Tuesday, April 29, 2003

Patrick Stewart, my favorite actor and portrayer of Starfleet's finest captain, gets the A&E Biography treatment tonight. (check local listings)

Now I know what I'll be doing while I fold laundry. And believe me, after Hell Week, folding laundry and watching TV sounds like heaven.

(Dad: thanks for tipping me off to this!)

Posted @ 11:20 AM

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Monday, April 28, 2003

A sad day on Broadway: Peter Stone has died at the age of 73. His long and storied career included writing the book for what is arguably my favorite musical of all time, 1776. As much as I love the songs, it's the book (often called the finest ever written for a musical) that really pulls at my head, heart, and soul.

Godspeed, Mr. Stone. You had "a happy talent of composition, and a remarkable felicity of expression." We miss you already.

Posted @ 2:22 PM

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Thursday, April 24, 2003

Welcome, Music Man audience members! If you got here because of my blurb in the program, thanks for coming both to the show and this site. Feel free to poke around. Might I suggest a glance at my theater résumé?

Posted @ 5:08 PM

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Wednesday, April 23, 2003

For the last several months, I've been listening to the WGN webcast of the Kathy & Judy Show, a morning radio talker featuring two witty, wonderful women from Chicago. I'm not their main target audience, to be sure, but I certainly enjoy them. Maybe it's an unconscious attempt on my part to balance out the overtly male, locker room style ramblings I regularly ingest as a consequence of my crack-like addiction to the Don & Mike Show.

Be that as it may, it's not the main point of this post.

WGN runs bumpers on their audio stream where the commercials would be on their broadcast. They're well-produced little station identifiers, with bouncy music beds and lots of random quotes. Many of the quotes extol the virtues of the Second City. One in particular has been resonating with me tremendously over the past few weeks.

I don't know the source, or who's talking. The man has a deep, sonorous voice, and an earnest tone. With no nonsense but great feeling he speaks these five little words:

Serving the nation from Chicago
I doubt that I'll ever permanently return home to Chicago, and at this point I'm not sure how I'll ultimately end up expressing my very strong urge to serve the nation. But if I were to distill my loftier aspirations and my dreams of home into one short phrase, it would be this one.

Posted @ 2:10 PM

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Tuesday, April 22, 2003

Just as I'm sitting here stewing over the contents and implications of my last entry, Scalzi comes in once again to take my mind off the pain and crack me up:

"This might not be an optimal chocolate experience," I warned.

Bad Easter candy as relief from political outrage. I knew the stuff had to serve some purpose.

Posted @ 4:43 PM

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Exploitive, opportunistic, callous, and wrong. Those are just the first of many choice words that come to mind regarding the Bush re-election strategy which includes a late-season, NYC-based Republican convention timed to butt up against, and take full advantage of, the third anniversary of the September 11th attacks. This is a disgusting, brazen ploy to milk a national wound. If there is any justice, it will backfire soundly on the President and his advisers.

Posted @ 2:05 PM

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Monday, April 21, 2003

A lot of folks are blogging about an article from Sunday's New York Times (free registration required) an examination of/warning about TiVo subscribers like myself. Nothing quite like picking up what you think is a newspaper and finding that you're holding up a mirror.

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Music Man opens in four days. I've already warned those around me that I'll likely be a zombie until Monday. I need to work up a welcome for anybody who might show up here after seeing the show, as I slipped my url into the program with all the subtlety of a boot to the head. I'm sure I'll have plenty of time to do that between work and Hell Week rehearsals.

Posted @ 2:01 PM

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Thursday, April 17, 2003

If I wasn't so busy with Music Man, I would have remembered that the fan attacking an umpire incident at the White Sox-Royals game, which I wrote about yesterday, was the second such occurrence.

I can't wait for the show to open so I can get my brain back.

Posted @ 9:03 AM

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Wednesday, April 16, 2003

Clint Eastwood has come to the defense of Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon (second item). Responding to the controversy over the cancellation of the Baseball Hall of Fame's Bull Durham fifteenth anniversary celebration, Eastwood expressed outrage towards Cooperstown, saying "how dare they?"

