Dilbert's Scott Adams got to this idea first, of course... but did he go for implementation? I don't think so.

My to-do list for 2012:  Create invention. Change the world. Get rich.

Building inspector Burt Herrera picks up his $15 bribe at the Mirage Tavern (Photo by Jim Frost for the Chicago Sun-Times)

So Pam Zekman– then a reporter at the Sun-Times– had the idea that the only way to document this story was to live it.  Her boss agreed, and– with help from the Better Government Association– they sent her out to shop for a tavern.  (Bars were, and are, subject to more regulation and inspection than almost any other small business.)

Here’s how it happened:  Reporters got calls all the time from small-business owners saying they were sick and tired of being shaken down for bribes by city inspectors.  But nobody would go on the record.  They figured the city would find a way to get back at them, and they were probably right.

So Pam Zekman– then a reporter at the Sun-Times– decided that the only way to document this story was to live it.

Her boss agreed, and– with help from the Better Government Association– they sent her out to shop for a tavern.  (Bars were, and are, subject to more regulation and inspection than almost any other small business.)  By September, the Mirage Tavern was ready to open.

By then, they had already found corrupt inspectors aplenty, along with a spectacularly sleazy accountant who called himself “Mr. Fixit,” and who gave them specific instructions about how to pay off a city inspector.

The big surprise?  How cheaply the inspectors could be bought.  Ten, twenty bucks, and many of them would ignore anything.

During the two months they were in business, they had some interesting customers– including a gun-runner, a bookie, and plenty of city workers coming in for a beer or three while supposedly on the clock.  And they got to know the neighbors– like the folks who ran the brothel down the street.

After they folded up shop, on Halloween, they took a couple months to fact-check some details and write up the results.  The first stories were published on Sunday, January 8, 1978 (followed, that same evening, by a 60 Minutes segment in which Mike Wallace got Mr. Fixit to acknowledge, on national TV, that he routinely committed tax fraud, using the line, “Look, between you and me…”).

As a result, city workers got suspended and lost their jobs, and a lot of people got embarrassed.  But–hey, this is Chicago– nobody went to jail.

I got to take a look back at the project– and interview some of the journalists who pulled it off–for WBEZ, on today’s episode of Venture.  Look there for a longer writeup, or to download the audio.

Photo by Convenience Store Gourmet via flickr

The other shows I saw in 2010-11 were a mixed bag.  Some I hated, but I enjoyed writing about all of them, so I’m posting them all here.

So, a caveat: If you found your way here because a Google Alert on your own name picked up this link– well, read at your own risk.  Out of anybody whose name appears on this page, the only person’s mother who should read any further is mine.

I’m dividing this list in two:  First the also-rans, then the stuff that was actually bad.  Depending on your taste, you may want to start at the bottom.

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Not bad, really
The following shows all had their strong points but didn’t win me over– at least not enough that I’d feel comfortable advising somebody to fork over cash and two hours of their life they can never get back.

Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead, Epic Theatre Company
Peanuts meets Mean Girls in this parody by Brad Royal. We get a teen Charlie Brown (“CB” here) mourning Snoopy’s recent death from rabies, Patty and Marcie as soulless bullies, a perpetually stoned Linus, and Lucy in a padded cell. Schroeder is gay, and the group has turned violently against him. In his grief over Snoop, CB seeks to make up–and then make out–with the outcast pianist, bringing the gang’s homophobic rage down on them both. Cheap elements–including extreme, reflexive gay-bashing–stand out awkwardly against echoes of the original strip’s smarts and soulfulness. Still, the young, earnest, uneven Epic Theatre Company cast ultimately won me over.

Skylight, Appetite Theatre
Former lovers Tom and Kyra argue till dawn over who betrayed whom and which of them has cultivated the dumber illusions, taking time out to screw. A wealthy entrepreneur, Tom considers himself wronged by Kyra for abandoning him, by his late wife for not forgiving him for the affair, and by society for not worshipping him. He lands some painful jabs, but Kyra, who teaches in a bleak urban school, holds the moral high ground throughout. David Hare’s 1995 drama requires that the actor playing Tom make up in magnetism for what the character lacks in decency and self-awareness. Forced to step into the role at the last minute, director Nick Izzo gives an honorable effort but falls short in Appetite Theater’s production. Colin Fewell projects a winning awkwardness as Tom’s teenage son, Edward.

Superman 2050, Theater Unspeakable
This 35-minute late-night show borrows plot, dialogue, and its approach to characters from the 1979 movieSuperman–but leans even more heavily on special effects. Images like those of a man in flight, bullets bouncing off a villain’s torso, and Clark Kent racing a bullet train are created live by Marc Frost’s seven-person cast, who remain perched on a three-by-seven-foot wooden platform for the duration. (They also hum the theme music, conjure dozens of different locations, and portray scores of inanimate objects.) It’s a charming stunt that manages only one knock-your-socks-off image yet offers plenty of small pleasures, efficiently delivered.

The Moonstone, Lifeline Theater
Victoriana fiends may want to take in this new adaptation of the first English detective novel, published by Wilkie Collins in 1868. Otherwise, it’s skippable. There’s little to care about until late in act one, the uneven British accents are distracting, quaint character quirks–like the butler’s Robinson Crusoe fetish–go stale quickly, and Collins’s Hindu villains are an embarrassment. The whole shebang amounts to a three-hour shaggy-dog story–not charmless, but not a good use of the talent and effort on display. Accents aside, the cast is strong, especially Ann Sonneville as the haunted ingenue. The set, lighting, and costumes are all solid, and director Paul Holmquist does a decent job of keeping things moving in acts two and three.

The Cripple of Innishmann, Druid Ensemble at Chicago Shakespeare
In Martin McDonagh’s comedy, staged here by Ireland’s Druid ensemble, a gimpy kid slips out of his stifling Irish village, makes it to Hollywood, and then returns. Some of the humor is enjoyably dark, the authentic Irish accents sell themselves, and the super-stagey blocking gets less distracting after a while. Ditto the pauses after every line, calculated to illustrate the Irish-country-bumpkin vibe–and, I suspect, to make room for laughs. Clare Dunne is adorable as the hero’s big crush, evoking the spirit of the Three Stooges’ Moe Howard in Olive Oyl’s body. If the show had ended after act two’s third big reversal I’d have been content. But several more big reversals followed and I left tired.

The Earl, The Inconvenience
Three brothers have made a tradition of staging a violent game (a crowbar features prominently) in a dilapidated office. This time around, the runt of the litter has brought along a ringer, or “earl”: a movie star in the Clint Eastwood mold who kicks the living crap out of the other two brothers. Playwright Brett Neveu keeps the backstory so vague that there’s little emotional charge, leaving fight choreography as the main attraction. Some sudden, gory moments yield both laughs and shock–think pro wrestling–but it’s hit-and-miss. Lanky, swift, and impish as the hyped-up youngest brother, Ryan Bourque is the best thing by far in this staging by Duncan Riddell for the Inconvenience.

The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Theatre Mir
There’s plenty to admire in Jonathan Berry’s staging of the Bertolt Brecht classic, in which a scullery maid rescues an aristocrat’s baby son during an insurrection and then goes through hell to protect him. The actors display commitment, intelligence, and talent throughout; early scenes effectively conjure war’s chaotic menace; and the finale–in which a drunken judge presides over the battle for the babe when his biological mom reappears–is full of satiric zing. In between, though, this Theatre Mir production gets dicey. Chance Bone’s songs are lackluster, and the cast’s musicianship is uneven. Berry lingers over the play’s every dark corner at the expense of narrative urgency and comic timing. Without many thrills, laughs, or decent tunes, the show’s long middle is a drag.

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That bad, really.
OK, here’s where you want to stop reading if you’re friends with someone involved in one of these shows.

Ismene, Dream Theatre
Tragedy literally stalks the heroine of this sorta sequel to Antigone, chasing her to a fortress-like school for girls whom the gods have wronged. There are some bold, smart performances–especially an energetically villainous turn by playwright/director Jeremy Menekseoglu–and once things get moving, Ismene is agreeably creepy and suspenseful. But the plot takes forever to develop any momentum, and there’s too much clumsy philosophizing throughout. (The Greek gods were jerks? You don’t say.) I was a Marvel Comics nerd as a kid, so I’ve got a nostalgic fondness for this mix of pulpy entertainment and cheesy deep thinking. But the balance is all wrong here, and that’s hard to forgive in a three-hour show.

Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, Emerald City
In Mo Willems’s charming, witty picture books, a quick-witted pigeon wheedles, begs, and eventually spazzes out trying to get his way. Parents and children switch roles, with the adult reader voicing the pigeon’s demands, and the kids answering “No!” This adaptation, given a disjointed staging by Emerald City Theatre, has one stroke of inspiration: presenting the pigeon, feather-free, as a wised-up if goofy young man, played by the magnetic James Anthony Zoccoli. But Zocolli can’t sustain the whole show, which is unnecessarily repetitive and takes an overtly didactic stance that Willems wisely avoids. The production felt overlong to me at 60 minutes, and kids in the audience were squirming by the 40-minute mark.

Naughty! The Musical World of Emmet Taylor Farkas, Naughty Productions
This show by Leo Schwartz and Jeremy Kareken aims for irresistible outrageousness and misses. With the theater decked out as a funeral home and the audience positioned as mourners, four performers mount a “backers audition” for a revue of songs by the deceased–Emmet Taylor Farkas–who we’re told was a wealthy misanthrope and frustrated songwriter. When the first song started with a nonsensical reference to Richard Nixon in the present tense, I suspected we were in shaky hands. Abundant confirmation followed. The number in which TV’s Beaver Cleaver comes out to his parents exemplifies the show’s MO: outdated premise, unimaginative treatment. Shifra Werch’s staging for Naughty Productions adds little, but the promising Samantha Siroky almost manages to sell a couple of tunes.

Entertaining Mr. Sloane, Project 891
Director Ron Popp and the cast of this Project 891 production have bitten off more than they can chew with Joe Orton’s 1964 black comedy about a sociopathic lodger who uses his magnetic sexuality to control a middle-aged landlady and her closeted older brother. The pace drags interminably in act one, the actors leaving half a beat after almost every line as if to give each irony a chance to sink in. Things pick up a bit in act three, when the siblings negotiate an arrangement to share the young thug, who’s just murdered their father. The characters having dropped their masks of propriety, the actors are free simply to play out Orton’s deliciously ugly action.

Johnny Boy’s Graduation, at Boni Vino Restaurant
A direct descendant of Tony ‘n’ Tina’s Wedding–two of that show’s creators are among the writers here, and one of them directs–this “interactive comedy” takes the form of a party celebrating the title mobster’s release from prison. Patrons are greeted as old pals by cast members, and the mingling continues through dinner, dancing, and dessert. The story–with a cache of diamonds as the MacGuffin–holds no surprises, the jokes are stale, and the party atmosphere is forced (especially the sing-along to a couple of Sinatra chestnuts). The location, however, is brilliant: a charming, dumpy Italian restaurant just a block away from an actual federal prison. The kitchen’s homey, zesty food might steal the show even if the competition were stiffer.

Melissa Hawkins in "Exiles." Photo by Marianne Bach

Exiles, Theater Y
James Joyce’s only play predates the wild experimentation of Ulysses, but gets a hyper-stylized treatment in Theatre Y’s inventive, intense production. The story concerns a brooding writer who jerks around his devoted common-law wife. By halfway encouraging her to return the romantic advances of his own childhood buddy, he sets up a manipulative, tragically un-passable test of her loyalty. Director Kevin Smith spotlights the play’s oppressive sexual politics: The female characters are done up like drag queens, their suppressed emotions bursting out in spasms, shouting fits, and–at the end of each act–explosive lip-sync numbers. Joyce’s script has some plodding passages, but the ensemble’s commitment, vision, and precision fire up many startling, haunting moments.

The Last Act of Lilka Kadison, Lookingglass Theatre
Cranky 87-year-old Lilka bickers with her home health aide while the ghost of her first lover demands that she acknowledge his significance in her life. When she was 17, he drew Lilka out as an artist, knocked her up, and helped her escape the Holocaust–all in less than a week. Literally written by committee, this new script deploys some formulaic tropes. But the results are funny, poignant, and romantic, thanks largely to a stellar cast, designer Tracy Otwell’s charming toy-theater sequences, and the wonder cabinet of a set crafted by Jacqueline and Richard Penrod. As the health aide, Usman Ally uses his characteristic intelligence, intensity, and wit to provide crucial leavening.

The Chicago Landmark Project, Theatre Seven
This ambitious project comprises a dozen brief plays, each of which explores a different Chicago location with a different author, director, and cast. There’s a lot of heart and–except for two duds–a lot of skill all around, and the two shortish programs offer an efficient chance to sample the work of a large, diverse crew of local artists. Most of the plays aren’t fully baked; some are emotionally thin, some transparently didactic. But their brevity, energy, and variety work in their favor. The standout is a devised piece about Oz Park by the all-female A Red Orchid Youth Ensemble, who sell their work with delightful precision, confidence, and wit. Runners up include a harsh and tender scene by Robert Koon, set on Navy Pier, in which a father and daughter hash out their issues as she prepares to leave for college, and Aaron Carter’s sharp, funny, magic-realist fable about race and romance, set in the long-defunct Riverview amusement park.

