Category Archives: Entertainment

Late Spring Break

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Time for a spring break. Later than the standard breaks taken by students, but it’s been a long time since I could call myself that. Back again around May 21.

Congratulations to my nephew Sam and his wife Emily, whose second child, Georgiana, was born healthy late last week. Nothing like having a daughter. I liked the experience so much I did it twice.

It’s a sobering thought to realize that she and her brother could well live to see the 22nd century.

Closer to home, spring can’t decide whether to be warm or cool, as usual. But there has been rain in quantity when there hasn’t been snow.

I tried to start my lawnmower last week during one of the cool days, while it was still in the garage. Nothing doing. So I anticipated draining its gas tank of old fuel, something I forgot to do in the fall.

On Saturday, when it was very much warmer, I parked the mower outside for a while and let it warm up in the sun. Then I tried to start it and voilà, it woke from its hibernation, ready to trim the grass in its noisy way.

During our recent visit to UIUC, we wandered past Davenport Hall.

From the looks of it, an ag building. But not any more. These days, it houses the university’s geography and anthropology departments. Dating from 1899, it’s one of the older buildings on campus. Nice facade. Reminds me of Texas A&M.

Not far from campus, an all together different kind of building. And yet a building. That’s a broad concept, after all. A bit of local color usually not acknowledged as such.

Some music for spring. Electroswing. Seems fitting somehow.

The first number, “Zoot Suit Riot,” released in the late ’90s, seems vaguely inspired by the incident in early ’40s Los Angeles. The quality of the video is poor, but with the crisp audio that doesn’t matter.

A more recent swing, dating from this decade, though in the case of “Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen,” with a helping of “Diga-Diga-Doo,” the songs are original swing vintage. I’m fond of other versions as well, such as Max Raabe’s, which I saw him do.

Also recent, the lively “Gimme That Swing” and its kinetic, or maybe frenetic, video.

Speaking of music, I’ve picked one more biography to read, now that I’m done with Alexander Hamilton. A genius of a different sort: Cole Porter.

Othello

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Not long ago we went to the Factory Theater in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood to see a staging of Othello by the Babes With Blades Theatre Company. I suggested we go because I’d never seen that play staged. Also, Ann read it not too long ago for school — wrote some papers and so on, the usual sort of things you do in high school.

The Factory is a small venue, about 70 seats on three sides of a simple stage. As far as I could tell, we saw a completely traditional staging of Othello, complete with well-done period costumes and actual swords and knifes, except for one thing. Babes With Babes is an entirely female theater company.

But not just a female company. A company of players with some specific talents.

According to the BWB web site: “Our initial showcase, in 1997, was conceived by founder Dawn ‘Sam’ Alden as a two-day presentation of fights and monologues, intended to bring to the Chicago art world an awareness of the large number of stage combat-trained women it had in its midst whose talent was being consistently underutilized.”

While not an overly stabby play (unlike Titus Andronicus) Othello certainly has its share of swords and knives as a part of the action, and the troupe handled them well.

More importantly, they handled their parts well. The novelty of women in the parts always played by men — Deveon Bromby as Othello and Kathrynne Wolf as Iago, to name the principals — lasted for a few minutes. Then it wore off and you were simply watching a solid production of Othello.

Wolf was particularly good as Iago. If you’re not going to have a spot-on Iago, a character that believably exults in the art of deceit, you might as well not do the play, since everything turns on that performance.

Much has been made of the muddled motives of Iago, or perhaps his motivelessness, but I’m not sure that matters. If it’s perversely captivating to watch his glee at destroying the Moor, I’d say the actor has done his, and in this case, her job.

A Festival of Music, 1973

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I found this bit of ephemera at my mother’s house last year. She had saved it, tucked away in a envelope. I’d forgotten about the event, but it jogged my memory.

