Petesophizing...

My relatives in the Republic of Korvatz are all unemployed engineers and they keep sending me "schemata" for business ideas. My 3rd cousin, Dyula Dulvitz, has read that American women have date panties and lucky panties and I think he might be confused about what's meant by going commando.

Anyway, he suggests putting the various "Terror Alert" classifications from Homeland Security on women's underwear, but he has no financing.

One reason "we'll always have Shakespeare" is not just the durability of the greatest poetry in the English language but the opportunity Shakespeare offers talented directors to fuse a modern sensibility with -- the greatest poetry in the English language.

In a bold fusion this weekend at UW Parkside, Brian Rott, directing the first production for a small group he founded this summer called Loose Canon Theatre, puts the fashions, postures and iconography of 1980's America to work in a seven actor version of The Merchant Of Venice.

Still in his early twenties, Rott couldn't have known the full extent of his cleverness, couldn't have known what invoking the era of junk bonds, Princess Diana and Ronald Reagan would do for his 40-something audience. He couldn't have fully anticipated the toe tapping at the first notes of Sweet Dreams by Eurythmics, or the memories kindled by something like hair gel, shoulder pads for women, and a marvelously employed Rubiks Cube.

But his instincts were superb. In this "Merchant" Rott combined two smaller male roles into one fatal female. His concept was more than validated by Milwaukee actor Angela Beyer, playing some dangerous candy and leaving lipstick and a trace of cocaine on Shakespeare's verses.

This Beyer sister (there are two in the cast) also accounts for some of the play's subtlest comedy (Rott making it clear he considers Merchant of comedic origin) when she returns as Shylock's daughter.

I often think Angela Beyer has the soul of a comedienne. Here, as Jessica, she's amusingly off center. In an ill-fitting man's hat and overcoat, showering hopes and money on her suitor from a balcony, she winks at Shakespeare's Juliet but her closest relative may very well be one of the comedian Red Skelton's lovable kooks.

UW Parkside student Derek Ewing's slick, posturing Bassanio, all jacket and jawline, seems like he's one cigarette burn on his shiny suit from having the surface punctured. An 80's mindset.

As for Shylock, the question of sympathy is complicated. Milwaukee actor E. Frank Namath remains engaging throughout, and that's surely a victory.

Milwaukee actors Kyle Tikovitsch and Tina Schultz deliver comedically in multiple roles and also demonstrate this group believes rightly there's a worthwhile moment in every line.

If you know Shakespeare a little you anticipate the big speeches. Milwaukee actor Jacquie Beyer's "Quality of mercy..." was muscular in her male disguise, and worth waiting for.

Portia is one of the "pants roles" and Beyer made it clear early on, before she put on pants, that a swimming suit, Lolita sunglasses and a one-of-a-kind hairdo can be pants as much as pants are pants. Her tabloid-style repose on a chaise lounge was perfect for shooting the clay pigeons that are her unwanted suitors, and perfect too for signifying that her wit concerning the male of the species is also, to some degree, "a cover story".

The heartstopper Sunday was her capacity for sentiment. From behind the sunglasses she's first snide about, then emotionally snared in, one of the play's principal conceits: her romantic fate being attached to a shell game -- the chests of gold, silver and lead. Jacquie Beyer raised the stakes high before the game was decided in her favor, so when she walked a few steps to embrace her new husband-to-be, the entire audience walked with her. A kiss is still a kiss.

Loose Canon Theatre is a young, educated group, clearly empowered with both textual analysis and visual splash, and their leader is Brian Rott. One hopes on his return from study at the Moscow Art Theater he'll gather them again, and that these talented performers will help constitute the next generation for Milwaukee theater.

You can see this terrific "Merchant" in Milwaukee at the Astor Theater on Brady Street the weekends of September 1st and September 8.

Some years ago I landed close to the bottom of the employment ladder. I suppose professional chicken grabbers, those guys who corner and snatch up chickens eight at a time to transport them for slaughter, have it worse, but not much. I wasn't just a telemarketer, but a telemarketer on "the cop call", the nightly shakedown across the country in the name of police and veterans groups of questionable legitimacy.

Even though the job led improbably to becoming the phone room manager at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater, I've tried to forget the cop call. But it looks from my notebook like I attempted to make the best of talking to thousands of Americans and it looks like I started taking notes for an essay with the working title: "What Telemarketers Know About America".

