I could do better than these Italians

When you are raised in a household that prides itself on connecting to culture of it’s ancestors, you get familiar with tastes and cooking rhythms. More than most you know how Chicken Tikka should taste, why a mole takes hours to perfect, and how great effort goes into a broth for minestrone soup. You get labeled a snob and in your pauses for self-reflection, you wear that blue ribbon of cultural criticism with honor, never taking substitutes with the mantra “I can do better than these…(insert your respective ethnic group).

In Highwood, Illinois stands a long running Italian steakhouse named Bertucci’s. My Grandparents use to frequent this establishment which I swore as a child was run by mobsters with the way I caught a glimpse of slick dealings in back rooms on the way to the toilet. Getting older, I realized those squeaky wheels could have been greased but it was likely a façade that Bertucci’s had any interesting décor outside of bland green and red carpets and posters of The Godfather. These are the places where heritage takes slips in identity and devolves into the idealized culture that doesn’t exist and perhaps never did. I say this because most Italians that I met in Rome and in Europe actually took pride in their service and quality of food. Ally and I, with another couple waiting behind us, waited close to five minutes at the host table before the late-sixties slick-haired Italian owner in an off-colored jacket just paraded us around the restaurant to find any seat.

 I’d say the clientele of Bertucci’s had been collecting Social Security and using Medicare for over five years. Most of the old Italians in my Mom’s side of the family are irritable, making me wonder why no one bothered to make a stink. Our waitress had a dead look in her eye akin to the in-flight hostess doing the seat belt demonstration. She didn’t care to read off specials or show much effort in appearing throughout the meal, an aspect of service I’ve heard more than once about Bertucci’s. Later on she was helpful, only after I dialed up the niceties. With our LivingSocial coupon, there shouldn’t have been an automatic 18% gratuity.  

The coupon was bought as a $41 for $80 deal where the couple gets a shared appetizer, two entrees up to $31 each and a shared dessert. The bland artichoke fritters came out far too quickly, making me think they had previously made them and warmed them in the microwave considering their temperature. Oh and do you ever remember ordering a side of béarnaise sauce and instead was happy with having your fritters a patty of Velveeta cheese? Yeah, me neither! The bland repeated itself in a boring side salad and a minestrone soup that was so boring and tasteless; I only had about four to five spoonfuls. My Great-Grandma would be ashamed of them! 

Ally and I both ordered the 16 oz NY strip with an alforno crust of Parmesan and garlic, both to be cooked at medium. The edges were certainly medium but the insides were medium rare to rare, and without the crust. The waitress explained that we didn’t request the crust – how the hell are we supposed to know if you don’t write it on the menu and do not take the extra two seconds out of your rounds to explain? When returned, the cheese and garlic crust more resembled a skin flap on top, adding a bit more flavor. The roasted zucchini and squash on the side and sliced bell peppers needed salt, butter, balsamic – anything! Thankfully, we got to take most of the dinner home. 

The one redeeming factor of the night was a chocolate shell that encased a smooth hazelnut moose with an amaretto sponge bottom. I’d order that again if in fact I was dragged back to Bertucci’s. What use to be an establishment with a name in downtown Highwood in a shell where the lackluster effort and execution in each stage is visible. Why people keep returning is beyond me.  

Life in Living Color - Let me take you for an uneven ride

Musicals have the ability for those willing to listen to infect your ears with lyrical worms usually left for the three minute pop songs on top forty stations. At any given moment you could be belting out the delightful but filthy lines from The Book of Mormon. You could even go traditionalist on your springtime walks with Oklahoma. I believe a show has to have an even level of relevance in their songs for the characters and the story, each song presenting something new in song, dance, comedy or tragedy. When a show has ever other song crash like a plane on takeoff, you know your in-flight entertainment is going to be a bumpy ride.

This past Sunday night Ally and I took up Broadway in Chicago ticket offers of buy one, get one free to see the limited run of Catch Me if You Can, adapted into a stage musical from the 2002 charming Steven Spielberg film that reminded us what it was like for that filmmaker to have fun again. Though the film runs a bit long at the beginning and end (not uncommon for Spielberg), the performances of Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks were dynamite in the true tale of Frank Abignale, Jr, who by his 22^nd birthday in the late 1960’s impersonated a Pam Am pilot, E.R Doctor and Lawyer, forging enough checks to warrant the F.B.I to hunt him down for the over two million he stole.

