Print Issue of February 22, 2018 (Volume 47, Number 20) by Chicago Reader

C H I C A G O ’ S F R E E W E E K LY S I N C E 1 9 7 1 | F E B R U A R Y 2 2 , 2 0 1 8

THE WORLD CATCHES UP TO JULIUS EASTMAN The iconoclastic composer died homeless almost three decades ago, and his work was nearly lost. But classical music ﬁnally has room for a queer black voice in the minimalist pantheon. By KERRY O’BRIEN 22

THE BASICS OF

B LO C KC H A I N & B ITCO I N RUMI MORALES

B LO C KC H A I N & B I TC O I N

Advisory Board Member, Chamber of Digital Commerce As head of CME Ventures, Rumi launched and led one of the most successful corporate venture capital units in financial technology. She is an early specialist in digital currency and has been twice named one of the “most powerful dealmakers in financial technology.”

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Learn about Blockchain, Bitcoin, Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), and more in an in-depth discussion with industry experts about these technologies and how they are changing our world. JENNIFER O’ROURKE B LO C KC H A I N

State of Illinois Blockchain Business Liaison

JIMMY ODOM

S O C I A L I M PAC T O F B LO C KC H A I N & C RY P TO C U R R E N C Y

Co-Founder & CEO, Bit Capital Group

COLLEEN SULLIVAN

C RY P TO C U R R E N C Y

CEO, CMT Digital Holdings LLC

HOWARD TULLMAN

CEO, 1871 Special opening remarks on Chicago’s role in Blockchain technology.

FOR MORE INFORMATION AND TO PURCHASE TICKETS VISIT SUNTIMES.COM/BLOCKCHAIN

2 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 22, 2018

THIS WEEK

C H I C A G O R E A D E R | F E B R U A R Y 2 2 , 2 0 1 8 | V O L U M E 4 7, N U M B E R 2 0

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FEATURES

IN THIS ISSUE 4 Agenda Southern Gothic at the Windy City Playhouse, a traveling art show serving unlimited pancakes, the ﬁlm A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness, and more goings-on about town

INTERIM EXECUTIVE EDITOR DAVE NEWBART CREATIVE DIRECTOR VINCE CERASANI DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY JAMIE RAMSAY CULTURE EDITOR AIMEE LEVITT FILM EDITOR J.R. JONES MUSIC EDITOR PHILIP MONTORO ASSOCIATE EDITORS STEVE HEISLER, JAMIE LUDWIG, KATE SCHMIDT SENIOR WRITER MIKE SULA SENIOR THEATER CRITIC TONY ADLER STAFF WRITERS MAYA DUKMASOVA, LEOR GALIL, DEANNA ISAACS, BEN JORAVSKY, PETER MARGASAK, JULIA THIEL SOCIAL MEDIA EDITOR RYAN SMITH GRAPHIC DESIGNER SUE KWONG MUSIC LISTINGS COORDINATOR LUCA CIMARUSTI FILM LISTINGS COORDINATOR PATRICK FRIEL CONTRIBUTING WRITERS NOAH BERLATSKY, ADESHINA EMMANUEL, ANNE FORD, ISA GIALLORENZO, JOHN GREENFIELD, ANDREA GRONVALL, KT HAWBAKER, JUSTIN HAYFORD, JACK HELBIG, IRENE HSIAO, DAN JAKES, MONICA KENDRICK, BILL MEYER, MICHAEL MINER, J.R. NELSON, MARISSA OBERLANDER, LEAH PICKETT, BEN SACHS, DMITRY SAMAROV, OLIVER SAVA, TIFFANY WALDEN, KEVIN WARWICK, DAVID WHITEIS, ALBERT WILLIAMS INTERNS MADELINE HAPPOLD, ASHLEY MIZUO, MELISSA PARKER, RACHEL YANG ----------------------------------------------------------------

CITY LIFE

19 Movies An interview with Laura Checkoway, director of the Oscarnominated Edith+Eddie 20 Movies The bitch is back in Sally Potter’s The Party.

MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE

8 Joravsky | Politics Rahm’s Trumplike dream of an express train to O’Hare could be a nightmare for Chicago. 9 Q&A Former IPRA head Sharon Fairley isn’t “just some Joe Schmo candidate” for state attorney general. 11 Column Adeshina Emmanuel chats with Sun-Times Media CEO Edwin Eisendrath about last week’s issue. 15 Transportation Chicagoans to Wisconsin: Thanks but no thanks— we’ll take the train.

ADVERTISING DIRECTOR CHRISTOPHER BEST SENIOR ACCOUNT MANAGER EVANGELINE MILLER MARKETING AND EVENTS MANAGER BRYAN BURDA DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL JOHN DUNLEVY ADVERTISING COORDINATOR HERMINIA BATTAGLIA

32 Restaurant Review: Gideon Sweet Is Matthias Merges and Graham Elliot’s Gideon Sweet the second coming of Yusho? 33 Key Ingredient Chef Christopher Thompson combines black truﬄes with Chef Boyardee ravioli.

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26 In Rotation Cleric, Solange’s Black Cab Sessions, Georgia Anne Muldrow, and other current obsessions 27 Shows of note Tony Allen & Jeﬀ Mills, the Higher Brothers, Mammoth Grinder, and more of the week’s best

MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE

The world catches up to Julius Eastman

The iconoclastic composer died homeless almost three decades ago, and his work was nearly lost. But classical music ﬁnally has room for a queer black voice in the minimalist pantheon. BY KERRY O’BRIEN 22

16 Theater Antoinette Nwandu’s Breach fails to live up to its potential. 17 Lit Brittney Cooper’s black-girl magic for grown-ass women

18 Comics For Ryan Browne, “a comic is a movie with an unlimited special eﬀects budget.”

CLASSIFIEDS

34 Jobs 34 Apartments & Spaces 35 Marketplace 36 Straight Dope What are the environmental ramiﬁcations of using salt to melt snow and ice? 37 Savage Love Why is a bixesual woman so threatened by her boyfriend’s bisexuality? 38 Early Warnings Radiohead, Joey Badass, Smashing Pumpkins, and more shows to look for in the weeks to come 38 Gossip Wolf Busy drummer Ben Billington releases music from two of his bazillion bands, and more music news.

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More at chicagoreader.com/theater 4:48 Psychosis If contempt were a cure, every depressive desirous of relief should hasten to Saltbox Theatre Collective’s rendering of Sarah Kane’s 4:48 Psychosis, written the year before her suicide, because no one, sick or well, could stomach their own thoughts declaimed with such emphatic melodrama. Everything done is overdone by an ensemble of 12 whose primary mode of interpretation seems to be to bellow the lines with the fervor of adolescents realizing they can curse. Directed by Brian Fruits, this production perhaps best represents Kane’s obsessive, elliptical text, which contains no roles and few directions, through a physicality that arrays the ensemble in a series of formations that heightens the claustrophobic experience of mental illness. However, any inkling of craft in either speech or movement is conspicuously absent. —IRENE HSIAO Through 3/11: Thu-Fri 8 PM, Sat 3 and 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Stage 773, 1225 W. Belmont, 773-327-5252, saltboxtheatre. org, $20, $15 students and seniors. Cam Baby Jessica Moss’s misanthropic one-act drama ventures where many in-yer-face plays have gone before: a pair of morally bankrupt young men devise a scheme to sexually and ﬁnancially exploit women who trust them. In this case, it’s renting out spare rooms to female tenants on Airbnb, covertly recording their hookups, then publishing the footage on a subscriber-only fetish website. With so many heinous examples of similar behavior existing in the real world, it’s unclear why Moss’s story relies on unconvincing bids at moral ambiguity and false equivalency from its supporting characters to generate tension. Jesse Roth’s production for Chimera Ensemble features vulnerable, naturalistic performances by Nora Hunt and Arif Yampolsky as a couple caught in the crosshairs, but the rest plays out as a cautionary tale with easy answers to easy questions. —DAN JAKES

Through 3/4: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, Collaboraction, 1579 N. Milwaukee, 312226-9633, chimeraensemble.com, $22, $15 students, seniors, and industry. Così Fan Tutte What, in the era of #MeToo, would make it worthwhile to sit through three and a half hours of two schemers’ slapstick attempts to get a pair of young women to forget their boyfriends and succumb to their advances? Mozart! He took librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte’s farcical womenare-cheats story line for Così Fan Tutte and loaded it with beautiful duets, trios, and sextets. This Lyric Opera production oﬀers gleaming-voiced soprano Marianne Crebassa in the role of Dorabella, the more willing of the ingenues; soprano Elena Tsallagova as the streetwise maid Despina; and comic baritone Alessandro Corbelli as Don Alfonso, the guy behind the plot. Ana MarÍa MartÍnez is Fiordiligi, the reluctant cheat. The setting’s been moved up from the 18th century to World War I, introducing a menacing backdrop from the real world. In Italian, with English supertitles. —DEANNA ISAACS Through 3/16: Wed 2/21 and Mon 2/26, 7:30 PM, Lyric Opera House, 20 N. Wacker, 312827-5600, lyricopera.org, $17-$319. Cyrano Theatre Above the Law’s R world premiere of Michael P. Dalberg’s adaptation of the French classic

takes an interesting twist that resonates in today’s #MeToo climate. Cyrano is a female soldier, played with panache by an achingly vulnerable Isabella Snow, and her trademark large nose is purely a product of body dysmorphia. She’s yearning to win the heart of Roxanne (a wide-eyed Nicola Rinow). This Cyrano is a completely modern romantic comedy tinged with unsettling, gender-based power dynamics. What remains the same is Cyrano’s inability to get past her own insecurities to see true love right in front of her face. As best friend Donna, Brittany Vogel is a constant source of witty barbs and oﬀers much-needed raised eyebrows to balance Cyrano’s stormy bravado and bluster. —MARISSA OBERLANDER Through 3/4: Fri-Sat 8 PM,

Fear & Misery in the Third Reich Haven Theatre Company presents its take on Bertolt Brecht’s 1938 cry of protest against the rise of the Nazi regime. The uniformly enthusiastic cast struggles gamely to deliver Brecht’s heightened, portentous screed against tyranny (translated from the German by Eric Bentley), but the production’s most affecting moments are silent and due to Claire Chrzan’s stark lighting design. Yu Shibagaki’s set—made up of a raised platform that takes up most of the room and is painted to look like scuffed steel, with seating in two wells and along the walls—succeeds in overwhelming most of the words and action. That seating I mentioned consists of benches with nothing but thin foam for padding, so I’d advise audiences to bring a pillow from home to endure this nearly three-hour affair. —DMITRY SAMAROV Through 3/11: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, Den Theatre, 1331 N. Milwaukee, 773-6092336, haventheatrechicago.com, $18. Journey for the Sun Subtitled a R “sci-fi cartoon circus,” this trippy little charmer, written by Seth Bockley,

codirected by Frank Maugeri and Lindsey Noel Whiting, and featuring the acrobatic work of the Actors Gymnasium’s teen ensemble and others, packs a lot into less than 90 minutes: acrobatics, juggling, puppetry, and lots and lots of mildly campy clowning. The story, which aims to please young children, adolescents, and adults, is decidedly silly—a group of adventurers must travel to the sun to “cool it oﬀ” because it’s gotten too darned hot—but easily wins us over with its cool grace and constant inventiveness. Kasey Foster earns big laughs as the show’s sad-sack hero, Darryl, but the real scene-stealer is a likable young Chaplinesque clown named Jean Carlo Claudio. —JACK HELBIG Through 3/25: Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 4:30 and 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, Actors Gymnasium, Noyes Cultural Arts Center, 927 Noyes St., Evanston, 847-328-2795, actorsgymnasium.com, $25.

The Madwoman of Chaillot For R those who despair that unfettered greed and corruption have taken

A Moon for the Misbegotten

control of the world, Jean Giraudoux’s classic 1943 comedy is a welcome tonic. It focuses on the eccentric Countess Aurelia, whose home in the Chaillot district of Paris sits atop untapped reserves of oil. When a cabal of political and business leaders descend on Chaillot intending to drill for black gold without regard to their scheme’s destructive impact, Aurelia and her bohemian band of street people thwart the scheme. Promethean Theatre Ensemble’s workmanlike production of this urban fairy tale features Elaine Carlson as an Aurelia whose daft, dithery whimsicality belies a steely ruthlessness. —ALBERT WILLIAMS Through 3/17: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 2 PM; also Mon 2/26, 7 PM, Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport, 773-3403599, prometheantheatre.org, $27 adult, $22 seniors, $17 students and children. A Moon for the Misbegotten R Bethany Thomas gives a galvanic, heart-wrenching performance as Josie

Hogan, a daughter who tries to be everything to everyone only to leave herself with nothing. Eugene O’Neill’s 1943 tragedy, set on an imperiled tenant farm in 1920s Connecticut, is given extra contemporary resonance by director William Brown’s innovative casting. Making the Hogan clan African-American rather than Irish allows Brown to put the class and economic conflicts underlying the narrative into even sharper relief without changing a word of O’Neill’s text. All the men in Josie’s life flee or let her down, and the world beyond the farm offers little but hostility, yet she still dares to dream that everything will work out, and we dream along with her, knowing full well nothing will come of it. —DMITRY SAMAROV Through 3/18: WedFri 7:30 PM, Sat 3 and 7:30 PM, Sun 2 and 6 PM, Tue 7:30 PM, Writers Theatre, 325 Tudor Ct., Glencoe, 847-242-6000, writerstheatre.org, $50-$80. Southern Gothic Immersive R theater productions that place viewers in the same space as the actors

are very diﬃcult to pull oﬀ, but Windy City Playhouse’s Southern Gothic has the right blend of skill and ambition to create a memorable and unique theater experience. Leslie Liautaud’s script is a familiar drama about a group of coupled

ò MICHAEL BROSILOW

Best bets, recommendations, and notable arts and culture events for the week of February 22

COMEDY Blame It on Bianca Bianca Del Rio, the alter ego of comic Roy Haylock (who won season six of RuPaul’s Drag Race), steps up to the mike for standup comedy. Sat 2/24, 8 and 10:30 PM, the Vic, 3145 N. Sheﬃeld, 773-472-0449, victheatre.com, $39.50.

Typeforce 9 ò TOM TIAN / FIREBELLY

friends getting drunk and unloading their secrets on each other, but David H. Bell’s graceful, intricate direction and the rich performances draw the audience deep into this world. Snacks and cocktails appropriate to the 1961 Georgia setting are served, reinforcing the party atmosphere. It’s impossible to witness everything once the action spreads throughout the entire home, but a major part of the fun is piecing together bits of information gathered by being a ﬂy on the wall. —OLIVER SAVA Through 4/22: Wed-Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 4 and 8 PM, Sun 2 and 6 PM, Windy City Playhouse, 3014 W. Irving Park, 312-374-3196, windycityplayhouse.com, $65-$95.

Jokesplaining Alex Kumin, Gena Gephart, and Sonal Aggarwal perform at this stand-up showcase. Fri 2/23, 10 PM, Laugh Factory, 3175 N. Broadway, 773-327-3175, laughfactory.com, $17.

DANCE

More at chicagoreader.com/movies NEW REVIEWS

The Pancakes & Booze Art Show ò KATHY TRAN

Black Panther The ﬁrst black superhero in mainstream American comics, Marvel’s Black Panther came with an African pedigree: in real life he’s the ancestral king of a small, impoverished sub-Saharan nation that conceals a secret empire, the whole operation empowered by an asteroid from outer space. That premise provides most of the fun in this big-screen adaptation, particularly in the form of the Dora Milaje, the king’s security team, who are badass

Kaluuya, and welcome cameos from Angela Bassett and Forest Whitaker. —J.R. JONES PG-13, 134 min. River East 21, Showplace 14 Galewood Crossings, Showplace ICON. Game Night I’ve always found R Jason Bateman’s comedies to be a pretty good bet; he’s never doubled

me over, but the movies he’s produced (Identity Thief, Bad Words, The Family Fang) are abundantly clever, with dialogue that manages to be hilariously mean but essentially harmless. In this energetic farce, he and Rachel McAdams (in a sparkling comic performance) are spouses who live for their social evenings playing board games and other contests with friends; one night the husband’s brother oﬀers to host and hires one of those mystery-staging companies to come over, but real criminals arrive instead. The long joke of the narrative is adroitly handled, and for once the climax pays oﬀ in laughs. John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein directed; with Kyle Chandler, Jesse Plemons, Michael C. Hall, and Danny Huston in a bit role. —J.R. JONES R, 100 min. ArcLight Chicago, Century 12 and CineArts 6, Chatham 14, Cicero Showplace 14, Crown Village 18, Ford City, River East 21, Showplace 14 Galewood Crossings.

over a game of Super Smash Bros. Sun 2/25, 8 PM, Under the Gun Theater, 956 W. Newport, 773-270-3440, undertheguntheater.com, $10.

LIT & LECTURES African American LitFest Local R African-American authors host panel discussions, with storytelling,

crafts, and other activities for kids throughout the day. Sat 2/24, 10:30 AM-4 PM, Harold Washington Library Center, 400 S. State, 312-747-4300, chipublib.org.

Poetry oﬀ the Shelf: CantoMundo The Poetry Foundation and CantoMundo, a national workshop dedicated to Latinx poets, present authors Amy Sayre Baptista, Natalie Scenters-Zapico, and Jacob Shores-Argüello. Thu 2/22, 7 PM, Poetry Foundation, 61 W. Superior, 312-787-7070, poetryfoundation.org.

This Is a Blank Page. A Story, in R Motion LA-based movement artist VISUAL ART Andrew Pearson’s dance-theater show

“follows the pursuit of happiness, as seen through the eyes of a gay millennial.” Sat 2/24, 6 PM, Hoover-Leppen Theatre, Center on Halsted, 3656 N. Halsted, 773472-6469, aboutfacetheatre.com, $20.

Typeforce 9 Emerging typographybased artists utilize compuer-generated visuals to showcase their work. Cocktails served. Fri 2/23, 6 PM. Co-Prosperity Sphere, 3219 S. Morgan, 773-862-1232, coprosperity.org.

MOVIES

Surely Goodness and Mercy New Player Has Entered the R Raising a child indeed takes a vilR Show Four stand-up comedians lage, as demonstrated in Chisa Hutchinbattle for bragging rights by shit-talking

son’s satisfying, uplifting play about a grade school student’s friendship with an ornery lunch lady. Neglected and abused at home by his adoptive aunt (Katrina D. RiChard), Tino (Donovan Session) takes refuge in his newfound Christian faith at church, his insatiable curiosity in the classroom, and his unlikely bonds with an extroverted wisecracking peer (Charlita “Charli” Williams) and an aging cafeteria manager with a looming medical crisis (Renee Lockett). Wardell Julius Clark’s Redtwist Theatre production paints a pretty clear road map of its own plotting early on, but that doesn’t make the journey any less gratifying or the climactic destinations any less emotionally punchy. Notably absent from Hutchinson’s frank and sobering story: cynicism. —DAN JAKES Through 3/18: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, Redtwist Theatre, 1044 W. Bryn Mawr, 773-728-7529, redtwist.org, $35-$40.

A People’s Museum of LGBTQ History As part of a national grassroots project, the art and design collective AK/OK invites attendees to contribute drawn and written recollections of the ﬁrst queer person in their lives. The ﬁrst 40 participants receive a hand-silkscreened T-shirt and will be credited as contributing artists. Sat 2/24, 1-4 PM, Weinberg/ Newton Gallery, 300 W. Superior, #203, 312-529-5090, d-weinberg.com.

For more of the best things to do every day of the week, go to chicagoreader. com/agenda.

The Pancakes & Booze Art Show This traveling art show features work by more than 50 local artists, live music, all-you-can-eat pancakes, and more. Fri 2/23-Sat 2/24, 8 PM-2 AM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 2109 S. State, 312-949-0121, pancakesandbooze.com/chicago, $10-$15.

