So this is England, huh? Day One/Two

So apparently you're not supposed to order pancakes outside the United States, and nobody told me. The ones I got were certainly edible, fresh and fluffy and covered in blueberries, so I don't know what the fuss is about, but I still feel obligated to pass on that bit of advice. It seems when we go to war with a country we do introduce them to McDonald's, but thus far we have not passed on the elusive secret of making pancakes that don't suck (throw the first one away).

In other areas of human culture, this England place seems alright. My first day I spent dealing with jet lag, severe compression issues from fitting into an airline seat and riling up the seemingly demonically possessed nerves in my back and legs, and just really getting to know the newest member of my extended family, who unfortunately still regards me like he's thinking, "Mommy, why is the guy from The Hangover in our house?" So today I got to spend some quality time wandering about and just getting the feel of the place, before catching a bit of culture in the National Gallery (apparently Titian has started painting again or something) and the surprisingly interesting National Portrait Gallery. It seems obvious in retrospect, but it honestly never occurred to me how much I would love such a place, despite my constant visual fascination with random people, like the guy in my sister's favorite breakfast nook who looked just like Stephen Yoakam (the actor, not the country singer). And no, it wasn't actually Stephen Yoakam unless he suddenly became an English builder and started wearing dusty jumpsuits, and... well, you know when certain British men look really sophisticated and statesmanlike but then they start talking in this high, squeaky cartoon character voice with no consonants besides F's and Y's? Yeah, it wasn't Stephen Yoakam. But the portrait gallery was really interesting, from beknighted actors (Dame Judi and Sir Ian) to fiancees who agreed to come over and pose naked to aged aunts... who also agreed to come over and pose naked... interesting stuff.

But the best thing today was getting to see The Globe, which I will profess is a special place, even though I certainly had my doubts. I'm not big on nostalgia and the weight of the past, and I rarely let it all in about "hallowed ground" preferring to let things be built in the moment, but this one really did get to me, partly because it isn't what it claims to be. It's not the theater of Shakespeare, where the Bard himself once trod the boards, and it could so easily be a kitschy museum piece turned into a theme park for tourists, some deadly throwback straight out of Vegas or Epcot, but it's not. Recreating the old wooden theater with uncomfortable benches, interrupted by rain and pigeons and the roar of jet engines as life goes on in the city brought forward the spirit of the theater, not just the bones, the spirit of this place just across the river where stories came to life in dangerous ways and the armies who clashed at Agincourt could come alive and squeeze into this tiny wooden O.

Twenty minutes before showtime I was standing outside looking at the muddy river and downing this fantastically earthy garlic smoked cheeseburger in the fading rain, but then I never had to go back inside. I didn't have to leave my real world, senses and belly all filled, in order to enter theirs. Musicians came out and started playing until they'd fought hard enough for our attention to begin, which seems like the dirty secret of the opening of every Shakespearean play: he knew somebody was going to be talking the first few words, if not more, so nothing was presented to a darkened, hushed audience collected into a single receptive body. The sun was shining, people were making out, a couple wide-eyed nerdy girls had their chins raptly thrust onto the lip of the stage, and we were all together in that space. My boss's boss's (boss's) boss talks about how he won't do Shakespeare in Elizabethan era regalia, tights and wooden sets because it all looks like something pulled out of a museum, and it's dead. Peter Brook talks about the Deadly Theatre as the laborious recreation of an image of something we all agree theater used to be, or is supposed to be, assembled rather than born. This was the opposite: alive and awake to the world, and refusing to play dead. Only this time around instead of boys playing ladies, it seems ladies now play boys.

A final note about English cuisine as I've experienced it so far: there's really a lot of meat going on. Some of that is the insistence by my friends and family that if there's L'Entrecôte to be had in town, we must go. (I've now gone in three countries on two continents.) And the garlic smoked cheeseburgers at the Globe really are good, maybe not £6 good, but good. But a side of bacon turned to be like, a SIDE of bacon, and I really thought there might be something else in a meat pie, like some vegetables or something. On the other hand, my brother-in-law's pub makes a really nice onion soup... won't find at the Onion Garden (ironically). And who am I kidding, I'm tempted to buy a groundling ticket just to go back and have another garlic-smoked cheeseburger.

