more run on sentences as our hero visits the Blue Man Group

Taken on their own, the individual elements that make up the Blue Man Group- trashcan percussion, gross-out performance art, body movement and interpretive dance, mime, clowning, and prop comedy- are some of the most hated elements of busking. For years, evil aldermen like Burt Nataras have defended their yuppie constituents by attempting to shut down unlicensed street performance doing just this kind of thing. Somehow, while the guys on the street are struggling to get by asking for pocket change, the Blue Man Group is able to sell out the Briar Street Theater nightly at sixty bucks a ticket.

It's easy to get cynical about something like that, because the Blue Man Group isn't some local-grown industrial dada outfit, it's a franchise that sees the city as a market, with enough tourists to support them through waxes and wanes of local support, just like Six Flags Great America and the Hard Rock Cafe. There are little bits of commentary in the show, that are more dangerous or cutting than you'd expect, but more shallow than they seem, critiques on the pretensions of high art consumers (with Sturm und Drang references!), how computer culture separates people from one another, and on the lack of depth in pop and rock music and the music industry (which is a little the-pot-calling-the-kettle-black as you get to see a Grammy-nominated performance art troupe launch into crowd pleasing covers of Ozzy Osboune's "Crazy Train" and Devo's "Whip It" on a PVC pipe organ).

So the punches are more like love taps, and you just might notice, but if you do, it'll probably be in retrospect, because, fuck the bullshit, the Blue Men put on a good show. The music is listenable, even in recordings where you can't see how it's being made, there are some more than service-able electronic jams, and even though the stage show is time-tested and years' old, it still feels fresh. There are of simple, beautiful moments, too, that are more surprising than anything else in the show. Once you've gotten used to the three Blue Men vomiting through holes in their shirts, turning off the lights as they use scrolling lcd screens as drumsticks, or playing oil drums full of blacklight-sensitive paint, you're not expecting them to cover a windowpane with shaving cream and use it as a projection screen for a film about animation as it derived from shadow puppets.

The show ends the way it always ends. Bad techno. Strobes. Rolls of toilet paper overflowing and becoming a tidal wave as people pass them up towards the stage. Baby's first rave. In the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Tom Wolfe talks about how Ken Kesey figured out how to use strobe lights, rhythms, and bright colors to simulate the best parts of an acid trip, and that pretty much happens here. Awed love feelings, slowed time, and a bit of a freak out.

Worth is a relative term. Because I don't have anything, sixty dollars seems exorbitant, and I can really appreciate the kids on the street, giving art away for free. Hopefully, if and when I ever have money I still will, but I'd wager to say, tht if I was a grown man, who wanted to hear some music, or feel a bit high, or just get some chucks out of a theater show, I wouldn't hesitate to drop sixty bucks on the Blue Men.