Thursday, April 26, 2012

Art Imitates Life Dept.

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"You're fighting to overthrow a king and yet you have no plan for what comes after?"
Game of Thrones
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Monday, April 23, 2012

Walk like a man

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...or if thou wouldst rather not then forsooth, my dearest coz, talk like Shakespeare.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel has proclaimed Monday, April 23 Talk Like Shakespeare Day, "an occasion for citizens from Chicago and across the globe to celebrate Shakespeare's 448th birthday by bringing the spoken words of Shakespeare into their daily lives."

The annual celebration of our greatest playwright was started in 2009 by the regional Tony Award-winning Chicago Shakespeare Theatre; their press release is here.

If you need to brush up on your Bard, the theater's TalkLikeShakespeare.org offers a handy "How to Talk Like Shakespeare" guide and suggests Elizabethan insults to use on your enemies. Prithee, go thou and check it out, cousin.

There's also a rich repository of video including Brian Williams' NBC News report on Talk Like Shakespeare Day, the Beatles clowning their way through A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare on "Sesame Street," and this entertaining clip of the Improvised Shakespeare Company bringing their fair art to the masses on Chicago's Navy Pier:


Saturday, April 21, 2012

Who Do We Think We Are?


This week I had the pleasure of attending the grand opening performance of The Second City's 100th mainstage revue, Who Do We Think We Are?, and found it lively and entertaining.

My Flavorpill preview is here.

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Sharpen your pencil

...and get ready to compete in Chicago's fourth annual crossword puzzle tournament!

It's all happening Saturday, April 28 at Marbles the Brain Store , just off Michigan Avenue in River North, where another lively afternoon of black-and-whites is literally and figuratively in store thanks to the intrepid Marbles staff and the most pleasant man in Pleasantville, N.Y., NPR puzzlemaster and New York Times puzzle editor Will Shortz.

Here are the deets:


Thanks to Marbles' runaway success and concomitant expansion, there are also tournaments happening the same day in America's second-, third- and fourth-greatest cities. (As if I had to tell you, these are King of Prussia, Penn.; Bloomington, Minn.; and Columbia, Md. )

More information about these tournaments is here.

The tournament puzzles will be from earlier in the week in upcoming editions of the NYT, and therefore easier, so you probably won't need the following. But it can't hurt to be extra-ready, so as a public service, here's a cheat sheet:
  • Midget buffalo: ANOA 
  • Hawaiian goose: NENE
  • Green Day drummer ___ Cool:  TRE
  • "Milk's favorite cookie" sloganeer: OREO
  • Verdi opera:  AIDA
  • Radames' love: AIDA
  • Egyptian slave: AIDA
  • Elton John/Tim Rice musical: AIDA
  • Solo sung by Aida: ARIA
  • Roman slave: ESNE
  • "For ___ — with Love and Squalor": ESME
  • Anger: IRE
  • Emerald Isle: EIRE
  • ___ Canal: ERIE
  • Short-lived television show "___, Indiana": EERIE
  • Music director of the NBC Symphony Orchestra: ARTUROTOSCANINI
Good luck!

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Beauty and the B

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One of "Today's Headlines" in this morning's email from the New York Times is the following:


Having met Ms. Suvari at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen a few years ago (see above; Mena is on the left), I was surprised to learn that her beauty regimen consists of more than the following daily routine:

1. Be Mena Suvari
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Monday, April 2, 2012