Print Issue of July 27, 2017 (Volume 46, Number 42)

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

Chicago’s TIF scam might be even more crooked than we thought. 8

Reviews of a dozen new albums, including Twista’s Crook County 26

Megan Stielstra, as seen through the people she admires The rising literary star talks shop with fellow writer pal Samantha Irby. Plus, Stielstra’s family and friends reflect on her work—and the gratifying (and sometimes thorny) experience of being a subject of her writing.

BY AIMEE LEVITT 12

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EDITOR JAKE MALOOLEY CREATIVE DIRECTOR VINCE CERASANI CULTURE EDITOR TAL ROSENBERG DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS FILM EDITOR J.R. JONES MUSIC EDITOR PHILIP MONTORO ASSOCIATE EDITORS STEVE HEISLER, KATE SCHMIDT SENIOR WRITER MIKE SULA SENIOR THEATER CRITIC TONY ADLER STAFF WRITERS MAYA DUKMASOVA, LEOR GALIL, DEANNA ISAACS, BEN JORAVSKY, AIMEE LEVITT, 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, MATT DE LA PEÑA, ANNE FORD, ISA GIALLORENZO, JOHN GREENFIELD, ANDREA GRONVALL, JUSTIN HAYFORD, JACK HELBIG, DAN JAKES, BILL MEYER, MICHAEL MINER, J.R. NELSON, MARISSA OBERLANDER, LEAH PICKETT, BEN SACHS, DMITRY SAMAROV, DAVID WHITEIS, ALBERT WILLIAMS INTERNS LIBBY BERRY, PORTER MCLEOD, EMILY WASIELEWSKI ---------------------------------------------------------------VICE PRESIDENT OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT NICKI STANULA VICE PRESIDENT OF NEW MEDIA GUADALUPE CARRANZA SENIOR ACCOUNT MANAGER EVANGELINE MILLER ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES FABIO CAVALIERI, BRIDGET KANE MARKETING AND EVENTS MANAGER BRYAN BURDA DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL JOHN DUNLEVY ADVERTISING COORDINATOR HERMINIA BATTAGLIA CLASSIFIEDS REPRESENTATIVE KRIS DODD

FEATURES

MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE

LIT

Megan Stielstra, as seen through the people she admires

The rising literary star talks shop with fellow writer pal Samantha Irby. Plus, Stielstra’s family and friends reflect on her work—and the gratifying (and sometimes thorny) experience of being a subject of her writing.

BY AIMEE LEVITT 12

8 Joravsky | Politics Chicago’s TIF scam might be even more crooked than we thought.

10 Recycling The truth about what happens when you recycle the wrong stuff in Chicago

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4 Agenda A Fool’s Journey: A Misfit Circus Cabaret, a live taping of the podcast Sorry, Please Continue . . .

“By the Light of the Moon: Nocturnal Japanese Prints” at the Art Institute, the film The Skyjacker’s Tale, and more goings-on about town

CITY LIFE ON THE COVER: ILLUSTRATION BY DANIEL FISHEL. FOR MORE OF HIS WORK, GO TO O-FISHEL.COM.

Seven writers tackle a dozen records, including the longgestating debut from footwork producer Jana Rush, lost recordings from 60s garage-rock oddballs the Monks, and a riveting solo set from unsung improvising pianist Pat Thomas.

26

IN THIS ISSUE

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Reviewed: Twista’s disjointed but generous Crook County and 11 more new releases

7 Street View Environmental Encroachment’s trumpeter never leaves home without an animal pelt.

23 Movies Time is of the essence in David Lowery’s A Ghost Story.

MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE

25 In Rotation Current musical obsessions include live footage of Bad Brains in the 80s, Looking Glass Projects, Cherry Glazerr, and more.

31 Shows of note Kendrick Lamar, Supa Bwe, Spoon, and more

ARTS & CULTURE

20 Theater Prepare to be dumbstruck

by Cirque du Soleil’s Luzia.

22 Dance Aura Curiatlas Physical Theatre’s A Life With No Limits ranges from human caregivers to fundamental particles.

FOOD & DRINK

35 Restaurant review: Marshall’s Landing Can the Merchandise Mart

become a dining destination? DMK Restaurants tries to make the case.

CLASSIFIEDS

38 Jobs 38 Apartments & Spaces 39 Marketplace 40 Straight Dope Is it true that quantum physics proves the universe is conscious?

41 Savage Love What to be concerned about when a 16-year-old is getting sexted. Plus: Stepdad, don’t creep.

42 Early Warnings Peter Hook & the Light, Squeeze, Loudon Wainwright III, and more shows you should know about in the weeks to come 42 Gossip Wolf Bucket O’ Blood teams up with Baderbrau for a carnival-themed Riot Fest party, and more music news.

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A Fool’s Journey: A Misfit Circus Cabaret ò BRETT NADAL

THEATER

More at chicagoreader.com/ theater Black! In his unfortunately titled solo show, Michael Washington Brown performs monologues purporting to demonstrate the “distinct differences” and “very definite similarity between Black people from all walks of life.” Well, just four, and all men: a music-loving African-American, a brainy Londoner, a paternal Jamaican, and a generic African, all primarily concerned with local, national, and global disunity among black people. Their musings range from provocative (can a Britisher ever feel “black enough?”) to insupportable (black people have a “natural sense of danger”). Whatever the case, they do little but hold forth during their extended, discursive speeches; they’re bundles of convictions and concerns rather than people. Brown is a graceful performer with a knack for accents, but he never lets us gets below his characters’ skin. —JUSTIN HAYFORD Through 8/30: Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 2 and 7:30 PM, Sun 2 PM, Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport, 773-935-6860, michaelwashingtonbrown.com, $27, $25 students and seniors.

Fight City In 2077, a virus that makes men sterile has flipped the social order, making the male population superfluous and placing all civil and domestic authority in women’s hands. I counted fully ten fights in this angry, juvenile play by Scott OKen, which pits a brutal police force made up mostly of women against a platoon of lady outlaws in war paint, headed up by the sadistic Erica Burdon (Kim Boler). The many slow and repetitive melees that ensue make this an extremely predictable live-action beat ’em up. The final showdown between Burdon and Barb Davies (Jennifer Betancourt), a second-generation cop with a chip on her shoulder, has two fights’ worth of exposition and feels like what’s called a boss battle. Jill Oliver directs her first full production. —MAX MALLER Through 8/26: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, the Factory Theater, 1623 W. Howard, thefactorytheater.com, $25, $18 students and seniors.

A Fool’s Journey: A Misfit R Circus Cabaret The hey, hipster friends, let’s put on a show vibe through-

out Misfit Circus’s 90-minute cabaret is both its greatest weakness and its most notable strength. While the general lack of aesthetic rigor turns the opening and closing dance numbers into mush and repeatedly strands a ragged three-piece band in limbo, it also gives the evening a relaxed, welcoming air that makes occasional sloppiness feel positively homey. Each of the dozen circus acts is nominally inspired by a tarot card, cursorily explicated by the show’s cunningly naive hostess, Divinity Price.

The relationship between card and act ranges from tenuous to nonexistent, but once a few performers have done their beguiling routines—and none more beguiling than Brian P. Dailey’s elegant work with Indian clubs—the question of thematic coherence becomes a niggling distraction. —JUSTIN HAYFORD Through 8/13: Thu-Sun 8 PM, Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division, 773-769-3832, misfitcircus.com, $27-$36.

Fuck You, John Lennon In Sarah Ruhl’s Passion Play, fish are a surreal motif, memorably realized in the Goodman’s 2007 production by lifelike puppets paraded across the stage, shimmering and obscure. A similar image, perverted and diminished, adorns the interludes of writer-director Kallie Rolinson’s Fuck You, John Lennon, where humans with goldfish headpieces singing, cavorting, and playing ukulele are the highlight of a production that includes some appalling acting and dancing only partially redeemed by a blockbuster drag performance of the Beatles’ “Let It Be.” The premise is one that plagues many a regrettable creation: May is an artist in crisis about her art. Here, her funk summons the ghost of John Lennon, who doesn’t take to whiny May but hotboxes and scarfs Hot Pockets with shiny Christian, aka Yoko Homo, her BFF. And the fish play on. —IRENE HSIAO Through 8/12: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Cornservatory, 4210 N. Lincoln, 773-650-1331, cornservatory. org, $15.

They’re Playing Our Song Just about every number by Broadway legend Marvin Hamlisch in this 1978

semiautobiographical romantic comedy, loosely based on his real-life courtship with collaborator Carole Bayer Sager, sounds like a sitcom theme song. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, especially if the kitsch factor is embraced, but this Brown Paper Box Co. production, directed and choreographed by Daniel Spagnuolo, attempts to play it straight, with chintzy, piped-in keyboards and downplayed variations on book writer Neil Simon’s zingers. In an attempt to mitigate the script’s cheesiness, actor Dan Gold transforms Hamlisch from a nerdy savant into a sarcastic jackass, and as Sager, Carmen Risi doesn’t fare much better, stuck with rake-effect gags that offer diminishing returns. The vocals in a few ensemble numbers shine, surrounded by two hours of schmaltz. —DAN JAKES Through 9/20: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM (no show Thu 7/27), Sun 2 PM, Rivendell Theatre, 5775 N. Ridge, 773-334-7728, brownpaperbox.org, $27.

Triassic Parq: The Musical R This clever 90-minute musical

by Marshall Pailet, Bryce Norbitz, and

Steve Wargo—composed in the pop-rock style of such shows as Wicked, Carrie, Batboy, and Spring Awakening—takes Jurassic Park’s premise of genetically engineered dinosaurs as the basis of a campy yet surprisingly thoughtful fable about religion, science, and gender identity. An all-female tribe of singing and dancing dinos, who worship “the Lab” that bred them and feeds them their daily goats, is thrown into chaos when some of its, um, members begin to sexually mutate in order to reproduce—because, as we all know, “life will find a way.” Circle Theatre’s intimate production, a remount of its 2015 hit, is driven by Tommy Bullington and Nicholas Reinhart’s gag-packed, high-energy staging and by flamboyant, polished performances by an eight-person ensemble headed by Parker Guidry as the knowledge-seeking “Velociraptor of Innocence” and the wonderful Veronica Garza as a horny T. rex. —ALBERT WILLIAMS Through 8/13: Thursdays-Sundays, Heartland Studio Theatre, 7016 N. Glenwood, 773-791-2393, $28.

DANCE Bring It! Live The stars of the Lifetime series Bring It! bring their summer tour to Chicago. Featuring new, high-energy dance routines, Miss D and the Dancing Dolls aim to wow audiences with their signature hip-hop majorette style. Fri 7/28, 8 PM, Chicago Theatre, 175 N. State, 312-462-6300, thechicagotheatre. com, $39.25-$66.25.

Dancing With the Stars Professional dancers from ABC’s enduring reality competition Dancing With the Stars show off some of their more memorable routines. Featured dancers include Sharna Burgess, Gleb Savchenko, and a whole horde of spray-tanned, sequin-wearing, painfully good-looking people. Sat 7/29, 8 PM, Star Plaza Theatre, I-65 & U.S. 30, Merrillville, 219-7911234, starplazatheatre.com, $50-$115.

COMEDY Dwayne Kennedy Kennedy has R honed his stand-up in Chicago for almost two decades, and it’s demonstrated by his kooky political discourse and wry, deadpan delivery. Sun 7/30-Wed 8/2, 8:30 PM, Zanies, 1548 N. Wells, 312337-4027, zanies.com/chicago, $25.

Kids Write It In honor of its 20th R anniversary, Barrel of Monkeys presents an evening of comedy based

on two decades of stories from Chicago schoolchildren. Get ready for some of the most outlandish and heartwarming tales from the company’s long history.

Thu 7/27, 7:30 PM, Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport, 773-935-6860, athenaeumtheatre.com, $25, $10 for children under ten.

Ménage à Tell Six Degrees of Separation presents a suggestive evening of comedy and guest storytellers. Expect some seriously improper improv and startling use of accent marks. 7/26-8/30: Wed 8:30 PM, Annoyance Theatre, 851

Triassic Parq: The Musical ò FLAMING CITY PHOTOGRAPHY

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Best bets, recommendations, and notable arts and culture events for the week of July 27 For more of the best things to do every day of the week, go to chicagoreader. com/agenda.

Margarita Saona Saona celebrates her new book Corazon de Hojalata: Tin Heart, a collection of bilingual poems telling the story of her cardiac failure and ultimate heart transplant, with poetry by Nathalie Bouzaglo, Jorge Frisancho, and Laura Ring. Thu 7/27, 6:30 PM, City Lit Books, 2523 N. Kedzie, 773235-2523, citylitbooks.com.

W. Belmont, 773-697-9693, theannoyance. com, $10.

Brendan Schaub From football to MMA to comedy, Brendan Schaub has had a wide-ranging career. He’ll be recording a live episode of his popular podcast at tonight’s show. Called The Big Breakdown, it’s a healthy mix of commentary on comedy as well as intensely physical sports. Sat 7/29, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, 312-526-3851, thaliahallchicago. com, $31-$36.

Suzuki Harunobu, Searching for Insects, c. 1768, part of “By the Light of the Moon” at Art Institute

Meredith Gran and Mike Holmes The writer-illustrators discuss their works, which include Gran’s long-running webcomic Octopus Pie, the story of two Brooklyn roommates who are opposite in almost every way, and Holmes’s graphic novel series Secret Coders. Fri 7/28, 4 PM, Challengers Comics + Conversation, 1845 N. Western, 773-278-0155, challengerscomics.com.

MOVIES

More at chicagoreader.com/movies

Reena Calm will perform at the live taping of Sorry, Please Continue . . .

Sorry, Please Continue . . .

R Adam Burke, Reena Calm, Shannon Noll, and Dan Sheehan tell comedic

stories at this live taping of the popular titular podcast. It sounds all well and good to bring some of Chicago’s finest talent to share their tales, but the podcast includes three additional comedians who act as a panel of sorts, asking for clarification and making humorous observations during each story. As a performer, it’s hard enough to deal with hecklers who aren’t part of the show format. Witness this ultimate challenge as part of the podcast’s midwestern tour.

Thu 7/27, 8:30 PM, North Bar, 1637 W. North, 773-697-3563, liveatnorthbar.com, $7 in advance, $10 at the door.

VISUAL ARTS Chicago Artists Coalition In “Sweet Creature,” Hatch artist residents Cameron Clayborn, Sydney Shavers, and Anna Showers-Cruser consider the oppressive systems that make up our society, creating a space for discussions about race, illness, queer issues, and the feeling of “otherness” often tied to those communities. Curated by Ariel Gentalen. Through 8/10: Mon-Fri 9 AM-5 PM, Sat noon-6 PM. 217 N. Carpenter, 312-4918887, chicagoartistscoalition.org.

Art Institute of Chicago “By the Light of the Moon” reveals how Okumura Masanobu, Suzuki Harunobu, Kawase Hasui, and other Japanese print artists

depicted nighttime “as a boundary, a presence, or a frame of mind.” The exhibit also demonstrates how prints developed from the 17th to the 20th century. 7/29-10/8: 10:30 AM-5:30 PM. Sun–Wed and Fri-Sat 10:30 AM–5 PM, Thu 10:30 AM–8 PM. 111 S. Michigan, 312-443-3600, artinstituteofchicago.org, $25, $19 students, seniors ($5 discount for Chicago residents), free kids under 14; free for Illinois residents on Thursdays 5-8 PM. Matthew Rachman Gallery In “The Chip,” Hannah Perry Saucier explores time’s distortion of memories through her abstract and complex paintings, creating a visual representation of our brain’s transformations. Opening reception Fri 7/28, 6 PM. Through 9/17. Tue-Sun 11 AM-6 PM. 1659 W. Chicago, 773-2453182, matthewrachmangallery.com.

National Museum of Mexican Art For the Running Street Art Tour, slap on your running shoes and join Miguel Aguilar, aka local artist Kane One, for a public art tour of Pilsen. All abilities are welcome, and feel free to stay after the run for a discussion. Sat 7/29, 10 AM, 1852 W. 19th, 312-738-1503, nationalmuseumofmexicanart.org.

NEW REVIEWS Amnesia Swiss writer-director Barbet Schroeder, best known in the U.S. for his Hollywood thrillers Reversal of Fortune (1990) and Single White Female (1992), delivers a personal film based on the life of his mother, a German expatriate so repulsed by the Holocaust that she completely rejected her native language and culture. The lanky, 70-year-old heroine (Marthe Keller) lives in a dazzling white villa on the Ibizan coast, where she meets and instantly connects with a handsome young club DJ (Max Riemelt) newly arrived from Germany. The year is 1990 and the Berlin Wall has just come down, but the old woman hasn’t set foot in the fatherland since 1936, when she was 16 and emigrated to Switzerland with her mother and the mom’s Jewish lover. Eventually the DJ’s mother (Corinna Kirchhoff) and grandfather (Bruno Ganz) arrive for a visit, and before long they’re all arguing about who’s responsible for the death camps. The title refers to the characters’ relationship with the past but also to a hot dance club (where the beat hits you over the head). In English and subtitled French, German, Spanish, and Russian. —J.R. JONES 96 min. Fri 7/28, 6 PM; Sat 7/29, 5:30 and

LIT & LECTURES

7:45 PM; Sun 7/30, 5:45 PM; Mon 7/31, 8 PM; Wed 8/2, 8:15 PM; and Thu 8/3, 6 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center Detroit Director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal follow their movies about U.S. military intervention in Iraq (The Hurt Locker) and Afghanistan (Zero Dark Thirty) with a story about civil conflict at home: the July 1967 rioting in Detroit and, more specifically, the killing of three black men by police at the city’s Algiers Motel. The retelling of the Algiers incident, based on the testimony of eyewitnesses, takes up the middle third of the narrative, and it’s brutal and intense—rarely has the racist abuse of power been rendered so effectively onscreen.

The filmmakers are less successful at explaining the social context of the riot or portraying the aftermath of the violence, though these shortcomings are mitigated somewhat by the strong performances, particularly from John Boyega as a black security guard whose sense of professional duty overpowers his sense of morality. With Will Poulter, Algee Smith, Hannah Murray, John Krasinski, and Anthony Mackie. —TAL ROSENBERG R, 143 min. For venues visit chicagoreader.com/movies.

Endless Poetry True to the title, this autobiographical fantasia by writerdirector Alejandro Jodorowsky (El Topo), based on his youth and early adulthood in Chile during the 1940s and ’50s, feels interminable. As usual Jodorowsky presents one over-the-top idea after another, until the film feels belabored and tiresome. The actress playing the hero’s mother sings every line in an operatic soprano, the action is frequently interrupted by parades or circus performances, and multiple characters are played by dwarves. The film certainly looks good, thanks to Christopher Doyle’s rich cinematography and the colorful mise-en-scene, and Jodorowsky shows greater sensitivity in his characterizations than ever before. (Adán Jodorowsky, his son, is particularly sweet as the protagonist.)

But if you consider Jodorowsky’s work excessive and mannered, you’ll probably find this to be a slog. In Spanish with subtitles. —BEN SACHS 128 min. µ

The Department of Pharmacology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, located in a large metropolitan area, is seeking a full-time Research Specialist to assist the Toxicology Research Lab develop and design research projects and proposals and serve as a technical research liaison between management, researchers and Quality Assurance teams. As part of the lab’s animal-based model of research studies, perform virus neutralization assays using Biotek Synergy HT, utilize validation systems such as nanoDot to record animal subjects’ exposure to radiation, and analyze the resulting cardiology and radiation dosimetry data.

Analyze and communicate data measured from necropsy organs through individual and ground summary reports to the Study Director. Manage GLP compliant data and data management systems and collaborate with Quality Assurance team and Facility Management to ensure compliance with FDA regulations and SOPs throughout research projects. Prepare results for publication and presentation to study sponsors and ensure protocols are followed regarding sensitive data transmission. Requirements are a Bachelor’s degree or its foreign equivalent in Computer Science, Management Information Systems, Statistics, or related field of study, plus three years of related research experience. Some travel is required. For fullest consideration, please submit a CV, cover letter, and 3 references to the attention of the Search Coordinator via email at ldevaney@uic. edu, or via mail at University of Illinois at Chicago, Department of Pharmacology M/C 868, 835 S. Wolcott Street E403 MSB, Chicago, IL 60612.

The University of Illinois is an Equal Opportunity, Affirmative Action employer. Minorities, women, veterans and individuals with disabilities are encouraged to apply. The University of Illinois may conduct background checks on all job candidates upon acceptance of a contingent offer. Background checks will be performed in compliance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

Never miss a show again.

Forms and Features: Poetry R Comics Poetry Foundation library coordinator Maggie Queeney discusses the oft-ignored interdisciplinary link between words as visuals and visuals as words in connection with the new exhibit “Betwixt and Between: Henry Darger’s Vivian Girls,” curated by Leisa Rundquist. Queeney demonstrates how poetry could elevate a comic strip into a new kind of reading experience. And vice versa. Thu 7/27, 6:30 PM, Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art, 756 N. Milwaukee, 312-243-9088, art.org, $5 donation.

EARLY WARNINGS chicagoreader.com/early Amnesia

JULY 27, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 5

AGENDA B Fri 7/28, 8 PM; Sat 7/29, 3 PM; Sun 7/30, 5:30 PM; Mon 7/31, 7:45 PM; Tue 8/1, 6 PM; Wed 8/2, 8 PM; and Thu 8/3, 6 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center

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Apply today — applications are accepted quarterly. sps.northwestern.edu/cw • 312-503-2579

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Girls Trip Bridesmaids proved that women could be just as smutty onscreen as men, but this fastpaced comedy is ruder, cruder, funnier, and more explicit. Four longtime friends—a gossip blogger (Queen Latifah), an uptight nurse (Jada Pinkett Smith), a sexobsessed motormouth (Tiffany Haddish), and a self-help guru (Regina Hall)—reconnect after five years for a weekend blowout in New Orleans. Nimbly choreographed sequences involve heavy drinking, cat fights, bodily functions, and a novel, sloppy fellatio technique involving grapefruit that Haddish graphically demonstrates. The main concern is female nurturing, with some spirituality thrown in to offset the raunch. Malcolm D. Lee (The Best Man) directed; with musical numbers by Common, Sean Combs, and Mariah Carey. —ANDREA GRONVALL R, 122 min. For venues visit chicagoreader.com/movies.

