Overwintering is the perfect kind of play to be produced in a city like Chicago, and a concrete example of why I think Chicago theatre is so much better than anything you'll find in New York or Los Angeles; because here, where it's so profoundly cheaper to mount a production and find an audience for it, you can get away with weird-ass shit like this. It's the ultimate irony, in fact, of being an artist in Chicago in general: that the circumstances that lead to people in New York and Los Angeles dismissing Chicago artists, are the same circumstances that let Chicago artists get away with much more challenging, much more thought-provoking projects than anything you ever see in New York and Los Angeles. And so the weird back-and-forth attitude continues among those of us who choose to be Chicago artists - that partly we would love to get the kind of mainstream media attention artists on the coasts do, but partly realize that our artistic community as it currently exists would be completely destroyed if that actually happened, and that we'd just become like what you see on the coasts - a bunch of badly-dressed white guys making jokes about faggots, and stepping all over each others' necks for a chance to get on HBO.

Anyway, I just thought it was really unfair of the Chicago Reader to give Overwintering such an undeserved hack job like they did, so wanted to just throw up my own two cents about the play as well, and to tell all of you out there in Chicago that this play is worth going to; that it is, in fact, a textbook example of what makes the Chicago arts so great, so exciting, such a wonderful thing to be a part of, either as an artist yourself or simply a satisfied audience member. I encourage all of you here in the city to get out and see it yourself, and to see just how great modern absurdist theatre can actually be.

A couple of random notes, while I'm here...

--TRAVEL UPDATE: Okay, so it turns out that I will not be visiting St. Louis the weekend of August 20th after all; I have, in fact, agreed to perform here in Chicago on August 20th, and had completely forgotten about it when first making my travel plans. For those who are curious, the show on the 20th is at Quimby's Bookstore in Wicker Park, and is going to be doozy: Thax Douglas (aka "that freaky poet guy who was introducing all the bands at the Intonation Festival"), Jonathan Messinger (of This Is Grand and Time Out Chicago fame), Wendy McClure (of Poundy and I'm Not the New Me fame), and the list just keeps going on and on.

This will be the first time in about two years that I've performed in Chicago, and likely the last time for another two or three years; I didn't want to perform at this show to begin with, to tell you the truth, but the whole thing is being organized by my friend Katherine Hodges, and it's in celebration of her tenth anniversary of moving to Chicago, and her whole idea was to invite people who have been big parts of her life over the last decade to come out and help her celebrate it, and how can you say no to that? Anyway, fans of my old performance work should definitely come out on the 20th, because this will be the absolutely last chance to see me perform for at least another two or three years. And hey, there's free cocktails too!

--MEETRO UPDATE: Last week I issued a public challenge to the Chicago-based social-networking company Meetro here at my journal - specifically, I asked them if they would consider creating an HTML version of their service at their website, for those of us without the proper hardware to run their proprietary software (and, uh, you know, those who don't want to install proprietary software on their computer, giving hackers God only knows what kind of access to our machines without us knowing). And a couple of days later, the Meetro guys wrote back with an answer: Um, no. And even more frustrating, they didn't give a single reason why they refuse to create a web-based interface for their service, even though it would literally only take a couple of days of work to do so, using AJAX and the dozens of premade modules that already exist precisely for such a purpose. So, you know, I hate to be nasty here at my journal (no, seriously, I do) - but frankly, I'm sick of talking about a company that's obviously going to be bankrupt a year from now. Good luck, guys; damn, you're going to need it.

--Today's a Sugar day:

How can I explain away
something that I haven't done?
And if you can't trust me now
you'll never trust in anyone
With all those crazy doubts you've got, I love you even still
But if I can't change your mind, then no one will

Fuck yeah, Bob!