Jessica Hopper on girl groups p 25

The most popular gassy Jewish lesbian on the Web CHICAGO’S FREE WEEKLY | THIS ISSUE IN FOUR SECTIONS p 10 FRIDTheAY, JAN 6, 2006 | VOLUME 34, NUMBER 15 Best Movies andJonathan RosenbaMusicum, p 1 J.R. Jones, p 17 ofA 15 -music2005-critic pileup, p 19

McSweeney’s reprints a lost Chicago writer, a Roscoe Village businessman says he’s being PLUS harassed for speaking up, the music scene rallies around a veteran soundman, and more. Section One Letters 3 Reviews Music 25 Columns One Kiss Can Lead to Another: Girl Group Hot Type 4 Sounds Lost and Found, Evie Sands’s Any On the Trib on the war Way That You Want Me The Straight Dope 5 Books 27 Literally scared to death? Triksta: Life and Death and New Orleans Rap by Nik Cohn, The Riddle of the The Works 8 Traveling Skull by Harry Stephen Keeler A row in Roscoe Village Plus Our Town 10 What Are You Wearing? 15 A podcaster to watch; how the City Council Aay Preston-Myint spends its money; have Virgin, will travel January 6, 2006 Ink Well 31 This week’s crossword: Subscription Descriptions

ON THE COVER: JIM NEWBERRY (MADGE), COURTESY BERTHA MCNEAL (THE VELVELETTES) The Best Film of the Past Two Years And 24 more picks from what the industry thought us yokels could handle in 2005

By Jonathan Rosenbaum

o choose the best movies of 2005 is to compromise. I T limit my list of candidates to films that have screened in Chicago, but I could easily fill it with movies that haven’t screened in the U.S. at all, and God knows what I’ve missed altogether. I’m at the mercy of studio heads, distrib- utors, and publicists, whose deci- sions about what to release and when defy comprehension. I saw Woody Allen’s Match Point in Madrid in mid- November, believing the distribu- tor’s announcement that it would open in Chicago in December. Surprised at how much I liked it, Idecided it probably belonged on my list, but then some industry executives decided that only the people in New York and Los Angeles should get to see it this year (in time for Oscar nomina- tions), not the less discriminating moviegoers in the Chicago boon- docks. I also couldn’t consider other films that won’t open here until 2006, such as Tommy Lee The World Jones’s The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. onto the Internet, Cinea will be that my top ten list expanded to tion, set in a theme park outside The people who run Disney able to analyze the copy and iden- 15 including ties. Beijing with scaled-down models spent a fortune sending critics tify the player, the time, and the of the world’s most famous and Academy members security- date on which the copy was 1. The World. Not just the best tourist attractions and populated encoded DVDs with special “high made.” Unfortunately, these play- film of 2005, Jia Zhang-ke’s fea- by visitors and workers. It’s a end” players to view them on. ers aren’t high-end enough to be ture was better, or at least more kitsch monstrosity that Jia Once we register the players we region free, and the version of important, than my first choices makes endlessly fascinating and can watch the five films we’ve Howl’s Moving Castle they sent for 2004 (The Big Red One) and suggestive—in contrast to the received so far as often as we like, me is the same old dubbed one I’d 2003 (25th Hour and Crimson cramped and unattractive “back- though each time we do, accord- already reviewed. The Japanese Gold). Those earlier master- stage” living spaces where the ing to the instructions, “the original with English subtitles pieces lack its vital and complex main characters spend most of SV300 inserts a powerful, com- won’t be out commercially on vision of what the whole planet is their time when they’re not pletely invisible watermark. It DVD until March. I can’t consider like at the moment. working. The animated fantasies stamps the content with your that version here because I Jia’s greatest film, Platform sparked by characters’ text mes- player’s ID number, and the time haven’t seen it, so I’ve grudgingly (2002), is about the Cultural sages are often even more spa- and date of the recording. If the put the dubbed version on my list. Revolution; The World is a cious and ethereal than the shots playback is copied illegally to These complaints aside, superb companion piece about of the theme park. The play videotape, recordable DVD, or 2005 was a good enough year China’s recent capitalist revolu- continued on page 16 2CHICAGO READER | JANUARY 6, 2006 | SECTION ONE CHICAGO READER | JANUARY 6, 2006 | SECTION ONE 3

m Chicago Reader, 11 E. Illinois, Chicago, IL 60611 312-828-9926 JANUARY 6, 2006 f VOL 35 | NO 15 Letters @ [email protected]

Publisher Michael Crystal Editor Alison True donnas of press journalism, a link. This is sometimes Managing Editor Kiki Yablon with their snobby pecking referred to as an “infomediary” Senior Editors Michael Miner |Laura Molzahn | Kitry Krause This Checks order, airs, pretensions, and or even “disinfomediary,” but Associate Editors Martha Bayne | Anaheed Alani delusions of grandeur, are out- the general idea is that you Philip Montoro | Kate Schmidt Out ward bound, and good rid- have someone or something Assistant Editors Jim Shapiro | Mark Athitakis | David Wilcox Staff Writers Liz Armstrong | Martha Bayne | Steve Bogira dance. They give lip service to that finds and filters informa- John Conroy | Jeffrey Felshman | Harold Henderson Mike [Miner]: the concepts of democracy, tion to give you a “best of” list Deanna Isaacs | J.R. Jones | Ben Joravsky | Monica Kendrick I want to attempt to set the equality, honesty, and free com- Craig is bent of information and links. Peter Margasak | Tori Marlan | Bob Mehr | Jonathan Rosenbaum Mike Sula | Albert Williams record straight and end all the munication, but when true on making a Bloggers help people find Copy Chief Brian Nemtusak nonsense of posters, plaques, equality of access comes along better world. articles. And then they link to Editorial Assistants Pat Graham | Renaldo Migaldi | Joel Score and reminiscences about who they favor the continuing stran- And now that those articles. Do you know Mario Kladis | Michael Marsh | Tom Porter | Jerome Ludwig Tamara Faulkner | Patrick Daily | Stephanie Manis | Robert Cass coined the advice to young glehold information bottleneck he has done what that makes bloggers, Mr. Kerry Reid | Todd Dills | Katherine Young | Ryan Hubbard reporters “If your mother says represented by their jobs and so for job Lenehan? That makes them Miles Raymer | Tasneem Paghdiwala she loves you, check it out” their billionaire owners. seekers, FREE ADVERTISING for the Typesetters Vera Videnovich | Kabir Hamid [Hot Type, December 9]. City Newspaper advertising can’t apartment publications putting those arti- Archivist Eben English News Bureau legend A.A. compete? Well, isn’t that too hunters, cles online. Dornfeld, better known as bad. Welcome to the 21st centu- and sexual Of course, this puts the onus Advertising Director Don Humbertson Dorny, is continually credited ry, guys. Thought you’d never predators, of generating revenue on the Sales Director Ginger Wade with the dictate. However, in get here. Take a year off. Take he’s turning publications that put their mate- Display Advertising Manager Sandra Goplin Assistant Display Advertising Manager Katie Falbo his book Behind the Front Page, two, they’re small. Nobody will to journalism. rial online. Let’s take the Online Advertising Coordinator Renate Durnbaugh the curmudgeon night CNB ever miss you. He’s involved Chicago Tribune, for example. boss, who tossed compliments in an online CPM (cost per 1,000 impres- Display Representatives Jeff Martin | Christine Thiel Neil Elliott Brad Winckler around like sewer covers, dis- project that sions) for banners ads on the Evanston Sales Development Manager Susan Zuckert abused Mike Royko of the will use the Tribune’s Web site ranges from Senior Account Executives Denice Barndt | Angie Boehler Evangeline Miller | Ryan A. Norsworthy | Geary Yonker thought and insisted Ed same “wisdom $12 to $33, based on how specif- Account Executives Nichole Flores | Greg Saint-Victor Eulenberg, a coconspirator of the masses” ic you are on where you want Tim Sullivan | Laura Swisher | Dan VanKirk rewrite and deskman, penned Dept. of approach your ad to appear (per the Trib’s Advertising Project Coordinator Allison Hendrickson the memorable order. “Eulie” that informs advertising media kit). Advertising Assistants T.J. Annerino | Jennifer K. Johnson was one of the great CNB men- Misappre- Craigslist. So let’s say the Wonkette, Kieran Kelley | Sarah Nishiura tors until he went straight and —Michael one of the Web sites with hate took the cash offered by the hended Lenehan, piled upon it in the article, ran Art Director Sheila Sachs Daily News . December 30 some commentary and a link to Associate Art Director Godfrey Carmona Hyperbole an article in the Tribune. I don’t Art Coordinator Elizabeth Tamny James B. Strong, aka Stormy have any hard data on how Production Director David Jones CNB ’55 Dear editor, many visits a link from Production Manager Bob Cooper Arlington Heights Associate Production Manager Nickie Sage I picked up the current Wonkette would generate, so Production Artists Jeff Marlin | Jennifer McLaughlin | Mark Blade issue and went straight to the let’s say 1,000 people left the Benjamin Utley | John Cross | Andrea Bauer | Dustin Kimmel Josh Honn | Mike Browarski | Nadine Nakanishi | Linda Montalbano comics section. Then I read site to visit this Tribune article. Editorial Design Jardí + Utensil Take a Year— something much funnier: (I suspect that number is low.) Michael Lenehan’s hate piece On the low end of things, that Operations & Classifieds Director Mary Jo Madden Take Two! on the online community [“A would represent $12 of ad rev- Controller Karl David Wilt Year Without Journalism,” enue for the Tribune. On the Classifieds Manager Brett Murphy Thanks for “A Year Without December 30]. high end, $33. Free money, Classified Representatives Sara Bassick | Danette Chavez Journalism” [December 30] and While it is getting tiresome generated because Wonkette Bill Daniel | Kris Dodd | Chip Dudley | Janet Lukasiewicz its elitist response to the blogger to hear print journalists linked to a Tribune piece. But Jeff McMurray | Amy O’Connor | Scott Shehan | Kristal Snow Bob Tilendis | Stephen Walker and Internet advertising chal- bemoan the popularity of the wait, the Trib usually has two Matches Coordinator Jane Hanna lenge, as if bloggers aren’t jour- Internet, it can be very amusing ads on a page, so we’re talking Back Page Representative Chris Auman nalists too. The same self-serv- to see how little of it they more like $20-$50 of free Operations Assistants Patrick O’Neil | Alicia Daniel ing cries were heard from the understand. As a public service, money because one of those Receptionists Monica Brown-Fielding | Dorie T. Greer monasteries when Gutenberg I’m going to outline how some darn bloggers was talking about Robert Jacobs |Dave Thomas | Stephen Walker Bookkeeper Marqueal Jordan printed his Bible with movable of this works in a business a Tribune article. More if some Circulation Manager Perry A. Kim type. And from the movie indus- sense so that we can, perhaps, of these people decide to look at Circulation Fred Adams | Sadar Bahar | Neil Bagwell try when television came along. have a more informed discus- something else at the Tribune’s John Barrille | Kriss Bataille | Steve Bjorkland | Mark Blade But we’re not going back to sion in future issues. Web site. (The technical jargon Michael Boltz | Jeff Boyd | Michael Bulington | Bill Daniel Tom Frederick | Kennedy Greenrod | Nathan Greer buggy whips. Sorry. The bloggers Mr. Lenehan for people sticking around a Scott Harris | John Holland | Sasha Kadukov What the new citizen jour- seems to hate so much are link site and looking at something Dave Leoschke | James McArdle | Shane McDougall John Merton | Dave Miedzianski | Terry Nelson nalism means is that the prima aggregaters—they collect links else is “stickiness,” FYI.) Gerald Perdue | John Roeser | Phil Schuster to information relevant to the So bloggers are hurting the Dorian Tajbakhsh | David Thomas | Stephen Walker topic of their blog’s subject and papers? Not nearly as drastical- Craig White | Dan Worland present them to the audience. ly as some would have us Often they have a quick sum- believe. On the other hand, I Information Systems Director Jerry Davis mary of the piece and some have been passing around the Information Systems Project Manager Conrad Hunter Information Systems James Crandall | John Dunlevy commentary on the content, PDF link for the Reader’s spe- Doug Fawley | Sean Phelan but they almost always contain continued on page 30 Special Projects Coordinator Lisa Martain Hoffer

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[email protected] Hot Type www.chicagoreader.com/hottype

Another “Good War” The Trib questions the war it championed—and comes out with its faith intact.

By Michael Miner gag Christmas gift came went on to say, “This re-exami- Laden should be the quarry, not to my house, a “count- nation of the administration’s Hussein? And if going to war A down clock” key chain rationale for war offers doses of was the thing to do, could we labeled “Backwards Bush.” As I discomfort for the self-assured— trust this war to Bush, who tout- write there are 1,114 days, 8 those who have unquestioningly ed it as if unaware that war is hours, 27 minutes, and—let’s supported, or opposed, the chaotic and evil? see—20.9 seconds left in his sec- ongoing war in Iraq.” But no one The Tribune signed on with its ond term. That’s an eternity if could doubt who’d wind up eyes wide open. “The gauzy you don’t like Bush. being told to swallow the larger vision that proponents of war On November 20 the Tribune “doses of discomfort.” offer for a post-Hussein Iraq is, editorial page issued a challenge to I’m guessing most Bush bash- to be frank, unconvincing,” it the kind of readers who take com- ers who read the Tribune edito- allowed in its March 2, 2003, fort in Backwards Bush key rials, which concluded on editorial “The case for war.” But chains. It dared them to see if they December 28, judged them a the United Nations and Europe could handle the truth about the shameless apologia for the presi- had waltzed with Hussein since number one count in their indict- dent. Given the language that the 1991 gulf war, enabling his Given the have done to make America safer ment. Over the next several weeks, launched them, I found them “12 years of cunning defiance,” with the time, blood, and treas- said the Tribune, it intended to surprisingly balanced. and in the Tribune’s view he’d prospect of ure expended in Iraq. The take a long, hard look at the ori- Try to remember the state of become too dangerous to put up Hussein selling Tribune simply compared what gins of the war in Iraq. “Did the nation three years ago. Most with any longer. Bush and his people said then to George W. Bush intentionally mis- Americans supported the loom- The “core issue” was clear: WMDs to the facts as we know them now. lead this nation and its allies into ing invasion of Iraq because “Saddam Hussein must disarm,” terrorists, the I’ll quote mainly from the war?” it asked. “Or is it his critics Bush said it was the right thing and he hadn’t. “Despite 17 UN December 28 editorial, which who have misled Americans, to do; others thought the idea directives, Hussein has refused Tribune forgave summarized the series. Much of recasting history to discredit the was reprehensible, many simply to account for his stores of dead- Bush for erring what the White House said president and his policies?” because the idea was Bush’s. But ly biological and chemical before the war about Iraq’s In 2003 the Tribune editorial some Americans with no love for weapons, or to come clean about on the side of weapons of mass destruction page had championed Bush’s the president believed the war his nuclear aspirations.” While turned out to be “flat-out wrong,” war; would it now find against might accomplish something the world chose “to kick the can belligerence. the Tribune said. “In putting so Bush and therefore against useful. The troubling questions down the road and hope nothing much emphasis on illicit weapon- itself? That didn’t seem likely— in their minds—our minds, bad happens,” a “thug” remained ry, the White House advanced its especially given the polarized set because I was one—were these: free to butcher his own people, most provocative, least verifiable of alternatives it offered, which Could a war be justified that intimidate his neighbors, and case for war when others would ruled out the possibility of hon- seemed not absolutely necessary “mock the rest of the world.” have sufficed.” As for Saddam orable misjudgment. Surely the and that Bush (less so Tony The Tribune’s recent editorials Hussein’s links to Al Qaeda, “No Tribune would never admit to Blair) flogged by playing to our did no philosophizing on just compelling evidence ties Iraq to being deceived. fears? Was this the right war at and unjust wars. They declined Sept. 11, 2001, as the White The November 20 editorial the wrong time—when bin to wonder what else we might House implied. ...By stripping

get connected

www.chicagoreader.com/matches section two CHICAGO READER | JANUARY 6, 2006 | SECTION ONE 5

