This could be my next gig, you never know. Image via Wikipedia

I’ve learned a great deal at my time here on True/Slant – mostly that blogging is damn hard work and you’ve got to be passionate about your subject or it’s not worth it for either the reader or the writer. That said, I will continue to write about the topics I am most passionate about – living well after 40, sex, relationships, parenting, and promoting a healthy self-image for women of all ages – all served up with a dash of humor and pinch of spice.

You can find me at my blog Forty Fabulous (www.fortyfabulous.blogspot.com) and at Makeitbetter.net where, among other things, I write the monthly “Sex and the Suburbs” column. If you’re interested, follow these links to my recent pieces on Staying Sexy at Every Age and how to deal with a Sexless Marriage. And feel free to follow me on twitter.

I still have high hopes for becoming the next Oprah, even though my audition video only gained a handful of votes. Perhaps I’m better suited to  The View.

Thanks to everyone at True/Slant for allowing me to be part of such a wonderful group of writers. It has been an honor. Good luck to all.

Emily. Image via Wikipedia

My old man taught me to say “so long” whenever we parted because he contended “goodbye” should be reserved for permanent occasions, like the one Emily Dickinson refers to here:

Good-by to the life I used to live,

And the world I used to know;

And kiss the hills for me, just once;

Now I am ready to go!

Goodbye seems especially ill suited for this occasion: while True/Slant writers and readers will scatter to diverse corners of cyberspace, that universe is nothing if not a network, and we will never be more than keystrokes apart.

It’s up to us to keep it going.

Nonetheless there is a passing to note here, an achievement to acknowledge, many thanks to be given.

My colleagues have written more ably and eloquently than I can of the community that thrived here, the conversations started, the friendships forged (I won’t name names, for fear of leaving one out–you know who you are).

I’ll focus on one particular accomplishment that still surprises me, happily, every time I log in.

When True/Slant came along the world needed (in addition to love) an economically viable way for readers and journalists to find one another and converse in civility.

In the end Forbes would testify to True/Slant’s economic viability, but right from the beginning True/Slant attained civility. For the most part, people here disagreed, as the saying goes, with all due respect. And without, as my colleague Caitlin Kelly said, trolls and flames.

In a comment on his own farewell post, my colleague Michael Humphrey says, “Perhaps civility will be the great legacy of T/S.”

But I believe True/Slant surpassed civility and attained a unique style of conversation better described as “collegiality.”

The difference is that we don’t just get along–that’s civility–but we trust one another. We have mutual respect and confidence in our ability and our intent.

That came to be the case not just among those who occupy True/Slant’s Mountain Lair, not just among the site’s 300 contributors, but most remarkably, among the million-plus readers who visited us each month and those who chose to return and comment.

This was a place where we knew one another to be in pursuit of the good, no matter how we might differ on the best way to get there. That’s why trolls and flames found neither purchase nor harbor here.

And this is no small achievement on my beat, which is harassed everywhere else by half-cocked skeptics. Skeptics brought their doubts to True/Slant, sure, but found they had to back them up. They had to be fully-cocked.

True/Slant’s community spanned the world, but was so coherent in its collegiality, it got so you could spot a newbie by his inappropriate bluster. It’s not hard to imagine a hypothetical True/Slanter, either commenter or contributor, who stumbles into town all roughed up by the wild ways of the world wide web, spewing sarcasm and snark and superiority, and finds that here it gets him nowhere.

He leaves in a cloud of frustration. But something draws him back, almost against his will, some scarcely definable allure in content and platform, and gradually he learns, as we all did, to disagree with all due respect.

Thank you colleagues, commenters, readers for the collegial conversation we have enjoyed. Let’s take it everywhere.

How was it achieved?

Collegiality took root in the technologies developed by Andrea Spiegel and Steve McNally and Roger Theriault, blossomed in the professionals selected by Coates Bateman and Lewis DVorkin, flourished under the hands-off leadership and hands-on assistance provided by all those people, plus editorial Jedi Master Michael Roston and our sherpas, Kashmir Hill and Katie Drummond.

Thank you, denizens of the Lair, for making this collegial conversation possible.

As many other writers before me have noted, here we were free to write. In freedom we turned to one another for examples, and we found some of the very best. They did what Emily Dickinson had long ago advised:

“Tell all the truth but tell it slant—”

So long, for now.

It's all pomp because of the circumstance. Image via Wikipedia

It feels like the last day of high school around here, or more accurately, like the high school is closing down and kicking all us kids out.

As you no doubt know by now, Forbes acquired True/Slant and is shuttering the site. As they turn off the lights, everyone is getting one last chance to say goodbye. Some of us are moving on to bigger and better things (Ivy Leaguers), others are taking some time off before heading back into the fray (Gap Year types) and a lot of us don’t yet know what we’re going to do (Sorry, Mom, I’m Not Leaving Yet). As for me, I’ve made my own yearbook of sorts and collected all my content over here while I figure out my next move. For those of you who are link-averse, it’s http://thesuburbanista.wordpress.com/

It’s sad to say goodbye to all the (virtual) new friends I made and I will miss hearing from them every day. My fellow bloggers never failed to inform, inspire and engage me. I wish we could have all stayed 2gether 4ever but alas, it was not to be.

It was a great time while it lasted and a fantastic learning opportunity. As a long-time news reporter, blogging was new to me and something I wasn’t quite comfortable with at first, as it required a complete reversal of all I had known. It had been drilled into my head from Day One of journalism school to remain neutral, don’t take sides, keep your opinion out of it and just report the facts. Over the years, I’ve done that pretty well, I think, dispassionately reporting on skinheads and murderers, creationists and global warming deniers, religious extremists, vaccine opponents and many more people, always putting aside my own feelings in service of the story.

As a blogger, though, I was supposed to share my thoughts, the more controversial the better (translation: more page views). I don’t think I ever fully accomplished that, mostly because I still work as a news reporter for a variety of publications and either have covered or could be called on at any moment to report on a topic that I might have blogged about. I never wanted a source to look up an old post, unlikely as that might be, and accuse me of not being impartial or coming into the reporting with an agenda.

I was never the most popular blogger here, so I didn’t get to sit at the cool kids table, nor was I the least popular, so I didn’t have to sit at the losers table either. I may have been somewhere in the middle, which happens to be where I’ve always liked it.

So goodbye for now and stay as cool as you are. Let’s stay in touch, even as we all move on to our next chapters. Last one out the door is a rotten egg!

So while True/Slant’s new owner Forbes intends to take the site in a new direction, I am deeply appreciative of the opportunity I was given to write for the site. All in all, it really was an exceptional experience.

And I really want to thank all the people who helped out with my stories, be it by giving their time to sit down for interviews, or granting me access to review their films, plays and shows. And I especially want to thank anyone who gave any of my blog posts a look over. It goes without saying that there is so much content out there, and a ton of content covering what to do in Chicago, and I encourage you to keep reading The A.V. Club, Time Out Chicago, the Chicago Reader, Chicago magazine, the Sun-Times and the Trib, among other great sites/pubs, to keep your finger on the pulse. But despite this, it means a lot that people actually did read my stuff, and hopefully they learned something new, and they were exposed to something or someone that they went on to love. Or maybe they glanced at it and went on. Whatever the case may be, thank you all very much for at least paying my blog a visit and giving it a bit of your very precious time.

I’ll be keeping plenty busy with my other gigs, including my day job for Marketing News magazine, the Marketing News Exclusives e-newsletter and Marketing News-sponsored podcasts. I’m doing tons of freelance work still for AOL’s TV Squad site and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and I’ve got my weekly Store Brand Scorecard blog for Walletpop. But I still plan on writing about Chicago talent. If there’s a band I should hear, a play I should know about, a comedian I should see or a local film I should watch, please let me know, and I’ll see if I can pitch a story somewhere. I’m at Levypeter@aol.com, Twitter.com/PietLevy and on Facebook.

So rock on everybody! Thanks again, and enjoy life!

