Read My Fair Lazy: One Reality Television Addict's Attempt to Discover if Not Being a Dumb Ass Is the New Black, or a Culture-Up Manifesto for Free Online Page B

out words that are even vaguely sexual. She catches my eye and mouths, “I’m so sorry. I had no idea!”
    Then Marta, the lead dancer, comes out wearing a circus-tent-sized shirtdress. She strips from the waist up and begins to make out with a statue for a while.
    Like, a long while.
    Then the whole stage is covered with an enormous sheet of dry-cleaning film, and Marta and her naked self writhe against it for a very long, naked while. She almost dances but is likely too busy being naked and trying not to suffocate when she breathes in the film.
    I guess this is why they put all those warnings on the plastic.
    Then the entire ensemble assembles onstage with giant plates of watermelon, 40 and they spit chunks of it into the air and at the audience. They pour water all over themselves and swim around on the wet, watermelon-y floor.
    And then it is over.
    With no goddamned dancing whatsoever.
    The audience goes batshit crazy with applause and gives the “dancers” an extra-long standing ovation while I try to make sense of what the hell I just saw.
    As soon as everyone finally finishes applauding, I turn to Stacey and say, “You realize this is exactly why my side keeps cutting funding to the arts. And by the way, I totally called the watermelon.”

    Later we find out that Marta Carrasco and company were retiring certain pieces and that what we saw was essentially a medley of her previous work. Stacey tells me, “By cutting them up and mixing them around, the continuity was lost, as was most of the dancing. In the original context, you’d have seen that the smoking and desk spinning in the beginning was her interpretation of losing a job and having nothing but time on her hands.”
    I nod. “Now that I’d understand. When I got laid off, I remember I’d sit in my desk chair and spin and spin when I was trying to think.”
    “Exactly. And I give you props for not leaving the moment the first n-i-p-p-l-e made its Goodman Theatre debut,” she adds.
    “You know what’s funny? Even though I had no frigging clue what any of the performance meant, I like having had the privilege of getting a glimpse into an artist’s mind. I mean, what I saw was disturbing and dark—”
    “And watermelon-y.”
    “And watermelon-y,” I agree, “but the experience wasn’t without value, you know? Like, my world is a tiny bit bigger for having seen that.”
    Stacey seems pleased. “That’s what I always used to try to get my students to see. The value in a performance like that isn’t understanding every nuance the artist implies. It’s the interpretation and feelings you get from it.”
    “Well, mostly I ended up thinking I wasn’t in on the joke. But there’s a part of me that feels like I learned something from the performance, even if it’s how to fight my way out of a giant dry-cleaning bag.”
    Seriously, something about this performance yanked off the big white dustcover that’s been protecting the critical thinking part of my brain. There were no producers here to explain every little nuance of the action via a single-camera confessional, and it was up to me to interpret what I saw. I had to engage .
    Intellectually, I sort of feel like I did the first time I ran on the treadmill. Most of my body was screaming no . . . but a tiny part of me shouted yes.
    from the desk of the logan square - bucktown neighborhood association 41
    Dear Neighbor,
    Remember this weekend when you idled right outside my bedroom window? And you played shitty house music as loud as your fifteen-year-old Buick’s radio would allow? With your bass turned up so high my fillings rattled? For, like, twenty minutes? At 3:00 a.m.? And when I went outside to glower at you, all you did was move two spaces up? Remember that?
    No?
    Too bad.
    Because that’d go a long way in explaining why I was organizing my purse right beneath your open bedroom window late last night, playing Natasha Bedingfield as loud as my Harman Kardon speakers would allow.
    By