Oak Park’s same-sex couples puzzle activists by ignoring pioneering legislation that gives them the same rights as heterosexual marrieds.
Tag: Vol. 29 No. 11
Issue of Dec. 16 – 22, 1999
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 inNews & Politics
Giving From Spleen/Sympathy for the Sun-Times
By Michael Miner Giving From the Spleen The needy of northwest Indiana are truly blessed. This year they’re benefiting from dueling Christmas funds. Gary’s Post-Tribune has launched its Empty Stocking Fund while imposing a news blackout on the venerable Christmas Neediest Fund of the paper’s unionized employees. But the union presses on. “It’s going pretty […]
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 inNews & Politics
Hearts of Ice
Jigs and spud bars top the agenda at the ice-fisherman’s ball.
Posted inArts & Culture
Willie Pickens Trio with Randy Brecker & Joanie Pallatto
WILLIE PICKENS TRIO WITH RANDY BRECKER & JOANIE PALLATTO Christmas never comes too early for Chicago pianist Willie Pickens: for five years running he’s produced a yuletide concert, and in 1998 he issued A Jazz Christmas (Southport), one of the least sentimental and most engaging holiday jazz albums ever. If you think of Christmastime tunes […]
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 […]