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Chicago Cellar Boys – Winter’s Jazz Club – January 25, 2020

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How could little Red Ridin’ Hood have been so very good and still keep the wolf from the door? It’s a question we’ve all pondered, but who knew there was a song about it written in 1926? Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs – maybe. The Chicago Cellar Boys – definitely.

This is my second time seeing the Boys.  I loved their whole set, but their revelation about that “modern child” “runnin’ wild” was one of my favorites, among a set list that included songs from the 1920s and 30s written by Fats Waller, Jelly Roll Morton, George Gershwin, and others.

My other favorite was Waller’s Truckin’, covered in 1973 as Everybody’s Doin’ It by Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen (Truckin’ by The Grateful Dead is a whole different song), though it made me wish I could have seen Ina Rae Hutton and Her Melodears perform it live, even though Ina’s dancing was more tap than truckin’ (about which I’m not complaining), which, of course, led me to a short clip of a jazz dance instructor demonstrating truckin’ steps along with some others.

Seeing the video of Ina and her all women band also made me thing of Some Like It Hot, but, returning to reality, I also thought about the Boys’ clarinetist/trumpeter giving the beat at the start of each song, which is all fine and good, except it seems like too much to ask of everyone to play the correct notes and contemporaneously maintain the same beat for more than about three measures. I think playing very short songs is the answer.

I also noticed that the piano player held his right shoulder slightly higher than his left, which led me to a website about posture and piano playing. With all these distractions, it’s amazing that I was able to enjoy the music, but I did.

Bugs Bunny at the Symphony (30th Anniversary Edition) – Symphony Center – January 18, 2020

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In this, the 80th anniversary of Bugs Bunny’s debut in The Wild Hare, this program of classic cartoons being accompanied live by the Warner Bros. Symphony Orchestra listed Bugs, Elmer Fudd, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Wile E. Coyote, Road Runner, Michigan J. Frog, and Giovanni Jones as starring. I was glad to see that there wasn’t an insert telling me that an understudy would be filling in for any of them. I would have been disappointed at seeing Donald, rather than Daffy, playing the role of the duck.

I also was glad to see that I wasn’t the only adult in the audience unaccompanied by a child. I wasn’t counting my inner child, as it didn’t need its own seat.

The program also told me that Max Steiner composed the Warner Bros. Fanfare. Steiner was a man of many firsts in regard to scoring movies, including the use of click tracks, which the musicians at the Symphony Center were listening to on headphones, which were not merely acting as earmuffs, as I originally contemplated given the cold temperatures outside.

Steiner was a major influence for John Williams, whom, I will gratuitously mention, was played by the son of a friend of mine on the Apple Podcast, Blockbuster, which tells the story of the early directing days of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, and which led me to research further and come to believe that Lucas’s film editor and wife of the time, Marcia, who won the Oscar for Best Film Editing (one more Oscar than George has ever won) was probably the real force behind the success of the original Star Wars.

Speaking of directors, the great Chuck Jones, the animation director of about half the cartoons shown at Symphony Center, was represented by his grandson and great granddaughter, who, on behalf of the Chuck Jones Center for Creativity, presented the Symphony Center with an original drawing by Jones of Bugs as conductor. There’s no Oscar for best animation director, but there should be given how difficult it must be to deal with temperamental cartoon characters, like Yosemite Sam.

What’s Opera, Doc?, an operatic performance even I can get behind, was greeted with cheers from the audience as conductor, and co-creator of these concerts, George Daugherty informed us that we would be hearing eight Wagner operas in the space of six minutes and four seconds, rather than 30-40 hours.

The audience also was treated to three new Road Runner shorts and the world concert premiere of Dynamite Dance, a new cartoon, based on The Dance of the Hours, created for Bugs’s 80th birthday.

Fittingly, at the end of the performance, Daugherty was presented with a bouquet of carrots.

That’s All Folks.

606 Trail – December 26, 2019

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I still haven’t scaled Mt. Everest or qualified for the Astronaut Candidate Program (my lack of a degree in one of the required sciences certainly being the only thing holding me back), but now I can scratch off walking the 606 Trail, or at least most of it, from my bucket list (from which I also scratched off a bucket handle tear of meniscus cartilage earlier this year).