With Ebert sidelined from TV due to health reasons, Siskel long passed and his replacement Richard Roeper splitting from the show over creative reasons, “At The Movies” took a turn for the terrible when hosted by quote whore Ben Lyons and  Turner Classic Movies host Ben Mankiewicz. The two critics lost their post after just one season in the wake of some major criticism, and starting last fall, the Chicago Tribune’s Michael Phillips and The New York Times’ A.O. Scott, two of the finest film critics out there today, took over.

But the ratings never recovered and now Disney is letting it go. “At The Movies” is ending in just four weeks.

So why watch it now? I’d say do so to pay a little respect to a program that while different from its hey day is still about one thing at its core — a couple of passionate people talking about movies. For any movie buff, its a must, and frankly with Phillips and Scott at the helm, the show is the best its been since the Siskel-Ebert days. The two engage in enlightening, engaging back and forth that’s primarily about the films, rather than the bickering, which has become the focal point of so many debate shows from “The View” to stuff on CNN. It’s a shame that with the show getting so good again it has to now go away. Personally speaking, I can’t imagine it being off the air, considering that I’ve watched it since I was a just a kid, and recalling all the fantastic films (from “Dark City” to “Hoop Dreams” to “Where The Wild Things Are”) I was convinced to see by its hosts. But, thanks to Philips and Scott, at least the show is going out in style. Considering the circumstances, I can’t think of a better way to see the show come to an end.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Philips and Scott about the show’s end, how they got their groove and the relevance of film criticism today, and will have the interview up at Moviefone at the end of the month or in early August. Check if you’re in Chicago like I am, you can watch the show on ABC 7 at 10:35 p.m. Saturdays until August 14th. 

But where? Well, I’m not totally sure yet. I’ve got things in the works, but it’s not quite settled at this very moment. I expect to be back up and blogging at the latest by September 1st, and hopefully, much sooner. I will be back for sure. I just don’t have a specific web address for you yet.

Want to make sure you find out where I reappear? Send me an email at onestoryupblog (at) gmail (dot) com. I’ll let you know when I’m good and settled some place new.

Much thanks to Andrea, Michael, Coates and Lewis for all your support while I’ve been here and for this wonderful opportunity. I’ve truly enjoyed the site and the community here and the opportunity to grow more as a writer.

I’ll be seeing you!

Photo by Xhanatos on Flickr

Read the headlines on San Francisco’s Housing Authority, and you may feel like you’ve stumbled upon a history book about Chicago’s public housing.

Gross mismanagement. Rents not collected. Multi-million dollar deficit. Poor upkeep. Serious lawsuits because of negligence. A real mess.

Now, San Francisco is looking to remedy two of those problems - the deficit and the rent collection in one fell swoop. They’ve issued thousands of eviction notices for families living there, letting them know they’ve got to pay up or get out.

The problem is, many residents can’t trust what they’re told they owe. Record keeping has been so bad that many who have paid every month have also gotten eviction notices, or people are being asked to pay much larger sums than they think they owe.

Take Anna Stephens, whose story was told in the San Francisco Chronicle. A single mom with two kids who works as an administrative assistant, she’s paid her rent on time for years. But she got a bill in the mail saying she owes the housing authority $9,750 in back rent. It’s not the first time either. A few years ago, they brought another suit against her after she complained about the security in her building, saying she owed nearly $2,000 in back rent. The suit was later dropped.

Other tenants who are facing hard times say their rent hasn’t been adjusted to their much lower income levels. Others still say paying your rent has never been a big deal in San Francisco’s public housing, so it’s going to be hard to change that idea in tenants minds.

San Francisco is struggling to improve under demands from HUD, not unlike Chicago in the mid-1990s. After years of mismanagement, huge deficits and a large stock of derelict housing, HUD took over CHA in 1996 in an effort to get it back on the right path. Soon after, the Plan for Transformation was gotten underway, knocking down most of the city’s public housing units to make way for mixed-income communities and relocating thousands of families.

In San Francisco, the Housing Authority says it’s not going to throw people out on their ear.

“We realize these are tough economic times,” said Henry Alvarez, the director of SFHA, to the Chronicle. “There is no reason to throw people out on the streets.”

But that’s a difficult message to get through when you send an eviction notice.

The Pitchfork Music Festival, created by the popular music website of the same name, on the other hand, provided one of the most pleasant massive live-music experiences imaginable. The fifth-annual festival (sixth if you count the Pitchfork-curated Intonation Festival in ‘05) filled Union Park with three days of eclectic music. Lineup aside, the atmosphere fused everything that makes a festival like Pitchfork an enjoyable, unique experience. Absent were the massive banners advertising brand “x” and “y,” with only a handful of booths displaying their brand name in spare parts of the park. The slaughterhouse feel that pervades many Live Nation-branded festivals and parks was missing too: The price of food was low, the cost of water was lower (and continued to drop with the heat) and those who worked the festival treated attendees with, well, a proper sense of camaraderie. As the staff made an effort to pass free bottles of water to those in need and brought a Greyhound onto the park grounds for anyone seeking air conditioning, the sense of compassion amongst attendees was high thanks to a shared love of the music being played.

The music itself was another story. If anyone was skeptical of Pitchfork’s diversity of musical taste, one glance at the festival’s two main stages would have changed their mind quickly. With a schedule that sandwiched a performance by the toned-down, orchestral indie stylings of St. Vincent between sets by spazzy, hard-and-heavy noise duo Lightening Bolt and the electro-dance crew known as Major Lazer, it’s hard to argue against the festival having featured varied genres of music.

It made for a festival that was exciting, exhausting and hard to predict. Like any mass gathering of musicians, there are a few bum notes. Panda Bear proved an utter bore, divorcing whatever tunefulness and individuality he brought to his medium of electronic-drone and churning out a fairly uninteresting and excruciatingly long set. Similarly, Girls sucked what little life was in their stylistically-pedicured fuzz-rock out of their performance and left it elsewhere. Hampered by audio glitches, Sleigh Bells grasped for something – anything – to help them make noise and stand out against the brazenly loud pre-recorded instrumental track that threatened to swallow the duo whole. Liars’s post-punk noise freakouts seemed to evaporate into thin air before the emotional complexity of the tunes registered with the crowd.

Fortunately, a lot of these little glitches were few and far between. Throughout the three-day festival lay many solid sets, surprises and genuinely fantastic musical voices. Robyn and Delorean brought some excellent dance tunes that simmered in the heat, while LCD Soundsystem made some emotionally-taught freak-out funk live on through the night. Alienation sounded great, as Titus Andronicus churned out fist-pumping, Americana-soaked crust punk for all to enjoy, while WHY? tackled the issue with a distinctly American hybridization of hip-hop, indie, electronica and some curveball experimentation tossed in. Beach House succeeded where many atmospheric bands would have failed, tossing out finely-focused, dreamy anti-folk tunes, while the equally aurally-focused group CAVE churned out a handful of lean, mean krautrock-inspired, classic rock-inflected jams. Big Boi cranked out old OutKast material and solo songs like there was no tomorrow.

The list goes on, quite literally, and it’s hard to squeeze in every last band. Sure, not every band arrived with the same eye-grabbing status that Sunday night headliner Pavement brought with it (the band put on a perfectly imperfect performance, which, depending on who you talk to, is either good or bad), but many acts had some great moments. However, the real kicker may not have been in the complex guitar noodling on stage C at a specific time, but that everything seemed to come together so well in the span of three days: The bands, the fans and the atmosphere blended together in one great, euphoric event. A magic kingdom indeed.

Delorean – “Real Love”:

I see ads on College Humor, Hulu, and Huffington Post, and people talking about Isaiah Mustafa (the actor who plays the Old Spice Guy) on Digg, Reddit and  Twitter.  In case you’ve been living without a TV or internet since February, here is the link to the first Old Spice ad featuring Mr. Mustafa (that aired during the Super Bowl), and I’ve embedded the brand new commercial below. Please watch both commercials before continuing.

