I Don't Get People

No Time For Love, Dr. Jones!

2005-10-07T06:32:00.000-07:00

Got lots to do today.
However, if you get the urge and are near Belmont and Racine tonight, go see The Twilight Gallery at Theater Building Chicago.
I adapted one of my favorite Twilight Zone eps for the first part of tonight's 3-episode showing. If you feel really philanthropic, you can see 3 different episodes at the same-Bat-time-same-Bat-theater tomorrow night! You even get $5-off tomorrow's ticket with tonight's ticket stub.
WHAT A DEAL!
Call now! Low-cost, tired-of-dealing-with-people operators are standing by.
(Last post I loved lists, but this one is all about the hyphenates.)

I'm Back, Finally or Is Anyone Going to Read This?

2005-09-30T08:00:00.000-07:00

Alright, so it's been quite some time since I posted. Almost a month, to be exact. I have a good reason, I swear. Now where did I put it?
Oh yeah, here it is.
In the last week alone I have:
1. Had auditions for Judy's Scary Little Christmas, and cast most of it (still seeing a few other people for key roles).
2. Went on at Grand Hotel for one of my understudy roles (I go on for one other next weekend, and then the third one the week following).
3. Cleaned most of our apartment (finally)!
4. Taken one of our kitties to the vet.
5. Dealt with tourist shoppers on Michigan Avenue (trust me, it's a noted accomplishment).
6. Become addicted to Su Doku.
7. Learned. Loved.

And there's so much more to do in the next few weeks. I'm excited, nervous, and looking forward to all of it.

Now for this week's "I Don't Get People" rant ... er, um, observation, in which I continue my new love for listing items.
Anyone who is still rallying behind Bush needs to do one or all of the following:
1. Go to the Gulf States and volunteer their time to help clean up the mess he ignored for three days while fundraising and golfing. Oh well, at least he didn't follow Condie's lead. Or did he?
2. Enlist in the Army. From what I've been reading, they could use it.
3. Give up their SUV's in exchange for more fuel-efficient or hybrid vehicles.
4. Be forced to read the Patriot Act, before defending it.
5. Fuck right off.

I could go on forever about the President and his ability to take away our freedoms, destroy our foreign relations, plunge the country into debt, and look like an idiot on camera while doing it. However, far greater people have already tread there before me.
What I do not understand is that in the face of all this evidence against his competency and his lack of concern for his own citizens, there is still a 38% approval rating. Almost 2/5 of this country still think he's doing a good job. Are these people without a television? Unlikely. Do they read the newspaper/internet? Even more unlikely. Are they idiots? You bet. They blindly follow the GOP, even as it appears to be going over the falls. There was a time in this country when it would have been preferable to be a Republican. That time, however, passed with the Great Depression. Since then, the party that freed the slaves became obsessed with big business, and the protection of their amassed wealth at all costs. Oil became king, and the working man became an afterthought.
And yet, the majority of the supporters of this party are people who will not benefit one iota from putting them in power. They will see their jobs go oversees as the company decides it costs too much to employ American workers (pesky minimum wage). They will sit and watch their children not go to college because the Hummer needed gas. They will watch their personal freedoms be trampled by a government that can now wire-tap their phones without provocation. And worse still, they will sit and watch their neighbors drown while the leader of their great party is clearing brush and raising thousands of dollars for his constituents.
Yeah, that sounds smart.

Two Weeks, and Counting

2005-08-23T09:51:00.000-07:00

Aw crud, I haven't posted anything in two weeks! The five people who read this may stop very soon.
I have a couple of posts that I swear I'm working on. I got a lot of material in my trip to Six Flags: Great America last week (mullets, missing teeth, and manners). And I even got some ideas from my trip to my hometown this weekend (marriage, meals and my Mom).
It will take me a while to compile these nuggets into posts, however. My time is going to be eaten up in the next two weeks with rehearsal, preparing to direct, and other time consumers. So hang in there, dear reader(s).

A Whole Week

2005-08-10T13:32:00.000-07:00

I know, it's been a really long time since my last post, but I promise a really good post soon.

