Posts

Two months ago a colleague stormed into my office to complain about my supervision of a graduate student. The student was working on a paper on the aesthetics of Madonna’s video for “Cherish,” and had written about the use of editing, lighting, and visual framing to create meaning and, yes, beauty in the clip. My colleague’s complaint was that I had taken this aesthetic level too seriously, that what I should have done was steer the student toward what really mattered–the clip’s “sexism....

To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Boy, there sure won’t be any passionate editorials to save the Borg Warner Building if the Chicago Symphony Orchestra goes ahead with its plan to knock it down [The Culture Club, April 17]. What a monstrosity! If I had to work in the ugliest building on Chicago’s Michigan Avenue wall, I would wear dark glasses and enter through the loading dock....

On the night when several thousand lusty Bulls fans celebrated their second straight NBA championship by smashing windows, overturning cars, looting stores, and setting fires around town–just as fans had the year before–one of the rioters promised a reporter from the Tribune they’d be back. “Next year this time,” he said, “we’ll be doing it again. It’s a Chicago tradition from now on.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » When you arrive you are met by a cordon of bobbies with nightsticks, mounted police, and dog handlers who conduct you to the gate, keeping you away from the families and out of range of the other team’s supporters....

Everything in this place is green. Never mind that a lot of it has faded into sickly pale greens over the years. The curtains are green, the chicken wire is green, the foam is green, the Xerox machine sits atop a sea-green box, the woman at the counter slicing off the green stem of a carnation is smoking a cigarette from a green box. Best of Chicago voting is live now....

Disarming in the simplicity and sentimentality of its basic conception, this mainly silent black-and-white comedy reworks the basic coordinates of Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid in terms of the homeless in contemporary lower Manhattan. Written, directed, produced by, and starring Charles Lane, the movie focuses on a young black sidewalk portrait artist who finds himself caring for a two-year-old girl after her father is murdered in an alley. The comparisons provoked by Lane between himself and Chaplin are not always fortunate; in spite of his obvious talent and sincerity, the filmmaker-performer doesn’t come across as any sort of genius....

STOLTZMAN/GOODE/STOLTZMAN TRIO at the Rhona Hoffman Gallery Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The only other piece on the program that was actually written for the trio’s instrumentation was Bartok’s Contrasts for Clarinet, Violin, and Piano. The work has an unusual history in that it was commissioned by Hungarian violinist Joseph Szigeti and big-band clarinetist Benny Goodman. Szigeti, a longtime friend of Bartok’s who moved to this country in 1926, thought the work would give his friend greater popularity here (Bartok was still in Hungary because his mother was ill)....

THE OFF OFF LOOP THEATER FESTIVAL Sunday, March 25, performances at the Theatre Building Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Old Wives Tales is easily the most offensive piece of theater I have ever seen. It features spikes pounded up vampire’s butts, necrophilia, incest, child molestation–all done in high comic, almost commedia dell’arte style. It is horrifying, but absolutely riveting. Famous Door’s talented performers clearly enjoy their no-holds- barred mission statement and give the piece an exuberantly defiant treatment....

THE SANTA NICK VERSES–A CORPORATE CHRISTMAS CAROL at Red Bones Theatre Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Developed by the ensemble under the direction of Barbara Wallace, The Santa Nick Verses (its title a labored pun on Salman Rushdie’s proscribed novel) takes place at the annual Christmas office party/shareholders’ meeting of the Wholesome Family Greeting Card Company. After the “shareholders” (audience members) are welcomed, given name tags, and led in a caroling sing-along, we plunge into the crisis besetting the 64-year-old company: sales are plummeting, union troubles threaten a strike, and management is in chaos....

TRIAGE Yet The Normal Heart is one of the most effective plays I’ve ever seen, and I’ve often wondered how Kramer pulled it off. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Both plays are packed with information about their respective topics, and both revolve around a quixotic attempt to deal with crisis. The threat to quit the world also brings a visit from Baron Wim van Bilderberg, the administrative director of the Central Organization of Industrialized Nations (COIN), a powerful financial cartel....

To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The only debasement here, is Whiteis’ inability to experience blues music as a form of entertainment. His preconceived notion of what the blues should be reflects an attitude toward the people who actually created the music. It is one thing for Skip James or Lightnin’ Hopkins to create “melancholy” songs full of “haunted introspection” sixty or so years ago in a setting that is far removed from contemporary experience (Whiteis does point out that while we venerate these legendary musicians as wise old men, they indeed wrote and performed these tunes as young men, “abrim with youthful exuberance”)....

