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SELF-ISOLATION, DAY 8on March 24, 2020 at 11:46 pm

DocRambo

SELF-ISOLATION, DAY 8

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Watch Berkowitz w/Dabrowki tonight in suburbs & City: How much risk to take– Lives & U.S./IL Economy? Cable & Webon March 25, 2020 at 12:59 am

Public Affairs with Jeff Berkowitz

Watch Berkowitz w/Dabrowki tonight in suburbs & City: How much risk to take– Lives & U.S./IL Economy? Cable & Web

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Watch Berkowitz w/Dabrowki tonight in suburbs & City: How much risk to take– Lives & U.S./IL Economy? Cable & Webon March 25, 2020 at 12:59 am Read More »

COVID-19, Caregiving and Compassionon March 25, 2020 at 1:07 am

One Cause At A Time

COVID-19, Caregiving and Compassion

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The Zombie Crossing Guard of North Mulberry Streeton March 25, 2020 at 2:27 am

The Goods

The Zombie Crossing Guard of North Mulberry Street

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The Zombie Crossing Guard of North Mulberry Streeton March 25, 2020 at 2:27 am Read More »

Chicago Craft Beer Brief Weekend, March 27-29on March 25, 2020 at 2:57 am

The Beeronaut

Chicago Craft Beer Brief Weekend, March 27-29

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Chicago Craft Beer Brief Weekend, March 27-29on March 25, 2020 at 2:57 am Read More »

Methtacular! returns for an online-only engagement at 16th Streeton March 24, 2020 at 9:15 pm

Steven Strafford was supposed to be live onstage at Berwyn’s 16th Street Theater this month with a remount of Methtacular!, his solo chronicle of his three-year bout with meth addiction. But then COVID-19 happened, and the theater decided to go with a ticketed streaming version of a show recorded last year at Steppenwolf’s LookOut series.

Then again, given the story Strafford has to tell, it’s amazing he’s alive at all. And at least this time, he’s missing a show for a reason other than being on a meth binge in a bathhouse for several days. (Spoiler alert: he lost that acting gig.)

Strafford’s been performing this tale at theaters around the country for a few years, but the performance you can see through 16th Street’s website (directed by Adam Fitzgerald and with William TN Hall providing piano accompaniment for Strafford’s musical numbers) doesn’t feel like a guy phoning it in. (HMS Media, which has been recording live performances in Chicago for years, did the admirable honors here; the visual and aural quality is excellent.) Rather, he exudes exuberance, leavened with David Sedaris-like dashes of self-deprecating snark. “I love formulas,” Strafford tells us early on. “Like, Tuesday plus crystal meth equals Friday!”

Refreshingly, Strafford doesn’t seem to have a backstory of deep trauma for why he fell into addiction as a young actor in Chicago in the early aughts. (If you’ve been around the theater scene awhile, you can have fun playing fill-in-the-blanks with the shows and collaborators he mentions.) His family seems solid, at least judging by what we see of his loving mother in video interviews spliced into the show. Unlike a lot of young gay people, Strafford wasn’t kicked out when he came out. His addiction, like that of so many others, came instead from a place of garden-variety nagging self-doubt, despite his obvious talents. Take a hit of meth, feel more confident and attractive. What could go wrong?

Oh boy.

Through a series of increasingly fraught relationships with friends, lovers, and combinations thereof–including a nebbishy teacher who grows violent and a gun-toting dealer who lives surrounded by filth and feral cats–Strafford takes us down the rabbit hole of his sex-and-drugs obsession. By working in clever musical bits and audience interaction, including a game show called “What’s My Meth?,” Strafford finds ways to break down the navel-gazing nature of the autobiographical solo form. (The correct answer to a question in the latter is “Take apart the toaster and find out where the voice is coming from.”)

In these days of enforced isolation, maybe a solo show about addiction seems a perilous entertainment choice for some. But Strafford, who beat his meth demon by what he can only describe as luck (though he admits he will never get over wanting to do drugs), offers a surprisingly sweet and hopeful conclusion for anyone stuck at home, looking at themselves in the mirror: there is nothing wrong with you. v






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Methtacular! returns for an online-only engagement at 16th Streeton March 24, 2020 at 9:15 pm Read More »

Nora Dunn on our first and worst presidentson March 24, 2020 at 10:10 pm

Two weeks ago, Saturday Night Live alum and west-side native Nora Dunn was in rehearsals at Steppenwolf for the title role in The Most Spectacularly Lamentable Trial of Miz Martha Washington, by James Ijames.

Ijames’s script is hallucinatory and gripping: Martha Washington is in her final days, thrashing through a fever dream, tended by the slaves without whom her lifestyle would have been impossible. That’s a grossly incomplete categorization: as Ijames points out in his prefatory notes, this is no “slave play.” Ann Dandridge, Doll, Priscilla, Davy, William, and Sucky Boy are as intricate and indelible as Martha. They also double as other historical figures, both Black and white.

As Dunn put it in an interview on March 13, “You think of Mount Vernon as a tourist attraction when in fact it was a labor camp. You can’t go there and treat it as if it wasn’t part of the holocaust here. I love our Constitution. I love that we have a Declaration of Independence.