® The Straight Dope by Cecil Adams

It’s a staple of ghost stories, horror films, spooky TV shows, and creepy books. And I suppose for someone with a heart condition, it may well be true. But can a young, healthy person be literally scared to death, without any physical cause? —Rebecca S., Seattle its rhetoric of the ambiguity pres- Sunnis and Shiites have major ent in the intel data, the White differences to reconcile, a year’s or once fiction writers and doc- tors agree: it’s possible to die of House exaggerated this argument worth of predictions that Sunni fright, or for that matter grief, for war.” And as for Iraq as a disaffection could doom self-rule F anger, joy, or just about any other sponsor of terrorism generally, have, so far, proven wrong.” intense emotion. Most victims are older “The argument that Hussein was These are sweet but clumsy and likely in precarious health to start able to foment global terror thoughts. A robust election-day with, but a few are young—in some cases against this country and its inter- turnout doesn’t mean the Iraqis really young. One British kid, in what is surely a mother’s worst nightmare, was ests was exaggerated.” What have embraced democracy—it reportedly so freaked out by a visit to the American intelligence surmised means they’re eager to choose dentist in 1970 that she died of a heart and the Bush administration their next rulers with the tool at attack at age four. believed, the Tribune said in its hand. When a government Sudden death due to stress has been December 7 editorial on Iraq and peacefully voted in is peacefully reported throughout history. Physician terrorism, surpassed the “less voted out we might be able to say George Engel, in a 1971 review in Annals of bombastic facts on the ground.” that democracy has taken hold. Internal Medicine, notes that in the New Testament the apostle Peter tells Ananias, But given the prospect of As for the idea that Sunni disaf- “You have lied not to man but to God,” Hussein selling WMDs to terror- fection could doom self-rule— whereupon Ananias and later his wife ists, the Tribune forgave Bush for well of course it could. All we can Sapphira fall down dead. For more recent erring on the side of belligerence. say for now is that it hasn’t instances Engel over a six-year period If you believe the only justifi- doomed self-rule yet and maybe compiled press accounts of 170 deaths due cation for war is self-defense, it never will. to “disrupting life events.” Three-fifths

involved men, commonly 45 to 55 years UG SIGNORINO you probably believe that if Bush Despite its flaws, I think the old; the peak age for women was 70 to 75. SL was wrong about WMDs and Tribune series showed the proud In 27 percent of cases, the largest catego- attack, essentially) is common—roughly by a sorcerer, panics, and dies of no obvi- state-sponsored terrorism his owners of Backwards Bush ry, the precipitating event involved fear. 450,000 cases per year in the U.S. exclud- ous organic cause. Many such accounts are Examples: “A 63-year-old security guard case for invading Iraq falls apart. countdown clocks that there was ing deaths in hospitals. Eighty-five to nine- hearsay, but clinician Clifton Meador died after being bound by robbers. ... If so, the only remaining ques- a case for the war we’re fighting, ty percent of the time the victim has heart reported two well-documented cases in A woman seeing some teenagers outside tion for the Tribune to answer and it wasn’t something so obvi- disease. Sure, in cases linked to an emo- 1992. In the first, a 60-year-old man was her apartment beating and robbing a bus was whether the Bush adminis- ously stupid and mendacious tional jolt, maybe stress was a factor; still, brought to the hospital near death after driver died while phoning the police. ... the guy usually had problems to start with being cursed by a voodoo priest. The tration intentionally misled us and driven by oil that only fools A 35-year-old man accused of robbery or—to consider a possibility the and scoundrels believed it. The and at most was pushed over the edge. attending physician staged a “cure” in told his lawyer, ‘I’m scared to death!’; then The same can often be said about which, through sleight of hand, the victim Tribune didn’t allow for when it war did something good by boot- collapsed and died.” younger people who die suddenly of non- was persuaded he’d vomited up a live introduced its series—was itself ing Hussein and it might do As the above may suggest, most of cardiac causes. Engel tells of a 17-year-old lizard, the embodiment of the curse. He misled by Hussein’s intransi- more good yet. Engel’s cases aren’t that startling. In fact, boy who collapsed and died at 6 AM, June soon recovered and lived ten more years. gence and its own faulty intelli- Bush bashers should concede the most dramatic story I could come up 4, 1970; exactly one year previously, at OK, this mope’s real problem was that, with after hours of rooting around in the gence. The latter, the Tribune this. Perhaps it occurred to some 5:12 AM, June 4, 1969, his older brother pre-“cure,” he was sure he was a goner, journals involved a hated assistant at a had died of car-crash injuries. Coincidence stopped eating, and was wasting away from believes. The Tribune managed of them during the Tribune’s six- college whom the students pretended to or something more? Who knows? Fact is, starvation. Case number two resists such to conclude that the case for war week-long project that the paper execute: “The assistant was held with his the kid was done in by hemorrhage follow- easy analysis. Here the patient was a man still holds up, but it seemed suf- was testing the purity of water head on the chopping block, eyes band- ing a ruptured aneurysm, a condition aris- in his 70s who’d been diagnosed with incur- ficiently humbled by its look long since over the dam. When aged, while one student made the noise ing from birth defect, injury, etc, not fra- able cancer and told he had only a few backward to drop the polarizing I’d finished it I thought, “Good. of a swinging axe [and] another dropped ternal grief. The demise of the four-year- months left. Wanting to live till Christmas, a warm, wet cloth on his neck. The assis- language about one side or the Now let’s move on. Let’s debate old dental patient is harder to explain, but he ate and exercised as directed and tant died instantly.” she’d been sedated to calm her, and anes- walked out of the hospital for the holidays other deceiving the country. In the war the way it needs to be Yow. But the lack of detail smells to me thesia of the young is inherently risky. much improved. He was readmitted shortly its conclusion it spoke gently of debated—on how it’s been run.” of urban legend, and others have reached The most interesting scared-to-death after New Year’s close to death and expired “people of patriotism and From inadequate troop levels to the same conclusion. The typical victim per cases are what we might call willed deaths. within 24 hours. An autopsy found the can- integrity” who disagree. the lack of armor on troop carri- Engel is a middle-aged male who under- The classic scenario was described by phys- cer diagnosis had been exaggerated; his So what were the Tribune’s rea- ers to the brutalizing of prisoners goes a mildly traumatic event and dies iologist Walter Cannon in a famous 1942 physical complaints weren’t enough to kill within an hour. Not to be callous, but so paper titled “‘Voodoo’ Death”: the victim him. Instead, he and everyone else were sons for reaffirming Bush’s war? and sacking of independent- what? Sudden cardiac death (fatal heart learns he’s eaten taboo food or gets hexed convinced he was going to die, so he did. It took a second look at that minded generals to the shrug “gauzy vision” it dismissed three that “stuff happens” when libera- years ago. “The White House was tion gave way to anarchy, the Comments, questions? Take it up with Cecil on the Straight Dope Message Board, www.straightdope.com, correct in predicting that long White House has plenty to or write him at the Chicago Reader, 11 E. Illinois, Chicago 60611. Cecil’s most recent compendium of knowledge, subjugated Iraqis would embrace answer for. The public wants to Triumph of the Straight Dope, is available at bookstores everywhere. democracy,” wrote the Tribune on end this war, but it doesn’t want December 28. “And while Kurds, continued on page 6 6CHICAGO READER | JANUARY 6, 2006 | SECTION ONE

Hot Type

continued from page 5 intelligence analysts in 2002 and enemy’s main goal is to kill to lose it. It doesn’t think we can 2003, or misled the nation in Americans, turning the war over afford to. making its nuclear case for war, to Iraqi forces won’t solve the One of the curious aspects of challenge logic.” Page three that problem. On the contrary, it the Tribune series was the occa- day offered a story with the will leave the insurgents no sional dissonance between sto- headline “U.S. military paying choice but to come after us right ries in the same editions. For Iraqi editors to publish propa- here at home.” instance, the November 20 kick- ganda.” On December 4 the Chapman went on, “Bush off installment that foreshad- Tribune pondered the paradox of prefers not to admit that the owed a verdict favoring the preemption. Because we got only reason Iraq is a terrorist White House shared the paper Hussein before he got us, “no one hotbed is that we invaded and with a page-one story that knows, and no one can know, fostered chaos.” began: “The German intelligence what an undisturbed Iraq would I doubt that mischievous edi- officials responsible for one of have done in subsequent years.” tors were seeing to it that reality the most important informants On the next page, op-ed colum- undermined Tribune opinion. on Saddam Hussein’s suspected nist Steve Chapman, the But they did make it harder to weapons of mass destruction say the run-up to the Iraq war.” relied on faulty intelligence but Tribune’s most acerbic in-house read the case for war without the Bush administration and the On November 30 the editorial argued, “Assertions that the Bush war critic, offered a more biting wondering how much it matters CIA exaggerated his claims in page allowed that Bush had administration strong-armed paradox of his own: “If the anymore. v CHICAGO READER | JANUARY 6, 2006 | SECTION ONE 7 8CHICAGO READER | JANUARY 6, 2006 | SECTION ONE

The Works [email protected]

Tale of a Ticket A Roscoe Village businessman thinks someone is making him pay for being a pest.

By Ben Joravsky wo days after Christmas, Matlak dropped his support and Upset at the denies reporting DeCaigny as his According to Spiess, it was a Christopher DeCaigny the proposal was killed. assailant.) I said, ‘This is ridicu- nasty scene. “Let’s put it this T went to court to challenge Upset at the chamber for try- chamber for lous. I’ll call my attorney and way—they had an animated con- a ticket he’d been issued for ing to raise taxes, DeCaigny and trying to raise you guys come back with an offi- versation that basically cleared breaking the city’s garbage-col- other business owners charged cial statement and we’ll deal out the restaurant,” he says. “It lection law. But DeCaigny insists the organization with having taxes, DeCaigny with it then.’ He said something was a tense and loud exchange.” his real offense is one that’s not violated its bylaws: though like, ‘Yeah—it’s BS.’ You could (Spiess says he has a list of wit- mentioned in the city code— board terms were supposed to and other business tell his heart wasn’t in it. That’s nesses who can corroborate this, messing with the wrong guy. run two years, board elections owners charged the last I heard from the cops.” but when I asked for their names DeCaigny thinks the city’s hadn’t been held since 1999. After the policeman drove off, he didn’t call me back.) punishing him for challenging Johnson says this hardly seemed the organization DeCaigny went back inside the On September 30 DeCaigny Al Johnson, president of the like a big deal: few people, he with having restaurant. About 15 minutes wrote a letter to the office of Roscoe Village chamber of com- says, have showed much interest later Andrew Szorc, the 32nd attorney general Lisa Madigan, merce and a longtime ally of in attending the chamber’s meet- violated its Ward superintendent and a asking for an investigation into Ted Matlak, alderman of the ings, much less serving on the bylaws:though longtime Matlak precinct cap- the bylaws of the Roscoe Village 32nd Ward. “It’s a real squirrel- board. The bylaws have been tain, came in. “Drew walks in chamber of commerce, charging ly deal,” says DeCaigny, presi- amended to allow the current board terms were and says, ‘Chris, you’ve got to that they violate the Illinois dent of Union Insurance Group, board to continue to serve. supposed to back off,’” says DeCaigny. “I Not-for-Profit Act. (Johnson at 2123 W. Roscoe. “It’s gotten The bickering between couldn’t believe it. The cops, the insists that the bylaws have out of control.” DeCaigny and Johnson contin- run two years, alderman’s guy—what’s next? I already been cleared by the For the last 30 years or so, ued throughout the year into the admit I got upset. I was furious. attorney general’s office.) He Johnson, who runs a real estate summer. In June the dispute got elections hadn't I was absolutely livid. I said, ‘You also asked the attorney general company, has been the unofficial testier. DeCaigny says he was been held since sit your fat ass down and tell Al to “place a freeze on all property mayor of Roscoe Village. He’s eating at Piazza Bella Trattoria, a Johnson to back off.’” and assets of the Chamber” been president of the chamber of restaurant on Roscoe, with Brad 1999. As the exchange heated up, pending “an election of a new commerce since the early 90s. Spiess, the vice president of his DeCaigny says, Szorc referred to [chamber] board” and a “full DeCaigny’s beef with Johnson insurance company, and a few Matlak’s biggest local rival, state audit” of its books.” goes back to 2004, when the others. “We were talking and an representative John Fritchey. Over three weeks passed, and chamber championed a proposal employee of the restaurant came “Drew said, ‘You’re helping John he still hadn’t heard back from to create a Special Service Area. up and said, ‘Chris, the police are Fritchey run against Matlak,’” Madigan’s office. So he wrote a An SSA levies a special tax on a here looking for you,’” says says DeCaigny. “I can’t believe letter to Fritchey, asking him to district for a ten-year period to Spiess. “Sure enough, we looked that’s how they saw it. I’m rais- “facilitate an audience with the raise money for specific services. outside the window and a police ing important questions about Attorney General’s office.” In In this case, the Roscoe Village department car was out there.” our chamber of commerce, and November Inside, the neighbor- chamber of commerce proposed DeCaigny says he went outside they think I’m doing this to score hood weekly, ran an article on raising about $300,000 a year to talk to the police officer. “He points for Fritchey? I said, ‘What the matter, quoting DeCaigny, with an SSA to be used to erect said, ‘We have a report that you the hell are you talking about? I referring to his letter to and tend planters, shovel side- assaulted Al Johnson,’” says don’t even know Fritchey. He’s Madigan’s office, and noting that walks, run a shuttle bus, and pay DeCaigny. “I was flabbergasted. the state rep. Why would he Fritchey was “scheduling a meet- for other programs intended to Assaulted him? I hadn’t seen want to be alderman—isn’t that ing with the attorney general’s boost business in the stores near him in days. The cop said some- a step down?’” (Szorc refused to office to keep abreast of the Roscoe and Damen. But in body pushed Al Johnson down. I comment on the incident. “I am investigation.” The next day November 2004, after more said, ‘Let me see the report.’ He fair and just to everybody,” he DeCaigny got his garbage ticket. than 100 locals attended a meet- said, ‘I don’t have a written says. “I have nothing to do with DeCaigny runs his insurance ing and denounced the plan, report—he called it in.’ (Johnson the chamber.”) company out of four units he CHICAGO READER | JANUARY 6, 2006 | SECTION ONE 9

owns in a condo complex on the city’s garbage service,” he month to arrive. and Sanitation will eventually trative hearing office in the shop- Roscoe. Like the residents in his says. “Then on November 9, Matlak says he has nothing ticket Johnson’s office? “I don’t ping strip across the street from building, he gets weekly service right after the Inside runs its against DeCaigny and knows have anything to do with that,” Lane Tech High School. The from Streets and Sanitation story, the city discovers we have nothing about Szorc’s show- says Matlak. hearing officer was late, so they trucks (supervised by Szorc, by the wrong kind of service? I down with him at the restau- Johnson says DeCaigny’s alle- waited in the hallway for about the way), which collect his think the timing’s a little more rant in July. “It’s a personal dis- gations of harassment are “pre- 30 minutes. Then they were ush- garbage from several bins in his than a coincidence.” pute between DeCaigny and Al posterous.” “I’ve been in this ered into a windowless room alley. But businesses aren’t enti- DeCaigny says he’s starting to Johnson,” he says. “Whatever neighborhood for 40 some where the hearing officer dis- tled to weekly garbage collection. get a little paranoid. To him the dispute he has with the cham- years,” he says. “This is the first missed the ticket because it wasn’t Instead they’re supposed to pay message is clear. “They wanted ber has nothing to do with me. I’ve ever heard of anything like clear from handwriting on it what for private service. me to back off , but I’m not back- I don’t even know what this.” He confirms that his date it had been issued. DeCaigny says the city is arbi- ing off,” he says. “We’ve been DeCaigny looks like.” Matlak garbage service is provided by Afterward Spiess and Clune trarily enforcing this law in asked by a lot of businessmen to also says he knows nothing the city. “I’ve been here since stood in the parking lot. “If it Roscoe Village. He points out continue the fight.” about the ticket. “Until you 1988,” he says. “I’ve had the same was so important, you’d think that several other local business- If it is retribution, it’s not very called me, I didn’t even know service since 1988.” they’d send someone down es have regular city garbage serv- efficient. Streets and San tickets they issued a ticket,” he says. DeCaigny was out of town on to enforce their ticket,” Spiess ice—including Johnson’s real are delivered through the mail. “It’s about a garbage cart. This December 27. But Spiess and said. “You know what was estate company. He also finds the But the inspector who wrote up is city policy, and they’ve been James Clune, Union Insurance’s going on here. They were just timing of the ticket suspicious. Union Insurance used the wrong enforcing it in the ward.” lawyer, schlepped over for the 9 inconveniencing us—sending “For [12] years we’ve been using zip code, so the ticket took over a Does this mean that Streets AM hearing in the city’s adminis- us another message.” v 10 CHICAGO READER | JANUARY 6, 2006 | SECTION ONE

[snip] All that glitters isn’t green. Fred Pearce writes in forest is being razed to grow palm oil and soybeans to New Scientist, “The drive for ‘green energy’ in the devel- fuel cars and power stations in Europe and North oped world is having the perverse effect of encouraging America.” Surging prices and some governments’ biofuel Our Town the destruction of tropical rainforests. From the orang- requirements are likely to accelerate the destruction. utan reserves of Borneo to the Brazilian Amazon, virgin —Harold Henderson | [email protected]

Up and Comers Queen of All Media Richard Bluestein may be Chicago’s first podcasting star. By Mike Seely ill Streeter wiped a stream of golden-brown grease from his B chin as he pulled his maroon minivan out of a KFC parking lot in Bloomington and turned toward Chicago. He popped a cassette adapter attached to an iPod into his tape deck, and for the rest of his trip alternated between stored tunes and podcasts—downloadable radio pro- grams he subscribes to via Real Simple Syndication (RSS), media aggregation software often referred to as “TiVo for the Web.” Ninety miles south of town, he tuned in to one of his favorite shows: Yeast Radio, an hour-long daily podcast hosted by a Y gay Chicago-based performance artist named Richard Bluestein.

