 Light some candles, recline with a lover (or two), and let your imagination be ravished by these four tales of romance and the erotic. "Pileup," by Tim Sniffen "The Lady and the Rake," by Dennis O'Toole Selections from Pat Gallen's Love Journal "Small Man, Big Heart," by Bess Romano Add Comment  Below is last week's complete episode busted up into chewable morsels. Podcast options coming soon. Introduction "The Maidenhead of Geraldine Evans," by Brendan Dowling "The Silence of the Worms," by Jen Bills "36 Bus Nightmare," by Barry Hite "The Ax Murdering Dentist," by Dennis O'Toole "Children of the Corn," by Scot Goodhart Closing  Even this dude writes about "Girls" The new show "Girls" on HBO has been on three times so far. Very few people have had a chance see it, yet that has not stopped the flood of pained commentary all over the web. And I mean pained, from the apparent "The Emperor Has No Clothes" depiction of modern sexual life (you mean it's not all idyllic free love?) to the earnest debate that consumed the chattering class last week--after the second episode--about whether the show is too white. It's a comedy, but you would not know that from the people writing about it. At least, the people I see writing about it. The New Yorker, the New York Times, Slate, Jezebel (duh) and the Atlantic are holding daily "Girls" symposiums on ever-changing, non-funny cultural issues du jour. (Slate was first conceived as a site for pained discussions on shows few people see.) Is Salon still around? Let's assume it is, and that the lead article on the homepage today posits the couches depicted in "Girls" are too big for actual Brooklyn apartments. I also assume that the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and the American Rifleman are holding similar debates. Maybe their hourly "Girls" posts are much funnier.  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… * GHOULISH JOKES AND GHOSTLY RIDDLES What do you get when you cross a swamp thing and an ogre? 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.)  W.B. Yeats's homeboy, J.M. Synge. 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."  Above: fruit flies porking Knowing my ongoing fascination with drug abuse and promiscuity among fruit flies, a certain New England journal of medicine (which I can neither name nor hint at) asked me to comment on a recent study on loser fruit flies who can't get laid. I submitted the following. Two hours later I received, via facsimile, an acrimonious and vulgar rejection letter. The editor told me that my "methodology sucks" and that I "could not research my way out of a brown paper bag. You clearly pulled two-thirds of this out of your sorry Mick ass." The letter was unsigned, but included a photocopy of a hand giving me The Swear Finger. Based on the huge pinky ring, I'd guess its author was Dr. Gregory D. Curfman, who's otherwise a stand-up dude and was probably just having a bad day. Well, whatevz. I stand by every word I wrote, except for the ones that appear in black font. The Nerd Gene by "Dr." Dennis O'Toole Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco have published a study in the journal Science showing that male fruit flies who cannot find a mate drink four times as much alcohol as those that mate. "It's the first discovery, in fruit flies," according to Science, "of a social interaction that influences future behavior." Nerds everywhere, take heed: Could it be that the vicious cycle of social ineptitude is wired into one’s DNA? Science seems to say, quite emphatically, yes: Shortly after moving into my first one-bedroom apartment, I made a rule. It is, indeed, my “First Commandment of Living Alone”: I am not allowed to push rice onto my fork with my pinky. If I want those last few grains, I must use a knife. This credo has served me well. I have lived alone for almost 13 years, and throughout that time I have maintained, as closely as possible, the habits of someone who doesn’t. Imagine that I had shrugged my shoulders, back in the spring of 1999, and said, “Ah, screw it. This apartment is my castle. I can use my pinky if I feel like it, and I can talk to myself like this if I feel like it, too.” What would have been the harm?  Motto: "Y'all mothafuckas is crazy!" In the final week of January, 2011, I read an article in the New York Times titled, “Grief Could Join List of Disorders.” It said: In a bitter skirmish over the definition of depression, a new report contends that a proposed change to the diagnosis would characterize grieving as a disorder and greatly increase the number of people treated for it. That made me think: what other normal shit is now, like, fuckin’ crazy, bro!? So I came up with a list of other revised definitions for common disorders. The results: Eh. First problem: that Times quote is long, yet it’s still not thorough enough to set up my game. The right quote should also say that this proposed change would appear in the new (fifth) edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the book-to-beat in professional psychiatric diagnosis. Rather than try to squeeze in that long-ass title, I’d rather just toss “the D.S.M.” in brackets somewhere and assume that you—a savvy reader of broad interests now doing post-doctoral work at one of Switzerland’s finer particle accelerators—are familiar with the acronym. |  Dennis O'Toole is a all-set cobra jet creepin' through the nighttime. He lives in Chicago.
Click here for published stuff. Heads up: Many entries will have a kinda hard to see "Read More" link in the corner. Click it to read less. If you need to reach me, dial: denotoole AT SYMBOL gmail PERIOD CHARACTER co LETTER M Twitter handle: http://twitter.com/deeohtee ArchivesMay 2012 Categories |
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