Went to a comic show last Sunday for the first time in a while. As soon as I walked in the door all I heard from the dealers was griping about how nobody was there, and those who were would all disappear as soon as the Patriots game started. As it was, I didn't really find much to buy, one guy had some cheap '70's Marvels in great shape, so I picked up several issues of Godzilla of all things, and another guy had a couple of my missing Power Man's. Could only find a couple of cheap Ripleys Believe it or Nots, got a bunch of comics for the kids, some for now and some for Christmas. And for two bucks I finally got my last missing issue of Howard the Duck magazine, which was exciting. It's always fun to go look, check out the bootleg videos (no records and cd's this time), the Japanese toys, etc. But most of what was for sale was either crap (a lot of recent indy stuff), overpriced even though "on sale" (a barely good copy of Ripleys #4, the first issue, was half price at $10, when the guide said it should be $5), and pedigree stuff that is out of my price range. There's plenty of '70s Marvels to be had if you want to pay $6 or $7 apiece for a fine condition, but that's still a bit much for me. At the rate I'm going, it'll take about 1000 years to complete my collection, but I'm in no rush, since I don't really have the room for the stuff anyway. Someday Justin's going to want his closet for his own stuff, then I'll have to seek other accomodations for the 20 or so longboxes that are in there.

Eight of us met up last night for the Classics Reading Group, relegated this month to the sociology section on the first floor as there were at least two other events going on at the same time in the store. Laura was not among the attendees, having begged off for a month due to work and preparation for a big vacation, hard to believe since the meeting was going to last longer than it took to read the book, but that's okay, she's the reading group's biggest fan and is entitled to a day off once in a while.



As a result there's no recap from her that I can just cut and paste into this. Evan was in charge, and was by no means interested in taking on the newsletter, too, so its up to me to remember what we talked about. The book was actually a play, Macbeth. Plays do surprisingly well at the group, maybe because the lack of expository prose allows people to fill in the gaps in their own ways, creating more topics for debate. Certainly there was no concern about finding enough things to talk about this time, since Mr. and Mrs. Macbeth are among two of the most famous and most debated characters in literature.



A general question about the nature of the witches kicked off the discussion - were they really witches, what was their purpose, etc. Most seem to agree with the idea that Macbeth is fated to kill the king, and the witches merely reinforce something he was thinking about doing anyway, plus then Lady Macbeth puts in her own two cents. One member was extremely dubious that Shakespeare attributed Macbeth's actions to fate, but just about everyone found that predestination was a staple of Shakespeare's tragedies, and this was no exception. I personally found just based on the text that Macbeth is not a terribly heroic character, such that it makes it more difficult to pass off as good tragedy in that there is little upon which for the reader/viewer to hang their sympathy. Lady Macbeth is almost the more "tragic" character in that she eggs her husband on to an evil deed for her own gain, then realizes too late that this causes events to spiral out of control, ultimately leading to both their untimely ends.



The last part of the discussion then focused on what exactly is a tragedy, starting with the Aristotelian definition that a tragedy is an otherwise good man does a horrible thing unknowingly. That counts out Macbeth, as he knew full well what he was doing. I suggested that while he did know he was going to kill the king in order to become king himself, the fact that this would lead to years of misery and the deaths of numerous others, culminating in his own demise, was unknown to him at the outset and maybe that could be considered the "unknowing" part of the definition. Nobody else bought it, though. Most didn't seem to have trouble with Macbeth as a tragic character, even though he comes across as a bit on the dim side and and too willing to let his wife call the shots.



There are lots of secondary characters in Macbeth that didn't get much mention, and since the play is on the short side there isn't a lot to grab you about most of them without seeing what an actor, who has already thought about it a lot, would bring to a specific role. But it was a good discussion and the time went quickly. We thought in honor of the recall election we should in Laura's absence recall some of the subsequent books that have already been chosen and vote in some others, but we ran out of time.

A month ago today I was in Maui, taking in the sights along the road to Hana. Got some pictures in the mail yesterday from Mom, primarily of that particular tour. Sure wish I was still there...