I, Olga Hepnarová In 1973, a 22-year-old Czech woman named Olga Hepnarová drove a truck down a crowded street in Prague, killing eight people. This austere docudrama by writer-directors Petr Kazda and Tomaš Weinreb reconstructs her life leading up to the attack; fashioned like a case study, it shows Hepnarová engaging in routine activities and at times revealing to others how she feels about her life. The black-and-white cinematography (by Adam Sikora, who has worked with Lech Majewski and Jerzy Skolimowski) is cold and pristine, almost overwhelming the drama, but the directors ground the action in a vivid psychological realism, aided by Michalina Olszanska in a committed lead performance. Given Hepnarová’s history of abuse and self-destructive behavior, this isn’t always easy to watch, but it’s impressively free of sensationalism. In Czech with subtitles. —BEN SACHS 106 min. Fri 7/28, 8 PM, and Thu 8/3, 8:30 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center Landline Remember the old days, when people had to call each other on phones attached to the wall?

This genial comedy, set in 1995, exudes a warm nostalgia for its era, which is defined onscreen mainly through its clunky technology: the young protagonist (Jenny Slate) and her school-age sister (Abby Quinn) learn that their father (John Turturro) is cheating on their mother (Edie Falco) when they find his illicit love letters on a floppy disk. The movie reunites Slate, screenwriter Elisabeth Holm, and director Gillian Robespierre of the cult hit Obvious Child (2014), sort of a pro-choice romantic comedy; like that movie,

The Skyjacker’s Tale

this one benefits from Slate’s ample charm and comic timing, though they’ve been funneled into a more conventional coming-of-age story.

With Jay Duplass. —J.R. JONES R, 93 min. For venues see chicagoreader.com/movies.

man), though incredibly there’s no mention of Philip Glass, probably the most influential film composer since Williams but one whose cold rigor flies in the face of the studios’ emotional manipulation. —J.R. JONES 93 min. Arclight

Restless Creature: Wendy Whelan In 2014, following many months of therapy and surgery to treat a tear in her hip cartilage, Wendy Whelan gave her farewell performance after 30 years with the New York City Ballet. Directors Linda Saffire and Adam Schlesinger document this anguishing journey, stressing, perhaps too often, Whelan’s injury and treatments (including graphic depictions of her surgery) and her tremendous grief at leaving ballet behind (though she wisely, bravely followed her retirement with a modern-dance project, “Restless Creature”). The film offers a trove of insights into the world of dance, including many glimpses of famed choreographers and fellow performers, and reveals a performer as remarkable for her warmth and candor as for her singular artistry. —LAURA MOLZAHN 94 min. Fri 7/28, 2 and 6 PM; Sat 7/29, 7:45 PM; Sun 7/30, 1:15 and 3:15 PM; Mon 7/31, 6 PM; Tue 8/1, 8:30 PM; Wed 8/2, 6 PM; and Thu 8/3, 8 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center

The Skyjacker’s Tale R Canadian filmmaker Jamie Kastner gets the scoop on Ishmael

Score: A Film Music Documentary Documentary maker Matt Schrader bills this as “the definitive look at the craft of film composing,” though he takes a narrow route through the subject, focusing on the symphonic composers who hammer out music cues for big-studio projects. A large cast of industry professionals (nearly all men) sit for talking-head interviews to hail the old masters (Max Steiner, Alfred Newman, Alex North, Bernard Herrmann, Ennio Morricone, Jerry Goldsmith) and single out their most innovative colleagues (Danny Elfman, David Newman, Hans Zimmer). Many speak as if they’re more responsible for the drama onscreen than the directors are, which is usually true because most of the movies they score are terrible. The participants unite in a giant spasm of love for popcorn maestro John Williams (Jaws, Star Wars, Super-

Muslim Ali, still notorious in the Virgin Islands for his role in a 1972 armed attack on a Rockefeller-owned golf course in Saint Croix that left eight people dead.

Then known as Ishmael LaBeet, he was given eight consecutive life sentences, but on New Year’s Eve 1984, under the escort of two air marshals, he hijacked an American Airlines flight from Saint Croix to New York and diverted it to Cuba, where he lives to this day.

Scoring the first interview with Ali since the hijacking, Kastner finds him relaxed and charismatic, labeling himself “a revolutionary” and insisting his confession to the massacre was tortured out of him.

Back in Saint Croix, the filmmaker breaks even more ground when he pries from Legrand Lee, one of the Saint Croix policemen who captured LaBeet back in the 70s, on-camera confirmation that the suspect’s interrogation included a cattle prod and a plastic bag over his head. History provides the final twist: now that the U.S. is normalizing relations with Cuba, Ali may yet face extradition to serve out a U.S. conviction for the skyjacking.

—J.R. JONES 76 min. Fri 7/28-Thu 8/3. Facets Cinematheque SPECIAL EVENTS

Mapping the Obscure: James Fotopoulos Facets Cinematheque presents a weekend retrospective on local experimental filmmaker James Fotopoulos, to include his features Zero (Fri 7/28, 11 PM), Migrating Forms (Sat 7/29, 11 PM), and Back Against the Wall (Sun 7/30, 9 PM). Fotopoulos attends the screenings and takes part in a full-length conversation with White Light Cinema programmer (and Reader staffer) Patrick Friel (Sat 7/29, 9 PM). Facets Cinematheque v

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CITY LIFE

Street View

ò ISA GIALLORENZO

Party animal

“I’M BY NO MEANS a ‘fashion dude,’” says Jeff Wichmann, “but if you’re gonna be a rock star, you’d better kick it up.” As the trumpet player of the battle-scarred “psycho-rock marching band” Environmental Encroachment, he says, “I have two rules. One, never wear shorts onstage. Two, sneakers are for clowns.” A constant in his look is “something animal related: gorilla, bird, snake, deer, or ferret.” His mink fur, a favorite accessory, he named Monk. “It’s dead and so will I be someday. Maybe someone will wear me around their neck—if they hunt me down.” As for the life span of Environmental Encroachment, he says: “It’s just one big freaky art experiment that will be around when the aliens take over.” The band plays Phyllis’ Musical Inn (1800 W. Division) on Friday, July 28, at 8:15 and 10:15 PM. “It’ll get crazy,” Wichmann says. “Come on by.” —ISA GIALLORENZO See more Chicago street style on Giallorenzo’s blog chicagolooks.blogspot.com.

SURE THINGS Ñ

Keep up to date on the go at chicagoreader. com/agenda.

SUNDAY 30

* Wi cker Pa rk Fest Guided by Voices, Doomtree, Sales, Mattson, Air Credits, and Ovlov headline this musiccentric festival. Listen while perusing the sculptures on display or playing a giant game of Battleship. Noon-10 PM, Milwaukee between North and Paulina, wickerparkbucktown.com. F

THURSDAY 27

FRIDAY 28

( Fiesta del Sol The Pilsen Neighbors Community Council presents a weekend of art, kid-friendly activities, and live music. This year’s edition includes a health booth providing info on maintaining healthy habits. 11 AM-11 PM, 1400 W. Cermak, fiestadelsol. org. F

% Tour de Fat The traveling tour, sponsored

by New Belgium Brewery, features a costumed bike parade, the famous carfor-bike swap, circus performers, and music from the Roots, not to mention tons and tons of beer.

4-9 PM, Northerly Island, 11400 S. Lynn White, chicagoparkdistrict.com. F

MONDAY 31

TUESDAY 1

WEDNESDAY 2

| The Newberry Book Fair Rummage through more than 120,000 novels, many priced under $3, at this annual usedbook bash. If reading isn’t your thing, try it! Or dig around plenty of collectibles, records, and movies to take home. Noon-8 PM, 60 W. Walton, newberry.org. F

( I Am Jazz Reading The Human Rights Campaign, Lurie Children’s Hospital, and Women & Children First present a reading of Jazz Jennings’s I Am Jazz—the story of a young transgender girl’s quest for self-acceptance.

6:30-8 PM, Center on Halsted, 3656 N. Halsted, centeronhalsted.org, $10 suggested donation.

M Chicago Underground Comedy A benchmark for local stand-up comics, this curated weekly showcase features the best locals and the occasional ex-pat (think the likes of T.J. Miller, Hannibal Buress, Cameron Esposito, or John Mulaney). 9:30 PM, Beat Kitchen, 2100 W. Belmont, 773-281-4444, beatkitchen.com, $5.

SATURDAY 29

J Monkey Wrench Clickhole’s Dan David, Comedy Central’s Jamie Loftus, and Chapo Trap House’s Matt Christman headline an evening of comedy with a leftist spin to benefit the Democratic Socialists of America. So, essentially, a Venmo to Bernie Sanders. 9 PM, Elastic, 3429 W. Diversey, 773-772-3616, elasticrevolution.com, $10.

JULY 27, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 7

Read Ben Joravsky’s columns throughout the week at chicagoreader.com.

CITY LIFE Rendering of the renovated Navy Pier.

The attraction reportedly received $55 million in diverted TIF funds. ò ADRIAN SMITH + GORDON GILL ARCHITECTURE

POLITICS

TIF calculator

Chicago’s TIFs will generate a record $561 million this tax year.

Which means more money for the mayor to sneakily divert into vanity projects like Navy Pier.

By BEN JORAVSKY

I

f you want to know why Mayor Rahm Emanuel will never give up his beloved tax increment financing scam without kicking and screaming, consider these stories that broke back-to-back just last week.

On July 20, Cook County clerk David Orr released his annual TIF audit, showing that the program across 145 districts will collect a record $561 million dollars this tax year—$100 million more than last year. Obviously, this goose is stilling laying golden eggs.

And then on July 21, the Better Government Association and Crain’s released a bombshell investigation into a couple of South Loop TIF districts that shows the mayor really is free to spend that money any way he wants.

To paraphrase Dean Wormer from Animal House: easy money and no oversight is no way for a city to go through life. Particularly a city as corrupt as Chicago.

A TIF, remember, is effectively a surcharge added to your property tax bill. Instead of going to schools, parks, police, etc, the money

8 CHICAGO READER - JULY 27, 2017

is diverted to bank accounts largely controlled by the mayor, leaving the rest of us to make up for the difference.

In the case of South Loop TIF deals, the mayor swore up and down he was spending $55 million in TIF dollars on the arena/hotel project at 22nd and Michigan. But thanks to Crain’s and the BGA, we now know the money was diverted to pay for Navy Pier renovations.

So it’s a diversion of a diversion. Impressive!

I’m not sure Mayor Daley the Younger even tried that—and he pioneered this scam.

Got to tip my hat to John Chase and Danny Ecker, the two reporters who put this story together. I hammered the hell out of the mayor for wasting property tax dollars on that hotel/ arena vanity project, especially since much of the money was diverted from our nearly bankrupt schools. Turns out it was even worse than I thought—a scheme worthy of a John Grisham novel.

In 2014, the city sent $55 million to bank accounts controlled by the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, the agency known

as McPier that oversees McCormick Place and Navy Pier. And MPEA immediately sent the money to Navy Pier.

As Reader readers know, the TIF program is supposed to subsidize development in blighted neighborhoods. I can think of dozens of Chicago neighborhoods (Austin, Englewood, Roseland, etc) far more deserving of TIF dollars than Navy Pier—which is neither poor nor a neighborhood. MPEA CEO Lori Healey and Department of Planning and Development commissioner David Reifman responded in a joint statement four days after the investigation was published that “no TIF funds were diverted to Navy Pier”; they argued unreassuringly that what looked like one of Chicago’s top tourist attractions getting dollars intended for struggling areas of the city was merely business as usual.

Surprisingly, state and city officials were up front about the apparent switcheroo—at least in the e-mails they wrote to each other. James Reilly, the former CEO of MPEA—its board is appointed in equal parts by the mayor and the governor—acknowledged the unorthodox transaction in a July 12, 2013, e-mail, one of many Chase and Ecker secured via Freedom of Information Act request: “There is a somewhat complicated series of cash flow issues that we need to get a handle on between the City, MPEA and [Navy Pier] with regard to the Tiff [sic] funds that will come from the City to MPEA to reimburse MPEA for the purchase of the land for the [hotel and basketball arena] which in turn will enable MPEA to grant $55M to [Navy Pier] for its reconstruction project.”

“I don’t have any doubt that this can be worked out. . . . OK?” Man, only in Chicago would this even be remotely OK. Wait, there’s more. In October 2014, Richard Oldshue, MPEA’s chief financial officer, sent the following message in an e-mail to Mark Jarmer, an aide to Illinois house speaker Michael Madigan: “None of this TIF money comes to MPEA as incentive or otherwise. The City is aggregating balances from various existing [TIF] districts as they become available to transfer funds to MPEA which we transfer in full to [Navy Pier]. We don’t keep any.”

Got that? Just in case you don’t, Oldshue spells it out even more explicitly: “We don’t actually get any funding.”

That’s what President Nixon might call a smoking gun. Hey, maybe we can impeach Rahm!

The revelations have upset Third Ward alderman Pat Dowell—as well they should. The hotel and arena are being built in her ward. For the better part of the last few years, Dowell’s been the public face of the project, assuring everyone it needed the $55 million subsidy to be built. Now, of course, she sees that the hotel and arena were just a cover to funnel the money to Navy Pier. Let this be a cautionary tale to any politician who thinks it’s a good idea to trust Mayor Rahm.

“This is outrageous,” Dowell told the SunTimes after the story broke. “I’m really furious about that, because I worked in good faith with these people. It’s a potential stain on me.

I have a pristine reputation. I do not like being put in the middle of something like this.”

To paraphrase Dean Wormer from Animal House: easy money and no oversight is no way for a city to go through life. Particularly a city as corrupt as Chicago.

Dowell says she’ll insist the City Council hold hearings on the deal. That would be helpful—as the council never actually held a hearing on whether to spend the $55 million in the first place. In July 2013, two weeks after Reilly wrote the aforementioned e-mail, Emanuel hammered the deal through on a voice vote—most aldermen didn’t know about it until after the vote was taken. We now know why the mayor wanted to keep it a secret.

Activists like Amisha Patel of the Grassroots Collaborative, a coalition of labor and community groups, say MPEA should immediately send the $55 million back to the city. I’d take it a step further: Send all $561 million in this year’s TIF tax to the schools, or just return it to taxpayers who paid it in the first place.

At least that way we can be sure that Mayor Rahm won’t dump our hard-earned property tax dollars into the lake. v

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D E N T A L S A L O N . C O M JULY 27, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 9

CITY LIFE Some Blue Cart Residential Recycling Program participants will receive an “oops tag” on their carts if the contents include nonrecyclables. ò DEPARTMENT OF STREETS AND SANITATION

RECYCLING

Waste management

The truth about what happens when you recycle the wrong stuff in Chicago

By MAYA DUKMASOVA

H

ere’s the deal: Do not put plastic bags, food, wood, clothing, cords, hoses, propane tanks, or construction waste into your recycling cart.

And this warning goes out to my neighbors: Don’t put cat litter in there either!

In an attempt to address confusion about what can and can’t be recycled, the Chicago Department of Streets and Sanitation, in collaboration with the nonprofit Recycling Partnership, is testing a new, more streamlined public information campaign in hopes of boosting the city’s dismal recycling rate; less than 10 percent of Chicago’s waste is currently diverted from landfills. In a pilot program rolled out along several routes on the south and southwest sides, which have some of the lowest recycling rates in the city, Blue

10 CHICAGO READER - JULY 27, 2017

Cart Residential Recycling Program participants are receiving mailers with instructions on proper recycling and “oops tags” on their carts if items that can’t be recycled are discovered by haulers. The contents of the contaminated cart will be picked up by garbage collectors and sent to the landfill instead of one of the area’s three recycling facilities.

Last year, some of the 600,000 residents participating in the Blue Cart program (single-family homes and buildings with four or fewer units) began to see stickers on their carts notifying them of the presence of nonrecyclable contaminants. The most common offenders were plastic bags, which can’t be recycled because they tangle and break sorting-plant machinery and can injure recycling facility workers who

spend their ten-and-a-half-hour shifts handsorting refuse on fast-moving conveyor belts. But the messaging on the stickers has been confusing and their use inconsistent.

A third of the city’s blue carts are hauled off by municipal workers. The other twothirds of the routes are split between the private haulers Waste Management and Sims Recycling Solutions. While the city workers used orange stickers, Waste Management sometimes opted for white-and-green stickers that claimed, “One contaminated cart can ruin an entire truckload of recyclables, which may wind up in the landfill instead of being recycled.”

After seeing DNAinfo’s story on the new stickers rolled out to enforce the city’s change in January 2016 from bagged to bagless recycling, and the detailed list of the stuff that, it turns out, can’t be recycled (paper coffee cups? pizza boxes?) my mind flooded with questions and hypotheticals: What if the plastic bag is so low down in the cart that the haulers don’t notice it and dump the whole load into the recycling truck?

Would that truck wind up at the landfill? How is it possible to check every truck to make sure they’re all free of the presence of even a single Styrofoam cup?

Despite my neighbors’ persistent disposal of plastic bags, Styrofoam, and, yes, cat litter into the building’s blue carts, the recycling has continued to be collected and we’ve never received a violation sticker.

That means our contaminated recyclables have been sorted at the facility, despite the inconvenience, cost, and potential danger to the workers—right? And what if a sticker were to appear? Does that mean we’d have to sort through the blue cart and get rid of the contaminants ourselves before the contents could be recycled? It was never clear what Waste Management meant when it said the entire cart would be landfill-bound garbage if contaminants were discovered.

It turns out that when you get a dreaded sticker or tag, your blue cart will be picked up by the garbage collectors—not the recycling haulers—on the next collection day. So removing contaminants in a blue cart that’s been stickered won’t reverse the fate of those

recyclables. Once the haulers remove the tag from the blue cart, you can try to do better with the next load. The same is true of the routes on which the “oops tag” pilot program is active—the city’s just trying to convey a clearer message with a friendlier tone, relying on a picture of a little girl face-palming and illustrations of nonrecyclables beside check boxes so drivers can let residents know what they did wrong. There’s even a thankyou message on the back of the tag.

“We’re not punitive right now, in fact we’re trying to be encouraging,” says Sara McGann, director of public affairs for Streets and San. “We want to reinforce the basics and what people need to do to recycle properly.”

If you don’t get a sticker or an oops tag, you can assume your blue cart’s contents are getting to the recycling sorting plant, even if there’s a contaminant in there.

Waste Management’s claims about entire truckloads of recyclables ending up in the landfill turned out to be more of a scare tactic. “I can’t verify if any [truckload] was ever diverted for contamination,” says Lisa Disbrow, a spokesperson for the company.

“This is all about trying to educate the residents and get them to stop and think before they put it in their cart.”

But ultimately, the extensive lists of contaminants and the city’s bungled education campaign may have resulted in a general aversion to recycling. Since the Blue Cart program was fully implemented in 2014, every one of the city’s six Streets and San collection zones has seen a drop in the percentage of recycled waste. (This number is calculated by the percentage of each zone’s overall waste tonnage that’s taken to a recycling plant rather than a landfill. Streets and San doesn’t track recycling participation on a residence-by-residence basis.) The zone on the northeast side, which recycles more of its waste than any other part of town, has dropped to 17.9 percent from 19.3 percent in 2014; the zone on the midsouth side, which recycles the least, has declined to 4.6 percent from 5.7 percent in 2014.

This contributes to the city’s declining recycling rate as a whole, which has fallen to just below 10 percent from 11 percent in 2014.

By comparison, New York City diverts about 30 percent of its waste away from the landfill through recycling and compost; Los Angeles and San Francisco each boast an 80 percent diversion rate. Seattle is at 60 percent. The nationwide average municipal recycling rate is about 35 percent.

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CITY LIFE Are Chicagoans simply less willing to recycle as compared to other Americans? The disparity in rates can more likely be traced to the youth of the city’s comprehensive recycling program. Though Chicago’s first recycling ordinance was passed in 1993, it suffered from uneven implementation for more than two decades. The city has had uniform recycling coverage for smaller buildings only since 2014. And lest you think Blue Cart participants are solely to blame for Chicago’s poor recycling track record, consider that twice as much waste comes from large residential and commercial buildings than from Blue Cart homes. Instead, owners and managers of larger buildings are required by city ordinance to provide recycling services to their tenants and contract with private haulers for pickup. This breaks up the city into an intricate network of private waste management fiefdoms, each with its own approach to educating residents and enforcing recycling rules. The cartel of companies who haul trash and recyclables away has mounted powerful resistance to attempts to consoli-

date and simplify the city’s waste collection in the past.

The failure of landlords of large buildings to provide adequate recycling services to commercial and residential tenants is supposed to be penalized, but in the past the rules have rarely been enforced, and the fine of no more than $100 was hardly threatening. Officials have only gotten serious about enforcing larger building recycling requirements this year, with a strengthened recycling ordinance. As of January, the penalties have increased to up to $1,000 for a first offense, such as the failure to provide recycling for tenants or the presence of contaminants in building recycling carts.

The city is encouraging building tenants to report landlords’ noncompliance by calling 311. Says McGann of Streets and San: “Our goal is to work with the property owner so they learn how to comply with the ordinance, get the private hauler there, educate their residents about the recycling.” v

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MEGAN STIELSTRA, AS SEEN THROUGH THE PEOPLE SHE ADMIRES The rising literary star talks shop with fellow writer pal Samantha Irby. Plus, Stielstra’s family and friends reflect on her work— and the gratifying (and sometimes thorny) experience of being a subject of her writing.

By AIMEE LEVITT ò DANIEL FISHEL

M

egan Stielstra’s essays are ostensibly about herself: she’s always the main character and narrator. But Stielstra’s work is just as much about the people she loves and admires; you can tell just as much about her through what she says about others as she does about herself.

Over Fourth of July weekend, Stielstra went to Kalamazoo, Michigan, to visit her friend and fellow essayist Samantha Irby. Stielstra and Irby first met while performing in Chicago’s live-lit scene and have seen their careers develop almost simultaneously. Their first collections of personal essays, Irby’s Meaty and Stielstra’s Once I Was Cool, were published by Curbside Splendor in fall 2013 and spring 2014, respectively, and won acclaim from readers and critics for the way the authors wrote about their real lives and attendant disasters (sexual, financial, intestinal) with frankness and humor.

Their second essay collections are also being released in close proximity to each other—but this time with national

12 CHICAGO READER - JULY 27, 2017

publishers, and all the book tours and press coverage that implies. Irby’s We Are Never Meeting in Real Life (Vintage) came out in May to near-universal praise and a spot on the New York Times best-seller list. Stielstra’s The Wrong Way to Save Your Life (Harper Perennial) is out August 1; early reviews have advised that it’s worth waiting for.

