Silence vs. Noise Week: Bleader, Chicago Reader

Retweet it, only louder

Kevin Warwick — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 08:07:00 -0500

For the Bleader's Silence vs. Noise theme last week, I wrote about the minor phenomenon of late-night/early-morning bird chirping—a result of the same urban light pollution that helps guide home the drunks falling out of 4 AM bars the city wide. Of course, the nocturnal glow of street lamps isn't the only distraction to a songbird's mating and defense routines.…

Minoso doc seeks final funding

Ted Cox — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 07:47:03 -0500

A documentary on former White Sox star Minnie Minoso is threatened with silence unless it can earn a final $20,000 in funding.

TV producer Tom Weinberg is going through the fund-raising site kickstarter.com to raise the money for final editing, starting Monday.…

3 AM tweeting, the other kind

Kevin Warwick — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 06:59:22 -0500

Late-night bars are the devil's work, and Chicago has too many of them. As the clock creeps closer to dawn, bad decisions begin dressing up all dapper like and convincing drunkards that, yes, another shot and grabbing a frozen pizza on the way home is the way to go.…

Aching lovers, hockey thugs, etc

J.R. Jones — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 16:54:11 -0500

Boy, how I hate getting scooped by my own coworkers. Here I had this great idea for a piece about The Deep Blue Sea, explaining how director Terence Davies strategically uses silence to frame and intensify the sounds and music in his story of a woman (Rachel Weisz) torn between her boring old husband and her virile young lover.…

Tribune Co. plays hardball with DirecTV

Ted Cox — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 16:33:11 -0500

Now this is hardball.

It was reported earlier this week that the Tribune Co. is threatening to pull its programming—primarily WGN TV and its national sibling station WGN America—from DirecTV.…

Notes among silences

Peter Margasak — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 16:03:27 -0500

As I mentioned in this week's Three Beats, 2012 is the centennial of brilliant composer and thinker John Cage. For many people Cage is just the prankster who composed 4'33", in which the performer does nothing but turn a few pages of sheet music for the duration.…

The new noise: so loud we can’t even hear it

Mara Shalhoup — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 09:37:00 -0500

Some silences are harder to find than others. Or maybe it’s that certain noises are harder to avoid?…

And the clock ticks on

Kate Schmidt — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 07:12:00 -0500

My aunt and uncle, one of my dad's brothers, lived in Greenfield, Iowa, where they had a farm. Greenfield's biggest claim to fame was (is?) having served as the location for the 1971 movie Cold Turkey, directed by Norman Lear and starring Dick Van Dyke.…

Sh is acceptable only in Scrabble

Michael Miner — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 07:27:21 -0500

When Staff Sergeant Robert Bales was identified as the NCO who shot and stabbed to death 17 Afghani civilians, woman and children included, a curious thing happened—or didn’t: no one described him as a silent, distant brooder.

"Robert Bales was a positive person who always had a smile on his face," an army officer told a public radio reporter.…

The startling truth about fan noise

Steve Bogira — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 07:05:09 -0500

When Tiger Woods began his backswing on the 15th tee, the crowd was, of course, hushed. It was the third round of the Arnold Palmer Invitational Saturday at the Bay Hill Club in Orlando.…

Into great silence

Ben Sachs — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 07:14:51 -0500

All movies serve as escapism: no matter what you’re watching, it’s always someone else’s experience. As I argued in this week’s issue, the recent art film The Kid With a Bike works as escapist entertainment because its writer-directors, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, incorporate aspects of popular storytelling to bring greater urgency to a realistic story.…

Starting today on the Bleader: Silence and Noise Week

Steve Bogira — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 06:33:00 -0500

We've missed the muffled sound of traffic after a healthy snow this year. We're glad to sacrifice it, all things considered, but it got us to thinking about our neglected sense of hearing.…