john_j_enright

I just picked up my shirt and race bib for the Ridge Run, a local 10k. I believe this will be my 29th running of this race, the first 10k I ever ran.

Maybe once I hit 30 I can stop. A lot of my contemporaries, who used to be Ridge Run regulars, have stopped. Mostly it's their knees that stopped them. I've been lucky with my knees, so far. Knock on cartilage.

They're a kind of pivotal hinge
with a nasty potential for twinge.

I'm not sure how long the Obama campaign
can keep harping on Bain.

“Let’s compare apples to apples,” the other CNN host said to the DNC chair. “It seems to me the criticism you’re offering is that Mitt Romney went into businesses and laid people off. But wouldn’t the apples to apples comparison be that’s exactly what Barack Obama did when he touts the auto industry as a feather in his cap, didn’t the federal government and Barack Obama go in and layoff thousands of autoworkers to save that industry?”

Let the topic subtly alter
whenever your logic starts to falter.

Classic Bloomberg:

An amateur video, filmed by an annoyed Manhattanite and broadcast Tuesday on WABC-TV, showed the mayor landing and taking off several times over the weekend from the East 34th Street helipad, where trips on Saturday and Sunday have been expressly banned for more than a decade.

Now that he has been publicly shamed, he has agreed to stop.

I always liked that helipad. When I lived on 38th Street I liked to walk over and watch the whirlybirds. Chicago doesn't seem to have a similar helipad. We did have a whole mini-airport on the waterfront near downtown, but our previous mayor bulldozed it in the dead of night. To solve the noise problem. Or the risk of crashes. Or something.

And so I'm jealous
of NYC where truly zealous
copter pilots can land all week
in a whirling roaring streak.

The Chicago police used bicycles a lot during the NATO protests. They would line them up in impromptu barrier walls and stand behind them, which struck me as a novel tactic.

Much less scary than a row of tanks,
but, still, a way to hold ranks.

By some strange coincidence, the most recent plays I've been moved by lately have been "fairy tale" sorts of stories:

1) my friends at Dream are doing part 2 of their Peter Pan trilogy, by Jeremy Menekseoglu.

2) I was into Into The Woods, by Sondheim and Lapine. I was playing Cinderella's father.

3) My friend, Jordan Leigh Wakefield, played the prince in The Fantasists, by Randy Wyatt, a clever children's story featuring a quest to save a kingdom from an ill-intentioned ice witch.

I have seen nary a fairy,
but their tales rarely fail.

After all these years, I now have experience putting on eyeliner. My tendency to flinch, when anything gets near my eye, was not helpful.

Sometimes it seems a bit daft,
the things we do in the acting craft.

Police here have arrested a few people and accused them of making, or planning to make, Molotov cocktails. Alleged targets include Obama campaign HQ, Rahm Emanuel's home, and police stations.

The defense lawyer called it a set-up:

At least two informants "ingratiated themselves" with the three men, brought the materials and made the alleged plans, he insisted, calling it "an entrapment to the highest degree."

You have to be careful with the entrapment defense, since, like the insanity defense, it starts an admission that you did it.

Yes, your honor, I did it, but I've got a good excuse,
so I hope you'll let me loose.

This would have been a regular workday in downtown Chicago. But due to all the scare stories about the NATO confab and the protesters...

downtown
was mostly shut down.

I went to work. But a lot of people didn't. I think my morning train was one quarter full at best.

I saw the protesters go by my building 3 times. I had a good view. There weren't a lot of them. My favorite sign:

Give Class War A Chance!

Well, they've got 3 more days to protest before the NATO Show blows town.

Maybe this was just a warm up.
Maybe tomorrow they'll swarm up
in much bigger groups
of class warfare dupes.

Our production of Into The Woods opened tonight, with a big burst of energy. I think Act One was 15 minutes shorter than it was the night before in dress rehearsal. And I didn't hear of any mistakes that the audience was likely to detect as such.

The audience gobbled it up like the wolf gobbled up granny, laughing, clapping, cheering.

It's great fun to have a crowd
that's happy and loud.


(photo by one of the Murphy boys)

The young woman in charge of costumes, for the play I'm in, thought it would suit my character to be wearing a red bow tie. So I bought one. And then I had to learn to tie it!

I've worn bowties a few times in my life. I think I had a clip-on bowtie in elementary school. And the couple of times I've rented a tux... but they came with pre-tied bowties that you just fastened somehow.

Anyway, I found a video on the web, and worked at it. Well, I'm getting better. The good thing is that my character, Cinderella's father, is a bit of a wino, so you wouldn't expect his tie to be too perfect.



Now I sort of know
how to tie one in a bow
I should maybe buy some mo.