Q I lost my virginity last night. PS: I’ve attached some photos in hopes that you will respond. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » It’s possible that your girlfriend is a bad kisser/blower. Just because you’re a virgin—or were a virgin—doesn’t mean you’re going to automatically click with the first woman you sleep with. It’s possible that, however much you like this girl, you’re just not sexually and/or chemically compatible....
An online infomercial that’s been making the rounds of gadget freaks, music nerds, and connoisseurs of schadenfreude opens with a short bald man standing in front of an odd tabletop device—three silvery columns attached to a horizontal base in a sort of W shape. To the accompaniment of a canned rhythm track, he starts waving his hands in the spaces between the columns, breaking beams of laser light to trigger sampled drum fills and ersatz DJ scratching....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I woke up this morning to find two topics dominating my Twitter timeline: Jack White’s hissy fit Saturday night at Radio City Music Hall (he walked off after performing for only 45 minutes) and the new album that doom-rap duo Death Grips dropped overnight with zero warning to their label—an album with one of the most flagrantly NSFW covers of 2012 (overall a very good year for NSFW music-related visuals)....
jaein lee Max Kakacek, Cullen Omori, and Cameron Omori of Smith Westerns Things always moved fast and furious for Smith Westerns. Not long after their 2009 self-titled debut—an adrenaline shot of glam rock—the three teenage Chicagoans were thrust into the indie-rock stratosphere. By 2011’s Dye It Blonde, they were a full-throttle, undeniably confident touring force that, for better or worse, ranked among the buzziest of buzz bands. That they’ve seemingly out of nowhere decided to call it quits isn’t entirely shocking—bands that burn so hard tend to flame out quickly....
Yosh Hayashi turns in a mesmerizing performance as the eponymous sniveling menace, a publicity-starved petty thug in 1920s Chicago bent on taking over the city’s lucrative vegetable trade. Hayashi’s Ui is impish, dyspeptic, malevolent, pitiless, and charismatic–often all in the same breath. But like director Jonathan Berry’s strident, unvaried Steep Theatre production, his performance barely progresses, and Ui’s rise to power seems unremarkable, inspiring neither awe nor terror. The rest of the cast members in Brecht’s oversimplified 1941 parody of Hitler’s ascension fail to find the psychological nuances in their iconic, cartoonish characters, and in their rapid-fire delivery of Brecht’s snub-nosed poetry they too often mistake shouting for emotional engagement....
Many judges, including U.S. Supreme Court justices, are given lifetime appointments. This presents obvious issues since judges can do a lot of damage if they go off the deep end. How do we get rid of whacked-out judges? Looking at it from the other side, what happens if a Supreme Court judge is greatly disliked by, say, the president and Congress–can they do something to give him/her the boot? –Frauendorfer, via e-mail...
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » City officials claim they’re using the Olympics to benefit the west side, but I have a hunch they’re really leaving it with a white elephant. According to Philip Hersh’s account in Saturday’s Tribune, the aquatic center “would have a roof but open sides and ends during the Games and later be turned into an indoor facility.” Olympic or city officials didn’t say who was going to pay to build the walls, though I think we all know the answer....
The physical rehaul of the Eckhart Park public library branch impressed everybody when Branch 27 opened last spring. That was in contrast with chef Bob Zrenner’s opening menu of American bistro standards, which Reader reviewer Martha Bayne found “safely unremarkable in both content and execution.” But in early December Zrenner decamped (ending up at Jerry Kleiner’s 33 Club), and owners Howard Natinsky (Fat Cat, Five Star Bar) and Cary Michael (ex-Rockit Bar and Grill) executed a shrewd play in replacing him with John Manion, who’s been a ronin chef since his terrific Wicker Park nuevo Latino restaurant Mas closed in 2007....
OK, I’ll say it: I think the Led Zeppelin reunion is a great idea, and I hope I get a chance to see it. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » It may be that their decision to break up and “never” play together as Led Zep again after the death of drummer John Bonham in 1980 was the height of integrity and friendship, as it’s often portrayed....
Sun-Times Media Malort, the bitter liquor that everyone loves to hate (or at least loves to talk about hating), is becoming ever more popular in Chicago. There’s a certain amount of local pride involved: Jeppson’s Malort was once brewed in Chicago and has never been available outside of northern Illinois, as Mike Sula wrote in a 2009 column about the wormwood-based spirit. The Violet Hour is even producing its own version....
