On Nazis, Skinheads, and the Dichterliebe

Q. What's green and flies over Germany?

A. Snotzis

I have to admit a lot of Nazis and skinheads kept popping up in my recent art and entertainment choices, and it's really left me in the mood for some light, happy escapist fare, but I couldn't help but be a little shaken tonight by some of the other recurrent threads in three films and plays about skinheads, Nazis and classical music, and the sensation of being numbly set adrift in icy cold water that is pervasive to all films about skinheads.

I've seen four that are worth a mention: Romper Stomper, American History X, The Believer and This is England, and without a doubt the strangest is The Believer. Ryan Gosling has this uncanny knack for rising way above the material, and there are some serious flaws to this film's aimless plot, its "incest andS&M sex kitten who wants to learn Hebrew" subplot, and above all its cop-out ending, but Goslingdoes a lot with the film's bizarre premise: a Jewish skinhead. The bitterness in Gosling's Danny Balint and the furious preoccupation with Jewish history and theology that twists into a strangely reverent loathing is absolutely fascinating, and the fact that Gosling is able to express all that internal conflict while retaining a cohesive performance is amazing.

I've raved at length elsewhere about the last Shane Meadows film I saw (Dead Man's Shoes) but I couldn't help but feel that there was something missing from last year's This is England. The performances of both films have this stark, genuine quality like Meadows went back to 1983 and followed some kids around with a camera and filmed them from the bushes without them noticing, making it a subtly powerful film. I couldn't shake a certain feeling of inevitability, as the film had to follow the same well-worn arc of every other skinhead film I've ever seen, and that left This is England somewhere just short of brilliant, but very much worth watching.

It did leave me pondering the lost children who become the monsters of these films, and the degree to which I find myself sinking into that same feeling of alienation recently, since I don't know what I'll be doing with my days in a few weeks. For that reason the way that feeling drifts like a fog out of every scene in This is England shook me so much, I took a walk down ironically deserted street where all the restaurants pull in their sidewalks on Sunday night, the pleasant chill of October mixing with a craving for pizza and deep melancholy.

It was an odd confluence of films, randomly popping up in my Netflix queue, when there's an amazing show playing at the Guthrie set in 1986 Vienna about a young American pianist who's lost his touch studying with an eccentric Austrian professor. Old Wicked Songs explores the same idea of putting on a costume to declare to the world who you are, with the hope that you can find that identity within yourself and fill out the costume. The play is set on the eve of Kurt Waldheim's election and so stirs up the legacy of Nazism in Ostereich, while most of the populace continues to bury their heads in the sand. I hate to describe too much of this play given the innocent seduction of the audience in the early scenes, but it's about wearing the clothes of a pianist, of a Jew, or of a Nazi, and finding that this may only magnfies the emptiness within. It follows the opposite trajectory of the skinhead films, wherein a character finds themselves by building their skinhead identity and then rejecting it.

I really wish more people could have seen Latte Da's production of Old Wicked Songs, but I get the same feeling about virtually every show I've seen in the Dowling Studio. I don't know how much longer my time at the Guthrie is going to last, but I see a Dowling Studio Package ($80 for four tickets usable at any show) in my future. I feel like I had so much more to say about all of this, but I'm just so damned tired with the emotional back and forth and the grind of being here every morning that has characterized my time at the theater recently. Here's hoping I can figure out what I'm doing past Halloween.

Don't Tell Me the Score!

Tomorrow night I will be at work until at least 9pm, meaning I'm going to tivo the Vikings season opener against Green Bay on Monday Night Football. I'm turning off my phone and not checking my email (or talking to any patron in purple) but I still know Amstelbooij's going to find a way to tell me the score this week and every week during the Vikings season when I have to work during away games (I love the theater, but not enough to miss a home game). Here are the top ten ways he'll do it, covering the myriad locations in which I might find myself working:

10. He'll send a singing telegram to my cubicle, that much is obvious.

9. A chinese dragon will parade through the lobby past the concierge desk, with "Vikings 24 Packers 17" written on it.

8. All prairie sky backdrops for Little House now have "Vikings 24-17 Packers" written into the clouds.

7. A mail order will be called into the store: "I need 24 Vikings and 17 Packers, could you verify with Rufus in the stockroom that you have that?"

6. A fax will be sent to the stage door of his newborn's son's birth announcement... informing me his the kid's name is "Vikings 24-Packers 17"

5. An improv class in the Learning Center will begin with a warm-up vocal exercise of yelling "Vikings 24 Packers 17!" loud enough for me to hear it at the desk

4. When Melissa Gilbert comes out to sign autographs after Little House on the Prairie, she'll also blow the Gjallarhorn in the lobby to announce a Vikings victory

3. The big musical number in Little House on the Prairie at the end of act I now concludes "I'll be your eyes... when we watch the Vikings beat the Packers 24-17 with a 4th quarter touchdown on a reverse by Aundrae Allison"

2. Amstelbooij will be poised to pop out from trap door in the thrust stage in a purple and gold mask like the &$*#'ing phantom of the opera screaming out "Vikings 24 Packers 17!"

1. During tomorrow night's concert, announcements over the PA intermission will go like this: "Ladies and Gentlemen, the call is places... the performance will begin on the McGuire Proscenium Stage immediately following the second half kick-off of the Vikings Packers game which the Vikings are leading 14-10"

On Vice Presidents

At long last, our national nightmare is over... the vice presidential picks are in, and we now know within a margin of error of about 5 Aaron Burrs on the left-right political scale who will hold that unique position in American government, who serves in two branches of government while having almost no influence over either.

