Les Miserables describes pretty much anybody’s drive into Chicago from the suburbs.

So I was in the right mood for seeing the final leg of the current national tour of Les Miserables at the Cadillac Palace Theatre. It plays there through Sunday, May 24.

I first saw this pop opera decades ago when I took my mom downtown to see it for her Mother’s Day gift. What mom wouldn’t like a musical based on the classic, 1,500-page Victor Hugo novel from 1862? One featuring human trafficking, graft, corruption, greed, obsession, child abuse, political violence murder, suicide and a few dick jokes thrown in for good measure? OK, there’s young romance, unrequited love and Jean Valjean, the dreamy, saintly leading role for a hunk, plus all that singing.

Given the above I was still slightly surprised when a buddy told me he once sat through a version of Les Miz a teacher friend of his was involved with, a variation for kids. That seemed like something some PTA somewhere in Florida would have worked to ban so they could get social media attention and go on cable news to whine about how oppressed they are.

Anyway, since I was crabby from my drive – and a 3-hour show stood  ahead of us just down the block – my theater-going pal and I hit City Social for a bite to eat beforehand.

Yes, there was an irony about dining before seeing a musical where the lead character is a guy who spent time in prison for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister’s hungry kids. In fact, it seemed the cheery restaurant drew a good number of young, fresh-faced youngsters there with their friends or parents to grab from grub before the show.

On the short walk back to the Cadillac Palace, we heard singing coming from somewhere. A young woman – probably a student at one of the downtown colleges – had set up an amp with backing tracks and was doing show tune karaoke. She had her resume and social media links handy.

Who did she think would hire her? She didn’t belt out any protest tunes, which would have made her busking fitting for the play. But we only heard her for a smidgen. (Smidgen seems like a Les Miserables word, doesn’t it?)

Once in the lobby, nobody was selling any bread along with the iconic Les Miserables t-shirt and other tchotchkes.

Nobody was dressed like a French peasant, or in a blocked bicorn hat or as if they were going to take part in the ill-fated, anti-monarchist June Rebellion of 1832. That is, no cosplayers, but for a guy in a top hat that made him look like Abe Lincoln’s tubby brother.

Plopped in my seat, I wondered if the guy who played Javert – Valjean’s central, stalking nemesis –  would have a better voice than Russell Crowe did in the movie version of Les Miserables, which I saw 13 years ago. Russell’s a method singer. He was nominated for an Oscar for A Beautiful Mind, not for A Beautiful Voice.

Of course, everyone in this tour had the great vocal chops needed to be in work where not a word is spoken. I marveled at the training involved.

It’s also wondrous how far stage craft and audio technology have come since Les Miserables made its way from France to make its Broadway debut in 1987. Imagine, too, a time when no old guy sitting a couple seats away would be checking the time on his cellphone every 10 minutes. Those were the days!

I also had forgotten how frenetically paced a show based on a really long novel was. Les Miserables is an aerobic workout for the cast and the audience. (Is that line stolen from a poster for the production? If not, it should be on one.)

Once the music began, it reminded me of what Les Miserables hath wrought. While this sort of thing may have started with Jesus Christ Superstar, Les Miz certainly took a certain type of  megamusical theater and of singing to new levels. Or at least contributed to it.

Not that Broadway was ever particularly fond of subtlety. But Les Miz was part and parcel of the era of maximalist works. The over-the-top Phantom of the Opera first hit Broadway in 1988, just a year after Les Miz.

Then there’s the irony of a big budget musical like Les Miz dealing with themes related to abject poverty.

Les Miserables and Phantom also laid the groundwork for PBS Pledge Drive-friendly productions of a different ilk, namely Irish dance and/or music offerings. Those include Riverdance, Lord of the Dance, Celtic Woman, Celtic Thunder and the like.

Then there’s the musical style. Whitney Houston was big in 1987, too. So her, plus Les Miserables – then Celine Dione just a couple years later –  laid the foundation for decades to come of a particularly dominant strain of adult contemporary music.

You know it when you hear it. Lush orchestral accompaniment. Weepy ballads. Soft parts followed by loud parts. Lots and lots of vocal gymnastics on display. Reverb. Not just walls, but halls of sound.

The likes of Michael Bolton, Richard Marx and Kenny Freaking G fit this late 80s mold, too.

Ok, maybe the Pixies and Nirvana adapted this to rock. Or not.

But Nirvana didn’t lead to American Idol, The Voice or anything else involving Simon Cowell.

Aye, in the spirit of Jean Valjean, I hope one day I can find it in my heart to absolve Les Miz for the above.

Speaking of the kindly, forgiving hero of Les Miserables, the late 80s also saw Barney the Dinosaur unleashed upon the world. On the opposite side of the pop culture tar pit stood Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko.  The villain with the slick backed hair uttered the “greed is good” mantra in the movie Wall Street. To some, though, Gekko was a hero.

The internet amplifies that dichotomy today. Whatever the hell the manosphere is, the techbro oligarchy and all the social media noisemakers bully the easily-mocked Barneys.

Maybe that’s why Les Miz remains popular today. It’s downright Hallmark romantic to believe grace, compassion and kindness are what the world needs now. And that’s exactly what the world does need and always has.

On a planet where big bucks bad guys believe empathy is weakness: Fight the power with power ballads!

Protests obviously aren’t passée these days, A good many, if not most recent ones stateside have been tame. At the same time, the most recent near-riots here and elsewhere involved throngs swarming in front of Swatch stores to be the first folks to buy a $400 pocket watch. Hooray for materialism!!

The things I think about when I watch a musical, eh? You didn’t really expect me to review it, did you?

Anyway, on the way out of the theater, we smelled what seemed to be soup. Great marketing? Nah. It was a street vendor selling sausages with grilled onions.

In the parking garage elevator, I joked to strangers. Les Miserables antagonist, the buy-the-book Inspector Javert, wasn’t really a bad guy. He was just misunderstood. And he was just  doing his job.

(Plus, why the hell did he go by just one name? I thought that started with Cher. No wonder he was so frustrated. Nobody even bothered to give him a first name. That’s the part I didn’t say out loud.)

Uneasy laughter ensued. My buddy told me afterward that one of the women in the elevator with us was wearing a 24601 t-shirt, that being the prisoner number for Jean Valjean. C’est la vie!

On the way home, stuck in construction traffic, I thought about various ways you could rewrite and set Les Miserables. A few days later I wasted  gallons of water having AI do that for me.

Poor AI didn’t understand when I asked it to come up with a version of Les Miserables starring Barney.

Then I asked AI to make an image of Barney starring in the musical. That it could do.

Sigh.

Where’s our Victor Hugo?

AI didn’t understand that question either, but did let me know where he’s buried.

So maybe there’s hope for us yet.

The post Les Miserables with Danahey on the (too) Loose appeared first on FREE CRAIC.

St. Patrick’s season is most likely finally over.

I waited a week past March 17 just to make sure. Here’s a recap of my shenanigans.

Grew a beard 

This was my attempt to look more Irish, like an extra in Darby O’Gill and the Little People, but with better teeth. Or the Notre Dame leprechaun. Or maybe George Bernard Shaw.

Either way, Best Fest Buddy Tom’s beard came in better than mine. He could play a crusty old Irish guy better than I could anyway.

I did not dye my beard ginger, nor give it a spray tan. Neither did Tom.

I did go to the local barber school for a trim. I was nicked by the 18-year-old student, but survived. I told him the small cut built character. My modeling career ended long ago.

Bought lots of corned beef  – and one solitary cabbage

On a dare from Tom and his brother, I shopped to find the least expensive corned beef. 

