COMEDY SPORTZ at Frankie’s Sports Bar & Grill Competitive sports and comedy improvisation: it was only a matter of time before someone got the brainstorm to connect them. While most stand-up comics are so many lone talents howling at the audience, comedy improv requires teamwork, coordination, flexibility, and raw courage–real sports stuff demanding team spirit […]
Tag: Vol. 16 No. 38
Issue of Jul. 9 – 15, 1987
Posted inNews & Politics
First Person: The Art of Eavesdropping
Usually you get chance fragments of dialogue that you can interpret any way you choose. It becomes an art, a form of expression.
Posted inArts & Culture
Steve Earle
The money men are nervous ’cause they sense big bucks in this guy, but aren’t sure who to market him to. The critics are nervous because he frustrates their categorical imperative. So–unforgivably–both factions are suggesting he’s Springsteen with a twang, Mellencamp with a beer belly (while Nashville wonders if maybe he’s the next Judds). Screw […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Empty Quarter
An autobiographical fantasy from French photographer-documentarist Raymond Depardon (Reporters, Faits divers), about a photojournalist traveling in North Africa who becomes voyeuristically obsessed with an enigmatic young woman. There’s something about the combination of voyeurism and languor in this that ought to be disturbing, but frankly I’m not complaining. It’s a small masterpiece of a vaguely […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Kronos Quartet
The Kronos Quartet has not grown into a crossover phenom on the strength of its punk haircut and space-age attire alone. Only a decade old, this ensemble is already commanding wide respect as the most incisive, eloquent, and impassioned interpreter of contemporary music–“serious” and otherwise; the trendy accoutrements, along with a puckish sense of humor, […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Promises of the Times; The Shadow of Our Mile
Promises of the Times Putting out a magazine is a simple thing. You fill it with wonderful stuff and watch people line up to read it. The founders of Chicago Times believe in this formula. In spirit, they’re heirs of Margaret Anderson, who decided in 1914 that someone ought to publish the best new writers […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Fear of Feeling
Working with an unorthodox theory of emotions, Evanston psychoanalyst Kenneth Isaacs is achieving dynamic results for victims of phobia and other “symptom disorders.”
Posted inArts & Culture
Free Enterprise: this man will set your pet to music
“Simple Simon is my turtle / That’s all he’ll ever be. / But even though he’s just a turtle, / He means much more to me.” Dennis Knick first got the idea to write songs for animals when he saw Jaws. “Remember that music for the shark?” he asks. “it was sinister, and I didn’t […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Great Chicago Playwrights Exposition
Those Lincoln Avenue roommates, the Body Politic and Victory Gardens theaters, have lent their two-level performance complex as well as their energies to the task of bringing off this six-week-long 13-playwright showcase for homegrown talents. Productions include two full-length works, three programs of short plays, and a couple of pieces-in-progress (see below for details). Body […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Sports Section
Breakfast at Wimbledon is one of the few television marketing ploys that succeeds on all levels. Wimbledon, of course, is the oldest and most prestigious of tennis’s grand-slam events; its appeal is obvious. Its grass courts reward the most exciting and powerful form of tennis–the serve-and-volley game–while contributing an element of luck the British seem […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Big Mouth
To the editors: The Saint Lawrence Seaway does indeed have a big mouth, stretching northeastward from Quebec City. But if Fred Thompson (“The Little Red Book House,” October 17) lived in Saint John, New Brunswick, “at the mouth of the Saint Lawrence Seaway,” the river had a much bigger “mouth” in 1913 than it has […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Your Tax Dollars at Work
The Springfield Follies of 1987: This Is the Way a Legislative Session Ends
Posted inNews & Politics
Crazy Priorities
To the editors: I read with extreme interest Robert McClory’s article about militant mental patients [Our Town, May 29]. I am in agreement with his conclusion that there are no easy answers to mentally ill people who need medication to stabilize their lives, and the problems of an uncaring and uninformed society. Let’s consider for […]