Q I just turned 20 and have been out of the closet for a year. A lesbian friend wants to hook me up with her gay friend, let’s call him Kyle, a cute, fit boy who runs track and does theater. The issue is, he’s just 17 and starting his senior year in high school, while I’m entering my junior year in college. The age of consent where we live is 16....
By Dan Savage Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Q I suppose you’re going to call me an asshole once you’ve finished reading my letter, but I hope you have some advice for me regardless.I’m a 45-year-old heterosexual male. My last relationship lasted nearly seven years. I’m currently single, and I’m discouraged. One of the reasons for my discouragement: I have to get too far into a relationship before I can determine if it will work out with any particular woman....
Willie T. “Timmy” Donald, who was convicted of murder in 1992, used to think he had good friends at the Medill School of Journalism. But now associate dean Mary Nesbitt won’t even answer his letters. I respect her position but have more sympathy for his. Early this year he wrote two letters to Nesbitt. “Since 2009, no progress has been made,” said the first. (Donald provided me with copies.) “I would like to move forward so I have decided to go in another direction....
The Chicago Tribune nearly won a Pulitzer for a two-part series published in 2000, “State of Execution: The Death Penalty in Texas.” The principal reporters, finalists for the prize, were Ken Armstrong and Steve Mills. Criner got lucky. He was eventually pardoned by Governor George W. Bush. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The article, which also quotes admirers who praised her ethics and judicial temperament, was written because the judge is in big trouble....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Got a little black dress you’ve been dying to wear, Carrie Bradshaw? It’s the suggested attire for women (men should wear “business chic”) at the launch of the Little Black Dress Wine Club (more here) 6:30 PM Wednesday on the East Bank Club roof terrace. In addition to boutique wines from around the world, hors d’oeuvres will be served....
At the time of the 2004 presidential election, the nation was overwhelmed by fear—fear of terrorists, of John Kerry’s rambling answers, of gay people having the right to get married. It was clear that the war in Iraq was being mismanaged and that the rationale for military action had been severely flawed, based more on national anxiety than any real threat. On election night, I sat in the dark until George Bush’s victory was announced....
In the February issue of Vanity Fair there’s a provocative and problematic essay by food writer Corby Kummer on the tyranny of fine dining; or how extravagantly priced, multihour, multicourse tasting menus supposedly subjugate the desires of the diner in favor of egocentric cheffy autocracy. But Duffy’s not one of Kummer’s tyrants. You do have a choice—between two nine-course menus, one vegetable focused, the other a bit meatier. Each of these costs $185, which after wine, tax, and tip positions Grace as the second-most expensive restaurant in the city (after Alinea, with Elizabeth a close third)....
Old age is a shipwreck, said Charles de Gaulle. And if Helen Thomas, 90, has hit the shoals, so has the Society of Professional Journalists, the 101-year-old organization to which she belonged until she resigned in anger and anguish in January. The stranger, Rabbi David Nesenoff, proprietor of the blog RabbiLive.com, had a second question. “Where’s home?” And soon Thomas announced her retirement. But on December 2, speaking to Arab-Americans in Dearborn, Michigan, Thomas said, “We are owned by the propagandists against the Arabs....
Over the course of a weekend, Columbia College’s Papermaker’s Garden on 8th and Wabash was transformed from a gravel pit to the home of an untitled, temporary art installation. Using the gravel that so frumpily filled the space before, eight students created an eye-popping display. On one end of the garden, rocks were arranged into what look like miniature crop circles, with blue painted rings of gravel increasing in size until they ultimately become shapeless....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I’m not sure exactly what it means that Chance the Rapper wrote the only original song on Lil Wayne’s new mixtape, Dedication 5, which is otherwise full of recycled industry beats, but it seems significant. Last Wednesday, Wayne’s camp apparently reached out to Chance requesting he send a track over. So he hit the studio with Nate Fox, Peter Cottontale, and Cam to produce “You Song,” a sunny, nostalgic bit of romance that’s easily the most interesting moment on Wayne’s mixtape—the Dedication series is long past its expiration date....
