By Michael Miner Requiem for a Heavyweight The affectionate excerpts published in the Tribune last week don’t even hint at the hard edge to Richard Ciccone’s new biography, Royko: A Life in Print. The 13th chapter begins with this flat statement: “On any given day, Mike Royko could find someone to hate. To his friends […]
Tag: Vol. 30 No. 38
Issue of Jun. 21 – 27, 2001
Posted inArts & Culture
In Store: take off your shoes and stay awhile
From the outside, Adrian Tann’s store, Saiote, looks isolated on its stretch of Milwaukee Avenue. Though it’s just a few blocks north of the fancy boutiques and trendy restaurants near the intersection of North and Damen, it might as well be a world away. Hundreds of rugs from Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan cover the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Mouse on Mars
MOUSE ON MARS Most of the tunes on Mouse on Mars’s terrific new Idiology (Thrill Jockey) would more likely precipitate a sit-down strike than a dance-floor clamor at the local disco. But Jan St. Werner and Andi Toma haven’t obscured their techno roots even as they’ve moved beyond them. As on last year’s Niun Niggung, […]
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Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious
The Neo-Futurists have always done reflexive work. One of the joys of Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind is its loose structure, which allows cast members to comment at almost any time on what’s happening. But the troupe has never been as deep into self-analysis as it was last fall, when Greg Allen […]
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Amherst Undead: Emily Dickinson was a Vampire
Amherst Undead: Emily Dickinson was a Vampire, Mammals, at the Space. How could poetry of such depth and darkness have come from a woman who spent most of her life in her father’s house in the tiny town of Amherst, Massachusetts? If worldly experience was not her inspiration, what fueled the mind that explored love, […]
Posted inNews & Politics
TRG Music Listings
Rock, Pop, etc. concerts AIR, SEBASTIEN TELLIER Sat 6/30, 8 PM, the Vic, 3145 N. Sheffield. 773-472-0449 or 312-559-1212. BODEANS Tue 6/26, 8 PM, Pavilion, Ravinia Festival, Green Bay and Lake Cook Rds., Highland Park. 847-266-5100. CHICAGO, MISTAKEN IDENTITY Sat 6/30, 8 PM, Rosemont Theatre, 5400 N. River Rd., Rosemont. 312-559-1212. COULD IT BE MAGIC? […]
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La Derniere Lettre (The Last Letter)
Filmmaker Frederick Wiseman is known for his cinema-verite documentaries of institutional life: Titicut Follies, High School, Hospital. With this beautifully staged, lit, and acted production–a one-woman performance starring French actress Catherine Samie–he also reveals himself as a first-rate theatrical artist. Wiseman’s script–adapted from Russian journalist Vassili Grossman’s once-suppressed novel Life and Fate–is a monologue in […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Putting Urinetown on the Map
How did these guys wind up prepping a show about pay toilets for a big Broadway premiere?
Posted inNews & Politics
News of the Weird
Lead Stories The Swedish navy announced in May that, because of slashes in the military budget, its around-the-clock operations would be cut back to Monday through Friday, nine to five. The nation’s army and air force have not yet decided whether to remain open on weekends. Ben Lambert of Winnipeg, Manitoba, expects to sell 40,000 […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Blue View
My thanks to Harold Henderson for reporting on Urban Recycling and the Search for Sustainable Community Development in “Reading: Blue Bags, Red Flags” (June 15). Evaluating the blue bags collected with the garbage against separate collection, the authors offer a split decision. Many of us committed to separate collection see it as the best route […]
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Films by Andy Warhol, program one
Andy Warhol’s name was so often attached to narrative films by Paul Morrissey (Andy Warhol’s Flesh, Andy Warhol’s Trash, etc) that some viewers might be surprised at the rawness and randomness of the films Warhol directed himself. This Chicago Filmmakers program, which collects three of his earliest works, reveals his aesthetic debt to composer John […]
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Willie Pickens
WILLIE PICKENS Chicago pianist Willie Pickens lets it all hang out: voluble and mercurial, he can play with the force of two pianists. (Not that he always does: on a forthcoming Concord release, recorded at the Jazz Showcase in December, he plays duets with–and leaves plenty of room for–fellow pianist Marian McPartland.) Though a stalwart […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Gummo Can’t Hurt You Now
I would like to thank Lisa Alspector for her review of Gummo [Movies at chicagoreader.com]. I now feel less terrified about the movie I just watched. Erik Hons Waterloo, Ontario
Posted inArts & Culture
Natural Order
Edward Weston: The Last Years in Carmel at the Art Institute of Chicago, through September 16 By Fred Camper When I first looked at reproductions of Edward Weston’s prints almost 30 years ago, I found them inert and dull, skillful but lifeless. And I figured that since Weston himself had published these black-and-white photos in […]