This American Irish briney brisket ain’t cheap. Even on sale, it was more than $8 a pound for the name brands

Bargain-hunting-me found flats, points and rounds for around $4 a pound at Aldi, Jewel, Meijer and Butera. Butera had cabbage for 17 cents a pound, so I threw one of those in for good measure.

I wound up giving two packages and the cabbage to a neighbor – and still have two left in my fridge.

Found a new flat cap

Tom gave me his spare $10 Kohl’s cash, which went to me picking up a lined flat cap, on clearance. That was a fortuitous choice, given the weird weather and its arctic spells during St. Patrick’s season.

Used a gift card to by libations

Showing discipline, I saved a Binny’s gift card received at Christmas, to buy some Jameson and Guinness. A week or so later, I added to sale-priced Tullamore Dew, Bushmills and another eight-pack of beer to the St. Patrick’s stash.

Lest you get the wrong idea, much of it remains available to drink come Easter and beyond.

Put up two decorations

There’s been a small silver tree in my hallway since Christmas time. For Valentine’s Day I put hearts on it. For St. Patrick’s season, a Dollar Tree leprechaun hung from its branches. I adorned a doorknob with some wooden shamrocks. Martha O’Stewart would be proud.

Avoided a parade

The town near where I live held its parade March 7. That’s too early. 

Plus, Tom’s grandkids had swim lessons the same time the parade happened. So after that, I took two of them to the Bricks and Minifigs store to shop for Lego. Then we had horchata, tacos and Mexican Coca-Cola. Does anyone else remember the Carlos Murphy’s chain of restaurants?

Saw Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man

The same afternoon as the premature parade I went to the local cinema to view the latest piece of product in the Peaky Blinders line.

This time, brooding old Tommy Shelby battles ghosts, his rotten Romani son and Nazis. A good time is had by all.

Everything looks brown and dirty. Blue-eyed boyos Cillian Murphy and Barry Keoghan can mumble and pout with the best of them. Parts of the flick play like MTV videos for Irish band Fontaines DC. You might not want to eat pork for a bit, given what happens in a couple scenes.

I watched the movie a second time this past weekend, when it came out on Netflix. It looked bluer on the streamer. 

A sequel series is in the works, starring Keoghan. They should have an amusement park, too, where everybody can smoke cigarettes and opium and where they sell all the Peaky merchandise. They’ll shoot anyone who calls the holiday St. Patty’s Day at this place. For sport.

Watched The Quiet Man for the umpteenth time

It’s become a tradition – particularly since I sent my dad a Korean bootleg copy I hope he watched just before he passed away 11 years ago.

Sure, The Quiet Man is quaint, dated and cornball. It plays like an old fashioned musical, without the singing. Still, there is some sly dialogue to be heard and general Technicolor wackiness to be seen.

Had an Oreo Shamrock McFlurry 

Another personal tradition is to slurp a Shamrock Shake and, since its Lent, wolf sown a Filet-O-Fish during St. Patrick’s season. 

Changing things up a bit, I tried an Oreo Shamrock McFlurry. It looked like how Irish American arteries look after eating too much corned beef. 

I wound up having the shake and fish at a later date. That was $10. The shake was blander than I recall, with little mint taste. The fish sandwich seemed smaller, drier and salty.

That might be because as a New Year’s resolution, I gave up going to McDonald’s, Wendy’s and Burger King. For real.

Caught some Irish cheese on WTTW pledge drive 

A Chicago area St. Patrick’s season TV tradition, WTTW shows Irish cheese during a March pledge drive. 

In keeping with that, I happened upon a bit of Riverdance 25 and Celtic Woman. I felt glossy afterward. I wore my shirt unbuttoned to the navel for a couple days after this.

Attended The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings live in concert 

Tom’s brother and I caught the screening at The Auditorium where 238 musicians played live along with the first part of Peter Jackson’s take on the trilogy.

It was impressive to hear and to see how they fit all those singers and players on stage. While I spotted the didgeridoo,  I didn’t realize there was an accordion player until everyone took a bow at intermission.

Lest you forget, at least three of the Hobbits in the 25-year-old movie have Irish accents. Frodo, Sam and their buddies also do an Irish goodbye at the end of this one – leaving the rest of the Middle Earth resistance movement behind for a bit in the endless saga.

What people do forget is theater etiquette. One douchebag divorced dad type – dressed in pre-ripped designer jeans – had to be told to take his feet off the railing of the box seat where he was sitting with tween daughter. She had her shoes off and feet on the railing too.

It goes without saying some folks were making videos and snapping photos with their smartphones. Apparently this was allowed at this show.

It also goes without saying that some people dressed up like their favorite characters to attend. The guy in the bar line dressed like Gandalf, though, looked more like a big mushroom. I wonder if he ordered the Shire Sunrise.

Anyway, adding to the St. Patrick’s season of the excursion, we went the Friday before the St. Patrick’s parade in downtown Chicago. Across the street from The Auditorium, a bagpipe group was practicing in the alley. Celebrants were checking into The Congress Plaza Hotel.

We grabbed some grub at the hotel before the movie. I had never been inside this bit of history. The dining room was very Mid-Century Modern – and looked like any number of places in the suburbs where dads smoked and drank too much back in the 1970s.

Ghostbuster types claim the Congress Hotel is haunted. But no red rum was on the menu.

The staff was friendly and getting ready for the storm. I wished our elderly, Eastern European waitress good luck in dealing with the incoming crowd and Saturday’s silliness.

Paraded in St. Charles

The Saturday before St. Patrick’s Day, Tom and I took his three grandkids to the big, hilly march in St. Charles.

Lucking into a parking spot, we only had a quarter mile or so to walk to the staging area – as opposed to the hike with an Irish sherpa we took the prior year. 

Tom and the youngest lad met up with the gang from Rosie’s Color Studio (oh the irony, per the baldness). They wound up sharing duties, carrying one of the Irish county flags along the route, the one for Leitrim.

The other two kids just wanted to collect candy and other parade swag, so I watched them watch the parade. They don’t even eat most of what they get. It’s like money is for billionaires. It’s basically a game all about being able to get as much as you can.

To that point, the middle lad brought along a brightly colored fitted bed sheet to gather his stash. It matched his holiday outfit. He’s destined to be an inventive engineer or some sort of product designer.

For once, they listened to my advice. They set up along a curb close to where the parade route started. This allows for maximum volume, as marchers work to unload their treats ASAP. The other good spot is at the end of the route, where the slowpokes have leftovers they don’t want to haul back home with them.

The snow flurried on this parade. The following Monday it was close to 70, and we took the kids to the park. March is schizo that way. Also frightening:  saw a mom with a Mar-A-Lago/Kardashian/Kris Jenner face at the park. It scared me.

Gave fashion advice to a dinner host

The Sunday before St. Patrick’s I headed to another local establishment I frequent to offer fashion advice.

The Village Vintner would be hosting Scotch-Irish dinners the Wednesday and Thursday after St. Patrick’s Day. The waiter hosting the meals wanted to borrow a kilt. He’s thin. I’m not.

So I suggested he wear a flat cap, vest, dress shirt and jeans, like they dress Irish in American movies about Ireland.

My good deed done, I had a Scottish ale to mark the occasion.

Saw Sean Cleland fiddling  at Brix

As luck would have it, the local library sponsored a free performance from Sean Cleland and a couple of his musician buddies the night before St. Patrick’s Day at The Brix, a banquet hall out my way.

The fabled fiddler and his pals shared tales about Irish music, instruments and of Chief O’Neill. I learned that bodhran is just a fancy word for a tambourine.

