Regardless of Thompson’s political leanings I did follow the first half of his advice and got my vote on yesterday up at Welles Park. The whole process took about forty-five minutes, including the wait in line - and that was in the middle of a Saturday. If you haven’t voted yet, you can still participate in early voting through this coming Thursday. Click here to find the early voting location closest to you.

Second, Shakesploitation! opens at Gorilla Tango Theatre (1919 N. Milwaukee Ave.) this Friday. The show features three one-act parodies of plays by William Shakespeare, with fight choreography provided by Yours Truly.

And third, next Saturday, October 18th, you should come by the Playground Theater (3209 N. Halsted St.) at midnight for Atomic Nerdery, a celebration of all things geeky hosted by Chicago Metblogs’ very own Dan Telfer. Aside from some great stand-up, sketch comedy, live music, puppets and film, this evening will also feature the debut of The Gentleman Rogues, a new stage combat/comedy duo featuring myself and Ryan Zarecki.

See you at the theatre! A good time shall be had by all!

The city’s hopes now lie with the White Sox, who are already two games down in their series against the Tampa Bay Rays. The Sox in exciting (if desperate) fashion, forcing a one-game mini-playoff against division rivals the Minnesota Twins. While our hopes - or fears - of a Crosstown Classic have been crushed, there is still a chance for a little more October baseball in Chicago. If you like that sort of thing.

Personally, I feel like the season starts a month too early and ends a month too late. They call baseball players the “Boys of Summer” for a reason. There should never be a risk of a ballgame getting snowed out.

But whatever. The Bears are on at noon.

I have exploded.

Although the scenes themselves were almost forty years old, much of the humor arose from the random attempts to update the settings. References to iPod Docks clashed hilariously with comments about four-dollar movie tickets and the draft. Some of the scenes had been created by Jim Belushi, David Blum and director Del Close, to whom the evening was dedicated.

Second City celebrates its fiftieth anniversary next year, so there’s a chance that there will be a few more nights like this in the future.

Da Bears got the ‘08 season off to a good start Sunday night, upsetting the Indianapolis Colts in stunning fashion. The star of the game (as you probably already know by now, as his picture was on the front page of every major publication in the city) was rookie running back Will Forte, who rushed for 123 yards. The last rookie running back to start the first game of a season for the Bears was Walter Payton in 1975. His stats for that game? Eight carries for zero yards.

The Bears defense was not the sluggish beast that lurched through the preseason. They caused and scored on turnover, stuffed Colts running back Joseph Addai in his own end zone for a safety and most importantly they managed to prevent Peyton Manning from finding any kind of rhythm. Granted, Manning spent the entire preseason recovering from knee surgery and was off his game before the opening kickoff. Still, it’s Peyton Manning.

Speaking of quarterbacks, Bears starter du jour Kyle Orton had a solid game, going 13-of-21 for 150 yards. More importantly, no turnovers. That was new and interesting.

Oddly enough, the only real screw-up came from, of all people, Devin Hester, who tried to get clever on the opening kickoff of the second half. He caught the ball deep in his own end zone, then stood casually for a few seconds, hoping the Colts would assume he was taking a touchback. They did not fall for it, but Hester decided to run for it anyway, making it only as far as the three-yard. The Colts got the ball back with good field position and responded with a touchdown.

Overall the Bears played a solid, no-frills, no-mistakes game. If they can maintain that this season should go much better than people feared.

Not that this affects us too much in Chicago, but Tom Brady’s season-ending injury is a huge loss for football fans everywhere. It will be a strange year without him.

Here’s a brief video clip from the RedBall Project’s appearance in Portland, Oregon:

The Red Ball Project

Do not miss the Big Red ball! How can you miss the Big Red Ball? It’s a Big Red Ball!

I just thought it was a nice story.

Our first-team defense was awfully shaky, giving up a touchdown on the first drive. This in spite of safety Mike Brown’s return after his third season-ending injury.