Streeter, creator of the rock ’n’ roll JIM NEWBERR Richard Bluestein as Madge Weinstein, host of Yeast Radio culture Web site Lo-Fi Saint Louis, was headed for the Apple Store on Michigan Avenue to conduct a ence of her comedy. Her sheer outra- moved to Chicago in 1992 after get- incorporating video, Saturday-night seminar on video geousness takes the edge off the ting fired from his first postcollegiate audio, and heart- blogging entitled “Meet the monotony of my day.” job at an Evansville firm. After set- spilling text. Vloggers.” There, in the small theater Bluestein launched Yeast Radio tling into his new city, he worked in Emboldened by at the back of the store, he finally met from his Chicago living room in the health-care industry and began Alshaibi’s envelope- the 38-year-old Bluestein in person— November 2004 with little but a dallying heavily with narcotics, pushing style, he also though when he did he barely recog- microphone, streaming audio soft- which culminated in a brief stint liv- began performing in nized him. That’s because on his ware, and a well-conceived persona. ing in Amsterdam in the late 90s. drag atSchubas with show—which also runs with different A month later he sent a demo reel to “I sought out drugs,” he says. “I the Feast of Fools content as a video blog—Bluestein former MTV VJ Adam Curry, host of remember in high school phys ed Cabaret, developing an isn’t Bluestein. He’s Madge Weinstein, the podcast Daily Source Code and class when the drug expert came in alter ego that would crys- a 59-year-old “bloated Jewish lesbian” founder of Podshow.com, a distribu- and showed the poster of all the dif- tallize on yet another film project. with a penchant for overeating, hard- tion network that’s attempting to ferent pills that we shouldn’t take if “Some friends of mine were smok- left politics, flatulence jokes, and monetize home-brewed Internet we were offered them. I just kept ing pot and they called me and said “yeast infection advocacy.” broadcasts by attracting sponsors thinking, ‘I want one of those, and they wanted to do a mockumentary The self-proclaimed “shock jock and, eventually, offering premium that, and that!’ So finally I got some like Spinal Tap, except with lesbian with no cock,” Madge is apt to refer content. Curry was instantly smitten pot and then I escaped. My drug riot grrrls,” says Bluestein. “They to the vice president as “Penis and soon added Yeast Radio to the problem lasted until I returned from wanted me to play the manager of Cheney” and secretary of state Podshow roster. According to the Amsterdam, crashed and burned.” the band, this big Jewish woman Condoleezza Rice as a “cunt-faced network, the show has attracted Bluestein returned to Chicago in who wants to fuck all the girls. So it whore bull dyke bitch.” She calls lipo- more than 40,000 subscribers since 1998, but having quit drugs, “I had just came out of that.” suction “thigh abortion” and makes it was picked up in early 2005; fac- nothing to interest me,” he says. “So I The film has yet to be released, but promises to potential advertisers like toring in unique downloads and lis- bought a video camera and some the band manager character gradu- “If you sponsor me, I’ll lick your teners to Podshow’s channel on editing software. That’s how my ally evolved into Bluestein’s pre- balls.” Add F-bomb attacks on the U.S. Sirius satellite radio—the same video hobby started.” He began post- ferred online persona. “I had a lot of military’s use of white phosphorus in uncensored, pay-to-play network ing experimental clips on a Web site problems in my personal life from Iraq, comparisons of Enron executives that’s now home to Howard Stern— he’d started (and still maintains), spilling all this shit on the Internet,” to serial rapists, a flamboyant roster of its audience may be more than dou- insanefilms.com. Then, with few he says. “It damaged some relation- out-and-proud guests, and vivid ble that size. qualifications to speak of beyond his ships and it became very difficult to descriptions of the bloated host’s gassy “From day one I was totally in love Web clips, Bluestein answered an ad be truthful. And when I wasn’t constitution and stool samples and with his concept,” says Curry, who in the Reader seeking a director of truthful, I’d just become depressed. you have some of Madge’s more radio- estimates he gets a dozen submis- photography for Kristie Alshaibi’s The Madge thing is perfect, because friendly witticisms. sions per day from aspiring produc- Other People’s Mirrors, a way-off- I can fictionalize my life.” “I think Yeast Radio is a really good ers. “Madge is really what Howard mainstream production exploring Bluestein’s contract with example of a content producer who’s Stern wants to be.” adult taboos. Alshaibi was sufficient- Podshow, from which he draws a not for a broad audience,” said In person Bluestein is reserved, ly impressed with the novice film- full-time salary (neither he nor Mason Dixon, a video production perhaps owing to his square-peg maker to offer him the gig. Podshow would disclose the designer and copresenter at the adolescence in Carmel, Indiana, “Cannibalism, rape, murder, group specifics), includes a production “Meet the Vloggers” symposium. “But where his family moved from New sex—I don’t remember all of them, deal that will allow him to develop the people who are going to like it are Jersey he was in fourth grade. “It but I had to film them all,” recalls new characters down the road. “I gonna love it.” sucked,” says Bluestein, whose Bluestein. “We shot a rape scene in plan to have my own half-hour Streeter—a 38-year-old father, air father is a renowned thermodynam- one of the tunnels under Lake Shore counterversion of Wolf Blitzer’s The force veteran, and son of a Baptist ics professor. “There were few if any Drive. Somebody actually called the Situation Room on a channel like minister—doesn’t necessarily fit into other Jewish students in my classes cops. And in the cannibalism scene, Comedy Central,” he says. “I’d call it what one might assume is the niche and people constantly made fun of our female protagonist ate this guy’s ‘The Shituation Room.’ It’ll make demographic for a show with a my religion, my eastern accent, and balls. That was my introduction to The Daily Show look like Fox News.” cross-dressing, openly gay, politically my lack of interest in athletics. I filmmaking.” Bluestein is also currently develop- radical host, but he’s one of Madge’s was always an introspective child Once production wrapped, ing qpodder.com, an online commu- most loyal listeners. “Who wouldn’t with few friends.” Bluestein continued to produce multi- nity for queer podcasters. love her?” Streeter asks. “She’s a Bluestein, who has a degree in media content for insanefilms.com But despite Yeast Radio’s early suc- complete original. I love the irrever- accounting from Indiana University, and a separate Livejournal account, continued on page 12 CHICAGO READER | JANUARY 6, 2006 | SECTION ONE 11 12 CHICAGO READER | JANUARY 6, 2006 | SECTION ONE

[snip] Land of shrinking opportunity. to go to Stanford, because California vot- Weissman, head of the Stanford lab, told Two of the world’s leading cancer geneti- ers had approved $3 billion for such the San Jose Mercury News, “When they do cists, Neal Copeland and Nancy Jenkins, research. But now that antiabortion their work, it will be for Singapore. They’ll are leaving the National Cancer Institute groups have tied up the money in court, conduct their clinical trials in Singapore. because of Bush administration restric- they’re going to Singapore’s Institute of The first place their work will be patented Our Town tions on stem-cell research. They were set Molecular and Cell Biology. Irving and used will be Singapore.” —HH

continued from page 10 cess in attracting an audience, its fol- lowing hasn’t resulted in the sort of sustained paid advertising Podshow is designed to generate: the film House of Wax, starring Paris Hilton, is the show’s lone sponsor to date. Still, Curry remains undaunted. “We’re willing to subsidize our hunch that Madge will be something very big,” says Curry. “This is going to be a huge community that is very tight- knit, thanks in no small part to Richard Bluestein.” “I’m ready to take on the world,” Bluestein says. “Howard Stern may call himself the ‘King of All Media,’ but I’m about to become the Empress of All Things Tech, Politic, Media, and Yeast. Honey, every- thing’s coming up Weinstein!” v ARK

Follow the Money URA P LA

including salaries, supplies, committee, which oversees bonds, Legislative aides for one alderman or A Million research costs, meeting costs, and taxes, legal settlements, workers’ committee may help research or even ward-office expenses: $39,677,808 compensation, and council spending. draft ordinances; other aides are Here, a Million •Percent increase from 2005: 7.99 But each of the council’s 19 commit- essentially administrative or clerical •Percent increase in the national tees also has a budget for “personnel assistants. (Most of them are paid There . . . consumer price index over the past services,” which committee chairmen under the “personnel services” line year: 3.5 use to hire more staff. Tom Allen, item.) One of the longest titles is The City Council’s cut of •2006 salary for an alderman: alderman of the 38th Ward and assistant council committee secretary the 2006 budget. $98,125 chairman of the committee on trans- in charge of committee rooms. “They •2005 salary: $94,805 portation and the public way, says the do a variety of different things for the By Mick Dumke •Percent increase: 3.5 chairmen like having a lump sum for entire City Council,” says Schulter. sense of good cheer pervaded •Percent increase in the council’s hiring because they need “flexibility.” •Number of assistant council com- the last City Council meeting budget since the first city budget •Number of salaried council staff, mittee secretaries in charge of A before the holidays, on Richard M. Daley introduced as not counting aldermen, listed in committee rooms in 2006: 2 December 14, where the aldermen fin- mayor, in 1990: 71.6 the 2005 (and the 2006) budget: •Salaries for assistant council com- ished weeks of discussing Mayor •Percent increase in the consumer 184 mittee secretaries in charge of Daley’s 2006 city budget by making a price index over the same period: 51.2 •Number (not counting aldermen) committee rooms: $57,036 and few amendments and signing off on it •2006 salary for council members listed in November 2005 payroll $61,188 48 to 1. Fourth Ward alderman Toni in New York City: $90,000 records: 290 •Number of legislative aides listed in Preckwinkle was the sole no vote; the •2006 salary for council members •Number of salaried staff listed in the 2005 (and the 2006) budget: 2 33rd Ward’s Richard Mell was absent. in Houston: $44,400 2006 for president pro tem Danny •Number of salaried legislative Some aldermen, led by the Ninth •1990 aldermanic salary: $40,000 Solis, the alderman who presides aides listed in payroll records in Ward’s Anthony Beale, would still •Value of 1990 aldermanic salary in over the council in the mayor’s 2005: 87 like to add another nickel to the bud- 2005 dollars: $60,474 absence: 4 •Top salary for legislative aides list- get’s 20-cent hike in cigarette taxes •Number of pay hikes aldermen have •Number for finance committee ed in payroll records in 2005: to cover the salaries of an additional given themselves since 1990: 6 chairman Ed Burke: 27 $78,828 staff member for each ward. Beale •Number of aldermen who’ve •Number of council staffers who The responsibilities of and funding says his office receives around refused pay increases since 2002: 2 earn more than aldermen: 6 for the council’s legislative commit- 100,000 constituent phone calls •Salary taken by the two, Margaret •2006 salary of the highest-paid tees, some of which have been con- each year. “The job of alderman has Laurino of the 39th Ward and council staffer, finance committee solidated, are also wide-ranging. really evolved over the years,” he says. Eugene Schulter of the 47th Ward: chief administrative officer Marla •Number of committees in 2006: 19 “We now have e-mail and faxes. We $85,000 Kaiden: $148,452 •Number in 1990: 27 haven’t upgraded our staff and The past 16 budgets have included •Top 2005 salary not itemized in •Percent increase in funding for offices to keep up with the times.” In funds to cover the salaries of 50 2005 budget, for chief administra- committee staffing and expenses the meantime they’ll just have to get aldermen, 3 full-time staffers for tive officer Charles Lomanto: since 1990: 61 by with what they’ve been allotted. each, 10 administrators and aides to $106,572 •2006 budget for the finance com- Here’s how it breaks down. serve the council as a whole, and up Staff titles don’t always explain mittee, the council’s biggest: • Total 2006 City Council budget, to 25 staffers for the council’s finance what the people who hold them do. continued on page 14 CHICAGO READER | JANUARY 6, 2006 | SECTION ONE 13 14 CHICAGO READER | JANUARY 6, 2006 | SECTION ONE

[snip] A military historian’s perspective. Hebrew University’s Martin van Creveld, author of The Transformation of War, writes at forward.com, “For misleading the American people, and launching the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9 B.C. sent his legions into Germany and lost them, Bush deserves to be impeached and, once he Our Town has been removed from office, put on trial along with the rest of the president’s men.” —HH

continued from page 12 $2,060,463 •2005 finance committee budget: $1,927,084 •2006 budget for the parks and recreation committee, the council’s smallest: $81,820 •2005 parks and recreation budget: $74,816 •2006 health committee budget: $84,816 •2005 health committee budget: $77,614 •1990 health committee budget: $100,800 •1990 budget for the committee on ports, wharves, and bridges: $60,220 •2006 budget: 0 (“Was it around after we settled Fort Dearborn maybe?” says Alderman Allen, whose transportation committee has taken over this committee’s responsibilities. He adds, “What the hell is a wharf?”) The council budget also includes several pots of money for things such as “legal, technical, medical and pro- fessional services, appraisals, con- sultants, printers, court reporters, and other incidental contractual services” (a total of $3,206,042). As president pro tem, Solis can author- ize dipping into one of them; the 50th Ward’s Bernard Stone, who holds the largely symbolic post of vice mayor, can authorize dipping IS into another and Burke, as finance AV committee chair, into two others. •2006 contingency funds to be Alice Danhoffer recites the rosary at Rose Calvero’s house; an ambassador wraps the Pilgrim Virgin for her next trip. JOEFF D spent at the discretion of the presi- dent pro tem: $4,000 lights and flanked by candles and with us, for the night is coming •2006 contingency funds to be Active Cultures vases full of flowers. Now it’s some- on. ...Sweet heart of Mary, be my spent at the discretion of the vice one else’s turn to have the statue for a salvation.” They pray together for half mayor: $104,970 week, and an honor guard from the an hour, then the Cannones add their •2006 contingency funds to be Ambassadors of Mary has come to own wrinkle to the ceremony, leading spent at the discretion of the Driving Miss take it away. the group in singing “Viva Maria” and finance committee chair: Mary The five women and one man who “E l’Ora Che Pia” in Italian. $1,433,077 make up the honor guard are sitting Frank Cannone, who moved to the •Total council funds directly con- Keeping up a little-known around two tables with the Cannones U.S. from Italy 42 years ago, says trolled by Burke in 2006, including and their friends. The Cannones, most of the people who’ve come each the finance committee budget and Catholic tradition is who’ve hosted the statue three times, evening during the past week to say contingency funds: $3,493,535 getting harder. seem to know the removal rite as well prayers and have cake and coffee are There’s also a pot of money to as the honor guard does: five decades also older people from the old coun- cover honorary ceremonies held at By Jeffrey Felshman of the rosary, followed by the Ritual try. His children haven’t come. the beginning of council meetings. or the past week the Pilgrim of the Enthronement of the Sacred “They’re Catholic, but they go to •2006 budget for “Expense in con- Virgin has stood on a table in Heart of Jesus and the Act of work, they’re busy,” he says. “They nection with recognition and F the basement of the Cannones’ Consecration of the Family to the have to drive an hour, an hour and a awards to citizens of Chicago for bungalow on the western edge of the Sacred Heart. Their voices hum. half to get here. Maybe next time.” acts of heroism”: $1,000 v city, framed by an arc of tiny white “Gratefully we adore you. ...Stay His wife has signed up to get the CHICAGO READER | JANUARY 6, 2006 | SECTION ONE 15

