Death Row Is His Parish Media interest in death row is, well, episodic. Nobody has a bureau there. But so many news outfits wanted in to see the Stateville execution of Charles Walker that the Department of Corrections finally drew nine names out of a hat. The results were pretty funny. Radio stations in Springfield […]
Tag: Vol. 19 No. 48
Issue of Sep. 13 – 19, 1990
Posted inNews & Politics
Reading: Anatomy of a Race Riot
In 1908, a gathering storm of racial violence touched down in Springfield, hometown of the Great Emancipator. The similarities between that time and ours are striking.
Posted inArts & Culture
Young Fresh Fellows
Like the auteurs behind, say, Pleased to Meet Me and Darkness on the Edge of Town, Young Fresh Fellow Scott McCaughey is a rock ‘n’ roll zealot, a true believer, someone you can’t imagine doing anything else but fronting a band. Unlike Messrs. Westerberg and Springsteen, however, he never takes himself too seriously, nor, in […]
Posted inFilm
Is It Life, or Is It Media?
THE ICICLE THIEF **** (Masterpiece) Directed by Maurizio Nichetti Written by Nichetti and Mauro Monti With Nichetti, Caterina Sylos Labini, Federico Rizzo, Heidi Komarek, Renato Scarpa, Carlina Torta, Lella Costa, and Claudio G. Fava. There is still so much we have to learn about TV!–Kurt Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus Some people have called Maurizio Nichetti the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Rum and Coke
RUM AND COKE Center Theater It’s a depressingly familiar pattern. A country is invaded, supposedly at the spontaneous request of its oppressed citizens. To make their offense look defensive the invaders set up a provisional government, which then calls for a military occupation (ostensibly to protect the newly liberated citizens). The result: a coup camouflaged […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Yo La Tengo
The singing on Yo La Tengo’s fourth album, Fakebook, with leader Ira Kaplan flat as always and drummer Georgia Hubley coming out of the closet, vocalizingwise, is delicate and nuanced, weary and lilting, and somehow riveting. A fakebook, of course, is a fast and dirty collection of standards, with melody lines, words, changes, and little […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Jelly Roll Kings With Frank Frost & Big Jack Johnson
Guitarist Jack Johnson teamed up with Frank Frost (harp, piano, guitar) and drummer Sam Carr back in 1963, and as the Jelly Roll Kings they established themselves as one of the Clarksdale, Mississippi, area’s most popular blues bands. Rowdy and exuberant, playing everything from Delta blues standards to country-western novelty numbers and pop tunes, they […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Chi Lives: Sandy Holubow, house painter
Sandy Holubow paints houses in Old Town and Lincoln Park–on canvas. “A house is really a metaphor for the self,” she says. “It can be a mask. A house is as important as a face, or the way we dress. That’s what holds my interest.” Holubow is standing on the top floor of her three-level […]
Posted inArts & Culture
La Petenera
LA PETENERA Latino Chicago Theater Company at Cabaret Voltaire La Petenera, a play made up of poems by Federico Garcia Lorca, is about a condition, something mournful and murderous–as complex as love or as simple as a folk song. Or it might just be a cautionary tale for strong women. It depends. Originally produced at […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Borderline
BORDERLINE Heartland Arts and Chicago Dramatists Workshop Charles Graham is the model of the successful American WASP male, circa 1988. A former college athlete, he now has a lucrative career in marketing and advertising, an expensive house in the suburbs, an attractive and devoted wife, a son–everything a man could want. But one night an […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Dreams of Dark Victorian Night
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 […]
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 […]