Brain Cells on Parade

For most of the 1980s, I worked with a touring theater company in Michigan called Crossroads Productions. The shows I performed with them covered a lot of stylistic ground, from dramas about substance abuse to American folk tales to traditional fairy tales. These shows rarely had casts of more than half a dozen or so, and they were designed to travel to schools and community centers with all of their sets, props, costumes and actors either riding inside a car or tied to the roof. There are a lot of stories to be told about my work with them, but today I’ll focus on one particular show – our production of Cinderella.

I played a supporting role. I don’t recall his exact name or title, but he was something like the officious Lord Chamberlain to The Prince. So you can see that in my youth, as now, as ever, I tended to be cast in the role of the older authority figure.

I don’t recall the name of the actor who played The Prince, as it was the only show I ever did with him. I can report, though, that the qualities he brought to the role included being thin, speaking clearly, and possessing very little charisma. But he was young, so if he’s still in the business, I sincerely hope he has continued to learn and grow.

We had only performed the show a few times when a moment of crisis arrived. I don’t remember the specifics since they didn’t involve me personally, but it all culminated in our Prince announcing at a rehearsal that he would be leaving the show, effective immediately. The parting did not go smoothly. His final words as he exited the room were, “Good luck trying to replace me!” The line was delivered with all the snootiness and superiority he could muster. It was intended not only as a statement of his own wonderfulness, but as an indictment of the overall quality of our theatrical enterprise.

Within days – maybe even hours – of this bit of unpleasantness, a solution was arrived at. Our director determined that the best move would be to shift my humble self into the role of The Prince while he stepped into the role of the Lord Chamberlain. This was a great moment for me. I’m not one of those guys who started out playing the male ingénue roles, switching to character roles in middle age. No, I was playing character roles right from the start. In my first play ever, a high school production of The Music Man, I played Mayor Shinn. In my second play, a high school production of Oliver!, I played Mr. Bumble, head of the workhouse. A pattern had been established, and while I relished many of these roles, the opportunity to play an actual romantic lead was a moment to be cherished.

So what was the result of this remarkable casting switch? Well, it’s impossible for me to report on that with any sort of objectivity. There were no print reviews published from which I might quote, so I have only the words of my fellow company members and my own memory. Certainly, they all told me very nice things – that I could act circles around the fellow I replaced, and that we finally had a Cinderella/Prince pairing with some actual chemistry. To be honest, those statements were in complete accord with my own perception of the situation. I made a point to hurl myself into that role with all the commitment I could muster, for I was pretty sure it would be one of my rare opportunities to play such a role. The passing of time and the dozens of roles I have played since then have borne me out on that suspicion. It is worth adding, I think, that my goal as an actor has always been to portray a wide variety of characters. I wouldn’t want to play the romantic lead every time out any more than I’d want to play the heavy, or the quirky neighbor every time out, but it’s been nice to find that every once in a while, a director does manage to see my potential in an area off the beaten path.

My mother made quite a point of keeping our family generously supplied with sweets and other goodies. I think this may have been a reaction to her own scrimping childhood during the Great Depression, but I will save any further psychoanalytical speculation for another time.

Considering that there were 8 kids living under the roof of my childhood (myself plus 7 siblings), there was a good deal less squabbling over food than in many other families I’ve heard about. I think this is a testament to how well stocked Mom kept the shelves in that kitchen. Still, there’s something about discovering hidden sweets that can turn a child’s heart toward larceny…

It wasn’t in the kitchen, in the can cupboard, or even in the dining room. It was in my parents’ bedroom in the top drawer of a high bureau. Still, it was certainly chocolate – a small bar that was sectioned off so as to break into little squares. Even if I had been able to read the lettering on the front, I wouldn’t have read any significance into the word “Ex-Lax” at that point in my life.

And there were witnesses. At least one older sibling witnessed the deed and reported it to Mom as soon as she showed up. I had eaten at least a couple of those squares of chocolate – I don’t recall the precise number, and my sibling took no small pleasure from the act of tattling that I had taken some candy that clearly wasn’t intended for us kids.

I don’t recall that Mom said a great deal to me. I don’t recall any specific admonition for taking something that wasn’t mine; no discussion about why I would have done such a thing. What I do remember is that she briskly and efficiently pulled me into the bathroom, set me on the throne, and told me to stay there. I recall feeling puzzled and a little scared about why she would compel me to do such a thing. Very soon though, my questions were answered in a very personal manner. Let’s just say that learning is sometimes both an internal and an external process, and that it’s a lesson that has stayed with me. And while it didn’t lessen my fondness for chocolate, it may have accelerated the development of my reading and comprehension skills!

Those of you who don’t use PowerPoint will probably want to keep on walking. But those of you who do use it will thank me for this tip!

Our office recently upgraded (ahem) to the Microsoft Office Suite 2007. If you’ve made the switch, you know that the interface for PowerPoint has changed dramatically. A lot of new functionality and effects have been added, and I will say right here and now that I think it’s an improvement overall. I’m very fond of some of the new features and I’m getting the hang of how the menus have been reorganized.

HOWEVER…

There are some other considerations. Oddly, there are features that have been taken away from the new version of PowerPoint – useful features. Specifically, while there are some cool new options for fill patterns and effects, PowerPoint no longer offers the age-old, familiar palette of fill patterns. I’m talking about such classics as parallel lines, cross-hatches, and dot patterns. They’re just gone, without apology or a suitable replacement.

Well, those old fill patterns may be low-tech and basic, but they can come in pretty darned handy sometimes. I did some reading up on this and found that my eyes were not deceiving me; those fills really are gone. But if you want them anyway, there is a workaround…

It seems that those fill patterns have been eliminated not only from PowerPoint, but from every program in the MS Office Suite – except Word. You can open a Word doc, paste in or draw the shape you want, and fill it with any of your old favorite patterns. When you copy and paste the object back into PowerPoint, the fill pattern will come along with it.

I have no idea why this feature was left in Word when it was stripped out of the rest of the Suite, but there it is. Using Word to create the fill and pasting back into PPT may be a bit of a bother, but if that’s the effect you want, it’s a whole lot quicker than creating it from scratch in PPT!

Lots of lovely birthday wishes received over the past few days. Thank you one and all! On the home front, CC marked my birthday by cooking me a fabulous dinner, capped off with one of her inimitable pecan pies – one of these days, I’ll tell you a story about how pecan pie constituted an early bonding moment for us.

At my day job, coworkers presented me with a nice signed card and a serious German chocolate cake, which brings me to the visual portion of today’s presentation. The intention on the part of my coworkers was to surprise me by calling me into the conference room, where they would all be gathered to present me with card, cake, and good wishes. Fifteen minutes before they called me in, a message was sent to the computer screens of everyone in the office. And I mean everyone, myself included, though I did not let on that I had been tipped off. Below is a screen shot of what appeared on my screen, though I have discreetly removed our email address from this graphic.

Word has reached us of the death of Stella Paris. For many years, Stella was a fixture in Detroit’s Greektown – as a street person, of all things. In fact, I would venture to say that she was the most well known street person in Detroit for quite a few years.

I must state right away that I was amazed to find out that she had only just died. Thirty years ago, she looked as if she could easily have been well into her 60s, so I have to believe she was well into her 90s when she died. But I get the feeling that no one really knows for sure. According to this article in the Detroit Free Press, it doesn’t sound like anybody had the full story on Stella.

I spent several years working at the Attic Theatre when it was still in Greektown, so I became quite familiar with Stella. It was not uncommon to see her screaming at parking meters, parked cars, and anyone who happened to make eye contact with her. Suburbanites who weren’t familiar with Stella would often find the experience rather unnerving, but those of us who knew her saw little reason to be fearful.

Stella was clearly of Greek origin and she appeared to speak fluent Greek and rather broken English. One Greektown merchant claimed to me that Stella had lost her husband in World War II and that she had never recovered from the loss, but I can’t independently verify any of that. There are a million stories about Stella, and I daresay they’re pretty much all true. I’ll relate just a few that I know of in this space.

There was one memorable night when Stella mingled with the crowd on the street during intermission of a show at the Attic. I’m sorry to say I don’t recall which show this was. When intermission was over and the crowd filed back into the theater, Stella walked in with them. A few minutes into Act II, Stella began talking loudly to the actors on stage from the audience and was tactfully escorted from the theater.

My best memory of Stella happened one afternoon around lunchtime. I was walking along Beaubien, about to turn onto Monroe (the main street of Greektown) when I heard Stella screaming bloody murder from somewhere on Monroe. I peered around the corner and saw that she had staked out a plot of sidewalk in front of one of the restaurants and was waggling her billy club at anyone who tried to approach her and screaming until they backed off. And I got an idea.

Stella and I had always had a smile-and-wave sort of relationship, so she knew I worked at the Attic Theatre. I stepped around the corner onto Monroe and ducked from car to car, staying out of Stella’s sight. By so doing, I was able to sneak right up to her. I made my final move when she was looking the other way, so that when she turned around, I was right next to her. Before she could react in any way, I smiled broadly, patted her on the arm, and said as warmly as I could, “Hi Stella! How are you?”

There was a moment – just a moment – when I wasn’t sure how she would react. But the moment passed, she relaxed her shoulders, and she muttered, “Oh, okay.” The spell had been broken. She was done screaming for the time being. I stood and talked with her for a minute, though I frankly couldn’t understand a word she was saying. Still, she seemed to have a lot to say so I let her say it, and I walked away feeling as if I’d done my good deed for the day.

A few months later, I was walking along Monroe, about to head into the video/pinball arcade, when Stella called out to me with a guttural “Hey!” It turned out she’d been following me and she had something for me. She reached out her closed hand toward my hand and dropped something into it. It was a quarter. She smiled and motioned me to go into the arcade. I was flabbergasted! The only appropriate thing to do was accept her gift and go into the arcade as I’d been directed.

A lot of people over the years wondered aloud why Stella was allowed to live the way she did. I don’t have a complete answer to that question, but I can attest that many people looked after her in many little ways. I’m told that there was generally a room for her to crash in at the nearby police headquarters, and various Greektown merchants made sure she had food and drink. In most any big city, there are lots of homeless people if you care to look for them, and in a lot of ways, Stella was more well cared for than most of them. If she was a little crazy – okay, maybe she was a lot crazy – well, I don’t have a solution for that, but mental illness is also not uncommon among the homeless. Ultimately, Stella’s story is not a commentary on the plight of the homeless. Rather, it is the story of one unique woman who lived a life unlike any other I have come across, and it’s the story of a memorable character who lives on in the memories of far more people than she might ever have imagined. Rest in peace Stella!

Oh boy, here we go – When I first heard about Twitter, I thought it sounded utterly moronic, sophomoric, and just generally ick. And now I’ve gone ahead and created a Twitter account. I don’t know how much I’ll be utilizing it, but I’ve decided that it’s in my best interest to be conversant in it. If you’re looking for me there, my Twitter name is charlesofcamden, same as here.

I am weary to the bone with the politics of a great many people. I’m not talking about their specific political leanings; I have friends across a wide spectrum of political, philosophical, and religious beliefs. I’m talking about the people who refract every beam of light that comes their way through the tight prism of their political loves and hates – with the accent on the “hates.”

There are a couple of primary levels to this kind of simplistic thinking. First, we see the inclination to put a big, common label on everybody who comes along, e.g., they’re either a Conservative or a Liberal. The next level comes in believing that this label tells you the Fundamental Truth about the individual, and that you now have the moral right to shun them or embrace them, to praise them or ridicule them.

