"I've been traveling around the world; there ain't no ladies like [in] Chi-Town," Common told the sold-out crowd of 1,400 at his House of Blues concert Saturday night. Be still my heart.

I managed to catch up with the rapper, actor, fashion designer, book author, and native Chicagoan before the show, which benefited his own Common Ground Foundation. "[I] stay in tune with the people from where I'm from," he said. "The more you get, the more you give back." ...

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"I've been traveling around the world; there ain't no ladies like [in] Chi-Town," Common told the sold-out crowd of 1,400 at his House of Blues concert Saturday night. Be still my heart.

I managed to catch up with the rapper, actor, fashion designer, book author, and native Chicagoan before the show, which benefited his own Common Ground Foundation. "[I] stay in tune with the people from where I'm from," he said. "The more you get, the more you give back." ...

" />

"I've been traveling around the world; there ain't no ladies like [in] Chi-Town," Common told the sold-out crowd of 1,400 at his House of Blues concert Saturday night. Be still my heart.

I managed to catch up with the rapper, actor, fashion designer, book author, and native Chicagoan before the show, which benefited his own Common Ground Foundation. "[I] stay in tune with the people from where I'm from," he said. "The more you get, the more you give back." ...

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Celebrity Beat: Common

“I’ve been traveling around the world; there ain’t no ladies like [in] Chi-Town,” Common told the sold-out crowd of 1,400 at his House of Blues concert Saturday night. Be still my heart.

I managed to catch up with the rapper, actor, fashion designer, book author, and native Chicagoan before the show, which benefited his own Common Ground Foundation. “[I] stay in tune with the people from where I’m from,” he said. “The more you get, the more you give back.” …

The Blip – February 2008

    photography: (scissors) sanja gjenero/stock.xchng, (toyota 1/x) courtesy of toyota motor sales, u.s.a., inc., (isotope 217) courtesy of thrill jockey, (disco ball) © jason lugo/istockphoto.com, (pierce) library of congress brady-handy collection, (ashtray) © bruce lonngren/istockphoto.com, (cupcake) megan lovejoy, (flip-flops) © jasmin awad/istockphoto.com, (parton) Kii arens, (frog) © chen chih-wen/istockphoto.com

Guest Blog: It’s Da Bomb

“The audience in Oedipus Rex knew what was coming,” said Doctor
Atomic
librettist and director Peter Sellars in his pre-concert lecture at
Lyric Opera last night. He was drawing a comparison between Greek drama,
when the stories being staged were traditional tales already known to the
theatergoers, and Doctor Atomic, which is based on the real-life
testing of the first atomic bomb, in 1945. The second half of Sellars’s talk
took listeners through the opera scene by scene, describing what would
happen, what he thought was great about it, and his anti–nuclear weapons
politics…

Something Sketchy

I’ve been wrestling with the whooping cough, so Coda has been silent. (No one, I’m sure, wanted to read my musings on Ellen reruns and French existentialist writers–my main activities when I was bedridden.) Fortunately for you, Web editor Esther Kang and her pal, local writer Jackie Ostrowski, hit the annual Sketchfest in my absence and came up with a must-see: a local group called Bri-Ko. Read the review, view the photo gallery, and catch Bri-Ko again this Friday, January 11th, at 11 p.m…

Get Lit

Winter may be the perfect time to curl up with a good read, but even better than turning into a housebound bookworm is becoming an erudite social butterfly.