balkin.qxd Mike Sula reported inaccurately and did us a great disservice in his reporting about the Sunday Maxwell Street tribute at the Chicago Historical Society in Section One [Calendar] in the 1/9/98 issue of the Reader. He wrote, “And since the Devil paved paradise and put in a parking lot, all that’s left are the […]
Tag: Vol. 27 No. 15
Issue of Jan. 15 – 21, 1998
Posted inMusic
Ed Thigpen Quartet with Antonio Hart
ED THIGPEN QUARTET WITH ANTONIO HART Drummer Ed Thigpen’s last few appearances in Chicago have only confirmed what audiences understood from his first noteworthy appearances in Chicago, with Oscar Peterson in the 50s and early 60s: with his immaculate stick work and split-second accents, he defines tasteful drumming without sacrificing the fluid dynamics and deep […]
Posted inNews & Politics
West Side Stories
Our living room on Flournoy Street had a great big window out front. Today you’d call it a picture window. On the day before Halloween 1921 my father got out there and washed this big window. When he woke up the next morning the neighborhood kids had written on it, “So you like to wash […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Rejecting the N-Word
lee.qxd To the editors: I’ve just finished reading Bennie Currie’s article on the N-word (Essay, December 19). While I was reading it, I was thinking about a line out of a book I had read a while ago written by a black man. I forgot the title, but I remember the line saying, “If whites […]
Posted inFilm
One-Sided War
Welcome to Sarajevo Rating * Has redeeming facet Directed by Michael Winterbottom Written by Frank Cottrell Boyce With Stephen Dillane, Woody Harrelson, Marisa Tomei, and Emira Nusevic. By Matt Roth Weaving historical events into a fictional narrative always involves a major pitfall: important events risk becoming a hazy backdrop to the cliched struggles of boring […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Woyzeck
WOYZECK, the Hypocrites, at Voltaire. It’s a bit facile for the Hypocrites to state in their program that German playwright Georg BŸchner, author of the visionary early-19th-century drama Woyzeck, “wasn’t so much avante garde as he was crazy.” Although the play remained a series of feverish fragments at BŸchner’s death from typhus, Woyzeck anticipated absurdist, […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Ethics Arbiter
meyer.qxd Dear Editor: Since the Chicago Headline Club announced plans for an annual journalism ethics award three years ago, the Reader has published a series of snide, poorly supported potshots at the award, its organizers, and its recipients, including me. One Reader piece described the award as a “well-meant gesture…doomed to fall flat.” Meanwhile, the […]
Posted inFilm
The Winter Guest
The Winter Guest Two older women make their way to an out-of-town funeral, a teenage girl engineers a meeting with a boy she’s attracted to, his mother and grandmother (real-life daughter and mother Emma Thompson and Phyllida Law) go for a walk, and two young boys play hooky in this deeply atmospheric poem set in […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Oberman All Wet
mitchell.qxd Dear Editor: This letter is in response to the letter of Martin Oberman, as president of the Chicago Council of Lawyers, in your December 12, 1997, issue. In his letter, Mr. Oberman criticizes IVI-IPO’s focus “on paper qualifications and political considerations” in endorsing judicial candidates. At the same time, Mr. Oberman claims that judicial […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Winners/Losers
Winners/Losers, ETA Creative Arts Foundation. What drives an otherwise honest man to break the law? That question is explored in this fable of a chauffeur driven by insecurity in a society that discourages his efforts to better himself. His immediate problem is the money he’s borrowed to buy his wife a fur coat, even though […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Anastasia File
The Anastasia File, Illinois Theatre Center. The greatest unsolved mystery of the 20th century may be the story of Anastasia, the woman who was perhaps the sole surviving heir to Russian czar Nicholas II. At the very least it’s a tale that long ago became fodder for made-for-TV movies, pop biographies, and of course most […]
Posted inNews & Politics
House Blend
Will the eclectic Logan Beach Cafe change under new management?
Posted inNews & Politics
Cheap Suits
Case #97L4694: Rentschler v. Manhole Michael Rentschler says he “suffered great bodily pain and injury and mental anguish” from an April 30, 1995, fall in the bathroom of the gay bar Manhole, 3458 N. Halsted. Rentschler charges that the proprietors of Manhole “negligently permitted grease, oil or other slippery material” to remain on the bathroom […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Following Function
A Basketmaker in Rural Japan at the Field Museum of Natural History, through February 8 A Game of Chance at Printworks, through February 7 By Fred Camper Viewing the 100 some elegant handmade baskets and other objects in the Field Museum’s “A Basketmaker in Rural Japan,” I was struck at first by their repeating geometrical […]
Posted inMusic
Karl Montzka Organ Band
KARL MONTZKA ORGAN BAND Though they haven’t received half the press, the Montzkas would come second only to Von and George Freeman in a Chicago jazz-sibling rivalry. When keyboardist Karl locks rhythms with drummer Eric, they make a great case for nature and nurture: having grown up in the same household, presumably listening to much […]