Now, one wonders, as I was throughout the show, how the heck can you adapt this for the Broadway stage – you can’t, unless the story changes dramatically. Usually the first act curtain of a show should have set up everything required to ride itself out for the rest of the show. Some of the numbers just drag and frankly kind of stink, (Butter out of Cream, Don’t be a Stranger), making me wonder if the producer’s said to themselves “Shit, we’ve already committed to this musical and the film story really doesn’t work as one…just stuff it with songs and get it on stage!”

Catch Me if You Can at the Cadillac Palace was still setting up circumstances for Frank about four songs into the second act. Problem is with such a long story, and each of those impersonation sections of Frank’s life necessary is that you end up rushing the show to get to the climax of the story where he leaves the Louisiana lawyer’s daughter. Then, you further root those dancing shoes into the stage with songs that are better left for nails in coffins. Characters that didn’t deserve as much time on stage, such as the Italian-stallion mook performance for Frank Sr, were not nearly as boring as Frank Jr’s ex-fiance belting out a tune that has little relevance to the show, considering that she’s such a minor character singing the main climatic number.

Those infectious songs in Catch Me if You Can by the performances of Frank Jr (Stephen Anthony) and F.B.I agent Carl Hanratty (Merritt David Janes) were the boards holding back the water in that sinking ship. The show kicks off what promises to be the story through Frank Jr’s vision, as if he is on a celebrity T.V with his name, the dancers living out his life tongue-in-cheek style, video screens broadcasting Bond-girl like cut-outs to the audience of women and planes in stark 60’s color patterns. Life in Living Color, sung by Frank Jr, personifies this airway vision. Stephen Anthony and Merritt David Janes had great comic timing, eliciting laughs from myself and many audience members in the unfulfilled seating of the massive Palace. Catch Me if You Can was certainly a bumpy ride that though had delightful numbers it probably should have been left as film or taken time to develop the music and lyrics with what is a great composer in Marc Shaiman.

In my final thoughts I have to reserve disdain for fellow audience members all around Ally and I. The whiny, high-pitched voices of the men behind us, laughed one does when someone feels the need to scream for a brief second. The man to Ally’s right fidgeted by leaning forward and back so many times I thought there was a six foot five child next to her. Two ass-hats took the open seats in front of us in the second act, the one guy’s massive Jupiter head blocking Ally’s view. Behind me and to the left a few seats, two caddy women were drinking copious amounts of over-priced chardonnay and talking as loud as two friends would in a club before some of us shushed them into silence. People, for the love of God, leave your rude and ill-advised choices for your home cinema and let the rest of us who know how to respect our fellow theater goers enjoy the show! If you can't tell I'm already developing curmudgeon sensibilities at 31 years old.

Trad Irish at Old Town

I cannot celebrate the memory of Ireland without hearing traditional Irish music. The tunes of The Chieftains and Gaelic Storm were alive with the pastoral green fields and fog covered hills of Ireland, not unlike what I later saw in Scotland. Though my program at the University of Limerick seemed to be an even choice with the other program at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, my heart directed me to the Emerald Isle.

In the years since I had been in Ireland, you lose an experience such as that the same way one loses a language once familiar to their tongues. Two years have passed since I last attended Milwaukee’s Irish Fest. I give little thought to the life lessons I developed in those years; rightly so as one grows and hopefully matures. What I have left to connect with Ireland is few and far between – somehow the music has faded, but not yet. 

This past Sunday Ally and I attended the Old Town School of Folk Music in Lincoln Square, Chicago. Created in 1957, later expanding to its Lincoln Square campus in 1998, Old Town describes themselves as an institute that “teaches and celebrates music and cultural expressions rooted in the traditions of diverse American and global communities.” Almost no-one who comes to a concert at Old Town has little to no interest in seeing the music perform or taught – all are fans of eclectic world sounds of traditional folk music forms, from Ireland to American bluegrass to ancient Chinese rhythms. 

