If this meeting of perpetually nervous, thinking guitar bands doesn’t turn into the best twin bill of the season, I promise to eat my entire collection of Velvet Underground albums. You might identify the Feelies as the cooler-than-cool group from the reunion scene in Jonathan Demme’s Something Wild, the artistic pinnacle of North Jersey nerd […]
Tag: Vol. 17 No. 22
Issue of Mar. 17 – 23, 1988
Posted inArts & Culture
The Vampires
THE VAMPIRES Immediate Theatre Company Don’t let the title of The Vampires scare you–the play isn’t quite as dumb as it sounds. Harry Kondoleon has attempted to write a farce about people who have been supported by illusions that are now collapsing. As they tumble headlong into the snake pit of reality they scream and […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Frogs/Seaviews
THE FROGS Pegasus Players SEAVIEWS Raven Theatre Company Well, you can’t fault this show for its dry humor, its refusal to make waves, or any lack of buoyancy, let alone chlorine. Written in 1974 for the Yale Rep and performed in that school’s Olympic-size swimming pool (Meryl Streep and Sigourney Weaver were in the original […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Art Facts: Bill Walker accentuates the negative
“No job, no place to stay. No job, no place to eat. No job, no clothes to buy. No job, no bus to ride. No job, no job, no job, yet they hold on, keeping the hope alive, keeping the faith alive . . . the poor, homeless, unemployed, sick American will tell you with […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Old Man and the Kid/Broadcast News
The Old Man and the Kid Legendary journalist I.F. Stone is roaming his supermarket snagging odds and ends. Andrew Patner, 52 years younger, gallops after him waving a tape recorder. Stone’s passion is a continuing amazement; for as he shops, Stone, who’s almost 80 and legally blind, chatters away about a poem a Greek named […]
Posted inNews & Politics
What’s a Wife Worth?
A Lot More Than She Used to Be, Thanks to Divorce Lawyer Michael Minton
Posted inNews & Politics
What Girl?
To the editors: Reading the [“First Person: A Waif at My Door”] story in the February 26 issue of Chicago Reader I was filled with horror and sadness by the way the kindness of people is exploited by clever individuals. But then as I read on to the end, I started wondering why the credibility […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Straight Dope
As a longtime reader of ingredients labels, I beg you to clarify the ubiquitous phrase, “partially hydrogenated.” I assume it has something to do with hydrogen, but what does that highly flammable gas have to do with food? And why partially hydrogenated? Why not get down, go crazy and hydrogenate to the max? –Mr. Sinister, […]
Posted inNews & Politics
That Girl III
To the editors: “Margery” [“First Person: A Waif at My Door,” February 26] does get around. She first introduced herself to me on a hot, sunny Sunday morning in August. She entered our church directly after our 10:30 AM service. I had assisted with worship that day and I guess the clerical robe and my […]
Posted inNews & Politics
City File
How long does it take for the average American car to pollute the atmosphere with its own weight in carbon? According to Greenpeace (April 1988), one year. “I hate The Opponent,” writes John Eisendrath in the Washington Monthly (March 1988), recalling his brother’s successful 1987 campaign for 43rd Ward alderman. “I hate the people who […]
Posted inNews & Politics
That Girl
To the editors: My wife and I read your “First Person: A Waif at My Door,” February 26, with shocking recognition. We were also suckered by “Margery Davis” in September of 1987 and the details of the con were remarkably similar. “Margaret,” as she called herself, targeted us at a cash station outside the Bank […]
Posted inNews & Politics
That Girl II
To the editors: Augghhh! Laurel DiGangi, you weren’t the only one! Your “Margery” [“First Person: A Waif at My Door,” February 26] got me at work (in a River North gallery). Then–incredibly–she turned up that night on a friend’s porch (in Wrigleyville), where she’d just gotten $30 from him! Same story, same cigarettes, same teeth, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Macbeth
MACBETH Court Theatre Nicholas Pennell’s got concepts. His Court Theatre Macbeth is heavy laden with concepts. Heavy, heavy laden. There’s a blocking concept and a scenic concept, a concept for the costumes and the witches and, of course, for that murderous Scotsman, Macbeth. Each concept’s precisely thought out and crisply presented. Some of them are […]
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Intimate Relations
MORDINE & COMPANY at the Dance Center of Columbia College March 11 and 12, 18 and 19, 25 and 26 Last Saturday night, Mordine & Company served its audience an elegant sandwich. Bracketing a cool, spare piece by California-based choreographer Loretta Livingston were two ripe, rich works by Shirley Mordine, the founder of this exceptionally […]