The original title of Cheick Oumar Sissoko’s striking and vibrant 1995 folkloric feature from Mali, a film literally dedicated to Africa, is Guimba: A Tyrant, an Epoch. A fantasy complete with magic spells and special effects, it recounts the intrigues that ensue when the title king allows his dwarf son to ride roughshod over their […]
Tag: Vol. 25 No. 40
Issue of Jul. 11 – 17, 1996
Posted inNews & Politics
People for the Ethical Treatment of Humans
Medical Ethicist Mark Siegler and His Colleagues Trace the Fine Line Between Life and Death.
Posted inArts & Culture
First Steps
Rebecca Rossen and Keith Carollo at Link’s Hall, June 14-16 Looking Through, Looking On Scott Putman and Margi Cole at the Dance Center of Columbia College, June 7 and 8 By Maura Troester There’s a Zen emptiness to the dances of Rebecca Rossen and Keith Carollo. Both create refreshingly simple choreography–it feels as if they […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Restaurant Tours: Spruce’s White House connection
Bill Clinton isn’t really a junk food junkie, says Keith Luce, who ought to know. Luce spent the past two years as the White House sous chef, feeding Bill, Hillary, Chelsea, and thousands of their closest friends. Now he’s the executive chef at Spruce, the smart new Streeterville eatery. Do not, however, expect him to […]
Posted inColumns & Opinion
Savage Love
Hey, Faggot: What is the correct preposition to be used after the word “masturbate”? Does one masturbate “to,” “at,” “about,” “on,” or “of” someone or something? I was composing a steamy note to someone and I wrote the following sentence: “I masturbated to you last night.” It almost sounds like I meant to send some […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Unhappy Endings
Suicide in B-Flat Center Theater Ensemble By Jack Helbig When my brother killed himself two and a half years ago, he wasn’t calling for help, he was calling for change. He hated his life, hated his job, hated who he was, who he had been, who he was becoming, who he hadn’t become. And if […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Sports Section
By Ted Cox Bases loaded, nobody out in the top of the seventh, and the White Sox up 4-2 against the first-place Indians, whom they trail by two games in the American League Central Division. Hard-throwing, 24-year-old reliever Bill Simas is summoned from the bullpen to face Cleveland slugger Albert Belle, a notorious first-ball fastball […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Better With Age
James Kelly Choreography Project at the Harold Washington Library, June 28 and 29 Connolly Dance Company and Janet Skidmore Harpole at Link’s Hall, June 28 and 29 By Maura Troester In 1991 the name seemed temporary, as if James Kelly didn’t want to create a dance company, he only wanted to make choreography. Five seasons […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Chicago on Tap II
With no disrespect to Aaron Copland, his view of percussive effects–outlined in his little book What to Listen for in Music–is highly limited: “The more [percussion instruments] are saved for essential moments the more effective they will be.” Tell that to the performers in Chicago on Tap II, who entertain with nothing but the percussive […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Theater
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED Agamemnon, European Repertory Company. Being at Choice, Factory Theater. Citizen Gates, Second City. The Clearing, Seanachai Theatre Company at the Theatre Building. Coffee Will Make You Black, City Lit Theater Company at Theatre on the Lake. The Cryptogram, Steppenwolf Studio Theatre. Doo Wop Shoo Bop, Black Ensemble Theater at the Mercury Theater. Forever […]
Posted inMusic
Randy Sabien
RANDY SABIEN Why does it always take so long for Randy Sabien–who lives about eight hours up the pike, in northern Wisconsin, fercrissake–to return to Chicago? (This weekend marks his second or third visit this decade; even so, he remains worth the wait.) When he first came on the scene, in the early 80s, Sabien […]
Posted inArts & Culture
In Print: sex, drugs, and weird rock’n’roll
“Alternative music sucks,” said Iggy Pop in a recent interview in Details. “Blows dead dogs. I hate alternative music. I hate alternative people. They can all kiss my ass. Let’s go have a big steak and fuck without a rubber and do some heroin afterward!” The Ig’s deliberately anti-PC life-loving rant is being read to […]
Posted inArts & Culture
A Delicate Operation
Walking the Dead Theatre Q at the Halsted St. Cafe By Justin Hayford Film historian Thomas Waugh contends that “melodrama has…a privileged relationship with gay men, situated as we are, like women, if not outside patriarchal power, in ambiguous and contradictory relationship to it.” For Waugh, “that much-stigmatized genre” stands opposed to “the male genres […]