Battle of the Giant Outdoor Concert Spots The battle of the outdoor music venues heats up considerably as of June 1, with the opening of the World Music Theatre in southwest suburban Tinley Park. The $23-million World Music Theatre is the brainchild of a group of Tinley Park real-estate developers and Tinley Park Jam, a company separate from but related to Chicago’s Jam Productions. With undercover seating for 11,000 and lawn seating for an additional 16,000, the World Music Theatre will be larger than either Poplar Creek or Alpine Valley, and it will add appreciably to Jam’s already-considerable clout as a midwestern pop-show promoter....

CARNE VALE Andy Warhol understood that perfectly. His work as an artist revolved around cultural icons that are etched into our collective unconscious through sheer repetition. Even when those images are as trivial as a soup can or as frivolous as Marilyn Monroe, they become significant because they are massively disseminated. Warhol called his workshop in lower Manhattan the “factory,” cynically implying that he could mass-produce art the way our culture mass-produces its mythology....

Cats here, cats there, Millions and billions and trillions of cats “We have 500 cats currently. It is costing me $10,000 a month. We get no government money because we don’t kill–if we would kill, we would get support. That’s one thing that I can’t understand. We’re supposed to be a civilized society–and yet we manage to kill millions of God’s creatures, year after year, animals that give us nothing but love and affection....

Ned Rorem was born in Indiana 65 years ago, the son of a University of Chicago business professor. While growing up in Hyde Park, he studied composition with Leo Sowerby; later, in New York, he was Virgil Thomson’s copyist. During the 50s, he settled in Paris and emerged a golden boy among expatriates, embraced by the cafe society and hobnobbing with the likes of Jean Cocteau and Darius Milhaud. (His adventures there have been chronicled with utmost frankness in a series of published diaries....

Regal in his sharkskin suit, black hat, and bright red tie, Lefty Dizz struts lanky and elastic across the stage, knees high. With one hand he lifts his hot-red Stratocaster off his shoulder, clenching the guitar’s neck while hammering out grungy one-handed blues riffs, his free hand waving wildly as he dances like some zealot preacher at the height of a frenzied sermon. With the last note of each extravagant phrase he creases his brow and stares at the crowd, demanding reverence for his blues thunderclaps....

As soon as she saw the town houses in the Sanctuary two years ago, Suzanne Hogan knew it was as close as she’d get to middle-class paradise on earth, and in the heart of Chicago yet. Located at the corner of Sheffield and Fullerton, the condominium complex–62 apartments and 17 town houses built around an enclosed courtyard is in the heart of Lincoln Park, a block from the el and five minutes from the lake....

The Spring Bird Count, which happens every year in early May, is one of my favorite days. I have picked out a census tract for myself in one of the choicest natural areas Cook County has to offer, and on count day, I can cover it slowly and carefully on foot, soaking up the solitude, the peace, and the rich bird life. But for all their sneering and for all the disreputable weeds on this land, the preserves north of Vollmer Road support as fine a collection of native prairie birds as you can find in Cook County....

FORBIDDEN BROADWAY Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Though it’s hyped as a takeoff on the great and not-so-great stars, writers, and directors of Broadway, the real topic of this show is work–who’s got it, who doesn’t, and how it’s paid for. Underlying Alessandrini’s scattershot spoofs of well-known performers, writers, and directors is a basic sense of resentment: they’re successful and I’m not. Ironically, this attitude has made Alessandrini quite successful; his show has been running off-Broadway in various updated editions on and off for almost ten years and has spawned various touring and regional versions....

NEW DANCES ’89 So where else can you go to see seven spanking-new dances by a total of 11 choreographers, some taking a first stab at making dances, and not be disappointed? Chicago Repertory Dance Ensemble’s “New Dances ’89” has its high points and its low, but overall it’s a pretty nifty showcase for the preoccupations, styles, and points of view of several Chicago choreographers. Best of Chicago voting is live now....

If all goes according to plan, Mayor Daley will call a press conference in a week or two and announce his nominees for the new school board. Then the City Council will approve them, and the press will extol them and credit Daley with acting in the best interest of the city’s 400,000 public school children. “Many commissioners feel unappreciated,” says Lafayette Ford, who, as chairman of the commission, tries to choose his words carefully....