Crosswalks to Nowhere

If you grew up in Chicago, you'll remember the neat little stop-animation films they used to show on WGN-TV at Christmastime.

I've ripped the audio portion of these films to MP3, and they're attached for your enjoyment. Click the links to hear them:

Susie Snowflake
Hardrock, Coco, and Joe
Frosty The Snowman

The Fourth was pretty cool.

We saw American English at Frontier Days. I've seen these guys at various festivals over the past 10-plus years, but this is the first time I ever saw their entire show. They pull the Beatles thing off really well.

After the show, we bought their latest CD, "What If... 1971." It's the band performing the solo Beatles' material that came out in 1970-1971 as if the band was stilll together (as in, the Beatles performing "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey" and "Instant Karma.") They recorded the CD last year at Abbey Road Studios, which must have been a real trip for them.

The interesting thing was that the guys stayed in character as they were signing autographs after the show. ["Sure thing, mate."] I wonder if they use the Liverpool accents as they go through the drive-through at McD's in Schaumburg.

--------

Saw Joao Gilberto at Ravinia last night.

He is a true legend. Here's a guy who would just sit in his robe and play his guitar and sing for hours and hours, sometimes in the bathroom (where the acoustics are perfect, of course) and he came up with an entirely new musical style.

My one regret is that I didn't get to hear him sing "Garota de Ipanema." That would have been awesome.

It also amazes me that one guy and one guitar could fill the space that they did.

If only I could be that cool at 72.

Saw the first installment of the Metropolis Arts Center's New Play Festival. Today's play was a reading of "Boxes" by a playwright from Indiana named Doug Bedwell. It was a very interesting piece that covered life, love, quantum physics (seriously), and why "nice" people always get hosed. Afterwards, the playwright, actors, and director were on stage holding a question and answer session.

The most poignant moment of the Q&A was when someone asked the playwright where he got his ideas. His answer: "Ideas are presents that your brain gives you when you feed it."

I decided at that moment to start feeding my brain a more healthy diet.

By the way, I'm writing this at the Schaumburg Starbucks, and for the very first time there aren't loads of screaming teenagers here. Could also be all that snow we've got coming down.

Finally, check out this error message.

And remember, God doesn't play dice with the universe.

On Saturday, I completed the first annual Boot Camp at The Pavilion. Not only did I get to see a side of the trainers I'd never seen before, but my butt was thoroughly kicked by the time it was all over at 10:30 am. I've got a nice certificate hanging on my wall as proof of my accomplishment.

I watched Shadow of the Vampire the other night. Man, that was intense. The plot revolves around John Malkovich as German filmmaker FW Murnau, making his version of 'Nosferatu.' Willem Dafoe plays Max Schreck, the person hired to play the vampire in the movie. A lot of drugs, drinking, and between-war German attitude with a couple freaked-out Czechoslovakians tossed in for color. Malkovich is always good, especially when he's playing off-center characters (has he ever played one that isn't?) and Dafoe is completely unrecognizeable as Schreck.

Today's lyric comes from one the first LPs I ever owned, Elton John's "Don't Shoot Me, I'm Only The Piano Player." The song is "Teacher I Need You." There's no particular reason for its being posted here, other than the fact that I can't get the song out of my head.

---
TEACHER I NEED YOU
(Elton John - Bernie Taupin)

I was sitting in the classroom,
Trying to look intelligent
In case the teacher looked at me.
She was long and she was lean.
She's a middle-aged dream,
And that lady means the whole world to me.

It's a natural achievement,
Conquering my homework
With her image pounding in my brain.
She's an inspiration
For my graduation,
And she helps to keep the classroom sane.

Oh teacher I need you,
Like a little child.
You got something in you
To drive a schoolboy wild.

You give me education
In the lovesick blues.
Help me get straight come out and say,
Teacher I, teacher I, teacher I,
Teacher I need you.

I have to write a letter,
Tell about my feelings,
Just to let her know the scene.
Focus my attention
On some further education
In connection with the birds and the bees.

So I'm sitting in the classroom.
I'm looking like a zombie.
I'm waiting for the bell to ring.
I've got John Wayne stances.
I've got Erroll Flynn advances,
And it doesn't mean a doggone thing.

Hey, good news in my Inbox today. Northern Exposure is coming out on DVD on May 25! This was one of the few shows I would actually stay home to watch when it was originally aired.

[montyburns] Excellent. [/montyburns]

One of the fun things about the internet is that ramblings of old are still available for all eyes to see. Here is a rant I put on the 'net about Northern Exposure almost 10 years ago. Classic jtl.

Today we have an old (1963) R&B number from Barbara Lewis (later covered by Yvonne Elliman, whose version just came across my MP3 player). Nice and mellow...

---
Hello Stranger
(Barbara Lewis)

(shoo-bop, shoo-bop, my baby)
(shoo-bop, shoo-bop)

Hello, stranger
(ooh) It seems so good to see you back again
How long has it been?
(ooh, seems like a mighty long time)
(shoo-bop, shoo-bop, my baby, ooh)
It seems like a mighty long time

Oh-uh-oh, I my, my, my, my
I'm so glad
You stopped by to say "hello" to me
Remember that's the way it used to be
Ooh, it seems like a mighty long time
(shoo-bop, shoo-bop, my baby, ooh)
It seems like a mighty long time

Oh-ahh-uh-oh
If you're not gonna stay
(ooh) Please don't treat me like you did before
Because I still love you so a-a-although
It seems like a mighty long time
Shoo-bop, shoo-bop, my baby, ooh
It seems like a mighty long time

The new portrait on my main page was done by a local photographer. I am really impressed with how well the whole set came out. Family members: watch your mailboxes.

I saw The Passion last week, and it's just not worth the hubbub. I saw nothing overtly anti-Semitic in the movie, but as S pointed out, the movie would have been at least a half hour shorter if Mel chose to use less slow-motion. On some level, I was hoping for a more spiritual experience, but this wasn't it. I thought Jesus Christ Superstar showed a little more in the Jesus-is-doing-this-for-human-redemption category than this movie-- this was just a lot of suffering. The characters of Judas and Satan were probably the most interesting.

RB took us to Poag Mahone's for lunch today. It's a new place that's sitting on the same spot as the late, lamented Excelsior. (That would be the home of the "Hungry Hunter.") The food is a lot better, though. This might be the new hangout for those after-work brewskis. By the way, "Poag Mahone" isn't someone's name: it's a colorful Gaelic expression that might get you a punch in the mouth. Check the link to see what it really means.

The other night a bunch of us Foundation people were at Peggy's (what's with the Irish theme anyway?) to discuss the upcoming Duck Race. It became apparent that none of us knew what a group of ducks was called-- M was convinced the word was "flock" but I didn't buy it. I think it says something that a group of parents who are running a volunteer organization dedicated to enhancing the educational experience for their children didn't know the answer to this question. (Research has proven that the correct terms are: a paddling of ducks, a raft of ducks, a team of ducks, and a dopping of ducks.)

Today's lyric is here simply because I like the song. No secret message here, just a sweet sentiment.

--
Destiny's Gate
(Tish Hinojosa)

What do you say, it was destiny's way that would lead us
Here we are holding tomorrow in the palm of our hand
All of our life led the way to this part of the story
I should've known you'd be waiting at destiny's gate

Son of a gun, there was love, peace, power, and glory
Song after song, well it must have been written that way
Now I believe in my eyes and the back way they showed me
Something far better was waiting at destiny's gate

You find a road and you pave it
A long lost love and you save it
So much of the past sees tomorrow at destiny's gate

Time as it's been and the trials we have seen kind of leave me
Checkin' our hearts for a cut or a bruise or a hole
I want to ride along straight on that highway to heaven
Checkin' the pistons and pumps and the bumps on the road

Rollin', rollin', time doesn't wait
I could see it, feel it finding a way
So much of the past sees tomorrow at destiny's gate

I watched "Vanilla Sky" the other night. (Yeah, I know-- it came out almost two and a half years ago.) What an amazing movie. I won't give away the plot, but I will say this: if you thought "The Game" (with Michael Douglas) messed with your head, this movie goes 'way beyond that. There were a lot of moments where I dropped my slice of Vini's pizza and went, "HUH??"

(This movie proved once again that while I do not consider myself a Tom Cruise fan, there's another movie in his oeuvre -- am I allowed to use that word?-- that I enjoyed.)

And can I mention Penelope Cruz for just one moment? Okay, I did.

The soundtrack to the film is very very cool. Evidently, Nancy Wilson (of Heart, also director Cameron Crowe's wife) was the force behind much of the music, and she's got some pretty decent taste: REM, Chemical Brothers, Radiohead, Peter Gabriel, Paul McCartney, and even The Monkees. This was the first soundtrack in a long time that I went out and bought for myself. Even the kid at Best Buy was gushing over the CD.

I also bought the "Music inspired by" CD of music from the movie "I Am Sam." These are all Beatles covers by people Eddie Vedder, the Wallflowers, Sarah McLachlan, Sheryl Crow, and bunch of other people. Most of it is pretty good. (I never saw the movie because it seemed, well, a little too sad.)

I haven't done anything more with the RadioBlog, but I will get some more tunage up there soon.

I took a trip up to Janesville today to see Bob at his exhibition. It was very cool, seeing what all these people do with their spare time-- and the talent! I also got a card from a guy who might be using me to build a web site, so we'll see where that goes.

I saw "Lost in Translation" tonight, which I've wanted to see since January. Another awesome movie, with another great soundtrack. Bill Murray does his lounge singer act and sings (among other things) Roxy Music's "More Than This" (on the radio.blog now-- the Roxy version). It's another of those movies that makes you think.

Also on the radio.blog is a Renaissance song called "Electric Avenue." This is from their new-wave period, which a lot of fans hated but I actually thought was pretty good. (I loaded a bunch of Renaissance on the iPod this weekend, so I've been in that mode for the past 24 hours or so.)

By the way, the radio.blog is whacking out. First of all, Blogger (where I write these words of wisdom) somehow shoved the radio.blog to the bottom of the page here, and I realized tonight that I am running out of disk space on my server here. I think I might move the radio page to another server, so watch for that change sometime. In the meantime, I have to pull old songs off while I put new ones on the weblog.

That's it for now. Here are the lyrics to the Renaissance song.

