Wrigley Field’s Stairway to Heaven It’s a long haul up to the press box in Wrigley Field, and Bus Saidt of New Jersey’s Trenton Times felt every step. “This is pretty tough on me,” he told the Sun-Times’s Joe Goddard during one of their climbs last April. And when Saidt paused to catch his breath, […]
Tag: Vol. 18 No. 36
Issue of Jun. 22 – 28, 1989
Posted inArts & Culture
Dig, Volley, Spike!
DIG, VOLLEY, SPIKE! Footsteps Theatre Company at the Hemenway United Methodist Church Penny O’Connor’s Dig, Volley, Spike! contains elements of the “heroes lose, heroes work hard, heroes win” plot utilized in countless novels, plays, and films. A bunch of motley, sad-sack rookies/recruits/amateurs/nerds overcome great obstacles to become a smoothly functioning team of athletes/soldiers/cops/dancers; after an […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Episcopal Extremists
To the editors: I have a number of reasons for having been fascinated by Bryan Miller’s article “Is Nothing Sacred?” [June 9]. Christened into the Church of England, I joined an Episcopal parish when I moved to the United States fifteen years ago. Since then I have attended both St. Paul’s-by-the-Lake, home to many of […]
Posted inFilm
Undermining Authority
SURNAME VIET GIVEN NAME NAM *** (A must-see) Directed and written by Trinh T. Minh-ha. How many, already, have been condemned to premature deaths for having borrowed the master’s tools and thereby played into his hands? –Trinh T. Minh-ha Uncertainty is a difficult premise on which to build a documentary, although there are times when […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Gossip Was Her Business
To the editors: Ken Towers, executive editor of the Sun-Times, in a statement in his paper said that the dismissed Ann Gerber was hired as a free-lance “society columnist” [Hot Type, June 9]. Towers knew, or should have known, that Ann Gerber was a “gossip columnist.” For in every publication of her column in the […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Telemarketing
You’re sitting down, about to enjoy a meal. Or maybe you’ve just put your feet up after a hard day. Or perhaps you’ve gone to sleep and have your passport ready for a trip to REM-land. The phone rings. Like the Pavlovian dog that most of us are, you answer it. On the other end […]
Posted inNews & Politics
More on the DJ Ballet
To the editors: We take this opportunity to inform you of the reasons for our picketing actions at the Bolshoi Ballet’s appearance at the Civic Opera House May 26-28, 1989 [Our Town, June 9]. We were astounded to learn that this prestigious company perpetrated what we consider an artistic fraud on Chicago’s balletomanes by using […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Arditti String Quartet
It was 40 years ago that Pierre Boulez wrote his revolutionary Livre pour quatuor, a string quartet so technically tortuous that it took nearly six years for a performance to happen, and even then only the first two movements were performed. The complete performance of the work took place no sooner than 1985, on the […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Andy’s Gang
To the editors: Andy Warhol was the supreme purveyor of form without substance, the art world’s paramount cult of personality. I had hoped that with his death the sycophants who danced to his beat and dominated the media would find more appropriate things to do; selling Amway, perhaps. But the cult of Warhol remains as […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Bleacher Bums
BLEACHER BUMS Organic Theater Once upon a time in a Chicago far, far away, a small, poor theater group with a penchant for creating shows based on improvisation and ensemble work put together a play about a group of Cubs fans, dubbed the “bleacher bums” by the press, whose outrageousness and fierce loyalty to the […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Episcopal Expose
To the editors: Thank God somebody has finally had the guts to tell the TRUTH about the shit that’s been happening in the Episcopal Church [“Is Nothing Sacred?” June 9]! Kudos to the Reader for publishing it and even more to Bryan Miller for writing it. Hope she doesn’t get excommunicated by the “Friends of […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Straight Dope
Forget cremation, forget embalming–when I go, I want to go in style. For some time now, I’ve been wondering how to get my mortal remains fossilized. I know that soft tissue doesn’t normally fossilize, but there must be some exceptions: for example, the Petrified Forest in Arizona. What kind of conditions are necessary, and how […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Why Students Fail
To the editors: Re: 5-19-89 Neighborhood News: “Is the School System Shortchanging Hispanic Students?” I’ve been a teacher for 8 yrs–mostly in Chgo. Hispanic schools. I can assure you that the #1 reason children fail is because they refuse to make the effort. More money and new schools would be great but if kids refuse […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The City File
This building suitable for recycling. A new interdisciplinary operation at the University of Illinois is called the Degradable Plastics Laboratory. “The press and the pollsters take for granted that there is a public and that it has opinions,” writes Jay Rosen in the Chicago-based Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (June 1989). Not true. For instance, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Artists & Residents: four-way views of ten good lives
Sculptor Margot McMahon wanted to build a testament to some of Chicago’s finer citizens and make it a family project. She called her father the artist, her brother the photographer, and her friend the writer. Together they created “Just Plain Hardworking,” a show of drawings, sculpture, photographs, and brief histories that document the lives of […]