The birth of V.I. Warshawski, as told by Sara Paretsky to Maggie Garb in In These Times (Oct. 24-30): “I was sitting in this meeting with my boss [at CNB Insurance Corporation], and you know how big corporations work–when you’re in middle management, you’re kind of the baloney in the sandwich. My boss was saying something asinine, and I was sitting there nodding and saying, ‘Great idea, go for it.’ And in my head, I was thinking, ‘What a stupid jackass....
My friend, whose name is Jim too, and I have been arguing about how Elvis died (although we do agree that the King has in fact died). I maintain the royal death occurred while Elvis was sitting on the porcelain throne with a stroke book in one hand and his scepter in the other. Jim says otherwise. So I have three questions: (1) What was the King doing when he died?...
Like his former boss, Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter has squeezed a remarkably protean resume from his three-decade career. With Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers in the early 60s he established himself as a fresh voice on the tenor saxophone and an exciting, sometimes brilliant writer of hard-bop tunes. With Davis, his compositional skills deepened and darkened–marking Shorter as perhaps the most important jazz composer since Thelonious Monk–while his improvisational abilities attained something approaching legend....
Leah Averick says she lost her equilibrium several years ago when she got the news she was to become a mother-in-law. “I didn’t know what to do or say. Why was I feeling this way? I should have been happy. Other people told me that my future daughter-in-law would be like a daughter to me, and I thought, ‘bullshit.’ I was ashamed to tell my husband how I felt.” Best of Chicago voting is live now....
AN EXCESS OF JOY The plot alone, which covers three days in the lives of a depression-era Chicago family, is incriminating enough. Phillip Loy (Marc Silvia) is a former vaudevillian, now an unctuous Chicago minister. Convinced that the kingdom of God is at hand and that his life lacks risk and excitement, Phillip decides to move his family into a run-down Gold Coast mansion, which he intends to convert into a fashionable theater....
AQUI NO SE RINDE Edgar Road Theatre Company Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The play opens with a revolutionary-sounding folk song, sung offstage, counterpointed by the percussion of footfalls in a lub dub, heartbeat tempo. Then an actor enters, hunched under black cloth, carrying ten feet of gutter pipe with a huge gourd stuck in the front end. The shape looks vaguely like a long-necked bird or a brontosaurus, and it takes its time checking out the audience....
To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The piece begins with Guthrie visiting the downstate printer and being troubled by the “Christian paraphernalia” around the plant. (Count Dracula had the same problem.) I presume Guthrie would feel more at ease if some other paraphernalia were evident; say, a shrunken head hanging on the typesetter’s belt. We are then treated to the non sequitur of the month: No, this isn’t Pornography, everything here has been shown in museums....
It’s been a good spring for Chicago teams, what with the Bulls’ success and the Sox and Cubs packing them in. But not all of Chicago gets to share the good fortune. Indeed, quite the opposite is the case: vendors and fans have been complaining of harassment and intimidation on the part of Sox, Cubs, and Chicago Stadium officials. Part of the problem stems from the unprecedented popularity of Chicago’s teams, which in recent years have drawn not only millions of fans but scores of small-time entrepreneurs....
Despite its success, the first Broadway musical to use rock and roll songs was dismissed as a trivial fluke at the time of its premiere in 1960–the same year draftee Elvis Presley starred in G.I. Blues. But over the years it has proven a durable and delightful caricature of its era. One reason is Michael Stewart’s script, about a pelvis-twitching singer just inducted into the Army and the efforts of his manager to capitalize on the event by having the star give a farewell kiss to a fan in front of millions of Ed Sullivan Show viewers; the sly spoof of a pop-culture clash between innocent but incipiently rebellious teenagers and the show-biz shysters who want to exploit the new “youth market” is sometimes funnier today than it was originally....