----

ELECTRIC AVENUE
(Jon Camp / Michael Dunford)

Brought up and lived by the modern age
Brought a new spot to my life
I love the power you have over me
Amaze my friends and set me free

Here we are walking in step
We've got ideas that we haven't used yet
There's so much left that I want to do
Automatically I think of you

Chorus:

You beginning and you to end
You were the first you never bend
You walk beside me everywhere I go
Our secret's safe they'll never know
But here we are walking on down Electric avenue
Part of today in every way Electric avenue

I'm insecure and I'm not so sure
Cause you mean this much to me
Your heart is cold and you won't grow old
I'm full of tricks so watch and see
I can disappear without a trace
Just say the word I'll be gone from this place
There's so much left that I want to do
I'm automatic that I think of you

Chorus

Sorry I didn't get around to talking about King of Kings yesterday. We had Visitors from the East.

In comparison, this movie is a bit slower than Mel's Movie, but silent films, especially dramas, usually do move more slowly. And of course, there was very little blood 'n' guts in the DeMille version.

The core story of the Passion is intact in the silent version, although all the pain is kept at a distance. The movie actually starts earlier in Jesus' life than The Passion does, so you get to see Jesus performing miracles and the people adoring Him. You don't really get that in Mel's version. Despite its slower pace, King covers a lot more ground.

There's no androgynous Satan-creature (Satan is played by a sinister-looking dude), and the Disciples are pretty much the same in both movies.

DeMille's Jesus is a little older (and blonder-- or lighter-haired I guess) than Mel's. He seems a little "above-human," playing the gentle and patient part to an almost extreme, moving slowly, giving long looks... (Cool trivia: Jesus is played by H.B. Warner, whom you all know and love as rummie druggist Mr Gower in It's A Wonderful Life.)

Most notable, though, was the fact that DeMille rewrote part of Christ's life (now there's guts for you). According to C.B., it seems Mary Magdalene was some hottie Cleopatra-like concubine who got upset when one of her "regulars," Judas, started hanging out with "a carpenter" instead of her. She blows into town on a chariot pulled by zebras, wearing a Janet Jackson-esque outfit, ready to reclaim her favorite customer. When she meets the Big Guy, she immediately has a revelation, covers up, and becomes a follower. Maybe C.B. thought this little twist would sell more tickets.

One really cool (and effective) thing about this movie was the fact that in the Resurrection scene, the film switches to two-strip Technicolor, which is a pretty neat effect, and one you don't see a lot in silent movies. Jesus visits the Disciples, which is another thing you don't get from Mel, so there's a little more context for the Crucifixion.

Anyway, I haven't changed my opinion of The Passion (mini-review: it was okay but not great) and I'm still thinking the original album of Jesus Christ Superstar had it right all along.

Yes, I made it to the cycling class this morning. Aileen led the class, and while she can be a lot of fun, I think she was determined to put us through our paces. My legs are still recharging.

Here are the usual instructors, so when I refer to them in the future, you'll know of whom I speak. At the top of that page, you can see a little bit of the room where I put myself through this. The difference is that the lights are usually out.

The Silent Film Society of Chicago is starting their 2004 season, tonight featuring Madame DuBarry starring Pola Negri. I was thinking about going to see it, but I'll probably use the time to catch up on other things.

I will be stopping to see my pal Mitch (scroll down to where it says "Under the Tuscan Sunset") for a wine tasting, though. I'm amazed at how much I've learned about wines in the few months I've been stopping by the shop.

I understand that the City of New York declared today "Poem in Your Pocket Day." The idea is that people are "encouraged to carry a poem in their pocket and share it with friends, family, coworkers and classmates."

Some bloggers are participating by posting their favorite poem or song lyric to their weblogs. Since posting lyrics seems to be my thing, I'm gonna post a lyric and a poem, how's that?

Let's put that LAS degree to work:

I saw Van Helsing on Saturday.

Taken for what it is-- a big, loud, flashy movie-- it's actually very good.

Anyone expecting significant character development or an explanation as to why all this stuff is happening to all these people should consider watching something else. You can't pick this movie apart on the details, because it simply won't hold up. But that's okay.

You've got hunky Hugh Jackman as Dr. Gabriel Van Helsing (as opposed to Abraham Van Helsing, the character in Bram Stoker's novel) out there using his gadgetry and sheer will power to take on the 2004 versions of all the Universal greats: The Wolf Man, Frankenstein's Monster, Mr. Hyde, and of course, Dracula.

Then you've got dishy Kate Beckinsale as a corseted, driven, take-charge-kinda-last-of-a-tormented-Romanian-family-gal. She's been trying on her own to rid Transylvania of Dracula and his entourage, and she doesn't take kindly to Van Helsing when he shows up to take on The Fanged One. She has her own extensive set of cutlery-- in impressive display cases conveniently located throughout her home, no less-- so there's never a shortage of silver stakes in the movie. I couldn't define her accent-- it varied between something vaguely British and Natasha from Rocky and Bullwinkle. She sure was hot, though. And who knew they had Spandex back then?

Oh, and I need to mention the vampire chicks. Yeah. The vampire chicks. A bunch of flying Victoria's Secret models with bad 'tudes and cool contact lenses.

Dracula is played by Richard Roxburgh, and every time he was on screen I expected him to launch into "Virginia Plain." His Dracula looked remarkably like Bryan Ferry. Comic relief and Van Helsing's impressive hardware are provided by Carl (David Wenham) who is, we hear over and over, not a monk but a friar.

And the Frankenstein monster in the movie is like none you've encountered before.

All that being said, the best advice I can offer is that you settle into your seat, turn off most of your brain, and just enjoy the ride. Forget most of what you learned of these monsters from the original movies or reading Anne Rice (or watching Dark Shadows), and just let the whole thing unfold.

Yeah, it's formulaic, there are lots of glib one-liners ("I think we've overstayed our welcome" *KABOOM*), and there's lots of cool CGI. But this is supposed to be a fun summer action movie, so just go with it.

Probably my favorite moment in the movie is the opening piece, which is a 21st-century reshooting of the best parts of the James Whale/Tod Browning 1930s monster movies. It's in black and white, you've got your villagers with their torches, and you've got all the cool Dr. Frankenstein wizardry, culminating in a "They're headed for the windmill!" scene.

I recommend it. The only question remaining at the end of the movie is: these Transylvanians sure put up with a lot; why don't any of them move?

When I mentioned ABC's Fridays yesterday, I started wondering if I was unfair in calling the show a Saturday Night Live ripoff. Then I realized I wasn't unfair-- it was a ripoff.

That doesn't mean the show was entirely bad, though, and after researching a little a whole bunch of memories came back about it.

The first of two things I remember were Michael Richards's (Seinfeld's Kramer) pharmacist character, who was always testing the stuff behind the counter. Yeah, it was cheap drug humor, but you can see where he got that jerky motion that later became Kramer. The second was the incident where Andy Kaufman interrupted a sketch in the middle and started a fight with Richards. (This was featured in the movie Man on the Moon. And there's your REM reference, LJD.) The first was something I could see SNL doing, but I don't think they were edgy enough in those days to pull a stunt like the second one. (And it was a stunt.)

Fridays also had a "Weekend Update" type of "news" bit featuring Melanie Chartoff (now a voiceover artist on "Rugrats") which never came close to Chevy Chase or Dan Aykroyd/Bill Murray/Jane Curtin-- but then again, Chartoff was up against Charles Rocket at SNL (and if you say, "Who?" you're not alone-- he later played the dad in the movie Hocus Pocus. And he got fired for giving the SNL audience the finger).

And I just noticed (thanks to IMDB) that Larry David was a cast member. I don't really remember him on the show, though.

And a final memory was seeing New Zealand new wavers Split Enz performing "I Got You" and "I Hope I Never" on the show in the fall of '81.

So there you go, Fridays: I hereby withdraw the short shrift.

Whenever they serve grits with breakfast in our company cafeteria, I always think of this line from My Cousin Vinny. And I can't let this entry go by without linking to my favorite Vinny-Mona Lisa exchange.

On the topic of movies, I watched Run Lola Run the other day. What a cool movie: lots of action, suspense, and a cool techno soundtrack. I won't give away too much, but it's one of those films that shows you how the slightest change in your life can have a drastic effect on how things turn out (a similar concept was used in Sliding Doors, which was a romance, not an action movie). The title character's boyfriend gets mixed up with some gangster-types and she has 20 minutes to fix the situation. The movie takes off from there. The music, as I mentioned, was pretty cool, and it reminded me of a couple tracks on Georgio Moroder's Cat People soundtrack.

Cat People. Another cool movie of a totally different type. �ber-creepy Malcolm McDowell, beautiful but totally lost and virginal Nastassja Kinski, an awesome New Orleans setting, and the occasional cheesed-off panther. Oh, and Ed Begley Jr. losing a battle with one of said panthers in a scene inspired by Sam Peckinpah. Neat stuff, but not for the squeamish on a couple levels. I was never a huge David Bowie fan, but this is where the original version of the song "Putting Out Fire" came from. The soundtrack is alternately moody and pulsing (although Amazon didn't include those samples), and "Irena's Theme" is one of my favorite haunting tunes of all time. I believe that this was the first movie I ever saw where I thought the music was so cool that I had to go out the next day and buy the soundtrack album.

It seems the ride ends here. Hope you enjoyed it.

The Silent Film Society of Chicago announced the lineup of movies in their Silent Summer 2004 festival.

This is an awesome event: they show silent films with live accompaniment on the huge pipe organ at the restored Gateway Theatre on Chicago's Northwest Side. Last year, one of the features (The Lost World) had a live orchestra playing along.

The final schedule is forthcoming; the movies are shown on Friday nights from July 23 through August 27. The films on the schedule are all classics: Buster Keaton in Steamboat Bill, Jr., Max Schreck in Nosferatu, Clara Bow in It, Colleen Moore in Lilac Time and Rudolph Valentino in Blood and Sand.

It's a great way to spend a Summer Friday evening.

The dismantling has begun. My bedroom is now home to my CDs, rugs, tables, chairs, the barstool, speakers, and soon the desk and computer, probably in pieces. Oh, and my bike. It looks like a garage sale in here because the splotches on my walls are going away this week.

Since it was another rainy day today, activities were pretty much limited to indoor stuff. I caught up on the rest of the Northern Exposure DVD set and finally watched Empire Records, which had the distinction of being in my Netflix queue the longest (about two and half years).

The movie was pretty much what I expected, and it reminded me a lot of The Breakfast Club for some reason. Not a bad "stick it to the man" kinda movie.

Heading out for ice cream with the ladies in a few.

TCM showed The Big Parade last night, but I was too tired to watch. I have it on VHS, though, so my Memorial Day plans will include that movie to end my day.

