floor mounted version of the lamp that's really cool.

3) USBCell Batteries. These are rechargeable AA batteries that can be recharged by plugging them in to the USB port of your computer. Genius!

4) Tangram Bookshelves. Remember Tangrams? Those crazy puzzles with the polygonal pieces that could be combined to make dozens of different pictorial shapes? Maybe it's just me. Well, now you can get polygonal bookshelves and make cool pictorial shapes on your wall! The site's not in English, but the pictures are really awesome.

5) Dr. Seuss Taxidermy. This artist make sculptures that look like animals from a Dr. Seuss book. If you hunted down those animals, killed them, and mounted their stuffed heads on your wall. Creepy but neat.

6) Finger Forks. Exactly what they sound like. The ad says, "No more sticky fingers," but I would imagine the opposite would be true. Still, sounds like fun!

7) Inflateable Iceberg. With climbing wall handholds mounted on the sides, the inflateable iceberg is the world's coolest water toy. At $8,500, however, it will remain nothing but a dream.


And now, here it is - your Moment of Zen:

You've gotta be shitting me.

I'm not sure how the expression "shitting me" came to mean "kidding me," but that's what I mean. Not that I want people to shit on me.

So, over the weekend I went to see a movie with a group of people that I didn't really know. They were really great people, though, and I had a great time. But one of the young ladies present looked a lot like my first ex-fiancee, Vicky. And she had her hair in braids. Now, back when we were in college together and hadn't started dating yet, Vicky put her hair in these white-girl-cornrows for a show. And she came over to where my show was rehearsing and asked me what I thought. I thought she was coming to me as a friend, looking for a truthful answer, so I told her the truth -- that I thought she looked stupid. Once we started dating, she never let me forget that. : )

All night on Saturday, I really wanted to tell that story, but I didn't want to offend the girl who looked like Vicky, mainly because I didn't think I could tell the story without telling her that I thought she also looked a little stupid. I made it through the night without bringing it up, but I had to tell SOMEONE, so I sent an e-mail to Vicky herself and told her.

And she wrote back to tell me that she appreciated the story and found it amusing. And to tell me that she's engaged and getting married in the spring.

Yep.

Apparently ladies, if you're looking to find the love of your life, the key is to date me for awhile and then break up. Any other exes of mine want to announce something? Maybe I could start charging for this service.

This also puts me in an interesting position, because I know that Vicky reads this blog, and I don't want her to feel bad about the situation. She's a great person and she deserves to be happy. I want her to be happy. I hope that she knows that. I guess she will after she reads this!

Anyway, that's the news. Don't worry about me -- I'm fine. : ) I'm just amused by all of it at this point. And now I'm off to do some laundry. Keep cool!

La plus ca change...

...la plus ca le same shit.

And if anybody out there gets that joke, I want you to bear my children. So, here we are. The past week and a half have been pretty miserable. I'm here to talk about it, get it off my chest, and get on with my life. Let's begin.

Things that are making me miserable:

- I've already posted about the travel difficulties I had last weekend. Thank god we finally got the prop bag back on Thursday. But I didn't mention, for example, the troubles I had over Labor Day, when I reserved a rental car, but because of the holiday weekend my payment to the credit card company didn't go through in time, and no one from the car company bothered to tell me when I made my reservation that as of August 1, every rental car company now requires extra identification if you want to rent using a debit card. Gosh, why didn't I think that I would need my passport or a current utility bill in my name and with an address that matches my ID when I went to pick up my car? Oh, that's right, BECAUSE I'VE NEVER NEEDED THEM BEFORE. Morons. (And why are they the only businesses in the world that have this weird problem with people using debit cards anyway?)

- I just finished watching the premiere episode of "Studio Sixty on the Sunset Strip." It's really good. Why is that depressing? Because I know that no matter how much they deny it, NBC is going to directly consider its success when determining the success of Tina Fey's new show "Thirty Rock." And I love Tina and want her show to win. But damn, it was a really good show tonight. Yeah, yeah, hopefully they'll both be good and have long happy runs. But the cynic in me doubts it. Just the fact that Lorne Michaels is involved with Tina's show is enough to give me palpatations.

- Although I've been doing reasonably well at Euchre and Poker lately, I haven't won a game of Cribbage in over two months. Wait, I might have won a game. But I haven't won two out of three, and I've been skunked at least five times and double skunked twice. One of those was a three handed game where Kingston double-skunked me and triple-skunked Brownlee IN THE SAME GAME!

- Last night I went back and read everything I've ever posted here. See the title of this post.

- And the big one: last week my ex-fiancee (the second one, for those of you keeping score at home) married someone else. So. It's been four years this month since we broke up. It's pretty reasonable for this to happen. I'm not really surprised. Someone told me before we even started dating that she was the type of girl who always had a boyfriend. A serial monogamist, as they say. And it's not like I wanted her back. She took care of that four years ago. If there's one thing that really infuriates me and that I can hold a hell of a grudge about, it's not being treated with respect (see also Boom Chicago). So why is this upsetting? Because it means that I don't get revenge. She broke my heart and wasted three years of my life, and now she's happier than ever. And I'm not. And I know that I have a lot of positive things in my life right now, and I know that I'm making some assumptions here, and I know that this is stupid and petty, but I can't help feeling like I've lost the game, you know? She beat me. I feel like I just got double-skunked in life.

Boy, that's awfully small-minded, isn't it? I told you I was still infuriated.

Kingston is going to worry that he shouldn't have told me (he found out from a guy he's in a show with who goes to her church), but thank god I found out now and not by running into her on the street and being introduced to him! So stop fretting, Local Favorite. I'm glad that I know. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't even matter. What she does or doesn't do doesn't affect me anymore. And I can't say that I'm sorry that's the case.


There you have it. Pathetic, I know. Now to see if I can look on the bright side.

- The Bears essentially double-skunked the Lions yesterday, and I had the whole day off and was able to sit and enjoy the game with some good friends. The boys are 2-0!

- I finished a great book last week, and started an even better one! Although the new one is a little depressing, being about assassinations. I never thought I would get choked up over the death of President Garfield.

- Saturday is the first day of fall!

- I haven't been to the gym in a week because of my nasty cold, but I have lost 4 pounds since I started going, so that's something.

- And lastly, I got a raise at work. It's just a COLA (cost of living allowance) raise, which means it's fairly small, but I didn't think I was eligible for one until next year, so it's a nice surprise.

That's pretty much all I've got. I guess there's the thing about the hippos. And then there's XKCD. In fact, let's let XKCD take us out tonight.

Here it is - your Moment of Zen:

Maybe it's me.

And now it's time for another installment of "It's Just My Opinion, But..."

It's just my opinion, but the Pope is probably the one person in the entire world that it's pretty ridiculous to expect to be tolerant of other religions, you know?

But apparently not everyone else understands that, because Muslims are all up in arms after he offended them in a speech yesterday.

Sigh.

And now, here it is - your Moment of Zen:

There is no God...

...because if there were, He never would have allowed something like this to happen!



Okay, I know that Nick Hornby novels have proven to be ideal for adaptation into movies. "High Fidelity" and "About a Boy" are two of the only books-turned-into-films where I like both the book and the movie equally. But for the sake of all that is good and true in this world, people, STOP THE INSANITY! It's no wonder no one goes to the theater anymore. Sigh.

And now, here it is - your Moment of Zen: