FEBRUARY
According to one British film writer, the late Curt McDowell’s 1975 underground porn classic Thundercrack “starts out on a dark and stormy night with a group of strangers stranded in a remote Victorian mansion. . . . A crazed hostess [has] her husband pickled in a jar and her monstrous son locked in a spare room. From there on it is a series of test situations which manage to get everyone together, sexually and socially, before dawn brings everything to a rousing conclusion.” The film, which the London Gay News has called the “hardest of hardcore pictures,” shows at 8 tonight at the Kino-Eye Cinema at Chicago Filmmakers, 1543 W. Division. It’s $5. Call 384-5533.
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Three hot Chicago guitarists representing the instrument’s broad palette host a daylong workshop. Ax handlers classical, rock, or jazz can take notes from Paul Henry, a classical recording artist who’s given two solo concerts at Carnegie Hall; Dave Uhrich, the most celebrated of Chicago’s hard rock instrumentalists; and noted jazz man Bobby Broom. The session runs 10 to 5 in Marx Hall on the ninth floor of Roosevelt University, 430 S. Michigan. It’s $40. Call 341-3789 to register.
If you watched Ken Burns’s baseball documentary you probably know how Negro baseball league star Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe earned his nickname: pitching and catching within the same game. Radcliffe and another Negro league player, Lester Lockett, who once hit .408, will be at Ann Sather, 929 W. Belmont, from 10 to 3 today talking to fans and signing any memorabilia you’ve got. It’s free. Call 281-1364.
The Commission on Global Governance has been meeting for years to figure out why wars and atrocities continue to mark the 20th century. At the end of January it submitted a report to the UN calling for changes to the UN charter and a world conference. One of two American representatives on the panel was Adele Simmons, president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; she’ll be reporting on the group’s work tonight at 7:30 in room 107 of Harris Hall, 1881 Sheridan Road on Northwestern University’s Evanston campus. It’s free. Call 708-577-8497.
A Bill Clinton adviser comes to town today to help spread the administration’s campaign for Democratic-style family values. Today at 4 the John M. Olin Center for the Theory and Practice of Democracy presents Personal Responsibility and Liberal Democracy, a free talk by William Galston, who’s deputy assistant to the president for domestic policy. It’s in room 122 of the Social Science Research Building, 1126 E. 59th. Call 702-3423 for more.
Central and South America may still be bloody, but they’re nonetheless moving steadily toward greater democratization. Or so says Guillermo O’Donnell, a Notre Dame professor of government, international studies, and sociology, who gives a talk called The Globalization of Democracy: The Latin American Experience at 2:30 this afternoon on the 10th floor of Loyola’s Damen Hall, 6525 N. Sheridan. It’s free. Call 508-8658 for more.
