Photo: Heidi Harman

By Arvo Zylo

My first exposure to Electronic Voice Phenomena, or EVP, was late at night more than a decade ago, on Art Bell’s Coast to Coast AM radio talk show. People had been recording in an abandoned mental hospital, and all of a sudden a scary old lady said, “He broke my neck!” Later that night, listeners heard a broadcast over the airwaves of what sounded like a child drowning in a room where there was neither a child nor a body of water. Supposedly, these voices were issued from a world out of reach to the human ears, or maybe the “underworld,” but certainly not from a living person, or at least what we consider to be a living person. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Gil Castellanos

By Eric Lutz

I don’t believe in ghosts.

But, if I did, it would be because of a weekend trip to Galena I took a few years back, when about ten seconds of “The Lovecats” by The Cure emanated from a closed laptop in the middle of the night.

I was pretty freaked out at the time, certain we’d been visited by some hipster ghost with a penchant for eighties post-punk, and wound up driving around all night until day broke.

Nowadays, I’m inclined to think the only thing scary about that night was my carbon footprint.

Maybe it’s strong to say I don’t believe. More accurately, I just don’t think about it very much. Read the rest of this entry »

By Brian Hieggelke

We live in a city of fools.

Consider: our most famous living musical export, fool. The most powerful man in Chicago media (until recently), fool. Our World Series-winning baseball manager, fool. But it’s our politicians, and ex-politicians, who put us into a special category of our own. In fact, a certain ex-governor, too foolish to even be named, would see the Trophy of the Fool cast in his likeness, if such a thing existed. And he’d be proud of it.

But it runs much deeper than him. Our sitting mayor, though perhaps too powerful to qualify, exhibits a running repertoire of fool-like behavior, whether it’s his sometimes impetuous leadership or, more endearingly, his losing battle with the English language. And our incoming mayor was so well-known for a particular brand of foolishness that he spawned a twitnit of a doppelganger who’s already parlayed his tomfoolery into fifteen famous minutes and a book deal.

What is a fool? A fool is not someone who commits a violent crime, no matter how foolish they behave. John Wayne Gacy, not a fool. A fool is not your boss, no matter how insipid their management or ill-advised their leadership.

He that has and a little tiny wit—
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,—
Must make content with his fortunes fit,
For the rain it raineth every day.
—The Fool, “King Lear”

So what is a fool? A hint, perhaps, can be found in the origin of the word, derived from the Latin follis, which translates loosely into “windbag.” Although the word has many uses, our conception of the fool here is an extension of the jester, or fool in the Renaissance Court as one who serves to amuse us. And in doing so, serves himself. Read the rest of this entry »

Frankly if you haven’t heard of Chet Haze, it’s understandable. But you’ve probably heard of his father. Tom Hanks is a multi-award winning actor, producer and director, but Chester (born Hanks) isn’t planning on going into the family business just yet.

No, this year marked the launch of his hip-hop career in a dirty frat basement at Northwestern University, where he’s a sophomore. His first mix-tape details his experiences with drugs, drinking and being an all-round achiever, providing some valuable insights into, well, being Tom Hanks’ son. Tracks include “Adios Motherf****r”, “Roll Up” and “Chivalry.” In his remix of Wiz Khalifa’s “Black and Yellow,” called “White and Purple,” Chet describes an average night in Evanston: “I got a call from the brothers in the frat house/ I’m with my girl, tryin to get up under that blouse/ She a freshman/ She a freak though/ In the bed, but a lady in the street, yo.” Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Rachelle Bowden/rachelleb.com

When we’re tired of our serpentine politicians, our slimy talk-show hosts and our punch-wielding punk-rock singers, we’ll always have Da Coach.

Who, more than Mike Ditka, has the loudest, largest mouth? He’s Chicago’s coach of coaches, the man who shepherded great glory long ago but could never stop talking.

A buffoon of a magnitude far greater than the boundaries of a football field, he fought for public smoking in bars and restaurants, even as those stricken with cancer sat on the other side.

A hypocrite, he questioned Jay Cutler’s toughness for not playing hurt, despite serving as spokesperson for the Gridiron Greats, a nonprofit that raises funds for retired NFL players, some who fall on hardship due to injuries sustained while they played.

A blowhard, who once said, “If God had wanted man to play soccer, he wouldn’t have given us arms.” (OK, that’s a little funny.) Read the rest of this entry »

Until they actually achieve it, every wanna-be art celebrity can be called a fool. Lured by the status of a glamorous occupation, time and money is thrown down the tube, usually against the wise counsel of family. For each and every successful actor, ballerina, or rock star, there are thousands of fools who came up short. But even more so in the visual arts, where not only is success extremely rare, but nobody knows how to get there. Anybody can be a famous artist—it’s just that hardly anyone ever is.

But funeral-home heir and retired businessman Matt Lamb takes the ordinary foolishness of hopeless dreams to a new level because he has both more money, and less shame, than all the others.

