Spring FashionSpecial Big Imagination Thirteen Chicagoans who make fashiona real art

CHICAGO’S FREE WEEKLY | THIS ISSUE IN FOUR SECTIONS FRIDAY,MAY 12, 2006 |VOLUmE 35,NUmBER 33

HotTypeon StephenColbert p 4

The brains behind Baseball Prospectus p 12 Gardeningfor theyardless p 15

TimKinsellaon ScottWalker p 24

ArtSchoolConfidential,DeLillo at Steppenwolf, circuit-bender Nicolas Collins, hotbrunchspots,books on what’swrong with America, andmore Section One Letters 3 Reviews Music 24 Columns Scott Walker, The Drift Hot Type 4 Movies 28 How the MSM covered (or didn’t) Art School Confidential Stephen Colbert Theater 30 The Straight Dope 5 Don DeLillo’s Love-Lies-Bleeding at Steppenwolf Does oil really come from dinosaurs? Books 32 The Works 8 Billy Hazelnuts by Tony Millionaire; Hostile Takeover “Property tax relief” demystified by David Sirota, Confessions of a Former Dittohead by Jim Derych, and Lapdogs by Eric Boehlert Our Town 12 Plus Baseball Prospectus’s Christina Kahrl; What Are You Selling? 14 May 12, 2006 Garden in a City Bailiwick Repertory throws a rummage sale. Free Shit 16 Breakfast for mom Ink Well 35 This week’s crossword: “And . . . Cut”

ON THE COVER: JIM NEWBERRY (HAT), MANDEL NGAN/AFP/GETTY IMAGES (COLBERT), CHARLES STEC K (KAHRL), ROB WARNER (TULIP) Big Imagination Thirteen Chicagoans who make fashion a real art

Dresses by Soo Choi By Liz Armstrong and Heather Kenny here’s the art of fashion, and then there’s fashion as art. In this issue we’re highlighting 13 Chicagoans T who think about the body less as a hanger than as a springboard for personal expression, resculpting or renovating the human form with garments and accessories that for the most part definitely can’t be worn with jeans. They include sculptors, painters, an architect, and a graphic designer and range in experience from student to professional. Their inspiration comes from all over the map—ichibana, civil unrest in Haiti, tripe, Victorian girlhood—but they don’t clobber you over the head with their big ideas. Instead they speak their intentions softly, Y encouraging viewers (and confident dressers) to decide on meaning for themselves. LA continued on page 20 JIM NEWBERR 2CHICAGO READER | MAY 12, 2006 | SECTION ONE CHICAGO READER | MAY 12, 2006 | SECTION ONE 3

m Chicago Reader, 11 E. Illinois, Chicago, IL 60611 312-828-9926 MAY 5, 2006 f VOL 35 | NO 32 Letters @ [email protected]

Publisher Michael Crystal Editor Alison True from previous weeks. But what Managing Editor Kiki Yablon always gets me is how much Senior Editors Michael Miner |Laura Molzahn | Kitry Krause The Real space is reserved for Chicago Doubt Club Associate Editors Martha Bayne | Anaheed Alani Philip Montoro | Kate Schmidt Antisocial bashing. It seems you Assistant Editors Jim Shapiro | Mark Athitakis | David Wilcox Plush Saga get more mail about poor Liz In “The Gospel According to Web Editor Whet Moser than you did when you pub- Kass” [Hot Type, April 21], Staff Writers Liz Armstrong | Martha Bayne Bob— lished the exposé on the Michael Miner lists as one of the Steve Bogira | John Conroy | Jeffrey Felshman Harold Henderson | Deanna Isaacs | J.R. Jones Hey, h’lo—hope you’re well. Scientologists, and these letters “Look at how details that make him a religious Ben Joravsky | Monica Kendrick | Peter Margasak Just a jot here to say get your are just as cultlike. many people doubter “the eternal damnation Tori Marlan | Bob Mehr | Jonathan Rosenbaum | Mike Sula myths straight, son! The Plush I’ll bet that a good majority are fascinated of Christ’s betrayer.” But there is Albert Williams Copy Chief Brian Nemtusak saga [The Meter, May 5] went of your readers, whether they by Studio 54, no Christian teaching that con- Editorial Assistants Pat Graham | Renaldo Migaldi like so: Russ quit before the Fed admit it or not, turn to or Haight- demns Judas to eternal damna- Mario Kladis | Michael Marsh | Tom Porter | Jerome Ludwig session, was replaced, and then Antisocial first or second thing Ashbury, or tion. Christianity teaches that it is Tamara Faulkner | Patrick Daily | Stephanie Manis Robert Cass | Kerry Reid | Todd Dills | Katherine Young replaced again before tape really after opening the paper. And even the Beat possible for any sinner to repent Ryan Hubbard | Miles Raymer | Tasneem Paghdiwala rolled. And I never quit at all—I why? Because it’s fun. The Generation. up to his last moment. It puts Typesetters Vera Videnovich | Kabir Hamid was replaced in the drum stool Reader covers politics, the All of these nobody in hell by name, not even Archivist Eben English when a different percussive style environment, the oppressed, scenes were Judas, and only one of three bib- was dictated to match the City Hall, sports. These are our made up of lical references to Judas’s death Advertising Director Don Humbertson arrangements prescribed by Tom vegetables. Antisocial is dessert, young people attributes it to suicide. Indeed the Sales Director Ginger Wade Tom Washington. I attended and that (I’m guessing) is prob- who were far Anchor Bible Dictionary suggests Display Advertising Manager Katie Falbo some mixes of the material after it ably the reason it was given too full of that Judas could have come Online Advertising Coordinator Renate Durnbaugh was all done too—not that they space, and that is the reason themselves, under the prayer of Jesus from Display Representatives Sandra Goplin | Christine Thiel Brad Winckler ever saw the light of day, but ... that it still exists. did far too the cross: “Father forgive them, Senior Account Executives Denice Barndt | Angie Boehler In the pastI’ve been called sev- I believe Antisocial is valu- many drugs, for they know not what they do.” Evangeline Miller | Geary Yonker eral delightfully ambiguous names able, not only because it pro- and spent a As for being a doubter, Mike Account Executives Nichole Flores | Jeff Martin in the pages of your paper, but vides entertainment, but also few years of Miner belongs to a distinguished Greg Saint-Victor | Tim Sullivan | Laura Swisher | Dan VanKirk Advertising Assistants T.J. Annerino | Kieran Kelley none so emphatic as “quitter.” If because it documents a specific their lives club. Graham Greene maintained Sarah Nishiura you want to hang that one on me group of people in a specific (sometimes that the only reason he remained you’re going to have to dig a little place. Fifteen years from now if much more) in the fold was that, despite seri- Art Director Sheila Sachs deeper—I have quit a thing or two people want to know what was finding new ous religious doubts, he always Associate Art Director Godfrey Carmona in my life, but not in this instance. going on in the Chicago party and interest- managed to doubt his own Art Coordinator Elizabeth Tamny Factitiously yours, scene, they have a valuable ing ways to doubts. Even the diaries of Production Manager Bob Cooper archive to turn to. Why would be seen and Mother Teresa reveal her own Rian Murphy Associate Production Manager Nickie Sage people want to do that, you heard.” serious religious doubts. Doubters Production Artists Jeff Marlin | Jennifer McLaughlin |Mark Blade Logan Square Benjamin Utley | John Cross | Andrea Bauer | Dustin Kimmel ask? I dunno, but look at how have their own prayer: “O Lord, I Josh Honn | Mike Browarski | Nadine Nakanishi many people are fascinated by believe; help thou my unbelief” Editorial Design Jardí + Utensil Studio 54, or Haight-Ashbury, (Mark 9, 24). They even have White Plight or even the Beat generation. All their own patron—the apostle Operations & Classifieds Director Mary Jo Madden of these scenes were made up of known as “doubting Thomas.” Controller Karl David Wilt Thank you, Liz Armstrong young people who were far too Finally, thanks, Mike, for Classifieds Manager Brett Murphy [Chicago Antisocial]! You don’t full of themselves, did far too quoting Saint Paul’s “We hope Classified Representatives Sara Bassick | Danette Chavez Bill Daniel | Kris Dodd | Chip Dudley | Janet Lukasiewicz get nearly enough credit from many drugs, and spent a few against hope” (Romans 4, 18), Jeff McMurray | Amy O’Connor | Scott Shehan | Kristal Snow readers for the great work you years of their lives (sometimes showing that, when necessary, Bob Tilendis | Stephen Walker do. Without your diligent efforts, much more) finding new even a doubter can borrow Matches Coordinator Jane Hanna how would we know what young and interesting ways to be seen from a believer. Back Page Representative Chris Auman white people with disposable and heard. Only later do these Operations Assistants Patrick O’Neil | Alicia Daniel Joe Wiley incomes and plenty of free time things garner any allure for Receptionists Monica Brown-Fielding | Dorie T. Greer Near North Robert Jacobs |Dave Thomas | Bob Tilendis are doing? This woefully neglect- those who weren’t there Bookkeeper Marqueal Jordan ed group would have to settle for and wished (often secretly) Circulation Manager Perry A. Kim the journalistic crumbs thrown that they were. Circulation Fred Adams | Sadar Bahar | Neil Bagwell at them by Red Eye or UR or We’re given an opportunity All-Pledge- Kriss Bataille | Mark Blade | Michael Boltz | Jeff Boyd Michael Bulington | Bill Daniel | Tom Frederick some other fluff publication that to follow the adventures of a Kennedy Greenrod | Nathan Greer | Scott Harris wouldn’t do them justice. So certain crowd, and we get to Drive Radio John Holland | Josh Hudson | Sasha Kadukov Thomas Kolinski | Dave Leoschke | James McArdle thanks again, Liz Armstrong and do so on a weekly basis, and Shane McDougall | John Merton | Dave Miedzianski the editors of the Chicago what’s more, the accounts are I suppose I should feel upset Terry Nelson | Gerald Perdue | Doug Scharin Phil Schuster | Dorian Tajbakhsh | David Thomas Reader, for your consistent cov- well written and usually pret- about the switch to an all-news Stephen Walker | Dan Worland erage in this area. You make ty funny. format at WBEZ [The Business, their plight come alive! But Reader, I’m not telling April 14]. However, it will be an you anything that you probably improvement over what we had Information Systems Director Jerry Davis K. Green Information Systems Project Manager Conrad Hunter don’t know. Good luck with during the most important local Edgewater Information Systems James Crandall | John Dunlevy everything. You’re doing a great election in recent years, which Doug Fawley | Sean Phelan job. was an all-pledge-drive format. Special Projects Coordinator Lisa Martain Hoffer Web Developer Brantley Harris Patrick Chizeck Michael Gebert Posterity Will Logan Square W. Newport National Advertising Thank Her The Ruxton Group, 1-888-2-RUXTON New York |Chicago|Phoenix |San Francisco Dear Reader, As a loyal Reader reader, I CHICAGO READER 11 E. Illinois, Chicago, IL 60611 usually make a point of perusing 312-828-0350 the letters to the editor in each www.chicagoreader.com week’s issue. Upon occasion I For recorded information on placing classified ads, find that someone has made a call 312-828-1140 (24 hours). valuable correction to a story The entire contents of the Reader are copyright © 2006, Chicago Reader, Inc. All rights reserved. Chicago Reader, Hot Type, Reader, Reader Matches, and Straight Dope are registered trademarks of Chicago Reader, Inc.

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CHICAGO READER, INC. President Robert A. Roth Vice President Robert E. McCamant Treasurer Thomas K. Yoder Executive Editor Michael Lenehan 4CHICAGO READER | MAY 12, 2006 | SECTION ONE

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

Laugh Riot Stephen Colbert’s speech at the White House press corps dinner threw the gap between the old and new media into stark relief.