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Game Night women with shaved heads, neck rings, and ﬂaming-red uniforms. Chadwick Boseman is appropriately noble and dull as the title character, and director Ryan Coogler (Creed, Fruitvale Station) brings along the compelling Michael B. Jordan, his frequent collaborator, to play the Panther’s philosophical antagonist. As in the recent Warner Bros./DC Comics outing Wonder Woman, the identity politics provide a fresh spin to the genre’s increasingly tedious narrative formula (like the fake climax three quarters through, which has you looking for your coat before you realize there’s a half hour to go). With Lupita Nyongo, Danai Gurira, Martin Freeman, Daniel

Hannah The story is a closely guarded secret in this tedious French drama (2017) by Andrea Pallaoro. An elderly, upper-class woman (Charlotte Rampling at her most baleful) tries to adjust to life after her husband begins a prison term for an unspeciﬁed crime, but there’s nothing for her except their cocker spaniel and her dreadful theater classes, where she’s working on a scene from A Doll’s House. Riding the subway, she witnesses moments of raw passion without batting an eyelash; denied admission to her grandson’s birthday party, she hides in a toilet stall and stiﬂes gut-racking sobs. Rampling is the whole show here, and it’s mainly show because Pallaoro µ

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and Treviño know how to develop narrative momentum through a steady stream of subtle psychological revelation. —BEN SACHS 88 min. Henry attends the screenings. At Gene Siskel FIlm Center: Fri 2/23, 8 PM; Sat 2/24, 3 PM; Mon 2/26, 7:45 PM; and Wed 2/28, 8 PM. At New 400: Thu 3/1, 7 PM.

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A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness

B gives her little dialogue; his focus on the quotidian may wear you out before he finally lays down his cards and the depth of the protagonist’s despair is revealed. In English and subtitled French. —J.R. JONES 95 min. Fri 2/23, 8 PM; Sat 2/24, 5 PM; Sun 2/25, 3 PM; Mon 2/26, 7:45 PM; Tue 2/27, 6 PM; Wed 2/28, 8 PM; and Thu 3/1, 6 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center. In Between Arab-Israeli filmmaker Maysaloun Hamoud makes her feature debut with this drama about three Palestinian roommates who live and work in modern-day Tel Aviv. Laila (Mouna Hawa), a sexually empowered lawyer, and Salma (Sana Jammelieh), a lesbian disc jockey, reject the patriarchal conservatism of their respective Muslim and Christian families by dressing and dating as they please and by immersing themselves in Palestinian nightlife. By contrast, Noor (Shaden Kanboura) wears a hijab and plans to return to her small village after graduate school to marry her impatient fiance. Despite the culture clash, the trio find common ground in their romantic struggles and feelings of alienation. They grapple with various issues connected to their race and gender, yet Hamoud keeps the tone relatively light, the women’s wit and vibrancy accentuated by a brisk pace and Itay Gross’s colorful cinematography. In Arabic and Hebrew with subtitles. —LEAH PICKETT 102 min. Fri 2/23-Thu 3/1. Facets Cinematheque. Luminous Procuress This 1971 experimental feature reminded me of Jack Smith’s classic underground short Flaming Creatures (1963) with its decadent costumes, copious nudity, and bacchanalian vibe. The film consists mostly of tableau-like scenes of men and women modeling outrageous costumes in equally outrageous settings; occasionally the performers strip their lavish get-ups and engage in hard-core sex. Director Steven Arnold was a protege of Salvador Dalí, whose influence can be felt in some of the

film’s bizarre touches (the dialogue is all gibberish), though much of the imagery comes across as secondhand surrealism; in one sequence, a clown giddily cranks a music box while seminude performers traipse across an empty stage. —BEN SACHS 74 min. New 16mm print. Fri 2/23, 7 PM. Logan Center for the Arts. Purge This Land Director Lee Anne Schmitt meditates on America’s legacy of racially motivated violence with this somber essay film (2017). The form is relatively straightforward: Schmitt presents locations from all over the country with voice-over narration describing violent incidents that took place there (lynchings, race riots, police shootings). Some of the sites have been memorialized with plaques, though many are anonymous; the latter come to represent Americans’ inability to learn from history and eliminate racism from the culture. As the sites accumulate, one becomes overwhelmed by how much of U.S. history is rooted in violence—this is ultimately more complex than it lets on. The title refers to a quote from radical abolitionist John Brown, one of the movie’s recurring subjects. Jeff Parker of Tortoise wrote the moody score. —BEN SACHS 80 min. Schmitt and composer Jeff Parker attend the screening. Thu 3/1, 6 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center Rogers Park Set in the title neighborhood, this indie drama covers a year in the lives of four middle-aged characters: a failed writer, who earns his living at a public library; his girlfriend, who works for an alderman; his sister, who runs a preschool; and the sister’s husband, who sells real estate. Both couples are interracial, though director Kyle Henry and screenwriter Carlos Treviño wisely overlook this concern, focusing instead on the characters’ bottled-up professional and interpersonal frustrations. The sympathetic performances, understated direction, and thematic emphasis on lower-middle-class unhappiness all reminded me of British filmmaker Mike Leigh, and like him, Henry

a decade, director Seijun Suzuki (Branded to Kill) returned to theatrical ﬁlmmaking in 1977 with this lurid, highly entertaining melodrama. A fashion model is groomed by a sleazy promoter to become Japan’s top female golfer, gaining TV celebrity in the process, but loses her soul to a life of stylish excess. (She also attracts the attentions of a stalker, yet this stresses her no more than her rigorous career.) Suzuki employs his trademark disorienting montage, with jarring close-ups and unexpected transitions between scenes, and for once the stylization inspires sympathy with the protagonist rather than emotional detachment. The colors are decadent and loud, giving this the air of a Technicolor musical. In Japanese with subtitles. —BEN SACHS 93 min. 35mm. Tue 2/27, 9:15 PM. Univ. of Chicago Doc Films. REVIVALS Beauty and the Beast A R sublime, sumptuous ﬁlm directed by Jean Cocteau with the

help of René Clément (1946). Cocteau re-creates the classic story of the beauty who gives herself to the beast to save her father, and whose growing love eventually transforms him into a handsome prince, with a brilliant blend of decor (sets by Christian Berard), human forms (superb makeup by Arakelian), and visual eﬀects (dreamlike photography by Henri Alekan). Josette Day, Jean Marais, and Marcel André star. In French with subtitles. —DON DRUKER 93 min. 35mm. Sat 2/24Sun 2/25, 11:30 AM. Music Box. Jane: An Abortion Service R An hour-long 1995 video documentary by Chicagoans Kate

Kirtz and Nell Lundy about the women’s health collective Jane, whose members performed 12,000 safe but illegal abortions within the University of Chicago community between 1969 and 1973. The oral history that emerges—which links this work to other political activities of the period even as it distinguishes it from them—is a fascinating and important chronicle. The video is limited at times by the diﬃcult task of representing events recounted in the interviews when appropriate footage isn’t available, but the overall story is indelible. —JONATHAN ROSENBAUM 58 min. A panel discussion follows the screening. Thu 3/1, 7 PM. Logan Center for the Arts F v

CITY LIFE

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ò ISA GIALLORENZO

Maximalist Heather Thorgaard believes that rainbows and sparkles are neutrals.

ELKHATIB LAW, LLC

YOU WILL NEVER CATCH ME in an all-black outfit, let’s be honest,” says CouponCabin.com writer Heather Thorgaard, who was sporting a vivid mix of pastel and neon hues that included a striped faux-fur coat that she says reminds her of cotton candy. “I believe that rainbows and sparkles are a neutral,” she says. Besides piling up on different colors, the former fashion major, a native of Ottumwa, Iowa, is also a big fan of maximal accessorizing: “I absolutely love bracelets, rings, and necklaces, and find most back home in Iowa at this little shop called Bob’s Jewelry that is filled to the brim with antique and vintage costume jewelry from estate sales all around the midwest. Truly a one-of-a-kind hidden gem!” But that’s not the only place she finds her treasures. “Don’t be afraid to shop anywhere,” she advises. “You never know where you’re going to find a unique and cool piece. I have been known to find things at a hardware store, Wal-Mart, or Chico’s just as easily as a vintage store or flea market.” Another sartorial rule she lives by? “Dress for yourself and no one else. People are going to have something to say regardless, so in my opinion, let them talk. I know my outfits can be insane at times, and that’s just the way I like it.” —ISA GIALLORENZO

FEBRUARY 22, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 7

CITY LIFE POLITICS

Huge dreams from our mayor Rahm’s Trump-like dream of an express train to O’Hare could be a nightmare for Chicago. By BEN JORAVSKY

everal weeks ago, Donald Trump went on a trip to Paris, saw a big military parade, and rushed back to the White House with big dreams racing through his little brain. He wanted a parade. A huge parade. Huger than the one in Paris. With soldiers and tanks clamoring through the streets of Washington. And planes flying overhead. And everyone bowing down to the commander in chief. And the aides said: Yes, sir, Mr. President, sir! Or words to that effect—I can only surmise what Trump and his aides say to each other. In any regards, the president is moving ahead with his parade plans even though . . . We can’t afford it because his tax cut for the rich will add at least $1.5 trillion to the national debt—he’s already proposing cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and social security to pay for the tax break. And he still hasn’t figured out how to pay for his great wall, speaking of big dreams racing through little brains. When I talk about all of this with my liberal friends in Chicago, they scornfully laugh at Trump supporters and ask, how can they be so stupid as to support this man? Well, I hate to say it, folks, but a similar thing is happening right here in Chicago with Mayor Emanuel’s great dream of an express train to O’Hare. Actually, in Rahm’s defense, the express train was Mayor Daley’s idea from about 2005. On a trip to China, Mayor Daley rode an express train that zipped him from the airport to the central city in no time at all. And when he returned to Chicago, he could barely contain his excitement, leading to an exchange on the fifth floor of City Hall that probably went something like this.

8 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 22, 2018

Daley: I want an express train to O’Hare and Midway, and I want one now! Aides: Yes, sir, Mr. Mayor, sir. This just shows you how much Trump and Daley aides have in common—at least in my imagination. And so Daley launched the express trains dream without study or analysis by arm-twisting the CTA board and the Chicago City Council into spending about $400 million to construct a downtown station under Block 37 for the service. Even though . . . There’s no need for an express service, ’cause we already have trains that run from the airports to the Loop (the Blue Line and the Orange Line). And Chicago, then as now, was hard up for money, so we really could have used those millions on something else. And there was no track for those express trains to run on. I think that last point reveals more about the mentality of Chicago under our autocratic mayors—Daley and Rahm—than just about anything else. One more time: there was no track for the train to run on, yet the City Council, bowing to Daley’s command, voted to spend millions in TIF dollars to construct an underground station that would probably never be used. As, for the last time, there were no tracks for the trains to run on. So essentially, the city spent hundreds of millions of dollars digging a big hole in the ground.

I remember voicing my incredulity about this to a former Daley aide. And he sheepishly shrugged and said something along the lines of “The mayor’s not very good at handling things he doesn’t want to hear.” This brings me to a Trump-like announcement Mayor Rahm made just a few weeks ago, as he declared that Daley’s express-train folly to O’Hare lives on, though the mayor has dropped plans to build an express service to Midway. As the mayor put it in a press release: “More than a century ago, Daniel Burnham encouraged Chicago to ‘make no little plans,’ and today Chicagoans continue to make big and bold plans with an eye towards the future.” Be wary of any mayoral press release that quotes Burnham. “Strengthening connections between the economic engines of downtown Chicago and O’Hare airport, at no cost to taxpayers, will build on Chicago’s legacy of innovation and pay dividends for generations to come.” Here’s how the mayor intends to deal with the trackless issue. The city had solicited proposals from four corporations (including Elon Musk’s Boring Company) that have pledged to build the aforementioned tracks. In exchange, the city will allow the winning corporation to receive the proceeds from operating the express train service. It’s a little like the infamous parking meter deal of 2008. In the parking meter deal, a consortium of investors lent the city $1.16 billion

dollars. And in return the city allowed them to keep all the money you feed the meters for 75 years—a bounty that’s expected to reach as much as $10 billion. Actually, this may even be worse than the parking meter deal. In that one, we at least we got the $1.16 billion. In this case, I’m not sure we get anything. The express service is expected to cost upwards of 30 bucks a trip, meaning it’s way too pricey for most Chicagoans. So some rich guy gets to zip into the Loop in a jiffy. And the winning corporation gets to keep the fares. And we, the people, get—nothing. Such a deal! The mayor does say the express train will help convince Amazon to build its headquarters here, as though the $2.25 billion handout he and Governor Rauner have already offered isn’t good enough. And, yes, the mayor swears up and down the O’Hare express will cost no taxpayer money. Well, I’d just like to point out that the service has already cost us roughly $400 million for the underground station—though it’s not clear if it will be connected to the proposed routes. Beyond that, anyone who thinks this project won’t cost more taxpayer money is about as gullible as a Trump voter in Michigan who still thinks Mexico’s paying for that wall. v

v @joravben

CITY LIFE Democratic attorney general primary candidate Sharon Fairley ò RICH HEIN/SUN-TIMES

POLITICS

Former IPRA head Sharon Fairley isn’t ‘just some Joe Schmo candidate’ for state attorney general

Talking gun violence, police misconduct, Illinois’s opioid crisis, and whether she’s on Rahm’s team By MAYA DUKMASOVA

haron Fairley came to public prominence in 2015 as Rahm Emanuel’s pick to lead Chicago’s police oversight agency—then the Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA)—in the wake of revelations about the city’s attempts to conceal the killing of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald by Chicago Police officer Jason Van Dyke in 2014. She’s now among ten candidates vying to replace her former boss, Illinois attorney general Lisa Madigan. Fairley, who’s 57, has spent the last two years under intense public scrutiny as the head of an agency that the Department of Justice found failed to deliver justice to victims of police misconduct. She also led IPRA’s transmutation into a new city agency, the Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA). She says her run to be Illinois’s top lawyer doesn’t have much to do with all that, though. And, for the record, she says she doesn’t “know Rahm well.”

How do you respond to a voter who may be considering your candidacy and feeling skeptical, feeling like you’re using a political appointment by Rahm Emanuel that stemmed from the Laquan McDonald coverup to position yourself to be attorney general? I’m always sort of perplexed by this issue where people express concern about my independence just because Rahm appointed me. I don’t know Rahm well. I mean, I can only remember one time in my life that I’ve actually been in the same room with him in person before he appointed me. It’s not like he gave me this tremendously cushy job. I believe this is one of the hardest jobs that existed in city government at the time—in the white, hot spotlight, making decisions, thrown into a situation where the city’s in crisis against a strong department of largely white men. This is not like a plum city appointment. He didn’t do me a favor. Most of my friends actually thought I was crazy by taking that job. And the second thing is I’m absolutely not trying to parlay anything into anything. My decision to enter this race is based off of my entire record, not just that particular experience. I spent eight years as a federal prosecutor and did a lot of really important work and got a lot of really relevant experience that’s important in the role of attorney general. I prosecuted narcotics and gangs, I prosecuted firearms trafficking cases, I prosecuted a bank robbery murder case, I did counterintelligence and counterespionage work. And you know beyond that I’m not just some Joe Schmo candidate. I’ve got an undergraduate degree from Princeton in mechanical and aerospace engineering. I’ve got some serious credentials to do this job, so I don’t understand why people would think that’s even remotely appropriate to say about me. At the same time, Rahm wasn’t going to appoint someone that he couldn’t count on. How do you explain to people what made you the right person for that moment? I can’t at all speak to why he picked me because I really don’t have any idea, other than the fact that I was a qualified person. I

had a good reputation as a smart, capable lawyer, and I was already working for the city. Beyond that I can’t speak to what his motivations are. But what I can point to is the work that I did when I was there. I pushed back on the administration on several fronts, including in the days of when we were working to get the [COPA] ordinance. I pushed back and strongly stood up for the budget and corralled the aldermen to get the support of the City Council to get that done. Same thing about pushing back against the city—the city really resisted the idea of COPA having the power to get outside counsel. I really pushed back on that. I made the agency way more transparent than it’s ever been before. There were times when I had to butt heads with the department, and I did that all independently, without any care for where the administration sits on that. So I considered myself to be working for the citizens of Chicago, not Rahm Emanuel, when I was in that job.

So much of the conversation about police misconduct focuses on Chicago. What will you do about investigating police misconduct in the suburbs and in other parts of the state? We know that there’s been a lot of concern about officer-involved shootings and police violence in Chicago over the last couple of years. We also know—recently they’ve done the reporting at WBEZ—that officer-involved shootings are an issue beyond the city as well. We need to address the legal structure that governs the use of legal force by law enforcement. And I think there’s a couple ways to approach that. One is really focus on shaping the policies that are in place in law enforcement agencies throughout the state, much like the Chicago Police Department addressed their policy last year and made significant and very important improvements. But also there’s a state law, there’s a statute that dictates the sort of instances under which law enforcement officers can use lethal force, and I believe that that needs to change as well. I think there’s a lot that can be done to make sure that law enforcement officers are being held accountable when they need to be. Police accountability is not anti-police—it’s meant to make sure officers have the training and skills that they need to do the job well and also so that we have checks and balances in place. If they are acting outside of the way that they’re supposed to, then they’re going to be held accountable. When the pub- J

FEBRUARY 22, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 9

UPCOMING TALKS

CITY LIFE

continued from 9 lic understands and believes that oﬃcers are being held accountable, then they are much more likely to have trust and faith in the system and participate in a process that really helps us solve crime and prevent crime. So police accountability really is a win-win for everybody when it’s done well.

DESIGN DIALOGUES: LAKESHORE EAST AT 15 Thursday, April 12 at 6pm | $15 public / $7 members Architect Adrian Smith filed the Lakeshore East master plan in 2002. Join Adrian and others with deep ties to Lakeshore East as they reflect on its development.

DAYTIME TALK: RENOVATING MIES’ MCCORMICK HOUSE Wednesday, March 28 at 12:15 pm | $5 public / Free for members with RSVP The McCormick House is one of only three residences designed and built by Mies van der Rohe in the United States. Moved to the Elmhurst Art Museum in 1994, the home is now undergoing a renovation that will restore much of its original feel.

ARCHITECT TALK: MAKING OLD CITIES NEW WITH CHRIS WILKINSON Tuesday, April 17 at 6pm $15 public / $7 members What can Chicago learn from adaptive reuse projects in other parts of the world? Hear Chris Wilkinson, founding partner of Londonbased WilkinsonEyre, explain how his firm has ingeniously reinvented neglected spaces in aging cities.

224 S. Michigan Ave. | 312.922.3432 | architechture.org 10 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 22, 2018

The current attorney general, your former boss, Lisa Madigan, has this lawsuit to get court oversight of police reform—are you planning on pursuing that? Absolutely. I’m thrilled to see Lisa Madigan stepping into the void left by the Trump administration and DOJ under Jeﬀ Sessions. They basically walked away from any involvement in police accountability work, and so she absolutely did the right thing. We know from looking at jurisdictions across the country that having court-monitored reform is really the only way to achieve long-lasting reform of a police department. And when you’re looking at a department of [CPD’s] size and complexity, with the seriousness of the problems that have been observed here, court oversight is just essential to making progress. That’s going to be, in my view, a very important part of the mission of the oﬃce of the attorney general for several years to come. This is not a short-term process, this could be upwards of ten years on a single project. You spent ten years working in the pharmaceuticals industry. What did you take away from that experience that could be helpful for you as attorney general, especially with regard to combating the opioid crisis? I know that the marketing practices of these companies have a profound effect on doctors’ prescribing habits. That’s a huge part of the problem, and that’s why I believe that the attorneys general have done the right thing in suing these companies to try to recover the cost they have incurred by fostering the kind of health-care practices that have caused these folks to become addicted. I mean, there’s no reason for somebody who has a minor issue to be prescribed an opioid for several days. I know how the medical marketing works. I wasn’t working on marketing to doctors. I worked on marketing to consumers, which was fairly new at the time.