Next: How to Celebrate the 4th of July in England Without Anyone Beating the Star Spangled Bejeezus Out of You

Top 10 Reasons I've Been Out of Work For 3 Months

10. Back in October I ate a Grumpy's meatloaf sandwich, and I only recently came out of the coma.

9. With the snow and ice making it hard for me to take my bike out, I tried taking an MTC bus somewhere. Just a few more blocks to my destination and about 1800 stops where people need to negotiate the route with the driver like it's a damn tuk-tuk.

8. I decided to shave my beard off and I couldn't remember how, so it's been taking a while.

7. Too busy writing Collateralized Debt Obligation: the Rock Opera.

6. I drank a potion that unleashed my dreadful alter ego, Edward Hyde, resulting in a maelstrom of mischief and a lot of missed days at work, because that guy never clocks in. (Actually I should use this excuse to explain my behavior more often.)

5. I wanted to feel what it was like to be an aging suburban hipster, so I thought I'd start with breakfast at Hell's Kitchen. I didn't want to leave because I'm sure any day now my table will be ready.

4. An Impinged nerve in my back prevented me from sitting and standing, and the theater has a tragic shortage of hammocks. This one's actually true.

3. I was tragically paralyzed by obsession with Japanese number puzzles. Actually this one's kind of true too, if anybody wants to stage an intervention and delete the KenKen app off my phone.

2. I can't focus on anything until I finish work on my Batcave style lair, so I can once again return to prowling the streets as the masked crime fighter Quirinus. If Phoenix Jones can run around pepper-spraying people until they're bright orange and choking, why can't I?

1. Way too busy trying to think of a 10th joke for this stupid list.

Zebras 103, Wolves 101

My experience with the Wolves the last few years did prepare me for one thing: I went in knowing the Wolves would lose. And with two minutes to go I knew  Dwayne Wade was going to come up with a clutch shot to kill us and nobody on the Wolves was going to stop him. So my Timberwolves negativity wasn't entirely unwarranted. But despite that little my reward to my pessimism, the Wolves did also provide evidence that things may have changed.

Pessimism does come easily to me right now after the increasing frustrations of the last few months, so I expected a few things besides a Wolves loss. For one, I thought they'd get massacred by Dwayne Wade and his two friends, and where the '08 Wolves are fondly remembered because they'd put up an entertaining fight until opponents turned up the intensity in the 4th quarter, I figured this game would see the Heat up by 30 and clearing the end of the bench by the half. Imagine my surprise when the Wolves were actually leading the game at halftime, and forced a complete game effort by Miami's superstars. I also thought Lebron James would beat Michael Beasley like a rented mule and then chew his way through the rest of the Wolves collection of tweener forwards like the cast of Alien. I wasn't totally wrong on that one since Beasley doesn't have the quickness to stay in front of Lebron (who finished with 34 points and two rebounds short of a triple double) but it wasn't nearly the sad spectacle I was expecting. And to be fair, stopping Lebron is harder than dubbing a Nicholas Cage movie into Cantonese: if the guy had any heart he'd be the best player in the league.

The A-Team meets Leverage

The A-Team is gone...

The A-Team loomed large in my childhood. They were larger than life characters, living these impossible lives and somehow juggling an impossible number of projects, personal and charitable. And given the Boomer mania for remaking old properties, it seemed inevitable that at least some production company would think if they could find them, maybe they could hire... the A-Team.

It was hard to imagine anybody making that work since those characters are so firmly bound in a particular time and place, and a much broader, comic-book kind of storytelling than you would get away with today. Silliness certainly still abounds on television (rolling my eyes at NCIS Los Angeles is a guilty pleasure) but these shows all take themselves deathly seriously, try to ground every detail and populate themselves entirely with world-weary veterans and doe-eyed trainees with harsh lessons ahead of them. There are certainly echoes out there of George Peppard's cigar-chomping grin and his enigmatic confidence, but Dirk Benedict wrote a scathing commentary on the timidity of producers and certain flavors of feminism meaning his signature characters were gone forever (Katee Sackhoff says he was less of a dick about it in person), and it seems clear: Mr. T is the only actor alive who could wear 50 lbs of gold jewelry and still be so intimidating as to frighten away even the barest trace of a smirk.

