What’s in a set? The question’s so blunt that it doesn’t seem worth dwelling on. A theater director might think of a production’s set design, and move on. A mathematician might remember someone’s work in set theory, and move on. But architect and UIC professor Ania Jaworska won’t accept such simple answers. In her solo exhibit at Volume Gallery, “Set,” she implores her audience to pause and ask again: “No, what really is in a set?...
Reeling: The Chicago LGBTQ+ International Film Festival opens tonight at Music Box with a screening of Matt Kugelman’s drag comedy Hurricane Bianca, then moves to Chicago Filmmakers and Landmark’s Century Centre for a week of screenings that concludes with Justin Kelly’s true-crime drama King Cobra. This is the festival’s 34th edition and the third since founder Brenda Webb announced it would go on hiatus in 2013 as the planners rethought their mission and considered such questions as “a change in the time of year that the festival takes place” and “how the festival might expand or evolve to better address the changing needs of LGBT filmmakers....
Q: I’m your average straight 42-year-old white guy. Married for a little less than a year (second marriage for both). We have an active sex life and are both GGG. My wife wants to be forcibly fucked—held down and raped. Normally I’d be all over this because I do love me some rough sex. My issue: She told me she was traumatically raped by a man she was dating prior to me....
Fri 10/14: Mash Bash Chicago, the annual Whiskey Awards Celebration, is hosted by Tastings.com and Binny’s at the beverage depot’s Lincoln Park location (1720 N. Marcey). The celebration includes a scavenger hunt, whiskey and food tasting, and special Binny’s discounts. 5:30-8 PM Sun 10/16: Bloody Mary Fest will be coming to the West Loop on Sunday at Plumbers Hall (1340 W. Washington). The festival will include food, entertainment, an assortment of beverages, and Chicago’s Bloody Mary Competition....
Formed in 2017, art-rock ensemble Je’raf arrange bits of hip-hop, jazz, funk, and postpunk into whimsical, progressive jams. All seven members (they’re split between New York and Chicago) play in similarly animated, eccentric bands outside the group too—bassist and vocalist PT Bell is in art-punk unit Blacker Face, for instance, and vocalist Brianna Tong fronts jazz-fusion group Cordoba. On Saturday, February 29, local labels Amalgam and No Index release Je’raf’s rambunctious and politically charged debut album, Throw Neck....
On Monday, April 23, within hours of Democratic state rep Anthony Deluca filing a bill to amend Illinois’s Freedom of Information law, a crescendo of opposition arose from civil rights lawyers and government transparency advocates. The amendment would’ve made misconduct complaints against police officers (and other records associated with pending criminal cases) off-limits in FOIA requests. Dozens of opponents filed witness slips, written statements, against this suggested change, and ultimately DeLuca backed down: he decided he would not be calling the bill for a debate....
When reporters have fooled you because you assumed they were being honest, did you give those reporters too much credit or too little? After William Gaines, who won two Pulitzer Prizes for his investigative journalism at the Tribune, retired from the paper in 2001 to teach journalism at the University of Illinois, he led his students in the unraveling of his business’s greatest mystery: Who was the Watergate scandal’s Deep Throat?...
For her livestreamed concert in the Jefferson Park EXP series last December, Chicago experimental musician Kimberly Sutton trained her camera on a pair of lit candles and several speaker cones of various sizes, resting on their backs like bowls and filled with water or sand. As the vibrations from the speakers increased, liquid and sand and flame started to tremble and flicker, forming restless and intricate interference patterns. Eventually the hums and throbs grew intense enough that the water began to bubble and spatter; you could see the sound leaping free of its cages and making a bid for freedom....
Imperfections is an independent film that boasts a number of admirable qualities: an original heist story shot on a small budget, an authentic Chicago setting (viewers may recognize local haunts Lost Lake, the Hideout, and the Jewelers Row stretch of Wabash), and a 31-year-old female protagonist. The mother’s boyfriend (Ed Begley Jr.), a diamond importer on Jewelers Row, offers the daughter a job as a runner—a position typically given to pretty, inconspicuously dressed women whom no one would suspect of carrying precious stones in their pockets....
It’s 1971. Louis Armstrong has just finished a set at the Empire Room in New York’s Waldorf Hotel. He’s sitting backstage, ready to share his story with you. And the first words out of those legendary lips? “I shit myself tonight.” But the revelations go a good deal further than bad kidneys and a potty mouth. In this engrossing 90-minute solo show written by Wall Street Journal critic Terry Teachout and directed by Charles Newell, they go to the man’s paradoxical core....