The River North area just north of the Loop is now known chiefly for its restaurants, art galleries, and attractive old loft buildings, but that will not be true much longer. Within a decade or two what was once a quiet, predominantly low-rise commercial and industrial district will become one of the city’s most heavily built-up, densely populated neighborhoods. High-rise apartment buildings aren’t necessarily a curse. There’s no doubt that having more people around adds to the bustle and excitement we associate with city life....
This is pianist David Benoit’s gig: it’s his name in the big letters on the marquee. But Benoit’s string of pseudojazz hits holds little interest for serious listeners, who may also have been underwhelmed by his recent album of more straight-ahead material. For me the drawing card is guitarist Emily Remler, who graced that last album and is now part of Benoit’s band. Remler brings to the instrument the crisp immediacy found in the work of her models (Wes Montgomery is one; Kenny Burrell and the young George Benson also come to mind)....
To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » When Jack Helbig dies his epitaph may read “Terminally Glib.” His review of Exhumed [May 26] (Theatre of the Reconstruction at The Garage–1843 W. North Ave.) makes me wonder if we saw the same play. He seems to think it was an incoherent story about one particular junkie–I thought this was a powerful play about spiritual quests among the disenfranchised....
Joan Silver’s hat is black, domed, and so big it hits the wearer’s shoulders. Its only decoration is a two-inch-wide vertical slit up the back. There’s also a smaller, almost invisible horizontal slit in front to see through; still, says Silver, “when you put it on, you’re pretty disoriented.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Chicagoan Barbara Zaretsky also uses a lot of black in the hats she makes, but you’d never mistake her work for Silver’s....
To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Psychotherapy can be a very effective tool in offering a treatment to help people deal with various psychological disorders. Its usefulness is limited as is the usefulness of any discipline. Yet I am curious as to why Jeffrey Masson so opposes professional psychotherapy when he himself states, “I believe that people have been helped by therapy....
These are two giants of the European avant-garde, each making her first appearance in Chicago as part of the Southend Musicworks’ innovative concert series. Swiss pianist Irene Schweizer was among the founders of Europe’s FMP (Free Music Production) movement in the 1960s; she was also long considered the preeminent avant-garde pianist in Europe, owing to a high-energy musical presence that finds voice in her no-holds-barred technique, which sometimes threatens to overwhelm the keyboard altogether....
JUGGER’S RAIN Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Carney, the eldest son and a famous television preacher, decides to make it his business after a traveling journalist pays a visit to his family and produces a tabloid news story, complete with photographs, about his crazy family. In an exorcism that terrifies even Dulcey, his gentle wife, he casts out their optimistic fantasies, calling them “lies of Satan,” and brings his kinsmen back to a painful, mean-spirited reality, making them all so unhappy that even the tree weeps salt tears for them....
If you ask Chicago Symphony Orchestra librarian Wally Horban what was the most exciting thing that happened to him on the orchestra’s recent tour of Japan, he is quick to mention the new synthesizer he picked up, “much cheaper than I would have paid in the States.” Then he adds, “It was great, because I actually set up a portable studio in my hotel room and wrote two songs over there....
I used to think that in a more enlightened age, maybe even soon, pornography would be like goat cheese or 19th-century German opera. Some people would get off on it and some people wouldn’t, but nobody would feel the need to ban it. Pornophiles might find the reaction of pornophobes mysterious, possibly indicative of an unsophisticated palate. Pornophobes could simply avoid adult bookstores. No big deal. Consenting adults, chacun a son gout, et cetera....
To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » That response might be understandable coming from an art student. But David Nelson is now a professional and as such must accept responsibility for all aspects of his work. Each element of a political cartoon, if we are to take it seriously, ought to be there for a reason. David Nelson’s cartoon created no light. It was not an effective critique of handgun proliferation, the rise in the homicide rate, or even of aldermanic foolishness....
To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » During the late 1950’s when I was a high school student, girls who got pregnant either married in haste or were sent to homes for unwed mothers and forced to surrender their babies for adoption. I say “forced” because real choices did not exist then. Pregnant girls were not allowed to remain in school. Single motherhood was highly stigmatized....