Last night was game 5 of the ALDS, which is not the acronym for Lou Gehrig's Disease, but the American League Division Series, and who could resist what with the Red Sox having surged back into the fray with two straight wins at home after dropping the first two in Oakland. It was 1999 all over again, same pattern, same result, the major difference being there wasn't a 23-2 game in Fenway (or whatever it was) like last time, and Pedro wasn't injured and doing duty as a closer like last time. All the games were close, two went into double-digit innings, but last night's game couldn't possibly have been more of a squeaker, where the Sox did everything by the book to blow a three run lead, but still managed to come up with the win.



What's different about these kind of games is that there's some sort of emotional involvement (from me, that is, lots of people get that way at every game). Since I grew up in Illinois and there were no winning teams in Chicago, you never got that feeling of anticipation in a close game. Sure the Bears made the playoffs a couple of times in the late 70's, but only to get stomped by Dallas in the first round. As soon as I moved here, the Bears won the Superbowl, and against the Patriots no less, the timing stunk as I couldn't see all the Bears games on tv out here, and they were so dominant there wasn't much concern about them winning the whole thing. The Patriots squeaked in by upsetting the Dolphins ("Squish the Fish") and although the rallying cry was to "Berry the Bears", or, even better, "Smear the Bears", which only rhymes in Boston, they ended up the smearees and were out of the game after about five minutes.



In '86, the Celtics won their last championship, not a big basketball fan at the time (with only the pre-Jordan Bulls to go by, and the NBA not on tv that much before cable, it wasn't a top sport of mine), then the Red Sox made the World Series, and we all know what happened there. After that came the long dry spell in Boston, the Patriots gave it another go in the mid-90's, the Bruins and Celtics every so often would squeeze into the playoffs and lose in the first round, but nothing much to get excited about, and after the heartbreak of the '86 Red Sox (which was only a year after I moved here so it still wasn't that big a deal to me, bearing in mind that in '86 I still didn't think I was going to be staying here forever), who could afford the attachment to another team's playoff aspirations?



The Wildcats came through, though by having a spectacular season out of nowhere in '95. I have fond memories of watching them beat Notre Dame on tv in the first week of the season, and then it just kept happening. Nate, Tony, Wolsky and I were all in weekly contact as NU piled one win onto the next, to the point that we were bowl-bound for the first time in our lifetimes. As those late season matchups against Illinois, Penn State, and Michigan State came around, when each additional win meant not only a better shot at a bowl, but at a better bowl, until the Big Ten title was on the line, suddenly I was watching games that mattered. Instead of having a passing interest in who won or lost, it seemed to be important, and there was that heady sense of unease, the wild swings in mood from euphoria to devestation that went with each great play or great goof. At the end of each game, and almost every one was a nailbiter, you couldn't help feeling exhilirated and exhausted, and downright giddy with anticipation for the next matchup. And lo and behold, 10 weeks after chloe was born, I was heading to Pasadena for a rendezvous with my fellow alums and a date with destiny.



Of course we lost, but it was a lot of fun. The Rose Bowl game itself would of course been great to win, but winning it wouldn't have accomplished anything more than what the team had already achieved, and the 'Cats made a game of it, keeping it close until the last quarter. The next year they were right back in it with a trip to the Citrus Bowl, but after the once-in-a-lifetime experience of the Rose Bowl, neither Tony, Adam or I went since it didn't seem like as big of a deal.



The Patriots finally broke the logjam in Boston in 2001, again with a series of close games and some questionable calls going their way for once, and their last-second Superbowl win is still talked about today. By this point of course I was a Boston sports fan (although not as "what have you done for me lately" as most of the natives around here), so that was a fun ride, the Patriots were underdogs in every playoff game but they won them all anyway, and came close to giving away the Superbowl but just couldn't do it. The Red Sox had teased in '99, but after the gutsy come from behind series against Cleveland they were crushed by the evil Yankees in five games and that was that. This year the Yankees once again are the next roadblock, and of course are favored by everybody, but Arizona showed they were beatable, the Red Sox have never been better, so anything could happen. Watching game four on Sunday sort of reminded me of the Bulls' heyday, when they could go down by 20 or 30 points in a crucial game, and you just sat back and said, "they'll come back", and they always did. The Sox were down then, too, but with the hometown crowd and the sudden ascendance of the bullpen and any number of other factors, you couldn't help but think, "they'll pull it out", and sure enough they did. That was not the feeling last night, where you could barely stand to look at the screen for what was happening before your eyes, but you didn't dare give up on them, and they somehow pulled it off.



