Posts

Higher education. The University of Illinois’ annual Insect Fear Film Festival in Urbana recently featured the 1957 release The Deadly Mantis, in which, according to U. of I. publicity, “a giant praying mantis becomes a preying mantis, eating much of the U.S. Eastern Seaboard and climbing the Washington Monument before getting caught in the Lincoln Tunnel between New York and New Jersey.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » On what TV news program were 89 percent of the guests men, 92 percent of the guests white, only 5 percent representatives of public-interest groups, and less than 2 percent labor, racial, or ethnic leaders?...

When Chicago forensic psychiatrist Carl Wahlstrom was asked by defense attorneys to evaluate a sex offender pleading “guilty but insane” to a multiple murder charge, the request should not have been an unusual one. An instructor at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center, Wahlstrom is an authority on mentally disordered criminals, and regularly evaluates alleged offenders at the Psychiatric Institute attached to the Circuit Court of Cook County. But this particular defendant was no garden-variety criminal–he had already earned an undisputed slot in the forensic hall of fame, his crimes the stuff of grisly legend....

Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean somebody isn’t out to get you. That pretty well sums up the personal philosophy of Andrew D. Jones. “Oh yes,” he says, “when I start explaining my ideas, people look at me kind of funny, like I been shooting up some of that brown Mexican heroin. But you know, injustices have been done, and I gotta speak the truth even if nobody’s paying attention. I’m like a stoplight that keeps flashing green, yellow, red–whether there’s any cars on the street or not....

TURANDOT Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » For all the hype surrounding Mephistofele, Antony and Cleopatra, and The Gambler, no show this season has been anticipated as eagerly as Turandot. The last show of the season at Lyric has often been used for desultory revivals with second-string casts, but this time Lyric pulled out all the stops. Last spring it announced not only a superstar stage designer (Hockney), but also an apparently strong cast and a formidable director, Lotfi Mansouri....

A Nose for News: The Anchorman and the Bridge Tender It had been a terrible accident. The rising bridge had flipped this cab onto its back, then crunched through the cab as it came back down, decapitating the driver. As journalists converged, Przislicki came down from his tower and stared at the wreckage. Someone pointed him out to Deborah O’Malley, a Channel Five producer. Best of Chicago voting is live now....

Friday 26 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The unfortunately titled Two People Came Over–We Didn’t Know What to Say So We Played With the Dog and Our Minds Wandered has nothing to do with casual visits, household pets, or boredom. The opening scene features Chinese artist Qi Gu Jiang painting from live models. Simultaneously, an American actor prepares to play Qi onstage. Minutes later, the audience is presented with a videotape of all this....

Dave Alvin anchored one of the most interesting American bands of the 80s, the Blasters, a roots-rock postpunk ensemble out of LA that somehow fit right in with the ugly, star-crossed visions of their pals John Doe and Exene in X. The Blasters’s secret was guitarist and songwriter Alvin: his brother’s voice defined the band’s windswept sound, but it was Dave’s closely observed and efficiently limned portraits (“Border Radio,” most notably) that were its foundation....

The man enters the Wiener’s Circle, the hot-dog stand at Clark and Wrightwood, with more than just a hint of bravado. He opens both of the double doors in a wide, sweeping motion and plants himself firmly in the center of the doorway. After looking at the upper and lower perimeters of the doorway twice, he looks over either shoulder, as if to see if he was being followed. Finally, surveying the menu over the counter, he stands on his toes and squints several times, all the while holding one of the doors open with an elbow....

Our suspicion is that black-crowned night herons have been nesting along the North Shore Channel. This bird is on the endangered list in Illinois. We have three known colonies around Chicago: Lake Calumet, Lake Renwick near Plainfield, and Baker’s Lake in Barrington. There are two other colonies along the Illinois River south of Peoria and another two near East Saint Louis. And that is it for the whole state. Best of Chicago voting is live now....

THE FINAL PRODUCT What he’s got is plenty of attitude and humor. When–decked in boyish shorts and tight T-shirt–he describes himself as having once been a budding drag queen, he dares us to tell him that he really doesn’t fit the stereotype. And when he describes his friend Jonathan as a “piggy little bottom” we laugh nervously–at Scott’s bitchiness, and quite possibly at our own occasional pettiness. Best of Chicago voting is live now....