Each video has an insanely high view count for a commercial.  The original ad has over 13 million hits, and the newest commercial has over 6 million hits… in just two weeks. The commercials are fast-paced, outlandish, and center around a gorgeous man with a soothing baritone sounding off catchphrases left and right. The phrase “I’m on a horse” has become  popular, reminiscent of “I’m on a boat” . The Old Spice Guy even talks about baking cakes, an allusion to the internet meme perhaps?

These commercials don’t just harness phrases and ideas from the internet – Old Spice creates them.  Young males on and off the internet are saying  ”____  is NOW DIAMONDS” or “SWAN DIVE” or “I’M ON A HORSE”  but honestly, every single thing the Old Spice Guy says is worthy of being repeated again and again.

Not content with its current internet success, Old Spice took to Twitter on Tuesday (one day only),  fielding questions and making personalized videos for any interesting person that tweeted to him. Celebrities got personal videos (Alyssa Milano got 3, including flowers) as did strong internet personalities (like Kevin Rose) and the “average joe“.  Brennon Slattery at PC World wonders if this is the “most brilliant ad campaign ever”  and I say yes.

These Old Spice commercials appeal to a man’s sense of masculinity and coolness, like the Dos Equis “The Most Interesting Man in the World” ad campaign. Unlike the Dos Equis ad campaign and the key to its success, these Old Spice  commercials are also directed towards the ladies. Eric Baldwin, one of the creative directors behind the ad campaign, told the LA Times:

“This was more of an acknowledgement that a lot of times, it’s the girlfriend or significant others that are doing the purchasing. So we thought a dual message would be effective.”

via LA Times “Old Spice Talks to the Ladies, Man“

I can’t be a warm-blooded woman and not be in love with the fantasy of the Old Spice Guy. I also appreciate these commercials for their satire and the sexy eye-candy just for ladies (no bikini clad women in these commercials, unlike Axe).  It’s not just women though- I have heard my male friends say repeatedly that they’d go gay for the Old Spice Guy.

These Old Spice commercials have a level of honesty unheard of: the Old Spice Guy knows the female viewer’s boyfriend can never be as good as him, so the closest sexual experience the female viewer can get to the Old Spice Guy is to buy the product for her man, and smell him while they have sex. Gentlemen, are you comfortable knowing your lady is thinking of Mr. Mustafa while you bone?

The Old Spice Guy is well groomed, fit, beautiful,  romantic but also highly capable of many magical things, like riding a horse, catching fish, manning a boat, and  baking a cake after building a kitchen with his bare hands.  The Old Spice Guy exudes a charm and chivalry quite unheard of today, and he is an unobtainable fantasy. Women are used to looking at ads featuring hyper-sexualized and idealized females and then feeling bad about themselves, but this is a new phenomenon for men.

Besides the Old Spice Guy, the only other recent fantasy male fawned over by women was Edward (and Jacob) from the Twilight series.  There was an uproar among men when the movies came out and men just couldn’t contain their hatred towards the teenage fantasy (and I kind of agree?) – a real man isn’t like that, they said. No man can ever be like that,  they say, completely forgetting Edward was created for teenage girls… (what did you males fantasize about when you were 15, huh?)

While younger men have embraced The Old Spice Guy (perhaps because they are okay with being sexualized?), John Kass over at the Chicago Tribune recently wrote:

our modern American culture really doesn’t like manly men much these days.

Currently, the so-called ideal man is smooth and hairless and shaves in all the wrong places.

via Chicago’s Manly Man vs. America’s Manliest City Survey

According to Kass, a real man is overweight, has hair in all the wrong places (or is balding), and has attitude in spades – no trace or “whiff of self-consciousness”. A real man doesn’t care how repulsive he is to the opposite sex. (If a female wrote a column like this, she would be ridiculed)

Twitter user OhDoctah has some beef with the Old Spice Guy, and something tells me John Kass would like him: OhDoctah is overweight, opinionated and confident. OhDoctah is offended by the Old Spice Guy’s beauty and popularity, saying women prefer to sleep on duvets (chubby men), not bricks (men with nice abs). OhDoctah understands the popularity of the Old Spice Guy is based off sex appeal, and offers an alternative viewpoint.

Youtube user  dehudson1230 also hates the Old Spice Guy, and recently posted a video titled “I Hate the old Spice Guy, He’s making my life Hell”. In the video, Charles doesn’t appreciate his wife asking him to bake her a cake or fix her kitchen, he just wants to rest when he comes home from work. His wife interjects and says if he did sit-ups he would have nice abs too.

Is there something wrong with wanting a man that takes care of himself? I personally don’t want to marry some dude only to have him die 30 years before me because of some heart disease related to high cholesterol/lack of exercise/obesity, leaving me a lonely widow in my feeble old age. What is wrong with asking for the same standards society applies to women, to men?

I also don’t understand all this male outrage against female fantasies. Based off the popularity of the Old Spice Guy, you’d think men would intuitively understand this ad campaign is about sex with a fantasy, not a threat to masculinity.

If women can accept the Old Spice Guy as a fantasy and not as a mandate on how all men should look, why can’t men do the same?

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• Old Spice Guy Proposes To Lucky Lady On Behalf Of Her Boyfriend [Spicy] (jezebel.com)

Crystal Richards stands with two of her children in front of the Chase Tower in downtown Chicago. Her entire family may be homeless after she is forced to vacate her South Shore apartment Saturday.

Crystal Richards takes care of her six children – 14, 9, 6, 5, 2 and 2 months – and a sick mother. And as of Saturday, she has no home.

Richards is stuck in a dead zone, where clearly someone is at fault, but there’s no one willing to take the blame. Her building, 7263 S. Coles, is quite literally falling apart. Bricks are falling off the front of the South Shore apartment building, not to mention the ceilings are falling in and the electricity is about to cause on fire any minute, she says. The bathtubs won’t drain, so they sit, daily, full of grey water, while families try to wash themselves in the kitchen sink. Mold, insects, pests – you name a problem, they got it.

It’s so bad that the city has deemed it uninhabitable, and Saturday, they will come out to vacate 10 families from the premises. Richards and her neighbors gathered downtown yesterday afternoon, asking for relocation assistance from the party they say is responsible for the building’s profound neglect – Chase Bank.

7263 S. Coles was put into foreclosure in 2008 by Washington Mutual Bank. Soon after, Chase took over Washington Mutual, and thus took on the building as well. They asked the court to appoint a receiver – a company to look after the building, says Arturo Del Angel, community organizer for Metropolitan Tenants Organization.

The receiver, he says, submitted one report to Chase in 2009, saying the building was fine. Finally, in May of this year, the foreclosure was completed. Days after, the order to vacate the building came, and quickly, the building was sold to a company called Oceania LLC.

“The city has said its so unsafe that the tenants can’t stay there,” says Del Angel. “We’re just asking that Chase help tenants find another, safer place to live.”

But Chase says it’s not the responsible party. Tom Kelly, spokesperson for Chase Bank in Chicago, says the bank only owned the building for one month and the receiver was responsible for the building, not them. I tried to contact Millennium Management, the court appointed receiver. They have no website, and the phone number listed for them is a fax line.

Many of the tenants have no place to go and will end up homeless, says Sean Brown, a building resident.

Sean Brown speaks at Thursday's rally.

“We shouldn’t be forced out of our homes because of their negligence,” says Brown. “I’ve been making phone calls for repairs for two years. Nothing was ever done.”

Kelly came out into the street to talk to the protesters, but the conversation sounded like a schoolyard quarrell. “The receiver works for the bank,” said MTO director John Bartlett. “No, they work for the judge,” said Kelly. “Chase is responsible to the tenants who are being put out,” said Bartlett. “Chase is no longer the owner of the building,” said Kelly. Back and forth, they argued.

No one wants the tenants to stay in the building – it’s simply too unsafe. But what the tenants and MTO want is relocation assistance – money given to the tenants to help them find a new home on such short notice.

