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How Pidgeon Pagonis Ended Intersex Surgeries at Lurieon September 21, 2020 at 5:26 pm Read More »
It’s possible we are reaching a limit on how much we can hear about the compounded crises of the past year. An ad for sweatshirts that read “Liquor: the glue holding this 2020 shitshow together” showed up in my feed right in sync with the internal fear that the fast approaching 2021 will be more of the same. My former professor’s advice to writers this year was not to feel obligated to write the current moment, a moment that is marked by so much uncertainty. “Instead,” he says, “try to write work that finds the beauty and explores the depth of uncertainty.”
Eula Biss is a master of uncertainty because she doesn’t seek to claim mastery over it. This has allowed her work to become prophetic. Her three most recent titles look like a roadmap of the vast, hellish landscape that is 2020. COVID-19? Biss’s 2014 title On Immunity: An Inoculation features pandemics, vaccinations, and human interconnectedness. When protests over police brutality and the regime of white supremacy raged across the country, I thought of Notes from No Man’s Land from 2009, a reckoning with race in America. Her latest, this month’s Having and Being Had (Riverhead Books), deals with the minutiae of capitalism as many Americans flounder in an enormous and unusual recession.
Having and Being Had is a loose collection of short, nonfiction vignettes, most just a few pages long, divided up into four sections: consumption, work, investment, and accounting. Some individual pieces bleed into one another seamlessly while others are confounding in their placement. Some are like tight comedic sets, with a punchline at the end that feels more like gut punch. Others simply make you turn the page and keep reading until the point circles around tens or hundreds of pages later. Present through each are Biss’s hallmark leaps between disconnected, everyday happenings, like her son trading Pokemon cards, and the works of economic thinkers (David Graeber pops up frequently), theorists, poets, and artists.
Themes of precarity and security, service and servitude, and what it means to work echo throughout the essays. She diligently searches for language divorced from economic value for the different types of work in life. “Work, if we are fortunate, is rewarded with money, but the reward for labor is transformation,” Biss writes, referencing Lewis Hyde’s definitions of each term. Immediately she inverts the connotations based on another scholar’s interpretation: labor is toil, work is accomplishment.
This comfort with contradiction is what makes the book both frustrating and thrilling. There is no drive to tie a neat bow. Like Maggie Nelson and Annie Dillard, Biss is able to hold many different truths at the same time. Hypocrisy is called out not as a “gotcha” but to show that life is complicated. Even Marx educated his daughters in the trappings of aristocracy, she points out. He just wanted them to have a better life.
As always, she acknowledges her vantage point, most notably in this book by the conscious choice to always use exact figures. Readers learn her income, her husband’s income, and how much they spent on their house. It is a “direct refusal of what I understood to be the rules of polite conversation around money,” as she puts it.
Such transparency makes her trustworthy. But there are times when Biss’s ambivalence seems to show class blindness rather than enlightenment. In one example Biss is reading The Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith during her son’s skating lessons, when another mom asks her outright if she thinks capitalism is bad. “I don’t know what it is to me, in my life in work,” Biss writes as her response. “I’m not neutral so much as undecided.” In this age, is it really possible not to know? Certainly the uninsured who are refused medical treatment or the workers denied bathroom breaks in Amazon warehouses while Jeff Bezos sets new records for wealth every day know whether capitalism is bad.
The very next essay ends on a note that suggests she knows more than she lets on: “We shouldn’t ask our rich to be good, in other words, we should ask our economic system to be better.” Readers turning to Biss for answers will be disappointed. But those who can handle a good honest grappling, with all its requisite disappointments and insights, will leave with a new view of hairline fissures in the system that hide in plain sight. v
The view from the middlePhoebe Moghareion September 21, 2020 at 3:30 pm Read More »
Like many drag queens, Chicago’s Tori Sass has been through it this year. It started with some bang-up success: When the South Michigan Avenue drag palace Lips Chicago made its grand opening in August 2019, Sass landed a coveted showgirl gig at the venue, whose opulent interior is a cross between upscale Victorian bordello and Mad Men-era steakhouse. In addition to Chicago, Lips owner Mark Zschiesche installed Lips in New York City, San Diego, Fort Lauderdale, and Atlanta. Chicago’s is the third to reopen post-COVID, after Florida and Georgia.
