I got my first signal from the Patricia Locke Cult last fall, the day I moved to Chicago. I was standing in the MCA gift shop, paying for a set of Mies van der Rohe postcards–something Chicagoan to send back to New York. As I was coaxing change from my purse, a pair of earrings trapped in the glass case below called me. Weeks drifted by. I checked the phone book under L....
Irving G. Thalberg. Members of the Thalberg family had been invited to attend Oscar night, and at one point a TV camera panned them all in their seats: the great man’s daughter, a granddaughter, others. The one person notably absent was Irving Thalberg Jr. In his eyes–or so his widow says today–the Academy Awards were “bullshit.” He would later say that he did appreciate the film clips of his–father, but the choice of Spielberg would not have been his own....
His name isn’t important. Maybe for someone, maybe once, but not for us, not now. There are times when it is just plain hard to tell what is important. Sometimes it’s something so simple as getting a job done right. But not today, not this morning after a long hard rain. The only vehicle the cop finds today is a yellow maintenance truck with two laborers, waiting. The tape must be stretched....
Friday 10 Bluegrass music got its name from seminal practitioners the Bluegrass Boys, who in turn took their moniker from the nickname of their home state of Kentucky. The music’s roots are apparently in Scottish and Irish folk music; subsequent mixtures with jazz, ragtime, swing, and gospel in the postwar South created the rollin’ and pickin’ music we love today. High Lonesome: The Story of Bluegrass Music, a feature documentary by Rachel Liebling, salutes the father of the music, Bill Monroe, and checks out modern practitioners like Illinois’ own Alison Kraus....
It’s Monday night; football and Murphy Brown are on. Yet 15 people–7 women, 8 men–are downtown learning how to flirt. A lawyer, a musician, a computer programmer, and a mother and her son are among those who want to learn. Brown’s learning-to-flirt class does not include batting the eyes, flicking the hair, or coming up with good one-liners. “That’s superficial,” she says. “There’s no such thing as a perfect line.” Anyone who wants to learn glibness, who wants to develop good openings, is wasting three hours and $65 with Brown....
David Baerwald was the lyricist and singer whose contemporary Chandlerisms and unsentimental melancholy suffused the still-potent David and David debut album, Boomtown. The record’s relatively minor success loomed large in the lives of its creators, delaying and then scotching the follow-up; first real word we’ve had from the pair since is Baerwald’s solo debut, Bedtime Stories. The record is similar in tone, theme, and sound, but it’s somehow grittier, despite the AOR sweetening on songs like “The Best Inside You....
BIG BUSINESS With Bette Midler, Lily Tomlin, Fred Ward, Edward Herrmann, Michele Placido, Daniel Gerroll, and Barry Primus. With Arnold Schwarzenegger, James Belushi, Peter Boyle, Ed O’Ross, Larry Fishburne, and Gina Gershon. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » City Sadie wants to sell Jupiter Hollow’s main business–the Hollowmade Furniture Company, left to her and her sister by their father–to an Italian businessman (Michele Placido) who wants to level it for strip-mining and condos....
To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The most arrogant people in the world are those who are so sure they know better than everyone else that they feel entitled to rule others. The second most arrogant people are those who are so sure they know better than everyone else that they feel entitled to ignore the laws in a nation where the people rule themselves....
I have always envied dogs their noses. Imagine being able to walk into a room and instantly know not only who was there but who just left. Except when it snows. In freshly fallen snow, snow that has not yet been subjected to thawing and refreezing, snow that has not yet been blown about by the wind, even unskilled trackers can learn a lot about the movements of animals we seldom see....
The article that follows appeared, in shorter form, in the now-defunct Chicago Daily News one week after the riots that were touched off by the murder of Dr. King. Daily News editors cut out large chunks of the article, including the “fists” introductory section. Here we have restored most of those cuts and reedited the piece to conform to the Reader style. We present it as both a chronology of events and an artifact of the time....
