News
Sunday, January 20, 2013
Sports News Stan Musial lived fully in Saint Louis
Posted by Michael Miner on 01.20.13 at 02:04 PM
In this regard, Musial was not unique then and he would not be unique now. But he'd come a lot closer.
Friday, January 18, 2013
Politics News Mayor Rahm channels his inner Herbert Hoover
Posted by Ben Joravsky on 01.18.13 at 12:38 PM
- Library of Congress
Mayor RahmHerbert Hoover
In the midst of spending his time trying to bring a casino to Chicago, he dashed over to the banks of the Chicago River to attend a ground-breaking ceremony for River Point.
That's the upscale office skyscraper subsidized with $29.5 million of your hard-earned property tax dollars taken from the mayoral slush fund known as TIF.
Or tax increment financing, to be proper about things.
In the TIF program, the city diverts over $200 million a year from the Chicago Public Schools—currently about $1 billion in debt—to fund much-needed economic development and eradicate blight in low-income neighborhoods.
Did You Read __________? News Did you read about a divided Congress, divided Democrats, and the questionable ethics of the quinoa trade?
Posted by Reader staff on 01.18.13 at 11:33 AM
- Vi..Cult...
- Quinoa
Hey, did you read:
• That according to this Politico story, Obama must lead a Democratic party with two factions: liberals, who want to focus on income inequality and unemployment, and centrists, who have more allegiance to Wall Street? (Guess which one Mayor Emanuel is.) —Steve Bogira
• As if you didn't suspect as much, that the last session of Congress was the most politically divided in history? —Mick Dumke
• That the much-bemoaned budget deficit "is already, to a large degree, solved," according to Paul Krugman? —Steve Bogira
• About the questionable ethics behind the quinoa trade? —Luca Cimarusti
• Adam Mansbach's first dispatch from his book tour? ("The publishing industry stopped having new ideas out of respect for the untimely death of Ernest Hemingway in 1961, and has been doing everything the same way ever since.") —Sam Worley
• The Library of Congress blog on the inaugural Bibles? —John Dunlevy
• This Pitchfork article on New York City's new underground dance-music culture? —Tal Rosenberg
Thursday, January 17, 2013
Whoa Music News Chief Keef's sentencing: The view from the courtroom
Posted by Leor Galil on 01.17.13 at 05:49 PM
And yet the scene inside the Cook County Juvenile Court Building was fairly modest; a group mostly made up of journalists, legal professionals, and Keef's family filled three wooden benches in a small, off-white courtroom. The room's sparse decor—a clock on one wall, a calendar on the other, and a droopy American flag behind Judge Carl Anthony Walker's seat—was hardly reminiscent of the lavish lifestyle Keef enjoys rapping about. The rapper himself walked in wearing a navy-blue sweatshirt and sweatpants that bore the letters JTDC ("Juvenile Temporary Detention Center") instead of his usual Louis Vuitton and Salvatore Ferragamo gear.
Outside the courtroom he has an outsize, violent persona, but inside he was a 17-year-old who goes by Keith Cozart. Lately the online conversation about Keef has focused on white cultural tourism via violent music by African-Americans, but it didn't come up in the conversations among cops and court officers that I overhead in the courtroom prior to Judge Walker's entrance—I heard more about young Chicagoans who are grappling with real violence. In the courtroom Cozart's rap career was almost of no consequence—except for the fact that it was used as evidence to keep him behind bars (and a reason to let him go).
Do This Things I Hate Things I Love News Have a juicy tale of romantic woe? We want to hear it!
Posted by Reader staff on 01.17.13 at 03:30 PM
- linda/Wikimedia Commons
Send your submissions to vday@chicagoreader.com by midnight on Sun 1/27.
Did You Read __________? News Did you read about Manti Te'o's fake girlfriend, Scientology, and Lance Armstrong being an asshole?
Posted by Reader staff on 01.17.13 at 12:49 PM
- Shotgun Spratling/Neon Tommy
- Manti Te'o: Duped?