Make no mistake about it, the trail has some elevation changes (okay, pretty gentle, more like the ramp leading into Mt. Sinai Hospital than the South Col Route up Mt. Everest). But, at 2.7 miles each way, the trail required me to cover a lot more ground in my extravehicular activity (from a good nearby parking space), and with more gravity holding me back than it did either Neil Armstrong or Buzz Aldrin (the moon’s is one-sixth that of the earth’s), and in a lot less time than their 2 hours, 31 minutes, 40 seconds (but who’s counting).

Besides being unencumbered by automobile or lunar module traffic (but watch out for the bicycles whizzing by), the trail offers great people watching and interesting views down tree-lined streets and into a variety of nearby residences for those who relish peeking into others’ homes (you know who you are).

While the path itself is hard, like a typical sidewalk, each side has a narrow (but wide enough for one person) rubberized lane that is a godsend for the weak-kneed. Water fountains abound, and I assume that, in those months when warm weather is expected (a list that’s growing and will soon include December), the fountains may actually be turned on.

The only thing the trail lacks from my standpoint (besides refreshments and jazz musicians at rest stops), is an intriguing destination (though the dog area at Walsh Park seemed to be popular) and perhaps some moon rocks to gather.

The Other Cinderella – Black Ensemble Theater – December 22, 2019

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My favorite cast member in this incarnation of the Black Ensemble Theater’s annual production of The Other Cinderella was Stewart Romeo, who played the Page. According to his bio in the program, Romeo is a trained singer, actor and carpenter (and he’s funny and can dance). When I saw the carpenter credential, I wondered, given the family atmosphere of the theater, whether Romeo had been enlisted to build any sets. Sure enough, he’s listed in the program under set construction. It reminded me of Harrison Ford, who was a carpenter between early acting roles, and Alexander Godunov, who also danced a little during his career, showing off their carpentry skills while nailing their parts in the barn-raising scene in the movie Witness.

The theater’s family atmosphere continued after the show when the actors went into the lobby and formed a receiving line for the patrons. It was like being at Cinderella and the Prince’s wedding, though, disappointingly, there wasn’t any cake. I was a little embarrassed because I didn’t bring a gift (you have a year, right?), but I didn’t bring one to Tony and Tina’s wedding either.

Also embarrassingly, this was my first time at the theater’s current location – they moved into it in 2011. It’s a nice building, but some things haven’t changed. The indefatigable Jackie Taylor is still running it all as the CEO, and, in addition to having written The Other Cinderella, including many of the songs, over 40 years ago, she’s listed as the producer, director, costume designer, and, why not, understudy for this production.

Though the plot is essentially the same, this isn’t Disney’s or the Grimm Brothers’ Cinderella, or Strabo’s Rhodopis. No brothers from the hood there. And Taylor keeps it updated. I’m pretty sure the original production didn’t include references to Idris Elba, Michael B. Jordan, and social media.

Chicago Map Society Annual Holiday Gala and Members’ Show and Tell – Newberry Library – December 19, 2019

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Ironically, I found the map society meeting without the help of a map.

While a meeting of a map society may seem somewhat anachronistic, I enjoyed it and am pretty sure it was more interesting than a meeting of computer-driven global positioning system advocates would have been.

Five people presented. The first showed us various inflatable and pop-up globes, including an inflatable one that might have been big enough to transport the stars of the movie The Aeronauts to new heights. The pop-up globes made me think of Sydney, Australia’s Shakespeare Pop-up Globe Theatre, though the closest I’ve come to it is an evening at San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre.

The second person displayed a map of Chicago from the 1933 World’s Fair showing Chicago as it was in 1833, although apparently not really, as it was just something to sell at the fair (printed t-shirts didn’t become popular until the 1960s), without the need for, or regard to, accuracy.

The meeting started to hit its stride with a European map from 1914 that featured dogs, that is, the dogs of war, which should have, again, made me think of Shakespeare (Marc Antony in Julius Caesar), but instead reminded me of Christopher Plummer’s scenery-chewing turn in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

As proof that maps, computers, and people under the age of 30 can coexist, a student from Jones College Prep then gave the crowd an introduction to Minecraft, the best-selling video computer game of all time(?), and a mapping project he worked on with it, which led to him showing us a prize-winning map of a Canadian province created by one of his Minecraft buddies.

