Things I learned from this week's Reader (8-30-05)

Theater edition.

-Denise Druczweski's Inferno is "a delightful comedy with heart."
-Corn Productions' The Bad Seed is a "laugh-out-loud spoof."
-Corn Productions is apparently associated in some way with something called "Tiff and Mom."
-"What carries [The Lion King] isn't the melodramatic plot and characters but the stagecraft."
-Wicked "offers a revisionist account of how green-skinned teen misfit Elphaba and her perky blonde schoolmate Glinda are transformed into the witches of Oz."
-"[The] Orestia ... retells the ancient Greek legend of Orestes, who murdered his mother after she murdered his father because he had slain her daughter."

Wow, Greek legend. I'm all cultured now. Thanks, Reader!

Not Hitler (I just like wearing the outfit)

H-E-double-hockey-sticks hath no fury like that of a right-wing doofus scorned. In the Reader mailbag this week, a long and angry and well-nigh unreadable missive by some dude connected to ProtestWarrior, the conservative web site with the exceedingly gay logo that was hacked (allegedly) by last week’s pouty Reader coverboy. (See Hack Need below.)

In sentences as long as Henry James -- not as long as Henry James’ sentences, but actually as long as Henry James’ rotted corpse from head to toe -- letter-writer Justin Fleming drives home ... ah ... some point or ... another about ... er ... something or ... ah, whatever.

Alas, I fell into a coma sometime during the first sentence and when I returned to consciousness all I could remember was Hitler. Something about Hitler. I think the Protest Warrior dude wanted us to know that he was Hitler. Or that he WASN'T Hitler. I'm pretty sure it had SOMETHING to do with Hitler. Oh, and that maybe people shouldn’t be picking on him and his friends so much. Protest Warrior dude's friends, not Hitler's. (Apparently they are not the same people.)

Hey, you try reading the letter. See if you can tell me what he’s going on about. I dare ya. I double hockey sticks dare ya!

Actually, instead of doing that, I’ve thought of a FUN GAME! Anyone who can successfully diagram the first sentence of Fleming’s missive will win a FUN PRIZE! Here in all its curdled glory:

“For as long as violence, crime, and perfidy in the name of “social justice” has been a sort of rite of passage for young, white, middle-class Americans who obey their professors, it has been framed as “activism” that, although unhelpful, is somehow proportionate to imagined abuses committed by chimeric rightwing cabals lurking always behind them as they speak drunkenly about President Bush being Hitler in some live/work space located in a newly gentrified corner of the city.”

Ouch! All that typing made my typy hand all hurty.

NOTE: Aforementioned “fun prize” may not be fun or a prize.

KEYWORDS: Right-wing, Left-wing, Douchebag, Hitler, Hacktivist, Henry James, Coma, Chimeric Rightwing Cabals, Liz Armstrong, Man-boobs, Penis.

Hack Need

The cable news channels have their Natalee Holloways; the Reader has its Jeremy Hammonds. The beaches and hotel bars of Aruba still swarm with TV, ah. "journalists" on the cold case of the hot presumed-dead blonde. The Reader, meanwhile, devotes yet another forest-worth of newsprint to yet another story of some earnest young activist’s run in with The Man.

"But Can He Hack Prison?" the cover of this week’s Reader asks. "This 20-year-old antiwar activist could be facing hard time for online crime." Our coverboy, the aforementioned Mr. Hammond, pecks defiantly at his laptop in the cover shot, a scarf draped rakishly around his neck. His (alleged) crime? (Allegedly) swiping credit card numbers from a right-wing web site, an (alleged) act of astounding (alleged) stupidity that brought the FBI to his door.

Our handsome hacktivist (his term) hasn’t actually been CHARGED with anything just yet, but that doesn’t stop The Reader from mentioning "hard time" in its coverline – nor did it stop Jeremy’s pals from starting a web site called freejeremy.com. Among other things, the site invites visitors to "Help drop the investigation!" -- which doesn’t make much sense, if you think about it in a logical, literal sort of way, though it’s not hard to see what they must have meant.

I’m more troubled by the site’s NAME. If your lawyer is posting press releases on a site demanding that you be freed, before you’ve even been charged, much less tried and convicted, this would seem to suggest that he doesn’t have much faith in your innocence or his lawyering ability. You gotta think these things through, folks.

Unlike the cable news channels, which only seem interested in missing persons if they happen to be white and hot, the Reader is at least an equal-opportunity time-waster when it comes to its little obsession. Ben Joravsky’s piece this week tells the Rashomon-like story of corrupt-alderman-turned-soul-food-restauranteur Wallace Davis’ recent run in with The Man.

In an act of creative casting, The Man was represented in this particular case by a black woman -- specifically, a black policewoman who arrived at Davis' restaurant one recent evening recently to find him confronting a knife-wielding would-be robber with a broom. Yada, yada, and Davis ends up beaten by several dozen cops, all white, that the "Aunt Jemima" (his words) policewoman called for backup. That’s his story, anyway. Trust me, it doesn't make much more sense without the yada-ing.

