When I was young I sought out music that had any hint of eroticism. I remember Merril Bainbridge’s “Mouth” giving me shivers: “When I kiss your mouth, I want to […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Screenshot: The rules of the game
September rolling around again means not only the return of professional football, but also of professional football’s most popular simulacrum, the Madden video game franchise. EA Sports has been releasing […]
Posted inCommunity/News
An interview with city council candidate Kingsley Botchway
As the city council election draws near, Little Village posed the same set of questions to four candidates. The answers will be published one candidate at a…
Posted inUncategorized
Wire: New Pope insists on being nice to atheists and also driving an old Renault
Dang it, New Pope, you just keep being awesome, and saying stuff that makes us think you actually understand some of that Jesus stuff. For instance…
Posted inFood & Drink
Beard Beer is brewed with yeast cultured from an actual beard, and you can try it tonight at Sanctuary
This just in: the Sanctuary Pub will be tapping Rogue Beard Beer tonight. The beer is an American wild ale made with yeast cultured from Rogue Brewmaster John Maier’s beard, […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Style Points: (W)rapping about scarves at Revival
Let me bottom-line something to you. You need to test-drive a scarf if you’re not already into them. Do you see other people successfully wearing scarves and wish you could […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Live music preview: Mobb Deep, Coolzey, Bleached and more
The duo Prodigy and Havoc are legendary rappers from the golden era of hardcore hip hop. Hailing from the Queensbridge Projects in New York City, Mobb Deep’s seminal sophomore album The Infamous was a realistic tale of the street gangsta. Rather than glorifying the lifestyle, Prodigy’s poetic rhymes and Havoc’s minimalist, bleak production presented a life full of misery, violence and paranoia. This album cemented their legacy as one of the great hip-hop groups to come out of the New York hardcore scene and built a legacy for the area’s future rap crews like Dipset. Anyone who has an interest in hardcore rap or likes the grittiness of New York rap should be at this show.
Posted inCommunity/News, UR Here
Mapping the middle: What delineates the heartland
I’m a lifelong Midwesterner and a devotee to and student of the region. But I’m usually left stammering when it comes to defining the human culture of these middle lands. […]
Posted inUncategorized
Wire: Dozens of neo-confederates plan rally to save Southern whiteness
(via Wonkette) Our good Tennessee blogfriend Southern Beale sends us a tip about a rally — if you can call something attended by “the tens not hundreds…
Posted inAstrology, Community/News
Astrology forecast for September 2013
FOR EVERYONE: We’ve been making important decisions about our lives for awhile. We prolonged the decision making process, partly for practical reasons — we had to get our ducks in a row. We also lacked a compelling vision of the future. Finally, there were important moral choices we knew would be hard to make and costly to follow through on. September will provide the vision we lacked, and it will ask us to make those tough and costly moral choices and be ready to accept the consequences.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Outside the box: An interview with Will Shortz
If the clue were, “America’s most acclaimed contemporary crossword puzzle master,” the answer would be, unquestionably, “Will Shortz.” In addition to holding the world’s only college degree in enigmatology, the art and science of puzzle-making, Shortz has been the puzzle master for NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday since the program’s start in 1987 and crossword puzzle editor of The New York Times since 1993; additionally, he was the editor of the legendary Games magazine for 15 years, and he is the founder of both the
Posted inArts & Entertainment, Prairie Pop
Prairie Pop: Mobb Deep’s past, present and future
“I got you stuck off the realness / we be the infamous”—Prodigy rapped in the opening verse of “Shook Ones, Part II,” Mobb Deep’s classic 1995 single—“you heard of us / official Queensbridge murderers / the Mobb comes equipped with warfare, beware.” Grimy, blood-soaked and unrelentingly bleak, Mobb Deep’s albums were filled with first-person tales delivered over menacing beats and minor key samples. Prodigy and his partner-in-musical-crime Havoc sounded like they had roamed the mean streets of New York since they were old enough to lift a banana clip. The reality, however, was a little more mundane.
