Crosswalks to Nowhere

This past Saturday night, we saw Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer performing at the Chicago Theatre in their Unwigged and Unplugged show. These are the guys who are also known as Spinal Tap and The Folksmen, as featured in the movies This is Spinal Tap and A Mighty Wind, respectively.

I've always been fascinated by the fact that Spinal Tap managed to make the leap from a completely fictional band to a piece of the culture that everyone pretends is real, sort of like the guy in the red suit with the reindeer. There are all sorts of band histories, discographies, and reviews on the internet that rival the sites for legitimate rock bands. Even the Wikipedia page I linked above indicates that there seems to be no line drawn between reality and whatever Tap is.

The show was great. The three guys came out as themselves and essentially performed as a tribute band. Lines like "Nigel Tufnel wrote this" were part of a common theme. We got to hear all the classics from the movies played acoustically, and while performing the singers were in character.

The songs were interspersed with video clips from the band and a great YouTube clip featuring Tap's "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight" performed by Lego people. And at one point, Michael McKean's wife Annette O'Toole came out to sing a duet on their Oscar-nominated song from A Mighty Wind, "A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow." (Here's a clip from the movie with Catherine O'Hara and Eugene Levy performing the song.)

The audience seemed to be in on every single joke, but it wasn't like you needed a footnote reference to understand them (see Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back). The show was entertaining all on its own.

The Sunday night performance in Milwaukee was recorded for a DVD release, so if you missed the show, watch for it.

The Summer season has officially kicked in, and of course, Summer means Graduations. Emma's class held their graduation ceremony Monday night at Rolling Meadows High School. Needless to say, it was a happy and emotional occasion for everyone, including E.

Congratulations, Emma! (I know I'm not old enough to have two high-school-aged daughters-- something must have gotten mixed up somewhere.)

And this little guy is our newest addition to the family. Clark was born in March, and he came home with us last week. So far, he's managed to charm everyone who walks through the front door.

All we need now is for the weather to cooperate, and we can get this "Summer" thing underway.

Well, it's that time of year again. Actually, it's well past that time of year: the time to get out there and commune with the soil.

While we've had plenty of rain so far this year, there haven't been too many wam days, so my gardening efforts have fallen a bit behind schedule.

A few weeks ago, I managed to get our backyard garden planted; we have a few tomato and pepper plants along with some bush beans. New to the yard this year are two zucchini plants and some basil. Once the temps heat up we should be in good shape, and not nearly as overcrowded as last year.

The reason for the less-crowded garden this year is the fact that we have a 25' x 25' plot at Cypress Gardens just across Arlington Heights Road.

You may recall from this blog that I had a plot at Cypress in 2003 and 2004, with varying degrees of success. I was a condo-dweller in those days, and only a fraction of a mile further from the garden in the other direction. For some reason, though, it was difficult to keep it going. Now that we live closer and have a place to store all the appropriate tools, it seems to be going much better.

In addition to the chicken-wire fence I put up, I also set the plot up into quadrants. One area has about 20 tomato plants, another has beans, peppers, and cucumbers, and a third has four "Three Sisters" plantings underway. So far, things are moving along, albeit slowly.

The fourth quadrant, it turns out, is problematic. When we first checked out the plot before planting, one of our "neighbors" came over to say that we would have a water problem. He explained in a heavy Russian accent that the water spigot we were near always leaks, and that his friend who had the plot last year had to abandon it because of flooding. Well, he was right. We thought we'd be smart and plant something that needed a lot of water in that spot, so we stuck a watermelon plant in the ground. The poor thing is practically drowned at this point. Fortunately, the water problem seems to be limited to that one section of the garden, so when the weather finally heats up maybe things will dry out.

The other clever thing I've done this year is to bring my grass clippings from the house and put them in the pathways I formed between the garden quadrants. This helps keep the weeds down and sucks up the extra moisture from the leaky water spigot. If I get enough clippings I'll put them down among the plants.

I also have a couple rows of sunflowers going at both Cypress and in the backyard.

Now all we need is some real sunshine.

On Friday evening we took off for Akron, OH to attend Lisa's cousin's graduation party. We got to take two of the Great American Roads, the Indiana Tollway and the Ohio Turnpike. This was the first time I was on these roads since I was a kid, and aside from the fact that I didn't have any comic books in the car it was pretty much as I remembered it: straight and flat.

One of my favorite memories of this road was when my family was returning from a trip to Canada, and we stopped at a Howard Johnson's at one of the waysides. This wasn't a regular restaurant-- it was kind of a lousy cafeteria with all sorts of prepackaged sandwiches and whatnot. I remember as we were leaving my oldest brother got a comment card that we filled out while riding in the station wagon. We couldn't wait to get home so we could tell the Howard Johnson people about their "raunchy pizza."

"You never know when you're making a memory..." as Rickie Lee Jones once sang. A bad lunch experience actually wound up a happy memory.

We had the chance to almost re-live this moment as Lisa, Emma, and I had some über-average Uno's microwave pizza at a stop on the turnpike on the way home. It wasn't Dondi's, but Emma said "it's okay for road-trip pizza." What a trouper.

The nice thing about the trip was the fact that the weather held out and the six and a half hour ride went very smoothly.

We returned late Saturday in time to prepare for a great Father's Day celebration with the family.

Summerfest, Farmer's Markets, and Superdawg. What more could we ask for?

Summer's here!