Favorite Northern Exposure quote of the evening:

Chris: It's like Jung said, the unconscious is revealed through the imagery of our dreams which express our innermost fears and our desires.
Bernard: Jung said that?
Chris: Yeah, I think it was Jung. Either that or Vincent Price.

Here's an excellent Yahoo article on SCTV, which goes into more detail than my previous blog entry.

Ray Charles passed away today.

This is very sad because Ray was one of those talents that spanned the decades as well as cultural lines. He was one of the all-time greats of soul, blues, jazz, gospel, rock 'n' roll.. you name it.

I was fortunate enough to see Ray play live, even though it was almost purely by accident. I had agreed to see a Dolly Parton-Kenny Rogers concert in 1985, and Dolly backed out ("medical problems") and was replaced by Ray. I took this as a message from above that I was a good guy for agreeing to attend in the first place, and this was my reward.

Ray was brilliant. Pure and simple.

The problem was the crowd: they were the rudest group I'd ever sat in, and I've been to some pretty rough shows. People were talking, laughing, smoking (these were the days when it was allowed), and basically ignoring the genius playing his heart out on the stage. I was transfixed, but most of the overly-hairsprayed-middle-aged crowd couldn't or wouldn't appreciate the man; they were anxiously awaiting for the paunchy, blow-dried crooner of "Ruby" to come onstage. The worst part was the fact that they turned the lights up in the stadium before Ray's set was finished: jeez, even the staff at the venue was unappreciative.

When he was done, I was one of the few on his feet cheering.

To this day, I can't fathom what these people were thinking, but then again we're talking about Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton fans. Part of me wanted to light a match and see if I could make the joint explode with all the hairspray floating through the air.

I know there was a movie in production last year about Ray Charles' life, but I haven't seen anything about it since. I'll see if I can find out more. Update: Here's the info on the movie.

Thanks for everything, Ray.

Today is Chris' birthday, so we let him pick where we would have lunch. He chose Peppers.

The charm of this place is that it's small, dumpy, limited in its menu, and relatively quick. The food tastes okay when you're eating it (I had a double cheesburger with everything-- the burgers are flame broiled-- and fries), but a little while later, you tend to remember why this is a once-a-quarter event.

'Nuff said. Next topic:

We walked back to the office and there was a band playing in the plaza at the building across the street. As we approached, we heard a respectable version of "Sweet Home Alabama," which was okay for a song I've heard a kabillion times, then it morphed into Warren Zevon's "Werewolves of London." Nice segue, and I never realized it had the same bassline. After a verse or two, it further morphed into the Grateful Dead's "Franklin's Tower," again with the same bassline. Then all three songs got squished together. It was a neat musical stream-of-consciousness in an overplayed-classic-rock kind of way. All this was courtesy of a group called Maryann and the Professors.

Moving on with the afternoon now.

In today's Wall Street Journal there's an article about the sorts of things people leave in the books they sell to used book stores.

Bookstore owners talk about photos, cards, letters, money, and other material that people forgot to remove, only to be found by shop clerks and occasionally customers. Here's a brief overview:

- One guy's rap sheet wound up in a bookstore in New York: he was arrested at an anti-Apartheid sit-in at Cornell University in 1985, and his complete arrest record, including a complete set of fingerprints, sneaked out.

- In a book about the New Orleans Museum of Art, there was "a spent bullet."

- A doctor's prescription pad with these words written on it: "Wednesday -- mambo, lindy, spins. Thursday -- rumba or tango. At work -- angry. Really got angry. How to use?"

- One bookstore owner described a collection of photos he found "which I can't bring in" of "men in negligees."

- Another owner talked how he opened a book titled "The Bill of Rights" to discover it was hollowed out. He later learned that Abbie Hoffman had hidden a tape recorder inside during the Chicago Seven trial.

One of the clerks summed up the findings by saying, "It's as if the book picked up a new story. I'm not sure I want to know the whole truth. The suppositions are so interesting."

So before you donate or sell anything off your bookshelf, consider what you might be passing along to the next reader. I know someone has a class syllabus of mine with Grateful Dead logos drawn all over it.

This week's Reader features a cover story about Wacky Packages. I know most kids growing up between 1967 and 1991 are familiar with these hilarious (okay, hilarious to a 10-year-old) consumer product parodies, including Crust Toothpaste, Neveready Batteries, Gadzooka Gum, and the classic Plastered Peanuts.

Do you doubt this stuff influenced a couple generations' collective sense of humor?

Topps has introduced a brand-new series to entertain the kids of those of us whose minds were previously corrupted.

Here's a great site that features all the previous series. Memories of riding my bike to Kresge's...

From the Hollywood Photochopping Dept.: Evidently, some studio types thought they needed to make Keira Knightley appear a little, um, healthier for the marketing material for King Arthur.

And on a completely unrelated topic, Live Aid took place on this date in 1985.

My favorite moment of the day was either David Gilmour playing on "Slave to Love" with Bryan Ferry or MTV's Martha Quinn saying, "Gee, I wonder why Sting is on the stage while Dire Straits is warming up?" (Saying this while talking over the opening lines of "Money For Nothing.")

I have 12 hours of Live Aid on tape somewhere... maybe that'll be an upcoming "Dude..." entry.

I learned today that Bill Martin, Jr. passed away last week. Unless you're a parent (or a kid) the name may be unfamiliar.

Martin wrote more than 300 children's books, including Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? and Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, two of my kids' preschool favorites.

According to the obit in the Chicago Tribune, Martin had difficulty reading until he came upon a system that worked for him:

A struggling reader until he reached college, Mr. Martin finally learned the skill by memorizing poems by Robert Frost and Walt Whitman that his professor read in class. Once he had learned the verses by heart he could pick out the words on the printed page.

He remembered his own learning experience when he started to write books for preschoolers. His frequent repetition of words and phrases was intended to help them remember new terms.

His books are great, and Chicka Chicka in particular was a great help in my kids' learning the alphabet. I have a CD of Ray Charles reading the book-- somewhere, Bill and Ray are riffing on "A told B and B told C... I'll meet you at the top of the coconut tree..."

Groucho Marx passed away on this date in 1977. In his honor, here's a link to some great Groucho quotes. Black crepe moustache and eyebrows are optional.

Last night, Brazilian singer Maria Rita won the Latin Grammy awards for Best New Artist and Best MPB album. I heard an interview with her on NPR yesterday morning, and some of the samples they played were pretty nice, so picked up her CD.

I've gone through it twice, and there are some really nice moments on this CD. Rita's voice sounds a bit like Marisa Monte's, although a little lighter and sweeter. She does sound a lot like her mother, the legendary Elis Regina. The arrangements are very simple-- few guitars, keyboards, and percussion. My favorite songs on the album so far are "A Festa [Party]" and "Agora So Falta Voce."

This album, as I mentioned, is very simply done, and doesn't have the multiple layers or quirkiness of my favorite album of 2003, Tribalistas.

I'll write more after I've given it a few more listens.

While the kids were celebrating Rosh Hashona with their mom's family, I decided to check out the latest Tom Cruise movie-thing, Collateral.

It was okay. Tom Cruise plays a hit man who hires cabdriver Jamie Foxx for the evening while Cruise does his, uh, business. Jamie figures out pretty early what Cruise is up to (the body falling on his taxicab is about as subtle as a hint could be), and amidst the evening's mayhem we get to see Foxx's character transform from a mild-mannered dude into someone a little more assertive. Cruise is great as a sociopath who quotes (or attempts to quote) the I Ching and Darwin, while clearly enjoying his work.

Mark Ruffalo, who seems to be popping up everywhere these days, is an undercover cop who figures out what's going on. The thing about Ruffalo is that his "tough" act still makes him look like a pretty nice guy. Another cop "owns" another case that turns out to be connected with the one Ruffalo is on, so we get the scene where two LAPD guys argue over what's really going on. (The other cop was played by Bruce McGill, the guy who played D-Day in Animal House. I thought it was Stacy Keach at first.)

Lots of product placement here, from the Bacardi sign on the top of Foxx's taxi (which is in clear focus in almost every shot of the cab), to a PNY USB memory key, to the constant reappearance of my employer's LA building in helicopter shots.

For mindless Saturday Night entertainment, it was good. Overall, I'd have to give it 6 stars out of 10.

Next up: Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

Salon.com has an article listing the top 10 comedians they consider to be the successors to Lenny Bruce's throne.

Here's their list in reverse order:

10. The Upright Citizens Brigade
9. Louis CK
8. Chris Rock
7. Eddie Izzard
6. Sacha Baron Cohen
5. David Cross
4. Sarah Silverman
3. Aaron McGruder
2. Rick Shapiro
1. Howard Stern

My issues with Stern's being chosen as #1 are as follows: (1) For as long as I can remember, going back to the early 80s when he'd appear on Letterman, Stern has been a tremendous self-promoter who has repeatedly invoked Bruce's name, calling himself the successor. You can't be a successor just because you say you are; (2) Many other radio personalities (including Chicago's Steve Dahl) were doing Stern's act before Stern. He's not a groundbreaker, he's just the loudest and most succesful one; (3) Salon compares Stern's "persecution" to Bruce's: bad move. Lenny believed in the legal system and did everything he could to get the system to change. He fought the hypocrisy within the system, not the system itself. All Stern does is whine about his being at the wrong end of lawsuits.

It's this third point that makes me look at this entire list and immediately disqualify every single one of these comics: I don't see any of these people truly bucking the system from within (with one almost-exception, discussed below). They are people who are sometimes funny, shocking and offensive in discussing certain subject matter (primarily racism and sexism), but I don't see a single one of them at the other end of a conflict with the Powers That Be, and trying to change the way the Powers That Be think by working within the system. That is what Lenny Bruce was all about.

The closest exception I can find is Aaron McGruder, author of the comic strip The Boondocks. This strip is centered on a group of African-American city kids adjusting to life in the white suburbs. It's alternately (and simultaneously) political, culturally-aware, and very angry. Sometimes it's just not funny-- but more often than not it makes you think. In a survey of Chicago Tribune comics readers, The Boondocks came out as a "least favorite" because of its attitude and subject matter, but the paper continues to run it, showing that a powerful media company (traditionally a conservative one) can have the courage to distribute an alternative viewpoint. And to McGruder's credit, his strip stayed in the paper without his toning down his style.

There's a difference between just being offensive (which is ridiculously easy) and being offensive with a purpose. Read Ralph Gleason's liner notes from Lenny's Berkeley Concert LP to learn what Lenny was really about. (Sorry about the misprints in that link-- I couldn't find a cleaner copy on the 'net.)