[snip] Do you speak Microsoft? According to Russell Mokhiber and Robert What Are You Wearing? Weissman’s “Focus on the Corporation” column, “Of the world’s 100 largest economies, 47 are nations, and 53 are corporations.” —HH

pilgrimage to Fatima. Our Lady, The founder with characteristic humility and love, overcomes this difficulty by “thought it would reversing the process. She becomes say something to the Pilgrim.” It wasn’t an original idea—replicas of the Fatima statue see men coming have been blessed and sent out into the world since 1947. But the into homes and Ambassadors of Mary happily sent statues to parishes that requested doing devotions, them, and Hackett says that today more than 300 are being moved where it’s always from home to home throughout the

world every Saturday. “Through her A women. You can ‘Pilgrim Statues,’” states the Web UGLI

site, Mary “is hurrying around the O TR

get women to VERI

world collecting prayers and sacri- SA do just about fices in reparation for the sins com- Aay Preston-Myint mitted against her Divine Son.” anything when it For the first 30 years the statues were made at Del Prado Statuary on Amassments comes to church. Grand Avenue, and after it went out When it comes to of business they were made in Northlake. For the past seven years ay Preston-Myint is a student at the School of What are you working on now? men it’s di∞cult.” they’ve been made in Annandale, the Art Institute of Chicago. He cofounded the I’m doing an all-purpose project about nuclear technology. Right Virginia. This new model weighs Chicago Tapes Project, subject of an earlier now I’m making models of a plastic dining set where the table is A Reader story, and teaches art to little kids. a mushroom cloud and the chairs—like little stools—are nuclear only 15 pounds. The Pilgrim Virgin statue again the same time next year. in the Cannones’ basement is a 25- reactors....Also some soft-sculpture nuclear missiles. Did you make the shirt you’re wearing? Anthony Ross, a 72-year-old pounder made in Northlake in 1991. Yeah—over time I just start amassing fabric scraps Soft nuclear missiles? wearing a blue blazer and a tie, is One of the Cannones’ friends drapes I find. It’s a collage. There’s no real professional process. There are 44 countries in the world that either can make a the official custodian of this Pilgrim the statue in a cloth and carries it I just stick it all together and sew until it doesn’t move nuclear bomb or already have. I wanted to make a little plush Virgin, one of 28 circulating in the outside, settling it in the lap of anymore. toy bomb for each one of those. My friend and I came up Chicago area and northern Indiana. Bridget Griffin, who’s sitting in the with the idea last year. He’s responsible for picking the front seat of a blue Mercury. She fas- I know you’ve done a lot of screen printing and painting. What made you veer into squishy arts? How many have you made so far? statue up and dropping it off in his tens the seat belt around both herself Well, there was the live-action screen printing, where I’d Only six: Argentina, Belgium, United States, South Africa, India, territory, which is bounded by and the statue, and the three-car car- print T-shirts for people at galleries and parties. That was and Sweden. It’s kind of tongue-in-cheek, like Dr. Strangelove, Austin, Grand, Mannheim, and avan heads off to the house of the the bridge over into fabric- and fiber-oriented work. learning how to live with and love our failures. —Liz Armstrong Lawrence. He rarely leaves town woman who gets it next. and has transported the statue prac- Rose Calvero, an 84-year-old tically every Saturday since 1990. widow who lives in Schiller Park, has He and other custodians, all volun- already had the Pilgrim Virgin three teers, report to the president of the times this year. When Ross became Ambassadors of Mary, Pat Hackett, custodian there was a two-year wait- Danhoffer, who’s been accompanying statue. “You get it for a week, and at the group’s storefront headquar- ing list to get the statue. Now he the statue for as long as Restivo, says when it leaves you feel sad.” ters on Diversey near Austin. often has to call “repeaters” such as most people don’t request it for any “Oh yes! You feel so sad,”say a cou- Hackett says the custodians are Calvero and ask them to take it. special purpose. But, she says, ple people in unison. always men, because the statues are Ross pulls into Calvero’s driveway “sometimes it seems that the statue “It’s a special peace or something,” three feet tall and weigh 25 pounds behind the Mercury, takes the goes to homes where it’s most need- says Danhoffer. and because the founder of the Pilgrim Virgin from Griffin, and car- ed. I had it at my house one time Calvero’s 85th birthday is coming organization “thought it would say ries it into the front room of the tidy where lightning struck my attic—it up in a few days, and Ross and the something to see men coming into bungalow. He places it on a platform actually tarnished a vase of flowers women sing “Happy Birthday.” homes and doing devotions, where below a rose-festooned arch, next to while we were saying our prayers. Do Josephine Hargus, who’s been an it’s always women. You can get two large rose-filled vases and two you remember that, Carol?” honor guard for ten years, has been women to do just about anything small ones holding single roses. “Yeah, I do,”says Carol Heidorn, sitting quietly during the discussion. when it comes to church. When it Once everyone’s seated Ross asks nodding. Suddenly she says, “We all have a real comes to men it’s difficult.” Calvero if she would like the group “Nothing happened,” Danhoffer devotion to the Blessed Mother.” Father James Mary Keane, a to say a special prayer. She says she says. “It was like a miracle because “Oh yes,”says Restivo. “She’s a Chicago priest, founded the has a 17-year-old grandson with can- she was there. It seems like when mother, and whenever you need Ambassadors of Mary in 1946 to cer, adding, “He starts chemo again people have her they’ll say, ‘Oh, we something where do you go? You go promote devotion to Mary. After this week.”They all pray for him, really need her,’ because this one is to your mother. And that’s it.” Pope Pius XII declared 1954 a then start the rosary. sick or that.” “They say he can’t refuse his moth- “Marian year,” he set up the Pilgrim Afterward everyone heads into “‘This happened just in time,’ er,” Griffin says. Virgin program with a replica of a Calvero’s kitchen for cake and coffee. they’ll say,”says Ross. Restivo notes that Hargus statue in Fatima, Portugal, where an Audrey Restivo, who’s been part of “It does, it happens,”says Restivo. recently lost her 49-year-old son to apparition of Mary allegedly spoke the honor guard for 16 years, says her “It’s like she gives you strength a heart attack. “She’s getting solace to three children in 1917. The orga- niece had the statue when her before something may happen in from doing this,”she says. “That’s nization’s Web site explains that daughter was diagnosed with lupus your life.” her strength.” “most people are unable to make a and the girl is fine now. Alice Griffin says it’s hard to give up the Hargus smiles wanly. v 16 CHICAGO READER | JANUARY 6, 2006 | SECTION ONE

Rosenbaum

continued from page 1 among all these spaces marks Jia as the most talented Asian direc- tor currently at work—with the possible exception of Hou Hsiao- hsien, whose hauntingly mini- malist Cafe Lumiere will be play- ing at the Music Box in January.

2. Not on the Lips. At 35, Jia may be the youngest supreme film master working today. At 83, Alain Resnais is the second old- est working regularly, after 97- year-old Manoel de Oliveira, who visited Chicago for the first time during this year’s film fest. This exquisite film version of a 1925 operetta is Resnais’ fifth cine- matic effort to convey his love of musicals, and in some ways it’s his most successful. A weird, ghostly farce about loneliness and emotional fragility, it’s also an anachronistic history lesson, with its 1920s manners, 1950s MGM colors and lighting, and early-21st-century French racism and anti-Americanism. It also displays much of the formal mas- tery of previous Resnais master- works, including Last Year at Marienbad (1961), Providence (1977), and Melo (1986). Fox Lorber never bothered to adver- tise this film, but it’s been avail- able on DVD since March, when it also screened at the Gene Siskel Film Center.

3. A History of Violence . I’ve yet to encounter a single attack on David Cronenberg’s multilayered yet fluid meditation on violence in George Bush’s America— filmed entirely in Canada. The writer-director clearly knows what he’s doing—note the bril- Clockwise from top left: A History of Violence, Not on the Lips, Howl’s Moving Castle, Me and You and Everyone We Know, Capote liantly worked-out sex scenes— and though the film peaks well Part one of Tropical Malady Johnny Depp as chocolate tycoon Onion City Film Festival at complexity of his underrated before its end, making the climax shows the budding romance Willy Wonka are a reminder that Chicago Filmmakers, used digital Coffee and Cigarettes, and the fact almost an afterthought, it’s less a between a soldier on leave and a Burton has better instincts for the technology to show Antonioni, that he edited it backward is serious flaw than an indication of shy country boy with a mixture of visual than for human behavior. now in his 90s and confined to a apparent, because it starts out how lean and mean the earlier irony and tenderness. Part two wheelchair since 1975, walking rich and ends up depleted. Bill segments are. turns folkloric and allegorical as 7. A tie between two literary through Saint Peter’s in Rome, Murray’s narcissism bores me the soldier travels through a dark movies, Yes and Capote, both high- looking at and caressing almost as much here as it did in 4. Ten Skies. Here’s an experi- forest, alternately stalking and ly unexpected successes. Yes , a Michelangelo’s restored Moses— Lost in Translation, but the other mental film seen by many fewer being stalked by his lover in the post-9/11 love story about an Irish- one restored Michelangelo con- actors are delightful. July’s com- people than the titles above, hav- form of a tiger spirit, with a talk- American scientist (Joan Allen) sidering another. Saraband, a pulsion to tweak Americans for ing screened only once at Chicago ing baboon offering sage advice. and a Lebanese surgeon working sequel to Bergman’s 1973 Scenes their puritanism is also somewhat Filmmakers. This masterpiece by as a cook (Simon Abkarian), From a Marriage, was shot in off-putting, but the characters are James Benning is an elaborately 6. A tie between two kids’ proved that contemporary world DV and shown that wayat sweet, her direction deft. constructed montage of ten ten- movies, Howl’s Moving Castle politics could be gracefully con- Bergman’s insistence during its minute takes, a mesmerizing and Charlie and the Chocolate fronted in iambic pentameter. It’s commercial release. It’s a kind of 10. A tie between two examples study of time, light, movement, Factory , both based on well- the best film Sally Potter’s made postcinematic effort by of not-quite science fiction, Hal and moisture that traces the known English novels. I especially since The Gold Diggers (1983), in Bergman, now in his 80s, made Hartley’s modest The Girl From shifting relations between clouds value the first, Hayao Miyazaki’s part because she found some- with a new technology after a Monday and Wong Kar-wai’s and earth, nature and people. It animated feature—based on thing a∞rmative to say. Capote 60-odd-year career using film. almost Wagnerian 2046 . had much more to say to me than Diana Wynne Jones’s book and showed that Truman Capote’s The content is typically self-pun- Hartley’s hilarious futuristic most narrative films, though the the most commercially successful downfall could be partly ishing, but I could only admire satire imagines a “dictatorship of subtly shifting patterns and tex- domestic release in the history of explained by the ethical and emo- his willingness to record such the consumer,” with citizens tures of each shot provide plenty Japanese cinema—for the radical tional conflicts he went through barrenness using a technology wearing bar codes on their wrists of narrative as they tell the story fluidity with which people and while writing In Cold Blood. It that wouldn’t grant it even a and regarded as “investments of our own perceptions. objects undergo constant trans- had the advantages of a first-rate modicum of glamour. with growth potential,” especially formation and for the implied actor (Philip Seymour Hoffman), when they have sex. Wong’s first 5. Tropical Malady. All three fea- philosophical position: that wis- a highly focused script by Dan 9. A tie between two plaintive film in ’Scope, a labyrinth of tures to date by Thai writer- dom doesn’t so much succeed Futterman, and the economical comedies about lonely fuckups, longing, begins in the last year of director (and School of the Art callowness as peacefully coexist direction of Bennett Miller. Jim Jarmusch’s Broken Flowers Hong Kong’s economic and Institute of Chicago graduate) with it. The same can be said for and Miranda July’s Me and You political independence but is set Apichatpong Weerasethakul dreams and waking reality. The 8. A tie between two up-to-date and Everyone We Know . I could mainly in the 60s and concerns confirm that he’s one of the most triumph of Tim Burton’s deliri- works about art by old masters, have made this a three-way tie his parents’ generation. creative and unpredictable film ous riff on Roald Dahl’s Charlie Michelangelo Antonioni’s 17- and included Noah Baumbach’s artists now working anywhere. and the Chocolate Factory is minute Michelangelo Eye to Eye The Squid and the Whale, but once he year’s biggest disappoint- Each time out he becomes more more in the surrealist design and (2004) and Ingmar Bergman’s the shock of it wore off I didn’t find T ment was a marked decline ambitious, though Mysterious nightmarish dislocation than in feature-length Saraband (2003). its negativity as clarifying as I in the quality and vitality of the Object at Noon and Blissfully some metaphysics. The off-put- Michelangelo Eye to Eye , shown would have liked. Jarmusch’s fea- documentaries released. In 2004 Yours were hardly modest efforts. ting aggressive mannerisms of in 35-millimeter as part of the ture lacks the formal and moral we were given Fahrenheit 9/11, CHICAGO READER | JANUARY 6, 2006 | SECTION ONE 17

The Corporation, Los Angeles Plays Itself ,and Route 181: Fragments of a Journey in The Best Ten Movies Palestine-Israel. This year we got solid stuff—Cinevardaphoto (a Block Films screening), Go Further, Grizzly Man, Magnificent Obsession: Frank You Probably Didn’t See Lloyd Wright’s Buildings and Legacy in Japan, The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, and William Eggleston in the Real Attendance is down, but quality is up. World—but fewer revelations. Even the most documentarylike By J.R. Jones items in my top 15, Ten Skies and he big story in movies last My own experience is warped by secrets like Lila Says. I had even gives an Oscar-caliber perform- Michelangelo Eye to Eye, are year was plunging atten- the fact that I watch so many more trouble than usual whittling ance as the adoring sister-in-law, subversions of the form, as is T dance: down 6.2 percent movies for free, but I too spent less my year-end list down to ten and screenwriter Angus Jem Cohen’s memorable Chain. from 2005. Everyone had a theo- at theaters in 2005. I have a DVD movies, as evidenced by my MacLachlan deftly shifts our Sad to say, none of the docu- ry about why, and among the player and a big TV tube with a weaselly genre categories at the sympathies between the two. mentaries I saw about the war in proposed culprits were DVDs, stereo speaker on either side, the end. In the 50s, when the nation’s Iraq seemed adequate to the sub- crying children, on-screen adver- best approximation of screen pro- theater owners were first feeling 2. Gunner Palace. Michael Tucker ject. They all seemed too “embed- tisements, and patrons yakking jection I’ve ever had in my home, the competition of television, arrived in Baghdad as an embed- ded,” too timid, too dependent on on cell phones. My own guess and a Netflix subscription pro- they came up with the advertis- ded reporter in September 2003; cross-referencing Hollywood fan- was that people had wised up to vides cheap access to just about ing slogan “Movies are better his documentary about an artillery tasies like Apocalypse Now. It’s all the slick advertising and puffy anything issued domestically on than ever.” I wouldn’t go that far, division stationed in the bombed- obviously important for Gunner reviews, had grown tired of DVD. But I’ve resolved to spend but in 2005 movies were better out Al Azimiyah palace not only Palace to show that some inno- organizing their evenings around more time and money this year at than usual. Here are the best: exposes problems that make the cent families in Baghdad whose a two-hour block of corporatized my favorite theaters—the Music war unwinnable (soldiers’ igno- houses were ransacked for cheese. But according to an Box, LaSalle Bank Cinema, Gene 1. Junebug. A hilarious and mov- rance of the culture, ineffective weapons got sent to Abu Ghraib online study cited last month in Siskel Film Center, Landmark’s ing snapshot of the red state- training of Iraqi civil defense even though no weapons were the New York Times, the real rea- Century Centre—because without blue state divide, Phil Morrison’s forces, abuse of the civilian popu- found, but it’s offensive to treat son is more prosaic: ticket prices them I wouldn’t know about most funky comedy follows a cosmo- lation) but allows the young such information as incidental have risen about 5 percent since of the movies below. politan art dealer (Embeth grunts to comment on their expe- and secondary. Ironically, Joe 2003, and people think they’re Last year’s drop in attendance Davidtz) to North Carolina, rience through rap and music. Dante’s crude, fictional too expensive. It’s a sign of the is particularly dispiriting because where she meets her new hus- Homecoming—an angry satire times—moviegoing, a middle- so many good movies came and band’s seriously dysfunctional 3. Lila Says . Hands down the sexi- about slain soldiers returning class entertainment for more went without finding an audi- family and tries to land a frac- est movie I saw this year, this from their graves to vote the pres- than a century, is becoming too ence, from big-studio rollouts like tious outsider artist for her French feature by Ziad Doueiri ident out of o∞ce, which turned expensive for the middle class. Cinderella Man to art-house Chicago gallery. Amy Adams continued on page 18 up on Showtime’s “Masters of Horror”—came closer to bearing witness to the war’s true meaning. Far too much fuss has been made lately about liberal-minded fiction films that make liberal- minded viewers feel sensitive and virtuous. As a first feature, Paul Haggis’s Crash certainly has its high points, but fresh insights into the nature and ramifications of racism aren’t among them, and the complacent Altman-esque ironies don’t help. (Curiously, Jan Hrebejk’s uncannily similar and equally accomplished Czech film Up and Down was ignored by critics.)I was moved by both Brokeback Mountain and Rent, but they still seemed overly con- tained. Steven Spielberg may have learned to think beyond Zionist reflexes, but Munich, like Raiders of the Lost Ark, is still supposed to make us feel good about the slaughter of Arabs, though we’re now also supposed to feel bad about feeling good. Ten other movies I liked, in alphabetical order: The Beat That My Heart Skipped; The Brothers Grimm; Fear and Trembling; Goodbye, Dragon Inn; Lord of War ; Notre Musique; Or (My Treasure); Play; The Producers; and Safe Conduct. My annual F.W. Murnau award, given to the film that did the most to alter my sense of film history, goes to the wonderful, radical 1966 Jacques Rivette documentary Jean Renoir, the Boss: A Portrait of Michel Simon by Jean Renoir, or A Portrait of Jean Renoir by Michel Simon, or The Direction of Actors: Dialogue. Unlike most of what I saw in 2005, it was bliss- fully free of compromise. v Clockwise from top left: Junebug, Palindromes, Lila Says, My Summer of Love, Gunner Palace, The Devil’s Rejects 18 CHICAGO READER | JANUARY 6, 2006 | SECTION ONE