By Michael Miner n blog time Stephen Colbert’s speech at the April I 29 White House correspon- dents dinner is ancient history, though its glory will live forever. By mainstream-media stan- dards Colbert spoke just the other day, but nothing he said was worth reporting. The AP story on the dinner that both the Tribune and the Sun-Times carried was a model of mainstream-media construc- tion. Reporter Elizabeth White focused on the royalty instead of the rabble—jokes that President Bush told on himself were the news, not what some professional jester said about him. “President Bush and a lookalike, soundalike sidekick poked fun at the president and fellow politicians,” White reported. It was “twice the fun” for the audience of journalists and guests. Ten paragraphs in, White reported perfunctorily on the “featured entertainer,” Colbert: “‘I believe that the government GES

that governs best is a govern- IMA TY

ment that governs least, and ET by these standards we have set /G AFP up a fabulous government in Iraq,’ Colbert said in a typical zinger. He also paid mock trib- MANDEL NGAN/ ute to Bush as a man who Stephen Colbert ‘believes Wednesday what he believed Monday, despite what the beatitudes. GING for honest journalism.” nal and corruption allegations cent jump in ratings for Comedy happened Tuesday.’” In the days that followed, the To its credit, the Sun-Times that have piled up against his Central’s The Colbert Report, and The Sun-Times trimmed Sun-Times, like the Tribune, slapped together a Colbert pack- administration.” an announcement on Yahoo’s the AP story by editing out printed not another word on age for its Sunday, May 7, In another part of the paper “buzz log” last Sunday that Colbert’s quotes, reducing Colbert—though Sun-Times Controversy section—an edited Paige Wiser weighed in with her searches for Colbert had jumped him to a passing reference. It Washington reporter Lynn text of Colbert’s talk ran along- usual ingenuous acuity, observ- 5,625 percent in the previous was classic MSM thinking: Sweet acknowledged him side an essay by TV critic Doug ing that “what should have been week and were still “picking up hey, space is tight, and where’s online. When she asserted in Elfman, who acknowledged the an occasion for laughter has speed.” But if you hadn’t been the news value in a comedian’s her blog that Colbert had disap- “blogstorm” and suggested a become a political hot button, a online you saw none of it. quips? But in the blogosphere, pointed her—“Given the poten- “newsworthy lead” that MSM media frenzy, a national scandal. Stoutly maintaining its oblivi- where space is infinite and tial material, I expected bet- reporters (like Elizabeth White— Nothing has been taken more ousness to Colbertmania right communal wisdom decides ter”—bloggers’ condemnation and Sweet, for that matter) hadn’t seriously than this guy’s little up to the mania’s sell-by date, what matters, MSM econo- rained down. “It was the most been sharp enough to write: “It standup routine. ... Can’t any- the Tribune produced a Sunday mies garner the contempt electric and searing comic per- was perhaps the first time in body take a joke?” Perspective section that was all Matthew would have been due formance in a decade. You are Bush’s tenure that the president That media frenzy had pro- about Chicago’s bid for the 2016 if his report on the Sermon insensate inside.” And “Come was forced to sit and listen to any duced a new Web site, thank Olympics. This was the sort of on the Mount had blown off clean, Lynn. America is BEG- American cite the litany of crimi- youstephencolbert.org, a 37 per- editor-driven team journalism CHICAGO READER | MAY 12, 2006 | SECTION ONE 5

® The Straight Dope by Cecil Adams

We all know that oil came from dinosaurs, or, at least, from the decomposition of organic (i.e., formerly living) materials—hence the term “fossil fuels” and the Sinclair dinosaur. But is it really true? Were there really enough dinosaurs—or even plant life—to create

rapt attention to a story from the billions and billions of gallons of known oil reserves? What is Never was the the story. If the AP had written the physical process that converts dead reptiles and/or ferns into a line between old the story the bloggers were col- lectively ratifying, it could have homogeneous carbon compound that bears little resemblance to the media and new begun like this: “Truth was molecular structure of plants and animals? (“Heat and extreme so clear. The old finally spoken to power Saturday night in Washington pressure” seems a little vague—and anyway, I thought that offers coverage, the D.C., humiliating a fitfully produced diamonds, not oil.) Has the process been duplicated in the new conversation. laughing audience that consist- laboratory? Isn’t the source of oil more likely to be natural geologic ed of the president of the The old doesn’t United States and hundreds of processes? —Larry Orr, via e-mail squirming journalists. Power like being part of had no comment afterward.” the story....The The Opinionator is a New orgive me for hitting the energy Europeans a half century later. In one of York Times-maintained blog questions pretty hard lately, but those quirks of history, the compatriots of every trip to the gas pump these new can’t separate that hailed Colbert as it drew F the original geniuses then switched sides. days brings the subject painfully Russian chemist Dmitry Mendeleyev, the its rapt attention withering fire on the Times to mind. Evidently you’ve forgotten my guy who worked out the periodic table, itself. “Stephen Colbert’s 1986 adumbration of “abiogenic” oil, came out strongly for A-oil, a view held by to a story from remarks were so scathing,” which focused on the work of the scientific Russian and Ukrainian geologists to this said one contributor, “that none maverick Thomas Gold. Like you, Gold day. Meanwhile, pretty much everybody the story. doubted the conventional wisdom that of the sycophants amongst the else in the world bought into B-oil, petroleum derived from plant and animal although important details weren’t assembled would have dared remains. Instead he thought it was pro- NO worked out till after World War II. the Internet remains incapable to laugh for fear of being duced from inorganic material deep within I won’t rehash the A-oil vs. B-oil argu- of, and frankly, I was happy to demoted or marginalized. The the earth, the implication being that there ments other than to say that (a) oil can be was a lot more down there waiting to be UG SIGNORI read about something besides comedic tension he created SL produced in the lab using both processes; Colbert. Even so, he’d come and simply blew the room away. found than most experts thought. With (b) each side agrees that in nature some that in mind, Gold persuaded oil prospec- gone, and the Tribune had It wasn’t a high score on the and biological processes then converted oil is produced the other side’s way; and tors in Sweden to bore an ultradeep hole the plankton bits into a waxy substance (c) circumstantial evidence strongly favors barely noticed. The Week in laff-o-meter he sought. Nope, in that country’s Siljan Ring, the site of an called kerogen, some of which over time a B origin for almost all found to date. Review section of the Sunday he had a loftier ambition. (TO ancient meteorite strike that had cracked was forced down deep enough that its That hasn’t deterred the A team, though, New York Times was also TELL THE TRUTH.)” the earth’s crust. Gold hoped to find pri- temperature rose to between 65 and 150 which brings us back to the Siljan Ring. Colbert free. The Times left This comment touched on a mordial petroleum seeping up through the degrees Celsius. This was the “oil win- The 6.7-kilometer borehole completed in Colbert out of its original cover- crucial point: Colbert didn’t fissures, far below the level at which oil is dow”—the range of conditions under which 1990 didn’t come up a gusher but did normally found—proof of his theory. slow roasting and a bit of catalytic basting recover 15 tons of oily sludge. When the B- age of the dinner, carried a piece leave ’em rolling in the aisles. We’ll get to the results of that little could rearrange the organic ingredients oil crowd objected that it was just drill on the blogstorm on May 3, and Which is why, when virtually treasure hunt in a second. But first let’s into crude oil. (The heat and pressure lubricant, the Swedes dug another hole then forgot about him. Colbert overnight the Internet exploded, look at this skeptically: what makes main- needed to create diamonds, since you using a water-lubed drill and again struck returned to the Times May8 in the original subject wasn’t truth stream geologists so all-fired sure that asked, are much higher.) The petroleum sludge. Eh, it’s probably B-oil that migrat- its business pages: C-SPAN, and power. It was whether petroleum is of biological origin? The idea then migrated by complex means to reser- ed from elsewhere, said scoffers. In short, which had aired the dinner live Colbert was actually funny. seems bizarrely complicated on first voirs where it was sheltered until humans nothing got settled. Professor Gold having encounter. Contrary to widespread belief could pump it out. I personally don’t doubt gone the way of the plankton in 2004, a and was marketing the DVD for Did Colbert deliver Swiftian that dinosaurs were centrally involved, oil this scenario, but you can see where the few other Western scientists have taken $24.95, was telling other Web irony or leaden sarcasm? Did a is thought to have derived mainly from idea that it would produce two to four tril- up the A-oil cause, although foes far out- sites that had posted the video of craven press corps laugh less single-celled plankton that flourished tens lion barrels of commercial-grade crude number fans. the speech to take it down. than it should have or as much to hundreds of millions of years ago in might move some to think: Get out. Does it matter? Absolyutnyi, say the If this skirmish between old as Colbert deserved? Was the nutrient-rich environments, such as lakes Fact is, the bio- and abiogenic theo- Russians. They claim they’ve found oil in and the shallow seas above continental media and new had spent itself, laughter tepid because the press ries—let’s call them B-oil and A-oil—com- supposedly non-oil-bearing rock, that shelves. Upon their demise, the plankton peted for quite a while. According to geol- there’s lots more where that came from, never was the line between the corps was also the target of sank to the bottom and were buried in ogist J.F. Kenney, an A-oil advocate, B-oil and that they’re going to try like hell to two so clear. The old offers cov- Colbert’s irony/sarcasm or sediment before their remains, rich in was first proposed by a Russian scholar in find it. No doubt when we scoffers get erage, the new conversation. because it felt embarrassed for hydrocarbons, could decompose. Chemical 1757, while A-oil was advanced by western desperate enough, so will we. The old doesn’t like being part President Bush, Colbert’s main of the story and shrinks from target, sitting just a few feet characters like Colbert who away? Was their embarrassment Comments, questions? Take it up with Cecil on the Straight Dope Message Board, www.straightdope.com, insist it is. The new—like a gallant, or did it betray the corps’ or write him at the Chicago Reader, 11 E. Illinois, Chicago 60611. Cecil’s most recent compendium of knowledge, colony of ants swarming over a toady status? Triumph of the Straight Dope, is available at bookstores everywhere. dead wren—can’t separate its continued on page 6 6CHICAGO READER | MAY 12, 2006 | SECTION ONE

Hot Type

continued from page 5 may call for another C.P. Snow, negative. Yet I was asking some- equilibrium is out there some- ward the latter complaint “to And by the way, why was a scientist and author who thing which is about the scientif- where in the future. my colleagues Sue Schmidt, Antonin Scalia laughing so hard? made a career along the last ic equivalent of: ‘Have you read When Washington Post pol- who won the Pulitzer last And George Clooney not laugh- century’s cultural fault line. “A a work of Shakespeare’s?’” itical reporter Dana Milbank month for the Abramoff story, ing at all? good many times I have been The law of entropy was found- fielded questions online on and to Dana Priest, who won Big questions. Questions ulti- present at gatherings of people ed on the observation that dis- May 5, most were about Colbert. the Pulitzer for exposing the mately transcended but never who, by the standards of the equilibriums resolve themselves. Except they weren’t questions— administration’s secret prisons.” settled, not even by the traditional culture, are thought Hot things cool off. Cold things they were pronouncements. Unfortunately, Milbank gawker.com poll that saw highly educated and who have get tepid. Concentrations of The first had the press sitting thought Colbert “wasn’t terribly Colbert’s performance called with considerable gusto been energy disperse and diffuse. idly by as Colbert was “reveal- funny.” Someone in Chicago set “one of the most patriotic acts expressing their incredulity at This Monday the Newspaper ing the truth about their com- him straight. “It’s not whether I’ve witnessed of any individual” the illiteracy of scientists,” he Association of America reported plicity with the White House.” Colbert was funny or not. ... by 87.9 percent of people who wrote. “Once or twice I have that, according to the most Another had the Post “and the It’s that either way, nobody in voted and “not really that been provoked and have asked recent figures, daily circulation rest of the White house lap the media reported it. THAT’s funny” by the rest. the company how many of them had dropped by another 2.5 per- dogs [sweeping] Republican what’s troubling—sound, intelli- But they were questions could describe the Second Law cent but visits to the papers’ shenanigans under the rug.” gent dissent going down the posed by the new media and of Thermodynamics. The Web sites had climbed by 8 per- Milbank tried to give as good as memory hole.” ignored by the old. This schism response was cold: it was also cent. Energy is shifting. A new he got, replying that he’d for- As if. v CHICAGO READER | MAY 12, 2006 | SECTION ONE 7 8CHICAGO READER | MAY 12, 2006 | SECTION ONE

The Works [email protected]

Mum’s the Word Mayor Daley and Michael Madigan stayed strategically silent on the latest attempt at property tax relief.

