CDs 21-31

Reduced CDs, thumbs up and down:

Thumbs up:

k.d. lang, Watershed - classic k.d. crooning

Tegan and Sara - So Jealous - more lesbians from up north. sort of a cross between folk and riotgrrl.

Dixie Chicks - Wide Open Spaces - an old one that we had never gotten around to earlier. Classic chicks.

Dustin O'Halloran - Piano Solos v. 2-- he opened for k.d. lang at a recent concert and we loved him. some of his music can be heard on the "Marie Antionette" soundtrack.

Alicia Keys -- one of our favorites from last year. soul for the 21st century.

KT Tunstall -- Eye to the Telescope -- great voice, guitar and songs from the girl from Scotland. What more could you ask for?

Rufus Wainwright - Rufus Does Judy at Carnigie Hall -- Rufus channels Judy Garland, reperforming her famous concert at Carnigie. Great versions of some great classic tunes.

Fiona Apple -- When the Pawn . . . This is an old one that a friend sent to us and we loved. Who does dark and overwrought better?

Thumbs down:

Lucinda Williams - West - We love Lucinda, but this is not her best stuff.

Erykah Badu - New Amerykah -- Love Erykah too but this one was a bit too "conceptual" for our tastes.

Books 33-40

Ok, in keeping with the Reduced Shakespeare model, we're filling up the book category in one message. There will be two categories for the book list, one for thumbs up and one for thumbs down.

Thumbs up:

Girls Like Us: Carole King, Carly Simon and Joni Mitchell. It has been getting some rough reviews but we really like it -- a good beach read, it's tone is a cross between early women's movement info and People magazine.

Keeping Faith by Jodi Picault -- great writer and a great story (but we should also add that the book lacks a great ending)

Heydey by Kurt Anderson -- rolicking good story of gold rush era

Our Lady of the Forest by David Guterson -- a wet story of a modern saint set in the pacific northwest.

Little Book of Atheism -- first half offers dull proofs that god doesn't exist but the second half
is filled with interesting material about spirituality without god.

Thumbs Down:

Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris. Lots of hype and publicity, but no there there.

Geek Love by Katherine Dunn -- tries way too hard

The Yiddish Policeman's Ball by Michael Chabon -- the first book of his I haven't liked.

Reduced 10x40 - Experiences

We're way behind in our posting, maximizing our last months in Chicago at the expense of keeping of the blog! Have you ever seen Reduced Shakespeare? It's a humorous performance offered by a comedy group that goes through all of the plays (or all the books of the Bible, or all the great books -- you get the idea). Well, they take their time for first 3/4 of the show, only to have to run through in rapid fire fashion whatever plays or books remain at the end of the show.

Inspired by Reduced Shakespeare, in the next several posts we're going to offer a list of things that we've done in the last month or so, to the end of getting to 40 in as many categories as possible. Think of it as Reduced 10x40. We'll be closing down the blog on or around June 16, which is the day that I will have my one year check up in cancer world. Seems only fitting that we end there (but with good news this time), since that's where this whole trip started.

Cubs Lose! Performance 20; Fun Fact 40

Yesterday we went to see the Cubs play the division rival Milwaukee Brewers. Kate's first game of the season and Susan's second, it was disappointing to see the Cubs lose a close one. The Cubs' ace, Carlos Zambrano was pitching. He looked sharp early, but then ran up his pitch count well over 100 in the middle innings and was pulled early in the 7th. He helped his own cause by hitting a solo home run in the third, but the Cubs collapsed in the top of the ninth when Milwaukee went ahead by one run. The Cubs could not generate enough fire power in the bottom of the ninth and the game ended quietly in a double play to short. Fun fact: In this huge city, we ran into some good friends who had tickets in the section next to ours and we were all able to sit together. Small town Athens isn't the only place where that kind of thing can happen!

Ryan Adams - Easy Tiger - CD 21; Fun Fact 39

Do you like Neil Young? Lucinda Williams? Gillian Welch? If so, you're you'll probably like Ryan Adams' Easy Tiger. This 2007 alt-country release has all the trademark Adams features: great voice, excellent guitarwork, finely crafted songwriting. You may remember Adams from his earlier band Whiskeytown, or from his 2001 solo release Gold which received a fair amount of radio play, as did his song "New York" especially after 9/11. While Gold remains my favorite CD of his, Easy Tiger is a close second. Fun Fact: Before he became famous Adams played in a band called The Patty Duke Syndrome.

The Counterfeiters - Movie 28

This intriguing German-made film is about a world class counterfeiter who is arrested by the Nazis. He survives in the camps by heading up a unit of Jews who are charged with creating convincing copies of the British pound and the U.S. dollar, to support a Nazi plot to undermine their respective economies. This quiet but powerful film offers a facinating mediatation on the complexities of power and the difficulty of knowing what exactly is the right thing to do in difficult circumstances. One of the best films we've seen this year - we highly recommend it!

Girlyman / WAC at Bill's Blues - Performances 18 & 19

A couple of Sundays ago we went to see the band Girlyman at the Old Town School of Folk Music, with our friends Jude and Pam who were in visiting from Milwaukee. (Check out a sampling of their music here.) Girlyman is a trio of accomplished musicians who also happen to be hysterically funny. The OTS is a great venue for seeing live music. (For Athens friends: it's even more intimate than Stuart's Opera House!) And it was great to see our friends from our old neighborhood in Milwaukee. We plan to meet up with them for a Cubs game later this summer.

Speaking of musical performances, I forgot to blog the performance of my Women's Acoustic Group at Bill's Blues in Evanston (the home of Northwestern University, just north of the city proper). We all braved the weather one super cold Thursday in late February to play a 7 song set at this friendly club that stages primarily folk and blues performers. Not too many things are better than the thrill of being on stage and performing -- especially in front of such an enthusiastic audience. Hope we'll be able to get another performance in before the end of the summer! (I'm second from the left in the shot above.)