We saw Bob Dylan at the NIU Convocation Center in DeKalb last night. It was very cool to be in the same room with a guy who influenced people like John Lennon.

Here's the setlist (from Bill Pagel's Bob Dylan site):

Down Along The Cove
God Knows
Positively 4th Street
Things Have Changed
Forever Young
Lonesome Day Blues
Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again
Blind Willie McTell
Highway 61 Revisited
Not Dark Yet
High Water (For Charley Patton)
Honest With Me
It Ain't Me, Babe (acoustic)
Summer Days
--
(encore)
Like A Rolling Stone
All Along The Watchtower

We arrived about 20 minutes late and Bob was already well into his set. The ads weren't kidding when they said "8:00 pm Sharp."

The staging was very simple, with a curtain behind the band that had colored lights and the latest tour logo projected on it. Bob spent most of his time behind a keyboard (which was very low in the mix) singing. Most of the songs were played with a similar arrangement, but we could still sing along with tunes like "Like A Rolling Stone." It was also interesting to hear Bob play "All Along The Watchtower" in the style of Jimi Hendrix. And while he couldn't hit the notes of the old days, he gave a great show.

The crowd seemed to be mostly in their 40s and 50s, although after the show we noticed a lot of college-aged people. It's good to see he still appeals to a wide audience.

We saw Evita at the Auditorium in Chicago on Friday night. In general, it was a good show and was the better of the two performances I've seen (the other was at the Marriott Lincolnshire three years ago).

My only real complaint was with the guy playing Che. This character is the narrator in the play, so it's important that you catch his lines. The actor playing Che insisted on using an operatic voice which, while impressive, made it difficult to understand the lyrics. So unless you already knew the story and the songs you missed out on the details of what was going on. I feel I need to go easy on the guy, though, because midway through his opening number ("Oh, What A Circus") he misjudged the depth of the stage and slid right off into the orchestra pit at full speed.

The other actors were good in their roles, and the staging was well done and not completely overblown. I'll give it a thumbs-up.

This show also confirmed the opinion I formed after seeing Sunset Boulevard years ago: that Andrew Lloyd-Weber did two really good shows-- Evita and Jesus Christ Superstar--- and the rest of his stuff is just lousy. It seems the formula for his later shows is to come up with one or two musical hooks, repeat them over and over again, and hope the audience doesn't notice because they're too overwhelmed with flash pots, smoke machines, and flying whatevers. I don't need to pay $150 a ticket for that.

Next up: maybe it's time to see The Neofuturists again.

(...as in, "Yes he does... well, in a safe, suburban kind of way.")

I took the kids to see Ashlee Simpson last night at the Rosemont Theatre. And let's get these things out of the way right off the bat:

(a) No, I don't think she lip-synched;
(b) Yes, I was one of the very few adults there;
(c) Yes, I possessed one of about 40 Y chromosones in the entire place, including Security, Fire, and Police personnel.

All that said, I have to say that for a pop concert it was actually very good. Ms. Simpson clearly knows her audience and plays perfectly to them. She manages to pull off the "Anti-Britney" act much better than Avril Lavigne-- you actually think of Ashlee as a "regular" girl who has a voice that's less than perfect and stumbles (literally) around the stage while she sings. I imagine the girls in the audience relate to her much more than Ms. Spears or Ashlee's older sister, Jessica, which in my opinion is a good thing: we've had far too much of the sleazy and the overly depressing.

Musically, it sounded like they took a bunch of metal bands of the 80s and grunge bands of the 90s and stuck them in a blender and filtered them through a Disney Machine. I guess I'd call it "Mall Rock"-- loud and energetic but underneath it all very, uhhh, safe.

(Side note before we go any further: Will the parents of this current generation please make sure their kids actually listen to the Ramones before you let them leave the house in a Ramones shirt?? Thank you.)

To those people who are trying to stop Ashlee Simpson: give it up. Every generation has pop heroes that people hate. When I was a kid, it was Donny Osmond. They're not going away, folks-- if you really want people like this to disappear, ignore them.

The music critic in The Daily Herald ripped Ms. Simpson and her show apart, which is kind of like going to McDonald's and complaining that everything was fried. What did this dude expect? The White Stripes?

There were two opening acts in the show. First was a Boston-based "new school power pop" band called The Click Five, who were pretty good. They appeared in dark suits, ties, and moptop hair and pulled off some pop-rock stylings that reminded me of The Raspberries, Badfinger, and, um.. another British band that doesn't come immediately to mind. Lisa said it was good to see a boy band who actually plays their own instruments.. good point. (Note to The Click: the keyboard player needs to tone down the Morrissey imitations.)

The other opening band was another group of young guys called Pepper's Ghost. These kids were pretty good, too, playing that "Safe Metal" stuff.

As we left, there were loads of parents waiting for their kids outside. I muttered as I passed, and I was reminded of these words from Henry V:

This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhood's cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

Yeah, I got guts. The kids were worth it.

Last night, we saw Bob Dylan and Merle Haggard at the Auditorium. We saw Bob at the NIU Convocation Center on Halloween, and it was a good if very echo-laden show, but seeing him in a real theater showed what we were missing. Bob was in the same performing mode as he was in October: hunched over an electronic keyboard, delivering his lines all in the same tone. I suppose he realized we were there for the event, and if we were expecting him to sing "Lay Lady Lay" ;or "It Ain't Me Babe" in the same voice he used on the recordings, we should probably be listening to the records instead.

His band was comprised of many of the same members of the group from his last tour. The notable addition was a violin player named Elana Fremerman, who seemed to be tearing it up when you could hear her through the occasionally heavy mix. The complete setlist can be found here.

We missed the opening act (Amos Lee), but we did catch most of Merle Haggard's performance. It felt like we were at a theatre in Branson or Nashville, the way he and The Strangers were compacted into the center of the stage. I've never been a huge country music fan, but these guys played very tightly-- you could tell they've been doing this for a while. Merle's inter-song patter rolled off, corny as it was, to the audience's delight. I found a couple of his little jokes hilarious, and if Lisa were the type of person who'd roll her eyes, she would have. (You can read more about the recent shows we've seen here at her blog.)

It's not every day that you get to see a legend like Bob Dylan perform, but we've been lucky to see him twice in six months. Not too shabby.

On Saturday night, we saw Les Mis�rables at the Cadillac Palace theatre.

This is the third time I've seen the show (the first time was in 1989, the second was in 1997), and it just doesn't get old. The story, which some people think of as "a bunch of French people dying," is actually very touching and covers a lot of ground: integrity, loyalty, idealism, despair, thievery, debauchery, dedication to duty, and, well, a lot of French people dying.

This performance was great, with Randal Keith as ex-chain gang member-now productive member of society Jean Valjean, Robert Hunt as the dedicated-to-his-mission Inspector Javert and a very good supporting cast around them.

Watching this show proved once again that live musical theater does not have to be a product of the Andrew Lloyd Webber Pop Musical-o-Matic.

This was part of an awesome weekend we spent in the city.

Sue and Ted in their Native Habitat

On Sunday, we went to the Field Museum. Lisa wanted to see the Jackie Kennedy display and I'm always up for looking at mummies and shrunken heads (not part of the Jackie Kennedy display, I should add), so off we went.

The Kennedy display was interesting, although I learned more about designer clothing than a middle-aged heterosexual guy should really know. There were lots of film clips showing Jackie on the campaign trail with JFK and on her tours of India, Latin America, and elsewhere. There was also an extensive display of letters and material associated with her White House redecoration projects, accompanied by video clips of the White House tour she gave for CBS TV. The end of the exhibit showed some of her post-JFK efforts of architectural preservation in New York.

Afterwards, we spent some time in awe of Sue, the largest and most complete T Rex.

Following that, I got to experience a piece of my childhood when we walked downstairs and the familiar smell of melting plastic reached me. The museum has several Mold-A-Rama machines, where you can spend a buck and get your choice of a red T Rex, blue Triceratops, green Apatosaurus (what we called in the Sinclair days a Brontosaurus), or yellow Stegosaurus. Presumably, these were not their natural colors. Then again, nobody was around to see, so the Mold-A-Rama people may have been on to something.

We scored a T Rex and Triceratops and named them Sue and Ted. here they are reading about how they were deadly enemies in their days on what is now part of South Dakota:

We took the tour of Ancient Egypt, and then decided to call it a day at the museum.

Lisa had her first experience with hot caramel corn from Garrett's on State Street, and then we walked over to First National Plaza to look at the Chagall. I snapped this detail of the mosaic as the closing photo of the weekend:

...there was Frederic W. Haskin.

Haskin was a newspaper columnist in the early part of the 20th century. His column was devoted to answering questions about general knowledge, and in 1926 he released a compilation of his work in a book called Answers To Questions.

My grandfather had this book in his collection, and when he passed away I took it. I thought it was lost in the flood in my parents' basement but yesterday I found out otherwise.

Some of the material is quaint, some of it is very politically incorrect, and surprisingly some of it is still accurate 79 years later. From time to time I'll toss a few of these gems here in the weblog. Today's selections are on the next page.

Working from CT scans of King Tut's mummy, scientists have assembled an image of what they think the Boy King looked like when he died over three thousand years ago.

I wonder if he ever had the idea to rule the world from his secret underground lair...

Today, Bob Geldof announced Live 8, a global benefit concert, scheduled to take place on July 2. This event looks to be on the same scale as his Live Aid concerts of 1985.

Here are the acts who are scheduled to perform:

Hyde Park, London
---
Coldplay
Dido
Sir Elton John
Keane
Annie Lennox
Madonna
Mariah Carey
Muse
Scissor Sisters
Sir Paul McCartney
Joss Stone
Stereophonics
Sting
Robbie Williams
U2
REM
Velvet Revolver
Bob Geldof
The Killers
The Cure
Snow Patrol

Museum of Art, Philadelphia
---
Will Smith (host)
Bon Jovi
Maroon 5
P Diddy
Stevie Wonder
Jay-Z
The Dave Matthews Band
Sarah McLachlan
Rob Thomas
Keith Urban
50 Cent
Kaiser Chiefs

Eiffel Tower, Paris
---
Jamiroquai
Craig David
Youssou N'Dour
Yannick Noah
Andrea Bocelli
Calo Gero
Kyo
Placebo
Axelle Red
Johnny Halliday
Manu Chao
Renaud

Brandenburg Gate, Berlin
---
A-ha
Crosby, Stills and Nash
Brian Wilson
Lauryn Hill
Bap
Die Toten Hosen
Peter Maffay

Circus Maximus, Rome
---
Duran Duran
Faith Hill
Irene Grandi
Jovanotti
Tim McGraw
Nek
Laura Pasini
Vasco Rossi
Zucchero

Geldof also said in an interview that the Hyde Park concert may also include a reunion of the Spice Girls, so get out your Union Jack-emblazoned halter tops.

