Our very funny friend Dana Olsen, a fellow Northwestern University and Mee-Ow Show alum, is hosting “A Comedic Variety Show for the Middle Ages” at The Wilmette Theatre on June 14th. If you’re anywhere near Chicago’s North Shore, you won’t want to miss it.
Dana is comedian and screenwriter whose works include The ‘Burbs, Memoirs of an Invisible Man, George of the Jungle and Inspector Gadget. Dana is one of the funniest people I know — and I know lots of funny people: intentional and unintentional. With Dana, the humor is definitely intentional.
I’ve known Dana since we were both NU freshmen in 1976. He was a brilliant and captivating raconteur back then – and he’s even more fun to listen to now. Plus, he was recently named one of North Shore Magazine’s “Eligible Bachelors of the North Shore.” It’s truly groovy in Mr. Olsen’s neighborhood.
Victoria, Steve Rashid and I will be joining Dana on the bill that evening – just one night before we open “The Vic & Paul Show” on Chicago’s South Side at The Beverly Arts Center on June 15th.
Comedic chanteuse Shelly Goldstein, another fellow Northwestern and Mee-Ow Show alum (and the original director of “The Vic & Paul Show”) will also be appearing with us in “Mr. Olsen’s Neighborhood.”
“Mr. Olsen’s Neighborhood” is the place to be on June 14th.
Then, after enjoying some laughs at The Wilmette Theatre on the North Side, come down to The Beverly Arts Center on the South Side for more laughs.
June in Chicago will be a very funny month.
Filed under Art, Comedy, Improvisation, Music
That’s it. I’ve had it.
Screw you, Joe Manchin, so-called Democratic U.S. Senator of the great state of West Virginia!
I understand, Joe, that you’re on the fence about whether to support President Obama or Mitt Romney???
Do you really think Mitt Romney gives a damn about the hard working, blue-collar working class people in your poor, impoverished state?
Or are you just too damn weak to stand up to the fossil fuel companies who work your constituents to death while raping our environment?
Or the NRA.
Try educating your voters, Joe. Tell them the truth that they might be too ignorant, uneducated, bigoted and/or afraid to hear: the Republicans don’t give a damn about them.
How many millionaires live in West Virginia, Joe?
How many coal miners make a million dollars a year? Do you understand that all your coal-mining constituents pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes than multi-millionaire Mitt Romney does?
You suck, Joe Manchin. Get off the fence. Get real. Or retire.
We progressive Democrats would rather have a true believer Republican in the Senate than a weak-kneed, ineffective, frightened loser like you.
If you were born after 1970, you may not remember the Dick Clark that I remember. You might remember the Dick Clark of “TV’s Bloopers and Practical Jokes” or “New Year’s Rockin’ Eve”.
And if you were born after 1980, your primary image of Dick Clark is likely the elderly, diminished, post-stroke Dick Clark who showed up after young Ryan Seacrest carried the bulk of “New Year’s Rockin’ Eve”. You might have winced at the sight of him. You might have wondered why he was still on TV.
But for the kids of my generation, born in the 1950’s – and the kids 10 years older than me – Dick Clark was a pop culture icon second to none.
At a time when the personal tastes of a single popular radio disc jockey could still make or break a musical artist, Dick Clark was the most influential DJ of them all.
And with “American Bandstand”, Dick Clark brought the best of rock & roll to television every week. If it was good rock & roll music, and you could dance to it, he showcased it on “American Bandstand”. Dick helped make the kids jump to bands and artists we might otherwise have never known — a lot of African-American artists, too. In the incredibly uptight 1950’s, he wasn’t hung up on “race music”. From Little Richard to Chuck Berry, it was all rock & roll to Dick Clark.
Now, I know there are those people – especially some rock & roll historians — who still harbor a grudge against Dick Clark because of the 1950’s Payola Scandal and how Dick got away relatively unscathed and Alan Freed’s career was basically destroyed.
Freed, the man who coined the term “rock & roll” took the fall – and Dick Clark rose above it.
Google the payola scandal, study the history, and reach your own conclusion. As a Clevelander, you might imagine I’d be in the pro-Freed, anti-Clark camp — but as I figure it, young Dick Clark did what he had to do. And “American Bandstand” helped to keep America rocking for more than 35 years.
