The stock market dropped 1,000 points this morning, after two young women dressed entirely in black were spotted on LaSalle Street pigging out on a Whitman’s Sampler. From Loyola University fine-arts professor Justine Mantor: “The general health of our economy is usually reflected in the popular colors of the time and if all we’re seeing are dark colors…well, you get the idea.” And from Kilwin’s Chocolates: “It’s almost 100 percent predictable....
One day last spring a work crew started digging up the street outside of Sharon Evans’s business. She owns and operates the building that houses the Live Bait Theater and Nightcrawler Cafe at 3914 N. Clark. “It was a Wednesday,” says Evans. “I figured, great, they’ll be done and gone before our weekend rush.” By all accounts the project got off to a decent start, when work crews zipped up Clark from Barry to Addison, finishing that segment in only five or six weeks....
To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » We too are amazed at the statement that there is community opposition to the proposal to redevelop that site, because there is no such significant opposition. While it is true that political opponents of Osterman are falsely telling people who live East of Broadway that the redevelopment aspect of that site that calls for a CTA bus turnabout or cul-de-sac literally means a concrete wall blocking the sidewalk of Berwyn so as to “wall out” East-of-Broadway people, few people actually believe such racial demagoguery....
Currently 13 is considered to be an unlucky number. However, I am told it used to be–and in some earth-worshiping, i.e., pagan, religions still is–a lucky and magical number. Consequently there were 13 months and 13 zodiac signs (the Gemini twins had separate identities). Knowing how Christianity and other god-as-a-man-based religions were prone to say what the pagans (Earth-and-god-as-a-woman) considered good was bad, I wonder if this was the case with the number 13....
Anthony Newley’s dual talent as singer and songwriter–a common enough combination in rock–made him a rarity in the musical theater of the 1960s. As coauthor (with Leslie Bricusse) and star of two of that decade’s finest shows–Stop the World, I Want to Get Off and The Roar of the Greasepaint, the Smell of the Crowd–Newley introduced such heart-on-the-sleeve hits as “What Kind of Fool Am I,” “Who Can I Turn To, and “Once In a Lifetime....
Barry Schain’s Vision for “Hollywood by the Lake” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » To lure still another type of crowd, Schain is contemplating putting a sports bar and restaurant in the space now occupied by Christopher’s on Halsted and the Ruggles Cabaret. Schain expects to do a major sales job on the neighborhood residents to win their approval for a sports bar; he envisions a watering hole where both sports fans and theatergoers would feel comfortable stopping in for a drink–a tricky concept to pull off....
THE RIVALS REVISITED Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Kane plays Beverly Absolute, the bold and mischievous daughter of irascible Sir Anthony Absolute. Beverly poses as her absent brother Jack, an army captain, in order to elope with her beloved Lydia Languish. The nearsighted Sir Anthony’s plans for his son’s wedding are shared by Lydia’s dotty guardian aunt, Mrs. Malaprop; all Beverly has to do is dress up as Jack, lower her voice an octave, and walk off with the bride without anyone realizing they’ve just witnessed a lesbian wedding....
It took two years for this provocative independent feature to reach Chicago, yet it’s as intellectually ambitious as any new American picture I’ve seen this year. This highly original existential dark comedy, which won first prize at the 1990 Sundance film festival, charts the real-life exploits of William Douglas Street (played with a great deal of charisma and wit by writer-director Wendell B. Harris Jr.), a con man from Detroit who specialized in impersonations during the period covered in the film (1978-1985)....
The music of David “Honeyboy” Edwards is perhaps the purest traditional Delta blues still played in Chicago. His list of childhood acquaintances and influences reads like a who’s who of legends, beginning with Robert Johnson and including the likes of Charlie Patton, Big Walter Horton, Big Joe Williams, and many others. Honeyboy built an early reputation as one of Chicago’s finest slide guitarists, and his voice remains imbued with the rapid tremolo of southern folk blues and field hollers....
It’s not hard to see why Eddie Palmieri was once dubbed salsa’s answer to Duke Ellington; to borrow a favorite Ellington encomium, Palmieri’s music often is indeed “beyond category.” Like Ellington, Palmieri is a pianist, composer, and bandleader, and like Ellington he generates a remarkable and unquestionably artistic excitement: it stems not from synthetic pseudo-Latin rhythms, but rather from a synthesis of complex percussion, his own romantic but iconoclastic piano work, and a unique stamp on the traditional brass-heavy salsa sound....
