It's about 15 minutes into my phone conversation with jazz vocalist Margaret Murphy-Webb. She's energetic and engaging and boasts an infectious laugh, and every once in a while she calls me "baby," which I like a lot. And then, knowing that the artist is pursuing a music degree at Chicago State University after nearly 30 years of performance, I ask her if, because of tuition and other costs, she has to supplement her income with any additional jobs.

"Oh, baby, you don't know!" she exclaims. "I'm a Chicago police officer! August 1 will be my 20th year!"

I actually did not know this (nor, for the record, would any other visitors to MargaretCMurphy.com, where that information is noticeably absent). I apologize for my ignorance and ask if it's cool to mention her career in print, and she says, "Oh yeah! I just assume people know, but I try not to tell people. That's dirty laundry." She laughs. "But they don't boo me when they know I'm a police officer!"

Of course, I'm betting that the musician doesn't ever deal with booing, given her gorgeous phrasing and vocals, and her presence that the late, great jazz saxophonist (and Murphy-Webb's former mentor) Von Freeman said "reminds you of Betty [Carter] and Billie [Holiday] in that, from the moment she steps onto the stage, she has the audience enraptured."

Prior to last Thursday, I had seen 40 productions at Mt. Carroll's Timber Lake Playhouse, and somehow, during all those visits, I had never been there when it rained. Yet rain it did on Thursday, and it rained hard, and I couldn't imagine more fitting weather for the venue's opening-night performance of An Inspector Calls, an eerie, succulent psycho-drama (with laughs) that made the literal storm clouds a spectacular match for the figurative ones on-stage.

22 JUMP STREET and HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2

This past Friday was my birthday. (Aw, thank you for asking! Belated gifts can be sent care of the Reader!) And like a present delivered specifically for me, the day brought with it not only two movies featuring Jonah Hill - even if one only features the voice of Jonah Hill - but two follow-ups I wasn't at all dreading: 22 Jump Street, the sequel to a comedy I loved, and How to Train Your Dragon 2, the sequel to an animated adventure I liked just fine. I suppose it was both fitting and inevitable, then, that I wound up liking the former just fine, and the latter ... well, I didn't love it, but I did enjoy it a heck of a lot more than the original.

Fewer than 90 minutes after it began, the Timber Lake Playhouse's season-opening production of Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat ended, appropriately, with a blast of exuberant, life-affirming color. Yet at the curtain call for this fantastically well-sung presentation of composer Andrew Lloyd Webber's and lyricist Tim Rice's beloved biblical musical, it became clear that the stars of the show weren't the gifted performers portraying Joseph, the Narrator, or any of director James Beaudry's 19 other cast members. The real stars, it turned out, were the streamers.