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 […]
Tag: Vol. 25 No. 43
Issue of Aug. 1 – 7, 1996
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 […]
Bill Henderson
BILL HENDERSON When the native Chicagoan Bill Henderson started singing at Stelzer’s Lounge on the south side–sometimes sharing the stage with the young pianist Ramsey Lewis–he must have answered a few modern-jazz prayers. Hip and savvy, unencumbered by excessive angst or showy virtuosity, Henderson sang in a clear, luminous voice; like his hard-bop jazz contemporaries, […]
Savage Love
Hey, Faggot: I find myself in a weird situation. I’ve been with my now-husband for four years, and we’ve always had really good sex. But lately he’s gotten into being “submissive,” and I have never felt more bullied. He wants me to tie him up and “rape” him. In practice, “raping” him means getting him […]
Sun-Times Flips Over Meigs
By Michael Miner Sun-Times Flips Over Meigs If an airport didn’t exist on Northerly Island, nobody would urge the city to build one. And if Meigs Field’s 50-year lease weren’t up in September, that airstrip would be the least of Chicago’s worries. But the lease does expire, so Meigs is ipso facto an issue. Mayor […]
Screwball
Microbrews, dancing Elvis, goose races…whatever happened to good old-fashioned fun at the ballpark?
The I.O.U. Wedding
The I.O.U. Wedding With his first professional opera, La cambiale di matrimonio–which he composed in 1810 at age 17–Rossini practically invented the 19th-century comic opera, a form rooted in commedia dell’arte that anticipated the satiric operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan. Seldom staged outside Italy, this tuneful oddity has been translated into English and updated by […]
Watchdog…And A Vision Like Saint Paul’s
Watchdog…and a vision like saint Paul’s, Infectious Productions, at Cafe Voltaire. This 1990 one-act explodes with the rage of ACT UP, the fearsome, now fragmented radical AIDS group. Playwright Madrid Saint Angelo, who directs this Chicago premiere, is an AIDS activist who was indicted for, but not convicted of, organizing a plot to kill the […]
Spot Check
FLACO JIMENEZ 8/2, FITZGERALD’S Buena Suerte, Senorita (Arista Texas), the latest album from accordionist Jimenez, finds the conjunto star ripping into ten spirited dance numbers with no concern at all about crossing over. That’s not the case on 4 Aces (Reprise), the terrific new rock-tinged record from the Texas Tornados, his raucous quartet with Doug […]
Book Ban
Mr. Comerford’s letter in the July 19 edition regarding Tori Marlan’s article “Blood Sport” is the finest evidence I’ve seen yet that access to a thesaurus should be regulated. I’ve never seen so many seven- to ten-letter words bunched in one paragraph. Someone do Mr. Comerford a favor and confiscate both his dictionary and thesaurus […]
Reel Life: playing with matches
Four years ago Mark Wexler set out, he says, to “make an objective documentary essay about dating and mating in America, about the search for the perfect woman.” A photojournalist who’s done assignments for Life, the New York Times, and other national publications, he’d moved back to Chicago from southern California to hone his documentary […]
True Books
If I’m So Famous, How Come nobody’s ever heard of me?, by Jewel Shepard (Kitchen Sink Press, $16.95). Synopsis: Shepard shares her meteoric rise from teenage stripper and model in second-rate porn rags (Adam, Genesis) to actress in third-rate jiggle flicks like Caged Heat 2 and Hollywood Hot Tubs (parts one and two). Includes 200 […]