Lead Stories Michael David Rostoker, 41, an electronics-firm CEO, was arrested in San Francisco in September, allegedly on his way to meet a 13-year-old Vietnamese girl whom customs agents say he intended to marry. According to the agents, Rostoker had spent $150,000 on the girl and her family, and his E-mail messages to her exhorted her to stay thin, learn English, and have sex with him “often.” A week earlier Patrick J....
By Erika Erhart “Oh, they found it right away. When they opened her up, it was right there. A tumor the size of a grapefruit. You get to be my age and these things happen all the time,” she says, handing me a spoon. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “Horrible? You think that’s horrible? Listen, she had an aneurysm as big as a kalamata olive....
STYLES OF BEYOND Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Hip-hop’s persistence on the Billboard pop charts means it’s not just city kids spending money on the stuff: these days Master P is as much a mainstream icon as Mr. T was 15 years ago. Yet while the hip-hop nation has been incorporating the suburbs, the image of hip-hop artists has remained overwhelmingly urban. Flying in the face of this convention, Styles of Beyond rappers Takbir and Ryu proudly tout their roots in the San Fernando Valley–the suburban Los Angeles wasteland parodied by Moon Unit Zappa around the time The A-Team was popular....
In your book The Straight Dope you wrote about a possible link between aluminum and Alzheimer’s disease. You waffled on the question of whether aluminum actually caused Alzheimer’s and gave your stock response that research was continuing (equivalent to Ann Landers kissing off a question by telling the writer to seek professional advice). Well, here it is 13 years later, during which research presumably has continued. I have read at least two articles in the past few years saying aluminum has been pretty much ruled out as a factor in Alzheimer’s....
drazen.qxd Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » It may have started in 1948, when President Harry Truman integrated the armed forces and a lot of Dixiecrats (southern white racist Democrats) began to bolt the party rather than recognize the civil rights struggle. But the trend accelerated in 1969; Mr. Judge was five at the time and might not remember. This was, however, the beginning of Richard Nixon’s “southern strategy,” a deliberate attempt by Republicans to court white racist voters....
When Gustavo Leone got the assignment to score Court Theatre’s adaptation of Prosper Merimee’s novella “Carmen,” he was mindful of inevitable comparisons with Georges Bizet’s classic. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Newell approached James Robinson, an old hand at directing musical theater, about adapting Merimee’s novella, a lurid tale of lust, jealousy, and murder that’s recounted as if it were a scientific report by an archaeologist who’d traveled to Spain and become fascinated with its Gypsy subculture....
VERBENA Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » If you’re not listening closely, Souls for Sale (Merge)–the debut album from the Alabama foursome Verbena–sounds like more of the same 70s-inspired guitar rock that’s currently clogging the nation’s airwaves. But Verbena has worked out its own appealing take on the form, and it includes neither overwrought caterwauling nor unbearable effects wankery. Drummer Les Nuby and bassist Daniel Johnston (not the savant from Austin) swing with a tough, economical, Stonesy swagger, and guitarists Anne Marie Griffin and Scott Bondy send well-aimed, meaty riffs hurtling through the band’s well-written tunes....
The Healing Oasis Veterinary Hospital in Sturtevant, Wisconsin, just north of Kenosha, seems more like a spa for the idle rich than a vet’s office. Dr. Pedro Rivera, his wife, Michelle, and veterinarian Shawn Mulvihill treat animals with a combination of chiropractic work, massage therapy, homeopathic medicines, and flower remedies. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » At the hospital, candles burn in the exam rooms, and the vets are careful not to offend their nonhuman patients, examining them on the floor and asking their permission before touching them....
Mas Moonshine, Por Favor Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Since it opened in January 1999, Mas has been one of Wicker Park’s trendiest restaurants, drawing a nightly crowd of well-groomed foodies and locals. But Mas’s bar scene is as big a draw as Manion’s acclaimed cuisine–especially in summer when the French doors are flung wide and specialty drinks from an array of Latin American countries can be sipped inside in open air or at tables outside....
Silver Apples July 28, Empty Bottle Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Really, one should be skeptical of anything that comes recommended as a revolution, a radical break with history, and sure enough, the supposedly humble DJs and remix wizards of electronica have begun to succumb to some age-old impulses, mugging for magazine covers and writing manifestos. Maybe most tellingly, the psychedelic/experimental types (read: the ones that don’t dance) have recently started construction on a creation myth....
