Category Archives: Middle Way House

09/18/2014
2 Comments
Daniele Watts, David Bowie, Domestic Violence, Lotus Fest 2014, Middle Way House, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Rahm Emanuel

Hot Air

The Acting Profession

Dunno about you but that whole Django Unchained actress run-in with the police smelled rotten to me from the get-go.

The photo of her crying struck me as kinky. She looked like nothing other than an actress chewing the scenery.

Watts

Danièle Watts, Emoting

●

And now we discover that she and her boymate were banging in the car, in the middle of the afternoon, on a public street, with the door open wide enough so that people could photograph their congress from a nearby office building.

But what turned my stomach almost as bad as her falling back on a celebrity privilege copout and a racial profiling charge was the fact that she and her Romeo wiped themselves clean of bodily fluids and then proceeded to toss the wadded up napkins or tissues on the parkway outside their car.

The whole thing stunk of arrogance, entitlement, and puerility.

And it fries me that now Right Wingers’ll say, for the trillionth time, See, they’re always pulling out the race card.

▼

Bowie

How cool is this?

Tuesday, September 23rd, will be David Bowie Day in Chicago. That’s the day that the Museum of Contemporary Art will open its “David Bowie Is….” retrospective exhibition.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel broke temporarily from his usual union-busting, 1%-kowtowing duties to sign an official City Council proclamation declaring the city in thrall for 24 hours to perhaps my fave rocker.

Chicago City Council

●

The exhibition runs through January 4th and includes “[m]ore than 400 objects, most from the David Bowie Archive — including handwritten lyrics, original costumes, photography, set designs, album artwork, and rare performance material from the past five decades….”

And, in case you’re dying to find out, here are my two fave Bowie discs:

Bowie Discs

Station To Station (L) & Low

●

When I was a callow 20 y.o., I longed to be as cool as Bowie, mainly because he was everything I wasn’t: British, a rock star, thin, light-haired and -skinned, a poet, fragile as a porcelain doll, and rich. One night in about 1979, he dropped in at Neo, a club I haunted regularly. “Go talk to him!” someone said to me. But I was too scared.

Bowie, it turned out, was really short and, in reality, just a guy. In fact, he stumbled as he walked past me away from the bar. That night I decided I would celebrate my non-Bowie-ness as Big Mike.

▼

Calling For Help

Middle Way House reports a 77 percent increase in calls regarding domestic abuse in the days since the Ray Rice/Janay Palmer security cam recording was released. This morning’s Herald Times [paywall] quotes MWH exec director Toby Strout as saying, ““When a celebrity commits domestic violence or sexual assault, it makes the front page for a while, people pay attention.”

Which is a goddamned shame. Which, also, is why I call on all who read this to drop a dime whenever you hear what sounds like a physical altercation. If you’re wrong, so what?

Black Eye

●

Not only that, for my own part, I’ll continue to socially shun anybody I know or am acquainted with who has assaulted and/or battered a “loved” one.

The onus is on us to teach our males that rape and battery aren’t boys-being-boys funtimes but repulsive crimes. How have you conveyed this to your sons, nephews, grandchildren, or brothers lately?

▼

Lotus Fest Sked

Here’s your Lotus Fest 2104 lineup:

Venues

  • Buskirk Chumley Theater 114 E. Kirkwood Ave.
  • First United Methodist Church 219 E. 4th St.
  • First Christian Church 205 E. Kirkwood Ave.
  • First Presbyterian Church 221 E. 6th St.
  • Ivy Tech Community College Tent 6th St. between Walnut & College
  • Old National Bank/Soma Tent 4th & Grant streets
  • The Bluebird 216 N. Walnut St.
  • 3rd St. Park 331 S. Washington St.

●

Thursday, September 18th

● 7pm: Söndörgó, Canzoniere Grecanino Salentino Buskirk Chumley Theater

●

Friday, September 19th

● 6:30pm: Söndörgó First United Methodist Church

● 6:45pm: Catherine MacLellan First Christian Church

● 7pm: Kaia First Presbyterian Church

● 7:15pm: Vanesa Aibar & Company Buskirk Chumley Theater

● 7:15pm: Mames Babegenush Ivy Tech Community College Tent

Mames

Mames Babegenush

●

● 7:15pm: The Revelers Old National Bank/Soma Tent

● 7:45pm: Catherine MacLellan First Christian Church

● 8:05pm: Nora Jane Struthers & the Party Line First United Methodist Church

● 8:50pm: Nagata Shachu Buskirk Chumley Theater

● 8:50pm: Van-Anh Vanessa Vo First Christian Church

● 8:50pm: FullSet First Presbyterian Church

● 8:50pm: Tsuumi Sound System Ivy Tech Community College Tent

● 8:50pm: Aurelio Old National Bank/Soma Tent

● 9:50pm: Söndörgó First United Methodist Church

● 10:10pm: Banda Magda Buskirk Chumley Theater

● 10:25pm: Nora Jane Struthers & the Party Line First Christian Church

Struthers

Nora Jane Struthers

●

● 10:25pm: Erkan Ogur’s Telvin Trio First Presbyterian Church

● 10:25pm: Orkesta Mendoza Ivy Tech Community College Tent

● 10:25pm: Movits! Old National Bank/Soma Tent

●

Saturday, September 20th

● Noon to 5pm: Lotus in the Park 3rd St. Park

∙ 12:15pm: Kaia

∙ 1pm: Banda Magda

∙ 1pm: Radha Lakshmi

∙ 1:45pm: Arga Bileg

∙ 2:30pm: Sancocho Music & Dance Collage

∙ 3:15pm: Lotus Dickey Song Workshop

∙ 4pm: The Revelers

● 6:30pm: FullSet Buskirk Chumley Theater

● 6:30pm: Arga Bileg First United Methodist Church

Arga Bileg

Arga Bileg

●

 

