An Eye for a Truth: Bushwick Bill in extremis “It’s fucked up that I had to lose an eye / to see things clear.” The words are those of Bushwick Bill: pornographer, dwarf, misogynist, rapper. Bushwick is the gnarly-voiced singer of the Geto Boys, the Houston gangster rappers who before last year had firmly established […]
Tag: Vol. 21 No. 50
Issue of Sep. 24 – 30, 1992
Posted inArts & Culture
High Fiber
STRETCHING OUR ROOTS at the Textile Arts Centre Appropriately, the Textile Arts Centre has opened the new season with a show that draws attention to contemporary fiber artists’ diverse processes and ideas. After all, pluralism is no stranger to the textile arts, which have long embraced styles ranging from the abstract to the figurative, and […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Dave McKenna
Certain jazz musicians display an essential command of their instruments that verges on symbiosis: above and beyond the concerns of their art, their grasp of their instruments’ natures leads to the exclamation “Oh, that’s how it should be played!” Solo pianist Dave McKenna fits this category. Melodically and formally, McKenna’s strengths lie in the elevation […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Spiegel Slings Mud, Sun-Times Pitches In/Declaration of War
Spiegel Slings Mud, Sun-Times Pitches In It’s come to this: Big business doesn’t just say no to Chicago anymore. It says no and thumbs its nose at City Hall on the way out the door. And the press seconds the insult. Spiegel pulled the latest vanishing act, deciding to move its distribution center and 2,000 […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Santiago
SANTIAGO Latino Chicago Theater Company Santiago is what not-for-profit theater should be about. The Latino Chicago Theater Company’s production of Manuel Pereiras Garcia’s tremendously difficult play rarely comes entirely into focus. It’s an evening full of loose ends and inconsistent choices. But the material that director Juan A. Ramirez and his cast of six have […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Polish Film Festival
The Polish Film Festival, which is being presented by the Art Institute’s Film Center and the Polish Museum of America, continues from Friday, September 25, through Monday, September 28. Screenings will be at the Copernicus Center, 5216 W. Lawrence, and at the Film Center, Columbus Drive at Jackson. Tickets are $5. For more information call […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Restaurant Tours: terrific tapas, low-priced and downtown
My friend Poppy told her date she was taking him to a tapas bar for his birthday. He thought she said topless, so he was disappointed when they got there and all he saw were lots of little dishes. She said she thought a tapas bar was the perfect place to take a man because […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Eddie Shaw & the Wolf Gang/Jimmy Dawkins
This summit of west-side blues legends promises to bring back as many memories as it generates. Tenor saxophonist Shaw’s style–raucous roadhouse honks ascending into free-form screams, all anchored by a soulful sense of melodic. development–has changed little since the days when he was Howlin’ Wolf’s sax player, but his voice has strengthened and his repertoire […]
Posted inNews & Politics
News of the Weird
Lead Story In May Dr. Charles G. Moertel of the Mayo Clinic called “unconscionable” what he found from a study of the drug levamisole, the first effective medicine for colon cancer. According to Moertel, Johnson & Johnson, which developed the drug in the 1960s, charges $1,495 for the amount needed to treat a person for […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Circus of Dr. Lao
THE CIRCUS OF DR. LAO Next Theatre Company Charles G. Finney’s 1935 novel The Circus of Dr. Lao is about magic. Not silly, la-la magic, not the phony stuff Ringling Brothers manufactures, but the stuff you wish the circus had–odd, unnerving magic that’s sickeningly real. Finney, who was an infantryman in China in the 1920s, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Sneakers
Robert Redford plays a 60s radical hired to penetrate and test security systems with an eccentric team of experts–including a CIA veteran (Sidney Poitier), a computer whiz (River Phoenix), a gadget man (Dan Aykroyd), and a blind audio expert (David Strathairn). Forced to participate in a covert operation, they wind up enlisting the hero’s former […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Welcome to Chicago
What’s Behind the Success of the Tibetan Resettlement Project?
Posted inNews & Politics
McCarter’s Hot Air
To the editors: I want to commend Bryan Miller for her recent cover interview with William McCarter (September 4). Not only were her questions pertinent, but she also followed through and did not merely accept McCarter’s attempts at clouding the issues. Miller also deserves kudos simply for enduring the unbearable rush of hot air that […]
Posted inMusic
Bono saved from drowning
Just where does the Zoo TV Outside Broadcast Tour come from? Nothing U2 has ever done–nothing any rock group has ever done–prepares one for how gripping it is as music, how compelling it is as theater, how apropos it is as pop artifact, and how knowing it is about the culture. It takes all the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Urban Scenes/Creole Dreams
URBAN SCENES/CREOLE DREAMS David Rousseve/Reality at the Blackstone Theatre September 18 and 19 I don’t know what to do with Urban Scenes/Creole Dreams. It’s too big to ignore, too well-meaning to write off. Blessed with a large, talented cast, it stands head and shoulders above most other “entertainments,” yet it doesn’t quite accomplish what it […]