Stray Dogs, Profiles Theatre. Julie Jensen’s plays are not neatly packaged little fables. The worlds occupied by her characters crawl with the messy, contradictory, often grotesquely banal quirks of real life. So when two allegedly competent adults overlook several opportunities to disarm the drunken bully threatening them with a .22 rifle in Stray Dogs, the […]
Tag: Vol. 28 No. 20
Issue of Feb. 18 – 24, 1999
Posted inMusic
Silos
SILOS If you weren’t paying attention, you might have taken the extended absence of a new Silos album to mean that the band’s 14-year career was creaking to a close. But in the fall, the “band”–which as always means Walter Salas-Humara and whoever he feels like playing with–quietly released Heater, its first studio album in […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The View From Inside
First I would like to thank Steve Bogira for his article “Senseless Sentences” [January 8]. It showed a horrible but true reality. Also to Margaret Thom, Dave Homiak, and Joanne Archibald for seeing that so much is wasted when people are put in prison nowadays [Letters, January 29]. I am writing from firsthand experience. During […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Who the Hell Is Juliette?
Who the Hell Is Juliette? Gleefully mixing fact and fiction, this 1998 mockumentary fabricates the story of Yuliet, a 16-year-old Havana hooker who may or may not be the Yuliet Ortega playing the role. Mexican director Carlos Marcovich met Ortega on a trip to Cuba and cast her in a music video as the younger […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Talking About Godard
TALKING ABOUT GODARD, Curious Theatre Branch, at the Lunar Cabaret. Though references to classics like Contempt and Breathless abound, you’d be hard-pressed to say that Beau O’Reilly’s script is solely a discourse on French New Wave filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard. Not that the play’s title is deceptive: Godard enthusiast Mary Barnes is perpetually bent on bringing […]
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Spot Check
BALLYDOWSE 2/19, big Horse Here’s one more reason to keep opening the mail: The Land, the Bread, and the People (Grrr), a great and totally unheralded record by Ballydowse, a band whose nine members belong to the Jesus People USA commune in Uptown. They wear their anticorporate, antifascist politics on their sleeves, though their message […]
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Astrud Gilberto
ASTRUD GILBERTO She could never really carry a tune–rather, she’d sort of bobble the melody, precariously balancing it between the notes that ran flat and ones that strayed a little sharp–and her voice packed all the punch of a hungry kitten’s mew. But that didn’t stop Astrud Gilberto from becoming a pop icon in 1964, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Kill Whitey
KILL WHITEY, Black Comedy Underground, at Donny’s Skybox Studio. Chicago has long needed a group like the Black Comedy Underground. Not just because the improv comedy scene, still dominated by white males, could use shaking up but because there’s so much potential comic material in African-American life, and only African-Americans can mine this territory without […]
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Survival Stories
The Vagina Monologues at Goodman Theatre Studio How I Learned to Drive Northlight Theatre at North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie By Carol Burbank Last weekend director Susan V. Booth reminded audiences once again that feminist theater can both pack an emotional punch and be fabulously entertaining. Art and politics were the […]
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True Books
The Dog Who Would Be King: Tales and Surprising Lessons From a Pet Psychologist, by John C. Wright, PhD, with Judi Wright Lashnits (Rodale Press, $18.95). Synopsis: The authors of Is Your Cat Crazy? help disturbed canines–and their owners–lead richer, more fulfilling lives. Representative quote: “After four months of constant effort, King was safer to […]
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In the Spirit
Bad Livers Dust on the Bible (Quarterstick) By Linda Ray This summer the Nashville-based Gospel Music Association revamped its standards for the Dove Awards, the Christian recording industry’s equivalent of the Grammys. Previously the only prerequisite for nomination was that one’s record be sold in Christian music stores, but apparently the GMA was disturbed that […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Kimler Strikes Back
Although David McCracken’s pettiness does not in itself warrant a response [Letters, February 5; Culture Club, January 22], he does inadvertently touch upon several issues that I should once again reiterate. It is self-evident that I have done well as an artist. I support myself entirely with my work without resorting to other means such […]
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Walter “Wolfman” Washington & the Roadmasters
WALTER “WOLFMAN” WASHINGTON & THE ROADMASTERS New Orleans guitarist Walter “Wolfman” Washington draws on everything from his hometown tradition of street-parade improvisation to the urbane blues of Bobby “Blue” Bland and hard-driving contemporary funk–but it all sticks together, thanks to his dead-on earnestness and raucous good humor. On last year’s Funk Is in the House […]
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Rhythm & Brass
RHYTHM & BRASS Musicians never tire of “Caravan,” the famous 1937 bijou written by Ellington Orchestra trombonist Juan Tizol: it’s been grist for everyone from nouveau swing bands to contemporary Latin-jazz outfits. Even Rhythm & Brass–a hip, eclectic sextet parading in the guise of a classically trained brass-and-percussion ensemble–is not immune to its charms. But […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Rush Judgment
Dear editor, Let’s soothe Victoria Kuohung and Raymond Nomizu’s concerns that mayoral candidate Bobby Rush is racist toward Asian-Americans (Letters, February 12). Yes, in his “Rush Job” (February 5) Neal Pollack regaled readers with an anecdote in which Rush visited an unnamed Asian restaurant (or in Pollack’s affectionate terms, a “chop suey parlor”) on Sheridan […]