This kind of thinking has a seductive appeal. It makes this big, complex world understandable. It must be a great feeling to suddenly see the world come into focus. The fact that this “focus” is completely illusory and has been imposed by the viewer – well, that fact is completely lost on them. They know who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. They know who is out to take their money and who is down in the trenches fighting for them. And the only price they’ve paid for this wisdom is a virtual lobotomy.

While I will admit to some frustration with such attitudes, there is an entertainment factor present as well. Since I do not generally wear my political stripes on my sleeve, I find that I am described, depending on whom one should ask, as both a Liberal and a Conservative – except for those who describe me as Middle of the Road. I have also been told, alternately, that I am not only learned and wise, but also naïve and ignorant (the correct answer being, of course, either All of the Above or None of the Above).

One of the most remarkable aspects of many people is their mistaken belief that their religion is more important to them than their politics. I know people who would put religion at the top of their personal priorities list if you asked them, but when their politics come up, a flush of passion enlivens them such as no religious moment would, and any difference in religion or lapse in morals on the part of their political allies and heroes is either blithely disregarded or swiftly discarded as slander from the opposition. At best, the beliefs and foibles of their heroes are accepted as being far less damning than the appalling conduct of their opponents. Or perhaps such lapses are simply tolerated because their perpetrators hold the Correct Political Views. At the bottom line, it becomes absurdly obvious that the individual’s religious inclinations are entirely at the service of their political passions.

To be clear, there are also people who believe that their religion is a top priority and they behave accordingly, but I’m not talking about them; I’m talking about hypocrites.

I want to emphasize this point: The traits I’m talking about here exist across the political landscape. If you’re thinking that these traits are the exclusive province of some particular political wing, think again. I think they represent several weaknesses in human nature that work against our efforts to view the world honestly. As I suggested earlier, we want to make sense of our world, so when we come across a hypothesis that not only offers solid answers, but also promises to save us from the labor of constant critical thinking – well, that’s a pretty attractive package. On top of that, we are also offered a way of identifying a scapegoat, someone outside ourselves who can be blamed for the ills of the world. Embracing the scapegoat model not only makes further sense of the world, it also allows us to feel better about our own choices.

You may note that I have not explicitly pointed the finger at myself in this post. That is, I have not spoken of my own susceptibility to lazy thinking or my own prejudices. And I’m not going to, not today. Today I am satisfied to merely complain about others!

There was this guy – I’ll grant him anonymity in this space, but some of you know him – who used to carry around a voice pager so that his employer could get a hold of him on short notice. This was in the mid-1980s, when cell phones were still kind of exotic. Beepers and pagers were pretty common, though. I carried one myself when I delivered singing telegrams for a living. It had a single line monochrome readout that would show me the phone number I needed to call when it went off. But voice pagers were pretty cutting-edge, at least in our neighborhood.

Paging someone on one of these voice pagers was simple enough. You dialed their pager number and left a brief voice message. After a delay of a minute or so, they would hear your voice coming out of their pager. After obtaining this fellow’s pager number, I had all the tools I needed.

Our friend was over at my parents’ house, sitting in the living room surrounded by members of my family. He was on call for his employer so his pager was in his pants pocket. When the moment seemed right, I slipped out of the room and placed a phone call from the back bedroom. I hung up and quickly returned to the living room, where I sat and quietly waited for the message to be broadcast.

Suddenly, a frantic voice began to emanate from our friend’s pants: “Help! Help! Let me out of here! It’s stuffy in here!” Our startled friend immediately smacked the pager to shut it off. He instantly turned toward me and began to cuss me out, though he did so between spasms of laughter. He knew he’d been had, fair and square.

I was recently reminded (never mind how) of a certain Fun Fact about Ann Arbor, Michigan. It seems there’s a street near the center of town, just off Main Street, with the ungainly name of Hiscock. Even with all the time I’ve spent in Ann Arbor, I might never have come across the street on my own except for a friend of mine who used to live on Hiscock.

If you go to Google Maps and type in “Hiscock, Ann Arbor, MI” you can see Hiscock for yourself (don’t worry; it’s safe for viewing at work). My friend wearied of having people point out to him that Hiscock wasn’t very long and certainly wasn’t straight. In addition, you may note that Hiscock disappears completely at Sunset. I once asked him how they dealt with winter weather on his street – did they get the blowers out on Hiscock when the need arose?

I imagine one could come up with innumerable additional observations with a moderate amount of effort. But now you know – if you ever need to find Hiscock, it’s in Ann Arbor. You could even drive on Hiscock – lay some rubber on it if you like. OK, I’ll stop now.

This posting is a movie review, which I want to state up front given the philosophical pretensions of the above title. I’ve now seen The Young Victoria approximately 1.4 times. The first time we went, the building was evacuated part-way through the film on account of an undisclosed emergency, but by then, we had become so enamored of the movie that we went back a week later and saw the whole thing.

The Young Victoria possesses many charms. Most of it is set in the year prior to Victoria’s coronation and the first few years just after. There are a couple of parallel strands of plot that play out and intersect in the course of the film. First and foremost, it tells a story of young love in the persons of Victoria and Prince Albert, played respectively by Emily Blunt and Rupert Friend. They are, quite simply, the right actors in the right roles and I don’t have a bad word to say about either of them. I suppose it’s a coincidence that what Victoria needs the most at this point in her life is in fact a Blunt Friend.

There is also no small amount of political intrigue mixed into everything. I am not giving anything away by saying that Albert is sent to England on a political mission to woo and marry Victoria. He has been groomed for years by his family and handlers to assume this position. Victoria likewise is surrounded by an extended family that wishes to steer her toward creating political advantage for them. Some of these people have an entirely different opinion with regard to the question of who Victoria should marry. The love story here is centered in Victoria’s and Albert’s rejection of those who would control them and their pursuit and acceptance of each other over politics.

There is plenty of eye candy on display for the moviegoer as well, from the clothes to the jewels to the castles. Such visual delights are a major argument for seeing the film on the big screen in full detail.

Now as for the title of this posting – Roger Ebert has always held that all films are fictions, even including documentaries. He makes a good point there – after all, two documentarians may cover the same subject and even use the same footage, yet present their subjects in drastically different lights. I would paraphrase it like this: If what you want is unvarnished reality, then get the hell out of the movie theater. If, like myself, you have developed a taste for varnish, then sit back and enjoy the movie!

Along that line of thinking The Young Victoria doesn’t even have the constraint of documentary footage to rein it in. And in any case, the screenplay and dialogue in a period piece such as this must of necessity be wholly created by a writer.

***MINI-SPOILER AHEAD – SKIP AHEAD 4 PARAGRAPHS IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW***

I bring up all of this talk about history and fiction because of one particular incident portrayed in the film. It comes about as the result of a tense moment late in the film. For the first time, Victoria and Albert appear to have reached an impasse in their relationship. We seem to have arrived at a point of fundamental disagreement between them and, because we like them, we are anxious to see how this may be resolved. It turns out that we haven’t long to wait. It is resolved by having Albert take a bullet for Victoria during an assassination attempt. He recovers, and it results in a lot of tears and remorse, and a renewed mutual commitment for the loving couple.

The problem is that it’s kind of a dramatic cheat. According to myriad sources, no such shooting ever took place. Instead of addressing the complex political and personal issues that led to their rift, the movie stays true to its core identity as a love story, telling us that the power of a love such as this is stronger than any political consideration.

I don’t want to sound too critical here. I like a good romance. But I do wonder about the introduction of a historical inaccuracy as glaring as this. It strikes me as roughly comparable to making a movie about, say, President Truman debating over whether to drop the atomic bomb on Japan and resolving it by having Harry take a long walk in the woods with his older brother and talking it out – ignoring the fact that Harry didn’t have an older brother, and there is no suggestion in the historical record that some walk in the woods preceded his decision. It might work dramatically, but at what cost?

And that’s what it comes down to – the phrase ‘at what cost?’ In the case of Victoria and Albert, it may be that their story, lovely and inspiring as it may have been, might have been lacking in literal dramatic moments. Or perhaps the literal dramatic arc of their lives simply wouldn't work in dramatic terms. It may have been dramatically necessary to concoct something like this shooting for the sake of making a good film, and I can’t say they were wrong to do so – but I can’t help feeling a certain tightness in my chest as I allow this.

***END OF MINI-SPOILER SECTION***

I want to toss out a bouquet in the direction of actor Mark Strong. It looks as if 2010 will be a good year to be him. He plays the heavy here in the role of Sir John Conroy, who has the temerity to shake Victoria in anger at one point. We don’t like Sir John one bit. On the same day we were evacuated from the theater, we also saw Sherlock Holmes, which also features Mark Strong as the lead bad guy! IMDB tells us that he has quite a few films in production at the moment, so his star appears to be in rapid ascent these days.

Other standouts in my book include Harriet Walter as Queen Adelaide, Miranda Richardson as the Duchess of Kent, and the irrepressible Jim Broadbent as King William.

The bottom line is this: The Young Victoria is a pretty film with a pretty and likable couple at its center, and we want them to be happy in the face of powerful and perhaps sinister forces.

Cool trivia note — One of the producers of The Young Victoria is Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York. Her daughter, Princess Beatrice of York, plays a small role in the film as one of Victoria’s ladies-in-waiting. What’s cool about that is that Princess Beatrice is in fact the great great great great granddaughter of Queen Victoria! Thank you IMDB for that little pearl!

Perhaps you’ve heard of the website stuffonmycat.com. If you haven’t, you really ought to check it out! I mention it only because CC has suggested a complementary website that would be called catonmystuff.com. The following photo would be a typical example. CC’s yarn basket is normally kept covered against just such an occurrence as this, but it was left uncovered for just a moment the other day and Cy quickly insinuated himself upon it.

On New Year’s Eve, Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding closed. Again. Yeah, I know they closed back in July, and as you may recall, I was on hand then to watch the show, take a bunch of photos, and post them in this journal (you can flip back to my entry of July 19th if you want to see the entry). This time, management claims they really mean it.

So have we seen the last of this company of wayward Italians? Well, yes and no. There; I’m glad I’ve had a chance to clear up that question for you.

OK, here’s the scoop: They reopened the show in November, just to run it through the holidays. That deadline was hardly arbitrary; it was chosen for 2 important reasons: 1) Business falls off substantially after the holidays; and 2) The lease on their performing space is not being renewed. Reason #2 is the real door-closer. The show will certainly crop up again here and there in the near future, at least as a touring show for specific bookings. Whether it ever again will have a permanent home is an open question at this point, though it seems doubtful given the downward trend of TnT business stretching back over the last decade.

The mini-run of TnT that concluded on New Year’s Eve was performed almost entirely by former cast members being called in to reprise their roles. I declined the opportunity, though CC appeared in the role of Mrs. Vitale (the mother of the bride) at last week’s penultimate performance.

Let’s get to the photos. The one at the top of this post is, I suppose, the public face of TnT – the sign anyone could see while driving along North Avenue. It will be interesting to see how long it takes building management to take it down.
( Click here for more stories and photos! )

I saw the new Sherlock Holmes film the other day. By the way, if you’re looking for it in the movie listings, it is helpfully titled Sherlock Holmes. It stars Robert Downey Jr. in the title role, with Jude Law as Dr. Watson.

