Today's Sermon--The Neo-futurists

(I'll have you know that I started this entry on Sunday, but circumstances prevented me from posting till now--however, I still consider it a valid Sermon Sunday post. So there.)
As you know, not every sermon I share with you concerns some awful pet peeve I want to rant about--I like to inspire as well as admonish. Today I'd like to give voice to a paean to the Neo-futurists.

Today (Sunday), I took a group of my Intro to Theatre students to the Neo-futurarium to see Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind. I am very pleased to report that they were flabbergasted and amazed by the show. I've been going to TMLMTBGB for over ten years now, and I never (well, hardly ever) hesitate to send my students to it because I always know that they will have an experience unlike any they have had before. Most of them made a point of telling me that they are going again, and that they are going to take along their boyfriend/girlfriend/best friend/parent.

I like theatre best when it does things that movies can't do. Face it--movies do realism better than theatre can. They have bigger budgets. They have glam stars. The best way for live theatre to compete is to give audiences an experience that they can't have at the movies. It should take advantage of the contact, spontenaity, and intimacy possible with actors that are right there in front of you! TMLMTBGB does this with a vengeance. Last night (Sunday), my students were involved in the show, brought right up on stage and made part of the action.

Every visit to the Neo-futurarium brings new experience, new laughs, new poignant moments--new good stuff, in other words, that I could not have gotten from seeing the latest Hollywood "blockbuster." Don't get me wrong, I love movies. But I love theatre more, because of the immediacy and power that it has that, for me, dwarfs what any cinematic (or televisual, for that matter) experience could.

I won't describe in more detail what the Neo-futurists do because their website does a much better job than I could. Just know that, if you haven't been yet, you need to go. If you are out of town, I will more than likely drag you bodily to a show at the first opportunity when you do come into town. You might, like David and Carrie, be dragged onstage by the actors and made into spectacle (in David and Carrie's case, you might have to make out between each short play.) You will also see something you have never seen before.

Moral: I love the Neo-futurists--you should too.

Further deponent sayeth not. Go forth and sin no more.

Postscript: You can be part of the Neo-futurist experience even if you aren't in Chicago! Greg Allen, the Founding Director (he came up with the idea for TMLMTBGB) is writing a new play for their "prime-time" season called You Asked For It! He is surveying people to find out what they most (or least) want to see in a play, then writing the script based on the responses. I've already taken the survey--you should too! Go here to let Greg know what you, the finicky potential audience member, wants to see.

Today's Sermon--Three Coins in a Fountain

I'd like to speak today on one of my pet peeves--the habit Americans have of throwing coins in fountains, wells.... Hell, any still body of water short of a puddle in the street is likely to have been infested with hundreds of idly tossed coins. Malls, plazas, hotels, hospitals, parks, lobbies, train stations, airports, palazzos, winter gardens, libraries, colleges, museums--it doesn't matter the context, if there is a man-made body of water in it, some moron will throw a coin into it.

Case in point--the Egypt exhibit at the Field Museum features a small mock-up of the Nile, used to educate viewers on the role the Nile played in Egyptian culture and farming habits. It is clearly not a fountain or wishing well. Nonetheless, it usually sports a thick bed of American coins, nestled among the faux-papyrus and stuffed waterfowl. This monetary refuse does not add to the ambiance.

Why do people do this? When I've asked I've received answers such as "It goes to charity, doesn't it?" (How would you know?) "The {fill in the name of the location victimized here} takes them as a donation, I think..." (I have to believe that a lot of places pay more money to clean this crap up than they get from the pennies you've just flung from your meaty, sweaty hand into that fountain.) It seems to be some gut-level instinctual response, much like the post-mortem jerking of a frog's leg. I know Americans hate change, but does it really need to go to this level? If you were at Trevi Fountain trying to ensure your return to Rome, I could understand it, but who needs to ensure that they will return to Oak Brook Mall?

Moral: Please people, keep your damn coins in your damn pocket.

Further, deponent sayeth not. Go forth and sin no more.

Today's Sermon--Jack Benny

I'd like to discuss another of my heroes for this Sunday's sermon--Jack Benny. Although our lives barely overlap, Jack has been an enormous influence on me. In fact, his portrait was the first I bought for the "Hall of Fame" that I'm still putting together for my office. The title of today's sermon: "On Making Everyone Else Funny--Jack Benny."

I discovered Jack Benny when I was still in grade school. I have always loved old radio programs. I owned (and still own) recordings of radio shows like "The Shadow," "The Green Hornet," "Jack Armstrong--All-American Boy," "Quiet, Please," "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century," "Dimension X," "X Minus 1," and many others. I would ride my bike to the Oak Lawn library, which had a better selection than my own, and check out tapes of old shows. It was in this way that I discovered Jack Benny.

It can be very hard for comedy to preserve its laughs over the years. Comedy is usually very topical, very dependant on references and events. Benny's show still made me laugh (still makes me laugh) forty to sixty years later.

