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American Writers Museum – Gillian Flynn and A.J. Finn – January 16, 2018

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I haven’t read any of Gillian Flynn’s books (though I enjoyed the movie Gone Girl) and I haven’t read A.J. Finn’s first effort, the highly acclaimed The Woman in the Window, but now that I have seen Finn speak in person, I will remedy that omission. He’s a hoot – candid, funny, animated, articulate, and well-schooled. The program was a give-and-take between the authors that was never dull.

Because it started 15 minutes late, as too many things I go to seem to do, I had to leave when they started taking questions from the audience. I regretted having to leave early on this occasion, although often I can’t get out fast enough at that point in a program to avoid the questioners who don’t know the difference between a question and a statement, or just want to hear themselves talk, or want everyone else in the room to hear their opinion or resume. If that’s your thing, start a blog, like I did, where people can read your thoughts, if so inclined, at their leisure and without it cutting into the time of the invited speakers.

There were only a few empty seats when we got there, but apparently the museum is still new enough (it just opened in March 2017) that there aren’t a lot of members yet (I happen to be one). So, after being adorned with member wrist bands, we were lovingly directed to a couch along the wall. We couldn’t see the speakers, but had no complaint about that.  Even so, a staff person came by and suggested that I could push the couch forward along the wall to a spot that would allow an unimpeded view. I hesitated doing so, but the staff person took it upon herself to do it for us. My $40 membership had already paid dividends.

42nd Street – Drury Lane Theater – December 30, 2017

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This performance at the Drury Lane Theater marked the 20th play at 13 different theaters that I have seen in 2017. That’s not even in the ballpark compared to the numbers put up by people I know on the Jeff Awards Committee, but I can narrow my selections of what I see to the kind of shows I prefer, which, if you haven’t figured it out yet, means ones that make me smile and laugh, and, even better, include tap dancing (which is why I loved SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical and its tap dancing squid, which might destroy my credibility but for the fact that The New York Times loved it also).

I went to see 42nd Street on a last minute whim. You can do this a lot when you’re retired. Every day is Saturday. Okay, this time it actually was Saturday, which is why there was a 5:00 performance. I bought my ticket online at 3:00 and was out the door by 3:45.  I love that theaters hold back house seats. As a result, I wound up sitting in the 7th row center, with an empty seat to one side for my puffy coat.

At intermission a woman two seats away on the other side, leaned across her husband to tell me that she was enjoying this show more than Hamilton. I haven’t seen Hamilton (I’ve never seen 1776 either – hmmm) – I can see a half dozen or more shows for the price of one Hamilton ticket – so I couldn’t respond regarding my preference, but I did comment on not wanting to spend the money on Hamilton, which immediately made a best friend of the husband, who apparently had made that same, albeit losing argument to her.

As hoped for, 42nd Street made me smile. The tap dancing was fabulous and there was a lot of it. Going to the 5:00 show enabled me to avoid traffic in both directions, get a good parking spot, and make a quick exit. It’s the little things in life.

Broadway in Chicago – 2017

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I don’t have a subscription to any theaters because I like to pick and choose (waiting to see reviews first if possible) and it’s always possible to get a ticket if you’re flexible. My schedule is and I take Pilates.

It won’t come as a shock that all four shows I saw in 2017 in the Broadway in Chicago series were musicals, though the list may seem peculiar – Something Rotten, Aladdin, An American in Paris, and the pre Broadway opening of Escape to Margaritaville (which did not receive the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for drama).

Something Rotten was only here for a two-week run. I had some hesitation about seeing it here because my experience seeing it in New York seemed unbeatable. I had blown out of a reception and purchased a last minute ticket at the Times Square discount TKTS booth and arrived at my seat less than ten minutes before curtain. And what a seat – seventh row center, and with an empty seat next to me. And Christian Borle, who won a Tony for his role, was playing Shakespeare in his next to last performance. Great show – in my top five all-time. But I digress (as always). I also loved the Chicago production.

Aladdin brought a constant smile to my face. Tap dancing and the show stopping Friend Like Me. I have a friend who wouldn’t go to the show with me because she doesn’t think much of Disney shows – big mistake. (She has since softened her opinion, but that’s for another time.)

I agreed to see An American in Paris even though I wasn’t interested in doing so, and I didn’t like it. I found the book of the show to be inconsistent and the attempts at humor unfunny. The ballet numbers were beautiful, but, you know, not tap dancing.

I went to Escape to Margaritaville with a friend as a lark. My expectations were low and were met. But, I have to admit, I caught myself smiling. Good enough for me.

iO – January 7, 2018

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Though I was a member of one of the original ImprovOlympic teams in the early 1980’s, I had never been to the iO building on Clark or their new building on Kingsbury until now. We performed at the Players Workshop, a bar named CrossCurrents, and events like ChicagoFest and Loop Alive.