On the one side is Senator Joe Biden, a man who had the top of his head surgically removed to give surgeons access to his brain... and then he had the procedure done a second time because the first time they couldn't find his brain (note to the Captain: Joe Biden told that joke himself on "Meet the Press", don't get all worked up). As chairman of the foreign relations, Biden has also famously taken meetings with معمر القذافي to discuss how most democratic countries don't have a President-for-Life, and advocated a Belgian solution to the problem of Iraqi governance, which I assume involves shipping over chocolates and starting a Michael Jackson "touch" football fantasy camp.

If you're from overseas and don't know what the Vice President does, or were educated in an American school and still don't know what the VP does, don't worry, because neither does the other candidate for the job. Every politician asked about the Vice Presidency, including Senator Biden, publicly denies any interest in the job, leading New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson whose name is constantly associated with the job to describe it as "the job nobody wants, but nobody turns down." When she was previously asked about the Vice Presidency, Alaska governor Sarah Palin brushed it off joking that she didn't even know what the VP did, which really was an unfortunate choice of words now that she's trying to follow in the footsteps of Cactus Jack Garner, Elbridge Gerry, and John C. Breckenridge. That's right, to get famous in that job, you either have to invent gerrymandering, have a stupid name, rebel against the government, or shoot somebody who's face is printed on money (a cookie to anybody besides the Captain who knows which bill that is).

As a former beauty queen and current governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin does have a few things going for her, the most significant being that she's not incredibly old and covered in melanomas, and is in fact the one part of Alaska I'd like to drill. She appeases the conservative base of the Republican party, because she is staunchly pro-life and skeptical of science, favoring teaching Intelligent Design alongside the theory of evolution... hey, it's not any dumber than that guy at SPA who used to teach about phlogiston. Governor Palin also brings executive experience, having been Governor of a state mainly populated by caribou for a couple of years, and having also been mayor of a town with fewer people than a Gopher hockey game. Sarcasm aside, she brings youth, executive experience, and a vagina to the Republican ticket, and I do like to think that there's a woman who's part of a credible bid for a federal executive office, and not a sacrificial lamb who won't even carry her own state like in '84. Part of the reason I like this is Hillary Clinton doesn't get to claim synecdochic representation of all women everywhere, and part of it is because Palin has a much better website devoted to her than Biden in www.vpilf.com

The job of the Vice President has generally been to help win an election and then make people less nervous about the President being incapacited. Given the fact that the President is likely to be an old cancer survivor or the biggest target for the ignorant and violent underbelly of our society since JFK went cruising around in an open limo to better grope passing women, the Vice President better be somebody who can take over while the President is recovering from a gunshot wound or has fallen and can't get up. I say that largely without mirth, but I do think somebody's going to do a big hit of meth and take a shot at hypothetical President Obama, and I'm glad he picked somebody with foreign policy experience who's made serious bids for the presidency.

The past two Vice Presidents have had serious policy portfolios rather than being a useless appendage: Al Gore was the public face of the government's work on NAFTA, and in charge of the effort to reform the federal bureaucracy into something more adaptable and just generally less stupid, while Dick Cheney has been secretly running the country from an undisclosed location for eight years while the President clears brush on his ranch. I don't know what sort of agenda we could expect from the two current nominees, if Palin will just drink orange juice and work out twice a day so she stays healthy "just in case" and Biden will be sent to out of the way corners of the world to tell dictators to suck it, or if they'll have something real to do, but I certainly am looking forward to this debate.

And a quick memo to the British press, it's Governor not "Governess", she's not teaching inbred upper class children how to fold their napkins and boning the ghost of their father in some circa 1800 windy shithole of a house in a marsh somewhere.

Olympic rings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or where have I been all summer

I've realized recently that I really started losing track of the 2008 election and stopped providing updates on it. One reason of course, is that I've decided to vote for General Zod from Superman 2, but also I found a much more interesting and occasionally more frightening clash of superpowers in the Beijing Olympics. And there have been some fascinating developments at the games so far, not least of which was the first complete WTF moment when news broke about the Spanish national basketball team's "slitty-eyed" ad campaign. Facing a serioius credit crisis, that's definitely a great way to court the Asian tourist dollar. Or euro, or yen, or baht or whatever else you got.

After the inevitable nuclear holocaust over oil resources, somebody will have to rule the barren wastelands, and I'm not betting on the mohawked Australians in football pads from The Road Warrior. I think the South Koreans will emerge to fill that role, spreading out from Busan and Koreatown to rebuild a feudalist society based on tofu. The reason I say that is that after decades of living a hop skip and a jump over the minefield from Kim Jong Il's nuclear program they've clearly started preparing the low-tech army that will rule a world without sophisticated manufacturing and electronics, by aggressively teaching the bow and arrow. Have you seen how freakishly good Koreans are at archery? The streak of bullseyes they smugly fired in against the Italians in the gold medal round was crazy, and Korean archers may have taken over from Norwegian biathletes as the scariest people to meet in the woods. (Who am I kidding, I'd love to meet a Norwegian bi-anything in the woods.)

As I was flipping through obscure Olympic events nobody but me watches I found a couple other real surprises, like the medal sweep by the US women's sabre team. It's been a hell of a long time since I lifted a sword in anger, but man is it nice to see that the rare women I used to fence against really succeeded in cracking the door open for women in our weapon. Also the chick who won the bronze is hawt. I can't help it, elite female athletes are already sex bombs but a redhead with a sword really gives me funny feelings in strange places.