Weary from all their St. Patrick’s season performances, the trio quipped that to novice ears all Irish music sounds the same. Then, for those playing it for years and years, they realize that’s probably true.

As an added bonus, I went home with some Lucky Charms bars and a couple chocolate coins.

Lunched at Bennigan’s

On a frigid but sunny St. Patrick’s Day, I met a buddy for lunch at Bennigan’s in Elgin. It’s one of the just six full-scale Bennigan’s left in the United States. Remember the one across South Michigan Avenue from the Art Institute of Chicago? That makes you old, like me.

I opted for grilled cheese and a salad, not the traditional Turkey O’Toole. 

Contrarian by nature, aside from my green DKM T-shirt, I wore mostly blue for the day. Track pants and a hoodie, even, like a Euro gangster in a TV show. 

Besides, blue was the first color associated with St. Patrick. But blue and orange would have made Ireland the Fighting Illini.

Headed to ECC to see Switchback

After lunch, a bunch of us Irish guys headed to Elgin Community College for Switchback’s matinee concert, a dry one at that.

See, the Blizzard Theater there is the same building that was serving as a polling place for the primary. A nice touch was valet parking for the show and for voters. 

Marty McCormack and Brian FitzGerald put on an energetic show. The fellas are my age and can still kick their legs up like Rockettes. 

These days, I walk so slow, when I was downtown heading back to the Grant Park South Garage a woman wearing stiletto heels was able to pass by me – by a considerable distance. 

I said hello to the Switchback lads at intermission and bought a CD. A buddy picked up a brochure about the band’s fall excursion to Ireland.

Three of four of us did an Irish goodbye shortly after that. Hey, Shay had to meet his St. Patrick’s posse at Rosie’s  – the bar not the hair place – at 3 p.m.

Had pints, heard piping at Rosie’s

So Rosie’s it was. They had a bagpiper there, a guy who is to that instrument what Roseanne Barr is to the Star Spangled Banner.

He stood up on the bartop and had staff queue up AC/DC’s It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock and Roll) on the digital jukebox. He seemed to pipe-synch the pipe solo in that tune.

A bit later, a buddy of mine said she sort of recognized one of the numbers the poor piper tried to play. I thought about hiring him to scare squirrels away from my roof.

Praise Jesus and pour another Guinness, the set was mercifully short.

Darby O’Gill was playing on the wide screen above the fireplace. In high def, you can really see how bad teeth were back in those days.

Rosie’s usually has a game of some sorts on its sets. With the NCAA men’s basketball tournament approaching, I remembered that on St. Patrick’s Day in 1979, the DePaul Blue Demons beat UCLA to head to the Final Four for the last time in the Chicago school’s history. Bill Murray may have bragged about it on Saturday Night Live.

Loyola made it in 2018. Notre Dame hasn’t made the Final Four since 1978. The Irish women’s team has been there nine times, the last being 2018 when the squad won its second title.

I tried some Reuben eggrolls a friend ordered. Hmm. The Irish and the Chinese built the Transcontinental Railway in the 1860s. The Reuben has been around for about 100 years and has at least three origin stories, according to the internet. One tale is based in Omaha, of all places.

The sandwich and eggroll versions have corned beef, sauerkraut and Swiss cheese. It’s served with Thousand Island dressing – which first was known as Sophia’s Special Sauce . A Reuben can also come with a side of Russian dressing.

Geez. Food can be so WOKE!

Ate more corned beef and watched a Star Wars movie

Discombobulated by the first Daylight Saving Time holiday, we headed back to Tom’s for some more corned beef. Ok. DST started March 8. But still.

This first corned beef Tom prepared in the crockpot earlier during St. Patricks’s season turned out tender and good for sandwiches. The next one wound up in soup.

I had that while watching Star Wars: The Last Jedi. It’s an Irish movie, with many scenes filmed on Skellig Michael. 

I could barely walk along the Cliffs of Moher without getting vertigo. That’s French for being afraid Tom was going to push me down into the deep blue sea, to see if I was really a puffin. 

So, though pretty to see from a distance, Skellig Michael out there in the Atlantic is not on my bucket list of places to visit.

Started watching Dublin Murders

Keeping St. Patrick’s season alive, we’ve been watching Dublin Murders, a nostalgic look back at Ireland in the mid-2000s. The Celtic Tiger is the killer.

Or not.

Dublin Murders is pretty much the Celtic cousin of many Scandinavian detective shows – grumpy grizzled veterans, fresh faced rookie garda, some supernatural stuff  and psychologically scarred up-and-coming sleuths with drinking problems and sad sex lives. 

Conleth Hill, who played baldie eunuch Varys on Game of Thrones plays a boss in Dublin Murders. He has a full head of hair here. I assume all his character’s other body parts are intact, too.

Unlike Game of Thrones, my guess is there will never be any Dublin Murders tours of Ireland’s capital. This could have been made in Cleveland. Are there any mountains in Ohio?

Anyway, 25 or 6 to 4 words later, that’s been my St. Patrick’s season. Maybe I’ll put one of the remaining corned beef chunks in the air fryer sometime this week to relive the memories.

The post St. Patrick’s Season Recap w/ Danahey on the Loose appeared first on FREE CRAIC.

“The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” in concert is coming to The Auditorium in Chicago Friday, March 13 and Saturday, March 14.

It’s fitting that the performances happen the weekend before St. Patrick’s Day – and when all the downtown falderal takes place.

It’s been 25 years since the debut of director Peter Jackson’s film version of “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring”  – the first of his takes on J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic trilogy – hit cineplexes around the world. So you may have forgotten that there’s a Celtic connection to Howard Shore’s award-winning score.

In an interview conducted via email, Shore noted that Tolkien’s story points the compass North, South, East and West to depict the different cultures of Tolkien’s Middle-earth.

“The story starts in the Shire, in the West, therefore you had the Celtic instruments – the tin whistle, Celtic harp, bodhran, hammered dulcimer and the fiddle,” Shore said.

As the story progresses and introduces more cultures, the palette expands to include them. Shore said he used instruments from the East – Japanese taiko drums, Chinese cymbals, Tibetan gongs, East Indian bowed lutes, the sarangi and the dilruba. For the North he used a hardanger, a Norwegian fiddle with sympathetic strings.

For the South, Shore’s employed African instruments. Shore knew those from working on director David Cronenberg’s movie that’s sort of based on William S. Burroughs’ life when Burroughs wrote his 1959 novel “Naked Lunch” (the book from which Steely Dan took its name).

“I learned how to write for the rhaita and the ney flute and African percussion,” Shore said.

Shore said that Celtic music is very old and ancient, dating back to the period from which writing and stories that may have influenced Tolkien, like the Finnish poem “Kalevala” and other works. So compositionally, using Celtic instruments felt very natural to the time and Tolkien’s tales.

Shore also suggested that Jackson contact Enya to see if she would be interested in putting together songs for “Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.” That led to the creation of the Oscar-nominated song, “May It Be” and “Aniron,” with Enya and her collaborator Roma Ryan.

“In ‘Fellowship,’ you start in the Shire. It was greener and more folk-oriented, and I thought of Enya. I love her voice, and I thought she would provide a perfect sound for this beautiful folk/Celtic world,” Shore said.

As such, the original score was recorded by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. Enya recorded her vocals in Dublin and Shore recorded the LPO in London.

“The Lord of the Rings” is considered one of the most complex fantasy worlds ever written, and Shore took almost four years to write the score.

“I love the book(s). I related to Tolkien’s work in terms of nature very closely,” Shore said.

Back then, he was writing in an oak forest, watching the seasons change, restoring a 19th-century house and restoring its garden.

