You Know Things are Getting Bad When . . .

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You have to remove all your injury ice packs from your freezer to make room for food.

Your choices for television you haven’t seen yet are down to The Masked Singer and reruns of videos from your lobby showing the mail person delivering the mail.

The guy in line in front of you at the store pulls out a measuring tape, gives you a dirty look, and makes a chalk line on the floor six feet behind him.

You don’t bother to pick the lima beans out of the vegetable medley you bought because they were out of real food.

You’re training your dog to go to the store for you.

You’re making a collage out of all the CEO messages you’ve received regarding company responses to COVID-19.

You live in a multiunit building and are considering saying hello to your neighbors.

BUT, DON’T PANIC YET – here’s some good news from a couple subscribers.

The 92nd Street Y in New York will live stream Garrick Ohlsson’s piano performance tonight at 7:00 Central time. 

The Berlin Philharmoniker Digital Concert Hall is offering a free month of high quality audio and video—including different angles and closeups of the solos. (And the instructions are in English.)

Finally, thanks to all of you from whom I’ve heard about my recent post-apocalyptic posts. If my brain doesn’t give in to cabin fever, I’ll try, with your help, to keep them coming.

Things to Do When There’s Nothing to Do

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Change all your passwords, daily at first, more often later if you’re still bored. Then try to memorize all 500 of them.

Remove your spam filters and start reading all your junk email and listening to all the robocalls you get.

Learn a new skill – campanology has a nice ring to it, though it may annoy the neighbors.

Take a free online course from a top university – epidemiology seems like a useful one.

And then watch all the contagion movies. Check out Vulture’s list of The 58 Best Pandemic Movies to Binge in Quarantine.

While you’re at it, there’s a new sequel to the book The Andromeda Strain, The Andromeda Evolution, which I recommend, even though it wasn’t written by Michael Crichton, who, after all, left us in 2008. I wonder how he would feel about the amazingly convoluted Westworld television series, which I don’t recommend.

Shred every shred of paper in your possession – very cathartic.

Write the consensus Great American Novel, thereby eliminating the other pretenders on The Literary Hub list, which, by the way, does not include the Philip Roth book, The Great American Novel, which I, and perhaps a few others, actually have read.

Think about exercising, but don’t actually exercise, as you might hurt yourself, and it’s not a good time to need medical attention.

Start writing a blog. It empties your head, and thereby helps you sleep at night.

Sleep, a lot – not only does it help cleanse the brain of toxins (so that you can pursue all the above activities), it helps preserve toilet paper and hand sanitizer (unless you’re a sleep cleaner), and, who knows, things might be better when you wake up.

The Theory of Nothing

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Just because the world has ground to a halt doesn’t mean that I should stop writing, or does it? Have I misinterpreted the signs? Anyway, to help us all pass the time, here are some notes about some of the things I’m not doing.

Speaking of signs, and the stealing thereof, I’m not watching baseball games. I wouldn’t anyway, but my class on the Literature of Baseball at Northwestern’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute will be held online, instead of in person, which means I don’t get to indulge in the delicious home-made brownies that a member of the class, who is a baker, brings each week.

I’m not watching March Madness or running my pool, which is a shame because I concocted some bizarre rules this year in the hope that no one else would understand them. In that vein, in the absence of games, I have declared myself the winner of the pool.

Despite having been the Wizard of Oz in Wicked on Broadway, Joel Grey apparently does not have the power to make everything right and so is not going to the 25th Anniversary Porchlight Music Theatre Icons Gala honoring him and neither is anyone else, including me, at least until it gets rescheduled.

I’m not going to the postponed Newberry Library Associates Night, where I was hoping to cop some free wine and cheese and then sneak out before the staff droned on about research that would have bored me to tears.

I’m not going to the American Writers Museum to listen to Gene Luen Yang talk about his new graphic novel Dragon Hoops, as he cancelled his in-person book tour, and instead, according to his website, is touring as a cartoon.

I’m not going to the Civic Orchestra of Chicago’s 100th Anniversary Concert, which was to feature Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5, which also was performed at the orchestra’s first-ever concert on March 29, 1920. I missed that one too.

A Scientist Walks into a Bar: Thermodynamics – The Hottest Science – The Hideout – March 10, 2020

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Willetta Greene-Johnson’s Ph.D. thesis was “The effects of the exchange mode dynamics on vibrational phase relaxation at surfaces.” I have no idea what any of that means, but I do know that Greene-Johnson’s colorful slides and good humor while somewhat dumbing down thermodynamics and entropy for the audience at The Hideout, gave off the kind of good vibrations that would have made her fellow Grammy Award winner, Brian Wilson, envious. (She also is a classically-trained pianist, who dabbles with the cello and clarinet.)

The room was packed and it seemed like almost everyone, myself excluded, lined up to ask questions after the presentation, questions that ranged from: Is the expanding universe a manifestation of entropy?, to What are the thermodynamic properties of love?, with a comparison of Greene-Johnson’s renaissance range of talents in science and songwriting to those of Tom Lehrer’s combination of mathematics and music thrown in for good measure.

