SPIC-O-RAMA: A DYSFUNCTIONAL COMEDY at the Briar Street Theatre Forget the subtitle: Spic-O-Rama functions superbly. John Leguizamo’s collection of monologues, a work in progress originally unveiled at the Goodman Studio and now transferred to the bigger Briar Street Theatre, is hilarious, painful, and beautifully detailed. The short, athletic, intense, and chameleonic Leguizamo is a virtuoso […]
Tag: Vol. 21 No. 16
Issue of Jan. 30 – Feb. 5, 1992
Posted inNews & Politics
Border Dispute/Snake Bit
Border Dispute Nine months of Calvin and Hobbes reruns end this weekend in a blaze of effrontery. The first freshly minted Calvin since May will show up in Sunday’s funnies in a shape that cartoonist Bill Watterson is shoving down the papers’ throats. It’s a virtual square a half-page large, which Watterson decided during his […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Three Generations
Just outside the Belmont station the train came abruptly to a stop and we sat for a minute while the conductor and motorman conferred in low voices. With a tight look on his face, the conductor opened one of the doors, leaned out, and peered into the lightly swirling snow. “Hey,” he began calling into […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Work Kills
Joe Kinney’s Personal Crusade Against Negligent Employers and Unsafe Workplaces
Posted inArts & Culture
The Chris Hogan Show/Virtual Reality
THE CHRIS HOGAN SHOW Organic Theater Company Greenhouse VIRTUAL REALITY Upright Citizens Brigade at Kill the Poets The year I turned 12 I’d saved up enough money from cutting lawns to buy a portable tape recorder and a package of three blank cassettes. Before that, my friend Mark and I would spend our time hanging […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Kospodinov/The Secret Play/The Larger Problem
KOSPODINOV, THE SECRET PLAY, and THE LARGER PROBLEM Playwrights’ Center A kaleidoscope fractures an image into multifaceted beauty, breaking it up to create a more complicated picture. That may be the rationale behind the aggressive obscurity of these one-acts by William Vaughn Johnson, in a Playwrights’ Center premiere: they refract reality through extreme characters. Unfortunately, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Paul Wertico Special Quintet
You might argue that the Paul Wertico Special Quintet, established by Wertico in 1990, needs no identifying adjective–that it’s been “readily distinguishable from others in the same category” (Merriam-Webster) from the start. With Orbert Davis’s cool, crisp trumpet leading the way, the band displays a breezy professionalism without masking its impassioned respect for the mainstream […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Abuse Is Irrational
To the editors: Re: “Men Who Beat Women” January 10. The narratives imply that it is psychotic, bitchy, rejecting women who are abused. Please understand that the impulse to scapegoat is irrational: It doesn’t need a reason. People who destroy property, kick the dog, hit the wife, or play sadistic mind games do it because […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Calendar Photo Caption
“At the Edge of Shelter: Homelessness in Chicago,” an exhibit of work by local photographers Tom Arndt, Angela Kelly, and Marc PoKempner, runs through April 12 at the Art Institute, Michigan at Adams, 443-4600. Museum hours are 10:30 to 4:30 weekdays (10:30 to 8 Tuesdays), 10 to 5 Saturdays, and noon to 5 Sundays; admission […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Insensitivity
To the editors: Concerning Nelson’s cartoon on Alderwoman Dorothy Tillman [December 20]: The Reader has shown insensitivity before. A year or so ago, I wrote objecting to a review of Strauss’s opera Salome, which used the Jewish Princess stereotypes that insult and intimidate Jewish women, often with overtones of violence, in college and work situations. […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Straight Dope
What is it with sickness and cold temperatures? Countless times I have heard it said that winter is “cold and flu season.” Mom always said to put my hat and galoshes on or I would catch pneumonia or my death of a cold. But I’m no dope. I know disease is caused by germs, not […]