More details can be found here on the BBC's website.

I just learned that the Silent Film Society of Chicago's "Silent Summer 2005" festival has been rescheduled for the fall. It will also be at a different venue.

The guy at the SFSC was very nice and polite about it, but it sounds like they had a lot of challenges trying to make it happen this summer. He assured me that next year they'll be back on during the usual months.

In the meantime, keep an eye on their site for the festival announcement.

Today is Buster Keaton's birthday. Those are his words in the title of this blog entry, denying the "genius" title given to him by people who discovered his work long after it was made.

When most people think of silent film comedians these days, they think of Chaplin's Little Tramp and maybe Harold Lloyd, hanging from the face of a clock. Buster Keaton's comedy was far more inventive and, despite the slapstick, it was more subtle.

One of the keys to Keaton's character was the fact that no matter what unpleasantness befell him, he always found some resourceful way around it. Jumping through a window or over a ledge would always result in Buster's getting away from a chase or into the arms of his leading lady, and through it all keeping the legendary "stone face" expression.

My introduction to Keaton was when the local PBS station ran the series Buster Keaton: A Hard Act To Follow, and my view of silent film, especially silent film comedy, changed forever. Since then, I've seen (and collected) several of his films, and during last year's Silent Summer Festival I saw The Navigator on the big screen with accompaniment by a live organist.

Wikipedia has an excellent biography of Buster here, and you can also spend a lot of time surfing the International Buster Keaton Society's site.

Finally, a piece of Keaton history/folklore: he was supposedly buried with a rosary in one pocket and a deck of cards in the other, just so he'd be prepared for wherever he wound up in the afterlife.

Happy Birthday, Buster!

Tonight we saw Lon Chaney in the original 1925 silent film version of Phantom of the Opera with accompaniment by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The performance took place at Symphony Center and was a wonderful experience. This is the way movies were meant to be seen.

The film tells the story more as a horror tale, not as the overwrought romance Andrew Lloyd Webber would have us want it. (Apologies to Phantom fangirls in the audience. :-)

Modern film audiences tend to be spoiled by the flash and boom of the current crop of Hollywood movies (ask Dan upstairs about this), which seem to be focused on making you, the viewer, feel like you're right there in the middle of the action. Silent film is a different experience altogether: you know it's a performance because it's this flat black-and-white image on a screen and it doesn't look like real life, and the sound in the theater is meant to draw an emotion instead of replicating the actual audio of The Rock blasting someone's whatever off.

Phantom of the Opera used some early silent film techniques, such as different color stock for inside, outside, and underground scenes and even an early use of Technicolor for the Grand Ball scene.

Despite its lack of Foley artists, this Phantom of the Opera is very creepy. Lon Chaney's tortured Opera House-dweller is more menacing on grainy celluloid, and Mary Philbin plays a Christine that you can actually care about.

The CSO played an adaptation of the original score by G Hinrichs and M Winkler. The conductor was Richard Kaufman, and the organist was Dennis James, whom I've heard playing at the Silent Film Society of Chicago's presentations. A wonderful touch was soprano Elizabeth Norman, providing voices for both Christine and Carlotta, along with the occasional scream.

The program started out with Mr Kaufman's telling us that the movie we were about to see was made 6 years after "a very important event." He then introduced Chicago White Sox organist Nancy Faust, who played a rendition of "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" followed by "Go-Go White Sox."

Who says an evening at the symphony is stuffy?

Lisa's brother got tickets for us to see Blues Traveler at the Barrymore Theatre in Madison on Saturday night. The thing about these guys that amazes me is that each "song" is actually a 20-minute set of songs, and their playing never lost its energy.

The opening act was a group called Carbon Leaf, who were also great. Their music (and lead singer) reminded me a lot of R.E.M., but I'll leave it to a real R.E.M. fan to offer her opinions on that. They sounded good enough for me to pick up their latest CD at the show.

This was a great way to cap off a day that saw a big Badgers football win.

As I've mentioned here before and most recently on the Fourth Time Around podcast, my favorite holiday movie is Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. So I did a little search on the movie and came up with the "Which John Hughes Character Are You?" quiz. I hate these quizzes; they're a waste of time.

Oh, here's my result:

You are Clark Griswold (from National Lampoon's
Vacation)! You're full of optimism and
boundless energy, and no one loves a good
family trip more. No one else can swear a blue
streak like you either, Sparky!


Which John Hughes Character Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

- First, you'd be sitting in a conference room in New York waiting for your client to make up his mind about an ad campaign. Oh, and you'd be sitting across from Ferris Bueller's dad.

- After losing a cab to Kevin Bacon and tripping over some guy's trunk in the street, you get to the airport to find your plane is delayed. And you meet the guy whose trunk you tripped over.

- You spend the night in Wichita.

Hope I'm not giving too much away. :-)

Apple just did something that gained them BIG points in my book.

XTC's music is now available through iTunes.

It's about time. Let the downloading begin!

(I originally published this here in 2002-- actually, it goes back to my old, old personal web page from about 1996-- but I think it bears re-posting. And note that it's not "Hardrock, Cocoa, and Joe." :-)

If you grew up in Chicago, you'll remember the neat little stop-animation films they used to show on WGN-TV at Christmastime.

I've ripped the audio portion of these films to MP3, and they're attached for your enjoyment. Click the links to hear them:

Susie Snowflake
Hardrock, Coco, and Joe
Frosty The Snowman

If you're in the area, pick up a copy of the Daily Herald today. If you're not, check out this article on podcasting. Some people you know are in there. :-)

Last night, we saw Elevation, at U2 tribute band, at Peggy's.

I've never been a huge U2 fan, but I've seen enough bar bands to know when a group has it together. These guys really did, especially the dude playing Bono.

The photos in this entry were taken with my new Motorola RAZR phone. The images look really cool on my phone's display, but on this screen they're kind of tiny.

Here's a photo I took in the afternoon at Peggy's-- we were standing next to this bar for part of the evening.

The best part? The Harp was really cold. :-)

At the dawn of the CD age, getting information about which of your favorite LPs was being reissued on CD when wasn't that easy. Record stores (as we called them back then) had their CDs either behind the counter or in a single rack somewhere in the store.

As a result, many CD-only stores popped up, and most of them were great. My favorite was Chicago Compact Disc in Evanston, who had a huge selection of domestic, import, and bootleg CDs. We also used to get a bunch of people together to place orders from a company out of Oregon called Noteworthy Music, who published several catalogs a year and carried some really cool, really rare CDs.

In order to keep up with what was coming down the CD pipeline, some publications started up as well. The best of these was a four-page newsletter which was xeroxed on yellow paper called "International CD Exchange." I picked up my first copy at Chicago Compact Disc in August of 1987. I was so impressed that I immediately subscribed: and it turns out I was one of the first to do so.

ICE was primarily a listing of upcoming releases from the record companies, but over the years it grew to include articles about artists and recordings, concerts, and digital media. It also progressed from the photocopied sheet to a 24-page full color magazine.

19 years later, ICE has closed its doors.

Subscribers received a letter from publisher Pete Howard explaining his decision to close down the magazine (the letter is on the site in the link above).

I emailed Pete to let him know how sorry I was to see his magazine go. Along with ICE, over the years I also subscribed to Musician, Rolling Stone, Goldmine, and CD Review as a part of my music-listening hobby. As I told Pete, ICE was the only magazine subscription that survived 19 years, at least seven address changes, and some major life events on my end.

ICE always stuck to what it did best, and they adapted to the new technologies as they arrived: when email and web sites became prevalent in the mid-90s, they were a part of it. And when the Diamond Rio, Napster, and MP3s came around they reported on it. And then, when the little white box with the wheel appeared... you know the rest.

It's impressive to think of a publication that made it through all the changes in the way we communicate and we're entertained.

Pete wrote back to tell me he appreciated my sentiments, and that he was going to share my email with his parents. Now there's an endorsement..

R.I.P. ICE. We'll miss you.

The Silent Film Society of Chicago just announced their Silent Summer 2007 Film Festival.

This is one of my favorite things to do on Friday nights in July and August. This year's schedule looks like this:

July 20 - Seven Chances (Buster Keaton)
July 27 - Wings (Clara Bow and Buddy Rogers, Jr. in the very first film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture)
Aug. 3 - Battleship Potemkin (with orchestra and organ)
Aug. 10 - Welcome Danger (Harold Lloyd)
Aug. 17 - Beggars of Life (Wallace Beery and Louise Brooks)

Details at the Society's web site.

We'll be there!

I recently discovered Wonderfalls, an intelligent, irreverent, and highly original TV show.

It's the story of Jaye Tyler (Caroline Dhavernas), a twentysomething with a Philosophy degree from Brown who works at a Niagara Falls gift shop. (Her adolescent and adenoidal boss is not-so-affectionately referred to as "Mouth-Breather.") The hook: the animal-shaped toys and tchochkes she encounters in her life speak to her. As in, they literally speak to her and tell her what to do. Jaye just wants to be left alone, interacting with the world begrudgingly and indifferently only when she has to, but the critters in the show get her involved in other peoples' lives and ultimately-- and in a very convoluted manner-- make them better off than they were.

Oh, and Wonderfalls is also a canceled TV show: dumped by Fox after only four episodes in early 2004.

The critics raved about this show when it was first aired. More than one referred to it as "the best thing on television." Not being one to fall for superlatives, I didn't bother with it until the complete 13-episode series was released on DVD and I read even more glowing reviews. Finally, I rented Disc One from Netflix and stuck it in my bag for my trip to Japan. I cursed my laptop battery when it died in the middle of an episode called "Karma Chameleon." It was that good. Within the next couple weeks, I'd finished watching the entire series, and felt better for the experience.

Okay, maybe that's exaggerating, but there's something to be said for watching a TV show or movie or whatever and having it wind up a satisfying experience.

I also came to the realization that Wonderfalls' cancellation was ultimately a good thing.

I remember when I was heavily into another, more successful TV comedy-drama, Northern Exposure: the first episode I ever saw (where Shelly gets addicted to satellite TV) blew me away and I was hooked for the next few seasons.