A solid conservative speaking up for the rights of strong liberals, on principle alone. This is the kind of thing that makes me proud to be an American.

Posted @ 3:25 PM

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The Cubs are in first place in the NL Central! Woo hoo!

Since I don't expect this to last very long, or for them to get out in front again this season, I figured I better celebrate right away. Not that such things matter to me. As I've often said: I'm not into baseball, I'm a Cubs fan.

Meanwhile, a South Side fan attacked an umpire at the former Comisky Park last night. I always hate to see this kind of thing, but having it happen in Chicago saddens me even more. Let's hope this is just one of those occasional abberations, and not the beginning of a trend.

Posted @ 10:17 AM

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Monday, April 14, 2003

Google News is one of my primary sources of information, but as much as I love it, it's not without its problems. One of the biggest is a glitch which often pair headlines with completely unrelated pictures. Here's one from their Entertainment section which was too glaring not to share:




It's all so clear now. Montgomery Burns has been the secret underlying catalyist behind the Troubles in Ireland this whole time! Undoubtedly he's been stoking the fires of conflict for years, selling arms to both sides and raking in the cash.

Posted @ 10:12 AM

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Thursday, April 10, 2003

John Scalzi, a man I'm proud to share initials with, has a piece in his (now much more blogish, Moveable Type powered) Whatever column today supporting the idea of women serving on the front lines. The article is both humorous and respectfully deferential at the same time. I completely understand the deference, as I share with him the strong desire to avoid giving offense to women in uniform, and subsequently getting my ass handed to me by some devastatingly capable female soldier.

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Tonight's my last night without rehearsal before Music Man opens two weeks from tomorrow. To celebrate, I'm finally going to give my new George Foreman Grill a spin. I need to pop down to the butcher shop and get a steak worthy of the occasion, and maybe a nice salad.

Posted @ 5:31 PM

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Wednesday, April 09, 2003

There's an excellent piece in today's Salon about The Daily Show and its coverage of the war. It nicely articulates many of the reasons I've got it on a TiVo Season Pass.

Posted @ 4:53 PM

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The third installment of the Madelyn Murray O’Hair in Hell series, "The Secret of the Burning Canvas", is up at The Morning News. The fact that it's been up for five days and I'm just touting it here now should give you some indication of how very busy I've been. Between work (slogging through a big, detail-intensive project) and Music Man rehearsals (with the cast swapping colds like bunch of kindergartners), any boost I got from recharging my batteries two Fridays ago is long gone.

If only spring would come back. We had it here in Washington for almost a week, but then winter decided it still had a few things to say. Nothing as bad as my friends in Massachusetts and New York have been dealing with, but dreary enough all the same.

No time to worry about that now. Back to work for me, confident that a ray of sunshine is just around the corner.

Posted @ 9:57 AM

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Thursday, April 03, 2003

The 2003 NFL schedule is out today. Is it too early for me to make my Week 1 picks?

Just five months and one day until the NY Jets/Washington opener...

Posted @ 4:29 PM

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Over to your right you'll notice a new graphic, an image of a service flag. Years ago it was common practice for people to hang service flags in their windows during times of war. Each star on a flag indicated a family or organization member in the armed services.

I "hang" this flag in honor of my friend in the 3rd Infantry Division, the one I wrote about a few days back. Out of respect for his privacy and that of his family, I'm just going to call him Sarge.

I debated with myself a bit about whether or not it was proper for me to put up this display. I'm not blood, and while we were members of the same clubs off and on in our younger years, that hasn't been true in a long time. Nonetheless, I felt the strong need to make this statement, and with the blessing of Sarge's wife, I went ahead and put the image up yesterday.

You're in my thoughts every day, Sarge. Get your job done and hurry home.

Posted @ 11:37 AM

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Tuesday, April 01, 2003

Items I know are just April Fools' Day fun:

• the annual TeeVee prank


• Metafilter bought out by Google


• the new staff directory at my ex-roommate's office

Item I hope is just April Fools' Day fun:

• the Royal Shakespeare Company developing The Tempest as a video game (via The Morning News)

Posted @ 11:13 AM

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