MIKHAIL METZEL/AFP/Getty Images There’s only one Putin here. “The triumph of Vladimir Putin,” the headline on the cover of last week’s Economist, and “The Loneliness of Vladimir Putin,” the headline on the cover of the most recent New Republic, seem to offer diametrically opposed assessments of Russia’s president. They don’t. “Dissidents aren’t interesting to anyone,” he said, moving on to a French press of tea to wash down the meal....
I have friends who say they can drink mezcal all night and never get hungover. Over the last couple months I’ve spent a bit of time testing that theory. Just as there’s something different about the buzz—tranquil, dreamy, and obliging—there’s something different about the morning after. There’s no question the spirit, distilled from any number of varieties of the agave plant, gives me fitful, restless sleep—but the tradeoff is vivid and absorbing dreams....
Courtesy the artist Raveonettes Looking for something to do today? Agenda‘s got you covered. For more on these events and others, check out the Reader‘s daily Agenda page.
Courtesy ICM Partners T-Pain Looking for something to do today? Agenda‘s got you covered. For more on these events and others, check out the Reader‘s daily Agenda page.
More than 100 years ago, Hungarian immigrant Joe Hussli brought the seeds for a medium-hot pepper from his homeland and planted them in his new hometown of Beaver Dam, Wisconsin. The pepper was popular enough to be named after the town where it arrived, but like many other heirloom vegetable varieties, it fell out of favor after hybrids (plants created by cross-pollinating two closely related species, usually to select for certain characteristics) were introduced in the 1950s, and the pepper was all but forgotten—even in Beaver Dam—until recently....
More people of consequence have passed through Yellow Springs, Ohio, than you might imagine. The home of liberal-leaning Antioch College, the town hosted Coretta Scott King as a student in the 40s; punk vocalist Mia Zapata founded the Gits there in 1986; and comedian Dave Chappelle currently calls the place home. In 1972, the Pyramids, a jazz band made up of Antioch students and led by Chicago-born saxophonist Idris Ackamoor, began performing while studying abroad in Europe, Ghana, and Kenya....
Punk rock was partially a reaction to vacuous mainstream pop culture, but it’s merely a coincidence that the follow-up to a restaurant devoted to Saved by the Bell is a pop-up with a Riot Fest theme. The same team behind Saved by the Max—a re-creation of the diner from the popular 90s sitcom—opens Riot Feast for a three-month run in the same Wicker Park space beginning tomorrow. The restaurant is open Wednesday through Sunday with two ticketed seatings at 6 and 8 PM both for the communal dining areas and reserved tables....
Ab-Soul, These Days . . . (Top Dawg Entertainment) Backed by a squealing jazz saxophone, Herbert Anthony “Ab-Soul” Stevens throws out a quick line on “Kendrick Lamar’s Interlude” about his most famous labelmate and fellow Black Hippy crew member: “If I ain’t better than Kendrick, then no one is then.” This California MC is hardly the only rapper eager to knock Lamar off his throne, but on his guest-jammed album These Days ....
Danielle Allen, a political philosopher and professor at Harvard, is the winner of this year’s Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize for Nonfiction for her most recent book, Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality, a discussion of how the Declaration was intended as a guarantee of equality as well as liberty and its continuing importance for all Americans. The Heartland Prize is an annual award for books that reinforce and perpetuate the values of heartland America; previous nonfiction winners include Isabel Wilkerson, Rebecca Skloot, and Studs Terkel....
Advertising is a dark art. After all, subterfuge is usually required to convince someone to become a customer. But commerce can be a source of amusement. Think of the Super Bowl, for instance: a sizable chunk of the audience tunes in each year to see new ads rather than the game itself. A couple of the artists on display tried to subvert the ad-poster medium. Théophile Alexandre Steinlen was able to insert social commentary into his work and occasionally irritate the constraints of polite society....