Between books, a number of things have changed in their lives. Irby went from living in Rogers Park, working as a receptionist in an animal hospital, and dating men to marrying a woman, Kirsten Jennings (known in her essays as Mavis), and moving with her to Kalamazoo. She’s also been spending time in LA, where she’s working with Abbi Jacobson of Broad City and Jessi Klein, head writer of Inside Amy Schumer, on developing Meaty into a TV series for FX. Stielstra’s life changes have been less dramatic—she still lives with her husband, Christopher Jobson, and nine-year-old son, Caleb, but in an apartment near the beach in Rogers Park, and she still teaches, but at Northwestern instead of Columbia College—and she

now also writes op-eds for the New York Times. (A nasty reader comment on one of them inspired the title of her new book.)

Stielstra and Irby called in from Kalamazoo to let us eavesdrop on their conversation about publishing and writing and how they’re not at all the same, about where life and storytelling overlap.

Megan Stielstra: So how do you decide what you put on social media, or what turns into an essay, or what’s just something you tell out loud?

Samantha Irby: Well, this is the conundrum currently, being one of the last few people on earth with a fucking blog. It’s like, what goes on the stupid thing I write for free and make no money off of, versus what do I save to potentially go in a book? My agent wanted two months ago for me to start thinking about doing another book. And I’m like, “Damn, already?” And he’s like, “Well, listen, you took too long with the second one.”

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Megan Stielstra; Samatntha Irby ò COURTESY THE AUTHOR; EVA BLUE

How long did it take you to write the second one?

Well, it just seems to me like printing a book called Everything Is Garbage prior to November 2016 was just incredibly profound.

It took, like, two years.

You had some other stuff going on, though.

Yeah, I did, but you know they don’t care about that, right? It is nice to have lots of things happening, except that person A that you have a thing happening with does not give a shit about your deadline for person B, and person B, even though they know they’ve been bumped to second, really doesn’t give a shit about this thing you decided to do with person C, who you probably shouldn’t have started doing a thing with anyway.

Thanks for the breakdown.

Yeah. It’s cool to have so many things going right. Like, I have a book and I have my dumb blog, and then I’m writing book reviews for Marie Claire, and then I’m working on this TV show. I’m like, none of those people care about the deadlines for the other people—as they shouldn’t. The person I usually leave by the wayside is myself, right?

I haven’t written my blog in forever, and my thing I need to get together for the next book pitch I haven’t even started thinking about.

Can we do that right now?

Yeah.

OK, great.

I have a potential title but I don’t want to say it. One, because I’m worried someone steals it; but two, I don’t know if this happens to you, but the book that I just put out does not have the title that I wanted or that I originally thought it should have. I wanted to call it Everything Is Garbage, which is still true.

Yeah. I don’t think they thought people would buy it, and maybe not. And I can’t really say shit because people did buy We Are Never Meeting in Real Life, so . . .

I think you could have called that book like, I don’t know, the symbol of Prince, not even a name, and we all would have bought it.

There are many differences between a small press and a large press, and one of them is there is a team of people who get a vote on everything. Which on the one hand is like, “all right, this is dope,” right? Because the chance that I am going to embarrass myself on a national scale are decreased greatly by having to run this past an editor, copy editor, a lawyer, a style person, a marketing person. There are all these people that have to look at it and give it the OK before it hits the streets. And then it’s like, “Phew, I wouldn’t have caught all that. I wouldn’t have caught this part. I definitely would have gotten sued about this thing.” You know so, like, it’s good.

But on the other hand, I have to learn that I cannot get married to my ideas. Things that I feel pretty confident about, over this process, I sort of turned everything in with a question mark like, “Here’s this thing I wrote? I think this should go in the book?”

Where before it was like, “Here, take all this trash, put it together.”

One of the pieces in the first book I turned in two days before it went to print. So I told that story at a meeting and I could feel them all having a collective heart attack. I felt so strongly about that title, but I learned quickly that . . . I’m a person who can see that I do not have a marketing degree, I have not worked in publishing. I always defer to the experts. I know I shouldn’t say it was a hard lesson, but I learned very early on that unless I really wanted to fight about it, I should kind of have a relaxed attitude about what I wanted.

you don’t have to worry then about, I don’t know, my dad in Alaska or my ex in New York or my kid 25 years in the future reading it, because it just exists in this moment with this audience.

Yeah. I think for me—probably for you, too—I definitely just write things with the punch line in mind, or where it landed with the audience in mind, and you can’t write for a book like that. You have to have a point, and you gotta get to it, and you gotta support it. I also had the benefit of fixing it onstage. This didn’t hit as well as I thought it would, so now I’m gonna say a little extra or give a little context, or insert a completely different story, off the cuff, in the middle of this story.

Well, because you can tell when you’re on the mike, the audience is right there, and if you’re in the middle of it and somebody gets out and checks their phone, whether or not they’re a dick is irrelevant. The point is, I watched that, so how does that affect how I need to go back in?

That for me is the hardest thing about writing these books now, that I don’t get to see how it plays and sticks it for the next time. I don’t see which passage drags, or there’s no way to stop mid-essay and confront someone who looks like they’re not into it and say, “What would you like, sir? Should I curse less? Should I curse more? Should I get louder?” You just have to trust. And I really like to change everything all the time. I don’t read my things after they’re done anymore because I’ll just keep changing them. I will finish something and then not turn it in for a week even though my editor’s like, “Give it to me!” Because I need a lot of time just to read it out loud and change. When live lit became a big thing [a Chicago audience] sort of knew that’s how it worked, that they might hear the same story in a different way, or that their laughter sort of drives the piece. And on the page, you just gotta trust that’s your best thing. I’m immediately embarrassed by everything I’ve ever written.

What’s the word when you’re psychic? Prescient?

Prescient? No, is that it? This interview’s gonna be called “Two dumb dummies who are dumb.” Now they know how much I rely on thesaurus.com.

I think a lot of it comes, too, from how we were making work for so long in Chicago. You know, you’re doing these live shows—and I know both of our work started with a lot of that—and sometimes you’re writing it the day before or the hour before, but

That’s been the hardest thing for me with this process with working with a larger publisher, is the wait from filing the final manuscript to when it finally hits shelves. My book isn’t out for another month yet, and so I . . .

J

JULY 27, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 13

Megan Stielstra Tue 8/1, 7 PM, Women & Children First, 5233 N. Clark, 773-769-9299, womenandchildrenfirst.com.

continued from 13 Are you already over it? I’m already over this one, like this is old.

Well, I turned it in November 1, and so I just started doing interviews, and I don’t even remember what I said.

People will quote specific things at me and just sort of wait for me to say something, and I’m like, “Did I write—is that mine?”

Yeah, yeah.

Then they’re like, “Oh, you don’t even know your own writing?” and I’m like, “Yeah, no, I don’t remember every line I’ve ever written.” You know, it sounds like something I’ve written, but then I feel like I read other people’s stuff and I’m like, “Did she steal that from me?” And like, no, she didn’t, but I don’t remember things I’ve written.

Which is great, their books are great, it makes me feel good that I can sort of craft similar sentences, but also just, “Yeah, I don’t know my own stuff, huh?” Like once I’m done with it, I’m done. And you’re about to go through that too, where people are like, “on page 73 you said,” and then you’re like, “I did?”

It already happened. My dad called me after I sent him a galley.

Oh, I do not have this particular torture in life.

I’m really lucky in that he and I have a really great relationship, so his opinion really matters to me. And the first thing he said was, “Is there still time to change things?” And I was like, “Fuck, what did I do? What did I do?” And I’m like, already I went too hard at something or I brought up some kind of memory that was difficult for him, and he’s been 100 percent supportive of my work, so this is just a huge thing. And he said, “Well, on page 40 you have me carrying the wrong gun. That is not the kind of gun that I would’ve used on a sheep hunt, I would’ve used it in a

14 CHICAGO READER - JULY 27, 2017

blah blah blah.” And then we had this whole conversation about the details being important.

One way to think about it was if I was writing this in fiction—if I was writing a fictional piece from the point of view of a hunter—that detail would really matter to me. But this is from my point of view, which is a woman who lives in the city of Chicago and never hunts imagining her father on a mountain hunting, and the situation under which I was imagining him was during a school shooting, so there was a lot of duress and so I wouldn’t have had the details right. So I called him back and I was like, “Look, I will change that gun, because I wrote this essay about how much I love you and don’t want you to read it and wince every time you get to it. But I am right. I am right because I am being true to my memory of it.”

I feel like I have an unspoken pact with most of the people in my life who end up in my work that like, “If you are looking for this to be a complete factual recounting of something that happened, you’re not gonna get it.” I cannot tell the story exactly how it happened. It’s boring, it happened over a long period of time; I just want to get to the funny parts of it, I want to get the jokes off. If you want me to make it not about you, we could do that, but if you’re going to tell me that your shirt was red and I said it was pink, you and I are gonna have a hard time being together.

Kirsten ends up sort of the butt of a lot of my jokes. But she gets it. I’m like, “You knew what you were getting into, man. I know you didn’t have a $37 jar of artisanal pickles on you, but you gotta let me make this joke because you could’ve.” You know, this part did happen and this detail did not, but this detail is what makes it funny and work.

Well, I think the honest truth, what storytelling is, you add the extra ten feet that the hero had to jump. And you’re never like, “I was at a party last night and there were four people and we had a Zima!” Like, “There were 300 people there and we all wound up naked in the pool!” And that’s true. So when I think about writing

creative nonfiction like that—being true to the way it was told and things my mom said at the time—all of that matters.

I feel like if the point of a piece is how I felt during the piece, then the details are less important. You know, like exactly where I was standing or exactly what I was wearing or what song was on the radio are less important. Is it funnier to say that this song was on the radio? Then that’s what I’m gonna say. You know, does it move the story along to say that it happened in the summer rather than late summer, early fall? Then that’s what I’m gonna say. I don’t have very many people who will call and be like, “Yo, that’s not how it was,” which is . . . I’m very grateful.

Well, what’s interesting too is that all those people who call have different memories of what went down, right? Like, based on where they were at. When I was going through a lot of the stuff for this book, my dad would have one version of the story and my mom would have another, and I would have a third.

And yours is the one that counts, because you’re writing it. They can write their own book.

Right. And the people who will write you—OK, let’s just bitch for a minute—the people who will write you and be like, “That is not what you should’ve said in your essay. You should have said ‘blah-blah blah-blah.’” Like some of the stuff I’ve done for the Times, particularly the political stuff, will be like, “I do not like the thing that you said about Rahm Emanuel. You should have said ‘blah-blah blah-blah,’” and then I’ll write back, “That sounds like a great op-ed. You should write that op-ed. I wrote the op-ed on my opinion, which is what I stand for in this instance.”

Yeah, if the New York Times wants to know what you think they’ll ask you.

I need you to follow me around and be my guts sometimes.

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I wrote an op-ed for the Times, and the only thing I got—because mine was about myself and burning through money—was fan mail from women that were like, “Thank you for writing that, that was so funny,” and I got e-mails from men who were like, “I know you said you don’t want to save money, but here’s how you can.” And I was like, “Well, OK, thanks, stranger, for telling me your unsolicited opinion on what to do with my money.”

“ S O M E T I M E S YO U SIT THERE LIKE,

Real quick: what you just said about the women writing you to say thank you. Can we just real quick say thank you to those women?

‘WHY AM I DOING

Thank you everyone who has ever sent me an encouraging e-mail.

T H I S ? I WA N T T O

Yeah, thank you from me too. Because sometimes you sit there like, “Why am I doing this? I want to throw my laptop into the sea.” And it’s always in those moments that somebody reaches out to you and says the one little thing. So please write if there’s someone whose work moves you. I’m trying to be better about that, to write the writers and the artists that move me.

THROW MY LAP TOP I N T O T H E S E A .’ ” —Megan Stielstra

I hate tweeting and am terrible at it, but it’s a good way to quickly tell someone like, “I love what you do. Thank you for what you do.”

Yeah.

I did a reading in New York last month, and this woman comes up to the table during the signing part and she’s like, “I’m really happy to meet you. I run a support group for women with bowel diseases, and a couple of us came tonight to meet you and thank you for talking about poop all the time.” And that was so meaningful and great. To me, that’s the kind of stuff that makes it worth it in the face of people who are like, “This is trash.” And I’m like, “Well, OK, but this woman and her IBD support group appreciate what I do, so I’m gonna keep on doing it.” But I am lucky in that I don’t get a lot of hate mail. If anything, I’ll get advice mail, which is fine. But like, no straight-up “You’re an idiot.”

But I also have Twitter set up so I can only see messages from people I follow, and I don’t check my “other” Facebook inbox because that’s the kind of stuff that doesn’t roll off as quickly. I’ll get somebody else’s voice banging around my brain for way too long and then that makes me hesitant about things, and I don’t ever want to feel that. So I don’t read reviews or anything, I don’t seek it out. The people who find me, then great—I appreciate their messages. So far no one has found me to yell at me, but we’ll see. Life is long.

When I’m gonna perform a thing, that doesn’t enter my head.

Oh, no, never, because people never come up and say shit to your face.

Yeah.

I think maybe the most—“controversial” isn’t even the word—the thing that drew the most ire, I wrote this piece about Mad Men once and how there were no black people on it, and I read it at the [Paper] Machete. I don’t think I ever published it anywhere,

but there were definitely a lot of white men in the room who were . . . who could’ve been pissed off about that. But nobody came up and said anything to me. I would have never feared that someone would roll up on me and be like, “That thing you wrote sucked.” First of all, untrue. Second, I mean, the computer-emboldened people— And the anonymity.

Yeah. I have never, ever once worried that something I was saying was gonna get . . . it’s like I’d just turn to someone I know and be like, “Did you hear what this guy said to me?” But when writing things, I’m like, “Ooh, where’s this gonna be published again?”

Yep. “Who’s gonna see it?” And then, I’m in a collection coming out this fall. It’s called Nasty Women, and [Kate Harding, the editor] reached out to me and was like, “We’d like for you to write something up.” Like, girl, I don’t mind a little politics, especially not now. You’re not gonna get me on the record saying shit. So that was that, and they came back and were like, “Come on, we need somebody with something funny.” And I was like, “I don’t have anything funny to say. People are dying in the streets.” So I told them I don’t have anything, and they were like, “Come on, just do it.” So then I began thinking about my experience living in a red state in this sort of post-Trump America. And that felt fine because I was just sort of writing about me and my reaction to it, but I do not need the drama that you get for writing about politics. I feel like when we were talking about political things or sociopolitical things, you need to be coming from an educated background, and

I like to watch Rachel Maddow and shit, but I did not pay attention in history and I only went to high school. So I feel like there are people who actually study this and are well-read and educated [who] should be talking about it. Let me keep making butt jokes and whatever else I write while the smart people . . . I know you’re gonna say “you’re smart,” and thank you, but . . .

I was gonna say something more like, “Shut the fuck up.” Obviously I’ve read so much of your work, and I’ve also read so much about your work. And would you not categorize some of the things you write about as political?

I mean, I do think my existence is political. I feel like repping for being a person on the margins and sort of talking about it is a political thing. I like talking about specific policies. I think the government should pay for things and just help people who need it—you know, roses and sunshine and rainbows. I mean, not really, but like, I’m like a literal rainbow.

Yes, a literal rainbow.

But then if you were like, “Well, what about this policy? What about this statute?” I’d be like, “Uhh, I don’t know.” So I am political in that I am a queer black person with some disabilities, some mental health problems—not problems, issues I’m dealing with—who is processing those out loud and on the page and sort of trying to be useful to other people in those situations. Sometimes it’s just enough to have my words reach someone who doesn’t know many people like me.

I feel like I’m useful in that way, my life is political in that way, but if you were like, “Talk to me about the good and bad parts in the health care bill,” I’d be like, “The part where they want to take it away is bad. The parts where people get coverage is good.”

I think there’s some connection with those two things. I think of all the people who I’ve heard, both in how they review your work and how they’re talking about your work on social media or how they’re standing in big, huge, long lines to your book signing, or standing in a big line in order to have five minutes with you or to have you sign their various body parts—which is my favorite part of Instagram, Sam signing people’s body parts—but they’re all talking about how your work gives them permission to be more open about their own life. And I think that’s such a profound truth about what you do. Even the wildly hilarious work is still giving us the permission to tell our own stories, and I think that that connects the politics. But to hear, “Hey, here’s something that I’m going through, and here’s a way that my body lives in this world and how it doesn’t roll the way that yours rolls.”

Yeah.

Thirteen dudes locked in a room deciding health care. Right, like to hear those stories not just from you but from multiple people who sit down to make work after reading yours.

That was very nice of you to say.

Thank you, that’s very true, and not in a “I’m exaggerating my hero’s jump.” It’s just true. v

JULY 27, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 15

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16 CHICAGO READER - JULY 27, 2017

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he problem with writing a profile of Megan Stielstra is that she’s already done most of the work herself. Once you read her two essay collections, Once I Was Cool (Curbside Splendor) and The Wrong Way to Save Your Life (Harper Perennial), you’ll know where she was born (Alma, Michigan), what her parents were like (kind, loving, and supportive, even after the divorce), her hopes (love, understanding, great writing), her fears (the mortgage, her father’s death, the bigotry and violence that emerged with the rise of Donald Trump), her interests (books, theater), her crushes (Pete, Todd, Dave) and love affairs (the college boyfriend who followed her to Italy, the future husband who followed her to Prague), the most dramatic events of her life (like the time her apartment building almost burned down), and the more mundane ones (like the slow, inexorable process of losing a job that she loved).

Stielstra’s essays aren’t just about herself, though—they’re also populated by her family and a constellation of longtime friends, plus what appears to be the world’s greatest Realtor. She writes about all these people with the same honesty and scrutiny she applies to herself, but also with deep love and admiration. We asked some of them what it was like to be a character in her stories. Here’s what they told us.

Lott Hill, Stielstra’s friend and former boss who was ordained on the Internet to marry Stielstra and her husband; he and his husband are helping them raise their son

Stephen Hnatow, Stielstra’s Realtor

Caleb, Stielstra’s son

I think people go into real estate for two different reasons. Some become a Realtor because they continually transition in and out of professions. They think that they can make money easily. And it’s definitely possible to make money in this industry! I think the best brokers are those who go into this profession with the intention of service, though.

So when I hear and read an essay written about me by a past client that is being published into a book, I can’t help but giggle. It’s beyond the best client testimonial one could ever receive, no? It’s nice to know that a period in time a couple years ago still has a profound effect on someone whom I grew to admire and love. I was unaware of any financial hardships outside of the short sale process. I prefer not to involve myself in my clients’ personal lives so I can focus on the task at hand objectively.

So on days when I want to murder myself with alcohol, after an Annette Bening in American Beauty kinda day where I find myself cleaning up after people who aren’t my children, I will remember moments like this when I was appreciated on this large of a scale. That this hard work that is often never-ending with zero days off means something to someone. Because over the years, it’s easy to forget that it’s not about you.

I love knowing that my mom writes about me because it means she loves me, she probably writes about that too.

But I don’t like it when she gets up so early in the morning. She needs to stay asleep so she’s healthy. Also: there’s no right or wrong way to save your life.

Dia Penning, Stielstra’s coworker at the Equity Collective and the mother of her nephew Megan Stielstra is my best friend. Which means that we often wear the same dresses from Nordstrom Rack. In fact, I’ve been known to buy two just in case she can’t find it at the one in Chicago (I live in Oakland, California.) We are sisters that ended up in the wombs of two different moms, seeded by two different dads; but sisters, nonetheless. For close to 25 years, she has been writing about our relationship, how it affects her growth, my growth, our kids, our understanding of race, local and national politics, teaching and learning, and things as basic as where to buy bras.

Seeing our relationship reflected on the page can be confusing. Since two people experience things in different ways, we have memories that overlap but are not identical. When I talk to her about my fears, it’s always halting and filled with self-doubt; I cry a lot, and cuss a lot. In her world—I am strong, I have the answers, I ask questions so that others can find out about themselves. Megan writes autobiographical fiction—there are sometimes memories that never happen, but become part of our story anyway. I have moments where I have to ask, Did that really happen? Do I really take on the world in all the ways she believes I do? Am I that patient? Am I as good of a mom as she thinks I am? Can I be the puddle inside and still be the person she sees me as? And, the way she sees me . . . in her mind I am six feet tall, I wear stilettos, I dance on pool tables, I can disarm people with my eyebrows, and I do it all with flawless makeup and tattooed shirtsleeves. Megan makes me look GOOD. Honestly, I am happy to have her version, made-up or 100 percent real. Megan makes me a better version of myself. Actually, she makes everyone a better version of themselves. The way she develops characters takes the essential kindness of that human being. She uses lessons that we all learn, sometimes hard and sometimes joyful, to create an even more beautiful person. In her writing, I see myself the way I wish I could be—parenting at 3 AM, when a workshop participant claims racism doesn’t exist, when my mother uses my pain against me—the way that Megan shapes my humanity makes me want to do better.

Megan sees the best in the people she loves. I’m not talking about that rose-tinted-spectacles-gotme-blind-to-your-flaws kind of thing. Trust me, she’s always paying attention. She can see the flaws! No, with Megan it’s some kind of superpowered laser vision that gets to the core of what is good, what is working, what is taking her attention.

Did I mention that she is paying attention?

Anyone who’s ever taken one of her classes knows what I’m talking about. Megan is that teacher who is so in-the-moment present that students sometimes wonder if she can see into their heads.

She listens intently, focuses completely, observes compassionately, and sometimes seems informed by unobservable forces. “There. That!” She’ll say, pointing her finger at the journal in a student’s hand, “Jot that down. Get down what you just said and go home and write. That’s the first line, now go write the story!”

It’s just the way Megan pays attention. She listens. She listens like few people know how to listen. I can’t tell you how many times over the years Megan and I have talked about listening. Listening as writers. Listening as teachers. Listening as students, as mentors, as friends, as citizens. Listening as a parent. What does listening look like? What does it mean to listen in different contexts? What does listening inspire you to do or not to do? How can you listen—truly listen—and not want to burn the whole fucking world to the ground? How can you truly listen and keep your heart whole?

Megan pays attention. She listens. She writes.

She reflects back the very best she sees in those around her. To be in her life—to be loved by her—is to be heard and seen and written into the stories she tells. To be friends with Megan is to regularly have your best acts and aspects recognized and named and celebrated and, every once in a while, recorded for all of history in one of her brilliant essays.

JULY 27, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 17

Amanda Delheimer Dimond, artistic director of 2nd Story and Stielstra’s son’s godmother Being written about feels a bit like looking at a photograph of yourself. You have a memory of where you were and how it happened, and then there’s this outside perspective on it that you can look at and examine and juxtapose and compare it to your own. And that, to me, is part of the delight of it: seeing how somebody else perceives that same moment you were in, or how they internalized it or how it affected them.

I think the essay that always blows my mind the most is about the period of time when Megan had postpartum depression. At the time, she wasn’t calling it that, and none of us had a sense of what was going on. But there are moments that she mentions again and again where it felt to her like I swooped in and saved her life in some way. And really all I did was take the baby and be like, “Hey, go take a shower.”

