Posted inArts & Culture

Assault On the Senses

OR Dumb Type at the Museum of Contemporary Art, December 9-12 By Justin Hayford If you missed Dumb Type at the Museum of Contemporary Art last weekend, you may not have a chance to make up for your folly: the likelihood of seeing this Kyoto-based performance collective in Chicago again is slim. Formed in 1984, […]

Posted inNews & Politics

News of the Weird

Lead Stories Life imitates Weekend at Bernie’s: In November government officials in East London, South Africa, thwarted an attempt by two men and a woman to register a corpse for pension benefits. According to the South African Press Association, the three took the recently deceased man (who they said was merely ill) to a pension […]

Posted inArts & Culture

The People vs. Scarlett James

The People vs. Scarlett James, 1 N Da Chamber Productions, at the Reynolds Club, University of Chicago. Playwrights Earl Harrington Jr. and Yohance Lacour demonstrate a sufficient grasp of legal jargon in their courtroom drama about a woman accused of murdering her abusive husband, but in real life a trial like this would probably take […]

Posted inNews & Politics

Police Scanner

Thursday, December 9, 10:45 PM Dispatcher: Are you privy to being pawed? Unidentified Caller number one: I wish. Unidentified Caller number two: What’s wrong with pawing girls? Unidentified Caller number three: We don’t paw on our kitties. Dispatcher: Do we just pet our kitties? Unidentified Caller number four: Meow. Unidentified Caller number one: Real nice. […]

Posted inColumns & Opinion

Savage Love

I am in the middle of changing my sex from male to female. I have a sweet girlfriend, and she and I have fabulous sex! I told her I was a woman about four years ago and began the transition two years ago. My girlfriend still loves me and overlooks the boobies or other feminizations. […]

Posted inArts & Culture

Karrin Allyson, Nancy King

KARRIN ALLYSON, NANCY KING Before I learned about this bill, I’d have never guessed that Karrin Allyson had even heard of Nancy King–let alone that she’s adored King’s records for years, as she’s recently said. Though the two share a husky-voiced assertiveness, their territories don’t seem to overlap: King, an intrepid scat improviser based in […]

Posted inMusic

Electronica in the House/The Ax Finally Falls

Electronica in the House House music has sprouted like a spider plant since its birth more than two decades ago. Techno, speed garage, acid house, drum ‘n’ bass, gabber, and 90s electronica are among its progeny–but here in Chicago, where house began, its more experimental offspring are largely ignored. Important postrave artists, from England’s Autechre […]

Posted inNews & Politics

Sports Section

What a perfect time for the end of the millennium or, if not that, the end of the century or, if not even that, then certainly the end of the 1900s and, ergo, the 90s. If there has ever been a time when Chicago sports fans wanted to reject the present and lose themselves in […]

Posted inNews & Politics

Power to the People

Dear editor: Free speech does rock! And that is why the people running the show at Harpo Inc. are trying to stop free speech [December 10]. Thank you for the interesting story about Oprah Winfrey and her company’s influence over one person’s First Amendment rights and public discourse at large. This story illustrated very well […]

Posted inArts & Culture

The Kitsch Pitch

Not that many decades ago high art and kitsch were thought of as irreconcilable opposites. Now, however, it almost seems as if art imitating kitsch were the norm among young artists. The less interesting work in this vein simply replicates the superficial effects of mass-culture objects, but the best of it, dating back at least […]

Posted inArts & Culture

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer adn Rudolph the Red-Hosed Reindeer

RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER, Annoyance Theatre, and RUDOLPH THE RED-HOSED REINDEER, Sweetback Productions, at the American Theater Company. Every year for the past ten years the Annoyance folks have taken a TV holiday classic (A Charlie Brown Christmas, Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town, Frosty the Snowman) and adapted it for the stage, re-creating with […]