Lead Stories Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » According to a May San Francisco Chronicle report, 2,000 followers of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in Fairfield, Iowa, have recently been clashing with the 8,000 townies over whether homes and businesses should be rebuilt to face east so that the residents will lead more fulfilling, harmonious lives. According to the followers’ beliefs, sunrises produce energy and sunsets produce lethargy....
pakshir.qxd Point one: Mr. Makhmalbaf does not have children from both marriages. All three of his children are from his first marriage. After the death of his wife, his sister-in-law cared for his children. Islamic law does not allow single men and women to cohabit–that is a basis for marriage–hence a second marriage. Let’s not even mention the comment about children and the number of shoes! Best of Chicago voting is live now....
AVAIL, DILLINGER FOUR 8/25, FIRESIDE BOWL Tim Barry and Joe Banks, the singer and guitarist for the Virginia quintet Avail, have been monkeying around with post-hardcore punk since 1988, but they don’t sound the least bit tired on their latest full-length, One Wrench (Fat Wreck Chords). In recent years they’ve injected their anthemic quickies with tropes adapted from country and bluegrass, but they’re not headed for Bloodshot territory anytime soon. They’re touring with openers Dillinger Four, a quartet of Minneapolis boys who’re milking their relative youth while they still can: their third album, Versus God (Hopeless), puts over timeless messages like “Get Your Study Hall Out of My Recess” and “Music Is None of My Business” on sheer roll-around-on-the-floor energy....
By Michael Miner There’s been trouble in the Ninth Congressional District, reported Susan Dodge and Fran Spielman. Allegations of pilfered campaign signs were flying. “The Schakowsky campaign said a field coordinator videotaped a city transportation employee last week walking away from a business in the 1400 block of West Devon Avenue carrying Schakowsky signs,” they wrote. Jerry Morrison, campaign manager for Janice Schakowsky, told the Sun-Times that more than 800 Schakowsky signs had been removed....
SVEN-AKE JOHANSSON & ALEX VON SCHLIPPENBACH Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Swedish drummer Sven-Ake Johansson was a key player in the shackle-busting European free-jazz explosion of the late 60s: he played on Peter Brotzmann classics like For Adolphe Sax and Machine Gun and in the great quintet led by trumpeter Manfred Schoof, and since the mid-70s he’s been involved in a regular duo with Alex von Schlippenbach....
THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (ABRIDGED), at Bailiwick Repertory. If you’ve never seen an actor carry an entire show, check out Ted Bales in The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged). Bales–whose monstrous comedic talents helped make Party a hit here and around the nation–returns to Chicago with a performance style more nuanced, whimsical, and eclectic than ever. One of three actors charged with bringing all 37 of Shakespeare’s plays to the stage in a single evening, he rises to the occasion by sinking into a petulant funk, unwilling to make more than a cursory effort to portray various kings, queens, lovers, and murderers....
By Tori Marlan With her 11-month-old son propped on her hip, a TV news camera illuminating her face, and the chorus of veteran activists behind her, Byrd, a 24-year-old computer-science student who’d felt intimidated by Pirodan when she previously confronted him, wonders if perhaps the tables have turned. The show of force is stronger than she’d expected: blacks, whites, Latinos, a silver-haired woman aided by a walker, a smattering of children, and a man in a business suit are among those rallying to her cause....
In your book The Straight Dope you were asked whether John Wayne had ever served in the military. You said no–that though Wayne as a youth had wanted to become a naval officer, “during World War II he was rejected for military service.” However, it may be more interesting than that. According to a recent Wayne bio, for all his vaunted patriotism, Wayne may actually have tried to stay out of the service....
Broken Home We consulted experts. They stood around our little courtyard off Wellington and inspected, making notes and drawings on coffee-stained clipboards. “It’s not pretty,” sighed the master mason. “Big job, but we can do it. It’ll take my whole crew though. Lintels are all rotted.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » We received glossy envelopes in the mail with neatly typed pages of bids all ending in many zeros....
Friday 9/22 – Thursday 9/28 23 SATURDAY “Someone once said, ‘Find them, fuck them, feed them and leave them.’ But that don’t work. People I work and play with have a habit of moving into my life. And they don’t move out so easily,” wrote Ben Reitman, the well-known hobo, physician, reformer, author, and ladies’ man. The good doctor, who grew up in the city’s notorious First Ward and was an early advocate of the widespread use of condoms (despite fathering a number of out-of-wedlock children), wrote a lot of letters to his lovers, including Emma Goldman....
