QMy boyfriend and I both like porn and toys, and we’re obviously open about everything and often play with them together. But recently he posed an interesting question that left me feeling like a prudish conservative: If virtual-reality technology is developed such that one can have a sexual encounter with a computerized person (insert favorite famous wanna-fuck object here: Brad Pitt, Jessica Alba, whoever), would that be too close to cheating?...
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Oh rad. Someone’s unlocked the secret songs in Soft Rock Band, “that sweet new party video game where one person sings, one person plays classical guitar, one person plays piano/synth, and one person wears an open shirt and grows a thick nest of emotionally charged man-hair on his head.” “Right Here Waiting” by Richard Marx. I still can’t get through the first chorus without breaking down weeping....
The Absolute Best Friggin’ Time of Your Life Second City E.T.C. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Though Bungeroth’s a rookie at E.T.C., he’s no stranger to Second City. He’s directed one of the touring companies for years and served as assistant director on the 2008 mainstage revue, America: All Better! (Second City is good about promoting from within—a smart policy, as proven by the ongoing success of another up-through-the-ranks director, Matt Hovde, whose credits include Rod Blagojevich, Superstar!...
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....
“Psycho Killer” is a beyond-obvious choice for a favorite Talking Heads song, but I feel no shame. There aren’t many songs that I’ve been hearing on a regular basis since I was born that I’m still excited to hear coming on the radio, and every time I hear it I find some new feature to admire. Hearing alternate versions is an even more revelatory experience, like a 1978 live rendition on the BBC’s Old Grey Whistle Test where Tina Weymouth’s savage bass line feels like it’s going to reach through the screen and grab you by the throat....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Anthology of Chicago, which Hyman started up earlier this year, collects essays, poems, and stories that evoke the spirits of different neighborhoods. (So far, it’s chronicled Pilsen, Logan Square, and Hyde Park.) In the spring, it attracted the attention of Paul Dailing, who lives in Noble Square and writes 1001 Chicago Afternoons, a website that, in the spirit of Ben Hecht’s 1,001 Afternoons in Chicago column that ran in the Chicago Daily News from 1920 to 1922, will attempt to post 1,001 stories from around our fair city....
I once tried to sit down at a sidewalk restaurant in Hanoi that specialized in dog meat. As I haltingly asked for a seat in my horrible mockery of the Vietnamese language, the young woman in charge of the spot stared right through me, probably more than familiar with clumsy, thrill-seeking adventurers—or worse, foreigners eager to pass judgment on something alien to their experience. Whatever she thought I was after, she wanted no part in it....
If nothing else, Alan Janes’s 1989 tribute musical proves that Buddy Holly–who died in a plane crash almost 50 years ago–has staying power. Though the book is criminally slim and obvious, Holly’s music carries the show. That is, if the musicians are good enough, and they are in this high-intensity staging by Janet Louer (who choreographed the show’s 1992 touring edition). Josh Solomon, vulnerable and earnest as Holly, both credibly imitates the singer-songwriter and puts a new spin on some songs, especially the delicate “Everyday....
Raja Gosnell: Family movies or movies in general? Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » From that point forward, I was interested in being a film editor. That was my way into the business. I came to work with Chris Columbus, editing the first two Home Alone movies and Mrs. Doubtfire, and moved into directing after that. But I still feel like it’s a bigger version of being alone in my room with that Super-8 camera....
Richard A. Chapman / Sun-Times Mayor Rahm Emanuel officially kicked off his campaign in early December, but his fundraising machine has never stopped running. Mayor Rahm Emanuel has raised $1.4 million for his reelection bid—and that’s just in the last few weeks. Along with $250,000 Garcia received earlier this month from SEIU Healthcare, the contributions have brought his campaign fund up to about $700,000. But millions more came from rich supporters with access to the mayor and city government....
Jamie Carter didn’t know much about Chicago when he moved here in 2001 at age 20. “I didn’t even know how big the lake was,” he says. “In the beginning of the Oprah show there would be a shot of lakefront buildings, and I always assumed they took that photo from the other side of the lake.” He didn’t know anyone in Chicago either, but he doesn’t hesitate when asked what brought him here: Touch and Go, Steve Albini, and Thrill Jockey....