Then the show got really, REALLY stupid. Dr Fleishman became a mountain man. Lovable, simple-yet-wise Ed became an idiot. Ruth-Ann got really mean. And most egregious was the sudden center-staging of Chris the DJ as a pontificating, overblown, wordy dime-store-philosopher-wannabe who made me want to pull an Elvis and shoot out the TV screen.

There, I feel better.

My point is that the 13 episodes of Wonderfalls complete a very nice story arc, and by virtue of the show's not living past its first season it never got the chance to get stupid. And thanks to the hard work of the show's fans to get the show released on DVD, the show lives on in its absolute brilliance, never to be described as "the formerly-great Wonderfalls."

It's heartening to see something so wonderful live on in one medium despite its failure in another. It's very much in line with the overarching theme of Wonderfalls, that everything happens for a reason.

Last night, we watched one of my favorite documentaries.

It's the story of three people who made history in the world of technology: the first was someone who fancied himself a technologist but appeared far more interested in achieving fame for himself, and was known for his publicity-grabbing grandstanding; the second was a genius who was more interested in solving technical issues than in furthering his own renown; and the third was someone who saw opportunity in a brand-new market and created a seemingly-unstoppable corporate behemoth. These three men (along with many others) took what was a hobby and turned it into a serious business that touched nearly every life on the planet.

The documentary is Empire of the Air: The Men Who Built Radio, and the people were Lee de Forest, Edwin Howard Armstrong, and David Sarnoff.

You're forgiven if you came up with three different, more contemporary names.

Based on Tom Lewis' book of the same name, Empire of the Air shows how each of these people achieved their places in the history of radio. We learn that de Forest may or may not have developed the revolutionary Audion tube, and spent a lifetime promoting himself as "The Father of Radio." We see how Armstrong improved upon de Forest's and others' work and made AM radio practical-- and created FM radio. And we hear the tale of David Sarnoff's rise from a poor paperboy to the chairman of RCA.

And while telling these stories, we spend a lot of time in courtrooms.

Well, not really-- but this was a litigious bunch of people, and as one watches Empire of the Air it's hard to resist drawing parallels to the personalities in today's technology world. And while it's certainly unfair to either set of people to draw the comparisons, I can't help but have the familiar names floating through my mind while listening to the stories.

Produced by Ken Burns in 1992, Empire of the Air is a fascinating documentary even to those without a technical background. The emphasis is on the people, their circumstances, and the world they lived in-- and not the inner workings of a regenerative circuit. Old photos, music, and archival film are mixed in with interviews with family, friends, coworkers, and radio insiders like Norman Corwin and Garrison Keillor.

You can find a copy of the movie here.

Why am I talking about this now, 15 years after the movie was first aired? (Incidentally, it was shown about a week before my daughter Becka was born. :-) Well, two reasons: Lisa and I were talking about my interest in the radio hobby (check my radio page), and then I got the idea to build a radio from a kit, like I did when I was a kid. It's a modernized version of a crystal set, and I'll post about it here within the next week.

In the meantime, check out Empire of the Air-- you'll find it enlightening, especially when you realize things haven't changed all that much.

My review of the Übercaster podcasting software package has been published in the August edition of Blogger and Podcaster Magazine. Click on the magazine cover under "View Current Issue," and you'll find the Ubercaster review on page 41.

You can also hear the dulcet tones of my voice reading the review at the magazine's site. Click "Reviews" under "B&P: Podcast Edition" and then hit the Play button.

The review encapsulated: Übercaster is an okay program, but it has a bit more growing to do.

Enjoy!

I've been working my way through the DVD boxed set Popeye the Sailor 1933-1938 - Volume One.

This is a wonderful collection which presents the original Max and Dave Fleischer cartoons in their original form, complete with Paramount title openings and closings (and the occasional NRA badge), which were clipped off the TV versions. The transfer to DVD is absolutely brilliant-- none of the other Popeye video sets look half as good as this.

My earliest recollection of Popeye was from the 1960s King Features made-for-TV cartoons. Years later, a local TV station began showing the 1950s Paramount theatrical Popeye films, which had a little more to offer in animation quality. But sometime in the late 1970s the same station got their hands on the Fleischer-era cartoons, and when they showed 1935's "You Gotta Be A Football Hero" I was completely hooked.

Sometime in the 1980s, many of these cartoons were colorized. In the process, the engineers ruined the animation by decreasing the frame counts and "smoothing out" much of the image. These versions were abominations. Thank heaven someone within Turner Entertainment, oddly enough the people responsible for the colorized versions, championed the idea of releasing these wonderful films in pristine form.

As the title suggests, this DVD covers the years 1933-1938, and we get to see everything from Popeye's debut in a Betty Boop cartoon up to the two-reel Technicolor productions Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor and Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba's Forty Thieves. There are also a few documentaries about the history of Popeye and animation as well as some great early cartoons featuring characters like Felix the Cat and Krazy Kat.

While this set is titled Volume One, I have to say that these are the best of the best Popeye films. As the years went on, the characters softened and once World War II started the films took on a very strong patriotic flavor.

Here's the Wikipedia page on the dude. One of the many great reviews of this DVD set can be found here.

If you're a fan of classic animation, check out this set!

Last weekend, we visited Opera in Focus at the Rolling Meadows Park District Theater.

Opera in Focus is a presentation of opera scenes and scenes from musical theater as performed by 18-inch rod puppets. While it sounds simple enough, the presentations are anything but simplistic. The sets are elaborate and the puppets are amazingly lifelike.

The photo above shows three of the puppets sitting in an opera box in front of the proscenium.

Our visit was scheduled as an item for our Discover Woodfield podcast, where you can hear our take on the experience in our latest show.

This link will take you to a very good history of Opera in Focus. The group also has YouTube and MySpace pages.

This guy is "Senor Tosci," an eerily lifelike representation of Arturo Toscanini who "conducts" the presentations.

The shows are appropriate for all ages-- we had a wonderful time and recommend that everyone visit this treasure of the Chicago suburbs!

On a Saturday morning a little over 15 years ago, I discovered the radio show by which every technology radio show and podcast I've heard since has been measured.

The show was Computing Success! hosted by Thom Foulks.

I found it completely by accident: I was trying to tune in (what was then) WLUP-AM and instead came across WNVR, which ran syndicated programming by The Business Radio Network. I would have tuned away from the station, but I was intrigued when I heard the host talking about Microsoft's new operating system, Windows 3.1.

After a few minutes, he took a call from a listener who had a question about Usenet and UNIX systems. I may have been new to PCs, but I was already an established Usenet user and UNIX Systems Administrator so this was my chance to "tech out" the host. He passed quite impressively.

What made the show special was the fact that Thom actually listened to his callers' questions and was genuinely interested in getting them the answers they needed. If he didn't know an answer, he'd recommend a book or other resource. Thom never faked his way through an answer, and his easygoing style made the listener, whether experienced or not, enjoy his show.

Thom also reported on the latest technology news, carrying reports from the staff of InfoWorld, PC Computing, and other computer publications of the day. John C Dvorak was an occasional contributor to Computing Success!

I had just obtained my first MS-DOS-based PC (a monochrome Sharp notebook, courtesy of my employer), so I was interested in learning as much as possible about what it could do. Thom's show was a huge help-- he spoke in plain English and kept the jargon to a minimum. While his style was low-key, yet you could tell he was thrilled about the subject matter. Thom wasn't interested in showing off what he knew about computers-- he was interested in sharing what he knew and showed he was always willing to learn more.

Sadly, Computing Success! went off the air about a year after I discovered it. It was replaced with another computer show hosted by a guy who loved to repeat his own name and referred to himself as "your computer answer man" despite the fact that the show seemed bereft of "answers" that did not involve a sponsor's product.

When I listen to today's tech shows that try to accomplish the same thing, I realize how much today's shows are lacking, when taken in the context of Thom's show . Leo LaPorte's The Tech Guy seems to come close, but it's not quite the same because Leo likes to "ham it up" a bit more than Thom did.

Thom Foulks passed away in March of 2004. He was active in the computer arts right up to the end, and if you Google his name you'll find all sorts of projects he worked on, including an extensive geneology project. And here's a link to his Wikipedia page.

I wish I'd taped some episodes of Computing Success! -- it would be nice to hear them right about now.

If you grew up in Chicago, you'll remember the neat little stop-animation films they used to show on WGN-TV at Christmastime.

I've ripped the audio portion of these films to MP3, and they're attached for your enjoyment. Click the links to hear them:

Susie Snowflake
Hardrock, Coco, and Joe
Frosty The Snowman

(a Crosswalks to Nowhere classic repost from long, long ago...)

I could argue that I'm a cool dad by virtue of the fact that I'm just, well, cool.

Last night, I took the girls to see the Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus concert at the United Center. I managed to get connected with some tickets in a corporate Skybox, which is the only way to see a show like this.

(I think the girls are spoiled now, and probably won't want to sit in the regular seats the next time we see a Bulls game.)

The show was perfectly suited for the audience. Ms Cyrus, in both her "Hannah Montana" and real-life personae had full command of the crowd, who sang along with every number and jumped up and down and screamed to fill the spaces in between.

Here's a link to a review in the Chicago Sun-Times. They liked the show, too.

It seemed the crowd much preferred the "Miley Cyrus" portion of the show to the "Hannah Montana" part. And Kudos to Ms Cyrus and her management for launching her career in this "dual" mode-- given the way Disney first promotes and then chews up their stars, it's brilliant to market both sides of the coin. When "Hannah Montana" is long gone from the Disney Channel lineup, Miley Cyrus will have an established career that will (I hope) take her further than, say, other former Disney stars (I'm trying really hard not to mention Ms Duff and the unfortunately unfortunate Ms Lohan).

Most of the songs were from the Hannah Montana TV show and CDs, but at one point Hannah and opening act Aly & AJ went into a respectable cover of Kiss' "Rock and Roll All Night." My, how time flies.

I have to admit, that like my previous experience at a concert geared towards teenagers, I actually enjoyed the show.

And my kids think I'm the coolest dad, like, ever.

Lisa took me to see a taping of NPR's "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" last week.

I've been a fan of the show for a long time-- in fact, I was on the show a few years ago and won the prize of Carl Kasell's voice on my answering machine. Impressive, huh?

It was interesting to see how the show was put together, and to hear the finished product with its edits and other clean-up. It reminded me of some episodes of our podcast, where we creatively edit the show to make it the wonderful entertainment many of you have come to know and love.