According to a statement front man David Coverdale posted on the band’s Web site February 19, Whitesnake will return to the studio to record a new album. And what will it sound like? “Soulful, bluesy, melodic power rock with a couple of underwear-moistening tear-jerkers thrown in for good measure.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » OK Go front man Damian Kulash, now living in Los Angeles, penned an infuriated op-ed piece for the February 19 New York Times on EMI’s policy of not allowing blogs or Web sites to embed its music videos....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I’m sure I’m only writing this to protest the endless presidential campaign — a campaign in which it’s been impossible to favor one candidate for very long without buying into reasons to despise the opposition. Or have you forgotten how, long before the distant time when Obama and McCain both seemed like pretty good guys, Democrats were rejoicing that their field of candidates was so strong — Clinton, Obama, et al — that they’d happily support whoever wound up with the nomination?...
On January 26, the activist organization Adbusters, which helped spark the Occupy Wall Street movement, called for at least 50,000 “redeemers, rebels and radicals” to visit Chicago in the month of May for “the biggest multinational occupation of a summit meeting the world has ever seen.” Mayor Rahm Emanuel used his clout with President Barack Obama to bring the NATO and G8 summits here, and the way the preparations are proceeding says a lot about how he runs this town....
Mary Hollis Inboden was a sixth grader at Westside Middle School just outside Jonesboro, Arkansas, on the spring day in March 1998 when two fellow students there ambushed their classmates. One of the killers, age 11, tripped a fire alarm in the building and then ran to a neighboring field where he and his 13-year-old coconspirator opened fire on the students as they exited the school. Inboden says they were lined up on the playground waiting for a roll call when she heard what sounded like firecrackers and saw people drop, screams and puffs of dust rising around them....
I could stare at Tank Noodle’s menu for an hour, but that might annoy my dinner companions. With numbered dishes stretching into the hundreds—spring rolls, bubble teas, and dessert yogurt included—the oft-packed destination in Uptown’s Vietnamese corridor requires a high level of patience. Though I’m privileged (depending on how you look at it) to immediately flip to the vegetarian section and peruse a more manageable list of dishes (I’ll love you forever, rice noodle curry tofu) I’ve dined with indecisive meat eaters who have been pushed to the verge of frazzled when tasked with choosing a dish....
Joe Bryl has been at it for a while. Not only has he been a prolific Chicago DJ since 1981, he was the co-owner and mastermind behind the eclectically programmed and now-defunct Sonotheque in Noble Square (since transformed into Beauty Bar). Currently, among a grab bag of other gigs, he’s the musical director at Maria‘s in Bridgeport, the tucked-away craft-cocktail-and-beer bar that got a healthy facelift in 2010 when Lumpen‘s Ed Marszewski took the reins as manager....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » With 2008 behind us, The New Colony is now putting their momentum behind their next production, Producing Director Evan Linder’s FRAT. Linder has spent the last year and a half cataloguing true stories from the Southern fraternity experience to create the narrative and characters for the production. The cast of eighteen actors completed workshops for FRAT this winter and Linder is finishing up the script for January’s rehearsals....
With platinum albums an endangered species and the practice of selling music looking more and more outdated, you’ve got to wonder how much the recording industry will have to celebrate at the 54th Grammy Awards in February. That is, if you forget momentarily how much the recording industry loves blowing its own horn. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » But the Grammys are also under increasing pressure to appeal to consumers acclimated to the rapid churn of Internet-enabled entertainment—people for whom the awards’ period of eligibility, which runs from the beginning of last September through the end of this September, means that pretty much anything that might win is already ancient history....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Some leading lights of Chicago documentary gather Wednesday to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Columbia College’s Michael Rabiger Center for Documentary Film. A 5 PM panel discussion features documentarians Tod Lending (who garnered an Emmy award and Oscar nomination for his public housing doc Legacy); Michael Rabiger, Doc center founder and author of the canonical Directing: Film Techniques and Aesthetics; Judy Hoffman, who shot Howard Zinn: You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train; Russell Porter, current Columbia documentary chair and founder of the Melbourne Documentary Group; Suree Towfighnia, director of Standing Silent Nation, about a Lakota Indian fighting the DEA for the right to grow industrial hemp on his South Dakota reservation, and student Arlen Parsa....
FitzGerald’s annual celebration of the diversity of American musical traditions returns this week with four days of rock, folk, jazz, R&B, country, zydeco, and more. From Wed 7/3 till Sat 7/6, the Berwyn club hosts music on its main indoor stage, under an outdoor tent, and in its Sidebar. Music starts at 5 PM on Wednesday; Dave Alvin & the Guilty Ones headline the tent stage, and the Mudd Morganfield Blues Band headlines the club....