Jones

continued from page 17 suring formula and startling sub- visiting from the city (Emily tics. The film is well-paced and Best animated: Howl’s Moving ( West Beirut) is set in a dilapidat- ject matter. The main story is a Blunt), much to the displeasure has an impressive historical Castle, Corpse Bride, Wallace ed Paris suburb, where a quiet, sweet screwball romance between of the country girl’s older brother sweep, though Giordana gener- & Gromit: The Curse of the gifted Moroccan teenager a lonely performance artist (July) (Paddy Considine), who’s ates that broad perspective Were-Rabbit. (Mohammed Khouas) is drawn and a hapless shoe salesman returned from prison a sancti- through intimate observation of Best general-interest docs: into a secret romance with a white (John Hawkes), but woven into monious evangelical Christian. the many characters’ everyday March of the Penguins, neighbor (Vahina Giocante). Her this conventional fare are sub- This small-scale British drama lives. The film was produced as a Murderball, Tell Them Who exquisite beauty and sexual bold- plots that boldly explore the nar- by Pawel Pawlikowski was pro- TV miniseries but rejected by the You Are , Up for Grabs. ness make her a walking powder rowing sexual divide between moted for its lesbian romance, Italian state network and ulti- keg in the poor, largely Arab com- children and adults. July handles but despite all the idyllic after- mately released in theaters, Best music docs: Fallen Angel: munity, and a conflict involving this taboo material with a dis- noons on rolling hills, it’s a story where it screened in two three- Gram Parsons, Moog, The the hero’s leering buddies leads arming frankness and simplicity, of brutality and betrayal. hour segments; a DVD release is Nomi Song, Rock School, We both lovers to the brink of absorbing it into her main con- scheduled for February 7. Jam Econo: The Story of the tragedy—and to genuine love. cern—the joy of discovery, be it 8. A History of Violence . In David Minutemen. sexual, romantic, or creative. Cronenberg’s harrowing crime 10. The Devil’s Rejects. Who’d Best political docs: Enron: The 4. Grizzly Man. German master drama, some people are born to have thought that Rob Zombie, Smartest Guys in the Room, Werner Herzog finds a uniquely 6. Palindromes. Todd Solondz kill, others are born to be killed, the freaky-looking dude who The Future of Food, The American focus for his career- dives headfirst into the abortion and at the end a small-town fam- once fronted the metal band Protocols of Zion, Wal-Mart: long fascination with man and controversy with this heartbreak- ily gathers at the dinner table, White Zombie, would conjure The High Cost of Low Price. nature: Timothy Treadwell, a ing moral comedy about a young united and stained by this awful up the most frightening movie self-invented grizzly-bear expert girl who is forced to have an abor- knowledge. This was adapted since The Blair Witch Project? Best movies I couldn’t jam into who became a media personality tion, runs away from home, and from a hard-boiled graphic Moving like a bat out of hell, this any of the above categories: before a grizzly devoured him in falls in with a born-again family novel, and Cronenberg, despite tale of a murderous family on the The Ballad of Jack and Rose, Alaska in 2003. Working with of deformed children. Dividing his own history of Grand run from a vengeful sheriff taps The Beautiful Country, more than 100 hours of video the main character among eight Guignol, honors the form with a into the same fear of backwoods Breakfast on Pluto, Brokeback footage Treadwell left behind, actors, each chosen for her inno- remarkably spare narrative. crazies that’s powered the genre Mountain, Capote, Charlie Herzog fashions an unnerving cence, was commercial suicide, since Two Thousand Maniacs! and the Chocolate Factory, portrait of a troubled man whose but it was also typical of a 9. The Best of Youth. This six- and the original Texas Chain- Crash, The Constant Gardener, congress with the grizzlies was filmmaker who acts more from hour family saga by Marco Tullio saw Massacre . Good Night, and Good Luck, Kontroll, Layer Cake, Millions, both religion and death wish. pure feeling than common sense. Giordana traces a middle-class Best noirs: The Ice Harvest, A Munich, Nine Lives, Purple Italian clan from 1966 through Tout de Suite. 5. Me and You and Everyone We 7. My Summer of Love. A homely the end of the century, as two Butterfly, Separate Lies, The Know . Miranda July made an orphan in rural West Yorkshire brothers are united by their Best comedies: Wedding Crashers, Squid and the Whale, auspicious feature debut with (Nathalie Press) is drawn into a affection for a mentally ill young The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Sarah Thumbsucker, Tony Takitani, this canny combination of reas- steamy affair with a posh bird woman and then divided by poli- Silverman: Jesus Is Magic. Walk the Line, Yes . v CHICAGO READER | JANUARY 6, 2006 | SECTION ONE 19 The Best Music of 2005 Our Section 3 regulars have made their lists. Even though some of them don’t believe in lists, man.

Liz Armstrong

I was positively, wholeheartedly obsessed with everything on this list at some point in the year, either for months or just for a few hours. I’ve put the entries in alphabetical order, because arranging them according to the amount of time I fixated on them would be silly.

AIDS WOLF “We Multiply,” “Opposing Walls,” “Fuck You McLean,” “Panty Mind Extended” | MP3s on MySpace A tangled orgy of wall-to-wall shrieking in a paradise full of dirty naked people.

COCOROSIE Noah’s Ark | Touch and Go Stripped bare but still lush, heart-wrenching but kind of creepy—like the songs a Jean Clockwise from left: Bettye LaVette, Spoon, Crooked Fingers, M.I.A. Genet novel would sing. analog synths to summon a hood grit, antifashion fashion, west-coast gangsta rap. The DELIA GONZALEZ & GAVIN RUSSOM vision of crows flying into a and National Geographic. Kabir Hamid Game is so hardcore I bet The Days of Mars | DFA/Astralwerks dark eternity. all the muscles he uses to Instrumental electronic art- NEON BLONDE smile have atrophied right gallery music that’s like the SAM FLAX KEENER Chandeliers in the Savannah | off his face. deeply revelatory moment in the “Backwards Fire” | MP3 at Dim Mak denouement of some trippy, grit- mindmilk.com Two of the Blood Brothers set 3. BLACKALICIOUS ty, long-lost 70s film set in a win- A transmission from Marc jazzy, ass-ripping screeching to The Craft | Anti- try New York, stretched out to Bolan’s ghost channeled by rollicking cabaret piano, spiny Not even their best, but still last a whole hour. a blond, feather-haired New guitar, and hectic beats. head and shoulders above Age twink. almost all the other hip-hop HARRY MERRY OCS this year—Gift of Gab’s inex- Well . . . Here’s Another Nice Mess 3 & 4: Songs About Death and haustible flow defies belief, You’ve Got Me Into! | Tocado Dying Vol. 3 and Get Stoved | 1. EDAN and Chief Xcel packs ideas Keyboard chaos and arrhyth- Narnack Beauty and the Beat | Lewis into his tracks like a guy who mic percussion, simultaneous- Like a lazy summer evening on the Edan spins a dense, claustropho- knows he won’t run out. ly giddy and desperate—the porch, tipping back warm whiskey bic matrix of 60s psychedelic music a hamster might hear with friends while some weird rock samples around his deeply 4. COMMON in its head as it tries to navi- dusty troubadour guy no one real- weird lyrics, which he delivers in Be | GOOD/Geffen gate the most elaborate ly knows sings and plays guitar. an authoritative, scissor-tongued Chicago’s native son resurrects Habitrail ever. style. The hip-hop equivalent of himself after the flop that was SSION a Salvador Dali painting. Electric Circus: his love songs INDIAN JEWELRY M.I.A. “World’s Worth” | Sound Virus to the ladies are great, and his Invasive Exotics | Girlgang Arular | XL/Interscope Sleazy Robitussin party jams fist- 2. THE GAME love songs to the street corner Shamanic badasses wield Dangerous dance music that’s fucking outrageous Vivienne The Documentary | Aftermath are even better. shadowy guitars and sinister equal parts jump-rope taunt, Westwood punk. Single-handedly rehabilitates continued on page 20 20 CHICAGO READER | JANUARY 6, 2006 | SECTION ONE

Best Music

3. M.I.A. the creative process can some- tech stasis, jackin’ house, and the plus of aggression: they sound Arular | XL/Interscope times have a happy ending. nasty boom of southern bounce, it heavy, hammered, and happy. This displaced Sri Lankan art stu- meets all your needs in a single dent has more than earned every song. Asses are clapping in heaven. MARIANNE FAITHFULL overthought review with her Jessica Hopper Before the Poison | Anti- politically ambiguous agit-pop— 9. PELICAN Possibly her best since Broken and her dancehall-tinged Brit- The Fire in Our Throats Will Beckon English back in 1979. She’s been continued from page 19 hop beats are so good they render the Thaw | Hydra Head working that singular voice—the 5. CAGE all that verbiage irrelevant. Lush instrumental metal that jaded older woman with her Hell’s Winter | Definitive Jux appeals equally to fans of Egg wicked wisdom—since she was One of indie hip-hop’s most 4. THE HOLD STEADY Hunt and Iron Maiden. Several what, 19? And it sounds even notorious nutcases grows up Separation Sunday | Frenchkiss songs here clock in at around 11 better now that she’s aged into it. and decides to share: openly These Brooklyn boys now confi- minutes, but they could all stand autobiographical stories from dently inhabit the bar-band to be two or three days longer. HIGH ON FIRE his incredibly messed-up life go idiom they once merely imitated, Blessed Black Wings | Relapse toe-to-toe with some apocalyptic which helps Craig Finn’s caustic I didn’t think dense, smart, Def Jux beats. lyrics jell—you don’t have to be a 1. SUFJAN STEVENS unhyphenated metal needed four-eyed lapsed Catholic from Illinois | Asthmatic Kitty anyone to defend its honor, but 6. KANYE WEST the upper midwest to appreciate Because Chicago is worth it! I’m still happy to watch these Late Registration | Roc-a-Fella his fractured urban legends. guys leave all the other would-be Whether Kanye’s lyrics are 2. SPOON champions in the dust. charming or just cutesy is open Gimme Fiction | Merge to debate, but there’s no arguing Perfection in rock isn’t interest- with the richness and maturity of ing or compelling, except when it his almost orchestral beats. is. I can’t help but surrender my breath to the sweet plodding of 10. COMMON 7. DANGERDOOM the piano and drums on this one. Be | GOOD/Geffen The Mouse and the Mask | Epitaph The musical counterpart to Bell Doom. Danger Mouse. The 3. MAKE BELIEVE Hooks’s The Will to Change: Cartoon Network. Together they Shock of Being | Flameshovel Men, Masculinity, and Love— cut an irreverent fart in the gen- Tim Kinsella’s been threatening self-examination and a love ethic eral direction of all that’s self- 5. KANYE WEST to give us a real punk band since as an antidote to mainstream serious in hip-hop. Late Registration | Roc-a-Fella 1997—who knew his version hip-hop’s apocalyptic patriarchy. IRON & WINE Kanye demands the best in col- would be this commie-situation- Woman King | Sub Pop 8. ASAMOV laborators, and when that won’t ist blitzkrieg combining the aes- Every so often you hear a song so And Now...| 6 Hole work he samples them—top-tier thetic of Pere Ubu with the atti- Monica Kendrick perfect it gives you goose bumps, The debut from this four-man pop producer Jon Brion adds his tude and ideals of Huggy Bear like this EP’s title track—eerie, Florida posse is the album Little grandiose arrangements, and the and Born Against. The notion of ranking my favorite hermetic folk that’d earn the disc Brother wish they’d made this voices of Ray Charles and Otis music is incomprehensible to me. a spot on my list even if the rest year. Laid-back, infectious grooves Redding root the whole project 4. LUNGFISH First I think, “Is this album of of it sucked. with fun, feel-good rhymes. in the soul tradition. Feral Hymns | Dischord rootsy hillbilly blues better than The only band worth owning 11 this album of black-hole drone?” MODEY LEMON 9. ONE.BE.LO 6. SLEATER-KINNEY albums by. All Day I Dream And then I think, “What the hell The Curious City | Birdman S.O.N.O.G.R.A.M. | Fat Beats The Woods | Sub Pop About Dan Higgs’s Beard. kind of question is that?” In This trippy, tribal, mannerist Former Binary Star member All the Led Zep comparisons alphabetical order, then: neogarage, undoubtedly the rhymes his ass off over a warm, obscured another obvious refer- 5. MARYJ. BLIGE product of ill-advised whackjob jazzy soundscape. ence point—this is what Heart The Breakthrough | Geffen ambition, succeeds in spite of could’ve been if they’d interro- I know it might sound sacrilegious sounding like it’s constantly 10. ATMOSPHERE gated the power of boy rock as given the exalted status of Blige’s falling apart—just like about 87 You Can’t Imagine How Much Fun expertly as they harnessed it. early records, but The Breakthrough percent of my favorite rock We’re Having | Rhymesayers is nuclear—it’s her most consistent records ever. Solid all around, and the closer, 7. THIONE SECK disc from song to song, the cameos “Little Man”—where Slug reads Orientation | Stern’s Africa are pure fire, and the production SUNN O))) letters he’s written to his son, his Youssou N’Dour’s 2004 release is fuck a brick. Mary’s back. The Grimmrobe Demos | Southern father, and himself—is one of the Egypt untangled the Arabic and Lord most self-aware hip-hop tracks Middle Eastern roots of West 6. JOHN DOE Like being in the womb, only bet- I’ve heard in a long time. Africa’s musical culture, and this Forever Hasn’t Happened Yet | Yep CROOKED FINGERS ter. And louder. (No offense, mom.) disc from Dakar’s perpetual Roc Dignity and Shame | Merge number two attraction under- It’s such a relief when the new This dark, quirky, and very com- TRAVELING BELL Keith Harris takes something similar—though record from an aging punk hero poserly singer-songwriter Scatter Ways | Secret Eye it’s sweeter and earthier, and doesn’t make you wish he’d left well record had me at hello—or at On her drony, elegant solo debut, reaches even further east to spice enough alone. There’s still nobody the very least at the asking-for- Kathleen Baird of Spires That in the music with Bollywood fillips. who duets better with lady singers. directions part. the Sunset Rise sounds steely and fierce—like a dryad in a spiked tree 8. MOUNTAIN GOATS 7. RIVER CITY TANLINES DALEK waiting for a lumberjack to make The Sunset Tree | 4AD River City Tanlines | Dirtnap Absence | Ipecac her day. Think Nico’s Desertshore A longtime enemy of the autobio- A bona fide icon with her own Ever wondered how weird hip- without the desperation. graphical lyric, John Darnielle crafts label, Alicja Trout is the Ian hop could get if it were set free of these acerbic songs about his own MacKaye of garage punk—and the expectation that normal WILLIAM ELLIOTT WHITMORE adolescence with the same artis- on top of that she solos like a humans should be able to dance to Ashes to Dust | Southern tic distance that makes his third- fever. This is just a collection of it? Dalek shows us one possibility, There are a lot of whippersnap- 1. ART BRUT person narratives so powerful. singles, but it’s sick, sick business. wrapping skittery beats in searing, pers on Fat Possum who wish Bang Bang Rock & Roll | Fierce Panda droning goth-industrial guitar. they were this guy—or if they Wire-weaned English lads use 9. MINOTAUR SHOCK don’t, they should. faux-Fall two-and-a-half-chord Maritime | 4AD DEAD MEADOW barrages to set up Eddie Argos’s David Edwards undercuts the Feathers | Matador punch lines about forming a whimsy in his intricate laptop These D.C. psychonauts have a Peter Margasak band, failing in the sack, and pop with wistfulness, as if to ask, swoopy, sludgy sound thick freaking out in art museums. “Yes, you got the high score, but enough to pour on pancakes, 1. BETTYE LA VETTE was it really worth it?” with rhythms like slow-swaying I’ve Got My Own Hell to Raise | Anti- 2. GOGOL BORDELLO seaweed and lyrics that might as Would’ve been the comeback of the Gypsy Punks: Underdog World 10. FIONA APPLE well be Robert Plant cutups—but year if LaVette had ever gone away— Strike | Side One Dummy Extraordinary Machine | Epic unlike many other bands flourish- perfect production, classic soul Lyric-spitting madman Eugene These scaled-back rerecordings 8. ROD LEE ing under the “stoner rock” grow arrangements, and material by the Hutz and his merry band throw a trump the intriguing but fussy Vol. 5: The Official | Morphius lights, they hardly hint at post- likes of Aimee Mann, Fiona Apple, spastic Gypsy dance party for mar- demos leaked online, proving Baltimore club is God’s dance 1975 metal. Nor do they taint and Dolly Parton that sounds ginalized mongrels everywhere. that a major-label intrusion into music: combining cold Detroit- their lumbering riffs with a sur- shockingly great in her hands. CHICAGO READER | JANUARY 6, 2006 | SECTION ONE 21

2. AMADOU & MARIAM Dimanche a Bamako | Nonesuch Wunderkind producer Manu Chao keeps the swirling arrangements and hypnotizing beats small, letting the outsize personalities of this blind Malian couple shine through.