It was such an enormous thing to her, and it makes me think—one just never knows how the little tiny things that you do can have the most life-changing impact on somebody else.

You might never see that person again, but it feels particularly meaningful, I think, to have some of that reflected back to you by someone who . . . well, in many ways, Megan and I grew up together as humans and as artists.

One of the real blessings of being friends with Megan specifically is that she sees the world through these lenses of love and justice. None of us are perfect people. I’ve never been nervous about being written about by her, mostly because she approaches the world with such a huge heart.

There are some writers who are like, Well, it’s my life and I’m going to write about whatever the hell I want. And there are some writers that feel very much like part of their job is to bring people along, that if they do want to write about them, they know that it’s happening and are able to—not necessarily change things—but have an impact on how their story is told. She’s very conscious of the fact that yes, she is telling her own story, but there are parts of those that are other people’s stories. And it’s very important that they feel like their stories are represented that is true to the way they want to be represented.

She comes to everything as an educator, also. I think it is that educator lens that gives her a real commandment to approach the work not just as an end, but as this larger process of all of us being lifelong learners and trying to figure out who we are walking through the world and what our unique role is in all that.

18 CHICAGO READER - JULY 27, 2017

Christopher Jobson, Stielstra’s husband Being the subject of Megan’s writing wasn’t something I particularly thought about until the first time I heard my name spoken out loud in a story she’d already written early in our relationship. Of course she’d run the whole thing by me, probably several times, but sitting in a bar with an audience of 100 people and realizing the Primary Topic of This Story Is You, Christopher, from the blond storyteller standing onstage was a little overwhelming. This was followed immediately by the realization that if things worked out, this might happen a lot. Like, a lot a lot.

In those first few months and years we had dozens of conversations as she checked in with what’s OK and what’s not. It happens less frequently now because we’ve established clear boundaries and I trust her completely. Megan is extremely thoughtful about the people she incorporates into her work and she often involves them in the process. Still, I always react to hearing stories about me for the first time.

Sometimes I’m deeply affected by whatever she’s written because she brings into clear focus an event I’ve long since forgotten and/or completely repressed. Other times I remember things from a different perspective—not in a way that makes either one of us wrong or right, but it’s illuminating to see where our memories diverge or how we interpret things differently. Just kidding, Megan’s always right, I have a horrible memory. But to be clear, there’s never been a time when she’s handed me a draft and I’ve said “Megan, what is this, I have no idea what this means, who are you even, I wouldn’t even know how to break open an ATM using only a cupcake.” So yeah, we’re generally on the same page.

The most significant thing is that while plenty of random, scary, or just mundane things have happened to us over the years, she still manages to capture it on the page in a way that’s completely engrossing and entertaining, even if it involves something I’m intimately familiar with. I’m right there along with the rest of you, flipping the pages thinking, OH GOD AND THEN WHAT DID I DO?

Sarah Zematis, Stielstra’s friend I often think, “What did I do to deserve Megan in my life?” She will tell you that I saved her when we met but it was most certainly the other way around. Meeting Megan changed the course of my life. I thought I was just an ordinary mom.

But Megan saw me and my hunger for something more. She showed me that I had a voice. That my thoughts mattered and that I had power when I put them on the page.

Friends are a reflection of yourself.

The good, the bad, and the ugly.

Sometimes they can be like the fun-house mirror and you want to run because the vision isn’t pretty. But sometimes you find the friend that reflects the best parts of you. And, if you are truly lucky, she can be a magic mirror that helps you see how you aspire to walk through this world.

When I met Megan, her grace and beauty pervaded my soul. This is the friend you hold on to with both hands.

When I read Megan’s essay “We Do and Say Kind Things,” her perspective on this chapter of my life brought me to my knees. Again, she put me in her sights and saw me. My daughter’s cancer diagnosis two and a half years ago was impossible to comprehend. I went through each day in a fog, one foot in front of the other. What we didn’t (and couldn’t) know, is that diagnosis is just the beginning. It comes in waves, kind of like sinking in quicksand. There are pauses where everything stops and seems like it may be OK. Then, a sudden shift and you find yourself sinking again. Each time the sands feel like they will swallow me whole, there she is. My lifeline, holding out a guide rope so I can surface and rise.

J. Adams Oaks, Stielstra’s friend and her son’s godfather Megan and I have been writing about each other for more than 20 years. Like a brother and sister, it’s often a competition because we’ve experienced so much of life together, so when we witness a magical moment or hear a spectacular story, we claim dibs—“That’s mine,” I’ll exclaim, and Megan will say, “You have six months to use it or it’s mine.” Much to our friends and family’s annoyance, we also have been known to simultaneously scramble for our journals to jot down a moment rather than just live in it.

We’ve even written the same story unknown to each other from our separate perspectives. We’d started writing the stories separately about when we first became friends and started hanging out. So when Megan was looking at publishing her collection of short fiction called Everyone Remain Calm, she asked me if it would be OK to include a version of us playing our game called Oscar and Veronica. I said, “What? You wrote that as a story too?” Of course we’d both written it. The [online magazine] Nervous Breakdown published both of them (hers and mine). But from then on, we confer with each other before publishing.

I wouldn’t be half the writer I am today without Megan and an infinite roll of white butcher paper. She is the guardian of my journals, the carrier of my tears, the witness to the secrets I deem worth baring. When it comes to our words and emotions, our passion and growth, she is the pushmi to my pullyu. We’re lucky to have found each other.

And, man, is she lucky to have so many others worth writing about so gloriously.

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Bobby Biedrzycki, a writer who often collaborates with Stielstra About two years after I got sober Megan had an idea: “Maybe we should write the story together?”

I shot her a confused look. “You know, the story,” she said. I was silent. She meant the story of my overdose and near suicide, an experience that shifted the direction of my life in every possible way.

Something I wasn’t completely sure I was ready to write about. It was an event Megan was a part of in deeply personal ways. It was truly a shared experience. “Maybe we should write it, together?” she said.

And we did. We wrote and performed the story, “Dragons So Huge,” as a collaborative piece. It first went up live at a 2nd Story show, and then appeared in Megan’s book Once I Was Cool. It’s rare in the art of personal narrative that you get an opportunity like this, a chance to coauthor a shared experience. As nonfiction writers, so many of the stories we live and write are communal. But it’s uncommon that we actually get to put pen to page in community to write them. This process required that Megan and I explore our shared experience—a moment that unfolded over multiple days full of communal hurt and harm and wonder and awe—in really deep and loving ways. It was a transformative experience for us both, and it helped us make sense of something that had been living in us for two years. Throughout the process of writing Megan would ask me things like, “Is this cool to share?” Or “Is this how you remember it happening? Did that part feel the same to you?” What’s interesting about those questions is they are not unlike the questions Megan might call and ask me when she’s writing about me in a piece I’m not coauthoring.

See, what I wanted to tell you about was what it’s like to be written about by Megan Stielstra, but I realize I’ve mostly told you about my own experience. And how, through writing, Megan cared for that experience and turned it into art. But this is it, this is how I feel when Megan writes about me: cared for, a profound sense of trust and joy that our shared experiences are being transformed into breathtaking works of art. I mean, how does one really describe the feeling of being a fan, a coauthor, a friend, and a character all at once? I don’t know. Mostly, I think, one just says thank you.

Darcy Stielstra, Megan’s dad Some of her essays are easy and enjoyable to read. Often I want to call her and say, “You can’t say that. It happened differently, honey.”

And she’ll say, “Dad, this is my recollection.”

I’ll say, “OK, I understand that,” but there are things I’m long in the tooth in and she’s not, and I want to correct her. Especially the hunting and fishing things. I took her out early, but she never got hold of it.

She had a story about when I took her pheasant hunting, and she had herself with a shotgun with a scope. You don’t hunt pheasants with scopes. In her book, she had a boat I built with some friends that are more talented than me, and she said I had a wood stove in the boat, and the notion gives it a real Alaskan kind of feel. But you would never have an open flame in a boat. That would be inordinately dangerous. Propane would be OK. But you would never find an open flame. A couple of other little things. And she, I think, more to pacify me than because it had any tremendous appeal to her, made the change in the final rewrite.

Some of her writing I find unsettling, I guess because I’m a loving dad and you have some natural inclination to protect your little girl, even when your little girl’s 40. You want to always be stepping in that direction, and because a lot of her writing, even when she doesn’t identify it as her, is often her recollecting an event. Even if it isn’t her, I put her there as I’m reading. And that’s where the unsettling thing comes in: “Don’t go this direction!” Or “Call your dad! He can race up there and rescue you.” Those tendencies I would love to ascribe to every loving father, or mother as well, are quick to take hold. She’s always one to say, “Dad, don’t read this one.” We’re quite close and find it easy to talk to each other and enjoy each other’s company immensely. Unfortunately I live in Kodiak, Alaska, and she lives in Chicago.

I love my daughter very much, and I recognize her as a unique talent and the progression of that talent I’d like to take credit for it, but the truth is, from the get-go, from the earliest moment, she was flapping her own wings. Even when I took her to kindergarten, I took her to her first day, and we pulled up to the school and I started to get out. She said, “Dad, you don’t have to come, I know where to go.”

She turned and started skipping down the sidewalk toward the school. I sat there watching her go. I didn’t take her hand and I didn’t go with her, and that seems like a fitting descriptor of who my daughter has always been, before that moment and ever since. v

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• Clothing (excludes in Store Boutique) • Knick-Knacks • Framed Art • Electronics • Books • Purses & Jewelry • Shoes

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Furniture

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9-6 - Mon - Fri • 9-5 - Saturday Closed Sunday

10-6 Mon-Fri • 10-5 Saturday Closed Sunday

All proceeds from our Thrift Stores support our youth programs, food pantry, and our two free Christian-based residential drug recovery programs. For more information on our programs, call (708) 333-3370 or email rmi@restorationministries.net

PARTICIPANTS NEEDED FOR A RESEARCH STUDY: Behavioral therapy for insomnia in people with COPD We are testing a program for improving sleep in people with COPD and Insomnia at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the Hines VA. Participants will participate in a 6 session program. All program activities and testing are free and parking is provided.

Who: People aged 45 years and over who have COPD (emphysema or chronic bronchitis) and difficulty falling or staying asleep.

Where: University of Illinois at Chicago, Center for Narcolepsy, Sleep & Health Research and Hines VA What: 2 screening visits, 8 or 9 lab visits (6 sessions and 2 testing visits) and a 3 month follow-up Tests include: Overnight sleep study, lung function test, questionnaires, two blood draws, activity monitoring.

COMPENSATION PROVIDED FOR ENROLLED STUDY PARTICIPANTS. For more information go to cbti-copd.uic.edu or call Mary Kapella, PHd, RN or Franco Laghi, MD at (312) 996-1575, 9am to 4pm, Monday thru Friday.

This study is funded by the National Institutes of Health.

please recycle this paper JULY 27, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 19

ARTS & CULTURE

R

READER RECOMMENDED

b ALL AGES

F

Luzia ò MATT BEARD

THEATER & PERFORMANCE

Prepare to be dumbstruck

By JACK HELBIG

T

here’s something about Cirque du Soleil shows that drives me crazy.

I mean in a good way—at least kind of in a good way. I mean, I love its shows to pieces, don’t get me wrong, but they also frustrate me, a lot. They obsess me, send my thoughts off in a thousand different directions at once. I leave Cirque du Soleil floating in a cloud of unknowing, bemused, silenced by a surfeit of images and feelings, with so many assorted pieces of the show

20 CHICAGO READER - JULY 27, 2017

floating around my head—costumes and performers and bits of music and overwhelming moments of aesthetic ecstasy—that when I try to put it all together and articulate what it all means . . . I just can’t.

But that’s the point, I think. I think the people behind Cirque du Soleil intentionally create shows that tease and tease and tease, leading us on, promising ever more, overwhelming us with sights, sounds, dancers, acrobats, and clowns until the rational brain

gives up and we all become wide-eyed, slackjawed children again. Then the lights come up and we go home, bereft.

This is especially true of Cirque du Soleil’s latest show, Luzia, cowritten (with Julie Hamelin) and directed by Daniele Finzi Pasca, an exceptionally well-conceived and well-executed entertainment that at almost two and half hours, with a 25-minute intermission, still feels far too short. Subtitled “A Waking Dream of Mexico,” it lives up to the oxymoron.

From the opening moments, when the show’s protagonist, a hapless clown (expertly played

by Eric Fool Koller), free-falls into Cirque du Soleil’s very whimsical version of our neighbor to the south, we find ourselves in a surreal place packed with all manner of dreamlike elements freely borrowed from Mexico’s religious and cultural heritage. (There are sprinklings of Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, and other visual artists throughout, and one of the circus acts, the Adagio, directly references the 1949 film Salon Mexico, about a taxi dancer in a sleazy nightclub who uses her earnings to put her daughter through a tony private school.)

The structure of the show is, at its root, that of a traditional circus, just as Cirque du Soleil’s founders, Guy Laliberté and Gilles Ste-Croix—both former street performers in Montreal—and their original associates were steeped in circus traditions. But Cirque long ago transcended the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey paradigm, and in the end transformed it so much that even the Greatest Show on Earth (which shut down in May) discovered it was playing Sears to Amazon Prime.

In Luzia the circus acts are a canvas upon

which the Cirque du Soleil team overlays costumes and music and light to create dazzling performance-art pieces. They’re great in themselves, but they’re also a springboard to something meaningful as opposed to mere eye-popping entertainment. At times they’re more reminiscent of the circus imagery in paintings by Picasso and Chagall or poems by E.E. Cummings than of, well, circus acts.

This is especially true of a dreamlike sequence in which Angelica Bongiovonni spins around the stage in a Cyr wheel as Enya White soars above her on trapeze. What begins as a display of athletic skill and daring becomes an utterly transcendent scene whose gorgeous movement, music (written by Simon Carpentier), lighting (by Martin Labrecque), and stagecraft (water falls) prompt meditations on evanescence as well as memories of childhood.

To be sure, even the more common circus acts—like a team of acrobats diving through rings from ever-higher heights—are top-ofthe-line when reengineered by Cirque, to the point that they seem new. In fact, every moment of Luzia feels new and transformed— down to the very title, which reportedly combines the Spanish word for light (luz) with that for rain (lluvia) to create a new word for its new world.

And it’s a creation of constant novelty; the show never stops changing as, over the course of the evening, we’re tossed from desert to rainforest to seacoast. Luzia isn’t just entertaining and enlightening but ultimately exhausting, a luminous journey from aesthetic revelation to speechless consternation. v R LUZIA Through 9/3: Wed-Thu 8 PM, Fri-Sat 4:30 and 8 PM (8 PM only Fri 8/25), Sun 1:30 and 5 PM; also Tue 8/1, 8/15, and 8/22, 8 PM; Thu 8/3, 8/10, and 8/17, 4:30 PM, United Center, 1301 W. Madison, 312-455-4500, cirquedusoleil.com, $35-$399.

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JULY 27, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 21

ARTS & CULTURE

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Prometheus unbound

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www.BrewView.com 3145 N. Sheffield at Belmont

Movie Theater & Full Bar $5.00 sion admis e for th s Movie

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Rough Night

Fiona Bradley, Joan Gavaler, Dan Plehal, and Richie Schiraldi as particles in A Life With No Limits ò GEOFF WADE

IT’S HARD ENOUGH coming up with a dance, let alone one about the discoveries of wheelchair-bound astrophysicist Stephen Hawking. Hawking, of course, was diagnosed with ALS, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, shortly after his 21st birthday. As his health has deteriorated over the last 50 years, so has his mobility. He now requires a staff of nearly 40 people to care for him; at least four remain by his side at all hours of the day.

The choices made by Virginia-based Aura Curiatlas Physical Theatre for its tribute to Hawking, A Life With No Limits, wound up making the work as much about the famed scientist’s interactions with the people keeping him alive as about Hawking and his theories themselves. “We wanted to explore

that relationship,” says cocreator Dan Plehal.

“What’s it like to completely rely on other people to get dressed in the morning, to move around from space to space, to drink water, to change your clothes?” As I watched a short video clip of a section called “The Lecture,” in which four dancers pile on top of one another like human Lego pieces, it was easy to imagine Hawking’s life—inner and outer— as a dance itself. The evening opens with selections from the company’s show Dream Logic. v AURA CURIATLAS PHYSICAL THEATRE 7/28-7/30: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, the Edge Theater, 5451 N. Broadway, 773-769-9112, edgetheater.com, $20, $15 students and seniors.

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Sat-Sun, July 29-30 @ 8:00pm

George Romero's

CREEPSHOW

Screening of his classic 1982 film!

22 CHICAGO READER - JULY 27, 2017

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TRI U MPHANT ! .. “

Get showtimes at chicagoreader.com/movies.

ARTS & CULTURE

THE FILM IS INSPIRING.” “IMPOSSIBLY ELEGANT.” “CAPTIVATING.” -DAVID ROONEY, THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

-LILAH RAMZI, VOGUE

-LISA JO SAGOLLA, FILM JOURNAL

A Ghost Story

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STARTS FRIDAY 7/28 GENE SISKEL FILM CENTER

164 NORTH STATE STREET, CHICAGO•312-846-2800•WWW.SISKELFILMCENTER.ORG FRI: 2:00, 6:00; SAT: 7:45; SUN:1:15, 3:15; MON: 6:00; TUE: 8:30; WED: 6:00; THU: 8:00

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By LUKE HICKS

I

t’s all about time,” reads the moody grayscale poster for David Lowery’s supernatural drama A Ghost Story.

Nothing on the poster seems entirely black or white, except for the abyssal eyeholes in the bedsheet that represents the ghost. The film follows two young lovers, C (Casey Affleck) and M (Rooney Mara), just long enough for us to care about them before C dies in a car wreck. Suddenly draped under a white sheet, its eyeholes empty and brooding, C walks away from whatever ethereal realm awaits him and, unable to let go of his previous existence, wanders back to the house that now holds his grieving partner. For the rest of the film C watches and waits. But why? For what?

Lowery (Ain’t Them Bodies Saints) isn’t concerned with answering that question.

Rather, he wants it to hover in the back of one’s mind and drift to the forefront after the film is over. He has brazenly crafted a film whose ostensible protagonist is motionless and wordless. As a ghost, C is jealous and wanting, unable to move on from the woman he adored and the house they called home.

Trapped under the sheet with him, one stares at his lover and all those who pass through the house they once shared. A ghost he spots in the house next door is similarly stuck.

“What are you waiting for?” C asks it. “I don’t remember,” the ghost replies.

Lowery’s film is unusual in that the ghost’s watching and waiting isn’t established in real time. Cinema is distinct from other artistic media in its power to disrupt our understanding of how place and time are related. We usually comprehend the passing of time through physical movement, but cinema allows for movement to be broken up and reassembled.

Consider how David Lynch’s Mulholland Dr. (2001) and Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) tangle up place and time. With each film one realizes he isn’t where he thought he was. In Gondry’s, time is woven into the protagonist’s faulty memory in a way that makes the viewer question which events are actually taking place. Lynch’s film seems to involve alternate realities where familiar characters suddenly have different homes, names, and personalities though J

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ARTS & CULTURE

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Rooney Mara in A Ghost Story

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OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG 24 CHICAGO READER - JULY 27, 2017

continued from 23 they’re still connected to previous events in the film. Our common understanding of how time functions suddenly breaks down. This is the privilege of cinema—that it can display several possible moments in the same space and time, or spread several seconds of action over millennia, as in A Ghost Story. Like the films noted above, this one offers no clear answers. Through the dead man’s eyes, one can float through time and consider how it functions in our own lives when, physically or mentally, we too watch and wait, hanging on to people or moments that have already gone.

In A Ghost Story time is elastic: to disorient the viewer, Lowery doesn’t give one enough time to experience certain moments but grants an overabundance of time to linger on drawn-out takes. Soon after C’s death, M tearily ruminates on the pages of certain books, C’s ghost leering invisibly beside her. One wonders what she’s reading, and Lowery inspects a few pages, but each shot is so fleeting that one can grab only a few words. Their meaning remains a mystery, the very duration of the shots challenging us to let go.

At the other extreme lies the scene in which M, still traumatized by C’s death, comes home to a pie dropped off by her landlord. She peels away the foil and picks at the crust, as if she has nothing better to do. She meanders over to the silverware drawer and grabs a fork. Now taking slightly bigger bites, M sits down on the kitchen floor, the camera angle shifting to reveal C’s ghost standing ominously in the back-

ssss EXCELLENT

sss GOOD

ground. So begins what feels like the longest single shot in film history, as M grief-eats an entire pie in nine minutes and then throws up.

Though C is almost always still and staring, he travels from past to present to future so easily it boggles the mind. For example, Lowery allows one room in what seems like one moment to contain three different instances of M walking out the door. This odd passage of time is one of the first signs that C’s refusal to move on might be futile. Watching M walk out the door every day, eat a pie, read, and cry gives the ghost nothing. Eventually M packs up and leaves, and a family moves into the house in the next scene, but there’s no sense of time having passed. As the film progresses, the house is transformed from a single mother’s refuge to a college party house to a demolition site to a corporate skyscraper to a speck in a thriving futuristic cityscape to a frontier family’s campsite.

For Lowery, there’s no reincarnation, no circle of life, only a process of disengagement.

One might be tempted to call his ghost patient, but that would suggest a linear narrative at work. Instead, Lowery’s obliteration of time renders C naive. He is a spectator—just as we are. A Ghost Story may be thinly plotted, but it’s thick with introspection, dodging any easy interpretation. It may well be all about time, but as C learns, time isn’t as useful as we might have thought. v A GHOST STORY ssss Directed by David Lowery. Arclight, Century 12 and CineArts 6, Landmark’s Century Centre, RIver East 21.

ss AVERAGE

s POOR

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MUSIC IN ROTATION

A Reader staffer shares three musical obsessions, then asks someone (who asks someone else) to take a turn.

Clementine Creevy of Cherry Glazerr onstage at Pitchfork ò COURTESY WRBB 104.9 FM

Bad Brains front man H.R. at CBGB in 1982 ò VIA YOUTUBE

Kik Kikagaku Moyo ò JAN RILLICH/UT CONNEWITZ PHOTO CREW

KEVIN WARWICK

KARISSA TALANIAN

Founder of Eye Vybe Records

Singer-songwriter, vibe dealer

Larry Graham funk-bass tutorials Slap-bass innovator Larry Graham—of Sly & the Family Stone and later his own Graham Central Station—began developing his “thumpin’ and pluckin’” technique to make up for the lack of a drummer in his mom’s band. You hear a version of that story in each of his decades-old bass tutorials, now accessible via fuzzy YouTube transfers—but built around that yarn are close-ups of Graham blasting through overdriven funk while providing descriptions of his process midjam. And damn, does he seem to be having a good time.

