The students are already seated, quiet and polite in perfectly aligned rows of chairs, when Bill Ayers walks into the classroom. He wears shorts. “We were anarchists,” he tells the class. “We were willing to get thrown out of school. We were willing to go to jail. I make no apologies. There comes a time in your life when you face a moral challenge. You have to ask yourself: ‘Will I bow to conformity and accede to the world as it is, or will I take a stand?...
I’m enclosing an article that poses a question that had never occurred to me before: Why is the night sky dark? According to the author of the article, Robert Cowen, “the traditional answer holds that the universe is expanding so fast that light from the distant stars is degraded and thinly spread.” Another theory suggests, “the darkness is better explained by the simple fact that the universe is of finite age....
Mick Napier has always been a sucker for slice-‘n’-dice, hack-’em-up movies. Over the years, he says, he’s seen plenty of antisocial psycho-killers (sometimes already dead themselves) slash up their onscreen victims (often horny teenagers) by the dozens. He’s seen critical classics (including the work of David Cronenberg and George Romero), popular classics (Friday the 13th, Halloween), and nonclassics (Happy Birthday to Me, My Bloody Valentine). Best of Chicago voting is live now....
The Pakistani form of Islamic devotional music called qawwali works this way: An ensemble of nine men sits on a beautiful carpet in the middle of the stage. Two harmonium players squeeze out simple Western major-key chord changes while the five guys in the back row provide a rocking hand-clapping chorus and a tabla player contributes a percolating rhythmic commentary. This setting frames some of the most exciting improvisational singing audible in any idiom today, which comes not only from Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan himself (who’s regarded as the foremost living qawwali singer, and it’s not hard to hear why), but also from three others in his “party” (they’re all related) who continually trade riffs back and forth with him in a friendly game of can-you-top-this....
CINDERELLA If one thinks of Cinderella as a children’s fairy tale, a la Charles Perrault or Walt Disney, featuring fairy godmothers, pumpkin coaches, and glass slippers, then Rossini’s treatment of the story in his opera La Cenerentola (“Cinderella”) may seem in many ways unfamiliar, even strange. Rossini chose to turn the story into a sophisticated, sentimental romantic comedy that, by its end, has also become a powerful parable of forgiveness and understanding....
To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Camper consistently refers to Warhol’s “fetishism.” Good word for both the art and the review, I reckon: Webster defines fetishism as “extravagant irrational devotion.” While Warhol might have felt devotion to Marilyn Monroe, Mick Jagger and soup makers, it’s difficult to imagine why anyone else should follow suit. John Updike’s observation in The New Republic makes as much sense as any other I’ve heard; while Warhol was busily denaturing art, many critics soon realized that if art disappears, art critics would, too....
“Painting is directed by the heart through the eye. Photography is directed by the mind through the eye. . . . Someday heart and mind will become one, that is, an all-embracing and economical medium will enable us to realize all our desires instantly.” –Man Ray, 1950 In the center of the floor is a two-faced pillar, three phscolograms high, of alternating images of nudes and complex spiky polyhedrons–herpes, papilloma, and AIDS viruses....
A lot of things happened in 1990 that shouldn’t have–ranging from Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait to the failures of the Hubble telescope to Binney & Smith’s decision to retire four highly regarded Crayola colors, including raw umber. It has been a year of the gauche, the goofy, and the gross–in the Chicago area as much as anywhere else. The predictable assortment of senseless crimes, tragic accidents, natural catastrophes, and stupid decisions could shake one’s confidence any year, but in 1990 the bizarre often had a special bite....
Drive around the city of Benton Harbor, in the southwestern part of Michigan where upscale Chicagoans now like to vacation, and the decay is obvious. The town looks like “four square miles going out the world backwards,” as one local educator describes it. “We have gangs and drug dealing,” reports Mayor Bill Wolf. “Lots of people drive through in nice cars, buy crack, and then leave town.” Last year Benton Harbor had nine homicides....
Bureau of Tourism Tries Something New Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The new campaign, which kicked off earlier this month, is a far cry from the sophisticated soft-sell, image-oriented efforts of recent years, which used arty visuals and tried to portray the state as a culturally enriching vacation spot with the slogan, “Illinois: The American Renaissance.” Now the push is more down-to-earth, purely “product driven,” according to Donna Shaw, appointed director of the tourism bureau last September by Governor Edgar....
