Captured at http://colitz.com/site/11942/11942.htm To all whom it may concern: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The object of my invention is to effect the removal of worms from the system, without employing medicines, and thereby causing much injury. The trap is baited by taking off the cover B, of the exterior box, and filling the interior box with the bait which may consist of any nutritious substance....
Beatrice and Benedict, Berlioz’s lost opera and an abridged update of Much Ado About Nothing, has never been staged in Chicago before, underappreciated because of its lack of dramatic coherence–and also possibly because it’s French, and therefore considered elegant but lightweight. In choosing to mount it as the first production of the reconstituted (though still financially beleaguered) Chicago Opera Theater, the artistic team of Carl Ratner and Lawrence Rapchak is staying true to the company’s tradition of reviving neglected worthies....
FUTILE ATTRACTION and In the great tragic romances, wisdom about love is hard won. After killing Desdemona in a jealous rage, Othello cries out that he should be remembered as a man who loved “not wisely, but too well.” Both he and Desdemona learn the wages of jealousy, but at least they had a good thing going before Iago went and ruined it. The poor souls in the two one-act antiromances One Day Short Theatre has picked for its premiere production also have love problems....
As head maestro of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Lukas Foss seldom ventured south to Chicago. Now, several years after returning to the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the distinguished musical polymath is back to conduct his first concert at Grant Park. Go figure. Himself an estimable composer–probably the most adroit of the European Americans at fusing the traditional and the experimental–Foss has been an avid promoter of new music, and for this occasion he’s picked a recent work worthy of attention: The Protecting Veil for Cello and Strings by John Tavener....
To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I take great exception to every unsubstantiated statement and/or unduly illogical comment made by Jeanne Metzger and “the unidentified, short blond woman” for my experience as a client of Richard Rinella completely contradicts every questionable allegation they make. In regards to his legal representation, I have had the utmost confidence, trust and respect in my attorney, Richard Rinella, from the onset of my divorce proceedings in the fall of 1992, throughout the legal procedure, up to and including the prove-up of my case in late July of 1993, and the completion of all settlement matters thereafter....
Lead Story Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » A July dispatch by the German news service Deutsche Presse Agentur reported on Beijing’s trendy oxygen bars, where young professionals can unwind at the end of a hard day in an increasingly polluted city by inhaling fresh air for about $6 an hour. Special herbs and spices, some of which have medicinal qualities, can be mixed in for a higher price....
Performance artist Ayun Halliday discovered massage therapy while traveling in the jungles of Sumatra. Though she wasn’t aware of it at the time, Halliday had been traveling through Southeast Asia looking for some sign of what to do with her life. She felt she was drifting through her 20s, her only goal to avoid her parents’ lives of middle-class desperation. Her mother was the fashion editor of the Indianapolis Star (she “didn’t find writing about fashion very challenging”), while her father was a banker who secretly longed to be an English teacher....
“A lot of people came to be folk artists because they had some personal crisis in their lives,” explains playwright and folk-art collector Michael Blackwell. “Almost every one of them has had a spouse pass away or a physical illness or something catastrophic happen in their lives that has led them to pick up a pen or a knife to start drawing or whittling or shaping something. They find solace in their art, and the art draws people to them....
WIRELESS BALLROOM Ironically, in Wireless Ballroom everything’s wired, both literally and figuratively. The stage is dominated by a giant video screen and covered with keyboards, video monitors, and banks of computers. And the figurative wiring is so ornately–and needlessly–tied into knots, so dependent on the technology, that when the message finally emerges, it’s hard to disentangle it from the mess. It’s also hard to take it seriously. It’s as if, after a wildly imaginative demonstration of knots to be used for rustling and hanging, these little tantalizing tangles were discovered to be best suited as shoelaces....
Michelangelo Antonioni’s first feature in color (1964) remains a high-water mark for using colors creatively, expressionistically, and beautifully; to get the precise hues he wanted, Antonioni had entire fields painted. Restored prints make it clear why audiences were so excited a quarter of a century ago by his innovations, which include not only expressive use of color for moods and subtle thematic coding, but striking uses of editing as well. This film comes at the tail end of his most fertile period, immediately after his remarkable trilogy consisting of L’avventura, La notte, and Eclipse; Red Desert may not be quite as good as the first and last of these, but the ecological concerns of this film look a lot more prescient today than they did at the time....