The Donegal based group Altan took up the afternoon and night shows on March 24^th, much to my delight! Altan is a traditional Irish band that strays away from what Gaelic Storm has sadly become – a hackneyed mockery of Irish music with songs like Pina Colada in a Pint Glass and Kiss me, I’m Irish. One might as well have an alcoholic Bostonian dressed in a Leprechaun suit do a dig on stage to represent Irish culture. Though I’d laugh, I would harken back to Altan’s salute to the Gaeltacht regions of Ireland, where Irish Gaelic culture and language had survived the Anglo-Saxon cultural domination the British had forced upon them for close to five hundred years. Even the band members names speak to this Gaelic traditional reborn in the past decades – leader singer and fiddle player Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh is one to name a few. Mairead formed the band with her late husband Frankie Kennedy, surrounding herself with fiddle, bazooki, guitar and accordion players of immense talent, including Dermont Byrne, the winner of the Traditional Irish Musician of the Year for 2013. 

I felt embarrassed for having had a drink before the show, the band’s traditional Irish love songs from Ireland and Scotland were all sung in Gaelic and because of that drink, the songs lulled me to have droopy eyes, for which I am not sure if that is good. Certainly I would be foolish to not admit the jigs, reels, sets and Shetland style traditional tunes that they played were intense, heart-warming and rhythmically in tune with every piece they performed. Ally and I admitted that the group of whiney hipsters behind us needed not to clap as loud at the Hulk in the middle of every tune – that’s not what traditional Irish music is all about! 

Memories of Ireland came alive this past Sunday within the first jig and reel played, my eyes watering a bit with waves of potent nostalgia. When I return to that island and explore cities familiar and landscapes yet unseen, traditional Irish music should be a required accompaniment, with at least one of the tracks being from Altan. 

http://altan.ie/

Theater of Improbable Frequency

The heart of Chicago theater is not in the palaces of the loop. With equal number, if at some occasions small to mid-sized theaters and performance halls than New York City, Chicago reigns in talent hungry to hone their skills. Though my Ally would be right in admitting that New York’s Broadway and London’s West End is the gold at the end of the rainbow, theater in Chicago isn’t viewed out of the mere fortune that we live in a culture-less area – we are the culture, with plenty of great shows to boot.

For years I have been journeying down to the city to watch shows in which my oldest friend, Mike Przygoda, has lend his musical talent to. So when he floats a text my way before my Wednesday night Humanities class at Harper with the offer of two preview tickets to his new show, Improbable Frequency at Strawdog Theater, a man wouldn’t be foolish to resist – especially since he has to save so much for a wedding in one year’s time. 

For years I’ve admired Mike’s musical commitment to multitudes of Chicago theaters. This is on top of his duties to students at The Chicago High School for the Arts on the South Side as well as being a company member of Barrel of Monkeys – oh and did I mention he runs his small label, Speed-Fi? The man doesn’t get sleep anyway. 

Another feather in his cap to another theater he is company member at is Strawdog Theater at 3829 N. Broadway in Chicago where Mike serves as Musical Director and Orchestrator for the musical comedy Improbable Frequency. Set in Dublin of the neutral to World War Two Irish Free-State (still under some British influence) in the early 1940’s, this tale of a rather uncommon and uptight English crossword artist Tristam Faraday turned spy gets raveled up in a game of intrigue with code words on Irish radio broadcasts that might in fact be helping the Nazi’s deliver weapons to the disgruntled and violent Irish Republican Army. Along the way our spy Mr Faraday (nice nod to English scientist Michael Faraday) crosses paths and romantic glances with the charming yet goofy Philomena O’Shea who appears to be up to her own games of deception. 

To say that Strawdog company members Michael Dailey as Faraday (doing his best Rex Harrison impression) and Sarah Goeden as Philomena (a wiz with comic timing and voice) are the only good parts of the show would have only resulted if the audience was only awake for their parts. Scott Danielson showed great range in switching from a bumbling Englishman, to Myles the poetic Irish alky-barfly, to the violent I.R.A man Muldoon. Jason Grimm leaves you tickled with his Hi-ti-di-te Irish accent of broadcaster O’Dromedary and positively Faulty Towers-esque English agent named John Betjeman. Christina Hall as Agent Green provides what Marlene Dietrich only wish she could have done with an English accent. Eric Paskey was a tad flat with the Colonel but was delightful as the overly sexed mad scientist version of the famous German scientist Erwin Schrodinger. 

