The Reader SUCKS

Oh, and the Reader Sucks

2007-03-03T12:57:00.000-06:00

Hey friends. You may have noticed that neither I nor Mr. 'Cog have been posting lately. That's because critiquing the Reader, however purging it may be, has the drawback of requiring you to read the Reader. We just got fed up with it.The stuff they've trotted out for the last few months hasn't re-piqued my interest. I'd like to cite a couple of cover stories as examples of badly-done stories

Fertilizer

2006-01-22T23:38:00.000-06:00

I honestly just don't get the Reader sometimes. This week's cover story is about a great topic -- EarthBoxes, these plastic tubs that help you grow plants on sites with limited water or poor soil. But however ingenious the devices may be, do they really warrant a story that's essentially a retyped press release? Martha Bayne spends the entire article explaining how great these are, how many

Belletwits

2005-12-25T22:02:00.000-06:00

It's the Reader's annual fiction issue again, and once again it's an exercise in small-pond-ism. The idea of a Chicago-centric fiction issue sounds OK at first. But the Reader manages to make it virtually unreadable. They start with a groundless assumption: that Chicago writers will inevitably produce 4-7, and only 4-7, stories per year that the rest of us will want to read. In fact, Chicago

I have chosen to stay and suck

2005-12-17T17:54:00.000-06:00

A flurry of scrappy contentiousness whipped up by a recent post reminded me of something that's confounded me for a while now: the irrational loyalty that low-to-medium-level Reader staffers cherish for their employer. I really feel for these people. Clearly they've internalized the ideology of their oppressors, and their careers are paying the price.Look, if you're one of the non-sinecured

A fun game

2005-12-12T15:32:00.000-06:00

Q: How do you tell the difference between this story and this story?A: One is parody; the other is self-parody.(Also acceptable: The first was a timely critique when it was written five years ago; the first is entertaining and trenchant; the first has a clever illustration.)

Rosenbaum raves!

2005-12-07T19:23:00.000-06:00

It's no secret that Jonathan Rosenbaum is a tough critic to please. Especially when it comes to mainstream Hollywood fare. The Hours? It "reduces Virginia Woolf and her art to a set of feminist stances and a few plot points, without reference to style or form." Grosse Pointe Blank? "An unholy mess that becomes steadily more incoherent--morally, dramatically, and conceptually." But Rent...

A Taste of Crap -- Miner bangs on his highchair

2005-11-21T10:46:00.000-06:00

Miner's in fine form this week. He covers the Taste of Heaven Cafe controversy (Way to go, McCauley!) which, though a fun story, isn't exactly going to impact the fate of the republic. No wonder he's interested!As a local press critic, you'd figure Miner would want to write about what's wrong with the Trib. Especially since the Taste of Heaven story is a perfect example. Both the Trib and the NYT

A deee-luxe apartment in the sky

2005-11-07T01:00:00.000-06:00

Well we're movin' on upTo the East SideTo a deee-luxe apartment in the skyMovin' on upTo the East SideWe finally got a piece of the pie There are many things we may associate with this song: Insubordinate maids. Women named Weezie. Perpetually flummoxed 50-ish white men who have managed to snag improbably stylish and svelte wives despite the fact that the small, angry guy next door calls them

Reports of my retirement have been exaggerated (and Miner still needs to die)

2005-11-02T01:02:00.000-06:00

Fuck you, Cog. I resent the implication that I have something better to do. You know perfectly well that my madcap social whirl revolves around the quickie mart and its rack of cellophane-wrapped Hostess products. (As such, the Reader is the perfect complement to my lifestyle.) Anyway, even if I had retired, Miner's latest column would have me reeling in the fishing line and heading back to

This just in: The Reader still sucks

2005-10-20T18:05:00.000-05:00

You may have noticed that we haven't been posting much of late. Has the Reader somehow lost its suckitide? Hardly. It's just that, well, WE HATE THE READER. We hate reading it; we hate carrying it around; we hate the ink that rubs off on our tender skin -- no matter how hard we wash, we'll never again be really and truly clean. Every time we site down to write a post for this little blog, in

Parsley, Sage, Rosenbaum and Time

2005-09-22T18:26:00.000-05:00

I read it, scratched my head, and read it again. Suddenly, I saw a flash of lights before my eyes and felt myself hurtling into an infinite vortex, as if the very fabric of space and time had somehow come apart. ... Night followed day like the flapping of a black wing. ... I saw trees growing and changing like puffs of vapour, now brown, now green. ... I saw huge buildings rise up faint and fair,

Another day in the life of... Liz Armstrong - Girl Reporter!