I find it amusing that the International Olympic Committee is so protective of their name (which is why ImprovOlympic became iO many years ago) given that the things I most associate with the Olympics are drug scandals, payoffs, cost overruns, and boycotts.

iO doesn’t have a parking lot. I didn’t feel like circling the neighborhood, even though the block on which iO resides is made up mostly of loading zones. I was able to translate the plethora of regulations on the street signs and boldly parked in one of the zones that seemed to be safe for a couple hours. Still, it’s always a little scary when no one else braves the same zone, as was the case this night. What if the authorities don’t have the same grasp of reading signs that I do?

I went to see a friend from the storytelling class I took at Second City perform with her current improv classmates at iO. Improv is hard, so I wasn’t expecting a lot from a group still learning their craft. But as with a lot of improv, there were moments that made me smile, bloop singles if not home runs, stolen glances if not stolen bases. And there weren’t any scenes that dragged on forever, the curse of any type of sketch comedy. If a line works, get out of Dodge, know when to fold ‘em, fight and run away and live to fight another day, take the money and run – take your own advice.

Q Brothers Christmas Carol – Chicago Shakespeare Theater – December 2, 2017

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I have now seen the Q Brothers’ version of A Christmas Carol at The Shakespeare Theater four years in a row. It never gets old. Last year I gained special insight into the show when I struck up a conversation with an usher, who turned out to be the Q Brothers’ high school drama teacher from years ago. She was very proud of the boys.

Despite my recommendation (or perhaps based on it) I have many friends who say they won’t go to this show because they hate hip hop – good, stay home – more room for me to see a high energy, intelligent, fun-loving, live performance of familiar, but reinvented material, where four actors play a dozen parts and I leave with a smile on my face, along with some glitter that rained down from the ceiling. I’m going to keep going every year until the seemingly indefatigable GQ runs out of energy.

This year the show moved into Shakespeare’s new space, The Yard. I was a little misled trying to interpret their online seating chart for the first time. Though we probably wound up with the best seats in the house, getting to them unexpectedly involved climbing stairs (raise your hand if you’re over 65 and have knee problems). There probably was an elevator somewhere but it wasn’t obvious (raise your hand if you’re over 65 and have trouble seeing in the dark) And the seats were right behind the balcony railing, which for someone like me, who isn’t fond of heights, even when they aren’t all that high, is a little disconcerting. So I had to avoid laughing and applauding too hard (not an easy thing to do at this show), lest I lose my equilibrium, tumble over, and interrupt the show to allow for cleanup in aisle 2.

Tomato Throw – The Comedy Bar – October 3, 2017

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It is said that audiences as far back as Shakespeare’s time used to throw rotten fruit at the actors. So I considered it a cultural excursion to go to The Comedy Bar in River North on a Tuesday night for one of their Tomato Throw shows.

Okay, I actually went because a friend’s son was performing there that night, but there’s nothing wrong with a twofer. Audience members don’t throw real tomatoes (so much for historical accuracy).  That would get expensive and messy. The fake tomatoes are made of soft plastic so that you can’t throw them very fast and they don’t hurt when they hit you, or so I surmised as I was not the target of any and no paramedics appeared during the evening.

Only one of the performers gets paid, the one who has the fewest tomatoes directed his or her way for subpar humor. Even before the show started we realized that the rules provided a huge advantage for whoever went first because no one yet knew the quality of humor of the field and because the nonregulars such as myself might be a little hesitant at first to join in the fray.

Our assessment was accurate. The first performer’s bathroom humor was not, in my opinion, even close to funny, but he escaped fairly unscathed. After that, however, something hit the fan, or more accurately, the tomatoes hit the wall. It got to the point where not only would people hurl missiles for little or no reason, the performers would encourage them to do so, knowing that they had no chance to win the money and figuring that they might as well endear themselves to the audience by becoming willing targets.

Next thing you know I’ll be going to state fairs to see the dunk tanks.

Vijay Venkatesh – Dame Myra Hess Concert – Chicago Cultural Center – January 17, 2018

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I started taking piano lessons a year ago. I have no illusions about my current or potential talent levels, but I enjoy the process and the sounds that I urge out of the keys that occasionally resemble music.  I also really enjoy listening to someone good.

The Chicago Cultural Center hosts Dame Myra Hess Concerts every Wednesday from 12:15-1:00. This week Vijay Venkatesh played Liszt and Beethoven on the piano, and brought forth tones that doesn’t exist on my digital keyboard. And, though his hands were occasionally moving at lightning speed, I’m pretty sure that he played all 88 keys at least once during Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 12. So the hundreds of us in attendance would have gotten our money’s worth even if we had paid something to get in.

There was a woman in the front row who, at first glance, seemed to be taking notes, perhaps for a review, I mean a real one, not like what you read on my blog. But as I shifted in my seat, I realized I was wrong, she wasn’t writing, but rather sketching the pianist at work. I don’t take notes for my blog. I feel that it would distract from my enjoyment of the event and hinder my ability to observe all that is going on around me. And I can’t read my handwriting.

