Louder Than a Mom – Martyr’s – March 19, 2018

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I went to see my former storytelling teacher (see my January blog about the class) tell a story, proving beautifully, at least in her case, that those who teach, also can do. Martyr’s is the fourth different venue I have been to for storytelling. Four down, a hundred zillion to go.

The quality of the storytelling was high and the humor was rampant. Not knowing how crowded it would be, my friends and I got there two hours before showtime. No one else showed up for another hour. This allowed us to get the full attention of the waitress and acclimate ourselves to the almost complete lack of lighting in the venue. It’s not a good place to go if you have cataracts. Our smart phone flashlights really came in handy for reading the limited menu.

Next time I’ll eat somewhere else first. They didn’t even have mustard, though at least, unlike the restaurant the night before, they weren’t out of chicken. We all agreed that ketchup on chicken was a nonstarter, although the waitress said she has witnessed it. Perhaps she can get counseling for that trauma.

My former teacher, MT, introduced us to one of the hosts of the event, Kate, who encouraged us to tell a story at a future event. Though one of my friends and I were two of perhaps six men, one of whom was the bartender, at this well-attended event, Kate assured us that we would be welcome additions and that you don’t need to be a mom to participate. In fact, one of the eight speakers that night was a man, though his story was about the birth of his child, so, you know, kind of a mom story. Actually, he gets a pass on that as his story was about how ugly newborns are. (If you need a refresher on the Seinfeld episode, the Hamptons, about a “breathtaking” baby, you can find the script at http://www.seinfeldscripts.com/TheHamptons.htm).

Kate Moore – American Writers Museum – March 18, 2018

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We didn’t know Kate Moore was British (after all, we were at the American Writers Museum and her book was about Americans) until she opened her mouth to reveal a delightful accent and to tell us she was from “across the pond.”

She spoke nonstop for an hour about her book, The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women, providing personal details about the women’s lives, while also discussing their place in history as it relates to discoveries about the effects of radium poisoning and changes in occupational disease labor law.

Leonard Grossman Jr., the son of the lawyer who represented some of the women in their battle against their employer, was at the museum for the program. He has an interesting website with scans of original newspaper articles about the women from the 1920s and 30s.

Though I usually prefer going to hear authors who have something humorous to say, all the authors I’ve seen at the museum perform a very important function for me. They give me something to talk about at parties, making me sound well-read, without actually having to read anything.

With this important function in mind, I’m heading back to the museum to see Martin Amis discuss The Rub of Time.  Last time I looked, he was also British. But his publisher describes him as “acidly funny”, so I’m back on safe ground.

After listening to Moore, we went to dinner at Howells and Hood, which wouldn’t be significant except to note that we both ordered chicken dishes and the waiter came back a few minutes later to tell us they were out of chicken! According to the National Chicken Council, the average American ate over 91 pounds of chicken last year . So you’d think a restaurant would be prepared for the likelihood of someone ordering chicken. At least they didn’t try to substitute something else lying around the kitchen that “tastes like chicken.”

 

Patrycja Likos (Cello) and Yana Reznik (Piano) – Chicago Cultural Center – March 14, 2018

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Just when I thought I might not have anything more to write about the weekly Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts, a previously unseen episode of Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows broke out part way through today’s performance.

The first piece went smoothly, as did the beginning of the second. Then Reznik reached up with one hand and made a minor adjustment to the way the pages were sitting on the piano’s music stand (cause or effect, I don’t know) and then, as the page turner executed his next maneuver, the pages starting unraveling every which way, fanning out in a slapstick fashion that seemed likely to bring the performance to a crashing halt. But, as the page turner tried to restore order, sprawling akimbo like a man playing Twister, Reznik, contorting her neck to the side to read a sheet of music that was now at a 45-degree angle, played on, amazingly, seemingly flawlessly.

The fuss was such that Likos turned her head around, while also not missing a beat, and looked to see what mayhem was taking place behind her. Then, after what was probably at most 10 seconds, but seemed like an eternity, someone from the front row of the audience rose up and came to the rescue, getting the sheets under control on the right side of the piano as the page turner held up his end on the left. The audience then held its collective breath until the end of the piece.

I have seen Reznik before and she is wonderful (as is Likos), but this performance was above and beyond. How does one prepare for such mishaps? It made me think about Tiger Woods and how his father used to scream in Tiger’s backswing to enure him to the distractions he might experience on the PGA tour.

I have been asked on occasion to inform readers about future events. This is the perfect opportunity to let everyone know that next week’s concert will be streamed live on Facebook. If you can’t make it in person, you might want to check out the broadcast. Who knows, perhaps an episode of McHale’s Navy will break out during the performance.

Julia Sweeney, Older & Wider – Judy’s Beat Lounge – March 11, 2018

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We had dinner at Topo Gigio, where, fortunately, the service was a vast improvement (or we wouldn’t have made the show on time) over where I dined the night before, where we sat for an hour before the waiter brought the check, without having brought the food (picky, picky, picky), which reminded me of the Steve Martin short film, The Absent-Minded Waiter (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fsh47iNVRkM).