By Ben Jorvasky ack in November, when he it’s helpful to know a thing or two determine that your property the rate of inflation. Holding was looking to build sup- about our needlessly complicated has doubled in value, from In a sneaky sort the line on property taxes B port for his budget, Mayor property tax system. Explained in $100,000 to $200,000, you’ll of way, reassess- increases government efficiency Daley promised voters he’d be on its simplest form, your property wind up paying $12,277 in taxes, and keeps Chicago neighbor- their side come spring, fighting in tax is figured by multiplying the a 104 percent increase. ment helps elected hoods affordable for residents.” Springfield to extend the so-called tax rate (6.28 percent) against In a sneaky sort of way, officials like Daley In reality, property taxes have cap on rising property taxes. But the value of your home, which is reassessment helps elected offi- gone up dramatically since when the vote came on May 3, determined by Cook County cials like Daley and the city and the city council 1989, one reason many long- Daley was in the Middle East, far assessor James Houlihan, minus council pretend they’re keeping pretend they’re time residents in gentrifying from the legislative fray and of no an exemption—formerly $4,500. taxes down: the tax rate stays neighborhoods have been help in defending the bill, which So if the assessor puts the value roughly the same year after keeping taxes forced to leave their homes. was soundly defeated. Meanwhile, of your property at $100,000, year, while rising assessments In 2003 Houlihan himself house speaker Michael Madigan you subtract $4,500 and multi- do the dirty work of making down. stepped in to try and fix the prob- voted for the measure while play- ply that total, $95,500, by 6.28 sure you pay more. In its last lem of rising assessments, propos- ing a passive role in its defeat. percent, leaving you with a tax budget statement, for instance, ing a state law that would cap all As Barb Head, cofounder of bill of $5,997. the city bragged that “the 2006 reassessment increases at 7 per- the Tax Reform Action Coalition, Of course, your home’s value budget contains no increase in cent per each three-year period. a citywide group, puts it: “The doesn’t remain the same year the property tax for the third Under Houlihan’s plan, if your bottom line is you’re going to pay after year. Every three years year in a row. Since 1989, home was assessed at $100,000, more—way more—in property Houlihan’s number crunchers Mayor Daley has held any its reassessment value would be taxes. We’re all screwed.” reassess property values by increase in city property taxes capped at $107,000. Your taxes To understand the issues reviewing property sales to an average of about one per- would rise from $6,280 to involved in this latest go-round, throughout the county. If they cent a year, which is well below $6,719—$5,558 less than what CHICAGO READER | MAY 12, 2006 | SECTION ONE 9

you’d pay if your assessment had doubled without the cap. Houlihan’s proposal put Daley in a bind. He didn’t want to look unsympathetic to besieged tax- payers, but he couldn’t afford to lose the revenues that unfettered reassessments bring in. For bet- ter or worse, the city is hooked on property taxes, which pay for schools and parks and pensions and almost all the city’s capital budget. Just as important, prop- erty tax revenues fund the city’s 140-plus tax increment financ- ing districts, the piggy banks Daley needs to keep his alder- men content. So Daley, Madigan, and state senate presi- dent Emil Jones stitched togeth- er a cockamamie alternative. Instead of capping assessments, they proposed “capping” proper- ty taxes by raising the home owner’s exemption to $20,000 for a period of three years. Going back to our example, a home owner whose property was reassessed at $200,000 would wind up paying $11,304 in prop- erty taxes—considerably more ETH PERLMAN, JON RANDOLPH /S

than what he’d pay under OTO Houlihan’s proposal, but a sav- PH AP continued on page 10 Michael Madigan, Mayor Daley 10 CHICAGO READER | MAY 12, 2006 | SECTION ONE

The Works

continued from page 9 the change didn’t so much cut to do something. We can’t have ings of almost $1,000 from what property taxes as shift the bur- people having to sell their homes he would have paid without the den of paying them: roughly 20 ’cause they can’t pay their taxes.” increased exemption. percent of the city’s taxpayers Publicly, Madigan, who con- The revised plan, passed in the wound up paying increases of trols the house, was silent on the spring of 2004 and signed into more than 50 percent. Moreover, bill as it came up for a vote, law that summer by Governor the plan was always a sunset pro- offering neither support nor Blagojevich, was flawed. It gave vision—it expires next year. opposition. Daley likewise took no protection to commercial In March the senate passed a no stand in the debate. In the property owners, many of whose measure that would have raised absence of strong leadership taxes rose considerably. Nor did the exemption to $60,000 for from Daley or Madigan, reps it offer much relief for home the next three years. But the bill were free to vote as they pleased, owners in neighborhoods like stalled in the house. “I know this and the measure fell far short of Edgewater, North Center, and is not a perfect piece of legisla- the 60 votes it needed for pas- Bronzeville, where some assess- tion,” says state rep John sage (there were 37 votes for, 69 ments soared so high the exemp- Fritchey, one of the house’s chief against, and 6 votes of present). tion was no real help. In effect sponsors of the bill. “But we have Downstate reps, both Democrats and Republicans, largely voted against it, suspicious of any pro- posal that would offer tax breaks for Chicago. State rep Dan Burke, the brother of 14th Ward alderman Ed Burke, voted against it. And none of the city’s black state reps, who for the most part represent impover- ished communities on the south and west sides, voted for it. Ken Dunkin, whose district stretches from Cabrini-Green to the near south side, says he voted against the bill because it doesn’t provide enough protection for those who don’t own their homes: large apartment units are consid- ered commercial property, and tax increases get passed on to ten- ants. “That bill has a dispropor- tionate impact on renters on the south side,” he says. His explana- tion, like the votes of the other black reps, leaves many observers baffled. Despite the bill’s flaws, it did offer relief for home owners in neighborhoods like Englewood, Bronzeville, South Shore, Woodlawn, and Lawndale, who will get clobbered if the exemp- tion reverts to $4,500. “You’d think they’d vote for it just out of political self-interest,” says one northwest-side rep. “I don’t know if a lot of legislators understand the bill—I don’t know who they’re listening to. I do know they’ll be howling like everyone else when they get their reassessment notices.” For the record, no one’s fooled by Madigan’s vote in favor of the bill. “Of course he voted for it— his constituents would have lynched him if he hadn’t,” says the legislator with a laugh. “Why not vote for it? He knew it was going to lose.” Most legislative insiders think Daley and Madigan are playing a wait-and-see game on the issue. If the citizenry rises up angry as reassessment notices come out, Daley and Madigan will probably back some sort of cap or increased exemption come fall— just in time for the mayor’s reelection campaign. Fritchey predicts the bill will pass in November’s veto session. And Head vows to keep the heat on. “We’re going to have a rolling revolt,” she says. “As assessment notices come out, we will ask peo- ple to make copies and send them to their elected officials, including the mayor, the aldermen, and the state reps. We’ll keep up the pres- sure all summer long.” v CHICAGO READER | MAY 12, 2006 | SECTION ONE 11 12 CHICAGO READER | MAY 12, 2006 | SECTION ONE

[snip] “The idea that the United States is ‘an increasingly and few are work related. Even the younger generation is more mobile society’ is an indestructible intellectual weed,” settled, with 37 percent of twentysomethings moving in 1948, writes Alison Stein Wellner in Reason magazine. “In 2004 less 28 percent in 2004. “According to the historian Stephanie than 14 percent of U.S. residents moved—the lowest figure Coontz ...a person born today is more likely to remain Our Town since the Census Bureau began collecting the data in 1948, near his birthplace than a person born in the 19th century.” when the moving rate was 20 percent.” Most moves are local, —Harold Henderson | [email protected]

Sports Short for Christina Meet the former Christopher Kahrl, one of the best-known female baseball experts in the country. By Dave Hoekstra n February 20 the Web site Baseball Prospectus scooped O the dailies by reporting that Cubs starting pitcher Mark Prior was having shoulder trouble. Cubs GM Jim Hendry and manager Dusty Baker initially denied the report. “You can’t believe a report unless it comes from us,” Baker told the media the day after the story appeared. “If it doesn’t CK

come from us, it doesn’t count.” TE So on March 15, when the Cubs

announced Prior was indeed having CHARLES S shoulder troubles (he remained on the Christina Kahrl DL at press time), Christina Kahrl could have gloated a little. She’s the knew they were right. But Kahrl was talk about what’s going on and why.” Chicago, where she helped assemble managing editor of Baseball more philosophical about the Prior Mark Prior was Baseball the Baseball Prospectus staff, she Prospectus, which she founded with event. “We’re not looking for scoops,” Prospectus’s biggest story of the past was Christopher Kahrl. She moved to four other stats-obsessed writers in she says. “It’s more of a think-tank year. The second biggest was Kahrl the D.C. area in 2000 to work for a 1995, and tens of thousands of readers business model, where we want to herself. When she was living in continued on page 14 CHICAGO READER | MAY 12, 2006 | SECTION ONE 13 14 CHICAGO READER | MAY 12, 2006 | SECTION ONE

What Are You Selling? Our Town

continued from page 12 her family was just as supportive as sports-book publisher, and the fol- her colleagues. “If any family was lowing year she decided to change going to be open-minded, it was genders. Currently a preoperative probably going to be mine,” she says. transsexual, she’s been living as a “My brothers have been great and so woman since 2003. She first went have my parents. My grandmother’s public about her sex change in line was, ‘Well, you’re the first one in August, when she used her new my family I know about—and I love byline on a piece about the Oakland you just the same.’” Raiders in Salon. In the early 90s Kahrl, who grew That didn’t go unnoticed among up near Sacramento, California, was the stats geeks who pay close atten- working at the Oriental Institute tion to Baseball Prospectus’s hard- Publications Office on the University core numbers juggling. Bulletin of Chicago campus (she has a BA in boards and blogs picked up the news, history from the U. of C. and a mas- but Kahrl, 38, would just as soon ter’s in public history from Loyola). play down its importance. “It is She posted regularly to the interesting, but it isn’t important,” rec.sport.baseball Usenet group. she says. “Readers are still reading Impressed by their baseball knowl-