On Moneyball

To answer the question I keep being asked, no, I'm not excited about a movie coming out named Moneyball, despite the two giant moneyballs sitting in my living room (crappy State Fair prizes). Because I know what it's about.

Back when I first read Moneyball, I was in the middle of some kind of binge of books on sports and serial killers, two subjects which actually have a frightening amount of overlap. Both turned out to be largely about men so fixated on one idea they would go to any extreme to appease their demons, and I don't know if I'd prefer being locked in a room with a serial killer or with Mike Agassi and Peter Graf. However in this sea of vivid characters, Moneyball left me cold, for several reasons.

Can I talk myself into Wolves tickets again?

Once again I’ve reached that part of the year where I try to talk myself into the idea that the Timberwolves might be watchable again, after the muddled, unmotivated mess they’ve been for the past couple years, and I've decided to write it all down this year. The Wolves went into the off-season with five ways to improve: Europe, our draft picks, the David Kahn trade blender, seasoning players, and maybe looking like they have a plan.

Europe
Especially since the end of the McHale era, the Wolves have finally started to clue in to the idea that basketball is played on more than one continent, and that second round scouting doesn’t have to be limited to watching a few Big 10 games. Consequently the Wolves have a couple players under contract in Europe, although I can’t say their first big European import (Pekovic) has been all that impressive. But now they have Ricky Rubio, the young Spanish point guard with a silly haircut, coming over to play. Two years ago he was a future phenom who refused to play in a backwater like Minnesota, but growing up a bit and having a bad World Championships seems to have tempered his attitude. Adding a potential future all-star could certainly help make the Wolves watchable again.
Plus: Ricky Rubio

On Singapore Cabs

A quick note about cabs in Singapore: they're cheap but they're weird. I've never met people so averse to earning a fare or keeping a tip as Singapore cabbies, who will quickly dig out and insistently thrust a 10 cent coin at you if you pay your S$9.90 fair with a tenner. The no-tipping policy is culture shock, but the thing that kills me is the unintended consequence of regulation that makes it impossible to find a cab: if you call for a cab in this country they slap an extra S$2 on the fare, so they all lurk around the corner of major destinations waiting for a call. Last night this provided the second of two Singapore cab absurdities as Amstelbooij and I stood outside a restaurant looking at two cabs parked across the street, unwilling to come over and pick us up until they were dispatched... I still can't figure out how these people make money when they spend so much time ducking fares hoping for a dispatch, trying to make sure they get back to the garage just as their shift ends, or my favorite: pulling over for half an hour before sundown and refusing fares because they can charge an extra 50 cents at night. So basically hailing a cab here is harder than dubbing a Nicholas Cage movie into Cantonese, and half of the guys with their lights on are carrying passengers off the books anyways, so it's a mystery how the cab companies stay in business at all.

Singapore Diary - Into Orchard Road, or Who's Afraid of Rice?

I thought it was worth taking a day to just chill with friends I haven't seen since last summer, and to see a day in the life of a people who live here, dropping the kid off at his Chinese speaking preschool and hitting Orchard Road for a bit of shopping, which turns out to be the primary purpose of this city. Every building in this cluster of urban malls boasts a designer name over its entrances and promises a hyperactive food court, and Singapore seems to be jam-packed with every conceivable dining option.

I'm told it's entirely possible to live here permanently without ever sampling any Asian food, but after five minutes in the Lucky Plaza food court I cannot conceive of why you would want to live like that... and this is coming from my Irish-Scandinavian palate that finds mashed potatoes on the spicy side. On top of that, the sticker shock on western food definitely made me gasp as I discovered buying a bit of yogurt that I usually buy for 60 cents in Minnesota: 5.15 in Sing dollars, or over $4 US. My friends tell me everything is that expensive, but the Thai food (with watermelon juice) Lian bought me for lunch was about $6 US and lick-the-plate delicious, so I can't help but wonder if there's just a hardcore Ang Mo upcharge biting everyone who won't go native, demands their imported European cheeses and won't try the Chinese equivalent of Cheerios (on clearance at $10 a box).

