Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » This recent post by Kos at DailyKos, based on a New York Times story, suggests so. Mitt Romney favored gay rights when he ran against Teddy Kennedy for the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts in 1994. “We must make equality for gays and lesbians a mainstream concern,” he wrote to the Log Cabin Club. “My opponent cannot do this. I can and will....
The International Latino Cultural Center presents the 22nd Chicago Latino Film Festival with screenings Friday through Thursday, April 28 through May 4, at Facets Cinematheque; Gene Siskel Film Center; Lake Forest College, 555 N. Sheridan, Lake Forest; Landmark’s Century Centre; Little Village Lawndale High School, 3120 S. Kostner; Olive-Harvey College, 10001 S. Woodlawn; Richard J. Daley College, 7500 S. Pulaski; River East 21; and St. Xavier Univ., 3700 W. 103rd St....
Thank you for printing Ben Joravsky’s article regarding the complete and total blundering of the smoking ban by Mayor Daley and the Chicago City Council [The Works, December 30]. It was one of the few clear and no-nonsense views of the debate. As a bartender, I fought hard for the support of the full ban. With all the health benefits of enacting a smoking ban which the Chicago aldermen cited in the smoking-ban ordinance, it would make anyone wonder how the aldermen and the mayor could wait two and half years to enact a full ban....
If you accept the Vietnam-era proposition that military justice is to justice as military music is to music, I have a Web site for you. It’s where you can watch the kind of justice President Bush decreed for “enemy combatants” at Guantanamo Bay being lambasted by lawyers in uniform–military officers defending the nation’s honor against George W. Bush’s White House. Swift says, “My first real ethical question was, ‘Can I go down and participate in this at all?...
Motel Bar Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Hubie Greenwald and John Manion, the team behind Wicker Park’s Mas, tackle American comfort food at the Motel Bar, a clubby new spot in the old Montgomery Ward catalog building. The chic industrial space, with high vaulted ceilings, exposed ductwork, and circular red vinyl booths, is designed for mingling: there are no TVs and the music is kept at a conversation-friendly volume....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The Sunlight Foundation, which broke the Hastert Highway scandal, is putting the grassroots to work: “Citizen Muckrakers have investigated 438 members of Congress, and tentatively found 19 spouses who were paid by a member’s campaign committee — totaling some $637,424 since January 1, 2005.” Bobby Rush and Danny Davis are the Illinoisans on that list. This looks like good news for organized transparency in government, and bad news in what was found....
Lead Story La Fromagerie Boivin, a cheese company in Quebec City, announced in October that it was abandoning efforts to find about 1,700 pounds of missing cheese in a fjord about 125 miles away. Boivin had submerged the cheese, worth more than $40,000, last year in hopes of giving it a unique flavor, but diving teams and sophisticated tracking gear had proved unable to locate it again. (Canadian authorities had already questioned whether the immersion method was in accordance with food safety laws, raising the possibility that the cheese couldn’t be sold anyway....
Lead Story Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In February Richard Paey, a 47-year-old lawyer confined to a wheelchair by a severe spinal injury, petitioned a Florida appeals court for a new trial on the drug charges that in 2004 landed him in prison–charges, several national columnists later pointed out, similar to those recently faced in Florida by Rush Limbaugh. Each was accused of illegally obtaining large quantities of prescription painkillers, apparently for his own use–in Paey’s case, to relieve him of the intense pain he’s endured since undergoing several unsuccessful back surgeries (he also has multiple sclerosis)....
For more than 20 years pit master Willie Wagner has been serving ribs, pulled pork, and other ‘cue at neighborhood fairs and music fests; now he’s taken his show indoors at HONKY TONK BARBEQUE, a Pilsen space decked out in a Wild West motif. Texas-style beef brisket is killer, moist and rippled with savory fat. Memphis-style baby backs and Saint Louis-style spare ribs are sprinkled with a mildly piquant dry rub, then cooked low and slow to render fat while leaving loads of flavor on the bone....
NProof | When a brilliant but unstable University of Chicago mathematician dies, his daughter Catherine must face her fear of a possible connection between genius and madness. The puzzle in David Auburn’s 2001 Pulitzer winner is how the titular proof, a labor of love meant to disguise mental illness, can also be a mathematical breakthrough. Gregory Gerhard’s staging creates sympathy for Catherine as she makes various choices–between staying in Chicago or moving to New York, for example....