For Richards, relocation assistance would help her family find a decent place to live. She had just paid her rent when she found out about the order to vacate the building, so there wasn’t any extra money left for a new place, plus security deposit. She says she doesn’t know what she’ll do come Saturday.

“I don’t know where me and my kids are going to get to,” she said. “[The relocation assistance] would help us find a place to live.”

Foreclosures are a problem to building and home owners, ruining their credit and leaving them with nothing. They’re a problem for banks who are dealing with thousands of unpaid loans. They’re a problem for neighborhoods who bear the brunt of the blight and problems they attract. And at 7263 S. Coles, it’s become a huge problem for these tenants, many of whom may become homeless because no one will take responsibility for what’s happened to their building.

The buck has been passed at 7263 S. Coles. Passed on and on and on, until finally, it’s arrived on the doorstep of 10 families. Ten families who paid their rent, and in return, expected a decent place to live.

The city, big banks and corporations are all involved in this mess, and yet, the most vulnerable party – low-income families on Chicago’s South Side – will bear the brunt of what’s happened. It’s they who will have to try to scrape together a security deposit and rent for a new place, find a place for their belongings in the meantime, look for new schools and child care providers for their kids. Ten defenseless families on the margins of society are the ones who carry the burden of the mess we’ve all made.

Meanwhile, yesterday, JPMorgan Chase boasted $4.8 billion in profits, up 76 percent from this time last year.

Walking in the hot sun, protesters shouted, “We bailed you out. You bailed on us.”

It’s not so hard to see their point.

1. “The Girl Who Played With Fire” (Ongoing) — The film version of the second installment in the late Stieg Larsson’s wildly popular “Millennium” trilogy is one of the biggest foreign hits to play this year. No surprise there. But you can think local movie distributor Music Box Films for bringing the Swedish flick stateside. Music Box Theatre, 3733 N. Southport. Click here for showtimes.

2. “Inception” (Ongoing) – One of these days, Chicago-born cinematographer Wally Pfister, the man who shot out city like never before for “The Dark Knight,” is going to pick up the Oscar. Could it be for this seemingly gorgeous new sci-fi thriller, directed by “Dark Knight” director Christopher Nolan? At either rate, the film should be a feast for the eyes, especially in IMAX. (For more on Pfister, check out this great interview over at Cinematical). Navy Pier IMAX Theater, 700 E. Grand. $13-17. Click here for showtimes and to buy tickets.

3. Pitchfork Music Festival (July 16-18): If you scored tickets for one of the most anticipated fests of the summer, make sure you show the local acts some love. Friday features Chicago native comedian Hannibal Buress (4:45 p.m. at Stage B); Saturday includes psych pop band Netherfriends (1 p.m. Stage B), garage rockers Smith Westerns (5:45 p.m. Stage B); and on Sunday Spanish psychedelic ensemble Alla (1 p.m. Stage A) and improv heavy, ambient-leaning Cave (1 p.m. Stage B). Union Park, 1501 W. Randolph. Friday, 3:30-10; Saturday and Sunday 1-10.

4. Jenny Gillespie (July 17) – Singer-songwriter Gillespie lends her lovely voice to a new album “Kindred,” celebrated at this record release show. Martyrs’, 3855 N. Lincoln. 7 p.m. $7. Tickets available here.

5. Dylan Rice Band and Milhous (July 17) – The Dylan Rice Band is finally celebrating its album released in March, while Milhous, a pop and country-influenced Chicago act, reunites for the first time since 1999 for one night only in celebration of a newly released best of album. Martyrs’, 3855 N. Lincoln. 9:30 p.m. $10. Tickets available here.

6. Welcome to Ashley (July 17) – Local post punk act has a welcoming sound and a solid new effort, “Beyond The Pale.” Quenchers, 2401 N. Western. 9 p.m. $5 donation.

7. “Les Enfants Terribles—Prom Night” (July 19-August 14) – Red Tape Theatre presents a show packed with commedia, improv and circus, and boasts that folks who love 500 Clown and sensations Blue Man Group will dig this show, claiming its “unlike anything you’ve seen on the stages of Chicago.” One way to find out. The second floor at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, 621 W. Belmont. $10-20. Tickets and schedule available here.

8. Kid Sister (July 19) – If you haven’t had your chance to lend an ear to one of Chicago’s most talented, original hip hop stars, here’s your chance to see what will undoubtedly be an electric show for free on what looks to be a beautiful evening. Part of the Downtown Sound free concert series. Jay Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park (Michigan and Randolph). 6:30 p.m. Free.

9. “Planet Earth Live” (July 21) – No doubt the breathtaking cinematography made the landmark nature series “Planet Earth” so special, but it was George Fenton’s sweeping score that made it cinematic. Fenton conducts the Grant Park Orchestra at this show, part of the Grant Park Music Festival, alongside clips from the series. Jay Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park (Michigan and Randolph). 8:15 p.m. Free.

10. The Faint (July 23) – The synth is the new guitar, and dance music the new alt rock. But given its harder edge and addictive beats (and yes, some guitar), The Faint, despite working in a crowded field, is one of the finest acts of its kind out there. Metro, 3730 N. Clark St. 9 p.m. $20. Tickets here.

11. Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Show (July 23) — Chicago guy and future father Vaughn resurrects his solid stand-up comedy tour from 2006 for one night in Chicago. Kevin James, his co-star in the film being shot in Chicago this summer (directed by Ron Howard), co-hosts. Park West, 322 W. Armitage. 9 p.m. $50. Tickets available here.

12. The Backyard Film & Music Festival (July 24) – Local filmmaker Fred Koschmann moves his three-year-old homegrown film fest (complete with live band performances) from his own backyard to a 12-acre site that once housed a railcar factory. Among the highlights on the bill: “A Sip from a Certain Fountain,” a “Twilight Zone”-style short from local filmmakers Christian Gridelli and Hunter Norris. Pullman State Historic Site, 11057 S. Cottage Grove. 12 p.m. $10 in advance, $15 at the door. Tickets available here.

13. In, Flew Ants (July 25) – With a challenging experimental sound, this is bound to be the strangest record release show in Chicago. Schubas, 3159 N. Southport. 7:30 p.m. $10. Tickets available here.

14. Jump Smokers (July 27) – Jump Smokers brings old school, funktastic dance music for its new album “Dance Rock Shake Pop,” celebrated at this show. Lincoln Hall, 2424 N. Lincoln. 9 p.m. $5, free admission if you show up before 10 p.m. Tickets available here.

15. Todd Carey (July 29) – If Carey keeps releasing cheery, frothy pop songs like “After the Morning After,” expect to hear him more on the radio. Lincoln Hall, 2424 N. Lincoln. 8 p.m. $10. Tickets available here.

16. Reds and Blue (July 30) – Dreamy psychedelic band plays in celebration of its album “Son of the Stars.” Schubas, 3159 N. Southport. 10 p.m. $8 in advance, $10 at the door. Tickets available here.

Two episodes of the program are in the can, the first of which premieres this Friday on WTTW after “Check Please,” with the hope that enough people will tune in to justify “Chicago Stand-up” becoming a regular series. Patrick McGann pleaded his case and the show’s concept to Chicago Beat.

Chicago Beat: So how did the idea for this show come about?

Patrick McGann: I’m a stand-up comedian and was always noticing whenever I told people that, they thought it was cool and intriguing. And I started thinking that people have a general interest or curiosity about stand-up. It’s like ballroom or jumping out of an airplane in that people say they want to try that once. So I was thinking it would be cool to see some well-known people doing something out of their element. That’s how it came about.

I pitched it to Bert Haas, the guy who runs Zanies, and he and I talked about it as a web series, and eventually Bert said this would be a TV show. I started to talk to people around town about it and WTTW really liked the concept.

CB: So what challenges did you face putting your first TV show together?