Agnes of God, Hubris Productions
After a dead baby turns up in a convent, a court-appointed shrink (Barbara Roeder Harris) tries to determine whether the mother, Agnes–a childlike, definitely weird young novice–did the killing . . . and whether she’s nuts. Agnes claims to remember nothing about the baby’s conception, birth, or death. Mother Superior (Lorraine Freund) hopes she’s a holy mystic–and maybe a virgin–and spends much of John Pielmeier’s 1982 play in ponderous debate with the shrink, a bitter ex-Catholic. Harris and Freund get bogged down in speechifying at times, but Sara Pavlak’s Agnes burns with love, terror, and finally rage, lighting up this Hubris Productions show.

Verse Chorus Verse, Tympanic Theatre
Did an envious Seattle rocker murder Kurt Cobain? And was the crime witnessed–perhaps even abetted–by the young woman whose real-life kidnapping, rape, and torture Cobain wrote about in the song “Polly”? These questions provide the MacGuffin on which Chicago playwright Randall Colburn hangs his smart, creepy, affecting script. Scenes from Polly’s ordeal punctuate a story set decades later, when a callow young musician draws her into a campaign to investigate Cobain’s death. Directed by Kyra Lewandowski, Tympanic Theatre’s stripped-down, intense production features sharp, nuanced performances throughout. Victoria Gilbert is riveting as Polly, Jon Penick endlessly likable as her friend, and Neal Starbird eerily sweet as her tormentor.

The Copperhead, City Lit
City Lit dusts off this long-forgotten melodrama–it made Lionel Barrymore a star in 1918–and shines it up brilliantly. An Illinois farmer, Milt Shanks, serves the Union cause as a double agent during the Civil War. But his family and neighbors think he’s a traitor, and he lives as a pariah for 40 years before unburdening himself. With director Kathy Scambiatterra avoiding the temptation to camp up the many unsubtle elements in Augustus Thomas’s script, her capable actors invest unstintingly. It works. Confrontations between Shanks and his wife are searing, a proper young couple’s first kiss is notably hot, and Mark Pracht’s climactic monologue as Shanks is spellbinding.

Fa La La La… Fuck It, Annoyance
This tale of a dysfunctional family’s nightmarish Christmas is genuinely unsettling. Dad–a mountainous, grunting, embittered drunk–is onstage the least, but his weary belligerence sets the tone. Mom only stops her pathetic, ineffectual attempts at sugar-coating when she pours her grief out in soliloquy. Having adopted opposing coping strategies, the two teenage kids tear at each other: the boy, his face covered in zits, affects childish enthusiasm, trying to buttress mom’s Martha Stewart fantasies; the girl, her face a riot of piercings, does her sullen best to withdraw, but her unplanned pregnancy blocks the way. The raging, intimate dread recalls Eugene O’Neill, Jennifer Estlin is devastating as mom, and the laughter of drunk audience members only makes the play more disturbing.

Anthony Kayer in "Arnie The Doughnut." Photo by Suzanne Plunkett

I’ve been reviewing theater for the Chicago Reader since last summer, and this seems like as good a time as any to look back on some favorites.  Keep in mind, I’ve only seen a small fraction of what’s out there– the Reader’s got a small army of us– so there’s a lot of good stuff that I’ve missed.

In no particular order, here are the five that I’m most psyched to have seen– the ones I walked out of, thinking, “Damn!  That was unusually awesome. I’m sure glad I’m alive.”

Arnie the Doughnut, Lifeline Theater
On the morning he’s born, chocolate-covered Arnie gamely resolves to find his life’s purpose. Discovering the shocking truth when his owner attempts to take a bite, Arnie makes his objections heard. Frances Limoncelli’s adaptation retains the absurdist zing of the 2003 children’s book by Laurie Keller while freely adding complementary ingredients, including zippy songs by George Howe and a Kafkaesque subplot involving a totalitarian condo-board president. Brandon Paul Eells brings not only sweetness but wit to the title role–this doughnut is a naive goofball, but nobody’s fool–and makes Arnie’s terror and disillusionment truly affecting. The entire cast provide spirit, charm, and jazzy harmonies under Elise Kauzlaric’s capable direction. The show is a delight–delicious and substantial, even without a kid tagging along.