Greek myths are essentially ancient soap operas, and such is the case with Medusa Undone, which reexamines the origin of the well-known monster but told through a modern feminist lens. Here the gods Athena and Poseidon are cast as monsters and Medusa is a timid sea nymph who just wants to serve Athena and is afraid of incurring the wrath of the gods. As Medusa leaves her terrible family life (her sisters are Gorgons, after all) and follows her spiritual passion to become a priestess, she finds herself caught betwixt Athena and Poseidon in a classic love triangle, which ends quite badly for her (not to mention leaving her with one terrible hairdo)....
Yolanda and the Thief As a musical, it isn’t much: the book is trivial, and the songs are few and forgettable. But as a tour de force of visual style, this 1945 film is unique. Vincente Minnelli, a superb pictorialist as well as a great director, let his imagination run wild, and the result is a captivating, dreamlike film composed of startling, outrageous, and sometimes sublime images. It has nothing to do with good taste—and that may be the secret of its peculiar appeal....
Update: The origins of the Posture label have been corrected. s/t by Perma Cough
On Sunday, August 4, I went to Dolton Park for DJ Clent’s Beatdown House Litnic, a free daytime party and barbecue celebrating ghetto house, juke, and footwork. In the park I noticed a couple other picnics with PA systems set up, but none of them compared to what DJ Clent had brought—nearly two dozen speakers, assembled into a massive sound system that stretched across the front of the stubby stage like a fortification....
The collaborative spirit of Chicago’s young hip-hop scene is beautiful, but for somebody trying to keep track of everyone’s affiliations, it can be confusing. Rappers, producers, and singers rep their cliques and crews with pride on recordings, but they’re also likely to hit the studio with people from a different set. I’ve seen people mistakenly claim that Noname, Alex Wiley, and even Virginia rapper-singer D.R.A.M. are members of Save Money—I assume because all three have recorded with the collective’s most prominent member, Chance the Rapper....
Summer holiday weekends are usually meant for lazy outdoor faux-activity like backyard badminton or resting one’s dirty feet in a kiddie pool while neighbor children throw snap-its at you through the fence. One must rise to the occasion from time to time, and Independence day weekend is a good moment to reflect upon what more we can each do to guarantee that BBQs and cornhole can be enjoyed in peace by anyone who chooses to live in our fair city....
If you’re involved with art or music or writing in Chicago and keep at it for any length of time, odds are you’ll meet everyone else involved sooner or later. I’d first met Jeremy Kitchen, the head librarian at the Chicago Public Library’s Richard J. Daley Branch and host of its semiregular Punk Rock and Donuts shows, a decade ago through the artist Tony Fitzpatrick. Last year, after a chance meeting at Jackalope Coffee in Bridgeport, not far from the library, he invited me to be a guest on his radio show Eye 94, which airs Sundays and Thursdays on Lumpen Radio, with monthly live shows at Pilsen Community Books....
Updated Wed 6/26 at 2 PM: This preview has been edited to reflect the addition of Gucci Mane and Famous Dex to the Summer Smash bill (and the removal of Kodak Black). The Summer Smash, presented by Chicago hip-hop blog turned cultural powerhouse Lyrical Lemonade, is already the biggest rap festival in the city—and it’s on track to be one of the biggest in the country. After debuting in August 2018 as a one-day event with two stages, the Summer Smash has expanded to two days, with three stages and 51 acts....
Terence Hannum is perhaps best known as the keyboardist and vocalist of prolific Chicago-born experimental metal trio Locrian, who blend dense, crushing drones and harsh, sweeping black metal to stir up some serious dark energy. But Hannum is also an accomplished visual artist, writer, and solo musician. I was expecting his brand-new album, Dissolving the Bonds, to contain some Locrian-style dissonance, but when I hit play I was treated to five warm tracks of calming, ambient beauty....
I’ve never had the luxury of not giving a fuck about what I do with $145. But Maple & Ash—which offers a $145 chef’s tasting menu friskily called “I Don’t Give a F*ck”—is aimed squarely at those who do. The Gold Coast steak house apparently was conceived as a playground for the fabulously wealthy and businesspeople with large expense accounts. A $95 seafood tower for two? Why not! Caviar ranging from $100 to $240?...