From "What Telemarketers Know About America":

Americans use their children to screen their phone calls. In New York, Kansas, and Michigan, little children have become a front line of defense against the kind of call I'm making. As young as 2, 3, 4, they're power-lifting telephone receivers, stopping for one last coaching session from mom and dad, and screaming WHO IS THIS?

Here's a peek into the phoneroom:

After a few weeks I decided to ask the phone room manager, Mark, who was already fond of me -- and fond of my results -- the question so many people on the other end of the lines ask me: "What percentage of this money actually goes to the officers?" With seventeen or so years in the business, he was ready for me. "I was badly abused as a child," he said. This was his verbatim, direct response. Then he handed me a brochure for the prepaid legal services he was hawking on the side.

But here's something I kind of like:

I'm talking to Lara on behalf of the Kansas Peace Officers when I have a realization and I break from the script. "You were born in 1966 or '67, weren't you", I said. "You have that information?," she asked. "Doctor Zhivago came out in 1965", I said, "your parents loved Doctor Zhivago, didn't they." "Clever boy," she said. Suddenly sexuality. I'm not totally gone.

According to the Social Security Administration's (SSA) Popular Baby Names, in 1965, the year Doctor Zhivago was released, Lara isn't in the top 1000 names at all, (though "Fonda" -- used as a first name -- ranks 885th).

In 1966 Lara makes a stunning debut at 618th.

In 1967 Lara jumps all the way to 277th.

1968: 227
1969: 224
1970: 235
1971: 273
1972: 297

So Lara peaked in 1969.

In 2002 the BBC reprised Doctor Zhivago as a miniseries and in 2003 it played in America on Masterpiece Theatre, with Keira Knightley in the role of Lara, the role Julie Christie beamed into the minds of American parents-to-be.

(The real letdown in the miniseries was Sam Neill standing in for Rod Steiger, but that's not to discredit Neill, who I usually like, but just because Rod Steiger was unstoppable. The way Steiger's Victor Komarovsky intones, not "Lara", but "Larissa", would fry any database.)

In 2003 Lara ranked 730th according to the SSA.

In 2004, 733rd.

Score one for Julie Christie.

Although in 2005 "Keira" ranks 232nd.

It's time to consider "opensure". The nicens at LezBeOut.com think so too. From When She Leaves: 12 Ways To Mend A Broken Heart:

You want closure? I don't believe in it. It's not closure. It's opensure. Opening an unhealed wound. Don't do it. Is there a reason to call and ask why he/she broke up with you? Yes, if you want to feel more pain. There's time for this tomorrow (and when tomorrow comes, you won't care to know the answer).

Raspberrysundae -- bewitched, bothered and bitten -- in one of her bursts of berry goodness has been open to falling from grace:

i like the word opensure. my little brother - he's a smart one, that guy.

I like "le sigh" at the end of her posts.

I can't find my rhetorical quarry in the blog of said brother, but in Give Me Monsters and I will slay them he informs:

- Anna Kournikova is no longer cool to have as your imaginary crush. Try like Jessica Alba or something. Ohh...Zooey Dashchnel or however you spell her name.

Even at 44 -- I can adjust. (Whoever Zooey is, I hope she's of legal age, fantasywise.)

Opensure is, or was, a rock band in Orange County, CA fronted by one Ryan Chapelle. If the solo career deflates go back to the band title, Ryan.

Psychotherapist Mira Kirshenbaum has written EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON. Nevermind the subtle tautological aspect of the title (less generously: a fallacy), we're flacking for a word, here. From the blurb on Zooba:

[Kirshenbaum] turns a platitude into a profound principle of self-understanding...and guides you toward, not closure, but "opensure" -- an acceptance that focuses energy on the future.

Why not? A working definition: acceptance that focuses energy on the future. It can be positive energy. Or negative capability. Opensure has more pop than "openness"-ness-ness. How many n's in that word, anyway? And let's change "closure" to "death".

I'm a cemetery person and I have five to choose from in easy walking distance. My dead are in Calvary Cemetery, but this afternoon I walked the grounds of what's now called The Clement J. Zablocki VA Medical Center, but what I'll always call The Soldier's Home. Because, well, that's what my mom calls it.

As a kid I somewhere absorbed the myth that the Ward Memorial Theater was an exact replica of Ford's Theatre in Washington. Now a laptop instantly punctures that myth for neighborhood kids, lowering the creepiness factor, but I'm thinking probably not entirely eliminating it. I see the founding document for the grounds is dated just ten days after the end of The Civil War.

