That’s what I want to ask her. If we were to meet I would say, “When were we in Delaware?” And she would say, “Last year, about this time.” And I would say, “I don’t think it ever happened. That weekend when we walked the beach and watched the kids surf the small waves by that jetty of rocks. Remember that? And we were on the rocks the size of small cars and there was a little girl climbing across the rocks after her friends....
President Trump slapped a 20 percent tariff on softwood imports from Canada Tuesday, and John Cruickshank’s phone started ringing. Tht’s because before he was a Canadian diplomat, Cruickshank was a newspaperman. As for Trump, he speaks generously of him back in the day—when Trump came to Chicago in the early 2000s and bought the Sun-Times site along the Chicago River where Trump Tower now stands. After Radler was booted out Cruickshank became publisher....
) So what of it? Kass isn’t deferential. They meet as a couple of high-order personages who each knows the value to himself of a cordial relationship with the other. If they also meet frequently for lunch, which I’m told they do, good for them. Kass’s journalism won’t suffer for actually knowing what’s on the mayor’s mind. In addition to the Illinois combine and journalists with their noses deep in the establishment butt crack, Kass likes to assail the “Chicago way....
“It’s all essence, and it’s available to those who, to all appearances, have nothing,” writes Richard Hell of his bread, butter, and jam from the mid-70s to the mid-80s: rock ‘n’ roll. In 1974, Hell and Tom Verlaine dreamed up their first band, the Neon Boys, which by the end of that year had a new name, Television, and regular gigs at Hilly Kristal’s infamous punk club in the Village, CBGB....
The folks at the Chicago Humanities Festival couldn’t have known, when they booked author Laura Kipnis for a May 24 event at the Studebaker Theater, just how topical her subject would be. Ludlow’s investigations stemmed from relationships he had with two Northwestern students. The more notorious of the two was a single outing with a 19-year-old freshman who wound up spending the night with him in his bed. She claimed later that the then-55-year-old professor had forced her to get drunk and groped her....
RICHARD A. CHAPMAN/SUN-TIMES Dave McKinney has left the building. Talking to various people earlier this week about the Sun-Times, I heard the situation described exquisitely by one person with knowledge of the company: Scorning last Sunday’s Sun-Times endorsement of former Wrapports investor Bruce Rauner for governor, McKinney told Ferro in his resignation letter that the paper had “reversed its three-year, no-endorsement policy and unequivocally embraced the very campaign that had unleashed what Sun-Times management had declared a defamatory attack on me....
Mexico City black-metal band Xibalba Itzaes started out in the early 90s. The word xibalba means “the place of fear,” or the underworld, in Mayan culture, and like their contemporaries Brujeria, they take occult cosmology of traditional Mexican magic as their foundation, but they also delve deep into indigenous spiritual history. Xibalba Itzaes released one brilliant full-length, Ah Dzam Poop Ek (which has lyrics in English and Latin), in 1994, and despite sporadically released limited-edition splits and singles throughout the next two decades, the group went dormant enough for two bands (one from California, the other from Baltimore) to snag the name Xibalba for themselves....
It’s debatable whether Al Jackson left his profession as a middle school teacher in Miami to pursue a dream in stand-up comedy, or left because he had too much material from being a middle-school teacher in Miami not to pursue stand-up comedy. Either way, the smart comic is more than obliged to incorporate life lessons he learned during his time at the head of the class. His tale about the couldn’t-give-a-shit student who read a report on the Wright brothers for a Black History Month-themed assignment is practically precious (and only slightly bleak)....
In this week’s issue Leor Galil takes a hard look at Spike Lee’s Chi-Raq, which opens Friday after considerable hubbub. And we’ve got capsule reviews of: The Armor of Light, a documentary about a rabidly pro-life evangelical leader who becomes a convert to gun control; Creed, the new Rocky sequel, written and directed by Ryan Coogler (Fruitvale Station); The Dark Valley, a German western about a vendetta playing out in a frontier town; The Forbidden Room, the latest camp fantasia from Canadian director Guy Maddin (The Saddest Music in the World); James White, a powerful indie drama with Christopher Abbott and Cynthia Nixon; Janis: Little Girl Blue, a new documentary portrait of Janis Joplin; Legend, starring Tom Hardy as the British gangsters Ronnie and Reggie Kray; Movement + Location, a low-budget sci-fi drama about time travelers; and The Office, a Chinese musical from crime-movie specialist Johnnie To (Election, Sparrow)....
Later this week, the University of Chicago’s Doc Films screens the documentary Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff, a look at the legendary UK cinematographer. The film chronicles Cardiff’s long and varied career in the movies, including his directorial efforts and stint as a child actor, so it’s a decent introduction if you’re unfamiliar with his influence, but why bother with a biographical doc when you can dive right into the work itself?...