The last map we saw was the most timely, showing receding ice caps, world heat and humidity levels, and annual storm concentrations, a veritable Tempest.

Burning Bluebeard – Porchlight Music Theatre – December 15, 2019

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Remember the scene in Animal House when John Belushi grabs the guitar out of the hands of the guy playing on the stairs and smashes it against the wall. I wanted to grab the entire cast of the Ruffians’ production of Burning Bluebeard, a show about the tragic December 30, 1903 Iroquois Theater fire, and smash them against the wall, gently of course, as I’m not a violent person.

On the other hand, a ruffian is defined as a violent person, especially one involved in crime, which seems fair, because, as far as I’m concerned, this play is a crime. But, just as no one was ever convicted in connection with the Iroquois fire, Burning Bluebeard has received great reviews over the years in which it has become a December tradition, and, based on the applause, was found innocent by many of those in attendance the night I saw it, in a clear case of audience nullification (see jury nullification if you haven’t watched enough Law and Order).

The Ruffians say that they use a “multi-disciplined creative process [that] fuses acrobatics, story-telling, and pop culture styling into a joyful anarchy that gives voice to the eerily beautiful harmonic hum of magical-realism.” I would agree with all of that, except the joyful part.

I’m not a big fan of avant-garde theater, the closest I have come to liking it before being the time I saw a production of Austin Pendleton’s Orson’s Shadow about Welles’s production of Ionesco’s Rhinoceros. But, if avant-garde is your thing, then knock yourself out, as opposed to the cast, and see this production. Just don’t sit in the front rows, or the fog, representing smoke, may knock you out.

The play is informative. But, personally, I would recommend, instead, reading the Smithsonian Magazine article about the fire and the reforms that resulted from it.

Q Brothers Christmas Carol – Chicago Shakespeare Theater – December 14, 2019

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Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol was first published in 1843. Though the underlying spirit (or spirits, if you will) remains the same, the Q Brothers have made more than a few changes. Bless them, everyone.

This makes six years in a row I’ve seen the Q Brothers ply their trade in this must-see show. I’d call it a tradition, but that implies a handing down between generations. I can’t even get most of my same-generation friends to go because they’re afraid of hip-hop, as if it were some kind of communicable disease. Bah, humbug, Those who have gone, thank me.

Since I’ve written about the show the last two years, there’s not much left to say, except to wonder when the cast will get too old to dance around the stage, and when that happens, will they allow a younger set of performers to replace them in the tradition of some road-weary 60s rock band that has reached its limit and sold their name (see Blood, Sweat, and Tears).

Nonetheless, I’ll mention a few things. Scrooge asking a young girl in the audience whether he’s using the word hashtag correctly. Her hands-up response suggested she didn’t know, which made me feel better. Scrooge’s childhood friend once again going off on a tangent, not one considered by Leibniz or Euclid, but different than last year’s, cracking up not only the other actors and the audience, but also himself, and thereby answering my question as to whether his random departure is part of the show. The Tarik Cohen joke added last year to show currency. The newly-inserted visual marijuana reference to the Illinois law about to take effect. Tiny Tim’s song that matter-of-factly lists all his ailments, none of which, I’m pretty sure, are transmitted by attending a hip-hop show. Just saying.

Two Tales of a City – Northwestern University and Newberry Library – December 4 and 11, 2019

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Northwestern’s Chicago in the Roaring Twenties was the best of lectures, Newberry Library’s misnamed Books That Built Chicago was the worst of lectures.

Kathleen Skolnik, who teaches art and architectural history at Roosevelt University, had the Northwestern audience in the palm of her hand as she led them on a photograph-aided journey through design elements of the 1920’s.

On the other hand, or palm, the Newberry Library didn’t even get the name of their program right. There’s a reason why Chicago by the Book: 101 Publications That Shaped the City and Its Image is so named, as evidenced by architect and IIT professor John Ronan’s task to convince us that the original brochure (a publication, not a book) for the 860-880 Lake Shore Drive Mies van der Rohe buildings was worthy of being included.