Hey, did you read:
• The tale of Manti Te'o's mysterious girlfriend? —Tony Adler
• That Lance Armstrong shouldn't be punished for taking performance-enhancing drugs, but for being a huge asshole? —Tal Rosenberg
• This footage from DNAinfo of a CVS manager who wasn't charged with strangling a shoplifter to death quite clearly strangling a shoplifter to death? (Not exactly graphic or NSFW, but certainly a bit disturbing.) —Drew Hunt
• About American Airlines' new tech-friendly airplanes? (But will the new planes solve the airlines' problems with delays, cancellations, and malfunctions?) —Tal Rosenberg
• Laura Miller's review of Going Clear, the new Scientology expose by Lawrence Wright? —Sam Worley
• That 16-year-old Oak Park style blogger Tavi Gevinson released a cover of a Pet Shop Boys song on DNAinfo? (??) —Sam Worley
Media News On the Tribune covering the Tribune
Posted by Michael Miner on 01.17.13 at 10:26 AM
- from Broken Deal
- Randy Michaels
HBO for the vulgarity—"You know, shit happens, OK," said Zell to a Wall Street audience he was sucking into his caper. "So anything is possible." But in the pages of the Tribune business section, ONeal and Mills couldn't say shit—and lasciviousness.
"Broken Deal" didn't get into personalities much, though personalities left scars that won't soon fade from the souls of the Tribune Company rank and file who lived through the era. A book will make room, and HBO will revel in them. For instance, it can introduce Zell at the 1999 birthday party he threw for himself in the Aragon Ballroom. Cops closed the Lawrence el station to accommodate Zell's private trains, and Redmoon Theater provided strolling musicians and masked actors dressed as birds on stilts. The writer Joy Bergman, who hooked on with Redmoon to get inside, later described the scene to me:
Seriously? The Internet News Shoenice put my phone number on YouTube
Posted by Luca Cimarusti on 01.17.13 at 07:32 AM
Somewhere along the way, I found myself fascinated with Shoenice. I am by no means proud of my love for Shoenice videos—I'll be the first to admit that watching a video of a middle-aged man sitting by himself and eating an entire birthday cake (including the burning candles) is more than just a little dark. So naturally I'm not proud to admit that when Shoenice posted his phone number to Facebook on Saturday morning, I immediately picked up my phone to call him. I got his voicemail, hung up, and didn't think anything else of it.
That is until I got a handful of blocked phone calls a few minutes later. I answered one, and it was from what sounded like a prepubescent boy telling me to fuck off. It was when I answered another to hear someone impersonating Shoenice's video introduction line ("Hey everyone, Shoenice again," as demonstrated in this video of him eating a dozen raw eggs, shells and all) that I started to realize I had made a huge mistake. Curiosity was about to kill the cat.
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
Media News A home for StoryCorps at the Cultural Center
Posted by Deanna Isaacs on 01.16.13 at 01:58 PM
Starting this spring (date TBA), the public will be able to reserve times for recording sessions in which one person of a pair interviews the other.
You can come with your mother, your child, your mentor, your neighbor, your lover, your coworker, your long-lost classmate, or even your nemesis—any meaningful pairing. StoryCorps has been doing this since 2003; you can sample the results here.
Did You Read __________? News Did you read about marijuana busts, Chief Keef being busted, and dudes intimidated by female rap fans?
Posted by Reader staff on 01.16.13 at 11:40 AM
Hey, did you read:
• Alexis Madrigal on air pollution in Beijing now and Pittsburgh up to the mid-20th century—and some thoughts from Chicago's smoke inspector in 1896? —John Dunlevy
• That busts for marijuana possession dropped significantly after Chicago's new pot law went into effect last summer? —Mick Dumke
• That Chief Keef has been taken into custody for violating his probation by doing that video interview for Pitchfork? —Leor Galil
• That someone was shot outside our building this morning? —Mick Dumke
• The argument that the Second Amendment was ratified in order to assure southern slaveholders that their patrols designed to prevent uprisings could continue? —Tony Adler
• Meaghan Garvey's essay on dudes who are intimidated by female rap fans? —Leor Galil
• The Village Voice's annual Pazz & Jop, the ultimate in pop-critic year-end lists? (Rob Harvilla's essay on rapper-singer Future is a standout: "He uses Auto-Tune the way Picasso used nude women, the way Obama uses drones.") —Tal Rosenberg