Obviously what we need to do is make sure that these companies are following the law when it comes to their marketing and that they aren’t going beyond what they’re supposed to be doing in terms of the promises they make about the drugs and how they’re directing doctors to use them. We also have to worry about doctors’ prescribing habits, and then we also have to educate consumers about the risks. Is there an under-the-radar issue that you will have power to do something about if you are elected attorney general that you think people should be discussing more? We’ve had a rough week when it comes to gun violence. It’s so saddening and disheartening when I think about the lack of progress made from a legislative perspective, not only on a federal level, but also in the state of Illinois. I don’t understand why we cannot get the Gun Dealer Licensing Act [a proposal to regulate gun stores] done, why we can’t get a ban on assault weapons and bump stocks done here in Illinois. In [2012] the Seventh Circuit demanded that we had to address the concealed carry situation for the state. Not only did they create this structure for concealed carry, but they actually put in place a statewide preemption that basically says anything having to do with the regulation of the licensing and the possession of handguns and the possession of assault weapons has to be handled at the state level—meaning municipalities can’t make their own rules. I think that’s ridiculous. To me that’s just another signal of how strong the NRA is and the symbol of the failed leadership of our legislators. Here in Chicago 40 percent of the guns recovered in crime come from sources within Illinois; the other 60 percent come from outside of Illinois. We need to get our own house in order, to deal with that 40 percent. But we also need to stand tall for the states that surround us, that don’t have strong gun laws, and really push for federal gun legislation and push the other states around to do the right thing, because our citizens are getting hurt. We need stronger leadership out of our political leaders to solve this problem, and we’re just not seeing it right now. v

v @mdoukmas

Edwin Eisendrath

MEDIA

On the offensive Reader cover, staff diversity, and the paper’s future A conversation with Sun-Times Media CEO Edwin Eisendrath

By ADESHINA EMMANUEL

ast Thursday, the Chicago Reader’s then-executive editor, Mark Konkol, published a cover that depicted gubernatorial candidate J.B Pritzker sitting on a black lawn jockey. He published it without the knowledge of Edwin Eisendrath, CEO of Sun-Times Media, which owns the Reader. The image was meant to call out the sneak racism of white progressives who call themselves friends to the African-American community, but many in that same community interpreted it as a reduction of black Democrats to a racist trope. The same image was used inside the paper to illustrate a column I wrote about Pritzker’s coded language in a 2008 conversation with then-governor Rod Blagojevich about ﬁlling the Senate seat Barack Obama vacated when he became president. On Saturday Eisendrath ﬁred Konkol. On Monday night, Eisendrath agreed to chat with me on the phone about Konkol’s tenure, the cover, and the Reader’s future as a print publication and brand. We also talked about lack of diversity at the Reader, which is a bigger issue than just one rogue editor. This is a condensed version of that conversation.

How well does the Reader’s content reflect the city it serves? I would say the Reader is changing. For years and years and years it was a white baby boomers’ paper, mostly on the north side. It’s gotten interested in, comfortable with, and eager to cover more and more and more of Chicago, and to cover more and more and more of Chicago in partnership with people who live in neighborhoods in Chicago. When I say partnership, I’m thinking about the stuff the Reader does with the TRiiBE, for example. What about the current staff? Are there any black or brown folks there?

The Reader staﬀ is not diverse. The people at the Reader fully understand how problematic that is, and they raised this question: Can we be more diverse? One of the enormous problems, of course, is the Reader is also financially challenged, so it isn’t doing much hiring. It gets its diversity through partnerships and through freelancing, and until there are vacancies when people leave. But no, the Reader staﬀ is not diverse. When did you know about the lawn jockey cover? I saw it when it was published. I hadn’t seen it before. This is something that’s been floating around the Internet—that there was a cover with J.B. Pritzker in blackface that was vetoed by you. Is that true? Yes. Why did you veto that cover? It goes back to the question of diversity. I think through great literature, through a lifetime of challenging but honest conversations among friends, we can learn a lot about each other’s experience. But your experience isn’t my experience, and it’s not for me—there’s just some things that are not for me to say and some things that are not for you to say about each other’s lived experience or the lived experience of other groups. A nondiverse Reader should never be trying to find a way to use those images. It can’t be trusted. Even if you think it’s making good points. It’s just not the right crowd to do that. That’s one reason. The other is I just plain thought it was repelling. Why hire Konkol? When I talk to people at the Reader and make my own judgments, it’s clear the Read-

er does have to go through some change. It was very high quality but a little bit stuck, and that reflected itself in operational ways, in financial ways, so I was eager to find somebody who could sort of combine a business vision, a new vision, as well as an editorial one that made sense. I’m still eager to find that person. We’ve posted the [executive editor] job, and one of the reasons why I’m eager to do this interview is I’m hoping that really interesting people and people from all over will apply. There’s nobody who’s perfect for a role, but he had a vision—and I thought that with some help from the rest of us it would work out. Every once in a while things don’t work out. In fairness, I put him in a position that he wasn’t ready to succeed at. But did you make any efforts to make a diverse hire? The company’s process for hiring—we’re not perfect in that round, in part because there were some sensitivities because there was also a editor in place at the time. I think the shortcomings of that process were clear, and that’s one of the reasons now why the job is posted and we’re casting a wide net now. So last time you didn’t really post it? We actually met with a lot of people, but it was a confidential search, not a public search. Does the decision now to terminate Konkol come with a decision to hire more people of color, women, or LGBTQ voices? So there are two different conversations. I don’t think they’re in any way linked. Mark and the Reader have parted company, and that’s one. Two: everyone at the Reader has said they would like to be in a place where there’s more diversity, not just in some roles,

but in important decision-making roles. They’ve all made that clear, and I couldn’t agree more. They are, however, a struggling weekly newspaper, and they’re not doing a lot of hiring. That does make it hard to do diversity quickly. What have you learned from all of this? I was reminded that we always have to expect the unexpected. I was reminded of the cardinal virtue of treating people well.

What’s the ﬁnancial situation at the Reader these days? When people ask me, “What’s your financial situation,” they’re basically asking me, “Are you broke or not?” Right, and you can imagine that’s not something I’m ready to talk about tonight. I will tell you the Reader has been struggling, and that’s not a secret.

Do you see the Reader as a viable print journalism business in this day and age? All of us are talking about how to make the Reader a viable business. And all options for us are on the table in thinking about how to save it.

Where do you see the Reader in two years? I don’t have a crystal ball. I hope the Reader continues to reinvent itself to be the important, relevant, interesting voice it has been most of my adult life.

Do you plan on continuing to print the Reader? Right now, we’re stabilizing. We’ve been through a bit of a trauma, we’re doing some stabilizing, it’s not the time to discuss options about whether we print or not. It’s not for now. v

v @Public_Ade FEBRUARY 22, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 11

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FEBRUARY 22, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 13

CITY LIFE

An ad for Wisconsin on the outside of a Brown Line car. ò MICHELLE STENZEL

TRANSPORTATION

Chicagoans to Wisconsin: Thanks but no thanks— we’ll take the train

CTA commuters weigh in on the ad campaign urging passengers to ditch the hassles of public transit and move to the Badger State.

By JOHN GREENFIELD

he ads are on el platforms and 15 Brown Line cars. They’re on social media, in downtown health clubs, and on beer coasters in local bars. A typical placard juxtaposes dejected-looking young straphangers with shiny, happy people drinking beer on a terrace above Madison’s Lake Monona, playing Frisbee golf or competing in beach volleyball. The accompanying texts pose dilemmas such as “Rush hour or happy hour?,” “An hour commute or an hour with friends?,” and “Bump elbows or bump on the court?” The tagline? “Wisconsin: It’s more you.” They’re all part of a $1 million marketing campaign to entice Chicago millennials to move to the Badger State. The message is clear: the el’s a drag, so move to Wisconsin, where you can drive everywhere instead. Consider that a message direct from Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, a Republican whose anti-transit policies have included refusing $810 million in federal grants lined up by his predecessor for a new passenger rail line linking Milwaukee and Madison. The organization behind the $1 million ad campaign is the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, a public-private venture Walker created in 2011. Now he’s looking to take the message elsewhere: on February 8, the Wis-

14 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 22, 2018

consin Legislature’s budget-writing committee approved his proposal to spend another $6.8 million to expand the campaign to other states. The funding still needs to be approved by the full legislature, but Wisconsin soon may be trying to poach millennials from cities like Detroit and Minneapolis, too. I recently buttonholed a few such folks on the Brown Line to get their impressions of the campaign. “I love the CTA,” said preschool teacher DeAdra Estelle, 29, on the Armitage platform. “I don’t have a car, and my commute is pretty easy.” She thinks the ads are funny. Adam Stevens, a 26-year-old software consultant who moved to Chicago from Milwaukee suburb Whiteﬁsh Bay, said he’s generally had positive experiences with the el. He’s skeptical about the ad campaign’s strategy: “Being from Wisconsin, there are enough positives to play off of that we don’t need to focus on anything negative to get people to move up there,” he said. But is there something to those negatives? Another one of the ads claims that “Chicago has the longest commute times in the country compared to only 22 minutes in Wisconsin,” and asks viewers if they’d rather be “Waiting for a train or waiting for kabobs” at a barbecue. While that’s an apples-to-or-

anges comparison, it’s true that Chicago’s average commute time is 32.4 minutes, signiﬁcantly longer than the average Milwaukee commute of 22.4 minutes, according to recent Census data. Yet the average length of a transit commute in the two cities is virtually the same— 43.4 minutes in Chicago, compared to 42.4 in Milwaukee. Commute distances are longer in Chicago, but the el, immune to traffic jams, evens things out, since Milwaukee doesn’t have rapid transit. “It’s not so much that people are choosing to drive in Wisconsin, but rather that the choice of riding a train was taken away from them,” says Scott Bernstein, director of Chicago’s Center for Neighborhood Technology, a sustainability think tank. “I have a really hard time looking at those ads and not being somewhat offended. My guess is that people in Wisconsin might be offended too.” Indeed, former Madison mayor Dave Cieslewicz recently wrote in the Isthmus, the city’s free weekly, that the ad campaign seems “premised on the notion that millennials would rather spend time stuck in traffic on the Milwaukee freeway system or on the Madison Beltline than riding the el.” He noted that nowadays about a quarter of U.S. 19-year-olds don’t even have driver’s

licenses. “It apparently never occurred to the WEDC that there are people who actually would rather ride a train than drive a car.” Marta Grabowski is one of them. On the Belmont platform, the environmental engineer told me the el factored into her decision to take her current job instead of one in a city with no rapid transit. “I don’t think [the ads are] going to persuade millennials to leave Chicago. I think young people, especially, like riding the train. It’s sort of a cool city thing.” That was seconded at the Irving Park stop by a 31-year-old banking industry employee named Thai, who previously lived in Brew City and drove to work every day. “Milwaukee’s great, but the public transportation isn’t so great,” he said. “I actually prefer riding the el to driving, not having to sit in traffic. The CTA works perfectly for me.” Judging from these responses, if the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation wants to convince Chicago millennials to move, it should stop portraying the el as a hell ride and focus on promoting the things America’s Dairyland does best: beer, brats, Brie, and bouldering. v

John Greenfield edits the transportation news website Streetsblog Chicago. v @greenfieldjohn

ARTS & CULTURE

Caren Blackmore, Keith D. Gallagher, and .Al’Jaleel McGhee ò MICHAEL BROSILOW

We ﬁrst meet Margaret on a date with her rich, white boyfriend Nate (Keith D. Gallagher), who works, ambiguously, in finance. He’s “one good kill” away from “hitting his number,” a milestone that will allow him to retire and live extravagantly for the rest of his life, although he’s only in his 30s. Unlikely as Nate’s economic prospects seem (it’s the ﬁrst of several key plot improbabilities), they function primarily to throw Margaret’s predicament into high relief: she’s a mere freshman composition teacher at a community college whose appointment as acting assistant to the interim director, a job she feels she deserved, convinces her she’s going nowhere. Perhaps she was passed over, she muses, because unlike Rasheed (Al’Jaleel McGhee), who got the job, she’s “not black enough.” This problematic sentiment, combined with

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her insistence that she doesn’t date “black guys” and her habit of wearing a wig of long, straight, light brown hair, sets Margaret up as the self-hater in the play’s subtitle. But after this opening scene, Nwandu provides almost no other dramatic evidence of Margaret’s internalized racism. Nor does she do much to dramatize the forces specific to race or gender that thwart Margaret’s progress. In the very next scene, we watch Margaret interact with Rasheed, her new boss, in a hyperbolically insubordinate manner—on its surface, a more likely explanation for her lack of career advancement than her being a black woman. The fact that she and Rasheed end the scene unaccountably in ﬂagrante delicto only muddies the water further. As Nwandu sends more troubles Margaret’s way—an unwanted pregnancy, frustrations with her elderly live-in great aunt Sylvia, romantic advances from Rasheed, condescension from Nate—we watch Margaret grow progressively more frustrated and frantic, as though she’s increasingly trapped. But J

It’s just a friend request, it doesn’t mean I want to be friends

THEATER

Nwandu’s Breach fails to live up to its potential

It manages to render African-American women’s struggle for agency incidental. By JUSTIN HAYFORD

laywright Antoinette Nwandu achieves an unlikely feat in her new play Breach: A Manifesto on Race in America Through the Eyes of a Black Girl Recovering From Self-Hate, now in its world premiere at Victory Gardens. She manages to take one of the more pressing social issues of the day—African-American women’s struggle to claim and exercise legitimate agency in our culture—and renders it incidental. Nwandu clearly intends the opposite, as the subtitle suggests. At the play’s emotional climax, when Margaret, the striving, perpet-

ually frustrated thirtysomething protagonist (played by Caren Blackmore), becomes convinced her life has reached a spirit-crushing dead end, it’s apparent Nwandu wants issues of race and gender—and in particular the way internalized racism can weigh down women of color no matter their station in life—to be the driving forces that have sapped Margaret of opportunity and self-worth. But curiously, those forces are largely absent from everything that leads to Margaret’s meltdown, making the play’s defining crisis feel more academic than emblematic.

The Burn By Philip

Dawkins Directed by Devon de Mayo

Only 6 more public performances through March 3

FEBRUARY 22, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 15

ARTS & CULTURE A wizard battle royale in Ryan Browne’s bonkers comic Curse Words j RYAN BROWNE

continued from 15

Nwandu forgets to show us what road Margaret would follow if the way were clear. We learn little of the goals and aspirations she purportedly can’t reach (beyond a waxing and waning desire to help her students), which makes her entrapment seem more dramatically convenient than inevitable. Her only source of comfort is Carolina (Karen Rodriguez), a pregnant Mexican-American cleaning woman at her school, whose exuberant chutzpah in the face of her own parallel struggles provides a fleeting antidote to Margaret’s feelings of powerlessness. It all leads to a frustratingly unconvincing breakdown, as Margaret insists that all black men will abandon their families (we’ve heard of only one, her father) and all black women will remain perpetual underachievers. Overwhelmed, she lashes out viciously at Sylvia, the woman who has cared for her since birth. Had Nwandu more effectively dramatized Margaret’s journey to this point, the scene might be devastating. As it is, it feels like a contrived demonstration of the big points the playwright hopes to make. It’s a shame, because Nwandu’s writing shows moments of engrossing nuance, the sort that might make Margaret’s journey wholly convincing. But Nwandu limits that nuance to Sylvia, the only character who’s fully dimensional (and brought to remarkable life by Linda Bright Clay). Sylvia is curmudgeon, sage, do-nothing, and firecracker all in one—a stark contrast to the other characters, who tend to operate at single speeds. Her brief monologue recounting the day of Margaret’s birth brings a certain decades-long cultural history to vivid life. And director Lisa Portes has all the talent necessary in the rest of the cast to tackle the big issues this play inflects. It’s unfortunate Nwandu doesn’t give them enough material to fulfill their potential. v BREACH: A MANIFESTO ON RACE IN AMERICA THROUGH THE EYES OF A BLACK GIRL RECOVERING FROM SELF-HATE Through 3/11: Wed-Fri 7:30 PM (except Wed 2/28, 2 PM), Sat 3 and 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM; also Tue 3/6, 7:30 PM, Victory Gardens Theater, 2433 N. Lincoln, 773-871-3000, victorygardens.org, $27-$60.

16 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 22, 2018

COMICS

Ryan Browne, weirdo auteur

A comic book artist who’s actually funny. By MARK PETERS

on’t you hate when you’ve defeated another of your fellow wizards from your hellish home dimension, only to ﬁnd the U.S. government kidnapped your buddy the talking platypus? Such is the current status of Wizord, the protagonist/antagonist of Curse Words, an ongoing comic that’s raised the profile of 36-year-old Chicago artist and writer Ryan Browne. Browne believes “a comic is a movie with an unlimited special effects budget,” and he consistently takes advantage of that freedom. Curse Words, a collaboration with writer Charles Soule published by Image Comics, tells the story of Wizord (yes, a wizard), who left the Hole World for Earth, where he put out his shingle as a magician for hire. But Wizord is far from a kindly Dr. Strange: he’s brought

wizard-on-wizard violence to Earth and plenty of entertainment for readers. The third arc kicked off February 14 with issue 11. Browne—who moved to Chicago from Boston 11 years ago to be around friends and closer to his hometown of Detroit—has gained a following in the past decade thanks to his use of bonkers imagery, ridiculous violence, endless jokes, and boisterous excess. Browne’s first professional work was a 2007 issue of Stormshadow written by G.I. Joe creator Larry Hama. That’s the year he also started writing, illustrating, and self-publishing God Hates Astronauts. This sci-ﬁ superhero series about farmers illegally launching themselves into space helped build his rep as a weirdo auteur. As guest illustrator for Image’s The Manhattan Projects, an alternative history about the scientists working

on the atomic bomb, Browne took readers ringside for a civil war inside the brain of Robert Oppenheimer’s cannibal twin. When Browne decided he needed a break from the hand-straining labor of monthly comics, he began a new project where he worked on each page no longer than one hour: the result was Blast Furnace, a loopy heist comic that rivals the best improv comedy. Humor is a constant in all of Brown’s comics, including a terriﬁc satire he wrote but didn’t illustrate for Dynamite last year, Project Superpowers: Hero Killers. This absorbing story of a pathetic sidekick turned even more pathetic superhero serial killer is damned funny, which makes it unlike many comics today. Like deadpan comedians, Brown makes you laugh by playing things straighter than straight, even when, for example, a character has an

ARTS & CULTURE oven mitt tied to his head to hide a mark left by Rainbow Boy (don’t ask). “No matter how crazy and weird things get,” Browne says, “the characters in the story do not have a sense of humor about it and don’t seem to notice that anything is out of the ordinary. This makes the comedy pretty easy, actually.” Most of Browne’s inspiration comes from movies, not other comics, which may explain the freshness of his work. “The films of the Coen brothers are my main influence in terms of storytelling and character,” he says, “and I really gravitated towards the absurdity of The Tick and the early Adult Swim shows like Space Ghost and Aqua Teen.” Another early influence was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: “I like drawing human anatomy and animal heads.” Browne’s art has always been weird. His ﬁrst comic, Holocaust of the Pigs, would probably yield a call to social services if it were produced by a second-grader today. “It was about three pigs with guns shooting bad guys,” Browne says. “I’m pretty sure I didn’t know what the word ‘holocaust’ meant in any way.” Browne has a sideline in graphic design: He did the poster and ﬂyers for Logan Arcade, and he’s collaborated with Half Acre for Beer Hates Astronauts, a seasonal IPA. He also draws an occasional poster for friends’ bands, such as Murder by Death.

He has plenty lined up for the future. Besides year two of Curse Words—the project has a planned three-year arc—he’s self-publishing Trash Bridge with cowriter Steve Seeley and artist Jim Terry. Browne calls this comic his “love letter to buddy-cop and postapocalyptic ﬁlms of the 80s.” He’s also working with other artists on new God Hates Astronauts stories that will be published in an anthology comic. Kickstarters for this and other projects are coming soon (check ryanbrowneart.tumblr. com for details). In all future work, though, Browne promises more great jokes and grotesque animal people. Also, you can ﬁnd one actual animal: Browne sneaks his cat, Simon, into every issue he produces, creating his own version of Where’s Waldo? v CURSE WORDS #11 By Ryan Browne (Image Comics)

YOU GOT OLDER By Clare

Barron

Directed by Jonathan

Berry

“Sincere, honest… Barron is writing what she knows, and she does so with eloquence” — Chicago Tribune

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ﬁlled with an emotional truth” — Chicago Sun Times

“Richly acted production…

v @wordlust

hits all the right emotional and elegiac notes” — Daily Herald

<Easy now, my friend.>*

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*still Translated from the Langue Mystique.

<RealLy? is that true?>

<ActualLy…> <…no!>

Heh heH HA hAH!