Kikagaku Moyo I caught this newer Japanese group on tour with pals Moss Folk at the Empty Bottle back in October (and then again this past May) and had my mind totally blown open. Dreamy, lush, melodic folkpop mixed with heavy, mind-melting stoner jams? Yes please. Even better, they run their own label, Guruguru Brain (Krautrock nerds rejoice), which releases music by all their freaky friends back home!

Red, “Akoustik (Cellophane)” I saw Red sing for the first time at the last Highness Collective show. She left her usual spot behind the drums and stepped to the mike to do a beautiful rendition of “Soulstar” by Musiq Soulchild.

I was blown away and curious to see where she would go as a singer-songwriter. This year she released “Akoustik (Cellophane),” an acoustic slow burner that tugs at the heartstrings. I’m a sucker for minimal production that lets a vocalist shine, melodically and lyrically. My favorite lines: “So I told her that I love her / She said it’s way too soon / So picking up the pieces / Dustpan and the broom.”

The backing vocal arrangement is sweet too.

Definite headphones masterpiece.

Reader associate editor

Cherry Glazerr onstage and not caring Maybe my favorite time at this year’s Pitchfork Music Festival was watching Cherry Glazerr not worry about looking cool. The LA young ’uns pinballed around the Blue Stage during their Saturday-afternoon set, with front woman and shredder Clementine Creevy occasionally spazzing out between songs, off-the-cuff yelling something like “Fuck you.

Fuck you all.” The set itself was excellent, and it was refreshing to see such a wild card at a festival so focused on keeping it chill.

Jim DeRogatis’s dogged reporting on R. Kelly Ever since 2002, when his pursuit of the R. Kelly scandal began with a videotape he received anonymously, Sound Opinions cohost and former Sun-Times pop critic Jim DeRogatis has never flagged. His most recent piece on Kelly, for BuzzFeed News, is about the singer’s manipulation of young women and the “cult” he’s created via promises of fame and notoriety.

The Velcro Lewis Group These guys have been chooglin’ around Chicago for years, and their upcoming LP, Amnesia Haze, is a psychedelic prog-funk epic that any Sabbath or Funkadelic fan needs to hear at full volume.

It’ll be available via LP on Safety Meeting Records later this summer—for now, you can listen to the single the band released to protest Trump’s inauguration. Be sure to see ’em at the Empty Bottle on August 16!

Looking Glass Projects LGP is the new online mecca for Chicago underground music. This website compiles profiles of hundreds of local bands, lists concerts and events, features multiple playlists of local music, and even runs a Facebook group to help reconnect musicians with lost or stolen gear. Anyone looking for something to do on a Friday night, hunting for info on local labels, or trying to find a cool new band to round out a bill should absolutely check this site out.

DREA SMITH

Live footage of Bad Brains in the 80s I rewatch live Bad Brains footage because I don’t have a time machine—it’s the only way for me to experience H.R.’s insane stage presence. My favorite is a CBGB gig they did in 1982. It does something to my spirit to see Dr. Know shredding at the start of “Big Take Over” and H.R. doing the coolest slow-yetintense skank—not to mention backflipping while screaming psychotically to the crowd.

Sly & the Family Stone, “Just Like a Baby” Childish Gambino’s latest album got me craving the funk I grew up with. I have a thing for funk vocal arrangements and bass lines, and “Just Like a Baby” is a five-minute sweet spot for both. The bass alone is enough to hook you. Sly’s voice is like cognac and sounds lived-in. I love this song because I believe what he’s singing, and I know he believed it too.

JULY 27, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 25

operandi brings out some of the most effective playing I’ve yet heard from Delius, colliding Ben Webster’s throaty tone with Archie Shepp’s clipped phrasing. —PETER MARGASAK

Richard Dawson Peasant (Weird World)

REVIEWED:

Twista’s disjointed but generous Crook County and 11 more new releases Seven Reader writers tackle a dozen records, including the long-gestating debut from footwork producer Jana Rush, lost recordings from 60s garage-rock oddballs the Monks, and a riveting solo set from unsung improvising pianist Pat Thomas.

Booklet

The 100% Rabbit (Jedso) The second album by this Berlin-based trio carries on its loosey-goosey aesthetic, braiding together various freebop influences and subjecting them to an improvisatory ethos that stresses spontaneous interaction. In fact the name “Booklet” refers to a kind of songbook the group has developed for its repertoire, in which the songs all function as springboards for improv. The focal point of the band is reedist Tobias Delius, best known for his longtime membership in the ICP Orchestra; drummer Steve Heather and bassist Joe Williamson complete the

26 CHICAGO READER - JULY 27, 2017

trio. Delius’s aesthetic strongly shapes the material Booklet tackles: tunes by fellow ICP member Michael Moore and other Amsterdam-connected folks such as Sean Bergin, Cor Fuhler, and Michiel Scheen, as well as pieces by Johnny Dyani and Dudu Pukwana of South Africa’s Blue Notes, a band whose music made a big impact in Amsterdam in the late 60s. Booklet strings together these pieces in seamless medleys, triggering the shifts from song to song according to an internal logic known only to the players—this allows improvisational thinking to influence the music, even when the performances stick largely to sturdy themes (including some by Delius and Williamson). That modus

British singer, songwriter, and guitarist Richard Dawson is a brilliant improviser, his jagged, astringent lines worthy of Derek Bailey, but he’s also fascinated

by British folk traditions, writing epic original songs and belting them out in a soulful, spellbinding voice that’s as earnest as it is imperfect. On his previous records, as good as they are, those two seemingly incompatible approaches have collided only occasionally, but on the new Peasant he goes all-in, fusing them with a cohesion he’d only hinted at before. He packs his ebullient, unkempt folk-rock tunes with fanciful phrases and bizarre imagery, helped along by colorful harmonies from harpist Rhodri Davies, violinist Angharad Davies, horn player John Davies, and a raucous chorus. Dawson draws on folkloric language but adds a biting sense of humor: he opens “Weaver” with the lines “I steep the wool in a cauldron / Of pummeled gall-nuts afloat in urine / And river water thrice-boiled with a bloodstone.” No matter how absurd his language gets, though, Dawson sells it with his voice—he’s never been more precise and emotive, keeping a tight rein on his outsize howl but leaving in the wrinkles that make him sound so richly human. His music already stood apart from practically everything else I’ve heard, and with this masterpiece the vivid originality of his imagination has been matched by the fantastic expertise of his arrangements and performances. —PETER MARGASAK

Japanese Breakfast

Soft Sounds From Another Planet (Dead Oceans) On her second album as Japanese Breakfast, Philadelphia-based songwriter Michelle Zauner loosens up the punchy, distorted pop-rock of her 2016 full-length debut, Psychopomp. The new Soft Sounds From Another Planet prioritizes grooves over hooks, letting

its bass lines drive the action and leaving plenty of space for ripples of retro synthesizers. It’s less Cocteau Twins and more Tangerine Dream, though Zauner’s voice—now occasionally pitched up or roboticized—burns as brightly as ever at the record’s uneasy heart. Ostensibly a failed concept album about a woman who takes to the stars after falling in love with and being rejected by a robot, Soft Sounds retains the cinematic sweep of the sci-fi narrative that it’s otherwise abandoned. Zauner’s more commonplace subject matter (failed relationships, grief) takes on the drama of interstellar travel as she searches for peace and healing within the turbulence of ordinary life. The album may have begun as an imaginary transmission from Mars, but it sounds perfectly at home down here on earth. This place is surreal enough as it is. —SASHA GEFFEN

Less Art

Strangled Light (Gilead Media) On its debut, Strangled Light, Less Art is a claustrophobic machine of a band, playing posthardcore in various shades of sheet-metal gray. Vocalist Mike Minnick ranges from almost conversational proclamations to bitter howls, urged on by whip-sharp Shellac-viaKinsella guitar riffs (courtesy Jon Howell and Ed Breckenridge) and a cavernous rhythm section (bassist Ian Miller and drummer Riley Breckenridge).

Though four of its five members have worked together in baseball-themed grindcore band Puig Destroyer, little of that group’s lightheartedness is on display in Less Art. The only humor here is gallows humor, born of a smirking recognition that we humans tend to be our own worst enemies, whether globally or personally. Strangled Light is a record obsessed with death: the churning “Diana the Huntress” was inspired by the real-life story of a woman in Ciudad Juárez who retaliated against sexual violence committed by bus drivers by killing two of them, and album opener “Optimism as Survival” muses almost wryly on suicide (“I’m too curious to kill myself”). Less Art’s most impressive skill is their ability to seamlessly shift intensity levels—on a macro scale, the entire album is a carefully built crescendo. It culminates

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music with the title track, where the band provides apocalyptic accompaniment to Minnick’s screams of “No one comes back from the dead.” —ED BLAIR

Limp Wrist

Facades (Lengua Armada)

Facades is the first record in nine years from queer hardcore band Limp Wrist, but I won’t say we need it now more than ever just because of Trump—as uniquely awful as his administration is, it didn’t invent bigotry. The 40-page zine accompanying the album features contributions from punks around the globe—including Singapore, Melbourne, Toronto, Buenos Aires, and several U.S. cities—who remind us that queer people have been fighting an uphill battle to be treated as fully human since before the Grifter in Chief was even a glint in Putin’s eye. In the zine’s introductory essay, Limp Wrist front man Martin Sorrondeguy (also of hardcore legends Los Crudos) writes that the band made Facades for queers who lack access to support systems and might experience gay culture only through mainstream outlets that don’t reflect their identities. The album’s furious songs get that message across quickly and powerfully—and unusually clearly, at least for a hardcore band.

Limp Wrist ease up on the throttle, and the slightly less frenzied tempos let Sorrondeguy deliver his passionate lyrics slowly enough to be comprehensible even to someone who’s never seen a basement show. He and the band also lead by example when it comes to demonstrating how queerness comes in all kinds of shapes: the B side of Facades is entirely electronic. Those songs are sure to ruffle feathers among hardcore fans, and that’s punk as fuck.

—LEOR GALIL

Thelonious Monk

Les Liaisons Dangereuses-1960 (Sam Records/Saga) Censors, lawyers, and critics all lined up to jab at Roger Vadim’s film Les Liaisons Dangereuses when it was first released in 1959. But the first guy to put Vadim and his music producer, Marcel Romano, through the wringer was Thelonious Monk—during negotiations to recruit him to compose the movie’s soundtrack, he was so skittish that he once cut talks short by ducking out of a Ping-Pong game with Romano to cook dinner for his kids. After all that, Monk didn’t end up writing any new music for the already finished movie; he simply added French saxophonist Barney Wilen to his working band and record-

ed tunes from his set. A planned LP drawn from those sessions didn’t materialize at the time, but the discovery of the original studio tapes in 2014 has resulted in the recent double album Les Liaisons Dangereuses-1960 (the year in the title is an artifact of a lawsuit). It’s a delight to hear the easy concord of the musicians on “Ba-Lue Bolivar Ba-LuesAre,” and their brief, radiant reading of the hymn “By and By” could melt a glacier. But the proliferation of multiple takes might interfere with a casual listener’s enjoyment; even though each version is lovely, it’s wearying to hear “Pannonica” three times in a row. For serious Monk students, though, the pianist’s 14 minutes of dialogue with drummer Art Taylor as they work out the rhythm of “Light Blue” will be pure gold. —BILL MEYER

The Monks

Hamburg Recordings 1967 (Third Man) The 2006 documentary Monks: The Transatlantic Feedback offers a Teutonic take on the Monks’ 1966 masterpiece, Black Monk Time, casting the album as an avant-garde triumph by German producers who transformed a bar band of American former G.I.s into a dark parody of the Hamburg beat scene.

But despite the Monks’ high-concept costumes and odd instrumentation (buzz-saw banjo, all-floor-tom percussion), the group was amazingly American. Like the Dirty Dozen, each had an area of expertise (jazz horn, rockabilly guitar, Booker T.-style organ), and this gave the Monks an edge that came more from their own harmoniously incongruent regional quirks than from the schemes of any Svengali. Because their weirdest elements got the chilliest reception from German teens, I feared the previously lost tracks on Hamburg Recordings 1967 might be less ambitious than the LP that preceded them.

But opener “I’m Watching You,” with its scrambling bass, manic keyboard, and Gary Burger’s signature “They’re coming to take me away” vocals, is a bizarre injection of pure unfiltered Monkishness. More seductive is “Yellow Grass,” which arranges a mixed marriage of Eddie Shaw’s absurd trumpet fanfares and the roller-rink organ runs of Chicagoan Larry Clark—together they sound like a dream mashup of Herb Alpert and

Dave “Baby” Cortez. Though these five tracks feel more like respectable B sides than a follow-up album, I’m certain they would’ve been just as rejected by Polydor’s American affilate as Black Monk Time was. And what’s more American than dissing Vietnam-era veterans?

—JAKE AUSTEN

Jana Rush

Pariah (Objects Limited)

Chicago electronic producer Jana Rush hadn’t put out a full-length until this month’s Pariah, and it took her decades to get there. She began DJing as a preteen, spinning at Kennedy-King College’s WKKC Radio alongside black Chicago music legends Gant-Man (who helped create juke) and DJ Rashad (who helped shape footwork). In 1996 she released a 12-inch through peerless ghetto-house label Dance Mania, but in 2000 she abandoned music completely. A chemical engineer by trade, Rush returned to music just a few years ago, and Pariah combines many of the sounds she DJed as a teenager with others that continued to evolve in her absence. Throughout the album she employs footwork’s M.C. Escher rhythms as a foundation for other electronic styles. On “Chill Mode” down-tempo house keys spread out beneath stuttering, echoing vocal samples, and on “Acid Tek 2” bristling acid synths duel with austere percussion loops. Rush is by no means reinventing footwork, but her approach on Pariah explores some of the untested routes the genre can take without losing what makes it special. —LEOR GALIL

Tau Cross

Pillar of Fire (Relapse Records)

Because Tau Cross’s lineup includes Amebix bassist and front man Rob Miller and Voivod drummer Michel “Away” Langevin, they hardly need introduction. The band’s proto-metal sound, something like Motorhead by way of Killing Joke, is poignant and powerful enough that it doesn’t need to lean on its members’ pedigrees to get over—and neither does it fall short of the high expectations they might create. On Pillar of Fire, their second release for Relapse, Tau Cross J

JULY 27, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 27

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continued from 27 successfully recapture the punch and pull of their 2015 debut—it feels like these songs were written alongside their predecessors.

The tracks are even more memorable and just as tight, especially anthemic singalongs such as “Bread and Circuses” and the barn-burning “RFID.” Tau Cross haven’t grown much from one album to the next, but on the plus side, it’s unlikely anybody will be disappointed by this one—and there are still few faults to find. Though these songs are grade-A stompers, musicians as skilled as these, working in such a lofty and focused direction, are surely capable of broadening their own canon. When they do, it’ll put this stellar release to shame. —BEN HANDELMAN

Pat Thomas

The Elephant Clock of Al Jazari (Otoroku) Keyboardist Pat Thomas has been one of the most inventive and uncompromising improvisers in England for years, and he’s got an outsize personality with a riotous sense of humor—he’d surely be far better known if he’d ever displayed much interest in developing his career as a recording artist. But he tends to perform with other strong musicians and leave it at that, which means he’s familiar mostly to the cognoscenti. This stellar solo performance was recorded live at London’s Café Oto in May 2015, and it showcases Thomas at his most oblique and jarring. The title of the album refers to a water-driven clock devised by 12th-century inventor and scholar Badi’ al-Zaman ibn alRazzaz al-Jazari—often called the father of modern robotics—but its connection to the music seems tenuous. Thomas plays with an angular, riveting attack, making great use of the left end of the keyboard with low-end hammering and jagged chords. On “Elephant” he mucks about inside the instrument, complementing his bass figures with grating metal, and on “For Al Haytham” he thrums and scrapes at those same strings, interrupting their turbulent explosions with spooky right-hand stabs and then barreling into a fusillade of broken-glass clusters. The album concludes with “Done,” a bruising, barely recognizable abstraction of a jazz standard—it zips along at the lightning pace of “Giant Steps” while Thomas pounds the piano like vintage Cecil Taylor. —PETER MARGASAK

Twista

Crook County (GMG/Empire) No Chicago hip-hop veteran has done as much over the past decade to elevate the city’s

emerging voices as Twista. In 2013 he gave Chance the Rapper and Vic Mensa cosigns on the brink of their breakouts by appearing alongside them on the Acid Rap cut “Cocoa Butter Kisses”; on his previous album, 2014’s Dark Horse, he featured Chief Keef, whose profile was particularly low at the time; and in 2013 he hopped on Sicko Mobb’s “Bitches & Bikinis” as the west-side duo brought bop into the spotlight. Twista is proud of the role he’s played, and it’s obvious on Crook County.

Nine of the album’s 13 tracks feature local rappers or singers, some of them on the cusp of bigger things—including Supa Bwe, the Boy Illinois, and YP. Twista has a gift for tweaking his triple-time rapping to fit the personalities of his collaborators, and though this makes Crook County feel like a collection of songs that feature Twista rather than a cohesive Twista album, it’s clearly scattered by design.

Each of the cuts is easy to settle into on its own, especially the limber, funky “Mortuary,” which features Vic Spencer—and which would feel right at home on one of Spencer’s albums.

—LEOR GALIL

Lal & Mike Waterson Bright Phoebus (Domino)

Several years after influential British folk vocal group the Watersons hung it up in 1968, siblings Lal and Mike began working on original songs, a departure from their family band’s focus on traditional material. With encouragement from guitarist Martin Carthy of the recently formed Steeleye Span, they committed their evolving vision to tape with a cast of British folk-rock royalty, including Carthy and fellow guitarist Richard Thompson, bassist Ashley Hutchings, and singer Norma Waterson. The record was released in 1972 by Bill Leader’s Trailer Records, but fans of the Watersons rejected its psychedeliatinged folk-rock sound, a judgment that time has proved ridiculously conservative and closed-minded. But by the time the initial pressing of 2,000 sold out, Leader had sold his company, and the new owner put Bright Phoebus to the side—making the album not only a holy grail for modern collectors but also a missing piece of the British folk-rock legacy. Thankfully, it’s back in print, letting us enjoy its kaleidoscopic, whimsical range and the devastating beauty of its arrangements and vocal harmonies. The LP and deluxe CD releases complement the 1972 version with the original demos, cut with just voice and guitars—but no matter the version, the songwriting displays the same remarkable power.

—PETER MARGASAK v

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Recommended and notable shows and critics’ insights for the week of July 27 b

ALL AGES

F

THURSDAY27 Kendrick Lamar Travis Scott and D.R.A.M. open. 7:30 PM, United Center, 1901 W. Madison, $225. b Neurosis See also Friday. Amenra and Bruce Lamont & Sanford Parker (DJ set) open. 9 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $25. 21+

More than 30 years in, progressive-metal legends Neurosis know exactly how to deliver—their 11th studio album, last fall’s Fires Within Fires (Neurot), is a ruthlessly efficient travelogue of varied soundscapes and altered consciousness. It feels much longer than it actually is (about 40 minutes), and that’s not a function of tedium but of density.

The claustrophic and ominous crushing weights of “Bending Light” and “Fire Is the End Lesson” give way to the unsettling atmospherics of the intro to “Broken Ground,” and if you have the ominous feeling you’re being set up for something, you’re right— that song and “Reach” build to a sort of apocalyptic climax not too far removed from a Swans or Psychic TV incantation. Upcoming in August is a CD reissue of their landmark 1990 release The Word as Law (remastered by Bob Weston), and it’s a treat to spin them back to back and hear how far Neurosis have come while still remaining utterly themselves.

—MONICA KENDRICK

PICK OF THE WEEK

In rap right now, there’s Kendrick Lamar and there’s everyone else

ò KEVIN WINTER

KENDRICK LAMAR, TRAVIS SCOTT, AND D.R.A.M.

Maurice “Mobetta” Brown

Thu 7/27, 7:30 PM, United Center, 1901 W. Madison, $225. b

THE REASON YOU’LL want to see Kendrick Lamar in concert is that he’s indisputably the best rapper alive right now. Lamar had the daunting task of releasing a follow-up to 2015’s To Pimp a Butterfly, which landed atop multiple year-end lists, including Pitchfork’s and Rolling Stone’s—a sharp-eyed examination of black American identity, Butterfly contained a rich musical synthesis of backpacker hip-hop, west-coast gangsta rap, jazz fusion, gritty funk, experimental R&B, and bedroom electronic music. But on this year’s Damn (Top Dawg/Aftermath/Interscope), Lamar stripped

ò ZACH GROSS

down his musical backing to straightforward hard-core rap beats and focused on demonstrating his next-level prowess as an MC. For evidence, look no further than the second verse of the track “DNA,” where Lamar launches into a breathless, mind-shattering flow in which he packs an incredible number of words and internal rhymes into four bars. Like this: “This how it is when you’re in the Matrix, dodging bullets / Reaping what you sow and stacking up the footage / Living on the go and sleeping in a villa / Sipping from a Grammy and walking in the building.” —TAL ROSENBERG

FRIDAY28 Maurice “Mobetta” Brown with Talib Kweli 7 and 10:30 PM, Martyrs’, 3855 N. Lincoln, $30, $25 in advance, early show all-ages, late show 21+.

Maurice “Mobetta” Brown’s brass is boundless. The trumpeter blows seamlessly in and out of moods that sample liberally from hip-hop, blues, rock, and contemporary jazz, making him a natural collaborator for lyrical poets such as Prodigy, Jean Grae, J

JULY 27, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 29

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Guided by Voices ò PAUL ROUB

continued from 29

FESTIVALS

Slam metal, queer punk, a daylong free show, and more Chicago Domination Fest Extreme metal hits the suburbs! Diabolic, Gruesome, Nader Sadek, Putridity, Moral Decay, and Embalmer represent just a sliver of this festival’s huge international lineup.

7/27-7/29, Wire, 6815 W. Roosevelt, Berwyn, chicagodominationfest.bigcartel.com, $35 per day, $60 two-day pass, $80 three-day pass, 18+ Fed Up Fest Chicago’s queer- and trans-positive punk festival features three days of underground bands from around the country, including No Men, Nervous Wreck, Total Bliss, and Tina Panic Noise. Fed Up Fest also presents workshops, panel discussions, and a fashion show. 7/287/29, Co-Prosperity Sphere, 3219-3221 S. Morgan, fedupfestchicago.com, $15 per day, $35 three-day pass, all-ages

and Talib Kweli. Brown, a native of south-suburban Harvey, was also a founding member of Tedeschi Trucks Band, creating the horn arrangements that helped the group win a 2012 Grammy for Best Blues Album for its debut record, Revelator. His chops as an arranger are fully evident on his latest album, The Mood (Ropeadope)—if you’re into clever genre blending that results in the creation of some super grown-up tunes, Brown is the man to hear. His performance at Martyrs’ features an appearance by hip-hop great Talib Kweli, whose contribution to the song “Fly by Night” made it the standout track from Brown’s 2014 Maurice vs.