I'm off to clean the kitchen now. Wish me luck! Something in there growled at me today. I hope it was just one of the cats.

Parents Do the Darnedest Things

2005-08-03T08:52:00.000-07:00

I promised a post about the way parents use their kids, so here it is. A few months back I posted on another blog a comment regarding a story about a suburban San Francisco neighborhood up-in-arms over a proposed bocce ball facility. (Stop snickering at "bocce ball"!) Basically, the parents were worried about the "outsider" element coming to use the facility (which was to be built on a vacant lot owned by the city). Just to give you an idea of what the article was about, here are some of the choice comments from local residents:

- "People want to come home from work and go in their hot tub and play with their kids, and then they have to feel like they have 200 guests in their backyard," said Mike Dwyer, whose property overlooks the proposed site.

- "You just worry about what that does to your neighborhood. It brings in a lot of people that don't obviously live here," [Julie Hart] said. But, she added, "I have nothing against people playing bocce ball."

- ...in a letter to City Hall, the [Julie Hart and her husband] said, "There is the potential impact on the safety of the local residents, especially to our children, and the specter of inappropriate behavior around our young and impressionable children."

- "We don't want eight bocce ball courts. We don't want six," said Jeff Glassauer, who has never played the game and has no plans to take it up on the courts that could be built on a weed-covered field the city owns near his house. "We don't want any bocce ball courts."

In this instance, home owners who think their property values will diminish from being next door to a recreational facility are using their children as reason for opposing the proposal. Never mind the fact that an empty lot - that could attract drug deals, dead-body dumping, and children playing with dangerous trash - is right next door to them already.

The parents have put on a front of, to quote Helen Lovejoy, "won't someone please think of the children." But what would the children really be subjected to? Retired gentelemen gathering for a leisurely game of ball throwing? Exposure to people and possibly another culture that is not currently represented in their neighborhood? Wisdom from said gentlemen who have lived full lives and have much to impart to eager young minds? Oh yeah, we wouldn't want that, would we?

I don't have kids myself, so I know there are some people that would tell me I have no business commenting on the lengths parents will go to to protect their children. But what do they need protecting from here? I feel for Mike Dwyer, who may have to put up a privacy wall to keep everyone from seeing what he's really doing in his hot tub late at night with his wife, after the kids have gone to bed. Because let's be honest, that's the only thing he should be worried about the neighbors seeing.

But instead, the parents are using their kids as an excuse for their own ignorance of what's being proposed. Have they done research on the impact that comparable facilities have had on other neighborhoods? Have they looked into who the average bocce ball player is? Have they asked about what impact the bocce ball facility may have on the neighborhood's revenue? No. Instead they make unfounded accusations that this facility will attract pedophiles and peeping toms.

But what they and, I feel, a lot of parents are really saying is, "I'm too busy to have to take an active interest in what my kid does and sees every minute of the day. That should be someone else's responsibility." You only need to look at the recent developments with censorship, and Janet Jackson's "Nipplegate," to see that parents have now come to the conclusion that it's someone else's responsibility what their kids watch on TV. Last I checked, every TV and remote control for them had an "OFF" button , or at the very least a channel changing option. True, most of them say "POWER," and maybe that's where the problem lies. But they should look at that button as giving them "POWER" over what their kids see. The rest of us, however, want to be able to watch what we want to watch without worrying about it being dumbed-down. That's what I want on TV, but no one listens to me because I'm not using a child to support my argument.

If only the parents in the suburb of San Fran (and everywhere, for that matter) would just put down their Motorola RAZR V3 with Bluetooth, Blackberry, Sidekick, PalmPilot, iPod, Powerbook, and whatever else they can find to tune their children out, they may actually learn that their children are a lot smarter than they give them credit for. Sure you need to nurture them, teach them right from wrong, and instill them with a sense of purpose and confidence, and all that is hard work. But there's something to be said for parents who raise their kids with a sense of self reliance. If Mommy and Daddy are always there to tell them what and who they should be exposed to, they become incapable of making informed decisions for themselves. They won't bother doing any kind of research into what's really important, and instead just follow whomever may be there to tell them what they should think and do. (*Cough* George W. Bush *Cough*)

