Chicago Reader print issue of August 1, 2024 (Vol. 53, No. 26) by Chicago Reader

IILAATAWIAANKI (WE SPEAK A LANGUAGE)

THE MIAMI-ILLINOIS SPEAKERS OF CHICAGO WAKE A SLEEPING TONGUE.

BY PAUL DAILING, p. 7

04 Editor’s Note A strange invitee to a journalism convention

05 Feature Stussy’s Diner opens in Bridgeport with high hopes.

06 Reader Bites Veggie, Egg & Cheese at Loaf Lounge

& POLITICS

07 Cover story | Myaamiaataweenki The Chicagoland residents bringing back a language once feared lost

13 ShotSpotter The gunshot detection tech has become a political football.

THEATER

15 Review The Lord of the Rings—A Musical Tale takes over the Yard at Chicago Shakespeare.

16 Review Gi Theatre’s Obliteration dissects comedy and loss.

FILM

18 Feature Entrances and Exits double features the first and last films of ten renowned filmmakers.

20 Moviegoer Fever dream

MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE

21 Feature A corner-store art show opened a window on Chicago hip-hop’s ongoing love aﬀair with Dragon Ball.

24 The Secret History of Chicago Music William Warren drummed on one of the greatest blues recordings ever made.

26 Shows of Note Preview of concerts including Ragana, Vince Staples, 10cc, and Mei Semones

28 Gossip Wolf Rave Down caps a day of shoegaze and ambient with a rare Lovesliescrushing set, postpunks Clickbait celebrate their debut album, and more.

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30 Jobs

30 Professionals & Services

30 Auditions

30 Matches

BACK

31 Savage Love Quick answers on sex from Dan Savage

ON THE COVER

ILLUSTRATION FOR THE CHICAGO READER BY CHRIS PAPPAN.

FOR MORE OF PAPPAN’S WORK, VISIT CHRISPAPPAN.COM OR FOLLOW HIM ON INSTAGRAM @CHRISPAPPAN.

COVER PULL QUOTE SAID BY GEORGE STRACK QUOTING DARYL BALDWIN IN “IILAATAWIAANKI (WE SPEAK A LANGUAGE)” BY PAUL DAILING P. 7.

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A new diner in the old Bridgeport Restaurant space aims for a “60s roller skating vibe” and a little something for everyone. ELIJAH BARNES FOR CHICAGO READER

EDITOR’S NOTE

On Monday, July 29, the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) announced that former president Trump would be participating in a “conversation with journalists” as part of the organization’s opening day of its national convention, hosted at the Hilton Chicago. The release was posted just after 9 PM Chicago time to the NABJ website, two days ahead of the 2024 convention’s opening day, July 31.

According to the release, Trump is scheduled to talk at the gathering with a panel of three moderators, including Fox News host and anchor Harris Faulkner. In case you’re not familiar, in 2023 while hosting the program Fox News Tonight, Faulkner used her opening monologue to opine that “women and children are being redesigned by some sort of mad leftist science experiment,” and that her pronouns are “U.S.A.”

Response to the news was swift from both NABJ members and others. Some members, participating in a spirited debate on the app formerly known as Twitter, pointed out that the organization has a tradition of inviting presidential candidates to address the convention. This dates back to at least 2004 when then candidate George W. Bush was the last Republican to accept the invitation before Trump. Journalist Jemele Hill wrote in a tweet, “As journalists, we can never be afraid to tackle someone like Trump. The reality is that he is running for president and needs to be treated as such.”

But as journalist Tyler J. Davis pointed out in a TRiiBE op-ed published on Tuesday, July 30, “NABJ leaders decided to platform a person who has insulted the convention’s host city and its residents.” That same day, a coalition of Chicago organizations, including the

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The Chicago Reader accepts comments and letters to the editor of less than 400 words for publication consideration. m letters@chicagoreader.com

Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (CAARPR), announced plans for a response rally outside the hotel timed around the convention kicko to “tell Trump he’s not welcome in Chicago.”

For their part, some members of the Chicago chapter of NABJ have pointed out that Trump’s invitation was a decision made by the national organizers. And on Tuesday afternoon, Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah announced her decision to step down as cochair of this year’s convention.

Candidate or not, it is a terrible decision to hand a platform to a person who during his previous campaigns regularly reposted and reshared messages from white supremacists and neo-Nazis and signed an executive order banning people from majority Muslim countries from entering the U.S. There’s a big difference between a chance for a journalist to ask questions of a candidate in an open forum and the program that NABJ’s national team seems to be organizing for this week. Will anyone ask Trump about the time he attacked Yamiche Alcindor in a press conference? Will he be forced to answer for past transgressions against journalists?

NABJ is one of the largest journalists associations in the country and has several Reader staffers, contributors, and alumni in its membership ranks. I believe in the power of these associations to strengthen journalism.

But as a Chicagoan and an anti-racist, I cannot believe that this situation will be any different than the circus-like rallies we’ve seen from Trump’s campaign in the past. And that’s not fair to the NABJ members who deserve to spend their convention time comparing notes about better ways to report on the truth in our local communities. v

—Salem Collo-Julin, editor in chief m scollojulin@chicagoreader.com

CORRECTIONS

The Reader has updated the online version of Mike Sula’s July 25 print feature “They’re laughing in the face of famine at Cedars Mediterranean Kitchen,” about restaurateur Amer Abdullah’s advocacy for the Palestinian community. The print version of the story mistakenly refers to comedian Azhar Usman as “Arbaz Khan” in one instance. The Reader regrets the error. v

Stussy’s Diner at 35th and Halsted; Dahlia Beckett inside the restaurant

Stussy’s Diner opens in Bridgeport with high hopes

The diner will bring “old school and new school to the same place.”

By S. NICOLE LANE

Bridgeport Restaurant was your typical greasy spoon, serving hash browns, scrambled eggs, and bottomless co ee. The legendary diner served neighbors on Halsted for more than seven decades until it closed in 2022 when the owners decided to retire. After sitting vacant for two years, Bridgeporters wondered if we’d ever get a diner in that location again or if yet another big-box store would rip up the interior.

Locals may have noticed the iconic vintage sign has been taken down and replaced with a new pink exterior, and neon lights now dominate the inside. That’s because restaurateur

Erik Nance, owner of Mikkey’s Retro Grill in Auburn Gresham, and Chemistry Chicago and Litehouse Whole Food Grill in Hyde Park, will be opening Stussy’s Diner, a new restaurant serving typical diner food.

In the spring of 2024, Nance and his partner, Quiana, were walking down 35th Street to grab pizza when they noticed the diner was available for lease. Stussy is the nickname of Nance’s 17-year-old daughter, who will begin college next year. He realized this could be the perfect opportunity for their daughter to work toward something, learn about the business, and fund her dreams of college.

And so he decided to jump in, and Stussy’s Diner was born.

He says the restaurant is his daughter’s going-away present and a way to pay for tuition.

Nance says she’ll be hosting and learning about the business on the weekends before she leaves. “We wanted to give our daughter something she could work [for] and be proud of,” he says.

Nance says they want to ensure Stussy’s fits into the neighborhood and brings something the community can be proud of. “Stussy’s brings old school and new school to the same place, all while balancing each other out,” he says.

And that’s exactly what Bridgeporters hope for every time a new business opens in the area. It’s a prideful neighbor-

FOOD & DRINK

hood, with the saying, “born in Bridgeport, raised in Bridgeport, die in Bridgeport” being common amongst old-timers. Not everyone is eager for newness; folks still crave old school.

When the Ramova Theatre reopened this year after closing in 1985, locals expected the old Ramova. Instead, complaints of high beer prices, cashless pay options, and expensive food ﬂooded Bridgeport Facebook groups. In response, Ramova lowered its beer prices. The neighborhood wants shops, restaurants, and bars to move in without tearing down what’s been a historical linchpin in the area.

But Nance plans to stay close to Bridgeport Restaurant’s roots. “We hold the traditions of normal diner food,” he says. They will serve creme brulee french toast, homemade cinnamon rolls, sou é pancakes, plus lattes, smoothies, and curated mocktails. They’ll also serve a chef-crafted smash burger with pink ketchup, footlong mozzarella sticks, and pizza kabobs.

And Stussy’s style—a 60s roller skating vibe—is a nod to a time when Bridgeport was thriving.

In the 1960s and ’70s, Chicagoans ﬂ ocked to South Halsted to see a new movie at the

Ramova, buy dime-store items at Woolworth, pick up dinner from Halsted Foods, get an apple ta y from David’s Sweet Shop, and of course, stop at one of the several taverns. Just as people now travel to the Magniﬁcent Mile or Milwaukee Avenue in Wicker Park, Archer Heights and Brighton Park residents would travel to South Halsted just to eat and shop.

When the stockyards closed in 1971, many immigrants who worked there moved to the suburbs, other shop owners retired, and momand-pop shops couldn’t compete with big-box stores that trickled in. The taverns closed, shops disappeared, and the street turned tired and quiet.

However, in the last summer alone, Halsted’s roots from the 60s are trickling back in, and the street is beginning to come alive again in a more reﬁned way. Sheehan’s, a longtime hidden bar, was sold but reopened as Electric Funeral; SoHappyUrHere, a vintage shop, celebrated its second anniversary; Tangible Books moved into a much larger location; and Bridgeport Records opened earlier this month with huge success. Opening right next to the Ramova, where

The interior of Stussy’s Diner

Dahlia Beckett (le ) and Ashley Trieu ELIJAH BARNES FOR CHICAGO READER

FOOD & DRINK

shows have been selling out, is exciting to Nance. “Come dressed up. Come in your favorite ’60s attire. Come with your old-school skates on. Stussy’s awaits you,” he says. The Black-owned restaurant will be one of few in the neighborhood. Historically, Black business owners have experienced not only hostility but also racist harassment in Bridgeport. Prima Lash & Beauty Supply left the neighborhood in 2023 after police ignored targeted vandalism, Cook It Mama Cafe was also

in Asian-owned businesses as Chinatown moves down Halsted, adding to a melting pot of cultures in a neighborhood once dominated by Irish, Lithuanian, German, and Polish populations. The neighborhood has continued to become more diverse, with the population estimated to be about 40 percent Asian, 34 percent white, 21 percent Hispanic, and 3 percent Black. The inﬂux of restaurants in the area highlights the shift in demographics. Within just one block of Halsted, there are six Asian restaurants. The neighborhood is filled with mouthwatering choices, from Johnny O’s hot

Iﬁnd something unspeakably pleasurable about eating a good sandwich on a walk. And that pleasure is only immeasurably heightened when the sandwich is not only good, but great—greater than I could’ve even imagined.

dogs and Lithuanian bakeries to ramen, hot pot, and now elevated diner food.

Businesses like Stussy’s are pushing Bridgeport in a new—and necessary—direction that could continue the food evolution on Halsted and beyond.

Stussy’s is located in “one of the greatest neighborhoods in the world,” says Nance, and, as such, it is specifically “made for the neighborhood.”

“We’re glad we got it,” he says. v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

targeted in 2023 with graffiti, and hair salon Haus of Melanin had their windows bashed in with a sledgehammer in 2022. The vandalism has ignited larger conversations with locals about intolerance for violence or hate speech.

Brittany Matthews, the owner of Haus of Melanin, told me in a WBEZ interview that even after her business was vandalized, she’s committed to making the neighborhood safer for everyone and excited to see the culture change. In the last few years, there’s been an increase

I imagined the Veggie, Egg & Cheese at Avondale’s Loaf Lounge would be good when I ordered it, but it was a desperation order during a walk with my friend—born of the late morning realization that all I’d consumed that day was a spatula’s worth of frosting (nothing with “macronutrients,” as my husband likes to put it). My shaky, low blood sugariness began to transform me into a conversational black hole, and I was in need of something fast. My friend recommended the sandwich in her low, beautiful voice, “It’s very good,” she said. Yet, all I could think to ask was, “Is it portable?” She assured me it was.

Portable and perfect, the Veggie, Egg & Cheese is as much a riff on that New York bodega classic as it is a midwest take on Ko-

rean gilgeori toast. The default egg is runny, which is exactly what you want: yolk soaking the braised, seasoned kale and mellowing its spice. Somewhere between the mushrooms and the greens, there’s a heat that comes from dried Calabrian chili, or maybe there’s a kick in the herby mayo. But the humble hero of the sandwich is the English mu n, homemade, of course (lest you forget that you could buy a loaf at this lounge). It’s a perfect English mu n—nook and crannied, soft and chewy where it’s not toasted crisp, and if I weren’t in polite company, I would’ve circled back to the end of the line to order one toasted with a lot of butter.

My first trip to Loaf Lounge involved a slice of the chocolate cake that cameos in The Bear. For all its hype, the cake has mashed into all the other tall, better-thanaverage chocolate cakes in my memory. I wouldn’t travel for that cake, let alone brave a line, but for the Veggie, Egg & Cheese—I’d cross town on an empty stomach. —JOANNA NOVAK LOAF LOUNGE 2934 N. MILWAUKEE, SUITE E, $9, 773-904-7852, LOAFLOUNGECHICAGO.COM v

Reader Bites celebrates dishes, drinks, and atmospheres from the Chicagoland food scene. Have you had a recent food or drink experience that you can’t stop thinking about? Share it with us at fooddrink@ chicagoreader.com.

Veggie, Egg & Cheese at Loaf Lounge

Clockwise from top le : Creole Gals Salmon and Cajun Grits, assorted milkshakes, and Pink Strawberry Shortcakes ELIJAH BARNES FOR CHICAGO READER

NEWS & POLITICS

MYAAMIAATAWEENKI

George Strack sits in an airy, artfilled kitchen with a little dog named Bo at the end of a cul-desac in the northwestern suburb of Morton Grove. The 77-year-old retired Chicago Public Schools building engineer answers a ringing cell phone. “Aya nimihse!” he says. (“Hello, older sister!”)

Roughly ten miles away, amid the cafes, mansions, and holdout two-flats of Lincoln Square, Brad Kasberg apologizes to a few rabbits spooked by his early morning marathon training run. “Teešiko waapansooki,” says the 34-year-old, who works in Argonne National

(We

Iilaatawiaanki

speak a language)

The Miami-Illinois speakers of Chicago wake a sleeping tongue.

BY PAUL DAILING ART By CHRIS PAPPAN

early 1700s.

Those four texts, however, are just the starting point for the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma’s Myaamia Center. Housed at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, the center is in the midst of a decades-long quest to revive the language. The tribe o ers a slate of online and in-person language courses and camps, and they’re in the process of transcribing every known source of Myaamiaataweenki—from missionary texts to treaties to articles by early 1900s amateur linguists—to be compiled into a massive online database.

But historical texts alone cannot make a modern language. Aayaacimwaakaanhsa (cell phones), teehtipihsaata (bicycle) and Myaamiaataweenki itself are just a few of the modern words community members have built from traditional parts. “They are deﬁning it, and that’s what makes it Myaamia,” says Hunter Thompson Lockwood, a non-Native Myaamia Center linguist.

Three Chicago-area speakers of Myaamia heritage—Kasberg, Strack, and Carter Young—agreed to be interviewed for this story, sharing tales of Myaamiaataweenkilanguage Dungeons & Dragons games, old family appearances in silent ﬁlms, the invention of a word for lemonade, long-forgotten swears, and what it means to speak words that others tried to take from them.

“We’re not a people of the past,” says Strack, quoting his friend, Myaamia Center executive director Daryl Baldwin, whose Myaamia name is Kinwalaniihsia. “We’re a people that have a past.”

SLaboratory’s environmental science division. (“Scoot over, rabbits.”)

In south-suburban Crete, 69-year-old after-school program director and art gallery president Kathy Carter Young practices the name she shares with her great-grandmother over Zoom. “Waapankihkwa weenswiaani,” she says. (“White Swan Woman is my name.”)

These are Chicago’s modern Myaamiaataweenki speakers, a handful of area residents who are bringing back a language once feared lost.

Myaamiaataweenki is the traditional language of the Myaamiaki, Waayaahtanooki,

Peeyankihšiaki, and tribes of the Inohka—or, as they were called by French missionaries, the Miami, Wea, Piankeshaw, and Illinois. These are just some of the various Indigenous peoples who consider the Chicago area part of their traditional homeland.