PM: It’s always a challenge to get people to stop what they’re doing. In Shani Davis’ case, he’s an Olympian and speed skater, so his schedule is busy and [Local Fox-TV meteorologist] Amy Freeze is busy, and Susanna Negovan is busy running [Michigan Avenue Magazine], so it was a challenge to line up everyone’s schedule. So once we got the green light, we had in our mind a three-month window and we started to get to the end of the three-month window, and shot two episodes within a week of each other. I would have liked to spread that out a little bit more.

I am lucky. I am the comic that shows up to shoots. As far as getting the right shot, that’s not my responsibility. But I probably take it for granted how smooth things rang [on a TV shoot]. There is a challenge in working a live show for the first time, doing stand-up. You never really want to do a retake on a joke, especially in front of someone who has heard the joke. You wouldn’t get the same reaction the second time. But everyone did their five minutes, the crowd got into it, and no one fell off the track.

I think our producer Eddie Griffin shared the vision I had for the show. He got the concept right away, and I think people will be interested to see somebody they think they know doing something different from what we know they’re doing. Each person talks about themselves and their lives and you end up pulling for these people because they’re putting themselves out there.

CB: Talk about the format of the show.

PM: At the beginning of the show we introduce participants, remind people how they know them, give the background of the person. They talk about what their thoughts. [Former White Sox great] Ron Kittle was not nervous at all, but some of the other participants are nervous. They know its not easy but a challenge. … From there we go into a conversation about what they want to joke about and write about. We see them on stage preparing for their sets, writing their material and getting ready for that big night. They each did 5 minutes, but we edited it a little bit so we don’t have sets front to end. That stuff people can see online, … and people can go to WTTW.com and talk about the show. There’s no judging on the show itself, but we welcome that on the discussion board. A lot of reality TV shows, so much of the time is spent showing judges, so we decided not to have that element. These people are putting themselves out there. They’re not professional comics, there’s a short window of time for preparing. We don’t want to embarrass anybody. People know [from watching] whether they do well or not do well.

CB: On the show, you serve as a stand-up coach. What was that experience like for you, and how did it help your own stand-up act?

PM: Well I have always been a huge fan of stand-up. I’ve watched it, I write about it. Anything that has to do with stand-up I will consume. But I don’t think you can teach somebody how to be funny. My approach was to kind of encourage people what not to do. I just encouraged each person to talk about themselves, to think about things that they love, things that annoy them. I talked to them about being confident in knowing their material. A big part of the battle is being confident. If the audience sees that you’re comfortable, they are going to listen a little bit more.

In an introspective way, as I was telling this to them, I definitely was think about my own act and what I’m trying to focus on now is to talk about my life and not just mundane observations I have and things that are funny, but getting more personal on stage myself.

CB: What are some things not to do when performing stand-up?

PM: Like telling a long story that doesn’t have laugh lines along the way. Sometimes people think, ‘I have a really funny story,’ but it’s a ‘guess you have to be there’ story. You can’t get up and tell the story; it has to be crafted with jokes. And I think this isn’t something run into being on PBS, but one of the things I learned not to do out of the gate for no reason is to be really dirty and really blue. Most people dismiss you as having to do dirty material when you haven’t built a brand for yourself or a reputation. If the crowd knows you, you have a little bit more leeway working blue. But for an unknown starting out, its not always the right way to go.

CB: There are reality shows about comedy, like “Last Comic Standing,” but that one’s a competition, not so much a look at the making of an act. Since the people on your show are learning about stand up, what do you think viewers will learn about it themselves by watching?

PM: Oftentimes comedians can be dismissed as a circus act or some kind of clown, but really what comedians are doing is giving people an escape. And it also reminds people that this is an art form. … It’s not my goal, but I think it will bring a little bit more respect to the art of stand-up.

“The Chicago Stand-Up Project” airs at 8:30 p.m. Friday on WTTW Channel 11. A second episode of the show airs the following Friday, same time, same channel.

Forming when the players were just in high school, Chicago's Cap'n Jazz left its mark as a pioneering emo rock band. The group is playing a pair of sold out reunion shows this weekend after breaking up in 1995. Photo provided.

Cap’n Jazz has been on a journey few bands have taken—from fast rise and fall, to posthumous discovery, to unexpected reunion. With just one original album release in the band’s history, 1994’s “Burritos, Inspiration Point, Fork Balloon Sports, Cards In The Spokes, Automatic Biographies, Kites, Kung Fu, Trophies, Banana Peels We’ve Slipped On and Egg Shells We’ve Tippy Toed Over,” also known as “Shmap’n Shmazz,” the Chicago-area band’s influential emo music went on to be discovered by indie rock audiophiles thanks to Jade Tree Records, which released the album and other recordings as a two-disc anthology in 1998. But it would take another 12 years for the group, which formed when the guys were just in high school, to play together as thirty-somethings. Following a much buzzed-about surprise reunion gig in January in celebration of that anthology being released on vinyl for the first time that month, the band plays a pair of full set homecoming shows at Bottom Lounge this weekend have long been sold out. (The band plays again July 31^st however at Wicker Park Fest).

One of Cap’n Jazz’s guitarists, Victor Villareal, talked to Chicago Beat about the band’s origins, the reason for its split and why its been resurrected now.

Chicago Beat: So how did Cap’n Jazz come to be?

Victor Villareal: I met [lead vocalist] Tim [Kinsella] the summer of ’89 I think. I was skateboarding at this kind of school [in Buffalo Grove] for delinquent kids. They were closed for summer and we would skate at this school. I was there alone and went to skate this set of stairs and Tim came out of nowhere. And I guess he was waiting for some friends we both knew. The girl he was waiting for, I’m not sure if she didn’t show up. So we went back to his house and we were talking the whole way about his hobbies and interests, and guitar came up. I was taking classical guitar lessons at this shop in Wheeling. So when we got to his house I played one of his guitars for him. He was telling me he played guitar too. It was a common interest we shared. He was telling me he played fast music and I thought he was going to be a virtuouso on guitar and I was excited to hear him. So he grabbed [the guitar], but it was a different kind of fast, like Minor Threat fast. So he started thrashing out. So we began to jam; he asked me if I wanted to be in this band he had going at the time called Toe Jam. I didn’t know what they sounded like, but I was excited to be in a band. So I’d get there and every song was really fast and crazy. I was worried I’d show up to practice and I wouldn’t fit in, but it worked out in some strange way. There was no real structure to it. It was a lot of improvising and really fast, hardcore skate music type stuff.

We began to play for a while and started to write actual songs with parts and changes and stuff. We played mainly in Tim’s basement. It was our biggest venue; we’d have shows in his basement, make fliers, pass them out at school. And there was this church not too far from his house and we would open for whoever was playing there. High school variety shows were a big thing for us in the day.  …

[Two guys] dropped out of Toe Jam I think it was sophomore year of high school, ’90 or ’91. … Sam [Zurick] at the time jumped on bass, which seemed pretty normal at the time because he was at every Toe Jam practice; even though he didn’t play anything, he was always watching. He was so intrigued by the band and it was cool to see him start from not being able to play an instrument to see him become what he is today. And Mike [Kinsella] has always been a really talented musician. He would have ideas that were semi-arranged; he’d come to practice with a guitar part and bass part that rang well together and ask us to play those. And he would jump on drums. There were a lot of songs he wrote the foundations to. And we would feed off of that and the rest of it was me coming to practice with parts.

We began to take music more seriously and started to actually develop a sound. We weren’t doing it on purpose, but it just kind of happened, and we started playing more shows. I think [the Chicago band] Gauge had a big role in establishing our sound back then. Tim I remember showed me a 7 inch from this band at the time and said, ‘Man, you have to listen to this,’ and so they played a big influential role in the development of Cap’n Jazz. We would go to their shows all the time. And Cap’n Jazz would practice more than Toe Jam did. We were on fire at the time. We were really excited to have a sound. We would play out more. Once we hooked up with Gauge, we started expanding the places that we would play at and we began to meet more people and hook up with new connections and places to play. They sort of took us under their wing a little bit.

CB: What was the process like in putting your one and only album together?