Mobetta. —TIFFANY WALDEN

George Freeman & Mike Allemana Mike Reed’s Flesh & Bone headlines. 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $15, $12 in advance. 21+ One of the great stories in Chicago jazz over the past few years has been the resurgence of guitarist George Freeman, a key figure in one of the city’s most celebrated jazz families. He’s now outlived his brothers Von (a brilliant saxophonist) and Bruz (a drummer), and at age 90 Freeman is about to drop one of the strongest recordings of his career. In 2013 Constellation owner and drummer Mike Reed approached guitarist Mike Allemana, who spent years in Von’s working band at the New Apartment Lounge, about putting together an organ combo with Freeman. The new band led a weekly engagement at the club that summer, and since then Freeman seems to have shaken off all signs of rust. Next month the band will drop Live at the Green Mill (Ears & Eyes), taped in 2015 at the historic Uptown lounge with regular organist Pete Benson and the legendary Bernard “Pretty” Purdie filling in for Mike Schlick on drums. As good as any mainstream jazz record I’ve heard in

2017, Live is an ebullient romp through soul-jazz and hard-bop fundamentals, guided by a deep connection to the blues. Benson lays down the chords gracefully, and Purdie is a pure rhythm machine; few other drummers could bring so much energy without getting in the way. Schlick is back on drums for tonight’s performance, which is being taped for NPR’s Jazz Night in America. —PETER MARGASAK

Neurosis See Thursday. Converge, Amenra, and Trevor de Brauw (DJ set) open. 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, sold out. 17+

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Weatherman Dosh headlines. 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $10. 18+ Tonight’s Weatherman performance is bittersweet. The Chicago-born minimal electronic trio celebrate their new self-titled, self-released EP, but it’s the last time they’ll perform as locals: pianist-vocalist Annie Toth and her husband, drummer Jason Toth (who collaborates with rambunctious singer-songwriter Daniel Knox), are preparing to move to France, and electronics programmer Joshua Dumas spends most of his time these days in New York. The somber, lightfooted songs on Weatherman evoke the mist over Lake Michigan at dawn, with Annie Toth’s whispered vocals cutting like the morning sun through the skittering electronics and sturdy percussive loops—she gives strong performances without overpowering the mood. On the early single “Trondheim,” Weatherman layer fragmented string samples, electronic keys that wheeze like an accordion, and bare, bone-dry percussion to slowly reveal shades of wistfulness. —LEOR GALIL J

Tour de Fat The Roots headline this year’s installment of New Belgium’s annual celebration of bicycles and beer. 7/29, Huntington Bank Pavilion, 1300 S. Linn White, newbelgium.com, $25, free for children under 12, all-ages Wicker Park Fest This gargantuan street festival features lo-fi legends Guided by Voices as one of Saturday’s main attractions; also on the bill are Jeff the Brotherhood, Piebald, Doomtree, and many more. 7/29-7/30, Milwaukee between North and Paulina, wickerparkbucktown.com, $10 suggested donation, all-ages Fuck Fest The concept is simple: 20 local bands play all day for free. Malci, Jollys, the Curls, the Cell Phones, and Beastii are among the acts currently booked. 7/30, Township, 2200 N. California, free, 18+

Neurosis ò SCOTT EVANS

JULY 27, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 31

MUSIC

Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.

continued from 31

MONDAY31

Accident have another album due out later this year, and what tonight’s show will entail is anyone’s guess.

—PETER MARGASAK

Cheer-Accident Free Salamander Exhibit headlines. 8:30 PM, Beat Kitchen, 2100 W. Belmont, $15. 21+

Pierre-Laurent Aimard 7 PM, Martin Theatre, Ravinia Festival, 200 Ravinia Park Rd., Highland Park, $10-$60. b

Drummer Thymme Jones has been pushing Chicago’s most unpredictable art-rock band, CheerAccident, in unexpected directions for more than three decades. On Putting Off Death (Cuneiform)— the band’s first album in six years—Cheer-Accident both embrace and mock their prog-rock roots.

Jones’s outfit has already explored gorgeously refined piano-driven melodies such as the one that animates album opener “Language Is,” but rarely with such sophistication and lyrical beauty. The song veers wildly about three and a half minutes in, with a tension-creating polymetric workout that Jones shapes (thanks to overdubbing) on both piano and drums. The tune moves through peaks and valleys, with swirling drones smacking into tricky tempos, slaloming riffs, and slinking trombone, and then dissolves into a mass of electronic static. And that’s just the first track. As Jones has noted in promotional materials, there is no overarching theme to Putting Off Death, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hold together. Songs in the middle of the record are marked by tight, dissonant arrangements where the core of Jones, guitarist Jeff Libersher, and bassist Dante Kester create lockstep patterns with a slew of harmony singers and horn players. On vocals, Jones alternates between hooky crooning and spazzy yelping. The album concludes with the lovely ballad “Hymn,” which melts the sound of early Genesis down into something lean and airy. Cheer-

Composers of classical music have been inspired by birdsong for centuries—from Daquin to Beethoven through a bevy of contemporary figures such as Jonathan Harvey and Per Nørgård—but none has devoted as much energy and imagination to the process of translating trills and warbles into notated music as Olivier Messiaen. In the 1950s he created his epic Catalogue D’oiseaux, a book of seven works devoted to the sounds of a wide variety of avian creatures. Rather than simply imitating birdsong, though, Messiaen envisioned full portraits of nature scenes, whether pastoral tableaux or instrumental renderings of interspecies confrontations. Such music requires a sensitive touch, and French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard has proven to be one of Messiaen’s most adept interpreters—in part due to his early studies with Messiaen’s wife, pianist Yvonne Loriod, to whom the composer dedicated Catalogue D’oiseaux.

On his searing 2008 album Hommage à Messiaen (Deutsche Grammophon), Aimard performed two pieces from the suite—“La Bouscarle” and “L’alouette Lulu,” inspired by the Cetti’s warbler and the woodlark, respectively—with evocative clarity and a refined sense of timbre to convey the colorings and movement of each subject. At Ravinia, he’ll play the complete work—all three hours of it. The pianist doesn’t take Catalogue D’oiseaux lightly: in 2016 he performed the entire suite out- J

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32 CHICAGO READER - JULY 27, 2017

ota.org

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Cheer-Accident ò VILMA JOVAISA

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JULY 27, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 33

MUSIC Supa Bwe ò ALANA KITTILSEN

ody lines that soothe rather than provoke, even if there is a swelling sense of propulsion in his playing. Here and there he layers found sounds—conversation or environmental recordings—and on “To Continue,” among several other pieces, he switches to luminescent electric guitar arpeggios that pile up in clouds of reverb without altering the general effect. —PETER MARGASAK

WEDNESDAY2 Liam Gallagher Blossoms open. 9 PM, Park West, 322 W. Armitage, sold out. 18+

continued from 32

doors at the Aldeburgh Festival in England, breaking the work into sections reflecting the habits of local wildlife. Indoors, Aimard should prove equally adept at bringing the sound of nature to the Martin Theater. —PETER MARGASAK

TUESDAY1

Mark McGuire Ancient Ocean opens. 9 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $8. 21+

Mark McGuire has built a modest career out of revisiting and reshaping conventions of instrumental music from the 70s and 80s, much of which could be called new age—though his early work in

Chicago forever.

34 CHICAGO READER - JULY 27, 2017

Cleveland trio Emeralds reached back further to the kosmische sound of Tangerine Dream. Over time, new age has become a big inspiration for a certain segment of the underground music world— especially young folks who, like McGuire, missed out on the movement the first time around. For a while McGuire toggled between synthesizer music and acoustic-guitar material, but in recent years he combined both on a series of bloated albums, none more corpulent than Beyond Belief, which made the work of Alan Parsons seem minimal. I’m happy to report that his new album, Ideas of Beginnings (VDSQ), embraces more modest means, sticking mostly to pretty patterns strummed and plucked on acoustic guitar. McGuire doesn’t go for John Fahey’s American Primitive sound—instead, he stays true to his new age aesthetic, creating gently rolling patterns embellished with sparkling mel-

Nobody embodied 90s cool quite like Oasis front man Liam Gallagher. Even his brother turned nemesis, former bandmate Noel, spent a good chunk of last year’s documentary Oasis: Supersonic musing about how tall, good-looking, well-dressed, and beautifully coiffed Liam is. When Oasis first appeared in 1994, Gallagher was the kind of rock star people hadn’t seen since the 70s—hardpartying, off the rails, bursting with cockiness and swagger. He also had one of the greatest voices in rock history, a gorgeous blend of snotty whine and gin-soaked soul. The drama of Oasis’s breakup eventually came to overshadow their legacy as a band, and Liam’s post-Oasis outfit, Beady Eye, sounded more like the death rattle of his musical career than the work of an adored rock star. As You Were (Warner Brothers), his solo debut, is set for an October release, and fortunately its singles (“Wall of Glass” and “Chinatown”) hint that Liam’s got some life in him yet. The songs aren’t mind-blowing by any means—his voice has become nasal and thin over the years, and the Oasis Lite fare lacks the explosive choruses Noel provided. But moments of genius bubble up here and there, such as when Liam’s casual confidence turns the simple, breezy refrain of “Chinatown” into something stirring and beautiful. —LUCA CIMARUSTI

Supa Bwe Suicideboys headline. 7 PM, Bottom Lounge, 1375 W. Lake, sold out. b Since 2014, Chicago rapper-producer Supa Bwe

has celebrated Independence Day by releasing new music. The first couple years he did it as a member of coulda-been-huge experimental rap group Hurt Everybody, and then last year he dropped his solo mixtape Dead Again 3. Supa planned to follow the tradition this year with Finally Dead, but on July 3 he announced on Twitter that he was rescheduling the release for a date TBD. Supa’s melting, mystical pop-rap songs contain yearning Auto-Tune crooning that comes out in Pollock-like bursts and instrumentals that bark and bite. But for all its visceral energy, Supa’s music would be less potent if he didn’t approach it with precision, so I can’t blame him for taking more time to finesse Finally Dead.

On the snippets of the new material I’ve heard, he’s padding out his work—most noticeably with the addition of horns on one track—without tamping down the volcanic bursts of his best performances.

Early single “I Hate Being Alive” touches down like a tornado, and hits with the kind of punk force that so many new lo-fi Soundcloud rappers have used as their secret weapon. —LEOR GALIL

Spoon CRX opens. 9 PM, Metro, 3730 N. Clark, sold out. 18+ Formed in 1993, Spoon have honed a perfect formula over the years, creating a lean rhythmic armature with just enough heft to accent the quietly soulful, post-Bowie singing of front man Britt Daniel. Recently the group have been tweaking that sound more actively—a natural move after more than 15 years of riding a perfect pocket—but they make their first serious missteps on Hot Thoughts (Matador), their most recent album. On its best song, “Can I Sit Next to You,” the band use quasiorchestral washes to guide the tune through major and minor keys; the ultra-taut “Tear It Down,” meanwhile, surprises with a jolt of Beatles-esque splendor. Still, some of the more awkward experiments—the flanged electronics kissing the postdisco throb of “First Caress,” the vacuous saxophone noodling of pseudo-ambient album closer “Us”—suggest that Spoon are unsure of their reach.

Luckily, they have a deep catalog of material, and the rhythmic power of drummer Jim Eno ensures that even the most misguided explorations never go too far astray. —PETER MARGASAK v

Take a class and celebrate 60 years of making music!

New adult group classes are now open! Browse our class schedules online at oldtownschool.org

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FOOD & DRINK

MARSHALL’S LANDING | $$$ 222 W. Merchandise Mart 312-610-8050 marshallslanding.com

Clockwise from top left: Ladies Who Lunch cocktail, Little Gem salad, mushroom bruschetta, burrata salad ò DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS

RESTAURANT REVIEW

The Merch Mart, a dining destination?

DMK Restaurants tries to make the case with Marshall’s Landing.

By AIMEE LEVITT

N

o one goes to the Merchandise Mart for fun. This is not to say no one has ever had any fun there, but all that fun is in the service of business, and no one wants to stay at their place of business any longer than they have to.

Which presents something of a conundrum for the proprietors of Marshall’s Landing, a new all-day restaurant from DMK Restaurants on the second floor of the Mart. Eating out is fun.

Since no one goes to the Mart purely for fun and most people want to escape work as soon as the day is over, who, exactly, is Marshall’s Landing for?

J

JULY 27, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 35

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I|O GODFREY // RIVER NORTH I O G O D F R E Y. CO M

Lemon-blueberry-ricotta pancakes ò DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS

All Lagunitas beers are $6

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OLIVER’S // 6908 WINDSOR // CHEF-OLIVERS.COM // 708.317.4640 Contemporary American with seasonal international dishes including prime cuts, fresh seafood and farm to table specialties in a relaxed casual environment.

“...Wonderful appetizers & martinis!”

— PAMELA B. / YELP

36 CHICAGO READER - JULY 27, 2017

I’ve spent a lot of time in the Mart, since it’s connected to 350 N. Orleans, aka Reader World Headquarters, and I have to pass through every time I take the el to the office. Most of the dining options are worker food, salads and sandwiches that can easily be transported back to one’s desk and consumed neatly in front of a computer.

A couple of years ago, the Mart decided it needed to get trendy, so it installed one of those big bleacherlike staircases that seem to be appearing in newly remodeled lobbies across the city. Workers or conventioneers on breaks can sit and drink coffee and watch important sporting events or HGTV programs projected onto the wall. There was also an open space with couches and armchairs arranged in little conversational nooks and a laptop bar that, at lunchtime, became the site of various guest pop-ups that were greatly appreciated by workers, particularly the barbecue and Caribbean offerings.

And then one day construction walls went up with signs on them promising something wonderful, and when they came down a few months later, we got Marshall’s Landing.

Soon after, I learned from reading Eater that all-day dining is officially a trend, just like the staircase. (And, yes, there is avocado toast on the menu.)

Superficially, Marshall’s Landing doesn’t look much different from the space that

preceded it, except the furniture is fancier, like a Design Within Reach showroom. The potted plants, a coworker has informed me, are top-notch; her parents produce decorative plants for a living, so she should know. A few circular banquettes have been installed by the windows overlooking the river, which means that if you sit in one, you have to look out at the room, which is a shame. Interestingly, there are patches of grass on the ceiling. If conversation ever flags, you could fill some time by pondering what artistic statement the decorator was trying to make.

My first visit to Marshall’s Landing was breakfast with my high school Spanish teacher. A few years ago, I discovered that he lived around the corner from me and wrote him a letter (in Spanish) that I slipped into his mailbox. Now we get together every so often to talk (in English) of times gone by and gossip about my former classmates. Despite having lived in Chicago for most of his adult life, Señor had never been to the Mart—because why would he?—and since he’d spent his entire career working in schools, he was fascinated by the atmosphere. There were a few people sitting at a long worktable lit by study lamps, hunched over laptops with coffee. Did they not, he wondered, have somewhere better to be?

We were the only people eating breakfast, though there was a healthy line at the coffee bar. (And here I must report that the pastries

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ò DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS

FOOD & DRINK

are priced at a ridiculous markup, and if you’re not on an expense account, you should purchase your doughnuts elsewhere.) I think this may have been a surprise to the waitstaff, since they neglected to provide us with silverware or salt and pepper. The cheesy scrambled eggs needed . . . something. The lemon-blueberryricotta pancakes had crispy edges but soggy middles, soggier than could be honorably justified by the ricotta. The bacon was delicious, though, perfectly chewy without being greasy, and our coffee (Dark Matter, prepared by a competent barista) came with biscotti, which we agreed was a nice touch.

Since no one else was around, and since he was getting into the restaurant critic role (I felt some regret that I hadn’t suggested we wear disguises), Señor began chatting with our server. He asked if it was usually this slow.

She said it picked up around lunchtime and then got really busy during happy hour, although more people drank than ordered food.

Ah-ha! we realized simultaneously. This was the true purpose of Marshall’s Landing!

A few days later, I persuaded a coworker to join me for after-work drinks and snacks.

Before she arrived, I spent some time in a comfortable womblike chair typing on my laptop.

One nice, though odd, thing about Marshall’s Landing is that no one will bother you and ask you to buy something unless you press one of the service buttons conveniently located around the room. The sound system was going through a really excellent playlist of 60s and 70s R&B. It was sort of like hanging out in a

hotel lobby, something I adore, except that there was none of that feeling of luxurious idleness that usually comes with a hotel lobby.

Everyone was eager to escape.

“This place is really weird,” my friend said when she joined me. (She would say it twice more before we left.) We paused for a moment to mourn the departed pop-up lunches, then pressed the button to order some food and drinks. The afternoon menu was much more satisfying than breakfast, though I did appreciate why comparatively few people get food: it’s hard to eat gracefully off a coffee table. The toasts that come with the burrata and bruschetta are toasted over a flame, so they have a nice char that contrasts with the sweetness of the cheeses and the bitterness of the greens. The forest mushroom bruschetta has a smear of ricotta and a squidge of balsamic, and the mushrooms are plump and meaty. It’s a good dish. The fennel salad that accompanied the burrata was a touch too salty, but the burrata itself was soft and creamy, sweetened only slightly by a light drizzle of honey.

Because it was happy hour, I felt obligated to order some cheese fries and a pink drink called Ladies Who Lunch. The fries were soggy— although I still couldn’t stop picking at them— but the drink turned out to be refreshing and astringent, despite its awful name, thanks to a judicious use of cucumbers.

Much to my surprise, though, the dish I enjoyed the most was the Little Gem salad, tossed with avocados, Granny Smith apples, manchego cheese, cashews, walnuts, and an herbed vinaigrette dressing. It had a nice balance of flavor and texture and was also filling enough to qualify as a meal, which is the most you can ask of a salad.

At around 7 PM, our server came by to kick us out. No bleary all-night happy hours at Marshall’s Landing! Of course we had someplace else to be. We obediently left, though by that time I’d grown strangely attached to the couch we’d been sitting on, which was soft and woolly, like an old sweater. There is probably some larger point to be made about why people insist on spending too much time at work, and how there’s something ridiculous and sad about the way contemporary office design seems to insist upon conflating work and play space, and how Marshall’s Landing is a prime example of this. But I will admit: since I’m stuck working near the Mart, I’m glad to know about that couch and salad. v

argentine atmosphere while you dine

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v @aimeelevitt JULY 27, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 37

JOBS SALES & MARKETING TELE-FUNDRAISING ARE ALL THE DINOSAURS EXTINCT? Looking for 4 Old Pros

to dial for American Veterans helping Veterans. Felons need not apply per Illinois Attorney General regulations.

Start ASAP, Call 312-256-5035 ask for Cash.

General Economic Researcher for American Institutes for Research (AIR) to work at our Chicago, IL loc. Identify + impl empirical approaches. Dvp conceptual frameworks + experimental designs that guide proj work.

Manage + analyze large-scale data files for research. Apply quantitative techniques to collect + analyze data. Org + doc analytic results + research procedures. Prep technical reports + journal articles + present findings. Dvp + draft research proposals. Mentor research analysts + manage projects. Serve as client contact for analytical + statistical expertise. May undergo standard pre-hire background checks. Must have Ph. D. in Economics, Public Policy, or rel Social Science field with coursework in econometrics or applied statistics. Also req skill (1 yr exp, which can be gained concurrent w/academic studies) in: advanced statistical methods, STATA software, analysis of large-scale data sets, and design of experiments and quasiexperiments. Apply with complete application at www.air.org; Job #9396. EOE.

Retail

TRANSUNION, LLC SEEKS Sr.

Consultants for Chicago, IL location to participate & oversee the design & development of applications & systems development, maintenance & enhancement efforts. Master’s in Comp Sci./Comp Eng./any Eng. field +2yrs exp. or Bachelor’s in Comp Sci. /Comp Eng./any Eng. field +5yrs exp. req’d. Req’d Skills: Hadoop (Yarn, Hive, Pig, Mahout, Hbase, Drill, Spark, sqoop, oozie, flume, Impala, Sentry, Kafka), Cassandra, Hue, RSTUDIO, SAS, Cloudera Manager/Mapr Console, Tableau, Unix/Linux, Bash Scripting, Java, Splunk, Kibana, Grafana, Elastic Search, TLS encryption, ITIL, High Availability (Nginx/ Ha proxy), SSL certs (Management and Deployment for https), Capacity Planning for Hadoop deployments, Performance Tuning of Hadoop file System, Python, MySQL, Postgres, OpenTSDB, Chef/Puppet, Jira, Git. Send resume to: C. Studniarz, REF: BKG, 555 W Adams, Chicago, IL 60661

General

FLUID HANDLING LLC - Mechanical Engineer– Morton Grove, IL Duties: Dvlp current & next generation products, systems, solutions & techs for global water business, encompassing turbomachines & other fluid handling systems.

40 hrs per wk (9am-6pm). Reqts: Master’s of Sci deg (U.S. or foreign equiv) in Mech Engg, Aerospace Engg or a rel field. 6 mos of exp in the app of advanced numerical & simulation methods & tools to solve engg problems, as part of a research team. Prior wrk exp must incl: Formulation of math models & other methods of comp analysis to dvlp, evaluate, or modify designs; Exp w/ the complete cycle of CFD simulation for complex cases, from geometry manipulation & pre-processing through solving & postprocessing; advanced meshing techniques for high-quality meshes, incl structured hexahedral meshing, using tools like GAMBIT or ICEMCFD; advanced solving methods & strategies for single & multi-phase flow using FLUENT or CFX; use of different turbulent flow models & discretization for simulation stability & solution accuracy; advanced post processing using TECHNOLOGY SLALOM’S CHICAGO OFFICE TECPLOT; batch processing for massive simulation runs; Exp in has multiple openings for the following positions. Must be available CFD w/ sliding mesh, multi ref frame, steady state, pseudoto work on projects at various, unanticipated sites w/n commuting transient & transient simulations; various models for multi-phase distance of Slalom Chicago office. flow; modeling of cavitation; transient dynamic mesh motion simu- SOFTWARE ENGINEER lations; App of numerical model[JOB CODE KB014]: Develop, create & modify computer ing & simulation tech to solve applications software or specialized engg problems rel to fluid turbomachines like pumps, compresutility programs. sors or turbines, or fluid subsystems thereof; Know & exp w/ - SOLUTION ARCHITECT, the operation, maintenance & BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE trouble-shooting of MS Windows[JOB CODE KB018]: Analyze complex business problems based High Performance Com& issues using data from internal & puting (HPC) cluster for simulaexternal sources to provide insight to tion; cluster node & job mgmt; diagnostic tests for cluster health decision-makers. mgmt; Dvlpmnt of customized comp s/ware code & User DeTO APPLY: Email resume to fined Functions (UDFs) for cusrecruithr@slalom.com & indicate tomization in CFD using C/C++; appropriate job code.