My parents were as loving as anyone else's, and yet they also raised me with a sense of awareness about the world around me. I was allowed to watch rated-R movies, provided they were with me. I saw Nightmare on Elm Street with my Mom and sister when I was 10 (and it didn't scare me then, either). They allowed us to have one drink on special occasions, provided they were there and no one else knew they were allowing us to drink. My grandma was a bartender until I was 12, so when we went to visit her at the bowling alley she worked at, I saw the effects of being a drunk. (Interestingly enough, my grandma was never a drinker herself.) As a result, I never felt the need to run off during high school to get drunk, because I was raised not looking at it as taboo or forbidden. Even in college I didn't drink that much or get drunk that often. I never had a curfew, provided I called to tell them where I was, woke them up to tell them when I got home, and went to church on Sunday no matter how late I stayed out Saturday night. As long as I obeyed what few rules they put on my actions, they let me make my own decisions about what I did and saw.

Sure I made mistakes. Who hasn't, but that's what life and growing-up is all about. You learn by example, and the example you set for your kids is the most crucial. Throwing a tantrum and making up excuses rather than finding out the facts is no example to give. I would never tell a parent how they should raise their kids. I would, however, tell them how they should act around their child. "Like an adult" is a good place to start.

Familial Relations

2005-08-01T09:31:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a very busy day. Tim and I went down to the Southport Grocery & Cafe for a production meeting for Handbag's holiday show, Judy's Scary Little Christmas (which I'm directing). After that, my parents and my oldest sister came up to see me in SCARRIE - The Musical, which I am in until this Sunday at the Theater Building. Come see it! It's the last week, and it's brilliant. After the show they took Tim and I out to eat in the neighborhood (Andersonville).

After dinner, I had a read-through for a same-sex staged reading of Bell, Book & Candle that Handbag is thinking of doing. I love the film, and the adaptation of the stage play that Handbag Ensemble Member Rick Karlin has done is very fun. It's interesting to note the new implications all of the "underground witchcraft" dialogue takes on when you also add the gay element to it. We hope to have a couple of late-night readings of it next year, one with a boy-boy romantic coupling and one with a girl-girl one. Should be a good time.

On Saturday, Tim and I braved Michigan Avenue for about an hour. It was all we could take. There was a Cubs game that afternoon, so a lot of people were out doing some pre-game shopping before heading up to the ivied fields of Wrigley. My biggest beef with the shoppers on Michigan Avenue are the "mosey-ers." They have little regard for those around them, apparently believing themselves to be the only people on the sidewalks. My favorite habits of theirs include: A) walking out of a store without looking and barreling right into you; B) exiting a store right in front of you and then stopping immediately, thus blocking you from exiting; and C) walking very slowly in front of you on the sidewalk and wandering back-and-forth across it.

We try to avoid Michigan Ave. as much as possible, but had no choice because Tim needed to return something to CompUSA. We prefer to do our retail shopping at the North & Clybourn corridor instead. Most of the same stores, but less people. It's where we usually do all of our Christmas shopping because you can get everybody taken care of between Best Buy, GAP, Express, Crate & Barrel, Pottery Barn, J. Crew, Borders, and Sam's Wine & Spirits, without having to deal with the uninitiated-with-Chicago shopper. Not to mention the lines of people waiting in sub-zero temperatures for caramel corn at Garrett's (it's just frickin' caramel corn, people), the sidewalk that becomes a highway filled with bumber-to-bumper strollers, and the oblivious parents of said strollers that feel their child entitles them to special privileges and the right-of-way. I have another rant in me regarding parents and their use of their children as excuses, but that will be for another day.

Fish Taco

2005-07-27T07:31:00.000-07:00

It's not what you think. I can explain. You see, my friend Brigitte and I went to the Cheesecake Factory (EDIT: Husband, here, I'm dissappointed, we are broken up for the rest of this blog) on Michigan Avenue last night (yes the tourist-trap eatery), and that's what I had for dinner. They were deeee-licious, BTW.