“It was beautiful to live there. There were trees all over the place, rabbits were running all over the place, every now and then you’d see a raccoon or something coming through,” Miguel Suarez recalls as he sifts through memories of his neighborhood. “African-Americans, Latinos, whites—there was no real differences in whom we were as a class, as a people. We were just totally happy living amongst each other.” It wasn’t just the unique architecture and unprecedented integration that made Lathrop unique among public housing projects in the city....
It’s understandable that when someone hears the name “The Floating Museum” they might think it’s a museum that floats on water, or in midair. Instead it floats from place to place, moving across communities and manifesting itself in programs that take place in various Chicago neighborhoods. But for its summer exhibition, “River Assembly,” the Floating Museum will be literally seabound, occupying a 100-square-foot shipping barge for a three-week voyage up the Chicago River....
Rebecca Makkai’s new novel, The Hundred-Year House, is a mystery that takes an unusual form: the Chicago author begins with a happy ending, then progresses backward in time, simultaneously revealing the origins of various deceptions that got the narrative so tangled in the first place and laying down the clues that have already been uncovered in part one. It’s one of those books that improves on a rereading, so you can see how all the pieces fall into place....
After this past election, activist Anne Haag was mad and didn’t care who knew it. “I’m angry that there are people who think that banning Muslims and banning refugees is going to solve anything and not just make it worse, and angry that one in six women is going to be sexually assaulted in her lifetime [according to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network] and angry that we still have to explain why ‘all lives matter’ is a problematic thing to say,” Haag says....
Chicago is practically a museum of Stanley Tigerman’s architectural endeavors. The 83-year-old worked with modernist greats at Keck & Keck and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill in the 1940s and 50s, spearheaded the Chicago Seven group of postmodern architects in the 70s, and founded Archeworks, the socially conscious River North design school, in the mid-90s. The Art Institute’s “Architecture to Scale” showcases the contributions of the bad-boy architect, whose designs include everything from the Illinois Holocaust Museum in Skokie to an Indiana vacation home that looks like a penis and testicles....
Tandem Productions GmbH & Film Afrika Worldwide Vanessa Kirby as Alice Tanner Did you read that the CW was airing a Labyrinth miniseries, and then assume that it was a TV adaptation of the 1986 Jim Henson film of the same name? You know, the David Bowie-fueled vehicle that helped launch Jennifer Connelly’s career? Well, it’s actually an adaptation of the 2005 award-winning bestseller by Kate Mosse, a 700-page work of commercial and historical fiction masquerading as a Holy Grail story....
Corporate sellout. That’s the epithet social media users have adopted to describe Bonobos in the wake of its recent sale to Walmart for $310 million, and why not? It’s a reaction that Dunn seemingly anticipated, which is why the Bonobos CEO (also soon to be SVP of Digital Consumer Brands for Walmart U.S. eCommerce) wrote a post on Medium defending his rationale for the deal. The problem is that the essay, generically titled “The Future of Brands,” is short on insight and long on faux-intellectual musings (“I have come to an odd belief, which is that we don’t make decisions so much as the decisions make us”) and obfuscating corporate speak....
Patrick McHugh . . . And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead Looking for something to do today? Agenda‘s got you covered. For more on these events and others, check out the Reader‘s daily Agenda page.
Venus in Fur If you’re sick of watching Brendan Gleeson prop up movies unworthy of his time or talent, make a beeline for Calvary, a potent combination of spiritual drama and wicked black comedy by writer-director John Michael McDonagh (The Guard). Gleeson plays an Irish Catholic priest marked for death by a man who was sexually abused by another priest as a child—our four-star review is here. Also in this week’s issue, Ben Sachs breathes heavily on the new tornado thriller Into the Storm, and it collapses....
For all its talk of inclusion, the Fly Honey Show is not about subtlety, nor is it for minimalists. Now roaring into its ninth season, the ear-blisteringly loud, unabashedly proud, intersectional feminist extravaganza of spoken word, song, and dance claims some 300 ensemble members and 35 featured acts spreading their gospel of sex- and body-positivity and their multitude of legs over a five-week run at the Den. They promise 150 minutes, and they make you go a full 180....