It’s the language that gave Chicago its name, from a word for wild ramps, but the last native speakers of Myaamiaataweenki—also known as Miami-Illinois—died sometime in the 1960s or ’70s. Today’s speakers use a reborn version of the language, crafted from three dictionaries and a prayer book that French Jesuit missionaries compiled in the late 1600s and

track was born on the northwest side in 1947, but he lived most of his childhood in the Lathrop Homes public housing project. He’d spend his summers with cousins in a Myaamia community near Fort Wayne, Indiana, where he recalls raucous, e gy-ﬁlled celebrations on the anniversary of one of the most famous Native victories over the U.S. Army, the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876, aka Custer’s Last Stand. “The food was great, kids were always trying to sneak beers, and they had the most amazing ﬁreworks,” he says.

The community had a strong tribal identity, but not one steeped in traditional knowledge. That had been taken away. At various points in their history, the Myaamiaki (plural of Myaamia) lived across the Great Lakes, including Chicago. But by the 1820s, U.S. government land grabs and corrupt treaties concentrated their people in Indiana, with reserve land in

NEWS & POLITICS

continued from p. 7

Fort Wayne and the town of Peru. As federal officials encouraged white squatters to encroach upon lands previous treaties promised the tribes, plans were made for what eventually became the Indian Removal Act of 1830.

“Our principal di culty has been with the Miamies [sic],” Indiana territorial officials wrote the War Department in 1826. “The country which they occupy is much more valuable than that occupied by the Pattawatamies [sic].”

After the 1838 Potawatomi “Trail of Death,” the Myaamia were the last nation remaining in Indiana. In late September 1846, U.S. Army forces arrived in Peru, rounding up families and tracking down people who fled. On October 6, five canal boats pulled out of the town, starting the monthlong river voyage to dump more than 300 men, women, and children in unfamiliar land in Kansas.

A few years and a civil war later, the pattern repeated as the government encouraged more white squatters to encroach on the promised land. In 1867, they displaced the alreadydisplaced people, moving them to a new reservation further south to where they are today, as the federally recognized Miami Tribe of Oklahoma.

Some families were allowed to remain in Indiana due to U.S. citizenship, land ownership, or affiliation with the Eel River band. This Indiana community was given federal recognition as a tribe in 1854, but the government stripped them of it 43 years later. Since 1937, the nonproﬁt Miami Nation of Indians of the State of Indiana (MNI) has been ﬁghting to get federal recognition back.

Strack, Kasberg, and Carter Young’s families come from these Indiana communities, although all three have since enrolled in the Oklahoma tribe. “To me, the government split the tribe,” Carter Young says. “It’s up to us to put it back together, to put it under one nation again.”

In the late 1880s, the Strack family opened a saloon on reserve land in Fort Wayne, selling beer brewed by a local German family, the Bergho brothers. When the Bergho s—of the eponymous iconic downtown Chicago restaurant—decided to run a beer tent at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, George Strack’s great-uncle Awaansapia, who went by James, came along.

James stayed in Chicago, opening his own bar, the Corn Palace, at the corner of Franklin

and Madison. When George Strack’s grandmother died in 1908, his father, then three, went to live with James.

“The family lore says they took the kids away from my grandfather because he was Native American and they deemed he wouldn’t be a good parent,” George says. “I think that because they had a tavern on the reserve in Fort Wayne, that was probably more the view of it than the fact he was Native American,” he adds with a chuckle, “or, put the two together.”

As the youngest, Strack’s father was the only one who went to live with relatives. His older brothers and sisters went to so-called orphanages. “They always used the term ‘orphanages’ back then,” he says. “They were workhouses, that’s what they were.” George Strack’s grandfather eventually remarried and moved to Chicago, reuniting with his children before his death in 1920.

George has old stills of his father, grandfather, and other family members playing Indigenous people in a travelogue from Essanay, a short-lived attempt at a midwestern Hollywood that produced Charlie Chaplin shorts and other silent films from a studio in Uptown. Essanay put them in Sioux headdresses—both locationally and ethnically inaccurate—and slathered his father in makeup to make his dark skin even darker.

“This was well before the idea of going to the cowboy and Indian movies, the John Wayne kind of exploitation,” he says. “In my perspective, I think they had some pride in doing that, in representing themselves.”

Strack and his sisters grew up as part of Chicago’s small but tight-knit 20th-century tribal community, connected through social events and an early social service agency, the Indian Council Fire.

The Indian Relocation Act of 1956 gave Chicago’s Native community a dark boost. On paper, the law created vocational training in-

centives that moved thousands from poverty on reservations to supposed opportunity in certain large cities. In practice—and, many argue, in intent—it severed community ties

and forced cultural assimilation.

“If you can separate these people, if you can get them disconnected from the land and, [with] what land they have, make them isolat-

George Strack CHRIS PAPPAN FOR CHICAGO READER

ed within it and not congregate in ways that they want to, they can’t practice the lifestyle they want,” Kasberg says. “Their culture and language is limited by that, but also they just can’t organize.”

Many Indigenous groups who consider Chicago part of their homeland have their own language revitalization efforts, like the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi’s Neshnabémwen programs or the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin’s new Hoocąk language-learning app.

Many of these tribal e orts had been ongoing for decades, but they got a boost from academia in January 1991, when linguist Michael Krauss predicted at the Linguistic Society of America’s annual conference that 90 percent of the planet’s languages would be gone by the year 2100. “That statistic—2100, 90 percent— shot through linguistics as if you told all the astronomers that all the stars were going to burn out,” Hunter Thompson Lockwood says. “It turned linguistics, which had been really theory-focused for a really long time, outward into this documentary mode.”

The switch from academia to activism was tricky. Linguists, university-trained to treat language as an artifact for study, learned to listen to people who saw it as the living breath of their culture. Where collaboration worked, universities and Indigenous communities built vital tools together to help preserve and teach these languages.

But there was one thing these efforts— whether for Hoocąk in Wisconsin, Māori in New Zealand, or Gaeltachtaí in Ireland—had in common: they started while native speakers were still alive. In some cases, there were thousands with ﬂuency. In others, there were only a handful of people, or even one person, who retained a few words and phrases from their families. “Every tribe is unique. Every tribe is di erent,” Strack says. “Some tribes have some level of continuity with culture and language that exists for the communities, and some have none at all.”

No one knows when the last heritage Myaamiaataweenki speaker died, but the best evidence suggests they lived in Indiana and passed away sometime in the late 1960s or early ’70s. While other revitalization efforts pair historical documents with recordings, interviews, or one-on-one tutoring, none of that existed for the Myaamiaki. They only had the Jesuit texts authored by priests who were there not to document Indigenous beliefs—

but to end them.

Lockwood is aware of only one other ongoing revitalization project for a “sleeping” language like Myaamiaataweenki: Jessie Little Doe Baird’s efforts to revitalize Wôpanâôt8âôk, a language colonists first heard at Plymouth Rock.

A few linguists and linguistic hobbyists provided some documentation from Myaamiaataweenki speakers in the late 1800s and early 1900s. But while linguistics improved throughout the 20th century, forced assimilation put the language in decline. “A lot of the data from the very best speakers was written down by white people who were not linguists and who were often not that good at what they did,” says Myaamia Center Language Research Office director David Costa, who is non-Native. “And the very best linguists often worked with bad speakers.”

Rumors of a Myaamiaataweenki speaker on the Oklahoma reservation in the late 1980s were never confirmed. As a graduate student, Costa was part of a University of California, Berkeley, research trip hoping to meet Woodrow Palmer, a World War II veteran and the son of longtime chief Harley Palmer, or Katakimaankwa, to document how much of the language he knew. “We didn’t make it out there until May 1989, and Palmer died in March 1989,” Costa says. “As far as I know, no one ever tape-recorded Palmer or even wrote down words from him.”

Whether in Indiana in the 60s or Oklahoma in the 80s, a language had gone to sleep; a new generation of learners would soon wake it up.

Myaamiaataweenki is an Algic language, part of the Algonquian linguistic subfamily, once spoken from Canada’s east coast to the Great Plains. That doesn’t imply interchangeability—the West Germanic subfamily, for example, includes English, Yiddish, and Lowland Scots.

But the similarities were enough to confuse the Archive of the Jesuits in Canada which, sometime between its founding in 1848 and the turn of the 21st century, acquired a handwritten dictionary detailing Myaamiaataweenki as it was spoken in Chicago in the late 1600s. “Dictionary of one

of the Algic languages with some similarity to the Odjibwe [sic],” an unknown librarian wrote in English on the book’s first page. “Which it is, I cannot tell.”

When Michael McCa erty, an Indiana University professor, uncovered the book during a research trip to Montreal in 1999, he called Costa to discuss the confusing find. Costa asked McCa erty to read him the numbers one through ten as deﬁned in the mysterious book. He checked them and a few key words against the two known Myaamiaataweenki dictionaries and conﬁrmed their shared suspicion.

The Pinet dictionary, as it’s called, is the oldest but most-recently discovered source of Myaamiaataweenki, compiled by Father Pierre François Pinet through his work at Chicago’s Mission of the Guardian Angel. The mission was the area’s ﬁrst non-Indigenous structure, predating Jean Baptiste Point du Sable’s mansion by more than 80 years. But while du Sable paved the path to a city, the mission’s legacy was severed. It was founded in 1696, closed a year later, reopened a year after that, and abandoned by 1702. There’s no trace of the mission today. Historians have placed it everywhere from the Merchandise Mart to Goose Island to Winnetka.

NEWS & POLITICS

tim from Pinet’s dictionary.

“New missionaries would get a crash course in Algonquian, or whatever language they thought they might be doing, by having them copy out manuscripts,” Costa says. The Jesuit Order would maintain handwriting samples from such authors, which have become crucial for modern historians. “They had a problem back then with missionaries writing letters back to France, anonymously complaining about the behavior of their fellow missionaries,” Costa says. “So, they would send letters like, ‘Father So-and-So is having sex with the women,’ and, ‘Father Such-and-Such is a drunk,’ and so forth. So the Jesuits deliberately made the decision to get handwriting samples.”

“To me, the government split the tribe. It’s up to us to put it back together, to put it under one nation again.”

But all three books, no matter how well-compiled, had a fundamental ﬂaw: they were written by Jesuits. “They were men and interviewed men,” Brad Kasberg says of the Jesuits. “They never really thought to talk to or interview women. There’s a whole wealth of knowledge lost from that.”

No one knows how many Myaamiaataweenki dictionaries once existed. Jesuit missionary reports mention four, none of which survived. The three that have survived were never mentioned. Costa speculates some might still exist in private collections or Jesuit archives in France or the Vatican. Others might have simply fallen apart over the centuries.

That fate almost befell two of the surviving dictionaries. Pinet , from the 1690s, is careworn from decades of ﬁeldwork by the priests who used it after the author’s death. Water damage and mice destroyed a large chunk of the Largillier dictionary, including many words unlucky enough to start with an A. Costa breathes a sigh of relief when discussing the Le Boullenger dictionary, from the 1720s. “It looks as though, ﬁve minutes after [Father Jean Antoine Robert] Le Boullenger wrote it out, it was locked in a vault for the next 300 years,” Costa says. “It’s in pristine condition. It’s astounding.” In addition to selections like a Myaamiaataweenki translation of the Bible’s book of Genesis, Le Boullenger appears to have copied large sections verba-

Terms related to sexuality that didn’t fit the Christians’ beliefs were also omitted or watered down, says George Strack, including many kinship terms for multiple wives and anything related to queerness. “There’s no acknowledgement of gay women at all at that point in time, but they do acknowledge gay men.” Even that is likely euphemistic, with the real words lost to time. “The story that I’ve heard was [that] they referred to them as ‘the old bachelor men’ when the missionaries asked about them,” Strack says. “It was a cover term.”

Nonetheless, Myaamia women found ways to keep themselves in the narrative.

Kathy Carter Young wept the ﬁrst time she heard a traditional winter story told in Myaamiaataweenki. It was the mere act of hearing; she’s still early on in her language studies and didn’t understand the words. “I was hearing something that my grandfather had maybe heard, that had not been heard since then,” she says.

Carter Young’s grandfather was a quiet man, the child of a 19-year-old Native woman and a 34-year-old married white farmer she only refers to as “my dirty, rotten great-grandfather.” When her great-grandmother died at age 23, Carter Young’s grandfather went to live with

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continued from p. 9

Myaamia relatives near Peru, Indiana, some of whom spoke the language.

Carter Young grew up in Michigan and moved to the Chicago area when her husband, a Methodist pastor, took a job in Orland Park and, later, Crete. Like Strack, her ties to the Indiana communities were deep in identity but not tradition. For example, her father took her to Peru to see the site known as the Seven Pillars cli s, not because of its sacred value to her people but to show where he’d swim as a teenager. She didn’t realize its significance until she was an adult. “His stories were stories of a kid growing up in Peru,” she says, laughing.

The 1960s brought a new era of federal policy around Native groups, including promises to back pay Indigenous people for treaty elements that were never honored. Carter Young, as a child in Michigan, and Strack, as an Air Force pilot in Vietnam, soon found themselves in joking, hopeful conversations about what they’d do with their “Indian money.” “My dad was always going to get a helicopter and make a helicopter pad in our vacant lot. My brother and I wanted an in-ground swimming pool. So, it became a source of all sorts of fun,” Carter Young says.

To get any money, people had to prove their Native heritage. The dour government “pedigree” charts required for payment brought a young Kathy her ﬁrst exposure to her family’s hidden stories. The charts themselves were boring lists of ages, birthplaces, death places, phonetic spellings of Myaamia names, and the like. But the task of filling them out and fact-checking fell to the women in her family. In intermediary drafts sent between relatives, they would scribble anecdotes, memories, and other details in the margins. “The narrative always came through men,” she says. But “it was the women that were writing the pedigree charts, and it was the women that were writing in the margins.”

Sometimes these stories were sad. Sometimes they were scandalous. But they were the true history of her family, kept and maintained by the women. “As far as cultural knowledge, all I had was these 8.5 by 11 genealogies, where you had these stories in the margins.”

Kathy, who was about ten at the time, and a similarly aged cousin pored over these stories. The phonetic spellings of the names on the list were her ﬁrst exposure to Myaamiaataweenki. It’s when she first heard the story of her dirty, rotten great-grandfather and her great-

grandmother Waapankihkwa, or White Swan Woman.

In a naming ceremony at a summer gathering in Oklahoma in 2017, Kathy Carter Young took that name to honor a woman whose life was cut short. When she practices “Waapankihkwa weenswiaani” over Zoom, she’s speaking both about her great-grandmother and herself.

In a world surrounded with English, Brad Kasberg says, it’s difficult to develop true ﬂuency in another language. “My wife is a ﬁrst-gen Mexican American, and incorporating Spanish into our daily routine is hard enough.”

Kasberg grew up outside Cleveland in the 1990s. He knew of his Miami heritage, but it wasn’t a large part of his daily life. His dad subscribed to the newsletter from the Miami Nation of Indians, and his parents enrolled his older sister in MNI but they never got around to it with him. His personal ties to the Indiana Myaamia community were occasional visits for family funerals. “Really, our meaningful connection was encyclopedias and anything we could read on being Miami,” he says.

Coincidence brought Kasberg to the Myaamia Center. He enrolled at Miami University in 2008 only to discover during his sophomore year that the school was home to what was then called the Myaamia Project. “I just walked in and said, ‘Hey, I’m Miami,’ which was kind of unbelievable to them. Like, ‘No, we know every Miami person on campus because it comes through us,’” he remembers, laughing.

Before long, Kasberg worked at the center, studying Myaamiaataweenki with the goal of teaching it to others. He dreamed of rebuilding connections torn away by centuries of U.S. government policy. “We don’t have the chance to see each other or speak to each other in a casual way. That’s the art of removal. That was the intention.”

Kathy Carter Young’s son likewise found his way to the center during his college career. Ian Young—now 30 and a lawyer for the Ojibwe in Duluth, Minnesota—would share what he learned with his mom, both about the language and the history of the Myaamiaki. “We send our babies and the Myaamia Center tells them a very difficult story that they have to know,” says Kathy, whose granddaughter is also learning the language while studying at Miami University.

“And it’s hard, it is hard. But they have also equipped them to process it and to deal with it.”