It was also interesting watching the group play in women's soccer to see what a difference a year made when the US women played New Zealand. A year ago at the Women's World Cup (note to the Captain: the WWC was also curiously located in nnnnnnn-China!) when I caught the Football Ferns in action against Brazil they looked like a bunch of underdeveloped girls whose schoolbus had dropped them off at the wrong field and they'd been thrown in against full-grown women. But they were still fun to watch, especially their keeper Jenny Bindon crashing after loose balls with her knees up and Ria Percival in her paddington bear yellow boots. In the last year they've grown into their bodies and their game, and even though they got spanked by the US (4-0) they held their own against the Japanese and kept things close against Norway, which can't have been easy. Now that the Matildas are out of their region it's more or less inconceivable that there will be an international tournament without the Ferns, so I look forward to seeing them again in Germany'11.

But really the most surprising thing was the opening ceremonies. When I heard Zhang Yimou had taken over for Steven Spielberg as director, I knew that we'd be treated to an amazing spectacle, just based on his wuxias I've seen (Hero, House of Flying Daggers, and The Curse of the Golden Flower) but I kept waiting for the inevitable third act to such an epic: death and shrieking on an unimaginable scale. Seriously, with all those athletes standing exposed in the middle of the field and Zhang Yimou at the helm I kept waiting for the inevitable hail of arrows or ninjas with hooks rapelling from the rafters, all in smashing outfits. Then again, maybe he's saving it for the closing ceremonies.

Start spreadin' da news...

I told you all Brett Favre would not stay retired. (Next time pay attention!) After publicly carrying on for years about his imminent retirement and enjoying about five farewell tours while the Packers groomed his replacement for about three years, the Packers finally asked Favre "Are you really retiring this time? Really? So would you say that's like 95 percent sure, or only 75? You're really leaving this time, no backsies?" and he finally retired. Until summer. The Packers were so unexcited about the QB controversy that they offered him $25m to stay retired. Favre showed up to training camp anyways. Packers fans held a candlelight vigil at his home, and one of the most media-savvy players in pro sports turned on the charm, and the Packers finally accepted that Favre was back in the NFL... so they traded him.

Favre will play for the New York Jets next year, which I hear isn't as bad as it sounds since they massively overhauled their previously horrid roster. But even if he has one more superbowl run in him, I doubt it's with the J-E-T-S. Which is too bad, because I used to know a Jets fan inside and out, until she became a Raiders fan and I realized I didn't know her so well. It wasn't just about football, I also really am just about the most horrible person to fall in love with... find somebody who has something nice to say about the whole experience and I'll send you free theater tickets. Someday I hope to be able to separate love and sex from despair and annihilation, and most importantly from football. But I digress.

The Jets get Favre, Green Bay gets a conditional draft pick, probably a 3rd rounder unless Favre falls flat on his face. If New York, New York make the playoffs with Favre at the helm, it improves to a second rounder, and potentially the 31st pick if Favre was to lead them to the Superbowl. As expected, the trade also stipulates that should Favre be traded to a certain purple and gold rival, the Jets must forfeit three first round draft picks to the Packers, which should ensure that Favre will never ever play another game at the Metrodome. Despite the gnashing of teeth in the Chicago and Minnesota sports media, there is no freaking way the Packers were going to risk Favre coming back to their stadium in another uniform, and the trade conditions clinch that. Frankly I'm so sick of all the drama that surrounds him every year, I'm glad that as far as the Vikings are concerned, he might as well be retired. Bring on Aaron Rodgers.

2008 Timberwolves Draft

I know this is the time when I’m supposed to explain the Timberwolves draft strategy and their future prospects, but it’s been hard for me or anybody else to sort it all out. The Wolves essentially traded down again for money, although not as blatantly as they did two years ago when they swapped picks with the Trailblazers for $1m (less than 2% of the average NBA payroll). But the Wolves had three picks this year (#3, #31, and #34) and this is what they did with them, in my most optimistic analysis.

#3 pick – OJ Mayo (traded to Memphis)

After once again getting the third pick in a two-player draft, the Wolves drafted OJ Mayo, a point guard from USC who probably was the best player available. Issues were immediately raised about how to fit him into a line-up with so many guards, but really it wasn’t hard to see that Mayo had a bit more potential at that position than the passable Randy Foye, tiny Sebastian Telfair, and mercurial Marko Jaric. And I was looking forward to ten years or more of making jokes about eating French fries with OJ Mayo to Amstelbooij (btw, good luck in Brussels!).

Then around midnight, the Wolves traded Mayo for Kevin Love, the #5 overall pick. Love is a power forward whose strength is his versatility and whose weakness is he’s a bit light. The thing is, the one thing the Wolves have locked down is they have a great power forward signed long-term, and about the only other young players anybody’s excited about are the other power forwards who back him up. If Love is able to play off of Al Jefferson the way Kevin Garnett at one time played off of Tom Gugliotta and makes it difficult to quadruple team Big Al, then he could be worthwhile. And while the Wolves really needed a center so Jefferson could move back to power forward, I suppose it’s still an improvement over starting Ryan Gomes out of position.

That being said, they traded down to get Love, so you’d think there must have been something in it for the Wolves… and at least this time it wasn’t straight cash. The trade really breaks down into three parts, the hot prospects, the warm bodies/jackasses, and the role players. I’ve already explained the difference between the hot prospects, meaning the Wolves probably lost on that part, so one has to assume the rest of the trade made up for it. In the warm bodies component of the trade, a couple of big, long contracts got dumped for shorter, smaller ones, meaning the Wolves can look to sign big free agents in the summer of 2010. Basically this brings the whole process of clearing out deadweight forward a year.

For their warm bodies, Wolves threw into the trade the gigantic unhappy contract of Antoine Walker, as well as Greg Buckner, two guys who were unlikely to do anything this year but take up cap room. The Wolves also threw in another unhappy and overpaid guy in Marko Jaric, whose versatility in the back court got him a lot of playing time, but his inconsistency really made him impossible to build around or give him a role on a young team. The Wolves also got back Brian Cardinal as a warm body who ties up money but not as much as the players the Wolves dumped. If Kevin McHale can be believed, he also dumped some seriously bad attitudes when he got rid of Walker and Jaric, so the warm body / jackass part of the trade is a small but significant net positive.

