In last week’s column, a reader took me to task for not running any questions about pussy lately. To address Frustrated Femme’s concerns, I dug up all my backlogged pussy questions, shared them with a couple of pussy experts–Anne Semans and Cathy Winks, authors of The New Good Vibrations Guide to Sex–and, lo, Pussapalooza ’99 was born. Welcome to Pussapalooza ’99: Week Two, with more pussy questions and more pussy answers....
I’m too broke to buy a copy of your book, but I’m dying to know what you decided to do about your son’s circumcision! This is a big issue between my husband and myself. I’m all for circumcision–I don’t want to wash that thing! And what about infections? Teenage boys aren’t exactly hygienic, ya know! He says “genital mutilation” and “let him choose when he’s older.” Now, come on–when you were 13, if someone asked you to lop off a bit of your dick, would you say yes?...
Hey, Faggot: You watched a videotape of your best friend sucking his own dick, which “excited you,” and you’re wondering if your buddy is gay or bi? What about you?! You’re the one getting turned on watching videos of him suck his dick, for cryin’ out loud. Projecting much? Are you wondering if your buddy’s bi, or are you hoping he is? Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » For the record: Sucking his own dick does not make your buddy gay, any more than jerking off makes him gay....
MAN OR ASTRO-MAN? 9/12, Metro On these self-proclaimed aliens’ latest album for Touch and Go, Made From Technetium, they sound less than ever like a surf band and more like, well, a Touch and Go band–less twang, flintier riffs, more singing. I think they’ve assimilated into their adopted environs a little too well. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » SPECTRUM, FRONTIER 9/12, Empty Bottle Speaking of astro-men…the vitriolic breakup of Spacemen 3 has led to revealing exaggerations of its leaders’ true natures....
Proven star power was a scarce commodity at last year’s Chicago Blues Festival. The shortage was so acute that Buddy Guy–the only household name in the lineup–told the local press he was less than impressed with his costars. He even remarked that the annual festival might benefit from charging a small fee for the prime seats at Petrillo Music Shell–a proposition previously championed by more than a few blues insiders, but never by someone wielding Guy’s clout....
Do male supremacists support gun control? The Chicago Crime Commission’s “Action Alert” (Fall/Winter) quotes Kirsten Lindberg, author of Girls Behind the Boys, Girls in Gangs, on why girls have taken on a stronger role in street gangs: “With easy access to guns, girls do not have to rely on their generally weaker physical strength to have the same power as their male counterparts.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Why “full disclosure” may not mean much....
Indiana discovered by scientists. “When we ponder biodiversity, we often take our own backyard for granted,” writes John Shuey in the fall newsletter of the Nature Conservancy in Indiana. “Indiana is indeed producing a rash of new species discoveries….Eric Metzler has been sampling prairie and savanna moths for years in Ohio. With the restoration of Kankakee Sands underway [in northwest Indiana’s Newton County], the Nature Conservancy asked him to sample savanna and sand prairie moths for two years at the site…....
Unfinished History Though it might seem hasty to judge a curator on the basis of a single exhibition, the MCA has been adrift for so long it’s hard to refrain; based on this show, the prognosis must be guarded at best. On the one hand, the exhibit brings together a number of artists not seen in Chicago before; some of the art is very good; and the show has the provocative theme of increasing cultural diversity in the coming millennium, an idea somewhat muddled in the wall texts and introductory video but a bit clearer in the catalog....
By Ben Joravsky Other residents complain of blatant prostitution near the intersection of Lawrence and Christiana. Not long ago Marcia Altinay saw a prostitute and a john in her backyard. “I let my dog out in the back one morning and there they were,” she says. “I don’t know how to put this, but she was giving this man her services. I lost it. I couldn’t believe it. I ran out of my house and started yelling at them, ‘Get out!...
By George Savino Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » It’s hard sometimes to impress Europeans with the natural beauty and cultural sophistication of the Chicago area, but Ravinia and the CSO are an impressive combination. And I’d promised that people really listen to the music instead of yammering the whole time, that it’s even enforced–sentries walk around the park wielding signs that read, “Silence, please....