(As an aside, I believe Jude Law is the heir apparent to the title “Person Who Is In Every Movie Made.” One of his predecessors, as an example, was Donald Sutherland, who was actually in every movie made during the 1970s)

As you may know, I have been a devoted Holmsian since childhood. I’ve read all of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories multiple times, and I could bore you for hours with Holmes commentary and trivia. But you can relax; my normal methods of boring people are still working well enough that I will hold off including the Holmes material for the time being, aside from this posting. My real point is this: I am not the sort of purist who insists upon complete faithfulness to ACD’s original stories. After all, Mr. Doyle himself falls short on that account in many instances, changing the names of peripheral characters from story to story, and even forgetting in a few instances that Dr. Watson has become a married man. Though if you are that sort of purist, I have a quiet word of advice: Stay away from this film. But for the casual purist like myself, this film is a hoot and a holler and a half!

I’m not going to give the film a conventional review in this space. If you follow movie reviews at all, you probably know a lot about it already, so I’m only going to address the points that interest and energize me.

First and foremost, we are treated to a liberal dose of Mr. Downey’s considerable skills as an actor. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen him portray an Englishman; he also did so in the wonderful though little-seen film Restoration, a film that I’m happy to have an excuse to recommend. His performance in SH is spot-on; everything a Downey fan could hope for. A few reviewers of this film have remarked that Downey deserves better material than he’s given here, and though I do not share their antipathy for the screenplay, I will concede that it’s fairly lightweight stuff, albeit with some delightfully witty moments here and there.

Among the supporting characters, Irene Adler, played by Rachel McAdams, is worthy of some discussion. We meet her handkerchief before we meet her. Holmes is in a dirt pit, taking part in an unsanctioned boxing match, when we see a white handkerchief draped over the edge of the ring. It bears the clear monogram ‘IA’ and Holmes is briefly startled when he sees it. I’m proud to say that I immediately realized it had to belong to Irene Adler. She is a character in the Holmes story “A Scandal in Bohemia.” The opening lines of it go like this:

To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind…

…so it was with some delight that I realized she was to be part of the film. There were, to be fair, some significant differences between her literary and cinematic incarnations. In the book, she was a highly successful actress and singer, smart as a whip and able to deceive Holmes through both her cleverness and her performing ability. It is made clear that she and Holmes share a mutual admiration. In the film, she appears to be an actual career criminal, though high-class and apparently successful. Also, it is clearly implied in the film that Irene and Sherlock have had a fling of some sort, whereas this dimension is utterly absent from the book. But like I said earlier, I’m not that kind of purist. The bottom line for me is that she adds some fun to the movie – plus which, it’s nice to see that the filmmakers have read their Doyle.

Some casual Holmes fans may wonder where Professor Moriarty is. After all, isn’t he Sherlock’s main adversary in the books? Well yes and no. Yes, he’s the one bad guy in the literature who seems to truly be Sherlock’s peer, but in fact, he shows up as a featured character in exactly one of Doyle’s stories. He is a peripheral character in another story, and that’s it, aside from Holmes invoking his name in several other stories. I don’t suppose it’s giving anything away to say that Moriarty does show up in the movie, but only slightly, though it seems clear that he is set to take center stage in the sequel.

The biggest stylistic difference between this film and Doyle’s stories is the scale of it, and I don’t have a problem with that. While many of the stories are quiet little affairs that might concern themselves with a single odd murder, a perplexing theft, or a mystifying character, this film is a big, loud blockbuster, brimming with explosions, fires, destruction, and the possibility of most of Parliament being murdered. And that’s as it should be, especially for the first film in a big budget franchise. If I want to see something closer in tone to Doyle’s work, I can always dig up Jeremy Brett’s rendition that played on PBS some years back. This is a different animal, but it remains true enough to the spirit of the original to be a very satisfying movie-going experience.

Today's installment of the comic strip "Bizarro":

“If I were afraid of Christmas, would I be considered Claustrophobic…
or just a Noel Coward?”

I coined that joke at some point in the early 1980s. Admittedly, I’m probably not the only person who has coined it, but still, I’d never heard it when I came up with it. I’ve come up with better jokes in my life; Lord knows I’ve come up with worse. But this joke was different. I want to describe for you a string of connections that appears to have led my words to some lofty places.

In the early 80s, I did a few shows with a folk singer/actor/improv teacher in the Detroit area named Jonathon Round, and he and I got to know each other pretty well. One day, I told John the joke at the top of this post. He laughed. I was satisfied. Normally, the story would end right there.

But Jonathon had a lot of contacts in the Detroit media world. One of his buddies was long-time Detroit Free Press columnist Bob Talbert (who incidentally passed away several years ago). Jonathon passed the joke along to Talbert, who ran it in his Sunday column (he credited Jonathon with the joke, not me, but I’m not bitter or anything).

The significant thing about Talbert’s timing, I think, was that he chose to run it in his Sunday column. At that time, Talbert’s Sunday column was syndicated to many newspapers across the country, opening up my humble joke to a much wider audience…

No more than a month or two later, I opened up my daily newspaper to read the comics. There, in that day’s episode of Frank & Ernest, was my Christmas joke, nearly word-for-word! While it isn’t possible to establish a firm chain of transmission, some general inferences are rather apparent.

First of all, cartoonist Bob Thaves (who likewise passed away a few years ago) may never have read Talbert’s column, but my joke had been put out there and any number of people could have passed it along to him. The real smoking gun, aside from the remarkable timing of its appearance, is that the entire joke is there. What I mean is that it’s really a pair of jokes, and while it could easily be a coincidence if Thaves had come up with one half of it, the inclusion of both halves is highly suggestive that its journey to the comics page may have begun with my uttering of the joke to Johnny Round and its subsequent appearance in Talbert’s column.

Now believe me, I can hear you naysayers already: “Ah, I heard that joke back in ’67, during the worst blizzard these parts have ever seen…” Fact is, I believe you did. But I don’t think the 1967 rendition is the one that ended up on Bob Thaves’ desk. If you are one of the heirs to the estate of the late Mr. Thaves, you needn’t worry about me suing for my much-deserved one ten-thousandth of his estate. I’m quite satisfied with things just the way they are. And besides, if everyone I’ve ever stolen a joke from were to sue me, I’d be doing time until everybody had forgotten my jokes so that I could pass them off as new again!

I’ve been in some terrific shows, and I’ve been in some dreadful shows. The usual risks associated with being in a dreadful show are such things as playing to tiny audiences, seeing one’s good name take a beating in the local press, and feeling one’s self esteem shrink with each dismal performance. The risks don’t usually involve actual mortal danger, but there have been exceptions…

This show wasn’t merely dreadful. It pioneered new horizons and experimental techniques for achieving dreadfulness. The signs were all there on the day of auditions.

The time was 1979. The place was a crumbling old movie theater on Detroit’s lower east side, the kind that was being torn down left and right in that era. This one wasn’t especially ornate or architecturally significant; it was just a big musty old theater. I’m sure it was a nice enough place in its day, but that day was long gone. A local county commissioner had bought the place and had decided to produce live theater there – non-paying community theater, but theater nonetheless. I was there to audition for their first production, which the flyer said was to be the musical Damn Yankees. Quite a throng of east side actors showed up as well. But before any auditions could take place, our director got on the stage and had an announcement to make.

“I’m glad to see so many people here for our Damn Yankees auditions. The only problem is, we’re not doing Damn Yankees; we’re doing The Music Man…”

I never did find out why we switched shows. A bunch of folks got up and left right then and there, but many stayed, including yours truly. While I would have loved to do Damn Yankees, The Music Man had been my first-ever high school play a few years earlier, so I knew it and loved it. The fact that I could immediately go onstage and perform the song “Trouble” from memory meant that I was definitely in.

Oh, but let’s not get carried away here – EVERYBODY who auditioned was cast in the show. Whatever genuine theatrical ability we had on hand was spread pretty thin (with a few distinguished exceptions). I was given the role of Ewart Dunlop. He only has a handful of scripted lines, but he is a member of the Barber Shop Quartet, so I was pretty jazzed about it.

The show opened 17 days after auditions. If you’re not a theater person, take my word for it – that’s a brutally short time in which to put together any show, much less a big musical with choreography and suchlike. In the lead role of Harold Hill, our director cast the very worst person who auditioned for the role. I’m not exaggerating here. At auditions, he was the one guy who you saw read and you immediately thought something like, “Well, HE’S not an actor, the poor fellow. Hell, he can barely read a sentence without losing his place. Well, maybe he can play a townsperson…”

But no, there he was the next day at our first rehearsal as Harold Hill. It was a disaster. What could our director have been thinking? Ah, we got the answer to that question at the third rehearsal, when our director announced that he’d had to replace the actor playing Harold Hill with… himself! As I got to know the director better (and I must confess that I crossed paths with him on a few occasions after this), it became crystal clear that this was a recurring modus operandi in his directorial style.

The next clue as to the sort of people I’d hooked up with came when our director announced that there was to be no costumer for the show. He pitched it to us as a positive thing – as a “rare creative opportunity” for us to costume ourselves. I cannot bring myself to describe for you the assortment of efforts (and non-efforts) that went up on that stage opening night, but it was sad. I can’t even call it a sad spectacle, for there was no element of spectacle to it, only sadness.

But let me get back to the “mortal danger” I referred to earlier. We did not have an orchestra to accompany us; we had a pianist. Yes, a pianist, but at first, no piano. The search was on for a cheap or free piano. Yeah, because people give away perfectly good pianos every day. But somebody knew somebody who knew somebody, and the director announced that there was a church basement in another part of town housing an old piano that nobody wanted. About 6 or 8 of us volunteered to go over there and get the thing.

So there we were in that basement, pushing junk and rubble out of the way to clear a path to the stairs. I don’t believe that any of us had ever moved a piano before, and nobody was in charge. The piano was an old upright that weighed a freakin’ TON. I do believe there was no small amount of cast iron in the thing. It took at least two people just to move it across the floor. We maneuvered it to the foot of the stairs, and that’s where the real drama began. Would that our show had offered a tenth of such drama.

We had no ropes, pulleys, or levers. Just a bunch of strapping young men and a steep, narrow stairway. It quickly became clear that we had way more people there than we could possibly use. It’s like this – You could get two, maybe three people behind the piano to push it up the stairs. While you could theoretically have a couple of guys above, pulling it up, the actual amount of force you could add from up there was rather minimal. Meanwhile, down below where the real lifting was being done, it took every bit of force we could muster just to get it up a step or two. And there was no place to rest during the climb – whoever was down there had to have the stamina to keep pushing all the way to the top. And the price for making a mistake was going to be very high.

Not wishing to accept defeat (or common sense, or self-preservation) so quickly, we commenced to pushing that damn piano up the stairs. We actually got it up about 5 steps or so before we began to lose energy and the piano began to push us back down the stairs. We at least managed to guide it back down without letting it go completely. At that point, it occurred to me, and I’m sure to the others, that if we were near the top and the piano began to push back, it could very suddenly begin to hurtle down as a terrifying dead weight and crush us into nasty, bloody, twisted masses of flesh and bone. There was a moment where we sort of looked at one another to see if any of us were seriously interested in renewing our efforts, now that a tangible peril was staring us in the face and causing even the most macho among us to reconsider. No, it was over. Let’s not say the piano won and we lost; let’s call it a win/win. The piano could go back to moldering in the basement on its own timetable, and we could go back to living our lives with all of our limbs intact.