LENA LIV Crucial to Liv’s success is her superb use of materials. The austere simplicity of her work, the way she constructs each piece out of only a few beautifully presented elements, deepens the mysterious aura that each element seems to evoke. (Interestingly, the one earlier work of hers I’ve seen, which is more cluttered with imagery, is less successful.) Particularly impressive is Liv’s use of handmade paper. In her hands it is shaped, made into three-dimensional reliefs, torn, reassembled; it has at once the organic qualities of a living thing and the machine-made qualities of a designed object....

The New Moon by Sigmund Romberg is a surprisingly palatable blend of dreamy schmaltz–part Viennese operetta, part American musical comedy. Romberg, best known for The Student Prince, was born Hungarian but immigrated to this country in 1909 and got hired as the house composer for the Shuberts of Broadway. His popular hits, while containing the requisite echoes of Strauss and Lehar, are largely New World in their can-do outlook, their fascination with Douglas Fairbanks-type swashbucklers embarking on adventures in foreign lands....

Since returning to the scene a few years ago, guitarist Lurrie Bell has established himself as one of our most technically proficient and tasteful young bluesmen. His knowledge of traditional Chicago blues is unparalleled, and he’s done enough listening and jamming with younger players to be conversant in today’s high-energy hot-licks blues language as well; best of all, he saves it for the right moments. Bell has toned down his intensity in the last few years, and that’s where fellow axman Jimmy Lane comes in....

NATIVE SPEECH Tight & Shiny Productions at At the Gallery-Chopin Theatre Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » So Tight & Shiny Productions have certainly given themselves an enormous challenge. Brett A. Snodgrass’s beautifully decaying set is the perfect environment for this play: an enormous slab of concrete floats in the center of an empty black stage. Out of this concrete shoot two steel beams, perhaps 15 feet high, reaching futilely toward nothing (the ceiling of the space is probably 30 feet)....

It’s hard to figure how the Daley administration’s plans to build a parking-ticket hearing office on the northwest side got so out of hand. The densely wooded preserve was a tuberculosis sanatorium that closed in 1974. After that, residents pressured Richard J. Daley into creating the North Park Village Advisory Council to oversee the preserve’s future. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “In about 1984, the Washington administration asked if we would set aside a portion of the village for development,” says Cicero....

Too many years have passed since Randy Sabien’s violin last lit up Chicago. When Sabien first came on the scene he seemed to merge the two classic schools of jazz violin playing; although he descends more from the gritty boisterousness of Joe Venuti, he stiff brings intimations of Stephane Grappelli’s elegant French precision to his technique. These days other violinists have been able to similarly fuse these two approaches and even incorporate a more modern strain; but the ranks of swinging and accomplished jazz fiddlers remain thin, and Sabien surely belongs up near the front....

SECRETS Bailiwick Repertory Rebecca Ranson’s Secrets is being produced as part of Bailiwick Repertory’s gay and lesbian series, but its two female protagonists are not necessarily lesbians. Theirs is a highly personalized relationship that transcends the facile label of “close friends” (as in “just close friends”) and the serial monogamy that passes for modern “lesbian lifestyle.” (The production contains some schoolgirl-league cuddling and kissing, but nothing to make the censors twitch....

THE CIRCUS OF DR. LAO Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » At times Mula comes oh-so-close. Unfortunately he undermines these moments by giving less than heartfelt readings of the more pedestrian, strictly human scenes leading up to them. The nice gal in me wants to cut him some slack. After all, it’s not easy playing some 15 different characters in less than two hours. But Mula is a seasoned and highly skilled actor and shouldn’t be coddled....

Where did the Grateful Dead get their name? What does it mean? I’ve heard a lot of tales, but I’ll believe only you. –S. Seidman, Stevenson, Maryland Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I am a rock of comfort, ain’t I? The official story on the Grateful Dead, as related by Jerry Garcia in the book Playing in the Band, is as follows: “We were standing around in utter desperation at Phil [Lesh]’s house in Palo Alto [trying to think up a name for the band]....

Advertising runs in cycles. One year it sings of Honest Workers, the next it extols the virtues of Triumphant Capitalists. These frightening archetypes still pop up, but 1989 saw the birth of a peculiar new fashion as well: meaninglessness. Having discovered how profitable it can be to sing the praises of both Young Babbitt and the horny-handed son of toil, admen this year wised up to the value of inane, lofty-sounding babble....