(Ironically, I attended Northwestern University in the late 1970s with Dick Clark’s son and Alan Freed’s daughter. Strange but true.)
Farewell to Dick Clark.
His passing is truly the end of an era.
I give him a ten.
Because back in the day, he championed the music you could dance to.
Rick Santorum has left the building.Because liberal progressives like me have good reason to shower Rick Santorum with our gratitude.
The best thing about having a truly reactionary ideologue and religious zealot like Santorum in the race for the GOP Presidential nomination has been the fact that the Republican Party’s very unattractive underbelly has been exposed.
Mr. Inevitable, Mitt Romney, has not been able to speak in sweet, uplifting platitudes about shining cities on the hill while devising plans to bleed the working class and further enrich the obscenely wealthy. Not with a sanctimonious culture warrior like Rick forcing him to take hard line “severely conservative” positions on hot button social issues like contraception, gay marriage and a woman’s right to make her own reproductive decisions.
Despite the fact that the majority of Americans favor contraception, gay marriage and a woman’s right to choose, Santorum’s uber-conservative candidacy forced Mitt Romney to state his opposition to all three early and often — and usually in a stumbling, uncomfortable manner.
Without a true believer like Santorum in the race, Romney could have done what many Republican politicians have done: court the religious right in private, promise them school prayer, an anti-abortion amendment, and whatever else their intolerant hearts desire – while speaking in more inclusive terms to the wider voting populace. Then, when elected, he could feel free to ignore the bible bangers’ agenda (which GOP Presidents have been doing since the Nixon years).
But having to compete with Santorum for the fundamentalist base, Romney was forced to shed the middle-of-the-road image that got him elected in liberal Massachusetts – and steer his candidacy far to the religious right.
And yet, many of these conservative Christian voters will reject Romney anyway because he’s a Mormon.
The surprising surge in Rick Santorum’s candidacy after he won the Colorado, Missouri, and Minnesota primaries on the same day in early February meant that Mitt Romney and his millionaires had to spend a lot more money than he would have liked to bombard the airwaves with negative commercials – not targeting Barak Obama, but that pesky upstart, Rick Santorum.
All while President Obama spent his money on putting together a massive ground game in critical states all across the electoral map.
Santorum’s personal brand as an earnest, uncompromising zealot presented a sharp contrast with Romney’s image as an opportunistic political shapeshifter, willing to do or say whatever is necessary to appeal to a Republican base that is far more conservative than he’s been in the past.
Santorum spoke his mind. He had no qualms about saying he’s against birth control. Catholic candidate Santorum had no problem saying that Catholic candidate John F. Kennedy’s historic speech upholding the separation of church and state made him want to throw up. Sometimes, Santorum even let slip the darkest dogs of his intolerant mind, saying he would not “make black people’s (or was it “blah people’s) lives better by giving them other people’s money” and calling President Obama a “government nig…” before catching himself in front of a friendly audience in rural Janesville, Wisconsin. That’s not just a dog whistle: it’s a dog loudspeaker.
Not only did Santorum’s shoot-from-the-lip certainty put Romney’s serial waffling in stark relief – it also revealed the darker, puritanical, homophobic, misogynistic and racist angels of the rabid right wing. For these two reasons alone, Santorum’s candidacy was a daily blessing for progressive Americans. It was a light shed on the darkness. And it kept Romney from running in the sunshine, teeth gleaming, every hair in place and looking like something he’s not: a good guy.
So, now Rick is gone. Google will get fewer hits and we’ll get fewer news cycles about birth control and “blah people”.
But with Santorum gone, Newt Gingrich is free to pander to the religious right and all those “true conservatives” that Santorum had successfully courted. That Santorum has given Newt new life in this race is, perhaps, his last gift to those of us Democrats and Independents who support President Obama’s re-election and fervently hope to take back the House and keep the Senate.