Watership Down, Lifeline Theater
Lifeline Theatre’s brilliant production captures the epic sprawl and driving suspense of its source–the 1972 novel by Richard Adams in which a band of rabbits, their warren destroyed, go on a perilous search for a new home. In fact, Lifeline tops Adams’s signature feat of delivering well-defined, often affecting characters who are–you know–rabbits. Where Adams had the luxury of relying on the reader’s imagination, Kate McLean Hainsworth’s ace cast have to sustain the conceit for two hours using body language. And they succeed with wit and style. Each cocked head and thumping leg makes a specific, emotionally-resonant contribution to the narrative. John Hildreth’s script navigates the story’s many turns clearly and economically, while Hainsworth’s direction keeps the wheels turning in a satisfying, vigorous rhythm.

The Nutcracker, House Theater
In this House Theatre of Chicago version of E.T.A. Hoffmann’s classic holiday story, the nutcracker Uncle Drosselmeyer gives young Clara is a likeness of her older brother, who died in war a year before, plunging the family into mourning. The wooden soldier comes to life at midnight, leading Clara and her dolls in a crusade to help the household recover from its loss by reclaiming Christmas. Giant rats, of course, resist. Witty, energetic and charming–with crackerjack stagecraft, some excellent songs, and a comic vision that borrows skillfully from the Toy Story movies–the show draws special power from its stark confrontation with grief. It was first staged in 2007, and I hope the House folks keep bringing it back so that my one-year-old son can see it someday.

Menorca, 16th Street Playhouse
Ollie, the archaeologist heroine of Robert Koon’s new play, has been a foreigner most of her life– a Basque in Barcelona, a Spaniard in England, a European in America– and yearns for “a place to settle.” Kirsten D’Aurelio’s warmth and intelligence in the role are captivating, and director Ann Filmer’s sure hand keeps this pensive, densely-layered story moving swiftly and gracefully between the Spanish island of Menorca, where Ollie investigates a newly-discovered set of human remains, and California’s southern desert, where she spends a cold, illuminating night on patrol with a border guard. Juan Gabriel Ruiz is a perfect foil as the guard– earthy, smart, and completely unfazed by Ollie’s haunted, ambivalent manner.

Contribution, ETA Creative Arts
The kindly old granny of a civil rights activist secretly does her bit for the cause–and one-ups the kid–by poisoning the local sheriff.  This Nixon-era one-act by Ted Shine remains fresh, potent, and funny, with Felicia McNeal serving up a strong, well-balanced cocktail of clowning and steel as the granny.   I’d never heard of Shine’s work before getting this assignment and was completely blown away.  ”Contribution” was paired with another Shine one-act called “Herbert III, which had both charms and weaknesses.   This was my first review for the Reader, and I struggled over whether to recommend the program; it wasn’t a full evening of awesome, but “Contribution” was an outstanding recovery of a forgotten gem.  I found myself talking about it for weeks.

First, did I mention that it’s a jail in the middle of downtown Chicago?

Also, you might have noticed, it’s freaky-looking:  A skinny triangular skyscraper, with walls that look like old-time computer punch-cards.   Why on earth does a jail look so weird?

And: it can be strangely invisible.  I used to get on the el about a block away from this building, and I never looked at it.  How does that happen?

Turns out the architect, Harry Weese, was a pragmatic visionary– his best-known project is the DC Metro– and all the unusual features addressed practical problems:

The triangular shape created good sight-lines for guards, and the narrow windows made escape difficult even without having bars.  They’re also beveled out, to funnel in more daylight.  And the skyscraper design created more built-in security: No inmates stay below the 10th floor, and the elevator itself functions as a pair of securely locked doors.

Weese also paid a lot of attention to how inmates would experience the building, and I got curious about what it looks like inside today.  Turns out:  Very different from what Weese intended.

You can download the story (or grab the player to embed it in your own site) here.

Avant-gardists have always been drawn to Woyzeck, and it’s easy to see why. For one thing, it was unfinished when its German author, Georg Büchner, died young of typhus in 1837. Some scenes look like fragments, some may’ve been rejects, and there’s no clear indication of their order, so an experimenter has plenty of room to mess around.

