Posts

Nursing a presidential debate hangover? There are plenty of Trump-free happenings around town to take your mind off the impending election. Here’s some of what we recommend: Thu 10/13: Hyde Park’s Indie City Writers hosts Love, Horror, and Everything In Between, a reading of poems, stories, and essays at 57th Street Books (1301 E. 57th). This edition prompts the writers—including K.B. Jensen, Michael Mills, Kayla Gordon, and more—to read works labeled as romance, thriller, or somewhere in the middle....

Courtesy of Dan Kanvis’s Facebook Dan Kanvis Local rapper Dan Kanvis is a figure without whom Chicago’s sprawling underground hip-hop scene would be a little dimmer. For about a year Kanvis brought the community to Lincoln Park courtesy of Heavy Rotation, a quasi-monthly celebration of Chicago hip-hop he hosted at Tonic Room. Kanvis put the spotlight on plenty of great, and sometimes underappreciated, up-and-comers and scene stalwarts—he booked euphoric rapper ShowYouSuck, Pivot leader Saba, and atmosphere-bent MC-producer Martin Sky, among others....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Wednesday, December 21, 2016. Report: Chicago violence surge is largely responsible for homicide rate increase in big cities The homicide rate for big cities in the U.S. is expected to increase by 14 percent in 2016, according to a report from the New York-based Brennan Center for Justice. The surge in murders in Chicago is responsible for 43.7 percent of the increase. “An increase in the murder rate is occurring in some cities even while other forms of crime remain relatively low,” notes the report....

Melissa Click is the University of Missouri communications professor made infamous last fall by a video that showed her calling for “muscle” to remove the student shooting the video from a “safe space” for student protesters. When the video went viral it did more than humiliate her: it handed everyone who disapproved of the mostly black protesters—whose claims of campus racism and demands that the university president resign rubbed plenty of people the wrong way—a shrieking white woman to scapegoat....

Ethan Hawke in Good Kill Notes on recent posts . . . The tandem of Hull and Mikita was one of the best in hockey, and each have statues outside the United Center.

This is the first of two columns that will examine the ideas of “cultural triage.” These are all things Loevner was thinking about before last March. “The impetus for this has been around for longer than the pandemic,” he says. “Over the last few years, I’ve been watching theater companies sort of explode or implode and leave the scene in really awful ways—deeply in debt or under, you know, significant scandal of some kind....

Over the last few years, guitarist Tashi Dorji (from Asheville, North Carolina) and drummer Tyler Damon (from Bloomington, Indiana) have forged an increasingly solid bond. They create harrowing improvisational duets that snarl and swagger like the most vicious storms, ebbing and flowing with passages of mayhem and temporary calm. After years of developing an appealingly jagged free-improvisation practice on acoustic guitar (something he still purveys) Dorji’s been refashioning his attack on electric, magnifying humid resonance, tangled harmonies, and viscous overtones within a rich, punishing world of sound....

In the category of closing the gate after the horse has bolted from the pasture, Mayor Rahm fired Ed Burke as chair of the all-important council finance committee after the feds indicted the 14th ward alderman on charges of shaking down a Burger King franchisee. In the aftermath of Burke’s indictment, Mayor Emanuel put on his sad and somber face—as though he were really hurt and surprised by what went down—and told the Tribune that public servants must have “a moral and ethical compass that informs your judgement of right from wrong [that] must be informed by a moral sense and an ethical sense of why we do what we do and what is our purpose in serving in public life....

This week marks the start of the Year of the Monkey! Here’s some of what we recommend to celebrate the Chinese New Year: Tue 2/9: Women in Comedy presents Love Letter to Myself at the Laugh Factory (3175 N. Broadway), a night of stand-up from female comedians along with readings of self-addressed love letters written by other women in the city such as a homicide detective, a Cook County judge, and more....

On Sunday, March 24, singer-songwriter Kaina Castillo spent the day with her parents at her childhood home in Irving Park, working on a music video for the song “Green.” The director, singer-rapper Jean Deaux, wanted to film what Kaina considered a perfect day: spending time with her family and friends and kicking back with drinks and a good meal. In April, the Fader premiered the video for “Green,” which Kaina had chosen as the first single from her debut full-length, Next to the Sun....