2005-09-21T10:30:00.000-05:00

Beep. "Armstrong!" At the sound of the intercom, Liz looked up from the latest issue of UR and shuddered. Beep. Beep. She reached for her Sofia Mini champagne-in-a-can and found it empty. Pity. She had a feeling she'd need alcohol after she answered this particular summons. Maybe she could

Michael Miner's European Vacation

2005-09-19T13:12:00.000-05:00

Mystery solved! ‘Scoops” Miner’s column was Katrina-free last week because, like a certain somebody in the White House, he was on vacation when the levees broke. The Reader editors could have saved me a lot of confusion had they taken a moment to explain: Michael Miner is on vacation. This week’s column is just some crap we found on his hard drive. We mean, besides all that tranny porn.So now

Katrina Who? Part the Second

2005-09-14T12:49:00.000-05:00

Our story continues. In my search for Katrina-related stuff in the Reader I flipped over to “Scoops” Miner’s column. Surely he’d have something to say. Something stupid and impenetrable, probably, but SOMETHING. I mean, a month ago, he devoted a column to the question of whether or not we’re safer now than were were before 9/11. And then back in July, he offered up this little gem:If and when

Katrina Who? Part One

2005-09-13T14:42:00.000-05:00

Long before The Onion was a gleam in its editors eyes, the National Lampoon did a brilliant parody of a preposterously parochial small-town paper, the Dacron Republican-Democrat. On its front page, in giant type, a headline blared: TWO DACRON WOMEN FEARED MISSING IN VOLCANIC DISASTER. Right below it, in much smaller type: Japan Destroyed. I would have thought it impossible to get much more

Things I learned from this week's Reader (9-12-05 edition)

2005-09-12T13:35:00.000-05:00

Surprisingly funny and/or informative this week. Puzzling...- Responding to reports that many Katrina survivors lost everything in the disaster, Bush said, "Only when you work hard and chew desperately on your own footwear can you live the American dream." -The Iraqi constitution gives the Kurds the right to establish casinos and bingo parlors in their territory, free of state regulation. -

Letter? I barely know her!

2005-09-08T19:56:00.000-05:00

There are only so many hours in a day. Twenty, twenty-five? Somewhere around there. And we at The Reader Sucks have had pretty full schedules lately: watching Katrina coverage, wailing in impotent rage, looking for embarrassing pictures of Tara Reid online, and putting in a full day’s actual work. Yes, our meager stipends as staffers at The Reader Sucks have not been enough to support the

A Moment of SIlence for Trent Lott's House

2005-09-02T17:18:00.000-05:00

We at The Reader Sucks feel compelled by recent events to set aside our normal Reader-related japeries.A moment of silence, please. For Trent Lott’s house. We learned of the house’s unfortunate demise earlier today in a statement from one George W. Bush, speaking at the Mobile Regional Airport: BUSH: We've got a lot of rebuilding to do. First, we're going to save lives and stabilize the situation

Nattering Nabobs of Narm

2005-09-01T00:44:00.000-05:00

Actually, this post isn't about Six Feet Under. I just like saying Narm!It's about negativism. As you may have noticed, we here at TRS are not above a little gratuitous hostility in the same way that the sea is not above the clouds.*** But, hard though it is to believe, there are actually times when crankiness is not helpful.Like in a theater review, sometimes. I love a good pan as much as the

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

2005-08-31T03:00:00.000-05:00

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

Not Hitler (I just like wearing the outfit)

2005-08-29T18:07:00.000-05:00

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

Hack Need

2005-08-24T13:27:00.000-05:00

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

Non-Gratuitious Nudity, or Not All Crack is Bad

2005-08-23T07:05:00.000-05:00

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

2005-08-21T22:53:00.000-05:00

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

Death and Taxis

2005-08-19T13:07:00.000-05:00

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

No Miner No Miner No Miner

2005-08-17T01:53:00.000-05:00

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

Michael Miner helps to heap dirt on a murdered cabbie

2005-08-16T19:11:00.000-05:00

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

You and Mise en Scene

2005-08-05T12:15:00.000-05:00

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

Hand jobbery

2005-08-04T18:38:00.000-05:00

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

Some Dude Does a Thing

2005-07-28T19:26:00.000-05:00

The Reader’s editors have a deep and abiding passion for unending stories about uninteresting people doing unimportant things. It’s not hard to see why. However unrewarding these stories are from a reader’s point of view, they do effectively fill the vast spaces between ads in section one. Most are so unremarkable that we here at The Reader Sucks do not remark upon them. Also, that way we don’t

