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Media / Politics / News Bites Alinsky and Terkel, talking

Posted by Michael Miner on Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 3:18 PM

Republicans from Newt Gingrich on down who have been trying to hang Saul Alinsky on Barack Obama are handicapped by their apparent failure to have any idea who it is they're talking about.

Alinsky was a community organizer born and raised in Chicago who worked closely with friends in high places in the Catholic Church. On what was probably his last visit to Chicago before he died in 1972, Alinsky appeared at the First Unitarian Church of Chicago, spoke sympathetically of the middle class and dismissively of demonstrators, and said the only way to change the system is from within it. He also spoke about demonizing the opposition. An organizer can't afford to grant that the enemy is 45 percent good and 55 percent bad, he said, because "people won't put themselves on the line for 10 percent."

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Religion / Onstage / Performing Arts / Dance The latest Reader performing arts reviews and previews

Posted by Sharon Lurye on Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 2:45 PM

Michael Brosilow
Hesperia

Shame is an overwhelming emotion. When it mixes with religion, it becomes an explosive force. Two plays this week go right ahead and light the fuse: Hesperia and Disgrace. In the former, a porn star joins an evangelical community, hoping to regain her innocence. In the latter, a corporate lawyer tries to run as far away from his Muslim upbringing as he can. Reader critic Zac Thompson recommends Hesperia, saying that playwright Randall Colburn paints his characters as, well, real characters, rather than chick tract stereotypes.

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Paranormal / Science Feline fears, confirmed

Posted by Sam Worley on Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 2:17 PM

Holy fuck, it’s true—my cat might be the end of me. And yours, perhaps, could be the end of you. In the March 2012 issue of the Atlantic (h/t the Awl, number one source for cat news on the Internet), Kathleen McAuliffe reports on Czech scientist Jaroslav Flegr, who researches Toxoplasma gondii—you know, the cat shit-borne parasite that causes toxoplasmosis? Flegr is unusually intimate with the parasite because he’s got it. It occurred to him that this might be the case 30 years ago, when he read about a flatworm parasite that uses an ant to get itself inside a sheep’s stomache. Jagr realized that his behavior “shared similarities with that of the reckless ant,” writes McAuliffe: He stepped into moving traffic. He spoke his mind in a communist country. He wasn’t bothered by gunfire.

Was he infected with a mind-controlling parasite? He was!

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Crickets / Music This week on the B Side

Posted by Miles Raymer on Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 1:31 PM

My interview with Ninja from South African zef-rap phenomenon Die Antwoord for this week's Reader was one of the most grueling transcription jobs I've ever done, thanks to his thick accent, the speed at which he speaks, and the extent to which he will expound on the questions asked of him—not to mention the quality of the phone connection to Johannesburg via a three-way call through a publicist's office in New York. (If you ever interview him, plan on five to seven times the amount of time you'd normally give yourself to transcribe.) But the story of Die Antwoord making a million dollars off of Interscope, then walking away owning the album the label bankrolled? It's wonderful and worth the effort.

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Film Oscar-nominated live-action shorts: Pentecost

Posted by J.R. Jones on Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 1:00 PM

All this week I'll be reviewing the Oscar nominees for best live-action short, which open Friday at Landmark's Century Centre. Check back this time tomorrow for the last installment.

Peter McDonald, a busy actor in Irish and British TV, movies, and theater, debuts as writer-director with Pentecost, a comic trifle about a young lad whose soccer obsession complicates his altar-boy duties at the local parish. Irish writer Frank O'Connor was a master at mixing Catholic mystery with childhood shenanigans; McDonald seems to be aiming for the same thing here, but the laughs are too aggressive and the lack of any true religious feeling leaves this a weak farce. A former altar boy myself, I remember the terror that I'd commit the unforgivable sin of fucking up the Mass, a character idea McDonald flirts with but then abandons in favor of a big climactic gag. A trailer follows the jump.

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Crickets / Music / Food & Drink The venue formerly known as Pancho's

Posted by Luca Cimarusti on Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 12:59 PM

Township restaurant entrance

Perhaps you noticed something a little different in this week's Reader music listings—perhaps the arrival of a new venue called Township. Turns out Township isn't entirely new; it's the revamped incarnation of Logan Square standby Pancho's.

MP Shows began booking bands at Pancho's, a mostly Cuban restaurant at 2200 N. California, in October 2010, after shows at Ronny's were suddenly shut down. A couple of months ago, MP honcho Brian Peterson and former Treat owner Tamiz Ciccone bought the place, and have since overhauled the menu, beer list, and aesthetic.

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Film Don't walk away, Resnais

Posted by Ben Sachs on Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 12:33 PM

I Want to Go Home (198(

Undeterred by one aborted attempt, next month I’ll try again to realize my dream of talking for 18 hours about Alain Resnais. Well, not all at once. The monologue will be spread across six sessions beginning on March 3 at 7 PM at Facets Multimedia and meeting for the next five Tuesday evenings. You can sign up here. The films screened and discussed include some of Resnais’s better-known (La guerre est finie, Providence, Wild Grass) and some that remain underappreciated in this country (Love Unto Death, Melo, and the Jules Feiffer-scripted I Want to Go Home). They vary in sentiment from heartsick to morbid to downright wacky, and no one who’s seen them all could support the popular misconception that Resnais’s art is strictly cerebral.

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Music / Post No Bills 12 O'Clock Track: O Têrço, "Flauta"

Posted by Peter Margasak on Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 12:00 PM

From the mid- to late 60s, Forma was one of Brazil's best record labels, releasing top-notch bossa nova with a progressive bent. Among the artists in its catalog are Baden Powell, Quarteto em Cy, Moacir Santos, Deodato, and Carlos Lyra. I had no idea O Têrço had also cut music for Forma until Brazilian reissue label Discobertas released a pair of titles by the band in late 2010. O Têrço's music was a long way from bossa nova; they're best known as one of the country's most celebrated prog-rock outfits of the early to mid-70s. But on their self-titled debut for Forma, released in 1970, they hadn't quite reached the heights of heaviness that would soon define them. There's nothing lightweight on the debut, and you can clearly hear the churning of elaborate ideas, but the psych-pop aesthetic isn't too far from what Os Mutantes were putting down a few years earlier. O Têrço still exist, but unless you have a grudge against your ears, I wouldn't bother with their recent recordings.

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Film Oscar-nominated short animations: A Wild Life

Posted by J.R. Jones on Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 11:00 AM

All this week I've been reviewing the Oscar nominees for best short animation, which open Friday at Landmark's Century Centre. Check back this time tomorrow for the last installment.

Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby's A Wild Life is one of two Oscar contenders that were funded by the National Film Board of Canada (the other is Patrick Doyon's Dimanche), which only goes to show that, for all the supposed evils of European-style socialism, it certainly has better cartoons. This hand-painted western story is distinguished by its handsome brushwork, which gives a tactile sense of the paint and a fair amount of expression to the simply drawn characters. Like many young Brits at the turn of the 20th century, the hero takes off for Canada in search of adventure, and Forbis and Tilby often frame their period details in static images: clothing, personal items, commercial products. In voice-over the hero explains how the call of the wild keeps pulling him farther west across the continent; all the while, black-and-white titles explain what a comet is. I expected this to end with the cowboy getting hit by the comet, but as it turns out, he is the comet, destined to disintegrate. A clip from the film follows the jump.

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Mego_0: Minnie Riperton's "Reasons" http://t.co/xk7uXm0F
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