comerfor.qxd Ben Joravsky summarily stereotyped gubernatorial contender John Schmidt as a stalwart liberal [Neighborhood News, August 1]. The eclectic Schmidt is an amicable moderate. A vintage liberal would denounce capital punishment, loathe abortion, and be incapable of generating ample money from the private sector. Furthermore, implacable liberalism embraces vegetarianism, animal welfare, and ecological exigencies while […]
Tag: Vol. 26 No. 44
Issue of Aug. 7 – 13, 1997
Posted inArts & Culture
Chi Lives: losing a son, gaining a mission
On December 13, 1992, reporters from a half dozen TV stations were waiting outside Dorothy Hajdys-Holman’s front door in Chicago Heights. They wanted to talk about her son Allen Schindler Jr., a sailor who’d been beaten to death a few months earlier by two fellow crew members from the U.S.S. Belleau Wood. Hajdys-Holman managed to […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Long View
Gordon Matta-Clark at Rhona Hoffman Gallery, through August 15 Mary Brogger at the Museum of Contemporary Art, through September 28 James Drake at Rhona Hoffman Gallery, through August 15 By Fred Camper The work of Gordon Matta- Clark, Mary Brogger, and James Drake recalls the decade beginning about 1965, when attempts to efface the distinctions […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Best of the Bunch
gazbarro.qxd Dear Peter Margasak, Never has your column moved me so much that I had the urge to write you a letter and say, “Thank you!” Your column of July 25 (“Rock ‘n’ Roll Vacancy”) said everything that I ever thought and always said about Jae-Ha Kim, author of such noted literary works as Best […]
Posted inMusic
Electronic Heart
Silver Apples July 28, Empty Bottle Most electronic music leaves me cold as a robot’s teat. The mechanistic precision of house and techno beats and the nuance-free drones of most synthesizer-based music, the absence of the happy little accidents that happen when human hands meet physical instruments, interest me about as much as a test […]
Posted inNews & Politics
News of the Weird
Lead Stories In July Bennie Casson filed a $100,000 lawsuit in Belleville, Illinois, against PT’s Show Club in nearby Sauget for its negligence in allowing a stripper to “slam” her breasts into his neck and head without his consent. Dancer Susan Sykes, aka “Busty Heart,” claims show business’s biggest chest (88 inches), which Casson said […]
Posted inNews & Politics
She Still Has a Job, Doesn’t She?
olsen.qxd Dear Friends: What’s with the Jae-Ha Kim bashing in the July 25 Post No Bills? Is she really mean or something? Whatever she’s done to deserve such treatment would be worth reading about. I bet that it would be more interesting than reading about music. I think that reading about music is like listening […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Gang Way
Sociologist Suhir Venkatesh spent four years in the Robert Taylor Homes learning…
Posted inArts & Culture
Oleanna
Oleanna, Burnt Orange Productions, at Chicago Dramatists Workshop. Often misinterpreted as an antifeminist diatribe, David Mamet’s provocative tragicomedy is in fact a take-no-prisoners showdown between two equally flawed characters: John, a professor of pedagogy at a small college, and Carol, the confused student whom he offers to tutor. When Carol misinterprets John’s interest and accuses […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Likes It Lite
Headline I cannot decide whether to be saddened or amused by Peter Margasak’s silly, pointless, and inexplicably mean-spirited missive on Jae-Ha Kim’s job change at the Sun-Times [Post No Bills, July 25]. On one hand I am saddened that Mr. Margasak has nothing better to do with his time than take bitter cheap shots at […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Taking Care of Mrs. Carroll
TAKING CARE OF MRS. CARROLL, Bailiwick Repertory. A lot of care has been taken with this warmhearted musical, drawn from the novel by the late gay writer Paul Monette. A tender portrait of reconciliation and forgiveness recalling Shakespeare’s late comedies, Martin Casella’s book chronicles the unfinished business that brings together lovers, an adopted child, and […]
Posted inMusic
Beth Orton
BETH ORTON Although Beth Orton has sung with the Chemical Brothers, Red Snapper, and William Orbit, she’s no dance diva. Several tunes on the London resident’s debut record, Trailer Park (Dedicated), are garnished with spacey electronics and propelled by shuffling dance beats, but her songs really pay homage to the icons of 1970s English folk […]
Posted inFilm
Flaming Creatures
Flaming Creatures Forget everything you might have heard about the late Jack Smith’s legendary bisexual, orgiastic, superlow-budget, experimental 1963 masterpiece–a lot more is going on here, artistically and otherwise, than either Jonas Mekas or Susan Sontag has ever suggested. This jubilant, celebratory 45-minute film holds up amazingly well; despite its notoriety and censorship during the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Hick, the Spick and the Chick
The Hick, the Spick and the Chick As priests have probably known for centuries, listening to confessional storytelling gets old real fast. But not the way Paul Turner, Antonio Sacre, and Donna Jay Fulks tell stories. Their tag-team approach to autobiographical performance transforms this potentially onanistic art into a community event. Like a group of […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Feelgood Folderol
Tall Tales & Small Miracles Tellin’ Tales Theatre at Live Bait Theater By Justin Hayford On numerous occasions during Tall Tales & Small Miracles writer-performers Tekki Lomnicki and Laura Dare say that “we are all the same person.” As I listened to them speak or sing this sentiment with a kind of grade-school-teacher earnestness, I […]