Back in the Beforetimes, Sass made bank at Lips, turning heads with her combination of atelier-worthy sewing skills and dead-on celebrity impersonations. But there were bumps in the road for Zschiesche’s latest Lips. Within five months, the Motor Row venue has endured two break-ins and a fire that burned the next-door dry cleaners to the ground. Within six months, COVID-19 accomplished what the fire and the break-ins had not: Lips shut down.
“I’m not going to lie,” Sass said, “The break-ins. The fire. COVID. Months trying to get through to unemployment. The depression is real. And it’s been tough.”
Lips reopens Thursday, September 24 with one of its signature shows, “Dinner with the Divas.” The queens tend their tables until the 60-minute show begins at 7 PM. Sass, Buffalo Grove native Angel LeBare, and a select few of the roughly 20 queens that regularly work the club are whipping out the duct tape, strapping on their heels, beating their mugs, and hoping the venue will be able to survive.
That survival is predicated on whether patrons will return, assured of their safety by Zschiesche’s assurance that the club is “in total compliance” with Illinois’s list of mandatory health precautions for Phase IV reopening of indoor restaurants.
Per those precautions, Lips will be reopening at 25 percent capacity, or a maximum of 50 patrons in the audience. On any given night, staff and freelancers in the venue will include four queens, three kitchen workers, a host, and a general manager, Zschiesche said. Also, he explained, nobody goes to work until they’ve tested negative for COVID-19. The tables will be six feet apart.
The show itself will be markedly different than it was in the freewheeling days of 2019. As Sass put it: “It sucks we can’t leave the stage for our [lip-synch] numbers, but that’s what we have to do so we’ll make it work.” That’s not the only restriction on queen-audience interactions.
Lips’s Beforetimes performance aesthetic could be a manual of what not to do if you want to avoid COVID. Lips, like most drag shows, has long been rooted in audacious audience interaction. Queens sashayed among the cabaret tables, delivering plates of cheeseburgers or penne vodka and glow-in-the-dark shots to giddy bachelorettes and birthday girls. Sometimes they’d plunk down in your lap. Sometimes they’d whisper in your ear, throwing shade with bull’s-eye precision, often at the other girls.
If it was your birthday or anniversary at Lips, you’d get invited on the stage for what Zschiesche describes as “a moment of fame.” Now? All touching is off the table. As they work the room, queens will be masked and in gloves.
Then, of course, there’s the flying saliva involved with lip-synching, when self-styled Britneys and Pinks and Chers subvert the gender binary by making it abundantly clear that gender is as performative as it is determinative.
In COVID’s world, there’s no lip-synching except on the stage, delivered by queens in face shields. Tips won’t be tucked into bedazzled decolletages or bespoke bikini bottoms. Instead, there will be buckets on the tables. The queens’ Cash App handles will be available as well. Offstage, dressing rooms have been redone with plexiglass panels between stations, Zschiesche said. The cabaret tables are six feet apart.
Audiences won’t be let in if they aren’t masked. And while you can remove said mask while you’re eating or drinking, it must go back on if you leave your table.
Zschiesche has learned a few things about enforcement from reopening Lips in Atlanta and Georgia.
“We did get some pushback. Some guests didn’t want to wear a mask. But we’re aggressive about enforcing it. You get up to go to the bathroom without a mask, someone is going to stop you and say ‘Oh darling, you have to put that on.’ And we’ll give you one right there if you don’t have one. I hate becoming a policeman in the sense of enforcing this, but you have to. It’s a safety issue,” he said.
COVID-19 is also, obviously, a financial issue. In February, Zschiesche began tracking the virus’s spread. “I could see this coming. I told all the queens–stop spending money if you can. Save. This is going to be difficult.”
LeBare can verify that. Before the shutdown, she bought a house in Des Plaines with her husband. On an average night, she said she brought in $50-$100 in tips.
“My biggest worry about going back to work is not going back to work, because I cannot keep my house if I cannot work. I’ve been living off my savings and using my credit card. I’ve sold some of my costumes,” LeBare said. “I’m still panicking to be honest. When the shutdown happened, it wasn’t just Lips. I lost all my Pride Month gigs. I had something every weekend in June. It was devastating.”
Sass initially thought the shutdown would be a matter of weeks.