The real positive is the Wolves also got back role players who actually appeared last year as something other than a garbage time novelty. The Wolves got something they needed in Mike Miller, a small forward with a three point shot who theoretically can stretch the floor out and punish teams for piling bodies onto Al Jefferson. They also get a true center in Jason Collins, who is legitimately seven feet tall and while he doesn’t score or rebound, can do some of the work inside. (Arguably Jaric fits in both categories as an overpaid, disruptive role player, but with the number of guards the Wolves have available he’s not that big a loss.)

#31 Nikola Pekovic (under contract with Panathinaikos)

With the first pick of the second round, the Wolves took this big Serbian center who everyone would be drooling over… if he wasn’t under contract for the next three years in Greece. Having the rights to Pekovic is a good thing assuming if they can ever get him to come over to the US when his contract is up, and nobody else would have passed on a chance to draft him in the second round. But he obviously won’t be doing much for the team any time soon.

#34 Mario Chalmers (traded to Miami)

When the Wolves picked Chalmers I thought it had to be a case of bringing in the best available player, because the last thing they needed was another combo guard, but then they traded him to Miami for a couple of 2nd round picks in next year’s draft, plus a pile of cash. I don’t know why they didn’t just keep him and send him to the Developmental League, because the picks they’ll get from Miami next year probably won’t be all that great and there’s only so many 2nd round picks you can get onto the roster.

Summer of 2009

It’s interesting to note that the Wolves may have a ridiculous number of picks in next year’s draft, if several reasonably likely conditions occur. If the Wolves pick is in the top 10 (and it will be, they’re going to stink) they’ll keep that top 10 pick, and if Miami challenges for a playoff spot, they’ll send their pick to the Wolves, and so will the Celtics. The Wolves give up a second round pick to Detroit as part of another trade but gain two from Miami, meaning in the summer of 2009 they’ll have five draft picks and a bunch of fat contracts in their last year, all of which are useful in trades.

But for the time being, there’s a draft pick with a lot to prove, five guys from last year to re-sign or replace and a lot of issues to sort out. Which I'm sure will require a lot of ranting and raving on my part.

Euro2008: Netherlands vs Russia

Sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words, so here's a brief pictorial tribute to Holland crashing out of the last two major international tournaments in their first elimination game:

Things in Chicago that are free

In no particular order, here are my ten favorite free things to enjoy in Chicago, which can be visited for the price of an "L" ticket.

The Museum of Contemporary Photography

I've raved about this museum at length elsewhere, many times I'm sure. There's always something worth seeing tucked into a corner of this museum, and given the small size of the gallery, it doesn't take long to find. And it's on Michigan Ave in the South Loop, making it easy to pop in.

The Baha'i House of Worship

While it takes a while to make the trip out past Evanston, the Baha'i temple is a tranquil oasis out at the end of the Purple Line. Go in, sit down, enjoy the way the light enters the building and chill out for a few minutes.

National Museum of Mexican Art

Half the fun is getting there, because of the murals at the 18th St Pink Line Station near the museum, which put to shame any other attempt at public art I've seen in the Chicago transit system. I'm not a huge fan of the museum, but the Chupacabra room was very stimulating, and I have to admit I like their gift shop for all my Doogie Howser weird mask needs. (Don't ask.)

Tuesdays at the MCA

The MCA is a very hit or miss kind of museum, with the risk you'll wander in to an video projection of a child swimming while a hoarse child screams the lyrics to Chris Isaak songs. That one was maybe not worth the price of admission, which is why I try to go on Tuesdays and buy something from the MCA's rather fantastic gift shop if I feel like I should chip in. And I have seen some spectacularly neat stuff at the MCA like the dinosaur-sized cat skeleton they had looming over the lobby for a while like an eerie, alien counterpoint to the Field Museum lobby.

Chinatown

There's something delightful about the insular nature of Chinatown, which really feels like another country has sprung up in the space between the Orange and Red Lines, and it's hard to shake the self-conscious feeling of appearing different and speaking a strange language while walking around Chinatown speaking English. Plus I still say sauteed baby octopus and squid with lemon grass at Penang makes for a nice meal.

Signature Lounge

I've never been up to the observation deck on the John Hancock tower, and the all-dancing all-singing all-crapping on your car pigeons that narrate your trip to the top of the Sears Tower really make me hesitant to go back. But the Signature Lounge at the Hancock Tower is a nice place to stop in for a drink with the whole city laid out around you. (Just stay away from the oily focaccia.)

Lincoln Park Zoo

I do like a nice zoo, even on a hot summer day when the animals all get that kind of stoned, weary look that says "You brought me all the way from Africa so I could sit around in the 80% humid, 90 degree Chicago summer? Thanks, it wasn't hot in the Serengetti or anything, this is really great. And don't over-season my gazelle this time."

Garfield Park Conservatory

I like this conservatory for the same reason I like the Baha'i House of Worship, it's very beautiful and calm, and right off the Green Line. The fern room which recreates Chicago in the Cretaceous Period in this lush, moss-covered greenery overgrowing its brick paths with only the waterfalls and fat koi to break the stillness is really an amazing retreat from all the chaos that surrounds the park. And there's a lot else to be said for the Conservatory as well.

Lake Michigan

I do enjoy the shoreline between North Ave and Navy Pier, and the unbroken, open quality of the Chicago shoreline, which will soon be completed by the Calatrava bridge over the river near that sky-scraping dildo he's building in Streeterville. It is a lovely place for a walk, but don't tell anybody I said that or Amstelbooij will be trying to get me to bike to his sailboat in Calumet City (the one his wife doesn't know about).