The speech Christopher Kennedy delivered last week at the City Club of Chicago was stirring enough to launch a political campaign. Exhibiting the energy and vision (and voice and curls) of his father, Bobby, and famous uncles, he got a standing ovation from the crowd, which included Bill Daley, Burt Natarus, and Natarus’s nemesis, Brendan Reilly, who recently unseated the alderman. But Kennedy, who worked his way up at the then-family-owned Merchandise Mart and has headed Merchandise Mart Properties (which runs the Mart and a lot more) for seven years, is attempting something harder than, say, a mere run for president....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Then aldermen got an introduction to modern technology and truly public public records thanks to Dan O’Neil of EveryBlock Chicago, who demonstrated that it wouldn’t bust the budget to post a fuller set of TIF documents. Again, Burke was moved to excitement and exhortation: “I wasn’t familiar with your site, but I just pulled it up, and I encourage members of the City Council to look it up–it’s just fascinating,” he said....
Noon | Claudia Cassidy Theater 2:30 PM The Other Side of the Water (about DJA-Rara) 3 PM | Humboldt Park Boathouse Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » La Excelencia The members of this killer 11-piece New York band come from all over South and Central America, from Argentina to Cuba, and though they play salsa dura (“hard salsa”)—the classic brass-driven sound epitomized by LPs on New York labels like Fania, Tico, and Alegre in the 60s and 70s—they blend in related elements of traditions like Puerto Rican bomba and Colombian cumbia....
It’s tempting to make too much of Kevin Flynn’s role in snatching the Sun-Times from the jaws of death, the reason being that the bigger the role the richer the irony. Suffice it to say that Flynn belongs to the investment group assembled by James Tyree that on Monday took control of the Sun-Times and the other 58 titles that compose the Sun-Times Media Group. Best of Chicago voting is live now....
Thursday 29 Randolph Cafe, Chicago Cultural Center CorylusNoon Singer and storyteller Mankwe Ndosi, who splits her time between Minneapolis and Chicago, leads this dynamic quartet with AACM reedist Edward Wilkerson Jr., bassist Darius Savage, and percussionist JoVia Armstrong; you may recognize her from her roles in groups with flutist Nicole Mitchell and cellist Tomeka Reid. —Peter Margasak See our previews of acts playing on: Saturday ·Sunday ·Aftershows Jazz Festival main » Harrison Bankhead Sextet1:45 PM Harrison Bankhead has been such an in-demand double bassist for so long—for the likes of Roscoe Mitchell, Fred Anderson, and the Waukegan Symphony Orchestra—that he didn’t record an album of his own until he was 55 years old....
Chicago has a tradition of showing art where you’d least expect it. Among the spots currently operating, there’s the Bike Room, located in a Rogers Park apartment building’s former bike locker; the Suburban, a gallery in an Oak Park garage; and the Motor Gallery, which recently began sharing an address with a U-Haul rental outpost in the South Loop. The loose format allows Malmed and Munsell to get creative with the openings, which have been held in parking garages at Home Depot and Whole Foods....
If you head a few blocks in any direction out your front door, there’s a good chance you’ll come upon at least one corroding and neglected bike—replete with bent rims, rusted chain, and slashed seat—not worth the trouble of rescuing. That weathered-to-shit 35-year-old Schwinn Varsity that’s probably been puked on during its lengthy stay outside your local dive bar earned its place in the city’s waste stream of bikes long ago, just waiting its turn to get chucked into a dumpster and eventually hauled off by scrappers....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » For some inexplicable reason Warner Music Australia went kind of nuts this fall over the classic Nuggets garage rock anthology, compiled by Patti Smith Group guitarist Lenny Kaye and responsible for at least three or four waves of garage revivals and revivals of revivals. They’ve just released a remastered version of the compilation and two Down Under-themed companion pieces: a comp of Australian garage rock from the same era called Down Under Nuggets: Original Australian Artyfacts 1965-1967 and a set of contemporary Australian covers of original Nuggets tracks called Nuggets: Antipodean Interpolations of the First Psychedelic Era....
Drawn from 82 hours of microcassette tapes that outsider comedy pioneer Andy Kaufman obsessively recorded between 1977 and ’79, Andy and His Grandmother (the album released by Drag City earlier this month) isn’t stand-up (not even close) and it isn’t wholly improv—at least half the players should be willingly in on the joke for it to even hint at improv. Instead, it’s Kaufman wielding a then-fledgling technology to further his whacked-out, diabolical performance art....