the same content. I’m still writing edge and writing talent, baseball ARNER the same content. I’m sure there’s consultant Gary Huckabay assem- ROB W people who say, ‘Well, you don’t see bled Karhl, Jazayerli, and three A sampling of the merch that every day,’ and you don’t. But we other regular posters in 1995 to cre- live in a different world than the way ate a baseball annual designed to things were 50 years ago.” replace Bill James’s Baseball Kahrl informed many of her col- Abstract, the pioneering stats com- What the “Naked” leagues of her decision via e-mail in pendium that stopped publishing in 2003. “No one expected this kind of 1988. “We had all been without the revelation,” says Rany Jazayerli, a Abstract,” Kahrl says. “We’re all on Naperville-based senior writer. “After the same page when it comes to People Wear I got the e-mail, the first thing I did using objective knowledge to come was call her. It was not my position to concrete conclusions.” to agree or disagree with what she The Baseball Prospectus site and ailiwick Repertory Theatre is the company that final- to represent forelegs.” Props? Heck yeah. A 1940s typewriter, did. The best thing I can do as a col- the first edition of the book both ly closed Naked Boys Singing so they could open a microscope, ship’s wheels, and “paint, lumber, and assorted weapons,” according to a press release. Box office manager league is to understand what she was appeared in 1996. This year’s book Barenaked Lads in the Great Outdoors—what kind of B Scott Deter says when possi- a costume sale could they put on? A pretty good one, going through. The only concern we contains analysis of 1,600 players, it turns out. Besides cowboy hats, collars, cuffs, boots, and Bailiwick Costume ble items will be marked with as a group had was, ‘How is this including minor-leaguers, draft Robert Mitchum masks worn by the naked fellas, they got your and Rummage Sale the show they’re from, but going to affect us in baseball?’ choices, and in-depth chapters on ball gowns worn by the Spider Woman, your plastic conquista- WHEN Sat 5/13, 10 AM-6 PM adds that no one has a clue Baseball is a fairly insular sport and every major league team. Baseball dor helmets should you feel the need to invade Peru, your mil- WHERE Bailiwick Arts what the child-size hexagonal Center, 1229 W. Belmont we were becoming well-known in the Prospectus annually ranks as one of itary uniforms, religious garb, and rainbow pride thongs, and coffin was used for. The com- lots of shoes and slippers. You can be only the second owner PRICE $1 donation to enter pany’s also unloading furni- industry. What would people think the best-selling books during spring of James Marsters’s doublet from Robespierre, We Hardly INFO 773-883-1090 ture, books, TVs, computers, when word got out?” training, and the site gets about Knew Ye or the Lycra shorts Greg Louganis wore in Larry contemporary clothing, rope, Nate Silver, who works out of 27,000 unique visitors a day Kramer’s Just Say No. And then there’s the wardrobe from and “lots and lots of fabric.” Shoes start at $1, clothing at $2, Lincoln Park as Baseball throughout the season. Still, it’s not Animal Farm, which Reader theater critic Albert Williams and the prices go up from there based on the quality and Prospectus’s executive vice presi- for everyone—along with articles described as “clever costumes that use crutchlike attachments uniqueness of the merchandise. —Patrick Daily dent, had similar concerns. “I’m a and essays is an alphabet soup of liberal guy, but at first you question stats and acronyms, the best known your own tolerance,” he says. of which is arguably PECOTA “There’s a bit of a shock the first (Player Empirical Comparison and time you see a picture or read about Optimization Test Algorithm), a it, but once you’re down talking statistical system that projects a Toronto Blue Jays, and the Cubs. spoke on Baseball Prospectus’s per- baseball and working with someone player’s performance using a data- Kahrl is an Oakland A’s fan, but in formance analysis method. “We every day, you don’t think about it. base of players going back to World Chicago she attended between 20 broiled in the sun watching [Jose] Once in a while I slip in ‘Chris’ War II. According to Silver, 28 of and 30 games at Comiskey Park and Contreras perform an homage to instead of ‘Christina,’ but apart from the 30 major league teams sub- a half dozen more at Wrigley Field, Steve Trachsel in terms of taking his that it has been surprising to see scribe to the Web site; in her fore- each season. She still takes in Sox time between pitches,” she says. how tolerant people have become.” word to the latest edition of the games when she visits; last July she Kahrl and her cohorts strike a “This is the one thing I needed to book, Kahrl sends shout-outs to the and Silver took part in a U. of C. similar tone in their pieces for iron out,” Kahrl says. She notes that GMs of the Seattle Mariners, alumni trip to Sox Park, where they Baseball Prospectus, including her CHICAGO READER | MAY 12, 2006 | SECTION ONE 15

[snip] Is the glass 28 percent full or 72 per- placed on probation because fewer than 15 per- cent empty? Catalyst Chicago reports informa- cent of their students scored at or above tion from research by the schools watchdog national norms in reading. By 2005, 28 percent group Designs for Change: “In 1996 and 1997, of the students in the 68 schools that remained 85 [Chicago Public] elementary schools were open scored at or above average.” —HH

weekly column, “Transaction Garden in a Report.” Regarding Red Sox pitcher Field & Street City David Wells’s recent move to the WHEN Sat 5/13-Sun DL, Kahrl wrote: “I wouldn’t get too 5/21,10 AM-8 PM or worked up over Jumbo’s latest 6 PM Sun breakdown. The man’s going to be Horto in Urbs WHERE Butler Field, 43 in another month, he’s never Columbus and going to be light on his feet.” The first garden show Monroe “If you don’t do that, it would be ever for people with no PRICE $10 except like reading a fantasy baseball maga- room to garden. Mon ($5) and Sat- zine or a corn futures report,” she Sun ($12), $7 for says. “That’s one reason I don’t like By Harold Henderson teens and seniors, fantasy baseball. I understand we’re ouglas Hoerr’s nightmare is kids under 12 free talking to a predominantly fantasy that one weekend you’ll INFO 312-742-4817 market, but I’m interested in what D decide to make over your or gardeninacity.org the players are really worth to their patch of backyard, buy a bunch of teams. I don’t care if he will help you plants, and squeeze them in however win a category. I guess I’m just more you can—and later realize that interested in real life.” they’re dying, running wild, or just in Baseball Prospectus has a staff of the way. Then you’ll decide that gar- 30, including three interns; only two dening just isn’t your thing. You were women before Kahrl switched wouldn’t redo your kitchen that way, genders. She’s thought some about says Hoerr, the principal of Douglas her new status as a minority member Hoerr Landscape Architecture, and of the sports media. “In some sense I he hopes that after you see Garden in am the singular member of the a City—an eight-day show that’s all team,” she says. “I would like to see about designing and planning before more. As a kid I remember Gayle you buy—you wouldn’t think of gar- Gardner [ESPN’s first female on-air dening that way either. staffer] and how cool she was.” Silver The show, of which Hoerr is the adds that Kahrl’s gender might influ- design chairman, is slickly present- ence the next generation of sports- ed. But it’s in a real gardening sea- ARNER

writers. “Baseball is still something son, not midwinter, when the ROB W of an old boys network in the media plants on display have to be forced. Douglas Hoerr and Grace Rappe in a plot of Hoerr's design and the industry itself,” he says. “But It’s in a realistic place, Butler Field when some old beat writer retires, (at Columbus and Monroe, behind into the ground rather than put designed for real urban spaces, par- you might have a 25-year-old take the Art Institute, in the megatents them in pots on a concrete floor. ticularly those in Chicago: narrow over who has read our stuff or other that would have housed Art Most important—the reason it’s parkways, tiny yards, gangways, things. They will come in with more Chicago), where exhibitors can dig being billed as the first show of its decks, balconies. There are seven of an open mind.” v their plants, shrubs, and trees right kind—the 40-some exhibits are continued on page 16 16 CHICAGO READER | MAY 12, 2006 | SECTION ONE Free Shit Our Town Breakfast for Mom

our mom will probably be happy with anything you do Y for her on Mother’s Day, be it fancy or fatty. On Sunday, May 14, from 7 to 11:30 AM, U Lucky Dawg offers a free breakfast for U Lucky Dawg moms, complete continued from page 15 breeder based in suburban West living a valued part of the land- 6821 N. Western with long-stemmed exhibits on garage roofs alone. Chicago (ballhort.com) that plans to scape instead of the first thing to 773-274-3652 rose. The menu’s more varied than “There are lots of places you can bring more than 500 species. “We’ve get value-engineered out.” the venue would imply: the lady of honor go to see examples of how kitchens developed varieties of what we call Garden in a City is intended to has her choice of pancakes, French toast, or living rooms can be set up in lim- goof-proof plants,”says Ball’s mar- complement large-scale civic-green- eggs, and bagels and lox. And if you made ited space,” says Hoerr. “There’ve keting director Jeff Gibson. And ing projects, championing the idea your Mother’s Day brunch reservation back when been few that show how a small gar- they’re not just conventional plants that it takes everyone tending his or there was snow on the ground, don’t fret. You can take den area can be designed.”How can used in conventional combinations: her own small green space to green dad out on Father’s Day for almost the same deal— though he gets a mystery gift instead of a rose. —Megan Roberts you screen your yard without also red geranium, dracaena spike, vinca the whole city. Grace Rappe, who blocking the sun? Put a native vine. He’s plugging alternatives like works with Hoerr, is particularly prairie out front without offending the company’s new “Wave” petunia pleased that so much emphasis has [email protected] the neighbors? Build that new and “Kong” coleus. been put on sustainability and envi- garage strong enough to support a Even though spring is peak land- ronmental issues—unlike at the rooftop garden? Find plants that scaping season, twice as many pro- Philadelphia garden show she parking lane that allows rainwater to can survive even if neglected in a fessionals as originally expected are recently visited. Exhibits will show soak into the ground rather than pot on a 20th-floor balcony? setting up exhibits at the show, how to save water, use fewer or no pour into storm drains. “People The answers will come from, whose principal sponsor is Target chemicals, and deal with contami- think ‘sustainable’ is going to be among many others, Hoerr, Midwest in partnership with the Park nated soil. Hitchcock Design Group’s gray,” says Rappe. “It’s not, but it’s Groundcovers, the Natural Garden, District. “We’re trying to give back streetscape, for example, will feature only going to be popular if it’s made and Ball Horticultural Company, an to the city,”says Hoerr, “and to a water-efficient trees, native vegeta- appealing. It’s about living smaller international ornamental-plant mayor who made what we do for a tion, and permeable pavement in the and not having a lot of excess.” v CHICAGO READER | MAY 12, 2006 | SECTION ONE 17 18 CHICAGO READER | MAY 12, 2006 | SECTION ONE CHICAGO READER | MAY 12, 2006 | SECTION ONE 19 20 CHICAGO READER | MAY 12, 2006 | SECTION ONE Spring Fashion

continued plasma cutter, a wandlike tool petticoat protruding for about a form and did it,” she says. “If a from page 1 that uses electricity and pressur- foot under the hem; a demure stitch dropped, a stitch dropped.” ized gas to cut through metal. white baby-doll wedding dress Inspired by dadaism, her elegant “When you touch it to steel it’ll has a half circle of white beads garments highlight some parts of blow a hole in it really easily,” she draped across the back like a the body and distort the rest. says. “It completely eradicates the backward necklace. Choi has What appears to be an open- macho thing of steel. It’s so easy. cited Belgian designers like Ann backed sweater with mohair So I started making feminine Demeulemeester and Bruno braiding flows down to become a patterns that all reference interi- Pieters as influences, and her mini apron dress. A collar piece or design or fabric design or work has similar structured, that lies flat in front gains things that are relegated to the architectural shapes, but there’s a dimension toward the back, feminine world.” Victorian aspect to her clothes as becoming a bouquet of triangles Handbag charm In December Brogger partici- well—which can also be seen in spilling into an inverted corset by Kelly Breslin pated in a fashion and perform- the ornate, spidery illustrations that’s wide at the waist, tight ance extravaganza at the Abbey she made for her Web site, Pub, where she sent out medieval- soosline.com. “I’ve been driven to Moire Conroy’s looking yokes of metal bead that aesthetic, something that’s triangular ruffles KELLY BRESLIN chain, strategically hand-stitched more romantic,” says Choi. Lately The only guideline artist Kelly to stay aligned. The material was she’s been using a lot of black, Breslin has when creating the from 12-foot curtains, salvaged too. “There’s something serene one-of-a-kind jewelry and hand- from the demolition of a subur- and surreal about black,” she bag charms that make up her ban McDonald’s corporate ball- says. “It can be a very rigid line, Litha, is that one side has to room. “We scavenged so much of design, but when it comes to be different from the other. She this that it broke the suspension fitting it to a person, it’s very ele- says this comes from her study of spring on my Jeep,” Brogger says. gant and beautiful.” She’s also ichibana, the Japanese art of Her models, wearing white been making chunky, messy jew- flower arranging, which stresses jodhpurs and not much else elry using chains, beads, fabric, man’s relationship with nature, besides the yokes, looked at and charms. tying together “the way things once butch and vulnerable. Choi, whose family moved to grow out and what you find Brogger’s first crack at the Chicago from Korea when she Shirt dress pleasing,” she says. Often refer- runway was at a 2003 show at by Castro was ten (with a brief stop in encing, if not incorporating, Open End Gallery that riffed on Schaumburg), is currently in

nature—in hand-dyed the theme of “fashionism,” Y Antwerp, where she’s landed a bits of fabric tied a nod to fascist lean- six-month internship with young onto chain to ings in both the designer Tim Van Steenbergen.