“But you can’t ignore the fact that George Washington owned over 300 people. There is little evidence that he had a conscience about it. He talked about them in terms of worth and value. Half of America didn’t believe that. There was an abolitionist movement in the 18th century. Washington wasn’t part of it. The play never lets that go. It doesn’t let George off and it doesn’t let Martha off either.”

Directed by Whitney White and featuring Nikki Crawford as Ann, Celeste M. Cooper as Doll, Sydney Charles as Priscilla, Carl Clemons-Hopkins as Davy, Victor Musoni as William, and Travis Turner as Sucky Boy, the show had all the makings of a feverishly watchable slice of history. Then on March 17, Steppenwolf announced the show was cancelled due to COVID-19. They have made a commitment to stage it in 2021, with the same artists. So make that “has” all the makings of a feverishly watchable slice of history.

To me, that interview with Dunn now seems like it happened last year. The entire world has changed–totally, irrevocably, and cataclysmically–since we spoke. Still, her thoughts have resonance. Dunn was marked as “difficult” for standing up to the macho atmosphere at SNL, where she joined the cast for the 1985 season, along with fellow rookies Jon Lovitz and Dennis Miller. She also became known for her recurring characters, including half of the Sweeney Sisters duo with the late Jan Hooks. Decades before #MeToo, Dunn fought for screen time.

“It was hard. It was a boys’ club. They would always tell me–whatever I wrote or came up with–that they didn’t get ‘girl humor.’ I didn’t understand that. Humor is humor. I was so pissed off–I’m like, I’m hired, I’ve shown you tons of material, and you can’t find anything for me to do? I didn’t hold anything back. But there was always the issue that the guys were in everything. And we had to accept we were in one or two things.”

In 1990, Dunn boycotted the episode hosted by noted misogynist Andrew Dice Clay. Lovitz told the tabloids that she was hard to work with, hard to get along with, and would be fired before the next season. She didn’t return.

“You can’t hold on to your anger,” Dunn said. “That’s building your own blockade.”

Still, she’s angry now.

“I don’t want to be the person who panics. Who buys all the food. I went to Whole Foods, and the shelves were almost bare. But I do feel a lot of trepidation because we have no national leadership.

“Because our ‘president,’ well, we don’t even have a person up there who is a human being. We need someone to say ‘here’s what we have to do. Boom. Boom. Boom. We’re going to have to suffer a little bit. We’re going to lose jobs. It’s a horrible, almost unbelievable shock, but here’s what we’ve got to do to contain this.’

“But he’s not doing that. He’s making it worse. He could have gotten the tests [kits for massive, nationwide testing] in January. He was warned. He didn’t care. My own hope is that he has the virus. And then he’ll be unable to tweet. I don’t know what drugs he’s on. But everyone is seeing it now. I hope.”

She continues:

“What’s coming to roost here is this: Guess what folks, we really do need a CDC. We do need diplomats. We need leadership. Saying ‘burn it all down’ is all very well and good but, that’s not what’s going to save us. I think now, more than ever in my life, community is critical.

“I have a niece in Seattle. They’ve been hit hard. I have so many friends in New York and LA. I fear for all of them, all of us.”

Two weeks ago, Dunn was still going out, but she noticed changes.

“Weird things–like people are in a trance. No one is signaling, driving weird. It’s like we’re all in limbo. There’s this fear of massive job losses. I live with my dog, and that’s how I communicate with many of my neighbors. I think today is the first day it’s really hitting me.

“We have to face the fact that there’s a virus going around that most of us aren’t even allowed to be tested for. We’re not being taken care of. At times like these, we need things not to take our mind off the horror of it. Otherwise you could lose yourself. A good play can take you to a deeper place. You let everything else go and immerse yourself into the story.

“I believe this play does that. It’s important. It’s still important. v



James Ijames’s The Most Spectacularly Lamentable Trial of Miz Martha Washington is available through Dramatists Play Service, dramatists.com.

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Nora Dunn on our first and worst presidentson March 24, 2020 at 10:10 pm Read More »

Blues guitarist Lurrie Bell beat mental illness to build a thriving careeron March 24, 2020 at 5:45 pm

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Blues guitarist Lurrie Bell beat mental illness to build a thriving careeron March 24, 2020 at 5:45 pm Read More »

Nurse says Northwestern Memorial fired her over wanting better face maskson March 24, 2020 at 7:19 pm

A nurse at Northwestern Memorial Hospital who wore a more protective face mask than the one issued to her by the hospital — and warned coworkers to do the same — said Tuesday she suspects she was fired because such a warning could spur protests or even walkouts by nurses who didn’t have the same level of protection.

Lauri Mazurkiewicz — who filed suit against the hospital Monday — wore an N95 face mask she bought herself to work this month at the hospital. On March 18 she emailed about 50 coworkers suggesting they, too, wear the extra-protective mask in place of the standard hospital-issued surgical masks her and her colleagues had been instructed to wear.

The very next day, Mazurkiewicz learned she’d been fired when she received a call from the nursing staffing agency that placed her at the hospital.