App of MATLAB to engg problems & apps; Exp w/ engg design methods & tools; app of Comp Aided Design (CAD) systems for basic design modeling using CREO or similar. QUAL APPLICANTS: To apply, visit www. xylem.com/en-us/careers. Scroll down & click on “Search Opening s.” Enter Req. ID # 8926BR to submit resume.

BINNY’S IS HIRING!

Binny’s Beverage Depot is the Midwest’s largest upscale retailer of fine wines, spirits, beers and cigars, and due to our continued growth, we are now looking for dedicated individuals to join our team at our Portage Park location.

STORE ASSOCIATES Full Time and Part Time

We are seeking energetic, customer-oriented individuals to perform a variety of store functions. Qualified persons must be over 21 years of age, able to lift 40-50 lbs. and available to work flexible hours. Previous retail experience a plus with cashier or stock experience preferred. Candidates must be able to work nights & weekends.

Please apply online at: www.binnys.com/careers

QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH ASSOCIATE (Multiple Openings) – Chicago, IL. Susquehanna International Group, LLP. Dvlp, test, eval & implmt statistical models & tools for invstmt & mkt trading sw. Req PhD in Math, Physics, Stats, Ops Rsrch, Elec Eng, CS or rel. Emp will consider PhD candidate who is ABD (“all but dissertation”). Must have completed grad lvl coursework in or acad rsrch exp which requires use of probability theory & linear algebra sufficient to allow applicant to devlp, test, eval, & implement statistical models & tools for use in investment & mrkt trading sw; have knowledge in at least 1 of following: C#, C/C++, Python, R or MATLAB sufficient to allow the applicant to devlp & implement statistical models & tools for use in investment & market trading sw. 1020% travel to SIG’s office in Bala Cynwyd, PA required. Apply to: Charlotte Maon, Susquehanna International Group, LLP, 401 E. City Ave. Ste. 220, Bala Cynwyd, PA 19004.

LOOKING FOR DRIVERS for

EOE

38 CHICAGO READER | JULY 27, 2017

daily driving to different areas around the Chicago GTA area and vehicle will be provided. The driver must have a clean Cass G drivers license. Send resume to dmgg2020@gmail.com

VP FREIGHT OPERATIONS (Elk Grove Village, IL) Dvlp & execute sub-region Strategies, Goals, & Continuous Improvement plans w/VP Ops Excellence.

Oversee P&L of freight fwd’g ops.

Supervise resources allocation.

Bachelor’s biz, transportatn, logistics, supplychain mgmt, finance, or reltd field +15yrs exp in logistics&transportation industry or 17yrs exp in logistics & transportation industry. At least 12yrs industry exp must be in senior mgmt role. 7yrs exp w/: proj mgmt methodologs; purchas’g, budget prep & review, financial analysis & reprt’g in freight fwd’g biz; biz plann’g methodologs, competitive analysis, strategy dvlpmt in freight fwd’g biz. 7yrs exp dvlpg&executing logistics sales&mktg strategs. At least 40% travel (domestic & internat’l).

CEVA Freight, LLC. Res: larry. trencher@cevalogistics.com. Ref: VPF.

Sr Technical Sales Representative sought by Akzo Nobel Coatings, Inc. in Chicago, IL (Telecommuting Permitted).

Reqs: Assoc deg or equiv in a Physical Sci, Comp Sci, or Engg discipline & 1yr of exp in the powder coatings ind. All of stated exp must incl: troubleshootg effect of customer’s powder coatings process on coatings prods used for automotive wheels & architectural aluminum; reading & evaluatg tech analysis rprts & interpretg results for customers; trials & introductn of new prods & technologies of powder coating materials & powder coating applic technologies; testg finished coated prods; & using tech equip incl oven recorders, film gauges, flowmeters, & electrostatic assessment devices. Travel domestically up to 50% of wrkg time.

Apply online at www.akzonobel. com/careers for vacancy#(170003BV).

Software Engineer Needed Software Engineer needed to be responsible for configuring and managing software applications on Hosted and Cloud platforms and define, architect, and maintain highly available production systems. Automating server management and application deployments using configuration management tools and migrating applications to Cloud Platforms.

Work location is Arlington Heights, IL and various unanticipated locations throughout the US which may require relocation.

Resumes to Aclat Inc., Attn: HR, 5 E College Drive, Suite 100, Arlington Heights, IL 60004. Resume must specifically identify all education & skills relevant to job offered.

TECHNOLOGY PLS FINANCIAL SERVICES, INC. SEEKS: 2 APPLICATION DEVELOPER II:

Req BS in CS, Comp. Eng., or foreign equiv in a related field & 5 yrs of progressively responsible exp. as a Senior Developer leading software development, customization, testing, & optimization projects using VB. NET, C#, ASP.NET, SQL, WPF, MVC, EF, LINQ, JavaScript, AJAX, jQuery, RESTful API, Backbonejs, IIS, HTML5\CSS, TFS, PowerShell, SOA. Supervise contracting resources for projects & lead a team of onshore/ offshore developers. Position is in Chicago, IL. Mail CV to: Attn: Art Sanders One South Wacker Drive, Floor 36 Chicago IL 60606. EOE.

GELBER GROUP, LLC seeks

Quantitative Software Developers for Chicago, IL location. Master’s in Comp Sci or Comp/Electrical Eng +2yrs exp or Bachelor’s in Comp Sci or Comp/Electrical Eng +5yrs exp req’d. Req’d skills- 2yrs w/ each: design, optimize & deploy highperformance trading sw, design database tables, process, analyze real time & static data, Python, Linux, MySQL, Pandas, Shell Scripting.

Background check req’d. Send resume to: hr@gelbergroup.com REF# PD

ALLCELL TECHNOLOGIES LLC is seeking an Electrical Engineer in Chicago, IL with the following requirements: Master’s degree in electronics engineering or related field. Alternative requirements: Bachelor’s degree in electronics engineering or related field and 2 years related experience. Will accept any level of experience in the following skills: conduct end of line test; design embedded software and programming; and program GUI software. Please submit resume to j schatt@allcelltech.com. Subject line must reference S061588 SOFTWARE ORACLE AMERICA, INC. has openings for SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT CONSULTANT positions

in Westmont, IL. Job duties include: Develop and deliver detailed IT solutions through consulting project activities. Responsibilities include client identification through final invoicing for engagements. Apply by e-mailing resume to jim.r.smith@ oracle.com, referencing 385.18208.

Oracle supports workforce diversity.

REAL ESTATE RENTALS

STUDIO $500-$599 73RD AND JEFFERY BLVD. Studio, 1BR & 2BR, heated, hardwood flrs, laundry room, appls, near trans. $565 and up.

773-881-3573

Chicago, Beverly/Cal Park/Blue Island Studio $575 & up, 1BR $665 & up, 2BR $885 & up. Heat, Appls, Balcony, Carpet, Laundry, Prkg.

708-388-0170

STUDIO $600-$699 CHICAGO, HYDE PARK Arms

Hotel, 5316 S. Harper, maid, phone, cable ready, fridge, private facilities, laundry avail. Switchboard. Start at $ 160/wk 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 CHICAGO - HYDE PARK 5401 S. Ellis.

Studio. $400/mo. û CALL 773-955-5106 û 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 SUMMER SPECIAL: STUDIOS starting at $499 incls utilities , 1BR

WEST PULLMAN (INDIANA

Ave) RENT SPECIAL: Pay 1st month rent only - No Security dep req’d.

Nice lrg 1BR $575; 2BR $699 & 1 3BR $850, balcony. Sec 8 Welc 773995-6950

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)

SUMMER SPECIAL $500 Toward Rent Beautiful Studios 1, 2, 3 & 4 BR Sect. 8 Welc. Westside Loc, Must qualify. 773-287-4500 www.wjmngmt.com

CHICAGO - South Shore Large 1BR, $660/mo.

Free heat.

Near Transportation.

Section 8 Welcome. Call 708932-4582 108TH ST., LOVELY 4 rm, 1BR, liv rm, din rm, kitchen/bath, heated & hw flrs. Close to trans.

Avail now. Also, 1BR w/ crpt avail.

773-264-6711 CHICAGO, 4 ROOM APARTMENT, 1BR, vicinity of 79th & Stony Island. $600/mo.

Call 773-407-3143 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., 773619-0204

10815 S. KING DR., updated, hdwd flrs, 0/mo. Tenant pays Credit check req’d.

484-9250

3BR, C/A. own Call

2BA, $110 heat.

773-

8322 S INGLESIDE, 1BR, $660/ mo, newly remodeled, hrdwd floors, cable, laundry, Sec. 8 wel-

come. 708-308-1509 or 773-4933500.

CHICAGO, 1405 N. CENTRAL, 4 rooms, 1BR, $760/mo + 1.5 months sec. Heat & laundry facility. Call 773-490-3347

1 BR $800-$899 SECTION 8 WELCOME SOUTHSIDE, Recently renovated, 1 BR Apts.

FREE HEAT! $800-$1000/mo.

Call Sean, 773-410-7084

1 BR $900-$1099 319 E. 80TH St 1BR, 2nd flr. $1040/

mo. & 324 E. 80th St. 2BR, 1st flr. $124 0/mo. Both Very lg, comp renov formal DR & cust features throughout., stove, fridge & vented microwave incl both non-ref move in fee req. 773.981.2731

LARGE ONE BEDROOM near the Red Line. 6828 N. Wayne. Hardwood floors. Pets ok. Heat included.

Laundry in building. $950/month.

Available 10/1. 773-761-4318.

ONE BEDROOM NEAR Warren

Park and Metra. 6800 N. Wolcott.

Hardwood floors. Cats OK. Heat included. Laundry in building. $925/ month. Available 10/1. 773-761-4318.

BIG 2BR, 4 ROOM, Section 8

ready!

New rehab, Huge, fresh, clean, quiet. Cadillac unit. Call 773290-8740, Norm. 1215 W 70th Newly updated, clean furnished rooms in Joliet, near buses & Metra, elevator. Utilities included, $91/wk. $395/mo. 815-722-1212

CHICAGO 225 W. 111TH ST. Lovely spac 1.5BR, 1st flr. Crpt, Ceiling fans, tenant pays all utils $600 + sec dep. 773-568-2546 NICE ROOM w/stove, fridge & bath Near Aldi, Walgreens, Beach, Red Line & Buses. Elevator & Laundry. $130/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

SOUTH SHORE NICE and Cozy w/hdwd flrs, 1-2BR Apts. $630$770/mo. Huge 3BR/2BA. $1020/ mo. 76th/Saginaw. 773-445-0329

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

1 BR $1100 AND OVER DELUXE BRIDGEPORT LOFT ,

Custom Beamed Ceilings, Marble Fireplace, Large Sundeck, Washer/ Dryer, appliances, $1,395 Per Month, $25 credit check 773-373-7368

ONE BEDROOM BY UIC Medical

Campus/IMD. Dishwasher/washer/ dryer. Electricity, water, internet. August 1, $1175 mostly. (312) 813-0857.

1 BR OTHER APTS. FOR RENT PARK MGMT & INV. Ltd. IT’S MOVING TIME!!!

OUR UNITS INCLUDE HEAT, HW & CG Plenty of parking 1Bdr From $775.00 2Bdr From $925.00 3 Bdr/2 Full Bath From $1200 **1-(773)-476-6000***

NEWLY DECORATED 4 Rms,

2BR, $650; 5800 Block S Wabash, Lambert Realty 773-287-3380

SECTION 8 READY 4 RM, 1 BR, All new, huge, fresh, 773-290-8740, Albert. 8160 S Racine

$550, 2BR $599, 2BR $699, With approved credit. No Security Deposit for Sec 8 Tenants. South Shore & Southside. 312-446-3333 or 773-2879999

ONE MONTH FREE. Move In NOW!!! Studios - 1 Beds Hyde Park.

Call Megan 773-285-3310

SUMMERTIME SAVINGS! NEWLY Remod. 1 BR Apts $650 w/

NO APPLICATION FEE Studio. $675 1BR. $750.

Near Metra & shops, Section 8 OK. Newly decorated, dining room, carpeted, appls, FREE heat & cooking gas. Elevator & laundry rm 1-773-919-7102 or 1-312-802-7301

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

1 BR HUGE 1200 SQ Foot NEWLY

gas incl. 2-5BR start at $650 & up.

Sec 8 Welc. Rental Assistance Prog. for Qualified Applicants offer up to $ 400/month for 1 yr. (773)412-1153 Wesley Realty

62nd & Maplewood, 1 BR, newly remod, lrg LR, DR, kitc., utils not incl, Sec 8 ok. No sec dep, $725. $400 move in fee.

773-406-0604

APTS. FOR RENT PARK MGMT & INV. LTD. SPRING HAS SPRUNG!!

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**

1 BR $700-$799

RENOVATED Apartments Avail 8/1/17.

Taking deposits now. Voucher/no voucher accepted. $750/month, no Sec deposit. 6801 S Loomis Blvd TEXT OR CALL PARIS ASAP (312) 852-2804.

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 ∫

SPACIOUS-SAFE 773-4235727. BRONZEVILLE, 3BR, heat included. Englewood, 1,2 & 3BR, heat incl. Dolton, 2BR, Gated Parking.

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CHICAGO, 1115 W. 76th St. 1BR Apartment. Newly decorated, heated, appliances incl. $645/mo + security. Call 1-773-881-4182 CHICAGO, 713 W. Garfield, Studio Apartment, newly decorated, heated, appliances incl., $605/mo + security. Call 1-773-881-4182 ONE-BEDROOM

WAITING

LIST is now open for Project-based Section 8 - 3639 N. Pine Grove, Chicago. Income limits apply. Must apply in person at the management office between 10:00AM and 4:00PM Monday-Friday.

6325 SHERIDAN RD . 1BR, panoramic view of Lake Michigan, secure building, step out and catch bus to downtown in minutes. Laundry & storage. Call Ken 630-243-0632 MOST BEAUT. APTS! 6748 Crandon, 2BR, $875. 7727 Colfax, 2BR, $875.

6220 Eberhart, 2 & 3BR, $850-$1150.

7527 Essex, 2BR, $950 773-9478572 / 312-613-4424

2 BR UNDER $900 CHICAGO, 2BR Apt, nicely decorated, located near 83rd & Hermitage, heat included, no pets, $730/mo. For information call: 773-783-7098 71ST & FAIRFIELD, B e a u t if u l 2BR, 2nd floor, unheated, stove & fridge incl., $650/mo + 1.5 mo sec. Please Call Mr. Robinson, 773-238-5188 AUGUSTA/ SPRINGFIELD Large 2 Bedroom Apartment. $750/month, tenant pays utilities.

Call 312-401-3799 FREE HEAT 94-3739 S. BISHOP.

2BR, 5rm, 2nd floor, appls, parking, storage & closet space, near shops/ trans. $900 + sec. 708-335-0786

BURNHAM AREA, 2BR, $750/ mo+ $500/move in fee, heat incld, 607 E. 92nd Pl, 2nd flr.

773-615-9042 9am-6pm

BRONZEVILLE- 42ND & Indiana. Gut rehab 2BR, $980, new hdwd flrs, kitc cabinets & windows, W/D in unit. Sec 8 Welc. 773-447-2122.

3 BR OR MORE UNDER $1200

2 BR $1100-$1299

CHICAGO, 7028 S. GREEN, 3BR, lrg living room, dining room, hardwood flrs, 1.5BA, 3rd floor, $985/mo + heat.

Section 8 Welc. 708-2049881

73RD & DORCHESTER, 2BR, refrig & stove, lndry hookups, off street prkg, enclosed yard, $975/ mo. No security dep. 773-684-1166

2 BR $1500 AND OVER

WICKER PARK. TWO bedroom.

First floor in owner-occupied 2 flat on quiet tree-lined street. Spacious, great rooms, wbfp, beautiful stained glass window, central air, cable ready. Laundry facilities. Secure iron gate. No pets. No smoking. No drugs.

Available September 1. $1600 plus utilities. 773-276-4591 or 773-7179840.

2 BR OTHER 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

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

CHICAGO 7600 S Essex 2BR $599, 3BR $699, 4BR $799 w/apprvd credit, no sec dep. Sect 8 Ok! 773287-9999 /312-446-3333

CHICAGO SOUTH SIDE Beauti-

MATTESON, IL newly decorated,

ful Studios, 1,2,3 & 4 BR’s, Sec 8 ok. $500 gift certificate for Sec 8 tenants. 773-287-9999/312-446-3333

2 bedroom, heat included, $850 + 1 month security. 4247 Lindenwood Drive. after 6pm 708-957-7861

MARQUETTE PARK 3BR, formal dining room, stove, fridge, laundry facilities. $900 + sec. Must See! 773-881-8836

RIVERDALE NEW DECOR, 1BR,

73RD/INDIANA, 88th/Dauphin & 74th/King Dr. 2BRs. $775- $850.

GLENWOOD, Updated lrg 2BR Condo, HF HS, Balcony, C/A, appls, heat/water incl. 2 pkng, laundry.

appls, new crpt, heated, A/C, lndry, prkng, no pets, nr Metra. Sec 8 ok $675. 630-480-0638

LOOKING TO MOVE ASAP? Remodeled 1, 2 , 3 & 4 BR Apts.

Heat & Appls incl. Sec 8 OK. Call 773-593-4357

CHICAGO, 11019 S. Vernon,

Studio $500. 2bdrm. $750. Heat Incl.

Section 8 OK. No Sec Dep. Call 312-326-3692

1BR, 1ST FLR, Newly rehab, hdwd

flrs, spac, appls, lndry facility, Quiet bldg. Gated backyard. Sec 8 ok. 773344-4050

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

Spac good trans, laundry on site, security camera. 312-341-1950

Chicago, 8216 S. Dobson , 2BR 1.5BA, Townhouse for Rent, finished basement, $890/mo. Call 773-374-4357 SOUTHSIDE 2BR Apt. $650/mo. & 3 or 4BR House. $875/mo. + utilities. 66th/Hoyne. & 69th/ Maplewood. 312-218-0027

$975/mo. 708.268.3762

NW 2 FLAT BRICK, 900 Springfield 3 BR, hrdwd flrs.

Cent air, $825/Mo + utils & sec. deposit. Credit check req.

Call 773-386-5932

61st/Langley 3BR/1BA in 2unit bldg Avail Now beautiful apt new bathroom, w/d in bsmt, Nr Trans & sch Sec 8 ok $1000/mo 312-6130974 SOUTHSIDE, 2 unit, 3BR, 1BA, lower, nr Train, quiet blk. Section 8 OK. $600/mo + utils. $500 gift cert to sect 8 tenants. 917-428-8569 MORGAN PARK AREA, 3BR, 2BA, intercom system, laundry, carpet & tile floors, $1100/mo + $1100 sec. Mark, 773-842-0476 SECTION 8 WELCOME. No Security Deposit. 7721 S Peoria, 3BR apt, appls incl. $1050/mo.

708-288-4510

ceiling fans, stove, garage, concrete patio. $1400/mo.

Section 8 Welc. 773-456-2061

3 BR OR MORE $1500-$1799 67TH/ABERDEEN. 1BR. $500.

81st/Exchange. 1BR. $575.

91st/Ada. 2BR. $725.

147th/Leavitt. 2BR Home. $850.

Ranch Realty. 773-952-2122

3 BR OR MORE $1200-$1499

84th/Paulina 2BR, updated bath & kitchen with ss appliances garage space included Sec 8 Welcome 312-282-6555

BRICK 4BRS/1.5BA 62nd & Winchester. $1300/mo & 8955 S. May. $1550/mo.

Move-in Fee, Sec 8 Ok. 773-720-9787 or 773-483-2594

CHICAGO, 8000 S. Hermitage, 2BR, $675/mo + security. Tenant pays own heat. Call James Dennis, 312-683-6837

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

SOUTH SHORE: 76TH & Kenwood, 2 Bed $850 & 1 Bed $725,

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

2 BR $900-$1099

Heat Included Call 312.208.1771

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

CHICAGO, 9307 S. Saginaw, Newly rehabbed, 2BR, carpet, stove & fridge, heat not incl, $950/ mo. Sect 8 welc. Mr. Johnson, 773294-0167

ADULT SERVICES

ADULT SERVICES

COLLEGE GIRL BODY RUBS $40 w/AD 24/7

224-223-7787

Never miss a show again.

MARQUETTE PARK: 7326 S Artesian, beaut rehab 5BR/3BA house, granite ctrs/SS appls, whirlpl tub, fin bsmt, 2 car gar. $1700/mo 708288-4510.

units fully heated and humidity con-

3BR/2BA Humongous 1st fl, c/a, trolled with ac available. North: Knox 773-685-6868.

South: hdwd flrs, fireplace. 3BR/1BA c/a, Avenue.

3BR/1BA all new 1st fl, c/a, hdwd Pershing Avenue. 773-523-6868. flrs, nr transp. 773-410-3892

SERVICES PROFESSIONAL EXPERT INTIMATE WAXING for both

males and females in very private, pleasant home setting in Rogers Park neighborhood. Extremely affordable.

Gold standard of wax products used, exclusively: Ciripel hard and soft wax

by Perron Rigot of Paris. Call or text 630-520-8052

DOLTON 5BR, 2BA,

SOUTHSIDE, Newly Remod 3BR /2BA with appls & washer/dryer.

Also, newly remod 2BR with appls & WD hk up 773-908-8791

COUNTRY CLUB HILLS: OPEN HOUSE Sun 2-4 3946 W 168th Pl 4BR 2 BA, 2 car garage, Section 8 OK $2000/mo 708-724-9200

Discount. Male preferred. Furnished rooms, shared kitchen & bath, $550/ mo. & up. Utilities included.

773-710-5431

CHICAGO, NEAR CHICAGO STATE, to share with a senior.$125 a week, references required. 773-629-6105

HEALTH & WELLNESS FULL BODY MASSAGE. hotel, house calls welcome $90

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

MESSAGES SPIRITUAL PSYCHIC READER TELLS you past, present and future, CHICAGO HOUSES FOR rent.

