Best Thing To Do Today: Comics Panel at Northwestern

Stacy Oliver, the assistant director at Northwestern University’s Center for the Writing Arts, says she was kicking around ideas with Reginald Gibbons, her boss, when inspiration hit. Today in culture, Oliver recalls saying, “there seems to be this wonderful partnership with the picture and the word.” And, blam, a panel discussion about the rise of the graphic story was born…

Failed romance relic featured in Chicago History Museum exhibit, “I Do! Chicago Ties the Knot”

THE OBJECT: A House of Worth wedding gown  FIRST WORN: January 2, 1922, at Fourth Presbyterian Church CURRENT LOCATION: Chicago History Museum, 1601 N. Clark St.; 312-642-4600, chicagohistory.org They were the Jen and Brad of their day. Scions of two storied Chicago families, Mary Landon Baker and Allister McCormick were attractive, wealthy, gregarious, destined to … Read more

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…

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…