VV: I think it sort of happened subconsciously. We didn’t go into it saying we were going to put this album together or make an album. We were more constantly progressing as a band, and it seemed we were constantly chasing after the desire to get better and better as a band, and from what I remember there was never a stationary point in the band where we were thinking we’ve got a sound now. The songs started to develop themselves in a way. Mike played a huge role in writing them and writing the foundations, and I would write a lot of bridges. For the most part, Mike had a lot to do with the arranging I would say; he’s got a total knack for that. And the rest of it was all of us contributing and coming to practice and just feeding off of each other, and then I guess setting in stone what sounded cool and then tossing away what didn’t. A lot of it was a full band effort in putting the album together.

I think the album came out in 1994. It first came out on a record label called Man with Gun out of Downers Grove. We recorded it at a studio in Wicker Park in Chicago and I remember thinking, ‘This place is amazing.’ We got the album recorded, they put it out. I think they only pressed so many copies and then a bit of crap happened there. I don’t know exactly what happened. I was not involved in the business portion of Cap’n Jazz. We ended up breaking up, and that was the only album, and I think it was four years after that Jade Tree Records talked to Tim and decided to pick it up. They wanted to re-release the album with all the seven inches included as an anthology [called “Analphabetapolothology”],  and they did an amazing job. Jade Tree, they kind of picked it up and thrusted it out there and made it available to a lot more peep than Man with Gun was ever able to.

CB: You guys have since found a devoted cult following, but at the time when the album was first released, did you become popular?

VV: We were actually not popular at all. We were very small time. I think our biggest show that I can remember was with the Smoking Popes at The Metro back in 1993 or 1992. That was a sold out show because the Smoking Popes were getting big at the time. But yeah, I think the people that I knew, they really enjoyed the album. We had sort of an intimate following. Our shows seemed a lot more personal. It almost felt like we were playing to our family. I was talking to my friend Jim the other day and he used to be one of the people that would go to the shows. He was saying it was such a neat time because you would see all of the same people at the shows, and it was almost like whatever was happening at the time everyone was experiencing it together as a whole. When we would have shows that were really short and the songs were really short and fast, it was this hyper release of energy at the time and it became an outlet for a few people that would go.

CB: So why did you break up?

VV: I had a problem at the time with substance abuse, and I guess at the time we were so young. Part of [my drug use] was experimental, part of it was trying to find another escape to avoid certain personal issues, but my drug use, most of it ended up interfering with the band. To sum it all up, we went on tour, I ended up taking a handful of drugs and I kept it kind of secretive, and it was a good time that got out of control and I ended up having to go to the hospital and they had to go there too. We had to drive home because of it and we ended up breaking up on tour.

At the time I was pretty numbed physically by the substance abuse, but really I felt like shit. I felt like I was the reason for making a lot of people really upset and I was the cause of it, and it’s not a good feeling at all, you know? It took me a long time to realize that there needed to be some serious changes in my life. I definitely did get to that point but I had to hit every branch on the way down. … I didn’t talk to those guys for a good six years or something.

CB: So you broke up when you were a young band and at the time didn’t have too large of a following. So then why did Jade Tree re-release your music and why do you think you guys still have this following today?

VV: Let’s see, Tim’s French Horn playing? (Laughs). I don’t know. Maybe the fact that we were never too serious about it, in the sense that some bands get really anal about what they look like or what they sound like. And maybe the fact that it was easy to relate to because we sucked. (Laughs). We weren’t like a polished band ever, so maybe people were able to relate to the imperfection to it. I don’t know exactly why people liked it, but whatever we were doing we enjoyed doing. It’s not like we were doing it to gain acceptance from anybody.

[As for why we’re still popular,] I don’t even know. That stumps me a little bit. I wish I had an answer for you on that.

CB: So why after all these years is the band back together now?

VV: There was no real reason behind it that I know of at least. As far as I understood it, Sam was the one that maybe mentioned it to Tim, and Tim thought that would be weird and Mike was ok with it and then Sam asked me and I was cool about it. I thought of it as an opportunity for some healing to take place in a way, because I never knew how to bring that issue up again after it happened. I felt horrible about it for years afterwards and I carried a lot of guilt. I just assumed I would have to live the rest of my life without having an opportunity to address it like this. Maybe there might have been another time in another way, but the way this happened it’s like too perfect, and I think it gives everybody a chance to sort of, what’s the word, for some healing to take place in a sense, you know what I’m saying? For the longest time we didn’t talk about the break-up. Nobody really sat down and brought it up; I think it would be awkward if somebody did. Maybe some people didn’t care anymore. I don’t know.  I was just happy this whole thing is taking place the way it did.

CB: What has it been like for you to be back playing in Cap’n Jazz again?

VV: Now it’s a lot of fun, and I think I’m experiencing what I probably should have experienced in 1992, cause I’m clearheaded today and I don’t have anything obstructing my view. It’s just really cool man. It’s nice to be able to be alive for it and to be coherent for it and now I almost think like, “Damn, now I feel like kicking myself. Why did it have to happen the way it happened, because I could have experienced this 15 years ago?” But I guess we live and learn, and it all happened for a good reason.

CB: And after you guys are done playing your summer shows, what happens to Cap’n Jazz? Do you think you’ll record another album?

VV: I don’t think we’re looking that far ahead yet. We are sort of enjoying what we have in front of us right now. I think its mainly focusing on the shows that we have right now. That seems to be the M.O. When I play with those dudes its cool because it just seems for some of them, and I don’t like to make generalizations, but there seems to be a feeling like whatever happens happens. Some things are planned of course but there’s a beauty in dealing with whatever comes up. Que sera sera.

Cap’n Jazz plays a pair of sold out shows with Gauge Saturday and Sunday at 9 p.m. at Bottom Lounge, 1375 W. Lake. The band plays again at Wicker Park Fest, on Milwaukee Avenue between North Avenue and Wood Street, on July 31st, headlining the North Stage at about 8:30 or 9. $5 donation at the gates.

Bee (Kate Arrington, on left) may have been told her future by her older self (Marylouise Burke), or she may be crazy, in Bruce Norris' intriguing new play "A Parallelogram." The play is currently in its world premiere run at Steppenwolf. Photo by Michael Brosilow. (M

If you knew what would happen in the future, and if you couldn’t do anything to change it, would you still want to go on with your life? That’s the first question, one of several profound ones, asked in Bruce Norris’ strong new play “A Parallelogram,” making its world premiere at Steppenwolf under the direction of Anna D. Shapiro (“August: Osage County”). It’s a domestic drama charged with sci-fi elements, as if Don and Betty Draper had stumbled into the world of “Lost.” In Norris’ hands, these elements, aside from occasional wordy stretches, go well together. The play stays interesting, and Norris’ characters are involving, throughout. He’s not so in love with the logic behind the sci-fi stuff that he loses his grasp of the human heart pumping his play with life.

The person asking that question, about whether a life whose path you know and can’t change is worth living, is Bee (Kate Arrington), the regional manager of a drug store. She asks it of her older boyfriend Jay (Tim Irwin), a payroll account executive who left his wife and kids for her. But the question is too complex for Jay, and too much of a distraction from the game he’s watching, the Heineken he’s sipping, the Latino lawn care guy he’s squabbling with (Tim Bickel), and the drama he’s dealing with on the phone with his daughter, for him to really give it much mind. Jay’s frankly too shortsighted and self-involved to think as Bee thinks, but he’s not a caricature. As written by Norris, Jay shows signs of sensitivity, and love, and in Irwin’s portrayal, authenticity and humanity.

Bee, on the other hand, is suddenly self-aware, not only of her present lot in life, but where her life will go from here. She knows so much, and now she doesn’t know what to do. In the bedroom where she faces this existential crisis sits an older version of herself (a wry Marylouise Burke), whom only she can see. The older Bee, armed with a remote control, has come back in time to tell her how her life, and the world at large, will play out. The younger Bee, we learn, is one of a handful of survivors of a horrific virus 25 years in the future. Bee learns what becomes of her relationship with Jay, how his ex-wife dies, how his relationships with his kids falls into ruin. And Bee sees what she will become—overweight, selfish, practically heartless. She hates what she sees, but she’s told, rather coolly by her future self, that what happens happens, and she can do nothing to change it.