Best thing so far I can't find in America: these weird little rice pucks my friend Lian offered me for breakfast, covered with some sort of fried onion like vegetable we haven't identified in English. It's just rice cooked together into a cohesive mass with a texture somewhere between a fried egg white and mashed potatoes, just an unintrusive little bit of starch ready to accept any flavor on top of it... and yet I know people who still won't eat it. I mean honestly, who's afraid of rice?

Tomorrow: A Walk Through Chinatown (and possibly a sliver of Belgium)?

Singapore Diary - The Day I Spent in the Air

Door to door in just over 24 hours: not that bad for going to the exact opposite side of the planet. (Suck on that, Magellan.) Our shuttered and darkened 747 chased the sun all the way across the pacific, finally letting it escape over the horizon when my Minnesota watch told me it was past midnight. This wasn't an overnight flight and it was barely approaching dusk in Tokyo so nobody really needed to sleep, and the whole purpose of darkening the plane was just to let people squint through the static of our ancient projection TV at the least appealing line-up of movies I've ever seen on a plane... is it bad when one movie doesn't even have a description in the in-flight magazine, like Delta knows the passengers would just panic and flee down the big yellow slide if they knew what entertainment hell awaited them?

I did try to pack reading material with some weight to it, but as always the more ambitious titles in my reading list served as inspiration to read something a bit more skimmable: I let Tristan Egolf's Faulkneresque first novel Lord of the Barnyard and Yasmin Reza's God of Carnage script sink to the bottom of my bag so I could for Rick Castle's Naked Heat... yes, I read a book by a fictional TV author and still felt intellectually superior for not giggling along to Little Fockers with the rest of the plebians in my cattle car. And I just recently discovered reading books fictional authors is not an entirely new thing for me, having read Kilgore Trout's Venus on the Half Shell back in high school without being able to place the author as a creation of the mind of Kurt Vonnegut. (Bizarrely it appears Trout's one published novel was actually written by Philip Jose Farmer and not by Vonnegut. There's got to be a story there somewhere.)

I feel like I did accomplish one more bit of business and didn't let a whole day go to waste by scrambling to find the single, solitary sushi place in Narita airport (I know like 4 downtown Minneapolis: catch up, Japan) Figuring I had no time to waste on translation and pointing I mumbled out the Japanese names of fish I could remember only to have the spritely Japanese girl at the takeaway window ask me in perfect English if I wanted my octopus boiled or fresh. Fresh is generally a good word when you're talking fish, so I went with that only belatedly realizing the way I usually get tako in the states was cold but obviously precooked... fortunately the mouthful I swallowed down before running onto my plane was delicious; I'm sorry I doubted you slimy airport cuisine, Japan. Now I've got to convince somebody in Minnesota to serve it to me that way.

I did earn my nickname of AMG (Angriest Man at the Guthrie) by getting wound up over the smallest grievances, so naturally I assumed riding for 24 hours in 40 year old airplanes with tiny rock-hard little Asian-friendly seats featuring the original upholstery from 1972 would have kicked my ass. Surprisingly it wasn't so bad; my least favorite thing about flying is turbulence, and our pilots kept warning us about storms and turbulence and preparing for difficult descents... but approaching Narita I started grumbling to myself , “Alright, let's start our descent already and get it over with,” only to feel the wheels gently hit the ground a second later. I really couldn't ask for it to go any easier, unless I got one of those weird pod seats they had for first class on the 777 I took from Narita. Seriously, they're these retro-modern bathtub like enclosures all set at a 45-degree angle to the aisles, straight out of 60's sci-fi... even the first class passengers all looked vaguely embarrassed to be sitting in them.

With only a couple hours of sleep crossing an ocean of restless discomfort I had to wonder why I was so mellow, and sort of almost enjoying the myriad little challenges of alternately racing through airports and trying keeping my butt from going to sleep, and somewhere over the South China Sea it finally hit me. Everything I care about is on the other side of thousands of miles of rock and molten nickel-iron, looking at different stars. The job, the theater, the people I love and the women I can't figure out (often one and the same) are two days away. All I've got are a whole new world to explore and a couple friends who for some reason always let me into their home. Everybody else can worry about themselves for a while, I'll be lost in Chinatown.

