Like the Bible and William Shakespeare, Mike Royko has now been annotated. The guerrilla wing of gay activism in Chicago performed this scholarly deed two weeks ago, picking apart a July column about AIDS and offering it as proof of Royko’s sins. During the night of August 2, members of ACT UP/Chicago faxed the Royko […]
Tag: Vol. 19 No. 44
Issue of Aug. 16 – 22, 1990
Posted inNews & Politics
The Angriest Queer
Not even the shock-brigade theatrics of ACT UP can contain the rage of Danny Sotomayor. He’s too mad to talk and too busy to die.
Posted inArts & Culture
What This City Needs Is a $2 Million Bullfrog/No Trip to Russia for Forever Plaid/CH&P vs. Payne-Leavitt, Round 2/Nick’s Neighborhood Bank Helps Remodel Fishmarket/Fab Four Photos
Architect Malcolm Weiskopf wants to put a 35-foot frog in Grant Park; he says it’ll look like it’s just escaped from the Field Museum.
Posted inArts & Culture
Buddy Scott & the Rib Tips
Buddy Scott and the Rib Tips have held down weekends at Lee’s Unleaded Blues Lounge (formerly the famous Queen Bee’s) on South Chicago Avenue for years. For some reason they’ve never developed a north-side reputation to match their talents. Scott’s guitar playing complements his vocal style–bluesy and passionate with a heaping dose of deep soul […]
Posted inFilm
Adrift in a Sea of Images
THE DOCUMENTATOR *** (A must-see) Directed and written by Istvan Darday and Gyorgyi Szalai With Mihaly Des, Lilla Paszti, and Janos Agoston. The Documentator opens with a long sequence of various military parades. We see troops and tanks marching before the main title, before any characters are introduced. Just after the main title we see […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Straight Dope
How did the myth that cats sometimes steal people’s breath when they sleep get started? –Rick Weaver, North Bay, California Cecil isn’t entirely sure it’s a myth, and neither are some cat writers, as we shall see. You can certainly understand why cats give some folks the creeps. They do, after all, prowl around at […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The City File
Just clean will be enough, thank you. Advance publicity for Procter & Gamble’s “1990 Black Family Reunion Celebration”: “Attendees will marvel at the vibrant colors of the portable toilets–hot pink, peach and seafoam green.” Code W for Weird. Ancient Skies (July-August 1990), the “official logbook of the Ancient Astronaut Society” based in Highland Park, reviews […]
Posted inArts & Culture
D.J. Lebowitz
D.J. Lebowitz is an itinerant weirdo who has amazed and antagonized audiences from coast to coast. Wide-eyed and bushy haired (when his head isn’t shaved), he’s a piano-playing singer-songwriter who traffics in a maniacal, singsongy mode of expression that seems influenced in equal parts by Jonathan Richman, Peter Lorre in M, and, oh, I don’t […]
Posted inNews & Politics
It’s a Mystery
To the editors: As Justin Hayford in his review of the Turbulent Mirror production of Kafka’s Metamorphosis points out, it resists interpretation [July 6]. The critic who expects coherent interpretation, remains frustrated and angry. Many have pondered the imagery of the Metamorphosis year after year and came to different results and new conclusions, often depending […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Field & Street
In the Amazon Basin, as in North America, the destruction of nature came after the destruction of people. It was only after settlers had killed most of the Indians and imprisoned the rest on reservations that they began to cut the forests and plow the prairies. When Francisco de Orellana led the first group of […]
Posted inNews & Politics
UIC’s Future: An Alternate Vision
To the editors: I was pleasantly surprised to see the Reader’s feature on the Maxwell Street Market [July 27]. Increased public awareness can only help our efforts to save the market. It is the oldest continuously operating open market in the USA. Its neighborhood, Jew Town, was not a term coined by postwar immigrants from […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind
TOO MUCH LIGHT MAKES THE BABY GO BLIND The Neo-Futurists at Live Bait Theater The nearly two-year-old cult show Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind is a late-night concoction of 30 rapid-fire “plays” performed in 60 minutes by the often inspired, always hard-working Neo-Futurist ensemble: Greg Allen, Dave Awl, Ted Bales, Lisa Buscani, […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Confidential to Name Withheld
To the editors: In your edition published August 3, 1990, I read with great attention the remarkable letter that was written over the name/name withheld: “Fetishists of the Holocaust.” My heart goes out to this man who has so many problems. He is confused, and perceives himself as a loser; and he endeavors to reestablish […]
Posted inFilm
Reinventing the Present
PUMP UP THE VOLUME **** (Masterpiece) Directed and written by Allan Moyle With Christian Slater, Samantha Mathis, Scott Paulin, Ellen Greene, Annie Ross, Cheryl Pollak, and Andy Romano. It’s hard to talk seriously about the 60s today, because TV and a lot of assholes have almost ruined it. When I taught film courses in southern […]