Kenny Chesney Wake-Up Call

When you least expect it, you too can be roused for a Kenny Chesney pop quiz. Startled and disoriented, you will have no idea what is going on or who you're talking to, only that Kenny Chesney is involved somehow. This is a free service provided to any number in the 312 area code, any time after our operator reaches the office at 2:30am. For those outside the Chicagoland area, also see our 4:52am "What time does Perkins open?" emergency phone call service.

Spiritual Guidance

The Ugly One

Never have I been so entertained by the story of an ugly man than I was by the American premiere of Marius von Mayenburg's The Ugly One, other than maybe that red stripe commercial where he tells the guy he can make himself beautiful by standing next to a bottle of red stripe ("You sir, are very ugly!"). I'm sorry it's having such a short run here at the Guthrie, but I'm sure it will reappear many, many other places in America in the next few years. It was really cool to see Kate Eifrig back in the Dowling Studio, playing three different women this time instead of the nine she played in her last show here (9 Parts of Desire), and I still say she should have a website for her stalk-- her fans. Fans, I said fans.

The Ugly One has the virtues of being provocative, funny, and short, presented in a minimalist homage to Detroit techno with no backstage area and props just strewn about the edges of the room, until the actors filed in to the noisy house and began their performance. The whole show is about what happens when the world's ugliest man has dramatic facial surgery that makes him irresistibly beautiful, introducing drastic changes to his lifestyle, until he discovers that this process is infinitely reproducible, and everyone in the world starts to look like him. Through all these changes his identity and the sense of purpose and belonging in his life are lost, making this story as tragic as it is funny.

I was also amused at how German this play is even in translation, especially with the rather Euro-stylin' Nathan Christopher as Karlmann the assistant plug-tester and Karlmann the sexually confused boy who serves as his mother's boy-toy wrangler. The whole cast seems like people who ought to be on stage more often, and worth looking for when they are, despite not being diminutive ingenues and dashing, lithe dancers... well actually I think a couple have put in some time as glam rock magic faeries in scandalous tights in the other show as well. And against the three hour tours of Gem of the Ocean and Midsummer, The Ugly One's 55 minute run time made for a nice antipasto of culture.

Swiss Geography

"Never liked the Swiss, they make them little clocks, these two cocksuckers come out of 'em with these little hammers, hit each other on the head. What kind of sick mentality is that?"
--Heist, screenplay by David Mamet

The ouroborosian self-consuming xenophobic isolationism of the Swiss certainly has its costs. (A cookie for whoever spotted the redundancy in that sentence.) One obvious casualty seems to be geography, as evidenced by this map of Swissair's American routes. Other evidence includes the total lack of signage in the Zug train station, and the conductor growling in scheissedeutsch over the ratty Trenitalia PA who doesn't think he needs to make any distinction between Zug Hauptbahnhoff and Zurigo Hauptbahnhoff.

Indiana Jones and the Chronic of Narnia

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

The new Indiana Jones film actually did turn out to be a lot of fun. I didn't expect much and the low-key opening wisely didn't overinflate expectations, but after I got over the inevitable wish that I would be magically transported back to my first childhood viewing of Raiders of the Lost Ark, I did settle back and enjoy myself. To be sure, in the early going Indy seems to be trying too hard for a laugh, and he's a softer, gentler Harrison Ford than the Indiana Jones from 1981 who began as nothing but an imposing profile and the crack of a bullwhip, but enjoying this film is very much a case of not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.

One thing that was back from Raiders was Karen Allen, and she's back in style, a perfect update of Marion Ravenwood after some twenty odd years. The rest of the supporting cast isn't bad either: Shia LaBoeuf is the least annoying I've ever seen him, and even manages to get past his atrocious gay biker intro, and I liked Cate Blanchett as the groovy Russian chick with a sword and a bad haircut. I also really liked the nod (er, literally?) to the late Denholm Elliott as Marcus Brody, and the classic you know it has to be coming what is Indiana Jones afraid of joke is hilarious.

The plot is kind of nutty, and none of the sequels have taken themselves seriously enough to ever reach the grandeur of the first film, the tone of which is exemplified in a single scene: when a bitter and beaten Indy trying to drink away the memory of Marion's Death, is confronted by Belloq over the meaning of digging up the Ark. That scene would have been out of place in any of the comical, bug-eating Indiana Jones sequels, but nevertheless I continue to enjoy all four films.

Prince Caspian

Unfortunately this was just tiresome. I'm not sure what Prince Caspian was doing in the movie other than tossing his wavy black hair in the breeze and telling Susan "This is not a schell phone in my pantsch". The whole film is enmired in banality and cliche from Reepacheep as the plucky comic relief to the armies of faceless soldiers he mows down in the gray-washed CGI battles that substitute for the dazzling spectacle of color of the first film's climax. The only time this film gets any twinge of the sense of wonder of the first film is in the White Witch's brief reappearance when the wolf chanting "I am hunger, I am thirst" started to send a few tingles up my spine, but really it's just too much of a reminder of how sad this film's villains are compared to Tilda Swinton's White Witch.

What's really almost distressing about Prince Caspian though is the casual quality of its violence. Peter can mow through a thousand Telmarines without anything more than a shrug, and Reepacheep's taunting before he stabs people in the face was straight out of an 80's actioner. There's no sense of meaning to any of it, and it's just excruciatingly tedious to wait out all the cliches all the way to the long goodbye ("I'm leaving now.... no wait, I'll turn back for just one more kiss!") that finally starts to wrap things up. Unless there's a serious change in direction the Chronicles of Narnia are poised to join Eragon, In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, and any more direct-to-video D&D movies the sci-fi channel wants to put out as just another by the numbers fantasy action franchise, and that's just sad.