Set to officially open in Chicago next month is his new “Museum of Private Art Collections,” following four days of festivities throughout the Chicago area, including the “Umbrellas for Peace” parade, and a daily speech delivered by Mr. Lamb himself. But Lamb’s museum has already been in the River East Art Center for more than a year now, where it was initially called the “Dali Lamb Museum,” in recognition of the two great artists who are on display: Matt Lamb and fellow master, Salvador Dali, both of whom are also in the museums that Lamb owns in Spain, Argentina, Russia and Germany. Somehow, the surreal delusions of Dali seem particularly appropriate in this context. Read the rest of this entry »

By Patrick Roberts

My North Side barber died a few weeks ago, and while I did not know him outside the small orbit of his barbershop, I am moved to write about his passing. Over the course of fifteen years I spent little more than a dozen hours with him. I know nothing of his personal life except that he loved dogs and baseball. Nonetheless, I feel disoriented by the disruption of one of my life’s reassuring routines. I’m approaching forty, and haircuts are increasingly becoming exercises in resource management. With his passing, I am forced to find another barber I can trust to carry me through the thinning, middle years of my vanity.

On television and in the movies, a barbershop is usually depicted as a lively place full of bright, chatty barbers and loitering men who talk about sports, politics, women. My barber was always alone in a shop empty of customers. He was profoundly laconic and as emotionally distant from his client as a man clipping hedges. Yet, his melancholy demeanor appealed to me and provoked existential musings. Why was he so sad? Did he regret devoting his life to the barber’s trade? Was he lonely? Or was he simply thinking about baseball?

He also chain-smoked while cutting my hair. Without ever asking permission (it was his barbershop, after all), he would light a cigarette, place it in a nearby ashtray, and pause for a drag now and then as he clipped. My freshly cut hair always smelled of sour smoke, but I didn’t mind. I admired his old-school disregard for my own comfort. I confess that I once asked him to give me a haircut like Brad Pitt’s. He didn’t, perhaps because he felt he could not pull it off, but more likely because he felt I could not pull it off. This is how it should be with your barber; you trust him not to make you look like a fool even when you demand to look like one. Which is not to say he gave a great haircut. More often than not he made me look like a 12-year-old banker. It didn’t matter. I went to him for pathos, not for style. Read the rest of this entry »

By Dina Elenbogen

I am floating in the underbelly of the city, the same way the summer my son was an infant, walking along the lake with him strapped to my body at dawn, I’d feel as if I were moving through the underbelly of the day. On this boat I take to work, floating under bridges and taking in new angles and facades of buildings, this city feels unfamiliar. It’s like looking into a face you’ve known for a long time and seeing an entirely new quality of beauty.

I used to envy friends who were able to walk only steps from the train to their buildings but now I realize that I am the lucky one. After a thirty-minute train ride on which I review for the writing class I’ll teach later in the morning, I arrive in the city, walk a few steps, and my boat is usually waiting for me. I step off the pier at Wacker and down a few steps into the yellow boat. I usually sit uncovered on a bench in the back. Some mornings I’ll commune with the red steel bridges that we pass between Madison (1922), and the Michigan Avenue Bridge (1920). Other times it will be the glass facades of the newer buildings next to the old stone and turrets of the Crain Communications Building and the Wrigley Building. If the boat didn’t hit the cement at Michigan Avenue to disembark, I’d probably drift away with my thoughts all morning. Read the rest of this entry »

Thousands of screaming girls leaning forward and reach their hand out to touch their idol. They wake up unbearably early, stay up painfully late, spend hours in miserable weather, hoping for the chance—the possibility—they might be able to brush a hand against a hero. The idol changes, but the audience is ageless. The haircuts, the makeup, the clothes are different, but it almost seems as if everyone is in uniform. The particulars may change, but it looks as if everyone got the memo about what to wear—and spent time in front of the mirror. You want to look your best when you meet the person you admire most in the world.

It’s easy to forget what it’s like, later on. But this summer, when Jacinta Gibson and Genesis Galva, rising seniors at Holy Trinity High School, interned at Newcity, we got a weekly reminder of the passion of real fans, not jaded, critical viewers who, minus a few nit-picky details, applaud an artists’ latest work. We’d ask the interns what they had been up to lately, and what they wanted to write about. Every week, we’d get a similar response: Jacinta hung out online with her Twilight friends, and Genesis counted down the weeks or days until the Avenged Sevenfold album came out, and then she listened to it, over and over again. Jacinta wanted to write about Twilight. Genesis wanted to write about rock bands—preferably, Avenged Sevenfold. Read the rest of this entry »

Nothing but simple facts and plain truths

Independence Day, the time we set aside as a nation to commemorate our founding, remains a worthy notion, regardless of whether you think it’s degraded into nothing more than a long weekend of sweaty, boring barbecues, or an opportunity for the politically obnoxious to invoke the images of our revolution (patriots, tea parties, etc.) while trampling on all of its values. For no matter how you feel about our nation’s current course, America remains founded on ideas and that is worth celebrating. For some, that means whooping it up on our city streets with their newly liberated firearms; for us that means celebrating the aesthetic of conversation, the free speech, that sets our nation truly apart. And thus, our annual edition dedicated to its unfettered exercise. We hope it moves you, one way or another. (Brian Hieggelke)

Godiva’s Only a Chocolate: Skeptical reflections on Chicago’s Naked Bike Ride

Bridgeport Rising: The consequences of the whiteout of a neighborhood’s changing face

Bloggin’ in the Neighborhood: Making the hyperlocal hype a reality

Upward Mobility: A plea for escalator etiquette

Weather or Not: Nothing but blue skies from now on

Train in Vain: The new dynamic of CTA intimacy