In a cramped space off to the side of the stage, Mike leads his other musicians in music that as he told me, “had to be transcribed and learned without any sheet music.” Considering how tight the music was with the timing of the musical numbers (and there are a lot of cues for the small black box cavern style stage that is Strawdog) I applaud Mike for leading the musicians in using their ears to do the work of making the tunes of Improbable Frequency come alive. 

The show last night was the wrap-up of preview performances before the premiere tonight. Ironing out the kinks of missed cues, lighting and music bits is what Mike and the cast did right after the show. I’ll admit with the accents flying and the dry Anglo-Irish humor that even for a man like myself who lived in Ireland that I had a few moments where I found it difficult to follow along. The second act is a bit weaker than the first, most of all I think because of the Dr Who meets Mystery Science Theater 3000 in a musical sequence in Schrodinger’s lab with the Probability Machine, a device that effects space-time. 

Director Kyle Hamman notes that Improbable Frequency is “full of comedic bits, vocal cartwheels, and a quick step or two, (the show) is a wacky word-lay musical on the surface but keep your ear to the ground and you’ll pick up on something much more complex.” Take a chance on Strawdog Theater in their 25^th year, even if you are surrounded by hipsters that as Ally noted were “all drinking PBR while we are drinking Woodchuck.” Trust me, unlike with the Pabst you will be cool enough to see the delight that is Improbable Frequency.  

http://www.strawdog.org/

A Grilled Cheesy Night

We don’t know who started the craze. First it seemed food trucks, who specialize in a small set of items from Korean BBQ to tacos, started putting around the U.S serving only gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches. Then it seemed restaurants took a cue that people voted with their wallets on wanting more than stale white bread with the kind of American cheese that has to be peeled off from individual plastic layers. These sort of memories are collections of days where comfort foods of grilled cheese and a good soup, preferably tomato rice, warmed our bodies over from the frost that accumulated on our windows. Not blazing a whole new trail I took cues from others to try different breads and cheeses. Then, we’d really be breaking bland upper Midwest tradition by adding bizarre toppings – you know, like basil and chicken. 

One such place continues the creative grilled cheese tradition – Cheesie’s Pub and Grub.

Having to watch our wallets but still wanting to be fulfilled, my other food buddy Nick and I took up his suggestion to visit the new establishment at 622 West Davis in Evanston. The other location is the original at 958 West Belmont in Lakeview. Stepping out of the cold and into the delightfully colored walls of Cheesie’s, one should abandon pretention, embrace the creativity and realize their target audience is the kids down the street at Northwestern University. Ever the Humanities instructor, I smiled at the playful Dali-esque mockeries of modern art on the main wall – Picasso’s statue and Ladies of Avignon, a Superman pose of who Nick and I guessed was Stephen Colbert, and a who’s who of Hollywood from Chicago in an Edward Hopper remake of Nighthawks. The purple wildcat claws of Northwestern are painted about, making us aware that students run the front. 

To my hilarity, and perhaps I shouldn’t expect much less from some students these days, one cashier was helpful and caring whist the other was too cool for school in his ironic hipster glasses and senior citizen wool button up, dancing around to a Kesha song that blasted out from speakers above as he delivered the baskets. You lose style and humanity points, jackass. 

Ever the curious bunch, Nick promised to exchange the half of our sandwich for each others. He ordered the special – a Texas toast combination of American cheese, fried pickles and catfish. Though it sounds disgusting, the sandwich was an excellent combination of savory and hearty. My appetites were for the delicious The Melt, made with American cheese, Chihuahua cheese, marinated chicken breast, bacon, Thousand Island and tomato on Texas toast that was served with creamy pesto mayo dipping sauce (damn good). 

With a side of tater tots for him and sweet tater fries for myself, I’d be a fool not to take advantage of the next Groupon or LivingSocial that offers deals on Cheesie’s Pub and Grub. Go there at least for some creative, unpretentious spins on traditional foods like the grilled cheese. It's not like they've added foie gras to a grilled cheese - yet.

https://cheesieschicago.com/