MODESELEKTOR Happy Birthday! (Bpitch Control) ***1/2 Modeselektor's debut full-length, Hello Mom!, succeeded in part because of a certain element of surprise. For those not following the duo of Gernot Bronsert and Sebastian Szary's odd 12-inch singles and compilation appearances, the...

SNAPSHOTS Happy birthday, Norman! That's B-I-R-T-H-D-A-Y By JAMAAL ABDUL-ALIM of the Journal Sentinel staff Monday, January 21, 2002 Longtime public policy analyst Norman Gill may have retired back in 1983, but today, at age 90, he's hardly done with...

"Happy Birthday, Wanda June" is a Punch and Judy show acted out by pretended people, in case you've forgotten the real content of any Punch and Judy show. It adds up, simply, to this: Punch kills everybody, one by one, until the Devil gets him. (p. 1) There are at least three things wrong with the play and one—much more important—that is right. The play is structurally ambivalent about death. A number of quite jolly interludes take place in a heaven that is conveniently co...

["Happy Birthday, Wanda June"] is an attempt at a satire on the return of Odysseus. Mr. Vonnegut's Odysseus is a paunchy, bearded fellow named Ryan who has been missing for eight years, held captive by Indians in South America. He is a bully and a braggart who calls his young wife "Daughter," boasts of his heroism during the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War, and at the end goes offstage with a loaded rifle to shoot himself. In short, he is a caricature of Hemingw...