Red all over
Untitled Document If everything goes as planned, Springfield’s hometown daily newspaper will soon have a new owner. Fairport, N.Y.-based GateHouse Media Inc. last week announced an agreement to buy the State Journal-Register and six other dailies and two weeklies in Illinois and Ohio for $380 million. The seller, Copley Press, of La Jolla, Calif., put its…
A political ax to grind
Untitled Document Shooter Running time 2:05 Rated R ShowPlace West, ShowPlace East Shooter finds Marine sharpshooter Bob Lee Swagger (Mark Wahlberg) in Africa, covering the retreat of an elite American unit that’s returning from a classified mission. Though he’s able to hit his targets from as far as a mile away, his location is compromised, his…
Family road rage
Untitled Document When movie families take to the road, they never have a good time. The trip usually brings out the worst behavior in everyone. The recent indie hit and Best Picture nominee Little Miss Sunshine is a shining example. Olive (Abigail Breslin) freaks out when she receives a call telling her that she has …
Letters to the Editor
Untitled Document We welcome letters. Please include your full name, address, and telephone number. We edit all letters. Send them to Letters, Illinois Times, P.O. Box 5256, Springfield, IL 62705; fax 217-753-3958; e-mail editor@illinoistimes.com. FIGHT BIG OIL: RIDE A BIKE With rising gas prices once again upon the fine people of Springfield and Sangamon County,…
That’s all she wrote
Untitled Document At the end of the film Venus, which stars Peter O’Toole as a decrepit actor holding off his final curtain, Vanessa Redgrave delivers a bleak line: “When you die, everyone wants to be your friend.” Though I knew Molly Ivins forever — since the Kennedy administration — I would never claim that I…
Measuring up
Untitled Document The last time Springfield School District 186 chose a new superintendent, the process was cloaked in secrecy. The top three candidates, skimmed from a pool of 19 applicants, were interviewed in a ballroom at the Crowne Plaza by a panel of people who had been sworn to silence. A few days later, when…
If you knew sushi
Untitled Document It seems as if sushi is everywhere these days — in eclectic restaurants that offer a bewildering (and, unfortunately, sometimes badly executed) mix of cuisines, in Chinese megabuffets, and even in plastic tubs in grocery stores. Even so, many people still have mistaken ideas about sushi, and some think there’s a gross-out factor:…
No Drew leftover
Untitled Document In 1990, when Drew Emmitt merged his group the Left Hand String Band with Vince Herman’s Salmon Heads to create Leftover Salmon, no one imagined the impact the group would have on the world of popular music. During the next 15 years the genre-breaking jam band from Boulder, Colo., released several CDs, both…
Push-back
Untitled Document Illinois House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie usually hangs back and lets others make news. Since getting the No. 2 job in the House Democratic caucus in 1997, she hasn’t been known for being way out front on major issues, and as far as I can remember she’s never once publicly criticized Gov.…
In the key of heartbreak
Untitled Document It’s somewhat misleading to say that Now It’s Time represents the return of Tarnation, the seminal Western-noir band that Paula Frazer fronted in the 1990s. Tarnation was never really a band so much as a concept, with Frazer the lineup’s only constant. Moreover, even though the San Francisco-based singer/songwriter has been recording under her…
Durbin acts to aid Darfur
Untitled Document Just weeks after a federal judge ruled Illinois’ Act to End Atrocities and Terrorism in the Sudan unconstitutional, U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., has introduced a bill to lend federal support to divestment efforts on state and local levels. U.S. Distict Judge Matthew Kenneally, who issued the Illinois ruling, did not close the…
People’s poetry
Untitled Document kinquotepoem # 8this being women’s history monthI give you a quote from my eldestat perhaps two and a half for the firsttime studying her own female mysteryshe is naked bent over doublehead between legs what are you doingI ask she replies looking at my bottomwhat does it look like I ask she repliesoh…
Dan Walker tells his story
Untitled Document Not long after Dan Walker took office as governor, in 1973, I interviewed him in his office in the Capitol. I was finishing a journalism degree at Northwestern while beginning a job with Lindsay-Schaub News-papers, in Decatur, that involved covering the Statehouse. He began by telling me that his office was rather small…
Davlin vs. Strom
Untitled Document On homelessness . . . Social-service agencies recently conducted a study of Springfield’s homeless community in which organizations counted 303 homeless individuals around the city, a 20 percent drop over last year’s total. The survey also found a 12.8 percent increase in the number of the city’s “chronically homeless.” Unlike the 2003 mayoral…
The lentil’s no has-been
Untitled Document Turkey. Check. Egypt, Ethiopia. Check, check. India, Iran, Italy, Lebanon, Mexico, Morocco, Nepal, Pakistan — check, check, check, check, quadruple-check. This sounds like the stuff of an amazing globetrotting dream — but this list is a mere sliver of the places where a little edible disc called the lentil is like a diplomat…
Killer classics
Untitled Document I had a premonition about Sandra Bullock’s latest film, which just happens to be called Premonition. I sensed that this was going to be another misguided effort by an actress with a career built on half-baked movies. Regrettably, I was right. I can think of no other actress of Bullock’s stature who has…
Another stinker ahead
Untitled Document I had a premonition about Sandra Bullock’s latest film, which just happens to be called Premonition. I sensed that this was going to be another misguided effort by an actress with a career built on half-baked movies. Regrettably, I was right. I can think of no other actress of Bullock’s stature who has…
