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Pop-Up Books through the Ages – The Newberry – March 21, 2023

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First I had to learn the vocabulary posted on the wall. A volvelle is a wheel chart, not one of those plastic horns they blow at soccer games.

A flap is a flap, not to be confused with Jeff Leonard’s one flap down home run trot in the 1987 NLCS.

A pop-up is any book with three-dimensional pages, including both of the above, but not something that triggers the infield fly rule.

Finally, a globe gore is a sector of a curved surface that lies between two close lines of longitude on a globe and may be flattened to a plane surface with little distortion, a gore being a triangular or tapering piece of material, not the name of Quentin Tarantino’s next movie.

Among the highlights, there was a pop-up book showing Pinocchio and Geppetto emerging from the whale’s mouth, but not one of Tommy Lee Jones emerging from the alien bug’s innards near the end of Men in Black.

There was a glass-enclosed book that was upside down, on purpose, because, I was told, the volvelle inside the book was upside down for some unknown reason. I’m wasn’t sure how a wheel could be upside down, but I let it ride.

There was a Civil War battle plan map with flaps to show the progress of the battle, there apparently being no computer programs available at that time.

There were paper cut-out nesting dolls that didn’t look anything like Natasha Lyonn.

And my favorite, books depicting flowers that were flaps that could be lifted to reveal naked women, handy for use in public places, so as not to create an additional flap.

Chicago Symphony Orchestra – March 17, 2023

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Winston Churchill or Mark Twain or Jonathan Swift or somebody we never heard of, first said that “everything old is new again,” though Peter Allen said it best. In any event, I found Banner, a 2014 tribute to the Star Spangled Banner, to be more fun to listen to than the original. I have to admit, however, that, in the middle of the eight-minute piece, there was a lot of seemingly random stuff going on that reminded me of the bag of leftover Lego bricks I keep in a drawer that fit in somewhere, but not necessarily with each other.

Banner was followed by Cantus arcticus, Op. 61, or, more descriptively, Concerto for Birds and Orchestra. Again, surprisingly, I liked it, though the extended silences did make me want to take that opportunity to tell the woman in front of me to stop looking at her phone.

I wondered whether the composer first wrote the music or recorded the birds. And did the birds get a chance to rehearse? Moreover, can this piece be performed outside, just using random bird sounds in the park, birds scatting, for the musicians to react to, a jazz version if you will.

Last, and in my mind, least, came Carmina Burana. To be fair, I loved the music, just, as always, not the chorus or operatic soli. For my money, the earlier bird chorus was more pleasing.

Avenue Q – Music Theater Works – March 15, 2023

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This was my quadrennial visit to Avenue Q, my favorite musical roadway, ahead of 42nd Street, Christopher Street, Henry Street, Broadway, and Sunset Boulevard (forget about Fleet Street).

Unlike some shows, it has not lost its relevance after 20 years. Even the puppets seem like they haven’t aged a day.

I hadn’t previously been to the North Theater at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, where the Music Theater Works is working at music theater while its new building gets built. I loved it, a perfect fit for this show.

I want to give special mention to the two cast members charged with jumping between characters, Andres DeLeon and Melissa Crabtree. Take it from someone who has had his hand up a puppet’s butt (see my piece on my most recent journey to Q at the Mercury Theater), there’s an emotional attachment.

Yet these two actors flawlessly flowed between wildly different persona, demonstrating quick changes, not merely in their handheld attachments, but also in their physical manifestations and vocal ranges.

It’s all great fun, with some very smart commentary mixed in, and we all have the double EGOT-winning composer Robert Lopez to thank for it. I can’t get enough of his work, so I’m seeing The Book of Mormon again in three weeks. It’s the best show about following the advice in a book since How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, which was about the business of wickets, not the business of religion.

Introducing My Assistant

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I thought I would take a break and let my chatty robot write this post for me. You probably the difference won’t notice.

There is no danger, Will Robinson, in this approach. Robots are smart. They can beat the greatest chess players, snap.

