Can a Welsh farmer’s daughter who’s become a publisher’s assistant in the big city of Liverpool and a fisherman who’s always lived on Ireland’s western coast reconcile their ambitions and find a relationship beyond the heartfelt letters they’ve been writing? Discovering one’s place in the world is the central issue in this popular romantic drama […]
Tag: Vol. 35 No. 33
Issue of May. 11 – 17, 2006
Posted inNews & Politics
Posterity Will Thank Her
Dear Reader, As a loyal Reader reader, I usually make a point of perusing the letters to the editor in each week’s issue. Upon occasion I find that someone has made a valuable correction to a story from previous weeks. But what always gets me is how much space is reserved for Chicago Antisocial bashing. […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Social Atom
Familiarity breeds comedy in the Sirens’ 50-minute show of short improvised scenes: instead of building on characters or narratives, the ten-woman group explores permutations of a single human relationship suggested by an audience member. At the show I saw, to-be, current, and former sisters-in-law were presented in love triangles, as estranged siblings, and at family […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Faun Fables
The Transit Rider (Drag City) is the fourth album from this Oakland progressive-folk duo, the brainchild of singer-songwriter Dawn McCarthy, and like its predecessors it’s a dazzling work of magic. McCarthy, abetted by her multi-instrumentalist partner, Nils Frykdahl (also of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum), invents worlds as vivid and convincing as anything you’d find in a […]
Posted inNews & Politics
All-Pledge-Drive Radio
I suppose I should feel upset about the switch to an all-news format at WBEZ [The Business, April 14]. However, it will be an improvement over what we had during the most important local election in recent years, which was an all-pledge-drive format. Michael Gebert W. Newport
Posted inArts & Culture
Somersault
An alluring Australian teenager (Abbie Cornish) stumbles into a kiss with her mother’s boyfriend, and after mom catches them red-handed the impulsive girl finds herself out on the street, where her only asset is a sexuality she doesn’t quite understand. Arriving in a mountain town, she’s not averse to trading her body for a place […]
Posted inFilm
Art School Is Murder
Daniel Clowes and Terry Zwigoff make an interesting point, even if they don’t make it well.
Posted inNews & Politics
White Plight
Thank you, Liz Armstrong [Chicago Antisocial]! You don’t get nearly enough credit from readers for the great work you do. Without your diligent efforts, how would we know what young white people with disposable incomes and plenty of free time are doing? This woefully neglected group would have to settle for the journalistic crumbs thrown […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Marriage of Marcus Tyler
Playwright-director Matt Fotis hangs his family out to dry in this semiautobiographical screwball sitcom. The younger of the Tyler sons, Marcus, tests the mettle of his intended by sending her to visit his wacky kinfolk by herself. He’s actually instructed his slacker brother to be obnoxious, we learn later, while the rest of the tribe […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Jon Auer
As a piece of musical vaporware it never rivaled Smile or Chinese Democracy, but during the long wait for its release, Jon Auer’s first solo album acquired a mythic status among power-pop fans. Auer began working on the brand-new Songs From the Year of Our Demise (Pattern 25) in 1999, just after the breakup of […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Real Plush Saga
Bob– Hey, h’lo–hope you’re well. Just a jot here to say get your myths straight, son! The Plush saga [The Meter, May 5] went like so: Russ quit before the Fed session, was replaced, and then replaced again before tape really rolled. And I never quit at all–I was replaced in the drum stool when […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Anthony Hamilton, Van Hunt
North Carolina soul journeyman ANTHONY HAMILTON began recording in the early 90s, but his early albums were either ignored or unreleased thanks to label snafus. His luck changed with 2003’s Comin’ From Where I’m From, an understated gem that showed off his Bill Withers-esque voice and set him apart from his peers–Hamilton refused to either […]
Posted inColumns & Opinion
Now That’s a Comeback
Two strokes left Gift Theatre cofounder Michael Patrick Thornton paralyzed at the age of 24. Now he’s returning to the stage in a one-man show.
Posted inNews & Politics
Doubt Club
In “The Gospel According to Kass” [Hot Type, April 21], Michael Miner lists as one of the details that make him a religious doubter “the eternal damnation of Christ’s betrayer.” But there is no Christian teaching that condemns Judas to eternal damnation. Christianity teaches that it is possible for any sinner to repent up to […]