look like Bush admin- JIM NEWBERR While she’s there she’s studying little istration more feminine shapes, including how a city can function as a fash- flowers and the a collection of outrageous ion center away from the hype or hunks design women’s button-down shirts and glitz of Paris, New York, and of driftwood, world. Brogger with huge bishop sleeves, some Milan. “In a smaller city it’s not for instance— sewed more tradi- incorporating four fabrics in the about where you’re at; it’s about her jewelry tional garments for same color, all for one client. Not finding an environment that you has an earthy the show, but dis- long ago he had a nightmare feel comfortable in,” she says. “I durability but played them with a about a cockroach, so he made a have no desire to be in New York. also an ethereal twist: “I happened to cotton dress with a tail that qui- At the same time, Chicago is prettiness. be at that time revisit- etly splits open and straps that really lacking in resources, in ER AU “Ichibana dic- ing an interest in a accentuate the waist, creating an fashion infrastructure and pro- tates you work particular sculpture,” insectlike silhouette—again duction. . . . It was important for ANDREA B on three levels— she says, “a 1933 o∞cial reconfiguring something ugly me to be [in Antwerp] to under- heaven, earth, and portrait of Mussolini by into something desirable. LA stand how to compromise.” HK across the hips. Her men’s suit is man—but you can [Renato] Bertelli. It was Art Effect, Casa de Soul, Robin Hejfina, soosline.com meant to be worn by a woman. break any rule,” she his profile spun 360 Richman What she considers perhaps her says. “It’s one of degrees.” Brogger made MOIRE CONROY riskiest piece, a feminine, ethere- those practices where plastic helmets of her own SOO CHOI For her latest collection—her al dress, has an explosion of tri- if you know all the profile and stuck them on Soo Choi’s ladylike designs final project at the School of the angle-shaped ruffles at one hip. rules it just gives you a all her models, “so I was the always come with a quirk: a Art Institute—Moire Conroy At first, she says, “I thought, mindfulness about the Bead-chain yoke dictator of my fashion,” she black dress has lace around the decided not to make any pat- What am I doing? It was almost way you work.” LA by Mary Brogger says. LA collar and a bubble-shaped white terns. “I just put it on a [dress] like ruining it.” LA Penelope’s, luckymountain.com CASTRO Soo Choi’s MARY BROGGER Castro’s style used to be about wedding dress Best known for her bronze how big his clothes could be memorial at Haymarket Square without falling completely off his and her sheet-steel curtains, body. “I was wearing a size 42,” sculptor Mary Brogger says she’s says the trim designer. Then in interested in navigating the space 2001 he took a trip to Europe. “I between feminine and masculine. went to Amsterdam in baggy She makes the curtains with a pants and I came back in straight legs,” he says. “All my friends was like, ‘Man, is you gay?’ ” One night he went out to a club in Toledo, where he’s from, in his new tight jeans. “A dude just started fighting me. That’s what really got me. The guy ripped my jeans,” he says. “So I patched ’em up and hooked ’em up and dyed ’em. And I prayed that day. I was like, ‘If I got it, let me know now,’ ’cause I wasn’t gonna waste my time.” He’s been designing ever since, making hand-dyed T-shirts with African mask appliques and cre- Y ating cotton-candy-light tops out Y of raw silk chiffon. He’s currently Brogger’s 360-degree profile refashioning men’s shirts into JIM NEWBERR JIM NEWBERR CHICAGO READER | MAY 12, 2006 | SECTION ONE 21

and these destroyed objects would collect in the attic. “These things are looking for her,” he says. “They’ve become ghosts of childhood.” From this idea he created a collection of three outfits, which took him a year to finish and incorporate hand-dyed doilies, a taxidermied hummingbird, porcelain doll parts, and antique watch guts, plus two collabora- Heidi Dakter’s tions with sculptors: a wooden clown shoes breastplate carved from a single log and a porcelain corset with a matching porcelain scalp. A comically voluminous silk skirt tilted almost completely sideways

and embroidered with ceramic Dress by ALE trinkets and a sideways veil made Sarah Hein of 100-year-old stiffened lace are TIE FIZD KA meant to look windblown, as if the wearer were “standing next to SARAH HEIN an open window with the breeze Sarah Hein, another senior at the blowing through a tattered cur- School of the Art Institute, tain,” he says. admits that a lot of her clothes HEIDI DAKTER A couple years ago he made an are unwearable: arms and hands Heidi Dakter would like more accordionlike bolero jacket are wrapped in fabric or stitched people to make spectacles of inspired by an Elizabethan ruff to the sides of a dress, or billowy themselves. “I love spectacle and paired it with a collapsible pants feature an uncomfortably because it can happen anywhere,” farthingale—a 16th-century bul- low crotch. The clothing’s effect says the 24-year-old artist, who bous undergarment—made of on the wearer brings to mind the worked at the Circus World Y leather and horsehair. Most careful gait of a geisha or the Museum in Baraboo, Wisconsin, recently he constructed a trench noble immobility of statues. as a teenager and more recently coat out of seven black umbrel- At a group show at Open End JIM NEWBERR has helped design costumes and las; still on his to-do list are Gallery last fall, Hein sent her sets for Blair Thomas’s puppet glass-bowl shoes, a pair of pants models out cupping large rocks troupe and Redmoon Theater. next collection will feature images and applied them to fabric or that’s actually three pairs sewn like offerings to the gods. Her She’s been known to tromp of current events embroidered on sewed them together. In one back-to-back (“you put on serene aesthetic hints at a world around town in her own big-tent- oversize white shirts. “It’s not hot, piece the sewed-together pieces whichever ones you feel like”), beyond this one, sometimes ready designs, like a pair of bright sexy fashion, it’s more intriguing,” are wrapped around a corset, boots resembling oil spilling inadvertently. “My last pieces red bulbous clown shoes or a she says. “You feel like you giving the garment what Glaum- upward, and a dress with a train ended up being a little more tall majorette hat embla- could go up and ask some- Lathbury calls an “awkward, jolt- that looks like its shadow. LA ghostlike than I intended,” she zoned with a picture of one about it.” HK ing movement.” A lot of her says of a collection of clothes Mother Teresa. “It is really Robin Richman clothes move strangely: one made from antique silk kimonos. incredible, the conversa- dress has an exaggerated, “They don’t want to keep their tions that arise,” she says. ABIGAIL GLAUM- uneven bustle, upon which continued on page 22 In 2004 she LATHBURY is layered a long skirt made accompanied a For her final of elastic, resulting in a medical mission to project at the motion that Glaum- Haiti, where she School of the Art Lathbury describes as was struck by Institute, senior “wiggly and noodly.” Haitians’ limited Abigail Glaum- Her spring ready-to- opportunities. “I felt Lathbury chose wear collection uses Vincent T. like everyone should the theme of tripe. more-accessible Haq-Mastrionni’s think about that a lit- “It’s got this incredi- shapes: a pair of long, umbrella trench tle more,” she says, ble honeycomb pat- narrow walking and she came up with tern,” she says. “I shorts have pintuck the idea of using like [taking] some- details that create Y clothing as a conduit thing that’s very parallel lines down for political mes- disgusting and the legs; the fabric JIM NEWBERR sages. She created making it into of an asymmetri- apronlike skirts something exqui- cal sleeveless embroidered with site.” She made white top rip- portraits of Jean- hundreds of latex ples across the Bertrand Aristide casings from a torso, gathering and other players plaster mold— around the body like a in Haiti’s nation- they do look cloud. HK al drama; her disconcertingly Habit like the floppy Abigail Glaum-Lathbury’s slices of offal VINCENT T. tripe-inspired dress sold in the HAQ-MASTRIONNI supermarket— For his junior project in the fashion department at the School of the Art Institute, Vincent T. Haq-Mastrionni imagined a little girl growing up in Philadelphia in the late 19th century, and then he imagined her possessions. As she grew up, he figured, her things would deteriorate— her dolls would lose

THER MURPHY limbs, her minia-

HEA ture tea set would chip, her doll- house would go ramshackle— 22 CHICAGO READER | MAY 12, 2006 | SECTION ONE Spring Fashion

Paper-and-wire dress by Dieter Kirkwood

continued from page 21 where he can indulge his old kimonos in Japan because rigorous attention to detail on they say the soul is left in the a smaller, more manageable garment. I feel like by reusing scale than with clothing. “I like the old silk I was bringing some- constructing a lot, just figuring thing back out.” She lent the out how to put things together,” ghostly garments some of the he says. Lohrbach says he’s

solidity of the physical world by Y usually too shy to wear his own sewing more rocks directly into designs, but doesn’t think them—she liked the contrast of others should be. “I would love their weight against the light silk JIM NEWBERR for someone to be brave and and the way they pulled and dis- wear them around.” HK torted the fabric. “I think a lot of things are beautiful that DANNY MANSMITH other people don’t,” she Danny Mansmith shuns the says. “A lot of people are serger—a sewing machine looked over that are that binds raw edges beautiful.” Hein’s with thread, making first solo show is hems easy and quick. May25 at the “I like homespun Garfield Park kinds of things,” Conservatory. he says. The HK intricate, Asian-influ- enced designs for Man- DIETER smith’s KIRKWOOD label, Scrap, Coat by Like most design- have a grandma- Danny Mansmith ers, Dieter Kirkwood chic appeal, quiltlike works on a dress form to develop and homey, but they’re also his ideas, but instead of fabric he impressive feats of craft, beauti- uses stuff like tissue paper and MAX LOHRBACH fully finished inside and out. Saran Wrap. “It’s more of a cre- Many of Max Lohrbach’s vintage- Mansmith, who used to sew for ative outlet,” says Kirkwood, who looking hats feature tiny another local designer, deals in studied sculpture before transfer- handmade creatures: a monkey the soft arts: paper-and-cloth ring to Columbia College’s fash- made of fur and leather, for dolls, fiber sculptures, and ion design program in 2001. “The instance, or a kitten dressed up clothes. “I think of it all the challenge is trying to incorporate like a tailor in a little coat. same,” he says. “Some people Y details from them into pieces that “Animals are a traditional hat focus on the fashion aspect, but are modernist and a little stream- thing,” he says. “A lot of my hats I’m not a fashion designer.” He JIM NEWBERR lined,” like translating the curve are based on historical styles, but lasted a semester and a half at of a paper-and-wire dress’s hem they’re a little more fantastic.” the American Academy of Art to the closure of a melton wool Lohrbach, a recent Art Institute downtown before dropping out wearer can thread ribbons and plywood core and applying dif- felt coat. Kirkwood’s day job is grad who clerks and creates store and teaching himself garment straps for an almost endless ferent wood veneers, gluing on a doing graphic design for the displays at Ragstock by day, construction by taking a seam variety of looks. sole made of recycled rubber tires, Columbia College library, and in found himself drawn to the ripper to jeans and thrifted suits. “I was racking my brains for and molding them into shape his latest collection he uses silk- labor-intensive art of millinery, Mansmith likes recycling sec- months, trying to figure out how overnight. The shoes are comfort- screened prints of trees, some- ondhand materials. Once, after to make the top of the shoes,” she able, she says, because their shape times blown up to look abstract. an artist he knew threw out a says, when she hit on the idea of distributes weight along the “You can see small details when canvas he’d been painting on, the loops. She went through length of the foot. The footbeds you get closer,” he says. “A lot of Mansmith rescued it, dyed it, cut dozens of prototypes until she are screen-printed with Mohaupt’s my pieces are about the smaller and sewed it, and attached found a type of elastic—actually abstract and floral designs. “It’s details, I like to say.” HK sleeves made from an army blan- thin bungee cord—strong fun for me, trying to develop my ket, turning it into a jacket. For a enough to hold up to everyday drawing skills as well as my shoe- 2004 exhibition in a Wicker wear. She still makes the shoes in making skills,” she says. HK Park loft he made a men’s suit her basement shop, sawing out a Wolfbait & B-girls, mohop.com out of paper and fabric and Felt hat by sewed pieces of broken LPs all Mohop sandals Max Lohrbach by Annie Mohaupt over it. Much of his clothing has an organic feel—he plays with sil- houettes by drawing out bulbous wads of fabric in unexpected places. “I like things to look hap- hazard but lie right,” he says. LA Habit, Surrender

ANNIE MOHAUPT Annie Mohaupt’s line of hand- made, customizable sandals, Mohop, made its debut at the Renegade Craft Fair in September, and a month later she quit her job as an architect to work on shoes full-time out of the basement of her Avondale WHERE TO BUY two-flat. Mohaupt, a vegetarian, ART EFFECT PENELOPE’S had trouble finding nonleather 934 W. Armitage | 773-929-3600 1913 W. Division | 773-395-2351 shoes that were both comfortable and attractive. “A lot of architects CASA DE SOUL ROBIN RICHMAN Y are into clean lines, and I really 1919 W. Division | 773-252-2520 2108 N. Damen | 773-278-6150 wanted to make a shoe that HABIT SURRENDER

