The 312 - April 2010

04/30/10

Think You Know Al Capone? Not So Fast, Says Jonathan Eig

The May issue of Chicago magazine features a long excerpt about the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, the gruesome 1929 murders of seven gangsters in a Chicago garage, from a new book about Al Capone. That book, Get Capone: The Secret Plot That Captured America's Most Wanted Gangster ($28; Simon & Schuster) by the journalist and best-selling author Jonathan Eig, went on sale this past Tuesday...

Posted at 03:48 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)

04/29/10

Movies We Like: 'Exit Through the Gift Shop' Starring Banksy

Last Wednesday, I attended a screening of a documentary, Exit Through the Gift Shop, which opens in Chicago tomorrow, April 30th, at the Landmark Century Cinema. The film chronicles the unlikely friendships forged between a kooky amateur filmmaker named Thierry Guetta and certain high-profile members of the graffiti underground—most notably Banksy, a notoriously elusive British graffiti artist...

Posted at 04:06 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)

04/28/10

Culture Invasion! Art Chicago 2010 Opens Tomorrow at the Mart

"Exactly what is Club Nutz?" That was the question, but all I heard on the other end of the phone was the sound of hammers thumping and drills buzzing. Two days from the opening of Artropolis, Ken Tyburski, the curatorial director of NEXT, the emerging artists portion of the fair, was simultaneously trying to supervise the installation of booths and conduct an interview...

Posted at 02:51 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)

04/27/10

Sunday Night Out: Wine and Art at Bluebird's Salon Series

Conceived by J. C. Steinbrunner, an artist, and Tom MacDonald, the owner of The Bluebird, The Salon Series is in part a response to the weak economy. But it's also a reaction against typical gallery culture: How can artists show their work outside of the gallery system? How to you get people to talk about art in a different way?...

Posted at 04:05 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)

04/26/10

Pianist Laurence Hobgood Just One Great Jazz Act to Catch in May

The pianist Laurence Hobgood is perhaps best known as the long-time collaborator and accompanist of the singer Kurt Elling, in equal measure for his sterling keyboard work and ingenious small-group arrangements. Last year, Hobgood put out the tremendous solo/duo album, When the Heart Dances, with the legendary bassist Charlie Haden; but for this trip back to Chicago he'll lead a sextet of old local friends, including the saxophonists John Wojciechowski and Pat Mallinger...

Posted at 02:01 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)

04/23/10

Your Friends, Kids, and Coworkers—Onstage at Second City

"I don't feel that nervous until the theatre starts to fill up . . . and then I start to panic," said my friend, who wrote two of the sketches in "Wait, It Gets Better," a show that recently played at Donny's Skybox Theater, one of the venues for Second City's Training Center. I saw the show a couple Fridays ago, and, watching him greet friends in the ticket line, I felt his pain...

Posted at 02:39 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)

04/22/10

Books We Like: 'The Living Fire' by the Poet Edward Hirsch

Born in Chicago's Michael Reese Hospital in 1950, Edward Hirsch turned 60 this year—which means he had finally run out of excuses for not putting together a collection of verse culled from his seven books of poetry. "I couldn't say I was too young anymore for a book of selected poems," says Hirsch...

Posted at 09:42 AM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)

04/21/10

'Welcome to Arroyo's' by Kristoffer Diaz: Bring on More Funk

I kicked myself at least a dozen times last year for missing The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity, Kristoffer Diaz's full nelson of a play, ostensibly about wrestling, in its world premiere at Victory Gardens. I kicked myself again last week, when the play was named a Pulitzer finalist. So when I had the chance to attend Monday night's premiere of another Diaz play, Welcome to Arroyo's, running through May 16th at American Theater Company, I jumped...

Posted at 12:46 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)

04/20/10

Run, Don't Walk to the 'TJ & Dave' Show. OK, You Can Walk.