3. DAVE DOUGLAS Keystone | Greenleaf The trumpeter crafts his best electroacoustic jams yet—as sound tracks for some of Fatty Arbuckle’s forgotten silent films.

4. DEERHOOF The Runners Four | Kill Rock Stars/5RC Deerhoof fuses twee pop and noise rock organically, with a thousand delicate connections—and though this album is the band’s most im- mediate and streamlined, that care- fully balanced yin and yang hasn’t Clockwise from top: Sleater-Kinney, Sufjan Stevens, Common, Edan lost a bit of its bushy-tailed energy. three-disc live set, bring the Marcus Schmickler alter- DAN PENN & SPOONER OLDHAM 3. EDDIE HINTON 5. SEU JORGE intensity and adventurousness of nately caresses and dices the Moments From This Theatre | Beautiful Dream: Sessions Vol. 3 | Cru | Wrasse free jazz to carefully composed minimalist figures of AMM Proper American Zane The David Bowie songs he sang postbop tunes—even the searing pianist John Tilbury in this Two of music’s greatest story- A collection of unreleased gems on-screen in The Life Aquatic solos are controlled and concise. serene but startling impro- tellers—and one of its greatest from the late lamented southern made him a celebrity, but these vised set. songwriting teams—run through soul man and session ace. strikingly original, stripped-down 9. DOMENICO GUACCERO their back catalogs in front of an sambas will make him a star. Da Cantare | Die Schachtel awestruck Dublin audience. 4. CAST KING This Italian composer wrote these Bob Mehr Moments has been available as an Saw Mill Man | Locust 6. M.I.A. mind-blowing vocal works between import since 1999, but was finally This recently rediscovered coun- Arular | XL/Interscope 1951 and 1983. Some of the materi- There’s a dead heat for the released in the U.S. this year. try songsmith and onetime Sun Maya Arulpragasam’s charisma al sounds like insane-asylum opera; number one spot, so my 2005 Records prospect released his transforms this composite of elsewhere Guaccero abandons all list actually goes to eleven. astonishing debut album at the familiar forms—hip-hop, electro, pretentions to genre, layering ripe young age of 79. bhangra, grime, favela funk—into weird, blocky percussion atop har- something fresh and irresistible. monically berserk choral singing. 5. REIGNING SOUND Home for Orphans | Sympathy for 7. CAMILLE the Record Industry Le Fil | Virgin Greg Cartwright and his garage- This French chanteuse, better rock gang retrofit a clutch of known as one of the singers from the their favorite tunes as glorious Nouvelle Vague project, uses multi- Memphis country-soul. tracked vocals—from melodies to 2. EDGAR “JONES” JONES mouth percussion—to create a sly Soothing Music for Stray Cats | Viper 6. OUTRAGEOUS CHERRY pop masterpiece that flirts with 1. RICHARD HAWLEY Cheeky, brilliant pop from the Our Love Will Change the World | chanson, funk, and doo-wop. Coles Corner | Mute former leader of the Liverpool Rainbow Quartz Former Pulp guitarist captures band the Stairs, combining On its seventh full-length, Matthew 8. ATOMIC 10. MARCUS SCHMICKLER the late-night magic of Frank sounds from jazz, doo-wop, and Smith’s Detroit combo toughens up The Bikini Tapes | Jazzland & JOHN TILBURY Sinatra, Lee Hazlewood, and classic R & B—and recorded its jangly 60s fuzz pop with barbed Five of Scandinavia’s finest Variety | A-Musik Scott Walker on this set of almost entirely on a digital lyrics and lean arrangements. improvisers, captured here on a German laptop wizard nostalgic pop numbers. eight-track in his home. continued on page 22 22 CHICAGO READER | JANUARY 6, 2006 | SECTION ONE

Best Music

continued from page 21 5. HOOD 7. PHANTOM BUFFALO Outside Closer | Domino Shishimumu | Rough Trade Lyrical, lo-fi indie rock, treated The year’s most offbeat and to hip-hop-inspired production inventive psych-pop record was and expressing a deeply English originally pressed in a tiny run in rural melancholy. 2003, back when this group from Portland, Maine, was still 6. KONONO NO. 1 calling itself the Ponys. Rough Congotronics | Crammed Discs Trade gave it a widespread This Congolese dance band uses release last winter. a sound system built from junk, auto parts, and repurposed 8. VARIOUS ARTISTS megaphones to amplify thumb- Cult Cargo: Belize City Boil Up | piano grooves past the point of Numero Group disintegration. Anthology of reggae, R & B, and pop produced by artists from the 7. WIRE tiny Central American nation in The Scottish Play: 2004 | the 1960s and ’70s. Pink Flag These legendary art punks prove 9. BETTYE LA VETTE that angry young men don’t I’ve Got My Own Hell to Raise | always mellow out with the pas- Anti- sage of time. Producer Joe Henry helmed this excellent studio comeback from 8. LAUNAU the old-school R & B diva. Kuutarha | Locust Rough-hewn, rustic Finnish 10. SHARON JONES & THE DAP-KINGS acid folk. Naturally | Daptone On their second disc, Jones and her nimble band plunge into soul so deep you can’t see the bottom. Bill Meyer

9. THELONIOUS MONK QUARTET WITH JOHN COLTRANE At Carnegie Hall | Blue Note This 1957 concert recording, lost for nearly half a century, turns out to be the most complete por- Clockwise from top: Vijay Iyer, Iron & Wine, Hold Steady, Cocorosie, Low trait of the brief but momentous association between these two 3. PONYS effort—it’s even impossible to hate up songs, which at first seemed 1. VARIOUS ARTISTS jazz giants. Celebration Castle | In the Red the song from that iPod commercial. like above-average filler, now feel American Primitive Volume 2 | Jered Gummere and company as strong as the hits—I guess Revenant 10. LOW soar to desperate new heights, 8. FRANZ FERDINAND false modesty is as classically dif- Before he died, John Fahey The Great Destroyer | Sub Pop alighting on the aerie where You Could Have It So Much Better | fident a Britpop pose as any. plucked these 50 gloriously The quietest band in rock turns Sonic Youth and Joy Division are Domino eccentric obscurities from 78s it up—way up. reimagined as one another. For my money, still the best made at the dawn of American (and most likable) of the post- J. Niimi recorded music. 4. EPOXIES Strokes boy bands. On their sec- Brian Nemtusak Stop the Future | Fat Wreck Chords ond disc, tongue-in-cheek art- 1. M.I.A. 2. JACK ROSE Even better than the Rezillian fare rock dandy Alex Kapranos and Arular | XL/Interscope Kensington Blues | VHF on their breezy and blistering debut. crew simply dish up more of the Shriekin’ Sri Lankan makes post- The best of the new generation Everyone from the Faint to Gwen same Roxy rock—but when it’s terrorism dance pop from Atari of American Primitive guitarists Stefani could learn a thing or two this good, who cares? glossolalia, talking toy machine infuses his lyrical rags, blues, from these guys about how this neo- guns, and a whole lot of dance- and ragas with remorseless rock new-wave thing oughta be done. 9. AMON TOBIN hall hustle. With a militant Tamil heaviosity. Chaos Theory | Ninja Tune separatist for a dad, she’s so 5. CARIBOU The reigning lord of the other- authentic she makes Ice Cube 3. THE FALL The Milk of Human Kindness | Domino worldly soundscape—whose basalt look like Jello Biafra. The Complete Peel Sessions Dan Snaith, served with cease- plateaus teem with metallized 1978-2004 | Castle and-desist from Handsome Dick insectoid legions, marching in the A six-CD set that’s both a trove 1. MEAT BEAT MANIFESTO regarding the Manitoba moniker, glare of exploding stars—does the of rarities and an invaluable At the Center | Thirsty Ear finally works off his debt to Boards sound track for a first-person condensed history of this can- Electro-dub-industrial trail- of Canada with his first full-length shooter, Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: tankerous English postpunk blazer Jack Dangers charts a as Caribou. Psychedelimotorik Chaos Theory. Can you say “duh”? institution. bold new course on this ele- excursions to the subarctic reaches gantly jazzed-up outing. A of the glitchtronica frontier. 4. ROGER SMITH & LOUIS shotgun blast of antivenin for MOHOLO-MOHOLO today’s poisoned brains. 6. LADYTRON The Butterfly and the Bee | Witching Hour | Rykodisc Emanem 2. BROADCAST This disturbed dance music could be 2. LCD SOUNDSYSTEM The title is a play on the phrase Tender Buttons | Warp the sound track for a lost Deodato LCD Soundsystem | DFA/Capitol “insect music,” long used to Addition by subtraction: film—it pulses with a palpable, deli- Affectless dance-floor electronica describe (or dismiss) English James Cargill and Trish cious unease that’s like a photo neg- gets a snarky sense of humor. free improvisation, but it dou- Keenan drop their supporting ative of 604’s synthetic euphoria. Irony will free your mind, and bles as a metaphor for this cast and produce their most your ironic ass will follow. duo’s unusual sound: Smith’s delicate and gripping album 7. GORILLAZ 10. KAISER CHIEFS light, prickling acoustic guitar to date. A wild, fluttering Demon Days | Virgin Employment | Universal 3. ELECTRELANE adroitly balances the much rush, like a clockwork wax- I like a few tracks on the first album I was initially pretty dismissive of Axes | Too Pure heavier tones of Moholo- wing crashing through win- better than anything here, but this album, but it’s grown on me Programmatic post-rock with Moholo’s percussion. dowpane after windowpane. Demon Days is a more cohesive like all hell. Even the less juiced- heart and balls as well as the req- CHICAGO READER | JANUARY 6, 2006 | SECTION ONE 23

uisite brains, wringing suspense fusing pop melodies played on just one genre. Like the sound them myself, since the labels that 2. MESHELL NDEGEOCELLO and drama out of its sonic plot classical instruments to anabolic track to the dystopian sci-fi release this stuff aren’t making The Spirit Music Jamia: Dance arc like a good film noir. disco beats. movie that 2005 sometimes enough money to send promo of the Infidel | Shanachie seemed to be. copies to folks like me. I’m sure The superb bassist opens up to 4. DANGERDOOM I’ve overlooked a few worthy jazz both past and present—the The Mouse and the Mask | Epitaph Miles Raymer 8. BLOC PARTY contenders as a result, but Lin arrangements recall electric The Shel Silverstein of rap joins Silent Alarm Remixed | Vice Chen’s silky, sinewy, soulful voice Miles, and the guest musicians forces with the Grey Album’s furry Underground dance-floor makes this the best example I include Don Byron, Neal Evans, rabble-rouser and realizes that the tastemakers rip apart an OK found all year. and Wallace Roney—and in decline of narrative in hip-hop frees Britpop record and stitch it back the process points to a fertile him up to talk about stuff besides together into something that 5. DEADLY SNAKES possible future. nines, Escalades, and pussy. lives up to the hype. Porcella | In the Red Nick Cave has the Beatles over 3. KEITH JARRETT 5. THE FALL 9. DAVID BANNER for a barbecue and serves Radiance | ECM The Complete Peel Sessions 1978- Certified | SRC/Universal them ...to Satan. Solo piano, but a lot more cutting 2004 | Castle One part conscious rapper and than the pastoral stuff you expect A fitting tribute to both the Fall two parts strip-club hedonist, 6. ANTONY & THE JOHNSONS from Jarrett. Two Japanese con- and the late great John Peel. The 1. SPOON Banner makes Dirty South I Am a Bird Now | Secretly Canadian certs recorded three days apart world would be a noticeably Gimme Fiction | Merge bangers with a pissed-off politi- If Antony’s androgynous cabaret and combined into one kaleido- crappier place had neither of The long wait for Britt Daniel to cal bite to match their tear-up- doesn’t make you weepy, you scopic, 17-part treatise. them existed. stop making merely good the-club rowditude. need an empathy transplant. albums and put out something great is over—this tense, creepy 10. VARIOUS ARTISTS postpunk pop sounds like a 70s The Sexual Life of the Savages: AM radio signal bounced off a Underground Post-Punk from lonely satellite. Sao Paulo, Brasil | Soul Jazz Sao Paulo’s early-80s postpunks injected hot blood into the genre’s ironic poses—further proof that Brazilians can make any style of music exponentially funkier. 4. DAVE DOUGLAS 6. JENS LEKMAN 7. EPOXIES Keystone | Greenleaf Oh You’re So Silent Jens | Secretly Stop the Future | Fat Wreck Chords In case you just can’t believe Canadian Ann Sterzinger If you don’t fall in love with new- that the silent films of the long- Sensitive Swede nominates him- wave goddess Roxy Epoxy, you discredited Fatty Arbuckle self to be the Scott Walker of might want to check your libido could’ve inspired the year’s best indie pop. Warm, lonely music 2. HOLD STEADY for leaks. fusion disc, this release includes for bus stations at 3 AM—like Separation Sunday | Frenchkiss a DVD where Douglas’s music “Midnight Train to Georgia,” Possibly the year’s best work of 8. LAST TARGET provides an obliquely comple- except from the point of view of literature, and you know no one One Shot, One Kill | BYO Records mentary sound track to the on- the guy who’s pawned all his in the New York Review of Books Has there ever been a bad year screen chicanery. hopes for a ticket to a simpler sounds like the E Street Band for Japanese punk? Not since I place and time. gone feral. hit puberty at least.