Non-Gratuitious Nudity, or Not All Crack is Bad

Like young Spiky, I too have been dismayed by all the icky gratuitous nudity in The Reader lately. But nude photos need not offend, so long as they are tastefully done. Here, for example, is a candid photo from a recent editorial meeting at The Reader Sucks. Our interns certainly are a rambunctious bunch!

An exercise in Manichean polarity

Good morning, students. Today we're going to talk about a difficult and complicated subject: human sexuality. I know many of you have been "experimenting," and that's fine. Just remember, while some of these... activities... are harmless, others can have terrible consequences.

Like, say, nausea.

OK, I can't keep that schoolteacher thing going. The point is, I am so fucking sick of seeing nudity in the Reader all the fucking time! I'm sick of it! They've had badly framed, badly reproduced, ungroomed, underdeveloped, pasty Midwestern flesh in there virtually every other week since the fucking redesign and I'm SICK of it.

Look. I like lanky alternaboys as much as the next girl. And I'm the first to say we need more public displays of penises in this world.

But, in the immortal words bequeathed to us by Seinfeld, there's good naked and bad naked. (And good naked, and good naked, and good naked, and good not-really-naked. And bad naked.)

There's also a time and a place. Like in my bedroom with the Tula vibe and some K-Y. Not in the middle of a cafe when I'm just looking for the movie listings.

Good naked. Bad naked. That's all I'm saying. Class dismissed.

Death and Taxis

Well, looks like someone had a chat with someone and the someones agreed that endcabviolence.com wasn't such a good idea after all: as of today, anyway, the site has been replaced with an ad for doman name seller godaddy.com.

Meanwhile, cabbie rag Chicago Dispatcher has put up a web page of its own: StopKillingChicagoCabdrivers.com.

Visitors to that site will notice, alongside a long and depressing list of cabbies killed in recent years, that the Dispatcher has a regular radio show called ... "Are You Talkin' To Me." Which normally would be a pretty stale reference, but somehow in this context it's actually sort of funny.

No Miner No Miner No Miner

The new Reader comes out tomorrow.

I must, I must, I must not write about Miner. I am sick of writing about Miner. No Miner, no Miner, no Miner. I don’t want this blog to turn into Miner Sucks. Because that would be too depressing for words.

I mean, say some lovely young thing comes up to me at a party and we’re talking and then she says, "Well, enough about your boring day job as an alligator wrangler. What are your true passions? What are your HOBBIES?"

And I say, "well, I collect Betty Boop memorabilia and I, er, co-write an anonymous blog about how Michael Miner at the Chicago Reader sucks." And she says, this time with an exaggerated Russian accent, "I knew it. You are no man! You are a boy, only a boy!" And then I start to cry.

No Miner, no Miner, no Miner. I will not, as young Spiky likes to say, go Miner. I will not go gentle into that not-so-good Miner.

All Miner and no play makes Spacecog a dull boy. All Miner and no play makes Spacecog a dull boy. All Miner and no play makes Spacecog a dull boy. All Miner and no play makes Spacecog a dull boy. All Miner and no play makes Spacecog a dull boy. All Miner and no play makes Spacecog a dull boy. All Miner and no play makes Spacecog a dull boy. All Miner and no play makes Spacecog a dull boy. All Miner and no play makes Spacecog a dull boy. All Miner and no play makes Spacecog a dull boy. All Miner and no play makes Spacecog a dull boy. All Miner and no play makes Spacecog a dull boy. All Miner and no play makes Spacecog a dull boy. All Miner and no play makes Spacecog a dull boy. All Miner and no play makes Spacecog a dull boy. All Miner and no play makes Spacecog a dull boy. All Miner and no play makes Spacecog a dull boy. All Miner and no play makes Spacecog a dull boy. All Miner and no play makes Spacecog a dull boy. All Miner and no play makes Spacecog a dull boy. All Miner and no play makes Spacecog a dull boy. All Miner and no play makes Spacecog a dull boy. All Miner and no play makes Spacecog a dull boy. All Miner and no play makes Spacecog a dull boy. All Miner and no play makes Spacecog a dull boy. All Miner and no play makes Spacecog a dull boy. All Miner and no play makes Spacecog a dull boy. All Miner and no play makes Spacecog a dull boy. All Miner and no play makes Spacecog a dull boy. All Miner and no play makes Spacecog a dull boy. All Miner and no play makes Spacecog a dull boy. All Miner and no play makes Spacecog a dull boy. All Miner and no play makes Spacecog a dull boy

Michael Miner helps to heap dirt on a murdered cabbie

This week, we here at The Reader Sucks feel we must set aside our usual drolleries and get serious. Here’s why:

This past February, a Chicago cabbie named Haroon Paryani died after a confrontation with a passenger escalated in a bizarre and tragic way: Paryani slipped and fell down in front of his cab, which was quickly commandeered by the angry passenger -- who proceeded to run him over, then to back up over him, then to run over him a third time before speeding away, according to witnesses at the scene.