The reason we went there is because it's across the street from Drury Lane Water Tower, where we went to see MORNING'S AT SEVEN with Katherine Helmond. Yes, we saw Jessica Tate/Mona Robinson in the flesh. She was cute, and has a great part in the show. The play is from the 30s and really good, but I think the pacing may have been a bit off last night. As Brig put it, it felt at times like watching old people forgetting their lines. If you don't know the show, the cast is made up of 7 elderly actors and two fortysomethings, so I think it's natural to be expecting some dropped/forgotten lines. But it's still a great play done very well (the set is two houses side-by-side, and looks amazing).

But back to the Cheesecake Factory. If you haven't been there or seen it, it is almost always packed with a wait. You see, tourists are under the impression that it is the best place to eat on the Mag Mile. While the food is scrum-diddly-umptious and in large portions, there are about twenty other places in walking distance that are just as good. In fact, a few short blocks away is Grand Luxe Cafe, Cheesecake's sister restaurant with practically the same menu and a shorter wait. But they don't care. They plop themselves and their shopping-weary kids down for a twenty to fifty minute wait so they can experience the phenomena that is a restaurant named for its dessert.

Here's a little secret, though. The bar area is "Seat Yourself, First-Come-First-Served" and hardly ever full (except on weekends). So Brig and I were in and out in an hour. Meanwhile, the line of shoppers hungry and escaping the much-needed rain grew and grew and spilled out of the restaurant into the downstairs lobby of the "Cock." Some were sitting on the floor playing cards. All for cheesecake from a chain restaurant. I have done far crazier things, though, so I'm not judging (too much).

And the poor waiters that have to wear all white at this place. Who's bright idea was that? I have known a few Cheesecake waiters, and they all complained about the uniform more than anything else (yes, even more than the tourists). It's impossible for anyone working in a restaurant to keep an all-white uniform clean. Hell, I worked at a place that required me to wear a tux shirt, and I had to have four of them because I just couldn't wash it every day. I can't imagine adding a pair of pants and shoes to that cleaning schedule, and I like doing laundry!

So...Hot Enough For Ya?

2005-07-25T06:53:00.000-07:00

I have never been a fan of the intense and humid Midwestern summer. It makes me not want to do anything but sit at home in the AC. Tim and I have a big 46" TV in our living room that I haven't turned on in at least two weeks. The AC is in our bedroom, so that's where we spend almost all of our time these days. Who wants to sweat into the couch just to watch Paula Deen make deep-fried bacon with butter sauce? And, BTW, say the phrase "Hot Enough For Ya" to me and get beaten severely with my sweat-soaked fist.

We went and saw Charlie and the Chocolate Factory this weekend with our friend Derek and loved it. Being a big fan of the original, I was anxious to see how Tim Burton (one of my fave directors, BTW) was going to pull it off. There's still something about Gene Wilder that will always be perfectly Willy Wonka, but Johnny Depp was just quirky enough to be fun. And all the kids are great. That little Freddie Highmore is adorable, and I just loved him in this and Finding Neverland. If you haven't seen Charlie yet, GO! It's much darker in tone than the first, but that's to be expected with Burton, especially since his goal was to stay more faithful to the book. I was pleasantly surprised by how funny this one is. There are a lot of laugh-out-loud moments. I wanna go see it again on the IMAX.

I have been riding my bike a lot lately (as I tend to do in the summer), and have noticed an alarming trend on the bike path: more people are just stopping on it, right in the middle. Now for those of you who haven't been on the Lake Michigan path, the thing to remember is IT'S NOT A SIDEWALK! Now if it was just a solid black path, I could understand the confusion. However, it is painted with white lines at the side and a yellow line going down the middle. You know, LIKE A ROAD! In fact, it is a road. Since the lakefront is so popular, we bikers must share the path with a number of idiotic users and their varied forms of transportation. But come on folks, if you stop move to the side. In no particular order, here are the many other people who do not understand the concept of sharing this wonderful Chicago asset:

1. Roller Bladers - You tend to be fewer lately, maybe because blades are on the downward slope of their popularity. In any case, the bike path is not the place for you to learn how to use them, nor is it the place to practice your slick moves that end up with you taking up half the path and not seeing what's coming at you.