7. COMET GAIN 3. KONONO NO. 1 9. VAZ City Fallen Leaves | Kill Rock Stars Congotronics | Crammed Discs 1. MOMUS The Lie That Matches the Furniture | These Brits lean hard on the The world’s best street musicians Otto Spooky | American Patchwork Narnack canonical C86 sound, especially make Powerbooks and Sometimes I think Nick Currie is Just when you’re getting jaded in the way domesticated amp clat- sequencers look bad by banging one of them real live genius the indie-metal haunted house, a ter catalyzes the ugly beauty of out the year’s densest, ass- things, but what do I know? real live loup-garou pops out confessional cockney speak-song. shakingest dance record on from behind a giant foam-rubber homemade thumb pianos. 2. MARGOT & THE NUCLEAR tombstone and gives you the BJ 8. WILDERNESS SO & SO’S of your life. 5. JOHN HOLLENBECK Wilderness | Jagjaguwar 4. MAKE BELIEVE The Dust of Retreat | Standard LARGE ENSEMBLE Baltimore boys show up late to Shock of Being | Flameshovel Recording Company 10. TENEMENT HALLS A Blessing | OmniTone the early-aughts postpunk yard Lyrically, it’s probably the most You could call these self-described Knitting Needles & Bicycle Bells | Having recently revitalized cham- sale and get stuck with the part relevant record of the year, and “scarf rockers” precious, or you Merge ber jazz with his Claudia Quintet, of PiL nobody wanted: the probably still will be when every- could quit resisting their wistful, Chris Lopez, of the dearly the drummer and composer rein- vocals. They make lemonade. one else catches up to Make wintry tunes and let your tears departed Rock*a*Teens, multi- vents the jazz orchestra, nodding to Believe’s next-level tweakcore wash the crud from your soul. tracked this almost-solo disc of Charles Mingus, Aaron Copland, 9. BASEMENT JAXX style sometime around 2011. raw but delicate garage—remi- Thad Jones, and Steve Reich. The Singles | XL niscent of the Thrills, if they Pixelated dance-pop outfit swallows 5. COMMON sounded less canned and tidy. 6. THELONIOUS MONK QUARTET club-culture flotsam—styles, singers, Be | GOOD/Geffen WITH JOHN COLTRANE samples, timbres—like it’s some sort With a little push from Kanye, At Carnegie Hall | Blue Note of magical food that makes you hun- Common dropped the record- Neil Tesser This technically superior record- grier the more you eat. geek navel gazing and got back ing of an artistically superior to writing raps that shout out 1957 concert provides the most feminism as fiercely as other valuable window yet into the MCs rep their clothing lines. On short-lived Monk-Coltrane part- “Go” he even got folks to dance nership—and its discovery was to John Mayer. 3. DMBQ jazz’s feel-good story of the year. The Essential Sounds From 6. CELEBRATION the Far East | Estrus 7. ERNEST DAWKINS’S CHICAGO 12 Celebration | 4AD This vortex of wild, psych- Misconceptions of a Delusion Gothic and vaudevillian and drenched blues-punk would’ve Shades of a Charade | Dawk steeped in slapback, this album made my list even without the Written by local saxist Ernest makes me picture one of those compassion points I awarded the 1. VIJAY IYER Dawkins to commemorate the 10. KELLEY POLAR cartoon bands of skeletons who band after the death of their bril- Reimagining | Savoy 35th anniversary of the Chicago Love Songs of the Hanging Gardens | play music on their own bones— liant drummer in a van crash. The clearest statement yet of Seven conspiracy trial, this Environ except it’s actually scary. China Mana, R.I.P. the pianist’s Indian-American piece captures much of the Croatian violin prodigy gets fusion: he stitches mathemati- lively burlesque (both intended expelled from Juilliard for what 7. M83 4. INVISIBLE BALLET cal theories and ancestral and not) of that time and place, his label claims was a “riot” dur- Before the Dawn Heals Us | Mute Escaping Light | Nilaihah modes into jagged, powerfully with its anger, pathos, and ing his master’s recital, then Epic in its scope and sadness I usually have to track down lyrical music that excites both helter-skelter anarchy. becomes a postmashup club star, and impossible to box into synth-pop records and order head and heart. continued on page 24 24 CHICAGO READER | JANUARY 6, 2006 | SECTION ONE

Best Music

continued from page 23 EUGENE “HIDEAWAY” BRIDGES philosopher behind his trick- 5. SUFJAN STEVENS 8. RICHARD GALLIANO Coming Home | Armadillo ster’s mask. Illinois | Asthmatic Kitty NEW YORK TRIO Buoyant but tasteful guitar It’s not just his songs, as smart Ruby, My Dear | Dreyfus blues, technically flawless and JAMES BLOOD ULMER and tender as they are—it’s those Galliano plays accordion, and it deeply soulful—even the most Birthright | Hyena ravishing arrangements. speaks to his virtuosity and exuberant good-timey tunes Aided by producer Vernon Reid, musicality that you won’t be sound refreshingly adult. Ulmer creates the feel of a bar- 6. JUDEE SILL tempted into a single Lawrence BETTYE LA VETTE ren, haunted landscape on this Dreams Come True | Water Welk joke. GOSPEL KEYBOARD TRIO I’ve Got My Own Hell to Raise | ferocious solo acoustic record. This hopeful anticipation of Heavenly Keys | The Sirens Anti- His adventurous playing and the apocalypse, recorded in 9. ANTHONY BROWN’S ORCHESTRA Chicago keyboardists Willie LaVette can extract more feeling naked lyrics—about sex, race, 1974, would’ve been the singer- Rhapsodies | Water Baby Jones, Leonard Maddox, and from a single phrase than most and religion—both invoke and songwriter’s third album if Brown has already transformed Dwayne Mason proclaim their soul singers get from an entire transcend the deepest roots of she’d lived to see it finished; the music of Ellington and faith in a set of churchy hymns, set. You may need to lie down the blues. it was finally mixed and Monk, and to complete the trip- up-tempo shouters, and stately after this one. released this year. tych he’s rescored, reharmonized, spiritual songs, both solo and as and restructured Gershwin’s a trio—it’s virtuosity infused AARON NEVILLE Douglas Wolk Rhapsody in Blue, incorporating with an uplifting earnestness Tell It Like It Is | Empire Musicwerks Asian influences and instru- and joy. When this angelic crooner 1. LCD SOUNDSYSTEM ments and a touch of Latin fla- unfurls his quavering falsetto on LCD Soundsystem | DFA/Capitol vor. Scandalous, heretical!—until BUDDY GUY a ballad like this set’s classic title James Murphy is the best dance you hear it. Bring ’Em In | Silvertone tune, hearts melt for miles producer in America, and he Lately this Chicago blues leg- around—but he can also sharpen makes a pretty great rock star too. end has developed a distres- his voice to match the streetsy sing tendency toward over- signifying on jumpy R & B num- 2. THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS wrought performances, espe- bers like “A Hard Nut to Crack” Twin Cinema | Matador cially in full-band settings, and “Space Man.” The Canadian power-pop legion 7. SLEATER-KINNEY but he imbues the updated sets a new world record for The Woods | Sub Pop 60s soul tunes here (and the DAN PENN & SPOONER OLDHAM hooks per unit time. Veteran Portland trio cranks up occasional pop number, like Moments From This Theatre | the amps to “pulverize” and bar- Dylan’s “Lay Lady Lay”) Proper American 3. VARIOUS ARTISTS rels off into terra incognita. with emotional depth and It takes a hell of a singer to pull One Kiss Can Lead to Another: Girl good taste. off a line like “Go back home, Group Sounds Lost & Found | Rhino 8. THE MOUNTAIN GOATS 10. FREDRIK LUNDIN OVERDRIVE see the old folks / They’ve all Five hours of magnificent 150-sec- Come, Come to the Sunset Tree | “Belly-Up”: The Music of Leadbelly | HERMON HITSON had heart attacks and light ond epics from the 60s, packaged self-released Stunt You Are Too Much for the Human strokes,” but blue-eyed soul in a hat box. A hat box, people. The LP-only edition of John This Danish saxist leads his Heart | Soul-Tay-Shus brother Dan Penn is a hell of Darnielle’s taut, compassionate big band in an inventive trib- A compilation showcasing this a singer. He and Spooner valediction to an abusive stepfa- ute to the American folk-blues almost forgotten 60s soul singer Oldham, who wrote and pro- ther, with home-recorded ver- icon—and doubles the ante from Atlanta. Hitson was ham- duced some of the most sions of the songs on the CD. by dedicating each arrange- pered by second-rate production memorable R & B of the 60s, ment, in spirit as well as in for most of his career, but at his reprise some of their best 9. SHARON JONES & THE DAP-KINGS name, to an American jazz best he packed an emotional tunes in gritty, graceful country- Naturally | Daptone great, from Charles Mingus wallop to rival James Brown’s or folk versions. As far as this joyful funk band is to Gil Evans. Otis Redding’s. concerned, it’s 1971 and they’re BOBBY RUSH glued to the top of the R & B charts. DENISE LA SALLE Night Fishin’ | Deep Rush David Whiteis Wanted | Ecko This time Rush mixes his usual 4. THE FALL 10. PRINCESS SUPERSTAR Odes to womanly prowess, both tales of backdoor shenanigans The Complete Peel Sessions My Machine | !K7 Given the range of subgenres in and out of bed, from a veter- with songs like “We Had Love,” a 1978-2004 | Castle A science-fiction hip-hop opera and styles represented, I haven’t an soul-blues stylist, laced with thoughtful meditation on a Twenty-seven years of status in which motormouthed ranked these—consider each the her trademark take-no-prison- childhood enriched by old-fash- reports from a marble-mouthed Concetta Kirschner turns all best of its kind that I encoun- ers raunch and leavened with ioned family values—a welcome avant-garde poet and his riff- other celebrities into “dupli- tered in 2005. good humor. glimpse of the serious-minded crazy backup bands. cants” of herself. CHICAGO READER | JANUARY 6, 2006 | SECTION ONE 25 Reviews Music Books

Rhino’s latest Nik Cohn’s Triksta REVIEW BY ROBERTMENTZER girl-groups box and Harry Stephen Keeler’s Evie Sands’s The Riddle of the Traveling Skull Any Way That You REVIEW BY JOHN MARR

Want Me D OY a REVIEW BY JESSICAHOPPER

25 Y CHRIS FL THA MCNEAL 27 TRAIT B Y OF BER

TES a The Velvelettes OHN POR UR CO NIK C Music

VARIOUS ARTISTS ONE KISS CAN LEAD TO ANOTHER: GIRL GROUP SOUNDS LOST AND FOUND (RHINO) EVIE SANDS ANY WAY THAT YOU WANT ME (REV-OLA) Girls, Girls, Girls And you thought “women in rock” had it rough.

By Jessica Hopper he first time I stole a ing but a tear-stained pillow record it was because I and poetic metaphors: “All I T wanted to be in a girl can see on the beach / Is a piece group. It was easy. I went to the of driftwood / And it somehow library, picked up a copy of 25 reminds me / Of the twisted Years of Motown, cut out the memories / Left in my mind” magnetic alarm strip with a goes the dramatic spoken razor, slipped the five-album set interlude of the Bitter Sweets’ into my large schoolbag with “What a Lonely Way to Start the spray-painted peace sign on the Summer.” it, and headed home to listen to But One Kiss Can Lead to “Reflections” by the Supremes a Another is more than just an few dozen times in a row. I was exhaustive tribute to broken obsessed with Diana Ross, Mary hearts and high-tease hairdos: Wilson, and Florence Ballard it’s a chronicle of how the girl- and desperately wanted to be group sound impacted rock ’n’ them all. That wasn’t the norm roll. Many of the girls came amongst 11-year-old Minnesota from gospel backgrounds and girls in 1988, but my fandom brought along the soul-holler was immutable. Much as their and hand claps. Phil Spector’s harmonies killed me, what I production for the Ronettes not really loved was their aesthetic: only created the template for Mary had the better voice and the girl-group sound—forceful bouffier hair, but Diana was my vocals cut with gunshot snares, favorite because she always pizzicato string stabs, and seemed to be wearing twice as reverb by the metric ton—but much eyeliner. They were the upped the ante for other pro- most majestic representation of ducers who sought to compete: young womanhood I knew, so Brian Wilson, Spector arranger princesslike, and I bought into side of the story—sort of. strong: “Please find it in your like the Shangri-Las—things end Jack Nitzsche, future Bread the dream of it completely. Crooning and cooing about the heart / To make all my dreams in tragedy. founder David Gates, and The four-disc genre retrospec- triumphs and travails of young come true / Let me get close to The girls are never true aggres- Motown’s resident genius team tive One Kiss Can Lead to love (and little else), wagging you,” sings country star Skeeter sors; rather, they are t-r-u l-u-v Holland-Dozier-Holland. They Another: Girl Group Sounds gloved fingers in time to their Davis on her girl-pop turn “Let hopefuls, keeping the heart made symphonic pop and made Lost and Found (Rhino) is a honey-sweet three-part no no Me Get Close to You.” Over a flames alive somewhere beneath it loud as hell, a cavernous cav- monument to that dream: the nos, the girl groups proffered snare crack that sounds like a their bullet bras. For these girls alcade of harps, timpani, and romantic fever dream of the inverse of the thrusty rebel- cannon shot and a bed of perfect- there’s just one kind of boy—the orchestra-size string sections teenage-girl narratives written lion and innuendo that had ly harmonized bum-she-bum-ooo- One and Only—and their love, with occasional tracks of audi- by adult songwriters. In the pre- been codified by men: the ultra- eee-ooo-aaa, the Chiffons’ Judy it’s Forever and Always. As for ble sobbing. The sound is as Beatles days of the early 1960s chaste longings of a bunch of Craig booms with pride, “I have a their love objects, they’re bad timeless as the sentiments of girl groups came to dominate purported virgins in satiny boyfriend / Met him a week ago / boys, other girls’ boys, ex-boys, lovelorn teens and still holds up the charts, supposedly due to evening gowns. He’s mine forever / Last night he and next boys, and they’re all decades after the genre’s final the vacuum left by the overseas Looking back, girl groups seem told me so,” on “I Have a elusive. Whether he’s a commit- years, represented here by the deployment of Elvis and the the epitome of the gender pre- Boyfriend.” Then, so we don’t mentphobic cad, a cheater, an Lovelites’ 1969 teen-pregnancy deaths of Eddie Cochran, scription of the time: that women think she’s some good-night-kiss- abuser, or a dude with a drag- classic, “How Can I Tell My Ritchie Valens, and Buddy and girls should be guileless and ing hussy, she adds, “Someday race death wish, she wants only Mom and Dad?” Holly. Trios and quartets of high pure, doting and servile, never we’ll walk down the aisle / So in to make him happy—and all he Much as the sound of pop school- and college-age women, fully women unless validated by love.” Their physical desires can can doisdisappear. She can may have changed, the subject many of them black, supplanted the love of a man. In song after be safely expressed only through shoop shoop shoop all night matter—love and how to suffer slick-haired boys on the radio song, the promise of romance double entendre, and when they long, but he ain’t coming back. it—is still intrinsic to the soul- and got a chance to tell their and the redemption it brings is stray—as with “bad girl” groups In the end she’s left with noth- continued on page 26 26 CHICAGO READER | JANUARY 6, 2006 | SECTION ONE

Music

continued from page 25 While the album consists mostly baring teen balladry on the of love songs, unlike on One radio today, and performers still Kiss not every phrase begins rarely write their own material. with the word baby, and the But as the liner notes to One portrayals of romance are a bit Kiss are careful to point out, more grown-up. The man and some of these girls were more his love are still elusive, but the than singers, and the girl-group girl is asking for more than boom enabled them to establish hand-holding: she also wants careers as songwriters: among friendship. On the album open- them were Stevie Wonder col- er, “Crazy Annie,” she’s even the laborator Syreeta Wright, a 17- post-Woodstock era. On the one doing the leaving. year-old Mary Wells, and Dusty cover, clad in a dark brown Any Way That You Want Me Springfield’s biggest influence, pantsuit and tunic, she cruises a sold 500,000 copies, but the Evie Sands, who has two early dirt road on her ten-speed, her bigger deal for Sands was the singles included in the set. long hair flowing, the very pic- inclusion of “It’s This I Am,” Sands’s 1970 debut album for ture of the carefree and liberat- which she describes in her liner A&M, Any Way That You Want ed new woman of the 70s. She’s notes for the reissue as a “thrill Me, reissued for the first time by not even looking at the camera, and personal milestone ...the UK label Rev-Ola in September, as if to imply that she just hap- first time I had gotten to record picks up where the girl-group pened to cruise into the frame and release a song I had writ- box leaves off, tiptoeing into the in her special carefree way. ten.” The rest of the record con- sists of songs that had already been made hits by everyone from the Troggs to Jackie Ross, but “It’s This I Am” is the most memorable moment; the song has since been covered by Beck and Beth Orton, and Belle & Sebastian are such fans that they backed Sands on two dates on her European comeback tour in 2000. A whisper-quiet, splendor-in- psych drift of faraway strings, electric piano, and indeterminate twinkling sounds, “It’s This I Am” is Sands’s haunting response to the firm prescrip- tions set for her and every other girl singer of the era. It’s a libera- tion anthem, and she asserts her dynamism in a rich voice, sure and melancholy: “I’m that great divide / That never was at all / That’s neither large nor heavy / That’s neither light or small / It always was and will be / Forever through all time / It’s here and there and nowhere / Always is / It’s this I am I find.” She’s defin- ing who she is rather than who she is in relation to some absen- tee heartbreaker boy. And she is beyond definition. v CHICAGO READER | JANUARY 6, 2006 | SECTION ONE 27 Books