In the photo, from left to right, you'll see Carl Kasell, Peter Sagal, Roy Blount Jr, Amy Dickenson, and Paul Provenza. After the show, we got to meet the cast and even got photos of us with Carl.

The Chase Auditorium is a small theatre-- designed, as you might expect, for corporate meetings. After all, it's located downstairs in Chase Bank's Chicago headquarters. It's intimate enough to be perfect for a live radio show.

(I saw Marisa Monte in this space years ago, and it was awesome-- we were two rows from the stage and it really had the feeling of being in a small club.)

If you're a fan of the show and you're planning on visiting Chicago, be sure to add a visit to "Wait Wait..." on your agenda.

It's an annual summer tradition: The Silent Film Society of Chicago just announced their schedule for their 2008 Silent Summer Film Festival at the Portage Theater.

In brief, here's what's coming up:

July 18: Speedy (1929) with Harold Lloyd, directed by Ted Wilde. Live organ accompaniment: Dennis Scott. Shown with "Swing Your Partners" from 1918. Pre-show entertainment by the West End Jazz Band.

July 25: Children of Divorce (1927) starring Clara Bow, directed by Frank Lloyd. Live organ accompaniment: Jay Warren. The film will be introduced by historian Ken Irwin, and Jay Warren hosts a sing-along before the show.

August 1: Our Hospitality (1923) with Buster Keaton, directed by John G. Blystone and Buster Keaton. Live organ accompaniment by Michael Jacklin. Special Event: "Keaton Pork-Pie Hat Contest! Prizes for the best 'Buster' hat!"

August 8: Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927) with live organ accompaniment by Jay Warren and added effects by theremin authority Professor Pierce.

August 15: Gloria Swanson in Sadie Thompson (1928), directed by Raoul Walsh. Live theatre organ accompaniment by Dennis Scott. Special event: "What's Behind the Curtain? See it for the First Time Since 1927!"

August 22: The mini-festival "Kings of Comedy 2" featuring short comedic films of W.C. Fields ("Pool Sharks"), Douglas Fairbanks ("Mystery of the Leaping Fish"), Harold Lloyd ("Somewhere in Turkey"), Harry Langdon ("Lucky Stars"), and Buster Keaton ("One Week"). Also includes closing-night festivities and pre-show with The West End Jazz Band at 7:00.

I've been a fan of Buster Keaton for years, and PBS showed a beautifully restored print of Our Hospitality a few years ago. I hope the SFSC got their hands on that copy.

Lisa wants to see the presentation of Metropolis, which will include effects by Theremin expert Professor Pierce. Here's a photo and description of the Professor at work (courtesy of Leigh Hanlon's ChicagoScope podcast site).

This is a highly recommended event! Maybe we'll see you there...

I recently discovered Cinematic Titanic, the latest product of the minds that originally brought us Mystery Science Theater 3000 in the 1990s.

Cinematic Titanic takes old (and some not so old), really bad movies and alters them (their official legal terminology) by "riffing" on them. Essentially, this involves the 5 members of the CT team watching the movie and throwing out comments as it plays. We see the members of the group in silhouette as they watch and react to the film.

The image above shows how the effect looks, and this link will take you to the promo for the most recent CT release, The Wasp Woman, where you can see the team in action.

The cast of Cinematic Titanic consists of Joel Hodgson, Trace Beaulieu, Frank Conniff, Mary Jo Pehl, and Josh Elvis Weinstein. If you were an MST3K fan, you'll recognize all those names from the heyday of that show's greatness.

Unlike MST3K, Cinematic Titanic's movies aren't shown on TV-- they're available on DVD (or download) through the group's web site and at the occasional live performance. In fact, we'll be attending one of their upcoming Chicago appearances in December.

(For what it's worth, my favorite MST3K episode was, and remains, their treatment of The Giant Gila Monster. I still crack up every time I see a clip.)

I bought The Wasp Woman online and burned it to a DVD, and we watched it last night. It was hilarious, and exactly what we would expect from this group. Another nice feature is the fact that when you download the movie, you get a printable copy of the DVD sleeve insert and the disc label.

If you're a fan of the original MST3K or you love poking fun at awful movies, check out Cinematic Titanic!

This past Saturday night, we saw the band Tributosaurus who, along with many special guests, performed songs from XTC's catalog.

I've been an XTC fan since my college days, and when I saw this video on the XTC fan site Chalkhills a few weeks ago, only a few seconds passed between my learning of the concert and the tickets' showing up in my e-mail.

Tributosaurus refers to themselves as "the Jurassic beast of multiple musical faces, and every month, the beast morphs into a different rock group. The finest musicians from Chicagoland join the core group to sit in…to sing and play songs they’ve wanted to cover all their lives." They pride themselves on their commitment to learn a brand-new set of material, note-for-note, every month.

Their objective is to recreate an artist's music as it appeared on their records, not to give the impression that we were seeing a live performance by the artist. Tributosaurus' dedication to XTC's sound was amazing, and the group very faithfully recreated songs from the band's catalog.

According to Chalkhills and the band's keyboard player, Chris (whom I spoke with after the show), the XTC show is now an annual event for Tributosaurus.

During "Earn Enough For Us," for example, there were at least 8 or 9 people on stage, half of them with guitars, to ensure that jangly sound. On "Dear God" (shown above) they invited a young girl to sing the opening and closing lines, and on "1000 Umbrellas" the team was joined by the "Tributosaurus Strings" who provided the backdrop that matched the original arrangement on the album Skylarking.

The show was conducted almost in the style of a "staged reading," in that the musicians and singers all brought their music with them as they came on stage. All the musical and vocal parts were shared by Tributosaurus and their guests, meaning no single performer took all the "Andy" or "Colin" parts during the show. Every single person who appeared on stage performed wonderfully.

I didn't write down the set list while the show was going on, but someone who saw last year's show posted this set list on the Sound Opinions forum, and it matches the show we saw very closely:

Making Plans For Nigel
Dear God
Earn Enough For Us
Statue of Liberty
Generals and Majors
Burning With Optimism's Flames
Love on a Farmboy's Wages
English Roundabout
Poor Skeleton Steps Out
1000 Umbrellas
Prince of Orange
Science Friction
When You're Near Me I Have Difficulty
One of the Millions
It's Nearly Africa
Mayor of Simpleton
No Thugs in Our House
The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead

"Senses Working Overtime" was the closer.

The show was at the Park West, which is still my absolute favorite place to see live music. (Evidently, this is XTC's Dave Gregory's favorite venue, too).

Tributosaurus plays regularly at Martyr's, and I have a feeling we'll be up there very soon. We suggest you check them out, too!

Leonard Cohen appeared before a sell-out crowd at the Chicago Theatre tonight. We were thrilled to be there.

Similar to the Bob Dylan concerts we saw a few years ago, it was amazing to see a musical legend performing right in front of us. Unlike Dylan, Cohen was engaging, funny (!), and seemed to be having a wonderful time as he played through his catalog. He expressed his appreciation to the audience and his bandmates several times through the show, tipping his hat and bowing after every song. Not once did his actions seem insincere.

I've only been to a few shows where more than a single standing ovation was given, and I counted no fewer than seven during this show, including the minutes-long ovation Cohen received when he first walked on stage.

Cohen welcomed the audience to the show by saying he hadn't been around for about 15 years, when he was 60 years old and "just a kid with a head full of crazy ideas." He also told us how the years have treated him, listing off the (prescription) medications he's experienced along with his delving into various religions. This latter effort was often thwarted because "cheerfulness kept breaking through."

He covered all his hits, including "I'm Your Man," "Bird on a Wire," "Suzanne," and of course "Hallelujah." The band was tight, and the songs were all wonderfully arranged. One of my favorite moments of the night was when "Tower of Song" was given the same cheesy arrangement that appears on the I'm Your Man album, complete with Leonard plinking out notes on a small keyboard.

The sound was amazing: the band was tight and we could hear every note that was played. You can get a taste of what the show sounded like by picking up the new release Live in London which came out last month.

The audience seemed to be mostly in their mid to late 50s, although there were several people there in the early to mid 20s, which speaks to Cohen's appeal.

After the final song of the second set, Cohen and the band came back for a great rendition of "First We Take Manhattan." This was followed by two more encores, and the show ended around 11:30 pm.

"We don't know when our paths will cross again," Cohen said at the end of the evening. We're just glad they crossed tonight.

In November of 2007 I wrote about Thom Foulks, the guy I believe to be the true godfather of technology talk radio. I closed the piece by saying that I wished that I had saved some tapes of Thom's show, Computing Success!

My wish has been answered-- a few months ago, Thom's son Dana e-mailed me to say that he enjoyed my previous blog posting and that he had some recordings of his dad's show that he would send me.

So, thanks to the tiny world we live in today, I can bring you an entire two-hour episode of Computing Success! that ran on the Business Radio Network on April 26, 1992. You can click on the links below to play in your browser, or you can right-click (Windows) or control-click (Mac) to save the files.

Part One

Part Two

I tried to clean up the audio, yet it's not perfect-- but no matter, I say. I'm just happy to be able to hear this again.

In addition to enjoying Thom's laid-back style of delivery, you'll also hear his wonderment at the then-new PC sound card technology-- part of the recently-announced MPC standard), and questioning whether the Logitech Fotoman (which you can see halfway down this page) was worth the expense. There are also lots of mentions of things we don't really worry about any more, such as config.sys files and where the "himem" command should go in your autoexec.bat.

There are also mentions of the Apple PowerBook and NeXT computers. Neat stuff.

I hope you enjoy these sound files-- they brought back a lot of memories for me. Thanks, Dana!

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.

This past Friday night, we attended the opening of the Silent Film Society of Chicago's Silent Summer Festival at the Portage Theatre.

The show was Running Wild, starring W.C. Fields, in a much more sympathetic role than you may be accustomed. The feature was preceded by the Buster Keaton short "My Wife's Relations," a classic Keaton piece where Buster finds himself going through an unintentional marriage after being accused of throwing a brick through a window. (Just go with me here.) Both films were presented in very nice, clean 35mm prints-- much clearer than what you'd find on YouTube or older VHS collections. Musical accompaniment was by organist Dennis Scott, and pre-show entertainment came via the West End Jazz band. Despite a few technical glitches the event was a huge success.

Before the show, we had a brief conversation with Professor Pierce, who has provided live Theremin accompaniment at previous Festival shows. He told us there was no Theremin on this year's program, saying it was "kind of like accordions; you want to limit how much you give the people."

This is always one of our favorite summertime events, and fans of classic films should absolutely attend!