Images from an upcoming issue of Curse Words j RYAN BROWNE

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FEBRUARY 22, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 17

ARTS & CULTURE LIT

Professor Crunk’s black-girl magic for grown-ass women In Eloquent Rage, Brittney Cooper oﬀers a course on black feminism and the importance of Beyoncé. By ALICIA SWIZ

his is a book by a grown-ass woman written for other grown-ass women,” Brittney Cooper, aka Professor Crunk, writes at the beginning of her new book Eloquent Rage. “This is a book for women who expect to be taken seriously and for men who take grown women seriously. This is a book for women who know shit is fucked up. These women want to change things but don’t know where to begin.” More specifically, Eloquent Rage is a critical memoir situated in the politics of America’s deeply problematic relationship with gender, race, and violence. Cooper explores how being a “fat, Black, and Southern” woman informs not just her own identity but the cultural definitions of these identities: “woman,” “black,” “southern,” “feminist.” It’s also a love letter to every woman whose existence has been stifled, stolen, or straight-up murdered because she had the audacity to be fat or smart or feminist or angry. Black women exist in these intersecting identities of gender, race, and class in a way that white women do not. “This is not mere propaganda,” Cooper explains in the opening

18 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 22, 2018

Brittney Cooper ò COURTESY THE ARTIST

chapter of Eloquent Rage, “The Problem With Sass.” “There is no other group, save Indigenous women, that knows and understands more fully the soul of the American body politic than black women whose reproductive and social labor has made the world what it is. Black women know what it means to love ourselves in a world that hates us.” Consider Cooper’s anecdote about a childhood pool party with her white friends. Having recently had her hair washed, permed, and braided, Cooper felt she had to remain more of a spectator than a participant in order to protect her hair from the damaging effects of water and chlorine. Staying close to the edge of the pool, Cooper overheard two of the mothers whispering about not understanding why hair was such a serious issue: “It’s just hair. Kids should be kids.” <Insert side-eye emoji> Cooper’s own mother wasn’t in attendance at the pool party because she was a single working mom—and now a mom who was going to spend her Friday night after a long week redoing her daughter’s hair. Cooper sees this as a metaphor for the disconnect between black and white women.

“This is not a one-comb-fits-all nation,” Cooper quips as she dives into the politics of black women’s hair and American beauty standards. “The ability to have a world centered on the prerogatives of white femininity is so far from the truths of so many Black girls’ lives.” Cooper’s mother’s worries about her daughter’s hair go beyond the superﬁciality of fashion and presentation. The norm in America is whiteness, and this extends to hair salons, products, and styles. Black girls and women don’t have the luxury of walking into any given beauty salon, in any given neighborhood, and knowing there will be someone equipped to style their hair. Black girls and women live in a world where they have to spend a great deal of time and money either modifying their hair to be more like their white peers or at least keeping it clean and kept, as Cooper’s mom aimed to do. In Eloquent Rage, Cooper describes the long process that brought her to feminism and her commitment to telling the truth about black girls’ lives. Born on the cusp of Generation X/Y, Cooper came up with the Baby-Sitters Club, the birth of the Internet, and, most

importantly, hip-hop’s emergence into mainstream culture. She earned a PhD from Emory University, where her research focused on the contributions of black women to America’s race dialogues; she now teaches at Rutgers. In 2010 she cofounded the Crunk Feminist Collective. (It recently published its own collection of essays.) The group was founded with the mission “to create a space of support and camaraderie for hip hop generation feminists of color, queer and straight, in the academy and without, by building a rhetorical community, in which we can discuss our ideas, express our crunk feminist selves.” The website challenges the problematic pop culture we ingest while also recognizing the potential it holds for revolution. Articulating the complicated relationship of feminism, pop culture, and patriarchy is central to Cooper’s work, but in Eloquent Rage she offers a foundation each of us can build upon: “Feminism is, ﬁrst and foremost, about truly, deeply, and unapologetically loving women. My job as a Black feminist is to love Black women and girls. Period.” Cooper credits Beyoncé as her feminist muse. “Some of my best academic theorization around feminism has coming from pondering what kind of space Bey might be making for the particular ways in which Black women can be and lead,” she writes. Black-girl magic is at an all-time high right now, and in an e-mail interview, Cooper writes that she “stans” for Ava DuVernay, whose upcoming remake of A Wrinkle in Time casts a young black girl in the formerly white lead role. She’s also excited about the resurgence of women in hip-hop. “I came of age in the 90s,” Cooper writes, “and so the mid-aughts were such a drag until Nicki. But now we have Cardi and Dreezy and Princess Nokia, and a range of others.” Her dream Crunk Feminist Festival lineup includes MC Lyte, Mia X, Lauryn Hill, and, of course, Beyoncé. Cooper’s work has inspired a generation of young black feminists, and she in turn has been inspired by them. “Black feminist bloggers [are] cultivating the internet as a woke political space that was the necessary antecedent to the rise of movements like Black Lives Matter and #MeToo,” she writes over e-mail. “So much of the work of justice happening now—Black feminists built this house.” v R ELOQUENT RAGE: A BLACK FEMINIST DISCOVERS HER SUPERPOWER By Brittney Cooper (St. Martin’s)

v @aliciaswiz

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ARTS & CULTURE MOVIES

no thought or recognition of what a broad spectrum that is. She was very lucid about wanting to be with Eddie, and her love for him, and she often spoke almost in prayer. She would recite poetry, she would sing to him over meals. It was really beautiful to get to know her.

Love at sunset Laura Checkoway’s Oscarnominated documentary Edith+Eddie proﬁles nonagenarian newlyweds who were torn apart. By J.R. JONES

Laura Checkoway ò JAMIE RAMSAY

Nominated for an Oscar this year, Laura Checkoway’s short documentary Edith+Eddie tells the story of two nonagenarians in Alexandria, Virginia—Edith Hill, a black woman, and Eddie Harrison, a white man—who married in June 2014 after ten years of companionship. The happy couple resided in Edith’s home of 44 years with her daughter Rebecca Wright but, as the film records, had to be forcibly separated after a court-appointed attorney ruled that Edith should be moved to Florida to live with her other daughter. Checkoway, a Michigan native now living in New York, is a protege of local documentary filmmaker Steve James (Hoop Dreams, The Interrupters), who served as executive producer on the short and hooked her up with documentary powerhouse Kartemquin Films. Edith+Eddie opens Friday at Music Box as part of two programs collecting this year’s Oscar-nominated documentary shorts.

How did you first hear about this story? A photo of the couple was circulating online. They had gotten married at age 95, 96, and they were being called America’s oldest interracial newlyweds. A friend texted the picture to me, and I just kept looking at it. I wanted to know more about them and what it would be like to fall in love at that time in your life, so I connected the dots to the family and they invited me down to meet them. Within a few days I was on a bus from New York to Virginia, and actually the opening scene in the film, where we see them dancing together, was the first time we met.

we’re fond of someone, that that remains true and possible throughout your whole life. How did you first get involved with Kartemquin? Steve James is a mentor of mine. I met him while I was making my first documentary, which is called Lucky. . . . He could really relate to a lot of what he heard I was going through with the making of that film. He suggested I see his film Stevie, which [also] follows a difficult person. . . . I don’t know how Steve feels about me saying this, but he has been like an angel in my life.

When you learned about their relationship, did you feel it was different from people who were meeting earlier in life, a different set of stresses and circumstances that shaped their relationship? I feel like they cherished each other even more because every day was something to hold dear. At the same time, that tenderness and excitement that you feel [when you’re] young, to see that that doesn’t change, whatever that feeling is that we get inside when

What have you learned from him, either in your personal contact or through his ﬁlms? What he saw in Lucky, which he could relate to in Stevie, is not shying away from diﬃcult people who don’t have a story necessarily of overcoming or assimilating. It’s just as important to pay attention to the kinds of people we wouldn’t usually see onscreen. [I’ve learned from] his integrity and his openness and willingness to deal with the messiness of life and all the complications that we, as people, go

through. And even though Steve started with Hoop Dreams, which is a classic, I also see him continue to step his game up in different ways with every film. To see that level of not just consistency, but getting better with time is really inspiring. I understand that producing this was more or less a one-woman operation. Can you describe the process of creating the film? I wouldn’t say a one-woman operation. I typically have one other collaborator, either a cameraman with me or Corwin [Lamm], who was a collaborator throughout, helped with the editing and coproducing as well. We would get there by any means possible when I felt it was important to be there, stay over at people’s houses, sometimes drive back that very same night. I edited it on my laptop. So yeah, it was really bare-bones. There wouldn’t have been any other way to make this film. I’m thankful that it was created in the way that it was, because it feels like the power of the story is what really shines through. Edith was ruled legally incapacitated in 2011, which was a few years before the marriage, for reasons of dementia. In the time you spent with her, did she seem to be cognizant of what was going on? Did she forget things? What was your take on her mental sharpness? She was really clear in some ways and, like many of us, not always so clear in others. It’s a really nuanced spectrum, and what we’ve learned is that often, when somebody is deemed to be incapacitated or that box is checked that says you have dementia, there’s

How much time did you spend with her altogether during the shoot? It was just under three months from the time that we met until the end of the film. We continued to film for another year and some change, following Rebecca’s fight to bring her mom back home and also recognizing that this is a bigger issue that’s happening to elders all over the country. I spoke with activists and advocates all over and families who have been affected by the legal guardianship system as well. Then the story hit a standstill, and when the ending that we were waiting for never came, I went to edit and chose to make it a shorter film.

What did this project teach you about elder-care law? Do you think it should be reformed? Absolutely. I wasn’t aware of the legal guardianship system when I entered into this. It’s alarming to learn that what happens with Edith and Eddie is happening to elders all over the country, and that it’s often experienced in isolation, so families don’t know what hit them. I have heard horror stories from all over, and there’s a through line even though everyone’s family and situation is unique. It’s a system that was implemented with intentions of protecting elders and now has become a feeding ground. The people who are appointed to protect are exploiting and taking advantage of those very same people . . . There’s no federal oversight—guardianship is a stateby-state system—so there’s no statistics on it at all, and that’s what allows this sort of situation to fester. It’s estimated that there are between 1.5 and three million people in this country under court-appointed guardianship. That’s a really big range, right? So there’s not even the basic numbers here, let alone people watching over what’s happening. v EDITH+EDDIE Directed by Laura Checkoway.

29 min. Screens as part of “Oscar Documentary Shorts 2018: Program A.” Checkoway attends the 4 PM screening on Saturday, February 24. Music Box, 3733 N. Southport, 773-871-6604, musicboxtheatre.com, $11.

v @JR_Jones FEBRUARY 22, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 19

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ARTS & CULTURE Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan Formosa

March 2 and 3, 2018

MOVIES

7:30 p.m. at the Harris Theater

The bitch is back

Tickets start at just $22. colum.edu/cloudgate

Patricia Clarkson lays down the law in The Party.

Concept / Choreography: Lin Hwai-min

By J.R. JONES

“When you’re talking about Cloud Gate, magic is not too strong a word.” Time Out

The Dance Center presentation of Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan is supported by Alphawood Foundation Chicago. This tour is made possible by the grants from the Ministry of Culture, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of China (Taiwan). Photo: LIU Chen-hsiang

Patricia Clarkson in The Party ò ROADSIDE ATTRACTIONS

fear Patricia Clarkson’s judgment. Like many moviegoers, I first took notice of the actress when she played Eleanor Fine, a conservative white housewife in 1950s Connecticut, in Todd Haynes’s revisionist melodrama Far From Heaven (2002). Eleanor’s friend Cathy has fallen in love with a black man, and a pivotal moment in the story arrives when Eleanor finally pieces the truth together and fixes her old friend with an ice-cold stare. Her expression lands like a slap, communicating instantly that Cathy is about to lose not only her closest confidante (apart from her lover) but also her social standing. Clarkson was much praised for her performance, winning best supporting actress awards from the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Society of Film Critics. Since then she’s enjoyed a healthy film career as a bitch for hire, though seldom in a vehicle so witty and cerebral as Sally Potter’s drawing-room comedy The Party. Again Clarkson plays a best friend with a serrated edge. Janet (Kristin Scott Thomas), a British politician, and her grumpy jazz-buff husband, Bill (Timothy Spall), are hosting a dinner party to celebrate Janet’s recent appointment as minister of health; among their guests are Janet’s acerbic pal April (Clarkson) and her husband, Gottfried (Bruno Ganz), a new age healer. Tom (Cillian Murphy), a handsome businessman, arrives before his wife, ducking into the bathroom to inhale a gigantic

ssss EXCELLENT

20 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 22, 2018

sss GOOD

line of cocaine, and lesbian marrieds Jinny (Emily Mortimer) and Martha (Cherry Jones) gather everyone together to announce that Jinny is expecting triplets. Bill, who’s been brooding all night, pipes up with news of his own: he is terminally ill and doesn’t have long to live. This touches off not only the expected sympathies from his friends and anguish from his wife but also spirited debates on socialized medicine, alternative remedies, and life philosophies, all punctuated by April’s wicked put-downs. “I expect the worst of everyone, in the name of realism,” April explains at one point. Gottfried is her whipping boy of choice; with elegant contempt she tells the others, “You can see why I’m separating definitively from this . . . German.” Martha is “a first-class lesbian and a second-rate thinker,” and Tom is “a wanker banker with a mysterious ability to make millions out of others’ misfortune.” Democracy is “finished,” and marriage is “an insufferably sunny institution.” April’s judgments carry so much authority that after a while she begins to seem like an omniscient narrator, filling us in on the other characters’ foibles. But I sure hope she isn’t, because that would make Patricia Clarkson the equivalent of God, and then we’d all be damned for eternity. v THE PARTY sss Directed by Sally Potter. R, 71 min. Century 12 and CineArts.

v @JR_Jones

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Jodee Lewis • Album Release Show Sam Amidon with special guest James Elkington Robby Hecht & Caroline Spence / Walter Salas Humara National Tap Day

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Maria Pomianowska with special guests • In Szold Hall

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 25 7PM

Ten Strings & A Goat Skin In Szold Hall The cover of the Cleric album Retrocausal

Beverly “Guitar” Watkins in the Instagram feed of She Shreds Magazine ò KELLEY RAYE

Singer, rapper, multi-instrumentalist, and producer Sen Morimoto ò KAINA CASTILLO

TASHA

KAMARIA WOODS

Mirrors for Psychic Warfare This duo is also half of industrial supergroup Corrections House: Neurosis cofounder Scott Kelly (guitar, vocals) and metal producer Sanford Parker (boxes with blinky lights). The fractal architecture of Parker’s cybernetic stomp and the warm, weary soul of Kelly’s weathered voice blend like oil and vinegar—that is, not at all, but they work a wonderful alchemy anyway.

The She Shreds Instagram feed One more thing to add to the wonder that is Black History Month 2018: She Shreds Magazine, the only print publication dedicated exclusively to women guitarists and bassists, is featuring a diﬀerent black woman guitarist on its Instagram feed every day in February. As a young black guitar-playing woman, I don’t often see musicians who look and sound like me, and She Shreds ﬁlls in that missing lineage stunningly. The women who’ve been featured so far are incredible—so while it’s not surprising that their names and faces are continuously left out of music history, it’s such a tragedy.

Artists who produce their own music I’m really inspired by local artists of color who produce their own music—including Loona Dae (singer, songwriter, producer), Yadda Yadda (singer, rapper, bassist, composer, producer), and Sen Morimoto (multi-instrumentalist, singer, rapper, producer). Hearing work written, performed, and produced by the same person is such a powerful and intimate experience—especially during live performances! These folks are so incredibly multitalented, and it’s mesmerizing and motivating to see them connect to their work in such an engaged and conﬁdently vulnerable way.

Dizzy Fae, “Johnny Bravo” I ﬁrst discovered Dizzy Fae my senior year in college in a small town in Minnesota, listening to Twin Cities radio station the Current. I was enamored with her ethereal black-girl musical prowess and confident persona. On February 2 she released her debut mixtape, Free Form, on Soundcloud, and though the entire project is a banger, breakout single “Johnny Bravo” is the dance-pop Prince-infused jam that will get you through these remaining throes of winter.

Guitar technique I’m drawn to acoustic guitar playing that uses the body of the instrument for percussion. Peter Collins and Fatai play like this a lot. They and Melanie Faye are my guitar-style icons right now. When I was growing up, my mom would play guitar every day, and these artists have a rhythmic, melodic style that’s really nostalgic for me.

6 Shot, “Itz Ya Dog” Local rap writer David Drake posted this 2001 track in a recent Twitter thread on New Orleans producer KLC, formerly of No Limit Records’ Beats by the Pound. I love the funky bustle and nasty swing in its body-rocking drums and the swagger in its fat ersatz horns. The intro will get you nodding, but you might still end up hunting for the bar line the ﬁrst time the beat drops. That disorientation, when your brain tries to hang on to a rhythm that’s just become “wrong,” is one of my favorite musical experiences. Cleric, Retrocausal When this Philly fourpiece released its previous full-length, 2010’s Regressions, I was so confounded by its collage of elastic noise and hypercube mathmetal that I wrote 1,200 words trying to explain it. Retrocausal came out in December, and I’ve had fun watching newer writers grapple with Cleric’s mix of bestial fury, jazzy sass, creepy ambience, and eight-dimensional convolution, which is so divorced from conventional structures that parsing it is like trying to memorize Finnegans Wake. These maniacs must’ve learned to use the evil puzzle box from Hellraiser as a musical instrument.

Singer and poet

Solange’s Black Cab Sessions performance of “Bad Girls” This is my favorite version of one of my favorite Solange songs. I’m a sucker for casual, stripped-back, acoustic YouTube sessions, and this one is hypnotizing in its playfulness and simple magic. I come back to this again and again when I want to remind myself what it means to be soft and full of soul. Also I think that’s Dev Hynes on the guitar? Dream duo.

Väsen

In Szold Hall

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PHILIP MONTORO

Reader music editor

FRIDAY, MARCH 2 8PM

Musician, singer, and producer

Georgia Anne Muldrow Georgia Anne Muldrow is one of my greatest inspirations. She’s a producer, singer, musician, collaborator, motivator, and just everything good in life. Her songs—odes to blackness, to us and our resilience, to nature, to patience and healing—are lessons, guides, shared blessings. “Requiem for Leroy” was the ﬁrst song of hers I heard. Everything she creates feels so comfortably and unapologetically her. She’s basically the light of my life. Top ﬁve songs, in no order: “Because,” “Keep It Real,” “Child of the Sun,” “Demise,” and “Never in Vain.”