The premise of Kat Leahy’s bloated new play is that the American public can’t discern the real world from TV shenanigans. When dim, well-intentioned soap-opera star Tate Baker runs for the Senate, he discovers that neither the voters nor, eventually, his own wife and campaign team can distinguish him from his on-screen alter ego. Despite funny satirical and farcical moments, Leahy’s script is short on insight, and as the confusion of television with reality grows increasingly extreme, her message just gets old....
In 1989, when I was a freshman at Baylor University in Texas, I was driving one evening to meet friends for dinner. I came over a hill and noticed a car on its last of several flips in a ditch on the side of the road. I quickly pulled over. The driver jumped out screaming–his buddy in the passenger seat had been thrown from the car. Another person stopped and noticed a body pinned under the front bumper in the ditch....
I don’t think there’s a more entertaining blog out there than the one published by WFMU, the fantastic free-form radio station based in Jersey City, New Jersey. It’s amazing enough that the station allows anyone outside of listening range to receive a high-quality stream—and then leaves its shows on the server in perpetuity—but its MP3-heavy blog is something else altogether. There’s an astonishing mix of aural oddities—some for laughs, some for provocative listening....
At a tabloid newspaper, vivid writing rules. Stefano Esposito’s knack for it landed the Sun-Times in hot water recently, but editor in chief Michael Cooke stands by his criminal courts reporter. “He has his own wonderful style of writing the most obvious court cases,” says Cooke, “and putting some energy and life and drama–in the best sense–into the reporting of those cases.” “Her kidnapper has already raped her, choked her and threatened to kill her if she struggles....
Early this football season, safety Mike Brown looked at his Bears teammates and pronounced, “We’re just terrible. It’s like we suck.” The Bears were 1-3 at the time and appeared well on their way to fulfilling the prediction of Sports Illustrated’s Paul Zimmerman that they’d be the worst team in the NFL. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The Bears might have benefited from the NFL’s emphasis on parity and an unbalanced schedule in which the worst teams from one season–last year’s Bears were 5-11–tend to play each other the next, meaning that some have to rise....
The Cubs seemed to approach this year’s home-and-home city series with the White Sox as more of a nuisance than a cause for excitement. That was in part because of the team’s newfound stature and high expectations–as no less than Sports Illustrated’s pick to win the World Series, they considered their National League games, especially in the Central Division, more “important”–but also because of the schedule. The Cubs prepped for their first meeting with the Sox by playing a critical three-game set in Saint Louis, then sandwiched three home games against their other top division rivals, the Houston Astros, between the two Sox weekend series....
Awkward lighting cast deep shadows over a scummy mattress and limp old sad-eyed animal costume attached to the wall, a homemade Cabbage Patch Kid hanging from the ceiling, rows of chewed-up cowboy hats. A tangled beaded curtain framed a dark hallway that led to a short flight of concrete stairs descending out into the darkness. And beyond that: trash-filled muddy moats around large islands of gravel, one of them occupied by an old moving truck, inside of which was a dance party....
BATgirl Returns In 2004 she prevailed by every measure. She accurately called the Twins to take the AL Central, the Yankees the AL East, and the Dodgers the NL West, and both the Red Sox and Astros to reach the playoffs as wild cards. No one else did as well. But what really separates her from the pack is this: she actually picked the wild-card Red Sox to become not merely the American League pennant winners but world champions....
To the editor: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » If nothing else, Kimler has made a career out of bamboozling credulous Reader staffers. A few years ago you reported Kimler was leaving for Los Angeles because Chicago was such a horrible place for artists. He denounced everyone in sight, stormed off, and returned 18 months later with his tail between his legs. Now he’s attacking Paul Klein and plans to have Important Conversations with Special Friends in the privacy of his studio....
Bob Fosse, John Kander, and Fred Ebb’s 1975 Broadway musical, about two burlesque bimbos who parlay criminal notoriety into showbiz stardom, is likely to reach a new audience on the strength of its Oscar-winning film version. Viewers familiar only with the movie, however, may be surprised by the lean theatricality and stark visuals of this concert-style touring revival by director Walter Bobbie and choreographer Ann Reinking. Hot licks from the onstage jazz band, a strong ensemble of singing dancers, Brenda Braxton’s whiplash comic timing and muscular sexuality as husband-killing showgirl Velma Kelly, and Tom Wopat’s big baritone and bluff charm as her mouthpiece, Billy Flynn, are among the highlights of this cynical satire of corruption and celebrity....