“I noticed that as the gardens improved, the sense of balance returned, my composition got better, and the music improved as well. I related to Tolkien in the sense that green and good was worth fighting for, and it was going to be a battle to save the goodness of the Earth,” he said.

As for The Auditorium performances. “The Lord of the Rings; The Fellowship of the Ring” will be shown on a 60-foot screen accompanied by 238 musicians, including a symphony orchestra, a chorus and soloists.

The production is presented by CAMI Music, and it follows more than 15 years of performances across the globe. It last played the Chicago area eight years ago at the Ravinia Festival in Highland Park.

Shore said he works with CAMI Music to bring the concerts to audiences, selecting the orchestra, choirs, soloists, conductor and to maintain the performances at the highest level.

“The live-to-projection concerts came out of the idea of hearing the music for the film in a continuous performance,” Shore said “As you are making films you are working in small areas of the film. But the live-to-projection was a way to hear the entire score played in one piece, and it came out of working on the complete recording releases. That’s when I thought about the live-to-projection concerts.”

Shore’s “Lord of the Rings” projects continue to this day. Most recently, he’s been working with renowned organist Anna Lapwood. She created a new piece, “The Lord of the Rings Organ Symphony, transcribing the original scores for the organ, Shore said.

Lapwood will premiere the work May 1 in Atlantic City, playing the world’s largest pipe organ at the Jim Whelan Boardwalk Hall.

As for why “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” still resonates today, Shore said even though it is a large, epic novel and film about war, at its heart, it’s really about saving everything that’s green and good.

“It’s the smaller relationships that resonate, like the Sam and Frodo relationship. And Frodo’s relationship with Gandalf, I thought that was really inspiring too. That’s really the heart of the story,” Shore said.

The post Lord of the Rings live, Howard Shore and Irish weekend in Chicago appeared first on FREE CRAIC.

In time for Valentine’s Day, Steppenwolf Theatre Company recently opened its run of August Strindberg’s “The Dance of Death.”

As the J Geils Band put it way back in 1980, love stinks. It’s a battlefield. In this case, it smells a bit Irish, too.

Written in 1900, Strindberg’s play involves Edgar, a rapidly aging, curmudgeonly, blowhard Swedish Army captain and his wife Alice, who is 15 years younger than he is and a one-time wannabe actress.

They live on a remote island in a lighthouse-like fortress that once served as a prison. As staged at the Steppenwolf, it is a foreboding, impressive set.

The terrifying two spend their days verbally lacerating each other in advance of their 25th wedding anniversary. Their familiarity breeds a vicious, boundless cycle of contempt.

Had they been around in the late 1970s, “Cruel to Be Kind”  would have been a favorite song. As is, the Captain dances around like a puppet to “Entry March of the Boyars” that Alice plays on the piano.

One day, Alice’s cousin Kurt comes to town to run the local quarantine office. Kurt and Alice had a thing for each other. More like lust than love.

Kurt’s a divorced dad whom the courts disallow from seeing his own kids. Edgar might have had something to do with that – and might have had something to do with Kurt’s wife.

Yeah. Love stinks like lutefisk here.

Edgar and Alice eviscerate each other with verbal lye. The hate is strong with these two. They don’t seem to like anybody else. And nobody seems to like them.

Poor Kurt gets caught up in their morass. Lechery lurks, then rears its ugly head. Deception begets deception.

There’s a lot of begetting going on here. A good amount of drinking. A touch of vampirism, even.

Of course, it wouldn’t be Swedish without talk about death and faith, or lack thereof.

Truth is beyond relative here. Much like what we’re seeing in way too many places these days, for these three – particularly Edgar and Alice –  reality is whatever fits their current schemes and narratives.

The couple loves to hate each other and thrives on vindictiveness. But for Kurt stopping by and maybe a ghost, misery is their only company.

They’re stuck with each other. They deserve each other.

If they were around in modern times, these two awful people would be internet influencers, star on a so-called reality TV show or be elected to higher office.

So if you’ve been through a bitter divorce or grew up in a house with bickering parents, this might bring on a bit of PTSD. Also, Bruce Springsteen has nothing to do with this show. You’re thinking of “Dancing in the Dark.”

But anyway.

While watching monsters may sound unpleasant, the way Steppenwolf stages “The Dance of Death,”  there are a lot of laughs.

To mix Swedish media, while it sure ain’t ABBA, “The Dance of Death” is not exactly like the stereotype of an Ingmar Bergman movie.

Nor is it like one of those moody Scandinavian crime dramas you can find on the streamers – the ones with an attractive young female detective and/or a grizzled, shaggy guy with a drinking problem. The murders most frequently happen in the woods, even ones set in a city.

In the Steppenwolf version of “The Dance With Death,” the dark comedy shines through.

Jeff Perry plays Edgar with high energy, cartoon character cruelty. While not as physical in her performance as Alice, Kathryn Erbe, makes a great cunning foil, cavorting about with a calculated callousness. Cliff Chamberlain’s performance is more subdued, at least until the prot/antgonists bring out the beast in him.

The Steppenwolf version uses a translation from award-winning Irish playwright Conor McPherson.

Two years ago, McPherson’s Bob Dylan musical, “Girl From the North Country,” played in Chicago. For that work – at the very least –  McPherson noted that Nobel Prize-winning Irish American playwright Eugene O’Neill was an influence.

“Unspoken resentments, hopes and dreams and thwarted ambitions start to reemerge and come to the surface. That creates a lot of drama. You’ll find that structure in a lot of successful plays,” McPherson said in 2024 of the musical.

In the acceptance speech O’Neill wrote for getting the Nobel, he noted his works owed much to the influence of Strindberg – an influence O’Neill said “runs clearly through more than a few of my plays and is plain for everyone to see.”

Bringing this back to Chicago, last year at this time, Steppenwolf staged another lurid look at love, Sam Shepard’s “Fool for Love.” Shepard’s work involves a cowboy type and a woman who just happen to have the same dad. Their old man was a bigamist.

The couple fell for each other in high school and may or may not have known they were related when they foolishly fell in love. Dad haunts the couple as they meet up once more at a fleabag hotel somewhere in the southwest in the early 1980s.

Things go up in flames, literally and figuratively.

As I learned last year  per seeing that Steppenwolf production, one of the things that influenced Shepard to become a playwright was watching the 1962 film version of O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night.”

O’Neill’s masterwork, first staged after his death, “explores themes of addiction, regret, familial dysfunction, and the inescapable influence of the past,” as the National Park Service website understates it. (O’Neill’s Tao House in Danville, CA is a National Historic Site.)

So credit the Irish for all this.

After all, these are current tips for Valentine’s Day dating, care of Ireland’s Garron Noone. Lest you forgot, Dublin is where they keep some of St. Valentine’s remains. And “The Dance of Death” runs through March 22, so you can see it in time for St. Patrick’s Day, too!

The post In ‘Dance of Death’ at Steppenwolf, love stinks appeared first on FREE CRAIC.

A smart Scot is part of “Jump In!”, the latest Disney on Ice Show which is currently playing in frozen Chicago.

“It’s a bit surreal,” said Rachel Hamilton of living her dream, touring the world skating since 2023 with Disney shows.

Glasgow-born Hamilton started skating when she was eight years old and was inspired by figure skating shows and televised competitions she’d seen.

“My brother took me to a local rink to try skating, and after I said, ‘I want to do that,’” she said.

She wound up training at the East Kilbride Ice Figure Skating Club, which led to competing in national and international events.

Hamilton, 25, put skating on pause for a bit to study and earn a first-class honors degree in Applied Biomedical Science from the University of the West of Scotland. After that, she thought she would give professional skating a shot.