* * *

A piano showed up at the theater a few days later. I didn’t know where it came from and I didn’t need to know. For my costume, I wore my one and only suit coat, a fashionable item of brown polyester.

The next show they did right after Music Man was Fiddler on the Roof. I didn’t audition for it, but I knew people who did. It seems that the director (same fellow as Music Man) cast someone dreadful as Tevye and tried to replace him with himself. This time, though, the producer (the county commissioner who owned the theater) stepped in and forced him to cast someone else.

I will close with one additional anecdote to illustrate the sort of people who were running this operation. Our final dress rehearsal was rough; filled with stoppages and problems. Even those of us who were relative neophytes to the theater biz knew that we were trapped in a desperately bad show. Our producer sat in the back of the empty theater that night watching, along with several people we did not know. After the curtain went down and the strangers had left, our producer had a few words of wisdom to pass along to us.

He was a corpulent old coot who reeked of sliminess, corruption, and nicotine. He spoke in a low, slow voice that managed to be simultaneously gruff and syrupy. He was very nearly a living human incarnation of Jabba the Hutt (though I use the term ‘human’ with reservations). “I was watching the show tonight with my friends from New York,” he began. He placed heavy emphasis on the words ‘New York,’ “and they told me that what you kids are doing up there is every bit as good as what they’re doing on Broadway!”

OK. I’m not here to defend Broadway. I’ve seen some incredible stuff there, and I’ve seen some… un-incredible stuff there. That being said, it is an outrageous, bald-faced lie to pass off a statement like that as truth. It’s one thing to try and encourage a cast on the eve of opening night; it’s another thing to tell a lie so big it leaves stretch marks on your tar-covered soul.

The title of this post is my conception of what the refrain to a Talking Heads Christmas carol would sound like. I know that not all of you are Talking Heads fans, so let’s move on to another topic…

On the Saturday before Christmas, I will be appearing onstage at Chicago’s famous Old Town School of Folk Music. Yay me! So will I be standing there with my banjo and harmonica, singing about heartbreak, social injustice, and ridin’ the rails? Golly no. It’s like this…

For many years, the Chicago Tribune has been sponsoring an annual Christmas carol sing-a-long concert, with the proceeds going to local charities. Long-time readers of this journal may recall that I took part in last year’s concert by virtue of being a finalist in an essay-writing and singing competition. I didn’t win but I had a blast. Well, I’m back.

This year, columnists Mary Schmich and Eric Zorn of the Trib are putting together a Christmas carol trivia quiz that will be run in the paper at some point. The questions have all been submitted by readers. I submitted several entries, and at least one of mine was chosen for inclusion in the quiz. My prize is that, on the night of the sing-a-long concert, I will be on the stage as a contestant in a “Christmas Carol Trivia Smackdown.”

So far as I know, there is no additional prize for winning the trivia contest (aside from all the attendant glory), but a big part of the thrill for me will simply be standing on that stage. It is one of the very finest concert halls I’ve ever been in. The acoustics and sightlines are absolutely glorious, so I’m looking forward to that on top of everything else! The concert itself is also tons of fun. Musicians from the Old Town School will be onstage playing and leading the singing. Lyric booklets are provided to all patrons. If you’re ever planning to be in Chicago in December, it’s pretty much the most fun you’ll have sittin’ up all season. This year’s concert, I’m told, is already sold out, so I’m afraid you’ll have to buy from scalpers if you want to see me make a fool of myself in public (again) (though I can also make a fool of myself by private appointment).

Postscript — The format for the quiz was specified as multiple choice. They offered examples of the sort of questions they were looking for, and they weren’t looking for anything too difficult or arcane. Here are the four questions I sent in to the Trib:

In “The Christmas Song” to what kind of “kids” am I “offering this simple phrase”?
A. Kids who are perfect in every way
B. Kids from 1 to 92
C. Kids up and down the square
D. Kids we have heard on high
E. Kids in a one-horse open sleigh

How did all the reindeer respond to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer after he guided Santa’s sleigh?
A. They loved him
B. They cheered him
C. They let him join in the reindeer games
D. They accepted him
E. They friended him

This popular Christmas song was originally written for the Broadway musical “Mame”:
A. Silver Bells
B. Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer
C. We Need a Little Christmas
D. Santa Baby

“Adeste Fidelis” is:
A. The original title of “Silent Night”
B. The traditional Latin title of “O Come All Ye Faithful”
C. An early composer of Christmas carols
D. The taxonomic term for the Arctic reindeer

We had a great time yesterday at Mark & Jane's fashionable north side condo, along with as nice a group of folks as you could hope to share a holiday with. Here they are (left to right, we have Pete in his brand new Yankees shirt with the World Champs patch on the arm and Derek Jeter's number on the back, CC, me, Mark, Trey, and Judy. The picture was taken by camera-shy Jane, so I must deprive you of her loveliness.

Back in August, one of my best friends, Jim Warren, died. If you scroll back to my entry of August 23rd, you’ll see a brief, cursory mention of it along with the basics of his last weeks, so I won’t revisit that material here. I’ve known all along that at some point I would have to express something more personal, to offer a more specific context for our friendship. That day has arrived.

Jim had three wives. No, not all at the same time; one after the other. His second wife was my sister, which is how he and I came to meet. Our first actual meeting was at a Detroit Tigers game to which my sister had invited me to tag along. For years afterward, Jim delighted in telling people how I had “shut him down” that night. What he meant was that I apparently had a comeback for his every zinger; that I had topped him at every turn. He was someone who was used to being the Alpha Zinger in most any room, and he said he’d never experienced this feeling before. Much later, I asked him if this had pissed him off at all. “No,” he declared, “I enjoyed the heck out of it.”

This was, by the way, an interesting moment for me as well. I hadn’t actually been conscious of trying to “shut him down” that night. I was just trying to have a good time. Perhaps Jim sensed my lack of hostile intent and that’s what made it okay.

Jim was a wildly avid traveler. His preferred mode of transportation was the automobile, and it must be said that he was an aggressive driver with an amazing stamina for driving long hours.

Quick anecdote on that topic: On one of my trips out west with Jim, we found ourselves in a motel west of Denver, and vacation time was growing short. “Tomorrow, we are going to drive,” Jim stated solemnly. He wasn’t kidding. We got in the car just after dawn and went to sleep that night in southern Illinois. Look at a map and decide for yourself whether you’d care to drive that far in one day!

One of the keys to our friendship was that, while we enjoyed a lot of the same things, we also respected our differences. Example: On that same trip through Colorado, Jim was inclined one evening to take in the entertainment at… well, an adult-themed drinking establishment. I told him I wasn’t interested and he was fine with that. He went off to amuse himself while I stayed in the hotel room, ordered a pizza, and curled up in front of the TV for the night. Jim didn’t get in until well after I’d turned off the light. The following morning, Jim had no interest in getting out of bed until well into the day, so he flipped the car keys to me and rolled over. I drove into Denver, toured the state capital building, and visited the Denver Mint. While Jim would probably have enjoyed these things to some extent, these attractions definitely held more appeal for me than they did for him.

This is a tough time of year for me because I am constantly bombarded with reminders of things Jim and I shared, particularly our devotion to hockey and football. Jim was the most knowledgeable hockey fan I’ve ever known, so attending a game with him was always terrific. Jim was able to point out subtleties of player movement and psychology that I would not have picked up on, which made the game a much more complete and involving experience for me. Regardless of the sport, it was not uncommon for my phone to ring after an exciting play was made in a game I was watching. It would be Jim on the other end, watching the same game and calling to discuss what we’d just seen. As a result, I find myself thinking of Jim frequently these days. Something remarkable will happen in a game and I’ll automatically think, “Oh, I have to call Jim–” but then I remember that I can’t.

My sports connection to Jim is particularly strong this week. Jim was a long-time season ticket holder for the Detroit Lions. For most of the past 17 years, he and I have attended the Lions Thanksgiving Day game together.

Aside for you NFL fans: The most memorable of these games was undoubtedly the infamous Lions-Steelers “coin toss” overtime game in 1998. It isn’t often that you can say you witnessed a moment that actually caused an NFL rule to be changed!

As it turns out, Jim had already purchased his Lions season tickets for the 2009 season, and I was recently invited to join another friend of Jim’s at the game to be played this Thursday. Unfortunately, logistics will prevent me from attending, but I will certainly be watching the game on TV and casting the occasional glance over toward Jim’s seats, which were about 10 rows from the field in the corner of an end zone. If you’re curious, his seats were on the far side of the field from the normal TV camera position, and in the back corner of the end zone to the right as you view the field on TV.

Another defining trait of Jim’s was his generosity. When I was making plans in 1992 to move from Detroit to Chicago, it was Jim who called me and said, “I’ve got a truck. When do you want to move?” He not only brought my stuff to Chicago, he made a follow-up trip several weeks later with lower-priority stuff. I could go on; Jim did favors like that for an awful lot of people over the years, but I think that story is a representative sample of his generosity.

Jim had chronic problems with his knees and shoulders, exacerbated by substantial weight issues that he was never able to entirely address. In spite of this, he was a shockingly strong individual. I well remember one Thanksgiving when our family dinner was held at the house he and my sister lived in. Sometime after dinner, a few of us were teasing Jim good-naturedly about his physical condition. Jim replied by saying something like, “Oh yeah? You don’t think I’m in very good shape?” He then proceeded to pick me up and lift me over his head, fully extending his arms so that I was rather high up. I am not a small guy. I’m 6’2” and haven’t seen the sunny side of 250 in many years, yet Jim picked me up as if I were a sack of potatoes and seemed quite capable of tossing me across the room. I don’t mind telling you that I was mildly terrified. After I assured Jim that I was duly impressed with his condition, he gently set me down. By the way, it is also fair to note that this was absolutely the only moment even close to a physical confrontation I ever had with Jim. Our normal mode was quite civilized and respectful.

The last anecdote I’ll offer here took place on the day of Jim’s marriage to his third wife. For the first time in my life, I was Best Man at a wedding. At Jim’s request, I sang a solo of Eric Clapton’s “Wonderful Tonight,” accompanied by another family member on acoustic guitar. At the reception, I delivered a toast that consisted of two parts: First, the hard part, where I did my best to speak from the heart and wish the newlyweds well. Then, I went from the sublime to the ridiculous and sang a parody of Jim Croce’s “You Don’t Mess Around With Jim,” the lyrics of which I will not trouble you with.

There was another interesting aspect to my being best man. I knew only a few members of either family, so I was meeting a lot of people for the first time. More than once, people came up to me, shook my hand, and asked how I knew Jim. “Oh, he used to be married to my sister,” was my reply. Talk about a conversation stopper! People either couldn’t process or couldn’t respond to that concept. Jim and I shared quite a laugh over that one. No disrespect to my dear sister at all; it’s just something you don’t expect to hear.

Someone asked me recently how I was doing in terms of “getting over” my friend’s death. Jim’s passing, like the passing of anyone close to us, isn’t something one “gets over” exactly. Rather, it’s a loss one accommodates, and their absence becomes ultimately a positive thing, reminding us of how lucky we were to know them during their brief turn on this stage.

I’m beginning to wonder whether I’ve stumbled across a huge story that no media outlet of any political inclination has picked up on – that in fact, everyone in the U.S. has been fired in the past year and is now working at a new job, if at all.