Sherlock Spacecog and the Case of the Poo-Poo Poopiehead

2005-07-26T15:43:00.000-05:00

One of our readers offers this critique of the, shall we say, Rabelaisian tenor of much of my writing: "I don't know why I am even bothering to write this comment, considering your writing is grade school level at best. Anyone who uses the word Poopiehead & expects readers to take them seriously oughta think twice about quitting their day job (if you have one)." The "grade school level" comment

His Fart Will Go On

2005-07-22T12:47:00.000-05:00

Miner again. Look, I don’t mean to write about Miner every week. But what can I do? He’s like some giant journalistic piñata. A piñata who’s constantly spouting inane drivel and pompous "profundities" and who won’t ever, ever shut up. You can’t help but hit him. (Alas, what comes out of him when you do is not candy.) So what has "Scoops" Miner farted out this week? Part One: The ABCs of Miner’s

Subpoena envy

2005-07-18T21:20:00.000-05:00

A quick quiz: Who does "Scoops" Miner consider the biggest hero in the world of journalism today?A) New York Times reporter Judith Miller, now sitting in jail because she believes reporters shouldn’t be forced to rat out their sources to whoever stops by with a subpoenaB) The guy who stopped by with a subpoenaOh, I won’t keep you in suspense. It’s B, also known as special prosecutor Patrick

Beat on the cat

2005-07-18T15:14:00.000-05:00

Most of the excitement in The Reader this week, such as it is, can be found on the letters page. D. Sparks of Rogers Park fucks with the Jesus; the suspiciously-named "Ellie Maybe" of Wicker Park calls Liz Armstrong a "dumb bitch." Meanwhile, one Kurt Wettstein (West Side!) gives mad props to anti-usury laws and offers his translation of a crucial passage in Thessalonians. Booyakasha!But the real

Look inside the can to win

2005-07-12T04:03:00.000-05:00

A funny thing happened this weekend at the Old Town School's Folk and Roots Festival in Lincoln Square. Wending through a maze of batik windcatchers and stained-glass toe rings in search of the beer tent**, I came upon a booth hung with pictures of a backwards-facing "R." Yes, it was the Reader. A handful of low-level staffers sat in the sun, reminding people just who provides the doorstops in

There once was a man at The Reader

2005-07-07T21:17:00.000-05:00

Pity the poor PR schlub whose task it is to carve out peppy, positive blurbs from reviews of Sally Potter’s new film "Yes." It’s a bit of a hard sell: all the dialogue in the film is written in, well, rhyming iambic pentameter. The two main characters of the film, an Irish-American gal and a studly Lebanese cook having an affair, are named He and She. The whole thing is supposed to be some sort

Who's on First (Amendment)?

2005-07-06T05:59:00.000-05:00

Posted by: spacecog on Buzznet I'm still recovering from the 4th of July, when Americans of all stripes celebrate their right to set off illegal explosives just outside my window all the damn night. Hey, they’re just expressing themselves, much the way my cat expresses her desire to be fed, again and again in the course of the day, by biting me on the foot. Or the way we at The Reader Sucks

ANTISOCIAL 2.0

2005-07-05T14:48:00.000-05:00

Normally I try not to criticize Liz Armstrong too much. Targeting the newest Reader regular suggests the paper was OK pre-redesign, and I certainly wouldn't want to give that impression. But this week Liz proves to have her head nestled so deeply in her butt, her sphincter muscles must be seriously impeding airflow. (Actually, reduced oxygen to the brain could explain a lot.)Liz reports from

Roadkill on the ... oh, never mind.