The COVID-19 pandemic slowed a process that took about two years or so, Hamilton said. It involved sending emails and videos to Feld Entertainment, which produces the Disney on Ice shows.

Her persistence led to an in-person interview/tryout in  2023 in Leeds, and not too far from her family’s home. You can learn more about it in an interview (available on YouTube) Hamilton did with a radio station in Scotland.

Hamilton said she went into the audition- which coincided with a Disney on Ice tour stop – with a positive attitude.

“It was a great experience and showed me how the process worked,” she said.

Two months later, she signed a contract and hit the road. So far, she’s skated with Disney shows in the UK, other parts of Europe, South America and the Middle East. Last summer, she and other skaters trained and rehearsed at Feld Entertainment studios in Florida for the new and current production, “Jump In!”

The tour has been hitting rinks at stadiums across the United States since August.

As part of the ensemble, Hamilton said she’s playing various roles during the show. Those include a donkey, a bat and Snow White.

The donkey is among the skating toys taking part in “Hoedown Throwdown” from “Toy Story.” The bat is part of a colony in a glow-in-the-dark piece involving the vampire Matangi from “Moana 2.”

Snow White is one of the Disney princesses in a number that sees Ariel from “The Little Mermaid” and Rapunzel flying above the ice to perform gymnastics routines.

According to a press release, “Ariel soars above the ice to “Kiss the Girl,” and Rapunzel’s golden hair is brought to life by flowing aerial silks as she and Flynn Rider dazzle with a mesmerizing aerial routine.”

“This is my favorite part of the show. It’s high energy and fun,” Hamilton said.

All told, “Jump In!” features more than 50 characters, as Mickey Mouse and friends welcome the audience to explore Disney stories through a Magical MousePad.

Characters include Anxiety alongside Joy, Sadness, Disgust, Anger, and Fear from “Inside Out 2″ and billion dollar superstar Stitch.  Tunes include “Let It Go” from Frozen, “Try Everything” from “Zootopia,” “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” from “Encanto” – which Hamliton said is her favorite Disney movie –  “Get Lost” from “Moana 2” and others familiar to anyone with little kids, Disney+ and DVD players.

“Jump In” plays Jan. 22 through Jan. 25, then Feb. 5 through Feb. 8 at Allstate Arena in Rosemont, then Feb. 12 through Feb. 15 at the United Center in Chicago.

For tickets and more information, go to www.disneyonice.com/jump-in/rosemont-il-allstate-arena

and www.disneyonice.com/jump-in/chicago-il-united-center.

As a trivial side note, Scotland is home to Lewis Gibson, who ice dances with Lilah Fear for Great Britain. They will be taking part in the upcoming Winter Olympics in Italy. Scottish ice dancers Sinead and John Kerr took part in the 2006 and 2010 Winter Olympics.

Scotland and Wales are also home to the quarries where they get granite to make curling stones.

As for Hamilton, this will be her first visit to the Chicago area. She’s looking forward to visiting the city’s sites and eating its fabled foods. I warned her about Malort and away from deep dish in favor of tavern style, explained Italian beef and Chicago style hot dogs to her and told her about Maria’s, a nice Mexican place in Rosemont.

She probably needs the calories for all the skating she’s doing – and to keep warm during the arctic blast.

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Bear weather?

I guess cold doesn’t really bother rams, at least ones from Los Angeles. As the kids text, IYKYK.

I never really understood how the phrase “bear weather” applies to an NFL team handling cold weather, anyway. Aside from polar bears, most bears sleep through a good portion of the winter.

“Some scientists prefer to call it the season of lethargy,” is how the Bear Vault website puts it.

“While (bears) are inactive, they enter into a deeper than normal sleep that allows them to conserve energy and survive the winter,” is what the National Forest Foundation says.

I can relate. Here in the Chicago area, this winter we all can, given it’s been more of an old school winter than the mild excuses we’ve had for winters the past few years.

Take for example, Thanksgiving weekend. That Saturday we had a record-setting snowfall. It prevented best fest buddy Tom and me from trekking to Chicago TARDIS, the Doctor Who convention in Lombard. That day’s special guest was actor Christopher Eccleston, who played the ninth incarnation of the time-traveling Time Lord.

While we did hit the sci-fi fest Friday, not having a time-traveling device of our own, a drive south to the event Saturday might have been a little too much for my old car to bear. More like, how long the drive would have taken would have been a bit much for my patience to bear.

So we watched old Doctor Who episodes at Tom’s house. I probably fell asleep.

Flash forward to Christmas Eve. A combination of pre-holiday eating and drinking and the norovirus making its rounds left me homebound.

Whatever the cause, the results were the same as if I had chugged the prep drink for a colonoscopy. When I wasn’t  resting, I was pooping. But hey. I lost weight. Not many people do that during December, right?

My next bear-like, unintentional hibernation happened just after the new year started. I hurt my ankle to the point I slightly rearranged furniture so that I could hold onto it as I hobbled about my house. Having no cane or walker, I also moved about by using an old mop.

Tom lent me a walking stick. Walking sticks come to a point, which make them great for walking on lawns, maybe on deep shag carpeting and for poking somebody in the eye.

Luckily, another buddy had a metal cane for me to use. Luckily, my wiring is up to code and lightning this time of year here in Illinois is very rare.

As the pain remained close to unbearable, I wound up going to the doctor. She gave me some medicine. The hobbling lasted for about a week-and-a-half.

At this point I was beginning to feel like the third wheel in my own life, or the spare tire. Not one of those big, cool spares like on the back of Jeep, but the little one hidden under all the crap you keep in the trunk.

Helping me break my hibernation habit, though, is that Tom’s granddaughter plays for her school’s fifth grade basketball team. My semi-retired schedule allows me to attend her games, which have been a hoot.

I don’t mean that in a mean way. Attending merely reminds me of how awkward we all are/were at that age.

So far, there’ s only been one jackass parent, and that was before an away game. He was heading into the school talking really loudly on his phone,  blathering on about 10 to 12 hour work days. It was so of the town where this happened, which is to say, Barrington.

The phone gave me an idea, though. To make a basketball game more relevant to fifth graders, they should be allowed to use them while they are playing. Scoreboards should feature emojis, memes, the current abbreviations and vernacular.

To that point, Tom’s granddaughter dons the number 67. Good for her for trying to be funny – even if nobody really understands what the “word of the year” means. Then again, what does anything really mean these days, anyway?

Anyway, the other idea I had from watching the girls play is that the rules they have for their games would make good rules for a league for old guys like me.

That is, as long as you dribble a bit, you can travel as much as you want. This would be a sort of modified NBA rule, come to think of it.

Passing would be encouraged, but mostly optional. Fouls would only occasionally be called – like when a bigger person pummels into another big player.

You’d be assigned to sort of guard one player and one player only. At the start of each quarter, the ref makes you turn around so you can see that player’s name and number – and vice versa. This would be a good memory exercise for people my age, too.

There would be two games of four, 9-minute periods, played back-to-back. Or maybe one game of six periods, which seemed to be the case at one of the schools.

Teams would have 20 members. Each group of five would rotate into the game every four-and-a-half minutes. No full-court pressing would be allowed. These rules would be to help prevent heart attacks.

Free throws would be kept to a minimum. The clock would rarely stop.

Matching t-shirts would be required, but leg gear could include jeans, cargo pants, sweats, shorts and even skorts.

Everybody would get a chance to play, because it’s just for fun and exercise anyway. And everybody would have a cool water bottle, a backpack and snacks.

If I could figure out a way to incorporate pickleball into my idea, I would really be onto something.