JIM NEWBERR looked good,” she says. She came 1951 W. Division | 773-342-0093 5225 N. Clark | 773-784-4455 up with a slender wooden design with a patent-pending system of HEJFINA WOLFBAIT & B-GIRLS elastic loops through which the 1529 N. Milwaukee | 773-772-0002 3131 W. Logan | 312-698-8685 CHICAGO READER | mAy 12, 2006 | SECTION ONE 23

Keepin' it Indie! 24 CHICAGO READER | MAY 12, 2006 | SECTION ONE Reviews

Music Movies Theater Books

The new Don DeLillo’s Tony Millionaire’s Scott 28 Love-Lies-Bleeding Billy a Hazelnuts Walker REVIEW BY album MILES RAYMER REVIEW BY REVIEW BY TIM KINSELLA Daniel Clowes TONY ADLER and Terry Zwigoff’s 32 a Art School a 24 New books on Confidential 30 corruption, Rush Limbaugh, REVIEW BY JONATHAN ROSENBAUM a and the press corps

Music

SCOTT WALKER THE DRIFT (4AD)

Great Scott Cult hero Scott Walker releases the weirdest record of his career. By Tim Kinsella n 1967, when Scott Walker which he’s most widely revered was 24, he quit his band the today—after a decent fifth album I Walker Brothers at the height in 1970, he released four more of their fame—on their final tour without any original material at the supporting acts were Cat all, including two forgettable Stevens, Engelbert Humperdinck, country-flavored discs. By the and the Jimi Hendrix Experience. time he reunited with the Walker Walker had always seemed uneasy Brothers for a few years in the with his role as a teen idol, and by late 70s, his chart career was on tearing himself away from his the wane, and since then he’s adoring public to pursue an interi- been putting out solo records at a or vision, he became a textbook rate of one per decade: Climate of example of the existential rock star. Hunter in 1983, Tilt in 1995, and He released four self-titled now The Drift , scheduled to come solo albums between 1967 and out later this month on 4AD. 1969, immediately gravitating to The new album is the product material deeper and darker than of seven years’ work. The BBC anything he’d been allowed to recently broadcast Walker’s first sing before. He began with TV interview in more than a English versions of Jacques Brel decade, playing studio footage tunes, and for Scott 4 wrote all where he’s showing musicians his own songs. When you first exactly how to bang a metal pipe hear those records, his rich bari- or slap a side of raw pork to get tone, couched in pristine, lay- just the right percussion sound. ered orchestral arrangements, The Drift is unmistakably the brings to mind hammy pop product of a powerful urgency, crooners like Robert Goulet, but but it’s nothing like a teenager’s once you understand what he’s urgent desire to be understood, singing about—isolation, mad- which is easily frustrated and ness, helplessness, hopeless- just as easily spent. Instead it’s Scott Walker ness—the music’s profusion of like a monk’s desire for transcen- interlocking patterns starts to dence, expressed in a steadfast eruptions of metal and industrial sion that each song is happening time will carry on, as if to show seem outright claustrophobic. commitment to work patiently, a noise, Tilt is one the most shock- somewhere particular, not just in the others the way. Layers of The longer you listen the stranger little each day, toward a goal ing and unsettling records I own, a studio, but the album mashes electronic whizzes, blips, and it sounds: lush and beautiful that’s hardly understood. and its often lurid surface can together those small ambient chirps erupt unpredictably, songs about desperate, miserable Walker is 63, but neither yields make it hard to appreciate the noises—and the tiny private sometimes blending seamlessly people, overwhelmed as much by to the pressure to sound superfi- songs themselves. Walker’s new sounds of the body, like the into the mix and sometimes pok- their crowded psyches as their cially contemporary nor revisits disc redeploys the avant-garde crackling of saliva as Walker ing out grotesquely, like the crowded apartments. the feel of his canonized late-60s collage approach of Tilt in the whispers—with grandiose, sus- background hum of a refrigera- Of course, as Walker’s music material. The Drift is so idiosyn- service of his classic albums’ tained washes of discordant tor or a computer accidentally grew increasingly complex, inti- cratic that only his previous emotional impact. strings, subverting a healthy exaggerated by a hypersensitive mate, and harrowing, his com- record can provide a meaningful The overall mood is of horrible mind’s sense of scale. A rock microphone. Brief, poetic radio- mercial appeal dwindled. But context for it. With its sinister suspense, noirish and futuristic. band might try to get started, play-style dialogues enter and these four are still the records for undercurrents and occasional Field recordings create the illu- then give up, but one player at a exit, suggesting a story but never CHICAGO READER | MAY 12, 2006 | SECTION ONE 25

providing any context for it. And the key features of pop. Often the impose ideas about what connec- tracks earlier, making it hard to the more seductive because he then there’s Walker’s singing: he music seems like little more than tions might exist between his tell which parts are born of was so clearly reluctant to com- cavalierly stresses his words on a series of textures to resituate the images. Every song seems to pass which song or what the motifs ply with the expectations built the wrong syllables, deforming vocal line in different spaces. fluidly from one perspective to are supposed to mean. into the role, acting instead as them to fit the odd, dilated When you notice a guitar, it another, so that even when you’re The Drift is as tightly packed though he’d been somehow mys- melodies, but his voice is still the sounds distinctly like U.S. Maple sure something terrible is happen- with information as any record tically anointed to be a pop star same rich, crooning baritone, (or like the Magic Band with all ing it’s hard to tell who are the vic- I’ve ever heard, but it still leaves and had to play the part no mat- almost operatic in its grandeur. the blues boiled out), but it’s not tims and who are the perpetrators. much of its sonic space open and ter how burdensome he found it. It feels like The Drift is only a as though there’s a recognizable On the chorus of “Cossacks Are” unstructured. Walker needs that (Between them Bono and record by happenstance. It could rock lineup churning away Walker sings, “With an arm / space to generate suspense: Is the Michael Stipe have gotten a lot just as well exist in any other beneath the obscure tangle of Across the / Torso / Face on / The donkey about to start screaming, more mileage out of that routine medium—say, as a wall-size drones and effects. It’s often hard nails / With an arm / Across the / or is this where the distorted than Walker ever did.) painting or a dense experimental to identify any instruments at all, Torso / Face on / The pale / Daffy Duck comes scolding? But Walker now refuses that film. It’s impossible to process in fact, and in the few moments Monkey / Nails,” impalement As a young man Walker con- simple connection with his audi- from the perspective of any when a standard-issue band does imagery that’s echoed later in nected with his fans by providing ence. His recent music is gnostic musical genre, and tough to get take the lead, that sound is so “Buzzers”: “Polish / The fork / And them the same sort of vicarious and ecstatic—qualities that arise used to even when approached pointedly just one of a vast stick / The fork / In him.” Not catharsis that every pop singer from its meticulously chaotic on its own terms. After a few lis- assortment at Walker’s disposal even animals are safe: in “Jolson relies on. He told them how he form, not from his performances. tens, the sonic shocks around that it seems more like a sam- and Jones” two men try to out- felt, and they felt it with him—or There’s no spontaneity or improvi- pled track than a live group. bluster each other, taking turns more likely for him. He was all continued on page 26 The accompaniment occasion- shouting, “I’ll punch / A donkey / ally falls into an off-kilter bur- In the / Streets / Of Galway!” lesque bump reminiscent of the Gone are the tales of particu- Get Hustle or Love Life, but in lar, everyday people struggling to contrast to those bands’ discrete survive in dank 60s tenements— bursts, this is more a preposi- the people in The Drift could be tional music—it’s always living in the 10th century as easi- between states, on its way else- ly as the 20th, staring up at the where, never settled. It’s as indifferent stars in the godless though Walker has written songs heavens and shaking under the without verses or choruses, only weight of that terrible epiphany. long strings of bridges. When he The album’s press materials say loops a lopsided pattern for a few “Jesse” is about 9/11 refracted bars, the repetition is always a through Elvis’s relationship with every corner begin to seem discharge of tension, a brief his stillborn twin, set to a demol- inevitable—each one belongs reprieve from the music’s unre- ished version of “Jailhouse Rock,” exactly where it is—but they lenting instability. It’s a sound and insist that the lyrics to don’t get any less surprising, that seems like a slightly sexy, “Buzzers” conjoin the Balkan since the album’s amorphous slightly silly put-on when conflict of the 90s with the evo- structure makes it so hard to younger bands try it, but in lution of the horse, but you’d anticipate them. Walker’s hands it’s truly heavy. never know that if you were left With its restlessly shifting back- The violence and dream logic of to parse the songs on your own. grounds, The Drift reminds me of the lyrics also reinforce the frac- “Hand Me Ups” links adulation Talk Talk’s last two records (with- tured, drifting, cubist aesthetic of to punishment by connecting out the hypnotic grooves) or John the album. The lines are generally hand claps and spanking, and Cale’s Music for a New Society just a couple syllables long, easy Walker’s lyrics seem to be about (without the clearly delineated enough to decipher one at a time celebrity—which, at least in the pop songs). Though disorienting but tough to piece together— most obvious interpretation, at first, its slippery pastiches Walker doesn’t seem willing to do makes the audience the culprit. eventually work to center the lis- any more for the listener than But the same rhythmic claps also tener’s attention on the singing—a establish a range of possibilities closely echo the steady footfalls strange way of arriving at one of and permutations, and refuses to from “Jolson and Jones” two 26 CHICAGO READER | MAY 12, 2006 | SECTION ONE

Music

continued from page 25 sation in his singing, but his songs demand audience engagement in a way that’s more like sparse free jazz than any variety of pop. The listener’s satisfaction no longer comes from identifying with Walker, but instead from an imposed alienation. In ordi- nary pop the performer’s moment of ecstatic release—the point of greatest intensity, often the chorus—is also a catharsis for the audience. Walker’s approach inverts this relation- ship, so that during his moments of ecstatic release the audience experiences sustained tension. Only when he comes down to earth or falls silent does the listener feel a sense of payoff or resolution. This virtually guarantees that Walker will lose most of his potential audience, but it makes for a more powerful connection with the folks who stick it out. Even in the likely event that the full significance of Walker’s cryptic gestures eludes you, you’re eventually forced to con- cede that something profound is happening. Damn, this guy’s really going through something was my own thought. He doesn’t care if I understand it, and he might not even understand it himself. The level of trust Walker places in the unfiltered expression of his darkest inner corners—to the exclusion of conveying any tangible mes- sage—is what proves he’s achieved a truly monkish inten- sity of devotion to his art. He seems unconcerned with his audience, thinking more of how to get something out of his head than of whether anyone will pick up on it once he does. Walker clearly has faith in the ability of music to exist at sev- eral different levels simultane- ously, and in fact The Drift depends on that—alongside its immediate physicality, it has the primal depth of the songs an aboriginal tribe might’ve used to pass down its history. But even more important than this faith in music is his total respect for it: rather than approach it as a set of genres and categories, he treats it like a boundless force of infinite variability, malleable enough to fit whatever shapes his subcon- scious imposes on it. v CHICAGO READER | MAY 12, 2006 | SECTION ONE 27 28 CHICAGO READER | MAY 12, 2006 | SECTION ONE Movies

ART SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL ss WITH MAX MINGHELLA, SOPHIA MYLES, MATT KEESLAR, JOHN DIRECTED BY TERRY ZWIGOFF MALKOVICH, JIM BROADBENT, JOEL DAVID MOORE, ETHAN RATINGS WRITTEN BY DANIEL CLOWES SUPLEE, STEVE BUSCEMI, AND ANJELICA HUSTON ssss MASTERPIECE sss A MUST SEE ss WORTH SEEING s HAS REDEEMING FACET Art School Is Murder • WORTHLESS Daniel Clowes and Terry Zwigoff make an interesting point, even if they don’t make it well.