This is an incredible burden for Bee to deal with, but Norris presents another difficult scenario: this could all be a delusion. Tumors were found in Bee’s uterus, and while removed, there is a possibility that the disease could have spread to her brain. That, coupled with a mid-life crisis, triggered not only by the disease, but her infertility, an eye-opening look of poverty while on vacation and the death of a pet parrot she’s had all her life, may have pushed her over the edge. That’s what Jay thinks at least, and Dr. Fein (Marylouise Burke) potentially suspects. But is Dr. Fein really a doctor, or is she who Bee thinks she is, the older version of herself pretending to be a doctor? And ultimately, what scenario is better for Bee: that she knows and can’t fight the future, or that she is actually losing her mind? Which scenario is better for the audience for that matter? If you are to believe that Bee actually knows the future, then you must accept that you cannot change fate. If she is crazy, and fate isn’t predetermined, then there is a chance for you to take control and make a positive impact with your life. For my own sanity and sense of self-worth, I’d like to thank Bee’s crazy and I have some control, but based on Norris’ ending, I’m not so sure he would agree with me.

So yes, heady stuff this, and certainly not escapist entertainment.  But it is still illuminating entertainment, and given Arrington and Irwin’s performances of this complicated characters, quite moving. No matter their future, Norris, Shapiro and the cast are working at the peak of their powers in the present.

Grade: A-

“A Parallelogram” is performed through August 29th at Steppenwolf Theatre Company, 1650 N. Halsted. $20-70. Tickets and schedule available here.

Image via Wikipedia

As the $8,000 home buyer tax credit dried up, so did housing sales. The number of people buying a new house dipped to the lowest levels in recorded history after tax credit ended in May, causing many people to worry that the recession will be shaped like a W – a perilous double dip.

What’s the cure for the ailing housing market? One real estate analyst says the answer is counter-intuitive: more foreclosures.

Why? Well, analyst Mark Hanson says foreclosures are what people want to buy. The new home buyers out there want (and perhaps can only afford) a good deal. But lately, pressures on banks to halt foreclosures have curbed the supply of cheap houses. Because we’re in a market where people are iffy about taking a big risk, unless the carrot is big and juicy enough, people aren’t going to bite.

Plus, Hanson says, there’s still a huge shadow market out there – homes where the mortgage isn’t in good standing, but they’re not in foreclosure yet. Hanson says we’ve got to clear through all this bad inventory – both the homes in foreclosure now and the ones yet to be – if we want the market to turn around.

The way he explains it sounds sort of like an old rusty faucet – you’ve got to let the water run orange for awhile before it starts to come out clear.

At our current pace of foreclosure, he says, it will take 101 months to clear through the system – 8 years. But if we doubled our rate of foreclosure to 180,000 a month, he says it till take 42 months, or about 3 and a half years.

Housing activists all over the nation are putting pressure on banks to slow the rate of foreclosure. It’s hard to argue with. Who wants to put more people out of their homes?

But then again, Hanson could be right. If the entire economy is spooked by low housing sales, it means less jobs being created, fewer people spending money. Many of those who are dreading a foreclosure can’t pay their mortgage because they can’t find a job or find one that will pay a decent wage.

Is it better to be without a house in the short term paired with a quicker recovery? Or if Hanson’s right, are we just dragging out the inevitable?

fake denim leggings, yeah? Image by Idhren via Flickr

I came late to the 80’s revival legging fashion parade.

At first I couldn’t understand why stockings suddenly went out of style. I didn’t understand the bare skin between the ankle and the top of the foot. But then I saw that leggings can provide texture that no hose or stocking can.  Leggings are also thicker than stockings but not as thick as pants, so I slowly became receptive to their usefulness. The cuteness of tunics over leggings was not lost on me, and then one day, a friend wore fake denim leggings on a hot day and I became a fan.

My like of leggings had to do with the usefulness of the accessory, despite modern outfits for ladies these days being utterly useless when it comes to pockets. When I wear leggings I have a dilemma. If I were to wear the leggings right, I can’t wear a bottom or top that has pockets. (Or I just haven’t found the right clothing options?) When I bring this up to my other female friends, they look at me strangely, not understanding my need for pockets. Somewhere over the past couple of years, my female peers began hating pockets and I never got the memo.  Why dislike pockets?

Pockets are useful. You put things in pockets. Chapstick. Change. A hair tie. Tissues. Keys. Items easily lost in a large purse. If I wanted to run to the corner store or buy some alcohol, I don’t want to take a bag – a large accessory. I want some folds in my clothes that hold these items on me, for quick access.

With the comeback in leggings, fashion has also brought back the cross body purse,… understandably, because there are no pockets on women’s outfits. I have always loved cross body purses as a way to carry all my EQ. I believed these purses were “safer” until an earlier mugging in my neighborhood was made more complicated by the woman’s cross body bag, and she got beaten up for it. The police at the subsequent CAPS meeting explained how these types of bags make it harder for you to give your purse to the mugger, and harder for the muggers to snatch it. You can get strangled by your bag, and if the mugger gets frustrated, he can punch and kick you  while you are entangled in the straps. An unpleasant thought.

I hate carrying a purse though, and I know I am not alone in this. Sure, clothes without back pockets make my ass look better, but I already have my mate so am no longer advertising myself to the male population by wearing skin-tight pants.

Is there a way to make clothes for women that include pockets without appearing bulky?  Instead of rehashing old styles from the past 100 years, can we make something new and creative? Some kind of functional clothing, with pockets?

Image by crsan via Flickr

This evening, the Pussy Galore Group show including artists Katie Arford, Laura Bovinet, Lianna Faletto, Allysa Hallett, Brandon Howe, Andrea Jablonski, Matthew Jorgensen, Andrew Malvenda, Charlie Megna, Eric Oij, Kelly Reaves, Pat Rios, and Madelyn Strutz, opened at the 345 Gallery smack dab  in the center of the oh-so-trendy Wicker Park, Chicago.

Besides the proliferation of cat pictures and videos all over the internet, I thought I would take the time to remind everyone that the only reason why we like cats is because we all have toxoplasmosis in our brains (1 in 4 Americas has it, thank you very much).

Although not in tonight’s show, Ashley Lande has an excellent piece featuring a floating cat head emitting a prism of light above a prophet Muhammad figure (see the second illustration on the top left). Clearly, Ashley Lande has speculated on whether the prophet Muhammad was infected with toxoplasmosis (I say he was!).   Ashley Lande’s work, as described by Lost at E Minor, takes our “current obsession with neo-primitivism and mysticism [and] exposes the awkwardness that arises from the fetishization and appropriation of cultures.”

Audrey Erickson has also made cats a common subject in her paintings, as seen here. The painting on the very top screams “bird on the brain”, which is fitting when we humans have “cats on the brain”. I only hope this Pussy Galore Group Show is at least a little ironic, or embraces the science behind our obsession with cats.

And just for good measure, here is the latest cat meme sweeping the internet:

510 W. Belmont. Photo by Jason Geil, courtesy Skyline Newpaper.

When I was a kid, the year 2010 brought on images of space suits and hovercraft. If you had asked me at 8 years old what I’d be doing in 2010, I was sure to have described something like an episode of the Jetsons.

That’s what they thought back in 1968 when the built 510 W. Belmont, a high-rise building in Lakeview. The owner got a below market-rate interest mortgage, meaning that even though interest on the mortgage would be probably around 7 percent, he only paid 1%. The government made up the difference, with the agreement that the building would be “affordable housing” – below market rate rent for 40 years.

40 years sounded like a long time when they made the agreement. And it is a long time, except that now it is 2010, and not only do we not have space suits and hovercrafts, we haven’t created a blissful utopia where everyone lives in a safe neighborhood, regardless of their income.

