The Bob and Jake Chicago Theater Adventure continues!

Last night Bob and I met up for a better-than-average dinner with a spectacular view at the new Millennium Park restaurant whose name I cannot remember. Our bellies filled with greasy entrees and those amazing chocolate volcano dessert thingies, we waddled up the street after dinner to the funky -- but not very patron-friendly -- new Harris Theater for Music and Dance to see the Rhythm & Romance section of Hubbard Street Dance Chicago's spring repertory concert series.

The concert was fine, offering a thoughtfully varied program of pieces I simply didn't care for -- with the exception of the lush Kiss pas de deux. Beautifully lyrical, emotionally charged and just plain visceral, the piece features a man and a woman suspended on ropes dancing and twirling and engaging in the epic passions that lovers sometimes do. It's set to the evocative "Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten" by Arvo Pärt, a composer I've never heard of who was clearly influenced by (or who influenced) Henryk Górecki's equally succulent third symphony.

After the concert, we headed to Bob's to nail down travel dates for our October trip to London and Paris. And since Hubbard Street had caused me to miss my Friday night date with Playing it Straight, I coerced poor Bob into recording and then watching the trashy thing with me.

And I was so impressed with Bob's Replay TV (and with Keith and Steve's TiVo on Thursday night) that this afternoon -- after getting the rest of my arms waxed and enrolling in French II -- I headed to my friendly neighborhood Best Buy and joined the TiVo generation.

My TiVo is currently studying or marinating or chatting with my cable company or whatever it has to do quietly and alone for the first five hours of its life before it will join me on my effortless TV-watching adventures. But that's OK -- I'm off to a chorus gig in the Loop and then to bed to rest up for tomorrow's Shamrock Shuffle 8K.