Why were the chefs in love again?

Usually a movie has to be neither romantic nor funny to be a romantic comedy, and No Reservations certainly qualifies for that title. There's nothing funny about it, nor is anyone really all that charming and it fits one of the classic elements of the genre in that there's no indication on screen why these people are destined to be together except for cheesy music. So that was just terrible, and of course as in all film romances, somebody was about to jet off to another city unless they were arrested by some sort of heartfelt confessional. Sadly even the generally smart The Devil Wears Prada couldn't avoid that eyeroll and reconcile its lovers without a plane being involved.

But while mulling over whether I really wanted to trash it in some overwrought rant, I realized it's not the only peculiar romance between chefs with a cute little onlooker I've seen on film recently. In Ratatouille, I never got if there was a reason beyond the necessity of cliche for Colette and Linguini to be involved at the end of the film, with no real groundwork for it. Working together, maybe a spark as she's looking at him in a new light, but "Oh yeah and he's totally banging the French chick" seemed kind of like a silly thing to tack on to a movie about a cooking rat. On the other hand Remy the Rat is adorable, and between him and the transcendent moment of Peter O'Toole's creepy food critic, I found something genuinely likeable about about Ratatouille.

Death Star Canteen

To answer a question about the Rainforest Cafe

The answer is no. Hell no. A thousand times no. No no no no no no no. Mother#$*@'ing no I was not trying to eat at the Rainforest cafe in the Loop. I have never eaten at any Rainforest cafe, a decision I made when I was a kid and one opened at the Mall of America, because of their facade: a big exotic jungle full of bright colored animals including, of all the animals in the world, a giraffe and a lion.

Consider if you will the nature of a rain forest, with its heavy canopy and lush vegetation, and ask yourself... what about that situation would bring about an evolutionary adaptation like being bright yellow so you're easy to spot in the dim light, being huge and having long legs so you keep tripping over shit and getting clotheslined by low-hanging branches? A long neck is useful in the savanna, an area defined by the sparseness of it's canopy of trees, in order to reach scarce green vegetation and for greater visibility, less useful with thick trees in every direction. A long neck might help you surprise the fuck out of a jaguar lurking on a tree branch when you pop up your head up next to him like the periscope off the Yellow Submarine, but one swipe of her claws would probably make that a lot less funny from the giraffe's perspective.

Now I know what you're going to say, what about the temperate rain forests, like in the Pacific Northwest? Well, Lafcadio (the lion who shot back) aside, have you ever seen a lion riding the monorail through downtown Seattle, sipping a macchiato and growling at panhandlers? No you haven't, and I assure you this is a perfectly valid counterargument, despite the fact that the monorail doesn't even run anymore (too many lion attacks).

So no, I was not trying to eat at the Rainforest Cafe in the Loop. I would not go there for steak, I would not go there for soup. No, I do not like to go, Nobo.

A Midsummer Afternoon's Feverish Catnap

I just saw A Midsummer Night's Dream, and wow that was just #@*&'ing crazy. It took me a while to get into the spirit of it, but once I did that was absolutely hilarious. There's glam rock faeries swooping in and doing musical numbers in a variety of styles, the Mechanicals are actually funny, there's hot young people in their underwear and glam rock faeries swooping around in next to nothing, but what really drew me in was when I realized they were going to be able to add in their own flourishes and still actually respect Shakespeare's text and tell the story without the irreverant eyeroll that says "we're too zany sexy cool for this dried out Elizabethan prose... jazz hands on three!" that accompanies an adaptation as unrestrained as this one. And there are crazy painted glam rock faeries with feathers everywhere and glittery codpieces dropping down from the ceiling, it's crazy.

I don't often get to laugh as hard as I did at the Mechanicals' play at the end, and to just enjoy the whole energy coursing off of that bunch. And this is one thing I love about the new Guthrie, that you can have three completely different styles of art going at the same time and everyone just spills back out into the bars at intermission. Lou Bellamy and Penumbra are digging deep into American history and the human soul in Gem of the Ocean on one side, Joe Dowling and the Guthrie are blowing up a confetti factory on the other, and above it all there are French dancers stomping out their cigarettes in 3/4 time upstairs in the Studio. I love this place, I really do.

And now I'm off to the Twins-Red Sox game at the HumptyDome to take in a completely different style of performing art at what I'm now starting to think of as the fourth theater. And Midsummer put me in such a good mood that not even that stupid umpire from the Black Sox series finale who waited so long to call a strike on a 3-1 count that the batter headed to first and both runners moved up as everyone in the building thought it was a ball. Okay, let's be honest... that guy could still ruin my good mood. But if he's the home plate ump tonight I'm totally getting Oberon to come swooping out of the stands to verily smite his ass. Forsooth.

Chicago Destinations

On my last trip to the City of Children dodging fish with Clive Owen, I hit some of my favorite locations and some new ones, and I've decided some things never get old when I go to Chicago. And some things get old awful fast.

Things That Never Get Old:

The Museum of Contemporary Photography always finds at least one nugget of provocative artsy goodness to make the small detour worthwhile. And even if they ever did put on a crappy exhibition, I could never stay angry at a free museum. This time the large picture of a South American shanty town made it all worth it, because of the amount of time it took me to realize that mixed in to all these corrugated tin and paper shacks that had never seen a level were these gleaming cedar homes designed to be off-axis and edgy, blending right into these scrap metal domiciles.