The contract that kept 510 W. Belmont affordable expired last Thursday (read my entire story in this week’s edition of Skyline). And because the program that made it so was obscure, short-lived and never fully replaced, it expired for good. Now, the 277 families that live in the building have an uncertain future. Rent increases?  Condo conversion? They’re hearing rumors, and none of them are good.

Forty years seemed like a good idea at the time. But now it seems We the People have invested millions of dollars in a building that may very well be turned into luxury units with granite countertops and whirlpool tubs for yuppies that already dominate the neighborhood. It won’t happen tomorrow – the market’s too poor for that. But we can’t guarantee the future either.

Now, we may be headed down that path again. Although it’s been shelved for now, the Department of Housing and Urban Development moved to privatize public housing earlier this spring. The plan would have given private businesses the contract to run public housing, taking it off the government’s hands, for 30 years. What happens after 30 years? Well, who knows… But 2040 is light  years away, right?

If we’re going to make a big public investment – like building thousands of apartments or paying the interest on a multi-million dollar mortgage – those investments should last. Our public policy has become that of a skeezy car dealership – pay hundreds to lease a car for a couple of years and in the end, all you get is diddly-squat.

Citizens of Chicago, we’ve been burned with privatization before. Lets make this our motto: public investments should be controlled by the public interest, not by a profit-hungry corporation. Let’s stop leasing our city car and realize that decent housing for all isn’t a need that’s going to go away, in 2040 or beyond.

Photo by Kevin Collins

The American social safety net is an all-or-nothing kind of deal. It’s not a safety net designed to help you move up. It’s one that’s nearly guaranteed to keep you dependent.

One reason? The social safety net encourages asset poverty. Asset poverty is different from income poverty – not having enough coming in. Asset poverty is when families can’t get access to wealth when their income gets cut off – assets like investments, savings accounts, 401ks, home equity, insurance policies, etc.

When you’re asset poor, it just takes one or two wrong turns to end up income poor. Getting injured at work, getting laid off, a huge car repair or medical expense.

But if you’re income poor, the social safety net we have – welfare, medicaid, wic – requires you to be asset poor. If you have too much in the bank, you’re not qualified, even if you don’t have a financial stream coming in.

Now, that makes sense on the surface. After all, we don’t want millionaires with lots of cash in the bank in the welfare line, right?

The problem is, we create a system where people can’t be their own safety net. Maybe they need food stamps or welfare for a few months, but they can only get it if they spend down their savings to the point where, if they are cut off for any reason, they’ll flounder. It makes families dependent on state aid and unable to move forward.

We’re beginning to see the paradox, though. There’s a few new tools being used to fight poverty, and they’re the old fashioned kind: saving and budgeting.

WBEZ’s Natalie Moore chronicled the efforts of mothers in Lawndale trying to get a handle on their finances. They’re taking a financial literacy course at the Lawndale League of Extraordinary Women, learning about budgeting, saving and the importance of creating your own safety net.

“When you actually sit down and write down what you’re spending every week, it will blow your mind because it blew my mind,” said Lynn Morton, a peer trainer for the LLEW.

She emphasized that every little bit counts – even a quarter given to a child to run to the corner store is worth documenting.

Another tool for fighting poverty is also emerging, and that’s a special savings account called an Individual Development Account.

The concept of an IDA is simple – a person sets goals and saves to achieve them. Maybe it’s buying a home or starting a business, going back to college or getting a promotion. They get special help working toward those goals – help filling out financial aid forms or figuring out a budget. Then, most importantly, every dollar they save goes into a special account that’s matched or sometimes even doubled or tripled by the organization. A single mom hoping to buy a house puts in $25 at the end of the month, and her IDA puts in $75.

At the end of the program, people reach their goals and climb out of poverty. They don’t just have money – they have skills, and the confidence that they can reach their goals.

The LA Times chronicled the journey of Dametria Williams, a single mom and health care worker who made $14,000 a year. She wanted to start her own business, but that seemed impossible.

“I used to walk through the world thinking there is never enough,” Williams said. “There is not enough money, there is not enough food, there is not enough time.

“When you are in the mind-set of thinking there is not enough, you aren’t even looking for help. But when you realize that there is enough — that money is a manageable tool — you start to see what help is available to you.”

Williams got an IDA and was able to save enough for her daughter to go to a tutoring program and eventually start her own business.

Individual Development Accounts are available in every state, but they’re hard to find, hidden behind more traditional forms of assistance. The Chicago Housing Authority offers a program like an IDA for public housing residents, called the Family Self Sufficiency Program.

Everyday, I hear complaints that the poor are dependent on the system, lazy and unmotivated. Many families are dependent, but not because they want to be. If we want to end poverty, we’ve got to start championing and supporting policies that work, not just keep people slaves to the system.

Image by Getty Images North America via @daylife

Chicagoans know they can count on a few things when the weather turns fair in summer: hundreds of thousands will flock to the Lakefront, live bands will play at lunchtime on State Street corners, farmers will haul fresh produce into town for the morning markets, fireworks will light the evening skies at least twice a week, and dozens of our neighbors will be shot to death.

So inured are we to the nighttime gunshots and the next-day numbers that we lose track of the body count.

“As of May 1st 2010, it was estimated that the same number of Americans were killed in Chicago as in the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq combined,” writes Krista Wortendyke, a Chicago photographer and artist who has taken it upon herself, like the bell ringers of old, to keep the city’s toll.

“As the temperature rises so does the homicide rate. Beginning on Memorial Day and ending on Labor Day, I will track the homicides in the city. Once the crime scenes are processed and the yellow tape is taken down, I will visit and photograph the location of each murder.”

On June 1, Wortendyke launched the blog “Killing Season: Chicago 2010,” where she posts not only the numbers but the names of the fallen and brief descriptions of each casualty, like this one:

Xiaohong Song, 50

At 1:43 a.m., Song got off the bus following a trip to a casino boat and was approached by two male suspects in the 200 block of West 23rd Street in the Chinatown neighborhood. They grabbed him from behind and strangled him to death.

The death toll was at 59 through July 3, with Fourth of July casualties not yet included (UPDATE: six killed on the Fourth of July)

Wortendyke also concerns herself with violence in her artwork, assembling fragmented images of violence from war zones. On the homefront, “Killing Season,” records the fragmented nature of Chicago’s war (here’s a map of one week’s carnage) in disjointed narratives of singular deaths. A kind of typical Chicago killing narrative, to the extent that the death of any individual can ever be called typical, does emerge. It looks something like this:

Walter Lampeley, 28 years old

Lampeley was shot and killed at his home in the 2400 block of West Taylor Street in the West Side Lawndale neighborhood early this morning. At about 11:54 a.m., he was fighting another person when a vehicle pulled up, suspects exited, and shots were fired at him. Lampeley suffered a gunshot wound to his neck and was pronounced dead at 12:56 a.m. at Mount Sinai.

Drive-by shootings rarely result in arrests, police say, because of a code of silence in Chicago’s subaltern communities. Long before police can make an arrest, there are often retaliatory strikes. “Today’s victims are tomorrow’s offenders,” Chicago Police Superintendent Jodi Weiss has said many times, usually during a press conference at a murder scene.

Wortendyke’s record captures what has become the city’s shame, the slaughter of its juveniles:

Jeremy Baggett, 15 years old

Baggett and a friend were on the 4200 block of West Thomas Avenue in the West Humboldt Park neighborhood about 9:30 p.m. when someone across the street began firing at them. Baggett was fatally shot while trying to flee on his bicycle. He was pronounced dead at 12:25 a.m. today. The companion told police that Baggett began riding away on his bike and then collapsed a short distance away. Police officers found Baggett on the sidewalk near Piccolo Middle School with a neck wound. He was a sophomore at Orr Academy High School.

A True tip of the Slanty cap to Laura M. Browning for alerting us to “Killing Season.”