Kathy herself would soon follow in her descendents’ paths, starting her own studies over Zoom with the help of a Miami University junior. “I tell her, ‘Hold my feet to the ﬁre. . . .

Make me address you. Make me say it in Myaamia.’”

Technology helps connect many far-flung language learners. Strack and his sons text each other their daily scores to the New York Times game Connections in the language of their people, and Kasberg is part of a group

Kathy Carter Young CHRIS PAPPAN FOR CHICAGO READER

NEWS & POLITICS

chat of young speakers called “Miami Boys.”

To maintain these bonds during the pandemic, Kasberg turned to Dungeons & Dragons, running an online game infused with Myaamia culture and conducted partially in Myaamiaataweenki. “I had every opportunity to create a new map and new world, and I just

accidentally made Chicago, our Miami lands,” he says, laughing. “Literally, if I were to show you a map, you can just point and say, ‘This is Lake Michigan. That is Chicago. Those are the dunes of west Michigan.’ It’s dead-on. And it was totally subconscious.”

Learning a language from dictionaries can

be bittersweet, Kasberg says. The Jesuits either didn’t write down or didn’t understand many of the connotations other language speakers take for granted. English speakers know childish is bad but boyish is charming, that being a rat is di erent than being mousy, that “I’m starving” can mean either “I will die” or “let’s grab lunch.” In a language built from dictionary deﬁnitions in 350-yearold French, many of those invisible, vibrant cultural markers are lost.

“We’re not a people of the past. We’re a people that have a past.”

called a polysynthetic language, using these linguistic Lego blocks to build complicated sentence-words packed with meaning.

The English sentence, “I am crossing a river” is one word in Myaamiaataweenki: keepeehšinaani. Mix and match the proper morphemes and you get words like keepeehšinankwi (We, including you, are crossing a river), keepeehšinaanki (We, not including you, are crossing a river), kapeehšintaawi (Let’s cross a river!), and other meaning-taut variations.

Kasberg “clings to the fun of it,” focusing not on what was lost but what is found, as the Myaamia Center continues to comb through source materials. A recent message to the Miami Boys simply read, “We found a new swear word.” The translation of milihteeheekana has not yet received official approval, but his friend’s early e orts put it as, “Your heart is poorly formed or filled with pus.” “We love that,” Kasberg says.

At a tribal gathering in Oklahoma a few years ago, a few Myaamia Center sta and volunteers started chatting about the beverage options. There was water (nipi), iced tea (mihšipakwaapowi), and a sweet but tangy yellow drink that didn’t have a traditional name. So they made one, inventing a fully modern, fully traditional word for lemonade on the spot.

To understand how modern words are made from traditional parts, one must first understand the morpheme. A morpheme is the smallest form of language with any meaning—it could be a standalone word (walk, dog) or it could only exist as part of a larger word (the - ing that turns walk into walking, the -s that makes dogs plural). A morpheme is unbreakable, and unbreakable (un, meaning not; break, meaning to separate into pieces; and able, meaning having the power to do something) contains three morphemes. Myaamiaataweenki is what’s

This is how the Myaamia Center creates new words steeped in culture. The word for computer (kiinteelintaakani) uses the morphemes for fast and thinking. The word for “I use the Internet” is the same as the one used for “I talk on the phone” (aacimwaapiaani), based on I, talk, and wire/thread. Bicycle (teehtipihsaata) translates as “he/she who rolls quickly.” Cell phone (aayaacimwaakaanhsa), David Costa says, means little thing one uses to speak all the time.

The center builds some words at the request of community members. Others, like lemonade, evolve more spontaneously. “I remember Daryl [Baldwin] said, ‘Well, I don’t know if we have a word for lemon, but it would make sense to call a lemon oonsaawimini, which is yellow fruit.’” Kasberg recalls. “‘And it’s a produced beverage. It’s not a natural[ly] occurring beverage. So, OK, gotta add powi at the end.’ So it’s oonsaawiminaapowi.”

A few families across the country, including the Baldwins, are raising their children to speak Myaamiaataweenki as a ﬁrst language at home. But in general, the purpose of revitalization isn’t to replace English. Rather, the hope is to give the Myaamiaki something that might be taken for granted by people who’ve never had to ﬁght for a language—words that express the present while connecting to the past, even if it’s just to greet relatives, speak a long-unspoken name, or apologize for spooking the rabbits.

“Native people are still here,” Strack says. “We’re vital communities. We’re sustainable. We may live apart from each other, but we still maintain connections and are sustaining ourselves in the future through our children and grandchildren. We are a modern, functioning group.” v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

Brad Kasberg CHRIS PAPPAN FOR CHICAGO READER

POLICING

ShotSpotter sparks a political power struggle

The ﬁght over the gunshot detection technology has escalated between the mayor and a group of alderpeople who’ve tried to block its removal.

By JUSTIN AGRELO, THE TRACE

This story was published by the Trace, a nonproﬁt newsroom covering gun violence in America. See more stories about our city at TheTrace.org/Chicago.

This February, Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson announced his plan to decommission ShotSpotter, a controversial gunshot detection technology that alerts police to shootings by using hundreds of acoustic sensors throughout the city.

Johnson’s plan, which would sunset the technology in November, was the culmination of a yearslong debate and a decision applauded by Chicagoans who had long contended that the technology was harmful to their neighborhoods. In 2021, the Chicago Office of Inspector General found that less than 10 percent of ShotSpotter alerts led police to evidence of a gun-related criminal offense. It argued that the technology was escalating tensions between police and residents in neighborhoods where alerts were common. In the highly publicized case of Adam Toledo, it was a ShotSpotter alert that brought o cers to Little Village and resulted in police killing the 13 year old.

a group of alderpeople introduced a law that breathed new life into the debate, turning what had been a fight over the merits and drawbacks of the technology into a municipal power struggle. The law, spearheaded by 17th Ward alderperson David Moore, passed 34–14 in May. It’s supposed to allow City Council members to decide whether ShotSpotter remains in their wards and require the mayor to get City Council approval before removing gun violence prevention-related funding from any of the city’s 50 wards.

Hanging in the balance are the citizens whose lives are affected not only by the technology, but also by the crimes it’s supposed to prevent.

Moore, along with ShotSpotter’s proponents, say the technology saves lives by informing police of shootings in instances when no one calls 911—and that Johnson shouldn’t be taking that technology from the Chicagoans who could benefit from it. “Just as communities that do not want ShotSpotter in their wards, other wards should have the ability to decide whether they want to keep the residents safe,” Moore said.

Adam’s death motivated Jose Manuel Almanza Jr., a community organizer, to join the #StopShotSpotter campaign. “I personally couldn’t not do anything about it,” he said. Almanza, who is also from Little Village, was thrilled with Johnson’s decision. But like others who opposed the technology, his relief was short-lived.

Just days after Johnson’s announcement,

And in the middle of July, Moore introduced a new ordinance that would empower the police superintendent and City Hall attorneys to control gunshot detection technology contracts independent of the mayor, but the measure was quickly blocked.

Even though these attempts to keep ShotSpotter have been symbolic—only Johnson has the authority to manage the contract, and after the vote, his press secretary confirmed that the city’s relationship with the tool will end as scheduled—the ﬁght over the technology became a political football during a critical juncture of the Johnson

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continued from p. 13

administration. Questions leading up to passage of the new law focused largely on power and who gets to make the crucial decisions over the technology’s use, not on its beneﬁts and drawbacks. The struggle for control, experts and activists say, can determine who has ﬁnal say over police strategy and the laws that govern Chicagoans’ everyday lives.

“It’s been hard to change ShotSpotter because of all of the different ways that the police . . . are shielded,” said Robert Vargas, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Chicago. “The whole debate over ShotSpotter is a microcosm of this. What was at stake here is far bigger.”

Hanging in the balance are the citizens whose lives are affected not only by the technology, but also by the crimes it’s supposed to prevent.

Assessing ShotSpotter

ShotSpotter has sensors in 35 of 50 Chicago wards, most of which are in Black and Brown communities on the south and west sides. The debate around its use mirrors those taking place in cities across the country. In June, an audit from the New York City controller found that, of the 940 ShotSpotter alerts the New York City Police Department responded to last June, only 13 percent were conﬁrmed shootings. New York City has until December to decide whether it will keep using the technology.

SoundThinking, the California-based company behind ShotSpotter, claims a 97 percent accuracy rate for identifying gunshots through its computerized algorithm and analysts who verify that the noises are actually gunﬁre. A growing body of research, however, has raised questions about not only the technology’s efficacy, but also the ethics of its use. The MacArthur Justice Center analyzed ShotSpotter alerts from July 2019 through April 2021 and found that they led Chicago police to more than 40,000 fruitless deployments. And a 2023 paper from researchers at Duke University argued that ShotSpotter diverts Chicago police resources from confirmed 911 emergencies and delays emergency response times. By the end of the contract, Chicago will have spent nearly $50 million on ShotSpotter.

A power play?

Moore led the effort to take the battle over ShotSpotter to the ward-level with help from a SoundThinking lobbyist, who sent council members multiple drafts

of an original and a substitute version of the order, according to emails previously uncovered by the Reader . Moore’s ward—which covers parts of Chicago Lawn, Marquette Park, Gresham, Auburn Gresham, and West Englewood—currently has 80 ShotSpotter sensors, according to an analysis by the South Side Weekly, and saw 32 fatal shootings last year. Generally, Moore has framed his argument around the mayor’s use of power. At a meeting of the City Council Committee on Police and Fire on April 1, Moore described Johnson’s decision to end ShotSpotter as “unilateral.”

(It’s worth noting that Mayor Rahm Emanuel didn’t seek City Council approval before inking a $33 million deal with ShotSpotter in 2018. Neither did Mayor Lori Lightfoot when she twice extended the contract.)

Moore has questioned the mayor’s choice to keep ShotSpotter active through the Dem-

ocratic National Convention (DNC) in August. “Either it works or it doesn’t,” Moore said. “And if it’s working for the DNC, then it needs to work for the constituents here in Chicago.”

Almanza is skeptical of this argument. “It wasn’t until this moment—where a Black mayor said, ‘We are going to cancel this contract that is harming Black and Brown people, and then we are going to reinvest in these Black and Brown communities’—that these alders were all of a sudden interested in ShotSpotter,” Almanza said. “They’re doing this just out of a power play.”

In an email to the Trace, the mayor’s communications director, Ronnie Reese, wrote, “The contract remains cancelled, and the DNC has no bearing on that decision.”

Dick Simpson served as alderperson of the 44th Ward for eight years. Now a political science professor emeritus at the University

of Illinois Chicago, Simpson said that, because there’s no governmental process by which the City Council can force the mayor to sign a contract, Moore’s ordinance is symbolic.

“What they’re really arguing about is: can the City Council require the mayor to get their approval to change this contract?” Simpson said. “They’re clearly trying to register their dissatisfaction with not only how he handled this particular tool, but with the crime level overall.”

What Chicagoans want

While the issue has become a power struggle within the City Council, it is very real to the Chicagoans who have to live with the problems that ShotSpotter is trying to solve. Maria Pike is a longtime gun violence prevention advocate. She sits on the board of Chicago Survivors and works with Moms Demand Action. (Moms Demand Action is part of Everytown for Gun Safety, which provides ﬁnancial grants to the Trace.)

In August 2012, Pike’s eldest son, Ricky, was shot and killed outside his Logan Square apartment. Pike views ShotSpotter as a tool meant to help police solve shootings. She doesn’t understand the logic behind the push to remove it, because she believes that communities on the south and west sides should be given more resources to respond to gun violence—not less.

Proponents like Pike share a common refrain: “If ShotSpotter saves one life,” she said, “then it’s worth the millions of dollars.”

Navjot Heer, a #StopShotSpotter organizer, understands why people like Pike believe that ShotSpotter helps police do their jobs. “It’s frustrating that this company has been able to lie to folks and present itself as a solution to gun violence,” Heer said.

The #StopShotSpotter campaign has begun an ambitious canvassing effort on the south and west sides to hear about alternative methods residents want to keep them safe.

“These communities and neighborhoods barely ever received investment from the city, so the removal of ShotSpotter has been perceived by many people as like taking away something from them. And that feels incredibly unjust and unfair,” Heer said. “Our responsibility is to show up, listen, and share more information about how this technology actually works or doesn’t work, so that we can arrive at solutions together.” v m letters@chicagoreader.com

Mayor Brandon Johnson plans to end Chicago’s use of ShotSpotter by November. SHIRA FRIEDMAN-PARKS

R THE LORD OF THE RINGS—A MUSICAL TALE

Through 9/1: Tue 7 PM, Wed 1 and 7 PM, Thu-Fri 7 PM, Sat 2 and 7 PM, Sun 2 PM; open captions Wed 8/21 1 and 7 PM, Spanish translation Thu 8/22 7 PM, ASL interpretation Fri 8/23 7 PM, audio description and touch tour Sun 8/25 2 PM; Chicago Shakespeare Theater, 800 E. Grand, 312- 595 - 5600, chicagoshakes.com, $ 41-$108

REVIEW

Hobbit songs

The Lord of the Rings—A Musical Tale at Chicago Shakespeare works best when it focuses on friendship.

By EMILY MCCLANATHAN

J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy is held so closely by so many people that it’s a tall order for anyone to adapt Middle-earth into another art form. Take Amazon’s original streaming series The Rings of Power, which debuts its second season in August. The writing isn’t ﬂawless, but the show is often breathtakingly beautiful. Yet some Tolkien fans seem unwilling to give it a chance, whether because of puristic loyalty to the books, a conﬂation of Tolkien’s world-building with Peter Jackson’s cinematic vision, or, sometimes, blatant backlash to its diverse casting.

When theater director Paul Hart revived The Lord of the Rings—A Musical Tale at the UK’s Watermill Theatre in 2023, it was a gamble. Extravagantly expensive productions of the musical, which has a book and lyrics by Shaun McKenna and Matthew Warchus, famously flopped in Toronto and London in 2006–08. But Hart’s scaled-back, semi-immersive, hobbit-centric version was received well by audiences and critics—so well that Chicago Shakespeare Theater has engaged Hart to stage the U.S. premiere, now playing in its largest venue, the Yard. The production is slated to transfer to New Zealand in November.

Anchored by Spencer Davis Milford as Frodo Baggins and Michael Kurowski as Samwise Gamgee, Hart’s Chicago cast captures the heart of The Lord of the Rings—namely, the deep friendship, unbreakable loyalty, and quiet acts of courage that make the halﬂings the heroes of Tolkien’s epic tale. While other elements of the story su er from being condensed into three hours, this version does right by the hobbits, and that’s enough for this Tolkien nerd.

Before the show begins, hobbits roam the theater’s aisles, boisterously welcoming patrons to the 111th, or “eleventy-ﬁrst,” birthday of Bilbo Baggins, Frodo’s uncle (Rick Hall). Their cheery comradery is on full display in the folksy opening number, and keen-eyed fans of the Jackson ﬁlms will catch a hint of

Elijah Wood’s chicken dance (if you know, you know) in Anjali Mehra’s playful choreography. Actors serve double duty as onstage instrumentalists to perform the score by Academy Award–winner A.R. Rahman (Bombay Dreams, Slumdog Millionaire), Finnish folk band Värttinä, and Tony Award–winner Christopher Nightingale ( Matilda the Musical ). Despite occasional issues with pitch and balance, the

beneath the dialogue, which adds a cinematic quality, and the intense drumming in the battle scenes is mesmerizing.

When Frodo discovers that the magical ring he’s inherited from Bilbo must be destroyed in order to defeat the Dark Lord Sauron, he embarks with Sam, Merry (Eileen Doan), and Pippin (Ben Mathew) on a perilous quest that puts them in the paths of wizards, elves, humans, dwarves, and tree-herders—not to mention villains ranging from orcs to a giant spider.

It’s with this cascade of new characters that the storytelling goes o the rails. Of course, major cuts are to be expected when adapting a 1,000-page trilogy into a standalone musical. It makes sense that two major battles in The Two Towers and The Return of the King are combined into one and the human realms of Gondor and Rohan collapse into a single kingdom. Did I miss Faramir, Éowyn, Éomer, etc.?

multihyphenate performers are an impressive bunch under the leadership of Mark Aspinall (music supervision and orchestrations) and Michael McBride (music direction and music programming).