Until last Wednesday, I had never seen T. J. Jagodowski and Dave Pasquesi's famous iO show TJ & Dave. I'd seen each of them perform in other settings—at The Second City, in Jagodowski's many commercials for the Sonic fast-food chain, or at the Chicago Improv Festival—but never their two-man, one-hour show on Wednesday nights at 11 p.m., mainly because it conflicted with falling asleep on the couch and watching SportsCenter...

Posted at 03:08 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)

04/19/10

Spiffy New Men's Restrooms a Good Omen for the Cubs? Nah.

I made my first visit of the season to Wrigley Field on Sunday, and everyone sent me off with the obvious question: How are they? Of course, the reference wasn't to the Cubs—the standard collection of mismatched pieces destined to continue on the path of mediocrity that nonetheless disappoints. No, the world wants to know about the revamped men's restrooms!...

Posted at 01:47 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)

04/16/10

Want to Meet a Whole New Crowd? Try Film School at Facets

The 36-seat venue that plays host to Facets classes—six-week-long film series with facilitated discussions—is the most uncomfortable theatre ever. Some of the seats are broken. The ceiling has decades-old water stains. The room is usually too hot, although once in a while it’s too cold. The ladies' bathroom has all sorts of warnings about slow flush and seems always on the verge of running out of paper. Even the popcorn is bad...

Posted at 03:26 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)

04/15/10

A Perfect Pair: Paul Virant's Haute Farm Food and Craft Beer

Hey, Chicago, did you hear? Craft beer in the Windy City is kind of big now. With last month's Stout Fest, last week's Craft Brewers Conference, and the opening of three breweries in the past two years (Metropolitan, Half Acre, and, most recently, Revolution in Logan Square), it's easy to feel a bit saturated—in suds...

Posted at 02:43 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)

04/14/10

Kitty Kelley's Oprah Winfrey Tell-All Shockingly Unshocking

I'm still slogging my way through Oprah: A Biography, Kitty Kelley's latest O-pus (524 pages in length), which hit bookstores yesterday. So I don't profess to know all that she spills therein. However, I do know the Kitty Kelley methodology, which I studied extensively in the spring and summer of 2008...

Posted at 02:42 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (2)

04/13/10

Meet Our 2010 Green Awards Documentarian, Suree Towfighnia

Tonight at the Shedd Aquarium, Chicago magazine honors the winners of our 2010 Green Awards. The thing about the event—which is really fun and always has great food—is that because it is, for budget reasons, closed to the public, our wonderful honorees end up mingling with us, their guests, and other leaders in the local green community...

Posted at 03:40 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)

04/12/10

Cesar Corrales Nails the Opening Night of 'Billy Elliot the Musical'

Two-and-a-half hours into Billy Elliot, the Elton John-composed musical that just opened its run at the Ford Center for the Performing Arts/Oriental Theatre, the star of the show—who's 13, mind you—has to pull off a finale sequence of 16 grande pirouettes followed by a series of passé pirouettes...

Posted at 02:39 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)

04/09/10

Earth Lovers Squeeze in at Uncommon Ground's Monthly Eco Mixer

Last night, green was blue—as in the organic blueberries muddled with lemonade and organically produced Rain vodka, then poured into a chilled martini glass. Uncommon Ground, the eco-fashionable Edgewater restaurant, was calling it The Agripolitan...

Posted at 12:31 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)

04/08/10

The Strokes' Julian Casablancas Barely Rouses Himself During Vic Concert

A woman in the crowd at The Vic Theatre this past Tuesday night yelled to the man shambling about on stage: "Can't wait to see you at Lollapalooza!" Julian Casablancas mumbled back something incomprehensible...

Posted at 01:24 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)

04/07/10

Fans of Minnesota Twins Baseball Say 'So Long, Metrodome!'

This year, the Minnesota Twins inaugurate Target Field, a new baseball-only venue to replace the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome. Last weekend, I attended an exhibition game between the Twins and the St. Louis Cardinals at Target Field, and saw outdoor Major League Baseball in Minnesota for the first time since the Metrodome opened in 1982...