He failed. Just because the buildings themselves may have been groundbreaking, doesn’t mean that the brochure was significant, its inclusion apparently resting on its attempts to glorify a plain, rectangular, interior living space.

And yet, Ronan held our attention better than David Van Zanten, Professor Emeritus in Art and Art History at Northwestern University, who discussed Frank Lloyd Wright’s Ausgeführte Bauten und Entwürfe, 1910-11 (Executed Buildings and Designs for those of you who don’t read German).

Van Zanten spent most of his interminable bombination, not on the substance of the book, but rather on the way in which the pages opened and folded over one another, and then posited that, perhaps, he should have showed us this origami-related manipulation on the screen instead of through third-rate, mime-like, hand gestures.

There were two other speakers at the Newberry, who informed us about the arguments the chapter selection committee had over whether or not menus should be included in the book.

Sparing you this discussion may be a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done.

Indulgence with Lucy Darling – Chicago Magic Lounge – December 4, 2019

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Arthur C, Clarke’s Third Law states that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Carisa Hendrix, aka Lucy Darling, proves that the technology doesn’t have to be that advanced to seem like magic, which is defined as “the power of apparently influencing the course of events by using mysterious or supernatural forces.”

But, more importantly, she proves that what often separates the headliners from the run-of-the mill magicians is their patter and persona, especially when they purport to do comedy magic, as she does. Lucy’s talented, smart and funny. How often do you go to a magic show that includes a Chekov allusion about an illusion?

This was my second trip to the Chicago Magic Lounge, but first time at the main stage. It’s a beautiful room, and, if I may divert (and isn’t magic all about diverting your attention), the sliced potato pancakes were pretty darn good.

On the other hand, though Lucy is a cut above, her tricks are pretty standard fair. She does multiplying bottles, the linking finger ring, the any drink called for trick and one where she makes a book chosen by an audience member appear in a shopping bag. That last one didn’t fool Penn and Teller on their tv show, where, interestingly, the audience member chose the same book that was chosen at the Magic Lounge show. What would Arthur C. Clarke say about that?

I don’t know what P&T know, but it seems to me that Lucy could just hide a portable 3-D printer in the shopping bag, allowing her to produce an exact replica of the book in a matter of seconds during her stage patter. Or maybe she has an easier way.

Before she developed her current character, Carisa became a Guinness World Record Holder after holding a flaming torch in her mouth for just over two minutes. No torch this time, but the act is still hot.

Timothy Hagen (Flute) and Ben Corbin (Piano) – Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert – Chicago Cultural Center – November 20, 2019

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Midway through a day that included leading a class on cheating in baseball (more on that another time), a fountain-lighting ceremony with singing in Washington Square Park, and a musical comedy that’s Duck Soup meets Of Thee I Sing (see piece on Call Me Madam), I listened to a lovely concert by Hagen and Corbin, though I found myself slightly distracted from the music itself.

I became focused on (read obsessed by) the flow of Corbin’s hands on the piano, something I have struggled with (along with avoiding dangling prepositions). My curiosity thus led me to a piano-technique website that discusses hand, finger and body motions in sufficient detail to keep me occupied through the winter.

It also reminded me of the well-known fact that a difficult part of acting is what to do with your hands. I found an acting coach’s website that says it best.

It seems that when we act, the hands are destined to flop around like a hyperactive T-Rex.
Or if they are not busy doing dinosaur impersonations, they are perhaps engaged in:
• Penguining (Flapping the arms at the sides.)
• Waitressing (Arms in a v-shape, like a waiter carrying plates.)
• The ForkLift (as above but straight out)

The other distractions were the guy behind me who spent five minutes fumbling around with batteries he was trying to insert into a camera, and a woman’s cell phone that rang loudly for an interminable amount of time (okay, maybe 15 seconds), as she fumbled to remove it from her purse and tried to remember how to turn it off. If not so rude, or maybe because of that, it might have made an amusing SNL skit, as the ring was musical and ended almost in synch with the performance. I couldn’t help but think, however, that it needed more cow bell.