The death of irony

• It's not rain, on my brother's wedding day
• It's a free ride on a trolley (except for whoever booked it) to take some wedding photos
• The brief ceremony will be outdoors but I'm not worried about black flies and don't know if they're even serving Chardonnay
• The only death row prisoners I've met were the wrongly convicted men whose cases I worked on as a law student; they were all exonerated in courtrooms, not executed or pardoned too late, and anyway I don't think they know my brother or are invited to the wedding 
• Afraid to fly or otherwise, everyone who flew here for the wedding is here now. As their planes touched down without incident, they thought, "Well isn't this nice."

It isn't ironic, don't you think?

Aces

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Do you like Vegas stories? Small-time crooks? Locally produced and written theater?

Then check out the new play Aces, now playing at the Signal Ensemble Theatre through June 18.

My Flavorpill preview is here.

One way to do it

Op-ed corner

Arnold Schwarzenegger wanted to be Maria Shriver's husband in the worst way, and that is exactly what he did.

Area Article Enjoyed

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18,000 People Cheer Thing Going Through Thing
[The Onion]

Gibson with two onions

Here's a quick basketball quiz.

Watch this video from last night's Game 1 of the Bulls-Heat playoff series:



The question is, which guy is all-NBA superstar and Chicago native Dwyane Wade and which is little-known Chicago Bulls power forward Taj Gibson?

Of course, as the YouTube title (not to mention mine) suggests, that was Gibson posterizing the poster boy.

He also threw down this one at the end of the game just so everyone knew the first one was no fluke:

This is how we do it

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Obi-Wan Kenobi Is Dead, Vader Says
[The Galactic Empire Times]

Amusing parody of the NYT's coverage of President Obama's bin Laden announcement. Don't miss the comment posts.

Justice

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At today's graduation ceremonies for the Northwestern University School of Law,  the guest of honor addressing his newly minted fellow alumni will be the Hon. John Paul Stevens '47, former associate justice of the United States Supreme Court.

Justice Stevens served in World War II as a Navy codebreaker in Hawaii before graduating in 1947, magna cum laude, from Northwestern Law. He served as a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit from 1970 through 1975. Nominated to the Supreme Court by President Gerald Ford, he took his seat on that court on December 19, 1975. After 35 years of service under three Chief Justices, Justice Stevens retired in June 2010 as the third-longest-serving justice in the Supreme Court’s history.

Yesterday afternoon at the law school, Justice Stevens appeared at a question-and-answer session conducted by two fellow alums, one a frequent advocate before the high court and the other his recent law clerk. He also took questions from members of the law school community.

A current law student asked, "Justice Stevens, did you ever wish you could go back and rewrite one of your majority opinions? Like in the years afterward, when you see how your case was applied by other courts, did you ever wish you could have a chance to change something?"

Justice Stevens replied, "No."

The original Grease

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Recently attended a press opening of Grease co-creator Jim Jacobs' remounting of the rarely seen, R-rated, Chicago-centric original version of his iconic musical.

I saw the play on the 40th anniversary of its first-ever performance. Also in attendance were Mr. Jacobs and several of his original cast members including Chicagoan Marilu Henner, all of whom reminisced about the show at a festive gathering after the performance. For the trivia file, Ms. Henner and Jeff Conaway were cast in "Taxi" after being discovered in the national touring cast of Grease.

I highly recommend this show, the buzz for which is growing so loud that the entire run is close to selling out. (An extension is inevitable and an eventual move to another theater is a distinct possibility.)

As I wrote for Flavorpill Chicago:

“Sure, you've watched the movie. Maybe you played Betty Rizzo in your high school's version or caught Brooke Shields or Rosie O'Donnell doing likewise on Broadway. But you've almost certainly never had the chance to see the original version of Grease that played Chicago's old Kingston Mines Theater on Lincoln Avenue in 1971 — until now, that is. Co-creator Jim Jacobs is remounting his most famous play old-school, and the pre-Travolta Grease turns out to be as gritty and real as the movie is light and frothy. The action centers around Chicago's Taft High School (later whitewashed into generic Rydell High for a national audience), with the boy-meets-girl bubblegum of Sandy and Danny just a small part of the clear-eyed depiction of working-class teen life in the late 1950s. Just when you think it's time for "Summer Nights" you get "Foster Beach" and know you're not at the multiplex anymore.”

More information and a ticket link in my Flavorpill preview here.

Live from New Orleans, it's my life

I'm on a boat!

Waka waka

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For the record, so did the deer.
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Discretion in action

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White House undecided on bin Laden photos  
[Agence France-Presse/Yahoo! News]

Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, a Republican, said US officials were working through whether to release photos of bin Laden's corpse.

"We want to make sure that we maintain dignity -- if there was any -- in Osama bin Laden, so that we don't inflame problems other places in the world and still provide enough evidence that people are confident that it was Osama bin Laden," he said.

Yeah, I would say questioning whether he had dignity is a good way not to inflame people.