TRIKSTA: LIFE AND DEATH AND NEW ORLEANS RAP NIK COHN (KNOPF) The Bounce Remains the Same Nik Cohn tried to influence New Orleans rap but all he got was this lousy nickname. By Robert Mentzer hite, British, and push- the city and its music, from now throw your hands up. and try to keep Choppa’s nose ing 60, Nik Cohn never his early fascination with Jelly Cohn knew the music, but to the grindstone.” He even W fit in with New Orleans’s Roll Morton to his first visit he didn’t feel it until the 90s, writes lyrics: “Bend it over, rap scene, but for a brief period there in 1972, while on the after he was diagnosed with catch the wall /Wobble wob- in the late 90s and early 00s he road with the Who. Though he hepatitis C. Hep C’s symptoms ble for me.” explored its margins as a jour- later moved to New York, he include insomnia and exhaus- It’s not giving away a nalist, talent scout, and manag- continued to rent a house in tion, but to hear Cohn tell it significant plot point to say er. Triksta, his book about this New Orleans for several the diagnosis forced him to that the deal eventually falls period, is partly a memoir, part- months each year, describing live his life in a new, reener- through and Choppa defects ly a meditation on hip-hop, and the city as “the lover I could gized way. So he catches a to Master P’s New No Limit partly an exposé of what’s under never be free of.” And he knows parade float in New Orleans Records. Bounce insiders the glittering surface of the New Orleans’s hip-hop scene, blasting a bounce track, bristle at his attempts to turn music industry. But mostly it’s which centers on bounce, a Magnolia Shorty’s “Monkey a regional genre into a nation- a story about hubris: Cohn’s an club-centric, bump-and-grind on tha Dick,” and it connects. al success. One producer all outsider who tried to harness style. Cohn puts on his musi- “The effect was baptismal,” but calls Cohn a carpetbagger, and influence the scene and cologist’s hat to explain that he writes. killing people,” he says.) Cohn and Choppa is deaf to Cohn’s failed in spectacular fashion to bounce is “patterned on the Cohn’s initial research brokers a major-label deal for talk about broader career do either. call-and-response of Mardi leads him to Earl Mackie, a one of Mackie’s artists, Choppa, strategies. “They love me all Cohn, the author of 1968’s Gras Indian chants,” but Jehovah’s Witness whose label, and is initially granted a budg- over,” Choppa tells him. Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom another way to put it is that Take Fo’ Records, specializes et of $250,000 from Warner “Baton Rouge, Shreveport, (often cited as the first book of it’s hip-hop with the formal in sex raps. (Mackie’s faith Brothers to make an album. “I Lafayette. Everywhere.” rock criticism), has been rigidity of a square dance, prevents him from releasing would select producers,” he Triksta is full of interactions obsessed with New Orleans with the MC commanding the records advocating violence, writes, “provide song ideas, like this, where Cohn and the since childhood: he writes crowd—bend over and touch but he believes sex is an hire guest artists and singers artists seem to be talking past vividly and enchantingly about the floor, now turn around, acceptable theme. “It beats and live musicians as required, continued on page 28 28 CHICAGO READER | JANUARY 6, 2006 | SECTION ONE

Books

continued from page 27 for Granta, the Guardian Cohn’s in his element when a kind of memorial. Certain contains not one reference to each other. Bounce’s rules are Weekend magazine, and he’s looking closely at hip-hop’s passages have an eerie pre- Katrina. He had no interest in inflexible, and Cohn’s ideas British GQ , and its seams allure, especially how and monitory tone, as when the pursuing new subject matter, simply don’t match up with his occasionally show—the why it titillates white audi- mother of once bounce pro- he recently told the New York artists’. Cohn wants an ode to chronology is scrambled, and ences. He’s conflicted about ducer describes the decay of Times. “When I get behind the independent women and single the stories of many characters gangsta rap and devotes her neighborhood: “Now there mike, I got a whole ’nother mothers, but Choppa just are confined to a single chap- numerous pages to his love- was nothing left, just wicked- mind frame,” he said. “I rap wants another remix of his ter. But the book has a com- hate relationship with it, but ness and crime, and God was about what they wanna hear.” familiar hit, “Choppa Style.” pelling theme in Cohn’s rela- for Cohn the hedonism of mocked ....But he would not Master P recently addressed Cohn leaves a voice mail for tionship to New Orleans as bounce accurately reflects a be mocked forever, no, God the disaster by releasing producer Supa Dave suggest- well as his constant grappling very New Orleans worldview: always had the last word.” Hurricane Katrina—We Gon’ ing a change to a bass line, and with race, particularly race in “Fantasy, braggadocio, myth— Katrina also reveals just Bounce Back (Gutter Music), an the message gets played in the pop music from the earliest these weren’t just fancy words how difficult a task Cohn cre- album by bounce supergroup studio to riotous laughter. days of rock ’n’ roll to the pres- for lying, but a sort of ated for himself: even the the 504 Boyz, but most of the Choppa nicknames Cohn ent. He worries that his obses- art....That was how I came to hurricane couldn’t rewrite the tracks wouldn’t sound out of “Triksta” during a pot-fueled sion with black musicians has think of New Orleans: my city rules of New Orleans hip-hop. place on any of No Limit’s late- studio session, after first call- “some taint of idealization, of beautiful lies.” Rapper and Cash Money 90s releases. Resilience is at ing him “Nik da Trik.” Neither the flip side of condescension,” Triksta was written and Records president Lil’ Wayne, the heart of bounce—Triksta name is exactly affectionate. and that sort of candor keeps printed before Hurricane who was raised in New Orleans, ends when Cohn gives up the Triksta is constructed in Triksta from becoming a work Katrina, and it’s hard to read recently released Tha Carter II rap game, but the game keeps part from pieces Cohn wrote of unintentional comedy. it now as anything other than (Cash Money/Universal), which right on going. v CHICAGO READER | JANUARY 6, 2006 | SECTION ONE 29

Books

THE RIDDLE OF THE TRAVELING SKULL HARRY STEPHEN KEELER (MCSWEENEY’S BOOKS) The Case of the Lost Logorrheic McSweeney’s brings local mystery stylist Harry Stephen Keeler back into print.

By John Marr etween 1924 and 1953 Cracksman. Articles celebrating sive poetess, Abigail Sprigee; nor Keeler’s beloved “London of the Chicago native Harry his demented aesthetic began to of the Great Simon, with his 2163 West”—a thoroughly skewed B Stephen Keeler published appear in publications ranging pearl buttons; nor, of—in short, I Chicago. One memorable about 50 of the most exuberantly from the Journal of Popular then knew quite nothing about sequence finds him hunting for odd mysteries ever written. Set in Culture to the New Republic, and anything or anybody involved in clues in a cemetery dedicated to a seemingly alternate universe his fame started to grow. This the affair of which I now became a circus freaks. He finally deter- thick with eccentrics—and excla- winter McSweeney’s Books for- part, unless perchance it were my mines that the skull belongs to a mation points—Keeler’s novels mally launches a Keeler revival Nemesis, Sophie Kratzenschnei- man Pelton murdered 20 years feature a dozen or more disparate with its reprint of The Riddle of derwumpel or ‘Suing Sophie!’” ago. The skull contains incontro- plot strands woven together the Traveling Skull, originally This is the sort of prose that vertible evidence of Pelton’s guilt through an astonishing agglom- published in 1934. It’s the first led one reviewer to accuse him of and is now in the hands of a eration of weird wills, lunatic Keeler to see print in America in writing in Choctaw. But if you blackmailer intent on his ruin. laws, crackpot contracts, idiotic more than 50 years. can see a certain loopy beauty in But after spotting the oaths, and some of the most out- Even the staunchest fan will the ornate syntax and rampant “Sherlockholmsian” hat and a rageously beautiful, layered coin- admit that Keeler is not for semicolons; if you can sense the er when Clay opens his bag and ventriloquist’s dummy outfitted cidences ever put to paper. The everyone. Consider this typical touch of a genius in the creation finds inside, instead of his toi- as a cockney costermonger in New York Times could but mar- sentence, from the first chapter of Legga the Human Spider and letries, a trepanned skull. Pelton’s butler’s room, Clay is pre- vel, of one forgotten title, “You of The Riddle: the Great Simon; or if you’re just He quickly deduces that he pared to unmask the blackmailer. cannot possibly dream of any- “For it must be remembered wondering how the hell it can all must have switched bags with a At this point, two-thirds of the thing half so bizarre as the yarn that at the time I knew quite come together coherently, Keeler clergyman on a Broadway street- way through the book, the pub- Mr. Keeler has strung together.” nothing, naturally, concerning is a sublime pleasure. car. However, this is no ordinary lisher issues a “Challenge to the Although he enjoyed moderate Milo Payne, the mysterious The Riddle of the Traveling trepanned skull—and in short Reader.” An insert announces, commercial success early in his Cockney talking Englishman with Skull opens with narrator Clay order Clay is mugged and “Stop! At this point all the neces- career—one of his books was the the checkered long-beaked Sher- Calthorpe returning home to relieved of the object by a myste- sary clues have been presented to basis for a Bela Lugosi film, The lockholmsian cap; nor of the Chicago from a business trip to rious Chinese man, inexplicably make it possible for you to deter- Mysterious Mr. Wong—Keeler latter’s ‘Barr Bag’ which was as like Asia. He’s worried about a poten- jilted by his fiancee, and inadver- mine the identity of the black- was long out of print when he my own bag as one Milwaukee tial entanglement with “Suing tently involved in blackmail mailer. CAN YOU DO IT?” died in 1967. But after his death, wienerwurst is like another; nor of Sophie,” a middle-aged mission- directed against his employer Blanks are helpfully provided a small cult began scouring used- Legga, the Human Spider, with ary who files breach-of-promise and potential father-in-law, for the reader to write down a book stores for titles like The her four legs and six arms; nor of suits against every man who Roger Pelton. guess, but the answer is: of Skull of the Waltzing Clown and Ichabod Chang, ex-convict, and crosses her path. However, she’s To untangle the mystery, Clay course not. The solution to a The Mystery of the Fiddling son of Don Chang; nor of the elu- soon relegated to the back burn- sets out on an odyssey through continued on page 31

Q 30 CHICAGO READER | JANUARY 6, 2006 | SECTION ONE

Letters

continued on from page 3 sources who have an online rev- political commentator is deter- uct is distributed in is a little dif- Professor Allen for so patiently cial comic section. It will be enue model). Is there original mined by the individual reader, ferent. The Internet is also a sharing his e-business expert- popular in comics and cartoon- journalistic content online? Of not the editor, and certainly much more inclusive and robust ise, particularly in the area of ing circles, and the only ad rev- course. Check out not by whether the commenta- distribution system. advertising, a subject we know enue there is if there’s an Chicagoist.com. While they link tor’s words are on paper or I hope Mr. Lenehan can quit very little about. I fear, howev- arrangement with the holders to some print-originated mate- a screen. It is freedom of what wailing like an infant with er, that my humble attempt at of the print advertising on the rial, they do plenty of original you want to read. soiled diapers and learn about humor has eluded him in a page of ads included in the work in areas print publications Newspapers and magazines the different types of ways to variety of ways, of which I’d like block to shell out a little extra gloss over. have revenue models that are distribute a news story and to to address just one: With capi- based on downloads. In this Chicagodailynews.org should be based primarily on advertising. get a check for it. The model is tal letters and a great deal of case, yes, the Web would not up and running before too long Alternative weeklies like the changing, and you can either condescension, Mr. Allen be making any money for and will be specializing in origi- Reader are based exclusively on adapt or go have a drink with informs us that blogs provide the Reader. nal material. You can hardly be advertising. Web pages are those nice young men from the FREE ADVERTISING for Now past the issue of online for half an hour without based primarily on advertising, buggy-whip factory. newspapers and generate whether bloggers prevent accidentally tripping over politi- with a few entering into the traffic for their Web sites. Todd Allen money from flowing to the print cal commentary. Liberal, con- realm of subscription and anoth- In his eagerness to deliver Adjunct professor of e-business media or actually help it, there’s servative—whatever—the com- er set reaping the benefits of a lecture, he seems to have Columbia College the issue of whether online jour- mentary is out there. Print selling merchandise that com- completely missed my point nalists can do anything besides columnists expanding their out- plements their product and/or Michael Lenehan replies: about the Wonkette item in link to print sources (and help put online, people who are topic area. The product is not so Over here at the Buggy Whip question, which was precisely the revenues of the print online only. The value of the different; the medium the prod- Gazette we are very grateful to that it did neither. Forgive me for repeating myself, but Wonkette linked to Sploid, a sibling blog, and to a page on Yahoo News. The item made no mention of the Houston Chronicle, which originated the story, or the AP, which delivered it to Yahoo. 0G Damn the Health Taliban

After reading Ben Joravsky’s piece on Chicago’s smoking ban [The Works, December 30], I found it odd that he fails to mention the fact that “second- hand smoke” damage itself is about as proven as “intelligent design.” Or the fact that despite humanity being aware of possi- ble damage from inhaling smoke since the first caveman tried building a fire within the cave, not to mention the fact that citizens have many choices of places to go that don’t allow smoking, some people feel Big Mother needs to step in and form the Health Taliban. But since the conservatives have their own pseudoscience justifying the War on Drug Users, liberals need some too, evidently. John Biederman DailyLimerick.net Ben Joravsky replies: My point was that the city started with the assumption that secondhand smoke is dangerous then did nothing about it. Swift Justice

Dear Michael [Lenehan], I enjoyed your piece in the lat- est Reader [“A Year Without Journalism,” December 30], and your modest proposal for a year’s sabbatical for journalists. As I’m sure Swift would’ve agreed, per- haps those daughters (and sons) of reporters and writers who are unsuitable for lives of prostitu- tion can be eaten. Fred Donini-Lenhoff River Forest CHICAGO READER | JANUARY 6, 2006 | SECTION ONE 31

Ink Well by Ben Tausig Books

42.Arbiter who calls strikes Subscription 44.Puncture sound Descriptions 45.Buckle up 47.Four: prefix ACROSS 49.Greenpeace target, at times 1. “No problemo!” 52.Desisted 6. Quarters in college 56.Mr. or Ms. Right continued from page 29 10.Genghis or Chaka 58.Hit the big time Keeler mystery is impossible to 14.“______adrink . . .” 59.Smart divine from mere clues, and 15.Trice of hip-hop 60.Crepe paper? Keeler had a penchant for intro- 16.Reprehensible 62.Ancient South American empire ducing twist upon turn upon 17.Driving instructor? 63. Land of limericks 19.Premade waffle option 64.Halloween 2005 nominee complication right up to the final 20.Riffs 65.Stern’s opposite page. Clay’s impeccably reasoned 21. < 66.Went platinum, perhaps, but solution quickly crumbles when 23. Take down the aisle, in a way probably not gold the truth comes out; the final 24.Really 67.Phone company that merged with answer involves so many unlikely 25.Not busy Bell Atlantic in 1996 coincidences and almost avant- 27.More sore garde literary devices (including 30.Chi. summer hours DOWN 1. Cuban, e.g. four characters who all turn out 33. Add slack 2. Battery terminal to be the same person) that it’s 36.Plus-size model 37.Stand-up responses 3. Carter and Gwyn almost postmodern. 39.What a swish misses 4. Flouts It’s not too surprising that this 40.False start? 5. Nuts sort of tomfoolery didn’t play too 41. Early garden 6. One may lead the blind well in post-World War II 7. Division symbols America. As cold war paranoia set 8. Out of bed LAST WEEK: SOUNDS LIKE LOVE in, mysteries grew increasingly 9. Seinfeld, notably 10.Bitches straight and serious and the pop- 31. Subversive art movement 48.Nearly never ularity of hard-boiled writers like 11. Joint publication? 12.Seaweed, e.g. 32.Rap sheet? 50.Type of tower Mickey Spillane and Erle Stanley 13.Dodge model 34.Nurse 51. Bottled spirit Gardner skyrocketed. Even Ellery 18.Playground retort 35.Give off 53. Protest strategy Queen swapped his pince-nez for 22.Pouch 38.Civil War battleground 54.Online party-planning resource a psychology textbook. Against 26.Apple problem 40.Perpetual child 55.Dry out, so to speak this buttoned-down backdrop— 28.Big Aussie birds 42.Like a model in a life-drawing class 56.“Get _____!” when a “cult writer” meant 29.Bolsheviks 43.Play the highlight reel 57.Litter’s littlest someone like Kafka—Keeler 30.Child, notably 46.Wing 61. Not to mention must have appeared hopelessly screwy, if not downright un- American. But with the line between high and low culture now so intractably blurred, his time may have finally come. v