His forehead studded with peroxide-blond stubble, the back of his neck cloaked by a shock of matching curls. Gold chains. Gold rings. Tattoos strangling his throat. He collects exotic cats and machine guns, and even at a distance, the size of his personality looms large. This might read like a description of Joe Exotic—it’s actually Roy Boy Cooper, a tattooer from Gary, Indiana, who’s left an indelible mark on the region since the 1970s....
A decade ago, I desperately tried to find a way to the UK after I heard that legendary band Mott the Hoople was re-forming for a show at London’s Hammersmith Apollo. Though five original members were touted, four ended up playing, and that reunion—along with 2013 and 2018 UK shows—were met with generally glowing reviews. I missed all those gigs, but pinch me: at last, these glam-rock gods are coming to the U....
I’d never claim to have more than an armchair interest in psychology, but I posit that the chronic pandemic/election/existential-crisis fatigue that Americans are living through in 2020 has resulted in some level of mass anhedonia. So it’s all the more thrilling when you find something that you’re genuinely stoked about. When New Zealand extreme-metal trio Ulcerate dropped Stare Into Death and Be Still (Debemer Morti) in early spring, the world was still coming to grips with the realities of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the album felt so on the nose that after listening to it a couple times I had to mentally file it away as “something to revisit to when it doesn’t feel like the world is collapsing....
I can think of at least 60 billion reasons why the Democrats changed the rules to allow Michael Bloomberg a spot at future presidential debates. Back to the rules change. Democratic candidates will be allowed on the debate stage if they reach a threshold in national polls—but there will be no threshold requirement for the number of contributors to a campaign. Donny and the MAGA hat crew will be crying their crocodile tears about the process being rigged against Bernie and Bernie bros getting screwed—when, in fact, they care about Bernie bros almost as little as they care about Black people....
Director Robin Witt places 34 audience seats—two groups of 12, two groups of five—on the stage surrounding the playing area for her keenly observed production of Lucas Hnath’s heady 2017 play. In essence, two juries and two galleries observe the proceedings: Nora, the proto-feminist heroine of Ibsen’s 1879 scandalous classic, returns to the household she left 15 years ago when she abandoned her husband, children, and all material comfort in the name of self-actualization, and Hnath spends 90 intellectually hypercharged minutes asking us to weigh everyone’s culpability....
If you want a sense of what Janine Nabers‘s Welcome to Jesus aspires to be—its ideal Platonic form—take a look at the Jordan Peele movie Get Out. The two productions have an awful lot in common—except that, where Get Out is a nasty-great piece of satire, there’s not much reason to come to Jesus, running now at American Theater Company. Out of the woods and into this misery walks Him (yes, that’s as much of a name as he gets), a mysterious black teen who, it happens, can throw a football hard, far, and accurately....
Some days, everything we try to say as journalists comes out wrong. People notice, and people are picky. Wife of a Bears’ lineman wins a bronze medal today in Rio Olympics https://t.co/kwZoGY0xAX pic.twitter.com/VZrjOvr80h — Chicago Tribune (@chicagotribune) August 7, 2016 And so forth. As always, there were men who stepped up in their own way to sound supportive: @chicagotribune filled with hope for my daughters’ future that this anonymous woman’s husband gave her permission to #bringhomethegold...
People often talk about machines taking over society like it’s a bad thing, but Connecticut multi-instrumentalist Carl Testa envisions a relationship in which musicians and computers coexist just fine. Testa plays double bass and electronics with bandleaders such as Anthony Braxton and Tyshawn Sorey, but in his own groups he likes to focus on playing his strings while computer processing adds dynamics to the sound. Testa has developed a series of computer systems that analyze the playing of his collaborators and respond to it by imposing changes in amplitude, reverberation, and decay on each musician’s output....
When last we looked in on those wacky, warlike Brits—in May, courtesy of Chicago Shakespeare Theater—they were busy taking over France. First King Edward III did it. Then Henry V did it again. Then it was Henry VI’s turn to do it, but he made a mess of things and kept his Gallic domains only by the skin of his diplomatic teeth. And a significant reason for the improvement is the material....
This story was originally published by City Bureau on December 2, 2020. There were 150 Chinese-speaking poll workers in this November’s election, said Chinese outreach director Jane Lau, who has worked at the Board of Election Commissioners for 15 years. She’s worked with churches, libraries, high schools, and other organizations—over time, that outreach had allowed her to virtually recruit more people in this unconventional election year. Lau added she was encouraged to see that 25 percent of workers were high school or college students....
