A poster print of the first two stanzas of Shel Silverstein’s poem “Me and My Giant,” hangs squarely in the middle of one wall in Jason Vincent’s decidedly compact Giant, his long-awaited comeback after stepping down two years ago as the nationally exalted chef at Nightwood. The reason for Vincent’s sabbatical is similar to the common refrain heard from retiring athletes and politicians leaving office: some form of “I want to spend more time with my family....
Midway through through Last Week Tonight‘s Sunday-evening segment on the problems facing the news industry, host John Oliver zeroed in on the embattled Tribune Company. Of another of Tronc’s “meaningless” visual aids, Oliver says, “It looks like a bunch of digital sperm impregnating a Tronc egg.”
Jim Newberry Liam Hayes in 2010 A couple months ago I profiled the singer-songwriter Daniel Knox; he recently returned from a tour of the UK, and tomorrow night he plays a free show at the Virgin Hotel (where he’s probably played the piano before, though not as part of a performance). Also playing is singer-songwriter and Chicago native Liam Hayes, whom some people might know better as Plush. In January he released the album Slurrup (Fat Possum) under his own name—as Peter Margasak wrote in a Soundboard capsule, the album is “a marked shift toward something more stripped-down after years of richly orchestrated work....
Local rapper Philmore Greene dropped his debut album, Chicago: A Third World City (One of One Music Group), in December, but it sounds like it could have come out in the 90s—its lifeblood is the kind of confident, luxuriant boom-bap that east-coast hip-hop acts regularly cranked out back then. “That’s what makes me comfortable,” Greene said of his sonic aesthetics in a December interview with YouTube talk show Beerz & Barz....
So it would seem Ron and Russell Mael, born and raised in California but whose look and sound often cause people to mistake them for a European band, are finally getting their due. That made the concept of this documentary, more than two hours long and propelled by the force of Focus Features’ PR machine, even more exciting. Early in the film, Wright opines in voiceover that Sparks is “successful, underrated, hugely influential, and criminally overlooked—all at the same time....
My house smells like slow-cooked pot roast and marijuana. Around this time five years ago, in 2015, I gave up my studio apartment to travel in a musty 12-passenger van with the Second City National Touring Company as the newest member of BlueCo. I was listening to five adults make a bit out of every sentence, drinking my weight in Jameson from a flask I once used as a prop, and figuring out what my road to comedy success could look like....
A lot of Manson fans will tell you that Marilyn Manson’s ninth studio album, 2015’s The Pale Emperor, was a massive artistic sidestep for the shock rocker. Instead of his usual industrialized hard rock, the album dabbles in goth, blues rock, and spaghetti-western flourishes—eliciting both love and hate from longtime fans. On October’s Heaven Upside Down, Manson’s returned to form, conjuring up the crushing sounds and dark energies that made him an (antichrist) superstar in the 90s....
We’ll have to wait until sometime this summer to get the video stream Lyric Opera’s promising of last weekend’s performance of the garage opera, Twilight: Gods. Like a picnic version of a gourmet meal, that event was more about the environment than the opera, so it’ll be interesting to see how well it works onscreen. Also free and worth finding online: Chicago Fringe Opera‘s “A City of Works”—a series of “site-specific micro-operas,” all by different composers....
Pianist Matt Piet is a Palos Park native who jumped into the local improvised music scene in 2014 when he returned home after finishing his studies at Boston’s Berklee School of Music. Since then, he’s rapidly achieved an exalted status among a younger generation of musicians through his abiding sense of curiosity, drive to collaborate, and raw talent. Earlier this year Piet dropped Rummage Out (Clean Feed) and Throw Tomatoes (Astral Spirits), albums he made with two of the working combos he’s developed with players a generation older than he is—a sign of the respect he’s earned....
Berwyn’s Pulqueria Chicago has the sort of broad, comprehensive menu that usually makes my eyes glaze over. How good can a Mexican restaurant be that also serves Spanish tapas, fettuccine Alfredo, french fries, and chicken wings? On the other hand, among all that disparate stuff it also serves two things not frequently seen around these parts that prove to be pretty remarkable. At Pulqueria Chicago the borrego is sold by the pound and presented in a way somewhat at odds with the sports-bar-type ornamentation that festoons the walls....
In early December Ben Joravsky interviewed candidate Lori Lightfoot. The mayoral challenger is an experienced manager and reformer and has worked at several levels of city and state government. This interview has been condensed and edited for length and clarity. There clearly is a double standard in our criminal justice system. And having frankly defended a lot of people who have been wrongfully accused, they get on the conveyor belt and nobody stops to say, is this a righteous prosecution?...
Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Thursday, December 8, 2016. Governor Rauner signs legislation to keep two Illinois nuclear plants open Governor Bruce Rauner signed legislation Wednesday that will keep two Illinois nuclear plants in Clinton and the Quad Cities open by “providing billions of dollars in subsidies to Exelon,” according to the Associated Press. “I was unwilling to gamble with these communities, gamble with thousands of good-paying jobs, and gamble with our energy future,” the governor said in a statement....
A few months after Trump was sworn in as, gulp, our president, I read a Washington Post story about the residents of rural areas that would be hard hit by the administration’s budget cuts. One woman in Durant, Oklahoma—a Trump voter—was particularly upset at the thought that her favorite senior center might have to close. But she remained pro-Trump anyway. You’d figure that the closing of her favorite senior center would be worth ten strikes in and of itself....
There may have been rain on Sunday, but that didn’t stop the rainbows from taking over Marz Community Brewing for our Pride Block Party! Thanks to all who came out to celebrate our city’s rich and diverse 50 years of LGBTQ+ community legacy with Drag Queen Story Hour, house and salsa dance lessons, a Janet Jackson Tribute, and so much more. Erik Kommer and Leni Manaa-Hoppenworth captured these special moments of technicolor magic from the day....
The Act to Prohibit the Importation of Slaves went into effect on January 1, 1808, effectively ending the transatlantic slave trade from Africa. It did not, however, end the demand for slaves in the United States. New Orleans was particularly rich in documentation: customs manifests, warrants to seize property subject to forfeiture, newspaper ads, and bills of sale, which, unique to Louisiana, were kept as public records. Greenwald also had access to testimonies of former slaves collected by the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s....
Is there a future for grand opera in Chicago? A contemporary English-language chamber opera, An American Dream (with music by Jack Perla, libretto by Jessica Murphy Moo), which Lyric will stage at the Harris Theater in March, will have two performances. So here’s the hard spot Lyric finds itself in: income from opera ticket sales is down (part of a national trend, Freud said), while expenses are growing. What to do?...
Q: I’m a lesbian and my girlfriend is bi. I’ve read your column and listened to your podcast for a long time, Dan, and I always thought I’d be fine with having a partner ask me about being monogamish. Then my girlfriend of about a year and a half told me she wants to see what other women are like. She says the thought of me sleeping with other people turns her on but the prospect of her sleeping with other people only makes me nervous....
