Come and see it! Come and see it!

Jeremy Menekseoglu has adapted everybody’s favorite Greek tragedy about a sorceress whose husband leaves her for a princess, and turned its thematic focus towards the children in the story. I play one of the children in this play…which means that it all pretty much revolves around me. (Just kiddin’…kinda…) If you’re in the Chicago area between tonight and August 24, you should make the trek down to the south side (beautiful, artistic east Pilsen) and check it out. It’s gonna be a hell of a show! (I’m not just saying that, it’s really going to be a good show. Really.)

See the website for info and tickets.

Filed by Bil at 1:22 pm under Shameless Plugs, The Arts
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By day I work for a company that has just reached its tenth year of existence. Everybody knows the traditional first-year anniversary gift is paper, the third-year anniversary gift is bananas, and the fiftieth-year anniversary is gold. But I was until recently unaware that the tenth-year anniversary is tin or aluminum. As a ten-year aluminum gift, my company has given me an aluminum water bottle. This is awesome, because I’ve been wanting one for kind of a while now, but the only ones I could find are like twenty or thirty dollars. Well, now I don’t have to look and I don’t have to spend any money.

I tried it out this last weekend by taking it to rehearsal. Ohmygod it’s the best. Seriously. The feeling of environmental friendliness is so inviting, and the health benefits make me even more powerful and ninja-like than ever before.
(Keep reading…)

Filed by Bil at 10:59 pm under Pop Culture, The Arts, The Science, Environmentality
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…the relevance of existing cultural activity.

These are the last six words of the mission statement of a theatre company which, like a newborn galaxy, is ready to burst into existence with a grand display of shining stars and gravitational hullabaloo. (…Except without all the stars.)

Every now and then, I think about how much art there is that I don’t see. Especially temporary art, like plays that only run for a certain amount of time and then are never produced again. Or some orange gates in Central Park. Or ice sculptures.
(Keep reading…)

Filed by Bil at 9:08 pm under Social Issues, Pop Culture, The Arts
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Below is the recording of the premiere of my new setting of Rune of Hospitality, a traditional Irish text. Kudos to Bil for the filming, and after editing it I’m more in love with my Mac than ever before. Enjoy!

Filed by Trevor at 4:26 pm under The Arts
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Recently, Devon and I acquired a new vehicle. It was a tough choice between a Scion xD and a Honda Fit; ultimately, the xD won the prize. The choice was unusually hard – a car is not something you want to buy now and regret later. And it’s not like you can just get another car if the first one doesn’t work out. We’re very happy with our little Scion, especially considering that we drove the shopping carpool this afternoon making trips to PetSmart, CostCo, and Trader Joe’s (three people and three cats will be fed for many weeks to come) and we were able to cram all our groceries into the car with no problems.

The timing could have been better – the day we drove it off the lot was the start of a week of snowfall. But aside from that, it’s really the ideal car for us – it’s a hatchback, meaning it’s bigger on the inside than the outside would let on. This is good if you have a ton of groceries or a ton of theatre props. I can’t imagine we’ll ever get a plain old sedan ever again. Also, it gets great gas mileage. It’s not a hybrid, unfortunately, but we’ll still be able to stay away from gas stations more than we were able to before. So, again – we’re both really, really pleased with the car we got.

The decision to get the car was easy enough; without it, Devon would be taking a series of busses to get to Skokie for work. But the decision on which car to get did not come lightly. It was the result of roughly one week of intensive online research (conducted by Devon) into what cars had the best mileage, safety, interior space, warranty, MSRP, etc., etc., etc., followed by about two weeks of searching the ad websites like cars.com, Vehix, and AutoTrader, test driving cars, phone calls to dealerships (conducted by me), and – finally – about a week and a half of waiting for the dealer to search a five-state radius and find us a Scion xD that wasn’t silver or white.

This is about the same length of time it took me to decide on which albums to purchase with an iTunes gift card I had received for Christmas.
(Keep reading…)

Filed by Bil at 9:39 pm under Social Issues, Pop Culture, The Arts, Politics
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“I like it in the city when two worlds collide: you get the people and the government, everybody taking different sides. Shows that we ain’t gonna stand shit; shows that we are united.” — Adele, “Hometown Glory”

I took a nap after teaching this morning and woke up with “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Miserables stuck in my head. It’s still in my head, actually, and I find it sadly appropriate given what today is.

Anyway.

If Amy Winehouse decided to cover Regina Spektor, you’d have Adele. As always, I’m weak in the knees for a strong low alto with a good straight tone — her album drops next Monday, but until then you can check out her cornucopia of material on YouTube and Myspace.

(EDIT: This one is the unaltered tagline for American Spectator magazine. So there!)

Filed by Trevor at 3:26 pm under Pop Culture, The Arts
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Filed by Stephen at 7:32 am under General, Pop Culture, The Arts
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Snowfall –
Blanket of silence and cold descending
On the world, destroying, preserving,
Beautiful and terrible.

In the darkness and drought
Of life and love that is Winter
We search for a flicker
Of Why in each other
(Keep reading…)

Filed by Stephen at 8:06 am under Religion, The Arts, Humanism
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For the second time in my life, my Massachusetts driver’s license was questioned by an overly-cautious clerk. This one has a happy ending, though, and I got what I was after. The shades of green and blue wavy lines on my driver’s license are for security, and are of course mathematically complex. But they make my ID look like a passport to Dreamland.

And I think it’s pretty cool. It’s one reason I’ve been such a slacker about getting myself an Illinois license. Illinois still has the boring white background. Also, I paid $90 for my Mass ID and I’m not so quick to dump it just because I don’t live there anymore. But mostly I just like the colorful wavy lines.

Filed by Bil at 10:49 pm under The Arts, The Science
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The Absolute works with nothing.
The workshop, the materials
are what does not exist.
Be a spot on the ground where nothing is growing,
where something might be planted,
a seed, possibly, from the Absolute.
– Rumi

Since my becoming unchurched, I have had some time to think about what speaks to me spiritually. And I’ve come to no conclusions whatsoever. What I have learned, however, is what I don’t like.

One of them is bad sermons.

Sadly, if you’re a Unitarian Universalist, unless you’re attending a church that has hired an amazing minister that always knows just what to say to draw people in, or keep people around, or whatever that congregation wants to do at the time, you’re pretty well guaranteed to get bad sermons at least half the time. And that’s if you’re lucky.
(Keep reading…)

Filed by Stephen at 6:53 pm under General, Religion, UU, The Arts, Fightin' Words
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