Bobo’s Revenge, at Cafe Voltaire. A serial killer is bumping off clowns. The more glamorous circus folks, the headliners, are unconcerned–the victims are only clowns, after all, and isn’t clowning a notoriously violent form of humor anyway? But Maddie Hairy, the ringmaster’s beautiful bearded daughter, is alarmed and calls in Gumshoe Fly, a Chandler-esque detective […]
Tag: Vol. 25 No. 32
Issue of May. 16 – 22, 1996
Posted inNews & Politics
A Few Good Women
To the editor: In general I think Jonathan Rosenbaum is the only movie reviewer I can trust, but I am glad I decided to see Antonia’s Line despite his negative review. I never saw any evidence of the “feminist rage . . . to the exclusion of most other concerns” that Rosenbaum describes. Instead, I […]
Posted inArts & Culture
I Shot Andy Warhol
This American independent feature by Mary Harron, written with Dan Minahan, is so good at re-creating the appearances of Warhol and his 60s milieu that I was almost completely won over. That is, until a closing title called Valerie Solanas’s SCUM Manifesto a feminist classic. After going out of its way to persuade the audience […]
Posted inNews & Politics
News of the Weird
Lead Story In March an 18-year-old dockworker at Roadway Express in Dallas was arrested at a Western Union office and charged with forgery after improperly trying to cash a check made out to his employer. The man produced a photo ID that gave his name as Roadway V. Express. After questioning him, the Western Union […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Film Notes: Talking the Blues
To some the blues is a dead issue, an art form perpetuated by clubs catering to the tourist trade. But filmmaker David Carlson discovered the blues were far from done after he stumbled across I Was There When the Blues Was Red Hot, a 1989 self-published history of the local blues scene by the young […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Hillsdale’s Wrong Right Way
Dear Chicago Reader, I just finished your surprisingly objective article on Hillsdale College [“School for the Politically Incorrect,” May 3], and I wanted to add my personal insights as a graduate of Hillsdale College who no longer adheres to the Hillsdale Vision of America. Dennis Rodkin’s article says that there is an “almost libertarian culture […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Politics: The Welfare Fraud
Whenever the subject of welfare arises, an eerie forgetfulness takes hold of politicians. Why doesn’t anyone ever call them on it?
Posted inColumns & Opinion
Savage Love
Hey, Faggot: I am a 24-year-old female and my husband is a 37-year-old male. I have a very serious problem when it comes to our sex life: my husband doesn’t give me any foreplay or oral sex no matter how much I ask for it. I put it to him very nicely–how much I would […]
Posted inFilm
Songs in the Key of Everyday Life
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg Rating **** Masterpiece Directed and written by Jacques Demy With Catherine Deneuve, Nino Castelnuovo, Anne Vernon, Marc Michel, Ellen Farner, Mireille Perrey, and Harald Wolff. Let’s put it this way: It’s 1957, and a 20-year-old garage mechanic in Cherbourg knocks up his girlfriend just before he leaves for two years of […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Real Rogers Park
To the editors: As a longtime resident of East Rogers Park, I would like to respond to Adam Langer’s slam on my neighborhood (The City File, May 3). I have lived here for over eight years, and the place suits me just fine: the rents are cheap, the lake is right outside my front door, […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The City File
By Harold Henderson “Before becoming a professor, I was a monk,” Northern Illinois University professor of English Sean Shesgreen tells Northern Today (April 15). “The two callings are alike. For example, as a professor, I observe two of the three vows I took in the monastery: obedience and poverty.” The march of progress. Early TV […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Class Dismissed
The Children’s School has done away with schedules, homework, discipline, and every other sign of a conventional classroom. Is there anything left?
Posted inArts & Culture
Coffee Will Make You Black
Coffee Will Make You Black, City Lit Theater Company, at Victory Gardens Theater. In yet another compelling adaptation, City Lit reveals the extraordinary theatricality of literature and ordinary life. The strength of Michael A. Shepperd’s faithful, smartly condensed version of April Sinclair’s novel, about a young black girl’s sexual awakening in the politically and socially […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Men Who Would Be King and The Ugly Duckling
The Men Who Would Be King and The Ugly Duckling, Merattic Theatre Company, at the Theatre Building. In Melora Kordos’s new play, The Men Who Would Be King, Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Richard III, Claudius, and Cassius meet in hell to elect the underworld’s new ruler. If the thought of watching such a play–scripted in ersatz Elizabethan […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Chicago Symphony Orchestra
CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Christoph Eschenbach, Ravinia Festival’s new music chief and a prime candidate to succeed Daniel Barenboim at the helm of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, knows how to mount blockbusters. In residence at the CSO for the next two weeks, he’s slated a couple of heavyweight programs that bring forth the late romantic era’s […]