Judy’s Beat Lounge is a casual 56-seat space at Second City, with general, unreserved seating. We got lucky with four seats together along the side wall, with no sight line issues, even after two of the people in our group were told at the door that their tickets were for a different, prior night (oops). Fortunately the box office was willing to sell them two more tickets (very generous).

Sweeney, who is most famously known for her androgynous character Pat, as a not-ready-for-prime-time player on Saturday Night Live, has been living somewhat under the radar in a northern suburb of Chicago for the last 10 years, apparently for the sole purpose of raising an adopted daughter who provides her with an endless source of material for her routine, including the two most memorable lines of the night – one about her daughter intentionally bringing an uncomfortable dinner conversation to an abrupt end by announcing that she was experiencing a heavy flow and the other about how Sweeney’s husband started calling their daughter’s boy friend Rolf (as in The Sound of Music) in response to information about his politics.

The show is billed as a stand-up work in progress, but, except for Sweeney’s occasional glances at her notes when changing topics and occasional comments about whether a bit had worked or not, it seems ready for prime time to me.

Avalon String Quartet – Chicago Cultural Center – March 7, 2018

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I arrived a few minutes earlier than normal, hoping to get a seat stage right for a change, so I could see the pianist’s hands at work from behind. Too bad I hadn’t remembered that it was a string quartet playing, not a pianist. No wonder I could get the seat I thought I wanted, as the other regular attendees scurried stage left, where the quartet was to be positioned.

One advantage to sitting on the right side, I initially rationalized, was that I was near the little booth where Dave Schwan sits each week to host WFMT’s live broadcast of the program. Of course, during the music, he just sits there, not doing or saying anything. So it really wasn’t that special for me to be sitting near him (or for him near me, I imagine).

The Avalon String Quartet led off with Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes from Florence Price’s Five Folksongs in Counterpoint. That mouthful takes almost as long to say as the four minutes it took the quartet to play it. The selection reminded me that it will soon be St. Patrick’s Day, when no one will be drinking only with their eyes, although some will undoubtedly be blind drunk.

The second selection was Beethoven’s beautiful String Quartet No. 9 in C Major. I could see that at least one member of the quartet was using a tablet, instead of paper, to read the music. Beethoven surely didn’t see that coming, whether or not he was drinking with his eyes. (For an interesting article on issues related to this use of tablets, see https://www.inverse.com/article/10176-can-classical-music-escape-sheet-music-only-if-tablets-can-keep-tempo)

They’re Playing Our Song – Porchlight Theater – March 7, 2018

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The online Urban Dictionary defines porch light as “someone who attracts trouble, or crazy people. Like a porch light attracts bugs and unwanted pests, i.e. mosquitoes.” Unlike Sheldon Cooper in The Big Bang Theory, my mother never had me tested. Nevertheless, I don’t think I’m crazy (who ever does), and the rest of the audience, on this and other nights at the Porchlight Theater, seemed perfectly sane to me.

The only trouble I have encountered at the theater is that Michael Weber, the theater’s Artistic Director, sometimes goes into a little too much detail when giving his pre show history lessons on Porchlight Revisits nights like this. So, while it’s interesting to see pictures of all the actors who starred in the 1,082 performances of the Broadway run of They’re Playing Our Song, did I really need to know that lyricist Carole Bayer Sager has several dogs that sleep in her bed with her and her current husband?

As for the show itself, I read a review of a 2010 Los Angeles production that said the show “doesn’t have the weight to require a 2 ½-hour running time” and “would have been much more enjoyable with a loss of 20 minutes.” Porchlight lost more than that (and it wasn’t even Daylight Saving yet – don’t forget to reset your clocks this weekend). It did the show in one hour and forty minutes.

In addition to the stars, Lorenzo Rush, Jr. and Sharriesse Hamilton, both of whom I saw in the theater’s 2014 production of Ain’t Misbehavin, there are six performers who act as their inner voices, singing backup, dancing, and inspiring the emotions and mimicking the movements of the leads. Great stuff. Wouldn’t everything be more fun if we had a few inner voices following us around, singing and dancing? Hopefully that wouldn’t require everyone getting tested.

Bunny Bunny: Gilda Radner, A Sort of Love Story – Mercury Theater – March 4, 2018

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I hadn’t seen a show at the Mercury Theater in over 2 years (Ring of Fire: The Music of Johnny Cash) before seeing Bunny Bunny (bad title). I was elated to see that the Dairy Queen is still there, less than a block from the theater.

By the time you read this blog, our Uber driver, I hope, will have returned to bartending full time. He had no idea where he was going and caused me to fear for my life a couple times, not counting his moment of uncertainty about whether he should drive the car into Lake Michigan. He said that he had been an Uber driver for only two weeks and was starting it think it wasn’t for him. I couldn’t agree more.

Fortunately, we somehow arrived at the theater in time and alive, though they probably would have held the curtain for us (if late, but probably not if dead), as the theater, which isn’t that big to begin with (290 seats), was half empty.