Past kids’ basketball, during these times of torpor, there have been trips to the gym and one visit to Costco. And I’ve watched way too much football, mostly at home by myself – so I can change the channel during commercial breaks or boring parts of games.

I headed over to Tom’s to watch the Bears play the Rams, though. If I were superstitious, I would say it was me changing my solo viewing habit is why the Bears lost.

Which reminds me in a sideways way. What must it be like to try to watch the game at Soldier Field sitting in your $600 + seat behind the big dude who wears a bear’s head on top of his head? He seems like a nice guy, but still.

Alas, with the loss I’ll have to save these story pitches until next season.

• Find a pet spa that paints dog nails the same colors that Caleb Williams uses. All the better if one of the dogs getting their nails done is a three-legged amputee.
• Find a blind twin brother and sister combo who have made Bears-themed creations with Lego, including a 6-foot tall bear and a mockup of a proposed new stadium.
• Have AI write songs in various genres about the Bears.
• Find a group of elderly folks knitting Bears-themed blankets for homeless veterans.
• Interview experts for tips on Bears-themed body painting and body jewelry.

Either way, the Seattle Seahawks look like the team to beat and head to the Super Bowl. Seattle can embarrass the Rams with this video from 1986. It’s a Village People-like ditty called Ram It.

I probably will be watching some of that game this coming Sunday night. As I cut way back on streamers, there’s nothing good on TV then. Plus, football can lead to hibernation and dreams of warmer weather. I’d settle for March, even.

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It’s Giving Tuesday. And like other nonprofits, the Houlihan family needs your help — and needs it now.

The Houlihans are the South Siders behind Hibernian Media NFP, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit committed to celebrating and preserving Irish and Irish American culture through film, radio, television and live events.

“I  am an old hand at soliciting funding for our tiny – and yes ladies I said tiny – public charity dedicated to Irish culture,” said Hibernian Media founder Mike Houlihan.

Houlihan said that back in 2009 he traveled to Ireland with his family and “found my fortune in my Irish heritage.”

He discovered the church where his grandfather had been baptized, dipped his hands into that same baptismal font and was struck by a thunderbolt of Blarney.

“I had an epiphany, as my Irish ancestors descended upon my soul and inspired me to start Hibernian Media NFP,” Houlihan said.

Houlihan became an Irish citizen, began telling stories, writing books, creating films, TV shows, and radio shows, as well as the Annual Irish American Movie Hooley film festival.

After the 11th Annual Irish American Movie Hooley in September, the community asked for more year-round programming — and Hibernian Media listened.

“We launched The Monthly Movie Hooley. We are now in our third month of screenings at two pillars of Chicago’s Irish community: Gaelic Park and The Irish American Heritage Center,” Houlihan said.

Each month a different Irish or Irish American film is being shown, giving the community a place to gather, share stories and keep Irish and Irish America culture vibrant

The next feature is the acclaimed documentary “Older Than Ireland,” (TRAILER HERE) to be screened Friday, Dec. 12 at Gaelic Park and Saturday, Dec. 13 at the Heritage Center. Screenings of many more powerful films are planned.

But to keep this series going — and growing — Hibernian Media needs immediate support.

Your donation makes a direct impact:

• It helps secure film rights and screening materials
• It keeps monthly events affordable and accessible
• It funds new cultural programming throughout the year
• It ensures Irish stories continue to reach our community

And remember — every contribution is fully tax-deductible.

“My sons and my poor wife have helped me with this grand endeavor, and it has not gotten any easier,” Houlihan said. “We had some initial help from a billionaire with Irish blood who took a liking to us, but then he dropped dead. Luck of the Irish.”

To support Hibernian Media, the Houlihans recently created their own Irish American Labor Alliance when Jim Coyne of Local 130, Jim Sweeney of Local 150, and Kevin McLaughlin of Mid-American Carpenters Regional Council joined the Hibernian Media board of directors.

Still, more support will be duly appreciated.

“We are usually right on the verge of financial collapse. Some folks call it being ‘Tapioca,’ which is also the title of a film we made with Ben Vereen and several Second City veterans some years back,” Houlihan said.

Houlihan knows his irreverent style may rub some folks the wrong way,

“But hey. I got to be me,” he said.

So if you believe in supporting Irish storytelling, community, and culture, then your donation today truly matters, Houlihan said. He would love to talk directly to businesses and organizations interested in presenting sponsorships, too.

For more information on the monthly movie series, go to moviehooley.org.

For a laugh, here’s Mike Houlihan’s Giving Tuesday video: vimeo.com/1141557128?fl=pl&fe=sh.

And past Giving Tuesday, you’re all invited to attend the Annual Hibernia Hooligan Ball fundraiser on Sunday, Dec. 14 at Barney Callaghan’s Irish Pub, 10616 Western Ave., Chicago. Tickets are a suggested $50.

To contact the Houlihans and to donate to Hibernian Media, go to www.zeffy.com/en-US/donation-form/donate-to-hibernian-st-patricks-day–2025.

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Have yourself a very Costco Christmas. Or not.

With the holiday shopping season here, I’m sharing recent experiences to remind people how fun it can be to hit a big box warehouse shopping club pretty much any time of the year.

A few weeks ago, I went on a mission to find almond flour. I have a couple friends who are on high protein, low carb, diet drug diets. I’m the fat guy in the group now. And the only one with the Costco membership.

They heard Costco had a 3-pound bag of the flour cheaper than anywhere else. And they wanted to try it because it’s allegedly nutrient dense and low-carb.

According to the internet,  the Costco closest to where I live – 15 minutes away – doesn’t carry it. So, on a nice fall afternoon I drove to another location.

The one I visited stands in a higher demographic kind of town than my more local Costco.  Despite that, this Costco has a crappily designed parking lot – like my local.

Yet, things started out well enough. The aisles seemed wider here than at the Costco by me. Things weren’t as cramped. That made things seem more relaxing.

To my surprise, despite being like The Clash and frequently getting lost in the supermarket, I found the almond flour.

But I did not shoot the deputy. Nor did I partake in any of any free samples. I’ve given that up in advance of Lent 2026.

Plus, they make the poor sample givers dress as if they work in a laboratory. That makes me sad.

Also, probiotic kombucha gluten free radish nachos. It all blends together in those little cups. It no longer appeals to my sense of adventure.

All in all, I was happy with my visit..

Along with the found flour, I picked up a big ass bottle of Kirkland Canadian whiskey for $20.  I grabbed some potato chips cooked in avocado oil. For health purposes. And Cetaphil because I get itchy in winter.

I took a pass on the $5,000+ Star Wars pinball machine. It wouldn’t fit in my car.

So far, so good. But then I picked the wrong line for checking out.

Not being a fan of self-checkout – especially since I had a store credit  – I looked for a cashier-operated lane.

In the one I picked, the woman in front of me had her cart filled with giant jars of Kirkland protein powder. Fittingly, she was wearing Lululemon leggings for her shopping excursion.

What she didn’t have was her credit card. Which was weird, because at Costco, to get into the store and to check out, you need your Costco card. Also, she didn’t spring her lack of lucre news on the cashier until after she heard her total due.

Then she asked the cashier if she could go get it – from her car. The cashier obliged.

Meanwhile, we shoppers had to wait for the lil gym dandy to get back.

I joked to the cashier, Would you mind if I leave my cart here in line while I go pick out a TV? She didn’t get it.

Finally, after a few long minutes, the woman came back. She offered no apology for holding up the rest of us.

This left me puzzled. And hungry.

In case you’ve never been, Costco is set up to tempt you to chow down on cheap way-too-long hot dogs and sort-of pizza on your way out of the warehouse. It’s tough for me to pass up the deal. Maybe for Lent. In 2027.

