This game certainly had an enormous swing of momentum from beginning to end, and over the course of four quarters the pendulum swung from the Vikings to the Ravens... ending up far away from nowhere, on its own like Tarzan Boy. In the first act of this rather tense drama, the Vikings struck quickly on the opening kick-off when Favre found tight end Visanthe Shiancoe slipping away from Ravens defenders, living in the open all alone like Tarzan boy. I always love the moment when the Vikings first score: a native beat that carries on, burning bright, a fire blows a signal to the sky as the crowd roars beneath the glow of fireworks shooting up the goalposts. After the defense stopped the Ravens cold, Favre connected with Sidney Rice emerging briefly from heavy coverage, a game of hide and seek while rushing across the forest, to put the Vikings up 14-0 just a few minutes into the game... monkey business on a sunny afternoon. Since Favre brought his leadership and gunslinger confidence to the Vikings, asking his teammates to "Take a chance, leave everything behind you, come and join me, won't be sorry, it's easy to survive," the difference in the offense is remarkable.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Monday, October 05, 2009
On Getting "Warm", an open letter to my friend with a broken furnace
The first hit is always free. Pretty soon they'll start talking about getting your stove working "just a bit better", and maybe cleaning your ducts, maybe a gas fireplace... you end up hauling a space heater and an extension cord with you everywhere, but at that point you're beyond caring what people think... your family give you these sad looks as you explain away your burned lips and hands that you're just trying to stay warm. At that point you might start getting secretive about it and start "hitting the pipe"... the water pipe that is, cranking up the hot water heater to scalding and just lingering in the steam with a bunch of horny bears (wait sorry that's a different story).
Eventually you know you've hit rock bottom when you're stealing people's catalytic converters and tapping your foot in the bathroom at the airport to buy just a few more cans of sterno. I quit cold turkey and had the whole furnace ripped out and I used the money to pay for a whole pile of blankets. Sometimes the old ways are best. Don't buy the hype about "getting warm", just because Hollywood portrays it as glamorous and normal. There's a reason our ancestors came to Minnesota, to stay free of the warm weather that has ruined every great civilization. I mean look at the whole Mediterranean, the Spanish Empire crumbled when they discovered the Caribbean and everybody just hit the beach, Carthage couldn't survive a single ski vacation in the Alps, Alexander's whole empire dissolved once the Greeks started lighting their cheese on fire (just to get it that little bit warmer), Rome was sacked by a bunch of proto-Vikings who were less concerned with keeping warm than keeping it real, Visigoth style. The Egyptians got it: when they were trying to stay cool wearing just a couple strips of white cotton that breathes and looks effortlessly sexy, they built the pyramids.
Shivering (and loving it),
Rufus
Eventually you know you've hit rock bottom when you're stealing people's catalytic converters and tapping your foot in the bathroom at the airport to buy just a few more cans of sterno. I quit cold turkey and had the whole furnace ripped out and I used the money to pay for a whole pile of blankets. Sometimes the old ways are best. Don't buy the hype about "getting warm", just because Hollywood portrays it as glamorous and normal. There's a reason our ancestors came to Minnesota, to stay free of the warm weather that has ruined every great civilization. I mean look at the whole Mediterranean, the Spanish Empire crumbled when they discovered the Caribbean and everybody just hit the beach, Carthage couldn't survive a single ski vacation in the Alps, Alexander's whole empire dissolved once the Greeks started lighting their cheese on fire (just to get it that little bit warmer), Rome was sacked by a bunch of proto-Vikings who were less concerned with keeping warm than keeping it real, Visigoth style. The Egyptians got it: when they were trying to stay cool wearing just a couple strips of white cotton that breathes and looks effortlessly sexy, they built the pyramids.
Shivering (and loving it),
Rufus
Sunday, October 04, 2009
King of Shadows
King of Shadows is a good show. Spooky and poignant, this play about a grad student collecting stories from street kids until she meets one with a story she can't handle is full of supernaturalism and mystery, but subtly uses them to tell a much smaller and yet more powerful tale about the failure of its protagonist to make real connections to other people, no matter how many ways she thinks she's reaching out. I hesitate to even tell more of the story, because I walked in the door cold knowing nothing about the play and loved that experience, because really the only reason I went is that its director is such an amiable guy I wanted to support his work. Also Pillsbury House Theatre offering free tickets to arts organizations really helped, so I hope I can pay them back a bit by spreading the word about this show.
I've seen Randy Reyes put in great performances on stage, and while I am in no way qualified to judge his work as a director it felt to me like he got everything there was to be had out of this script. In my mind the script falls short of greatness but still lands somewhere very good and very interesting, and this production does a very nice job artistically and technically of bringing everything good about it to life. I must admit I've found it curiously difficult to judge some works when they're fresh in my mind, needing instead to find what still resonates in my head and my heart weeks and months later, like Marco picking up the chair or the journey to the City of Bones. I really liked Catherine Johnson Justice in what I would think has to be a difficult part, anchoring a play with a central character long on cold, abrasive edges and short on charm besides what the actress brings to the role. It is also somewhat gratifying to see new plays with a very different gender balance than a lot of older work.
I definitely recommend King of Shadows (or I would be if anybody was actually reading this) and in this case I'm not just shilling, because I really don't know anybody involved in this production beyond the occasional awkward wave in the hallway... I think if you offered Randy $10,000 for his next show if he could come up with my name within 3 tries his guesses would be "Gaius", "Rumplestiltskin" and "Mmmwhahamarumph... you heard me! Now where's my money?" Anyways, it's hard to beat getting a nice dose of culture and rich conversational material in such an intimate setting as Pillsbury House for $20 or less, and PHT seems to have quite a lot of options for getting into their show even cheaper like Wednesday pay what you can performances, and today I even got a parking place right in front of the theater, so really what excuse do you have? Seriously, even the cookies on sale at intermission were good.
King of Shadows
Oct 2 - Nov 1
Pillsbury House Theatre
3501 Chicago Ave S
As a post-script, it is funny how art ties together and the same themes come up in different works by different artists... as I sat in the theater waiting for the show to start I read the end of Dan Simmons' novella “Looking for Kelly Dahl” about the violent end to a teacher's failure to for all his good intentions to make a difference to the student who needed him the most, and the last show I saw was Jon Ferguson's new play Supermonkey, about a doorman's string of brief interactions with his tenants and his attempts to nurture them into something more meaningful (“Fruit plate!”) I wonder how much these other works affected the way I took in King of Shadows... fortunately I think I managed to tune out entirely the resemblance of one of the characters to the gay hustler with full-body tourette's from Crank 2: High Voltage (the least artistically redeeming work I've seen this year... seriously “Streethawk” was better).
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