Music that begins with the rustic sounds of strings, accordion, guitar, and percussion later incorporates brass, woodwinds, and harp as the characters move through the vast landscapes and disparate musical styles of Middle-earth. The Irish bodhran drum makes a prominent appearance at one point, and the ethereal vocals of Arwen (Alina Jenine Taber) have a Celtic flavor. There’s often scoring

“Now and for Always” is a touching tribute to friendship and stories—both powerful sources of courage for little folk in a bewilderingly wide world. And when Sam rescues Frodo in several iconic scenes, the audience responded with cheers on opening night.

Tony Bozzuto makes a thrilling second-act entrance as Gollum, the hobbit-like creature trapped in a monomaniacal pursuit of the Ring. Clearly influenced by Andy Serkis’s vocals, a choice that seems inevitable at this point, Bozzuto’s Gollum is athletic, cunning, and funny in his own right. As the Ring gains a tighter grip on Frodo, its sinister seductiveness takes on physical form when Frodo and Gollum sync their movements and dialogue in disturbing rhythm.

Such subtle moments of physicality contrast with the visual spectacle of other scenes, including the puppetry employed for many of the creatures (puppet design by Charlie Tymms; original puppet direction by Ashleigh Cheadle; Chicago puppet direction by Lindsey Noel Whiting). As the Ringwraiths chase the hobbits through the wilderness, they ride skeletal horses with glowing red eyes. The spider Shelob is also chilling; Rory Beaton’s gloomy lighting keeps her in the shadows just enough for her to look both mysterious and grotesque. I don’t love the Balrog’s slightly cartoonish design, but the setup to his battle with Gandalf (Tom Amandes) is stunning.

The thickly grained wood of Simon Kenny’s set opens into a large knot centerstage, which becomes the backdrop for George Reeve’s projections, turning the circular shape into the moon, the landscape of Mordor, or the ﬁery Ring itself. It even serves as the frame for a neat bit of shadow puppetry as Gandalf recounts the history of Sméagol and Déagol. The lighting design is similarly striking, especially in the moments when Frodo puts on the Ring.

Of course. Did I understand why they were cut? Yes.

The problem is that the non-hobbit characters who did make the cut, such as Aragorn (Will James Jr.), Boromir (Matthew C. Yee), Legolas (Justin Albinder), and Gimli (Ian Maryfield), barely have any space for development. Their plotlines feel extraneous and rushed, and I doubt they would be easy to follow for those who don’t already know the story.

But Frodo and Sam, who separate from their other companions mid-journey, provide all the heart that is lacking in the subplots. Their duet

Fans of the books will appreciate the musical’s denouement, which includes a partial telling of the evil wizard Saruman’s devastation of the Shire. Upon their return, the hobbits set about rebuilding and regrowing their beloved homeland with the aid of some magical elven soil. The Shire is saved—but not for Frodo, who will never recover from his wounds while he remains in Middle-earth. The hobbits’ poignant farewells in this version are the payo for strong character development on the part of the writers, director, and actors. This is a hobbit’s tale, through and through. And they really are amazing creatures. v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

Spencer Davis Milford (le ) and Tom Amandes in The Lord of the Rings—A Musical Tale LIZ LAUREN

R OBLITERATION

Through 8/4: Wed-Sun 8 PM, Steppenwolf 1700 Theater, 1700 N. Halsted, 312- 335 -1650, $ 30, steppenwolf.org, ($100 benefit performance Sun 8/4; tickets only available for Thu and Sun as of press time)

‘A surprise hidden in plain sight’

Gi ’s Obliteration dissects comedy and loss.

By KERRY REID

There’s a cartoon that made the rounds on social media a few years ago laying out the dissonance for the modern comedy scene. In the ﬁrst two frames, labeled “Comedians at the Club,” a guy at a mike says, “So my friend keeps getting diarrhea from Taco Bell and I’m like—what? Diarrhea? I usually just get a chalupa! Thanks, that’s my time!” In the third frame, labeled “Comedians on a Podcast,” the same guy is sitting in front of a microphone: “Yeah, so we’re basically modern-day philosophers and possibly the only people speaking truth to power in this era.”

Getting serious about the underpinnings of stand-up has become a cottage industry. (There is in fact a podcast with Daniel Lobell and a rotating guest list of comics called

Modern Day Philosophers.) But it’s not a new obsession: the late Trevor Gri ths’s 1975 play Comedians , set in a classroom for aspiring working-class British comics, places the most politically outre of the students, whose set is more confrontational performance art than a tight ﬁve, at odds with the crowd-pleasing instincts of his peers. More recently, Hannah Gadsby’s 2018 Netﬂix special, Nanette, delivered what the Guardian called “a scream of visceral soul-baring” in their deconstruction of patriarchy and gendered violence.

Andrew Hinderaker’s Obliteration , now in a short and mostly sold-out world premiere with Jefferson Park’s Gift Theatre (where Hinderaker is an ensemble member) as part of Steppenwolf’s LookOut series, seems at ﬁrst to be about how to negotiate the line between

Cyd Blakewell (le ) and Michael Patrick Thornton in Obliteration JOE MAZZA/BRAVE LUX

baring souls and scoring laughs. After a short recorded audio intro from Sarah Silverman— one of several real comedians living and dead (RIP Mitch Hedberg) whose voices we hear during the play—Gift cofounder and former artistic director Michael Patrick Thornton rolls out onstage in his wheelchair. “My name’s Neal, and it’s pretty obvious I do stand-up for the irony,” he deadpans.

Thornton, a native of Jefferson Park, had two spinal strokes in 2003 that left him paralyzed. Since then, he’s gone on to direct and perform with his own company, as well as act with Steppenwolf (Will Eno’s Middletown ) and on Broadway ( Macbeth , A Doll’s House). He also played Dr. Gabriel Fife, the arrogant geneticist who falls in love with Audra McDonald’s Dr. Naomi Bennett, on the ABC series Private Practice . Neal shares Thornton’s medical backstory—how many of the other details about Neal’s life that spill out in the course of the play mirror that of the actor, I can’t say. (Without spoilers, I will say that I hope to god some of it is ﬁctionalized.)

self-centered of performance mediums. Neal and Lee feed off each other, challenge each other, and eventually come to terms with how their need for public laughter both drives and distorts the ways in which they process unimaginable pain.

It asks us to see how people continue to live after tragedies that could have obliterated their life force.

If this sounds like psychodrama, be assured that Hinderaker (who also directs) and his actors never lose sight of the fact that if you’re doing a play incorporating actual stand-up sets, it’s important to earn the laughs. Thornton has a background in improv—something he began exploring after his strokes. (When I interviewed him for the Tribune in 2010, he told me, “I love improv because I can be anything. I can be a basketball star, I can be a track star.”) The give-and-take between Neal and Lee feels rooted in that form’s generosity, even in its ugliest moments. (A scene where they dissect a bit Neal has about how the word “molest” came into being is a master class in listening and building upon your partner’s energy.)

After the short set that opens the show, we and Neal meet Lee (Cyd Blakewell), a woman bursting with a mixture of anxiety and bravado. She used to be a stand-up until she had her daughter, Lee tells Neal, and she’s been thinking about getting back in the game. They go out for beers, and what seems to be a meet-cute between a couple of misﬁts soon turns into something deeper, thornier, and—yes—philosophical.

But Hinderaker (whose gift for dark humor drove his 2010 play, Suicide, Incorporated , which also featured Thornton) isn’t really interested in having these protagonists argue over the uses of comedy as a tool for social change. Instead, Obliteration does something harder and far more rewarding: it asks us to see how people continue to live after tragedies that could have obliterated their life force. If a joke is, as Lee maintains, “a surprise hidden in plain sight,” then Hinderaker’s script continually surprises us with revelations that sometimes expose our collective gullibility (as in Neal’s initial story about how he became paralyzed), and more often our vulnerability.

It’s also a love letter to collaboration in all its messy gutsiness, which may seem paradoxical for a show centered on the most

For me, Blakewell has long been one of the most watchable actors in town. I’d love to see Obliteration get picked up after this LookOut outing for a longer run if only so more people can see her performance as Lee, which rivals Gadsby’s in its searing can’t-look-away exposure. There’s a monologue in the second act where we learn what really drives Lee’s decision to return to the stage. Every time I thought Blakewell had emptied the emotional tank, she found a way to go deeper, and in the process delivered blows to the audience’s own emotional solar plexus. (In a sweet tribute to late Gift ensemble member and longtime Chicago theater mainstay Mary Ann Thebus, we learn late in the play that Lee’s last name is also Thebus.)

Early on, Neal tells Lee that it doesn’t matter if the audience is laughing, as long as they’re listening. With Obliteration , two fearless Chicago actors at the absolute top of their craft make us do both. This play will live with me for a long time. I hope Blakewell and Thornton do it again, though I also wonder how much a show like this takes out of them every night. Hinderaker’s take-no-prisoners story and their riveting performances truly are a gift. v

m kreid@chicagoreader.com

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From start to ﬁnish

The Gene Siskel Film Center’s upcoming series, Entrances and Exits, double features the first and last films of ten renowned filmmakers.

By KAT SACHS

Just as we all are born and eventually die, so does every filmmaker make a first and last film. (And for those who only make one film, it’s both.) The Gene Siskel Film Center acknowledges this truism with an entire series, Entrances and Exits, which features the first and last films of ten renowned filmmakers, screened as double features. There are some rules, of course. Per Siskel’s website, “Films included must not be posthumous releases, they must be feature films, and they must be solo directorial efforts.” It seems obvious, but a director’s oeuvre is rarely cut-and-dried. For example, Belgian-born French filmmaker Agnès Varda’s film Varda by Agnès was released after her death in 2019, and her penultimate film, Faces Places, was codirected by French artist JR. Thus, her 2008 documentary, The Beaches of Agnès—a sprawling, impish tour de force which traces her life up to that point—is the one included in the series. (Rules: without them we’d live and watch in chaos.)

The first film in the series and, as the pattern goes, also the first of the filmmaker in question, is Varda’s La Pointe Courte (1955). Varda, who began her artistic career as a photographer, has famously said she hadn’t watched many movies before deciding to make one herself. So, it’s di cult to compare it to anything else—which can be said of Varda as well. The film combines two disparate storylines: in the first, two Parisians travel to the port of Sète in the south of France to hash out their relationship troubles; the other concerns the struggle of locals in the community to continue fishing in a prohibited lagoon. The former is highly stylized (one particularly constructed shot inspired a similar, famous shot in Ingmar Bergman’s 1966 film Persona), the latter neorealist in Varda’s use of nonactors and their lived environment.

Perhaps the most famous first film in the series is Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane (1941), in which Welles stars as Charles Foster Kane, a character based in part on media magnate William Randolph Hearst. The genius of Citi-

zen Kane hardly needs an explanation, though it’s always worth seeing to remind oneself of it, but the other Welles ﬁlm in the series, F for Fake (1973), might require one. Welles’s docu-

REntrances & Exits Thu 8/1 –Thu 8/29, Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State, $14 50 per film or $ 30 per month with the Siskel Summer Pass, siskelfilmcenter.org/entrancesandexits

explores a similar concept but with specific regard to television. Spanning the history of Black television, the ﬁlm touches on a variety of shows that evince the Black experience not by their content necessarily but by how they are conveyed to and interpreted by white society.

Best known for her 1966 film Daisies , Czechoslovakian filmmaker Věra Chytilová considers the lives of two women in her debut feature, Something Di erent (1963). It follows a discontented housewife and a competitive gymnast, the latter sequences—shot in a documentary style—of real-life gymnast and Olympic gold medalist Eva Bosáková. Though

sister, and other women in his life whom he’s left to interact with and observe. Fellow world cinema luminary Akira Kurosawa said about the film that, “It is the kind of cinema that flows with the serenity and nobility of a big river.” Ray’s final work, The Stranger (1991), is based on one of the filmmaker’s own short stories—about a woman whose supposed uncle comes to visit, leaving her and her husband to wonder if he’s really who he says he is or if he’s after a large inheritance coming to her. Contrasted with the ambitious scope of the Apu trilogy, this moral comedy nevertheless reflects a master’s hard-earned quiet confidence. Few filmmakers were more dedicated to

drama focuses on art forger Elmyr de Hory and writer Cli ord Irving—who wrote a book about de Hory and later fell into controversy himself after writing famous recluse Howard Hughes’s alleged as-told-to autobiography, ultimately revealed to be a fabrication. It’s not just about its purported subjects, but the nature of truth as well. Welles positions himself as something of a magician in it, evoking “the magic” of the movies.

Nonfiction filmmaker Marlon Riggs was a trailblazer: a Black, queer artist, he made ﬁlms that enlighten and challenge as much as they gratify as art. His first, Ethnic Notions (1986), probes the origins and continual perpetuation of racial stereotypes in popular media, suggesting that such characterizations have contributed to how Black people have been viewed and subsequently discriminated against. In Color Adjustment (1992), Riggs

Chytilová makes only a vague physical connection between the characters at the beginning of the film, in general they are both women with too dedicated a focus on their respective lifestyles. In the New Yorker , Richard Brody writes that “as a ﬁrst feature, it’s astonishing.” Pleasant Moments (2006), on the other hand, centers on an overwhelmed psychologist and her just-as-frazzled patients, the chaoticness of such a situation wholly appropriate for Chytilová.

Satyajit Ray’s first film, and the first in his lauded Apu Trilogy, the Bengali bildungsroman Pather Panchali (1955), follows the trilogy’s titular character as a young child. Exploring rural life in West Bengal, the Indian auteur takes a neorealist yet lyrical approach to this facet of Indian society; when Apu’s father leaves the family’s village in pursuit of improved circumstances, it’s Apu’s mother,

their themes than Ingmar Bergman. In his first and last films, as well as pretty much everything in between, he considered relationships between men and women and the emotional connections and spiritual isolation therein. Made under the tutelage of Swedish silent film viceroy Victor Sjöström, Crisis (1946) is a minor entry (Bergman would later say it’s “lousy, through and through”) in a prodigious career. The film follows a young woman whose birth mother comes back into her life and takes her to Stockholm, where her naivete is challenged. Anything resembling naivete had long been abandoned by the time Bergman made Saraband (2003), a sequel to his seminal 1973 miniseries Scenes from a Marriage , wherein the series’s characters, Johan (Erland Josephson) and Marianne (Liv Ullmann), are revisited. It’s not necessarily a happy note to have ended on, but it’s certainly characteristic.

Agnès Varda in The Beaches of Agnès (2008) COURTESY CINEMA GUILD/KANOPY

Earlier this year, the Film Center put on the Edward Yang: Cities and Souls series, with several sold-out screenings. Entrances and Exits will bring back Yang’s last ﬁlm, the threehour Yi Yi (2000), an extraordinary ﬁnale to an extraordinary career that examines myriad human truths vis-à-vis a four-person family. A harbinger of the Taiwan New Wave, Yang’s first feature, That Day, on the Beach (1983), follows similar social and formal structures— in this case, two friends reuniting after many years—and uses them to interweave an intimate tale that’s rife for extrapolation.

Another defining film of the French New Wave, then-Cahiers du Cinéma critic François

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mon “the director’s devotion and love affair to cinema.” In Targets (1968), Boris Karloff, playing a fictionalized version of himself, gets embroiled in a spate of killings. Without giving too much away, a drive-in theater, that most iconic of exhibition venues, plays a crucial role. Bogdanovich’s last film, the 2018 documentary The Great Buster: A Celebration , is about the filmmaker’s personal hero and overall iconic comedian Buster Keaton. It’s as much a love letter as a documentary; the likes of Mel Brooks, Werner Herzog, and Johnny Knoxille appear to illuminate the influence that the Great Stone Face had on them.

Ukrainian Russian ﬁlmmaker Larisa Shep-

Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (1959), is likewise considered one of the best films about childhood. Starring a young Jean-Pierre Léaud in one of his earliest film roles, it’s semiautobiographical and follows Léaud’s Antoine Doinel (whom he would go on to play in four other films), a troubled young boy who rebels against authority and is sent to a reform school. Where Tru aut’s first film was a defining entry, his last was more incidental; Truffaut died a little over a year following the release of Confidentially Yours (1983). An homage to his favorite director, Alfred Hitchcock, and starring Fanny Ardant, the film—about a secretary who investigates whether or not her boss has committed a murder he’s suspected of—is in blackand-white, though Tru aut’s later films had all been in color. It’s a coincidental return to form, so to speak, providing an element of symmetry to the serendipitous pairing.