The big question of the night was which QB would win the starting job? Neither Kyle Orton nor Rex Grossman did anything to distinguish themselves as the front-runner. Orton showed a little more poise, completing 7 of 10 passes, but fumbled the ball on a scramble. Grossman got tripped up once by his own guard, but did manage to get a touchdown. In fairness, however, running back Garrett Wolfe did most of the work on that play.

Of the Bears quarterbacks who received playing time last night, the one who really caught my attention was Caleb Hanie, a rookie out of Colorado State. He played the majority of the second half and showed a great deal of awareness in the pocket. I was impressed by his instincts on a few scrambles after the pocket collapsed. He managed over a hundred yards passing, although his completion percentage was just over fifty percent. However, I believe that percentage would have been improved had he been throwing to first-team receivers. If the Bears’ starting QB job really is an open competition I hope this guy gets a shot at it. At the very least, given the nature of the position in this city, I would not be surprised if he got some decent playing time this season.

The other important event for the Bears yesterday was, of course, the trading of Brett Favre to the Jets. This is significant to us only because Favre, who has a 22-10 record against the Bears, is going from a team that plays the Bears twice a year to a team that isn’t even in the same conference. There will be a lot of talk for a while about how stupid the Packers were to let him go, but frankly I feel like it was Favre’s prima donna antics that got him shipped to New York. A massive amount of work, time and money go into preparing a team for an upcoming season, and for the last several years Favre has toyed with the Packers management, playing will-he-or-won’t-he come back for one more shot. You can’t wait until a couple of weeks before the season starts and then expect a team to drop all their plans for you, even if you’re Brett Favre. Couple that with his unreasonable expectations regarding his input in the management of the team (he threw a hell of a fit when the Packers ignored his advice and did not sign Randy Moss a year ago), and I can see why the Green Bay organization was ready for a change. And hey, the fresh start might be good for Favre, too.

It’ll be a relief not to have to face him twice a year anymore.

Begun in the spring of 2007 as a personal project, the Chicago Theater Database, currently in beta, is now poised to become the central source for all information relating to the city’s theater community. Unlike the IMDb, however, the CTDB is intended less for archival purposes and more as a tool for today’s artists.

“There’s so much going on,” Mr. Granata said, “but nobody knows about it because it’s all so disparate.”

Mr. Granata began compiling the original data out of curiosity, starting with the big theaters like the Goodman and Steppenwolf and expanded from there. He hit a snag, however, when his computer crashed and all the data was lost. “I was basically depressed for about two months.” Then local performing arts trade publication PerformInk released their annual season preview. Using the raw data from the preview, Mr. Granata began the project again. This time he expanded the fields to include things like theater companies’ budget and non-profit information.

Mr. Granata made mention of the project on his blog, I, Homunculus. The blog later received a mention in a Time Out article, which caught the attention of sound designer Nick Keenan, whose own blog, Theater for the Future, was also mentioned. Mr. Keenan expressed an interest in the database project through a comment on I, Homunculus. Having been “called out,” Mr. Granata began work in earnest, this time partnered with Mr. Keenan, who even took the time to learn a new coding language. Since then the project has grown exponentially, and the CTDB has even partnered with PerformInk to produce the next season preview.

Among some of the features Mr. Granata hopes to include in the database is a calendar of opening, strike and rehearsal dates, and also venue availability. Mr. Granata hopes that having all of this information in a central location will help bring about a new era of Chicago theater. “I feel bad,” he said, “because we burn out so many young actors who could do better if they were armed with some basic information.” The community still operates on a “Steppenwolf mentality,” in which so many artists come here straight out of college with the intention of forming a company, but none of them have a real grasp of the current state of theater in the city. “It just doesn’t work with two hundred fifty companies.”

The Chicago Theater Database is now open to public viewing, although it is still in the early beta stages. The rest of the summer will be spent collecting data and ironing out issues such as how to list festivals, and how to handle name changes. According to Mr. Granata the team hopes to have the database “largely functional” within the next couple of months. Until then, the site is available to look around on, and see what data has been collected so far.