The new working title of my play is THE NIGHT THEY INVENTED CHAMP EGAN, and I think it might stick. I'm putting the finishing touches on another draft.

The following exchange between characters has me reminiscing about an old friend -- and about taxis. "Champ" is an American and "Alexander" comes from the tiny Republic of Korvatz. (Can't find it on the map? I'll see if I can produce a link in another post.)

CHAMP

Did you get any psychiatric training in Korvatz?

ALEXANDER

I learned this as some teenager in the backseat of my brother's taxicab. Those Russian imports were maybe sixty, seventy percent cardboard but the back seat was "magnifico". If the girl was small she could lay down completely.

Those of you from my poker and chess days might recognize an echo of Alex R., my friend and onetime apartment mate (I was really more of a squatter), in that "magnifico". My fictional Alexander shares with Alex R. that kind of verbal play referencing a third language, even as he bruises his second language, English, a little.

It was, in fact, Alex R. who told me about the enormous ("cardboard") Russian taxicabs commonplace when he was a young man in the former Yugoslavia. They now bump and splash in the memories of an expatriot from Korvatz.

The real Alex R. has a wonderful story about those cabs, too, a story I haven't grifted for my play, but I probably should.

Back in the old country, after dinner one night, he and his date hailed a taxi. Alex being a gentleman escorted his female companion to one side of the car and closed the door for her. He got in on the other side. The evening had been going well and he felt there was plenty of chemistry between them. But they were now separated by the Continental Divide of that enormous back seat. An insurmountable distance.

Years later, having each gotten married, they ran into one another an ocean away in New York -- and joked about how, if that taxi had been smaller, their lives might have been quite different.

Match.com is relentless sending me follow-up emails after my promotional subscription ran out. (While I was enrolled "Elena" from Russia wrote to me: "I like your structure".)

Match.com, also -- in an unholy consortium with Dr. Phil -- rejected this photo, claiming I'm not the "primary subject".

A matter of opinion.

I suppose a case could be made for the "primary subject" being my stylist, Heidi, who shaves me with a straight razor.

She's easily one of the five key people who've helped me in the process of grieving over my father's death.

If I'm out to dinner with a snobby "foodie" I have a little maneuver I pull which is to interrupt his monologue with "Have you been to Squatty Roo's yet? Oh, it's terrific. Jazz on Tuesdays and 25 cent oysters I don't even know what days -- it seems like every day." It's very effective this far inland. I've gone so far as having to make up a fake address. If someone ever gets back to me complaining they haven't been able to find "Squatty's" I'm going to say, "I think it's closed because of an EEOC investigation. They were hiring only big breasted women between the ages of 18 and 25."

Among my dinner companions last night was an employee of a major Defense Department contractor. I knew she was going to be there and I was prepared for her. About the Iraq war I was going to say:

I'm interested in the "enabling" idea. And, applying that on a broader scale, I have more of a problem with the International Red Cross and my beloved Catholic Bishops, than with the defense industry.

This morning I'm not even sure what that means, but I'm sure it's clever and somehow would have let us all off the hook.

When she finally warmed up to me -- incidentally, mentioning I'm the co-founder of Adult Children Of Acoholics Who Still Want To Drink (ACOAWSWTD) is a real winner conversationally -- she said, "No matter what you think about the war, fighter jets are really cool, aren't they?"

Speaking then as an eight-year-old with fingers matted by model airplane glue -- I had nothing. I sought refuge in some buttery lobster mashed.

[Photo: Lightmatter_greatblueheron2 by LIGHTmatter Photography By Aaron Logan]

My friend Judy and I watched one of the herons feed for over an hour last night. I noticed they’ll wade and fish close to humans but if you try to inch your way to a better view they’ll often take flight.

I’m tempted to go to the Horicon Marsh for a rookery tour but I know herons are somewhat common and I’m afraid to lose the special feeling I have around these visitors. The magic is looking up from your ordinary urban day and meditating on a little bit of wildness. A flash of eye. A balance beam pose. One minute they're scrawny and turkey-like; the next, purposeful, drawn back like a bow and arrow. They’re not all that attractive. They’re gawky. And when they fly they look like Howard Hughes’s Spruce Goose.

But that beak is suggestive of prehistory, like an ancient bifacial tool. You don’t find a tool like that at The Home Depot. If these birds weren’t here before us they sure look prepared to survive long after we’re gone. I take comfort in that. For me it’s some at least momentary antidote to the moronic inferno.