And lost is the right word: I know I'm not the best traveler in the world, for instance it didn't occur to me until I was trying to fill out immigration forms that I had no idea of the address where I was staying. This of course was not at all awkward entering a country where customs has the death penalty... I don't do drugs much less smuggle them over international borders, but every once in a while I do take this potion that makes me black out and turn into a completely different person, free of moral responsibility and social accountability, and to my shame it appears Mr. Hyde did slip something intolerable to Singapore's clean society into my luggage and made me smuggle it into the country. And man, when I step on this chewing gum and sell it on the Singapore Mafia's turf, there's going to be hell to pay (the S.M. are the baddest motherfuckers who always still remember to say please and thank you). So wish me luck.

Timberwolves acquire Eddy Curry's penis

The Timberwolves basically got involved as a middle-man in the long-rumored Carmelo to New York  trade, notably giving up Corey Brewer to acquire Anthony Randolph and possibly include Eddy Curry’s penis as part of the worst half-time promotion ever. The Wolves involvement does have me asking myself a few questions about the team and its strategy so this goes on for a bit, but feel free to skip to the end if you just want to know why I keep bringing up Eddy Curry’s penis.

Question #1: Is David Khan an idiot, or does he have a plan?

I don’t think David Khan has a vision for what this team is going to be, but I do think he has a plan. And that plan is to basically get his owner through the impending lock-out. Immediately before the last lock-out the Wolves handed Kevin Garnett the biggest contract in the history of team sports and when the new collective bargaining agreement introduced a maximum figure for contracts it made the Wolves one of only four teams stuck with a crippling mega-contract. That contract, along with the need to at least try and negotiate contract extensions or trades for both Marbury and Gugliotta before they could turn to any other business, absolutely killed the Wolves, and the ensuing years of paralysis all go back to that contract and the fall-out of decisions made in that shortened post-lockout off- season.

How I survived the Great Blizzard of 2010

When they canceled the buses and it appeared there was no way out of Uptown, I wish I could say I was not afraid. It is only in facing the indifferent challenge of the wild places of this world that a man finds his character, and I decided in that moment, "No. I will not die here, today, on Lyndale Ave."

My first task was to use the only resource at hand, the drifting, blowing snow that stung my eyes and soaked my clothes, and turn my direst enemy into my dearest friend. I knew the blustering north wind would allow me little time to find shelter, so working as quickly as I could I was able to fashion snow into crude bricks and build a wall against the wind, and brick by brick, curve that makeshift wall into an igloo. The dire nature of my situation allowed only a brief rest for my aching muscles and a well-deserved hot chocolate from Bob's, before I once again returned to carving out the tiniest niche of survival from the cruel winter sky.

It would have been too easy to succumb to the temptation to sink into that wet, white embrace of the snowbank upon which I'd built the igloo that was to be my new home but I simply had to waterproof it, and there was only way to do it. I simply had to find a seal. I don't know how long I waited behind the shrubs of that deserted lawn, hoping the white snow drifting over my shoulders would help me blend into the landscape, and cursing the passing cars that were almost certainly spooking the wildlife, until I finally saw it.

Pacers 128-124 Timberwolves

I felt Target Center's security guard was disconcertingly thorough in searching my pants last night. She didn't find anything, because the only thing I carry that causes pain and sorrow isn't in my pockets. When I got inside I really wondered why she even bothered checking me for weapons, since I would have had to cross over two sections to find anybody to fight with. If all three stages are going, I honestly think the Guthrie could draw bigger crowds this winter.

The Timberwolves players also greeted me with the same disturbing sort of misdirected enthusiasm. Apparently the gameplan for the evening was to beat the Pacers by creating opportunities for 20 foot jump shots and playing defense by fouling. With all these career 30% 3-point shooters eager to prove their (lack of) range I kept wondering why Pekovic wasn't more involved, since he's been billed as the first banger the Wolves have ever had at center... when I checked the box score I understood. Due to a mixture of work, apathy, and friendly waitresses I came a bit late, and I missed out on seeing Pekovic foul out in 10 minutes. Sadly he doesn't play defense either. And incomprehensibly the Pacers couldn't take advantage... this mess went to overtime!