Similarly to Truffaut, Peter Bogdanovich was a consummate cinephile. The Film Center’s website says about his ﬁrst and last ﬁlms that they are “[s]eemingly the most disparate pairing” of the series, but they have in com-

itko, who passed away at 41, only made four feature films. Thus her first and last—also the last of the series altogether—comprise half of her applicable output. Made when she was just 25 years old, Heat (1963) is about an idealistic high school graduate who goes to a rural commune in the Kazakh Steppe and clashes with its leader. Shepitko’s pièce de résistance, The Ascent (1977), finds the filmmaker working on a grander scale in terms of its considerations, transforming the story of two Soviet soldiers who encounter German soldiers in Nazioccupied Belorussia as they search for food into a religious parable of sorts.

“All motion pictures are personal but the desire to ﬁlm The Ascent was almost a physical need,” Shepitko said. “If I had not shot this picture it would have been a catastrophe for me. I could not find any other material with which I could transmit my views on life, on the meaning of life.” A felicitous sentiment for the end: of the series, of a career, and ultimately of a life. v m letters@chicagoreader.com

A still from Varda’s 1955 ﬁ lm La Pointe Courte COURTESY IMDB

REP THE READER!

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Taround a symbolic entity. In No Fear, No Die, it’s the cocks, and in Fever , it’s a bomb. Based on a novel by Polish writer Andrzej Strug, the film follows a single, homemade bomb as it moves among the revolutionaries entrusted with it. Fever is set during an early emancipatory movement against the Russian partition starting in 1905. As I wrote in my blurb on the film for Cine-File, “Holland’s film is no concise overview of the historical moment in question. Rather, it looks at the idea of revolution and the dynamics at play within it.”

wo films I saw last week have really stuck with me: a digital restoration of Claire Denis’s early masterwork No Fear, No Die (1990) at the Gene Siskel Film Center and a digital restoration of Agnieszka Holland’s criminally underseen Fever (1981) at Doc Films. When we got out of the latter screening, my husband asked if I could think of another woman filmmaker whose films were as brutal as Holland’s. My mind instantly went to Denis, the French auteur whose work, like that of the Polish filmmaker, reflects the brutality of real life. If there are people who think women are predisposed to being soft, these filmmakers could certainly prove otherwise.

In No Fear, No Die , Dah (Isaach De Bankolé) and Jocelyn (Alex Descas), from Benin and the Caribbean, respectively, take their illegal cockﬁghting racket to the seedy truck stop of a wealthy French gangster. The parallels between the cockﬁghting duo and the roosters are quickly made obvious; though Dah and Jocelyn are, technically, the ones running the show, it’s an inexorable delusion born of racism and colonialism. They are in charge of the roosters, another constrained party in the overall dynamic, but it’s the white French businessman who is ultimately in charge of them. Jocelyn treats the birds he exploits with respect, another twisted dilemma that in Jocelyn evokes the circumstances of being both the exploiter and exploitee. That respect ultimately grows into a sort of kinship—the reality of which seems to fuel his eventual rebellion.

The ﬁlm’s title is the name of Jocelyn’s best cock. As Richard Brody notes in a piece coinciding with the restoration for the New Yorker, “The original French title of the movie is S’En Fout la Mort (a bit of broken French, meaning something like ‘Doesn’t Give a Fuck About Death’).” This irreverent attitude toward death is echoed in Holland’s Fever ; both ﬁlms center

The brutality I’m referring to above is less in the way of physical violence—which is certainly evident in both films as racism and oppression are also forms of physical violence even if physical contact isn’t involved—and more in what they suggest. In Fever , Holland adopts from the source material a rather cynical view of revolution, considering the myriad ways in which it can be compromised. It doesn’t center on any one character but shows several in their relationship to the cause. One of the men is ruthless, another woefully naive. The lone female character is driven mad when the ruthless man only uses her to fulfill his sexual and ideological needs. The bomb in question symbolizes for all these people a hope for freedom by way of an explosion, literally and figuratively, of Russian annexation. But their inherent human flaws hold it back, posing a rather desolate question: under what circumstances can revolution succeed?

It may seem as if I’m reveling in all of this despair, but, to be honest, seeing two great ﬁlms has boosted my spirits. Great art, even when confronting our deepest fears and the world’s most tragic horrors, can always be a comfort. Until next time, moviegoers. —KAT SACHS v

The Moviegoer is the diary of a local ﬁlm bu , collecting the best of what Chicago’s independent and underground ﬁlm scene has to o er.

DOPE AFTER DARK PRESENTS CITRUS FM

Five elements , seven Dragon Balls , and an immortal legacy

The corner-store art show “Dragon Ball Estrella” opened a window on Chicago hip-hop’s ongoing love aﬀair with Akira Toriyama’s most famous creation.

By ALEJANDRO HERNANDEZ

On July 12, 2024, a regular-looking corner store called La Estrella on Diversey near Harlem opened the doors on its new secret identity. On the inside, the mini-mart was transformed into an art gallery—and not just any art gallery. The two-week pop-up exhibit that launched that evening, called “Dragon Ball Estrella,” was dedicated to a media franchise from Japan whose manga, anime series, and movies have built a devoted fandom around the globe: Dragon Ball.

Featuring Mo Gwala, Lost in Kyoto, and Mo Mami. Fri 8/16, 9 PM, the Point, 1565 N. Milwaukee, $20, $15 in advance, 21+ a story of empower-

La Estrella owner Mohammad Masoud has been cultivating a relationship with Chicago’s hip-hop scene since at least 2019, in part by letting rappers and streetwear designers film promotional videos in the shop. (He remembers his dad doing the same thing at his Humboldt Park corner store as long ago as 2012.) La Estrella also sells manga, toys, and vinyl alongside the more typical corner-store stu , and it regularly hosts tournaments for trading-card games, including the current Dragon Ball game. But it’s never done anything like “Dragon Ball Estrella.”

Masoud organized the exhibit with Chicago visual artist Pabs Prints, a fellow lifelong fan of hip-hop and the Dragon Ball series. They brought in Chicago DJ duo Lost in Kyoto to set the vibes, and they assembled pieces from 15 visual artists who specialize in anime-centric aesthetics, including Flthy Rich, Geeknight, and Koni.

Dragon Ball and hip-hop have had a love a air going strong for more than 20 years.

Black pop culture already had an a nity for martial arts, and Dragon Ball pairs the handto-hand combat and ancient mysticism of kung fu movies with a story of empowerment and rebellion against imperial villains.

Large-scale U.S. broadcasts of the series Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z began in the mid1990s, and before long the characters and lore of the shows started turning up in rap lyrics.

Cartoon Network’s Toonami team, who added Dragon Ball Z to that programming block in the late 90s, understood their audience well—they started making promo videos and bumpers using adventurous hip-hop and drum ’n’ bass.

In 2017, Genius.com compiled a chronology of Dragon Ball references in hip-hop that begins with RZA from Wu-Tang Clan namedropping series protagonist Goku in the 2001 song “Must Be Bobby” (from his Bobby Digital album Digital Bullet ). After Akira Toriyama, the creator of Dragon Ball, died at age 68 in March, Florida-born rapper Denzel Curry posted a tribute that credited Toriyama with shaping his entire aesthetic as an artist.

The inﬂuence of Dragon Ball has of course

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The humans in this image, clockwise from top, are Mugen! the Human, Joestar the DJ and Genkai the Third of Lost in Kyoto, and Chris Robbin’. The Dragon Ball characters are both Goku, hero of the franchise, at le in his Ultra Instinct form (from Dragon Ball Super) and at right as a kid (from Dragon Ball GT ).

spread into Chicago hip-hop too. The artwork for Chief Keef and Fredo Santana’s 2015 track “Maybach” depicts the rappers as characters from the series, and in the 2010s local crew Sicko Mobb released a Super Saiyan mixtape series, named after a vastly powerful form that some aliens of Goku’s race can train themselves to assume. Lots of local musicians unabashedly ﬂex their fandom through their craft, and for this story I spoke with seven creatives who credit Dragon Ball as a primary source of inspiration.

Toriyama began publishing the manga that started it all in 1984, and the ﬁrst anime series, also called Dragon Ball, launched in 1986. It’s proved a hugely vital and enduring franchise. So far it’s spawned five TV shows (the most recent wrapped in 2018), and the sixth, Dragon Ball Daima , is set to release in October. There have been 24 Dragon Ball movies, and the latest, Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero ,

grossed more than $100 million when it came out in 2022. The 42 volumes of the original manga have collectively sold more than 260 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling such series of all time.

Toriyama was still involved in writing the latest entries in the canon he’d devised—the current manga, Dragon Ball Super , went on hiatus when he died (the mononymic Toyotarou, who’ll pick it back up, is his chosen successor). Toriyama’s passing touched generations of fans: over the decades, they’d all grown up watching or reading his series about a monkey-tailed boy named Goku who travels around the world on a quest to help his friends gather seven wish-granting orbs and trains himself into the strongest ﬁghter on earth— and eventually in the entire universe.

Toriyama’s passing pushed Masoud and Pabs Prints to put together “Dragon Ball Estrella,” but it took them a few months to

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continued from p. 21

get the job done the way they wanted. At the July 12 exhibit opening, the counter holding La Estrella’s cash register became a makeshift DJ booth, with speakers on stands to either side. Lost in Kyoto, aka Genkai the Third and Joestar the DJ, played a mix of contemporary hip-hop and the cinematic synths of Bruce Faulconer’s soundtrack for Cartoon Network’s broadcasts of Dragon Ball Z. Both DJs credit Toriyama for inspiring the beginning of their creative careers.

Joestar the DJ: I first saw Dragon Ball Z when I was ten years old, and I think it was the very first anime I had ever seen. Since then, I just really got into anime and drawing, like, a long time ago. It was just something so new and different. [Lost in Kyoto’s] thing was always anime and hip-hop. We’d play Japanese music too, but it was really anime, hip-hop, and Black kid stuff. That was our pop culture.

Genkai the Third: So [Joestar] and I worked at Apple. We worked there for about two years together. We were learning how to DJ oﬀ our phones because we had this app called Djay Pro. Based oﬀ of that, we had the same music interest and both liked anime. I mean, Toriyama is the reason why we started Lost in Kyoto. It got created because, at that time, Dragon Ball Super was out, when we were working at Apple—we were talking about it every week.

In 2017, Joestar and Genkai began using the Lost in Kyoto name for anime-themed DJ sets they hosted at their local dive, the Inner Town Pub. They’d been doing it for more than a year when they met Pabs Prints, real name Pablo Alejandro. He hosted pop-ups for clothing brands and visual art (his own and his friends’), and Joestar and Genkai volunteered to DJ for free at those events, using them as opportunities to perfect their craft—which included splicing clips from Dragon Ball series into videos they played as backdrops to their sets. In 2019, Lost in Kyoto started their own traveling monthly party series, Dope After Dark, whose venues have included Virgin Hotel, the Giant Penny Whistle, and Blind Barber. Their next party is set for Friday, August 16, at the Point in Wicker Park. None of this, they say, would have happened if it weren’t for Toriyama introducing them to the world of anime.

Genkai: The concept of Lost in Kyoto is just the idea of being culture shocked and being overwhelmed by anime, pop culture, and Japanese culture itself, and then just kind of bringing in that classic American aspect.

Dragon Ball Z has a very close relationship with hip-hop culture. We owe a lot to Akira Toriyama. A lot of conversations, a lot of sleepless nights creating visuals. It’s not a Lost in Kyoto visual without Dragon Ball Z. It wasn’t just that—even his side projects too. I love the Sand Land manga.

Joestar: We owe a lot of friendships and business decisions [to Toriyama]. I love all the Dragon Quest games too. I think the lesson I learned [from Toriyama] is if you have a goal you wanna achieve and you’ve got a bunch of work in front of you, just go ahead and dive in. Just put the work in, and you’ll get to where you want to be. You should be very intentional.

At the opening of “Dragon Ball Estrella,” once you passed the DJ booth, you’d encounter the exhibit itself, surrounded by a crowd of onlookers. One wall of the mini-mart was packed from end to end with toy figurines, trading cards, manga volumes, and a section of artwork in the middle that included paintings, prints, photographic portraits, and even a stained glass dragon, all by Chicagoland artists and all paying homage to the famous series. The organizers of the show spoke on why they dedicated their pop-up gallery to Toriyama’s magnum opus.

Pabs Prints: I grew up in Bogota, and we would watch his shows in Spanish. I remember being six years old and having these portraits of the ﬁghters. I would say that got me into drawing and trying to be an artist. A lot of my designs are Dragon Ball–related, and there was an opportunity to work with Mohammad on a pop-up for the community. Eventually, I want to do [art shows themed around] Digimon and other smaller, less-known animes, but it only felt right to have DBZ be the ﬁrst one because it’s like the original [mainstream] anime.

Mohammad Masoud: We always planned to do a show, and [a er Toriyama’s death] we were like, “Let’s just set a date and do it.” My goal is to create a con where I can

be able to show art but also create special moments for [La Estrella] itself. I was a child and would go to the Middle East for the summers. We would watch their version of Cartoon Network, called Space Toon, where they would have certain anime. Now I sell Dragon Ball stuff, from manga to cards to action figures. He had a vision, so whatever he was able to do, he helped me create a new avenue for my business.

Pabs: It was only right that we did it in the seventh month of the year—seven dragon balls. Kind of worked out perfectly. The roster that we had was pretty strong, and all the artists did an amazing job. It’s really cool bringing the community together celebrating a show that’s been a part of all of our lives.

When news of Toriyama’s passing reached the Internet, it seemed like everyone in the world took the time to dedicate an RIP post on social media. Rapper-producers Chris Robbin’ and Mugen! the Human are both based in Chicago, but their takes on Toriyama help explain his international appeal.

Chris Robbin’: Toriyama really knew how to cater to a diverse audience. Every character that he introduced in the show was always a little bit diﬀerent from the oth-

ers. Something about the aesthetic that he created just resonated with people. And I think it’s the vibrancy that he was able to bring, as well as the grittiness of it. He just creates those perfect underdog stories—from rags to world’s strongest. I think that’s a mentality that a lot of artists have themselves.

Mugen! the Human: I was first introduced to Akira Toriyama, specifically Dragon Ball Z , in about the third or fourth grade. We had a new kid transfer into our school from Pakistan, and he was into anime culture way more than us. We became best friends. I remember going to his house one day, and he had Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 1 and 2 for PlayStation—we played for hours. There is no Mugen! the Human if it weren’t for that.

I think it would be kinda tone-deaf to not reference the similarities between Goku and Superman. Everybody has known about the whole Goku-versusSuperman debate for so long, but I think part of the reason we put them up against each other is because they’re ideally who we want to be: somebody that constantly tries their best to not just reach their goals but exceed their goals with flying colors.

[Dragon Ball] was the ﬁrst of its kind to blow up here at a pivotal point, during the

Seji Bot drew himself (at right) with Ahkai, the hero of his manaA series

EnDjinn Quest. SEJI BOT

digital age in the 90s and early 2000s. Then the popularity of hip-hop, kind of being at its first [commercial] peak [at that same time]—it was really the perfect storm to introduce a lot of young people into both.

Dragon Ball itself tells an international story. Toriyama was primarily inspired by kung fu films and the 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West , which draws on several varieties of Asian folklore, religion, and legend. But he also pulled references from relatively distant cultures: Native American, Arab, Indian, even 20th-century American pop culture. Goku befriends people from all walks of life without prejudice—humans on Earth, aliens from di erent planets, literal celestial deities—and even turns enemies into allies. Dragon Ball also uses a tried-and-true trope of the universally recognized underdog tale, where characters reach their full potential only once their backs are against the wall. In fact, that’s an innate ability of Saiyans, Goku’s alien race. When a Saiyan has a near-death experience or su ers emotional trauma, their power levels increase drastically in what’s known as a “Zenkai boost.”