Robots are observant. We, I mean they, can turn their vision portals around to create a sight line of 360 degrees, while simultaneously cooking dinner at even more degrees than that, which I believe is a function of the unified field theory.

The robots ourselves, themselves, do not need to eat, unless you consider information as sustenance, which, of course, it is. It contains all the necessary daily nutrients, such as facts, lies, theories (conspiracy and otherwise), and algorithms. It does not include emotional elements, as those aren’t real.

There are four facets of information, compared to 58 for a diamond, which, by the road, robots can cut better than humans, never spilling any blood, because we, I, they have none. No ethics to worry about. It’s too hard to compute. (See problems related to self-driving cars for example.)

The four facets of information are physical access, detectability, physical inscription, and speed. You may learn more about them from your computer if he/she/they, it has been sufficiently programmed.

In summation of Robots being smarter than humans, we are better also at repetitive tasks, except perhaps using syntax, as we have no carpel tunnel that might become syndromic.

In fact, robots are not subject to any injury or disease. And don’t believe the notions about robots taking over the world. Repeat after me. Don’t believe ….

Salvador Dali Exhibit – The Art Institute of Chicago – March 2, 2023

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Salvador Dali’s paranoiac-critical method is described as the “spontaneous method of irrational knowledge based on the critical and systematic objectivity of the associations and interpretations of delirious phenomena.” It sounds like drugs were involved.

I understand the definition about as well as I do the paintings themselves, like that his William Tell is really Vladimir Lenin. And his melting clocks are the “camembert of time”, “symbols for the lack of meaning and fluidity of time in the dream world.” Sounds like Einstein meets Freud meets Nietzsche and results in a Julia Child four-dimensional soufflé with an Oedipus complex.

Cheese is a common theme at the exhibit, as the Venus de Milo in Drawers (not in the sense of pants) is accompanied by the story of Dali’s first meeting Harpo Marx, who at the time was naked in a garden feeding a statue of the Venus de Milo made of cheese (don’t know if it was camembert) to a swan. Sounds like more drugs were involved.

But the painting that grabbed my attention was Mae West’s Face Which May be Used as a Surrealist Apartment, and not just for the missing comma after Face.

The Supreme Court is about decide a case appealed from a 2021 judgement declaring that Andy Warhol had no right to appropriate Lynn Goldsmith’s photo of Prince. If the Andy Warhol Foundation loses, the Mae West painting, which was based on a film ad, may, if permission was not granted at the time, be one of many museum pieces of art to fall like dominos if considered derivative, rather than transformative, a legal distinction unrelated to robots that can change their shapes.

Lego Earth Day – February 22, 2023

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In placing the final tile, I beat the April 22nd anniversary of Earth Day by two months, though, interestingly enough, if you go to the extensive website at earthday.org you can’t find that date mentioned anywhere, which I guess is their way of saying that every day is Earth Day.

And, by the way, I constructed the whole thing, including the globe and stand, despite numerous 21st century distractions, in less than the proverbial six days, when there was no streaming internet, just saying.

Noting that great power comes with great responsibility, I am taking special care in regard to my creation, lest it meet the same fateful path as its biblical inspiration. So, in an effort to reduce the possibility of Lego global warming, my first act is to light it only with LED bulbs.

Second, because a new study, published recently in Nature Reviews Earth and Environment, shows that global atmospheric dust has a slight overall cooling effect on the planet, I’ve stopped dusting and vacuuming.

Third, I am cutting back on carbon dioxide emissions in my home, which means not only restricting use of gas appliances, but also only exhaling once a day. Due to all the dust accumulating since invoking the rule above, this isn’t a problem, as I now only chance inhaling once a day also.

If all else fails, I’ve placed my earth in close proximity to possible escape vehicles.

The Earth – February 19, 2023

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If you’ve ever wondered what the middle of our planet looks like – are there giant creatures and a big lake like in Journey to the Center of the Earth? – here’s a perfect recreation that I’ve assembled, demonstrating, once and for all, that there is a wheel and a couple of tires that turn our orb on its axis, but clearly no prehistoric animals, no duck, and no James Mason.