Section 8 Ok, w/app credit $500 gift certificate 3, 4 & 5 BR houses avail.

312-446-3333 or 708-752-3812

CHICAGO, SINGLE ROOM IN 4BR home, 6541 S. Hermitage, large living & dining room, full basement. Call 708-333-9490

helps with all problems, could do where others have failed. Call now for FREE consultation 630-408-4789

2 car garage, section 8 welcome, fridge, microwave, stove, dishwasher. $1500/mo. 773-552-2852

SOUTHSIDE - 55TH & Ashland,

GENERAL

3 BR OR MORE $1800-$2499 LARGE 3 BEDROOM apartment near Wrigley Field. 3820 N. Fremont.

Two bathrooms. Hardwood Floors.

Cats OK. $2190/month. Parking available at additional cost. Available 9/1.

773-761-4318.

Clean Rooms, use of kitchen and bath. Available Now. Call 773-434-4046

PHEASANT RIDGE/HUNTER APARTMENTS ARE ACCEPTING

APPLICATIONS on Friday, August 25, 2017 from 9:00 a.m. – 12:00 noon for subsidized 1, 2 and 3 bedroom apts.

Applications will be taken in person at the mgmt.. office: 9208 Hunter Dr., Orland Hills, IL 60477. All applications will be placed on the waiting list. Questions, call: 708-460-3880.

MARKETPLACE

GOODS

HUGE MULTI-FAMILY GARAGE

3 BR OR MORE OTHER

SECTION 8 WELCOME Chicago, 11526 S Harvard 5BR/2BA, $1600.

255 W. 111th Pl., 6BR/3BA $1700.

Call 773-793-8339, ask for Joe.

8322 S BAKER, 3BR apt, 1st flr, hdwd flrs, Sec 8 ok. 2BR or 1BR voucher ok. 2707 E 93rd St. 5BR, 2BA, hdwd flrs, Sc 8 ok. 3BR voucher ok. Call 847-312-5643.

EARLY WARNINGS

non-residential SELF-STORAGE CENTERS. T W O locations to serve you. All

NR 76TH & MARSHFIELD.

2BR Bsmt apt incl heat & W/D, close to transportation, shopping and schools. $730/mo. 773-349-5534

CHATHAM SPECIAL Must sell quickly! 3BR, 2BA, Needs finishing touch. Call Gloria, Charles Rutenberg Realty 773-490-3429

SOUTH SHORE, Senior

CHATHAM: 7234 S PRAIRIE beautiful rehabbed 5BR house, hdwd floors, fin bsmt, granite ctr tops, SS appls, $1675/mo. 708288-4510.

WEST HUMBOLDT PK, Lrg, 3BR, 2 parking spaces in back, $1300/mo, utilities not included. Grammar school in front. 773-633-0277 DOLTON - LOVELY 3BR, 1.5BA House, large fenced back yard, all appls incl, Tenant pays utils. Lrg fam rm w/fireplace, C/A. $1400/mo. 708-841-9025

BEAUTIFULLY RENOVATED 3BR Single Family Homes, new kit. Fridge, stove & W/D incl. Hdwd flrs. Cash & Sect 8 Welc. 708-557-0644

roommates

4010 S. King Dr. 3BR, heat incl, $1025. 7906 S. Justine. 2BR $800 & Restaurant for rent.

708-421-7630 or 773-899-9529

& Townhome.

Matteson, Sauk Village, University Park. Section 8 OK. Call 708-625-7355 for info.

2 & 3BR House

1300 W. 73RD St. 4+1BR, 1.5 BA,

ADULT SERVICES

FOR SALE PAXSON PROPERTIES. OWN

Sale!

Lots of Great Bargains and a Wide Variety of household items, clothing, tools, toys, furniture, etc.

3600-3900 Blocks N Central Park, Drake, St. Louis, Bernard, Kimball & Christiana August 5-6, 2017 8 am - 4 pm

MAKE UP TO

ADULT SERVICES

NOTICE IS HEREBY given, pur-

suant to “An Act in relation to the use of an Assumed Business Name in the conduct or transaction of Business in the State,” as amended, that a certification was registered by the undersigned with the County Clerk of Cook County. Registration Number: D17151342 on July 7, 2017 Under the Assumed Business Name of BEHOLD INTERNATIONAL SALON with the business located at: 1824 W 79TH ST, CHICAGO, IL 60620. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner(s)/partner(s) is: CHICTOWA WEATHERSPOON 3447 W 137TH BOX 1163, ROBBINS, IL 60472, USA

NOTICE IS HEREBY given, pur-

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

suant to "An Act in relation to the use of an Assumed Business Name in the conduct or transaction of Business in the State," as amended, that a certification was registered by the undersigned with the County Clerk of Cook County. Registration Number: D17151337 on July 7, 2017 under the Assumed Business Name of Joyride Organics with the business located at 331 W Armitage Ave, Chicago, IL 60614. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner( s)/ partner(s) is: Danielle Marie Ostrowski, 526 Hampshire Lane, Bolingbrook, IL 60440, USA.

ADULT SERVICES

ADULT SERVICES

your house. Seller finance, $2500 down. Mo payment cheaper then rent. Buyer must be approved (no bank). N & NW Ind. Mike 847-2801204

$60,000 per deal Guaranteed Financing Real Estate Audio Seminar Free info call 773-340-3151

legal notices

Find a concert, buy a ticket, and sign up to get advance notice of Chicago’s essential music shows at chicagoreader.com/early.

JULY 27, 2017 | CHICAGO READER 39

l

SAVAGE LOVE

By Dan Savage

When a 16-year-old is getting sexted as her sister sulks

What to be concerned about—and what not to. Plus: Stepdad, don’t creep.

Q : I’m a reader in Kansas

with two teenage daughters, 16 and 18. My girls recently met a boy where they work and both took an interest in him. The 18-year-old was devastated that he was more interested in her younger sister. I spoke to the 16-yearold about it, which is when I found out this boy is going to be a sophomore in college.

The fact that he’s interested in a 16-year-old is a red flag. I asked the 16-year-old to keep her distance. She agreed, but I saw a shirtless photo he sent her. I don’t know what other photos he’s sent and I don’t know what she’s sent him, but I immediately removed all photo apps from her phone. The girls have had public fights about this boy. They’ve made peace with each other, but now my 18-year-old wants to date him. I can’t control the actions of an 18-year-old but (1) it seems likely this guy is a complete creep and (2) isn’t her relationship with her sister more important?

—KNOWING A NUMBSKULL STALKS ADORABLE SISTERS

A : I’m not ready to pronounce this guy a creep—at least not for the age difference.

It sounds like he met your daughters someplace they’re all working this summer, which is a lot less icky than some college boy creeping on high school girls via Instagram.

And you say this boy is going to be a sophomore in college, KANSAS, but don’t give his age. There are 30-yearold college sophomores, of course, but if this boy went straight to college from high school, that would make him 19 years old. If your 16-yearold is closing in on 17, this guy could be “older” by two years and change. While I can understand why you wouldn’t want your younger

daughter dating college boys, I think you are overreacting to the age difference—and it’s a moot issue, as he’s no longer pursuing your younger daughter.

But you know what is creepy? Pursuing a pair of sisters. The possibility of conflict was so predictable it was likely a motivating factor for him. Getting off on drama and public fights isn’t a crime, but it is a red flag.

Now, you ordered your 16-year-old to stop seeing this guy and deleted apps from her phone. (It’s cute you think your daughter isn’t tech-savvy enough to redownload and hide all the same apps.) You should warn your daughter about the risks of sexting—she could face child porn charges for sending photos and this boy could wind up on a sex-offender registry for receiving them. But don’t attempt to micromanage your daughters’ love lives. Parental disapproval has a way of driving teenagers into each other’s arms, KANSAS. If you don’t want your daughters having a fuck-you-mom threesome with this guy before the summer is over, you’ll let them work through this on their own— but go ahead and stitch “Boys come and go but sisters are forever” on a couple of pillows and put them on their beds.

Q : I’m a straight guy married

to a wonderful woman. She has a daughter, and I’ve played “dad” since I met her mom five years ago. The girl who used to be a gangly, awkward 11-year-old is now 16, and there’s no other way to put this: She is hot. I’m not supposed to notice, I know, and I have ZERO interest in being creepy with her.

But she has always liked to cuddle with me and still does.

I believe safe closeness from a dad figure helps girls make

good choices when it comes to boys. (If not for me, she might seek attention from douchebag teenage boys trying to take advantage.) I want to continue to play this role for her. But when she comes in wearing tiny shorts and puts her legs over my lap, I get rock hard. I’m not trying to be creepy, but I’m a guy and she’s a perfect female specimen. I can’t say, “We can’t be as physically close as we used to be,” because that itself would be creepy and it would make her sad.

—INSERT DAD ACRONYM HERE OBVIOUSLY

A : Sometimes children grow

up and get hot, and bonus adults in their lives—typically (and thankfully) not their bio or lifelong parents—can’t help but notice. The onus is on the adult in that situation to suppress all evidence of awareness of that shit. Which means setting boundaries and, if necessary, keeping your distance. Put an end to the cuddling. When she plops down on the couch, go take a walk or a shower or a shit. Better she has a sad over the end of snuggle time than she notices your boners and feels unsafe around you.

She’s most likely plopping down on you out of habit, IDAHO, not out of a need for affection from a trusted male.

I promise you, she’s not going to start blowing bad boys in back alleys if she can’t get close enough to give you a boner anymore. (Also, if you don’t want to come across as a creep, don’t describe your stepdaughter—or any other woman—as a “perfect female specimen.” Ick.) v Send letters to mail@ savagelove.net. Download the Savage Lovecast every Tuesday at savagelovecast. com. v @fakedansavage

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JULY 27, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 41

Sza 12/20, 6 PM, Concord Music Hall A Avey Tare 10/6, 10 PM, Hideout, on sale Fri 7/28, noon Terror Jr 10/21, 8 PM, 1st Ward, 17+ This Is the Kit 10/20, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Thrice, Circa Survive 12/7, 6:30 PM, Aragon Ballroom, on sale Fri 7/28, 10 AM, 17+ Tiger Army 11/24, 9 PM, Beat Kitchen and 11/25, 7 PM, Metro Vagabon 9/17, 8 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Loudon Wainwright III 11/15, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 7/27, noon A Waker 11/4, 10 PM, Schubas, 18+ Warning, Thou 10/26, 8 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Wolf Parade 10/24, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 7/28, 10 AM, 17+

Silversun Pickups ò COURTESY OF SWELL PUBLICITY

NEW

Animals as Leaders, Periphery 11/1, 7:30 PM, the Vic, on sale Fri 7/28, 10 AM, 18+ Arkells 11/3, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, on sale Fri 7/28, 10 AM, 18+ Barr Brothers 12/7, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall Tim Barry, Gallows Bound 10/12, 7 PM, Cobra Lounge, on sale Fri 7/28, noon, 17+ Bleachers, Bishop Briggs 11/11, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, on sale Fri 7/28, 10 AM, 18+ Brand X 9/16, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Cannibal Corpse, Power Trip, Gatecreeper 11/24, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 7/28, 10 AM, 17+ Tommy Castro & the Painkillers 10/6, 9 PM, FitzGerald’s, Berwyn, on sale Fri 7/28, 11 AM Cayetana 9/26, 8:30 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Celebration 10/11, 9 PM, Empty Bottle, on sale Fri 7/28, 10 AM Cold Specks 11/28, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Colson Band 8/12, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Early November, Movielife 9/26, 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Feedtime 9/26, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Fletcher 10/10, 8:30 PM, Beat Kitchen, on sale Fri 7/28, 10 AM, 17+ Florist 10/22, 7 PM, Beat Kitchen A Jessica Hernandez & the Deltas 9/22, 9 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Hideout Block Party with Antietam, Screaming Females, Man or Astroman?, Condo Fucks, Meat Wave, and more 9/23-24, Hideout

Hiss Golden Messenger 10/24, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, on sale Fri 7/28, 10 AM Honey Radar 8/13, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Peter Hook & the Light 5/4, 9 PM, Metro, 18+ Horseshoes & Hand Grenades, Kitchen Dwellers 9/29, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 7/28, 10 AM A Humming House 10/18, 7:30 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 7/28, 10 AM A Ice Balloons 10/10, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Jzac 9/7, 8 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Salif Keita, Grand Tapestry 9/9, 7 PM, Concord Music Hall F Seun Kuti & Egypt 80 9/23, 7 PM, Concord Music Hall F La Santa Cecilia 10/7, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 7/28, 10 AM, 17+ Eric Lindell 8/9, 8:30 PM, FitzGerald’s, Berwyn Lisa Loeb 10/24, 7:30 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 7/28, 10 AM A Loose Ends 11/17, 7 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 7/27, noon A Makana & John Cruz 9/9, 1 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 7/27, noon A Jessica Lea Mayfield 11/9, 9 PM, Empty Bottle, on sale Fri 7/28, 10 AM Milck 9/11, 8 PM, Schubas, on sale Fri 7/28, 10 AM, 18+ Misterwives, Smallpools 10/15, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre, on sale Fri 7/28, 10 AM A Motionless in White, Amity Affliction, Miss May I 10/22, 5:30 PM, House of Blues, on sale Fri 7/28, 10 AM A Nosaj Thing, Jacques Greene 9/28, 9 PM, Bottom Lounge, 18+

42 CHICAGO READER - JULY 27, 2017

b

Nothing but Thieves 10/25, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, on sale Fri 7/28, 10 AM, 18+ Lindi Ortega, Andrew Combs 9/25, 7:30 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 7/28, 10 AM A Overcoats 11/17, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, on sale Fri 7/28, 10 AM, 18+ Pigeons Playing Ping Pong 9/9, 9:30 PM, Bottom Lounge, on sale Fri 7/28, 10 AM, 17+ Robert Randolph & the Family Band 9/7, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 7/28, 10 AM A Revelers 11/12, 1 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 7/27, noon A Josh Ritter & the Royal City Band, Good Old War 11/9, 8 PM, the Vic, 18+ San Holo 11/17, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+ Leroy Sanchez 9/28, 6 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club A Script 10/6, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre, on sale Fri 7/28, 10 AM A Secret Chiefs 3 9/26, 9 PM, Beat Kitchen She Wants Revenge 11/17, 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Joan Shelley, James Elkington 10/14, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 7/28, 10 AM A Shovels & Rope 10/3, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 7/28, 10 AM A Silversun Pickups 11/8, 7 PM, Riviera Theatre, on sale Fri 7/28, 10 AM A Skatalites 9/21, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Split Lip Rayfield 10/14, 9 PM, Hideout Squeeze 11/25, 7:30 PM, the Vic, on sale Fri 7/28, 10 AM A Susanne Sundfor 11/9, 8 PM, 1st Ward, on sale Fri 7/28, 10 AM, 17+

UPDATED Cranberries 9/28, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, canceled LCD Soundsystem 11/6-8, 7:30 PM, Aragon Ballroom, 11/6 and 11/7 sold out, 11/8, on sale Fri 7/28, 10 AM A Linkin Park, Machine Gun Kelly 8/14, 7:30 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park, canceled Umphrey’s McGee 9/23, 6:30 PM, Huntington Bank Pavilion, rescheduled from 7/20

UPCOMING Against Me!, Bleached 9/30, 6 PM, Concord Music Hall A Arkaik, Alterbeast 10/1, 7 PM, Reggie’s Music Joint Bad Suns 10/20, 7:30 PM, Metro A Boris, Helms Alee 10/23, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Jackson Browne 8/13, 7:30 PM, Copernicus Center Cloud Nothings 8/3, 10 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 18+ Current Swell 8/25, 10 PM, Schubas, 18+ Deep Purple, Alice Cooper, Edgar Winter Band 9/6, 6:30 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park Descendents, Get Up Kids 10/7, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre A D.R.I. 10/15, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ EMA 11/18, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Roky Erickson, Death Valley Girls 9/15, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Ex-Cult 8/14, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Frankie Cosmos 9/30, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston A Michael Franti & Spearhead 8/11, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+

ALL AGES

WOLF BY KEITH HERZIK

EARLY WARNINGS

CHICAGO SHOWS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT IN THE WEEKS TO COME

F

Never miss a show again.

Sign up for the newsletter at chicagoreader. com/early

Liam Gallagher 11/21, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Growlers 10/6, 9:30 PM, the Vic, 18+ High Kings 8/10, 8 PM, City Winery A Marian Hill 9/7, 7:30 PM, the Vic A Inquisition 9/10, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club Tom Jones 9/14-15, 8 PM, House of Blues King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard 9/24-25, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall Kings of Leon 8/12, 7 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park La Femme 10/21, 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Like Moths to Flames 8/6, 6 PM, Wire, Berwyn A Male Gaze 8/27, 9 PM, Empty Bottle John Mayer 9/2, 7 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park Randy Newman 10/18-19, 8 PM, City Winery A Oh Wonder 9/15, 7:30 PM, the Vic A Pears 10/11, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Pelican 10/13, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Matt Pond PA 10/1, 8 PM, Schubas Quicksand 9/27, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ RL Grime 11/15, 9 PM, Aragon Ballroom, 17+ Royal Blood, White Reaper 8/4, 11 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ Shakira 1/23, 7:30 PM, United Center Sheer Mag, Flesh World 9/15, 9:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Slaves, Secrets 9/20, 6 PM, Wire, Berwyn Thievery Corporation 10/6, 8:30 PM, Aragon Ballroom, 17+ Together Pangea 10/6, 7 PM, Bottom Lounge A Towkio, Jidenna 8/5, 10 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+ Venom Inc., Goatwhore, Toxic Holocaust 9/8, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Wand, Darto 9/30, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ War on Drugs 10/19, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Washed Out 8/25, 9 PM, Metro, 18+ Weather Station 12/2, 9 PM, Hideout The Weeknd 11/2, 7:30 PM, United Center Weepies 10/12, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston A

GOSSIP WOLF A furry ear to the ground of the local music scene IF YOU’VE SPENT much time in Subterranean or Tonic Room, you might’ve seen one of the more interesting background players in Chicago hip-hop. Paul Gulyas is a producer, recording engineer, songwriter, and musician. He plays bluesy guitar in the Shams Band with Tonic Room owner Donnie Biggins (they’ve got a gig there on Tuesday, August 15, with free tacos while they last) and sometimes runs the soundboard at Subterranean, regardless of what kind of music is on the bill. You might also know him as Cutta, the name he uses as a rap producer. One of his satisfied customers, Chris Crack, often starts his songs with a shout-out: “Cutta, what up?” On Friday, July 28, Gulyas (as Cutta) drops his first solo album, Pink Limousine, which he calls “late-night Chicago hip-hop/R&B”; that evening he plays a release show downstairs at Subterranean with U.G.L.Y. Boy Modeling, Nate Yung, and DJ Lite.

In 2012, Chicago power trio the Moses Gun dropped a self-titled debut LP that reminded Gossip Wolf of early-90s classics by the likes of Nirvana and Local H, with a bit of Husker Du’s breakneck punk urgency. A dip into the band’s new digital EP, Triage, confirms that they’re still pumping out tuneful, grungy burners. The Moses Gun celebrate with a release show at Quenchers on Thursday, July 27, with Nipple, Thom Simon, and Roarmen.

Three-day passes to Riot Fest are hard to come by—but you can win one thanks to south-side brewery Baderbrau and horror/sci-fi bookstore and record shop Bucket O’ Blood. On Saturday, July 29, they’re partnering for a free party at Baderbrau’s tap room (2515 S. Wabash) called Blood & Bader’s Carnies, featuring DJs, circus performers, an art show, a carnival-themed menu, and a pop-up record shop—plus Riot Fest ticket giveaways via a raffle and a carnival game. Local bands Boss Fight, the Burst & Bloom, and American Draft (covering Danzig’s 1988 debut) play live.

The event is all-ages from 7-10 PM and 21+ after. —J.R. NELSON AND LEOR GALIL Got a tip? Tweet @Gossip_Wolf or e-mail gossipwolf@chicagoreader.com.

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MOSHE KASHER & NATASHA LEGGERO

THE ENDLESS HONEYMOON TOUR

SUNDAY, AUGUST 6 • PARK WEST

SPECIAL GUEST:

FRIDAY OCTOBER 20

SATURDAY, AUGUST 12 • PARK WEST

ON SALE THIS FRIDAY AT 10AM!

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 23 PARK WEST 2 SHOWS! 8:00pm & 10:30pm

NOVEMBER 1

ON SALE THIS FRIDAY AT 10AM!

ON SALE THIS FRIDAY AT 10AM!

ON SALE THIS FRIDAY AT 10AM! NOVEMBER 8 RIVIERA THEATRE

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 25 ON SALE THIS FRIDAY AT 10AM! ( FOSTER THE PEOPLE –Aug. 2 • RYAN ADAMS –Aug. 3 • BANKS – Aug. 4 • THE SHINS – Aug. 5 OFFICIAL LOLLAPALOOZA AFTERSHOWS-ALL SOLD OUT ) GREGORY ALAN ISAKOV/BLIND PILOT – Aug. 24 • MARIAN HILL –Sept. 7 • OH WONDER – Friday, Sept. 15 • RHIANNON GIDDENS –Friday, Sept. 22 BOYCE AVENUE –Saturday, Sept. 23 • THE GROWLERS –Friday, Oct. 6 • DEMETRI MARTIN –Oct. 8 • RODRIGUEZ –Oct. 10 • THE KOOKS – Oct. 11 DARK STAR ORCHESTRA –Friday, Oct. 13 • CAMERON ESPOSITO & RHEA BUTCHER – Saturday, Oct. 14 • WHITNEY CUMMINGS –Oct. 19 • JAPANDROIDS –Nov. 2 SLOWDIVE –Nov. 5 • ELBOW – Nov. 8 • JOSH RITTER & THE ROYAL CITY BAND – Nov. 9 • JOHNNYSWIM – Nov. 10 JOHN MCLAUGHLIN/JIMMY HERRING –Nov. 17-18

ON SALE THIS FRIDAY AT 10AM!

BUY TICKETS AT JULY 27, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 43

BRING IT! LIVE FRIDAY, JULY 28

LYLE LOVETT & HIS LARGE BAND

MARY J. BLIGE WITH SPECIAL GUEST LALAH HATHAWAY SUNDAY, JULY 30

SATURDAY, JULY 29

ALPHAVILLE CHICAGO DEBUT FEATURING MARIAN GOLD & BAND

BELLE AND SEBASTIAN WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 16

MARGARET CHO

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 23

SUNDAY, AUGUST 6

GET ACCESS TO

CHASE PREFERRED

SEATING

AVAILABLE TO CHASE CREDIT AND DEBIT CARDMEMBERS.

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