hulu will end me: SOLITARY

Annie said: "You have to watch this show. It's nuts."

I had never heard of the TV program SOLITARY. It was one of the flagship creations for the Fox Reality Network in 2006 (there's a Fox Reality Network?). SOLITARY is like SURVIVOR meets the movies CUBE and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Nine people locked in individual "pods" who compete against each other in physical and mental "treatments". They don't see or hear how the other people are faring in the competition, and each "treatment" continues until someone quits (or vomits -- that's considered a quit). Their only companion is "VAL", the computer/torturer. It's a reality show for Sci-Fi geeks and lovers of dystopian futures where computers have enslaved humans. Watching too many episodes of this show in a row will mess you up. It's the sort of show that people point to when they want to prove that reality television is Satan. Both seasons are available, in full, free of charge and with limited commercial interruption on Hulu. Needless to say, it's awesome to the max!

http://www.hulu.com/solitary

P.S to Annie: you are a bad, bad influence.

A wine rack... a wine rack. I don't even own *a* bottle of wine, let alone many bottles of wine that would necessitate an entire rack.

I store my juggling clubs in my wine rack. I spread the clubs out in the rack to make it look more full.

When I lived with Charlie, he had a set of clubs and it looked like we owned a wine rack specifically to store our juggling equipment. On top, I keep my emergency pair of Glow-Stick glow-in-the-dark eyeglasses, just in case I get invited to a rave and can't find my Glow-Stick contacts. The mouse trap is in the upper right corner. No evidence of the mouse in weeks. I've taken the food-bait out of it so I don't attract bugs. It's baited with nothing. That's right: nothing. Fingers crossed the mouse has a bad day and just decides to kill himself.

(*bonus points if you know the movie and/or quote that inspired this post title.)

warning! you just bought hot pockets!

chicago bridges go up and down / up and down / up and down

I have a nice view of the Michigan Ave bridge from my office. Every once and a while, the bridge goes up to let tall boats through. Cars and pedestrians line up and wait to cross. When the bridge goes down, the large crowds of pedestrians storm across the bridge from either side. It looks like two advancing battalions preparing to fight in the middle of the bridge. They never do.

daily lit

Here's a website that will e-mail you books in serialized form: http://www.dailylit.com/index

A lot of the books are free. Each e-mail takes about 5 minutes to read. I've always wanted to treat Wuthering Heights like spam mail.

since 99% of the (questionable) funny on this blog is sCATological anyway

more cat pictures

boozycookies

I used to bartend here. You RedEye readers see their ads. Super "Bowl" Sunday Specials! $4 MGD! All-you-can-bowl for 15 minutes! What a deal! I hated working there. It was soul-crushingly corporate and it wasn't a money bartending gig. A lotta shit for little return. I guess that's most jobs, but bartending still has a romantic appeal. Control of the booze = power. But I also had to stuff olives with bleu cheese. I fucking hate bleu cheese olives. How do people eat those without throwing up? If I accidentally swallow a poisonous cleaning product and need to induce vomiting, skip the syrup of ipicac and give me a bleu cheese olive. I'll be yacking on my shoes in 3 seconds. Anyway, by the time I stuffed the one-millionth olive with butt-tasting bleu cheese, I was all: "eff this s, I quit. Pah-eeeace." And thus concludeth my professional bartending career.

I enjoy making martinis (without olives) and, yesfine, drinking martinis. The chocolate chip cookie martini is mind-blowingly decadent, a little something for the alcoholic child in everybody. It ain't cheap to do it up right. You're gonna have to hit Binny's and grab a bottle of Just Desserts - Chocolate Chip Cookie Cream Liqueur. Grab a bottle of Godiva Chocolate Liqueur and also a nice vanilla vodka -- Stoli, Absolut, big spenders'll toss a Grey Goose in the basket -- get anything except Smirnoff vanilla. I don't care if it's on sale. Do you want to do this right or not?