2. Parents - I really do not blame your kids for your wanton disregard for how they behave at the beach. I have come to accept the fact that part of me riding my bike on the path is that I will have to deal with people on foot around the beaches. But do you have to let the youngest members of your precious family run across the path without supervision or assistance? Would you do that on any street in the city? Do you not see the bikers, bladers and runners that are on the path? The correct answer to these questions is no, no and yes. Any other answer is unacceptable and dangerous to little Parker and Brittani (with an "i"). (EDIT: Tim's husband here, Tim. I'm hijacking his blog when I can. Honey, I think people can see Brittani is spelled with an "i", since this is written. Love ya) Try to remember that, won't you? (This applies equally to people with pets, so I won't make a separate gripe about that.)

3. Strollers - And I'm not talking just about parent's with kids here, I'm also talking about the casual or first-time users who tend to wander across the lanes without looking. You know, people just strolling about. Both types of "stroller" tend to travel in packs. They are rather prevalent along the lakefront and pose a great risk to my bike's perfect record of not plowing into anyone else.

4. Jogging Groups - Isn't the path great for you? You can train for whatever marathon/iron man/triathlon/decathlon/fun run/lion-taunting-trip-to-the-Serengeti that you are doing next. But do you all have to take up the whole path? There's two lanes, you know. Two across and no more. (EDIT: Tim here again. Did you know that there is a path for joggers along the lake? There is! And did you joggers know, running on the bike path is bad for you? It is!)

5. Parents (Again) - So Parker and Brittani (with an "i") decide they want to ride their bikes with you on the path, or be pulled by you in that cute little wagon behind your bike. You're wearing a helmet, WHY AREN'T THEY? (I am not making this up.)

6. Eight-Person Rental Bikes - Alright, I'll admit I'm exaggerating there, but seriously these things are as big as a trolley! They travel at the speed of plate tectonics, take up about 3/4 of the path, and contain an entire family just waiting to be rear-ended and have their vacation ruined by a trip to the emergency room.

7. Misc. Bikers - But Tim, this is a very broad group. Who do you include here? Well, I include you rare-but-still-seen morons who use your cell phones, travel in a pack instead of single-file (I know you want to talk, but do it at home), HOLD HANDS (yes, they're out there), and pass me with barely a millimeter between us.

Sometimes it takes a very Zen-like patience for me to not rip these trogs a new one. I realize they aren't going anywhere and I have to live with them, but I don't have to like them any more than I have to like red-hot pokers stuck into my eyes.

Day One - Well, Here Goes

2005-07-22T11:17:00.000-07:00

Can you believe they will let just anybody create one of these? That's either the greatest thing modern man has ever known, or the downfall of humanity. And in the end, is there much difference between either?

I must admit that I'm late getting on the Blogwagon. After all, it's already being replaced by the Podcast as the "hot" thing to do on the net. But that's OK. I've accepted the fact that I'm a follower, but being this far in the back has an advantage. Unlike the lemmings in front, I can see the cliff coming from miles away.

Now to the important issue: Why the name "I Don't Get People"? Well I don't know if you've left your house recently, but there are some seriously, shall we say, "special" people out there. Not only do they draw attention to themselves by their own actions, but those after their hard-earned dollars have now changed their way of getting it. If you've seen the peanut butter & jelly slices at the grocery store, you know what I'm talking about.

Or, my all-time favorite, the Barbie Doll commercial with the voice-over disclaimer, "Barbie does not actually fly." I didn't realize there were still some cro-magnons living in our society who haven't mastered the use of a butter-knife. Or who would bow down before the miraculous image of a polyvinyl-chloride being that has clearly been given the gift of flight. She must certainly be a god! (Actually, go to one Barbie Collectors Convention and try to tell me there aren't those who have come to this conclusion without being awed by her flying ability.)

In short, I hope to write about my everyday observations regarding these gorillas in our midst. I will also regale you of my exploits on this spinning rock, as well. And maybe, just maybe, you'll find them interesting enough to come back for more. Until then, I remain your obedient servant,
Tim