Three Words That Should Exist

Just spreading the health, man

This Monday after declining to shake hands with an actor I was jokingly accused of having hypochondria, which I thought was doubly unfair. For one thing I was obviously sick and not just fretting over the possibility, but more importantly the reason I don't touch actors when I'm sick is for their health, not mine... these are people who can't muddle through work with sore throats and a ghastly post-nasal drip. So is it still hypochondria when it's confined to an irrational concern for the health of other people? And a really particular group of people at that. I can't possibly start telling people I have a crippling case of xenohypothespichondria and then explain the whole thing, but it seems like there has to be some succinct way of putting it.

And situations do arise where a brief, natural explanation is necessary, like when I was working the stage door while sick a couple years ago, and I greeted a black actor I'd met previously at a reading. He extended his hand warmly in friendship, and my white guilt made me really afraid of a clumsy excuse to not shake his hand. If I could just spit out "I have xenohespichonthi..." well whatever my condition is called, it'd be much easier and I'd worry less that people thought I didn't want to touch their dirty hands. What me, paranoid?

What's with all the jumping between buildings?

I will try to avoid spoilers for Inception, Kick-Ass, and A Standing Long Jump... or at least keep them cryptic.

I've been kind of down recently. This is I'm sure a great surprise since normally I'm like a hooker in a bathtub: I have hope in my soul-- or however that goes. But it's true, I've been down. And I'm not usually a superstitious person unless I think it's funny for some reason, but I do sometimes get suspicious about the messages the universe is sending me... like when I keep seeing people jumping between buildings. Not really, thankfully, (because that would really depress the hell out of me, but it's been a surprisingly specific theme in the last month or so.

First there was A Standing Long Jump at this year's Fringe, starring a couple people I swear God put on earth to be watched in James Craven and Ali Dachis, and the magical Namir Smallwood. The standing long jump is a metaphor for those moments in life where one has to take the leap with someone, or see them pass out of our world forever. But the metaphor plays out in a couple of literal leaps from the roof of one building to another, knowing that at least somebody's going to fall short and plummet four stories to the alley below.

17 Things I Learned in 17 Shows at This Year's Fringe

1. Teachers do a lot more than run through the pages of a textbook. (Pardon My French!)

2. Joe Mauer is very forgiving. (Two Truths and a Lie)

3. Making a deal with the Devil will leave you smelling of rotten eggs. (The Damned Audition)

4. Ghosts are cool. (Rachel Teagle Believes in Ghosts)

5. Jack Chick is an underrated comic genius, even if he probably doesn't realize it. (The Jack Chick Plays)

6. Native Americans really are portrayed exactly like the mentally challenged. (Sad Carousel)

7. See You Next Tuesday is not a good last thing to say to somebody. (See You Next Tuesday)

8. Dancers are cool. (O(h))

9. Ikea is the new cruising spot. (Naked Yoga and Other Gay Love Stories)

10. Henry IV is the first Star Wars prequel. (Kill Will)

11. Taking your clothes off can be good for you. (Kathy Jensen is Pretty)

12. Cell phones are annoying. (That Sara Aziz!)

13. Whether you realize it or not, the world will keep moving forward in your absence, and you will never return to a place and time you've left behind. Also, chicken cacciatore is not always easy to come by. (Amaretti Angels)

14. Shel Silverstein is a dirty motherfucker. (An Adult Evening of Shel Silverstein)

15. Bowties are cool. Actually this one was from Doctor Who, but one of the 17 shows I saw had nothing to say about anything and I had to come up with something.

16. You may only get one chance to make the leap... don't miss it. (Standing Long Jump)

17. The glam rock, heavy mascara shredded everything look is coming back, or at least it should. (Garage Band)

Rufus Gets His Hair Cut (one show only)*

After letting my frighteningly agitated and sometimes violent friend Dewdrop cut my hair, I thought there should be a way to capture that drama, and there are certainly worse things being performed out there. So before next year I'll have to grow my hair back and my mountain man beard, and then at show time we'll put a few things in place: me, Dewdrop, a pair of scissors, a pair of clippers, a chair, a hand mirror, a roll of gauze, and a giant drop cloth.