DAN PENN Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » It’s hard to get beyond Dan Penn’s reputation as a songwriter: a key component of the Memphis-soul hit factory Muscle Shoals and its predecessor, Fame, Penn penned (with the likes of Chips Moman and Spooner Oldham) some of the most enduring soul classics of all time, including “It Tears Me Up” (Percy Sledge), “I’m Your Puppet” (James and Bobby Purify), “Do Right Woman Do Right Man” (Aretha Franklin), and perhaps the greatest Memphis-soul tune of all time, “The Dark End of the Street” (James Carr)....
You can hear sandhill cranes long before you see them. The migrating flocks fly high–a thousand feet or more. In fact, cranes have been seen flying as high as 13,000 feet. Standing at the south edge of the prairie at Miami Woods, I was watching a red-tailed hawk soaring over the open ground when I heard the distant tone. The books all talk of trumpeting calls, but I think the sound is more like that of a French horn....
LONDON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Sibelius’s praises are sung far more often than his pieces are played. To be sure, some of his stirring but lightweight tableaux–such as the patriotic Finlandia, the mordantly sentimental Valse triste, and two or three of the tone poems based on the Finnish national epic, Kalevala–do make the rounds, and his eccentrically rhapsodic, well-proportioned Violin Concerto is popular with soloists who want in their repertoire a 20th-century work with Romantic roots....
Boris Grebenshikov It’s one of the rare moments in Michael Apted’s documentary The Long Way Home when the subject of the film–Russian rock star Boris Grebenshikov–actually says something in Russian. He’s singing in a London studio with the man who was to catapult him to Western fame, Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics. Grebenshikov’s tenor voice is smoky but sweet: Ona moya drama. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Inspired by smuggled-in recordings of the Beatles and Bob Dylan–and by his own desire for meaning beyond the Soviet Union’s next five-year plan, Grebenshikov had been making his own rock music since the early 1970s....
Lead Stories Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In March four strippers at the Scene Karaoke and Coconut Karaoke bars in Pattaya, Thailand, received $80 in indecency fines for an act in which live ducklings were placed inside plastic “eggs” (with air holes) and inserted into the women’s bodies. In the course of their routines they would “lay” the eggs, which would then “hatch.”...
POONA THE FUCKDOG AND OTHER PLAYS FOR CHILDREN, Trap Door Theatre. Jeff Goode’s most frequently produced play in Chicago is The Eight: Reindeer Monologues, a witty anti-Christmas show. Poona the Fuckdog takes a similar approach–only here Goode’s deconstructing children’s theater. The show is purportedly a series of fairy tales dramatized for children, but from the beginning it goes awry. For one thing, the cuddly pooch around whom most of the stories are structured, Poona, turns out to be a precocious, sexually active girl dog....
Ivanov In this moment–one of the most Chekhovian on a Chicago stage in recent memory–we learn that life is serious, fate is cruel, love doesn’t stand a chance against bad timing, and human beings are incapable of the heroic gestures that might elevate their lives above the level of farce. Yet in Chekhov’s eyes, our pathetic efforts to find some semblance of dignity make us dear, pitiable creatures. Like Borkin, we’re clowns bumbling along as the sky falls in....
The Gin Game Drury Lane Dinner Theatre Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Sadly, the same attitude toward the audience seems to prevail in plays concocted for actors of a certain age. Designed to capitalize on their stars’ crusty charm and nostalgic appeal, these vehicles claim to be as roadworthy as the vintage autos proverbially driven by little old ladies from Pasadena–and some are, such as Alfred Uhry’s sensitive, skillfully written Driving Miss Daisy....
To Mr. J.R. Jones: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » A. The situationists were neither anarchists, Marxists, nor any one-sided ideological position/tendency since they, correctly, believed holding ideologies (i.e., dead, petrified thoughts) is alienating. They did critically synthesize elements of Hegelian-Marxian philosophy, psychoanalysis, Dada, and anarchy–for their theory/practice. C. The critical use of situationist theory, or any actual self-critical and big-picture grasping revolutionary theory, doesn’t have to lead to paralysis....
Tap of the World Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Last year Alexander’s project had to compete with the Chicago on Tap Festival. Presented jointly by the Old Town School of Folk Music and the Dance Center of Columbia College, Chicago on Tap was the second biennial event presented by the two organizations, and sources at both places say no decision has been made yet regarding another edition in 1998....
