Friday 24
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White Sox fans might want to check in at the first annual Soxfest at the Hyatt Regency, 151 E. Wacker. The weekend-long affair will introduce new manager Gene Lamont at a ribbon-cutting ceremony, which immediately follows the singing of the national anthem tonight at 5:25. Things run till 9 tonight, from 11 to 7 tomorrow, and from 10 to 3 Sunday, with pitching cages, dunk tanks, seminars with managers and broadcasters, an autograph session with players (no charge!), a video room, a women-only session, and lots more. Admission is $8 a day, $15 for the weekend. Call 616-1991 for more.
The biggest bluegrass act since Flatt and Scruggs is wunderkind Alison Krauss, who calls herself “a fiddle player who happens to sing” though both her fiddlin’ and her voice have been widely hailed. The 20-year-old songwriter has been recording for a third of her life, and last year she grabbed the Grammy for best bluegrass recording. She’ll play two shows tonight with her band, Union Station, at 7 and 10, at the Old Town School of Folk Music, 909 W. Armitage. Local heroes Special Consensus open. Tickets are $11-$15. Call 525-7793 for details.
One of a series of events held in conjunction with the Chicago Smelts’ Swim Your Heart Out AIDS benefit this year takes place tonight at Club Lower Links, 954 W. Newport. The Smelts, “Chicago’s (mostly) gay and lesbian swim team,” will hold their annual swimathon in February to raise money for Open Hand Chicago and the Chicago Women’s AIDS Project. Tonight Theater Oobleck, country and western duo the Texas Rubies, and members of Maestro Subgum and the Whole (led by Subgum’s scrofulous impresario Lefty Fizzle) will donate their talents to the cause. The show costs $6; it begins at 8. The Smelts will be taking pledges and selling T-shirts. Call 248-5238 for info.
Northwestern prof Lacey Baldwin Smith will lecture on his book Henry VIII: The Mask of Royalty–which scholar A.L. Rowse called “quite simply the best book on Henry VIII that I have ever read . . . as convincing as it is compelling, absolutely authentic, marvelously readable”–in the Video Theater of the Harold Washington Library, 400 S. State, at 5:30. It’s free. Call 747-4740.
Three videos on the Black Panther Party and its systematic destruction by the FBI are on the agenda at the Center for New Television tonight. Power to the People, directed by Peter Kuttner, features present-day interviews with people reflecting on the party’s legacy. Kuttner’s Right On: A Friend Remembers Fred Hampton features Jorja English Palmer talking about her work with party chairman Hampton, who was offed by the Chicago police in 1969. The FBI’s War on Black America, by Deb Ellis and Dennis Mueller, is a reputedly hard-hitting look at the bureau’s COINTELPRO attacks on the Panthers. They all show at the center, 1440 N. Dayton, starting at 7. It’s $5, $3 for members. Call 951-6868 for details.