What, you thought it was just you and your friends who’ve been fired lately? No, it’s all of us. Here’s how I found out: When I go on driving trips, I generally don’t take my laptop with me. So if I’m on the road and need to find directions to an establishment, I generally have to call Information and get their phone number so I can call and ask for directions. That’s all well and good, but something intriguing has come to light along the way…

The last half-dozen times I’ve done this, I’ve been told virtually the same thing by the voice on the other end. It goes something like this: “Well, honestly, I just started working here and I’m new to the area, so I don’t really know my way around town.” In most of these cases, there’s been no one else nearby that they could ask for directions, so I’ve had to hang up without my question being answered.

You needn’t point out the obvious – that there are other explanations for this phenomenon. The leading one, of course, is that all phone answering jobs have been secretly outsourced to other countries. To conceal the scandal, these foreigners have (mostly) been taught to speak with convincing American accents. Any location-specific questions, such as asking for directions, are to be dealt with using the sort of evasion I’ve been experiencing.

So what is to be done with this blockbuster of a scandal I’m sitting on? Sure, I could blow the whistle on them – only I have no idea how high up this scandal goes. If I’m fingered as a rat – well, I might never get proper directions again. Or wait a minute… this could be part of a devious plot to induce all of us to buy PDAs and GPS systems for our cars…

I have of late become a huge fan of the TV series Simon Schama’s Power of Art. If you like art, or if think you like art, or if… hell, if you don’t know a flippin’ thing about art but you have a brain, this series is one of the most compelling TV shows I’ve seen in a long time.

The series consists of eight 1-hour episodes. Each episode focuses on a particular work of art by a particular artist. Viewed in order, the episodes proceed chronologically, beginning with Caravaggio and Bernini in the early 17th century through Mark Rothco in the mid-20th century. Included in between are some artists very familiar to me (e.g., Rembrandt, Van Gogh) and some essentially unknown to me (e.g., Jacques-Louis David, Joseph Turner). This of course speaks to the spottiness and informality of my artistic education, as all of the artists covered are completely well known in formal art circles.

So what’s the great attraction of this series to me? It’s all about the author and host of the series, Simon Schama. He’s a dizzyingly knowledgeable academic, as one might expect (and even hope for). But it’s his style as a communicator – as an artist in his own right – that makes the series so compelling. For starters, he’s a man with every right, and every potential, to be an utter art snob, except that he isn’t one. He understands, first and foremost, that art does not occur in a vacuum; that it is a product of and a part of the world in which it is created. Schama’s expertise extends far beyond the musty garrets in which the art may have been created or the serene galleries in which these works may now be viewed. He is a student of political, social, and economic history just as much as he is a student of art history. His ability to weave these factors together gives us an appreciation for the art unmatched in my experience.

But I still haven’t really illustrated Schama’s style for you. He is most assuredly unafraid of big words, but he doesn’t brandish them for purposes of linguistic ornamentation, but rather because he wishes to communicate something specific and assumes that he doesn’t have to slow down for us. He also has a sneaky, snarky sense of humor that may show up at any moment, but also in the service of his goal to communicate. It’s a tricky thing to nail down, because he doesn’t tell jokes per se. Here’s an example, from his episode on Bernini:

…What Bernini’s managed to make tangible is something that we all, if we’re honest, know we hunger for, but before which we’re properly tongue-tied. Something that has produced more bad writing, more excruciating moments of bad cinema, more appalling poems than anything else…

The first episode that particularly struck me was the episode on Jacques-Louis David. David was a Frenchman whose career cut across the time of the French Revolution, and he was active in the politics of the era. The work Schama focused on was David’s Death of Marat. By the time Schama had finished connecting this portrait to the upheaval and horrors of the world in which it was created, I found myself traversing a range of thoughts and emotions I have rarely experienced in contemplation of the non-performing arts. Suffice it to say that David was hardly a passive chronicler of current events. He was, rather, a propagandist of the first order and even, one might argue, a direct accessory to the murderous campaigns of a dictator. Whew! I don’t know that the life and times of, say, Peter Max would include anything quite that weighty!

Schama is on the record as saying that he considers the episode on David to be the heart of the entire series. Schama has even written a book specifically on the French Revolution, so it is perhaps no accident that this episode so grabbed me.

The TV series was produced a couple years ago, but it still shows up here and there on TV, so check your local listings. It is also rentable, and I presently have a rented copy of the entire series in my home so that we might make our way through the episodes in order and pick up the ones we’ve missed. If you want a triple shot of art, ideas and entertainment, I cannot recommend this series highly enough.

It was an ice storm. One of those ice storms; the kind that comes along once a decade or so. It hit Detroit in the wee hours of the morning, the exact worst time for affecting the morning commute. Did I say “affecting”? No, change that to “destroying” the morning commute. Rush hour simply did not happen that day.

At the time, I was living in the near suburb of Roseville and commuting to my office job in downtown Detroit. It was an open-ended temp assignment. In fact, my entire department, including my supervisor, were all employed by the temp company. None of us made it into work that day. A few tried before turning their cars around and heading back home, but most of us never set foot outside our homes until well into the day.

My boss’ boss, who was a full-time employee at the company, was a benevolent and generous woman. Knowing that we were all lowly temps being paid a lowly wage, she had an announcement for us when we came into the office the following day: We were all instructed to go ahead and fill in our hours for the previous day as if we had worked them. If anyone asked, we were to say that we had braved the elements and made it in. We were all grateful for her generosity and did as instructed. This sort of treatment helped to make us a tight-knit, loyal band of workers.

A week or so later, in the middle of an ordinary workday, we had a surprise visitor in our department. It was someone we all knew – our representative from the temp agency had dropped in for a little visit, a smile beaming on her face. It seems that, out of all the agency’s downtown temps, we were among the very few who had made it into our jobs on the day of the ice storm. Our rep presented each one of us with a nicely engraved certificate, suitable for framing, that honored us for service above and beyond the call of duty. She told us that she considered us to be the best group in her entire company. All we could do was stand there, smiles plastered on our faces, and graciously accept the honor while avoiding eye contact with one another.

After the rep had left, we discussed the matter among ourselves. We all felt a little bit odd about it. After all, we hadn’t set out to deceive anyone, exactly – we were simply the recipients of a kindness from our boss’ boss on the day of the ice storm. As for this follow-up honor… well, it just wouldn’t have been proper for us to fess up at that moment and make our rep feel like a doofus. So in the end, we were paid for work we hadn’t done, and then honored for a service we hadn’t performed. Was that fair? Listen, if life were fair, none of us would have been stuck in a temp job in the first place, so I think we all slept well at night over this matter!

Just this afternoon, the name Douglas Campbell popped into my head for reasons I cannot now recapture. My immediate thought was that I ought to write about him in this journal, especially seeing as how I’d worked with him for 2 memorable days long ago. I began by looking up his listing on Wikipedia, and I was dismayed to learn that he passed away only last month, from complications of diabetes and heart disease, at the age of 87.

Mr. Campbell was one of the founders of the rightly renowned Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Ontario, Canada. Long-time readers of this journal may recall that CC and I attended the festival two years ago, and I’ve attended it a couple other times as well. In general, you would be hard-pressed to find higher quality theater anywhere else on this continent, but I will dispense with any further analysis or description of the festival today.

Campbell directed many shows and performed many roles at Stratford over the years, from the festival’s inception in 1953 right up until very recently. Although I never saw him perform, this story still has a very personal angle for me, because I had the pleasure of participating in a 2-day workshop run by him in the late 1980s, and it was one of the most important and memorable moments in my theatrical education.

I’d signed up for the workshop on little more than a whim and the encouragement of my acting teacher at Lansing Community College. I’d never heard of Douglas Campbell but I’d been told that he was a respected Shakespearean actor, so I figured “what the heck.”

We were told to prepare a 2 to 3 minute classical monologue, which we would perform for Mr. Campbell and the group, and which would be the basis of our individual work. I chose the opening speech from Richard III: “Now’s the winter of our discontent…” etc. It was only at the end of the first day that one of my fellow actors gently informed me that this role had been one of Campbell’s most celebrated successes at Stratford. I must admit that if I’d known that going in, I don’t think I’d have had the nerve to use that particular speech. In fairness, though, Campbell’s notes and advice to me were restrained and genuinely helpful; he displayed no trace of ego or proprietorship over that particular role.

The speeches used by the class covered a wide variety of classical roles, from Shakespeare to Greek tragedy to late classical comedy. We were not asked beforehand to write down what speech we were going to do, so Campbell didn’t know what our selections would be until we were standing before the class. Nevertheless, I couldn’t help but notice that any time anyone would go up on their lines or get a line wrong, Campbell would immediately correct them off the top of his head! That was my first clue that we were dealing with someone very special.

As invaluable as Campbell’s acting notes were, the greater value of the workshop for me was in his running commentary on his own artistic philosophies. This side of the man came out in a lot of different ways.

At one point, Campbell was discussing a particular Shakespearean speech, and he was going over it line by line, word by word, parsing it for every last clue and innuendo that might be utilized by the actor. I’d heard people analyze Shakespeare by this sort of method before, and I had a question.

“Why is it,” I asked, “that I only hear classical roles being dissected to this level of detail? Why don’t people do this with contemporary plays?”

“Well they ought to!” Campbell’s voice boomed with contempt, and a trace of brogue from his native Scotland began to show itself. The contempt was not directed toward me specifically, but rather to a certain type of actor with which he was obviously quite familiar. “These tools are applicable to any script you’re trying to understand, and if more people would use them, they would craft far better performances!”

I had a few other such exchanges with Mr. Campbell in the course of the workshop, and I was aware that a few of my fellow actors were beginning to frown in my direction. The clear implication was that they felt I should be more respectful of this living legend, and that I shouldn’t be asking for clarifications and justifications. To which I would have said this: Stuff it. I’m not here to genuflect; I’m here to work and I’m here to learn. I mean no disrespect whatsoever in my questions. Quite the contrary; I regard this as a rare opportunity. But if this experience is going to be of value to me, then I must pursue issues as they arise.

It was gratifying to me, I must admit, that Mr. Campbell not only understood my approach but seemed to approve of it as well. At the end of the last day’s workshop, after Campbell had said his goodbyes and dismissed us, his very first action was to make a beeline to me, where we continued to discuss acting and artistic philosophies for several more edifying minutes.

The most lasting message imparted by Campbell during the workshop came during his comments about the state of the Stratford Festival. Campbell was a classical purist when it came to the Festival, and he bemoaned the introduction of contemporary plays and (shudder!) musicals into Stratford’s season. For the record, I don’t share his distaste for these elements at Stratford; their production of Death of a Salesman, for example, was far and away the best and most moving production I’ve seen of it, even outstripping the celebrated Goodman Theatre production of a few years back that cleaned up at the Tony Awards.

But back to Campbell’s comments. He was pushing 70 at the time of this workshop, and he was talking about going off with his actor son and starting up a theater somewhere. He felt that Stratford had followed a certain creative arc and was now increasingly irrelevant artistically. He put it this way, in words that I have quoted and paraphrased many times since: “Sometimes, institutions need to die so that they may be reborn by the hand of a new generation. The people who inherit an institution tend to have a very different attitude towards it than the people who built that institution. The people who create such a thing know that the world can get along well enough without it, so they treasure it in a way that their children cannot appreciate.” He further suggested that we should not bemoan the death of artistic institutions, but rather, view their demise as an opportunity to create something more vibrant.