The show was okay, amusing in spots. The woman playing Gilda was a force (Dana Tretter – upon looking her up, I realized that I saw her perform in the 2006 White Horse Theater Company production of “I Sing!”, along with a friend’s son, who won a Jefferson Award for his performance in that show). I now wish I had found the time to see “In the Next Room or The Vibrator Play” (great title), in which she performed, at the Timeline Theater the end of last year.

In addition to Dana, a lot of our attention was paid to a fake tree, which was heavily referenced in the opening dialogue, and which the crew kept moving around the stage during the frequent scene changes, making it seem like a rather stilted member of the cast (though not credited in the program).

David Mamet – Chicago Humanities Festival (CHF) – March 1, 2018

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Mamet appeared before a sold-out crowd as part of the book tour for his new novel, Chicago, which, thankfully, was less than half the size of the tome, Leonardo da Vinci, that I had to lug home and attempt to wade through after seeing Walter Isaacson speak at a CHF based-on-a-book program last October.

Mamet was erudite and funny. I preferred the funny part, like when he quoted Mel Brooks. When he was quoting Archimedes, Aristotle, or Shakespeare, or rambling (the kind of rambling where no one remembers the question) on about the relationship between theater and religion, I was less interested. If some University of Chicago professor wants to delve into that at another program, go for it, but I won’t be there.

The interviewer, Chicago Tribune critic Chris Jones, spent most of the hour appearing star-struck. He said he had already read Mamet’s book three or four times, and read aloud a passage from it, apparently for the purpose of informing the audience that he didn’t understand several of the words (Chris, if you’re reading this, here is the url for the online Merriam-Webster dictionary – https://www.merriam-webster.com), a sycophantic move that said more about Jones than it did about Mamet.

The highlight of the hour for me was Mamet saying that his favorite writers were Ben Hecht and Charles McArthur. My mother used to tell me that my brother and I were named after Charles McArthur, which, early on, I unfortunately, traumatically, mistakenly heard as Charlie McCarthy, one of Edgar Bergen’s dummies. She also used to tell me that she and my father found me after I fell out of the crab apple tree in the backyard, at which point they exclaimed “Eureka!” (I made up that last part to show that I also could quote Archimedes), so who knows.

We Three: Loud Her. Fast Her. Funny Her. – Steppenwolf Theater – February 27, 2018

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We Three is a tall, talented, and talkative trio. When Meghan Murphy, Danni Smith, and Cassie Slater are on stage, singing and having fun, it’s hard not to have fun with them, so everyone in the audience just smiled, hooted, and laughed along.

The show started a half hour late due to what was described as a wardrobe malfunction, which turned out to be Meghan (aka Big Red – see my blog on Big Red and the Boys) having forgotten to bring her performance dress with her from home. Really? What else did she need to remember?

A couple sitting in front of us came to see the show because they wanted more of Meghan (she’s everywhere, but fortunately she manages to remember her lyrics, if not her clothes), whom they had just seen as Fräulein Kostin in Cabaret (in a show getting rave reviews) in Aurora (Aurora!) at the Paramount Theater (Aurora!), one of the great old theaters, built in 1931, and on the National Register of Historic Places (but Aurora!). I’ve been to Aurora, but for something really important – golf. It’s far and it’s Aurora!

There’s no drink service in the room (the 1700 Theater, an intimate 80-seat cabaret-type space), which seems odd. One has to go to the adjoining room, the cleverly-named Front Bar. I thought I might miss the start of the show (before hearing about the delay) because the bartender apparently wasn’t in class the day they taught how to open a bottle of wine. I almost impatiently jumped over the bar to help, but then remembered that I can’t jump.

Eight other people in attendance came, directly or indirectly, based upon on my prior blog about Meghan. So, after 27 frustrating years working for a very not-for-profit association, I finally feel like I’m providing a public service. My blog is reaching people numbering into the teens.

White Pines Golf Dome – Ongoing

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The background music at the White Pines Golf Dome is sixties rock. Fortunately, the rhythm of the songs they play suits my swing. Way back when, I loved running to the rhythm of certain songs. My personal favorite was the Spinners’ 1980 version of Working My Way Back to You (with no offense to the original Four Seasons version). Now, if only I could master rhythm on the piano. I play the piano as if I were doing interval training on the track, frequently (though unintentionally, as opposed to when running) changing the beat, regardless of how the music is actually written – let’s call it unintentional improvisation, a new kind of jazz.

The Dome opens at 7:00 am. No matter how early I get there, the caffeinated coffee urn is empty. Maybe there’s never any, even if you get there at 7:00 sharp, which I guess doesn’t really matter to me because I don’t like coffee. I drink it for the vanilla creamer. I keep vanilla extract in my kitchen cabinet, with no idea of what I’m going to do with it (I don’t bake), but reassured by it just being there. It has been suggested to me that I sniff it on days when I need a lift. Sure, why not, it’s probably not a gateway drug – I’ve never heard of flavors anonymous.

As for golf, I’m currently working on only seven swing thoughts, which is pretty good for me, and which I should be able to handle, based upon Miller’s Law. Miller’s Law refers to the oft-cited article, “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information”, published in 1956 in Psychological Review by the Princeton University cognitive psychologist George A. Miller. I try not to think about the article itself while swinging – that would be an eighth thing to remember, and would throw everything off.