Hey Brother!

I don't know how to explain this one.

So we had this party at the house the other night. Me and the roomie. Me and the roomie who are more than a little obsessed with Arrested Development. (Thank you again, Hal, for the DVDs. My life is forever changed.)

Being the theatre nerds that we are, we decided to have a party, with an AD theme: you had to come dressed as a character from the show.

Yeah, I know what you're thinking: Jesus, that's lame. Don't you have better things to do with your time?

Yeah, of course. I could have been doing report cards or prepping Limelight stuff, but instead I decided to dress up as Buster Bluth for the night.


We had a GOB, a GOB's wife (in Flickr, the picture that is NOT mocking Abu Ghraib, I promise), a gay protestor, and a half-hearted Tobias.

And a severed hand statue.

You have to watch the show to understand that one. Or any of this bizarre, pretentious hipster cosplay event. Ridiculous, to be true.

But it was fun. Even if Cori didn't decorate the house with blue paint smudges and a bag in the freezer labeled "DEAD DOVE. DO NOT EAT."

If at this point you fear that I have lost my mind, you may just be correct.



That wasn't all I did this weekend. Friday night was date night. With Duder. And Mrs. Duder got to come along too.

Hadn't seen Eric and Erica in forever, so they got a babysitter and we had a nice meal together at the Roundhouse. Steak is good.

Sunday morning, another drive to the north side. Haul ass back west for a sparsely-attended fundraiser. Frustrating, frustrating, frustrating. So hard to get people to pay attention to anything anymore.

It's late, and I'm beat. Report cards still haven't been started. Tomorrow I say goodbye to a group of students that I am loathe to leave.

More on all of that later. And then to bed, and then to bed.

A Mug and a Smile

The playwright Anton Chekhov once wrote that if you introduce a gun in the first act of a play, someone will surely be shot by the end.

This story involves a large glass mug and heavy drinking. I'll let you figure out what happens next.

Roommate was heading across the street (more or less) to this huge-ass bar that occupies an abandoned movie theatre. Everything about the place is oversized, from the long, mead hall-like tables to the big-screen TVs along the wall, and of course, there's the mugs. If you buy one of their Big-Ass Mugs (what is it--30 oz. or so?) you can bring it back and get nightly drink specials for a reduced rate.

I more or less hate the place, partly due to its hugeness, and mostly because it's loud and obnoxious and antithetical to everything a decent bar or pub or tavern should be. But people from work like going there and it's across the street, so there it is. One of those places you grudgingly accept.



Anyway, back to roommate. Or Cori, I should say. Cori headed out the door to meet some friends and have a few, and I told her to take my mug with, so she also could take advantage of the wonderful Mug Club opportunities The Foundry offers to its most exclusive patrons.

While she did that I stayed in and added a bunch of stuff to the LTC website, eventually crashing on the couch watching one of the greatest movies ever made. About midway through the film (around the time Tim Matheson gets the supremely-hot Nancy Allen in the Zero*) I hear someone fumbling with the door and in walks Cori with her two pals.

She has her hand over her mouth, and is spouting something about "You'll never guess...you'll never guess what I did." I imagine some sort of strange newly-acquired lip tattoo has become the highlight of her night, but sadly it's not that. She moves her hand away, and I have to squint to see what the hell she's talking about. She's also shaking her fist at me by this point, and I slowly realize what has happened.

She has chipped her front tooth on the Big-Ass Mug.

It's a decent-sized chip, and it'll require some sort of repair work. A little corner of her top front tooth gone forever.

Somehow I am to blame for all of this, simply because I was kind enough to lend her the Big-Ass Mug. But maybe she wasn't ready for it. The Big-Ass Mug does not suffer fools gladly. Not that Cori's a fool, but she was definitely out of her league tonight.

The Big-Ass Mug takes no prisoners.

*Wait--it wasn't a Zero. That doesn't make sense. What the hell was he flying?

