Off the Record? Yeah, Right What does “This is off the record” mean anyway? That what you’re about to say can’t leave the room? Of course it’s going to leave the room. What we think and do is predicated on what we know, and as soon as you tell me something I’ll know it even […]
Tag: Vol. 33 No. 22
Issue of Feb. 26 – Mar. 3, 2004
Posted inArts & Culture
Northern State
In a year already marked by the steep ascent of urban poets Kanye West and Dizzee Rascal, who’d have guessed one of the more talked-about rap acts would be a trio of white chicks from Long Island? Northern State–Hesta Prynn, DJ Sprout, and Guinea Love (Julie Goodman, Robyn Goodmark, and Correne Spero to their parents)–have […]
Posted inNews & Politics
TRG Music Listings
Rock, Pop, Etc. Concerts 3RD ANNUAL ALL-CITY MC BATTLE Sat 3/6, 9 PM, Logan Square Auditorium, 2539 N. Kedzie. 773-764-2277. ERYKAH BADU, FLOETRY See Critic’s Choice. Sat 2/28, 7 PM, Auditorium Theatre, 50 E. Congress. 312-922-2110 or 312-902-1500. BIG BAND Tribute to big-band music. Fri 2/27 and Sat 2/28, 7:30 PM, and Sun 2/29, 3 […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Flying Luttenbachers
The industrious Weasel Walter hasn’t slackened his pace since leaving Chicago for the Bay Area last year. A member of no fewer than 15 groups during his 12 years here, he’s already involved in three new projects there: Goof Ice, XBXRX, and Curse of the Birthmark. But his most active and best-known outfit remains the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
O Lover of Life: Experimental Narrative From India
Pooja Kaul’s videos are among the most original I’ve seen. They can be frustratingly elusive at first, but over time their gentle elisions and off-center framing suggest that the most important aspects of human experience are intangible feelings not reducible to imagery. Lover of Life (2003, in Hindi with subtitles) depicts a tentative romance between […]
Posted inFilm
Looking Back in Anger
Star Spangled to Death *** (A must-see) Directed and written by Ken Jacobs With Jack Smith, Jerry Sims, Cecilia Swan, Gib Taylor, Bill Carpenter, Laurie Taylor, Reese Haire, Bob Fleischner, Jim Enterline, and Jacobs. Young man, you’ve got a lot of explaining to do. –opening intertitle of Star Spangled to Death Ken Jacobs’s 1969 Tom, […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Orange Alert
Orange designation doesn’t protect historical buildings after all–not when Burton Natarus and the Plan Commission approve demolition.
Posted inArts & Culture
Chi Lives: the psychedelic sounds (and drawings, and writings) of Steve Krakow
Steve Krakow doesn’t cook much at home–his collection of 100 stuffed felt autograph dogs occupies most of the counter space in his kitchen. The rest of his Ukrainian Village apartment is filled with his other collections of pop culture detritus, accumulated over the last ten years or so: more than 7,000 LPs and thousands more […]
Posted inNews & Politics
When Anachronists Attack
What’s a medieval swordfight without the grappling and dirty tricks?
Posted inArts & Culture
Robert K. Landers
When you think of writers defined by or who themselves have defined Chicago, you think Bellow, Algren, Dreiser, Sinclair. Maybe Sandburg; maybe Hecht. You might think of James T. Farrell too, author of the Studs Lonigan trilogy–Young Lonigan (1932), The Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan (1934), and Judgment Day (1935)–but he’s always occupied a lower […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Active Cultures: there’s more to Thorrablot than just rotten shark and schnapps
Say you and your brood have been hunkered down for months, shivering in the 24-hour night at the bottom of a wind-blasted fjord. It’s a hard life, but you’re bred from fierce folk who colonized Scandinavia, terrorized mainland Europe, and landed on American beaches long before that Italian. Your man Sigurd slew the dragon Fafnir, […]
Posted inNews & Politics
News of the Weird
Lead Stories In a December issue of the journal Science, geologist David J. Siveter of the University of Leicester in England wrote that he and several colleagues had found a 425-million-year-old fossil in Herefordshire that is, as far as they know, the earliest evidence of an inarguably male animal. They named the tiny crustacean Colymbosathon […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Legless
LEGLESS, Dirt Road Theatre Group, at Curious Theatre Branch. There are two sorts of fairy tales: the peppy Disney versions and the darker original kind, where children get lost and stay lost and bad things happen to ordinary people, sometimes for no reason at all. In this new work by Abra Adduci, a young woman […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Mark Twain Tonight
Reports of Mark Twain’s death are greatly exaggerated–or so you might think after seeing Hal Holbrook’s brilliant re-creation of America’s greatest humorist. Holbrook introduced his Twain impersonation in 1954, honing the act in nightclub and college appearances before taking it to Broadway and TV. Now near 80, Holbrook still tours regularly (he was here last […]