WBEZ 91.5 Chicago

My favorite reaction to news that former Gov. Rod Blagojevich was losing his Sunday afternoon radio show on Citadel Broadcasting news/talk WLS-AM (890) came from Eric Zorn. More than anyone else in the media, the Tribune columnist and uber-blogger has kept close tabs on Blago's self-serving blatherings ever since he turned up as a talk jockey on WLS last year.

Zorn's one-word response: "Pity."

But simply because Blago will be off the station's payroll --  at least until the conclusion of his federal corruption trial --  doesn't mean he won't be heard on WLS anymore. In fact, the whole point of keeping him around all that time was to insure that he returns the loyalty to the station now that he's front-page news again.

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Lee Bey is away until Monday, June 7th. We are running some faves from his archives. This post originally ran on January 22, 2010.

(photo by Lee Bey) 

Suggested tongue-in-cheek movie bill for the shuttered ICE Lawndale 10 Theaters:‚  The Invisible Man. Ghost Story. The Man Who Wasn't There. And The Vanishing.

Jokes aside, what do we do with the empty multiplex?‚  Not just this one, but the others that'll likely come on line as the movie-going audience fractures and distracts itself with DVDs, Mp3 players and the very device you're reading this blog on.‚  And we can't depend on movies with blue characters to solve the problem, no matter how profitable they seem. "Avatar" 's $520 million gross is exceptional--only if you don't adjust for inflation. If you do, 1939's "Gone With the Wind"‚  grossed the equivalent of $1.4 billion in today's cash. In that matrix, "Avatar" barely out-grosses "Butch Cassidy‚  and The Sundance Kid."

Some of the closed multiplexes will become churches, no doubt, as did the old Hillside Theater in the late 1990s, and that's okay.‚  But the rest of them: could they be reused for live community theater? Or if possible, multiplexes of musical acts. Imagine a choice of 10 acts on 10 different stages in a single building.

The theaters could also become independent movie houses where the next budding‚  Cassavetes,‚  Micheaux or Lemmons can get their works‚  screened before a live audience?

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Churrasco with chimichurri and parmesan fries

With a couple of new steakhouses hitting River North this season - Benny's is already open, Mastro's will be opening in July - I thought we'd go back in time a bit, to when there were only a dozen or so meat joints downtown. When Fogo de Chão opened its doors on North LaSalle a few years ago, the city was abuzz in beef, especially the all-you-can-eat format. Here's the story I did for "The World" on Public Radio International.

Churrasco

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ALBUM REVIEW: Sleigh Bells, "Treats" (Mom + Pop/N.E.E.T.)

The buzz has been building for the debut album by songwriter and producer Derek Miller and vocalist Alexis Krauss ever since the Brooklyn hipsters made their high-profile debut at the CMJ Festival in 2009. Amplified by a series of demos leaked on the Net and the fact that the pair was signed to M.I.A.'s boutique label, N.E.E.T, the roar of approval has only increased in volume now that Sleigh Bells has issued its official debut album (Pitchfork score: 8.7). But these 11 tracks strike me as a whole lot of noise with nothing much substantive underneath all the clatter.

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^{Tribune Co. CEO Randy Michaels (far right) at the start of "Poker Night"}

Photos published on Facebook show top executives of Tribune Co. -- led by CEO Randy Michaels -- at a gambling, drinking and smoking party in the palatial Tribune Tower office once occupied by the company's patriarch, Col. Robert R. McCormick.

"We are in the office of the guy who ran the company from the 1920s to 1955 -- it's normally a shrine," wrote John D. Phillips, the Tribune Tower building manager who posted the photos. "We pretty much desecrated it with gambling, booze and cigars. Good thing we know the guy who runs the building!"

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 What would a bunch of Northwestern University students look like dancing together to music only they can hear? 

Like this:

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Initially announced with very little fanfare in March, an event billing itself as "Summer's Last Stand, the inaugural North Coast Music Festival" is set to move into the West Side's Union Park, site of the much better known Pitchfork Music Festival in July, on Labor Day Weekend, with an eclectic bill of dance, hip-hop, and jam bands taking the stage from 5 to 10 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 3, and from 1 to 10 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday Sept. 4 and 5.

A new venture by a group of relatively untested promoters -- the Congress Theatre is the most familiar name on a list that also includes React, Silver Wrapper, Metronome Chicago, Kingtello, and Cold Grums Proudly Announce... -- the festival will be headlined by aging electronic dance mavens the Chemical Brothers, rapper Nas and superstar reggae progeny Damian Marley, and the jam-crazy Umphrey's McGee.

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