For anyone still hoping beyond hope that Donald Trump won’t be POTUS come January, few avenues remain. Axing the Electoral College could have another benefit too: it might help bring disenfranchised or disillusioned voters back into the fold. “The [Electoral College] is a reason I was turned off to politics in the first place,” he says. “The system is set up to be confusing, and it’s not representative of the American people....

A Reader staffer shares three musical obsessions, then asks someone (who asks someone else) to take a turn. Barkmarket My favorite 90s power trio split in ’97 after three albums (five if you count early nontrio lineups), and each one wrapped its insidious rock hooks in ugly noise, perverse arrangements, and prickly, often blackly funny lyrics—a layer of off-putting avant-garde fuckery that made it seem like they were daring you to love their songs....

“I’m not afraid of dying. What I’m afraid of is losing my mother, of being in prison, of being a failure. I’m afraid of living,” a resident of a halfway house on the West Side tells Alex Kotlowitz in his new book An American Summer. It is but one of the countless heartrending insights the author gleaned from interviews with some 200 crime victims and perpetrators, their loved ones, and observers of violence on the streets of Chicago in the summer of 2013....

Indiana singer-songwriter Omar Apollo excels in the gray spaces between genres and scenes. On a string of singles he’s uploaded to Soundcloud over the past year, he transposes heart-wrenching, swooning guitars from early 60s pop onto mechanic percussion that moves like it’s made for a hip-hop track. Apollo, who sings in both English and Spanish, often coos in a voice so delicate it sounds like his melodies could dissolve in an instant....

Democratic governor candidate J.B. Pritzker was not exactly excited to pick up this week’s Reader and see himself in exaggerated caricature form sitting on top of a lawn jockey. Nope. He characterized the cover illustration by artist Greg Houston as “not the right approach.” .@JBPritzker On @Chicago_Reader cover: “Well I guess I knew they intended to be provocative at the Reader but I think this is not the right approach” @ABC7Chicago pic....

Native representation in television and film has been historically abysmal. When Native characters do pop up, they are typically one-dimensional, and often embody exhausting tropes, like the “drunken Indian” or the picturesque murder victim. But the Peacock sitcom Rutherford Falls offers audiences something entirely different: multidimensional Native characters who defy stereotypes and embody the contradictions that Native people in the U.S. are often faced with in their daily lives. The show was cocreated by Ed Helms, Michael Schur, and Sierra Teller Ornelas....

In this week’s issue of the Reader, Leah Pickett wrote at length on Long Shot, a new romantic comedy set in the world of American politics. The film certainly reflects a healthy tradition, as filmmakers have mined U.S. politics for comedy for generations. Below are five capsule reviews from the Reader archives of comedies that take place in political milieux. All are by American filmmakers, save for In the Loop, whose director, Armando Iannucci, is British; and save for Duck Soup (my vote for the funniest political comedy in movie history), all take place in American settings....

The phrase “glacial pace” could have been invented solely to describe Low, a trio from Duluth, Minnesota, who specialize in slow-burning minimalism. It’s the kind of aesthetic that would have grown old after a few years for most bands, but after nearly a quarter of a century together Low instead continue to expand their boundaries with songs that mix the fervor of gospel into spectral soundscapes. Any sense of artistic indulgence has not overshadowed the standout beauty of their melodies, as evidenced a few years ago when rock god Robert Plant chose two Low songs (“Monkey” and “Silver Rider”) for his newly launched group Band of Joy....

Thinkstock Mad scientists? More like sad scientists. New research has identified another group of American professionals who feel underappreciated. A study released Thursday by the Pew Research Center indicates that the public respects this profession, but not to the degree its members believe they deserve to be respected, and that the public has more doubts about some of the methods they employ than the experts employing them do. Even though most Americans still believe these people are doing a superior job, they’re not as certain of that as they used to be....

The long local election cycle is coming to an end! Come celebrate the runoff results as they roll in with live election coverage from Back Room Deal duo Ben Joravsky and Maya Dukmasova, all-vinyl jams from Sadie Woods, and beer and snacks from Marz Community Brewing. Oh yeah, and did we mention, it’s FREE? Nearest CTA: 35th Street bus (35th Street & Iron stop), Ashland bus (Ashland and 37th Street stop)....