The Washington Post reports today there is no bomb in a Seattle shipping container. If I had any money I’d try to invest in the Washington Post Company. Reporting on frightening events that could happen, but haven’t, signals an unlimited future for them.

But their close competitors have also mapped the undiscovered country of the undiscovered country. People Magazine yesterday boasted an exclusive, as Jennifer Anniston revealed “I am not engaged and I don’t have a ring and I haven’t been proposed to.”

I’d like to report that I did NOT do 1000 push-ups today as I’d planned.

When the smaller of my two herons wades in the pond she comes up with a morsel every time she dips into the water. I really love watching that.

The Orpheum Theatre in Madison, WI is going to show the cult documentary I Like Killing Flies, a film which for me isn't so esoteric since I was in the orbit of the restaurant Shopsin's General Store in the late 80's and early 90's in Greenwich Village. I was pretty friendly with Kenny Shopsin, the restaurant's proprietor and the subject of the film. [Photo: kenny1fx by nycnosh on flickr]

Anyone with a history at Shopsin's is off balance seeing a film, reviews, articles, because Kenny's been hostile to publicity even as he feeds NY media types. He told me he never wants to lose the neighborhood feeling of the place to a crowd of tourists. Of course -- a room full of regulars also gives the man the journalist Linda Ellerbee used to call "The Philosopher King Of Morton Street" an opportunity to hold court. [Photo: avocado milkshake by roboppy on flickr]

A Shopsin's Memory: Carl Bernstein was there one night and as he was leaving my friend David gave a small wave and said THANKS FOR WATERGATE!

To get a feel for Kenny, first look at the restaurant's menu, offering over 900 selections, all scratch-cooked by him. I've personally seen him refuse to serve a guy who picked up this menu and asked WHAT’S GOOD?

A Shopsin's Memory: Once John F. Kennedy Jr. walked in, or I should say, rollerbladed in. This was in his Assistant District Attorney days. I have to say, a better looking human being I've never seen. Kenny's wife, Eve, thought so too. To crack me up (and express her innermost thoughts?), she made obscene tongue gestures behind JFK Jr's back for as long as it took him to eat his soup.

Here are six clips from the movie. Much is made of the rules at Shopsin's, especially NO PARTIES LARGER THAN 4. A whole mythology, including a poem, has grown around this rule. But Kenny once told me the reason he originated it. I don't know if it's public knowledge so I'm not saying. I think he enjoys being misapprehended as arbitrary, mean, eccentric, but the real reason is thoughtful and respectful of his customers. [Photo: inside the ebelskiver (spherical pancake) by roboppy on flickr]

A Shopsin's Memory: In the middle of my chemotherapy the phone rang and it was Kenny inviting me to hang out at the restaurant whenever I was up to it, without having to eat. He suspended a rule for me. I could never resist ordering something.

Calvin Trillin is a Shopsin's regular who, regrettably, I never got a chance to meet. Kenny finally consented to let Trillin write about the restaurant. Don't Mention It: The Hidden Life And Times Of A Greenwich Village Restaurant appeared in the April 15, 2002 New Yorker.

A Shopsin's Memory: The walls have original artwork contributed by patrons. My favorite is a cartoon of Kenny stabbing a health department inspector with a chef's knife.

The film keys on the restaurant's forced move from its 32-year home at the corner of Bedford and Morton Streets in New York. I've been to the new place only once and I'm a little nostalgic for the old one. But Kenny -- uncensored, confrontational, imaginatively indulgent, and in my experience, a totally authentic human being -- is certainly a moveable feast. [Photo: kenny2fx by nycnosh on flickr]

Cloe's 19 now and needs drugs to battle kidney bacteria. She has skin reactions to the most common antibiotics for cats so she's getting Cipro, the antibiotic famously approved by the FDA "for the inhaled form of anthrax after an individual has been exposed."

In the event of an Anthrax attack, Cloe will live! And feed off my dead carcass until help arrives.

Cipro's made by Schering-Plough of Kenilworth, NJ. Though Cipro was developed for humans, Schering-Plough has a whole division focused on animals. They recently won FDA approval to medicate fish with a drug called Aquaflor, which could be a big deal for Schering-Plough stockholders as well as fish since drugs for aquaculture are rare.