European Union Film Festival Their Frozen Dream Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In Flight of the Eagle (1982) Swedish director Jan Troell dramatized an 1897 balloon expedition to the north pole that ended in disaster for three Scandinavian explorers. Fifteen years later, on the 100th anniversary of the event, he created this hour-long documentary, using diaries, logs, letters, and footage from his earlier film to retell the riveting story of those foolhardy adventurers, who died in the arctic cold months after their balloon crashed and whose remains weren’t found until 1930....
By Cheryl Ross The day before, David Mengarelli came in and plopped a pair of shoes on the counter. “You used to be under the el didn’t ya?” Mengarelli asked. “Dad started it in 1921. See behind you, see the pictures?” Beaming, Geroulis pointed to a collection of mounted photographs on the wall. “See, there’s a picture of my dad here in 1921 underneath the el. That’s my dad in ’71....
LISITSA AND KUZNETSOFF/ ANTHONY AND JOSEPH PARATORE Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » No duo-piano team is more musical than Lisitsa and Kuznetsoff, and none is more flamboyant than the Paratore brothers, two family acts that will make a joint appearance this week in Grant Park. Much of the literature for two pianos consists of transcriptions that try to mimic the volume of an orchestra and show off keyboard pyrotechnics, and this concert promises plenty of dazzling, split-second-precise synchronization for its own sake....
By David Moberg The base of the Teamster reform movement in Chicago has long been at United Parcel Service. In 1969 Jackson led workers in a wildcat strike against both the company and union leaders that won workers more control over the shifts they worked and the length of their workday. They and other reformers continued to protest bad contracts and demanded union representation of their grievances and the right to speak out at union meetings....
By Elana Seifert Susie’s brother Steve Lilovich–who runs the retail component of DeKalb County Marketing, George’s Market, two doors down on South Commercial–met me early on a Saturday morning when 400 chickens were to be slaughtered “Buddhist kill” fashion, which means with head and feet intact. Coops of chickens raised on several Amish farms in Indiana–“drug and pesticide free”–arrive by truck at 5 AM every day but Sunday. Best of Chicago voting is live now....
Chet Atkins Christmas With the Louvin Brothers (University of Chicago Press) Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » But why? That’s the question Vanderbilt sociologist Richard Peterson sets out to answer in his new book, Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity. He posits that ingenious marketing, in response to trends in both the entertainment business and national politics, streamlined a wide range of traditions into the music that we now choose to represent our idealized rural past....
RAY DRUMMOND’S ALL-STAR EXCURSION BAND Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Bassist Ray Drummond’s heavy swing and sprightly solos have made him one of the most recorded sidemen in recent history, but the band he leads would probably sound great even without him. Mature young pianist Stephen Scott can summon depth, even electricity, onstage (his newest CD, Vision Quest, finally captures this energy undiminished), and saxist David Sanchez straddles the jazz and Latin-music worlds like the proverbial colossus....
The kids can’t play–not yet, anyway. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » However unripe they were when picked, almost to a man these Bulls have the look of players who could develop into stars. They may turn out to be busts–the development of players as they adjust to the rigors (and riches) of NBA basketball is one of the most difficult things to predict in sports–but general manager Jerry Krause clearly drafted them with a future championship and not mere proficiency in mind....
By Jordan Marsh While conducting the survey in the Lakefront building, Venkatesh was accosted by several young gang members with guns. “They thought that I was an intruder,” he says. “They thought I was a Latino gang member. They really didn’t know who I was….So they basically kept me in a stairwell in an abandoned apartment building and sort of held me there until they felt comfortable enough to let me go....
By Cara Jepsen Snider hitched a ride to the countryside, where she was eventually reunited with her father and other family members. Her mother had died in the blast. She had been working with community mobilization forces to tear down houses vacated by fleeing residents, so as to hinder the spread of fires in the event of incendiary bomb attacks. The day before the bomb fell, at Snider’s urging, her mother had retrieved her from the austere country school where she and her classmates had been sent for their safety....