Jog might be too strong a verb. I still don’t remember much about the event, including why I participated. I was in the sixth grade, toward the very end of that year, and didn’t usually participate in choruses. Mainly, I think, because I can’t sing. But somehow or other I decided to do it, and there I am along with scores of other kids.
At the time, Alamo Heights had four elementary schools that fed into a single junior high and high school. Among the names of the kids at the three other elementary schools that I didn’t attend, I recognize a lot of people I didn’t know in 1973, but whom I would know by the time I finished high school six years later.

Considering the structure of the district’s schools, and the passage of time, and the way social interaction goes, that isn’t really so strange, and yet it feels strange when I think about it.

Another irrational feeling that comes to me when looking at the list is how normal most of the first names sound. Especially the girls’ names, like Amy, Barbara, Caroline, Laura, Lisa, Lynn, Mary, Melissa, Patricia, Sharon, Susan and variations on Deborah, Julia, Rebecca and Sandra.

The evening’s program.

Three of the four songs by the elementary chorus were from Up With People. I didn’t know that until reading the program recently. Guess they produced the kind of anodyne songs considered good for elementary school children in the early ’70s.

I’ve read a little about that organization, though I can’t say that I know much about it. But I can’t shake the lingering idea that if Ned Flanders founded a cult, it would be something like that.

Raumpatrouille

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Rain is more typical than snow for late April/early May, and we’ve gotten buckets of it since the snow melted on Sunday. The grass has responded by taking on new hues of lush green. I expect scads of the much-maligned dandelion to follow. The back yard already has some, but the rain beat them down. They never stay down for long.

How did I not know about Raumpatrouille until the other day? In full, as befitting a title in German, the TV show is called Raumpatrouille – Die phantastischen Abenteuer des Raumschiffes Orion. That is, Space Patrol – The Fantastic Adventures of the Spaceship Orion.

Naturally, when I found out about it, I wasn’t looking for information about the German science fiction television program of that name that’s an exact contemporary of the original Star Trek, premiering on German TV on September 17, 1966 (Star Trek first aired on September 8).

Yet in wandering the Internet’s twisty little maze of passages, or maybe its maze of twisty little passages, I chanced across Raumpatrouille not long ago. I didn’t have time to follow up on the information right when I found it, but I had the presence of mind to do some bookmarking.

Later, it was easy enough to find the episodes — there are only seven of them — on YouTube, which have helpful English subtitles. I watched the first one. Though I’d read it was good, I was taken by surprise by how good it was. As good as anything Star Trek did, and without that annoying Roddenberry vibe.

Actually, there’s a bit of his outlook. By the unspecified year in which the show is set, Earth has a world government. What little you hear about that government, or at least its military, makes it seem officious and a touch German, but not totalitarian.

The characters are supposed to represent a cross-section of Earth’s population. As Television Heaven puts it, “While Major McLane [the commander] is American, his crew includes a Japanese navigator and star cartographer, a Scandinavian engineer, and an Italian computer specialist and armaments officer. This is clearly not a projection of a desire for a Teutonic world order.”

In the single show I’ve seen so far, the story has some intelligence and suspense, plus some character development, and the pacing is good. The sets and props strongly resemble Doctor Who in its early days, since Raumpatrouille clearly had a slender budget. But they did well with what they had.

Also, there are a few moments of unintentional comedy. One scene has the characters at a bar near wherever their ships launch from, and the characters are having a discussion in the foreground. In the background, extras are dancing, as if it were a dance club. Except that they were obviously doing “a dance of the future.” It’s a strange sight with a lot of odd moves, and gets more funny as it goes along.

I’ll watch the rest of Raumpatrouille in the fullness of time. Don’t want to hurry, though. This is where I found out about it.

Thursday Nokorimono

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One major installation we saw at the Elmhurst Art Museum on Saturday didn’t have anything to do with the Bauhaus (which got a Google doodle today), or Mies van der Rohe, or anything but the sky.

