Below is the complete text of the program for yesterday's first-ever Tales of Adventure.  Seriously.  Audio of show to follow soon.

TALES OF ADVENTURE!

VOLUME 1, ISSUE 1:
HORROR WEEK

For your diversion, we have compiled some of the most popular jokes about ghosts, ghouls, goblins, and other deadly monsters that have been passed down through the generations.  Perhaps these laughs will take the sting out of what you hear tonight and the chuckles herein will help you to sleep.  Perhaps…

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GHOULISH JOKES AND
GHOSTLY RIDDLES

What do you get when you cross a swamp thing and an ogre?

I'm not a football fan, and had never heard of this guy--and even I love this article.

"I was part of the inaugural rookie symposium the N.F.L. conducts to help college players make the transition to professional football. Three days of meetings pretty much consisted of the same two messages: use a condom and save your money."

Hello theater lover,

You are strongly encouraged (by the cops) to attend an exciting new show called, TALES OF ADVENTURE! 

The details:

Tales of Adventure!
Sundays at 6:45, April 29, May 6, May 13
Strawdog Theatre, 3829 N. Broadway
Tickets:  5 bucks

Synopsis after rad poster...

Each week at Tales of Adventure!, five of Chicago’s funniest improvisers and best comedy writers will read short stories inspired by a different genre.  On April 29th, the theme will be “Horror.”  On May 6th, “Romance and Erotica.”  On May 13th, “Sci-Fi.”

SLATED TO APPEAR:  Scot Goodhart, Robyn Okrant, Rich Sohn, Brendan Dowling, Bess Romano, Kristen Studard, Pat Gallen, Tim Sniffen, Jen Bills, Barry Hite, and Linda Orr.  (Edited to add for clarification:  I will also host and read a story at each show.  If you hold me in any esteem at all, then I expect you there weekly.)

“Everyone is really excited about this,” said Mayor Rahm Emanuel about something else in a completely different context at one point or another in his life.  He may as well have been talking about Tales of Adventure. 

“It’s only five dollars,” said Shaquille O’Neal about something that was definitely not Tales of Adventure, which he has never heard of.  Even still, Shaq-Diesel could have been talking about this show since it is also just five bucks.

(Please note:  If Chicago’s funniest improvisers and best comedy writers are not available, then Tales of Adventure will be a rap battle starring Schaumburg’s dopest MCs.)

Or friend who sells the New Yorker.  Then, read "Transatlantic," by Colum McCann.  It's behind the paywall.  I mention it here in a linkless post anyway since it will be worth the effort.

Oof and yikes. 

The first link is to Frank Bruni's article in today's NY Times about the food critic Craig Claiborne. Bruni calls him "the father of contemporary restaurant criticism."  The title of a recent biography on him is, "The Man Who Changed the Way We Eat."  Either would make a fine tombstone inscription, I say. 

And yet Claiborne was also, to put it in Larkinian bluntness, fucking miserable.  "[F]earful, irritable, lonely and depressed," is how Bruni puts it.  "...for the 'personal poem' Claiborne produced as an anniversary present to one longtime lover, he paid $240 to Limerick Lane Poetryworks, which promised verse to call your own in return for the right background information. This was in 1992, the same year that the James Beard Foundation gave him a lifetime achievement award. He skipped the ceremony." 

To me, an acclaimed writer paying someone else $240 for a five-line joke is sadder than skipping a prestigious lifetime achievement award.  Bruni concludes: "His tale is a sad reminder: happiness has less to do with achievement than with perspective. And sometimes the person inside a life, storied or otherwise, is least able to savor it."

"In spite of his exile, he had a wide circle of friends and admirers to whom he wrote unbuttoned letters.  In the most famous of these, to Francesco Vettori, we glimpse his addiction to hobnobbing with simple people over cards and drinks at the tavern.  When in the late afternoon he is through with that recreation, he goes home, dresses in the handsome garments, and converses with the ancients, 'asking' them about their lives and actions.  During these four studious hours he is never bored; he forgets his poverty and disgrace, and does not fear death."

-From Dawn to Decadence, p. 259

Lauren Collins on UK rag, The Daily Mail.  Collins is such a fun writer.  She could make an article about bags of poo interesting.  Unfortunately, that one is behind the paywall.

Andrew Sullivan's readers write in about football's concussion crisis.  This one is great.  Also on the Dish, the man himself has a very good post titled, "Jesus and Sex."  Toward the end of the post, which is largely about forgiveness, Sullivan acknowledges his own failings and quite eloquently concludes, "I am unworthy to deliver such a message. But if no broken being can speak to the truths he cannot always live up to and has often strayed from, then we would have a great deal of silence."  It's nice seeing Andrew, as his fans call him, resort to blunt modesty like that.

Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a devastating rebuke to Juan Williams.

David Brooks is my homeboy.  A lot of people dis him because he veers off into psychology, (pop or otherwise), rather than constantly rebuking his fellow travelers on the right.  I am fine with him writing about what he feels like because:  first of all, I don't need yet more commentary to convince me the GOP is intellectually bankrupt; and secondly, unlike snobs who live in think-tanks, I don't read psychology journals all day and don't care if he is dumbing it down for me.*  But anyway, I appreciate his efforts, along with his NYT colleague Ross Douthat, to remind people that not everyone on the right is insane, cynical, stupid, or some dangerous combination of the three.  Here are three recent articles by him I dug.

And with that, I offer a toast:  to a vibrant Media Filter in the coming weeks, months, and yea, centuries, throughout which DennisOToole.com will entertain and instruct all who need it most.


*Note a day later: this is an infelicitous phrase in a run-on sentence, but you know what I mean.  There are two connotations for "to dumb it down."  One is "to make the complex accessible;" the other is "to dilute original, intelligently crafted research while insulting the intelligence of the audience."  Clearly I mean the former.  But, since Brooks is accused of the latter, I am making the distinction.  As for the snobs in think-tanks line, that alludes to one very harsh critique I saw of Brooks's forays into psychology.  Don't feel like linking to it.  Trust me.  It exists.