LOVE, SEX, AND THE I.R.S., Drury Lane Theatre Evergreen Park. This comedic relic by William Van Zandt and Jane Milmore revolves around an out-of-work musician who for tax purposes falsely claims his male roommate, conveniently named Leslie, as a spousal deduction. To conceal the subterfuge from a bumbling federal inspector, the roommate begins impersonating the […]
Tag: Vol. 30 No. 19
Issue of Feb. 8 – 14, 2001
Posted inArts & Culture
Hambone
Hambone Victory Gardens Theater By Kelly Kleiman “Life must be lived forwards, but it can only be understood backwards,” wrote someone purporting to quote Kierkegaard. It is both the strength and the weakness of Javon Johnson’s new play, Hambone, that it’s so true to life. Not only are the characters three-dimensional and their concerns and […]
Posted inMusic
Off the Charts
Off the Charts When composers like John Cage and Morton Feldman began experimenting with graphic notation more than half a century ago, they were trying to make music more interesting by cultivating unpredictability. Though they didn’t always dispense entirely with the conventional means of translating music to paper–staff lines, note shapes, and so forth–their use […]
Posted inNews & Politics
TRG Music Listings
Rock, Pop, etc. concerts BACON BROTHERS, CINDY ALEXANDER Sat 2/17, 8 PM, Star Plaza Theatre, I-65 and U.S. 30, Merrillville, Indiana. 773-734-7266 or 312-559-1212. JIM BELUSHI & THE SACRED HEARTS Sat 2/17, 8 PM, Hemmens Auditorium, 150 Dexter, Elgin. 847-931-5900. BREATHE: EMERGING POETS AND MUSICIANS Open mike and jam session for poets and musicians. Tue […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Come Out and Play
Response to “Jazz in Bloom” by Jeffrey Felshman, published 26 January, 2001, by Chicago Reader: David Bloom deserves much credit, not only for the dogged pursuit of his musical vision, but also for the unorthodox way he went about it. Eschewing the academic route entirely, he set up his own school. Not looking to anyone […]
Posted inNews & Politics
It Came From Within
For fright-flick buff Lawrence McCallum, life was one long horror show. Then he discovered a way to keep the demons at bay.
Posted inArts & Culture
Afraid of the Dark
Jennie Richee Ridge Theater at the Museum of Contemporary Art By Kerry Reid Henry Darger, a Chicago custodian who died in 1973 at the age of 81, led a life shrouded in secrecy and obsession, his psyche a battlefield of conflicting forces that drove him to write and illustrate Realms of the Unreal–at some 15,000 […]
Posted inNews & Politics
News of the Weird
Lead Stories In January Nick Griffin, the owner of two video stores in England, was fined about $9,900 for violating the Trade Descriptions Act by marketing ordinary feature films (such as the 1976 Jack Palance comedy Secrets of a Sensuous Nurse) as hard-core sex videos. Said Griffin, “I am amazed people have the audacity to […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Creep Shows
Morbid Curiosity at DePaul University Art Gallery, through March 9 By Fred Camper A forest of skeletons rises like a horror-movie apparition from a rectangular bed of bones. With indistinct faces and only vague indications of eyes, this little army is a lot creepier and less human than the zombies in Night of the Living […]
Posted inNews & Politics
StreetWise Boss Feels the Heat
StreetWise Boss Feels the Heat The editor of StreetWise and other staffers went into open rebellion against executive director Anthony Oliver this week, asking the paper’s board of directors that he “be immediately relieved.” In a letter to the board, they described their appeal as “a desperate attempt to prevent an already crisis situation from […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Off the Team
The Board of Education just dumped an organization of private donors that was pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into after-school programs. What were they thinking?
Posted inArts & Culture
Catching Up with African Art
“With African art people usually think of masks and sculpture that are used for tribal rituals, religious purposes, kings’ and chiefs’ regalia, or objects of everyday use in a village setting,” says Columbia College art history professor Kate Ezra. “They don’t think of Africa as being part of the contemporary art world.” For the new […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Tests of Faith
Winter 1995: Cafe Avanti on Southport Seth, almost eight, falls off his chair. Again. His father warns him: “Twenty minutes.” Meaning: 20 minutes time-out when they get home. Jesse, his twin, sits across from Seth, next to me. Their mother is at a brunch. One boy orders a square of cold pizza, the other, hot. […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Fringe Benefits: a private-consumption zine goes public
Chris Mullins and Jim Ziniel named their zine, the Soft Sandwich Chronicles, after the soggy, sweaty, homemade meals they’re prone to eating on long car rides. That weird, insider sense of humor permeates the offbeat publication, and–more than anything else–keeps it going. In these digital days they put out a zine that’s unapologetically old school, […]