“I was like, OK, cool, I’ll finally be able to get some rest. I’d been doing so much–painting and helping set up the set and working on the costumes, and rehearsing–I was actually glad because I was like I could breathe for a minute. And then the depression set in.” Sass combatted that toxic malaise with hard-core, white-knuckle ferocity. “I quit smoking. I started running,” she said. “The other day I got so angry about something I couldn’t shake. So I ran for four miles. Then I felt better.
“The important thing to do is find things that give you joy. That’s my survival mechanism right now. There is so much uncertainty and fear–you just have to find something you love or that brings you joy and do it,” Sass said.
Both queens say they are satisfied with the “laundry list” of precautions Lips is taking, even though the inescapable uncertainty of the situation unnerves them.
“Will we get 25 percent capacity–which is about 50 people? Or will we get five people? Nobody knows,” LeBare said.
That’s weighing on Zschiesche as well. “For now, all the proceeds from the reopening will go directly to the performers,” Zschiesche said. “We’re hoping it’s safe enough that they raise the limit to 50 percent capacity before too long. I think we can hang on at 25 for a month or two.”
In the meantime, Sass is ready to get to work.
“We’re doing what the state requires for reopening an indoor dining facility, and I feel safe with the way Lips is handling it. I also understand that everyone needs to make decisions that are right for them. I hope we’re able to bring some joy to people, if just for an hour. In 2020, I think most of us could use that.” v
Lips reopens with “Dinner with the Divas” at 6 PM Thursday, Sept. 24 at 2229 S. Michigan Ave. Tickets for dinner and show start at $40. For more information go to lipschicago.com.
After the shutdown, Lips is unsealedCatey Sullivanon September 21, 2020 at 6:30 pm Read More »
It’s no secret that sports make up a large part of Chicago culture. And we’re not just talking about our iconic professional franchises. Every summer, Chicago parks find themselves filled with residents playing a variety of different sports. There’s baseball games, tennis matches, and plenty of courts filled with basketball players across the city. But there’s one sport, in particular, that has the spotlight, softball. The game of softball is rooted in Chicago where the first game occurred in 1867. With a variety of adult leagues and formats, like the popular 16-inch softball game, it’s not surprising to see games fill the city day and night. So, whether you’re looking to play a casual game with friends, or turn it up a notch and join a competitive league, we’ve got the scoop on some of the best parks in Chicago for softball.
First up is Waveland Park which is located on the north side near another famous ballpark, Wrigley Field. At the Waveland Park softball fields, there are plenty of softball diamonds to host games. One of the perks of playing here is that the fields are maintained pretty well. Plus, if you end up needing a break from softball, the park has running and biking paths, tennis courts, and access to Lake Michigan.
Calumet Park is another great spot for some Chicago softball. Located in Chicago’s east side, the park is perfect for families with younger players as there are a lot of junior fields here. Outside of the seasonal sports, Calumet Park also hosts sewing, woodshop, and dance lessons for community members!
The next park you need to check out for some Chicago softball is La Follette Park. This park finds its home in the Austin community. Outside of the softball fields, La Follette Park features basketball courts, tennis courts, and even a fieldhouse with an indoor pool.
Looking to grab a slice before the game? View our list of the top 50 pizza restaurants in the city.
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The final park on this list is the premier park in Chicago for softball. Grant Park is located in the Loop and has held softball games for more than eight decades! Plenty of 16-inch softball tournaments and leagues have called Grant Park home over the years. The park is also home to Cloud Gate, the Maggie Daley Park, and the Art Institute of Chicago.
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The Best Parks In Chicago For SoftballDrew Krieson September 20, 2020 at 11:25 pm Read More »
Well folks, summer is officially over. And while you might not be swimming again anytime soon, you can still partake in aquatic activities at The Shedd! Chicago’s favorite aquarium is open daily from 9 AM to 6 PM but operates at a limited capacity. Make sure to read up on some of the changes Shedd Aquarium has put in place to keep you safe which includes wearing face masks and purchasing timed tickets in advance. Here are just a few of the wild and wonderful things you can see this month!
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Looking for a dose of cuteness? Watch dolphins play and swim while you take in breathtaking views of Lake Michigan! Home to Shedd Aquarium marine mammals, the Oceanarium is where sea lions bark, otters dive, and belugas play. Catch an aquatic presentation featuring curious beluga whales and lovable white-side dolphins.