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hen minimalist composer Julius Eastman died of cardiac arrest in a Buffalo hospital in 1990, the 49-year-old had been homeless for most of a decade. His obituary in the Village Voice wouldn’t appear till eight months later. He’d lost most of his possessions (probably including his scores) when he lost his apartment, and no commercial recordings of his pieces existed. It became nearly impossible for musicians to play his work, or for listeners to hear it. In life, Eastman had been unforgettable: outspoken, provocative, brilliant, unapologetically queer and black. But the lonely circumstances of his death threatened to erase him from memory. Not everyone could forget such a powerful personality, of course, and years of dogged and loving research—by people who’d known Eastman and those who’d only heard the stories—uncovered partial scores, long-neglected tapes in university libraries, and other fragments of his output. So far less than half of his catalog has been recovered, but in 2005 the ﬁrst of many commercial releases of Eastman’s music ﬁnally

22 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 22, 2018

Julius Eastman plays the violin at Griﬃs Sculpture Park in East Otto, New York, during a 1975 rehearsal by the S.E.M. Ensemble. ò CHRIS RUSINIAK

appeared: a three-CD set of archival material called Unjust Malaise. In 2015 the University of Rochester Press published a collection of Eastman scholarship. Recent events devoted to Eastman’s music and life include a December 2016 series by the London Contemporary Music Festival, a January 2017 program by Monday Evening Concerts in Los Angeles, and two iterations of a festival called Julius Eastman: That Which

Is Fundamental, one last spring in Philadelphia and the other this year in New York. It’s all part of an upwelling of interest in the composer that surpasses anything he enjoyed when he was alive. Eastmania, as this phenomenon is sometimes known, arrives in Chicago in force this week. On the afternoon of Sunday, February 25, the Frequency Festival (programmed by

Reader critic Peter Margasak) hosts the city’s first Julius Eastman portrait concert, curated by Chicago cellist Seth Parker Woods and held at the Cultural Center’s Preston Bradley Hall. As a composer, Eastman practiced an ecstatic, emphatic, and sometimes militant form of minimalism, eventually developing what he called “organic music”—a style of gradual accrual and accumulation, often followed by gradual disintegration. He was also a bass singer of extraordinary depth and dexterity, and as a performer and improviser he traversed a variety of musical communities in New York: not just minimalism but also free jazz and disco. Those who remember Eastman attest to the brilliance of his artistry, his inimitable and sometimes outrageous personality, and his lifelong preoccupation with spirituality. He aimed to live an outsize life, and summed up his ideal in a 1976 Buffalo News interview: “Black to the fullest, a musician to the fullest, a homosexual to the fullest.” Eastman’s legacy is still being pieced together today. Mary Jane Leach, a fellow performer and composer on New York’s downtown music scene in the 80s, has led much of the effort to recover his lost music. She assembled the recordings on Unjust Malaise by searching libraries at SUNY Buffalo and Northwestern University as well as the collections of private individuals. With musicologist Renée Levine Packer, she edited the 2015 anthology Gay Guerrilla: Julius Eastman and His Music, named after one of the composer’s best-known works. Beginning in the late 90s, Leach and many others laid the groundwork for the accelerating Eastman revival: over nearly two decades, they played exhausting rounds of phone tag with potential sources and made countless inquiries and archive searches, hitting nearly as many dead ends. Leach might hear that someone had a tape of a long-ago Eastman radio broadcast, only to find the cassette box empty. If she actually located a tape, it might be too degraded to salvage. Composer and producer Chris McIntyre reconstructed the Eastman piece Trumpet by consulting a blurry photo and transcribing a 1971 recording. The pursuit has yet to end, and it continues to bear fruit: recent Eastman releases include the 1974 recording Femenine (Frozen Reeds, 2016) and a 1980 performance packaged as Julius Eastman: The Zürich Concert (New World, 2017). At a January 27 concert hosted by Manhattan arts space the Kitchen, jazz guitarist Gerry Eastman (who controls Julius’s estate) began the evening with a lengthy remembrance of his younger brother. The event was part of the New York installment of That Which Is Fundamental, organized by Tiona Nekkia McClodden and Dustin Hurt for Philadelphia arts nonprofit Bowerbird. The festival ran January 19 through February 10 and included not just a concert series (featuring the composer’s work and newly commissioned pieces inspired by his life) but also an Eastman exhibit with archived reviews, audio interviews, and rare photos. As Gerry told it, the siblings grew up in Ithaca, New York, where Julius showed interest in the family piano at an early age. His mother encouraged him to take lessons, and his teacher urged him to join an Episcopal choir, where he served as pianist and a boy soprano; he also participated in glee club throughout junior high and high school. Eastman attended Ithaca College for a year, then left in September 1959 for Philadelphia’s prestigious Curtis Institute of Music—one of the most selective conservatories in the world, in part because its students don’t pay tuition. At the time, the school housed students with local families rather than in dorms, but no family would host Eastman. (It’s worth remembering that the Civil

Rights Act was still ﬁve years away.) He was so hell-bent on getting a musical education that until his graduation in May 1963 he lived in a claustrophobic room at the local YMCA. Eastman moved in spring 1967 to Buffalo, at the time a thriving center for contemporary music. Renée Levine Packer was then working in SUNY Buffalo’s music department. “Julius Eastman appeared in my office unannounced one day—a slim, handsome black man of medium height dressed in a long army-green trench coat and white sneakers, carrying some music scores under his arm,” she recalls in Gay Guerrilla. In September 1969, Eastman established a formal affiliation with the school’s Center of the Creative and Performing Arts, becoming a Creative Associate (today the SUNY Buffalo music library is the main source for archival Eastman material). In fall 1970 he joined Petr Kotik’s S.E.M. Ensemble, the group whose 1974 rendition of his piece Femenine was released in 2016. Eastman also became part of the university’s music department, teaching music theory. During this period Eastman performed extensively as a pianist and vocalist, presenting works by luminaries such as Frederic Rzewski, Pauline Oliveros, and Alvin Lucier. (Later in the 70s, he’d stage concerts with Meredith Monk, Carman Moore, Tania León, Arthur Russell, and others.) At the Aspen Music Festival in July 1970, Eastman sang the U.S. premiere of Peter Maxwell Davies’s Eight Songs for a Mad King, a demanding work that showcased his vocal agility and theatrical range. Later that year in the UK he made a studio recording of the piece that was nominated for a Grammy in 1973.

JULIUS EASTMAN PORTRAIT CONCERT Part of the Frequency Festival, with performances of Prelude to the Holy Presence of Joan d’Arc (for solo voice), The Holy Presence of Joan d’Arc (for ten cellists), and Gay Guerrilla (for multiple pianos). Sun 2/25, 2 PM, Preston Bradley Hall, Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington, free, all-ages

Most notoriously, Eastman caused a minor scandal at the 1975 June in Buffalo festival while performing John Cage’s Song Books. Loosely interpreting Cage’s already loose direction to “perform a disciplined action,” Eastman brought a man and a woman onstage, then theatrically and erotically undressed the man (the woman refused). Cage treated his own homosexuality as a private matter, and he was incensed—the Zen saint of the avant-garde, famous for letting sounds be sounds, apparently had a tougher time letting people be people. But Eastman saw no distinction between experimenting in his music and negotiating his identity. As Northwestern professor Ryan Dohoney noted in a 2014 academic paper, “Eastman, like numerous queer musicians before him . . . used his compositions, improvisations, and performances as modes of creating gay life.” When Eastman moved to New York City in the late 1970s, his work began to reflect this negotiation—most plainly in the confrontational titles he gave his pieces, which sometimes provoked vehement backlash. During an Eastman residency at Northwestern University in early 1980, the school posted concert announcements that listed the works he’d present: Crazy Nigger, Evil Nigger, and Gay Guerrilla. According to a 2011

Julius Eastman ò COURTESY R. NEMO HILL COLLECTION

history of the residency by Eastman scholar Andrew HansonDvoracek, black student alliance For Members Only challenged the titles as “racist,” threatened to protest the concert, and demanded a meeting with Eastman and Peter Gena, director of Northwestern’s Contemporary Music Ensemble. Eastman and Gena agreed that public announcements and posters would instead list the event as “New Music for Four Pianos.” Eastman didn’t change the titles, but he shared them only inside the concert hall. To explain himself, Eastman opened his January 1980 concert with a spoken introduction, which appears on Unjust Malaise. “Now there was, there was a little problem with the titles of the pieces,” he said. “There were some students and one faculty member who felt that the titles were somehow derogatory in some manner, being that the word ‘nigger’ is in it. . . . Now the reason that I use that particular word is because for me it has . . . what I call a ‘basicness’ about it. . . . And what I mean by ‘niggers’ is that thing which is fundamental, that person or thing that obtains a basicness, a fundamentalness, and eschews that thing which is superﬁcial or, what can we say, elegant.” Music critic and composer Kyle Gann (a longtime Reader contributor) attended that concert, and recalls Eastman delivering “a wise, calm speech.” As confrontational as the composer’s ideas could be, his bearing was serene. “He carried himself calmly, and his deep bass voice gave him a remarkable gravitas, like an Old Testament prophet,” Gann says. “His ideas were way out of the mainstream and he expressed them fearlessly, but it was their content that provoked people, not his manner.” Within just a few years, though, and still in his early 40s, Eastman seemed to sense that his life was coming to a J

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close. He was evicted from his apartment in late 1981 or early ’82, at which point most of his belongings were confiscated— likely including all the scores he still had. In a 1984 interview with radio host David Garland, recorded when he was drifting between his mother’s and brother’s homes, he described himself as in his “last stage.” A faculty job he’d hoped to land at Cornell University fell through, and Eastman’s drinking and drug use picked up. He worked for a few months in the late 80s at a Tower Records in Manhattan, and according to his boss there, Eastman was also in therapy. But he never found a place of his own again. As Leach has noted, many of Eastman’s works from this final period—some composed, some improvised—seem preoccupied with spiritual themes, such as Sacred Songs (1980), The Four Books of Confucius (1982), Buddha (1984), One God (1985-’86), and Our Father (1989). During these years, Eastman would appear in “all white toga-like garb,” according to Packer, as “a tacit proclamation of his spiritual endeavor.” Eastman’s spirituality was combinative; though raised Christian, he had many guides. In the interview with Garland, he professed interest in parts of Zen and said he’d been reading the Koran and studying the works of Confucius and Lao Tzu. “I live like a wandering monk,” he said. “I’ve been fighting with the Lord for a long, long, long, long time.” The works on this Sunday’s program convey Eastman’s reverence as well as a corresponding defiance. First is Gay Guerrilla (1979), followed by the solo vocal piece Prelude to the Holy Presence of Joan d’Arc and The Holy Presence of Joan d’Arc (1981) for ten cellos. When Eastman premiered Gay Guerrilla at his January 1980 Northwestern concert, he explained its title as well: “These names, either I glorify them or they glorify me,” Eastman said. “And in the case of ‘guerrilla,’ that glorifies ‘gay.’ . . . A guerrilla is someone who in any case is sacrificing his life for a point of view. And you know if there is a cause, and if it is a great cause, those who belong to that cause will sacrifice their blood because without blood there is no cause. So therefore that is the reason that I use ‘gay guerrilla,’ in hopes that I might be one if called upon to be one.” Composed for any number of identical instruments but most often performed on four pianos (as it was at Northwestern), Gay Guerrilla begins slowly and somberly—“like bells tolling,” as concert curator Seth Parker Woods describes it. Over the course of 20 minutes it builds to a booming, brazen musical quotation of the Lutheran hymn “Ein Feste Burg Ist Unser Gott” (“A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”). Though Eastman’s piece is instrumental, the original hymn includes the lines “And though this world, with devils filled / Should threaten to undo us / We will not fear, for God hath willed / His truth to triumph through us.” Eastman wrote Gay Guerrilla in 1979, ten years after the Stonewall riots and on the cusp of the devastating AIDS epidemic, as musicologist Luciano Chessa noted in his contribution to the book of the same name. Reflecting on this historical moment, Parker Woods points out that 1979 was just before “all hell broke loose” for the gay community, so that the precarious questions of “who could say what” and “who could come out” were newly fraught and unsettled. Joan of Arc inspired Eastman as a symbol of the indestructibility of the human desire for dignity and freedom. As a leader of the French army during the Hundred Years’ War, she was

24 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 22, 2018

Eastman at work ò DONALD BURKHARDT

captured and put on trial by the English for heresy, theft, and cross-dressing, among other crimes. In her defense, she said she’d been obeying the voices of saints, but she was burned alive in 1431. Almost 500 years later, she was canonized by the Roman Catholic Church. When Eastman premiered The Holy Presence of Joan d’Arc at the Kitchen in New York in April 1981, his program notes read in part: “Dear Joan, “Find presented a work of art, in your name, full of honor, integrity, and boundless courage. This work of art, like all works of art in your name, can never and will never match your most inspired passion. . . . I offer it as a reminder to those who think that they can destroy liberators by acts of treachery, malice, and murder. They forget that the mind has memory. They forget that Good Character is the foundation of all acts. They think that no one sees the corruption of their deeds, and like all organizations (especially governments and religious organizations), they oppress in order to perpetuate themselves. Their methods of oppression are legion, but when they ﬁnd that their more subtle methods are failing, they resort to murder. Even now in my own country, my own people, my own time, gross oppression and murder still continue. Therefore I take your name and meditate upon it, but not as much as I should.” In the piece’s solo vocal prelude, Eastman names the saints that Joan heard: Saint Michael, Saint Margaret, and Saint Catherine. And he repeats their admonition to her: “Joan, speak boldly when they question you.” The prelude and the piece itself were never performed together while Eastman was alive. He recorded himself improvising the prelude at his East Village apartment not long

before he was evicted, and in the early 80s it was broadcast on the radio before a recording of The Holy Presence of Joan d’Arc. Contemporary performers can duplicate that sequence only because multiple scholars and performers have transcribed the improvised prelude. In the words of Parker Woods, The Holy Presence of Joan d’Arc is both “a call to prayer” and a “call to arms.” Three of its ten cellos (the three saints?) soar above the others with songlike voices, while the others maintain an insistent, nonstop pulse. Today one of Eastman’s most popular works, The Holy Presence of Joan d’Arc inspired Mary Jane Leach to begin her search for his music. She found a dub of that early 80s radio recording in the possession of composer C. Bryan Rulon, then acquired the master tape through engineer Steve Cellum. The first two pages of its score she located in the collections of the New York Public Library’s Performing Arts Research Center, where they ended up after Eastman failed to reclaim them at the end of a 1982 exhibit. The sheet music most frequently used today was transcribed from Cellum’s tape by cellist Clarice Jensen. Any transcription of a piece for ten identical instruments is by necessity a painstaking task, and likely to result in an approximation of the original score at best. The love and labor that Jensen devoted to The Holy Presence of Joan d’Arc parallel the time and energy that countless people have poured into this Eastman resurgence. Parker Woods counts himself as part of the “new generation of champions” of the composer’s music. He describes what draws him to it: “You can hear the fragility, you hear the struggle, but you hear—at the core of it—you hear beauty, and you hear extreme experimentation . . . [reflecting] on many parts of life: the comedic, the sensitive, the serious, the strained. It’s all in there, you know, in all the different pieces I’ve heard or witnessed. And I think now is the time. It’s a music we need to hear. [Eastman’s] music is a social music; it’s a commentary on the times . . . [P]eople are now realizing again.” Eastman sought to do good. With his art he addressed moral, social, spiritual, and political questions, not just aesthetic ones. In an autobiographical blurb for a poster advertising a 1981 concert, he referenced the Buddha’s Eightfold Path: “Right thought, speech and action are now my main concerns. No other thing is as important or as useful. Right thought, Right Speech, Right action, Right music.” This quest for “right music”—a fierce seeking after the discipline and wisdom necessary to create art that operates in alignment with moral truth—must be considered a major part of Eastman’s legacy. He maintained it even through the lean years at the end of his career. “Not that many people are banging on my door for this or for that,” he admitted in 1984, “so I’m mostly writing imaginary music. No one’s really commissioning me.” It’s not Eastman’s work that’s changed since then. Audiences have changed, slowly, as the public collectively interrogates its assumptions about whose music should be heard, whose voices should be amplified, and who should be permitted to live their lives to the fullest. The current fervor for his music suggests that society has begun to apprehend the truth he grasped, however fleetingly, more than three decades ago. v

v @kerry_ob Kerry O’Brien is a lecturer in music and a Public Voices Fellow at Yale University.

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Recommended and notable shows and critics’ insights for the week of February 22

MUSIC

PICK OF THE WEEK

Nigerian drummer and Afrobeat pioneer Tony Allen collaborates with techno great Jeff Mills

ALL AGES

THURSDAY22 Field Medic Wallows headline. 7:30 PM, Lincoln Hall, 2424 N. Lincoln, $17.50. b Singer-songwriter Kevin Patrick, who makes charming, unvarnished acoustic bedroom songs under the name Field Medic, had an subconscious penchant for folk music long before he ever discovered Dylan and his 60s allies. In his early high school days Patrick gravitated toward the stripped-down material he’d come across on a now-defunct social network: “Every emo MySpace band had one acoustic track on their album,” Patrick tells me. Now 26, Patrick cycled through a handful of other projects before he figured out how to do what he does so well in Field Medic. In fact, he initially launched the solo endeavor as a side project while holding things down as the guitarist and vocalist for a rambunctious Bay Area band called Rin Tin Tiger. Patrick saved his folk-forward material for himself, releasing music under the name Field Medic online whenever he desired, and he realized the music he produced by himself best reflected his musical ideals. “I’d been through so many projects and stuff I just didn’t care anymore of what I thought was supposed to be right or wrong in the eyes of somebody else,” he says. “It allowed me to be free.” The results are occasionally shambolic, usually mystifying, and always lo-fi. In November, Run for Cover released Songs From the Sunroom, a compilation of Field Medic songs Patrick self-released over a twoField Medic ò COURTESY THE ARTIST

JEFF MILLS & TONY ALLEN, AND RON TRENT

Wed 3/28, 8 PM, Metro, 3730 N. Clark, $25. 18+

AS DRUMMER AND musical director of Africa 70, Tony Allen was the rhythmic architect of Fela Kuti’s Afrobeat style. Last year the Nigerian drummer reinforced the malleability of his instantly recognizable approach with The Source, his ﬁrst album for legendary jazz imprint Blue Note. Earlier in the year he dropped a digital EP on the label that featured interpretations of tunes by hard-bop outﬁt Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers, but for his full-length he fashioned a new project highlighting a dynamic blend of his stuttery, snare-driven attack with an agile, horn-rich nonet. The band, which is based in Paris, kicks up plenty of funky grit, heaps on wonderfully concise horn solos steeped in the Ellingtonian swing and postbop tradition, and taps into bits of sleek blues, sultry R&B, and spry New Orleans-style second-line brass music. Allen’s skills as a composer are impressive—he cowrote each pithy tune—but

26 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 22, 2018

From left: Tony Allen, Jean-Phi Dary, and Jeﬀ Mills ò JACOB KHRIST

though the general complexion of the album shows an unexpected side of his personality, that telltale snare patter meshed with a doubled-up kick-drum accent lets any listener know who’s keeping time. At ﬁrst, the idea of a collaboration between Allen and veteran techno producer Jeff Mills—who generally crafts lean electronic music distinguished by a punishing, relentless velocity—struck me as odd. I still can’t really imagine what they do together, but if anyone can ﬁnd a way to make it work it’s Allen; he’s previously worked with artists as disparate as Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, French hip-hop producer Doctor L., and Damon Albarn, who contributes innocuous piano on The Source’s “Cool Cats.” Allen and Mills have been performing together in Europe over the past year, but this show is their North American debut as a duo. —PETER MARGASAK

MUSIC

Poliça & Stargaze ò GRAHAM TOLBERT

year period. On the song “Pegasus Thotz” (Patrick styles the title with a space between each letter), the songwriter’s voice sounds hushed and on the verge of trembling as he sings over a ﬁnely plucked acoustic guitar and what sounds like a worn-out cassette recording of an aspiring drummer at practice. Though the elements may seem incongruous, Patrick pulls all the pieces together by injecting a sweet, amiable vulnerability into his performance. — LEOR GALIL

duced with a group of traditional Malian musicians a few years ago—Stargaze have engaged with plenty of pop musicians, including Owen Pallett and Julia Holter, and their pairing with Poliça has resulted in exquisitely crafted music. The arrangements—such as the spectral overtones that lend an eerie atmosphere to the stark ballad “How Is This Happening”—go far beyond mere orchestral lily gilding. But while Stargaze’s string parts enhance the usually austere machinations of Poliça, it all feels a bit perfunctory, and as much as it does to attract special project funding from institutions uninterested in supporting genuinely original new work, it certainly seems unlikely to build new audiences for new music. —PETER MARGASAK

PoliÇa & Stargaze Divide & Dissolve open. 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, $27.50$37.50. b Attracting new listeners to contemporary classical music is an ongoing struggle, but in recent years a number of music presenters, including Liquid Music in Minneapolis and Ecstatic Music in New York, have pursued a novel path of spearheading collaborations between pop groups and new music ensembles. In some ways this makes sense—plenty of musicians across the divide are fluent and interested in both, and among these various projects, there have been some successes, such as the winning joint effort between adventurous rock band Deerhoof and Chicago’s Ensemble dal Niente. In New York, the American Contemporary Music Ensemble and the related yMusic have become go-to outfits

FRIDAY23 Higher Brothers Bohan Phoenix and Matthew Law open. 6 and 10:30 PM, Subterranean, 2011 W. North, sold out. 17+ to ﬂesh out ambitious ambient work by the likes of Jóhann Jóhannsson and Blonde Redhead. However, the whole concept seems like a crapshoot to me, the endeavors seemingly conceived in meetings by suits as often as instigated by musicians with mutual admiration for each other’s work. Minneapolis elec-

tronic pop group Poliça just dropped Music for the Long Emergency (Totally Gross National Product), a collaborative effort with the Berlin-based newmusic group Stargaze. Conducted by André de Ridder—a ﬁgure with experience in collaborations such as the superb version of Terry Riley’s In C he pro-