I KNOW you chilled your martini glass, right? Sweet jesus, okay, run that thing under the tap and stick it in the freezer for 20 minutes. If you're in a rush you can poor man's chill it with ice water, but c'mon. Once you're chill, you need chocolate syrup to swirl in the martini glass. Put your syrup in a squeeze bottle with a thin tip and refridgerate it -- makes the swirl-line nice and thin and it won't run down the side like a mofo. A chocolate mofo.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Martini
2 oz. Vanilla Vodka
1 oz. Chocolate Chip Cookie Liqueur
1 oz. Godiva Liqueur

Shake-a-shake-a-shake-a in a cocktail shaker. Not too much. You ever see a bartender shake a drink for a million years? Tell em to knock that shit out cause they're watering it down. A martini is like a crying baby. You want to shake it just enough to get it to stop crying, but not so much that, uhhhh, you know what, nevermind. Pour your martini in your chilled and chocolate-swirled glass. It should look real nice. I wish I had a picture. I don't. Drink, enjoy. It's super sweet. Your teeth's gonna fall out of your head. That's part of the fun.

Epilogue: Need a place to kill that bottle of vanilla vodka? Vanilla vodka + Orange Crush = Creamsicle. You're welcome.

top 10 iTunes

I'm lazy about updating my iTunes library. A lot of the music on my iPod is from CDs I checked out from the Wilmette Public Library when I was house-sitting for my parents in February 2007. I'm not sure the top 10 most played songs is representative of my musical taste, but there is no denying that these are the songs I happen to skip to if I'm waiting for the train.

1. Lake Shore Drive - Aliotta Haynes Jermiah. I wish I had experienced Chicago in the 1970s, if only to understand why my parents think I'll be shot anytime I tell them I'm meeting friends in Wicker Park.
2. She Took a Lot of Pills (And Died) - Robbie Fulks. One of these days I'll come up with a title as great as the title of this song.
   
3. Van Helsing Boom Box - Man Man. I'll flip to this song when the clouds turn grey and I fear I will be struck by lightning because I'm listening to my lightning rod iPod.
4. Without Love - Hairspray (2007 Movie Soundtrack) I LOVE THIS SONG AND MOVIE AND ZAC EFRON AND ALSO THE 1989 MOVIE AND BROADWAY MUSICAL SO SHUT UP!!!1!!1!!!.
5. King Twist - Hazel. This song opened the Steppenwolf production of The Butcher of Baraboo.
6. Lollipop - MIKA. Was on Charlie's iPod boombox during the marathon weekend painting and building the Killing Women set last summer and I couldn't shake it cuz it's all hippity pop bippity bop.
7. Now and Then There's (A Fool Such As I) - Elvis Presley. Elvis doing Hank Snow's country tune, and there's a fool such as I for this country ditty.
8. Opus 17 (Don't You Worry 'Bout Me) -Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons - my favorite Four Seasons song can beat up your favorite Four Seasons song.
   
9. I Gotta Get Drunk - The Little Willies. Norah Jones leads a second song about substance abuse in my top 10!
10. Sure Shot - Beastie Boys. If I'm doing something totally mundane while listening to this song, like pulling a bottled Frapuccino out of the 7-11 fridge, it makes me feel a little more bad-ass.
    

actors!

I love actors. I love 'em. Unless they are assholes. But sometimes asshole actors are good actors and that's annoying. Otherwise, yes, I love actors. I've been fortunate to work with many good actors who are remarkably asshole free if you don't consider their anatomical asshole, which I don't, 'cause everybody has one of those. Is it hero worship? Maaaaybe. I've acted (a little) and I know I can never be a capital letters ACTOR. I don't got the chops or rib-cracking open heartedness or balls or guts or courage. Don't gots the skillz to pay those billz yo. That acting shit's difficult! If you are an actor who serves the play well with your energy and talent, the playwright may want to hug you and kiss you and perhaps do consensual things with you. Who knows. Time Out Chicago had a nice feature on actors, talented men and women you may have encountered if you dip your toes in the Chicago theatre pool every now and then. Michael Patrick Thornton's performance in The Good Thief was kinda - well - great. Can I explain to you why? I can't. Not really, not if you didn't experience it. The nature of thea-tuh. One and done. Pow.