2005-06-23T11:42:00.000-05:00

Posted by: spacecog on Buzznet A week ago, idly perusing a copy of The Reader. I fell into a deep, deathlike slumber. I was awakened only this afternoon, jolted into consciousness with an adrenaline shot direct to my heart, delivered by my faithful nurse, Bettina. "What the hell," I murmured, once I recovered from the shock."You have been sleeping for a long time," she said. "I know you tell

Deep Doo-Doohead

2005-06-13T12:50:00.000-05:00

Posted by: spacecog on Buzznet ....Now that the stupid spectacle of the Michael Jackson trial is over, we at The Reader Sucks can return our attention to even stupider things – like, for example, Michael "Scoops" Miner. This week Miss Stupid Thing delves shallowly into the mysteries of Deep Throat. The column is written in Miner’s typically, er, indirect style, which make the point of all his

These Farts

2005-06-07T11:41:00.000-05:00

Posted by: spacecog Like Spiky I have not yet read enough of last week’s Reader to find something to write about for this little blog. Well, actually, I’ve read none of it. Here’s the thing. As you may have noticed already, we at The Reader Sucks actually HATE reading the Reader. And there’s no issue of the Reader we hate reading more than the annual "These Parts" edition, wherein the Reader

Instead

2005-06-06T02:54:00.000-05:00

We're in the midst of the annual 'These Parts' ish, and frankly I haven't even looked at it yet. How much is there to say about Starved Rock and corn mazes?Instead, try:-City Wendy in the Windy City: Advice for 15-year-old girls"It's okay to have hair on your arms. Really."-VenusZine: How can I be famous like you?"Expect that you are going to be raped just like every other starving wannabe." -Dan

Thing I learned from this week's Reader (6/3/05 edition)

2005-06-03T05:59:00.000-05:00

Sex is the same as money.-"The ideal guy ... doesn't think his fancy condo (or BMW) substitutes for some skills in the sack... Physically, you can be a little thick around the middle, a little bald on top.. I relish that exhausted, sweaty feeling of marathon sex." (#110589)-"I am looking for a sweet, pretty, educated Caucasian lady or housewife who enjoys fine dining, hour-long sex and multiple

All your bass are belong to us

2005-05-31T13:55:00.000-05:00

Posted by: spacecog Now, I don’t usually read Liz A’s little reports from hipsterland – life is short, and all that – but this week I couldn’t help noticing that she was writing about an event that young Spiky and I had actually attended: the recent M.I.A./LCD Soundsystem concert at the Metro. M.I.A.—real name, Maya -- is a Tamil gal whose hugely appealing music is an electronicy mishmash of

Miner: Hero of the fuddy duddies!

2005-05-30T09:57:00.000-05:00

Posted by: spacecog So last week I wondered aloud if anyone but me ever read "Scoops" Miner’s interminable mush. This week, an answer! One Ed Baumann of Kenosha Wisconsin writes in to the Reader letters page to gush about how much he allegedly "really enjoyed reading about [Miner’s] frustration in trying to reach a live person at the Sun-Times." Seems Mr. Baumann was himself a newspaper "

Hot or not?

2005-05-26T16:04:00.000-05:00

RIP, "hot." And "cool." Maybe even "buzzworthy." ("Edgy" may have to go, too. But I kinda hope not.)These words are the trucker hats of contemporary prose. Bad writers think such terms are shortcuts to cultural authority: By deploying the modern lingo, they imply that they're "down" with the kids today.But come on, nobody who uses "hot" et al is ever as plugged-in as they pretend to be. Witness

Hang it up, Miner!

2005-05-20T13:52:00.000-05:00

Posted by: spacecog My estimable colleague Spiky may not have had the courage to "go Miner" this go-around, but I did, and can report that the stupidity in this week’s Hot Type is so utter and overwhelming that it more than compensates for any alleged lack of suckitude elsewhere in the Reader. This one’s so bad it almost seems like a parody, a belated April Fools’ joke on all of us. But this

Well, this sucks.

2005-05-20T01:28:00.000-05:00

In the sense that it doesn't. Suck. That much, this week. The cover story, about a maniac trying to ride 25,000 miles on his bike, doesn't interest me, but I can see -- oh, the agony! -- how it might -- MIGHT -- interest somebody. I've sworn not to "go Miner" this week, so it's on to Joravsky -- and he's actually covering something kind of fascinating! At least, if you're fascinated, as I am, by

Stars in Rosenbaum's eyes

2005-05-17T03:09:00.000-05:00

Posted by: spacecog Rosenbaum’s Reader contribution this week is strange indeed, even by his standards. Seems a run in with some irate Star Wars fans (unhappy about his low opinion of the flicks) has left Rosey feeling a tad defensive. (Maybe he’s been reading a little anonymous blog as well.) So, after a typically pompous and obtuse review of Crash, Rosey attempts to explain the strange math