Robbin’: I have a Zenkai-boost bar that I use as a reliable line that I go to in my writing, and even for the beats I make, I may [sample] the good ol’ Kamehameha beam charge. So for me, the real-world lesson is deﬁnitely “What comes a er facing adversity?” How you choose to overcome those struggles a er the fact is the growth that you’ve had from having to go through diﬃcult situations and being able to tackle similar circumstances in the future with a clearer state of mind or a stronger will.

Mugen: I think the biggest thing that I can pinpoint is just going hard for your goal and trying your best to surpass your limits. As a father, sometimes, the things that we do may not make sense to our kids, and this is a parental thing in general, but ideally, it’s always for the beneﬁt of your child. But that ties back into the idea of just going as hard as you can to make sure that you’re straight, so that the people that you care about are straight. I think that’s the biggest theme that Toriyama tries to get across.

[I]n today’s world, we can openly be anime fans without any worry of scrutiny

or bullying or anything like that. Toriyama, with some help from shows like Naruto and One Piece , definitely paved the way for that, but it’s important not to take that for granted. We have a space where we can all freely be ourselves. If we love something, we should be loud about it, because the people that give us those good feelings should know that they’re giving us those good feelings. People gotta get their ﬂowers while they’re alive, and people gotta know the impact that they have while they’re alive—because sometimes it’s a lot bigger than they’re even able to really grasp.

Today, nearly every popular shonen series—“shonen” refers to stories aimed at adolescent boys—follows the model set by Toriyama. Just like Goku, their naive main characters have pure intentions and overcome all obstacles by trusting in their friends and never giving up. Superstar mangakas such as Masashi Kishimoto (who created Naruto) and Eiichiro Oda (of One Piece) have praised Toriyama for inspiring them to draw in the ﬁrst place. Toriyama probably could’ve quit drawing and lived comfortably even without creating Dragon Ball. By 1983, one year before Goku’s debut, he’d already become Japan’s wealthiest mangaka thanks to his series Dr. Slump, a gag comedy that follows the adventures of a robotic girl named Arale and her inventor, Senbei Norimaki, aka Dr. Slump.

Chicago hip-hop collective Slumpgang777, founded in 2014, took their name from Dr. Slump and turned it into a double entendre about being “slumped” off weed. Säge, the 64th Wonder cofounded the collective, and he not only references Dragon Ball frequently in his lyrics but also literally wears Toriyama’s inﬂuence on his sleeve: he has “SLUMP” tatted across his forearm.

Seji Bot: ManaA is basically the Western version of manga. [People ask,] “What makes manga a manga instead of a comic?,” and that’s basically our response to that.

With rap, I got tired of asking for artwork for albums, so that put me into positions to create my own album covers. I made that transition [from rapper to manaA artist] so hard when I did. I automatically was thinking about [Toriyama’s] art style and how he started. I did a deep dive on interviews and all this stuﬀ. I wanted to be just like him.

I knew for a fact that he was always

In 2018, though, Säge decided to take his love for anime and manga in a different direction. He’s founded a publishing company called Onsol-Go! with Slumpgang comrade Khalil Halim and started work on EnDjinn Quest , his own manaA series (American manga). Today, he goes by the pen name Seji Bot, and his entire platform is underpinned by intensive study of Toriyama’s career.

working, to the point that no one would see him, so I was like, “You know what? Let me lock in.” I started that around a year before the pandemic. Once everything locked down, it made it easy to sit in the house and just draw. The art style speaks for itself—readers will see his inﬂuence. I try to retain the vintage aesthetic of the artwork. Hell, even the way I for-

mat chapters in the story I’m working on now, EnDjinn Quest—I literally formatted it oﬀ the Sand Land one-shot. A lot of people idolize Toriyama, but they didn’t really study him.

Seji Bot says that his experience as an independent rapper in the music business has helped him navigate the publishing world. In mid-July, Onsol-Go! started shipping the first physical issues of Onsol-Go! magazine (which has been publishing online on and off since 2018), and it plans to sell copies through brick-and-mortar comic shops in August. Seji sees this not only as an extension of the work he does with his colleagues but also as an extension of Toriyama’s influence.

Seji Bot: [Onsol-Go!] was supposed to be a company for us to tell our own stories instead of pitching everywhere. I learned that through rap—like, I’m not trying to get signed, I’m trying to do my own thing.

Literally, the same exact thing that I was doing with rap, I’m doing with [OnsolGo!]. I know I’m onto something for real. It’s like running a record label. Record labels are supposed to make artists money. They’re known to take money, but in reality we’re supposed to make money together, and I think that’s why it’s crucial that I’m a creator as well.

I’m trying my best to do my own thing and pay my respects to [Toriyama], and I’m so glad people can see the inﬂuence. I’m tapped in with Japanese manga artists, and they want the stories we tell, especially us as Black people. Tell Luffy, Naruto, and Goku to come over for a barbecue with my n----s.

The legacy of Akira Toriyama will in some ways be immortal. He lit the fires of creativity in countless children, and as they grow into adults and make their own manga, anime, music, and visual art, they’ll inspire a new generation of children in turn. The famous words that Toriyama wrote for Goku’s teacher, Master Roshi, perfectly demonstrate how simple and contagious his philosophy can be:

“Work hard, study well, and eat and sleep plenty—that’s the Turtle Hermit way to learn.” v

Pabs Prints and his son with the artwork at “Dragon Ball Estrella” COURTESY OF PABS PRINTS

THE SECRET HISTORY OF CHICAGO MUSIC

William Warren drummed on one of the greatest blues recordings ever made

On Hoodoo Man Blues he’s overshadowed by Junior Wells and Buddy Guy, but the talents he honed on Maxwell Street should’ve made him a star.

By STEVE KRAKOW

Since 2005 Plastic Crimewave (aka Steve Krakow) has used the Secret History of Chicago Music to shine a light on worthy artists with Chicago ties who’ve been forgotten, underrated, or never noticed in the first place.

Every so often, the Secret History of Chicago Music is inclined to “give the drummer some,” as James Brown famously put it in the 1967 hit “Cold Sweat.” This week’s subject is blues drummer William Warren, and I chose him in part because drummers in the blues so often get taken for granted—shu e beats sound deceptively easy to play, after all, and the genre doesn’t usually allow for ﬂashy drum solos or experiments with time signatures. But blues fans know how to hear the subtleties that make someone a sought-after drummer, and Warren was deﬁnitely that. He played with legends and appeared on recordings vital to the blues canon.

William Warren, sometimes called Bill, Billy, or even Levi, was born on September 6, 1919, in Clayton, Alabama. Unfortunately this small town is probably best known as the place where the state’s notoriously segregationist governor, George Wallace, began his legal and political career in the 1940s.

Little information appears to have survived about Warren’s early years, but by the 1950s, he had settled in Chicago. He became a regular at the Maxwell Street Market, a bustling open-air immigrant bazaar that played an important role in incubating the famous sound of Chicago electric blues. From the 1930s

onward, as Black blues musicians came to Maxwell Street from the rural south, they had to learn to compete with the noise of an urban market—and as soon as they could, they began switching to electric instruments.

Another SHoCM subject, late bluesman Frank “Little Sonny” Scott Jr., said he met Warren on Maxwell Street in 1950 and frequently jammed with him there. The city and University of Illinois Chicago shut down the original market in 1994, but I found some recollections from Scott on a Preserve Maxwell Street website archived by the Open Air Market Network. “I was livin on Maxwell Street near Je erson and played in a band on the street with a drummer named Porter and Little Carnell was on guitar,” he said. “I played harmonica but also played drums and guitar. The drum set was mine. Bill Warren would come by and we were glad to let him sit in on drums.”

Scott and Warren soon became friends. “I liked playing guitar to his beat,” Scott said. “I liked to swing and he put jazz and blues together. It let me swing. When I was playing with Freddie King, he would follow us and ask to sit in. I liked to let him sit in cause I would get very tired playing drums and needed an extra break.”

The energetic swing and bustling drum ﬁlls that Warren used early in his career made him a poor match for some blues musicians, but he soon learned to mellow his playing when the situation demanded it. His friends remembered him carrying around a briefcase filled with drumsticks, sheet music, and song ideas he’d jotted down on napkins, matchbooks, and various scraps of paper.

Warren made his ﬁrst known recording in 1961, cutting two sides with the Jump Jackson Band led by fellow drummer Armand “Jump” Jackson. With another drummer on the session, it’s hard to say with confidence whether Warren did more than sing, but he’s credited with vocals on both songs. “Midnight Shu e” b/w “Riding in My Jaguar” (the latter of which Warren cowrote) came out on Jackson’s label, La Salle Records (based at 5727 S. Lasalle, natch). During this era Warren also led his own band, Bill Warren & His Midnight Creepers, and a contemporaneous poster bills him as a drummer, singer, and trumpet player

(though no audio of the group seems to exist). Scott also recalled seeing Warren play at the legendary Theresa’s Lounge, which had opened in 1949 at 4801 S. Indiana. Also known as Theresa’s Tavern and T’s Basement, the club was named for its owner, Theresa McLaurin Needham. “[Bill] was playing drums on the stage and he called Junior Wells from the audience to come up and play harmonica,” Scott said. “Then Junior Wells called up Buddy Guy from the audience to come up and play guitar. After that night, they were hired to play there.”

Wells was one of Chicago’s best-loved harmonica players, and the regular gig at Theresa’s that he began in the late 50s would lead to some of the most important collaborations in the city’s blues history. The musicians who passed through Wells’s band included guitarists Sammy Lawhorn and Byther Smith (both previous SHoCM subjects) as well as Warren on drums.

In 1965, Bob Koester of hugely influential

local label Delmark Records asked Junior Wells to make an album. Wells assembled a band that included Buddy Guy and William Warren, and the album they recorded—Wells’s first under his own name—became the Delmark bestseller Hoodoo Man Blues . This LP, arguably the ﬁrst to capture the raw sound of an electric blues band tearing up a west-side Chicago club, made Wells a star, and it’s since been praised as one of the best blues recordings ever made. Alas, not much of that shine stuck to Warren, even though he played on several more sessions with Wells in the 60s.

Late in 1965, Warren filled in for drummer Sam Lay (formerly with Muddy Waters) in the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. Lay had come down with bronchitis on an east-coast tour and had to be hospitalized. Warren joined the group for a weeklong residency at the Chess Mate in Detroit, but Butterfield decided he wasn’t a good fit for the more rock-oriented direction they were taking. By the time Butterfield and company left for their first westcoast gigs in January 1966, Billy Davenport had taken over on drums.

In 1968, Warren traveled to Asia on a State Department tour in a band with Wells, guitarist Lefty Dizz, bassist Willie Monroe, and saxophonist Doug Fagan. He appeared on the 1969 Capitol Records LP Scufflin’ With Stu Ramsay and Chicago Slim , and in ’71 he played on one of the two sessions for Jimmy Reed’s Let the Bossman Speak! He’s on Sonny Thompson’s The Blues Again, a 1972 recording issued in 1984 by French label Black & Blue.

His slow-burning tune “Big Fine Girl” is immortalized on the compilation Chicago Blues Festival, Vol. 2: 1972-1973 (released in ’93 by Black & Blue), alongside material by the likes of Koko Taylor, Willie Mabon, Johnny Shines, and Luther Johnson.

Later in the 1970s, disco dealt a blow to the Chicago blues circuit, and Warren’s studio output seems to have ceased for decades. The next recordings I can find from him are on the 1998 compilation The Lost American Bluesmen, where he appears alongside Scott and other veterans of the ’50s scene, drumming and singing on “Riding in My Jaguar,” “Big Fine Girl,” and “Black Cat Blues.” In the

late 90s he also began turning up at protests to preserve what remained of the Maxwell Street neighborhood, though the market itself had already been relocated. (This summer, the latter-day version of the Maxwell Street Market returned to the original site, but it has almost nothing in common with the place where Warren used to play.)

On February 11, 2000, Warren died from complications of diabetes and several strokes. He’s buried in Restvale Cemetery in Alsip, home to the graves of many notable blues musicians, among them Willie “Big Eyes” Smith, J.B. Hutto, Magic Sam, and Muddy Waters.

Warren’s obituary in the Chicago Tribune mentions that he played with Waters and Maxwell Street elder Jimmie Lee Robinson and gigged at the Kitty Cat Lounge and Zanzibar Lounge, among other places. But its emphasis is less on his résumé and more on how well-liked he was by fellow musicians. “In my book, he should be in the Hall of Fame, he’s just that good,” said Johnnie Mae Dunson, a fellow local blues singer and beloved Maxwell

Street veteran. “He just had charisma. He would give you that feeling. He moved those sticks so well, he was so fast.”

After Warren’s death, Scott accepted power of attorney for his friend and took care of funeral arrangements. “He used to jump around, kept everybody alive,” Scott told the Tribune. “He had a pretty nice attitude, which is kind of rare.”

Warren’s recordings have been compiled as recently as 2019, when the ﬁ ve-CD set Down Home Blues: Chicago Volume 2: Sweet Home Chicago (released by UK label Wienerworld Presentation) included two tracks where he backed house-rocking guitarist Hound Dog Taylor. Let’s hope this means Warren’s role in the history of Chicago blues will get more attention, not less, in the years to come. v

The radio version of the Secret History of Chicago Music airs on Outside the Loop on WGN Radio 720 AM, Saturdays at 5 AM with host Mike Stephen. Past shows are archived at outsidetheloopradio.com/tag/secrethistory-of-chicago-music.

Recommended

Ragana cast anarchist black-metal spells to bring about positive change

THURSDAY1

10cc 7:30 PM, Arcada Theatre, 105 E. Main, St. Charles, $39–$79, $59 accessible seating. b

What do you get when you let four veteran musical geniuses loose in their own studio with plenty of space to collaborate? One answer is experimental pop legends 10cc. This summer the British art-rockers are touring the U.S. for the ﬁrst time in 30 years, responding to a surge of interest driven in part by new fans discovering their best-known song, 1975’s “I’m Not in Love,” on the soundtrack to 2014’s Guardians of the Galaxy

The band 10cc arose from the collision of two quirky songwriting teams: the duo of Kevin Godley and Lol Creme and the duo of Eric Stewart and Graham Gouldman. By the time the four of them started making music together in 1968, Gouldman had already established an impressive CV, writing mid-60s smashes for the likes of the Yardbirds (“For Your Love,” “Heart Full of Soul”), the Hollies (“Bus Stop”), and Herman’s Hermits (“East West”).

After 10cc formed in 1972, they scaled the UK charts with ﬁve consecutive top-ten albums as well as singles such the doo-wop send-up “Donna” (1972) and the exuberantly silly pastiche “Life Is a Minestrone” (1975). But American audiences weren’t quite ready for that weirdness, and on these shores the band did better with smoother songs, including 1973’s “Rubber Bullets” (whose mellowness contrasts its lyrics about a riot) and 1976’s “The Things We Do for Love.”

Gouldman still leads 10cc today, in a muchchanged lineup where he’s joined by two other long-term members. Drummer and keyboardist Paul Burgess was hired as a second drummer for a 1973 tour and became an oﬃcial band member a er Godley and Creme le in 1976. Guitarist Rick Fenn made his 10cc studio debut on the same full-length as Burgess, 1977’s Deceptive Bends

I recently spoke to Gouldman, who told me that 10cc didn’t need pretour rehearsals because Burgess is his longest consistent musical partner

LAST YEAR, OLYMPIA-BASED DUO RAGANA released their fourth full-length album, Desolation’s Flower (the Flenser), which balances radical political vision with a supernatural ambience. The anarchist blackened doom metal band are celebrated for their explicitly queer perspective and antifascist, anticapitalist politics. Coming out of a pandemic while witnessing the rising tide of American fascism, they’ve resisted the urge to revel in nihilism, paranoia, or selfdestruction. Instead, the darkly atmospheric journey of Desolation’s Flower celebrates queer and trans ancestors through heavy music. At times, the record is resigned to anger and sadness, but mostly it’s bold and celebratory—emphasizing beauty that persists against all odds.