One might have expected to hear something very different from a person in his position. One might expect him to be very protective of his beloved Stratford, to turn a blind eye towards its flaws, considering that it was his artistic home during the most theatrically productive years of his life. But no; this was a man to whom age was little more than an inconvenience as he kept his gaze turned ever forward, to the next production, the next project, the next theater company. For insights and inspirations such as these, I will always be grateful to Douglas Campbell.

Much of the time, our two cats seem to need us quite a bit. At times, they’ll even follow us around (Puck following CC and Cy following me), though it’s hard to tell whether they’re doing so simply to be with us or because they think they can stop us from leaving. Still, the wheel can suddenly turn as our cats may suddenly be seized with the apparent urge to demonstrate their independence from us. Such a moment occurred the other night. Puck, who normally spends a good deal of his nights at the foot of CC’s bed, was a no-show in her room. At the same time, Cy, who likewise is typically found by my feet or off to my left, was nowhere to be seen/heard/felt. As I was preparing to leave for work the following morning, I spied the two of them out on the sun porch, behaving in a chummy manner that we don’t often see. Here is the photographic evidence (Cy in the front, Puck in the back):

A few nights ago, CC and I attended the 17th Annual Actors’ Scene Showcase, produced by the Women’s Theatre Alliance. I’ve attended it several other years and I commend it to your attention if you’re ever in Chicago at the right time.

The evening consists of 10 scenes from plays. Generally, they are from 10 different plays, although this year, two of the pieces were different scenes from the same play. They must be 2-person scenes, 5 to 8 minutes in length, consisting of either 2 women or a man and a woman (this is, after all, a production of the Women’s Theatre Alliance). The showcase is a one-night-only event, and auditions are held some weeks earlier. Any couple that wants to try out can prepare a scene and make an appointment. A panel of auditors decides who the 10 best couples are and those couples advance to the showcase.

While the showcase is open to the public ($12 a pop this year), the primary attraction of it for actors is the opportunity to be seen by casting directors and other assorted reps from theaters around town. There were many such types in evidence in the audience Wednesday night, as they were mostly seated in a reserved section in the middle of the house and each was given a folder full of head shots and resumés of the actors on display.

I’ve considered getting together with an actor friend and preparing a scene for the showcase, but I haven’t done so as yet. It is, however, very much an active object of consideration for the future. I have so say that I’m glad I’ve seen several of these before undertaking it myself, because I’ve picked up a lot of pointers by doing so – quite a few “dos” and “don’ts.”

First, a couple of “don’ts” regarding the setting of the scene. DON’T do a scene that consists of two people talking while driving in a car. This is an audition of yourself as an actor, and a whole lot of acting consists of movement. DO pick a scene that lets you move around. I’ve seen at least two different couples who chose scenes set in cars, and they were not interesting to look at.

Unless you’ve got something really cool up your sleeve, DON’T pick a scene that consists of two people sitting at a table in a bar or restaurant. This one is similar to the car example above in that it is not interesting to watch two people sitting at a table, though this isn’t a hard and fast rule – depending on the scene and how it is staged, you may be able to incorporate a great deal of movement and visual interest. The other problem with this type of scene is that SO MANY people pick scenes set in bars for these showcases that it’s become something of a cliché. I suppose they’re easy to rehearse because you can just sit at a table and run your lines, but here’s the thing – You’re not here to do something easy! You’re here to do something difficult while making it LOOK easy!

DO get a third party to direct your scene. The showcase rules recommend this but don’t require it. While I’ve seen a few scenes that were self-directed and worked well, they are in a serious minority. Much more often, the self-directed scenes suffer from focus, movement, and character problems that could be readily addressed if a third party were there to see them from an audience-eye view. Better to get a director – and not merely someone to watch the two of you rehearse and pat you on the head, but someone who will actively craft the scene with you.

Next, as an actor, play the reality of the scene. I think that actors in these showcases often feel the pressure of trying to establish the context of a scene when they know that we haven’t seen the whole play. To compensate, they may try to craft their character so as to implicitly fill in the exposition we the audience have missed. I know this temptation all too well – I’ve made this mistake myself in scene study class. Just play the specific reality of the scene you’re doing, and nothing more. Remember, we in the audience aren’t here to see a full-length play; we’re here to see you displaying your ability to perform this one scene.

Play your scene for the theater you’re in tonight. You’re not at the Cadillac Palace Theatre, projecting out over the orchestra pit to 3,000 patrons and a full balcony; you’re at the Theatre Building on Belmont Avenue, looking up at about 200 people on risers. Show us that you have an awareness of your surroundings and can calibrate your performance accordingly.

Connect with your fellow actor. Too often, a scene at one of these showcases shows all the signs of being either under-rehearsed or improperly rehearsed (see earlier note about having a director). Some actors seem to think that their primary task is getting their lines and blocking down. Having achieved that, they forget that they’re also here to act. The first casualty of this lack of preparation is connection with one’s fellow actor. The fact that this showcase consists of 2-person scenes is awfully, awfully important. It represents a challenge – and an opportunity – to show that you’re not merely someone who can stand on stage alone and deliver a pretty speech. It’s your chance to show us that you can connect as a character with another character and build a scene together. That’s a mighty rare opportunity in the audition world, so treasure it and exploit it!

Now, back to Wednesday night’s showcase. The range of best to worst performance was pretty wide. We saw some people who lost us from the moment they opened their mouths. We also saw some people who we’d pay good money to see in a finished production. Intriguingly, some of the scenes had a curiously mismatched quality to them, where one actor was operating on a level far beyond their counterpart. In a few cases, CC and I couldn’t help commiserating afterward about how badly we’d felt for one actor bursting at the seams to do a terrific scene but having nothing to play against – a.k.a. the one-hand clapping scenario.

I don’t think it would be right or fair of me to review any of the performers by name, either for good or ill. Even though this was a public performance that I paid to attend, it was, after all, an audition. If I see a finished production, I’ll review it and I’ll name names, but I would feel disrespectful to do so with this showcase in this public journal. Suffice it to say that I saw some terrific performances and some very un-terrific performances. I also learned a lot and had a very good time, and I hope the folks who were onstage that night can say the same!

Hi. Chuck here, asking a favor of you, my wonderful readers. If you happen to be looking at some of my older entries and a photo isn’t appearing where it seems like one ought to be, please drop me a line and let me know the date of the entry. I’ve recently moved all of my photos to a different server, and the transition hasn’t been completely seamless. I’ve gone through most of my recent entries and I think I’ve caught most of the problem cases, but hey, I’m not infallible (yet)! Thank you!

I’m working on a longer writing project lately, but here’s a photo I took the other day of our two cats. That’s Cy at the bottom and Puck up top. Both Puck and the pot of kitty grass are on precarious perches that were quickly taken down after this photo was taken, as we realized the inevitable outcome of leaving things in this arrangement.

Before I get into it, I want to offer a few disclaimers. The main one is this: I was 18 years old. Now that I think of it, that’s pretty much my only excuse. Through the Miracle of Facebook, I have recently reconnected with the young lady at the center of this tale, so this seems like a good time to document the whole sequence of events.

During the second half of my high school career, I was very much taken up with playing Dungeons & Dragons. The core group consisted of Jim, Patrick, and myself. Others were frequently included, but we were the three mainstays. Most often, we played at Patrick’s house at the dining room table, so we were pretty well integrated into Patrick’s family. In particular, we were often joined by Patrick’s younger sister Cindy. I don’t recall that she actually played D&D much, but we always enjoyed her winsome presence.

However fond we may have been of her, though, she was still our buddy’s kid sister, and this placed her at constant risk of being teased. If our only contact with her had been while playing D&D, this sort of teasing might have stayed within certain comfortable parameters. But as you may well infer, another curtain of opportunity was about to be raised…

Cindy, much to everyone’s excitement, was cast in her first play, a high school production of The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds. At one time, this play was commonly produced by a great many amateur theater groups (it won the 1971 Pulitzer Prize for Drama), but I haven’t heard of anyone producing it in some time. Cindy was cast in the small but important role of a brainy girl who presents her science fair project.

As with any first-time actor, Cindy was nervous as opening night approached. Her anxiety was clearly heightened when she learned that Jim and I were both planning to be there on opening night. And this is where our story turns…

Jim and I arrived at the Dominican High School Auditorium early so that we might stake out a prime location. We ended up being seated in the front row, dead center. The orchestra pit was rather small, so this put us pretty close to the action, where we might easily be seen by anyone standing on the stage or, say, peeking through a curtain.

Cindy’s big scene was a solo turn for her character. She was to stand alone on stage for several minutes, proudly explaining her science fair project to the audience. The director had staged the scene to take place in front of the main curtain, all the way downstage, so Cindy was to be no more than 20 feet from the front row while performing a lengthy monologue.

The moment the lights came up on her scene, Jim and I burst into hysterical laughter, which caused Cindy to pause while recoiling in shock. Then, before she could even begin to utter her first line, Jim stood up, leaned over the orchestra pit railing, and took a flash picture of her.

In retrospect, I could hardly have blamed Cindy if she had simply left the stage at that moment, but she chose to push on, shaken though she was. Her entire scene was performed between gasps of hysteria and hyperventilation, but she got through it, even as Jim and I continued to cackle at her every utterance.

No, I can’t say I’m proud of that. If there truly were a God of the Theatre, I suppose Jim and I would have brought a plague upon both our houses for that stunt. It is to Cindy’s credit that she was able to continue being friendly to us thereafter; that she was able to look beyond our boorish behavior and see the nice boys we might be otherwise. It is worth noting, though, that Cindy has apparently, to date, never been tempted to pursue a career on the stage.

Postscript #1 — Several years later, I was cast in a production of Fiddler on the Roof. Our director was the same woman who had directed that fateful production of Marigolds. One night after rehearsal, she and I were chatting and the subject of that earlier production came up. I told her about what Jim and I had done in the front row on opening night. Her eyes widened. “That was YOU???!!!” It seems that, unbeknownst to us, this was also HER debut as a director. She explained that she’d been stuck in the back of the house that night running the show, but she’d seen the commotion down front and would have liked nothing better than to go down there and bounce whoever was responsible. Happily, enough time had passed that she and I were able to share a laugh over it (whew!).

Postscript #2 — It was not too long afterward that I began to visibly wince at the memory of my actions that night. As I became more and more immersed in theatrical pursuits, the memory of this incident became a touchstone, reminding me of who I didn’t want to be, as well as reminding me to invest in my craft the respect I wished to elicit from my audience. I figured if I could do that, I would always be assured of having at least one satisfied person in the theater!

____________________
* Or at least, the rottenest thing I ever did that I’m going to talk about in this journal!

The Chicago Tribune has announced the four finalists for its Ghost Story Writing Contest. Feel free to click on the link and vote for your favorite.

No, my story did not make it to the finals, and that’s OK. It’s OK because all four of these finalists wrote better stories than mine, in my opinion. For that reason, I hope you’ll excuse me if I don’t share my story with a wider audience. It was a highly instructive exercise nonetheless, and I’d do it again in a second!

A few days ago, I took a very nice photo of our cat Puck. It was so nice that CC decided to put it on the desktop of her PC. Yesterday, Puck himself decided that his image on her computer constituted a welcome mat, so he made himself at home. If CC expects to get any work done on her computer, she may have to replace the current desktop image with something else… say, a rabid Doberman.

