To the editors: ADIEU, QUEEN VICTORIA [Hot Type, August 17] On subway posters, so banal, To be seen by one and all Are dreams that gave a bygone age Tremors of ecstasy and howls of rage. Burton’s books were cruelly burned, Oscar Wilde was jailed and spurned. They’re stirring gaily in the grave, To think […]
Tag: Vol. 19 No. 48
Issue of Sep. 13 – 19, 1990
Posted inArts & Culture
Billy Bragg
I’m hoping that Billy Bragg’s latest, an EP called The Internationale, is a detour. I know that everyone complains about Bragg’s “political stuff”; he’s like Woody Allen in that people will never let him forget the components of his earliest successes, in Bragg’s case a knack for luminous and complex (and often, truth be told, […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Department of Insensitive Headlines
To the editors: I am writing to express my dismay at seeing the headline on the cover story of your recent edition [“The Angriest Queer,” August 17]. The use of the word “Queer” as a label for a gay man is a particularly annoying assault coming from a progressive publication. Members of the gay and […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Straight Dope
Consider, if you will, that classic breakfast cereal, Raisin Bran. A Raisin Bran raisin is heavier than a Raisin Bran flake. Logic dictates that heavy things ought to fall to the bottom of the box. However, when we examine a box of Raisin Bran, we find to our surprise (and delight, of course, because we […]
Posted inNews & Politics
In the Mud
To the editors: In response to the Our Town article dealing with the Mud Beggars and the honorable Rush Pearson (aka Will’m the Rash) in the Reader of 8/17/90: Whereas I enjoyed much the piece and found it to be a fairly good attempt to describe the Sturdy Beggars unique Renaissance Festival comedy act and […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The City File
The toughest call. “Number of calls the Illinois Animal Poison Information Center received last year regarding pets swallowing marijuana: 68” (Harper’s “Index,” September 1990). The decade we could have done without. In 1980 the average school-teacher earned $15,970 a year, while the average business CEO earned $624,996–39 times as much. By 1988 the teachers were […]
Posted inNews & Politics
On Black Power and Brown-Nosing
To the editors: I took exception to several points made by Monroe Anderson and Ron Brown in the August 24 “Hot Type” column. Since I may not be afforded the space to rebut every outrageous remark in the column, I’ll just pick a couple. First, as a journalist, I think newsrooms would be pretty sad […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Curlew
A cause for celebration: Curlew, a wiggy but impressively grounded quintet, makes its Chicago debut. Perhaps the most lionized of the bands that inhabit the energetic jazz scene in lower Manhattan, Curlew is steeped in the blues, but you’ll hear that influence only obliquely; it informs pieces that also boast the soulful funk of southern […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Return of Unsafe Sex
To the editors: Your article on “The Angriest Queer” [17 August] was very good as far as it went–a character sketch of Danny Sotomayor. But it seemed briefer than your usual cover article, with its endless detail, and it did not say what Sotomayor has really accomplished. I don’t mean to suggest he hasn’t accomplished […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Mike Royko, Voice of the Ruling Class
To the editors: Mike Royko playing the innocent parvenu is not something I would have ever predicted, nor is it very pretty [Hot Type, August 17]. In his columns on the tiresome brouhaha surrounding the CTA’s AIDS “kissing” poster, Mr. Royko has been operating at ever-ascending levels of disingenuousness. But a new level of absurdity […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Field & Street
My most memorable look at an osprey happened one morning in early spring at Saganashkee Slough. Saganashkee is one of the shallow lakes in the Palos Hills in southwestern Cook County. It is a pretty good sized body of water, almost three miles long east to west, and nearly a half mile at its widest […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Go Glick Yourself
To the editors: “You’re so vain.” Glick doesn’t need a new look, just a new outlook [“Paul Glick’s Toughest Make-Over,” August 10]! “Make-over” is a tragic story about a tragic man, obsessed with others’ opinions of himself. Even more tragic, is that this is a man who earned his fortune contaminating his clientele with this […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Making Babies
To the editors: In “A Girl in Trouble” (August 17), Flo Levinsohn trots out the usual litany of statistics and speculation concerning the real and imagined results of abortion regulations. What she conveniently neglects to mention (and the statistic that I personally am most interested in learning) in her “before and after” analysis is whether, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
One Manipulative Bitch
MADAME MAO’S MEMORIES Bailiwick Repertory A museum director gets busted in Cincinnati. Artists get vilified in Congress. Rap’s ripped, the NEA’s gutted, and aldermen loot the Art Institute. Suddenly art’s political again. Suddenly it’s recovered that old cachet of danger and debate. The nice-nice period of quiet grants for quiet shows, of innovation by committee, […]