And yet, Rick Santorum will likely have one more card to play – one more way to stick it to the man that he pointedly did NOT endorse in his speech last night suspending his campaign. I’m sure that Rick – a resurgent star of the GOP with a big chunk of devoted delegates — will have to be given a nice big speech at the Republican Convention. Maybe even a keynote address. Remember how well the “culture war” speeches by those two bombastic right wing patriarch Pats, Buchanan and Robertson, went down with the larger viewing and voting public? It’s not likely that Santorum’s speech will be a uniting Kumbaya embrace that helps to draw independents and working class people of all races, creeds and color into the GOP fold.
That speech may be Santorum’s last campaign 2012 gift to progressive America.
Thank you, Rick Santorum, for being exactly who you are.
Something Mitt Romney is not.
Filed under Politics
Steve Rashid, the musical director of The Vic & Paul Show, took a scouting trip to The Beverly Arts Center – where Vic, Steve and I will be appearing this summer from June 15-17 and 21-24.
Here’s Steve driving up to The Beverly Arts Center, located on Chicago’s South Side at 2407 W. 111th Street. You can’t see her in this show, but Steve is with his lovely wife, Bea Rashid, a brilliant dancer and choreographer who runs the Evanston cultural institution, Dance Center Evanston. Bea took many of these photos, which explains why Steve ends up appearing in his own photo tour…
You can Steve in the lobby of The Beverly Arts Center. (Dressed in a snazzy jacket.) This is where you can walk in and buy a ticket to The Vic & Paul Show. It’s also where all the pre-show excitement and hobnobbing will take place before each performance.
This is another angle on the bright and sunny lobby – a pleasant environment that those who attend our Saturday and Sunday matinee performances will be able to enjoy.
Steve wanders upstairs, headed to the theatre balcony. Those who sit in the balcony to watch The Vic & Paul Show will be treated to an excellent view of the subtle bald spot on the back of my head.
This is the view from the stage, looking into the 400-seat house. I love all those colorful seats. This is going to be a really wonderful place to see our show.
Here’s Steve standing on the stage. It’s a deep stage with lots of playing space. I’ll have plenty of room to stagger around during “Whiskey Tasting”.
Here’s another angle on the house. All you folks on the North Side of Chicago should come down and check this theatre out during our run in June. It’s shocking that Evanston doesn’t have a performing arts center like this.
This is the view of the backstage area – where Vic will be getting into all of her hilarious wigs during The Vic & Paul Show. Note the covered baby grand. Steve Rashid can really make a baby grand piano sing. Steve can sing, too. The Beverly Arts Center has two baby grand pianos – but Steve will only be playing one of them. He could play both of them at the same time – but that kind of ostentatious virtuosity went out with Emerson, Lake & Palmer.
Here’s one of the four art galleries located in The Beverly Arts Center. What exhibits will be on display during our run in June? Make sure to ask when you’re ordering your tickets for The Vic & Paul Show.
The promotion for our June run is already underway. Get your tickets now!
See you in Chicago’s lovely and historic Beverly neighborhood this June when The Vic & Paul Show brings a celebration of comedy, music, marriage and martinis to The Beverly Arts Center.
For tickets, click here.
Filed under Art, Comedy, Improvisation
The Vic & Paul Show is coming to Beverly Hills.
We’re talking Beverly Hills on the southwestern edge of the South Side of Chicago. (Known to the locals simply as Beverly.)
Yes, The Vic & Paul Show is going back to Chicago this summer.
And this time, it’s a special homecoming for my wife, Victoria Zielinski – because the show The Chicago Tribune hailed as “Old school sketch comedy done right” will be coming to Vic’s old South Side neighborhood.
The brilliantly funny girl who grew up at 91st and South Hamilton will be performing just 20 blocks from her childhood home when The Vic & Paul Show runs at The Beverly Arts Center at 2407 W. 111th Street from June 15-24th, 2012.
As always, Vic and I will be accompanied by our great friend, fellow Northwestern alum, and ridiculously talented musical director — “the rather impish and thoroughly amusing Steve Rashid”*. Steve also performs his own brand of satirical songwriting in the show: “songs,” notes Chris Jones of The Chicago Tribune, “that recall the stylings of Tom Lehrer.”
(*According to The Trib’s chief theatre critic, Chris Jones – and we certainly agree.)
