On a Slow Boat to China: Songs By Frank Loesser, National Jewish Theater. Frank Loesser joins Kurt Weill, Irving Berlin, and Richard Rodgers as Jewish-American composers who have inspired rousing National Jewish Theater revues in which obscure curiosities share the stage with beloved showstoppers. Devised, directed, and choreographed by Jim Corti and warmly arranged by […]
Tag: Vol. 25 No. 43
Issue of Aug. 1 – 7, 1996
Posted inMusic
Yum Yum Hard to Swallow/Postscript
Yum-Yum Hard to Swallow Given the way people in high places have frothed over Chris Holmes and the 21-gun salute the press has given Dan Loves Patti, the debut album by his band Yum-Yum, it’s shocking to learn that thus far the album looks like a stiff. The 24-year-old inveterate schmoozer, who also fronts space-rock […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Straight Dope
Why am I seeing pairs of shoes tied together by the laces hung up on power lines? –Lloyd S., via AOL Been getting this question a lot lately. Lacking a proper way to investigate it, I figured I might as well cast aside the pretense of science and post it to the Net, specifically, the […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Home of the Blues
Six months into its new recycling program has Chicago really got it in the bag?
Posted inArts & Culture
What’s My Problem?
What’s My Problem? at Cafe Voltaire. Her face is screwed up in a grimace of pained concentration. Her voice is an exhalation somewhere between a sigh and a migraine. She’s Dr. Myra Kopin, and she’s here to help you. The topic for this evening’s group-therapy session is “Loving Food, Loving Yourself,” and she encourages us […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Crossing Boundaries III: The Life of the Mind
CROSSING BOUNDARIES III: THE LIFE OF THE MIND, Strawdog Theatre Company. Calling your annual showcase of short plays “Crossing Boundaries” lets you put just about anything you want onstage–and subtitling the project “The Life of the Mind” hardly narrows the field. Producers might imagine that such freedom works to their advantage; as Strawdog artistic director […]
Posted inFilm
Rebels of the Neon God
Rebels of the Neon God Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-liang acknowledges that this film, his first, is part of a long tradition: focusing on four alienated youths, he has one of them confront a large James Dean poster. Two characters, brothers, steal phone coin boxes and video-game innards for a living; the third is one brother’s […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Field & Street
My mistake was not noticing the young tree when it first sprouted behind the garbage cans. In a couple months it’s grown into a robust young thing, insinuated in the slit between the asphalt of the alley and the foundation of my house. Now, with branches higher than my thighs and roots entwined with the […]
Posted inMusic
DJ Food/Funki Porcini
DJ FOOD/FUNKI PORCINI DJ Food is an alter ego for Coldcut, the pioneering duo of Matt Black and Jonathon More. Coldcut put British hip-hop on the map with their remix of Eric B. & Rakim’s “Paid in Full,” and their cut-and-paste-style collaborations with a variety of vocalists–reggae crooner Junior Reid, the Fall’s Mark E. Smith, […]
Posted inFilm
Red Lotus Society
Red Lotus Society A thrilling and multifaceted 1994 Taiwanese feature by theater director Stan Lai about both vaulting–the Chinese martial art of leaping enormous distances–and contemporary Taipei. The mysterious persistence of the past in the present combines with Lai’s visually impressive style–along with the work of Chris Doyle, the key cinematographer of the Taiwanese and […]
Posted inMusic
Lira Ensemble
LIRA ENSEMBLE The Lira Ensemble, which bills itself as “the nation’s only professional performing arts company specializing in Polish music, song, and dance,” has improved greatly over the years. Its reputation got a tremendous lift when its choruses were invited to participate in the recording of Polish composer Henryk Gorecki’s Miserere (Elektra/Nonesuch), and its current […]
Posted inArts & Culture
In Performance: losing his religion
When he was 12, Edward Thomas-Herrera started having visions. He was lying in bed one night, listening to his father working in an adjoining office, when he saw the site of the ascension flashed across his bedroom ceiling, as vivid as a Technicolor movie. “I didn’t know that it was the Mount of Olives right […]
Posted inNews & Politics
News of the Weird
Lead Stories Air New Zealand announced in June that in an effort to end “unofficial and uncontrolled” snoozing it will permit cockpit crews on international flights to nap during periods of low activity–as long as one person remains awake. The airline also issued instructions on how to awaken a pilot, saying it should be done […]