I entered a writing contest the other day. As you probably know, I’ve entered quite a few such contests over the years and I’ve fared pretty well in them. I usually gravitate towards contests that involve writing songs or poems, but this time it was a short story contest – with the accent on short.

A coworker gave me a copy of a recent Chicago Tribune column announcing a ghost story contest. Her timing couldn’t have been better. I’ve been in the creative doldrums in recent weeks, as evinced by the dearth of postings in this journal, and I’ve been looking for something to jump-start my creativity.

So in I dove. First order of business: a reading of the official rules. They were pretty straightforward. A) Suitable for a family audience; B) Must have a Chicago setting; C) Maximum of 700 words.

Uh-oh. [sound of needle skipping across phonograph record] 700 words! If you’re not much into writing, that might sound like a big number, but it isn’t, particularly for someone as in love with the sound of his own voice as I am. Let me put it this way – the last word in this sentence is already the 208th word in this essay, and I’m just getting started!

This word limit is particularly critical in the telling of something like a ghost story; that is, something requiring the creation of a particular, other-worldly atmosphere. But there’s nothing like a challenge to get the juices flowing, I figured, and after all, all of us who post entries have to operate under the same constraint, so be of good cheer – it’s a fair contest! So with the deadline for entries looming, I got busy.

In about two hours, I’d come up with a first draft. I’d decided in advance not to count words as I went. I figured I’d just try to come up with a halfway decent, economically told story and then set about cutting it down. So I probably shouldn’t have been so dismayed when the first draft clocked in at a little over 1,100 words.

“Okay,” I thought, “I’ve tried to write an nice little story, and now I have to cut out over a third of it while retaining a semblance of mood and narrative.” I had arrived at the moment of challenge in this process. We may have ultimately finished this editing process with a nail clipper, but the first tool to wield here was a scythe. It was not a painless process. Lovingly composed stretches of mood-setting prose were hacked off and thrown into the bonfire. Clever sub-plots and side references that had filled out my virtual canvas were extracted and shredded. At the end of this painful process, I checked the word total again. 831 words.

Gakk! You’re effing kidding me! I still have to cut out another 131 words? OK, OK. Calm down. We can do this. It was time for some strategic rephrasing. Don’t tell your readers things they already know or can figure out for themselves… use contractions where feasible… get the same information across in fewer words… but while you’re burning these sacrificial offerings at the altar of The Great God Writing Contest, don’t toss actual pieces of mood or essential story unless they are wrested from your bleeding fingers, because that’s the stuff that gives the story a reason for being.

OK. Whew! Got through that. Let’s check that word total again… 720 words.

After several minutes of beating my head against an iron grating, I returned to the task at hand. So close… we’re so close… but the rules were clear on this point: “…when we say 700 words, we mean it. Longer entries are automatically disqualified…” To make matters worse, I was now familiar enough with my own story that I could now see some logical gaps and irresistible opportunities that would, of course, have the effect of adding words to the story!

You get the idea. At the end of the process, we weighed in at a svelte 698 words. To give you some perspective on how little time that gives one to tell a story, the journal entry you’re reading now totals 769 words, and frankly, it’s probably scarier than my actual contest entry. But the deadline for entries is this Sunday and the winner will be printed in the Trib on November 1st. It may not sound like it, but I really enjoyed the process. It was a good little lesson in editing one’s work. I’ll keep you posted on the outcome and if I’m feeling really brave, I may even post the story here.

CC and I took a final trip (for the year) out to Carmelot. To review, Carmelot is the name CC gave to her property at Woodhaven Lakes Private Recreational Camping Resort in distant Sublette, Illinois. Fall Festival was taking place at Woodhaven while we were there, and the special events included a petting zoo. What’s special about the above photo is that CC is wearing a cap she knit for herself that depicts a line of alpacas – and she’s feeding an alpaca at the same time! It’s one of my favorite photos I’ve ever taken.
( Click here for a few additional photos from the trip )

An acquaintance recently asked me what I stand for.

I can’t even put a second sentence into that paragraph; it’s already too densely packed with implications. Let’s start with a few basics:

I have perceived over the years that this question, and others like it, usually have a subtext along these lines: “I have strong political and/or philosophical and/or religious convictions that are central guideposts in my life. These convictions help me to make decisions of all kinds and represent certain ‘lines in the sand’ that I will not cross. Furthermore, I do not sense that you possess the same value system and I am asking you this in order to challenge you and attempt to confirm my suspicions about your character and/or morality. In fact, I might even be able to offer you some sound guidance if you’re ready to hear it.”

It is of course possible that someone may ask what a person stands for out of pure curiosity, as an attempt to get to know them better. Yeah, it’s possible, but it’s rarely the case.

So how do I answer such a question? There’s no single answer; it depends on who’s doing the asking and what I think they’re looking for. I might respond with a smile and a flippant response – “What do I stand for? Well, I stand for old people on the bus and I stand for judges entering a courtroom.”

For the most part, though, I can’t help but resent the implications of such a question. It’s really on a par with questions like, “Have you stopped beating your children?” in that it makes a set of assumptions without inviting debate or even verification.

I “stand for” something? No. It is more accurate to state that I “am” something. I “do” things. To paraphrase the Elephant Man, I am not merely a symbol; I am a human being. Suppose I were to say – or my questioner were to say – “I stand for patriotism” or “I stand for America” or “I stand for Christian values” – or any of countless other ideals. Well my friend, I don’t care if you’re Abe Frickin’ Lincoln – you don’t stand for any of those things. You DO things. Don’t tell me what you stand for; tell me what you DO. Better yet, tell YOURSELF what you do and maybe you’ll realize that you need to come up with a different answer as to what you stand for.

Maybe you’re a loving parent. A devoted spouse. A tireless volunteer for charitable causes. A hard worker and a good provider. Maybe you’re an artisan or skilled tradesperson who takes great pride in their work. A lot of people would consider these to be laudable achievements. But these identities are not required to “stand for” anything. They comprise tangible attributes that stand on their own and do not require the artificial overlay of claiming that they stand for some higher ideal.

I am sometimes left wondering whether the unconscious goal of these questioners is to validate their own choices by trying to elevate the status of their own achievements. If that’s the case, then their questions have nothing at all to do with me.

It is revealing that I have never been asked such a question by someone who knew me reasonably well. People who are close to me develop a sense of who I am and what is important to me. Such questions are invariably asked of me by people who know me slightly, but upon whom I’ve made some sort of impression.

The closest I can come to summing it all up is this: Don’t ask me what I stand for and don’t tell me what you stand for. If you’re all hung up on this whole “standing for” business, SHOW me what you stand for by the example of your own life. And as we come to know one another better, maybe you can decide for yourself what I stand for. But don’t expect me to get on board with all of it, since I reject the very premise upon which the question is asked.

These two little embroidered items are just a sample of the wares being sold by a little company called Demeritwear. I learned of the site from a friend’s recent posting, and I’m already a customer. I ordered several of these as a gift for a friend and found them in my mailbox 3 days later. Turns out the company is in Ann Arbor, Michigan, if that affects your feelings about them!

It’s like this – we’ve all heard of merit badges, typically earned by Scouts for different skills, deeds, or other achievements. These are the flip side – demerit badges. They have dozens of different designs in various categories, all nicely designed and finely embroidered. With the arrival of autumn, it isn’t too soon to begin looking for unusual Christmas gift ideas, and these really tickled me! Even if you don’t want to order them, it’s an amusing web surf just to look at their offerings.

The title is figurative; I don’t actually have any snapshots of my Aunt Rosie, but I was reminded today of a long-ago interaction that concerned her, my mother, and me.

An important bit of context for this story is that I come from a large working class family. There were eight of us born in a little over 10 years’ time. Big family vacations were simply not a part of our upbringing. I don’t think we felt particularly deprived; that was just something ‘other’ families did. For us, vacation activities consisted of day trips to attractions in and around Detroit, e.g., Greenfield Village or the Michigan State Fair.

It was therefore quite an exciting prospect when it was determined that I would spend a night sleeping over at Aunt Rosie and Uncle Andy’s house – just me, not any other siblings. I must have been about 11 or 12 years old. My aunt and uncle lived only a few miles away as the crow flies, but when you’re in a big city, that’s quite a distance. They lived in an entirely different neighborhood from ours. Our neighborhood consisted mostly of solid old houses built in the 1920s, while theirs consisted of smaller, not-so-solid homes that probably dated from the late 1940s.

It was not just our respective neighborhoods that were different, though; the lifestyles of our two families were also quite different. Whereas our packed household of ten was generally winding down and getting pretty quiet by 10:00 or 11:00 p.m., Rose and Andy were definitely night owls. Also, they had stopped after merely two children, so even though their house was substantially smaller than ours, it somehow felt roomier.

For me, the remarkable part of the evening came after Andy and the kids had gone to bed. It was a pleasant summer evening, so Aunt Rosie and I sat on their tiny front porch, sipping our respective beverages and talking far into the night. It was the first adult conversation I’d ever had with her. By ‘adult’ I don’t mean that there was anything of questionable taste or propriety being discussed. I simply mean that we were talking as peers. That was a happy feeling.

Across the street and a couple houses to our left, another group was having a late-night poker party in their living room. We sat there and marveled at how clearly the sounds of their gathering were reaching our ears. Every clink of a glass, clack of a poker chip, and shuffle of playing cards was crisply audible as if we were sitting at the table with them. I suppose some of it could have been accounted for by the thinness of the walls on most of the houses around there, but it seemed odd to the point of being almost surreal and we both remarked on it. We then realized that if we could hear them so clearly, we probably ought to assume that they could hear us just as well, so our conversation went forward in a quieter tone of voice. At some point, we allowed that we were both talked out, so we retired to our respective rooms for a well earned sleep.

* * *

There was one small follow-up that came to light some weeks later. Aunt Rosie had been talking to her sister (my mom) and had told her some things that mom felt compelled to pass on to me. Apparently, I had received generally high marks from Rose and she had very much enjoyed my visit, but there was one particular remark that caught my ear. Mom quoted Rosie as saying something like this: “I used to think that Charles was such a brat, but then I finally realized that he was just trying to be funny, and I really enjoy his company!” As I have continued my journey through life, I have noted that this has been a recurring sentiment among various individuals of my acquaintance, including some folks who didn’t even know me in my childhood.

I wrote about this a few years ago, but I’ve had two recent requests for these lyrics, so this seems like a good time to go over it again and add a few details to the story.

Several years ago, FP asked me to write a song for a show she was putting together. She’s the Managing Director of the Stockyards Theatre Project. The show was a pastiche of scenes and songs titled Busting Out: Toying with the Tyranny of Time. The parameters she gave me for the song were as follows: It needed to be about the history of time, and it needed to be written as a patter song to go with a particular rhythm and a particular bluesy chord progression.

The prospect of writing such a song hooked me in big-time. As a life-long writer of smart-ass lyrics, as well as a life-long devotee of science, this was a commission made in heaven for me! I will offer this one caveat for the reader – it’s really meant to be performed rather than read, so it may seem a little odd rhythmically without the syncopated beat and riff behind it as intended. Here we go:

Time in Four-Four Time

Oh let me tell you people ’bout this thing called time.
No I’m not going to play it out in pantomime.
Set you back and listen for a while ’cause I’m
Gonna lay it out for you in simple rhyme.

