'Reading is Fun da mental

I don’t think it’s a good idea to start off every blog with. I dunno. It’s tempting though. Because I don’t know. I went and checked out a play in Chicago last night. It was one of those off-the-beaten-path productions. You know how you always say you want to check out more of those little plays? Well I finally did it. Didn’t hurt that a guy from work was in it and a bunch of people from work got together to go. I’m sort of a fringe player on the work social scene. It’s kinda hard cuz I’m so much older than everyone else. I think I hang pretty good though. They were talking about hipsters and I know hipsters pretty well, with their weird 50s nerd comb to the side hairstyles, their rolled up jeans, their bikes, their just too-hip-for you demeanors. You know what I’m talking about. Well anyway they had some book about hipsters floating around the dinner table. We grabbed dinner before the show. It didn’t make its way to me, but I knew what it was about. So yeah, I try to stay on top of current events and I can hang with a younger crowd. It went pretty well. We started out at this place called Wilde. For Oscar Wilde I guess. It def had an Irish feel to it. Lotsa tasty beers there, Gumballhead was on the menu, but alas they were out. I had another brew by Half Acre brewing, it was a lot like Gumballhead. Light and flaky. Good way to get started. I have to say we had a real nice dinner. All the people there were the peeps that I really get along with at work. It was cool. I felt like they thought I was ok and paid attention to what I was saying. Always nice. After dinner and drinks it was time to hit the show.



I was pretty amped for the show. I didn’t know what to expect. I had a couple beers, so I was slightly jingled, all ready to sit back and soak it in. Well the show we saw was called “The Love of the Nightengale.” It’s fairly well known in certain circles. It’s based on a greek tragic myth, and it def has some hints of Shakespeare in it. The production company is Red Tape Theater, google it. When we got there, I was geeked to see that they were selling beer. Not so geeked to find out that all the beer is room temperature. I think you can byob there though, which I might do for the next show. We get there and the theater is small. I was thinking it looked like it only held 20 people, but in actuality it’s more like 50. The seats are basically right in the middle of the stage. Let me explain how this works if you haven’t been to a U2 show recently. A majority of the action occurs in the middle of the room, and then there is a ring that goes around the room where stuff happens, then there is a sort of balcony on one side that they work in there too. So I ended up in the front row all the way to one side and the actors were like a foot away from me at certain points. I dug it. It must be hard to stay in character when you get a whiff of somebody’s chili-cheese frito breath in your face, but I guess that is one of the perils of the business. The actors did a really great job. Our man from work definitely stole the show, but we all had that figured. Seriously, our man played the Captain and I thought the captain had a really cool thematic purpose. I don’t like to spoil the story, so go see it and figure it out for yourself. I really liked the show, the other interesting element aside from about 10 women dancing around in underwear at one point, was that one of the leads looked like a direct descendent of Joan Cusack. I would’ve put money that she was related. I guess not though. I’m gonna check the show again next week with some friends, so I’ll prolly have more to say about it then.



On a sad note, one of the people that attended the show. The crazy guy who I’ve written about before. My friend from work, got let go. Sheesh, I’m gonna try not to take it personally, but my Asian buddy who liked peanut butter took off, and now one of my other main homies got laid off. Total bummer. This was the guy I wrote about a long time ago. One of my first days here at work, I was just sitting at a table alone. The guy comes up and says, “Do you mind if I join you? Well it really doesn’t matter if you mind cuz I’m joining you anyway.” He is a funny guy and has a fresh, if not completely off the wall, perspective. That first day, by the end of lunch we were talking about whose side we would be on if there was an apocalypse. I was totally on the good side, he said he would be on the bad side. Funny shtuff. We had a bunch of other crazy conversations and he was definitely outspoken on the finer issues. He didn’t have many inhibitions. One time at lunch someone at the table mentioned that they were considering law school. He says, “Don’t do it. If you want justification why you shouldn’t do it, look into Richard’s eyes (our general counsel). Take a good look. You’ll see that the legal profession sucks out your soul.” Richard (name changed) was sitting at the next table. One of the top 3 head honchos in the office got a chance to hear our man wax poetic about herpes one day, I don’t think that went over well. Safe to say, this guy may have alienated a few people with his hilarious antics. One day he said he wanted to start a rumor, so he said that one of my compliance colleagues was a hermaphrodite. Classic stuff. He will be missed.



I didn’t do much over the weekend. I had a family obligation on Saturday, and when that was over, I just basically did laundry. While I was folding my laundry, I was watching Saturday Night Live. After weeks of hype, the much ballyhooed episode featuring Betty White had arrived. I have not watched SNL in years. I think on most Saturdays I’m busy, or just go to sleep earlier. For some reason I’ve come to believe that people who watch SNL are losers that don’t have anything else to do on a Saturday night. Lump me in that category for last Saturday. I’ve seen the video for “I’m on a boat” and some other SNL stuff, so I thought that they still had some talented funny people doing stuff on the show. Not so much. Betty White was pretty funny doing her monologue, but after that it was all down hill. You can google it if you want to see how bad it was. Funny thing, at lunch we were talking about it. One of the bits is a takeoff on MacGyver, called MacGruber. I thought it was annoyingly inane. So I bring it up to talk to the young people about and they were all laughing about it and said that there was a movie coming out based on it. Unfathomable. I really am at a loss for words on that. It was beyond not funny, beyond inane, and I have absolutely no idea how it can be made into a feature length film. The idea barely fits into 2 minutes. I’m getting old. I just don’t get this MacGruber thing. I have to move on.



Rock and roll news is good. The rock band known as Bleach Battalion is preparing its forces for a global onslaught. The onslaught commences on May 29 at the Box Social, next to the Congress Theater. We had a practice last night and although I practiced the set twice through at home, I wasn’t that geeked. I just wasn’t playing the songs that well. I always show up, but I was tempted to call in sick on this one. So I get there early, and the new bassist is already there. Score. We can start early. So we run through the set and it was not so good cuz the new guy was getting up to speed and I was getting warmed up. Then we went through it again and it was definitely passable. We took a break and shot the shit. It’s so fun listening to their punk rock stories. I love the stories. They were all sitting outside back in the day just hanging on the porch and one of their weird buddies just picks up brick and goes up to somebody’s house and throws it through their picture window. In broad daylight. Anarchy. I don’t condone that type of destruction, but it makes for a good story. After the chat we decided to run through the set one more time. We nailed it. I was pretty happy with my playing, everyone else seemed really excited about it. I figured the bassist would realize that I’m not that good but he’s all like “your rock solid man, very steady.” It helped me to have the bass there and I dunno, it all came together we sounded really tight. A couple more practices and we’ll be ready for sure.



I know I had some other things to shout about, but I can’t remember them now. That’s ok cuz this is already really long. In case you were wondering, it’s actually two blogs that got smooshed together. If you want to read more blogs I found a couple good ones, quixotic dancer is pretty entertaining when she writes, and this woman Danka is linked off of the QD blog. I totally forgot to mention the crazy market tumult of last week. It was crazy. You can read about it all over the place. Computers gone wild, not nearly as fun as girls gone wild.