While I ate, I watched a grandmotherly-looking woman pitching vinyl siding or some other sort of housing material to customers as they left the store.

Is that really an impulse buy? How does one get such a tough job?

My belly full, my head spinning, I wheeled my comically big Costco cart out  to my car. Across the lane I saw a woman in a red SUV trying to back out of her space. To her left was an older couple standing next to a white SUV, nonchalantly talking to a driver. The SUV blocked part of the lane as the three talked.

I raised my voice so the people could hear me. Hey. She’s trying to get out of her parking space, I said. Could you move so she can get out?

No, the old dude standing outside the car says. She has plenty of room.

Really? Your pal  can’t move his car? What an entitled asshole I mumbled. Loudly.

They didn’t care. They all kept talking.

The woman in the red SUV very slowly and cautiously makes her way out of the parking space.

I wheeled my cart back to a holding pen, pissed at how privileged some people think they deserve to be.

Proving my point, I see the jagoff couple get into their car. A white Porsche. Perfect. Perpetuating a stereotype, even.

Of course, you can run into jerks like this anywhere. That’s what the camera on your phone is for. Alas, I forgot to record them, to make them TikTok-infamous.

Thankfully, my own anecdotal evidence shows it’s not always like this.

In line on a Sunday evening buying stuff and with two of Tom’s grandkids, someone was kind enough to let us cut in line. I probably looked frazzled. That happens when I shop at Walmart with kids.

More recently, I bought some flowers at Jewel for Tom’s granddaughter to give her after her elementary school show. Again, somebody let me pay before they did.

So it’s not all bad. You never know.

As they used to say on Hill Street Blues, let’s be careful out there.

Be kind, like the people who let me cut in line. Otherwise, shop online.

The post A Costco Christmas with Danahey on the Loose appeared first on FREE CRAIC.

Amadeus is mostly BS.

That may be the point.

Sure, the production playing at the Steppenwolf through Sunday, Jan. 25 is well-staged. The acting’s topnotch in that meat-and-potatoes way that’s earned the troupe its solid reputation.

My Irish buddy Shay and I took in a recent Sunday matinee of Amadeus. Understudy and fight director Nick Sandys played the main role of Salieri that afternoon and gave a fine performance.

But beyond the staging and acting, it’s all baloney. Blarney, Malarkey. Hokum. Preposterous pulp.

Yeah, novelists, playwrights, poets and politicians all love to take artistic license with history.  Fine.

But Peter Shaffer’s tall tale about an alleged rivalry between court composer Antonio Salieri and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart plays so fast and loose with the facts it could be mistaken for one of those idiots going 95 on their motorcycle while weaving in and out of lanes on the Kennedy.

Shaffer’s 1979 play and his screenplay for the Oscar-winning movie Amadeus from 1984 posit that Salieri was pissed at God because Salieri was mediocre at his craft, while the vulgar, infantile Mozart was a cackling boy genius who could crank out masterpieces.

The play would have you believe Mozart could write down whole scores without having to make corrections, for God’s sake. He behaved and dressed like a rock star. Which was saying something, considering fashion back then. He had a scatological sense of humor.

Salieri devoted his life and craft to the Lord. He didn’t seem to have any friends. He was sadly single. On stage at least, neither man seemed to collaborate with anyone on their work. They just tell the audience who might be writing the libretto, in the opera cast or playing in the orchestra.

Salieri also claims to be pretty much the only person around who recognizes that Mozart is the one true genius of his day. How could God do all this to Salieri?

So Salieri sets out to sneakily sabotage Mozart any way he can, making sure Mozart’s career flails. That leaves dear old Amadeus penniless, terribly ill and writing Requiem, which may or may not be for his own funeral.

While visiting a distraught Mozart, who’s close to being on his deathbed, Salieri confesses he’s been poisoning Mozart.  Salieri may mean it metaphorically, per all the crap he’s pulled to sabotage Mozart’s career.

Mozart dies. His work takes on a life of its own.

The details of the operatic-like fable are told in flashback by Salieri during the final few hours of his own life. He’s a windy, smug sort and narrates the proceedings from his point of view.

Here’s a link for the plot.

But it’s mostly bunk, from an historical perspective.

Basically, the men were rivals for a bit, but apparently not bitter ones. They even worked together a few times. Mozart was only six years younger than Salieri.

Salieri was married and had a busy, interesting life of his own. His work was hardly considered mediocre and had influence on future composers.

Mozart did spend beyond his means. The play barely mentions that a recession cut into him getting any commissions to write music, contributing to his sorry financial state.

I could go on, but then I would be whining, like Salieri does for most of the play.

Anyway, that’s what I learned from doing a cursory read. What good is going to the theater if it doesn’t make you want to learn more about a subject?

As but a few examples, here are some links for background:

The Rivalry Between Salieri and Mozart: Myth and Reality

Mozart VS Salieri

Mozart’s Requiem Mass and Movie Myths

The Real Story of Mozart, Salieri and Amadeus

Mozart and Salieri: From Pushkin to Shaffer

How Accurate About Mozart and Salieri’s Rivalry Is The Film Amadeus?

While Shaffer supposedly said Amadeus was a “fantasia” on the Salieri/Mozart rivalry, the bullshit is the play’s reason for being.

Why should the audience trust that Salieri is telling the truth? He’s the real star of the play. It’s all about him, not Amadeus. Salieri even has help from his own gossipy, Greek-like chorus, a duo akin to today’s internet influencers, to get his points across.

The last lines of the play are the tell:

“For the rest of time whenever men say Mozart with love, they will say Salieri with loathing. I am going to be immortal after all! And He (God) is powerless to prevent it,” Salieri boasts. “Mediocrities everywhere—now and to come—I absolve you all. Amen.”

(Hey, mediocrity has its place – like summer fests in the suburbs where bands cover 40-year-old Journey songs!)

So this narcissistic version of Salieri just wanted to be immortal, the ultimate form of fame.  Whatever it takes.

(Like the title song from the mediocre 1980 movie, Fame. Or life in 2025.)

Shaffer plays God and grants Salieri his wish. Or is it their wish? But, hey, who cares what really happens when there’s a myth to make?

For all we know, a sexy Danish detective will finally figure out how Mozart died. In the process she’ll first discover oil somewhere after visiting a town where the prison is the main industry.

Wait. That’s if Best Fest Buddy Tom’s TV algorithm married AI and wrote an Amadeus sequel.

Or maybe they could mashup Amadeus with A Beautiful Noise, the musical playing downtown right now about another music legend. They could call it I’m A Diamond.

Full disclosure: I stole that line. Tom’s no Mozart, but he does come up with the occasional good dad joke.

The post Amadeus BS with Danahey on the Loose appeared first on FREE CRAIC.

It’s em-ber time.

You know – that glowing piece of burning wood in a fizzling fire.

This time period includes Septem-ber, which leads to Octo-ber and no-light Novem-ber, which leads to the burr of Decem-ber. Then come Jan-uary and Feb-uary, where many old people from the Midwest seek sun and sanctuary in warmer climes.

But back to em-ber time.

I have had quite a few metaphorical moments to mark mine for 2025.

Tom’s youngest grandson provided one. I asked him to do something funny for a photo. So he proceeded to get stuck in a piece of playground equipment, his haunches hanging high in the air. (See photo at the top.)

Also, as of this writing, there’s a pile of dirt on the street in front of my house. It appeared out of nowhere the other night. I can barely get out of my driveway. I assume I will find out what the hell it’s there for early this coming week.

In the meantime, I guess it’s good practice for maneuvering around a snowdrift. The dirt pile also reminds me of what’s left of the 42-year-old mall near where I live.