Two-Minute Miner

2005-05-16T13:42:00.000-05:00

Miner actually covers a relevant topic this week -- laws governing what journalists can and can't print -- but of course he manages to hopelessly muddle the issue. Here's a quick guide to the story so that anyone following recent First Amendment news can skip to the worthwhile parts.Paragraph 1: Misc. bloviation -- skippableParagraphs 2-6: There was this Pennsylvania case that addressed the

Prof. Rosenbaum's chattering class

2005-05-13T03:00:00.000-05:00

Posted by: spacecog Do you lurk quietly by the hors d’oeuvres at cocktail parties because you have nothing clever to say? Well, put your wallflower days behind you with help from the Reader’s Jonathan Rosenbaum! Impress even the most suave sophisticates with your newfound knowledge of obscure European cinema!Here’s this week’s guaranteed conversation-starter – with FUN PHRASES lifted directly

When you're tired of pasty midwestern flesh...

2005-05-12T21:42:00.000-05:00

It's no secret that the Reader's redesign made plenty of room for gratuitous nudity. Who can forget the body-painted tits in Chicago Antisocial, not to mention the exposed penises, also in Antisocial? Still, two weeks in a row is a bit much, especially with the "blow job" headline in the books issue. Get a room, guys.

Things I learned from this week's Reader (5/6/05 edition)

2005-05-10T22:23:00.000-05:00

- When you write book reviews for local publications, it's as if your words are going into a black hole. You often can't tell whether you have any readers at all. (p. 18)* - In 1999, John Green lived in a crappy Wicker Park garden apartment with some college friends. (p. 5)- "Wendy McClure went to her first literary reading as a freshman at the University of Iowa in 1989." (That's a LEAD! A LEAD!

Book Immobile

2005-05-08T18:09:00.000-05:00

Posted by: spacecog Why did I just waste precious moments of my finite life reading Dan Weissman’s 1600-word profile of two utterly unexceptional Oak Park booksellers? The first sentence of the piece should have clued me in to the fact that it was going nowhere, and very very slowly: "During a recent visit to Oak Park, some friends told me a nearby bookstore had a bunch of Studs Terkel books

Foot print

2005-05-05T10:24:00.000-05:00

Posted by: spacecog OK, I was wrong. Terribly, terribly wrong. In a previous post, I mocked "Scoops" Miner for cutting-and-pasting huge chunks of a column from someone’s emails. Clearly I wasn’t thinking. Given Miner’s terribleness as a writer, virtually anything he quotes from someone else is guaranteed to be more interesting than his own dour, muddled prose. Take the lead section of week’s

Truth fairies (Also: Miner owns shoes!)

2005-05-01T17:03:00.000-05:00

Posted by: spacecog The best thing about doing this little blog? Seeing the telltale footsteps in our traffic logs of Reader staffers stopping by to take a peek. The worst thing? Actually having to read the fucking Reader, or at least portions of it, every week. I can happily report that this week I didn’t have to wade far into the murky depths to find a little treasure. It comes in the form

Fun with the archives

2005-04-29T09:42:00.000-05:00

Say what you will about Rosenbaum, he's far more postcolonial and culturally aware than anyone else on the planet. Just ask him.-On "Kids": "The New York Times's Janet Maslin called this 'a wake-up call to the world' -- meaning, I suppose, that rice paddy workers everywhere should shell out for tickets and stop evading the problems of white Manhattan teenagers."-On "Once Upon a Time...When we

Priest School

2005-04-25T16:26:00.000-05:00

Posted by: spacecog Well this is odd. In place of a review of the Amityville Horror, the Reader seems to have accidently run some guy’s Cultural Studies term paper on 70s horror movies, feminism, and the Catholic Church. According to Benjamin Strong, the author of the mini-dissertation, the original Amityville Horror, with its hero priest, totally rocked because when it came out in 1979 "

The Reader: Court TV edition

2005-04-24T17:51:00.000-05:00

Another history lesson this week. Between 1969 and 1981, a local guy ran a tiny record label, Bandit Records, with the proceeds from a string of hookers. He died in 1990. But last year the reissue label the Numero Group released a compilation of Bandit cuts, which is all the excuse the Reader needs to revisit this decades-old bagatelle.But how to make it seem interesting? Maybe some worn-out

Miner: Laziest man alive?

