JACQUES BREL’S DEAD AND WE’RE NOT FRENCH Relative Obscurity at the Roxy IMPROV THE NIGHT AWAY Sarantos Studios It’s been written to death because it’s been done to death–the comedy revue based on television. That usually means spin-offs of mercenary quiz games, eye-witless newscasts, ego-tripping talk shows, Saturday Night Moribund, and those all-too-familiar sitcoms. Relative […]
Tag: Vol. 18 No. 40
Issue of Jul. 20 – 26, 1989
Posted inArts & Culture
Game of Love
AS YOU LIKE IT Oak Park Festival Theatre Every summer the Oak Park Festival Theatre puts on an outdoor production of some Shakespeare script, and every summer I plan to go take a look at it, thinking, This will be perfect. To see a masterwork played out for me in the sweet air, on a […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Bus to the Future
The open land of today is the corporate office environment of tomorrow.
Posted inArts & Culture
The Tangled Snarl
THE TANGLED SNARL Raven Theatre Company Why, why, why, why, why would anyone try to do yet another parody of detective movies? Everyone from Neil Simon to the Firesign Theater to the Bowery Boys to Roger Rabbit, not to mention hordes of improvisational comedy troupes, has tackled this genre, and if there is anything new […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Cash Card
A man offered me $200 to hold his money for him while he met up with a prostitute. “I hear you can’t trust prostitutes in Chicago,” he said. He was from Haiti. “Don’t trust anyone,” I said. He told me he’d hooked up with a prostitute when he first reached town, and while he was […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Teaching America
They came to Uptown from Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Romania, Iran, Ethiopia . . . My job was to teach them English as a second language, and the U.S. as a second home.
Posted inNews & Politics
The Last Prairie Chickens
In 1912 there were healthy populations in nearly every county in Illinois. In the spring of ’89 fewer than 100 birds remained.
Posted inNews & Politics
The Straight Dope
Why do so many public buildings want you to use the revolving doors rather than the regular doors? –Seamus McCafferty, Hoboken, New Jersey As with many things, there are two reasons–the ostensible reason and the real reason. The ostensible reason is that the revolving doors create an air trap. Since the interior of the building […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Art Facts: William Warmack’s 2,000-pack-a-vest habit
William Warmack’s biggest problem as an artist is his low supply of materials. He’s a weaver who makes garments and objets d’art, but the cigarette packages he works with are a scarce commodity. He smokes Newport cigarettes himself, which supplies him with one or two wrappers a day. But he says it takes 2,000 wrappers […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The City File
Dept. of limited options. From a Chicago commercial dating-service questionnaire: “My friends consider me to be: _ Very Attractive _ Somewhat Attractive _ Above Average _ Average _ Fairly Plain” “The late Ira Bach, long-time city planning director and author of Chicago on Foot…. walked from his Loop office each day, rain or shine, to […]
Posted inFilm
Cult of Personality
LET’S GET LOST ** (Worth seeing) Directed by Bruce Weber. “Can you carry a tune? Is your time all right? Sing! If your voice has hardly any range, hardly any volume, shaky pitch, no body or bottom, no matter. If it quavers a bit and if you project a certain tarnished, boyish (not exactly adolescent, […]
Posted inMusic
Exemplary Conducting
GRANT PARK SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA at the Petrillo Music Shell July 7 and 8 Grant Park programs are often full of imagination, but Grant Park conductors usually are not. I find that the latter generally nullify the virtues of the former. While a first-rate orchestra can sound decent even with a second-rate conductor–as the Chicago Symphony […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Sports Section
At a party over the Fourth of July weekend, a friend of ours–who is nine years old–was entertaining us by aping the deliveries of a few notable pitchers. The identifiable characteristics of the pitching motions were all there–Dwight Gooden with his straight, over-the-top movement, Mike Bielecki with his low delivery and his lunge toward home […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Weighing in at the Tribune Pay Scale; Doing the Right Thing
Weighing in at the Tribune Pay Scale There was a bit of an uprising inside the Tribune recently. Some good came out of it. The president of the company learned a lesson in the psychology of newspaper people. After all, they’re his savages–he should know how they tick. One department after another was summoned to […]