By Michael Miner When Debra Shore was writing for Outside magazine she did a piece on crime in the national parks and forests and other federally managed lands. There’s a lot of it–drug smuggling, body dumping, automatic-weapons drilling. Having got to know these federal lands, she wrote another story for Outside on the questions visitors […]
Tag: Vol. 27 No. 9
Issue of Dec. 4 – 10, 1997
Posted inFilm
Pretty Village, Pretty Flame
Srdjan Dragojevic’s 1996 antiwar film was a hit in its native Serbia, which is probably a good thing: as one critic has noted, Serbs were kept so ignorant of the war that most didn’t even know their militiamen were shelling Sarajevo. While not very inventive cinematically, the film is full of energy, and not merely […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Mea Culpa
sandlin.qxd Readers of my November 28 review of Maria Callas may have been baffled by a reference to her performances in the “melodramas of Rossini.” There were no such performances and no such melodramas (not that I wouldn’t mind hearing them, even so); I’d intended to say “melodramas of Puccini.” I also goofed on a […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Idol Threat
IDOL THREAT, ArtWorx Ensemble, at Angel Island. First staged at this year’s Around the Coyote Festival, Idol Threat is set in a not-too-distant future in which the government conducts an annual lottery for population control. The losers are immediately sacrificed to a mysterious idol, while the winners get to live another year–on borrowed time. In […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Crippling Scripts
The Removalists A Red Orchid Theatre After-Play Organic Touchstone Company at Touchstone Theatre By Adam Langer These days there’s more to producing a play than choosing a good script–in fact, sometimes that seems to be the last thing on any company’s mind. First you’ve got to get past questions of what will look good on […]
Posted inNews & Politics
News of the Weird
Lead Stories In September inmate Michael F. Schmitz, 45, serving two years in the Kentucky State Reformatory for drunk driving, filed a $1.9 million lawsuit against the Lexington police department, complaining that officers were too nice when they arrested him in 1996. According to the lawsuit, when police found a loaded assault rifle in his […]
Posted inNews & Politics
A Higher Calling
By Tori Marlan Dandylion was found in an alley near a garage where a man was drowning kittens. Serape was hurled like a baseball between two boys on bikes. Summer suffers from epilepsy, asthma, and something like cerebral palsy. Spunky feeds through a stomach tube. 24 Karat Gold has inflammatory bowel disease. Cali, who is […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Death of a Gadfly
How Jack Richman’s personal campagin against mosquito spraying led to his own sudden demise.
Posted inMusic
Made in Chicago
Made in Chicago The health and diversity of the Chicago scene have been stable for some time, but one thing that’s noteworthy is the solidification of a new wave of record labels with varied rosters and first-class production values. Of these eight recent releases by local artists, only two were put out by the artists […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Kyogen
The farcical, often satirical Kyogen style developed as part of the ritualistic No theater to provide comic relief between No plays, showing the foolishness of ordinary people and mocking their frailties with rhythmic vocalizations, stylized physical movement, and minutely detailed timing. Often compared to commedia dell’arte, Kyogen has some of the same charm but lacks […]
Posted inMusic
Adrian Sherwood
ADRIAN SHERWOOD More than a decade before some category-happy writer coined the term electronica, Britain’s Adrian Sherwood was using technology to lay musical categories to waste. As a producer and later as proprietor of the On-U Sound label, Sherwood has been responsible for some of the wiggiest dub-influenced music ever released, organizing potent projects like […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Reader to Reader
Overheard at the Evanston Library: Patron: I’d like to reserve time on the computer for the Internet. Librarian: You can use it right now. What’s your name? Patron: Jones. Robert Jones. Librarian: How do you spell it? Patron: Jones. Just Jones, man. –R. Dashow Reader to Reader welcomes (and pays for) anecdotes, overheard conversations, and […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Public Embarrassment
martin.qxd To the editor: Thank you for your recent critical coverage of the fiasco known as the Chicago Transit Authority [“You Can’t Get There From Here,” September 5; Neighborhood News, November 7; Cityside, November 7]. An ardent supporter and user of mass transit–I have had the misfortune to ride the el almost every day for […]
Posted inMusic
Fred Van Hove
FRED VAN HOVE The list of records Belgian pianist Fred van Hove has cut as a leader is relatively short (and the list of those that have been issued in the U.S. is even shorter)–which makes his imposing presence on the European free-jazz scene over the last three decades all the more remarkable. Best known […]
Posted inColumns & Opinion
Savage Love
Hey, Faggot: In response to Wish I’d Known, I’d like to put in a word about being a “diseased fuck.” I contracted herpes and warts about 16 years ago. The genital warts I got from one sex partner, and herpes was given to me by another, who later became my husband. Despite these two STDs […]