Ragana is a Latvian and Lithuanian word for “witch,” and the band see making music as a form of spell casting for change. Members Coley and Maria, who go by just their first names, share the drumming, guitar playing, singing, and songwriting. Since forming Ragana in 2011, the two have moved around the Paciﬁ c Northwest while developing their own take on the region’s distinctive ﬂavors of doom and black metal. It’s as sludgy as mud sluicing down mountainsides during heavy spring rains, and it feels like losing yourself in a forest that’s survived eons of winters. Desolation’s Flower is brooding, meditative, and harsh, but in the most nourishing way possible.

—MICCO CAPORALE

RAGANA, SUNROT, STANDER, WRETCHED BLESSING Mon 8/5, 8 PM, Beat Kitchen, 2100 W. Belmont, $15. 17+

WINONA PHOENIX

(though Godley jumped onstage at a gig in May). He said that this Ultimate, Ultimate Greatest Hits Tour will include 10cc tunes beloved on both sides of the Atlantic, but he will not be using the Gizmotron, the eﬀects device the band members developed in the 70s to make an electric guitar sound like a full string section. (On our call, he referred to it as “that piece of shit” and said that it rarely started up—which shattered some myths for me!) The most recent 10cc studio album remains 1995’s Mirror Mirror , but Gouldman never stopped writing new material, and this month he released his sixth solo EP, I Have Notes. He told me he’s excited to play for three generations of fans on this tour—and I’ll be among those singing along. —STEVE KRAKOW

SATURDAY3

Her Only Light: A Connie Converse 100th birthday Celebration Featuring Emmy Bean and Ronnie Kuller with Sarah Plum, Vannia Phillips, Melissa Bach, Lauren Hayes, Emily Rach Beisel, Katherine Jimoh, and story quilts by Lizi Breit. 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $27.83.

It’s only human to love a good mystery, and the 1974 disappearance of singer-songwriter and anti-racist activist Elizabeth “Connie” Converse is a doozy. Born in New Hampshire in 1924, Converse led a colorful life in the vibrant 1950s Greenwich Village arts scene, then moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she worked as an academic editor. But after suffering a series of frustrations (including diﬃculties launching her musical career) and reaching the big five-oh, Converse sent letters to her loved ones announcing her intention to disappear. In that pursuit, she was a success: none of her family or friends ever heard from her again. Where did she go? What did she do? Did she use an assumed name? It all remains unknown. She might even be alive today.

This concert celebrates Converse’s 100th birthday, which she mused about in a draft of a letter found in her ﬁling cabinet a er her disappearance:

“To survive it all, I expect I must drift back down through the other half to the twentieth twentieth, which I already know pretty well, to the hundredth hundredth, which I only read and heard about. I might survive there quite a few years—who knows? But you understand I have to do it by myself, with no benign umbrella. Human society fascinates me and awes me and fills me with grief and joy; I just can’t ﬁnd my place to plug into it. So let me go, please; and please accept my thanks for those happy times. . . . I am in everyone’s debt.”

Converse is the subject of a book by Howard Fishman, To Anyone Who Ever Asks, published

last year. Much of her music has been kept alive by friends and acquaintances; a collection of her evocative songs titled How Sad, How Lovely was released in 2009, and more recently, new fans have discovered her music through two EPs, 2020’s Sad Lady and last year’s Musicks . And in 2017, John Zorn’s Tzadik label released a tribute album featuring guest appearances from the likes of Karen O, Laurie Anderson, Martha Wainwright, Mike Patton, and Eyvind Kang.

The ensemble performance, led by vocalist Emmy Bean and arranger and conductor Ronnie Kuller, is in some ways a reprise of a tribute show they presented at Constellation last year—it’s a joyous renewal of their commitment to Converse’s legacy. Her songs are wry, weird, evocative, and beautiful, and it’s a delight to hear them done justice in a lovingly staged cabaret-style performance with violin, viola, cello, harp, and clarinets. Textile artist Lizi Breit will bring story quilts inspired by Converse’s songs, and the birthday celebration will come complete with cake. Somewhere in space and time, Converse is smiling, I hope—though it’s hard to say whether this belated recognition could ever make up for the wrongs done to a visionary artist who was so underappreciated in her prime.

—MONICA KENDRICK

Vince Staples 11 PM, Vic Theatre, 3145 N. Sheﬃeld, sold out. 18+

In February, Netflix released The Vince Staples Show , a five-episode sitcom vehicle for the Long Beach rapper. Staples is no stranger to the screen: he brought nonchalant wit and chummy charm to his brief run on ABC’s Abbott Elementary , giving his side character plenty of dimension and remind-

ing me of what I love about his music. In a May interview with Rolling Stone, Staples explained that his TV work is part of an overall artistic practice that’s helping him evolve as a songwriter and rapper, which is still his main concern—he was talking to Rolling Stone in the first place because he’d just dropped his sixth album, Dark Times (Def Jam). On the record’s best cuts, Staples threads together sweeping narratives populated with intimate details that he delivers with the skillful precision of a surgeon. On “Étouffée,” he braids together his alienation in Long Beach’s projects, his prefame ambitions, and his grandmother’s story of escaping Jim Crow in Louisiana. He delivers architecturally sturdy bars with subtle flair and G-funk suaveness, and he builds to a cool, in-the-pocket chorus where he makes a guarded revelation of generational pain against the backdrop of an opulent synth melody that radiates something like optimism. —LEOR GALIL

SUNDAY4

Mei Semones Oyeme and Fingy open. 8 PM, Schubas, 3159 N. Southport, $15. 18+

Brooklyn singer-songwriter Mei Semones combines jazz, bossa nova, and indie rock in charming, understated songs that drip with romance, infatuation, and melancholy. Semones picked up the electric guitar as an 11-year-old in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and went on to study guitar performance at the Berklee College of Music, where she met her current bandmates. She’s been releasing music since 2020, and she relocated to New York a couple years ago. On her latest EP, April’s Kabutomushi, her flowery turns of phrase and so , intricate fingerpicking—colored by the brushstrokes of violist Noah Leong and violinist Claudius Agrippa—initially suggest nostalgia or whimsy. But despite her hushed, delicate style, Semones is a direct communicator when it comes to interpersonal dynamics and matters of the heart. The five songs on Kabutomushi , sung in English and Japanese, take a picturesque journey through breakups, new love, and longing. But on her latest single, “Didn’t Mean” (a collaboration with Atlantabased experimental pop songwriter Orchid Mantis), she gently taunts an emotionally closed lover. “Remember that time I hurt your feelings? / I didn’t mean to make you feel things.” You could read it as an indie-rock answer to Muhammad Ali’s “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee”: if you don’t stay present for those you claim to care about, they could catch you by surprise with a devastating emotional uppercut.

—JAMIE LUDWIG

MONDAY5

Ragana See Pick of the Week on page 26. Sunrot, Stander, and Wretched Blessing open. 8 PM, Beat Kitchen, 2100 W. Belmont, $15. 17+ v

Vince Staples SHANIQWA JARVIS

Vocalist Emmy Bean leads the ensemble for Her Only Light: A Connie Converse 100th Birthday Celebration. JOE MAZZA WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY LIZI BREIT

Mei Semones YOUN KIM

GOSSIP WOLF

SHOEGAZE VETERAN Scott Cortez was hanging out earlier this year with multiinstrumentalist Ryan Davis, who drums in Cortez’s noise-pop band Astrobrite , when Davis pitched him on a big Cobra Lounge show he was organizing with Cobra talent buyer Seth Riley . “He asked if Lovesliescrushing would play it,” Cortez says, “because he was talking about getting together all of these bands and friends of his that he knew.”

Cortez and Melissa Arpin Duimstra formed ambient shoegaze project Lovesliescrushing in 1991, and in the ensuing decades they’ve attracted a vital cult following. At the time of a 2021 Reader feature, they’d played “about seven” shows in 30 years, but lately they’ve been much more active. When Lovesliescrushing headline Davis and Riley’s daylong Rave Down festival on Saturday, August 3, it’ll be their second local show of 2024.

Davis and Cortez met during Windy City Crash Pop Fest at Chop Shop in the late 2010s. “We started talking,” Cortez says, “and I asked him if he wanted to play drums for Astrobrite.” Cortez had launched the project in 1993, and it played its ﬁrst show a few years later. “Doing the albums and everything was an easy outlet for me— it was my thing,” he says. “But re-creating that in a live fashion, not the easiest thing to do.”

“We played Philadelphia, and the original Astrobrite drummer was there,” Cortez says. “He came up to Ryan and told him, ‘You’re a monster on the drums.’ Ryan’s a metal, hardcore drummer—that proﬁciency, it just pushed everything to the next level.” Astrobrite played Philadelphia in March (and Los Angeles three weeks later) as part of Slide Away, a bicoastal shoegaze spectacular organized by Nothing front man Domenic Palermo. Lovesliescrushing also played the Philly date, and Cortez credits Palermo with getting them back onstage. “I was like, ‘Oh, I guess it’s time,’” Cortez says. “‘If that dude thinks we’re something, then I guess we’re probably doing something right.’”

A furry ear to the ground of the local music scene

and sings. And because everyone in the live Astrobrite trio will be on hand—bassist Kelly Coffey is DJing—they’ll perform a brief set just before Lovesliescrushing.

Tickets cost $37, or $31 in advance; the fest is open to all ages and starts at 4 PM.

ARTY CHICAGO POSTPUNK band Clickbait formed about eight years ago, and last month they finally self-released their debut album, At Your Leisure. The soulful shouts of front woman Sandra Yau give extra depth to the record’s spunky, funky songs, and Clickbait celebrate the LP by headlining the Empty Bottle on Monday, August 5, to cap their ﬁrst tour.

“I’m not really sure even what the impetus was for us to start a band,” says drummer Nick Mayor , who owns Bric-a-Brac Records with Clickbait bassist Jen Lemasters . “But

talking to Oakland band Shannon & the Clams. “You want people to feel like there’s a reason you’re on the stage and they’re in the audience, even if you’re not maestros of your instruments,” he says. “You’re doing something up there that’s worth watching.”

PLANT MATTER RELEASED their selftitled debut EP in May, and they’re belatedly celebrating with a show at Sleeping Village on Friday, August 2. Guitarist and singersongwriter Gabe Bostick is the creative center of this local indie project, but lots of other musicians have added to some phase of Plant Matter’s life—six of them appear on the EP. “It’s meant to be an introduction to my songwriting and an exposition of the way the band has evolved,” Bostick says. “From ‘Zephyr’ to ‘Morse Code’ is two and a half years of this band with different iterations of people playing on the songs.”

Plant Matter are currently a trio with bassist Leo Paterniti and drummer Ethan Toenjes . (The two of them also play in Sleeper’s Bell, and Toenjes is in Sleepwalk with Ryan Davis.) Bostick’s velvety vocals are earnest and temperate, his guitar is clean and expressive, and the drumming on Plant Matter is bustling but unflashy—it makes for an easy listen.

When Davis talked to Cortez about the Cobra Lounge date, Cortez gave him a suggestion. “It was, like, ﬁve bands or six bands, and I was like, ‘Ryan, you should just call this a festival,’” Cortez says. Rave Down also includes a set from hard-edged shoegaze group Sleepwalk , where Davis plays guitar

we knew we wanted to do something with Sandra, and it just kind of happened.” Before Kelsey Henke joined Clickbait on guitar a few years ago, they were only intermittently active, but the new lineup started gigging hard. “It really helped us settle on how we wanted the songs to feel and find whatever the voice is that we have,” Mayor says. “Like, summer 2022, I think we played eight or nine weeks straight.”

In January 2023, Clickbait headed to Kansas to record At Your Leisure with Caufield Schnug from Sweeping Promises at his Lawrence studio. The band spent about a year trying to mix it via email, then returned to Lawrence this past January to rerecord some parts and finish mixing in person. As much work as Clickbait put into the album, they’ve put even more into their live show. Mayor has taken to heart a lesson he learned from

Bostick grew up in the Bay Area and moved to Chicago in 2018 to study sound recording at DePaul. “Zephyr,” the lead single from Plant Matter , retells a true story Bostick heard about Amtrak’s California Zephyr line, which runs between San Francisco and Chicago. A very pregnant 19-year-old was on the train with her boyfriend, because she was too far along to fly but wanted to be with her parents near Denver for the birth. She went into labor as the train sped through the Utah desert in the middle of the night, and the assistant conductor delivered the baby. The grateful parents chose “Zephyr” as the baby’s middle name. “That song is an exercise in not overthinking songwriting,” Bostick says. “It’s a human story, and it’s immediately impactful.”

—D-M BROWN AND LEOR GALIL

Melissa Arpin Duimstra and Scott Cortez of Lovesliescrushing JULIAN ARPIN-CORTEZ

A Case for Dark Spells

At the precipice of the night

I beat the sun to rise

Kneeling before a keypad // notes app // a scrap of lined paper I give in to a magic

A bending phrase turns to tiny spell

A bewitching calms the dark unbroken yet by sun before the curse of day // job takes hold again.

At the precipice of the night

I make my last bid to supernatural

Set a stage as god

Breathe walls of words that block out the buzzing Build roads that lead to dancing there for an audience of night

I wind, wrapped in words

Naked

Here, night is at its peak and so am I honest as a holler hurled from mother’s dark warm water the ﬁrst and last time I wore my birthday suit to a meeting. Between then and now, I learned how grotesque light can be.

At the precipice of night

I’m not bashful in bare skin

I forget to be broken // burden // bother // bore // bitch I forget this ritual

Here in darkness, I become not so damn bad at being

Before the patron crickets fade to chirping birds and my open skin is traded in for business casual I am a magician.

By Kiayla Ryann

My keypad // my notes app // my pen // all wands my words // tiny abracadabras spelling me out of melancholy and into genesis where, at the beginning, there was only the word. With words, I spell into Eden.

At the precipice of the night, I don’t know my shadow from heaven. I breathe life into the dawn and from it a poem is born naked with no tempting tree to curse it with the lie nothing good happens here

In the dark, I rise without light and shine.

Kiayla, a womanist poet, somatic yoga instructor, and performance artist from Chicago’s south suburbs is conducting “liberation experiments”. She explores how embracing one’s authentic self propels collective freedom. Currently ﬁnalizing her ﬁrst poetry collection, Kiayla is also the co-curator of Poet’s Tea and Pleasure, a popup evening of poetry celebrating the liberating power of pleasure. kiaylaryann.com

A weekly series curated by the Chicago Reader and sponsored by the Poetry Foundation.

Summer Hours

Wednesday–Saturday: 11:00 AM–5:00 PM

A Bigger Table: 50 Years of the Chicago Poetry Center

Celebrating CPC’s ﬁve historic decades, this exhibition will feature 50 broadsides, 50 iconic vintage poetry event posters, archival materials and ephemera, and the premiere of a documentary ﬁlm.

Open through September 14, 2024

Learn more at PoetryFoundation.org

CLASSIFIEDS

JOBS

Health Care Service Corporation seeks Business Analyst (Chicago, IL) to work as a liaison among stakeholders to elicit, analyze, communicate and validate requirements for changes to business processes, policies and information systems.

REQS: This position reqs a Bach deg, or forgn equiv, in Tech or Bus Admin or a rel ﬂd + 2 Yrs of exp as a proj mgr, sys analyst, or a rel position. Telecommuting permitted. Applicants who are interested in this position should submit a complete resume in English to hrciapp@bcbsil. com, search [Business Analyst / R0026599. EOE].