Mike Ervin has just finished brushing his teeth and washing his face when the bus arrives. Which explains why the line was busy when Ervin called the night before. He hung up, and tried two more times, before he was put on hold. After which a dispatcher warned him to be ready at 8:30 AM sharp. “I’m in,” says Ervin, “I’m in.” The bus hits a bump and pops up and then slams back to the ground....
For decades New York City and vicinity have furnished the country’s best and brightest contemporary-music performers; but more and more, the west coast is putting up fairly stiff competition. The ten-year-old California E.A.R. Unit, in residence at the LA County Museum of Art, is fast acquiring a reputation for its versatility with instruments and the zestful, entertaining way it approaches the cutting edge. In its Chicago debut, sponsored by Northwestern University’s innovative Computer Music Studio, the nine-member group will present a number of local premieres–including “Revenge Before Breakfast” by avant-garde stalwarts Steve Reich and Frederic Rzewski and “Murphy Nights” by pretenders John Zorn and Henry Brant....
LA TRAGEDIE DE CARMEN Yet in 1981 theater director Peter Brook—working with conductor Marius Constant and Jean-Claude Carrière, a playwright noted for his collaborations with film director Luis Buñuel—shortened the opera “to focus on the intense interactions, the tragedy of four people.” Presumably the abridgment was allowed because the rights to the opera had expired and permission from the Bizet estate was not needed. In any case, fidelity to the composer’s musical design was never an issue for Brook, who declared he wanted to convey the dramatic core of Prosper Mérimée’s book, on which the libretto is based....
To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » When the war ended I received a couple of letters at the local office of Physicians for Social Responsibility criticizing us for “grossly overestimating” the number of casualties we thought could occur if war broke out. In retrospect we were wrong only on the U.S. casualties; if anything, we underestimated the number of Iraqi casualties....
To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » At the top level of city government, Daley has now appointed 18 minority group members (Black, Hispanic and Asian) to head city departments–50% of the Cabinet. Minorities head an even greater share of the most important departments–7 of the 9 largest (a higher percentage than under either Sawyer or Washington), plus other key positions such as Budget Director, Commissioner of Personnel and Commissioner of Economic Development (who also chairs the Development Subcabinet)....
The invitation said black tie optional; I must have missed the line that said underwear optional. The guy standing next to me at the bar was wearing jeans with so many holes he looked like a pornographic Advent calendar. The woman behind him, wore no blouse, no T-shirt, no halter, just a black sport bra that was so tight it mushed her breasts into rectangles. Best of Chicago voting is live now....
JOHN MAYALL’S BLUESBREAKERS: A SENSE OF PLACE Mayall succeeded artistically and commercially by remaining as true as possible to the music he loved. His voice at its best could sear you with an agonized high-tenor fire that sometimes approached the intensity of Otis Rush. He played harp in a refreshingly low-key manner, always referring respectfully to the masters–the two Sonny Boy Williamsons, Little Walter, Jimmy Reed, and occasionally Slim Harpo or Sonny Terry....
To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I find your argument, which I have dubbed the “O’Hare Field Argument” (you knew it was there when you moved in) misguided. While it is correct I was aware of the ballpark’s presence when I moved to my current address, the Wrigley family still owned the team and there was no talk of night baseball. Myself and my neighbors accepted the existence of the park, knowing that except on a few occasions, the game would be over and most all the fans would be gone by the time we came home from work....
Sunita* studied the patterns on the hotel-room floor, only half listening to the chatter of the two families. He sat on the couch, a few feet away. She had never seen him before, but she knew this meeting could lead to marriage and was too embarrassed to look at him. She stole one glance, noticed his fair skin, and looked back at the floor. “What do you think?” her parents asked, taking her aside....
Written and directed by Steve DeJarnatt, this taut, apocalyptic thriller shows some improvement over DeJarnatt’s previous direction of Cherry 2000 (which was released in this country only on videotape), apart from some faulty continuity in the final reel. Most of the film concerns what happens when the young hero (Anthony Edwards) accidentally intercepts a phone call that announces an impending nuclear holocaust only 70 minutes away, and is desperate to find the woman (Mare Winningham) he has just fallen in love with....
