The Artist Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic (NPG/Arista) By Josh Goldfein This year should’ve belonged to the artist once known as Prince, and not just because he wrote the theme song. Prince Rogers Nelson is a millennial figure in his stature (not to be confused with his height) among the greatest composers of the century, […]
Tag: Vol. 29 No. 12
Issue of Dec. 23 – 29, 1999
Posted inNews & Politics
I Don’t Like Mondays
When did school overtake the post office as the place a person is most likely to lose it? Over the past couple of years, crazed student gunmen have outnumbered AK-toting postal workers by a ratio of four to one. Is it the decay of standards in the mass entertainment media? The number of students using […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Cradle Will Rock
This ambitious, Altman-esque tapestry by writer-director Tim Robbins re-creates various events involving art, patronage, and politics during the mid-1930s, all revolving around the Federal Theater’s legendary New York production of Marc Blitzstein’s socialist opera The Cradle Will Rock and its suppression by the U.S. Congress. One could make countless legitimate complaints about the film’s details, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Chi Lives: how Joy Morton grew trees from salt
Morton Salt founder Joy Morton was born in Nebraska in 1855 with a silver-plated spoon in his mouth and a dual family mission: to succeed in business and to plant trees. His father, J. Sterling Morton, was a brash, politically conservative editor and big-business publicist with a Johnny Appleseed complex. He was acting governor of […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Straight Dope
While waxing nostalgic over our favorite cartoons from the 60s and 70s with some friends, we suddenly realized that Disney’s The Lion King bears a striking resemblance in plot and cast to the Japanese-made 60s TV series Kimba the White Lion (of which we can all remember every word of the theme song, by the […]
Posted inFilm
The Decade’s Finest
Ten Best Movies of the 90s (not including but with notes on Cradle Will Rock) By Jonathan RosenbaumDoes one’s integrity ever lie in what he is not able to do? I think that usually it does, for free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived […]
Posted inArts & Culture
In Motion with Michael Moschen
Most jugglers are show-offs. All they really care about is the applause, which is why they always stand front and center, ready to take their bows. Michael Moschen is an exception: juggling since he was a kid performing for quarters in front of New York City’s Metropolitan Museum, he clearly enjoys the applause but is […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Calendar
Friday 12/24 – Thursday 1/6 DECEMBER By Cara Jepsen 24 FRIDAY Chicago usually turns into a ghost town on Christmas Eve, so there should be plenty of parking at tonight’s Retro Eve. The fund-raiser for the Jewish Children’s Bureau’s Therapeutic Family Day Care Center offers free food and cocktails until 10 and music by the […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Boss Is Lost
Q: It’s Monday morning, January 4. The city is paralyzed by a blizzard, and the CTA has collapsed. You are CTA president Frank Kruesi, and according to your publicity, you always take the el to work. How long does it take you to get from your home station in Albany Park to City Hall to […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Mustache
THE MUSTACHE, Thirteenth Tribe, at the Athenaeum Theatre. I can recall few Chicago productions as compulsively fascinating as this adaptation of neogothic French author Emmanuel Carrere’s surrealistic novel about a man driven to madness after he shaves off his mustache and no one seems to notice. The story is utterly unpredictable yet fiendishly logical as […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Made to Be Broken
Chicago aldermen–who are paid extraordinary yearly salaries of $85,000 for part-time legislative work–obviously don’t have enough to do. Over the years aldermen have gone on famously useless crusades. Who could forget, for example, the wall Bernard Stone envisioned between Chicago and Evanston to prevent shopping traffic on Howard Street from spilling over into the 50th […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Looking Out For Number Two
Ed Kelly finds a fierce opponent in the man whose career he once nurtured.
Posted inArts & Culture
Robbie Fulks
ROBBIE FULKS Robbie Fulks’s misleadingly titled new album, The Very Best of Robbie Fulks (due in January on Bloodshot), is in fact a decade-spanning collection of oddities and rarities meant to tide fans over as Chicago’s best singer-songwriter-satirist–who parted ways with Geffen this year–works out new material and decides how to release it. But like […]