I ‘ve been reading an awful lot lately about efforts to keep students safe on college campuses. Safe not just from physical harm but from ideas, speech, and idea-speaking people that may upset them. Examples are as ubiquitous and darkly fascinating as that YouTube video of a python eating an alligator. In one recent spasm, at Northwestern University, professor Laura Kipnis found herself charged under the Title IX antidiscrimination act for publishing an essay arguing that, far from empowering the students, prohibitions against student-professor dating encourage them to “regard themselves as exquisitely sensitive creatures....
I want you to know something-Satan is a total loser, and he knows it.” The Great Satan only runs around 75 minutes. But it moves at such a wildly frenzied pace that if you can actually sit through the whole film without taking a breather-or just getting up to get a beer-you are stronger than most. While Everything Is Terrible! is first and foremost about creating outsider video art through obscure found footage, it’s also about testing whether you, the viewer, can take it....
“No, I refuse.” Addy balked at first, then expressed his appreciation, and charged the customer $80. The man shook his head sadly as he pulled out a credit card. “I wish you were here forever,” he said. But Addy wasn’t mourning. Wearing a cowboy hat and a red button-up shirt embroidered with musical notes and trimmed in white fringe, he stayed jovial as he rang up a seemingly endless stream of customers clutching stacks of vinyl, books, CDs, old magazines, band posters, and random junk, sharing stories of old rock shows and favorite LPs purchased at his store....
“Lots of people in Park Ridge are not for Hillary, that’s for sure,” says Chris Aryan, who lives in the northwest suburb where Hillary Clinton grew up. “It’s tough to find a Democrat in Park Ridge.” Barry Gale, another party attendee, wears buttons for Thillens and U.S. congressional candidate Bob Dold. But any sign of support for the Republican presidential candidate is conspicuously absent. Here, the TV is on, and television commenters are announcing more states for Donald Trump....
Q: I’m a lesbian in a long-term relationship. After much conversation with my partner we’ve decided to explore cuckolding role-play together. I’m not comfortable bringing another person into the relationship—especially right now—but I am willing to explore this as a fantasy. The thing is, I’m having a hard time figuring out how to do it. There’s not a lot of info out there on how to engage in cuck role-play, especially between two women....
Q: I’m a heterosexual cis woman in a monogamous marriage. My husband and I have always struggled to connect sexually, mostly because he has extreme anxiety that makes doing anything new or different difficult. He’s been in therapy since before I met him, but it doesn’t seem to be helping much. His anxiety has caused him to shut down every sexual ask I’ve ever made because he’s afraid he won’t “do it right....
Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Monday, November 13, 2017. A GOP state representative from the suburbs is running against Rauner from the right Republican state representative Jeanne Ives is trying to win conservative support for her primary challenge against unpopular incumbent governor Bruce Rauner. During an appearance in Arlington Heights Saturday, she criticized the governor for signing the sanctuary state bill, the school funding bill, and the reproductive rights bill HB 40, which allows state health insurance and Medicaid funding for abortion and eliminates a “trigger provision” that would have made abortion illegal if Roe v....
Tuesday night saxophonist Tim Berne performs with a top-notch quartet called Broken Shadows that’s devoted to the music of three brilliant reedists from Fort Worth, Texas: Ornette Coleman, Dewey Redman, and Julius Hemphill. I previewed the concert, which is the Chicago debut of this new band—which also includes reedist Chris Speed, drummer Dave King, and bassist Reid Anderson—but I didn’t make much of the contrast between Berne’s slinky, blues-streaked playing in this quartet and the tangled, information-packed style he’s pursued elsewhere for years....
Last week the Chicago Philharmonic Society announced the appointment of a new executive director, Terell M. Johnson. A classically trained musician as well as an administrator, he’ll succeed another musician-turned-administrator, Donna Milanovich, who’s retiring after ten years in that job—and more as a Chi Phil flutist and board member. “We love the Joffrey, we have a wonderful relationship still. We were sad we couldn’t follow them into the Opera House, but we understand that the rules of the Opera House are what they are,” Milanovich says....
Eifman Ballet returns to the Auditorium May 17-19 for the North American premiere of artistic director Boris Eifman’s The Pygmalion Effect. The latest in the choreographer’s spectacular psychological ballets—and his first comedy—reimagines the myth of the sculptor who falls in love with his work of art into a story of a ballroom champion who teaches an awkward young woman to dance. “The story of Pygmalion drew my attention because it shows the process of a character’s evolution....