There was also an October Sunday a couple weeks ago where I found a raccoon hanging out in one of my green Groot trash containers.

Somehow, the animal managed to trap itself. The lid was closed. It just looked up at me when I went to drop some car-bage from my Camry into the container.

I tipped the bin on its side. Like a teenager getting up for school in the morning, the raccoon took its sweet time to get its fat ass moving, then waddled up a backyard fence.

Cleaning up coffee grounds wasn’t on my weekend to-do list, but so be it.  Eh. At least it wasn’t a dead possum, like I found on the back steps one summer afternoon. Luckily, that was the day garbage goes to the curb. Double-bagged in this case.

Taking a buddy to and from his office on-and-off for more than two months wasn’t on my list either. Or his. He’s trying to repair his own SUV. It’s not going well. He’s on a first name basis with staff at Harbor Freight.

Anyway, at least the Miss Daisy drives can be pretty, as the leaves blaze bright before the dying of the light. Speaking of light, the angle of the sun in late September and October isn’t conducive to driving east-west routes in the early morning or late afternoon. Anybody reading this who’s ever driven on Lake-Cook Road in the northwest suburbs knows this.

They also know how dangerously entitled doofus old guys riding bicycles in Barrington can be. The one in question one early October morning decided he would back up traffic by pedaling west down Lake-Cook during morning rush hour. In his super cute biker outfit and requisite neon vest, he backed up traffic even more by making a hand-signal for a left-hand turn.

I wanted to give him a hand signal back. Instead I yelled something like “What the hell are you doing? Are you crazy?”

Like a good many people do, the old biker ignored me. Then he nonchalantly signaled for me to break the law: Drive on the shoulder around him. I did.

Just another reason to get grumpy these em-ber days, I thought.

A stop on my Uber buddy duties we made one day confirmed why the Amazon-owned grocery store has been called Whole Paycheck Foods. They had meatballs on sale for $12 a ball.

Making the drives occasionally enjoyable is when we’ve stopped to play disc golf on the way home. Hey. It’s a way cheaper 2-mile walk than golfing with clubs and balls. Trees still get in the way.

That reminds me. I have a friend somewhere in the Southwest recovering from breaking body parts. He was trying to remove a dying tree from a yard. No good deed goes unpunished. Somehow the big trunk rolled over on him.

Then there are the squirrels seeking accommodation in my house. I chased one of them off my balcony the other morning. It ran up to the peak of my roof and cursed at me in squirrel swears. These punks sit on my front stoop to eat walnuts and leave the crumbs. The indignity! Where’s a python when you need one?

Plus, one had the nerve to get drunk one night and drown in a friend’s pool.  I swear. This year, they behave like hair metal bands did in the late 1980s.

Still, compared to how others are having it, as an old song goes, I do remem-ber a kind of Septem-ber that was oh so mellow. Come to think of it, there are lots of September songs – some soporific, some sad and solemn, some about being or getting old, and, thankfully, at least one bouncy one. Yow.

As far as I know, none of the Septem-ber songs are about hockey. Which is what you could say about the pubs near where I live. Until now. Somebody opened one. Good timing, as the Chicago Blackhawks are predicted to finish last in their division. At least the bar there has a cool top. It looks like hockey ice, replete with skate marks.

Looking cooler was best fest buddy Tom. For the annual Chicago Beer Society picnic, he donned his big, beautiful black kilt, a professorial jacket and scully cap.

He wore that same cap a couple times when hosting a talk about cigars at a local restaurant. It made him look a bit like rowdy, rapidly aging pro golfer John Daly.

At the beer picnic, Tom looked more German than Celtic. He posed with an old dude dressed in lederhosen for comparison’s sake.

Speaking of German, a town near my abode held an Oktoberfest. Yeah, there were oompah, polka bands, beers, bratwurst – and a George Michael tribute. On a warm autumn evening, the reenactor sang “Last Christmas.” Why wouldn’t he?

I missed the Van Halen tribute the following night. The name actually is Dutch. Holland’s close to Germany. Eddie Van Halen liked Bach, Beethoven and Mozart. Close enough.

At a Fall Fest in the park near my house, we did catch Radio Gaga, which pretended to be Queen AND Lady Gaga. Which reminds me. Why are dudes sporting 1970s-style mustaches again?

Anyway, earlier that same September Saturday, playing from the very same stage, I saw a local golf-and-roll-dressed buddy reunite with his high school pals for some rockin’ in the free world. Cripes. That song is 34 years old!

That made me feel old. Again. So did hitting a birthday party for the owner of a local Irish pub.

He turned 70. The crowd at his place for his shindig thinned out by 10 p.m.

September ended with Tom, his brother and I heading to the local high school football bowl to hear an exhibition from the district’s three high school marching bands. They marched back in the day. I did, too, but not to the extent they did. Story of my life.

Nostalgia aside, the bands’ sets included the Killers’ Mr. Brightside from 2004 and Radiohead’s Creep from 1992. I felt as old as the guys in the soggy sequel to Spinal Tap looked.

Soggy, too, was the end of the evening when Tom and I hit the Irish Fest in Naperville. I learned about shillelaghs from a vendor. We heard Brigid’s Cross playing in a suburban version of a soft Irish rain. I remembered hearing them for the first time at a long-closed local, maybe for a St. Patrick’s Day gathering.

Festive, too, was taking Tom’s youngest grandson to see his brother and sister march in the Barrington High School homecoming parade. The three siblings are all in grade school, but Barrington goes all-out for its homecoming.

The parade included units from every school in the district, every high school club and cars holding graduates from days way gone by. By far, it was the most impressive high school homecoming parade I’ve ever seen.

If memory serves, all that was missing was dancing horses. But we saw those at the El Grito parade in our town.

Making the parade a real boon for Tom’s grandson was that by happenstance we wound up finding a great place to get candy the parade marchers were giving out.

The kid insisted on wearing shower slippers, because, hey, he’s a kid. While walking toward the parade route, one of the slippers broke. On a hunch, we hung back where we were – on a church lawn adjacent to the parking lot that served as the parade’s staging area.

So the boy was the first kid the candy-passers saw. He wound up with a big bag full of sweets.

I kept it. I am using it to give out on Halloween.

Sure. That sounds mean and cheap. But that afternoon, I took the three grandkids to a local candy store that was having a going-out-of-business sale. The place lasted 15 months. We stopped by in part to pay our last respects, on credit card.

Speaking of last respects, how about those Chicago Cubs? What was fun was watching them lose to the Brewers in Spanish and for free. Unimas had some of the games – which beat having to figure out which network or streaming service carried the games.

Speaking of services, for one of my day jobs I’ve written quite a few news obits lately.

One was for a local activist. I wound up going to the service and sat in the vestibule, where I belong. Turns out they locked the doors to the church during the memorial, and some people couldn’t get in. Sign of the times, I guess.

Another obit was for a local official. Nice enough guy. I found out through a mutual friend that the deceased didn’t get along well with one of his brothers. In fact, the brother wasn’t mentioned in the funeral home’s online obituary. Another sign of the times.

I wrote another about a colorful, retired Catholic priest, Back in his days as a pastor, lady parishioners made him ornately decorated vestments. He was also a fan of the local casino.

I remember hearing him give sermons as a guest priest at my local. He worked the pews, sort of like a casino lounge act.

Sometimes he would note how the readings from the Bible would double back or seemingly contradict themselves.

Paraphrasing here: He’d concluded with, “Well, that is a bit confusing. But at the end of the day, you know what’s important? Just be kind to each other. Love each other as God loves you.”

Words to remem-ber as the burr of this discontented winter approaches.

Amen.

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