2005-04-24T17:13:00.000-05:00

Posted by: spacecog Our methodology here at The Reader Sucks is both straightforward and very, very lazy: we page through the Reader until we come to something that annoys us, then we write down the first things that pop into our heads. Hey presto! A post. Seems Michael "THE CONVOLUTENATOR" Miner has a similar approach. The grain of sand around which his latest column grew was a week-old item

Tikied off

2005-04-19T07:13:00.000-05:00

Posted by: spacecog You know that column in The Onion, "The Outside Scoop," in which a perpetually clueless dork attempts to deliver the hottest gossip? Sometimes I think the entire Reader is written by that guy. Take Richard Knight’s Our Town feature on TIKI CULTURE, that exciting trend that’s sweeping the nation – er, that swept the nation, sort of, quite some time ago -- in which young

Things I learned from this week's Reader

2005-04-18T15:05:00.000-05:00

-Three years ago, local director Dale Goulding was trying to find a copy of a novel by Saddam Hussein. (p. 1)-Two years ago, Manny Flores beat Jesse Granato in the race for First Ward alderman.-Thirteen years ago, Pigface/Ministry vet James Teitelbaum became obsessed with Tiki collectibles. (p. 12)-Seven years ago, local scenester Norah Utley began giving away buttons that said "I heart Norah." (

You're a good man, Saddam Hussein

2005-04-18T07:28:00.000-05:00

Posted by: spacecog Oh lordy. So the Reader cover story this week is about three guys ("a theater vet and two precocious teens") intent on transforming a novel by Saddam Hussein – yes, THAT Saddam Hussein – into a play. And, no, they aren’t doing it as some clever postmodern gloss on the notions of dictatorship or democracy; they’re playing it straight. (Previous plays produced by the teens

Landmark ho!

2005-04-16T15:36:00.000-05:00

This week in Joravskyville:Ben is sort of annoyed by a "gerrymandered" landmark district. Why read 1200 words on the subject when you can get the gist from 14? Here’s Joravsky’s latest, in haiku form: Some alderman guyWants to save some old buildingsWhy not all of them? I believe that captures the essence of his piece. I didn’t read the whole thing, on principle. P.S. Even if you don’t want to

Girls! Girls! Girls?

2005-04-14T18:17:00.000-05:00

Posted by: spacecog The new Reader is here, and with it new revelations. In his review of Hal Hartley’s THE GIRL FROM MONDAY, our boy Rosenbaum reports a startling fact: "The ‘girl’ of the [film’s] title looks like a grown woman. …"Watching television this evening, unsettled by Rosey’s discovery, I came to a realization of my own: The so-called "real girls" featured in the DVD series "Girls

First Lizwatch, and now...

2005-04-13T16:04:00.000-05:00

a review of our blog's teeny but brave site stats reveals that approximately half of our 20-or-so visits a day are from...chicagoreader.com. I don't know why I was surprised, considering their propensity for navel-gazing. At this rate we're only weeks away from a Liz-esque jeremiad in the paper itself. (Miner, let it be Miner...)

Thumbs up my ass!

2005-04-10T11:39:00.000-05:00

Posted by: spacecog Thumbs up! A fresh batch of Rosenblurbs, culled from this week’s Section 2. (Note: Films that receive the coveted "Reader Recommends" backwards-R will be labeled "Two Thumbs Up My Ass"; those that fall short of Rosey’s highly peculiar standards will be labeled "Rosenbauminations." Exclamation marks added for a little extra va-va-voom!)FEVER PITCH: "It doesn’t require any

Scratching his nuts

2005-04-08T12:39:00.000-05:00

Posted by: spacecog Scratching his nutsMichael "The Convolutenator" Miner is such a terrible journalist it’s hard to know even where to begin in cataloguing his various flaws. But I suspect a lot of them stem from the little problem of his missing nuts. Well, not nuts, per se. Nut grafs. The term is a bit of journalistic jargon for the paragraph, or sentence, or whatever, that tells readers,

In Rosenblurb Country!