The Higher Brothers found inspiration for their group’s name in air conditioners. Or, rather, the supplier of the air conditioners they know best: Haier, the Chinese consumer-electronics company that purchased General Electric’s home appliance unit for $5.6 billion in 2016. Likewise, the J

FEBRUARY 22, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 27

Higher Brothers ò COURTESY THE ARTIST

MUSIC continued from 27

Higher Brothers—a four-person hip-hop group that formed in Chengdu, the capital of China’s Sichuan Province—aspire to be as globally dominant and renowned in their ﬁeld as the company in their (very large) backyard. The group’s sharpest work balances its members’ embrace of their cultural heritage with their stark ambition in the face of whatever expectations outsiders have of them at first blush. “Made in China,” oﬀ their debut full-length, 2017’s Black Cab, is built on a lean, post-trap beat accented with hand-drum samples. It sounds like any other hot contemporary hip-hop track—with the notable exception that most of its lyrics are rapped in Chinese. The song’s English-language hook is a listicle of everyday objects manufactured in China. Its message is clear: China supplies the world with almost every top-of-the-line item, and now with the Higher Brothers, it’s on a path to claim some room in international hip-hop as well. And as they grow their reach, they’ve got plenty of American rappers in their corner. In June, 88rising, the hybrid label and management company behind Black Cab and the group’s January EP, Journey to the West, published a video of popular MCs reacting to “Made in China,” with Migos, Kyle, Joey Purp, Lil Yachty, G Herbo, and Smino among others praising the Higher Brothers. (Note: “Made in China” features Chicago rapper Famous Dex, who was seen beating his girlfriend in surveillance footage that was leaked on Instagram in 2016.) —LEOR GALIL

SATURDAY24 Mammoth Grinder Sick/Tired, Like Rats, and Discarnate open. 9 PM, Cobra Lounge, 235 N. Ashland, $15, $12 in advance. 17+

Mammoth Grinder’s Cosmic Crypt (Relapse)—the Austin band’s ﬁrst full-length in ﬁve years. Fronted by Power Trip drummer Chris Ulsh, Mammoth Grinder lay down a more subterrestrial blend of death and thrash than their metal brethren, which Ulsh complements with a baleful growl that compares to the sound of a concrete saw being run through a drum of gelatinized street sludge. Musically speaking, the tenets of death metal are very well represented—tremolo picking is bountiful, and the bell of the ride cymbal is worked precisely and methodically—while the album’s production corners that the-world-is-a-barren-wasteland-and-we’redoomed-to-perish-in-its-inevitable-nuclear-holocaust vibe prevalent among the best current throwback-thrash bands. Standout tracks like “Servant of the Most High” sound so controlled in their blownout chaos that it can be easy to miss just how frenetic they are. It’s only when a raging, skyscraping guitar solo slices through the muck that you’re left

with little choice but to focus on everything crashing down around you. —KEVIN WARWICK

Moth Cock ADT headlines; Moth Cock and TALsounds & Matchess open. Sarah Squirm DJs between sets. 9 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, $8. 21+ On their latest album, the awkwardly titled 0-100 at the Speed of the Present (Hausu Mountain), this wonderfully squirmy improv-centric duo from Kent, Ohio, continue to collide acoustic and electronic— and silly and serious—in beguiling, bizarre ways. The bulk of their sound ﬁeld is occupied by the gurgling, liquid electronics of Pat Modugno: steadily shifting combinations of queasy synth washes, space-age noodling, electronic drum sounds that seem sampled from a child’s toy, and atmospheric transmissions that suggest a leisurely swim through heavy

Soulection Radio cofounder-host Joe Kay ò LUKE BENNETT

Lordy. As if last year’s Power Trip record, Nightmare Logic (Southern Lord), wasn’t enough of a super boon from the Texas-born purveyors of pummeling thrash metal, this January we were blessed with

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28 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 22, 2018

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MUSIC

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Yo-Yo Ma, Leonidas Kavakos, and Emanuel Ax ò SHANE MCCAULEY

cream. Doug Gent threads those viscous blorps with nasal squiggles, swoops, and shouts played on clarinet and saxophone, his blowing processed through various effects that transform his striated tone with chopped-up digitalia and distortion. Moth Cock’s music eludes easy classification. It emits a giddy weirdness a la vintage Ralph Records, but it’s treated with a twisted post-techno ebullience and the anything-goes mayhem of the deep underground. Moth Cock appear with several Hausu Mountain labelmates, including the ADT (which is celebrating the release of its new album for the imprint, Insecurities), a local improvising unit that seems to take much more inﬂuence from the Grateful Dead than from Derek Bailey. —PETER MARGASAK

Soulection Radio Tour With special guests Sahar Habibi and Boi Jeanius. 9 PM, Chop Shop, 2033 W. North, $20, $15 in advance. 18+ The Soulection Radio Tour is not your average concert. There isn’t some big-name rock band, pop singer, or rapper leading the audience on a transcendental musical ride. Rather, Soulection Radio cofounder-host Joe Kay crafts a perfectly curated set list of dusties, alternative hip-hop and R&B jams, and mainstream hits from a DJ booth in the middle of the stage, operating in a fashion similar to Soulection, the online radio show produced by his LA-based independent artist collective Soulection Radio. Since it was launched in 2011, Soulection has grown into one of the most popular streaming radio shows in the country (it’s currently available on iTunes, Soundcloud, and Spotify). It’s no wonder—how many other radio hosts can seamlessly create a magical, intimate mood by mixing Tink’s “Million” into Afta-1’s “Lil’ Bit of Ice” or Lauryn Hill’s “Doo Wop (That Thing)” into Don Blackman’s

“Heart’s Desire?” Listening to Soulection Radio feels like walking into a record store and discovering new sounds and stylistic blends for the very ﬁrst time; there’s no question that the gang’s live show is a music connoisseur’s dream. —TIFFANY WALDEN

SUNDAY25 Emanuel Ax, Leonidas Kavakos, and Yo-Yo Ma 3 PM, Symphony Center, 220 S. Michigan, $85-$220. b It’s natural that stellar classical musicians are drawn to one another for collaboration; when virtuosity and sensitivity are common currency, the focus can be solely on playing the shit out of a chosen repertoire. The mutual admiration of pianist Emanuel Ax and cellist Yo-Yo Ma goes back nearly five decades, but while performing together at Tanglewood, the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s summer home in western Massachusetts, a few years ago, they invited a slightly junior colleague to join them. At age 50, Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos is no slouch, but he lacks some of the international fame of his two cohorts. In their debut performance together they played Johannes Brahms’s Piano Trio no. 1 in B Major; the rapport between them was such that in the summer of 2014 they reconvened to play all three Brahms piano trios—which they finally recorded last year for a finely tuned set on Sony Classical. They inhabit the material with a thrilling yet graceful dynamism across the romantic flourishes of the Trio no. 2 in C Major and the full-blooded drama of the Trio no. 3 in C Minor. Brahms composed these pieces between 1854 and 1890, when he premiered a substantially revised version of his first trio; this group performs that later version. Ax, Ma, and

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bottom lounge

MUSIC

ON SALE FRIDAY 02.23

8:00 PM / 17+

ON SALE NOW

02.23 CHASE AWAYS

THE LINDEN METHOD / ROTTEN MOUTH / INVICTUS / TORCH THE HIVE RIOT FEST PRESENTS

02.25 AMERICAN NIGHTMARE

NO WARNING / SPIRITUAL CRAMP

02.28 J BOOG

JESSE ROYAL / ETANA

03.01 GABRIELLE APLIN

HUDSON TAYLOR / JOHN SPLITHOFF

REACT PRESENTS

03.02 AUTOGRAF

RAMZOID / EDAMAME

REACT PRESENTS

03.03 NIGHTMARES ON WAX 03.07 THE EXPENDABLES

THROUGH THE ROOTS / PACIFIC DUB / AMPLIFIED

03.10 MYLLHOUSE

BURY ME IN LIGHTS / TAKE THE REIGNS THE GLORY YEARS / THE BURST AND BLOOM

RIOT FEST PRESENTS

03.11 SORORITY NOISE

REMO DRIVE / FOXX BODIES REACT PRESENTS

03.14 SPAG HEDDY

ELIMINATE / PORN AND CHICKEN

03.22 ROY WOOD$ 03.28 FOZZY

THROUGH FIRE / SANTA CRUZ / DARK SKY CHOIR

04.06 ALBERT HAMMOND JR. THE MARIAS

04.07 COAST MODERN

BAD BAD HATS / REYNA

04.11 TURNSTILE

TOUCHE AMORE / CULTURE ABUSE RAZORBUMPS / BIB

1833 PRESENTS

04.20 CHROME SPARKS X MACHINEDRUM 04.22 RED SUN RISING MOLEHILL / BALLROOM BOXER

continued from 29

Kavakos have joined forces again for a short U.S. tour where they’ll play all three pieces. —PETER MARGASAK

John Dikeman and jasper Stadhouders 9 PM, Hungry Brain, 2319 W Belmont, $10 suggested donation. 21+ In the fall of 2016, I was in Amsterdam for the October Meeting, a festival of young Europebased improvisers. As the three-day event ended and a partylike vibe took over, saxophonist John Dikeman—an American living in the Netherlands— decided that he needed a haircut. He sat on the floor of the bar and a pair of shears was handed to another musician, who began cutting away. It was a ridiculous episode, but in its own absurd way it reinforced some of qualities essential for good improvisers: spontaneity, risk-taking, and trust. Dikeman has a reputation as a fire-breather—a guy who uses his tenor saxophone as a sonic weapon—but over time I’ve also seen a more considered side of his playing. On the 2016 album Live at Zaal 100 (Clean Feed), from Twenty One 4tet—Dikeman’s project with veteran bassist Wilbert de Joode and fellow upstarts, trumpeter Luís Vincent and drummer Onno Govaert—he blends his usual post-Brötzmann violence and Ayleresque screams with surprising restraint and tenderness, and he’s nicely attuned to what his colleagues produce; the music expands and recedes as if it were a single organism. Jasper Stadhouders is a longtime collaborator of Dikeman’s in the lacerating improv trio Cactus Truck. He also keeps busy with an expanding variety of projects, among them several led by Chicago reedist Ken Vandermark, including Made to Break and Shelter. On Shelter’s 2017 self-titled debut album, Stadhouders alternates between electric bass and electric guitar, underlining a skittering strain of funk with the former on tracks like “F-1” and unleashing brittle shards of wiry, metallic sound with the latter on “J-1.” Tonight Dikeman and Stadhouders will perform in a couple of improvised contexts: first, as part of a quartet with a couple of Chicago musicians who are new to me (drummer Adam Shead and

Wavy ID ò MATTHEW ELLIOTT ALLEN bassist Tony Piazza), then with the quartet expanded with the addition of cornetist Josh Berman, bassist Katie Ernst, violinist Macie Stewart, drummer Tim Daisy, and pianist Matt Piet. —PETER MARGASAK

MONDAY26 Wavy ID Suzie and Woongi open. 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western. 21+ F While watching New Zealand’s Connan Mockasin play sensual, luxurious psych-pop at the Empty

NOTION PRESENTS

04.26 FREDDY TODD b2b ESSEKS ESSEKS

CHARLESTHEFIRST / TSURUDA / KROMUH

REACT PRESENTS

04.27 DUMBFOUNDEAD 04.28 IAMX REACT PRESENTS

05.01 YUNG GRAVY 05.08 MADISON BEER 05.09 ALICE GLASS PICTUREPLANE

05.17 HELMET PRONG

05.18 EMMURE RIOT FEST PRESENTS

05.19 FU MANCHU MANCHU

MOS GENERATOR

06.23 SLOAN www.bottomlounge.com 1375 w lake st 312.666.6775

30 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 22, 2018

John Dikeman and Jasper Stadhouders ò COURTESY THE ARTIST

Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.

MUSIC

Want to play? We’ll teach you how.

Circuit Rider Trio ò JOHN SPIRAL

Bottle in 2014, Adam LP—who’s now been making seductive indie-pop songs as Wavy ID for a little over a year—had an epiphany: “I started rethinking different ways to make music, different sounds you can make, different kinds of emotions you can convey—you can be sexy, you can be gentle,” LP told me over the phone. “It seemed like in the [Chicago] music scene there was a lack of that. So I figured, ‘Hey, why not try this out?’” Since then, he’s found plenty of locals who appreciate his sultry, spacious sounds—notably the folks behind multimedia collective and label FeelTrip, which released the cassette and digital versions of Wavy ID’s Bummerpop, Vol. 2 in the fall. The LP successfully threads together Mockasin’s colorful flourishes with D’Angelo’s sinuous rhythms, particularly with the wah-pedal groove of “I Like Dessert” and the molasses-paced “Dinner at My Place (I Can’t Wait).” —LEOR GALIL

Circuit Rider Trio 7:30 PM, SPACE, 1245 Chicago Ave., Evanston, $20-$40. b Few figures in jazz operate with as much refined comportment, melodic grace, and measured spontaneity as Denver cornetist Ron Miles. He’s quietly but forcefully risen in the global jazz scene due to his thoughtfulness, lyric grace, and communal spirit, which have attracted an ever-widening coterie of top-notch collaborators. Late last year he joined guitarist Mary Halvorson and Deerhoof drummer Greg Saunier for New American Songbooks Volume 1 (Sound American), where he applied his broad technique in surveying a mix of classic and new standard rep by the likes of Fiona Apple, Gary Peacock, and Duke Ellington. And among his most dedicated colleagues are guitarist Bill Frisell and drummer

Brian Blade, who play in his trio, Circuit Rider, which is named after the title of the group’s 2014 album. Together they move with cool sensuality, three unspooling strands of burnished melody in a gentle riot of polyphony. Miles writes with open ears that have absorbed jazz’s interactive tendencies with incredible depth. Those qualities are reflected in the material he doesn’t write, too: Circuit Rider’s versions of “Jive Five Floor Four” and “Reincarnation of a Lovebird” by Charles Mingus retain the bassist’s multilimbed ebullience if not the wild drive, and their take on Jimmy Giuffre’s early chamber classic “Two Kinds of Blues” brings a moody heft missing in the original. His own pieces reach beyond jazz to reflect an ardor for vintage country, gospel, and other Americana. Last year the three musicians provided the backbone for one of the strongest albums of 2017, I Am a Man (Yellowbird/Enja), a quintet LP with pianist Jason Moran and bassist Thomas Morgan that featured original compositions by Miles. Its friction-laden, propulsive title piece references the Memphis civil rights protests of 1968 that were sparked by the deaths of two black sanitation workers; the phrase “I am a man” became an iconic slogan among workers demanding dignified treatment. The music rarely uses the shapes and drive of familiar postbop—it almost exists outside of jazz even though jazz tradition fuels its multidirectional splendor. —PETER MARGASAK

WEDNESDAY28 Jeff Mills & Tony Allen See Pick of the Week. Ron Trent opens. 8 PM, Metro, 3730 N. Clark, $25, 18+ v

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oldtownschool.org FEBRUARY 22, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 31

FOOD & DRINK

GIDEON SWEET | $$ 841 W. Randolph 312-888-2258 gideonsweet.com

Warm beignets ﬁlled with parsnip cream ò MATTHEW GILSON

FOOD REVIEW

Is Matthias Merges and Graham Elliot’s Gideon Sweet the second coming of Yusho?

Not quite, but it’s close. BY MIKE SULA

here are beignets for dessert at Gideon Sweet, Matthias Merges and Graham Elliot’s reunion of sorts in the Randolph Street space that once housed the latter chef’s Graham Elliot Bistro. The beignets come with a surprise if you’re not careful. Bite into them a certain way and they spurt hot parsnip cream all over your digits. If you’re in the right frame of mind, you’ll just accept this for what it is and greedily lick your ﬁngers. Ideally, the hot icing would announce itself inside your mouth after you take in the warm, sugary dough—but hey, it can happen to anybody. Just dip the doughnut’s remains in the little ramekin of thick, hot, darkly bitter chocolate sauce and you’ll likely be laughing out loud at the pure pornography of it: Camera zooms in on money shot. You: “Check, please!” And scene.

32 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 22, 2018

This is the memorable work of pastry chef Mari Katsumura, daughter of the late, great Yoshi Katsumura of Lakeview’s eponymous Yoshi’s Cafe, a restaurant that occupies its own unforgotten corner of Chicago restaurant history. (More about her desserts later.) Indeed, there’s a formidable amount of Chicago restaurant history behind Gideon Sweet (the name of an heirloom apple). Merges and Elliot used to work together, the latter under the former, at Charlie Trotter’s during years when extraordinarily important things were happening there. The chefs (and many of their colleagues) went on to have distinguished careers. Elliot made a name for himself with foie gras lollipops and the like at Avenues at the Peninsula, then played that gig into a series of audacious but no longer extant restaurants. Meantime he became a television star and Top Chef judge. Merges—who among many other singularities was one of America’s earliest adopters of restaurant sous vide cooking—opened a little place in Avondale called Yusho. The chef’s interpretation of a Japanese izakaya, it offered thrilling snacks and fresh, imaginative cocktails to wash them down with, a combination that made it an essential Chicago restaurant in the early part of this decade. It also served as the launching pad for his Folkart Restaurant Management. Yusho and its outposts are no more now, but Merges has been on a six-year tear, responsible for Billy Sunday in Logan Square, A10 in Hyde Park, Lucky Dorr in Wrigleyville, and Old Irving Brewing in Irving Park. Now he and Elliot have tapped chef Michael Shrader, from the last spot (and Urban Union before that). Here he’s executing a menu that’s more Yusho-like than anything previously mentioned, featuring just more than a dozen small plates with a very slight Asian bias, fairly complementary to a beverage program developed by longtime Merges collaborator and Trotter’s vet Alex Bachman. On its face, this is all good news, especially when one’s confronted with a pair of ovoid croquettes, crispy tots ﬁlled with an unctuous bone marrow composite and draped with a briny marine one-two punch of shimmering bonito ﬂakes and crab-infused butter. Another oceanic surge arrives in the form of a length of sweet king crab leg countered by salty trout

Search the Reader’s online database of thousands of Chicago-area restaurants—and add your own review—at chicagoreader.com/food.

FOOD & DRINK

over town, but most recently at Ty Fujimara’s “casual fine dining” Lakeview spot Entente, where I had a sassafras profiterole that still haunts my dreams. Apart from the beignets, she’s topped a warm apple tart with a quenelle of cheddar cheese ice cream, embraced citrus season with a palate-scouring red-grapefruit parfait with Meyer lemon sherbet, and constructed an astonishing take on Filipino halo halo, a towering sundae of purple sweet-potato ice cream given abundant texture with fruity jellies and ices. The other ace in the hole here is the cocktail program by Bachman, a sorcerer with rare and obscure ingredients. The FDA-proscribed tonka bean warms the sweet, rummy Gold on the Ceiling. Roasted barley bitters form the backbone of a stiff mezcal-and-sotol Round Two, while A Monarch’s Soda is a dry sparkling rosé adjusted with Chartreuse, bitters, and a wedge of galangal root. Seven tiny shots with one-bite garnishes function as curious apperitivi and digestivi, like tequila with a pungent black-garlic sangrita or sherry with a pickled green cherry tomato. Not to dismiss the contributions of Elliot, but Gideon Sweet seems in some ways a rebirth of Merges’s Yusho, which is an exciting prospect. I encountered enough duds to indicate it hasn’t hit its stride, but frequent specials and menu changes display an agility in the kitchen, and a potential for a future worth keeping an eye on. v

Okinawan sweet potato stack with coconut curry and cilantro salt ò MATTHEW GILSON

roe and uni butter, the latter transcending its current restaurant ubiquity. Same goes for a tempura-battered oyster paired with a single shiso leaf. But grilled hamachi collar—a simple yet lushly indulgent treat one could occasionally pick over at Yusho—was on the occasion I met it a letdown: undersize, dry, and stringy in comparison. Tubers make two notable appearances, one the M.C. Escher of street food and state-fair cuisine: a spiralized potato chip draped with sour cream and a ghostly sprinkle of bottarga. The other is a ziggurat of deep-fried, curry-imbued shredded sweet potato that looks like a heap of garnish but incites repeated plunges into its seemingly endless depths. A French onion soup special spiked with sherry and egg yolk for body was slight on cheese but gratifyingly murky, with deep onion ﬂavor, while a tensile lamb-and-zucchini meatball atop a spread of harissa-spiced yogurt makes a case for allowing proteins to perform on their own merits, with just the simplest of accompaniments. And yet the kitchen is inconsistent when it comes to red meat. The ﬁlling of a braised goat

Sweet king crab leg with trout roe and uni butter ò MATTHEW GILSON

v @MikeSula

king crab house 1816 N. Halsted St., Chicago

Lenten Specials $19.95

February 14th thru March 31st All You Can Eat Fried Perch 10 Fresh Fish of the Day During Lent (from regular menu)

tostada is possessed of a similarly prominent caprid intensity, but it’s stringy and tough. Pigtail agnolotti doused in demi-glace are a bummer, well on the raw side of the al dente barrier, with grainy pork crumbles for ﬁlling. On a slow night a venison tenderloin with parsnips—perhaps the most traditionally

entreelike dish I encountered at Gideon Sweet—arrived mercilessly overcooked. It didn’t take our server long to realize we weren’t going to take more than one bite of it before he hurriedly took it away and took it off the bill. One of Gideon Sweet’s greatest strengths is pastry chef Katsumura, who’s worked all

DAILY SPECIALS Mon - King Crab Legs $24.95 Tues - Snow Crab Legs $19.95 Wed - Crab & Slab $19.95 Thur - Fried Jumbo Shrimp $19.95 Not Valid with any other Promo, Discounts, VIPs, etc BYOB / $10.00 Corkage Fee

Call For Reservation 312-280-8990

FEBRUARY 22, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 33

FOOD & DRINK

○ Watch a video of Christopher Thompson working with Chef Boyardee Beef Ravioli in the kitchen—and get the recipe—at chicagoreader.com/food.