Posted at 12:16 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)

04/06/10

Books We Like: 'Grounded' by Seth Stevenson

If you're a fan of the Ad Report Card at the online magazine Slate, then you're already familiar with the writing of Seth Stevenson, who has been the column's main contributor since 2003. Today, his first book—an epic travelogue titled Grounded: A Down to Earth Journey Around the World—came out...

Posted at 02:44 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)

04/05/10

Matisse Returns to the Art Institute—This Time to Cheers, Not Jeers

As winter gave way to spring, Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913-1917 settled in at the Art Institute of Chicago for a three-month stay. The city immediately embraced the exhibit: its gala grand opening on March 19th lured enough of the "beautiful people" to raise $500,000 for the museum. Chicago, however, did not always welcome Monsieur Matisse so cordially...

Posted at 11:03 AM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)

04/02/10

Tonight on TV: New Medical Drama from the Cast-Out Creator of 'Lost'

The other night, I got an out-of-the-blue e-mail from Jeffrey Lieber. A couple years ago I wrote a story about Lieber, the Evanston native and University of Illinois grad who penned the original pilot that would eventually become the television series mega-hit Lost...

Posted at 02:11 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)

04/01/10

Love It or Hate It? Dog & Pony Stages Another Promenade-Style Show

When Dog & Pony Theatre Co. premiered As Told by the Vivian Girls in 2008, I had little experience with promenade staging. The action moved around the performance area and the audience moved with it. But that's not all...

Posted at 03:24 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)

