I woke up out of a dead sleep. I checked the clock — 3:45am. I tried to fall back to sleep and I did, for a bit. I woke up again a half hour later and then a half hour after that, each time straining to see the clock through the fog.
Man, I thought, I can’t wait for the 6:00 o’clock alarm and for the day to begin. More to the point, I can’t wait for 8:00 o’clock tonight.
That’s when the first game of the 2016 World Series begins in Cleveland, Ohio, for the next two days the center of the entire universe. My beloved Cubs arrived there yesterday morning so as to begin the task of transporting me to a higher state of nirvana.
I still can’t fully believe what has happened. I have to remind myself this is all true. For instance, I keep looking at this aerial shot of the Wrigley Field groundskeepers painting the World Series logo on the foul ground sod:
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Man, it’s all gotta be real, right?
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Talkin’ Big
My gig as host of WFHB‘s Big Talk interview show gives me the opportunity to meet the most fab peeps on this planet — or, at least, within the cozy confines of this sprawling megalopolis. Yesterday I taped Thursday’s show with a couple of hugely creative and focused young people, Bethy Squires and Dalia Davoudi.
Bethy is a freelance writer and one of the driving forces behind Sitcom Theater, a comedy skit gang that skewers, lovingly, sitcoms like Friends on stage. Dalia is a grad student at Indiana University and a key factotum at the Burroughs Century and Wounded Galaxies Festival of Experimental Media. The two of them are now involved in a recreation of the revolutionary and notorious Cabaret Voltaire.
CV was a nightclub in Zurich, Switzerland back when Europe was embroiled in its first attempt to destroy the world. A crew of artists, political radicals, and other such dangerous figures liked to do their cigarette-smoking and absinthe guzzling there and one day in Feb. 2016 essentially formalized their presence when they began meeting, in wildly imaginative costumes, in the nightclub’s backroom. These gatherings became known around the avant garde world and even gave birth to the antiwar, anti-burgeois Dada art movement.
Squires, Davoudi, and some dozens of other similarly avant Hoosiers (and isn’t this the first time in human history that’s ever been typed?) will stage their own Cabaret Voltaire Thursday evening at 9:00pm at the Blockhouse, 205 S. College Ave. Costume-wearing is recommended and even if you can’t quite come up with a good one, they’ll provide masks, etc. at the door for your masquerading pleasure.
My interview with Squires and Davoudi airs Thursday, Oct. 27, during the Daily Local News at 5:30pm.
And, BTW, don’t forget to hie on over to the Buskirk Chumley Theater tomorrow, Wednesday night, for the one-time-only airing here of the documentary Men in the Arena. It’s the story of two young Somali men who endured the horrors of civil war in that godforsaken Horn of Africa nation to become world class soccer players and, now, residents of this holy land. Director J.R. Biersmith will be on hand to take audience Q’s. Biersmith and local promoter Tyler Ferguson joined me on Big Talk last week. Here’s the link to the Daily Local News feature and here’s how you can hear the almost-complete original interview I did with the two (or, you will hear it as soon as I get around to putting the audio track up).
Next week, handmade jigsaw puzzle-maker and theater company director Marc Tschida joins me on Big Talk.
Like I say, I get to meet the coolest folk.
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Daydream Believer
Speaking of the six o’clock alarm, that’s a line from this Monkees’ hit, number one on the Billboard Hot 100 for four weeks in December 1967. The tune was written by John Stewart, a member of the Kingston Trio. Give an ear:
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