It’s also as dark as can be. Based on a sensational crime of the period,Woyzeck follows the unraveling of a soldier who, driven crazy by poverty and powerlessness, kills the mother of his infant child. The piece is full of biting social satire—with blackly comic, over-the-top scenes of powerful assholes abusing the hapless antihero—and constitutes a blueprint for pretty much all of Bertolt Brecht, parts of Waiting for Godot, and Monty Python at its nastiest.

This spring, six Chicago theaters and an opera company have banded together to present the Woyzeck Project, a festival anchored by two shows running now at the Chopin Theatre: About Face Theatre’s premiere production of Pony by Sylvan Oswald, which tosses a few Büchnerian elements into a contemporary story about transgender identity, andWoyzeck itself, as adapted and directed by Sean Graney for the Hypocrites. In addition to sharing a venue and a starting point, the two productions employ the same set, sound, lighting, and prop designers.

The Hypocrites give us Büchner’s story straight up. Franz Woyzeck hardly ever sees his lover, Marie, because he’s constantly working humiliating side jobs to supplement his military pay. One, as a subject in a science experiment, may actually be designed to drive him nuts, and he’s starting to experience nightmarish hallucinations. Eventually Marie takes up with another guy. When Woyzeck catches on, he leads her out to the woods and kills her. Graney’s adaptation steals text from various parts of the original to cobble together a narrator of sorts—a knowing, sinister figure who appears to Woyzeck at times, tipping him off to Marie’s infidelity and giving him confirmation, with a raised eyebrow, of his doom.

Graney and his crack ensemble tease out the play’s humor, pathos, and terror. Scenes in which Woyzeck is tormented by his bosses, Captain Hauptmann and the mad scientist called Herr Doktor, are played broadly and expertly for laughs. But, in a remarkable choice, Geoff Button is allowed to project kindness and intelligence as Woyzeck. From his first scene, he comes across as a grounded, decent, sweet guy who just happens to be losing his marbles.

The production design is similarly bold. In a brilliant stroke by sound designer Mikhail Fiksel, the cacophony in Woyzeck’s head—buzzing insects, a wheezing baby’s cry, the beating of his own heart—is produced by the other actors, who become a kind of choral, oral Foley artist. And everyday objects develop into powerful symbols: An oblong rock, for instance, represents Woyzeck and Marie’s baby—until it becomes a weapon.

Graney’s most potent image is a simple can of peas. Herr Doktor’s experiment requires Woyzeck to eat nothing but peas for months, and throughout the play, even as he listens to Marie’s dying sobs, Franz keeps spooning them into his mouth. It doesn’t occur to him to break the habit of obedience.

About Face’s Pony is similarly accomplished, with outstanding performances throughout. But Oswald’s play ultimately disappoints. The eponymous character is a woman who blows into town passing as a man. Pony takes up with Marie, who—in the play’s closest connection to Woyzeck—is obsessed with a recent crime of passion in the woods: Another woman named Marie was stabbed to death there by a jealous lover. Oswald’s Marie says she wants to know, to experience, the murderer’s state of mind. Everyone in the piece has cards they play close to the vest, mostly having to do with gender. But Marie’s obsession remains a mystery until the end, and then it doesn’t add up. Her craziness comes across as a stock device.

There are plenty of other problems. Late in the action, Pony acquires an annoying tendency to state the play’s themes in essay-like monologues. Another character, a therapist, takes a turn towards violence that doesn’t seem in tune with the person we’ve known to that point. And Marie apparently turns completely sane in the play’s last moments.

Oswald’s dialogue is smart, though, and the play offers a sweet scene between Pony and a young queer man, Heath, who’s come looking for him/her. Kelli Simpkins’s Pony and Matthew Sherbach’s Heath are absolutely endearing. Director Bonnie Metzgar gives the script’s every nuance time to breathe, for better and also for worse: If the pace were quicker, the holes in the script might be less noticeable.

I was out Sunday and took a few notes on what seem like promising leads. Using my camera. Here’s one:

Coincidentally, very sad news tonight.  Cliff Doerksen, who edited the Pink Nun story– my first for The Chicago Reader– died recently.  He was just 47.  News got around today.  Cliff had moved on from The Reader by the time I published there again, so that was my only encounter with him, but he did a lot to make that story shine.

RIP, Cliff.  From the testimonials appearing now, it’s clear I missed a lot by not knowing you better.

It’ll take a day or two for the whole InterWebs to figure out the switch, but in the meantime… yay!