And the Cubs are still right in it, too. While we were on the snorkeling trip we struck up a conversation with some people from Marblehead, one of whom was conspicuous by his Red Sox baseball cap. I said I liked the idea of a Cubs/Red Sox world series, in that at least one curse would be broken, and this guy agreed, but cautioned that the odds were good that if it did happen, somewhere towards the end of game seven the earth would open up and swallow the stadium and both teams along with it, leaving the outcome in doubt for all time. Like a movie or a book that ends on a cliffhanger, we'd all be left to speculate for the rest of eternity what would've happened. And what's so wrong with that?

Now that Maui is but a distant memory, the days are getting irritatingly short and the temperature is dropping like a rock, so the leaves can't be far behind. The six-month winter must be just around the corner, I can hardly wait.



As of last night it's official, I've rejoined the Masterworks Chorale, ending my self-imposed exile that was supposed to last for three months but ended up taking three years. Just in time for my 15th anniversary of joining the group in '88, plus they've got a pretty good season lined up with L'Enfance du Christe in November, Carmina Burana in March and the St. John Passion in May.



It was really almost a spur of the moment thing, I had always figured that I'd go back to a rehearsal when I felt like it, and after returning from two weeks of vacation in two different places, suddenly I had the urge to go again. Not that I'd been completely absent from the group, I've been helping unload the fruit truck off and on during this whole stretch, maintaining the website when somebody thinks to send me an update, and I played for several rehearsals and a few auditions and summer sings, but this was my first time returning just to sing.



As to why I'd ever stopped going in the first place, there was no particular reason other than short attention span. After three years as treasurer during some financially difficult times the chorale had become a major drag on my work time as well as my free time and I thought maybe a few weeks off to just stay at home on Tuesday nights and watch Buffy might be worthwhile. The kids were old enough to miss me when I was gone, and since I only see them briefly during the week anyway it seemed that extra evening could be better spent at home, plus giving me more flexibility if I wanted to burn an evening for reading group or the opera/symphony/whatever. That first concert was the B Minor mass, which is great and all, but not something I was dying to do again so soon.



As it turned out, the weeks became months, Beth started filling in her Tuesday nights with her own meetings, Buffy turned out to have degenerated into a soap opera, and just like anything else, once inertia has taken hold it's difficult to shake. So I figured I'd go back the following fall, but then that didn't happen, then the fall after that, and again I didn't quite make it. Played for six rehearsals in a row at the beginning of last year while Elissa was recovering from surgery, but even that didn't spur me to returning.



This year was different because the season was more appealing (all stuff I've sung before but none later than 1991, a respectable amount of time), Allen is looking like he'll live forever after all. If I was going to go back I wanted to do it before so many people of my era had left that it felt like a different group, so I had to return before everyone forgot me. As it turns out, at that first rehearsal two weeks ago I was getting hugs, kisses on both cheeks, being called by name by people some of whose names I no longer remember, it was quite a welcome, Allen said he'd be glad to have me back, even though I just kind of showed up and said, "so I'm back, is that okay?"



Now I've forked over the dues, so I guess that's that. It's only a matter of time before I get back in the swing of dreading Tuesdays and thinking up ways to play hooky. I'd really prefer to skip the Christmas concert, since it comes during a rather busy time of the year, but I think I can swing the rest. The Berlioz music comes back easily, the French text not so much, but one out of two isn't bad. The next step is to dust off the tux and see what kind of shape it's in, and whether I have a white shirt that's still white. Not singing for this long, in combination with some heavyweight summer sing accompanying, I think may have helped motivate my return to playing the piano more, so it will be interesting to see if singing and playing both can peacefully coexist in the ongoing competition for my spare time.