COASTAL DISTURBANCES Body Politic Theatre Three tons of sand were carted up a flight of stairs to provide Body Politic’s setting for Tina Howe’s Coastal Disturbances, a play that depicts late-summer visitors to a private Massachusetts beach. If they had put the same effort into breathing some life into the script, we’d have been spared […]
Tag: Vol. 17 No. 51
Issue of Oct. 6 – 12, 1988
Posted inNews & Politics
The Straight Dope
THE TEEMING MILLIONS POUNCE In your column of August 12, you answered “no” to the question, “does an airplane have a lighter load after the passengers have consumed their food?” Have you forgotten the second law of thermodynamics? Matter cannot be converted into energy and vice versa without some loss. When the airplane passengers eat […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Dizzy Gillespie
It would be presumptuous to start enumerating the virtues of John Birks Gillespie (he of the upturned horn); the man who, with Charlie Parker, discovered bebop almost 50 years ago remains one of the music’s most dynamic trumpeters (at the age of 71), and that says plenty. But I could go on at length about […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Some Men Need Help
SOME MEN NEED HELP Victory Gardens Theater I saw John Ford Noonan’s best-known play, A Coupla White Chicks Sitting Around Talking, in 1983, at the Drury Lane Theatre at Water Tower Place. That theater’s a multiscreen movie complex now, but it used to house an in-the-round stage with fat, soft, fall-asleep seats and lots of […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The City File
All shook up. For $54.75, Hammacher Schlemmer will sell you an alarm clock–one that attaches to your pillow and instead of ringing (according to HS’s fall supplement) “wakes you by vibrating at 14,000 rpm for 60 seconds.” Isn’t that the same kind of treatment they offer free in certain jails in Chile? A tale of […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Steve Forbert
Steve Forbert’s first album presented a persona that was a mix of both calculated innocence and the real article. But Forbert’s genuine innocence was interesting and different, giving his best music an air of something wild and fresh and lost, like a band of young brigands living a life of moonstruck freedom in the Mississippi […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Minimum Security
These Parts–The federal correctional camp at Oxford, Wisconsin, is home away from home for many of the judges and lawyers convicted in Operation Greylord. It’s more comfortable than a penitentiary. But it’s still a prison.
Posted inArts & Culture
Johnny Copeland
We’ve been getting a lot of superb out-of-town blues acts in Chicago recently; Texas-based Johnny Copeland is one of the best. Since his days touring the southwest with the likes of Rice Miller and Big Mama Thornton in the 50s, he has enjoyed a reputation as one of the most versatile and prolific of bluesmen, […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Saved From the Sandsuckers
These Parts—Grand Mere, Michigan’s new state park, covers nearly a thousand acres of wild, unspoiled dunes country. If not for a band of determined conservationists, it might be a sand mine or a can factory.
Posted inNews & Politics
Fatuous Times at Clemente High; Planning
Fatuous Times at Clemente High Last night we picked a flier off a sidewalk near our home. MARCH TO HAVE KAY THOMPSON FIRED! said the flier, inviting one and all to join a picket line at the Board of Education. Someone is ranging far and wide to end this woman’s career. She’s the librarian at […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Lesbian and Gay Film Festival
The eighth annual edition of the Chicago Lesbian and Gay Film Festival runs October 7 through 13 at the Music Box Theatre, 3733 N. Southport; then continues October 14 through 16 at Chicago Filmmakers, 1229 W. Belmont. Tickets for the ten-day event cost $4-$5.50 per show (except for the opening night reception and film, which […]