	04/30/10 Think You Know Al Capone? Not So Fast, Says Jonathan Eig The May issue of Chicago magazine features a long excerpt about the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, the gruesome 1929 murders of seven gangsters in a Chicago garage, from a new book about Al Capone. That book, Get Capone: The Secret Plot That Captured America's Most Wanted Gangster ($28; Simon & Schuster) by the journalist and best-selling author Jonathan Eig, went on sale this past Tuesday... Posted at 03:48 PM in The 312 \| Permalink \| Comments (0)
	04/29/10 Movies We Like: 'Exit Through the Gift Shop' Starring Banksy Last Wednesday, I attended a screening of a documentary, Exit Through the Gift Shop, which opens in Chicago tomorrow, April 30th, at the Landmark Century Cinema. The film chronicles the unlikely friendships forged between a kooky amateur filmmaker named Thierry Guetta and certain high-profile members of the graffiti underground—most notably Banksy, a notoriously elusive British graffiti artist... Posted at 04:06 PM in The 312 \| Permalink \| Comments (0)
	04/28/10 Culture Invasion! Art Chicago 2010 Opens Tomorrow at the Mart "Exactly what is Club Nutz?" That was the question, but all I heard on the other end of the phone was the sound of hammers thumping and drills buzzing. Two days from the opening of Artropolis, Ken Tyburski, the curatorial director of NEXT, the emerging artists portion of the fair, was simultaneously trying to supervise the installation of booths and conduct an interview... Posted at 02:51 PM in The 312 \| Permalink \| Comments (0)
	04/27/10 Sunday Night Out: Wine and Art at Bluebird's Salon Series Conceived by J. C. Steinbrunner, an artist, and Tom MacDonald, the owner of The Bluebird, The Salon Series is in part a response to the weak economy. But it's also a reaction against typical gallery culture: How can artists show their work outside of the gallery system? How to you get people to talk about art in a different way?... Posted at 04:05 PM in The 312 \| Permalink \| Comments (0)
	04/26/10 Pianist Laurence Hobgood Just One Great Jazz Act to Catch in May The pianist Laurence Hobgood is perhaps best known as the long-time collaborator and accompanist of the singer Kurt Elling, in equal measure for his sterling keyboard work and ingenious small-group arrangements. Last year, Hobgood put out the tremendous solo/duo album, When the Heart Dances, with the legendary bassist Charlie Haden; but for this trip back to Chicago he'll lead a sextet of old local friends, including the saxophonists John Wojciechowski and Pat Mallinger... Posted at 02:01 PM in The 312 \| Permalink \| Comments (0)
	04/23/10 Your Friends, Kids, and Coworkers—Onstage at Second City "I don't feel that nervous until the theatre starts to fill up . . . and then I start to panic," said my friend, who wrote two of the sketches in "Wait, It Gets Better," a show that recently played at Donny's Skybox Theater, one of the venues for Second City's Training Center. I saw the show a couple Fridays ago, and, watching him greet friends in the ticket line, I felt his pain... Posted at 02:39 PM in The 312 \| Permalink \| Comments (1)
	04/22/10 Books We Like: 'The Living Fire' by the Poet Edward Hirsch Born in Chicago's Michael Reese Hospital in 1950, Edward Hirsch turned 60 this year—which means he had finally run out of excuses for not putting together a collection of verse culled from his seven books of poetry. "I couldn't say I was too young anymore for a book of selected poems," says Hirsch... Posted at 09:42 AM in The 312 \| Permalink \| Comments (0)
	04/21/10 'Welcome to Arroyo's' by Kristoffer Diaz: Bring on More Funk I kicked myself at least a dozen times last year for missing The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity, Kristoffer Diaz's full nelson of a play, ostensibly about wrestling, in its world premiere at Victory Gardens. I kicked myself again last week, when the play was named a Pulitzer finalist. So when I had the chance to attend Monday night's premiere of another Diaz play, Welcome to Arroyo's, running through May 16th at American Theater Company, I jumped... Posted at 12:46 PM in The 312 \| Permalink \| Comments (0)
	04/20/10 Run, Don't Walk to the 'TJ & Dave' Show. OK, You Can Walk. Until last Wednesday, I had never seen T. J. Jagodowski and Dave Pasquesi's famous iO show TJ & Dave. I'd seen each of them perform in other settings—at The Second City, in Jagodowski's many commercials for the Sonic fast-food chain, or at the Chicago Improv Festival—but never their two-man, one-hour show on Wednesday nights at 11 p.m., mainly because it conflicted with falling asleep on the couch and watching SportsCenter... Posted at 03:08 PM in The 312 \| Permalink \| Comments (0)
	04/19/10 Spiffy New Men's Restrooms a Good Omen for the Cubs? Nah. I made my first visit of the season to Wrigley Field on Sunday, and everyone sent me off with the obvious question: How are they? Of course, the reference wasn't to the Cubs—the standard collection of mismatched pieces destined to continue on the path of mediocrity that nonetheless disappoints. No, the world wants to know about the revamped men's restrooms!... Posted at 01:47 PM in The 312 \| Permalink \| Comments (0)