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Now’s your chance to explore the Amazon River basin (the largest river system and rainforest on Earth) without leaving Chicago! Experience a full year along the river. Watch its floodwaters slowly rise to the top of trees then recede back to the banks. See how birds, turtles, tarantulas, electric eels, snakes, and even people have adapted to thrive in this intense environment.
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Time to meet your neighbors. Check out some of the most noteworthy animals that call the Great Lakes their home. Touch a sturgeon (if you’re feeling brave) which is a prehistoric fish that stalks the bottom of Lake Michigan. Or peek into the toothy mouth of a sea lamprey to learn how invasive species can hurt native fish populations.
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Get up close and personal with some remarkable predators and prey. Immerse yourself in a diver’s-eye-view of a vibrant and diverse marine ecosystem, complete with sharks, corals, rays, and fish. Check out the reefs of the Philippines and learn how Shedd Aquarium helps conserve many of these incredible wild animals.
Looking for a laugh in between trips to the Shedd? Check out the 6 worst submissions to the ridiculous design challenge.
View the Worst Submissions to the Chicago Winter Dining Challenge
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Put all your senses to work in one of Shedd’s 4-D Experiences! Expect the unexpected—you might feel a breeze on your face, your chair may rattle, and creepy crawlies could scamper behind your legs! Here’s what’s showing this month (times vary): BBC Earth’s Shark: A 4-D Experience, Splash and Bubbles: 4-D Undersea Adventure, and Sea Monsters 4-D: A Prehistoric Adventure. Admission is a $4.95 upgrade per guest per experience or $2.95 for members.
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On Sunday, the Chicago Bears would leave Soldier Field undefeated through the first two games of the 2020 NFL season. Despite having some work to do on the offense, if there’s one part of the offense that was efficient all game, it was the running game led by David Montgomery and Cordarrelle Patterson.
Montgomery, the lead running back, comfortably rushed for 82 yards on 16 carries, averaging 5.1 yards per carry. On the Bears final possession of the fourth quarter, he’d have rushing attempts for one, ten, 11, and 23 yards on four different plays.
The Chicago Bears are still very much a work in progress, which was apparent even after their victory on Sunday against the New York Giants. In a game that came down to the wire at Soldier Field, the Bears held off a final drive by Daniel Jones and the G-Men, to sneak out with a 17-13 win and begin the season 2-0.
In doing so, their chances of making the playoffs increased dramatically — at least statistically. However, if this team wants to have a realistic shot at making the playoffs, then there is much work to do over the coming weeks and months.
As you wake up on this Monday morning, the Chicago Bears are tied with the Green Bay Packers for first place in the NFC North Division. They defeated the New York Giants in week two to move to 2-0 on the season. Like week one, things were very shaky at the end and it could have gone either way. If two or three final plays went differently, the Bears would be 0-2 instead of 2-0. They have to fix a lot of things otherwise they are going to start to get cold.
They didn’t prove much to anyone over the first two weeks. It has pretty much been two weeks of luck, hot and cold play, and Allen Robinson drama. For a 2-0 team, things feel very uncertain about the future. There is also Mitchell Trubisky who seems to change how he is playing every single quarter. Nick Foles is waiting behind him for the opportunity which leaves even more uncertainty.
The excitement for the Chicago Bears was high after Week One’s win against the Detroit Lions, coming back down 23-6 in the fourth quarter, led by quarterback Mitchell Trubisky. The knock-on Trubisky was how the offense couldn’t move in the first half – he changed that fast against the New York Giants.
During the first drive against the Giants game on Sunday, Trubisky hit David Montgomery for his fourth passing touchdown of the season. The Bears would get a turnover three plays later, which resulted in a field goal. Before the end of the half, Trubisky hit Darnell Mooney for a touchdown, which is his fifth passing touchdown of the season.
At half time, Trubisky had already spread the ball out, throwing to 10 different players.
Those five passing touchdowns are more than Week one and two in 2018 and 2019 for Trubisky. He had just one passing touchdown in those four games over the past three seasons. Now, he has five to start the season.
Taking it back to his rookie season, he had just two in his first two games there. The first two games of the season have been a jinx for Trubisky that he has seemed to shrug off, as he not only is 2-0 for the first time to start a season, but he has two more passing touchdowns than his first two games of each season combined.
