Lincoln Park Conservatory – December 9, 2021

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A walk through the Palm House of the Lincoln Park Conservatory is like going to the grocery store, except that that section of the building is a lot hotter than Trader Joe’s and I’m relatively sure you’re not supposed to sample any of the plants, even though they’re named things like sausage tree, red shrimp plant, lobster claw, flowering banana, and purple waffle plant (though I couldn’t find a maple syrup tree, or a butter plant for the lobster).

There was a Chinese money plant, but one Yuan currently is only worth 16 cents, so I didn’t bother looking for any that might have dropped off into the soil, besides which a sign said that a small dinosaur would feel at home in the Fern Room, so I felt that it was more important to keep an eye out for those little critters.

The Orchid House had a sign pointing to one of the flowers that said “Smell”, which seemed problematic given that, upon entry, I had been told to keep my mask on at all times, but I tried anyway, and thus can report, after a deep inhalation, that an orchid smells a lot like the inside of a mask.

As You Like It – Chicago Shakespeare Theater – November 30, 2021

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I’m bad with names, but better with faces. What I didn’t know until I saw Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s As You Like It last night, is that I’m good with thighs (and not just those on the Thanksgiving turkey), or rather quadriceps, as that sounds better, until I recognized the actor playing Orlando as having the same ridiculously muscular legs as I saw when he played the lead in the production of Memphis I saw three-and-a-half years ago at Porchlight Music Theatre.

I don’t go to a lot of Shakespeare, but this show is as I like it, in that it incorporates 23 Beatles songs into the script, along with some off-hand jokes that undoubtedly rile true Bard of Avon aficionados, and starts with a band and a modern-day wrestling match (more riling), even before the obsolete, often unintelligible English dialogue that is Shakespeare jumps in (wouldn’t supertitles be great?), with the match acting as a prologue and a way of entertaining those of us who get there early to avoid the proof-of-vaccination backup at the door, the sight of which made me wonder whether there were similar lines during the 1665 Great Plague of London.

Magnificent Mile Lights Festival – November 20, 2021

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The word “Petoskey” is a native word that translates to “rays of light.” So it’s only fitting that the Michigan city participates in a lights festival. At least 40 of Petoskey’s 1000 or so high school students, as part of a steel drum band, came to the big city and entertained the crowd from an open-air bus.

I don’t know how good their football team is – actually I do, they were 3-6 this year – but those kids sure love to bang their drums, and not slowly. I was mesmerized as they turned otherwise yawn-inducing holiday songs into a raucous rave, accentuated by tribal screams and a bouncing choreography that threatened to destroy the vehicle’s shock absorbers and flip it over like a bug (and it wasn’t even a Volkswagen).

Usually, the only holiday song I’ll listen to is Mariah Carey telling me that I’m all she wants for Christmas (though she never calls), but, just like all food tastes better with jalapeño peppers mixed into it, a bus full of steel drums goes a long way to improving otherwise undigestible music, although the after-taste, or rather after-sound, can linger on for hours and isn’t helped by drinking a glass of milk.

Nunsense – Porchlight Music Theatre – November 18, 2021

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I first saw Nunsense in 1990 at the now-defunct Wellington Theater. The only thing I remembered about that production was that the cast included Georgia Engel of The Mary Tyler Moore Show fame. I didn’t remember that Ann-Margret played one of the other nuns . . . because she didn’t.

In the first of its three-performance Porchlight Revisits shows this season, the company built upon its upbeat choice of Pump Boys and Dinettes as the season’s still-running first full show, the set of which did double-duty for this show, a usage artfully explained in the dialogue, which also included other newly-added references, such as Ted Lasso and Roku, which, I think, is either some kind of noodle dish or a son of Odin.

I walked out with a smile, but not a program, as the theater emulated the restaurants that now have you scan a bar code to get your menu, which is fine by me except that I must have done something wrong this time, as, at intermission, someone delivered to me something called Udon, which I previously thought was Roku’s brother’s name.

My Week in Review – Presets, Pump Boys & Dinettes

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Eight years after buying my car, I finally figured out how to preset the radio, so now I don’t have to keep listening to golden oldies from the 60s, that’s 1860s, when Stephen Foster was the hot songwriter, or try to search for other stations while driving, which, to be fair, has resulted in no more than twelve accidents, none of them fatal. Who says you can’t teach an old dog . . . something, I forget.

I went to see my first play since Grease at the Marriott Lincolnshire Theatre in February 2020, this time Pump Boys & Dinettes at the Porchlight Music Theatre. Thankfully, given my constant need for continuity, Billy Rude appeared in both shows, this time as Jackson, whose leaps in the air while rocking his guitar reminded me of the fact that my vertical jump, once mediocre, is now, not only potentially dangerous, but also probably nonexistent.

I last saw Pump Boys in the mid 1980’s, when its tale of the Double Cupp Diner, lyrically located on Highway 57 (marked down from Dylan’s earlier Highway 61), not only delighted me, but also gave me words to live by with its Be Good or Be Gone, a song with which Melanie Loren, as Rhetta Cupp, in Porchlight’s production, wowed the audience.

By the way, the Cupp sisters, Rhetta and Prudie, who joined together for another highlight, Tips, bear no relation to Cooper Kupp, who is leading the NFL in receptions and touchdowns, though all of their cups runneth over.