“The problem is there aren’t many catfish veterinarians, per se,” says Dr. Dick Endris, Aquaculture Research Program Manager for Schering-Plough Animal Health Corporation, on their website.

Schering-Plough can't be all bad when they have a companion animal program and at least one doctor in their aquaculture division with a sense of humor. (It's the "per se" that makes the above line funny, isn't it?) Their whole corporate family of websites seems lighthearted when you find out they make both Levitra and Bain de Soleil.

They've resorted to the “headline” format, though, wherein "National Survey Reveals That Losing A Pet Can Be More Traumatic Than Losing A Job" turns out to be a promotional piece for the HomeAgain Pet Recovery Service using implanted microchips.

The big surprise: On the product page for dogs is a category entitled “Euthanasia”. With Beuthanasia®-D Special, “Cardiac arrest begins in less than half the time required by pentobarbital alone.” It’s a Class III drug and so “eliminates extra paperwork required with Class II drugs.” A special purple dye “Visually identifies Beuthanasia®-D Special, eliminating mistakes.”

I keep a close watch on Cloe, since she’s blind, or nearly so, and has lost half her body mass in the last couple of years. She’s pet and companion to me, but also 18 years of continuity: She’s a New Yorker. I adopted her from the Bide-A-Wee Home Association in 1988 and her first vet at the Bide-A-Wee clinic was Stephen Kritsick, who became a TV star on Good Morning America. He authored the books Tender Loving Cat Care and Creature Comforts: The Adventures Of A City Vet.

Sadly, neither Schering-Plough, nor any other drug company, could come through for Dr. Kritsick in time to save his own life. In 1994, just as he was becoming an American James Herriot, he died of AIDS at the age of 42.

I remember talking to Kritsick, calling him with petty concerns about Cloe. I’d never had a cat before. She was sleeping so much.

“Is she eating, drinking, going to the bathroom and grooming herself?”, Kritsick would ask me. "Yes", I'd say. “Then she’s OK,” he'd say.

Eighteen years later I can still answer Dr. Kritsick in the affirmative. Most important: I don’t see any signs of physical pain from her. So I hope for some continuing window of enjoying her, and her enjoying me.

Now she’s prepared for Anthrax-wielding terrorists.

How many Gibsons had Gibson? How mellow was Mel?

Christopher Beam (a Slate intern), writing for the magazine's generally appealing Explainer series, (recently: Are Snowflakes Really Different?, Did Stress Kill Ken Lay? and I Want A Butt Double, How Much Will I Have To Pay?) says Malibu Mel was "Pretty Drunk" -- with a blood-alcohol level of 0.12.

Now wait a minute. Not long ago the legal limit was 0.10. Is 0.12 really that drunk? Yes, I'm speaking as a resident of Wisconsin.

Kevin C. Barry is a resident of Racine, Wisconsin. Last Friday night when he drove through a barricade in Milwaukee's Third Ward and into a jazz festival Kevin C. Barry of Racine had a blood-alcohol level of 0.20. Nobody was hurt. A Milwaukee County Sheriff was having dinner at The Wicked Hop and arrested him. Even with a 0.20 blood-alcohol level he was smart enough to remain unconscious and not give voice to any racial epithets.

I'm speaking also as a recent graduate of The Bartending Academy Of Wisconsin, where on the final exam I had to make 24 drinks in 20 minutes. I remembered the ingredients to a Golden Cadillac but forgot to salt the rim on a Margarita.

In Urbana, IL, Lawrence Bouser was arrested a fifth time for D.U.I., with a blood-alcohol content of 0.26. Last week his sentence was probation. He'd already spent a year in jail in Wisconsin for his previous offenses. We don't like "Illinois Drivers". I'm glad to read he seems to be getting his life in order now. That's doin' some drink'n -- 0.26.

I'm speaking also as the co-founder of Adult Children Of Alcoholics Who Still Want To Drink (ACAWSWTD). We have no website and only one bylaw: You can't ruin your life drinking the same cocktail your parent(s) used to ruin theirs. Add ice, at least. Or change the garnish.

Mel Gibson is claiming total irrationality -- he's inventing "state-dependent anti-Semitism" -- with a blood-alcohol content of only 0.12. COME ON. We have some cakes and pies here that will get your blood-alcohol level up to 0.12.

After growing up in Wisconsin and now having been back here for some years I've finally crossed paths with the Great Blue Heron. I've named this one "Nessy", since he looks like the Loch Ness Monster when he's wading in a small pond in Jacobus Park.