When most people think of New Orleans’s heritage, they think of the French influence, which mark everything from street names to Cajun music to the city’s cuisine. But the city’s culture stems as much from its Spanish influence, which runs thick and fast through the work of Los Hombres Calientes, the irresistible musical tidepool presided […]
Tag: Vol. 32 No. 37
Issue of Jun. 12 – 18, 2003
Posted inNews & Politics
Taft’s Lincoln
Dear Ms. True: Two slight corrections regarding the Taft plaster sculpture of the Standing Lincoln, said to be given to the Vanderpoel collection by the Art Institute and never executed [Separation Anxiety,” May 30]. Actually, Mr. Taft personally donated the cast to the collection in 1927, and a statue was executed from the cast which […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Petty Crime
Monday, April 28, 5000 block of N. Marine, 10:05 PM. Assault. 23-year-old female offender was observed videotaping two males walking dogs in park. “I’m filming you yuppies,” she stated. Asked why, offender approached victims wielding a large steak knife. “I will take this to phase two,” she said. “I will stab you.” One victim subdued […]
Posted inFilm
Witness to the Persecution
It’s disconcerting to be appalled and even slightly nauseated by a masterpiece. But Andrew Jarecki’s Capturing the Friedmans is a documentary, and so it’s disconcerting largely because of its subject matter—it shocks us with the truth. Yet if Capturing the Friedmans were less shapely and less of a masterpiece, I’d find it less troubling. Both […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Anti-Catholic Tastes
Dear editor, Once again the Reader has shown its anti-Roman Catholic side. Cecil Adams’s Straight Dope article on Islam along with its cartoon [June 6] is rabidly hateful and xenophobic toward Roman Catholics. It seems that it has become commonplace in the Reader to spew hate against Roman Catholics whenever possible. I’m sure if Adams […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Datebook
JUNE 13 FRIDAY Chicago artist Sonya Baysinger has been dwelling on duality, worrying about the tense relationships be-tween heavy and light, rigid and pliable, male and female. The world is full of opposing states, says Baysinger, and her work is concerned with the journey between them–with cocoons, metamorphosis, and the transformations wrought by the artist […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Barebones and Skin
Barebones and Skin, Side Project, at the Side Studio. Under the wing of its artistic director and founder, Adam Webster, the Side Project has delivered another provocative success. Ten one-act plays, linked by their exploration of “the human condition at the peak of adversity,” offer fleeting insights into failure and desire. In Toby Burwell’s The […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Smoked Out
I am an ex-smoker. I smoked cigarettes for about 14 years over a span of 20 years. I quit a couple of times before I finally stopped. One time I even quit for four years. And I chose to start again, under the same rubric that Paul reports led him to not stop: self-indulgence. The […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Straight Dope
Forty years later, I dimly remember a bologna contingent. There was also a tuna fish faction, and the chicken-noodle-soup-in-an-Underdog-thermos brigade. A fringe weirdo or two might’ve favored liverwurst. But the plurality, if not majority, of the brown baggers in my grade school lunchroom were staunch peanut butter and jelly devotees. I ate a PB & […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Cherrywine
Digable Planets were one of the most interesting and original rap groups of the early 90s, recording two terrific albums, 1993’s breezy Reachin’ (A New Refutation of Time and Space) and 1994’s militantly funky Blowout Comb. After that, the group (rappers Doodlebug, Butterfly, and Ladybug, aka Mecca–possibly hip-hop’s most underrated female MC) virtually disappeared. But […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Murder…By Improv
Murder…By Improv, ChicagoImprovAnarchy, at Frankie J’s MethaDome Theatre. We’ve all seen improvised murder mysteries in which audiences vote on whodunit. ChicagoImprovAnarchy (CIA) takes the game several steps further, however. Under the guidance of our detective-host (Columbo on the night I attended, played by Tommy Taylor), we first submit suggestions on which the characters are based, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Calendar
Friday 6/13 – Thursday 6/19 JUNE 13 FRIDAY Wesley Willis–the schizophrenic singer and Magic Marker artist so fond of head-butting his fans–won’t be playing at tonight’s opening of the new exhibit Nitty Gritty: Slim’s Bike and the Street Art of Curtis Cuffie and Wesley Willis, which features 14 of his streetscapes on poster board. He’s […]
Posted inArts & Culture
A Chicken and Its Breast
A Chicken and Its Breast, at Stray Dog Studios. With performance art, half the trick can be convincing the audience it’s not performance art, or at least convincing them they don’t know what’s going on. One way of doing that is to present your show as an obliquely theatrical look at the artist behind the […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Final Chapter for Prologue?
Bureaucratic baloney threatens one of the city’s best schools for at-risk teens.
Posted inArts & Culture
The End of the Tour
The End of the Tour, Victory Gardens Theater. Joel Drake Johnson’s new play is a sensitively written, beautifully acted portrait of a fragmented family. Set in downstate Dixon, the action revolves around vain, crusty Mae Anne, a nursing-home patient whose main claim to fame is having once sung for hometown boy Ronald Reagan. Mae Anne’s […]