“Skycube” by David Wallace Haskins, which was installed in 2015. It may look light, but it’s made from 6,000 lbs. of steel.
The mirrors inside the cube deliver an image of the sky to — in — at — the square window — hole — aperture — on the side. It’s a little unnerving to sit there and look at it, but also hard to turn away.
Stand next to the “window” and you can get a self-portrait in the sky. Got a surreal tinge to it.
The view might be even more interesting on one of those days when rafts of clouds are speeding along at high altitudes.

The YouTube autoplay algorithm is pretty much of the same dense mindset as Top 40 radio is, or at least used to be. Play one song, well known or even not so well known, and it will line up nothing unusual or surprising.

Odd, then — and I’ve tested this on a few separate days — when I queue up something by the B-52s, a good many lesser-known songs of theirs appear on the autoplay. Mostly published by the group itself, but not always (and who doesn’t like a song that mentions ancient Mesopotamia?).

Might just be a fluke, though. Your results may vary. I doubt that algorithms will ever be good enough to weed out all the flukes. Hope not.

The last time I was in downtown Chicago, earlier this month, I paused for a moment to take a picture of a sign on E. Adams St. marking the eastern terminus of the former U.S. 66.
That’s the western-facing side of the side, covered by stickers from all over, with many European in origin. Shortly before I took my picture, a group of Germans were doing the same. Must be in their Reiseführer von Amerika. And what does the Meat Bunny know?

By the time I took a picture of the eastern-facing side, the Germans were gone.
Leaving only this fellow and his selfie stick.

Thursday Whatnots

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News I missed, and I miss a fair amount, which I figure is actually healthy: “For the second time in history, a human-made object has reached the space between the stars,” a NASA press release from December says.

“NASA’s Voyager 2 probe now has exited the heliosphere — the protective bubble of particles and magnetic fields created by the Sun…

“Its twin, Voyager 1, crossed this boundary in 2012, but Voyager 2 carries a working instrument that will provide first-of-its-kind observations of the nature of this gateway into interstellar space.”

Voyager 2 is now slightly more than 11 billion miles (18 billion kilometers) from Earth. Or 16.5 light hours. That’s still in the Solar System, though. “It will take about 300 years for Voyager 2 to reach the inner edge of the Oort Cloud and possibly 30,000 years to fly beyond it,” NASA says.

Not long ago, the original Godzilla — Gojira, to be pedantic — appeared on TV, in Japanese with subtitles. Not that the famed atomic beast needs any subtitles. I had my camera handy.
I didn’t watch it all, but that’s one way to approach televised movies. Not long ago, I watched the first 15 minutes or so of The Sting, a fine movie I’ve seen a few times all the way through. But other tasks were at hand, so I quit after Luther is murdered.

Later, I had the presence of mind to turn the TV back on and watch the last 10 minutes or so, when the sting is put on gangster Doyle Lonnegan. It’s a satisfying ending, but it got me to thinking.

A con with that many people would surely generate rumors. Just as surely, the rumors would make their way to the murderous Lonnegan, who wouldn’t rest until Henry Gondorff and Johnny Hooker were dead. But that’s overthinking things.

Here’s another example of a dim algorithm. Just about every time I use YouTube, I see anti-teen smoking PSAs. Or maybe they’re blanketing the medium, regardless of audience. Still, if I didn’t take up smoking 45 years ago, I’m not going to now.

That brings to mind the first time I remember seeing one of my contemporaries with a cigarette. That was about 45 years ago at a place called the Mule Stall.

The Mule Stall was a student space on the campus of my high school with a few rooms, chairs, a pool table and I don’t remember what else. It was tucked away about as far as you could get from the rest of the school, opening up to the street behind the school.

High schoolers used it, but junior high kids from the district had gatherings there occasionally as well. The event I remember might have been the wrap party for one of the plays I was in. Besides not acquiring a taste for smoking back then, I also discovered the theater wasn’t for me, except as an audience member. But ca. 1974, as a junior high school student, I did a few plays.

There we were, hanging out at the Mule Stall, when we noticed a girl named Debbie, who was in our class, pass by with a cigarette between her fingers. I didn’t know her that well, and I don’t remember much about her now, though she had curly hair, glasses and the sort of development adolescent boys pay attention to. At that moment, I guess she was on her way out to smoke the thing, though we didn’t see that.

