By Hank De Zutter As miracles go, it was small, even silly. It brought a giggle, not a gasp. And yet it was miraculous that somehow on a cold November morning both a tomato plant and a sunflower were blooming out of a sidewalk in downtown Chicago. With no visible source of sustenance–not even dirt–both […]
Tag: Vol. 30 No. 8
Issue of Nov. 23 – 29, 2000
Posted inArts & Culture
The Land of Karaoking Improvisers
LAND OF THE KARAOKING IMPROVISERS, Moctis, at the Playground. Usually, the more gimmicks improvisers use–masks, props, strange acting styles and conceits–the worse the show is. The exception was the Hyde Park-based troupe Sheila. For years they performed using the most annoying, cumbersome premise: moment by moment, they followed the dictates of a “giant wall of […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Straight Dope
I once read a quotation along the lines that there are only seven basic story lines, and that all the stories in the world can be seen as permutations of those seven. Do you know: (a) Who said/wrote it? (b) What the exact quotation is (including the descriptions of the basic story lines)? –Julian Maynard-Smith, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Kiss or Kill
Who needs another killer couple fleeing cross-country with cops in hot pursuit? Yet thanks to this 1998 Australian thriller’s aggressive and unnerving formal approach–jump cuts that hurtle us through the story like a needle skipping across a record and an inventive camera style that defamiliarizes characters as well as settings–the characters’ paranoia is translated into […]
Posted inNews & Politics
“He Paints With Light”
In the photo lab, Jack Leb turns a negative into a thing of beauty. In his life, as he made his way through the Middle East and across the sea to America, he sometimes had to do the same.
Posted inArts & Culture
Calendar
24 FRIDAY Last year on this, the biggest shopping day of the year, there were Buy Nothing Day anticonsumerism actions in over 30 countries. In Vancouver a gold-clad Mr. Materialism thanked shoppers for their enthusiastic spending, while in Kyoto a “Zenta” Claus sat meditating in the lotus position for eight hours on the city’s busiest […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Vote of No Confidence
Florida-style politics throw locals for a loop up north in the 33rd Ward.
Posted inArts & Culture
The Legend of Spirit Mountain
The Legend of Spirit Mountain, ETA Creative Arts Foundation. This company, dedicated to producing new plays from the African-American community, often stages works in progress–and The Legend of Spirit Mountain certainly fits that bill. Playwright K.M. Nkosi is a lyrical storyteller whose almost mythological play offers a fresh, interesting take on familiar issues: saving an […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Melt-Banana
MELT-BANANA This Japanese four-piece plays a dazzlingly intricate, perpetually wired, sometimes childlike, and nakedly joyous mix of hardcore, noise, improv, and pop, bringing the various subcultures together in a rapturous orgy of pure energy. K.K. Null took them under his wing in 1993, putting out their first album and giving them their earliest international exposure, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Soft Ball
Baal Trap Door Theatre By Justin Hayford By the time Bertolt Brecht completed his undergraduate studies in 1917, only 5 of his original 68 classmates were on hand to take the exit exam. The others had been shipped off to the war. Many never returned, and several of Brecht’s boyhood chums were killed as well. […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Wicked Smart
A week or two ago, you published a letter from a reader who stated that you should probably drop a cartoon or two and pick up This Modern World by Tom Tomorrow for Section Four. I am in total agreement with him, but I think Underworld is the one you should drop. Dumb, with lousy […]
Posted inNews & Politics
TRG Music listings
Rock, Pop, etc. concerts BoDEANS, WILLIE NILE Fri 11/24 and Sat 11/25, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre, 4746 N. Racine. 773-275-6800 or 312-559-1212. D-ERANIA Sat 11/25, 7:30 PM, Mars Hill Church, 5916 W. Lake. 773-287-3535. JOHN DIGWEED, DJs WALSH & SOMMER See Critic’s Choice. Sat 11/25, 9 PM, the Vic, 3145 N. Sheffield. 773-472-0449 or 312-559-1212. […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Babes Off Broadway
Cabaret singer and former Kenilworth resident Jeff Harnar says he owes his career to his North Shore upbringing. His first performance was with the Wilmette Children’s Theatre when he was nine years old. “They were doing Music Man. I got the part of the little boy who sings ‘Gary, Indiana’ and a Chicago talent agent […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Draw!
To the editor: Can someone please clue me in on why Jennifer Berman has cartoons published in the Reader? I have read every Berman feature with interest over the past few years only to see if her current comic is even worse than her last. Her cartoons are not in the least bit funny or […]
Posted inNews & Politics
News of the Weird
Lead Stories In October the New England Journal of Medicine reported the apparent first-ever transfer of a food-poisoning virus from one football team to its opponent. Florida State beat Duke, 62-13, in the 1998 game, but 43 queasy Duke players and assistants got some unintended revenge by making 11 FSU players violently ill during and […]