By Jonathan Rosenbaum he 2001 live-action Ghost premise seems to be that get- World was the first collab- ting even with bullies and get- T oration involving director ting laid are the two main Terry Zwigoff, cartoonist Daniel motives for becoming an Clowes, and John Malkovich’s artist—a thesis that’s illustrated production company. Art School as soon as the movie starts, Confidential is the second. when Clowes’s stand-in Jerome It’s far more ambitious than (Max Minghella) gets bullied its predecessor and suffers from on a playground. This thesis too many ideas rather than too becomes complicated because few, making it an inspired, some bullies and some fascinating, and revealing women—most of them crazy or mess. Holding it together is pathetic—also want to become the same anger about the way artists. Even stranger, at least at art is taught that gave so much first, is the implicit notion that edgy life to the scenes with many Americans hate artists so Illeana Douglas in Ghost World. much they place a greater value Even if one disagrees with some on serial killers. But this is of its points, as I do, it offers Clowes’s main insight, and if plenty to mull over. one stops to think how many Both films faintly echo a four- more popular movies there are page catalog of Clowes’s gripes about serial killers than about called “Art School Confidential” artists, this no longer seems that appeared in his comic book hyperbolic. And the social ram- Eightball. (Having taught ifications of this observation courses in film and critical make up for all the confusion writing in a university art about why people produce art. department in the mid-70s, Making things more interesting I can testify that art-world is the idea that murder some- careerism was the main preoc- times gets confused with art, cupation of both my students so that the “aesthetics” of and my colleagues.) Clowes psycho killings are treated Art School Confidential clearly felt alienated as an art with more respect by portions student and has been spewing of the general public than the Manhattan when the characters when he arrives, Jerome is The film may want us to bile ever since. But as in the aesthetics of paintings. walk past a subway stop, then obviously provoked by Bardo’s recoil from all the insensitivity, work of his fellow comic-book Ihave to recount more of the appear at a trendy joint called remark during his first drawing especially when it concerns the artist (and Zwigoff associate) plot to show how the movie Broadway Bob’s (lorded class that “this school is like a thwarting of Jerome’s libido Robert Crumb, self-hatred, seems to be saying or at least over by an uncredited Steve pussy buffet” and by his later and his serious artistic misogyny, and misanthropy implying some of these things, Buscemi) that’s clearly meant comment that Audrey (Sophia ambitions. Yet it turns him compete with the social so readers who don’t want it to be in Soho. But there’s little Myles), Jerome’s dream model, into a bit of a lout, a guy who criticism, to the point that given away should stop here. sense of place in either scene, is “prime real estate.” The movie willingly rejects his art for the they’re often difficult to sepa- It’s characteristic of Clowes’s perhaps because Zwigoff is makes us wince at the gross possibility of success and sex: rate. Art School Confidential’s overall disaffection that the mirroring the minimalist insensitivity of such remarks, when a classmate who paints also full of Freudian confusion, comic “Art School Confidential” worlds of comics artists, includ- and it makes us wonder about in a more primitive style which becomes obvious when lists “certain recurring character ing many who may have influ- Bardo’s admiration for Jimmy lures Audrey away, Jerome, we belatedly discover that the types [that] appear in every art- enced Clowes. (Nancy’s Ernie (Jim Broadbent), a cynical, in an effort to win back her heroine dislikes the work of a school class” and that in the Bushmiller—after whom a char- embittered, and alcoholic alum- admiration and that of his particular painter simply movie Bardo (Joel David Moore), acter in the film is named—is nus we gradually realize is a teacher, rejects his own style because he’s her father. a classmate of Jerome’s, does the an obvious example.) Clowes’s serial killer who’s been terroriz- and claims Jimmy’s brutal Adding to the confusion are same thing. Yet there’s practically somewhat nihilistic world is ing the campus. By this point collage works are his own. a lot of intemperate notions no overlap between the two lists, even more psychologically and we’ve also met Jerome’s two Then we learn that the class- about the art world at large, which makes me skeptical about even less socially determined roommates—a blowhard film mate is an underground cop expressed by artists, art stu- both. In any case, the main “type” than Crumb’s. (Crumb’s work student who’s making a movie hoping to nab the serial killer, dents, art teachers (one played that’s missing from both lists is expresses a deeply felt nostalgia about the serial killings and and since one of Jimmy’s by Malkovich), and gallery Bardo/Clowes—the adolescent for an earlier American era a fashion major who’s in collages contains a key piece owners. The basic activities of wiseass who insists on reducing that can’t help but encompass comic denial about his own of evidence, Jerome becomes drawing and painting are some- his classmates to such categories. a social vision.) gayness. What the closeted the prime suspect. The most times seen as a form of bluffing The fictional art school Drawn to Strathmore by a character is supposed to signify interesting consequence of this and an escape from “real” life, Jerome attends, Strathmore, is photo of a nude artists’ model in Clowes’s critique of art is that it allows the movie to and a key macho, post-Freudian eventually shown to be in on a brochure and still a virgin schools is beyond me. have a happy ending. v CHICAGO READER | MAY 12, 2006 | SECTION ONE 29 30 CHICAGO READER | MAY 12, 2006 | SECTION ONE Theater

LOVE-LIES-BLEEDING STEPPENWOLF THEATRE COMPANY DeLillo off the Page The acclaimed novelist’s new play might make a better book.

By Tony Adler s a playwright, Don tained by intravenous drip. DeLillo makes an excel- Then Sean and Toinette, Alex’s A lent novelist. This isn’t as grown son and second wife, damning as it sounds. There’s arrive with a bottle of morphine some merciless, meticulous writ- and a plan. They want to eutha- ing in DeLillo’s new Love-Lies- nize the old lion, only they’ve Bleeding. The language is inter- got to convince Lia. esting for the way it traps There’s a culture clash as anguish in frozen, formal dic- these urban east-coast interlop- tion. The characters each have ers try to their own weight and mass. The WHEN Through 5/28: push their premise provides an elegantly Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, quality-of- simple mechanism for exploring Sat 3 and 7:30 PM, life concepts primal issues. It’s all very strong. Sun 3 PM on the It just doesn’t belong on a stage. WHERE Steppenwolf devoted Or more accurately: it has no Theatre Company, custodian urgent reason for being on a upstairs theater, for whom a stage. The celebrated author of 1650 N. Halsted vegetative such novels as White Noise, PRICE $20-$60 Alex is Libra , and Underworld hasn’t INFO 312-335-1650 better

managed to turn his strong ele- than none OW ments into a play, by which I at all. Sardonically discussing mean a narrative that demands the invalid as if he were already to be performed—that can’t be dead, Sean and Toinette come MICHAEL BROSIL fully realized, understood, felt on like callous sophisticates. Love-Lies-Bleeding except through performance. But before long it becomes clear Love-Lies-Bleeding is essentially that DeLillo isn’t interested in these are literary rather than her up into her young, middle- locus of individuated humanity. a fiction in dialogue form. You setting up heroes and villains or theatrical. DeLillo’s lone aged, and dying selves, giving She makes Toinette a person. can close your eyes, listen, and entering the contemporary attempt at visual storytelling is them rein not only to argue with Heard tries to generate a never feel as if you’ve missed debate over the good death. to divide the role of Alex one another but to scare the old similar warmth for Alex, but in anything important. Sean and Toinette are allowed between two actors, one (Larry lady’s son as he observes his his case the impulse is wrong. Indeed, you may find your eyes their own sense of devotion; Kucharik, with fakirlike disci- deathbed vigil. The result is Ornery and charismatic enough closing against your will. With they come to an understanding pline) playing the vegetable funny, profound, and visually to have gone through four nothing crucial to feed on with Lia; and Love-Lies- while another (John Heard) dynamic. Theatrical. wives, visionary and arrogant despite highly competent acting Bleeding resolves into what it portrays the artist before and The measured pace of Amy enough to appropriate moun- and beautiful stage pictures, the really wants to be—a meditation between strokes. Nothing Morton’s distanced, deliberate tains for his art, Alex needs optic orb all too easily opts out. on what Welsh poet Alun Lewis comes of that conceit, though. Steppenwolf production tends to to be an outsize personality— Love-Lies-Bleeding centers on perceived as the “single” poetic The vegetable simply sits there exacerbate DeLillo’s shortcom- part Picasso and part Howard Alex, who himself has opted out theme: “Life and Death . .. what vegetating while his compara- ings, making his story that much Roark. That Heard renders him in more ways than one. A land survives of the beloved.” tively healthy doppelganger less interesting for being slower as nothing more than a kind of artist—not unlike Michael And it’s an often lovely medi- talks to people. No exchange and defeating his rare attempts at shambling nice guy subverts his Heizer, who’s spent the last 35 tation at that. The script is takes place; no transcendence humor. The show’s far more glum touted mystique, deprives the years building a single monu- chock-full of resonant is reached or frustrated; no than it has to be. Scenic designer production of a magnetic mental earthwork in the Nevada metaphors and poignant equation is asserted, beyond Loy Arcenas injects a little inter- central character, and begs the desert—Alex retreated into arid exchanges. Alex’s great unfin- the obvious: here’s Alex before, est by filling the back of the play- question of why we should be isolation some time back. Now ished work, we’re told, is an and this is him after. ing area with a glowing south- upset about his awful fate. two strokes have left him help- empty room he was carving— Coincidentally, you can find western landscape, but the Ultimately Love-Lies-Bleeding less and very possibly brain- like a burial chamber? a hidden out how a real playwright han- only other glow onstage comes reminds me of nothing so much dead. He spends his days heart?—into the core of a dles the same formal challenge from Martha Lavey’s Toinette. as what old-time movie cops strapped into a wheelchair, mountain. Sean argues that by seeing Edward Albee’s Three Alternately wised-up, rueful, and say when they’re breaking up twitching, staring, mewling, Alex in his broken state is “no Tall Women, currently at the coquettish (when she’s flirting a crowd at the scene of an tended by his much younger longer and not yet.” Evocative Apple Tree Theatre. Albee takes with the prestroke Alex), Lavey accident: Nothing to see here. fourth wife, Lia, and main- though they are, figures like a comatose old lady and divides constitutes the production’s sole Move along. v CHICAGO READER | MAY 12, 2006 | SECTION ONE 31 32 CHICAGO READER | MAY 12, 2006 | SECTION ONE Books

BILLY HAZELNUTS TONY MILLIONAIRE (FANTAGRAPHICS) A Children’s Book for Adults Tony Millionaire’s scary, magical new graphic novel

By Miles Raymer ne of the only fan letters in the Reader and has a huge when—as in his Sock Monkey long they’re off on a quest to I’ve ever written was to Internet fan base. Each week’s comics—he lets his profane and find the secret hiding spot the O cartoonist Tony installment usually ends tragically sentimental selves cohabit. And moon goes to when it sets. Millionaire. I wanted a bird tat- for the heroes—Drinky and a his new graphic novel, Billy Millionaire’s drawings are too, and he draws some of the monkey named Uncle Gabby— Hazelnuts, may be the best he’s like scrimshaw, with their best birds ever, especially crows due to their own ineptitude and done yet. deliberate, etched look and in thick, black ink that hang drunkenness. It’s full of poop Becky is a prepubescent sense of high action frozen in somewhere between John James jokes, minority stereotypes, poet- astronomer and inventor in place, but the ethereal, nonlin- Audubon’s nature studies and ry, and endings that mock Henny pigtails, a pragmatic, science- ear way the pictures flow— Ralph Steadman’s expressionist Youngman-style punch lines as minded girl who can’t stand landscapes that shift from New nightmares. During a slow shift much as they revel in them. I keep poetry but has no problem nav- England mountains to south- at Kinko’s I e-mailed Millionaire, a hardbound collection of strips igating a dreamlike world pop- western desert rock forma- asking him to draw one special on my coffee table, and visitors ulated by talking sheep and tions, flocks of bats drifting for me. He was game, as long as tend to read it front to back when talking meteors. Billy through the corner of a panel— I’d agree to a tattoo of his drunk, they pick it up. Hazelnuts is a golemlike crea- is even more indebted to suicidal Drinky Crow character But there’s another Tony ture with a head full of house- Winsor McCay’s early-20th- as well. I wimped out on that Millionaire, who draws award- flies, crafted by the mice in century Little Nemo strips. deal, but we kept up a short cor- winning children’s comics with Becky’s cellar out of garbage Like Nemo, Becky and Billy respondence after that about the Drinky and Gabby recast as and treacle to murder Becky’s find not just danger—here in best cheap beers. He recom- stuffed animals having mild (but mother, a tyrant who keeps the form of a robotic alligator mended ice beers for their high surrealistic) misadventures them from the family’s cheese. out in the barn after an epic man built by the crushed-out alcohol content and low price. It around the household of the lit- Billy’s birth is weirdly menac- battle with a house cat. When poet Becky has spurned—but was good advice at the time. tle girl who owns them. These ing—he rises unsteadily to his Becky finds him there, she danger that follows the slip- The Tony Millionaire who gives stories usually wind up with hugs feet as a roomful of mice chant cleans him up and replaces the pery logic of dreams. When the out drinking advice to his fans is rather than with violence by “Get alive! Get alive!”—but he flies in his eye sockets with flying boat commanded by the the creator of Maakies, a strip handgun. doesn’t turn out to be much of hazelnuts, so he can see. They gator man crashes with a bro- that appears among other places Millionaire does his best work an assassin. Instead he hides become fast friends, and before ken wing, he simply rears the CHICAGO READER | MAY 12, 2006 | SECTION ONE 33