“I had a box of my own,” she said of the N95 masks, noting her concern about airborne transmission of the virus and the additional protection the masks offer.

“Most nurses get (N95 masks) from the hospital, but they weren’t around. I don’t know why they weren’t around, maybe they didn’t have them, maybe they were low … but I can speculate they didn’t have enough for all the workers to go around,” she said Tuesday during a Skype call with reporters.

“It could have caused a movement where nurses would demand N95s from the hospital and then potentially they could have walked out or protested, and then they wouldn’t have any nurses,” Mazurkiewicz said.

The hospital also prohibited employees from wearing N95 masks, instead instructing them to wear standard surgical masks, said Mazurkiewicz, who worked in an observation section of the hospital near the emergency room where patients, after a couple days, are either admitted or sent home.

“They told her at the hospital not to wear it, and she said ‘That’s not OK. I’m not going to follow your instruction,'” her attorney, Blake Horwitz, said Tuesday.

Mazurkiewicz said she was not allowed to wear the N95 mask under the one issued by the hospital.

In an emailed statement, hospital spokesman Christopher King said, “As Northwestern Medicine continues to respond to this unprecedented health care pandemic, the health and well-being of our patients, our staff and our employees is our highest priority. We take these matters seriously and we are currently reviewing the complaint. At this time, we will not be commenting further.”

Mazurkiewicz’s lawsuit was filed in Cook County Circuity Court and names the hospital and several employees as defendants. The suit seeks a jury trial and more than $50,000 in damages.

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Nurse says Northwestern Memorial fired her over wanting better face maskson March 24, 2020 at 7:19 pm Read More »

2020 Chicago White Sox: Talk about bad timingon March 24, 2020 at 12:00 pm

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS - SEPTEMBER 28: (L-R) James McCann #33 of the Chicago White Sox, Ivan Nova #46, and Jose Abreu #79 meet on the mound during the sixth inning of a game against the Detroit Tigers at Guaranteed Rate Field on September 28, 2019 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Nuccio DiNuzzo/Getty Images)

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS – SEPTEMBER 28: (L-R) James McCann #33 of the Chicago White Sox, Ivan Nova #46, and Jose Abreu #79 meet on the mound during the sixth inning of a game against the Detroit Tigers at Guaranteed Rate Field on September 28, 2019 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Nuccio DiNuzzo/Getty Images)

The coronavirus has likely shortened the 2020 MLB season, if not killed it altogether. The Chicago White Sox have seen this before.

Long-time Chicago White Sox fans will remember 1994. That was supposed to be the year – the year they’d finally win it all for the first time since 1917. The 1919 Black Sox curse would be shaken off, and the Sox would win the World Series before the long-suffering Chicago Cubs would, making it even sweeter for those South Side fans who measure their team’s success against the team based 8 miles north.

After all, the 1993 team was pretty damn good, although they ran into a buzzsaw in the American League Championship when they faced the eventual champion Toronto Blue Jays.

When 1994 rolled around, the White Sox were predicted by most to face off against the then-Montreal Expos (now the Washington Nationals) in the World Series. Instead, the player’s strike scrubbed the season. At the time, the Sox had a 67-46 record and a one-game lead in the division.

Now, the 2020 White Sox were on schedule to possibly be competitive and make a run at the playoffs for the first time since a rebuild began in 2017. How very White Sox would it be if a shortened season worked against them, or if the season was canceled altogether?

I’m the eternal optimist – and I have a gut feeling that there will be baseball at the major-league level this year. But I could be wrong, and worst-case coronavirus scenarios could play out, thus scuttling the season.

Even if I am right, it’s hard to imagine 162 games being played, even with doubleheaders. The season could be compressed.

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Whether that will help or hurt teams is debatable. On one hand, fatigue would likely be less of an issue if teams don’t have as many games to play (of course, that will apply to all teams). On the other hand, there will be less time for players to rebound from slumps or rebound from injuries. Not to mention, a team that’s not predicted to be competitive could get hot, and without a long season, there won’t be time for them to cool off. They could knock the Sox out at some point.

Finally, even if the Sox were to win it all, they’d be derided for winning it during a shortened season. So-called “haters” could say that the win is less impressive than a normal championship because it wasn’t earned over the usual 162 games.

Sure, the Sox have the 2005 Series championship (which also came 11 years before Cubs broke their own curse, giving a certain segment of Sox fans more than a little bit of joy), and coronavirus can’t take that away.

Thursday was supposed to be the White Sox home opener. That, obviously, isn’t going to happen. Hopefully, the 2020 season will.

Next: White Sox get discount on Moncada’s deal

I know how important it is to socially distance, and I understand a shortened season is the price we pay to try and stop a virus that will kill too many people (really, one is too many, but you get my drift). With that in mind, the White Sox’ fate is very, very low on the priority list. I’ve written this post with tongue firmly planted in cheek.

Still, how very White Sox it would be, to experience no season in 2020.

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2020 Chicago White Sox: Talk about bad timingon March 24, 2020 at 12:00 pm Read More »