Last year, we appeared on WGN radio personality (and Chicago newspaper icon) Rick Kogan’s radio show, The Sunday Papers — and Rick introduced us by saying, “One of the theatrical events of the year is the return of Paul Barrosse and Victoria Zielinski to the Chicago stage with ‘The Vic & Paul Show’. I know it’s a lofty comparison, but you guys are the new Nichols & May, as far as I’m concerned.”
Talk about making us feel at home in Chicago after more than two decades.
Vic and I left the Windy City in 1991 to do TV work in Los Angeles – and raise our three wonderful daughters – but now that our kids are of age we’re back on the stage. And according to Chris Jones in The Chicago Tribune, “domesticity has not dulled the itch of Zielinski and Barrosse for a Chicago comedy stage, a couple of hard-backed chairs, and each other.”
We’ve been having great fun trodding the boards once more with Steve at the piano, beginning with our June 2010 debut at Push Lounge in Los Angeles, directed by our good friend and another NU alum, Evanston’s own Shelly Goldstein. A year later, we brought The Vic & Paul Show to Chicago for the first time at The Prop Theatre in June 2011, followed by a great holiday season run at Mayne Stage in Rogers Park.
Now, we’re taking our “Evening of Comedy, Music, Marriage & Martinis” to Vic’s old stomping grounds in Beverly.
If you live in the Chicago area and you haven’t seen The Vic & Paul Show yet, we hope you can join us at the 400-seat Beverly Arts Center for this run. It’s a wonderful venue for the show – and you may want to get there early to check out the rotating exhibitions of contemporary art in The Beverly Arts Center’s four gallery areas: second floor East Gallery, Bridge Gallery, Theater Gallery and Atrium. These exhibits are free and open to the public.
After the show, you can enjoy the best of Beverly, including some of Vic’s girlhood haunts, like Fox’s Beverly Pizza Pub, or a magnificent frozen summer treat at Rainbow Cone on Western and 92nd. And, according to Wikipedia, Beverly is home to more Irish-style pubs than any other in Chicago. Satisfying after-show options abound!
Okay, I know what you’re thinking.
Sure, The Vic & Paul Show is crazy funny, The Beverly Arts Center is obviously a great place to see a show, and all those Irish pubs sound like a guaranteed good time – but how in the world did Vic’s old neighborhood get the name Beverly Hills?
That’s because Beverly is the only area in the City of Chicago that has hills: in fact, it’s located on the highest elevation in the city!
So, this June, it can truly be said that The Vic & Paul Show has reached the top.
Join us at the topographical summit of Chicago for two weeks of grown-up fun: sophisticated and irreverent improvisational sketch comedy and songs performed in a splendid theatre in a vibrant, historic neighborhood.
And did I mention Vic grew up there?
Filed under Art, Comedy, Improvisation
Poster by Ron Crawford, of course!
Filed under Music
So, Mitt Romney won the GOP Primary in the great Midwest state of Illinois. He clobbered the prudish religious zealot Rick Santorum and probably assured his nomination as the Republican candidate for the Presidency. But what does Mitt’s victory in the Land of Lincoln really mean?
Not much.
First of all, let’s look at Illinois Republican Primary voter enthusiasm in 2012. Were this year’s GOP voters in Illinois more psyched up to vote than they were when they lost the Presidency to the state’s favorite son Barack Obama in 2008?
Not really.
About 902,214 Republicans cast their votes in this year’s GOP primary. That’s less than a million votes in a state with more than 7 million registered voters: so much for enthusiasm.
A total of 899,422 Illinois Republicans voted in 2008. So, four years after living through President Obama’s first term, less than 3,000 more Republicans statewide went to the polls to help kick Obama out of office. Not exactly a groundswell of opposition.
This year’s Illinois Republican Primary saw an even greater level of indifference than four years ago – when McCain wound up losing Illinois in a landslide.
In 2008, John McCain won 426,777 GOP votes in my wife’s beloved home state. In 2012, Romney won 427,911. So, Mitt won just 1,200 votes more than McCain did – in a year with 80,000 more registered voters in play statewide. That’s some victory, huh?
So, how do you think President Obama is reacting to Romney’s “victory” in Illinois? Probably something like this…
Filed under Politics
Click CD photo for music & info!
Paul's Voyage of Discovery & Etc. 