HOSTILE TAKEOVER: HOW BIG MONEY & CORRUPTION CONQUERED OUR GOVERNMENT— AND HOW WE TAKE IT BACK DAVID SIROTA (CROWN) CONFESSIONS OF A FORMER DITTOHEAD JIM DERYCH (IG PUBLISHING) LAPDOGS: HOW THE PRESS ROLLED OVER FOR BUSH ERIC BOEHLERT (FREE PRESS) ship back onto its long, buckle- shoed legs and continues the chase “on foot.” HowEverythingWentWrong As Billy and Becky travel fur- ther into the unreal, Millionaire draws the reader closer to the Three new books dig toward the roots of the mess we’re in today. story’s heart. As the action piles up in increasingly fantastic ways taxes.” Nothing? asks Sirota. Not out politicos (“Washington is one (peaking in a battle on the open HOSTILE TAKEOVER: HOW securing our country, not prevent- big legalized brothel”) and execs sea, one of Millionaire’s favorite BIG MONEY & CORRUPTION ing another 9/11, not protecting for their “unrestricted, unapolo- subjects), Billy’s relationship CONQUERED OUR American troops heading into bat- getic greed” and takes some swipes with Becky, and with humanity GOVERNMENT—AND HOW tle? $136 billion in tax breaks for at the “lazy/cynical media” along itself, comes under attack. WE TAKE IT BACK | David corporate donors—including, for the way. But he does deliver good When the smoke clears and Sirota | That government and example, $92 million for NASCAR news along with the bad. Billy finds himself lost, alone, corporate America are in bed isn’t track owners—sailed through Americans are smart and a grass- and blinded, it’s hard not to feel news, but the blatant mendacity, Congress while roots movement will eventually more sympathy for a gross little venality, and bipartisan suck-up David Sirota funds for food clean up the mess, he says, and the trash man than you’d have that David Sirota details in his new WHEN Tue 5/16, stamps, veterans’ good guys (they are noted here, thought possible. book, Hostile Takeover, are 7 PM benefits, and Pell though greatly outnumbered) are Though Little Nemo, Where the appalling. Sirota, a senior editor at WHERE In These grants were cut. A slowly getting more support. Even Wild Things Are , and The In These Times, exhaustively Times, 2040 W. job well-done by better, rather than simply rail Wonderful Wizard of Oz echo documents how the rights of Milwaukee the 4,000 regis- against the machine, Sirota offers throughout Billy Hazelnuts, average citizens are being INFO 773-772- tered lobbyists in concrete suggestions for change. odds are there won’t be many trampled in favor of big business 0100 D.C. who list taxes Near the end of the book he kids reading it. It’s not bloody, interests, all of it abetted by MORE With Rick as a specialty. writes, “If you’ve made it to this but it’s harsh and unlikely to legislators in thrall to campaign Perlstein and Sirota goes on point ...How do you feel? become a staple of contemporary cash and corporate-funded Tom Geoghegan to examine efforts $30 billion in profits; between Depressed? Angry? Outraged?” kids’ lit. And though Tony junkets. to erode workers’ 2000 and 2004 it donated $103 If you’re an average working Millionaire may deserve the love He starts with tax cuts for the wages and benefits, undermine million to candidates of both par- American, you’ll say oh, yes, of children, most of his followers wealthy—perhaps the most egre- unions, and enhance profits for ties. (MBNA is George Bush’s indeed, that’s exactly how I feel. are adult comics geeks. But when gious of many examples. Just HMOs and the pharmaceutical fifth-largest donor.) No surprise: But after spending several days they find themselves caught up weeks before the invasion of Iraq, and energy industries. Among the the new bankruptcy bill cracks with Sirota’s damning manifesto in Millionaire’s gorgeously deep House majority leader Tom DeLay many distasteful tit-for-tattings in down on individuals but not cor- you may no longer feel power- dreaming, they’ll probably forget said, “Nothing is more important Sirota’s arsenal: in 2004 the credit porate debtors. less. —Jerome Ludwig that they’re grown. v in the face of a war than cutting card industry as a whole made Sirota ably (and angrily) calls continued on page 34 34 CHICAGO READER | MAY 12, 2006 | SECTION ONE

Books

continued from page 33 CONFESSIONS OF A FORMER DITTOHEAD | Jim Derych | “In social situations, never discuss politics or religion,” goes the old saw. That’s a bit like saying, “Never discuss things that matter.” Without free debate, after all, you can’t really have democracy. Yet the prospect of dialogue can be daunting when you’re a progressive facing one of built in the minds of their listeners. the 30-odd percent of Americans —Renaldo Migaldi who still support the current Republican program, especially when to the LAPDOGS: HOW THE PRESS Jim Derych opponent such ROLLED OVER FOR BUSH | WHEN Sat 5/13, allegiance can Eric Boehlert | When Stephen 2 PM seem fueled by Colbert punked George W. Bush at WHERE Borders, emotion, not the White House Correspondents’ 2817 N. Clark rational thought. Association dinner last month, he INFO 773-935- How does a reserved no small amount of scorn 3909 liberal talk to a for the national press corps in Bush/Cheney whose honor the dinner is thrown. supporter, and is the effort futile? “Over the last five years you people Jim Derych thinks not, and he were so good,” said Colbert of the brings a distinct perspective to the assembled media elite. “Over tax question. His new book, cuts, WMD intelligence, the effect Confessions of a Former of global warming. We Americans Dittohead, is an unpretentious didn’t want to know, and you had memoir of his postadolescent the courtesy not to try to find out.” infatuation with the comforting That line could have come illusions peddled by talk-radio straight from Lapdogs , the new host Rush Limbaugh (whose fol- book by Eric Boehlert. A contribut- lowers proudly call themselves ing editor at Rolling Stone, former “dittoheads”), and how those illu- Salon columnist, and frequent sions slowly crumbled after his Huffington Poster, Boehlert own repeated collisions with facts employs meticulous analytic and and reality. Derych confesses that research skills to demonstrate the he was worse than a dittohead; he collapse of the fourth estate over was a fanatical “dittiot.” In his the past six years and forecast the book—distilled from a series of disastrous consequences the ensu- posts on the liberal blog Daily Kos ing sinkhole holds for democracy. (dailykos.com), where he’s gone by He comes out swinging, mercilessly the handle “advisorjim” since bitch-slapping poor Bob Woodward February 2005—he unwraps the for his curious silence during much layers of right-wing ideology he of the Valerie Plame investigation, once embraced and offers sugges- and continues on through a litany tions on how to try and get of instances in which the press, through to a dittohead. through either complacency or vil- “Rush makes you feel like you’re lainy, abandoned its post: the Swift an insider,” Derych explains. “Like Boat mess, Bush’s mysterious jacket you get it and nobody else does. bulge during his first debate with That you’re not alone. That’s how I John Kerry, Social Security reform, got hooked.” But Limbaugh is real- the hunt for WMD, the Terri ly just a carny barker with a dozen Schiavo “controversy” (which, he or so rhetorical tricks up his argues, was a figment of Fox News’ sleeve. He’ll isolate a statement by imagination). The press, he writes, some far-left extremist and claim is so afraid of losing access, so skit- that it represents the mainstream tish of charges of liberal bias, and of liberal thought; or, conversely, rendered so dizzy by the relentless quote an unthreatening statement right-wing spin machine that the by some mainstream Democrat, industry has come completely then explain to his listeners what unmoored. it “really” means. With anecdotes Maintaining a constant level of and examples, Derych handily righteous indignation and parsing shows how Limbaugh lures his lis- language with finesse, Boehlert teners into a bizarro world of cir- takes apart the myth of the liberal cular reasoning. media with surgical precision. One “My dittiotism died the death of a chapter charts the rise of ABC’s thousand cuts,” Derych writes, daily online tip sheet, the Note, recalling how after 9/11 he was dis- from an internal memo for the net- mayed by the Bush administration’s work’s news staff to an agenda-set- failure to capture Osama bin ting must-read for the journalists, Laden, then flummoxed by lobbyists, politicians, and other Limbaugh’s insistence on holding power brokers known as the Gang Bill Clinton responsible for the of 500. The Note’s popularity, he whole thing: “Maybe I was just points out, lies in how it reflects tired of hating Clinton. After eight the concerns of its rightward-lean- years you get tired of feeling angry ing Beltway readership—but the all the time.” It’s a moment that not fun-house nature of this relation- only leads to Derych’s epiphany, but ship gives it undue power. “The also points to a weakness that may Gang of 500 may set the nation’s exist even now in the teetering edi- political agenda,” he writes, “but fice that Limbaugh and other right- who helps set the agenda for the wing radio commentators have Gang of 500? The Note.” Other CHICAGO READER | MAY 12, 2006 | SECTION ONE 35

Ink Well by Ben Tausig

52.Actor Christopher’s delivery? “And . . . Cut” 56.Polo of Meet the Fockers 57.White whale ACROSS 58.Source of Islamic law 1. Cruncher’s pride 59.Bridges in movies 4. Trudges 62.Camera company imperative? 9. Dangerous toy 64.“It’s only ______. . .” 14.Stick in a pack 65.Little buddy 15.Studio support 66.Call a raise 16.Pontificate 67.Out of style 17.Ireland? 68.Elitist 19.Schleps 69.Alien’s subj. 20.Surprisingly warm house 21. Test prep company DOWN 23. Come off as 1. Senior discounter? 24.Ohio setting? 2. Veggie ______28.Free sample words 3. :-) 30.“So long!” 4. Cuban coin 31. Like some profiling 5. Drink like a cat . . . or where a cat 35.It’s stranded in your body might nap 36.Selling grills that “knock out the fat”? 6. Home of the Hanshin Tigers 7. Tooth trouble quarry include pundit-provoca- 42.John, to Paul, George, and Ringo 8. Crashed, so to speak 43.“The best debater since ______” (Bush teurs like Michelle Malkin and 9. Field of plants? Ann Coulter, whose “toxic rhetoric” strategist Matthew Dowd on John Kerry in 2004) 10.Literary family name and bullheaded scorn for facts 44.Bulbs in the kitchen 11. G’s gun Boehlert holds responsible for a 48.Force 12.Western tribe large part of the mainstream 13.Classic video game inits. 18.Extinct media’s fearful passivity, and blog- LAST WEEK: PITCHING ARTISTS 22.Soft tennis shot gers on right-wing sites like Free 24.Metric prefix Republic and Power Line, who 25.Cross letters 39.Make out 53. Prepares a child for bed, with “in” played a major role in pushing 26.What Phil Spector recorded in 40.______-Magnon 54.Over Terri Schiavo to the front page and 27.Nicole’s Moulin Rouge costar 41. Club with “Genius of Love” 55. The Empire Strikes Back role 29.Vet’s old theater, perhaps keeping her there at the expense of 45.“No problem here” for Billy Dee 32.Business mag coverage of, oh, Iraq. But incisive 46.Not an option? 58.It’s a tie 33. Movie list org. as his case may be, Boehlert is 34.Jean-______Godard 47.Long-running NBC program 59.Lassie’s mate preaching to the choir and, frankly, 36.Rapper’s asset 49.Read through 60.NYC destination, on a luggage tag it’s only engaging reading for so 37.Mrs. Chaplin 50.Clears the board 61. Granola grain long. As George W. Bush knows so 38.Muddy up 51. Door frame part 63. Meter prefix well, funny will often get the mes- sage across better than facts and fury, and Colbert’s 24 minutes of video convey the gist of Boehlert’s critique more effectively than these 296 pages of print. —Martha Bayne