It is a new year .  Yes, another.  They do sprint into view with too much haste, just as you are again making promises to do better during the year not yet finished............it is indeed finished.  How can it be 2024?   I just came back to this blog.  Had almost forgotten I had one.  I originally began blogging (if you can call this very occasional revisiting to the site) back in maybe 2008?  (I don't remember - and while on this page I cannot figure out how to get back to that information).

I decided to go back to it in 2017 and actually published a few times.

Now, I have been lying dormant (or rather, this blog has been lieing dormant) until today when, trying to comment on Neil Steinberg's "Every God Damn Day" I was shunted into the "Blogger" site and..........here I am.

This is intended to be just a toe in the water kind of thing because , honestly, I have no time today,  However, if I do one small entry, and promise to do better, perhaps I will start actually posting almost daily.

I just read some of my older ones, and they werent bad.

So - for today - let's just say.....I'm baaaack.

Or, at least I will try to be.

This week, it is very cold - Alaska tundra kind of cold - and usually I don't really go outside when the chill arrives since I can scurry across  a narrow alley-like street into the Prudential building and from there go most places on foot through the Chicago "pedway" - or I can call a Uber.

But Sunday at 4:30 I walked a block, wearing layers that I had learned to use when I ran daily..............a short sleeved t shirt under a long sleeve t shirt under a cardigan sweater under a wool zippered hoody under a faux fur vest I hadn't worn in years; with a knitted cap pulled down to my eyes to hold down the long pony tails I had rubberbanded over each ear ( I have a lot of hair - warming as earmuffs); and both fingered gloves and mittens (found in my old runners drawer) and a wool scarf to wrap around my fact..

I had to go out because I read on Facebook about something called "Drunk Shakespeare" at a theater on Wabash that I never knew existed.

I recommend it.

You walk into a long narrou corrider which is a bar, into a doorway on the far side which leads to a rectangular room with two red thrones on the other side from the door and bench type seats on either side - on your right and left; plus a second row of seats on the right, and both a second and third row on the left. All of the walls are lined with shelves holding old hard covered books.  

An actor greets me with "welcome - here is a libation. let me show you to your seat".  The young man hands me a small shotglass with something pink and sharp, and to the left side where I am in seat no. 14 on the bench.  He points out there is a cubby under my feet in which I will find a menu and into which I can stuff my layers of outerwear.

I then am regaled with a strange but hilarious performance of a raucous version of MacBeth in which one of the five actors is chosen to become a "drunk" actor - and is given several shots of mezcal at the start of the show (two extra shots are imbibed by him and an audience volunteer to prove to all of us that it is really liquor - it was, she reported).

When there are two deaths in the plot,  two members of the audience are handed white bib type shirts spackled with blood (paint) to wear so as to stand in for the killers.

Lady MacBeth is a young and sexy woman who moves like a cat and makes it very clear she is randy , so that MacBeth can forget about his problems from time to time as she writhes in front of him.

Audience members bid to be seated in the two "thrones" where a couple (they paid $100) received free food, a bottle of champagne, and involvement in the action from time to time.  For example, the woman ("Lady " whatever) is asked mid show to decide if the one drinking actor is drunk enough and if she determines that he is not, then he must imbibe again. 

At one point, they all dance down the aisle to the toon of Michael Jackson's "Beat It".

I ordered food and drinkby using a QR code on the menu, and a server brought me a coktail and hummus with pita

It was definitely worth the walk.

And this entry is not a very good sample of my blogging, but is here just to start out and prove to myself that I will indeed start doing it daily.

Daily?

Well, maybe , at least, from time to time.