Through the process of ever sillier haircuts and abstract chunks shaved out of my beard, and her attempts to sell me on her artistic vision mixed with threats to stab me with a pair of scissors, and my attempts to escape before things get worse will test our friendship and our will, as we each struggle to define our role and decide with what standard of grooming we will live or die. One performance only, since I will obviously have to grow my hair and beard back, and allow the probably quite painful scars to fade.

It might be terrible, but I guarantee a few good reviews for offering the audience a something real, which can't be reset and replicated for the evening show, which is one of the promises of live theater: the anxiety and the haircut will both be real. Now I just need a $50,000 grant to develop my script, and to finance all the shampoo and conditioner I'll need to use all year to prepare my mane.

(*-Kathy Jensen is Pretty and Rachel Teagle Believes in Ghosts have definitely sold me on the marketing value of putting my name up front. Also on the value of offering weird southern groceries as a promotion, but that's another story.)

"it’s strange to be here, the mystery never leaves you", Rosy Simas Danse at Bedlam

I’m generally a major skeptic of dance as an art form. I freely admit, I’ve seen some groups use movement as a critical part of a larger work but when it’s all about the dance I usually find myself wishing I’d sat closer to the door. (No joke, the last time I saw a dance show I seriously considered climbing down the back of the risers and sneaking out the fire escape.) I believe it’s an inherent flaw to the art form, that there’s just something about dance and musical theater that it way too easily turns into heavy handed pretention and repetition, high-strung divas so busy sniffing their own farts they miss that the restlessly bored audience got the whole point in the first three minutes... in short, keeping my attention with dance theater is harder than dubbing a Nicholas Cage movie into Cantonese*.

With that in mind, I have no idea what possessed me to hike down to Bedlam on Friday night for "it’s strange to be here, the mystery never leaves you", a new dance work presented by Rosy Simas Danse. Realistically even the dancers don’t want me there, scowling and jaded and about the worst audience member a dance company could ask for, grabbing a chair up front scowling and rolling my eyes. And after work I really wanted nothing more than to sink into my couch for the night, not shower, change clothes, and head back out into the damp washcloth of humidity this city has been all summer, but some instinct whispered “Go see something. Anything. Find some life somewhere tonight."

To my surprise, I loved it, and I couldn't take my eyes away (even for the cute baby dykes in matching knee-high ring socks sitting next to me). And here I really thought getting stuck with a front row seat was going to be a brutal exercise in forcing a smile and taping my eyelids open. As often seems to happen when people like me who are decidedly not dance aficionados see something we love, I can’t really find the words to explain what I saw in it or why it moved me about all three pieces of the show. I can say that the wet, naked finale in which several dancers gathered in a gentle downpour of water and then slid and spun around the slick stage was beautiful, and oddly reminded me every time I’ve tried to explain sports to art folks: sometimes in that sweaty, emotional celebration of the body you see something brilliant happen. So I may have been selling you short, dancers.

When I got out of the show it was that perfect moment as the heat of the day started to break, and I borrowed a free city bike and rode home with the buzz of that show still in my legs. Everything in the world seemed fresh and fragrant and calm, and I became aware of that paradoxically energized, lavender tranquility that I have spent fifteen fevered years searching for and found in only a few disconnected places, like watching the waves crash into the taiga on Selwyn lake, sweated into the sheets of a certain blonde, or the Baha’i temple in Evanston that seems suffused with it it’s left a purple vein flowing all the way back into the heart of the city… but as usual, I digress.

In short, I simply felt good walking out of the theater that night. And that’s why for all my endless whining, I keep crawling back to the big G, keep dragging myself kicking and screaming to shows when my eyelids and my legs are ready to come tumbling down… because sometimes you see something beautiful and it washes away the rest of the day.

Keep spinning, dancers... I hope we can see this work presented again.

*-He never opens his mouth!