KEY INGREDIENT

Thank goodness for cheffed-up Chef Boyardee

hef Boyardee’s line of prepared pasta is not a standard to which most chefs aspire. That includes CHRISTOPHER THOMPSON of CODA DI VOLPE, who was challenged by Kevin McCormick (Beacon Tavern) to create a dish with CHEF BOYARDEE BEEF RAVIOLI IN TOMATO & MEAT SAUCE. “It’s kind of the antithesis of my philosophy on Italian cooking,” Thompson says. That philosophy includes “buying amazing ingredients and processing them as minimally as possible, leaving them true to their natural form,” he says. He doesn’t even have fond childhood memories of Beefaroni or any of the other Chef Boyardee products: “Fortunately, my parents never cooked this for us.” Trying the ravioli as an adult did not leave Thompson impressed. “I think the sauce is way too sweet,” he says. “I also find the texture of the pasta to be unpalatable.” He solved the issue by disguising both the flavor and texture as much possible: his finished dish was a meatball pizza without a single mushy raviolo in sight. Thompson started by straining the sauce from the ravioli, then combining the pasta with Berkshire pork, house-made soppressata, dried ciabatta, buffalo ricotta, oregano, fennel, and chile flakes. All that went into a meat grinder to be turned into meatballs—but not before Thompson had shaved a generous amount of black truffle into the mix. While the can of ravioli cost less than two dollars, he estimates that he put about $50 worth of truffle into the meatballs. “I think they call this putting a hundred-dollar saddle on a five-dollar

34 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 22, 2018

ò JULIA THIEL

By JULIA THIEL

horse,” he says. But the decision to use black truffles was simple: they’re in season, he had some in the walk-in cooler, and he wanted the dish to taste good. After forming the meatballs, Thompson roasted them for a few minutes in the restaurant’s wood-burning oven to give them a smoky flavor, then braised them for several hours in a combination of Chef Boyardee meat sauce (which he’d strained from the pasta) and San Marzano tomatoes. The same sauce also went on the pizza, along with the meatballs, Grana Padano cheese, thinly sliced soppressata, and dollops of buffalo ricotta. Cooking it took less than two minutes in the 950-degree wood oven; Thompson ﬁnished the pizza with Calabrian chile oil, a few pieces of fresh basil, and more shaved black truffle. Thompson says that he actually did get some authentic Chef Boyardee ﬂavor and texture from the pizza: “I get a little sweetness in the sauce, a little bit of mushiness in the meatball because the overcooked pasta is an ingredient,” he says. “The soppressata and the truffle makes it a little more palatable. Just like mom never made.”

WHO’S NEXT:

Thompson has challenged BRENT BALIKA of MARGEAUX BRASSERIE in the Waldorf Astoria to create a dish with VEGEMITE, the Australian spread made from brewer’s yeast extract. v

v @juliathiel

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TECHNICAL ANALYST 4

(Hoffman Estates, IL) Tate & Lyle Americas LLC seeks Team Lead - SAP Sustain w/ Bach or for deg equiv in IT, CS or Eng & 5 yrs progressive exp in job offered or in applic devp & supp w/in IT field, incl 3 yrs exp in applic supp &/or outsourced vendor mngmnt; 1 yr exp in proj leadershp role on small to medium size proj; & 1 yr exp w/ SAP ECC modules interfacing w/ SAP prod such as CRM, APO, FSCM, SAP Fiori & SAP Certification in Order fulfillmnt. Freq domes & intl trvl reqd. Apply to L. Donley, 2200 E. Eldorado, Decatur, IL 62521

APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATE MANAGER (Multiple Positions) (Accenture LLP; Chicago, IL): Develop, design, and maintain software products or systems to enable client strategies. Must have willingness and ability to travel domestically approximately 80% of the time to meet client needs. For complete job description, list of requirements, and to apply, go to: www.accenture.com/us-en/careers (Job# 00558804).

CHICAGO, HYDE PARK Arms Hotel, 5316 S. Harper, maid, phone /cable, switchboard, fridge, priv bath, lndry, $165/wk, $350/bi-wk or $650/mo. Call 773-493-3500

STUDIO OTHER LARGE SUNNY ROOM w/fridge & microwave. Near Oak Park, Green Line & Buses. 24 hr Desk, Parking Lot $101/week & Up. (773)378-8888

CROSSROADS HOTEL SRO SINGLE RMS Private bath, PHONE, CABLE & MAIDS. 1 Block to Orange Line 5300 S. Pulaski 773-581-1188

Ashland Hotel nice clean rms. 24 hr desk/maid/TV/laundry/air. Low rates daily/weekly/monthly. South Side. Call 773-376-5200

1 BR UNDER $700 7022 S. SHORE DRIVE Impeccably Clean Highrise STUDIOS, 1 & 2 BEDROOMS Facing Lake & Park. Laundry & Security on Premises. Parking & Apts. Are Subject to Availability. TOWNHOUSE APARTMENTS 773-288-1030

2018 NEW YEAR SA VINGS! Newly Remod. Studio $550, 1BR $650 w/Heat. 2BR and up starting at $750. Qualified Applicants rcv. up to $400/month off rent for 1 year. No App Fee. (773)412-1153 Wesley Realty

MIDWAY AREA/63RD KEDZIE Deluxe Studio 1 & 2 BRs. All modern oak floors, appliances, Security system, on site maint. clean & quiet, Nr. transp. From $445. 773582-1985 (espanol)

MANAGEMENT: IMANAGE LLC seeks in Chicago, IL: Senior Product Manager w/ Master’s in Bus Admin, Mgmt Info Sys, or Comp Sci plus 2 yrs exp in job offered or sub sim pos, or Bachelor’s in Bus Admin, Mgmt Info Sys, or Comp Sci plus 5 yrs exp in job offered or sub sim pos. Send resume to Peopleops@imanage .com (ref. no. L9049) or Attn: Recruiting, 540 W. Madison St, Ste 300, Chicago, IL 60661.

Shore 1bdrms $900, Free Heat, Fitness Ctr, Lndry Rm . Niki 773.808. 2043. Section 8 Welcome.

BURNHAM - 14500 S. Torrence Beautiful 2 BR in a class of it’s own, tile flrs, appls, lndry room, a/c, heat included. 773-731-5010.

BR $735, Includes Free heat & appliances & cooking gas. (708) 424-4216 Kalabich Mgmt

6930 S. SOUTH SHORE DRIVE Studios & 1BR, INCL. Heat, Elec, Cking gas & PARKING, $585-$925, Country Club Apts 773-752-2200

APTS. FOR RENT PARK MGMT & INV. Ltd. SUMMER IS HERE!! Most units Include.. HEAT & HOT WTR Studios From $475.00 1Bdr From $550.00 2Bdr From $745.00 3 Bdr/2 Full Bath From $1200 **1-(773)-476-6000**

ROUND LAKE BEACH, IL Cedar Villas is accepting applications for subsidized 1BR apts. for seniors 62 years or older and the disabled. Rent is based on 30% of annual income. For details, call us at 847-546-1899 ∫

CHICAGO - BEVERLY, large studio, 1 & 2BR Apts. Carpet, A/ C, laundry, near transportation, $680-$1020/mo. Call 773-2334939

Chicago - Hyde PARK 5401 S. Ellis. 1BR. $625/mo. Call 773-955-5106

BURNHAM 1BR APT. Stove & fridge included. C/A. Newly decorated. $695/month + 1 month security. Call 708-288-3255

NICE ROOM w/stove, fridge & bath Near Aldi, Walgreens, Beach, Red Line & Buses. Elevator & Laundry. $133/wk & up. 773-275-4442

BIG ROOM with stove, fridge, bath & nice wood floors. Near Red Line & Buses. Elevator & Laundry, Shopping. $121/wk + up. 773-561-4970

Newly updated, clean furnished rooms in Joliet, near buses & Metra, elevator. Utilities included, $91/wk. $395/mo. 815-722-1212

CHICAGO, RENT TO OWN! Buy with no closing costs and get help with your credit. Call 708868-2422 or visit www.nhba.com

NO SECURITY DEPOSIT NO MOVE IN FEE 1, 2, 3 BEDROOM APTS (773) 874-1122

û NO SEC DEP û 1431 W. 78th St. 2BR. $605/mo. 6829 S. Perry. Studio/1BR. $465$520. HEAT INCL 773-955-5106

CHICAGO - South Shore Large 1BR, $680/mo. Free heat. Near Transportation. Section 8 Welcome. Call 708-932-4582

1 BR $800-$899 bedroom apartment for rent. Newly remodeled. Next door to food store. $880/mo plus security deposit. Includes gas. Near shopping area. Tim, 773-592-2989.

1 BR $900-$1099 7520 S. COLES - 1 BR $520, 2 BR $645, Includes appliances & AC, Near transp., No utilities included (708) 424-4216 Kalabich Mgmt

ROUND LAKE BEACH, IL Cedar Villas is accepting applications for Subsidized 2 and 3 bedroom apt waiting list. Rent is based on 30% of annual income for qualified applicants. Contact us at 847-546-1899 for details

TWO BEDROOM APARTMENT

SECTION 8 WELCOME

available in small building in Evanston. Rent is $1289 per month and resident pays gas and electric. Near shopping and downtown. Laundry room is located in the basement with additional storage areas. Apartment has hard wood floors, central heating and air conditioning, dishwasher and one reserved parking pad. Large backyard. Please call 847-475-5199 for more information. BEAUTIFUL REMOD 1, 2 & 3BR Apts, hdwd flrs, custom cabinets, granite cntrs, avail now. $1000-$1200 /mo + sec. 773-905-8487. Section 8 Ok

3 BR OR MORE UNDER $1200

ROGERS PARK, 1547 W. Birch-

1500 Block of S Kostner , 2nd fl, 3BR, close to pink CTA line. newly renov, new carpet & C-fan $1050. Sec 8 OK 312-818-0236

wood (at Ashland) Very large 2 bedroom vintage flat with Hardwood floors and updates. 3 blocks from lake. $1100.00 (no utilities included). Call EJM at 773-935-4426

2 BR UNDER $900 CHICAGO 7600 S Essex PRE-SPRING SPECIAL - 2BR $599, 3BR $699, 4BR $799 w/apprvd credit, no sec dep. Sec 8 Ok! Also Homes for Rent avail. Call Nicole 773-287-9999; W-side locations Tom 630-776-5556

EXCITED ABOUT THE LOVELY 2BR apt located near 83rd & Paulina, new updates, heat incl, Call for appt, $730/mo, no pets. 773-783-7098

1 BR Apt, nr North & Cicero $795 inc heat /water, coin op W /D on site, No Sec dep or credit check, Seniors Welcome 877350-5055

CHATHAM - 70th and Wabash 2BR. $750 and 1BR. $640. Sec 8 OK. Heat & appl. Call Office: 773966-5275 or Steve: 773-936-4749

floors, vintage, spacious, yard, laundry, 2025 W. Cortez, great location near Division/Damen, Available 3/1 or sooner. $1200. 773-616-4056.

EVANSTON 2BR: 1 MO FREE/ NO DEP, new kit, SS appl, granite, oak flrs, OS lndry, $1295/incl heat. 773-743-4141 www.urbanequities. com

LARGE 3 BEDROOM apartment near Wrigley Field. 3820 N. Fremont. Two bathrooms. Hardwood Floors. Cats OK. $2175/month. Special! Sign a lease starting by March 1, get April rent free! Available 3/1. 773-761-4318.

ROGERSPK 3BR, 2BA+DEN, 1 MONTH FREE! No Dep. New kit w/ granite, SS appl, Close to lake! $18 75/incl ht 773-743-4141 urbanequ ities.com

7134 S. NORMAL, 4BR/2BA.$1100. 225 W. 108th Pl. 2BR w/heat. $950. 9116 S. So Chgo Ave, 2/1. $675. 312-683-5174

UPTOWN,

4346

NORTH

Clarendon (at Montrose) Very large 2 bedroom vintage apartment with hardwood floors and updates. 2 blocks from lake. $1350.00 Heat Included. Call EJM at 773-935-4425

house in Gary, IN for $7,000 down & $600/mo MTG payment. 2&3BR’s. Do your own rehab. Available immediately. Call Mike 847-280-1204

non-residential SELF-STORAGE CENTERS. T W O locations to serve you. All units fully heated and humidity controlled with ac available. North: Knox Avenue. 773-685-6868. South: Pershing Avenue. 773-523-6868.

GARY NSA ACCEPTING applications for SECTION 8 STUDIO, 1 & 2BR UNITS ONLY. Apply Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10am to 2pm ONLY at 1735 W 5th Ave. Applications are to be filled out on site. Adult applicants must provide a current picture ID and SS card.

roommates CHICAGO, Rooms for Rent. Very nice & modern. 5926 S. Peoria St., 448 W. 60th Place. Call Sharon. 773-

744-9915

AURORA - SLEEPING ROOM.

3 BR OR MORE

$90 weekly, clean and quiet plus deposit. Fridge access. Call 331-250-1361

OTHER CALUMET CITY, 3BR, 1.5BA,, balc, $1100/mo + 2 months sec. Newly renovated, C/A &. Utils not incl. 708-259-8720

3 BR OR MORE $1200-$1499 Avail Now! 11728 S. Harvard, Well maint 3BR, 1BA, bsmt, fenced in bkyd, 2 car garage avail w/ fee. $1195/mo. 630-240-1684

PRE-SPRING SPECIAL Chicago Houses for rent. Section 8 Ok, w/ app credit $500 gift certificate 3, 4 & 5 BR houses avail. Call Nicole: 773-287-9999; W-side locations: Tom 630-776-5556

10234 S. CRANDON, small home, 3BR, 1BA, kit & util room, totally ren a/c, all appls incl, nice bkyrd. CHA welcome. 773-3174357

WEST SIDE 5126 W. Madison, single rm, utils incl, $400/mo. prk avail, shared BA & Kit, stores/ shopping, sec dep neg. 773-988-5579

MARKETPLACE GOODS

AUSTIN 1143 S. Monitor Newly Remod 3BR, 1ba garden apt, C/A, ceramic tile, all SS appls incl. Sect 8 Welc. 773-474-3266

3 BR OR MORE $1500-$1799 BUDLONG WOODS, 5500N/ 2600W. Three bedrooms, full dining room, spacious living room, 1.5 baths, many closets, near transportation, $1500 includes heat. Available May 1. Marty 773-784-0763.

2 BR OTHER stove & microhood, heat incl. 312-282-6555

FOR SALE STOP RENTING-SELLER FINANCING : Buy a single family

3 BR OR MORE $2500 AND OVER

CHICAGO, 33 W. 104th Pl, 4BR, 2BA & 6859 S. Evans. 3BR Townhouse, 1BA. Hdwd floors in both. Section 8 Welcome. Call 708-296-5477

2 BR $1300-$1499

2 FLAT, SMALL 2BR, comes with fridge, CHICAGO, NEAR 64TH & Ashland. Cozy, 2BR Basement Apt, New-

3 BR OR MORE $1800-$2499

6714 S. EBERHART. WILLING TO DO 5 ROOMS FOR 2BR VOUCHURE. 312-804-0209

WICKER PARK/UKRAINIAN VILLAGE; 2 Bedrooms, hardwood

S. SHORE 7017 S. Clyde. 1 & 2BR, reno Kit/BA, hdwd flrs, ten pays heat, nr Metra & shops. $600-$655 + $350 move In fee 773-474-0363

ACACIA SRO HOTEL Men Preferred! Rooms for Rent. Weekly & Monthly Rates. 312-421-4597

HUMBOLDT PARK. ONE PRE-SPRING SPECIAL - CHICAGO South Side Beautiful Studios, 1,2,3 & 4 BR’s, Sec 8 ok. Also Homes for rent available. Call Nicole 312-446-1753; W-side locations Tom 630-776-5556;

Analytics Mgr: Sr market research analyst leading team in performing quantitative analytics & developing innovative solutions across paid, owned & earned search media while developing strategies to maximize performance & participation. Chicago, IL location. Req’s MS in Integrated Marketing Comm’s & 1 yr exp as Marketing Consultant or Marketing Analytics Intern. Send resume to VNC Comm’s, Inc. (Performics), 111 E Wacker Dr, Chicago, IL, 60601, Attn: M. Colantoni.

NO SECURITY DEPOSIT South

7425 S. COLES - 1 BR $620, 2

STUDIO $600-$699

(RR Donnelley & Sons Company; Chicago, IL) - Lead the designing, coding, testing, implementing & maintaining, & support of large scale enterprise applications. Reqs: Bachelor’s degree or foreign equiv. in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, or related technical field + 5 yrs post-bacc related experience. Telecommuting permitted. Position allows employee to reside anywhere in the US & telecommute to perform work exclusively from home. For complete job description, list of requirements, and to apply, go to: https://www.rrdonnelley. com/about/rrdonnelley-jobs.aspx Job #37995.

