THE WEEKENDER Your weekly editor-curated arts compendium is here! Fascinating conversations, stimulating readings, live performances from the comfort of your couch and more abound, so there’s no excuse to spend another weekend just waiting for the weekend to end so the week can begin. If you know of an upcoming virtual or safely distanced event […]
Arts & Entertainment
Ghost Creek shimmers in the fog of our pandemic-fatigued minds
Video Premiere: The Hollowmen, “Need It Most”

The music scene in Iowa in the ’80s was vibrant. Inspired by similar regional scenes nationwide, bands across the state were springing from their garages, basements and practice spaces ready to storm the stages of bars and dorms everywhere. The beacon for this movement locally was the ever-present KUNI studios evening music programming, which regularly […]
TCR’s essential ‘Out of Bounds’ features stellar performances carrying heavy material

On a stage that resembles a blueprint for adolescence at its cruelest, the protagonist Amy’s origin story in TCR’s Out of Bounds unfolds before the audience in a frustrating, unrelenting-battle-against-the-system fashion. Slut-shaming. Victim-blaming. Mean girls (of all ages) galore. With a showtime of 90 minutes, the 10-act production brings to life a 14-year-old girl’s trauma […]
Rare and ‘unusual’ Grant Wood works make up CRMA’s newest exhibition

Some of Grant Wood’s most well-known paintings depict Midwesterners wielding metal tools, from plows to garden hoes to, of course, pitchforks. Less known is that Wood worked with metal himself. As a child, he served as an apprentice at a Cedar Rapids metal shop, and was later commissioned by a number of local homeowners and […]
Book Review: ‘Kink’ edited by R.O. Kwon and Garth Greenwell

A 2018 study by sex toy company EdenFantasys revealed that 40 percent of respondents considered themselves kinky, with over one-third claiming a specific fetish. Still, there’s an overwhelming dearth of affirming literature out there: There’s a lot of exoticizing, quite a bit of shaming, but very little normalization. Enter Kink, a new anthology out Feb. […]
Book Review: ‘Sweeter Voices Still: An LGBTQ Anthology From Middle America’

The mythology of “the Heartland” (also called “Middle America” or the “flyover states”) is usually rooted in archaic abstractions such as “traditional family values” and conservative ideals. These parts of the American landscape are described as if they are closed off by narrow boundaries, with rigid attitudes imposed upon the diverse populations inhabiting them. As […]
Album Review: Steve Grismore Trio — ‘Better Times (Are a Comin’)’

Better Times (Are A Comin') by Steve Grismore If the music collection in your head includes the work of the late Ornette Coleman, there is a reasonable chance you have it filed under “weird” or “difficult” or even “unlistenable.” That may be true even if you consider yourself a jazz fan. Coleman, a multi-instrumentalist best […]
Album Review: David Huckfelt — ‘Room Enough, Time Enough’

David Huckfelt’s 2021 Room Enough, Time Enough gets its title from the name the Navajo used to describe their ancestral homeland, near where Huckfelt recorded the album in Tucson, Arizona. Its rocky landscape influenced the Western themes of the record. Being in Tucson allowed Huckfelt to take a more communal approach to recording the album, […]
Book Review: ‘Lucky’s Feet’ by Thomas M. Cook and Olayinka O. Adegbehingbe

In the 1950s, the University of Iowa was the setting for groundbreaking work being done on the condition of clubfoot, a congenital deformity which causes an infant’s foot or feet to turn inward. When left untreated, the condition — which affects one in every thousand births, the vast majority of which are in developing countries […]
Album Review: Awful Purdies — ‘The Great Unraveling’

The Awful Purdies’ new release, The Great Unraveling is a defining statement for these accomplished musicians who combine their strengths, with wearied joy, to perform miracles. The songs are timely and timeless. The album is proud but not boastful, strong but not brutal, both wise and playful. The sheer quality of the material and the […]
Dear Kiki: I miss having night sex

Questions about love and sex in the Iowa City-Cedar Rapids area can be submitted to dearkiki@littlevillagemag.com, or anonymously using this form. Questions may be edited for clarity and length, and may appear either in print or online. Dear Kiki, I miss having night sex. The kids are always home and are old enough that they […]