Chicagoland
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Chicagoland, Food Chain, Lit & Lectures, Film, Food & Drink Dinner & a Show: Tuesday 2/9 (New Restaurants Edition)
Posted by Whet Moser on Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 1:54 PM
- James Kennedy
Show: Funny Ha-Ha Loves You Readings and performances by James Kennedy (The Order of Odd-Fish), comedian Cameron Esposito, Poetry magazine associate editor Fred Sasaki, and poet Robbie Q. Telfer (Spiking the Sucker Punch), along with short films by Steve Delahoyde. Claire Zulkey (An Off Year) hosts.
6:30-8pm, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia Ave., 773-227-4433 or 866-468-3401, $5 suggested donation to benefit Neighborhood Writing Alliance.
Dinner: The Southern The former Chaise Lounge is now the Southern, a more casual bar and restaurant featuring the regional cuisine of chef Cary Taylor (Blackbird, Ambria, Avenues). One of several restaurants that are too new to review.
1840 W. North Ave., 773-342-1840
Chicagoland, Politics They Fought the Law
Posted by Whet Moser on Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 1:29 PM
Republicans who are currently campaigning against law enforcement - a comparatively new historical phenomenon that President Zombie Reagan would disapprove of - should consider how quickly Mark Kirk had to backpedal on Thomson when the state refused to panic, not to mention their potential bedfellows ("Lynch Holder!").
Chicagoland, Music, Free Shit Cheap Classical: Sibelius 5 and Free Ensemble Shows
Posted by Whet Moser on Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 11:43 AM
One of the best deals in town are tickets to the Civic Orchestra performances at Orchestra Hall - monthly free performances (well, $1.00 seat fee) featuring guest artists and conductors. The next one, on March 8, features young Leo McFall, who served as Bernard Haitink's assistant, conducting Sibelius's 5th Symphony; tickets are still available, if you need a super-cheap Valentine's Day present. If you want more background on Sibelius, the great Alex Ross's essay "Apparition In the Woods: Rescuing Sibelius from silence" is a good start:
Joy is not the same thing as simplicity. The Fifth begins and ends in crystalline major-key tonality, but it is a staggeringly unconventional work. The schemata of sonata form dissolve before the listener’s ears; in place of a methodical development of well-defined themes, there is a gradual, incremental evolution of material through trancelike repetitions. The musicologist James Hepokoski, in a monograph on the symphony, calls it “rotational form”; the principal ideas of the work come around again and again, though each time they are transformed in ways both small and large. The themes really assume their true shape only at the end of the rotation—what Hepokoski calls the “telos,” the epiphanic goal. Music becomes a search for meaning within an open-ended structure—an analogue to the spiritual life.
If $1.00 is too rich for your blood, the Civic Orchestra also plays regular completely free ensemble gigs throughout the city, usually on a schedule of two or three different ensembles every week or two; check the CSO calendar for details. The woodwind ensemble plays the National Museum of Mexican Art next Friday; the brass ensemble plays Gage Park the same day.
Chicagoland, Visual Art Morning Art: Tacita Dean
Posted by Julia Thiel on Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 8:40 AM
Monday, February 8, 2010
Chicagoland, Visual Art Morning Art: Anatole Kolomayets
Posted by Julia Thiel on Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 8:28 AM
Chicagoland, Politics Know When to Fold 'Em
Posted by Whet Moser on Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 1:30 AM
You really couldn't pick a better time to end your campaign besides a Sunday night during the Super Bowl*.
* About which just a couple things:
1. It was an okay game, not a great one, but I did appreciate the goal-line stand and the onside kick. Sean Payton is my Super Bowl MVP.
2. I feel like the Who were sort of the end of the line for halftime shows featuring bands everyone theoretically likes. Since next year the big game is in Dallas, I am expecting country (Faith Hill: 3-1; Tim McGraw: 5-1; Brad Paisley: 10-1) but I'd just as soon go back to the days of marching bands. The obvious pop choice would be either Kanye or Lady Gaga, but I can't see the schoolmarms who run the broadcast getting behind either, even though the latter would be like the Cremaster cycle for the rest of us.
3. For instance re schoolmarmism:
CBS has rejected another Super Bowl ad, this time for telling viewers to "Go to Hell."The trailer for the epic Electronic Arts' game "Dante's Inferno" contains plenty of scenes of a warrior fighting beasts in the netherworld. But it was the game's widely used marketing tagline that had CBS seeing red.
The commercial will still air, only with the tagline "Hell Awaits" instead.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Chicagoland, Food Chain, Film, Music, Food & Drink, Performing Arts Dinner & a Show: Saturday 2/6
Posted by Whet Moser on Sat, Feb 6, 2010 at 2:36 PM
- James Blackshaw
Show: James Blackshaw A 12-string guitar can be an unwieldy thing, but in the right hands it's a peerless source of rich sonorities. Young Englishman James Blackshaw has such hands, and he puts them to good use on the splendid live album Waking Into Sleep (Kning), a solo performance recorded in Sweden in 2006: the stirring melodies of "Spiralling Skeleton Memorial" and "Sunshrine" billow into kaleidoscopic patterns of swirling tones.
10 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, 773-276-3600 or 866-468-3401, $8, $5
Dinner: Big Star Unlike Paul Kahan's other ventures (Blackbird, Avec, the Publican), Big Star is a bar. But you may have to remind yourself of that, because it's got probably the tastiest Mexican menu of any bar in Chicago. Both food (by Justin Large, formerly of Avec) and drink (by Michael Rubel of Violet Hour) are pitched to a very agreeable price point, making the place a surefire, low-cost, high-value good time.
1531 N. Damen, 773-235-4039
Friday, February 5, 2010
Chicagoland, Politics The Scott Lee Cohen Shuffle
Posted by Whet Moser on Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 4:57 PM
A "key Democratic source" [ed. note: ?] says Cohen wants to drop out, which is news to Cohen's spokesman; Dick Durbin says he won't be lite guv and "I'm just saying we have found ways legally to give voters an alternative" [ed note: ?]; and "if reporters wanted to speak directly to Cohen, the candidate would be at the Vertigo nightclub at the top of the Dana Hotel and Spa in downtown Chicago Friday night" [ed note: of course].
Update: Of course pt. 2.
Chicagoland, Food Chain, Film, Music, Food & Drink, Performing Arts Dinner & a Show: Friday 2/5
Posted by Whet Moser on Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 2:58 PM
- Megan Holmes
- Explode Into Colors
Show: Explode Into Colors "All-female Portland trio Explode Into Colors are big faves in their hometown, both with basement-party punks and on the outre-dance scene," writes Jessica Hopper. "They're killer live—with Claudia Meza on baritone guitar and vocals, Lisa Schonberg on drums, and Heather Treadway on percussion, keys, and more vocals, their setup is full sounding and for-real funky."
9:30 PM, Subterranean, 2011 W. North, 773-278-6600 or 866-468-3401, $10, 17+.
Dinner: Birchwood Kitchen There’s not a cheap shortcut to be found at this ambitious sandwich shop from former Pastoral cheeseman Daniel Sirko and partner Judd Murphy (also of Pastoral).
2211 W. North, 773-276-2100
Chicagoland, Politics Questions I'd Need a Professional Normative Ethicist to Answer
Posted by Whet Moser on Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 12:09 PM
Whether Jim Ryan getting 17% in his primary is more than, less than, or equally as disturbing than Scott Lee Cohen getting 26%.