The Chicago Reader at 50: A Half-Century of Revolutionary Storytelling – Newberry Library

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I’m the guy who made it through The Louvre in less than an hour, so it should come as no surprise that I finished my tour of Newberry Library’s Chicago Reader exhibit (on display through January 22, 2022) in under five minutes, or maybe it should, as the Reader had a much greater effect on my life than a bunch of old art work, although even I have to admit that the Winged Victory at the top of the Daru staircase is a sight one doesn’t easily forget.

I wish the Reader exhibit were larger. One small hallway, though nicely curated, really isn’t enough for a publication that helped shape a generation of Chicagoans, though kudos for mentioning the Missed Connections section that I once eagerly scoured in the hope that the young lady on the elevated platform really was checking me out.

And whose idea was it to have a constantly running broadcast of a couple of their podcasts interrupting your concentration while you’re trying to read the displays. It’s like studying with the television on. Oh, wait, that is how I studied. But I was younger then. It doesn’t count.

Porchlight Icons Gala – Galleria Marchetti – October 20, 2021

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On October 19, 1989, 3.8 inches of snow fell in Chicago. We dodged that bullet. The weather was perfect for the Porchlight Icons Gala, and a gentle breeze flowed in from the multiple, large openings to the outdoors. We weren’t pent-up indoors with a few hundred people. And yet, there was no need to sit under a space heater.

But, just in case, I brought my new toy (not made out of LEGOs this time), a portable carbon dioxide monitor, a device that has become fashionable in schools as a means of measuring the effectiveness of air circulation efforts in the time of Covid.

According to a report in Environmental Science & Technology Letters, scientists, relying on the fact that “infectious people exhale airborne viruses at the same time as they exhale carbon dioxide”, concluded that “wherever you are sharing air, the lower the CO2, the lower risk of infection” from Covid.

I am pleased to say that, despite my dropping it on the floor at one point, and hopefully not because I did, my monitor continued to signal a level of carbon dioxide equivalent to a totally outdoor environment.

So, I was able to completely enjoy the honoring of Dolores Conchita Figueroa del Rivero Anderson for her glorious theatrical career. Who? Chita Rivera.

The entertainment was top notch, as always with Porchlight, and Ms. Rivera was charming and gracious. And the wine was flowing (perhaps the cause of the dropped monitor), as were the donations, buoyed by an auctioneer extraordinaire. And it didn’t snow.

LEGO Typewriter – The Final Chapter

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Apparently one can enter Lego speed champion contests. Given that it took me ten days to assemble the typewriter, breaking only to gargle and cut my toenails, I would have as much chance of winning one of those challenges as I would of breaking the current Rubik’s Cube world-record solution time of 3.47 seconds, which is faster than I can say Rubik’s Cube world-record solution time of 3.47 seconds.

IMG_0067.jpgSo I probably won’t be attempting the new 9000-piece LEGO Titanic, because, well, it’s titanic, even though there’s a YouTube video demonstrating how to do it in 10 minutes, which, according to an expedition financed by The History Channel, is twice as long as it took the real ship to sink.

But I am improving, making fewer mistakes than on earlier projects. And I spend less time searching for pieces now that I organize the bricks from each newly-opened bag on the table as if they were instruments on a tray in an operating room, which is only appropriate since half my life these days is spent wearing surgical masks.

City on Fire: Chicago 1871 – Chicago History Museum – October 13, 2021

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I strolled into the Members’ Opening Commemoration to the strains of Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire playing in the background, just as I imagine it does at every meeting of AA (Arsonists Anonymous).

I wasn’t there for the exhibit (which is interesting and well done – though not as well done as the city was following the historical event), as I had already seen it a few days earlier on the actual 150th anniversary of the conflagration, but rather to partake of the refreshments in order to practice chewing with a mask on in public in anticipation of a couple upcoming dinner events on my calendar.

Though the mask wants to slip down off one’s nose, it’s definitely doable with controlled mastication. And perhaps it will even help me slow down my notoriously fast-eating habit, along with my habit of eating when I’m supposed to be fasting.

The other thing that I wanted to research was whether the inside of my mask would act as a garbage disposal of sorts, but, upon inspection after the fact, there were no noticeable remnants of the barbecue chips that the museum offered as gourmet fire-related food. So, bring on the ribs and Sloppy Joes.

The Keys to My Kingdom

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I have a couple writing projects coming up, and my 44-year-old computer is running out of memory (and I can’t remember what to do about it), so I started looking around for a certified pre-owned, more recent model with limited key strokes on it, maybe from an estate sale of someone who only used it on Sundays.

But with the chip and truck driver shortages, and shipping containers piling high in Savannah, I wasn’t the only one knocking on doors to find Windows.

Then inspiration hit me like a ton of bricks, or more accurately, like 2079 bricks, and I decided to go old school and get a typewriter, or rather build a reportedly somewhat functional one out of LEGOs.

IMG_0059.jpgI’ve forgone my previous day-to-day reporting on construction projects and am proud to announce that I’ve made it through the first four bags of pieces since I put my tunnel visor on and went straight to the object of my desire at the LEGO store, without allowing myself to be tempted by whatever other sirens within might be calling my name.

I can already sense manuscriptorial (I thought and hoped I made this word up, but, alas, found that someone beat me to it in a publication available on ResearchGate) inspiration emanating from my work now that I have the keys in place.