I don’t know anything about her later life. She attended high school with us for a while, but either moved away or dropped out before the Class of ’79 graduated. I wonder if even now, she holds her cigs in yellow-stained fingers and spends part of the night coughing.

As for the Mule Stall, we had occasional high school band parties there later. One in particular involved almost everyone lining up to dance to the “Cotton-Eyed Joe.” That was fun. As Wiki accurately says, the dance was very much alive in Texas in the 1970s.

In fact, the Wiki entry has a description of the style of dance we did. Someone who did the dance seems to have written it, because this is exactly right.

“This dance was adapted into a simplified version as a nonpartner waist-hold, spoke line routine. Heel and toe polka steps were replaced with a cross-lift followed by a kick with two-steps. The lift and kick are sometimes accompanied by shouts of ‘whoops, whoops,’ or the barnyard term ‘bull s–t.’… The practice continues to this day.”

We used the barnyard term. An administration with no sense of history apparently razed the Mule Stall in the 1990s. Now the site is parking.

Merrie England

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The point of going to Hyde Park on Sunday wasn’t merely to tool around the neighborhood, though that’s usually fun, but to see the Gilbert & Sullivan Opera Company’s performance of Merrie England at Mandel Hall.

It was the fourth production of theirs we’ve seen, besides Patience (last year) Iolanthe (2017) and Yeomen of the Guard (2015). Seems like the company wanted to do something a little different this year. Like Gilbert & Sullivan, but not Gilbert & Sullivan.

Composer Edward German and librettist Basil Hood collaborated on Merrie England, which had its first run in 1902. G&S might not have been working together by then — Sullivan especially, who had the handicap of being dead — but clearly German & Hood were giving the people what they wanted, for a little while longer anyway. I understand that it was among the last new light operas produced by the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company.

Merrie England has all the same sort of whimsy and nonsense as G&S, set to music and enlivened by dance as in G&S. Supposedly it takes place in the age of Elizabeth I, who makes an appearance, along with other historic figures like Sir Walter Raleigh and the Earl of Essex.

The show has all you need in this kind of comic opera: love declared, thwarted and finally triumphant; word play and a few patter songs; a little swordplay and some chasing around the stage; even a cameo by an actual corgi and a supporting character who unexpectedly breaks out a trombone and starts to play it.

All of the cast struck me as talented, but I particularly enjoyed the comic styling of Jeffrey Luksik as Wilkins, who says he’s “poet and chief player in Shakespeare’s Company” who, in a bit of meta fun, insists that everything is better when put to music.

“I prophesy that he [Shakespeare] hath a misconception of the part of a writer in writing a part, in that he hath too little regard for the matters of singing and dancing; for a time will come when all comedies shall be musical, or the public will have none of them…

Dost remember in ‘To be, or not to be’?
Come the words ‘a sea of trouble’
The applause, I trow, would double
If he forthwith sang a song about the sea!”

Dorian McCall did a fine turn as the Earl of Essex, the villain but not really the villain. As the program notes put it, he has an “even baritone and a rich and flexible voice, recognized as having great style, musically and physically, on stage.”

Also impressive: Emma Sorensen, who played a woodland-dwelling character called Jill-All-Alone, a witch but not really a witch, unless she really was a witch. How such a slender woman can project such a powerful voice is beyond me.

A fuller review — “hijinks and humor galore” is in the apt head — along with a picture of the cast, is at the Hyde Park Herald.

Frozen March

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The calendar turns to March, winter doesn’t care. Below freezing most of the time in recent days, close to single digits some nights, but at least no ice or snow from the sky. I understand the Northeast is getting blasted now, but the storm bypassed this part of the Midwest. All we have it rims of dirty snow and ice.

A week ago, when I flew from Dallas to Chicago, skies were cold and clear but also windy, at least at Midway. Not windy enough to prevent landing, but the pilot did warn us that the landing might be bumpy.

