Steppenwolf Theatre Company's hyphen-less hype

Earlier this fall I began seeing an ad for Steppenwolf Theatre Company on the el trains that carry me home from work. Next to a photo of Steppenwolf ensemble member (and costar of CBS's Elementary) Jon Michael Hill were the words "The beautiful. The absurd. The I-can't-believe-what-just happened. Onstage nightly."

I thought, What happened to the hyphen between "just" and "happened"? There should be one in that space. It was possible that the hyphen appeared in other versions of that ad for Steppenwolf, ones that weren't designated to appear above riders' heads on public transportation. But no, apparently someone decided that that particular hyphen wasn't necessary at all:

photo credit: Joel Moorman/Chicago Business Journal

photo credit: LonnieTapia.com

Last month The Minutes, a new play by Pulitzer Prize winner Tracy Letts, debuted at Steppenwolf. It's about "small-town politics," according to a print ad I saw in the Chicago Reader, as well as unhyphenated "real world power."

Next up for the acclaimed Chicago theater company is BLKS by poet-playwright Aziza Barnes. The promotional flyer that I received in the mail indicates that the play takes place on "one f**ked up night." That's less clunky than "one night that's f**ked up," but if "f**ked up" is your noun-preceding adjective of choice, it should be hyphenated.

You might be thinking, Who gives a f**k? I understand. But details matter — in drama, in advertising, and even in the f**ked-up real world.

David Ellis at his second best?

Ellis, where were you when James Patterson was writing Along Came a Spider and Kiss the Girls? Those books could've been twice as good with your contractually credited but professionally unacknowledged contributions to Patterson's effortless storytelling. You're fired!

I took this picture on April 29 last year.

I'm not saying the hepatitis C virus (HCV) isn't a deadly problem, but was it necessary for the designer of this advertisement to evoke the collective memory of two hijacked jets crashing into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001?

Welcome to Chicago. Run for your life.

Faux gangsters make me thirsty.

Before Mean Streets' Harvey Keitel pitched Gatorade ...



... before A Bronx Tale's Chazz Palminteri hawked Vanilla Coke ...



... and before Scarface's Robert Loggia shilled for Minute Maid ...



... there was a pre-Sopranos Tony Sirico using his powers of persuasion to make you buy Dunkin' Donuts coffee.



If all does not continue to go well in their movie careers, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and James Gandolfini's series of Sierra Mist commercials should begin airing sometime in the next decade.