The (alleged) killer? A man named Michael Jackson (not that one), who worked on AIDS issues for the City of Chicago. Jackson vanished that night but ultimately turned himself in. Originally released on bail, he found himself back in jail after an incident in which he (allegedly) attacked a nurse. All these "allegedlies" aside, from everything I have read about the case he deserves to be behind bars for a very long time.

So this week "Scoops" Miner reports on an utterly despicable development in the case: A web site that purports to be collecting information on abusive cabbies but which is in fact designed to collect dirt on just one cabbie – the now-deceased Paryani. "Has this man threatened you or made you feel uncomfortable?" it asks. "CLICK HERE NOW to share your story."

The site, endcabviolence.com , shows two blurry head shots of the murdered man, whose head was crushed in the attack; nowhere does it mention the murder.

Who are the fucks who set up this site? Miner talks to Jackson’s boyfriend, who acknowledges that, no big shock here, it’s the work of "the friends of Mike Jackson."

Any decent journalist would ask: why the fuck are you doing this, given that under no possible circumstances could one see Jackson’s (alleged) actions as anything but cold-blooded murder? Repeatedly running over a 61-year-old cabbie lying in the street is hardly an act of self-defense.

Miner touches on the question, quickly drops it, and proceeds to devote the rest of his column’s main section to … dishing dirt on Paryani. In 1989, he notes, Paryani was accused of attacking a passenger; the case was ultimately settled out of court. Instead of doing any research on the subject, Miner simply quotes a Mike Royko column on the incident written at the time, in which Mike quipped that Paryani didn’t really seem like "an Alan Alda type." (Jackson's ever-helpful lawyer faxed the column over to Miner, saving him the effort of having to look it up.)

The headline for Miner’s column? "Who was Haroon Paryani?"

Nowhere does Miner note that plenty of dirt has been dished about Jackson himself – like, for example, the rumors that he was hopped up on crystal meth the night of the murder. Nowhere does Miner mention the (alleged) attack on the nurse. His only explicit criticism of the web site? He calls an ad for it in Gay Chicago "creepy."

Though Miner quotes gay activist Rick Garcia, who tells him he thinks the web site is vile, Miner gives the last word to … Jackson’s lawyer.

Case closed!

For a rather different take on Paryani, look here .

And look here for a Windy City Times interview with Jackson’s boyfriend about the web site and a whole bunch of other things, like the meth rumors, that suggest that Jackson ain’t exactly Alan Alda himself. The Windy City Times reporter, Andrew Davis, asked a lot of the questions that Miner should have asked and, well, let’s just say he got some interesting, if not always quite believable, answers.

You and Mise en Scene

It’s time once again for ROSENBLURBS, wherein we at The Reader Sucks extract a PR-flak-happy quotable from Jonathan Rosenbaum’s highly, er, oblique prose. This week: some movie-shot-on-video for Swedish television by some dude named Ingmar Bergman! (Who even knew he was still alive?) Anyway:

"The mise en scene [in Saraband] is masterful, but the indifference to visual style seems to border on contempt!!!" Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader

CONTEST! Do you think you could find BETTER Rosenblurbs in his review this week – or, heck, ever? If so, post them in our little comments section! There will be punch and pie for all who do!

Hand jobbery

So a couple weeks – months, years? – ago, "Scoops" Miner wrote a column mocking the Trib’s insistence that "Red Streak" really costs a quarter a copy, when as we all know it’s given out for free all over town. Indeed, Miner noted with smug satisfaction, people are ACTUALLY BEING PAID to HAND THE THING OUT to commuters.

Miner then made what he presumably thought was a little witticism along the lines of:

"You’ve got to hand it to them. No, really, you’ve got to HAND IT TO THEM. Like, literally. In order for them to read it, you've got to HAND THEM a Red Streak, like, with your hands. Into their hands. But also – oh, and this is the genius part -- like that colloquial expression meaning ‘give credit to.’ Come on, it’s funny! And, no, I haven’t had too much to drink. Fuck you and, you, your MOTHER too, and she's a FILTHY WHORE, and I had sex with her, in, like, her butt, which is like, really really FAT, and it smells like POOP! Hic. No, ocifer, YOU'RE the one who’s clearly intoxicated!"

Obviously I’m quoting from memory here.

Anyway, so today on one of my rambles down Michigan Avenue – I make my living, such as it is, as an itinerant match-seller – I espied a portly young fellow with a big pile of Readers he was HANDING OUT to people. Like, with his hands.

Keywords: Michael Miner, Red Streak, hand job, filthy whore, poop.