The solarium at the Adler Planetarium is always nice on a cold windy day in Chicago, sunlit and calm with this panoramic view of Lake Michigan. And I still like a nice planetarium show, so I can point up at the night sky and act smart until Amstelbooij cuts me off saying, "Thank you Galileo, now go to bed." (Eppur si muove!)

The best breakfast in the city is still Noogie's, whether it's the original, Too, or Tree. The strawberry and mascarpone napoleon that requires a steak knife to eat is still to die for, and come summer I'm camping out overnight for the first crack at the three berry brioche. The Breakfast Club is good, but three locations just off the red and brown lines is hard to beat.

I also never get tired of Chinatown, just even to walk around for a while, because it really is like another country nestled into a few blocks on the south side. And it's nice to be able to pop down and pick up a little giant clam and tiger balm (it was a wild weekend) and Chinatown's markets are certainly unique. Chinatowns in other cities have been difficult for gentrification to dislodge because many Asian property owners won't sell their Chinatown holdings and give up the character of the neighborhood, so hopefully Chicago's Chinatown is here to stay as well. And Argyle St, which I still think of as "Not-Chinatown" for its concentration of non-Chinese Asian businesses.

Joining that list may be the Baha'i House of Worship in Wilmette. Out at the end of the purple line, it's this beautiful bastion of tranquility, and I know very few people with too much openness and tranquility in their lives. I may add that to my list of places I keep returning to in Chicago, a place that asks nothing but that you be at peace when you enter, and keeps services blessedly short. Certainly shorter than the trip up there... next time I'll be smart enough to pick up a purple express at rush hour.

Things That Were Worth a Trip Once:

The National Museum of Mexican Art has some interesting elements in its collection, especially the political art in the Chupacabra-themed gallery. There's too much old pottery for my taste, so I probably won't make it a point of going out there too often, but I really can't stay away from a free museum for too long.

The L platform at 18th street is so extravagantly decorated by Latino artists that it adds another highlight to the museum. I wish more Chicago stations had their own style, and you can see bits of this at Chinatown, but it seems like a huge opportunity during the huge renovation that has to be done all over the L. Letting local artists painting the panels on some of the platforms is certainly cheap enough to be viable. Also adding to the style of the pink line, I like the ancient subway cars with batwing doors they have banging along that line.

Chinatown's own Chinese-American Museum is interesting for its reminder of how long there has been a largely independent, sometimes segregated Chinese-American community in Chicago, and I hope they are able to continue to develop their exhibits and keep that history alive. I don't know that I'll be buying a $1000 glass brick, but it's important.

The Leather Archives boasts the best collection of uniforms and hardcore gay S&M porn I think you're likely to see in a midwestern museum, and I enjoyed their big screen presentation of short films showing in the theater as well. I resisted the temptation to buy a t-shirt of a muscular, mustached man sodomizing a bound boytoy, even though I do need something to wear around the office, but I like their gift shop. And really what I like most of all is their attitude: friendly and relaxed, without a touch of either shame or defiance... "Hi, we're here, come on in and stay a while."

Things I May Give Another Shot:

The Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Museum in Chinatown is supposedly a one-room museum of Kuomintang memorabilia, which I wouldn't make a trip to see if it wasn't right on the main drag in Chinatown above a storefront. Dr. Sun Yat-Sen is referred to by some as the father of modern China and he's got a bigger museum somewhere in Hong Kong, so I figure it's worth a look if I'm ever back on a weekend... I can't say no to a free museum.

I'm all annoyed at the torrential rain that was pouring down on my last attempt to take in a Twins-Black Sox game at Comiskey, and then last night's game against the Black Sox had a lengthy rain delay as well. I seriously just want to get in some outdoor baseball before the new Twins stadium opens in 2010... I shall return.

I also didn't think the rain and overcast skies did much to heighten my appreciation for James Turrell's Skyspace installation thingy on the UIC campus at Roosevelt and Halsted. Also the screwed up #12 bus getting delayed and overloaded doesn't do much for anybody's appreciation of art. I would like to see Turrell's piece when there's actual light for it to work with, and the fountain that's supposed to deaden some of the street noise and make the place tranquil, rather than dull, windswept and dusty.

Things That Just Failed:

I'm done eating at any restaurant in the Loop. Or basically anywhere with a wait... you would think that would indicate a good restaurant, what it actually means is the people who eat there don't know anywhere else to go, so they just sit and wait for an hour and a half for an uninspiring dinner and a stomach-acid inspiring bill. It's never a great experience, and half the time the staff don't know what the hell they're doing, leaving a tray of half-eaten food next to the table for you to look at as your empty stomach rumbles, then arbitrarily taking the bread plates and utensils away (but leaving the bread)... there is good food in Chicago, but there isn't any place worth waiting an hour behind a line of ovine yuppies. Except Noogies. It's always worth the wait at Noogies.

Gem of the Ocean

This past Sunday, Carl Eller and I took in the Guthrie's presentation of Gem of the Ocean, although not together (I'm not in tight with any Purple People Eaters). Carl sat in the good seats while I was chaperoning the Howling Dowlings, who are young and talented and still in search of a better name.

I suppose the most important thing to say about current production of Gem of the Ocean is that while it is presented by the Guthrie, it is Penumbra's show, and from that flows everything good and bad about the show. The Penumbra Theatre Company is one of about three African American theater companies in North America, and that allows them to offer something you'll likely never see anywhere else, a show performed by a black cast aimed only at a black audience, with all others in attendance welcome to come along for the ride. August Wilson was a huge believer in Penumbra, who performed more of his plays than any other theater in the world and had a personal relationship with him, so there was no better company to see perform the beginning of his 20th century cycle on the late playwright's birthday.