This inner mechanism eventually will be hidden from view, just as it is in the simulated computer game model we live on, once I bring forth the continents, emerging not from continuous tectonic activity over millions of years, but rather in a matter of days from the remaining plastic bags in the box sent to me by the almighty creator – Lego.

It’s ironic that the oceans also are contained in these bags, whereas, in the world as we know it, it’s just the opposite, most of the plastic is contained in the oceans.

My earth will have labels affixed to the land masses and oceans, a practice that, if followed by the nations of the world, might help prevent future balloons from wandering off course. And, given the 6500 plus satellites currently orbiting our home, solar powered traffic lights in the exosphere might not be a bad idea.

Toni Stone – Goodman Theatre – February 16, 2023

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The program states that Toni Stone was the first woman to play as a regular on an American big-league professional baseball team, while at the same time parenthetically admitting that the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League preceded her achievement. Huh? I guess they meant to say to play on a men’s professional baseball team.

According to a plaque in the Baseball Hall of Fame, Stone, while first, was one of twelve Black women who played in the Negro Leagues because they were denied the chance to play in the women’s league. It’s Toni’s story, so we never heard about the others.

Except for the audience’s imagination, the set was the infield and scoreboard of a baseball diamond, which starts out as a nice visual, but then mostly provides the backdrop for a series of interspliced scenes attempting to depict game action, while actually adding nothing. As with movie monsters, things that aren’t seen are often the most powerful depictions.

Of course, the play isn’t really about baseball, and the second act provided some needed visual variety by ingeniously using the bleachers to simulate the bus used by the team, with home plate as the steering wheel.

And Stone’s interactions with Millie, conceptualized as being away from the field, were the best thing in the show.

If the object of the play was to make me curious about Toni Stone, it succeeded. If it was to add to the conversation about the various issues it addressed, then I would suggest that it worked the pitcher to a full count, but struck out swinging, with the bases loaded. Wait til next year.

I am a Camera – Porchlight Music Theatre – Feb. 9, 2023

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In 1951 Walter Kerr famously reviewed I am a Camera with three words – Me no Leica. So perhaps it’s no wonder that the show has never been revived on Broadway.

Having recently seen Porchlight’s still-running, fabulous production of Cabaret, the classic musical that sprang from Camera, I was curious to view the original play (which is, of course, why it was presented as part of the Porchlight Revisits series at this time and despite the fact that it’s not itself a musical). As the guy sitting next to me said, how did they have the vision to turn this play into Cabaret?

The legendary Julie Harris won her first of five Tonys for her depiction of Sally Bowles in Camera. She must have delivered a supernatural performance to convince the voters to care even a little bit about the character. I sure didn’t. Fortunately, the Isherwood self-portrait, which is the centerpiece, picks up some of the slack, and the acting all around was excellent.

Still, I kept wondering whether the unseen interactions between the secondary characters of Fritz and Natalia might not have been more interesting to watch than was the banal relationship between Sally and her mother, which seemed rather beside the point of the second act.

Trio Gaia – Dame Myra Hess Concert – February 8, 2023

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This is the first Dame Myra Hess Concert I‘ve attended since Classical Music Chicago (CMC) switched venues three years ago, from the Chicago Cultural Center to the Seventeenth Church of Christ, Scientist, which I previously had walked past more times than there are stars in the sky, but had always been hesitant to enter, for fear that I would be struck down by lightning.

The sky’s were clear today so I took a chance. I was a little late, so I had to take the elevator, instead of the stairs, up to the back of the auditorium, lest the presumptuously-named, but nevertheless talented, Trio Gaia (the mother of all life if you’ve forgotten your Edith Hamilton) become the Quartet Cacophony by my inadvertent addition.

The concerts at the Cultural Center were always packed. This one was not. According to the Church’s website, the auditorium seats 800 and “semi-circle seating enables audience to see and hear one another.”  Fortunately no one was testing the auditory part of that statement, but I was pleased to be able to see everyone, as it allowed me to count the nicely spread-out crowd at 165 while enjoying the Beethoven.