Jack had a gift for the slow burn, for the reaction"shot", and an impeccable timing that made him a consummate performer. What really puts him on my Wall of Fame is his willingness to share the spotlight, to make others around him funny. Benny often plays the straight man to his cast of characters, or makes himself the but of the joke. His skinflint, fussy, cowardly, miserly, petty persona--so lovingly cultivated on the show--was completely the opposite from the real Jack. Benny understood that the real key to comedy, particularly in an ensemble, is giving gifts to others, setting up the people around you. I learned first hand how important this was when I was training in improv, and it is the first and most important lesson that I try to impart to my students today.

Moral: The great performer, like the great person, is a generous performer.

Further deponent sayeth not. Go forth and sin no more.

Today's Sermon--Ketchup

"Sermon Sunday" once again comes late this week--blame the holiday. Today, I shall sound off against one of the great ills of our society: ketchup (or catsup, I don't care.) The title of today's sermon: "On How I Learned to Stop Kowtowing to Society and Hate Ketchup."


Ketchup, my friends, is evil. There, I said it. Money has been said to be the root of all evil--it is as nothing compared to the festering sinkhole of corruption and calumny which is catsup.

Now some among you may think that I am expressing a hate of tomatoes, or of vinegar, two hapless, helpless participants in the perfidy which is ketchup. Nothing could be further from the truth. I love tomatoes: red, green, heirloom, I don't care. (And I love tomato juice, which has the same relationship to ketchup that a pure, sweet drink of spring water has to a swig of carbolic acid.) I have a cooler relationship with vinegar--we have a nodding aquaintance, mostly confined to salad dressings and the occasional shake of the malt variety over fried fish and chips. Vinegar is always welcome at my table...as long as it behaves itself.

Ketchup, however, embodies everything I dislike about our culture. It is applied, without wit or consideration, to foodstuffs that can survive perfectly well, nay, thrive, without it--often in heaping amounts. Its cloying, sickly sweet taste overwhelms and eradicates the savour of anything it is applied to. It stands as the fervent symbol of the "ugly American," who hastens to cover the slightest soupçon of unfamilar flavor with a red viscous shroud of pat routine. In short, if any condiment is emblematic of the soft bigotry of lowered culinary expectations which pervades this country, it is ketchup.

Therefore, I implore you, dear readers--set your french fries free! Cover your burgers no longer with a layer of the red devil! Apply it not to your fried fish, to your onion rings, to--sin of all sins, calumny of calumnies--your hot dogs! Banish ketchup (and catsup) to the nether reaches of the furthest, darkest, hottest circle of Hell!

Further, deponent sayeth not--go forth and sin no more.

Today's Sermon--Alton Brown

I intend to make each Sunday "Sermon Sunday," with preaching (of a sort) on a favorite subject of mine. I missed this Sunday by a hour or so, but I wanted to start the tradition nonetheless. The title of this Sunday's Sermon is...."On Alton Brown--My Hero."

I've always loved cooking shows. Not just because I love food (probably too much), or because I love cooking (although not enough to do it for myself as much as I should), but because they made the cryptic and inscrutable--the alchemy which is cooking--understandable and, well, scrutable. Half of cooking is technique--"how do I make that?" as opposed to "what is in that?"--and great cooking shows make it all look easy. (Of course, what looks easy on the screen may not be easy in the kitchen, but more on that later.) They also tend to revolve around personalities: I know that Julia herself, with all her jollity and can-do-itiveness, was a big attraction to me (and to Dan Ayckroyd, to judge by his affectionate satire.) Sometimes even more so than the food.

When Food Network came on the air, I fell first for Emeril, and I'm sure personality was the culprit (although most of the recipes I've cooked up have been excellent!) Emeril is big, engaging, funny--and incredibly repetitive after the first ten kajillion times you have heard him bam or exclaim about pork fat. (Hey, I love it too, but come on!) Then Rachael Ray caught my eye, mainly because she is cute. Her schtick became even more annoying twice as quickly, however. (Concerning her travel shows--Does she love everything she puts in her mouth? {insert dirty joke here}) I despaired of finding a guru of the same level of dear, departed Julia.

Then, one day, I saw Good Eats for the first time.

What do I love about Alton? Let me count the ways.....

• he makes things scrutable, but with science! Seriously, I like to know not only about the technique called for in preparing a particular dish, but why is that technique is called for, what does it do? Or, why those ingredients (in that order?) With Alton, I get the whys and wherefores. He talks about why foods behave certain ways, chemically, and I feel like this helps me understand and perform the techniques he is teaching more effectively. His books do the same thing. I like knowing why I'm doing something a particular way--he tells me.
  
• he is funny, in a genuine way. I'm not just talking about the jokes on the show, but his whole demeanor. On his newest show, Feasting on Asphalt (now sadly at an end after only four episodes), he takes a spill on his motorcycle. As he lay there in the road, in pain from a broken clavicle, he made a joke about his motorcycle mirror.
  
• he seems like a guy you (okay, I) would want to pal around with. Watching his "Making of" special, it looked like his employees like working with him, that he is good to them. He seems like a guy you could have a great conversation with on a bunch of topics--and he could keep up with any turn in the flow that might occur.
• I keep thinking of more friends who would love his show if they had cable or watched cooking shows. I don't know if this says more about Alton or about the friends I choose (or who choose me), but--I know they would love it!

In any event, such is my paean to Alton Brown, my new food guru. Moral--you should be watching him!

Further, deponent sayeth not--go forth and sin no more.