Friday 9
A “topping out” party marks the placement of the final structural beam in the Museum of Contemporary Art’s spectacular new digs on East Chicago Avenue today at 10 AM. The museum will greet well-wishers with warm beverages served under a heated tent at Fairbanks and Chicago (one block east of Michigan Avenue). There’ll be a few words, and visitors will get to sign the last beam before it’s hoisted into place sometime around noon. The museum suggests dressing warmly in a manner befitting a construction site. It’s free; call 280-1660 for more.
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Phil Johnson, one of the performers in Les Miserables, takes a busman’s holiday tonight to do a benefit called OK, So He Stole a Loaf of Bread . . . Proceeds will go to the AIDS Foundation of Chicago and Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. It’s at 8:30 at Cairo, 720 N. Wells. Admission is $9.95. Call 266-6620 for reservations.
What to get for the person who has everything? Here are two truly unusual places for gifts. First up is the Chicagoland Discussion Group’s annual Holiday Bizarre Bazaar, an S & M and fetish equipment fair with vendors like “master whip-maker” Joe Wheeler,”Kinky Santa,” and an outfit called Dungeon-in-One. It’s at 7:30 tonight at the Monte Vista banquet hall, 5145 N. Milwaukee. Admission is $5; call 281-1097 for info. Next up is an opening for a show of Mike Diana’s cartoons. Diana is the publisher of the Florida-based zine Boiled Angel, which features his drawings of pedophilia, bestiality, cannibalism, child rape by foster fathers and clerics, and other cheery topics. Diana was recently convicted on three obscenity counts, but his first art exhibition opens tonight with a free reception at 8 at Goat, a poster and comics store at 3728 N. Clark. Call 348-6660 for details.
