"El Cid." - Wasn't that Charles Heston?

Yesterday - hmmm...now that was a unique experience...

Dinner (after a day-long rehearsal at Peter Jones) at El Cid (a clean, well-ligthed place - Hemingway would have approved) in Logan Square: I had a combo plate, (I wanted a quick tour of Mexican cuisine) a taco, an enchilada, a quesedilla, beans and rice, guacamole, tortilla chips (it was all quite good, authentic, home cooking - Mexican food is just the ticket on hot day - did anyone say "siesta?!"). The Lovely Carla and I "broke tacos," with the Red-haired Welshman and his beautiful bride. We were all ravenously hungry, we ate with enthusiasm and had a great rambling conversation about everything under the sun.

Then it was off to the old Congress Theater, a cavernous place, (2500 seats) in the heart of one of those great little Hispanic neighborhoods in Chicago; the theater, funky and majestic, a beat up edifice with a dramatic, red-carpeted stairway (a little worse for wear), enormous chandeliers (hovering like impossible spaceships), a strangely-beautiful artifact from another time and place. The perfect place for the Windy City Rollers - an all-girl, roller derby league.

By the time we took our seats, the carnage was in full swing. Two teams, skating in little circles on a flat track, bodies slamming into each other and to the floor, the crowd cheering at the exuberant madness and mayhem of it all. There's something brutal, primal, and sort of electrifying about the whole spectacle. It all seemed so "Mad Max," so "Beyond the Thunderdome," so post-post-apocalyptic. It's like the nuclear war that was to devastate our civilization had already come and gone, but someone forgot to tell us.

Afterwards, remarkably, inexplicably, the women were all smiles, you could see a satisfaction, a pride, a cool cameraderie, which had blossomed in the hearts and heads of all the participants. They survived to skate another day, to take on another challenge, another opponent. We were just the spectators, there to witness and to marvel. We walked out of that sad, old theater, shaking our heads at the wonder of it all. It certainly seemed like a beginning and an ending of something.