	04/16/10 Want to Meet a Whole New Crowd? Try Film School at Facets The 36-seat venue that plays host to Facets classes—six-week-long film series with facilitated discussions—is the most uncomfortable theatre ever. Some of the seats are broken. The ceiling has decades-old water stains. The room is usually too hot, although once in a while it’s too cold. The ladies' bathroom has all sorts of warnings about slow flush and seems always on the verge of running out of paper. Even the popcorn is bad... Posted at 03:26 PM in The 312 \| Permalink \| Comments (1)
	04/15/10 A Perfect Pair: Paul Virant's Haute Farm Food and Craft Beer Hey, Chicago, did you hear? Craft beer in the Windy City is kind of big now. With last month's Stout Fest, last week's Craft Brewers Conference, and the opening of three breweries in the past two years (Metropolitan, Half Acre, and, most recently, Revolution in Logan Square), it's easy to feel a bit saturated—in suds... Posted at 02:43 PM in The 312 \| Permalink \| Comments (0)
	04/14/10 Kitty Kelley's Oprah Winfrey Tell-All Shockingly Unshocking I'm still slogging my way through Oprah: A Biography, Kitty Kelley's latest O-pus (524 pages in length), which hit bookstores yesterday. So I don't profess to know all that she spills therein. However, I do know the Kitty Kelley methodology, which I studied extensively in the spring and summer of 2008... Posted at 02:42 PM in The 312 \| Permalink \| Comments (2)
	04/13/10 Meet Our 2010 Green Awards Documentarian, Suree Towfighnia Tonight at the Shedd Aquarium, Chicago magazine honors the winners of our 2010 Green Awards. The thing about the event—which is really fun and always has great food—is that because it is, for budget reasons, closed to the public, our wonderful honorees end up mingling with us, their guests, and other leaders in the local green community... Posted at 03:40 PM in The 312 \| Permalink \| Comments (0)
	04/12/10 Cesar Corrales Nails the Opening Night of 'Billy Elliot the Musical' Two-and-a-half hours into Billy Elliot, the Elton John-composed musical that just opened its run at the Ford Center for the Performing Arts/Oriental Theatre, the star of the show—who's 13, mind you—has to pull off a finale sequence of 16 grande pirouettes followed by a series of passé pirouettes... Posted at 02:39 PM in The 312 \| Permalink \| Comments (0)
	04/09/10 Earth Lovers Squeeze in at Uncommon Ground's Monthly Eco Mixer Last night, green was blue—as in the organic blueberries muddled with lemonade and organically produced Rain vodka, then poured into a chilled martini glass. Uncommon Ground, the eco-fashionable Edgewater restaurant, was calling it The Agripolitan... Posted at 12:31 PM in The 312 \| Permalink \| Comments (0)
	04/08/10 The Strokes' Julian Casablancas Barely Rouses Himself During Vic Concert A woman in the crowd at The Vic Theatre this past Tuesday night yelled to the man shambling about on stage: "Can't wait to see you at Lollapalooza!" Julian Casablancas mumbled back something incomprehensible... Posted at 01:24 PM in The 312 \| Permalink \| Comments (0)
	04/07/10 Fans of Minnesota Twins Baseball Say 'So Long, Metrodome!' This year, the Minnesota Twins inaugurate Target Field, a new baseball-only venue to replace the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome. Last weekend, I attended an exhibition game between the Twins and the St. Louis Cardinals at Target Field, and saw outdoor Major League Baseball in Minnesota for the first time since the Metrodome opened in 1982... Posted at 12:16 PM in The 312 \| Permalink \| Comments (0)
	04/06/10 Books We Like: 'Grounded' by Seth Stevenson If you're a fan of the Ad Report Card at the online magazine Slate, then you're already familiar with the writing of Seth Stevenson, who has been the column's main contributor since 2003. Today, his first book—an epic travelogue titled Grounded: A Down to Earth Journey Around the World—came out... Posted at 02:44 PM in The 312 \| Permalink \| Comments (0)
	04/05/10 Matisse Returns to the Art Institute—This Time to Cheers, Not Jeers As winter gave way to spring, Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913-1917 settled in at the Art Institute of Chicago for a three-month stay. The city immediately embraced the exhibit: its gala grand opening on March 19th lured enough of the "beautiful people" to raise $500,000 for the museum. Chicago, however, did not always welcome Monsieur Matisse so cordially... Posted at 11:03 AM in The 312 \| Permalink \| Comments (0)
	04/02/10 Tonight on TV: New Medical Drama from the Cast-Out Creator of 'Lost' The other night, I got an out-of-the-blue e-mail from Jeffrey Lieber. A couple years ago I wrote a story about Lieber, the Evanston native and University of Illinois grad who penned the original pilot that would eventually become the television series mega-hit Lost... Posted at 02:11 PM in The 312 \| Permalink \| Comments (0)
	04/01/10 Love It or Hate It? Dog & Pony Stages Another Promenade-Style Show When Dog & Pony Theatre Co. premiered As Told by the Vivian Girls in 2008, I had little experience with promenade staging. The action moved around the performance area and the audience moved with it. But that's not all... Posted at 03:24 PM in The 312 \| Permalink \| Comments (0)

April 2010