2005-04-08T10:20:00.000-05:00

Posted by: spacecog In Rosenblurb Country!The weekly reading of the Reader has not yet commenced in earnest; in the meantime, tide yourself over with this: In My Country: "Liberal-minded!! … Somewhat diagrammatic at times!…. Sufficiently nuanced!!!" --Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader(Note: All quotations taken out of context. Exclamation points added for extra blurby flavor!)

Rosenbaum-o-matic

2005-04-06T12:12:00.000-05:00

If you just can't get enough Rosenbaum, here's a way to fill the void between Thursdays: The Chicago Reader Review-O-Mat. Courtesy of Mark Rosenfelder at Zompist.com.

A walk in the park

2005-04-05T10:27:00.000-05:00

Strange shit happens in Chicago. In Chicago’s neighborhoods, even. Birthday revelers fall into rivers and vanish forever. Bathrobe-clad women try to bum cigs on the Red Line. That sort of thing. But the Reader doesn’t seem much interested in the, well, interesting tales. Ben Joravsky’s "The Works" column – formerly known as Neighborhood News – focuses relentlessly not on actual neighborhood news

Things I learned from this week's Reader

2005-04-04T14:29:00.000-05:00

It's not totally worthless, really. Things I learned from this week's Reader:-Theater critic Kelly Kleiman doesn't know the difference between the Boston Tea Party and the Boston Massacre. (p. 3)-If you try to protest the Iraq war in Millennium Park, the police will tell you to leave. But the security guards at the Art Institute will treat you nicely. (p. 8)-At the recent Refine the Paradigm

Haters unite

2005-04-01T11:44:00.000-06:00

OK, I admit I learned about this person because I was putting our URL into the Technorati search engine. (What can I say? That fat 750 hits has me ready for my closeup.) I've been meaning to set up a list of other Reader-haters around the city (yay Reverend). But Lord knows when I'll get around to that, and anyway I want to quote a couple of nice lines from Keidra's Reader comments: "[The] Reader

Introducing ROSENBLURBS:

2005-03-31T20:16:00.000-06:00

While Michael “The Convolutenator” Miner is the Reader’s most reliable purveyor of suckitude, JONATHAN “THE ROSENBAUMENATOR” ROSENBAUM is surely its most masterful. Consider his contribution this week. I was hoping for an extended exegesis of GUESS WHO, but, alas, J.R. Jones beat him to it, leaving poor Rosenbaum to concentrate his attention on 3 indie documentaries, two of which are about films.

The Reader is not the New Yorker

2005-03-29T19:50:00.000-06:00

It's hard to explain exactly what's wrong with a story like this week's cover feature, "Out of the Courtroom and Into the Street." It's typically Reader: Long and meandering, with frequent detours to describe local scenery, bits of history or trivial conversations. These are meant to provide color.Clearly, the Reader's editors feel they're helping to keep an endangered style of writing alive. You

Things that are actually good

2005-03-29T10:10:00.000-06:00

Nathan Rabin and Scott Tobias really know what they're doing. Five or six years ago, how many people even bothered to read the Onion's AV Club? They took a section that was almost totally superfluous to the paper and turned it into a reason to read the paper in the first place.I'm not sure why I like their movie reviews so much. They certainly aren't the only movie reviews I read (and what the

The Convolutenator, man boobs, and a penis

2005-03-26T13:37:00.000-06:00

All righty. Our tour this week begins on page 4, home of MICHAEL "THE CONVOLUTENATOR" MINER and his column "Hot Type," which I believe is supposed to have something to do with the print media in Chicago. Thing is, every week he takes up a cause so obscure, and writes about it so confusingly, that it often takes until the very end of his turgid, meandering column to even figure out what it is

Partners in mediocrity

2005-03-23T22:04:00.000-06:00

This is going back a bit, but the new Reader doesn't arrive til tomorrow, so I thought I'd play the game of "let's open to a random page in a random issue and see how long it takes to find something stupid." And it took no time at all!I couldn't decide whom to sympathize with less when I read Miner's March 4 account of the doings at Crain's. (yeah, I'm obsessed with Crain's. Isn't everyone?) On

The time is now

2005-03-21T19:19:00.000-06:00

Great news today! Crain's Chicago Business reports that the Reader is losing circulation. Between Time Out, RedEye, UR and the Onion, the doughy rag that has passed for this city's "alternative" news outlet may finally begin its long and painful decline into unmourned oblivion.Crain's doesn't let you buy single articles, much less read for free (speaking of Chicago pubs that SUCK...) so here's a