The jury’s still out on whether Kiki loves Drake or not, but it’s pretty clear that the rest of the world does, and with good reason. On his fifth official full-length release, this summer’s Scorpion, the Toronto child star turned rapper proves that he’s one of the most consistent artists out there right now; though he churns out material at a seemingly nonstop pace, it’s always high quality, and it always manages to connect with his listeners....
Q: I’ve read your column for as long as I had access to the Internet and was interested in sex, so here goes: I’m a 27-year-old male with a 42-year-old girlfriend. We met at work; we were both going through divorce. At the beginning, holy moly! My dream girl in the bedroom. We’ve been together for a year, and the sex is still the best I’ve ever had—she says she feels the same—but it’s vanilla....
During emo’s pop phase in the 2000s, pointed, unambiguous sexism was unfortunately welcome, but as the bands propagating that message began gasping their last breaths at the end of the decade, Buffalo trio Lemuria emerged from the underground with Get Better (Asian Man). Not only did the album hint at emo’s groundswell of creative rejuvenation, but it also suggested the genre could be more than a boys’ club. The glum and forceful “Lipstick” is particularly evocative....
This 2012 play, written by Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, and Henry Shields for London’s Mischief Theatre and now playing at the Oriental Theatre, could as easily have been called The Set That Goes Wrong. At least 50 percent of the comic bits in this amusing, intensely physical comedy involve mishaps with the scenery (brilliantly designed by Nigel Hook): wall hangings fall, a door won’t open, an elevator malfunctions, etc. The set is so integral to the story about a provincial theater company that tries—and fails—to put on a rather lackluster fictional 1920s murder mystery that it’s virtually another character....
Ashley Cooper grew up in the 90s in Chatham and Grand Crossing but also in 40s, 50s, and 60s Hollywood. Her whole family loved movies. “My aunt’s middle name is actually Lauren Bacall,” she says. Her parents often dropped her off at her grandmother’s house, where Turner Classic Movies was the preferred TV channel. She started to read up on production details and made lists of movies mentioned in books about old Hollywood to see in the future....
You could go for a morning jog. And, yes, breakfast with your grandparents would be nice. But the South Loop has recently welcomed a fresh alternative to your Saturday morning: the weekly “After Afters” party, which starts at 7 AM. Since opening last fall, Riff Music Lounge has provided a much-needed boost of energy to a neighborhood long neglected by the Red-Bull-and-vodka set. And you’ll need plenty of both (or something stronger) to survive marathon sets by house DJs including Dustin Sheridan, Bucky Fargo, and Peru....
There are hundreds of stores just like Sexy Girls of the Hollywood all over Chicago. They sell inexpensive, strippery-looking shoes, cheap earrings and necklaces, underwear with the big padded butts, underwear without butt padding, fishnet stockings, a few wigs, and, oddly, some baby clothes and supplies. (Though I suppose sexy hosiery and procreation are inextricably linked.) Sexy Girls in Albany Park sets itself apart by having a name that’ll get people through the door—people like me, who think a totally unnecessary “the” (what the hell is the Hollywood?...
The whole “classic records being performed front to back” thing has been all the rage for the better part of a decade now, and the demonic rock operas of Danish black-metal pioneer King Diamond couldn’t be better suited for that treatment. Abigail, from 1987, was Diamond’s second solo record after his split from Mercyful Fate, and tells the long and complicated tale of a Victorian couple who move into a haunted mansion, where they are harassed and possessed by the spirit of the titular Abigail, a baby stillborn in the 1700s....
Great news, everybody! The publishing industry has been working overtime to explain all the weirdness that was the year 2016. Already sportswriters unraveled the mystery of the World Champion Cubs (The Cubs Way: The Zen of Building the Best Team in Baseball and Breaking the Curse by Tom Verducci, 3/28, Crown Archetype). The warning about Russian hacking (How America Lost Its Secrets: Edward Snowden, the Man and the Theft by Edward Jay Epstein, 1/17, Knopf) may be coming a little late, but it’s fitting that by the time Donald Trump assumes the presidency there will be not one but two books about how he managed to win the election, one from the left (Insane Clown President: Dispatches From the 2016 Circus by Matt Taibbi, 1/17, Spiegel & Grau) and one from the right (The Making of the President 2016: How Donald Trump Orchestrated a Revolution by Roger Stone, 1/31, Skyhorse)....
A couple of weeks ago, Tanner Woodford left his stable, well-paying job as lead interaction designer at the investment research firm Morningstar to focus full-time on growing his passion project, the nascent Chicago Design Museum, which he founded in 2012. “I’m taking the leap,” the 27-year-old says over the phone. “I’m sooo nervous, but I’m also very confident. Sometimes doors don’t open until you make a big gesture.” Woodford has been operating “ChiDM” as a pop-up museum....