CHICAGO Lovely 4 rm apt, 1BR, liv rm, din rm, kitchen/bath, heated and carpet flrs. Close to trans. $685, avail now. 773-264-6711

SPACIOUS & BRIGHT 3BR, 5614 W. Division, 2nd flr, new decor, 1BA, gracious Liv & din rm. $1695 +sec. Sec 8 OK. 708-369-6791

CLASSICS WANTED ANY CLASSIC CARS IN ANY CONDITION. ’20S, ’30S, ’40S, ’50S, ’60S & ’70S. HOTRODS & EXOTICS! TOP DOLLAR PAID! COLLECTOR. CALL JAMES, 630-201-8122

337 W. 108TH ST., N e w l y refurb, 5BR, 1.5BA, on quiet street, semi-fin bsmt, new appls. $1300 + sec. Mr. Williams. 773-752-8328

HEALTH & WELLNESS GENERAL

FULL BODY MASSAGE. hotel, house calls welcome $90

2122 W. 68TH PL. Remodeled 5BR House, 2BA, Central Air, Tenant pays utilities, security system. Sec 8 ok. Call Roy 312-405-2178

special. Russian, Polish, Ukrainain girls. Northbrook and Schaumburg locations. 10% discount for new customers. Please call 773-407-7025

ADULT SERVICES

ly Remodeled, $650/mo + sec, heat incl. Available Now. 773-307-1030

BRONZEVILLE SEC 8 OK! 4950 S. Prairie. Remod 1BR. $700+. Heat, cooking gas & appls inc, lndry on site. Z. 773.406.4841

ADULT SERVICES

1BR nr Elston & Milwaukee, Newly Remod, all new appls, all hdwd flrs. $900/mo heat incl. Call 847-370-9777

2 BR $900-$1099 Chatham Area, 2BR House,

N RIVERSIDE: 1BR new tile, energy efficient windows, lndry facilitities, a/c, incls heat - natural gas, $955/mo Luis 708-366-5602 lv msg

CLEAN ROOM W/FRIDGE & micro, Near Oak Park, Food -4Less, Walmart, Walgreens, Buses & Metra, Laundry. $115/wk & up. 773-637-5957

NEWLY REMOD 1BR & Studios starting at $580. No sec dep, move in fee or app fee. Free heat/hot water. 1155 W. 83rd St., 773-619-0204

1 BR OTHER APTS. FOR RENT PARK MGMT & INV. Ltd. Hot Summer Is Here Cool Off In The Pool OUR UNITS INCLUDE HEAT, HW & CG Plenty of parking 1Bdr From $795.00 2Bdr From $925.00 3 Bdr/2 Full Bath From $1200 **1-(773)-476-6000**

SUBURBS, RENT TO OWN! Buy with No closing costs and get help with your credit. Call 708868-2422 or visit www.nhba.com

$900/mo. 1 mo rent + 1 mo sec

required. Section 8 Welcome. Call 872-207-5184

2, 3 & 4BR Central/Jackson. $900-$1550. 5BR House. $1600. 3BR. Pulaski/Cermac $900. Tenant pays utils & sec 847-720-9010

2 BR $1100-$1299 2BR, LR, DR, enclosed back porch, 1BA, kitchen, fully remod front to back, brand new carpet & blinds throughout, new SS appls., W/D in bsmt. $1100/mo. Call 773885-2867

FEBRUARY 22, 2018 | CHICAGO READER 35

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312-222-6920

ION OF STA IAT TE OC

STERS RE FO

Only

By Cecil Adams Q: As I sat in my oﬃce on a balmy 20-degree day in Pittsburgh, a thought came across my mind: Pennsylvania uses salt to combat snow and ice. What are the ramiﬁcations for the environment? Will the Three Rivers become a saltwater haven for sharks? I humbly await your answer as I chain myself nekkid to a tree to protest its slow death from saltwater ingestion. —MARK

NATIONAL A SS

1-312-924-2082

STRAIGHT DOPE

SLUG SIGNORINO

{ { YO U R AD HERE

U N D E D 192

A: Sharks in the Monongahela might still be

a few centuries off, Mark, but your readiness to go full Lorax on the road-salt issue is commendable. I’ll be happy to supply you with a few shorter-term problems to worry over, with fewer teeth but frankly just as dire. First the scope of the situation. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, ice control accounted for 43 percent of all salt consumption in 2015. That’s about 25 million tons we’re shaking out onto our roads per annum. Where’s it all go from there? Well, the first stop is roadside soil and vegetation. You’re not wrong to be worried about the trees: salt spray injures evergreen needles and deciduous buds alike, turning them brown and thus decreasing their photosynthesis capacity. Or say the roadside plant in question is milkweed, its leaves plump with sodium, which subsequently gets ingested by monarch butterflies. Research from 2014 found that consuming saltier plant matter increased muscle protein activity in male butterflies and eye size in females. These effects may be beneficial to a point, but road salt seems to be a high-value treat for animals who don’t otherwise encounter lots of sodium, and if butterflies get too much it can kill them. Birds are also subject to salt poisoning, but they’re at more immediate risk too: to get at that delicious salt they alight on the road, aka where all the cars are. Outcomes can be similarly grisly for deer and moose, who see deiced roads as an all-you-can-eat salt lick. Roadways being designed to repel water and drain it off, salt readily makes its way into the local streamflow, which is where the most serious trouble begins. A paper published last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences explored the effects of road salt on 371 North American lakes, noting that we’re looking at a double-barreled problem: the continued use of salt for deicing, plus sprawl—we just keep producing more roads. Having a mere 1 percent of the nearby ground asphalted over, the study found, is enough to gradually bump up a lake’s salt content, putting it in danger of long-term salinization. As you might imagine, excess salt in lakes

and rivers disagrees with the constitutions of the various fauna living there. Great enough concentrations of NaCl have been shown to shrink the body size of rainbow trout and mess with the male-female ratios of woodfrog tadpoles. Sodium chloride was the focus in this analysis, but magnesium chloride and other salts are used on roads too; each has its own environmental effects, none particularly salutary. The PNAS paper predicts that if the current road-to-watershed pipeline persists unabated, “many lakes will exceed the aquatic life threshold criterion for chronic chloride exposure” within 50 years, which is to say we’ll get a grim cycle of declining biodiversity, disrupted food chains, and overall ecosystem malfunction; in the most serious cases, too much salt chokes off oxygen levels in freshwater bodies. This isn’t just some abstract problem of the natural world, either—these are our fisheries we’re talking about. And then sometimes humans have their own road-salt troubles. You’re aware of the situation in Flint, Michigan. The city switched its municipal water source from Lake Huron to the Flint River, whose already polluted H2O corroded lead-lined water mains, leading to widespread illness, lower fertility, and at least a dozen deaths. The problem with Flint River water was multifaceted; this is an industrial town, after all. But one contributing corrosive was road salt, washed into the river after it was used to deice frozen bridges. Oh, and about drinking water: road salt’s in there too. That 50-year threshold predicted by the PNAS study is also the point at which the taste of salt becomes perceptible in tap water, though a few locales are already reporting a distinct saline flavor flowing from their pipes come the winter season. On one hand, this is bad news for people on restricted diets, but on the other, hey—no need to salt your water for pasta anymore. It’s preseasoned right out of the faucet. v Send questions to Cecil via straightdope.com or write him c/o Chicago Reader, 30 N. Racine, suite 300, Chicago 60607.

SAVAGE LOVE

By Dan Savage

A young love threatened by biphobia

She’s bi herself. Why is she so threatened by her boyfriend’s bisexuality? Q : I’m an 18-year-old

female. I’m cisgender and bisexual. I’ve been in a monogamous relationship with my cisgender bisexual boyfriend for about a year. I’m currently struggling with a lot of internalized biphobia and other hang-ups about my boyfriend’s sexuality. When I think about the fact that he’s bi and is attracted to men, I become jealous and fearful that he’ll leave me for a man or that he would rather be with a man. I know it’s unfair of me to feel this way, and he’s never given me any real reason to fear this. We have a very engaged, kinky, and rewarding sex life! But I worry I’m not what he really wants. This situation is complicated by the near certainty that my boyfriend has some sort of hormonal disorder. He has a very young face for an 18-year-old, a feminine figure, and not a lot of body hair. He orgasms but he does not ejaculate, and although he has a sizable penis, his testicles are more like the size of grapes than eggs. He struggles a lot with feeling abnormal and unmasculine. I try to be as supportive as possible and tell him how attracted to him I am. But he can tell his bi-ness makes me nervous and uncomfortable. I don’t want to contribute to him feeling abnormal or bad about himself. How do I stop worrying that he’s gay or would be happier with a man? I feel horrible about myself for these anxieties considering that I’m bi too, and should know better. — ANONYMOUS NERVOUS GIRLFRIEND SEEKS TRANQUILITY

A : “Many people who

encounter us bi folk in the wild just project their insecurities onto us with impunity and then blame

us for it,” said RJ Aguiar, a bisexual activist. “As someone who’s bi herself, I’m sure ANGST know this all too well.” So if you’ve been on the receiving end of biphobia— as almost all bisexual people have—why are you doing it to your bisexual boyfriend? “This hypothetical so-andso-is-going-to-leave-me-forsomeone-hotter scenario could happen to anyone of any orientation,” said Aguiar. “But maybe because the potential ‘pool of applicants’ is over twice as big for us bi folk, we get stuck with twice as much of this irrational fear? I don’t know. But here’s what I do know: most biphobia (and jealousy for that matter) is projected insecurity. Built into the fear that someone will leave you because they ‘like x or y better’ is the assumption that you yourself aren’t good enough.” And while feelings of insecurity and jealousy can undermine a relationship, ANGST, they don’t have to. It all depends on how you address them when they arise. “We all have our moments!” said Aguiar. “But we can turn these moments into opportunities for open communication and intimacy rather than moments of isolation and shame. That way they end up bringing you closer rather than drive this invisible wedge between you.” As for the reasons you’re feeling insecure—your boyfriend might be gay and/or happier with a man—I’m not going to lie to you, ANGST. Your boyfriend could be gay and/or he could one day realize that he’d be happier with a man (just as you could one day realize that you’d be happier with a woman). But your wonderful sex life—your engaging, kinky, rewarding sex life—is pretty good evi-

dence that your boyfriend isn’t gay. Finally, ANGST, on the off chance your boyfriend hasn’t spoken to a doctor about his symptoms, I shared your letter with Dr. John Amory, professor of medicine at the University of Washington. “An 18-year-old male with testicles the ‘size of grapes’ indicates an issue with testicular development,” said Dr. Amory. “The reduced testicular volume, in combination with the other features such as his feminine face and sparse body hair, also suggest an issue with testicular function.” It could simply be delayed puberty—some people suddenly grow six inches when they get to college—or it could be something called Klinefelter syndrome. “Klinefelter syndrome occurs in one out of every 500 males and is associated with small testicular volume and decreased testosterone,” said Dr. Amory. “This diagnosis is frequently missed because the penis is normal in size and the men are normal in most other ways, although about half of men with Klinefelter syndrome (KS) can have breast enlargement (gynecomastia) that can be seen as feminizing. Bottom line: Small testes at age 18 means it’s time for a doctor’s visit—probably an endocrinologist or urologist. This should help him understand if he ‘just needs to wait’ or if he has a diagnosis that could be treated. There is a real possibility that he has KS, which is usually treated with testosterone to improve muscle mass, bone density and sexual function.” v Send letters to mail@ savagelove.net. Download the Savage Lovecast every Tuesday at savagelovecast. com. v @fakedansavage

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Caroline Smith ò COURTESY HIGH ROAD TOURING

NEW

Average White Band 4/14, 9 PM, the Promontory, 18+ Big Suit 4/14, 8 PM, Park West, on sale Fri 2/23, 10 AM, 18+ Birds of Chicago 4/8, 7:30 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 2/23, 10 AM b Black Moth Super Rainbow 6/16, 9 PM, Metro, on sale Fri 2/23, 10 AM, 18+ Blind Melon 5/8, 7 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+ The Bones of J.R. Jones 4/8, 7 PM, Schubas b Rondi Charleston 5/30, 7:30 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 2/23, 10 AM b Chicago, REO Speedwagon 6/24, 7:30 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont, on sale Fri 2.23, 10 AM Citizen, Angel Dust 6/5, 6:15 PM, Cobra Lounge b Cowboy Mouth 5/11, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 2/23, 10 AM b Cultura Profetica 5/26, 9 PM, House of Blues, on sale Fri 2/23, 10 AM, 17+ Justin Townes Earle 5/15, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 2/23, 10 AM b Eoto 3/30, 11 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ Ex-Girlfriends 4/1, 8 PM, Cobra Lounge, 18+ Kirk Franklin, Tamela Mann 5/13, 7 PM, the Venue at Horseshoe Casino, Hammond, on sale Fri 2/23, 10 AM Eleanor Friedberger 5/5, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ Full of Hell, Gatecreeper 6/6, 8 PM, Cobra Lounge, on sale Fri 2/23, 10 AM Geographer 4/14, 10 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Helmet, Prong 5/17, 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+

Ill.Gates 3/31, 11 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ Joey Badass 5/23, 7 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+ Lavender Country 4/26, 9 PM, Hideout Mipso 5/19, 9:30 PM, Lincoln Hall, on sale Fri 2/23, 9 AM Mud Morganﬁeld 4/5, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 2/23, 10 AM b Meshell Ndegeocello 3/24, 7 and 9 PM, the Promontory Rahsaan Patterson 5/26, 7 and 10 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 2/22, noon b Pearl Jam 8/18 and 8/20, 7 PM, Wrigley Field Jean-Luc Ponty 8/13-14, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 2/22, noon b Post Animal 4/26, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, on sale Fri 2/23, 10 AM Brigid Mae Power 7/10, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle, on sale Fri 2/23, 10 AM Radiohead 7/7, 7:30 PM, United Center, on sale Fri 2/23, 10 AM Martin Rev, Wolf Eyes, Mystic Ruler & Bentley Anderson 6/1, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Eric Roberson 5/30-6/1, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 2/22, noon b Rusko 3/23, 10 PM, the Mid Sect 3/18, 7 PM, Cobra Lounge, 17+ Simulacrum 8/11, 8 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, on sale Fri 2/23, noon, 17+ Smashing Pumpkins 8/13, 7:30 PM, United Center, on sale Fri 2/23, 11 AM Caroline Smith, Eric Mayson 5/19, 7 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 2/23, 10 AM b Southern Culture on the Skids 5/24, 8 PM, Schubas Spits, Negative Scanner 5/25, 9 PM, Empty Bottle

38 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 22, 2018

Squirrel Nut Zippers 5/20, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 2/22, noon b Freddy Todd, Esseks 4/26, 9 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Vance Joy 5/25, 7:30 PM, Rosemont Theater, Rosemont, on sale Fri 2/23, 10 AM WGCI Takeover Jam with YFN Lucci, Rich the Kid, Lil Baby, Derek Deshon, G Herbo, and more 3/29, 8 PM, Chicago Theatre, on sale Fri 2/23, 10 AM

UPDATED Taake, King Dude 3/30, 7:30 PM, Bottom Lounge, canceled

UPCOMING Acid Mothers Temple, Melting Paraiso U.F.O. 4/14, 9 PM, Beat Kitchen Altan 3/23, 7:30 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Alvvays 3/23, 7:30 PM, Metro b Trey Anastasio Band 4/20-21, 8 PM, Chicago Theatre Belly 10/6, 8 PM, The Vic, 18+ Bishop Briggs 5/12, 8 PM, Metro, 17+ Black Angels, Black Lips 3/26-27, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 18+ Bone Thugs-N-Harmony 3/25, 7 PM, House of Blues, 17+ Born Ruﬃans 5/19, 7 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Creed Bratton 4/1, 8 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Peter Case 4/27, 8 PM, Szold Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Casket Lottery 3/10, 8:30 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+

b Cut Copy 4/5, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Dead Meadow 4/4, 8 PM, Beat Kitchen Decemberists 4/10, 7:30 PM, Chicago Theatre Eagles 3/14, 8 PM, United Center Eels 6/6, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Faith Healer 4/10, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Frigs 4/4, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Godspeed You! Black Emperor 3/18-19, 8 PM, Metro, 18+ Tootie Heath Trio 4/10, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Peter Hook & the Light 5/4, 9 PM, Metro, 18+ Hop Along 6/10, 8 PM, Metro, 18+ Jimmy Eat World, Hotelier 5/8, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre b Judah & the Lion, Colony House 3/23, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre b Kaki King 3/13, 8 PM, City Winery b King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard 6/10, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre b L7 4/20, 8 PM, Metro, 18+ Kendrick Lamar, Sza, Schoolboy Q 6/15, 7:30 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park Lightning Bolt 3/28, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Jeﬀ Lynne’s ELO 8/15, 8 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont Matt & Kim, Tokyo Police Club 4/17, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ MGMT 3/3-4, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre b Miguel 3/5, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Nada Surf 3/13, 9 PM, Metro, 18+ Nancy & Beth 4/20, 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Nap Eyes 4/6, 9 PM, Schubas, 18+ No Age 5/10, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Okkervil River, Star Rover 6/12, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Pale Waves 4/7, 8:30 PM, Lincoln Hall b Panda Bear 4/30, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Pedro the Lion 8/24, 9 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Poison, Cheap Trick 6/9, 7 PM, Hollywood Casino Ampitheatre, Tinley Park Primitive Man 3/20, 8 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Primus, Mastodon 6/6, 7 PM, Huntington Bank Pavilion John Prine 4/27, 8 PM, Chicago Theatre Red Wanting Blue 6/28, 8 PM, City Winery b Screaming Females 3/10, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ Slayer, Anthrax, Testament 5/25, 5 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park v

ALL AGES

WOLF BY KEITH HERZIK

EARLY WARNINGS

CHICAGO SHOWS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT IN THE WEEKS TO COME

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Sleep 8/1, 7 PM, Riviera Theatre b U.S. Girls 4/17, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Wedding Present 3/26, 7:30 PM, Lincoln Hall Bob Weir & Phil Lesh 3/9-10, 8 PM, Chicago Theatre Andrew W.K. 5/12, 8 PM, the Vic, 18+ Wolf Alice 3/30, 7:30 PM, Metro b Wonder Years, Tigers Jaw 6/3, 5 PM, Concord Music Hall b X Ambassadors 4/27, 7:30 PM, Aragon Ballroom b Xylouris White 4/5, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Yanni 6/30, 8 PM, Chicago Theatre Yawpers 3/2, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Yellow Days 4/9, 7 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Yo La Tengo 3/29-30, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Zombies 3/19-20, 8 PM, City Winery b

SOLD OUT Courtney Barnett 5/21, 8:30 PM, Preston Bradley Hall, Chicago Cultural Center James Bay 3/31, 8 PM, Metro b Camila Cabello 4/22, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre b Fever Ray 5/18, 9 PM, Metro, 18+ Gang of Youths 3/30, 8:30 PM, Subterranean, 18+ Gaslight Anthem 8/11, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre b Ides of March 5/3, 8 PM, City Winery Knocked Loose, Terror 3/24, 5:30 PM, Bottom Lounge b Kooks 5/30, 8 PM, the Vic, 18+ Lord Huron 4/21, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Low 3/7, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ OMD, Ggoolldd 3/16, 7:30 PM, the Vic, 18+ Our Last Night 3/16, 5:30 PM, Bottom Lounge b Protest the Hero 3/23, 7 PM, Bottom Lounge b Quinn XCII 3/9, 6 PM, Concord Music Hall b Rainbow Kitten Surprise 4/21, 8:30 PM, Metro b Shakey Graves 5/22, 7:30 PM, the Vic, 18+ They Might Be Giants 3/17, 7:30 PM, the Vic, 14+ Trippie Redd, Mose Wood 3/9, 6 PM, Portage Theater b

GOSSIP WOLF A furry ear to the ground of the local music scene CHICAGO DRUMMER Ben Baker Billington has some of the busiest sticks in town. He always has his fingers in a whole icebox of musical pies—he plays in Ono and free-jazz trio Tiger Hatchery, for instance, and used to be in dearly departed Doors-y three-piece Moonrises. Last week his synth project Quicksails dropped a new EP called The Bright via Italian label Gang of Ducks that’s full of bloopy electroacoustic weirdness, as well as remixes by Brett Naucke and Khaki Blazer (aka Pat Modugno of Moth Cock). As if that weren’t enough, on Saturday, February 24, he’ll headline the Hideout as part of improv squad ADT, celebrating the new Hausu Mountain release Insecurities. Northwestern alums Tiffany Walden and Morgan Elise Johnson founded digital media platform the TRiiBE (whose core team also includes Web developer and designer David Elutilo) with the goal of “reshaping the narrative of Black Chicago through journalism and art.” Last week in the Reader they debuted a monthly multimedia series called the Block Beat, which aims to root Chicago musicians in places that matter to them—in this case, they interviewed Vic Mensa in his teenage hangout Hyde Park Records. The TRiiBE are also crowdfunding upcoming work, including documentary and multimedia projects on Chicago’s Black Hebrew communities and the neglected culture of the west side. The TRiiBE’s Indiegogo campaign ends next month (not long after their ﬁrst-birthday celebration on March 10), so don’t be shy about donating ASAP! Gossip Wolf has somehow missed all the recent shows by Pivot Gang cofounder Frsh Waters, but fortunately there’s another chance to catch up with him this week. On Friday, February 23, he headlines All Smiles, Rich Jones’s monthly hiphop series at Tonic Room. Mr. Jackson and JBro Bugatti open; DJ Elliven spins all night, and Lynzie Jazzsun hosts. Tickets are $10, and the show starts at 9 PM. —J.R. NELSON AND LEOR GALIL Got a tip? Tweet @Gossip_Wolf or e-mail gossipwolf@chicagoreader.com.

FEBRUARY 22, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 39

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FRIDAY, MARCH 9 PARK WEST

SUNDAY, MARCH 18 RIVIERA THEATRE

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