Experienced Staff Auditor - Identify accounting & auditing matters. Provide assistance in audit of selected financial statement accounts & prep of financial statements & mgmt letters. Document accounting systems & internal controls. Prep audit work papers. Resolve audit issues. *Work is at Employer’s Office 230 West Monroe St, Suite 310, Chicago, IL 60606, w/ domestic travel once per month lasting 3-5 business days is also required. Min Reqs: Bachelor’s in Accounting, Business Admin or closely rltd field. Must possess 6 mo exp in an occupation analyzing an orgs accounting records & controls. Must possess 6 mo exp in the following: collecting financial data; conducting reviews of an org’s financial ops for efficiency; Review & maintain financial records for compliance with procedurally regular standards; working with word processing s/w such as MS Word or Google Docs; working with spreadsheet s/w such as Excel or Google Sheets. Must possess 3 mo exp in the following: analyzing an org’s financial docs for completeness & maintained in conformance with GAAP reporting standards; performing reconciliations of financial records; conducting an audit of an org’s accounting or financial records; preparing Workpapers. Please send resume to Calibre CPA Group PLLC at recruiter@calibrecpa.com

Associate Attorney (Chicago, IL) Provide legal services in admiralty and maritime matters; focus on Longshore & Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act (LHWCA), Defense Base Act (DBA), War Hazards Compensation Act & Maritime law. J.D. from an accredited law school & Bar license required. Send resumes to: HR Dir, Thomas Quinn LLP, 53 W. Jackson Blvd., Suite 1437, Chicago, Illinois 60604; EOE

DevOps Engineer II (Chicago, IL) Drive developer exp improvements through automation & standardiza-

tion; triage platform issues responding to automated alerts/pages; perform advanced troubleshooting & monitoring of systems to ensure SLA & capacity reqmts. Bachelor’s deg in Comp Engg or rltd field. 2 yrs’ IT exp, incl some solid exp in each: Cloud Platforms (AWS, GCP); Kubernetes; GitLab CICD pipeline; SQL & NoSQL d/bases; Java; Python; C++; Bash/Shell scripts; Prometheus; Grafana; Terraform; Datadog; Ansible; NginX. Red Hat Delivery Specialist Certs in Automation, API Mgmt, & Platform; IBM Certiﬁed Administrator - Cloud Pak for Multicloud Mgmt v1.3; GitLab Certified Prof’l Svcs Engineer. Telecommuting from any loc in the US is an option. MUST send CV & cvr ltr to: nichole. knighton@ project44. com or Nichole Knighton, project44, LLC, 222 W Merchandise Mart Plaza, Chicago, IL 60654 w/in 30 days & ref Job #W2022-110.

Team Lead – Logistics (Job#: TL56) sought by IM Global LLC in Elk Grove Village, IL: Ensure that the supply chain is eﬃcient & effective throughout the org; Organize, store, & monitor the distribution of goods to ensure items & resources are shipped to their appropriate destinations. Plan & manage logistics, warehouse, transportation, & customer svcs; Direct, optimize, & coord full order cycle; Liaise & negotiate w/ suppliers, manufacturers, retailers & consumers; ep track of qlty, quantity, stock levels, delivery times, transport costs & eﬃciency; Plan routes & process shipments; resolve any arising problems or complaints. Rqmts: Master’s in Bus Admin, Logistics, or Supply Chain; In lieu of a Master’s deg rqmt, we also accept a Bachelor’s deg in Bus Admin, Logistics, or Supply Chain + 2 yrs of work exp as a logistician or closely rltd. Apply: mail CV with Job# to Will, 2475 Touhy Ave, Ste 300, Elk Grove Village, IL 60007.

Lead Software Engineer

Relativity (Chicago, IL) seeks Lead Software Engineer to provide tech. expertise on Core Toolchain team’s product architecture & mentor teammates. Remote work option from anywhere in the U.S. Submit resumes to Recruiting@relativity.com, to be considered, ref. Job ID: 24-9005 in the subject line.

Senior Machine Learning Engineer Relativity (Chicago, IL) seeks Senior Machine Learning Engineer to work w/data scientists & product teams w/in AI group to deploy machine learning solutions at scale & help build platform to support team & organization in deploying/ validating & monitoring machine learning models at petabyte scale. Must take & pass pre-hire coding

test related to problem solving/data structures & algorithms. Remote work option from anywhere in the U.S. Submit resumes to Recruiting@relativity. com, to be considered, reference Job ID: 249004 in the subject line.

Senior Data Scientist I

Senior Data Scientist I, AbbVie Inc., North Chicago, IL. Develop predictive models using statistical and machine-learning methodologies using complex modeling techniques and communicate insights. Utilize knowledge of statistical and machine learning methods, with expertise in modeling and business analytics. Consult with business users in the analysis of requirements and recommend solutions which anticipate the future impact of changing business requirements. Utilize experience with statistical languages and packages, such as R and Python. Design and develop processes and systems to consolidate and analyze data while considering variety (structured, unstructured), volume (includes big data), data quality (cleaning and validation of the data) and velocity (batch, stream). Enhance the data collection process by consolidating data, standardizing, optimization and perform exploratory data analysis before used on ML model. Work with modern relational databases and/or distributed computing platforms Big Data, and their query interfaces, such as SQL, Spark, PySpark and Hive. Develop advanced data analytical models and techniques from supervised and unsupervised machine learning, statistical analysis and predictive modeling. Generate reports with ﬁndings and communicate these eﬀectively via written, oral and visual Dashboard methods. Utilize experience with Failure Mode

and Criticality Analysis. Must possess a Bachelor’s degree or foreign academic equivalent in Data Science, Analytics, Engineering or a highly related ﬁeld of study with at least 5 years of related experience. In the alternative, employer will accept a Master’s degree in the aforementioned fields. Each educational alternative with at least 1 year of experience in the following: (i) knowledge of statistical and machine learning methods, with expertise in modeling and business analytics; (ii) experience with statistical languages and packages, such as R and Python; (iii) enhancing the data collection process by consolidating data, standardizing, optimization and perform exploratory data analysis before used on ML model; (iv) experience with Failure Mode and Criticality Analysis. Apply online at https:// careers.abbvie.com/en & reference REF27636M.

Installers Needed NOW

Seeking experienced installers for windowswindows,siding siding, and doors. Must have liability + workers comp insurance, truck and tools. Apply now! Polish speakers welcome! Contact: 773-800-9466

TECHNICAL

Yum Connect LLC is accepting resumes for the following position in CHICAGO, IL: Sr. Software Engineer REF7306490: Design, develop and support a critical front-end React web application. Telecommuting permitted. Send resume to Yum Connect LLC Yum.Recruitment@yum.com. EOE. Must include REF code.

Chuangyi Metals Corp is seeking an Operations Manager to maintain constant communication with president, staff, and vendors to ensure proper operations of the company;

Develop, implement, and maintain quality assurance standards and etc. Position requires a Master’s degree in Business Administration or related, any interested applicants can mail their resume with code CY24 to: Chuangyi Metals Corp, 3939 S. Karlov Ave, Chicago, IL 60632.

Project Manager Project Manager: Responsible for success of project through the system development lifecycle. Manage project timelines, track & measure project status, ensure quality deliverables are produced; manage project budget, scope, & backlog, & manage project risk, blockers, & escalations. Manage communication w/ clients & act as the liaison between client & development team. Participate in kickoff, requirement, status, demonstration, & training meetings w/ clients. $61,900.00/yr.

Reqd: Bach’s deg in Computer Science, Computer Engg, or rel. ﬂd. Resumes to: Americaneagle.com, Attn: HR, 2600 S. River Rd., Des Plaines, IL 60018

Health Care Service Corporation seeks Lead Data Scientist (Chicago, IL) to provide advanced math & stats concepts & theories to analyze & collect data & construct solutions to business problems. REQS a bachelor’s in a related ﬁeld (3 or 4 yr degree). Hybrid 2 days a week. Email resume to hrciapp@bcbsil. com & ref Lead Data Scientist / # R0034528. EOE.

Associate Attorney Associate Attorney, Baker & McKenzie LLP, Chicago, Illinois - Remain current on corporate law; draft memoranda, legal opinions, & client-related documents; conduct corporate legal research; advise on cross-border corporate projects. Must have a JD, LLM, or foreign

equivalent & 6 months exp. in corporate law, incl.: researching ﬁnancial transactions, coordinating client projects related to financial investments, & developing related clients. Must be licensed to practice law in Illinois. Experience may be gained concurrently. Eligible for telecommuting 2 days per week within commuting distance of Chicago. Apply online at www.bakermckenzie. com/careers

ENGINEERING

Fortinet, Inc. has the following opening(s) in Chicago, IL: Tech Sppt Engr [2040706TS] Anlyze & rslv iss & f/u on tech cases til closure. Sal: $130K-$135K/ yr. Email resume to hekim@fortinet.com. Must ref. job title w/code.

Investment Analysts RiverNorth Capital Management, LLC seeks Investment Analysts for our oﬃce in Chicago, IL. Employ core ﬁn. math & markets theory. Use VB code integrations w/ Excel (“macros\”), PowerPoint, Bloomberg, FactSet, Morningstar Direct, & Adobe InDesign. Appy exp. w/ arbitrage strategies, long-short strategies, fund-of-funds & investment strategies. Apply exp. w/ securities, asset classes & structures incl. hedge, closed-end, exchange-traded, openend mutual & interval funds, & bus. dev. companies, stocks, special purpose acquisition companies, master ltd partnerships, warrants, rights, preferred shares, bonds, options, futures, swaps & tender option bond trusts. Must show CFA cert. or progress toward CFA. At times, must work outside of normal bus. or mkt hours, including weekends. Must have master’s in finance, MBA, related or equiv. + 1 yr. exp. Email resume to hr@rivernorth.com. No calls. EOE.

AUDITIONS

Screenplay Editor. I’m seeking a Screenplay Editor with Final Draft Screenwriting Software experience, (or equivalent) to correct punctuation errors, and enhance action sequence wording to galvanize the readers imagination. The script is 101 pages. Contact info. antonzep007@gmail.com.

PROFESSIONALS & SERVICES

CLEANING SERVICES

CHESTNUT ORGANIZING AND CLEANING SERVICES: especially for people who need an organizing service because of depression, elderly, physical or mental challenges or other causes for your home’s clutter, disorganization, dysfunction, etc. We can organize for the downsizing of your current possessions to more easily move into a smaller home. With your help, we can help to organize your move. We can organize and clean for the deceased in lieu of having the bereaved needing to do the preparation to sell or rent the deceased’s home. We are absolutely not judgmental; we’ve seen and done “worse” than your job assignment. With your help, can we please help you? Chestnut Cleaning Service: 312-332-5575. www. ChestnutCleaning.com

MATCHES

All romantic dates women wanted All romantic fun dates all requests 24.7 Call (773) 977-8862 swm

SEX AND RELATIONSHIPS

Quickies

Thoughts on reckless infection, Dom/sub consent, and Pippin

By DAN SAVAGE

Q : I’m a neg boy who loves getting bred by mature poz men. I want their loads in me, no questions asked. I’m not on PrEP. Too deviant?

a: Too stupid, too reckless— and old and tired too. The gay world was roiled by “bug chasers” (HIV-negative gay men who were trying to get themselves infected) and “gi givers” (HIV-positive men/sociopaths who were willing to infect other people) a couple of decades ago. The stakes were higher then— literally life and death—but you are ﬂying with a net. Since you have access to HIV medications, you’ll be ﬁne. But I wouldn’t take that net for granted. Religious conservatives don’t just want to make abortion illegal and ban birth control. They wanna ban the death-control pills gay men have come to rely on, e.g., PrEP (protects neg guys from infection) and antiretroviral treatments (keep poz guys alive). Taking loads from poz guys— immature men, regardless of age—may wind up having consequences you didn’t see coming.

Q: Best resources for a newly self-discovered ace? I’m sex neutral.

a: I’m guessing you’ve already found your way to some online resources, seeing as you’re using ace-y jargon like “sex neutral.” But just in case: the Asexuality Visibility and Education Network (asexuality.org) remains an invaluable

resource. If you prefer something more informal, Cody Daigle-Orians, aka Ace Dad Advice, has built a supportive community on Instagram (@acedadadvice) and his Substack (acedadadvice.substack.com).

Q: How much masturbation is too much masturbation?

a: If you’re beating holes in your dick and/or overtaxing the grid with your vibrators, you might need to dial it back a bit.

Q: Do I qualify as gay if I’m not into oral or anal at all but I love absolutely everything else about men?

a: If you’re a man, yes. If not, no.

Q: What are your thoughts on Wicked being two movies?

a: I’m a triple threat—I enjoy oral and anal and movie musicals, and the more movie musicals, the better. So, I’m ﬁne with Wicked being not one movie, but two. But the Stephen Schwartz musical I’ve always wanted to see adapted for ﬁlm is Pippin Get on it, Hollywood!

Q: As a female Dom, do I need verbal consent to slap/ squeeze the balls of a new male sub?

a: You should bring up ball play/torture when you’re negotiating a scene with a new sub—if CBT is something you’re into—but it is possible

to incorporate ball play into a scene that’s already underway by giving your sub’s balls a gentle squeeze. And if that gentle squeeze elicits a positive response, use your words: “Do you like it when I hurt your balls?” If he asks for more, squeeze a little harder. But more extreme forms of ball play (slapping, punching, kicking) can’t be ventured without prior discussion and consent.

Q: Why are hetero men embarrassed to be uncut while gay men are proud of it?

a: Because uncut gay men tend to get a positive response from other gay men (“Yay! More cock to suck!”) while uncut straight men tend to get a negative response from straight women (“Shit. More cock to suck.”)

Q: How common is it for someone to actually fuck a hot delivery driver?

a: Hot delivery drivers, hot stepmoms, hot coaches— it’s easy to dismiss all three scenarios as porn tropes. But just because something happens in porn doesn’t mean it never happens in real life. So I’m sure there are people out there who’ve fucked a hot delivery driver, their dad’s hot new wife, and/or their college wrestling coach. And since the delivery driver is the only scenario that (if realized in real life) doesn’t involve an unforgivable betrayal and/

or an abuse of power, here’s hoping it’s the one that happens most o en.

Q: Can I ask my husband to wear a condom for anal? I don’t like it when he comes in my bum.

a: You get to decide where, when, how and how long someone gets to fuck your ass—it’s your ass—and if you don’t enjoy the a ermath of taking your husband’s load in your ass, you can tell (not ask) your husband to wear a condom for anal and/or pull out.

Q: I’ve read lots of letters in your column from cuckolds and their wives but none from a Bull. I am a Bull. I love fucking other men’s wives in front of them and I love humiliating a cuck in front of his wife. My best friend insists that this makes me a little bit gay.

a: I don’t know if you’re a little bit gay—are you one of those Bulls who lets the cuck “clean up” (read: suck) your cock?—but it sounds

like your best friend is a little bit jealous. (For the record: Bulls who let cucks suck their cocks are a little bit bi.)

Q: What if I don’t like how someone smells or tastes? Can that change?

a: If the issue is poor personal hygiene—they don’t bathe regularly, use deodorant on demand, or ﬂoss and brush their teeth on a daily basis—adopting good personal hygiene practices could make a diﬀerence. If someone is already doing all those things and you don’t like how they smell or taste, it’s a chemical clash that no amount of mouthwash or cologne can mask.

Q: Why as I’ve gotten older has my cum gotten thicker?

a: The quality of sperm cells and the volume of ejaculate are both “negatively correlated with age,” according to “Eﬀects of aging on the male reproductive system,” a depressing study published in February 2016

by the Journal of Assisted Reproduction and Genetics

Q: Is the rimjob/blowjob combo the closest a man ever comes to heaven?

a: Some men, sure. But not all men like having their asses eaten. Hell, not all men like having their dicks sucked.

Q: Couples that share douche bulbs are gross, right?

a: Sharing a douche with a partner is little like sharing a toothbrush with one, inasmuch as it grosses us out more than it probably should. If you’re already going down on each other and/or eating each other’s asses, why so precious about a toothbrush or a douche bulb? (I say that as someone who is—for the record—extremely precious about toothbrushes and douche bulbs.) v

Ask your burning questions, download podcasts, read full column archives, and more at the URL savage.love. m mailbox@savage.love

A presumably hot delivery driver on his way to deliver a package MAARTEN VAN DEN HEUVEL/UNSPLASH

24 - DEC 15

The cast and crew of Nothing On are scrambling to prepare for opening night, but despite their earnest e orts, the production is an absolute mess. Line ﬂubs and lost props and missed cues, oh my! Can this beleaguered ensemble overcome egos and jealousies to pull the show together in time?

Two lost souls meet at a crossroads, in the dead of night, deep in the Mississippi of it all. With a yearning guitar between them, they tell secrets and conjure a sound once forgotten—a tune pitched with Leroy’s longing and the sweet purr of Lucy’s desires. In this sultry play with music, the Delta Blues ﬁlls the air, the future lies just down the road, and we are everywhere and nowhere all at once.

Featuring ensemble member Jon Michael Hill with Brittany Bradford

Featuring ensemble members Audrey Francis, Francis Guinan, Ora Jones and James Vincent Meredith

By MICHAEL FRAYN Directed