I think about actors when I show up for the first few rehearsals for one of my plays, when their business becomes my business. This weekend I sat in on the first few table readings of Psalms of a Questionable Nature. I'm excited about the group of people working on it. Table readings are high-wire acts of discovery (actors) and restraint (playwrights) and discovery and restraint (actors and playwrights). Could I act my play better than them? Ha ha no. Uhh no. I want to be as helpful as I can and there's a fine-line-high-wire: feel it cutting the arch of the foot and have faith the actors will find that moment. They'll make those discoveries. If it's in the text, it will be found by actors and directors and designers and audience.

on wine

I bought a bottle of cabernet sauvignon called Funky Llama because it was called Funky Llama. Here are other wines I've bought based on their names: Side Show, Red Bicycle, (something) Penguin something I don't know. I'm not a wine connoisseur. I'll be happy so long as it doesn't taste like llama ass. I don't know what llama ass tastes like. I guess I'll be happy no matter what.

revisiting the rooms you once called home

On Saturday, I attended a designer meeting for Rivendell Theatre’s production of Psalms of a Questionable Nature which will be going into rehearsal in a couple weeks. The decision to produce this play was relatively last-minute; a confluence of circumstance, really. There are a few writing issues I left for when/if the thing is produced again. Nagging little things I would get to in the event of a next time. I am often unprepared when next time becomes right now. How it goes: I’m done and I dust my hands and the sod is years growing on the burial plot. Then years later the phone rings and a voice says: “yeah, your play? Has risen from the dead and would like to talk to you.” Oh, jesus, okay, put her on. Hello? I’m in the middle of other writing – can we – no? You need to talk now. Okay. Go ahead. (checks watch) Uh huh. Uh huh.

[back when I didn't carry my laptop everyfuckingwhere]

So you can always (or almost always) rewrite if someone wants to produce the play again. It’s an opportunity (or curse), part of the fun (or headache). The parentheticals get out of hand. (Clearly). You move on and become a different person and a better writer. Or maybe it’s a better person and a different writer? Or maybe you’re a few years older, a little brain damaged, and you live dangerously close to a liquor store. Once you have left a script behind, going back to it becomes a cold, clinical assessment. You are an editor on a script written by a person who just happens to have the same name as you. Then, on a beautiful Saturday, you find yourself sitting in a room with people who are talking about the play in the present tense and you can’t remember why or how you wrote this line or made that choice or what you were thinking and now you feel caught in a time-loop.

Doing what I can to get my brain back into the world of Psalms. Going back to some sources of inspiration. Tin Hat Trio’s album Helium. Richard Selzer’s essay “How To Build A Slaughterhouse” in his book Taking The World In For Repairs. Some new photos – unearthed by the design team looking for their own source of inspiration: http://www.oboylephoto.com/chemistry_lab/index.htm

I hate the phrase "word of mouth" cause where else are words gonna come from? My butt? Don't answer that

I saw "Speech & Debate" now in previews at American Theatre Company. Sarah K texted "I have an extra comp" which are the sweetest words next to "open bar." The production puts the italics in well cast. And if I have some self-recognition in the character of the awkward girl/blogger/theatre dork SO BE IT. I don't laugh at anything ever, and the show made me laugh a little bit. I guess that's reason enough to recommend it.

why are we clapping? oh right. nostalgia

I saw Jersey Boys the other night. A long-standing Wegrzyn Family outing. I got down to the Loop early and plopped myself at the bar at Miller's Pub, but then I had to chug my beer after getting call from my sister saying they had my ticket and they couldn't go into the theatre without me and finish your beer and get over to the theatre so they didn't have to keep standing outside dammit. I don't recommend chugging beer before a show. So I enjoyed the Jersey Boys, but pretty much everybody else had a religious, toe-tapping experience. When people were singing along to one of the first numbers I thought: this is going to be a long night. My favorite part was the post curtain call auction at the end of the show. It was the company's last night shilling for Broadway Cares, and they auctioned off some prop sheet music signed by Frankie Valli. There was a bidding war between a dude on the main floor and an excitable chick way up in the balcony. I'm not sure where her money was coming from if she was up in the cheap seats, but it was probably her 20th time seeing the show. In the end, two sheets of autographed music went for $1900 apiece. People with disposable income baffle me.

mouse update 2 / inflatable dancing man

Look, mouse. Die in my freaking trap or leave a note telling me you will not be coming back. I demand closure.

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My favorite inflatable gimmick is the dancing tube-man I see on the roof car dealerships and mattress stores. I like them more than inflatable purple gorillas or inflatable rats that show up at union protests. The inflatable dancing tube man is hypnotizing and delightful. Pure motion. Life. I want to dance with whimsical abandon, move to the breeze, limbs flailing, forgetting yesterday, not thinking about tomorrow, just being right now. I want to be inflatable tube man. However, I do not want an air-tube up my ass. Please enjoy this inflatable dancing tube-man rocking to Cream's "Glad."