Having just found out about A Scientist Walks into a Bar, I now am bummed out that I missed recent excursions into string theory, rockin’ around the gymnosperm, and how food works, but the good news is that there are 34 recordings from similar live Science on Tap events in Oregon and Washington available on Apple Podcasts and 44 seasons of PBS episodes available online. Forty-four seasons! I guess I must have been preoccupied. Still, despite the comfort and safety of listening from home, it’s just not the same as the excitement these days of being in a crowded bar, holding your breath for fear that someone near you may sneeze. (No one did.)

Five Iron Golf – March 6, 2020

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I’ve been using Five Iron Golf’s indoor simulators regularly over the last two months, ever since my orthopedist, when I asked him if I could play golf again, gave me the okay, though he wasn’t as positive about the violin, as I had never played that before.

March 6th was my first time using Trackman software, which we were told is more realistic than the other software we had been using. Clearly that’s so, because, on this first occasion, I got a hole in one, on the 11th hole at St. Andrews, not the one in West Chicago, but the real one, in Scotland. Well, not the real one, because we were playing on a simulator, and no one was speaking with a brogue, but it was a simulation of the real one.

Years ago I got a few holes-in-one when there were windmills and clowns’ mouths involved, but this is the first time with an actual golf club in my hands, even if the ball only travelled 10 or so feet into a screen, not 147 yards into the gray skies of Scotland.

I can’t remember the last time I was so excited – well maybe it was when I flunked my Army physical. I was like North Carolina State basketball coach Jim Valvano, when his team won the NCAA men’s tournament 54-52 in 1983 on Lorenzo Charles’s shot at the buzzer, and he famously began running around the court looking for someone to hug.

One of the guys on staff took my picture, I think just to shut me up, not to bask in my glow, but he also said something about having to follow Five Iron on Instagram in order to win a prize for my shot. The odds of that happening are longer than they were for the hole-in-one.

Erwin Helfer (piano) – The Hideout – March 5, 2020

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Erwin Helfer is my favorite boogie boogie and blues piano player (and a really nice guy, whom I’ve met a couple times). The last time I saw him was at the 2019 Chicago Blues Festival. Quite by accident, I discovered that he’d be playing at The Hideout, a place I’d never been to before.

The Hideout calls itself “a regular guy bar for irregular folks who just don’t fit in, or just don’t want to fit in.” As such, it’s got my name written all over it. After only one visit, I’d say that it’s my new favorite bar, except I didn’t have an old favorite bar, and I really don’t drink very much. That said, the bar’s Shiner S’more Chocolate & Marshmallow Ale on tap also had my name written all over it, and my name isn’t even Shiner.

Helfer’s trio was to include Rick Sherry on the washboard, which was an added enticement. I don’t know Sherry, but, c’mon, it’s the washboard. I heard my first one in New Orleans thirty years ago, played by a guy who also played the log that night. But Sherry, Helfer told us, had the flu, and was replaced by a drummer who atmospherically wielded a couple drum brushes as if he were Picasso.

Despite the lack of a log or washboard, the ambience I was seeking was maintained by The Hideout’s piano, which, in the true spirit of Helfer’s style and repertoire, is a very old-looking upright, without a top, with the hammers thus revealed.

My next trip to The Hideout will be for A Scientist Walks into a Bar : Thermodynamics – The Hottest Science. (Is this place eclectic or what?) The bar’s monthly interviews are promoted as “Chicago’s premier science-comedy talk show”. Are there others?

Piff the Magic Dragon – North Shore Center for the Performing Arts – February 28, 2020

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For the last 12 years, John van der Put has performed as Piff the Magic Dragon. Though it pays the bills, I’d think he’d be tired of the persona by now. It only took me about ten or fifteen minutes, the time at the top of the show he boringly bantered with willing audience members in the guise of humor as he searched for his first on-stage victim.

To be fair, he is widely acclaimed, has solid magician skills, and is funny in spurts. But I wonder if he would be as popular if he weren’t wearing a cheesy Halloween costume. Or is he merely following in the hallowed footsteps of Bette Midler and her wheelchair-bound mermaid alter ego Delores Delago.

The other thing that sets his show apart is his sidekick, Mr. Piffles, the World’s First Magic Performing Chihuahua™. There was a point where I thought, and hoped, that Mr. Piffles might shuffle a deck of cards, but, alas, the height of his powers was being put into a bag with a Rubik’s Cube.

As further proof that Mr. Piffles is not all that special, Piff replaced him on short notice for a show in New Zealand with a dog that had previously starred as Bruiser in a stage production of Legally Blonde. Clearly that dog has some range.

Piff’s act also makes good use of Las Vegas comedic showgirl Jade Simone, who is not to be confused with Nina Simone, who performed in Vegas in the 1960s, or Simón Bolívar, who never made it to Vegas.