● 7pm: Banda Magda Bluebird

● 7:15pm: Catherine MacLellan First Christian Church

● 7:15pm: Tsuumi Sound System Ivy Tech Community College Tent

● 7:15pm: Las Cafeteras Old National Bank/Soma Tent

● 7:30pm: Nagata Shachu Buskirk Chumley Theater

● 7:50pm: Kaia First United Methodist Church

● 8:50pm: The Revelers Bluebird

● 8:50pm: Vanesa Aibar & Company Buskirk Chumley Theater

● 8:50pm: Derek Gripper First Christian Church

● 8:50pm: Nora Jane Struthers & the Party Line First United Methodist Church

● 8:50pm: Mames Babegenush Ivy Tech Community College Tent

● 8:50pm: Aurelio Old National Bank/Soma Tent

● 10:25pm: Emel Mathiouthi Buskirk Chumley Theater

● 10:25pm: Singing for the Planets First Christian Church

● 10:25pm: FullSet First United Methodist Church

● 10:25pm: Orkesta Mendoza Ivy Tech Community College Tent

● 10:25pm: Movits! Old National Bank/Soma Tent

●

Sunday, September 21st

● 3pm: World Spirit Concert: Arga Bileg & Derek Gripper Buskirk Chumley Theater

▲

12/17/2011
2 Comments
Alexandra Horwitz, Barnard College, bloomingOUT, Bloomington LGBTQ Film Festival, Buskirk-Chumley Theater, Carol Fischer, Cats, Coprophagia, Dogs, Domestic Violence, Ellen Degeneres, Helen Harrell, Inside of a Dog, Lesbian, Middle Way House, Nina Simone, Oscar Levant, Portia de Rossi, PRIDE 2012, Shani Robbins, Vegan, Vegetarian

The Pencil Today:

✍

REALITY SHOW

“Beyond the phony tinsel of Hollywood lies the real tinsel.” — Oscar Levant.

♢

YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT?

So, Ellen Degeneres and her lovely bride, Amanda Rogers — oops, I mean Portia de Rossi — have become business moguls, peddling vegetarian foods to the rest of us who haven’t changed our names for professional purposes.

In fact, the two have gone so far as to be considering introducing a line of vegan grub for your pet dogs and cats.

I bet Steve the Dog doesn’t know he shouldn’t me eating meat or, for that matter, anything that has animal products in it. I hesitate to tell him so because he might go into a funk. He’s a rather sensitive pooch and he doesn’t like to disappoint people.

“Aw, Man, I didn’t Know.”

✍

Funny thing is, he seems to be reasonably healthy despite eating food processed in concentration camps and including hunks of pig, bovine, horse, and other brothers and sisters of ours.

Also, he loves to eat…, well, brace yourself — and if you’re lunching don’t read any further — he loves to eat deer shit. And the fewmets of quiet a few other critters. He even sometimes dines on his own day-old bombs.

Steve the Dog is not unusual in this regard. Alexandra Horowitz, animal cognition professor at Barnard College and author of the very cool book “Inside of a Dog,” says all dogs are coprophages (shit-eaters.) She suggests they do this because they’re so desperate to sniff things and their olfactory mechanism is so constructed that eating things brings their aroma that much closer to home.

✍

Degeneres has been quoted as saying, “… [I]f you love your animal, then you should feed them something that’s not dangerous for them. There’s a lot of poisonous stuff that they’re putting in [pet] food, those by-products.”

Now I’m no animal cognition expert. Nor am I terribly well-versed on vegetarianism and veganism. But I do know this: any creature that eats shit doesn’t, well, give a shit about whether or not he’s eating a trace amount of preservatives.

♢

LESBIAN VIOLENCE

When people think domestic violence, they generally flash to the image of a man walloping a woman.

That’s the usual scenario but host Helen Harrell and producer Carol Fischer presented another side of the problem during this week’s bloomingOUT on WFHB.

Fischer & Harrell

✍

Harrell and co-host Abigail Sewell interviewed Shani Robbins of Middle Way House about physical abuse in lesbian relationships.

One great thing about bloomingOUT is it doesn’t try to run and hide from unflattering topics within the queer community.

BTW: Helen and Abigail remind us that PRIDE 2012, the Bloomington LGBTQ film festival is coming up in January. Some 10 features and numerous shorts will run at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater from the 18th through the 29th with countless related events also scheduled.

♢

O-O-H CHILD

Nina Simone died in 2003 but her voice is forever. The disc, “Nina Simone Remixed & Reimagined,” illustrates how timeless her stylings were and are. Listen:

♢

%d