Katie Johnston-Smith, Gorilla Tango Theatre executive producer, is flipping through:
Dollhouse Volume 1: Epitaphs Comic books are for nerds. However, nerdy is the new normal . . . which means comic books are for everyone! I am superlucky to live near one of Chicago’s finest comic bookeries, Challengers Comics. The Challengers staff doesn’t judge you if you are new to the graphic novel scene (like me), and they give excellent recommendations for new series to get into.
I recently read Dollhouse Volume 1 and absolutely loved it! It spins off of Joss Whedon’s brilliant but short-lived show, also named Dollhouse. The story is set in a dystopian future in which the secretive Rossum Corporation programs individuals to become “dolls,” wiping their minds and installing new personalities and skills to suit the needs of its wealthy clients.
Dollhouse Volume 1 explores a world in which Rossum’s technology has gone global and brainwashed a majority of the population. It is both thrilling and pretty to look at. I mean, a graphic novel version of Tahmoh Penikett? Yes, please!
Sherman Edwards, stand-up comic, is geeking out over:
People Play Games It was a nice afternoon for a walk in Lakeview the other day so I decided to stop in People Play Games for a minute while exploring the neighborhood.
That minute quickly became over an hour. I was overwhelmed by the amount and assortment of games that they had: there were Atari 6400s, Nintendos, Super Nintendos, even game systems whose names I had never heard. People Play Games is the closest thing I’ve ever seen to a video game museum. I felt like a teenager again, rummaging through stacks of classic games, looking at old promotional banners and displays on the walls, and flipping through vintage video game magazines. And for those of you who are “done” with video games, you can bring your old game systems and games to the shop and they will buy them off of you. Neat!
Megan Mercier, Neo-Futurists associate artistic director and ensemble member, is relating to:
Girls Some critics toss Lena Dunham aside for actually believing that her experience is worth bitching about. While Girls may ocasionally evoke a twentysomething hipster’s take on Sex and the City, Dunham’s writing and sociocultural acuity are wickedly on point. She bemoans the ways in which recession regression asphyxiates overgrown college grads as they forge clumsy adult lives and grapple with the delusions of their coddled 1990s childhoods.
Beneath the distraction of Urban Outfitted scenarios lies the heart of the show: Dunham’s wry, self-aware take on the barrage of conundrums befuddling whip-smart, prepared-for-nothing, and entitled-to-absolutely-everything girls everywhere. Any similarity to Sex and the City just calls attention to what that show did to us, the girls who were studying the exploits of Carrie and Samantha as 15-year-old small-town, know-nothing virgins and believing that those were the lives we would magically wake up to without knowing whether to want them or not.