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12 O'Clock Track: Enslaved by Owls, "Divine Mission"
01/19/2012

I learned about the one-man sci-fi doom project of New Hampshire's Timothy Lang-Grannan a couple years ago via WFMU's blog, where Lang-Grannan is quoted as saying, "People tell me my music sounds like a combination of Vangelis and Burzum." This particular track, from the 2010 album VI, sounds pretty evil, but only if the notion of evil were conceived in the mind of a Muppet.…

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Spy vs. spy
01/19/2012

All eyes are on South Carolina, but today's a big day politically in Wisconsin. It's the day opponents of Republican governor Scott Walker must turn in their petitions to recall governor Scott Walker.…

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Remy Bumppo artistic director Timothy Douglas resigns
01/19/2012

After a tenure of only six months, Timothy Douglas is calling it quits. His resignation as artistic director of Remy Bumppo Theatre takes effect January 31.…

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Do you serendip into the news?
01/19/2012

When the Internet was young and I had much to learn about its nature, I argued that online news sacrificed one of the supreme virtues of newspapers: it denied readers the benefits and pleasures of serendipity. Turning the pages to the news that concerned us, we came across all the news that did not.…

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One Bite: bun mam, aka Vietnamese gumbo
01/19/2012

The Vietnamese stretch of Argyle Street has seen better days. Take a stroll after sundown and it can seem downright intimidating, with storefront after storefront shuttered and nobody daring to tread into the dark beyond Tank Noodle (which, frankly, hasn't been up to snuff lately either).…

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Keeping his Mitts on his money
01/19/2012

"I'm not worried about rich people; they're doing just fine."
—Mitt Romney, Oct. 11, 2011

They sure are doing fine. Yesterday, Romney—whose estimated net worth is $250 million—allowed that he's been paying an effective tax rate of 15 percent over the last decade—a much lower rate than is paid by most Americans who make far less.…

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We want your anti-Valentine's stories
01/19/2012

You know you have 'em: stories about bad first (or last) dates, good breakups, online exploits, one-night stands, and other dating exploits. We want them.…

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I bare my soul to Jack Silverstein
01/19/2012

Just got an e-mail from Jack Silverstein, featuring a link to an interview he did with me a few months back.

Jack's a young writer who's making quite a name for himself as an oral historian.…

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Aldermen examine new protest rules before doing what they're told
01/19/2012

Aldermen didn’t get much time to study Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s newest proposals for tightening protest regulations before they came before two City Council committees Tuesday. In the latest episode of an ongoing story, most of the new rules were handed out to aldermen a few minutes after the start of the meeting called to approve them.…

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The jugglers and the clowns do their ward map thing!
01/19/2012

The good news is that it looks like the City Council's going to adopt a ward map without a special election, to be followed by a lawsuit, that could cost $30-or-so million.

The bad news is that Mayor Emanuel's not going to use any of these savings to add staff to the libraries and reopen them on Sundays and Mondays like libraries in such civilized societies as, oh, the mayor's hometown of Wilmette.…

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Beer that you wear, if you're lucky
01/19/2012

The annual winter onslaught of Facebook photos from friends' vacations to Los Angeles, New Orleans, or some decadent tropical destination never really irks me. You're sitting poolside in 72-degree weather—the temperature is always noted—drinking a Bloody Mary and reeking of suntan lotion? Good for you, I guess.…

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See Kanye live at the Double Door (on video)
01/19/2012

No performers like people watching old videos of them as teenagers just starting out, but Kanye doesn't seem to have much in the way of shame, so he's probably not super upset that someone's dug up footage of him performing at the Double Door in 1996 and posted it to hip-hop blog DDotOmen.com. Or at least I haven't seen him going all-caps on Twitter about it.…

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Now online: All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (part 3)
01/19/2012

This is the last of a series of essays on Adam Curtis’s essay series All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, which you can watch for free here. I previously wrote about the series here and here.

One of Curtis’s most distinctive traits as a storyteller is to introduce all his subjects, whether they’re living or dead, as though they were fictional characters.…

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Our treacherous food stamp president
01/19/2012

With primary season under way, I worried that the participants in last night's debate in South Carolina might stoop to some old-fashioned demagoguery in their appeal to Republican voters. That would have seemed especially egregious on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.…

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Fiction Week: Treasure Island!!!
01/19/2012

I'm a bit claustrophobic, so when I'm on an eight and a half hour flight, as I was over the holidays, I don't spend my time watching in-flight movies. The headphones just make me feel more enclosed.…

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Nathan Salsburg stands up with Affirmed
01/19/2012

Louisville resident Nathan Salsburg dedicates much of his time to good works. He produces a radio program called Root Hog or Die for East Village Radio, and he works for the Alan Lomax Archive / Association for Cultural Equity as an archivist and producer, overseeing the production of CDs and online offerings.…

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