GUN PLAYS That gun crimes are epidemic in this country is a given. You need only throw open your window at night to figure that out. Everybody seems to be packing one. And not just the crazies and the gang members. Your taxi driver’s got one hidden under his seat. Your friendly local convenience-store owner has one in the register. Your neighbor has a big one up on his wall for hunting and another stashed in his dresser for burglars....
Spending an hour with Robert Townsend — producer/director/writer/star of the anarchic shoestring extravaganza The Hollywood Shuffle — is like watching a television commandeered by a hyperactive ten-year-old kid with a remote control unit. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Sophocles is switched off and we are, for the moment, tuned into Robert Townsend, a slim young man in a hotel room wearing a navy blazer and a T-shirt printed with stylized ducks....
JACQUES BREL’S DEAD AND WE’RE NOT FRENCH Sarantos Studios Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » But the ideas are novel. The songs include a rollicking hymn to cheese allergies, a tribute to the underutilized “Kitchens of the People Who Don’t Cook,” a Stephen Foster-style salute to sailing, a deft, weirded-out new-wave paranoid fantasy, complete with punk fright wigs, called “Rhonda’s Nightmare Ball,” the bizarre theme song from a cable series, “Part Time Posse” (aren’t they all?...
To the editors: In his interesting article “Capital Blunder” (Reader 7/28) Donald Sevener cites an “extensive” study of capital cases by Professor Michael L. Radelet. Mr. Sevener tells us that Prof. Radelet concluded that an innocent person was convicted in 350 of these cases. This figure would be more meaningful if Mr. Sevener had specified the total number of cases Prof. Radelet studied. Can you or he give us that information?...
Sending Up the Sheppenwolves “We’re going to do a Kabuki segment,” said Russ Flack. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Naked Zoo is also a play within a play. It’s being put on by that hot, hot Chicago theater group the Me First Ensemble. The characters are based on actors the Zoo has observed over the years. “You want us to name names?” said Nutter....
If there ever was a shrine, a holy spot, for American music, it is Congo Square in the heart of New Orleans, in what’s now called Louis Armstrong Park, next to the French Quarter. Beginning in the late 18th century and continuing, with interruptions, until the Civil War, slaves gathered on Sunday afternoons in Congo Square. Elsewhere in the south, African culture was rigorously suppressed–the Protestant slave owners in other states maintained that ruthless suppression of African traditions was necessary in order to save their victims’ souls....
The Bears are a quarter of the way through their season, and one ought to be able to come to some conclusions about them by this time. Yet the only thing that can be said is that love ’em or leave ’em–and to tell the truth, I’m not sure yet which side I come down on–they sure are exciting. They don’t offer much in the way of top-quality football, but for high-profile drama and human frailty they’re just about unmatched on the sports scene in this town....
What is the true source of the wealth of the Kennedy family of Hyannis, Massachusetts? I have heard several stories about Joe Senior having made a killing in Prohibition rum, sleazy stock market practices, or the Boston construction industry. I heard the other day that he made the seed money for all this by selling opium to China, and that takes the cake. Also, what is the Kennedy money doing today?...
I recently moved from Minnesota to Washington, D.C. Not only did I leave behind 10,000 lakes, it seems I left the United States as well. No, I’m not talking about the drive for District statehood. I’m wondering why my new home, Virginia, is called a commonwealth instead of a state. Is there a difference between Virginia–and the commonwealths of Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky–and the commonwealth of Puerto Rico? If there’s no legal difference, how come Puerto Rico doesn’t get a star on the U....
Forget cremation, forget embalming–when I go, I want to go in style. For some time now, I’ve been wondering how to get my mortal remains fossilized. I know that soft tissue doesn’t normally fossilize, but there must be some exceptions: for example, the Petrified Forest in Arizona. What kind of conditions are necessary, and how long will it take? Our Creationist friends are of the opinion that fossils are remains of animals that existed before the Flood; does that mean a man can become a fossil in a couple thousand years?...
