Author Archives: Carl Kozlowski

Brian LeTraunik teaches Chicagoans to stab, hit, and tackle each other without actually hurting anyone. The founder of the fledgling Chicago Stage Combat Academy, he’s been fascinated by stage fighting since he saw a swashbuckling rendition of The Three Musketeers when he was 12. Nine years later, as an actor in another Three Musketeers production, […]

Arshad “Sony” Javid says he started on caffeine when he was 11 months old. He loves coffee. It fuels him from the moment he gets up, and it remains his obsession seven days a week as he oversees his growing java empire, the Cafe Descartes chain, which includes a new roasting facility and coffeehouse in […]

Late Saturday night on Rush Street hundreds of singles are out searching for heavenly bodies to trade numbers with. But for Dennis Erickson, a science teacher at the Latin School, and five members of his Sidewalk Astronomy Club, a recent evening was a chance to look at objects of a truly celestial nature. Standing across […]

Adam McKay says his life was changed by a stand-up comedian. In the late 80s McKay was a discontented English major at Temple University in his native Philadelphia. He sought creative fulfillment at open-mike nights, and when a fellow stand-up told him about improv–“a comedy form that you could do anything with”–McKay immediately decided to […]

When Jim Carrane moved out of his parents’ Kenilworth home at age 28, he didn’t realize just how small Chicago could be. In search of cheap rent, he spent the next six years living in an apartment designed for dwarfs. Now Carrane, 36, looks back at that time and laughs. As a performer on the […]

In the summer of 1996, things were going great for the sketch comedy troupe Ectomorph. Its members–Bart Heird, Darren Bodeker, and Jim Kopsian–were regulars at the Improv nightclub, performing to enthusiastic crowds of up to 500 a night. Their rise to fame and fortune seemed assured. Heird decided to cash in on Ectomorph’s popularity, printing […]

In 1980 Marc Smith was just another poet yearning to express himself onstage. But when he tried to break into the Chicago poetry scene, he discovered he wasn’t welcome. “The scene back then was smaller, pathetic, stupid, boring, pompous, and very elite,” says Smith in his typically direct fashion. “If you weren’t in the higher […]

Judith Schulz’s most impressive trick with tops involves flinging them across the display area at the Spinning Top Museum in Burlington, Wisconsin, and hitting small landing platforms more than 15 feet away. “This is a rare skill to master,” she says, “even though it’s within anyone’s ability to pick up if they just try it […]