Two weeks ago I responded to a letter from Fifteen and Gay, a closeted gay high school sophomore who longed to be “some dude’s sex slave.” FAG met a 38-year-old “really nice guy” on the Internet who offered to pick him up from school and take him back to his house. I advised FAG not […]
Tag: Vol. 32 No. 31
Issue of May. 1 – 7, 2003
Posted inArts & Culture
A Blueprint of the Bluegoose
A Blueprint of the Bluegoose, Insight Arts, at United Church of Rogers Park, through May 9. In her 1985 philosophical meditation The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World, Elaine Scarry limns the theatrical/display component of torture. So it’s appropriate that Insight Arts draws in part upon Scarry’s text in its new […]
Posted inNews & Politics
It’s Money Well Spent
Dear editor: In the April 11 cover story “Give Us a Break,” about the state’s economic development initiatives, the Reader profiled a think tank report that makes incorrect assumptions about the programs and fails to recognize our recent successes. The city of Chicago and the state of Illinois have teamed up in recent years to […]
Posted inArts & Culture
On Stage: reporting live, from Wigfield
For years Amy Sedaris has wanted to write a book about a worm. “Montgomery the worm,” she elaborates. “He doesn’t know what kind of worm he is. And he goes on this long adventure trying to find out, and his head gets cut off from his body, and they go along their separate ways for […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Byther Smith
An account of Byther Smith’s early days almost reads like a parody of the archetypal hard-luck-bluesman story. He was born in Mississippi in 1932. His mother died in childbirth when he was a toddler, his father died six months later, and one of his sisters was killed in a fire not long after that (all […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Bolivia
Thrown out of work when the coca fields he tends are destroyed by a U.S. drug interdiction program, a Bolivian farm laborer with a wife and children illegally emigrates to a suburb of Buenos Aires and finds a job as a fry cook, but his new life is plagued by corrupt cops and the bigots […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Is Anybody Listening?
Dear Mr. Miner, You first announced on March 21 [Hot Type] that a public forum would be held on new changes being made by the FCC that would, among other things, enable newspaper companies to own television and radio stations in the same local market. Then, on April 18 you bitched out the dailies for […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Winged Migration
This up-close avian travelogue from producer Jacques Perrin (Microcosmos, Himalaya) is the most astounding cinematic testament to flock mentality since Hitchcock’s The Birds. With a team that included 12 cinematographers, Perrin traversed the globe between 1998 and 2001, filming dozens of bird species (red-crowned cranes, flamingos, bald eagles) on their arduous annual migrations. Shots from […]
Posted inMusic
Spot Check
DALEK 5/2, EMPTY BOTTLE These days it seems like hip-hop is pronounced dead almost as often as rock. And as with rock, such postmortems are usually delivered by folks who listen to little outside the mainstream–there’s always gold to be mined from weird little veins in the underground. This trio’s second album, From Filthy Tongue […]
Posted inMusic
Familiar Themes
Anthony Braxton Four Compositions (GTM) 2000 (Delmark) Roscoe Mitchell Snurdy McGurdy and Her Dancing Shoes (Nessa) Ken Burns’s (or anyone else’s) great-man theory aside, some of jazz’s most profound developments result when a nexus of players assembles to exchange information in performance, collectively shaping new dialects. At the birth of bebop, in New York in […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Stranded at the Station
The rise and fall of grand plans for a South Loop gallery district.
Posted inArts & Culture
Scott Amendola Band
Drummer Scott Amendola graduated from Berklee in the early 90s and moved to San Francisco, where he soon made a name for himself playing in guitarist Charlie Hunter’s group. His skill at maintaining a pulse in wide-open terrain and stoking imperturbable grooves has landed him plenty of work since then: he’s flourished in projects with […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Empty Chalices/Los calices vacios–The Life and Poetry of Delmira Agustini
The Empty Chalices/Los calices vacios–The Life and Poetry of Delmira Agustini, Aguijon Theater Company. Playwright Judy Veramendi shows an unusual dedication to the life and art of Uruguayan writer Delmira Agustini–and judging by the poetry incorporated in her biographical play, it’s wholly warranted. Aguijon’s production, under the direction of Rosario Vargas, contains many beautiful moments […]
Posted inArts & Culture
No, Seriously, We’re All Gonna Die/Godshow
No, Seriously, We’re All Gonna Die, Second City, and Godshow, Second City Unhinged. Most people watching the Second City main-stage show aren’t from Chicago, so they probably missed the Tribune’s suggestion that Second City can’t be funny with our troops “in harm’s way.” The night I attended, the audience didn’t hesitate to laugh as the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Chicago Anarchist Film Festival
The fourth annual Chicago Anarchist Film Festival continues Friday through Sunday, May 2 through 4. Screenings will be at Buddy, 1542 N. Milwaukee, second floor. Suggested donation is $5, and all films will be shown by video projection; for more information call 773-862-1011. FRIDAY, MAY 2 Culture + Community Four documentaries: Coleman Romalis’s Emma Goldman: […]