Here's the rundown of the schedule; all shows are at the Portage Theatre and start at 8:00:

July 24: Running Wild (1927) with W.C. Fields, directed by Gregory LaCava.. Live organ accompaniment: Dennis Scott. Shown with Buster Keaton's "My Wife's Relations" from 1922. Pre-show entertainment by the West End Jazz Band.

July 31: Underworld (1927) starring George Bancroft and Evelyn Brent, directed by Josef von Sternberg. Live organ accompaniment: Jay Warren. The film will be introduced by historian Ken Irwin, and Jay Warren hosts a sing-along before the show.

August 7: Girl Shy (1924) with Harold Lloyd, directed by Fred C Newmeyer and Sam Taylor. Live organ accompaniment by Jay Warren. Shown with the Harold Lloyd short "Back into the Woods" (1918).

August 14: Piccadilly (1929) with Anna May Wong and Gilda Gray. Live organ accompaniment by Michael Jacklin.

August 21: The Thief of Baghdad (1924) with Douglas Fairbanks, directed by Raoul Walsh. Live theatre organ accompaniment by Dennis Scott. Special event: "The Portage Harem Dancers on stage, courtesy DeMaira Dance Studio."

August 28: Seventh Heaven (1927) with Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell, directed by Frank Borzage. Live theatre organ accompaniment by Dennis Scott. Special event: closing night ceremonies, and pre-show music by the West End Jazz Band.

In these economic times... okay, I admit that was a cheap way to start off this piece. I only did it because for the past year it's become the hackneyed phrase of choice. I'll start again.

Like many people, we have a certain amount of money allocated for what can broadly be called "entertainment." We decided to take a look at all the areas where this money is going, and the focus landed on our monthly cable bill.

We paid about $160 per month for TV, internet, and telephone service. This was an introductory price for bundled services from WideOpenWest, our provider since mid-2008. Our TV package included the digital basic package and a bunch of Starz channels. (We don't have an HDTV.)

When we looked at our viewing habits, we realized that nearly everything we watch is either on broadcast TV and/or readily available on the internet or through Netflix. And since we have an antenna on the roof and digital converter boxes in the house, we figured we'd take the step and drop cable television service, ratcheting back to just the 8 Mbit Internet and home telephone services.

This brought our monthly cable bill down by over $70, and so far we haven't missed the programming offered by cable TV. We can still see The Big Bang Theory, 30 Rock, the local and national news, and all the old shows offered on Chicago's MeTV. We're also starting to catch up on our Netflix queue.

There was a time when I wouldn't have even thought about canceling cable TV. When my kids were younger, we spent many nights watching The Powerpuff Girls on Cartoon Network and they were glued to the set for Nickelodeon and The Disney Channel. They've since graduated to MTV and beyond, and now get most of their entertainment on their computers and iPods.

It just seemed to make sense to invest in the pipeline that brings the material to our house, as opposed to paying a chunk of money for 100-some-odd channels chosen by the cable company.

I have absolutely no complaint about WOW: having slogged through experiences with (in reverse order) Comcast, AT&T Broadband, MediaOne, and TCI I can say without any hesitation that WOW's services have been rock-solid and their customer service is consistently top-notch. I highly recommend them to anyone.

This isn't entirely about the money, although saving almost $1000 a year is significant. It is a powerful statement on our changing entertainment habits. With a few exceptions like The Daily Show and Turner Classic Movies, I don't expect we'll miss cable TV.

At least we can watch the Starz Bunnies on the internet.

Merry Christmas, everyone! Here are some photos of North School Park for your enjoyment.

I was watching an old episode of Northern Exposure and discovered this scene of Shelly talking with her as-yet unborn daughter.

Fans of The Big Bang Theory on CBS will recognize the little girl as Kaley Cuoco, "Penny" on the show.

Enjoy, and Happy New Year!

As mentioned in this blog post, we got rid of cable TV in our house about 5 months ago. I figured this was a good time to give a status report.

What have we missed? Not much. We're not inclined to watch shows like "Jersey Shore," and most of our former favorite channels-- Food Network, A&E, Discovery-- seemed to have become home to mean-spirited, cheaply produced "reality" shows. From what I've seen and heard since dropping cable, this trend hasn't changed.

During the holidays we missed some movie marathons from TCM and the like, but that just made us look for alternatives at Netflix or on the local Chicago over-the-air channels.

As I mentioned, we started plowing through our Netflix queue, and we've caught up on a bunch of movies we've been meaning to watch. I've also discovered some TV shows that I missed the first time around (thanks mostly to MeToo), and I can now eloquently spout 20-year-old pop culture phrases like "Resistance is Futile" and know what they mean. I can now both annoy and astonish my co-workers with my "new" TV discoveries: yes, I will admit publicly that until a couple months ago I never saw a single episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

From a technical standpoint, the video and audio on our TVs is near-perfect. We have a later-model analog/CRT TV, and the signal that comes out of our converter box is great. Despite my tendency to collect gadgets, I still don't see a need to upgrade to an HDTV yet.

All that said, we're not completely "off the wire." While we don't have cable TV in the house, we now have access to Internet video thanks to the Sony BDP-S370 Blu-Ray player I bought a couple weeks ago. This unit has built-in internet video streaming, including Netflix, Amazon, and a whole bunch of other services. This means that you connect the player to your home network, and anything that shows up as "Watch Instantly" in your Netflix queue can be streamed through the player right to the TV at no additional charge past your monthly Netflix subscription. You can also "rent" movies (and recent TV episodes) through Amazon and have them delivered directly to your player at that moment. I'll post a detailed review of the Sony player and the available services in an upcoming blog post.

So far, we've saved about $400 overall by not having cable TV, and we don't miss it. And frankly, I feel a little more smug about not supporting programs where the hosts encourage people to drop 80-lb wedding cakes or show Just How Much Better Off You Are Than These Losers Who Can't Seem to Run a Household.

Of course, we still have network TV for that.

The Silent Film Society of Chicago just announced the 2010 lineup for one of our favorite events! It's the annual Silent Summer Festival (link to be updated soon) at the Portage Theatre on Chicago's Northwest side.

This year's schedule looks like this:

July 23: The Freshman (1925) with Harold Lloyd.

July 30: Ben-Hur (1925) starring Ramón Novarro and Francis X. Bushman.

August 6: The Mark of Zorro (1920) with Douglas Fairbanks, accompaniment by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra.

August 13: The Penalty (1920) with Lon Chaney.

August 20: Harold Teen (1928) with Arthur Lake and Mary Brian.

August 28: Polyanna (1920) with Mary Pickford.

All shows are at the Portage Theatre and start at 8:00 pm. The movies usually have live musical accompaniment by organists Jay Warren and Dennis Scott, and there are often sing-alongs, two-reel comedies, and other fun stuff at each show. More details about each program and ticket information will be on the Society's web site shortly.

We had the pleasure of watching some great live music performed at one of our favorite venues, the Park West in Chicago. Tuesday night was an evening of Progressive Rock featuring former Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett and symphonic rockers Renaissance.

I've been a fan of Renaissance's music since I was in college, and by 1996 I was running a fan-based web site called Northern Lights along with Russ Elliot, another fan who was based in the UK. During this time I've had many conversations with past and present members of the band, and even met the band's guitarist and songwriter, Michael Dunford, when I was on a business trip in London.

This time around I had the chance to meet both Dunford and singer Annie Haslam. It was kind of unusual because I've spent a lot of time exchanging email and talking on the phone with Annie, getting updates for concerts and new CD releases and whatnot, and this was the first time we met face-to-face. It was nice to finally have a conversation without a wire running between us.

Renaissance's show was a bit shorter than one would expect, due to the fact that they were sharing the bill. Here's a list of the songs they performed:

Prologue
Carpet of the Sun
Midas Man
Things I Don't Understand
The Mystic and the Muse
Running Hard
Mother Russia
Ashes Are Burning (encore)

Those who are familiar with Renaissance's catalog will recognize these as some of the band's shorter songs. Had they played some of their other popular material we probably would have been there until 2:00 am. :) In all, it was a great set and the band sounded excellent.

Steve Hackett opened the show. I was a mostly-casual fan of Genesis (a girl I had a crush on in high school was a big fan of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway), but I was familiar with Steve's playing through my years as a prog-rock fan. He played some of his better-known Genesis songs, including "Firth of Fifth," "Blood on the Rooftops," and "Watcher of the Skies." He ended with "Los Endos," which made me want to pull out my old copy of Seconds Out.

Hackett was low-key and engaging with the audience; when he mentioned that the start of the show was delayed because of problems with the equipment truck and apologized that they didn't have a chance to do a sound check beforehand, the crowd responded with a loud cheer. The band sounded great.

Renaissance and Hackett are on tour throughout the Midwest and East Coast US as well as Canada, with Renaissance ending up in Tokyo in August (details here). It's a great evening for the prog rock fan.

We went to Ravinia last Saturday night to see Rodrigo y Gabriela, a guitar duo from Mexico City (via Dublin, of all places). The show was amazing.

Rodrigo y Gabriela's music clearly shows its Latin influence, but there's something very different about the way they play: the duo met when they were playing in a thrash metal band called "Tierra Ácida," and that influence is evident. At first listen, one is tempted to say "Oh, that's kinda familiar," but a few seconds into a song you can tell these two have a real edge.

Rodrigo generally plays the melody-- usually with hands moving so fast you can't actually see what he's doing-- and Gabriela plays rhythm by strumming, thumping, and banging on her strings and guitar body while throwing herself into the performance. The crowd at Ravinia took to both of them immediately, and when Gabriela started jumping around while playing, the audience was sold. The few times they spoke to the audience clearly showed they were excited to be there and that they really, really enjoyed what they were doing (an impression many acts don't seem to give). A favorite moment was when Gabriela was talking about the different types of music they've enjoyed and played and then dropped an f-bomb-- the crowd actually seemed to appreciate it.

The weather was perfect, and the sounds these these two made managed to fill the entire park; we were seated in the Pavilion and were thrilled to watch as they played. There were also two large screens on either side of the stage where you could see them play up close.

I discovered these guys in late 2009 via the KEXP Song of the Day podcast, where their song "Hanuman" was the featured track. I was walking to the office on a cold November morning and what came into my ears would have made me stop in my tracks if it wasn't so catchy. Click the link to hear what I mean. That evening, I downloaded their latest album, 11:11, and it's still one of my favorite albums of the past year. Here's wishing these two much success.

The image above was taken by a fan at the duo's Red Rocks show and posted on Rodrigo y Gabriela's Facebook page.