Piff has appeared on television on Penn & Teller: Fool Us and America’s Got Talent, but hasn’t made it to the list of the Top Ten Most Famous Dragons of All Time, though his almost namesake Puff comes in at number 18, which magically is part of the top ten.

 

New Faces Sing Broadway Now – Arts Club of Chicago – February 25, 2020

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As usual, Porchlight Music Theatre’s New Faces event showcased a host of talent, and a host with talent, Cory Goodrich, five-time Jeff Award nominee, and two-time winner, who is soon to star in Porchlight’s production of Freaky Friday, opening April 10th.

There were songs from recent arrivals and entrenched hits, including four of the five longest-running shows in Broadway history – The Phantom of the Opera, Chicago, The Lion King, and Wicked – but none from non-musicals.

One song was from a show that just opened on Broadway, but is familiar to Chicago audiences – Six. Six’s Porchlight connection is strong, as four of the six stars of the show have been featured in the past in the New Faces series.

What’s more, four of the six women in the cast have first names that start with the letter A, and the two who don’t replaced two from the original West End cast who did. Coincidence, or enemy action?

New Faces makes me think of people who literally have a new face, say for example the characters played by John Travolta and Nicolas Cage in the movie Face/Off. I wonder if they would have titled the 1997 movie Trading Faces if not for the 1983 movie Trading Places.

Speaking of John Travolta, he appeared on Broadway in 1974’s Over Here, in the role of Misfit, singing a two-song medley with the Andrews Sisters. Over Here, which I never heard of before despite it having been nominated for best musical, also included the song Don’t Shoot the Hooey to Me, Louie (gotta love the title), sung by Samuel E. Wright, who sang Under the Sea in the animated film The Little Mermaid. With that kind of trivia, Over Here sounds like a candidate for a Porchlight Revisits production.

For Lying Out Loud (Presented by The Chicago Bar Association) – Oakton Community College – February 23, 2020

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A musical suite is defined as a group of self-contained instrumental movements of varying character. A medley is a piece composed from parts of existing pieces. Instrumental medleys in overtures are fine, but calling a vocal medley a suite in a show’s printed program doesn’t make it so.

The problem with vocal medleys is that . . . . Just when the audience is starting to . . . . The performer isn’t given’t the chance to . . . . And the composer’s work . . . . It’s as if a writer started a series of sentences that . . . .

There were two so-called “suites” in this year’s Chicago Bar Association annual satire, For Lying Out Loud, that were somewhat, and only somewhat, saved by the fact that the piano accompanist for the show was excellent.

The opening and closing narrator for the show was dressed as Pinocchio, as befitting the theme. He first appeared on stage, however, already having a long nose, and it didn’t grow as a result of anything he said, unlike in the clever Geico commercials. So, was it Pinocchio or Cyrano de Bergerac?

The highlight of the show, for me, was seeing my name in the program as the purveyor of additional material, the reference being to two jokes I gave the writers many months ago. I was heartened to hear, not only the jokes, but also the audience laughing at them. Okay, the one predicting the imminent end of civilization may have elicited more of a groan, but I was back in show business.

Speaking of imminent ends, I was told that the Bar’s home venue will once again be changing, probably moving to the Studebaker Theater in The Fine Arts Building, with the hope, I suppose, that the show can somehow survive dwindling audiences and last four more years to reach an even 100, if civilization doesn’t end before then.

The Mystick Krewe of Laff 28th Annual Mardi Gras Bash – Speakeasy in the Big Easy Feat – City Winery – February 22, 2020

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How ya gonna keep ’em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree?

The Mystic Krewe of Laff’s bash is promoted as being the biggest Mardi Gras event in Chicago. I don’t know if that claim is accurate, but even if it is, I’ve seen Paree, or rather I’ve seen the Krewe du Vieux Carré in New Orleans. It was 2012 and the theme was Crimes Against Nature, and they meant it.

In New Orleans, the party was outside, where Mardi Gras parties should be, and where you don’t mind standing, unlike in the City Winery, where they oversold the event and didn’t have enough seats, though seating for all had been promised.

In New Orleans the music was better, sounded more like New Orleans, and wasn’t as hard on the ears as the piercing din at the City Winery, though fortunately I was prescient enough to bring earplugs.

In New Orleans the food was better, as City Winery was apparently promoting a bland-food diet. How do you make jambalaya tasteless?

In New Orleans the costumes were more interesting, though a lot of people, not me, tried their best at the City Winery. They just didn’t understand the difference between flapper attire and the decadence and debauchery associated with a real carnival.

In New Orleans there were mule-drawn carts with kegs of beer and other libations on them, which, I admit, might have been somewhat challenging at the City Winery and probably in violation of several laws.

At the City Winery, people were handed beads at the door. In New Orleans, you had to earn them the old-fashioned way.

Other than all that Mrs. Lincoln, I enjoyed my first visit to City Winery.