It certainly was a tremendous performance, especially James Craven as Solly Two Kings, in a story that was certainly not like anything I'm used to seeing. The play, set in turn of the century Pittsburgh, is about a lot of things but what really struck me was Solly Two Kings, a former slave and conductor on the underground railroad, trying to pass along the legacy of that to another generation in the midst of a racist backlash and great turmoil about what the future of African Americans was going to be at the dawn of the 20th century. They really didn't care if I got what they were doing, and I'm sure I missed a lot of it, but man my eyes were glued to James Craven every time he came on stage. The journey to the City of Bones was truly a departure to something mythical, and the operatic quality of those voices rising through the proscenium theater, it really was something special. And there are certainly a lot more positive things I could say about Penumbra's show, including repeating fifty-seven times how great James Craven was.

I do have reservations about the production, and I wonder if some problems are a result of Penumbra being too close to Wilson and his work. There is a relentless gravity to the play and it holds so many notes far too long for my taste, often taking a very moving moment and crushing it under a second helping of pathos. This makes the play exhausting more than exhilarating, which is actually kind of tragic. On the whole, I was still left with a lot to think about, a desire to see Penumbra on stage again, and a deep gratitude to the Guthrie for putting the weight of their marketing machine and their magnificent venue behind the show, which will hopefully be the first of several collaborations with Penumbra. No word yet from Carl Eller on what he thought of the show, or the Vikings' weakness at offensive tackle.

The last three movies I've seen in the theater

Rambo

Obviously I wasn't the only one waiting with growing anxiety over the last twenty years to find out whatever happened to John Rambo after he single-handedly chased the Russians out of Afghanistan. No, there was at least one other person in the theater when I saw it, and the movie did make back almost half of its production budget, proving demand is strong for new tales of blowing shit up and wiping your mouth with the American flag.

Actually though it wasn't all that bad. And the Rambo franchise, like the song "Born in the USA", was never quite so rah-rah America anally raping communism pigs as people who never saw the movies probably thought. The original concept for this character is a green beret with severe untreated PTSD from years of imprisonment and torture in Vietnam who gets pushed out of town by a good ol' boy sheriff, and the latest sequel returns to that origin. An aging Rambo has returned to Thailand, barely able to cope with human contact and making a living trapping snakes in Thailand. When a group of Christian missionaries ask him for help getting into Myanmar and predictably get themselves captured by warlords, he goes back to the one thing he knows how to do: kill an entire army with homemade weapons. And the movie really delivers on its promise of the old Rambo howling through the bamboo like the angel of death, without ignoring the last twenty years of his continuing breakdown. So I liked it. I'm not thinking Stallone has a SAG award in his future, but really, this was about the best you could hope for resurrecting the Rambo franchise, and a pleasant surprise.

Street Kings

What a difference letting the suits do the casting makes. Street Kings is full of great actors, including comedic actors like Hugh Laurie, award winning actors like Forest Whitaker, annoying but effectively cast actors like Jay Mohr, typecast actors like Noel Gugliemi (everybody's favorite Latino banger), underrated actors like Chris Evans (who really needs a better agent), strangely named actors like Cedric the Entertainer, and non-actors like Common and The Game, and they all do really well. And then there's the lead... Keanu Reeves never provides a single genuine moment in this film, and his usual post-concussive style of acting drowns the whole movie. He's like that horrible child corpse at the end of Friday the 13th that pops out of the water to drag down the canoe; just when you think the movie's really turning into something interesting, there's Keanu giving line readings like he's just been repeatedly punched in the face. Getting a decent performance out of Keanu Reeves is like dubbing Nicholas Cage into Cantonese, with the right material some directors have done it, but apparently David Ayers isn't one of them.

Iron Man

Iron Man was a blast. Iron Man and The Dark Knight have already restored my faith in comic book adaptations after the recent Spider-Man, Superman, and Fantastic Four debacles, and The Dark Knight hasn't even come out yet. But Iron Man was a hell of a lot of fun, and proves the power of decent casting, especially when it comes to female leads in popcorn movies. Robert Downey jr is perfectly cast as peripatetic playboy Tony Stark and Gwyneth Paltrow can be great when she's given something other to do than quiver her lower lip, and Terence Howard is always great no matter what awful movie he's in (seriously, he brought his A game to that 50 Cent biopic) and Downey's mile-a-minute banter against Howard's straight man and Paltrow's deadpan make this a hilarious film to watch. The timing is so good I laughed out loud at every gag, even when I knew it was coming, including Jim Cramer's hyperactive, studio-destroying sell rating against Stark Industries stock, and my favorite Stan Lee cameo ever. Jeff Bridges is delightfully bald and conniving, and while staying light, the film does find enough depth and scale to make a hero out of Tony Stark... it's just a great movie. And stick around for the post-credits teaser.

Vikings Draft Errata

I would be remiss not to correct a couple errors and just general wishful thinking:

1. The Vikings vanishing 7th round pick

The Vikings traded their 7th round pick to the Packers in order to move up in the 5th round and take QB John David Booty. That's interesting to me, that they had their eye on him enough to be monkeying around with the Packers to be sure they got their guy. I doubt Booty slips away to the practice squad, and despite Childress talking about keeping 4 QB's, I hope they just cut Bollinger loose after training camp so I don't have to watch him getting sacked on the first play of every drive.

2. The Vikings do have a glaring hole besides wide receiver, and that's offensive tackle. Ryan Cook was not too impressive on the right side, and Bryant McKinnie's recent arrest makes it possible they'll be completely without a left tackle. Not having a tackle covering his blind side makes it more likely Tavaris Jackson will convincingly dub a Nicholas Cage movie into Cantonese than successfully get a pass off. Hopefully there's some sort of plan in place, otherwise I want Bollinger to start next year... if we're going to get a QB killed, it should definitely be him.