MILESTONES–A TRIBUTE TO MILES DAVIS at Stage Left Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Which is why I find Frank Melcori’s current show so appealing. When this kindly, soft-spoken, rather unassuming monologuist steps onto the stage, he does so with his defenses down, ready to honestly reveal what’s in his soul. Melcori doesn’t play characters. He spends most of his time telling about his life in a tone only a half step more theatrical than he’d use at home....
To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Johnson states that Sprayregen’s letter “implicitly defines Iraqis, Palestinians, and members of the PLO as either terrorists or pampered children.” (This bizarre either-or comparison should be enough to set off bells in one’s head.) While every last member of the PLO may not be a terrorist–if we define a terrorist as one who actually commits an act of terrorism–all members support its terrorist acts (lest they wind up a victim of PLO terrorism) and many aid and abet it....
Johnny Noxzema isn’t just another pretty face who has branded himself with the name of a beauty product. This kid is one pissed-off queer punk from Toronto (“Home of the Coma”) who publishes Bimbox (“Free to Those Who Deserve It”), an underground fanzine (“All material is anti-copyright”) that serves as a soapbox for “queers” and “dykes” as opposed to gays and lesbians. Bimbox is dedicated to “the absolute destruction of lesbian and gay culture....
Scene: the Vic theater, early last Friday evening. A video crew fiddles with its camera crane, a crowd of excited teens teems in front of the stage, and a platinum pop star from Chicago prepares to launch into his latest single. Billy Corgan and the Smashing Pumpkins shooting a new clip for Siamese Dream? No, it’s R & B star R. (for Robert) Kelly, and the song is “Bump n’ Grind,” from his new album, 12 Play....
THE FILMS OF SERGEI PARADJANOV Fortunately, Facets has fixed all that, and for the next week, all three of Sergei Paradjanov’s visionary masterpieces will be screened there nightly, in two separate auditoriums. While it won’t be possible to see all three in a single session, as I did recently–a singular if exhausting experience lasting a little over four hours–one can still see them, ideally in order, over two or three evenings, and to do so is to experience a certain revelation and clarification....
The gathering didn’t get much attention–no reporters were present–but on November 20 Mayor Daley met with about 3,000 black residents at a church on the far south side. To rousing cheers and amens, he pledged to make money available for health programs and day-care facilities. Parts of these communities, which include Roseland and Pullman, remain vibrant–home to thousands of teachers and CTA and federal employees. But there’s no escaping the toll of a decade of economic decline....
BALLET CHICAGO Circumstances conspire to make our time a critical and exciting one for ballet in America. The death of George Balanchine spurred a dance diaspora: Peter Martins assumed direction of the New York City Ballet, and Balanchine dancers–notably Kent Stowell, Francia Russell, Edward Villella, and Daniel Duell–left New York and established companies in the hinterlands. Balanchine never considered his ballets museum pieces–he suppressed some, revised some, tinkered with others–and he never exercised a choreographic monopoly over his company....
Friday 15 The University of Minnesota’s David Smith, who has been negotiating with the government of Nepal to save the endangered sloth bear, threatened by poachers and the steady elimination of its habitat, is in town tonight to talk at a meeting of the environmental group Earthwatch. He’ll show slides, describe his strategy for saving the sloth bear, and ask for volunteers to help him track down some of the few remaining bears and fit them with radio collars....
Friday 29 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Had David Nelson’s painting of Harold Washington in lingerie gone up without the extra publicity the aldermen gave it, Nelson probably would have taken some heat about the need for social responsibility from his fellow artists. Those artists ended up defending his right to free expression during the barrage of media and political attention. Tonight the Chicago Artists Network hosts the first of a series of free forums that may help release some pent-up frustration....
OPEN SYZYGY–SOME MADRAS PARABLES This is a shame. A big shame. One of those big, fat, rotten decline of civilization/coarsening of human values shames you see all the time in the arts these days. Because immediacy really is a crucial part of the pleasure and point of theater. I love the movies, but I feel a genuine sense of privilege in spending time with performers–real, live, particular performers–whose talents and sensibilities, energies and sweaty bodies are physically present to me in a small space at a certain moment....