Early people saw the sun up in the air
Rising over here and setting over there.
That risin’ and a-settin’ made a tidy pair.
As a way of keeping time it was pretty fair.

Then they threw some gears in a box,
Shook it all around and started making clocks,
Infected everybody just like chicken pox
With a universal rhythm: tick-tock, tick-tock.

Then came Mr. Einstein. He had deemed
That time was not at all as it seemed.
He gave us his grand mathematical scheme
Written down on ream upon ream upon ream.

It boiled down to this – that energy, E
Is equal to mass times the square of C.
Now if C’s the speed of light, I think you’ll agree
That E becomes enormous exponentially.

Now C denotes a constant, the speed of light,
That never ever varies, not at any height
From the head of Ursa Major to the Isle of Wight.
Whew! That Mr. Einstein was pretty bright!

Now how does time relate to E, M, or C?
It slows as you increase velocity
But speeds up for the observer to a large degree,
And that is why we call it relativity.

Now that’s good news, it means that time
Is free for the taking, and that’s no crime.
On the journey of humanity, its noble climb
To the heighten of enlighten from primordial slime.

Quantum physics showed up and oh, it was dense.
A bit hard to understand unless you’re in Mensa.
Still a theory lacking crucial evidence,
And time no longer making any sense.

Don’t ask about the next one – the theory of strings.
They fly around the universe on tiny wings.
They vibrate and they quiver just like tiny springs
In the tiny little watches that run everything.

So tell me in the end, what have we learned?
And all the physicists, what have they earned?
I’ll tell you what this ordinary brain has discerned –
I’d like them to invent some time to burn.

So I could keep on singing this funky song
And you could learn the words and sing along.
Now I’m gonna tell you why Einstein was wrong —
But I see I’m out of time so, so long!

(© Charles Greenia)

We took in Friday’s baseball game between the White Sox and the Detroit Tigers. The Sox will spend the last week of the season on the road, so this series was their last home stand of the year. They’ve been eliminated from the pennant race, but the Tigers are still clinging to first place, barely ahead of the charging Minnesota Twins, so this was a big game for this expatriate Detroiter to attend.

We took the L down to the game. The photo above was taken right after we stepped off the train onto the 35th Street platform, which runs right down the median of the Dan Ryan Freeway (I-94). Note the threatening skies over the stadium. Rain was in the forecast and much of the game was played in misting conditions, though it never broke into a hard rain.

The rain also failed to put a damper on the fireworks show that followed the game. In fact, it was really quite first-rate, and while I didn’t time it, it seemed to go on somewhat longer than other Sox fireworks nights I’ve attended.

Friday night was also Hispanic Heritage Night at US Cellular Field (nee Comiskey Park), which only added to the spectacle of the evening. The front of our section (section 105 for the record) contained a large, enthusiastic group that spent the evening cheering loudly and waving multiple Puerto Rican flags. The closest we came to actively participating in the evening’s festivities was consuming an order of nachos and a churro, but we were with them in spirit.

The only negative all night was that the White Sox somehow motivated themselves to shut out the Tigers 2-0. Gordon Beckham strengthened his case for Rookie of the Year consideration by hitting a 2-run homer to account for all of the game’s scoring.

It is Sunday night as I write this and the White Sox have managed to take 2 out of 3 from the Tigers. A week from now, the season will be over – unless the Tigers and Twins finish in a tie, in which case we will have to endure the tension and potential heartbreak of a one-game playoff. Check back with me then.

…to anyone besides me, but here goes:

As I was returning to the office from lunch, a group of four people, two men and two women, got off the elevator. They were apparently just leaving for lunch, and the conversation centered around their potential choices of cuisine. One of the men had apparently just asked the other man a question, and he was responding.

“They have this thing called a ‘chimichanga.’ It’s good!”

It was the way he said the word, ‘chimichanga’ that got me. He said it as if it was a word he’d read, but had never before said aloud, yet he was trying to sound like an educated, though casual, gourmand. That, and the distinctly condescending air with which he was explaining it to the other fellow. It was a good character to note and store for future use as an actor. I thought for a moment that it would have been amusing to follow them and see how this conversation progressed… but I quickly thought the better of it and went back to the office.

While looking for an address, I stumbled across an old, pre-blogging essay that I wrote in 1999. It concerned the proposed impeachment of President Clinton in the wake of the Lewinsky scandal. I crafted it in the form of a letter to the future. Since we’re now in the future, I thought this might be a good time to share the essay with a wider audience. At the time, I envisioned someone in the far distant future reading it, but that’s something over which I have no control. Anyway, here it is:

Letter to the Future
Hello. I’m writing to you from the cusp of the millennium in the United States of America (I hope you don’t have to look that up). A group of elected officials in our capital city is trying to decide what to do to our commander in chief for his indiscretions of first engaging in an extramarital affair, and then lying about it. I’m writing this letter because I fear for what you will think of America (and, by inference, what you will think of me) when you read about this time in your history books (I wish you people of the future could write back. I’d like to know whether you are battling the same demons that stalk us today; whether you have discovered new demons; or whether you have come upon some wisdom unknown to the time in which I am living).

The trouble with history is that it tends to remember little more than events. It tends to be a poor reporter of national moods, diversity of opinions, special interest squabbling, and the fears of politicians. It thereby tends to convince the reader of history that things were much simpler in the old days; not complicated like they are now.

Well, I have news for you – things are rather complicated here in the late 20th century. Your history probably tells you that this time and place is ruled by a democracy, but I must tell you that the wishes of the mass of our citizenry are not typically reflected in the words and deeds of our elected officials. Why this should be the case is really quite puzzling – after all, we elected them; yet they say and do foolish things every day; they are widely recognized as foolish and deceitful people; yet we continue to elect them. I cannot explain this. I hope you people of the future have made wonderful breakthroughs in understanding this.

But back to the matter at hand. I want desperately for you people of the future to know that many of us living in this olden time are mortified in consideration of the legacy we appear to be creating. On the one hand, we are leaving the legacy of electing (twice) a man who brought shame upon himself and his countrymen, and then trying to run him out of office for turning out to have far too much in common with the electorate. On the other hand, especially, we are leaving the legacy of having this matter become little more than a tool for exploitation and political gain. I hope that in your future time, you have found the wisdom to place the judgment of such matters into 2 places: the hearts of the perpetrators, and the minds of the people whom they serve, while keeping the power of judgment out of the hands of calculating, frightened politicians.

Those of you who are reading this letter in 1999 may need a little perspective on my concerns. Consider, by way of example, Alexander the Great. Most of what we “know” about him are stories culled from anecdote and legend. The tale of the Gordian Knot is thrilling in its simple, symbolic power. The truth, one suspects, was perhaps both more complicated and more mundane. The knot, if it ever existed at all, may never have been seen, much less severed, by Alexander. Yet the facts of history that occurred after this supposed moment make one long for this portentous moment to have occurred in fact. The result is that we tend to view Alexander as a rather one-dimensional conqueror. A huge figure in history, certainly. But the myriad personal considerations, agonizing debates, and logistical realities remain largely buried in the ashes of time. What survives are broad strokes of the historian’s pen, supported and embellished by legend and conjecture. A little more to the point, consider Rasputin, legendary villain of late imperial Russia. Even in his own lifetime, in his own country, the fantastic tales told among the peasantry regarding Rasputin’s personal habits and practices strain credulity past any reasonable consideration. That he was a filthy, bedraggled mystic seems a safe enough assumption. That he wielded substantial influence in the Romanov household seems equally certain. Beyond that, one’s level of certainty quickly crumbles, until we settle comfortably into a type of “knowledge” that might best be termed “historical fact.”

All of which brings us to the matter of President Bill Clinton. When you read your histories of this era, you may well conclude that the common citizens of this era were simple folk who lived in a very small world. Perhaps your “historical fact” will be that the late 20th century in the United States was a time of stifling Puritanism; conversely, you may think that this was a time of unbridled voyeurism. You may, in fact, be right on both counts. In any case, let me offer you this insight, from one who actually lived in this time: Yes, there is a strain of Puritanism in this land today. Yes, there is rampant voyeurism. There are also millions of people whose defining characteristics are boredom, cynicism, and self-indulgence. And there are also quite a few of us who are smart enough to know that when a den of thieves turns on one of its own, we would do well to scrutinize its motivations, particularly when their rhetoric adopts a tone of self-righteous indignation. But even if you do view us as simple folk, you may take some consolation in the knowledge that many of our elected officials would agree with you.

That’s all I have to report for now. Perhaps I will have sent another letter to the future at a later date (although you would obviously know more than I about whether that actually happened). My remaining hope is that you will somehow find a way to answer my letter. If so, I would hope to learn that your rulers have adopted both higher standards of personal conduct, and a more honest sense of their own fitness to sit in judgment.

We will soon know whether the 2016 Olympics are to take place here in Chicago. Inevitably and predictably, this issue has been tossed back and forth between various factions, mindsets, and ideologies.

The first division is between those who don’t believe in the Olympics at all, regardless of location, versus those who see the Olympics as a powerful symbol and example of international cooperation.

Next, we have those who believe that the IOC and the USOC are corrupt, elitist organizations that ought to go away; that they are always on the lookout for large bribes and are very comfortable with having their asses kissed, versus those who either don’t see them that way or who believe that this is a small, perhaps necessary, price to pay for the existence of this wonderful institution.

More locally, we have Chicagoans who support the games either because they believe there’s money in it for them or because they are genuinely thrilled at the idea of Chicago being placed on the world stage as never before. Across the fence from them are the Chicagoans who view the local power structure as utterly corrupt and figure that someone is going to make a killing – probably at the considerable expense of the masses.

So it comes down to me now. I’m a Chicagoan – do I want our Olympic bid to be accepted? My feelings are a little mixed up on that score. On the one hand, I find it utterly plausible that someone has got my pocketbook squarely in their sights, and that the IOC, the USOC, the mayor, and select contractors/connected parties may very well be in this to make a big money grab. Still, none of that surprises me. I’m cynical enough that I think the vast majority of really BIG projects involve corruption, political maneuvering, favoritism, and cost overruns into the pockets of connected individuals. So it was in the ancient world; so it remains today. I’m not crazy about it, but I’m not going to just wish it away.

On the other hand, I have a romantic side that cries out: “We do not do this because it is a GOOD idea. No! Not at all! We do it because it is a GLORIOUS idea! If you are fortunate, you may see such a spectacle come to your city once in your life, so do not turn blithely away when such an international spectacle presents itself upon your doorstep.” Oh, I know how that sounds – it isn’t logical; it isn’t scientific; it isn’t all sorts of things. But it IS human. We are not logic machines – not very good ones anyway – and we never can become logic machines without becoming something other than human. So the part of me that embraces the Olympics is something human; something essential; something I must be true to in some manner.

So is that it then? Sign off on the Olympics and let the Corrupt Ones have their way with me and my foolish dreams? Sell myself out to the Fantasy Merchants? Not a very appetizing scenario when I put it that way, is it? It is also well worth noting that the Olympics happen because thousands upon thousands of people all over the world – who aren’t getting rich – are working their butts off to be a part of something they fervently believe in. And that is why I describe my feelings as ‘a little mixed up.’ This I know – whatever choice the IOC makes, there is a part of me that will rejoice, and a part of me that will feel a little sad.