The Great and Terrible Wizard of Oz

In addition to catching The Pogues on Monday, I must say a few short words about a show I saw last Friday: The House Theatre's short revival of The Great and Terrible Wizard of Oz.

The House is my newest obsession, after seeing The Sparrow a few weeks back. In fact, Cori the roommate is also hooked, so she convinced some of her thespian friends to come see The House's original adaptation of the Oz story.

It's a tough, stripped-down adaptation of the Baum story, with darker elements and a greater sense of tragedy, with Dorothy cast as the unwilling Witchslayer, sent down a road of destiny she doesn't quite understand.

After the show I was talking with Phil Kapperich, the playwright who adapted this and the 2002 production of The Terrible Tragedy of Peter Pan, about why he's drawn to these iconic stories. There's such a danger in attempting to put your own stamp on such a well-worn story, but as he pointed out, there's something in them that made them great in the first place. There's a reason why we keep going back to them over and over again.

Anyway, their shows have so much cool shit going on, I can't recommmend them enough. If you live in the area, I highly recommend catching either the final performances of Oz this weekend, or catch The Sparrow, now extended through mid-April at Steppenwolf's Garage Theatre.

You Are Not at Your Home

Okay, so....

Something really fucked up just happened.

I had all these plans to just head home and do some laundry and watch some movies and be a tired old guy. But instead I stayed late at work, gave blood (Mr. Super Hero Me!!!!) and then grabbed some dinner with Principal Best Friend. And his kids.

Then The Duder called and there was a gathering at the house and it involved wine and cheese and discussions of golf and so I must attend.

Had a LOT of wine and lots of good conversation and all that grown-up shit and then I decided to head home and around halfway there my thigh started vibrating and it was Roomie. (Hey Roomie! (See Arrested Development and other jokey variations on that joke for explanation.))

Roomie's car wouldn't start outside the grocery store complex, and thankfully I was close by for a swooping rescue. Arrived home, normalcy on a Friday, Cori walks in and says the following:

(Dramatic pause.)

"There's a guy at the door."

"Huh?"

"There's a guy at the door. I think he's drunk, but there's a guy at the door."

"What?"

(Dramatic re-enactment provided by the Limelight Adult Players. And a kitchen knife.)

Suddenly we shift positions and I realize that yes, there is a guy at my back door. Through the open vertical blinds we see a young man in a red baseball cap, swaying back and forth on my porch slab. He is obviously very, very drunk.

This is when I become bad-ass.

(This is true, by the way. Cori can vouch for me.)

I stride to the door, open the blinds a bit to meet my adversary (who, Cori reminds me, is a 19-year old drunk kid who can't see straight), and I throw my bad self into the ring.

"Do you know where you are? You are not at your home!!!!"

He swayed and mumbled and didn't give much of an answer. I tried variations on the theme, until I realized that there would be no compromise with this individual.

Determinedly, I finally yelled "GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE I'M CALLING THE GODDAMN COPS!!!!!"

He eventually slouched off towards less enterprising nocturnal ventures and I proceeded to mark my property with my own urine. I had to do the same thing last summer when a goddamn skunk started horning in on my affairs.

It's now late into the evening and all is safe. I have the cauldrons of hot oil ready and the trusty 2x4 in place lest a miscreant or a ne'er-do-well try and break the defenses of Castle Drunkenstein.

A Dash of Pepper

The other night I was trying to explain this song that was stuck in my head. Something about "mama quiero" and a "dash of pepper." It was from an old Tom and Jerry cartoon and I also remembered something about a cat dressed up like Carmen Miranda.

Cori just about spit out her cereal this morning when she saw it on TV, remembering my attempt to sing the song. And thanks to the miracle that is YouTube, I present for you the entire cartoon.

Watching it brought back about 50 other buried memories, including a vague one where my buddy Mike would imitate the little girl who dresses Tom up like a baby. Goddamn those cartoons kicked ass.