He wasn’t just whistling Dixie. Besides regular turbulence, the jet shook from side-to-side, not violently, but more than you’d want, even after it had touched down on the runway. When the plane finally came to a stop, spontaneous applause broke out. It was that kind of landing. You know, a good one. We all walked away from it.

I looked at this posting the other day and was surprised to remember that I’ve been watching The Americans for that long — since March 2013. Watched the penultimate episode on Friday night. Wow, it was good.

The last season has been on demand for a while now, but I refuse to gobble them up like little chocolate doughnuts. I take them more like Toblerone, a sweet triangle at a time, back when that confection was hard to find in the United States.

(I remember an irritating guest we had late in college at our house in early ’80s Nashville. His worst offence was snarfing down our entire Toblerone bar when no one was watching.)

TV was meant for weekly installments. That’s in Leviticus, I think. Except maybe Batman during the original run. Commentaries vary.

I understand The Americans finale is a corker, and I believe it, though I don’t know the details. The show’s nothing if not suspenseful. Sorry to see it end.

Valentain Day Special

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Time for a late winter break. Back to posting around February 24, much closer to the winter-springish domain of March-April, which is always worth looking forward to.

Saw this today on a package of sushi.
I won’t mock the grocery store for its spelling. I wasn’t a particularly good speller in my younger days. I have vague memories of teachers getting on my case about it. Later I got better, but never flawless, down to the present. Even now there are words I can never quite remember.

I have a hunch that my spelling deficiencies helped me become a more competent writer. I’d want to write a certain word, but couldn’t remember how it was spelled. So I’d think of another way to say what I wanted to say. If that isn’t an important writing skill, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.

Does anyone say that anymore? I queried Ann about the phrase. She’d never heard it. Come to think of it, I can’t remember the last time I heard anyone use it. I think my 8th grade math teacher used to say it occasionally, but that was 45 years ago.

This is in the public domain and I want to use it.

How often do we hear about James M. Cox anymore? Seldom to never. All it takes is 99 years. If anything, he’s noted as the running mate of FDR, even though Cox was top man on the ticket.

Let’s hear it for the public domain. Expanding again as it should.

Here’s a remarkable bit of animation, by a young Iranian named Majid Adin.

I’ll never hear “Rocket Man” quite the same again. But I also associate it with a fellow I knew in high school who attached a small rocket launcher on top of his station wagon and rigged it so he could shoot off small rockets while the car was moving.

The launcher was horizontal, so the rockets went backward from his car. I didn’t just hear about that, either. I saw him do it once on a highway, from another car not far away.

Glad to see that Merle Hazard is still recording. Still amusing, too.

Channeling Tom Lehrer some, I’d say, though Lehrer didn’t do much country and western, unless you count “The Wild West is Where I Want to Be.” I want to hear Hazard’s song about Weimar Republic hyperinflation too.

I’m sorry I missed this Joan Jett video when it was new 30 years ago. But definitely better late than never.

It’s a cover, of course, but who cares. I only learned about a year ago that AC/DC borrowed the title from Beany and Cecil, a cartoon from before my time and which never showed up in reruns that I knew of.

Finally, a comic in which a character makes up something on the spot: about bread mines in this case. I like that.

Geezer Mail

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Got a paper catalog in the mail today, one that comes periodically despite the fact that I’ve never ordered anything from it, not once in however many years I’ve been on the mailing list. The merchant must be waiting patiently, hopefully, like a dog under the dinner table waiting for some food to fall its way.

It offers DVDs. I look at it and always see a few movies I’ve never heard of and probably won’t ever see. Not that I dismiss old movies, or black-and-white movies, or subtitled movies out of hand, though I hear that some people do. Rather, there isn’t enough time to see everything, or even everything worth seeing.

Besides, my attitude toward DVDs is rent, not buy.

Speaking of the passage of time, when I opened the catalog this card fell out.

Catalogs are increasingly geezer mail, and if you need any evidence of that, look no further.