I am not a fan of suicide, but if I could crawl into the chocolate churro souffle at Regards to Edith I would joyfully eat myself to death. With no regrets, I’d happily gaze down on the runner who snatches the plate away, delivering my remains to the dishwasher, who then blasts what’s left of me down the drain with a howitzer of hot steaming water. But more about this outstanding dessert later....
Joe’s Barbershop Runner-Up: Pete’s Barber Shop
Eula Bliss It was Jeff Shotts, Eula Biss’s editor at Graywolf Press, who came up with the term “citizen-thinker” to describe her, and it’s remarkably apt. Biss isn’t afraid of knotty and complicated subjects—her two most recent books, Notes From No Man’s Land and On Immunity: An Inoculation, consider race and vaccination, respectively—but she’s no preacher or polemicist. Instead, she’s a writer of lucid, elegant prose. Her work is the result of care and time and serious thought: she begins not by choosing a position and doing research to support it, but with her own experiences and observations and dilemmas (like whether to vaccinate her newborn son)....
Everybody vs. Chris Jones and Hedy Weiss In February, Steppenwolf Theatre’s young adults program presented This Is Modern Art (Based on True Events), a new play by Chicago-based writers Idris Goodwin and Kevin Coval, about young street artists—also Chicago based—who in 2010 decided to tag the Art Institute’s new Modern Wing. Reader critic Albert Williams considered the show evenhanded: though “clearly sympathetic to the artists’ point of view,” it was “not blind to the impact their reckless act would have on their own lives....
Bonnie Metzgar American Theater Company announced Monday that former About Face Theatre artistic director Bonnie Metzgar has been appointed as interim artistic director, effective immediately. Metzgar, who directed Anna Deavere Smith’s Let Me Down Easy at ATC this season, will step into the vacuum left by the death last month of artistic director PJ Paparelli after an auto accident. (Paparelli’s final work at ATC, the documentary play The Project(s), is the subject of this week’s culture column....
I fished this jacket I hadn’t worn since last winter out of storage the other day and found a pin in the inside pocket that said, in small black capitals, “MAGIC COTTON BALLS.” Many playgoers around town probably have one of these pins lying around too, waiting to remind them that perhaps our best, most unique Chicago theater tradition—The Ruffians’ annual production of Burning Bluebeard, now in its eighth year of holiday runs—is around the corner again....
Near the end of her Sunday-night set at the Pitchfork Music Festival, Charlotte Emma Aitchison yelled, “Make some noise if me, Charli XCX, is one of the top 15 pop stars in the world!” The massive crowd, which stretched from the stage to the baseball diamond half a park away, howled in response. “Keeping it arrogant, but also fair, you know?” smirked Charli from behind black sunglasses. The highlight of the set was Charli’s most recent single, “Gone,” a duet with Christine & the Queens that she debuted in May at Primavera Sound in Barcelona....
Paul Costuros Present-day Deerfhoof: Ed Rodriguez, John Dieterich, Satomi Matsuzaki, and Greg Saunier On Friday, March 13, Deerhoof open for Of Montreal at Metro. The Bay Area band are still touring on their 12th album, La Isla Bonita (Polyvinyl), which came out last fall. Peter Margasak weighed in on it when Deerhoof played here in November: “They’ve found a sweet spot they can keep mining for exciting new forms of beauty,” he wrote....
There’s plenty to do in Chicago this week. Here’s some of what we recommend: For more things to do this week—and every day—visit our Agenda page.
Last week, as the world caught a bad case of the coronavirus and the stock market began a major swoon, Paul Krugman came to town to talk about zombies. This, apparently in response to an announcement by the Centers for Disease Control that we need to prepare for a possible pandemic. And that it wasn’t a question of if the virus would spread to the U.S., but when. Also, the national debt crisis, which the Republicans were so concerned about during the Obama administration, but have recently “done a 180″ on....
Last month London DJ and producer Ryan Lee West (aka Rival Consoles) told PopMatters that his latest LP, April’s Persona (Erased Tapes), has “lots of subtlety across the record that excites me more than something that is loud or more intense.” Indeed, Persona has enough sonic complexity to whet the appetite of a filmmaker searching for ambitious, fluid, and immersive electronic instrumental music for her soundtrack without the 80s-nostalgia trappings of Stranger Things or the overdramatic blasts that fester in Inception that are both so common in film and music these days....
Though it seems like Australians toss around the term “country music” without much precision, there’s definitely something happening down there—a small emerging crop of dreamy, retro-leaning pop acts are flirting with elements of twang. Tomorrow night a promising young singer from the Sydney suburb of Glebe makes her local debut at Martyrs’ opening for Marlon Williams, another impressive Aussie whose music has superficial elements of country. Julia Jacklin’s debut album, Don’t Let the Kids Win (Polyvinyl), drops October 7, and though her swoony, liquid vocal style has little do with Nashville country of any era, it’s definitely put its hooks in me....
President Obama finally got around to criticizing Donald Trump for his incompetence and idiocy in the face of the pandemic. It’s got me thinking: What if the leader of the Democratic Party—the man most beloved by Democrats—were less like Obama and more like Mike? As in, Michael Jordan. When it comes to competition, Jordan never lets a grudge—any grudge—go to waste. He views every slight, no matter how trivial or unintended, as a monumental insult that demands revenge....
Sarah Sherman sarahsquirm.tumblr.com Runner-Up: Jeff Arcuri
Big Star Taqueria El Asadero Finalists: Edgewater Tacos, Taco Mucho
A Reader staffer shares three musical obsessions, then asks someone (who asks someone else) to take a turn. Steve Coleman & Five Elements at Constellation Coleman often composes his distinctive avant-garde jazz by transcribing his own improvisations, and its hall-of-mirrors grooves can be a challenge to parse—the electric bass might cycle every 17 pulses, but nobody else will be in that meter. I’ve never spent an entire two-hour set trying and failing to get a handle on music that uses regular tempos and repeated patterns—I can’t help but think of how ordinary trees create essentially infinite complexity with nothing but branches and leaves....
Like the late Portuguese filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira, James Gray makes movies that suggest the work of a late 19th- or early 20th-century artist transported to the present. This may be somewhat intentional on Gray’s part, as the New York-based writer-director has frequently cited artists from these periods as influences. He based the look of The Yards (2000) on the work of French realist painters, drew on the narrative structure of Dostoevsky’s White Nights for Two Lovers (2009), and took inspiration from Puccini’s operas for The Immigrant (2013)....
The fetish for upscale tiny houses has been around long enough for some of the novelty to wear off. In the wake of the mortgage meltdown, the micro dwellings flourished as McMansion antidotes. They made a statement about carbon footprints and financial restraint, even if equipped with hot tubs and high-end sound systems. And they tickled our fancy, their peaked roofs and window boxes evoking the whimsical playhouses of childhood. They inspired their own reality television shows, lifestyle websites, and magazines, as well as numerous listings on Airbnb ($138 a night on a lake near downstate Carbondale, for example; $195 in Schaumburg, up a tree)....
Double Door 1572 N. Milwaukee 773-489-3160doubledoor.com Reggie’s 2015 S. State 312-949-0120reggieslive.com