For the next four years, Morris interviewed Reagan once a month in the Oval Office. He sat in on cabinet meetings and flew to Geneva to watch the president stare down Mikhail Gorbachev. But such nearness wasn’t enough for the besotted scribe. Reagan treated him as no more than a minor staff member or, worse, a journalist. Morris wanted to experience the real Reagan, the inner man who dwelled behind the one-liners and the speeches he used to both charm and deflect the world....
Except for underwear and shoes (size 13 double Es, hard to come by), Jack Drumke can’t remember the last time he purchased clothing and can’t imagine why he would. Drumke is nattily attired in a pair of black Pierre Cardin corduroy slacks and an Italian-knit cashmere sweater from the men’s shop at Bonwit Teller. That store bit the dust here in 1990, but that’s no problem for Drumke, who would be loath to set foot in the place anyway....
Since Edgar Allan Poe invented the modern mystery story in 1841, everyone from Nobel Prize winners to functional illiterates have tried their hands at the form, creating everything from brilliant literature to unreadable tripe. But few stories have even remotely resembled the works of Harry Stephen Keeler. In his 50-odd–make that quite odd–mysteries, the Chicagoan created a hysterical alternate universe full of eccentric characters, peculiar events, and seemingly random insanity. He’s been out of print in English since 1953, but a small, growing cult preserves the memory of Keeler, the most bizarre mystery writer of all time....
By Ben Joravsky “This project was designed by a small core of people acting behind the scenes,” says Ron Ernst, a longtime Jefferson Park resident. “So when the rest of us found out what was going on we’re even madder, because it looks as though they’re trying to sneak something by us.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » On December 1, Camiros released its Jefferson Park Business District Improvement Plan....
LATIN PLAYBOYS Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » There’s really no way the Latin Playboys–David Hidalgo and Louie Perez of Los Lobos and producers Mitchell Froom and Tchad Blake–could ever replicate the remarkable off-the-cuff feel of their 1994 debut. A side project that grew out of Froom and Blake’s work on the Los Lobos album Kiko, Latin Playboys was unburdened by marketplace expectations, and its inventive genre hybridizations and first-rate songwriting still sound fresh today....
LOUD FAMILY Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Scott Miller, veteran California popster and patriarch of the Loud Family, counts Jacques Derrida among his favorite writers, but he also loves all six albums by the original Monkees. That isn’t as much of a contradiction as it might seem–like much postmodern lit, the Monkees’ big-screen movie Head is mostly about its own process–and it goes a long way toward explaining Miller’s songs, which embrace the pop craftsmanship of the psychedelic 60s even as they aggravate its artifice....
MONEY MARK/MIX MASTER MIKE Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » For most of the last decade Money Mark (aka Mark Ramos-Nishita) has been content to make other people’s music. In the late 80s the self-taught keyboardist did session work for an obscure production team called the Dust Brothers and laid down parts on various Delicious Vinyl releases, including early singles by Tone-Loc. But music didn’t pay all the bills, so he did carpentry to make ends meet, and it was through carpentry that he met the Beastie Boys....
Lead Stories Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In Bradenton, Florida, Palestinian researcher Mazen Al-Najjar just completed his second year of confinement without being told the evidence against him. Al-Najjar, a U.S. resident for 15 years with three American-born children, faces deportation for some sort of association with a terrorist group, the nature of which the Justice Department has repeatedly refused to disclose, citing national security....
PARSONS DANCE COMPANY Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » David Parsons has a knack for stage illusions created through quirky articulations of the body and inventive lighting. In his classic Caught, a single dancer captured in a strobe light appears to fly, and in Instinct, one dancer with a furry top half and another with a furry bottom come together to produce a rapidly evolving series of satyrlike creatures....
RACHEL BARTON Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The question hardly anybody wants to ask is: would 22-year-old violinist Rachel Barton be booked solid for the next couple seasons had a tragic Metra accident not claimed one of her legs? Probably not–it’s generally quite difficult for a young performer to break away from a pack of competitive prodigies like the one Barton came up with....