Career Advice for Amstelbooij

The way I see it, you have three choices:

Singapore autumn
warm rain and money splashes
ladyboys blossom

Neon streetlights blinking
At night the city screams
a thousand diamond dreams
Christopher Street winking

There once was a banker from Gold Street
Who moved to Brooklyn but got cold feet
Fifteen dollars for the zoo!
I Can't believe it can you?
Now back in Chi walking his old beat
 
I think that pretty much sums it all up, don't you?

On Bikes and Pedicabs

I like the initiative behind providing free (sort of) bikes in Minneapolis, to try and make the place that much more liveable and get a few more cars off the roads. I can't say whether it will work and be sustainable, but after examining the pros and cons, I'm definitely a huge fan. And considering that the majority of the installation costs are paid and the machines seem to be solar powered, I would think it wouldn't take too much in fees to justify maintaining the system, although I wonder where they'll store all those bikes.But here's what I like about them:

The Last Mile
I don't know how many of the target market of downtown commuters will jump on these bikes, but it is great as an easy option to make a couple stops without having to walk miles in between or the achingly slow and disconnected mess that is our public transit system. Plus you don't have to sit next to that guy on the #14 line who just bought a new machete to cut people's hands off with (of all the people to accidentally make eye contact with, I just had to pick him). The frustration of transit does make me wish the system was expanded just a bit more, with a bike rental stand at each LRT station so you could hop the train to the right neighborhood and then take a bike to the Seward Co-op, the Smitten Kitten, Chris and Rob's or your favorite not quite on the transit map destination. It's much cheaper to add a bike kiosk to an under-served intersection than to re-route a bus line, and that's why I think it's a cool last mile solution. (Technically there's actually nothing stopping me from using my own bike for this purpose, but read on.)

Traveling Light, or the second most fun I've had in a cemetery

I really enjoyed this show, in which Theatre Pro Rata borrowed the Layman's Cemetery to stage a late night meeting between playwright Joe Orton and Beatles manager Brian Epstein in 1967 London, a few weeks before their ghastly deaths. For this one night, Epstein and Orton get to discuss art, sex, identity and clothes, and a taste of a world in flux as they argue, exchange clothes, and tangle with the police. It ties the deafening scream following the Beatles to beginning the decriminalization of homosexuality, and the larger and brighter world we find ourselves in when the violence of control is banished by the light. It achieved this best through WPC Foster laying bare the tragedy of Orton and Epstein's deaths, making me ache to see them finish what they'd started, plundering a sweet grave and birthing something beautiful with Orton's edge and Epstein's finesse, driven by the romantic power of the Beatles, and maybe also through the grotesque metaphor of the title.

But actually never mind about all that, that's not really the reason to go see it. Go see it because it's fun. Go see it because it's moving. Go see it because it's funny. Go see it because it just works.. putting so much dated counter-culture kitsch into one play, from the Beatles to swinging 60's London to nasty bathhouse humor to a gimmicky setting and the safe culture wars of a half century ago under the banner of the Sgt. Pepper's cover in most hands would make for a deathly tiresome masturbatory fantasy, but in this case playwright Lindsay Harris Friel and Theatre Pro Rata find the heart in all of it that drives the pulse of a bloody, sweaty breathing play. The kind of play that delights as it gently tugs on the creases of the brain, adding like a dream to our memories. It's the kind of show that makes me want to go home and write, until I remember I burned out long ago and I have nothing left to say.

So yeah, I liked it. Maybe it's just that the button-down chick with handcuffs in the graveyard was a deep scoop through the memories of another time in my life when I stood closest to love and art and death, so I hope others will try it and decide for themselves. I do recommend a bit of bug spray, and perhaps not drinking a liter of water then forgetting to scout out a bathroom beforehand... when I got out everything was closed, and by the time I caught my train home my back teeth were floating. (That may have been more information than anybody required.) And if you do take a chance, consider the worst case scenario is you have a cool hipster story about attending a show in the graveyard, right?*

More details and a study guide are available on Pro Rata's website:
http://www.theatreprorata.org/home.htm

*-Actually the worst case scenario would be my friend who may have gotten bit by a bat and may also be hallucinating the presence of a giant clown in her backseat, but I think it's still worth it.