I’m starting to worry that Ocelopotamus has become like that stock old-man character from sitcoms and things, who falls asleep for a while and then wakes up sputtering and tries to pick the conversation up wherever it was five minutes ago, as if no time has passed.
On the other hand, it’s heartening that I […]

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It’s been ages since I’ve done one of these little Chicago roundups, but there are so many head-splittingly good things going on this week that it seems like a dandy time to reinstate the tradition.
• First up, this weekend is the opening of the brand-new Theater Oobleck show Spukt, written by the mercurial Dave Buchen. […]

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Next Wednesday, September 19, I’m going to be participating in a way-fun event called The Nod, in which some of Chicago’s best bloggers will be reading posts from their blogs live at the Uptown Writer’s Space.
And for some reason they’ve asked me to be on the bill, as well. Possibly to make the rest of […]

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General Petraeus says that “victory” in Iraq will require 9-10 more years. I’m trying to imagine how ten more years of bloody occupation can possibly work out to a victory. More on that subject here.

A bill has been introduced in Venezuela to restrict baby names to a list of 100 approved choices. “The bill’s ambition, […]

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I just updated the News page over at The Head of Orpheus, the Russell Hoban Web site I maintain, so I figured I might as well cross-post the info here as well (with a few slight formatting tweaks).
Autumn 2007 is shaping up to be a great season for Hoban fans, with Russ’s next novel My […]

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Steven Moffat has won his second Hugo award for writing a Doctor Who episode — this time for the Season Two episode “The Girl in the Fireplace.” And well deserved, in my book. “The Girl in the Fireplace” was a beautiful script and a real standout in Season Two. (Moffat previously won for the “Empty […]

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Forgive me for posting twice in a row about Larry Craig. After the past week, surely it’s time for him to begin shrinking in the collective rear-view mirror of our culture.
But I can’t help it. On Sunday, someone who goes by the nom de net Blueness posted an absolutely beautiful diary on Daily Kos, called […]

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Proving that the Republican Party truly is just one big puppet show:

 
… I can’t find it now, but I swear that at some point in the 24 hours after the Craig story broke, there was a headline referring to him as “Toilet Sex Senator.”
And of course my first thought was that The Toilet Sex […]

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If you’re here in Chicago and looking for something fun to do tomorrow evening, I’ll be participating in an award ceremony and “gentle roast” (in the words of Live Bait Theater) for those stalwarts of the Chicago solo performance scene — and my fellow Pansy Kings — David Kodeski and Edward Thomas-Herrera.
The ceremony is […]

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… to the people of Singapore.

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Time to haul out a real classic.
It’s hard to explain to someone who wasn’t around, and tuned in to the new music scene, just how electrifying this video was in the first few years of the 1980s, when you’d catch it on the scattershot music video shows that existed before MTV. I still think of […]

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I haven’t done one of these Chicago Fringe scene reports in a while, so here’s what’s on my radar this week:

The Neo-Futurists’ annual festival It Came From The Neo-Futurarium VI: Curse of The Neo-Futurarium, consisting of staged readings of various camp-ready old films, kicks off this Thursday, June 21 at 8pm. The first installment is […]

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BOOKS: This week marked the release of Armistead Maupin’s new book Michael Tolliver Lives, which picks up the story of Michael “Mouse” Tolliver, the iconic character from Maupin’s Tales of the City series. Mouse is now in his mid-50s, living with HIV but happily married. Maupin says, “I wanted to tell the story of a […]

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For those who haven’t had the pleasure of meeting Stephen Colbert in person, this backstage video of him prepping John Kerry before Kerry’s recent Colbert Report appearance is a fun little peek behind the curtain of the character he plays on his show.
I think knowing what a charming, mild-mannered, and self-effacing person Stephen is […]

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