R • 1 hour 59 min • 1997
Yearly Archives: 1998
Posted inArts & Culture
Fatal Femme
Bremen Freedom Trap Door Theatre Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Emerald City Theatre Company at the Athenaeum Theatre By Jack Helbig The story has been told a thousand times in a thousand different ways: an exasperated woman, tired of her abusive husband, murders him. The ancient Greeks made it the stuff of tragedy. Clytemnestra’s murder […]
Posted inArts & Culture
In Performance: trying not to lose the beats
At the end of his relatively somber 1992 poem “After Lalon,” Allen Ginsberg–usually the sunniest of the beat writers–cautioned his readers: I had my chance and lost it, many chances & didn’t take them seriously enuf. Oh yes I was impressed, almost went mad with fear I’d lose the immortal chance, One lost it. Allen […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Roger Simon’s New House/ Two Thumbs in the Eye
By Michael Miner Roger Simon’s New House “I’d like to think my column had a fair amount of reporting in it,” Roger Simon was saying, “but it’s the first time in a long time that I’ve been a beat reporter. It’s an exciting challenge–as we say.” Not only that, it’s a steady job. Simon, whose […]
Posted inMusic
Tony Oxley
TONY OXLEY English percussionist Tony Oxley didn’t even begin learning his instrument until the age of 17, but within a decade he was the house drummer at Ronnie Scott’s prestigious London jazz club, performing with American legends like Sonny Rollins, Bill Evans, Stan Getz, and Lee Konitz in their heyday. Before long, however, Oxley’s mastery […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Art People: Aron Packer goes mobile
Aron Packer doesn’t like to be called an art dealer. “‘Art dealer’ sounds a little underhanded, kind of like a card dealer in Las Vegas,” he says. “Gallery owner” would no longer be accurate either, at least not since he closed his Wicker Park gallery in October. But during his five years there he gained […]
Posted inMusic
The Ten Best Albums of 1997
The Ten Best Albums of 1997 a RICHARD BUCKNER, Devotion + Doubt (MCA). Buckner’s unhealthy absorption in his own cyclical romantic traumas has made him able to describe the tenuousness of love and the persistence of its memory more beautifully than anyone currently in possession of an acoustic guitar. A terrific support cast, including steel […]
Posted inFilm
Rosita
Rosita The German films of Ernst Lubitsch had already achieved international renown when Mary Pickford, worried that her immense popularity playing little girls was typing her as a “personality instead of an actress,” brought him to America to direct this 1923 romantic comedy. As Rosita, a popular Spanish street singer, she loves a nobleman who […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Death of a Salesman
porter.qxd Dear Editor: My family really enjoyed the listing for my father, LeRoy Klowden (inventor of the self-service shoe department), in your year-end “Little Deaths” section [December 26]. Sam Walton once acknowledged that the merchandising ideas he gave him were essential to the early success of Wal-Mart. He was a man of many accomplishments and […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Following the Money
The League of Women Voters takes aim at our increasingly regressive tax system.
Posted inNews & Politics
News of the Weird
Lead Stories Tough times for Nike: The winner of November’s New York City Marathon, John Kagawe, said he might have broken the record for time except that his Nike shoes kept coming untied. And two weeks earlier the company cooperated with authorities in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, in the arrest of five employees at […]
Posted inMusic
Eddie Palmieri
EDDIE PALMIERI The worst news I’ve had all year: the scintillating salsa pianist and bandleader Eddie Palmieri will not lead his full-scale jazz orchestra in Chicago as originally announced, but will instead appear at the helm of a seven-piece band, as small a group as he’s led in years. But though we lost the opportunity […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Police Scanner
Monday, December 29, 10:35 AM Dispatcher: 2513. 2513: You want to make a little notation? Um, in the 1800 block of Nagle or Natchez, if somebody calls about a dog that’s lost, a black rockwilder with no–it’s just got a choker chain on it, I put it in the yard at 18–! (Laughs.) Dispatcher: (Laughs.) […]
Posted inColumns & Opinion
Savage Love
Hey, Everybody: I’m still on vacation–like I’m a goddamned Euro-three-weeks-paid-holiday-pean or something. Here’s another clit-notes column, and next week–tan, rested, and ready–I’ll be back with a 100 percent brand-spankin’-new sex-advice column. Hey, Faggot: “Bill” and I have been lovers on and off for five years. Lately we’ve been having troubles in bed. Basically, I was […]