It may be too soon to expect Like Water for Chocolate delights such as quail in rose petal sauce to define the Mexican dining experience, but at least those nightmare combination plates with refried beans aren’t the only thing around anymore. In fact, a restaurant named after Mexican painter Frida Kahlo is actually offering fusion cuisine with a Mexican accent. Combining the ingredients and/or cooking methods of two or more countries has been fashionable for a few years, but Mexican has rarely been part of the equation....
MEAT PUPPETS 10/14, VIC While their most recent album, the Paul Leary-produced Too High to Die (London), evinces some creative stasis, the Meat Puppets always cook live. The trademark nasal harmonies between Curt and Cris Kirkwood, the former’s ZZ Top-in-space guitar odysseys and druggy impressionistic lyrics, and the band’s delightfully stiff two-beat romps, smoldering boogies, and faux blues continue to sound great even if their inventive impulses are on the fritz....
Some of the bluntest political satire and drollest romantic comedy in town is to be found in a 65-year-old play by George Bernard Shaw. Written in 1928 when its author was in his 70s, Shaw’s last popular success is rarely performed in America, where its target–the tensions inherent in a democratic monarchy–may be deemed a bit rarefied. But this portrait of an idealistic, rhetoric-prone ruler who’s loyal but not faithful to his wife, and the governmental gridlock created by his power struggle with a bitterly temperamental parliamentary leader, is apt enough in the Clinton-Dole era; so are its cautionary comments on the fragility of freedom in a society where politics has become “the refuge of a few fanciers of public speaking and party intrigue,” leaving an apathetic public in the irresponsible hands of big business and media monopolies....
John Corigliano’s The Ghosts of Versailles, which wowed audiences in its Met debut four years ago, is less an opera than a theatrical extravaganza, with an ingeniously eclectic, meticulously fashioned score that juxtaposes the Versailles of today and the Versailles of the French Revolution. Leading the cavalcade of ghosts that haunt the palace are Marie Antoinette and the playwright Beaumarchais, who’s been in love with the queen ever since she was guillotined....
The Goods on Grant Happy the reporter who’s got the goods. La Raza’s Jorge Oclander is grinning with delight. The goods make a fat stack of papers on his desk. Oclander spotted the article and began digging. In early December he wrote again. Now he was itemizing “a new series of questionable, and in some cases possibly criminal practices,” the 5151 repairs among them. In late January his three-part series about the property, “The Privileges of Power,” began in La Raza Domingo, the Sunday supplement carried in the Latino parts of Chicago by the Sun-Times....
Where did the practice of kissing under the mistletoe arise? Mistletoe is a fungus, for God’s sake. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Even worse is the legend that supposedly accounts for our custom of kissing under the mistletoe at Christmas. In the version recounted by Edgar Nash in the Saturday Evening Post in 1898, the Scandinavian god Baldur told his mother Frigga that he had a premonition that he was going to die, whereupon Frigga extracted promises from every animal, vegetable, and mineral that it would not harm her son....
Artist Glenn Wexler says he can’t look at anything without imagining a screen print on it. He’s silk-screened pictures on cast cement, brushed steel, marble slabs, enlarged photos of old paintings, a variety of found objects, and on canvas too. He’s even cropped and printed images from Renaissance art on cutaway sections of tree trunks. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The el clatters outside the windows of Wexler’s Wicker Park studio, which is full of commonplace items–a picnic basket, a gasoline can–that haven’t escaped the screen treatment either....
FRIDAY 8 SATURDAY 9 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Chi-town comedian and actress-done-good Nora Dunn is putting on a one-woman show tonight that promises to include some of her most famous Saturday Night Live characters, including Pat Stevens and Liz Sweeney of the Sweeney sisters, as well as a whole slew of new personalities. It’s part of a fund-raiser for the Discovery Board of the Goodman Theatre and includes a light buffet....
Dear Chicago Reader: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » According to the article, Donald Hackl is a great guy who through hard work and dedication and a little bit of luck made it to the peak of a challenging profession. How heartwarming. Hello! Look at the old guy. He wears double-breasted suits and bow ties. He’s a walking, talking archaic stereotype if there ever was one....
“Nothing in modern times approaches the Oklahoma disaster,” the Chicago Tribune announced on April 20, the day after a thousand pounds of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil nearly leveled the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City, killing more than 100 people in the process. The explosion “slashed deep into [the nation’s] sense of heartland security,” continued the Tribune. It “stabb[ed] an icy fear of terror into the American heartland,” the Sun-Times echoed....