An unsettling home photo shoot in Sexy Baby The documentary Sexy Baby, which Chicago Filmmakers will present tonight at Columbia College and on Saturday in Andersonville, voices concern with the unrealistic images of female beauty and sexuality in contemporary mass culture. The movie argues that the ideal woman as conceived by fashion magazines, music videos, and primetime television aspires above all else to be sexually desirable—and that mainstream media defines sexual desirability increasingly in terms of exhibitionist behavior and the willingness to be sexually degraded....
Vern Thiessen’s script looks like a classic “pick a girl” story, whose conflicted lead has to choose between wife and mistress. But this dynamic is incidental to the real drama, rooted in fatal-illness caregiving and the successive shades of love it can bring out, like the brilliant hues of a changing leaf. Thiessen speaks to the process with convincing sensitivity, and his faintly poetic dialogue sets up some strikingly resonant moments....
Ebrahim Golestan: Lion of Iranian Cinema INFO 312-846-2800 WHERE Northwestern Univ. Block Museum of Art, 40 Arts Circle Dr., Evanston Imagine how different our understanding of film history would be if we were denied access to everything made before the so-called sound revolution. A much more profound revolution interferes with our grasp of the history of Iranian film. During the fundamentalist revolution of 1979, the Islamic clergy said cinema was a form of Western exploitation as corrupt as prostitution and over 100 movie theaters were burned to the ground....
For its 26th year the annual Chicago Gospel Music Festival returns to Millennium Park this Saturday and Sunday, June 5 and 6, with performances from noon till 9 PM both days. Presented by the Mayor’s Office of Special Events, the free festival features three stages of gospel music. The Day Stage and the Youth Stage, set up on the park’s north and south promenades, host local soloists, small groups, and youth and church choirs till 4:30 PM....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “Still, I had a new surge of energy when I stood at last at the light. I started up the access road to see what I’d find there. I didn’t feel hopeful; I was perfectly prepared to believe that the freight office was another five miles ahead. Nor did I have any faith that, if I found it, the cat would be waiting for me....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The Grand Chefs Gala Benefit for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, this Friday from 6 PM to midnight, has a safari theme this year. Some of Chicago’s best chefs will prepare hors d’oeuvres, a four-course dinner, and desserts; there will also be live and silent auctions, a DJ, dancing, and cocktails, as well as the presentation of the Jean Banchet Awards for Culinary Excellence....
Leor Galil,Reader staff writer Emily Reo, Olive Juice (Elestial Sound) I’m in awe of Boston experimental pop artist Emily Reo, who can make lovely, intimate music by layering what sounds like chintzy toy-keyboard percussion with warm, slightly frazzled synth notes and her gentle multitracked vocals. Her new Olive Juice is glistening, gorgeous, and comforting, and “Wind” and “Happy Birthday” are among my favorite songs of the year. Best of Chicago voting is live now....
Tal Rosenberg, Reader digital content editor Isaac Hayes, Hot Buttered Soul Robert Christgau called this 1969 soul masterpiece “a baroque, luscious production job over the non-singing of one half of Sam & Dave’s production-songwriting team,” then gave it a “C” grade. The album has spent the past 44 years proving him unbelievably wrong. Jonathan Bogart, free-floating pop critic African pop music Africa is so huge that it’s impossible for me to really have a grasp on the breadth of its musical output....
The Chef: Ryan McCaskey (Acadia)The Challenger:Thai Dang (Embeya)The Ingredient: Pandan leaf Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “I can’t even describe what the extract tastes like,” he said. “Not funky, but more—musty. I tasted it and immediately thought of grandma’s attic.” The leaf, on the other hand, has a toasted-rice-like aroma and flavor that McCaskey compared to genmaicha tea (Japanese green tea combined with toasted brown rice)....
“There are lots of happy and fulfilled gay/bi people out here… and when you get out of Nastytown and move on to a more welcoming environment … you’ll start meeting them. I got the snot beat out of me in high school some 30 years ago because I was a “fag.” Problem was, I wasn’t gay (not then, not now) but when you’re dealing with the small minds of high school bigot bullies, classmates who look the other way and teachers/administrators who don’t want to deal with the issue of fag bashing (or any other kind of bashing for that matter), I agree with Dan....