That’s an interesting stat that isn’t being talked about much. It’s also showing progress. In 2019, Trubisky had zero passing touchdowns after two games. It took him until Week three to throw his first touchdown. This year, he is on pace to throw 40-touchdowns. Will that happen? Probably not, but it shows just how well he’s started the season.
There are still some naysayers who believe Nick Foles should be the starting quarterback, but so far, the Bears are 2-0. Trubisky is having his best start to a season in his career, and things are looking up for this offense.
Trubisky should have had at least three touchdowns, but Anthony Miller missed a perfectly placed ball in the end zone that would have added to the Bears lead.
Fans who want to point out the obvious that the Bears struggled in the second half on offense have a point, but there were two critical plays that went against the offense.
The first play was Trubisky’s first interception, where it was a great defensive play on a tipped ball. The second play was Trubisky’s second interception. That play was a killer, as the Bears were moving the ball well. The interception wasn’t on Trubisky, it was on Allen Robinson. Robinson has to have those catches if he wants to be paid as a top wide receiver in football.
The biggest test of the season, so far, comes next week against the Falcons. It’ll be an interesting matchup. The Bears have to get the running game involved for the third straight week and Trubisky has to continue this passing-touchdown streak. If they can’t put up 25-30 points, it’ll be a tough game to win.
The date: September 21, 1990. The time: 6:30 am. The location: Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Anaheim, California.
Making her first appearance in the world is my daughter.
When the doctor said the baby is a girl, I was surprised because we were sure the baby was going to be a boy. The name we had picked out, Andrew Ryan, became obsolete. I cut the umbilical cord and then held my daughter for the first time. I put my finger in her hand and she grasped it tight. Oh man, that was it for me. I was hooked for a lifetime.
It’s hard to believe, but it’s almost exactly thirty years to the second of my child’s birth. Where did the time go?!!
So many things have occurred in that time period that it’s hard to know where to start, but I’ll give it a try.
Two years after her birth, her sister and her partner in crime came along. It led to years of fighting that rarely stopped, and years of love, which continues to this day.
When she turned five, we had moved from California to Chicago. The school deadlines were different and I had to tamper with her birth certificate to get her into Kindergarten and first grade. One of my proudest parenting moments.
As she got older, I coached her basketball team. It’s always a wonderful experience trying to lead ten or so middle school girls. OY!!!
On her birthdays, our family celebrated at the Olive Garden. REALLY!! Breadsticks with dipping sauce, tiramisu, ice tea and the waitstaff singing the OG birthday song.
Like any family relationship, there are highs and lows. The breakup of her parent’s marriage wasn’t easy. There were deaths of much loved grandparents and her half-sister. Definite disagreements about religion and school choices. And, don’t get me started about her move to San Francisco at age twenty. Oh yeah, did I mention that my kid lived down the street from the former home of the Grateful Dead, in Haight-Ashbury? Pretty cool, right?!
But, even with the disagreements and the distance, the love never stopped. That takes precedence over everything else…and always will.
So, back to this thirty thing…..
Last January, before the pandemic, we were together, waiting in line to enter a John Cale concert. First off, how many of you in my age range have a child who would buy you John Cale concert tickets as a present? Anyway, I took a look at her and said, “I can’t believe I have a child who is turning…”, and she stopped me before I could get the number out of my mouth. Apparently, she wasn’t ready to believe it either.
Well honey, ready or not, that day has arrived! The good news is we’re still here to celebrate the occasion! The better news is the best is yet to come…..I truly believe that!
Tonight, we’ll be dining at the Olive Garden again. REALLY!! Like life itself, some things change while others remain the same. Some of the faces may be different and the ice tea will probably become a glass or five glasses of wine, but there will also be breadsticks with dipping sauce, tiramisu and the singing waitstaff.
Happy birthday my dear child. I love you! We’ll try to keep the number thirty on the downlow.
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My so called friends think it’s time to edit this section. After four years, they may be right, but don’t tell them that. I’ll deny it until they die!
I can’t believe I’ve been writing this blog for four years.
It started as a health/wellness thing and over the years has morphed to include so many things that I don’t know how to describe it anymore.
I really thought this was going to be the final year of the blog but then Donald Trump came along. It looks like we’re good for four more years..God help us all!
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