Vijay deservedly (I think) received a standing ovation at the conclusion of his work, but these days it seems that everyone gets one, and thus it has lost its significance. I wonder if performers know that sometimes we stand just because the people in front of us (who might be friends and family of the performers) stood up and we can’t see if we stay seated, or we just want to stretch our legs, or we just want to beat the crowd out the door.

Please fight the urge to give this blog a standing ovation, as I’ve already left the room.

Random Acts of Fun in the Parks – 2017

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Every year the Newberry Library, in conjunction with its annual book fair, puts on a celebration of free speech in Washington Square Park (Bughouse Square), which for years had been a popular spot for soapbox orators. I went on July 29, not so much to hear the speeches, which are mercifully limited in length by the organizers, but once again to enjoy the performance by the Environmental Encroachment brass band, a ragtag group that for some reason amuses me.

I also spent the morning of April 27, Earth Day, in Washington Square Park helping prepare the park for the summer. Okay, so this wasn’t actually fun in and of itself, but by reminding me that the other 364 days of the year I don’t have to do any yard work because I live in a condo, it nevertheless brought a smile to my face.

I spent many other days in various Chicago parks during the year, in particular Millennium Park for the concerts and a taping of Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me, featuring ex-Cub Ryan Dempster as the special guest (when I heard that he was the guest I figured they must have gotten to the bottom of a long list of possibilities, but he turned out to be quite entertaining); Lincoln Park for the zoo and the golf course (where one day I got put in a foursome with three guys associated with Second City, which made for an unusual day where the banter was funnier than my golf game); Polk Brothers Park at Navy Pier for the outdoor water-related movies (I saw Jaws and Splash, but missed Sharknado – what a shame); and the park adjoining Adler Planetarium, where I joined several thousand of my closest friends to observe the solar eclipse on August 21. As we used to say in college – any excuse for a party.

Paper Machete – Green Mill – January 13, 2018

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Somehow, until now, I’ve been unaware of Paper Machete, the live magazine comedy and music review that moved to the Green Mill in December 2012. We arrived there about twenty minutes before the advertised 3:00 start of the show. But the Green Mill is at heart a jazz venue, so they didn’t start until about 3:15, early by jazz standards. Nevertheless, it was SRO to the max when we arrived, and I have no idea how early you have to get there to get a seat.

Though most of the crowd was a lot younger than us, there was a table of four that was a notable exception. They looked like they originally had come to see Billie Holiday in the 30s or 40s and wisely decided not to give up their seats. In the interesting seating configuration that is the Green Mill, their backs were to the main stage, but I was still jealous.

We wound up standing near the side door, constantly dodging waitstaff, but with a decent view of the primary stage and the area behind the bar used as a secondary stage. This put us next to a tall gentlemen who also was older than most of the crowd and who turned out to be the father of one of the performers. Even with that, he had to stand.

The emcee introduced acts, sang, and commented on the news. His opening wild, arm-flagellating, lip-synching routine tired me out just watching him.

In addition to him and that day’s band, we saw two comics, one of whom reported on important new devices displayed at the Consumer Electronics Show, such as smart toilets that create profiles of use by each person in your house.

When the show broke for intermission, we broke for the door, not out of dissatisfaction, as the comedy was spot on (though I’m hesitant to tell you what one comic said about cucumbers), but in response to a cry for help from my lower back ,which was tightening like a screw from standing in one place for an hour and a half. We need a new plan next time.

United Center – University of Illinois Basketball – December 16, 2017

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Once a year one of my almae matres (rarely used form of the plural I had to look up so as to avoid using the mundane alma maters), the University of Illinois, sends its basketball team to Chicago for a nonconference game at the United Center. Today’s game was against New Mexico State.

We ate at Park Tavern, a heartbeat away from the stadium. We took a shuttle bus from the restaurant to the game, but afterward walked back to the parking lot, which was actually faster than the shuttle. When I first started going to Bull’s games at the Chicago Stadium, when the team was in its infancy, we parked on the street and payed neighborhood kids to guard our car. Times have changed.

We had great seats near midcourt and the arena, although disappointingly only half full, was a sea of orange, with one major exception. The friend who accompanied me, who didn’t attend Illinois but is a loyal fan because her daughter did, wore a white University of Illinois shirt. Let me repeat that – WHITE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS SHIRT. Who even knew they made such a thing. She was sufficiently embarrassed by her faux pas, so I have omitted her name. Whoever thought that I would be a member of the fashion police?

At halftime we struck up a conversation with two men sitting next to us, one of whom, it turned out, worked where I did in the early 1990s. Another small world story.

The game was not particularly well played. Illinois fell far behind early, but made a valiant comeback, only to lose because of a pathetic inability to inbound the ball twice in the last minute of play, both occasions resulting in a steal and points for New Mexico State. Nevertheless, I’ll go to next year’s game  But I’ll make sure ahead of time that there’s color coordination. White is not the new orange!