Tynan's Anger

No new post, but with Chicago rock 'n' roll in the news with Pitchfork and Lolla on the horizon, I thought it high time to republish a post from my old blog about one of the better local bands I encountered in Chicago*:

The Cathy Santonies: University of Chicago Riot Grrls
(November 6, 2007)

One of my friends at this school once remarked that his brother decided not to apply to the University of Chicago because of the write-up we got in Rolling Stone's Guide to Colleges that Rock. Apparently, our campus is so classical-based that its pathetic rock offerings are taking away potential applicants. This coming from the publication that gave Papa Roach 4 stars.

Well, on Saturday I did discover one band that may change that. Fire Escape Films hosted the event Synesthesia, which put student films on the backdrop of some of the University's best rock bands. The featured band was U of C rock staple The Goddamn Shame, who had the unfortunate problem of trying to banter with the crowd with a guy fellating a toothbrush in the background. But the band that stuck out to me the most was The Cathy Santonies, a band of two girls and a guy who have been performing together for only a year and a half, but sounded like goddamn pros. They played a nice mix of riott girl and balls out punk rock, and sounded like Bikini Kill, X, and Le Tigre (bassist Radio Santoni donned a Le Tigre shirt during the performance). They seemed a bit unsure of themselves performing, but if they keep playing like that, they'll get more comfortable much more quickly.

The Cathy Santonies' next performance is on July 29th at the Beat Kitchen.

*I'm by no means the only critic whose interest the Cathy Santonies have perked. Jim DeRogatis likes them enough to write about them for the Chicago Sun-Times. They've also opened for DeRo's own band Vortis several times.

Labels: cathy santonies, indie rock, jim derogatis, pitchfork music festival, university of chicago

(This review was originally published in Blogcritics).

Greg Kotis' The Truth About Santa was a good test of my critical sanctity. Growing up an intellectual theater geek in New York, I basically discovered I was bound for the University of Chicago by seeing Proof and Urinetown (twice each) while in high school. I would draw the somewhat arbitrary line at reviewing Proof scribe David Auburn, whom I studied playwriting with in high school and whose work I directed in college. While I had never met Kotis before seeing The Truth About Santa, the play not only reminded me of what drew me to Urinetown and Chicago in high school, but what the intellectual monstrosity of the school has wrought on me since.

For instance, there's simply no way I can review The Truth About Santa without mentionin Emile Durkheim, whose Elementary Forms of Religious Life hangs over The Truth About Santa as strongly as it hangs over Chicago's core curriculum (and hence all of Chicago's academic experience). References to collective effervescence aside, the best summary of the religious sociology of Durkheim in The Truth About Santa comes from a song lyric by Kotis himself, where his Santa declares, "What strength that some people have come to perceive in me/ Comes from the fact that you people believe in me." In Kotis' play, the worship of Santa—and your fooling itself if you think it's anything but worship—fuels his existence (that and the Joy Weed that is the glue that binds his form). Kotis turns Santa into a universal sacred symbol of winter solstice who literally morphs into a new form everytime a new myth comes to dominate a society. In this play, Kotis essentially brings the same intellectually-grounded absurdity to to religion that he brought to revolutionary politics with Urinetown.

Of course, this off-off-Broadway production of The Truth About Santa is not as universally accessible (i.e. Broadway-ready) as Urinetown. While its roughness around the edges adds something of an indie charm, it also means the play will have to be tidied up if it wants more life. The play's opening is a little too jarring, it's performances a little too over the top, and it's pacing a little to inconsistent to fully maximize on Kotis' intelligent writing and exceedingly sharp sense of humor. John Clancy's production stays true to the Showcase roots of the Kraine Theater, and with Kotis' entire family in the cast it is clear that the ambitious are somewhat lower than the Great White Way (despite his family's qualifications).

Still, there's too much great stuff in The Truth About Santa to be kept off-off-Broadway. While the play's theoretical origins may go over the heads of a larger audience, the play's zany humor and bitingly cynical view of religion would not. It was that humor and social sensibility that made Urinetown a surprise audience success after its intellectual astuteness made it an even bigger critical success. Likewise, you don't have to know Durkheim to find The Truth About Santa hilarious, or to get it's larger message (though it certainly adds another level).

The humor comes from lines like a sibling lamenting that "Luke can smash the laws of physics, confound our sense of reality, and all I can do is make people slightly more pleasant for about a minute or two" (it's kinda boring) and involving Santa in a paternity battle. It comes from design touches like elves in Crocs and on-again, off-again intentionally 99-cent store angel halos (part of a generally ingenious costume design by Kotis' wife/fellow cast member Ayun Halliday). It comes from characters and performances as brilliantly rendered as Elves Jo-Jo (Clay Adams) and Jim-Jim (Jeff Gurner) and the pseudo-prophet George, who Kotis himself plays in Ralph Kramden-like fashion.

It's easy to forget that, despite his modest profile, Kotis is probably the most famous alum of the Neo-Futurists, a radical experimental theater group founded in Chicago that focused on breaking down the divide between "performer" and audience (that doesn't include Stephen Colbert, who was a member for one rehearsal in the early '90s before being pulled back to Second City). After The Truth About Santa, Kotis' next project is Yeast Nation (the triumph of life), his second project with Urinetown collaborater Mark Hollman, which premieres in Chicago this spring. It may be that, not wanting to tempt the theater gods (and other gods) too much, Kotis has hedged his bets on that project returning him to the Promised Land.

But it would be a shame to overlook The Truth About Santa, a play that has every right to become the Christmas Carol (or Mahabharata) for weird theater geeks across the world. Personally, I hope to see The Truth About Santa every winter solstice for years to come, preferably with a more polished script and production. If Seinfeld a similarly quirky, culturally-specific enterprise, can find a place for Festivus for a universal audience, The Truth About Santa can find a place for classic religious sociology in the mainstream world. You just have to believe.

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The Truth About Santa by Greg Kotis; directed by John Clancy; set design by Heather Wolensky; lighting design by A.J. Epstein; costume design by Ayun Halliday. Photos by Colin D. Young

Starring Kotis (George), Halliday (Mary), India Kotis (Freya), Milo Kotis (Luke), Clay Adams (Jo-Jo), Jeff Gurner (Jim-Jim), Bill Coelius (Santa), Lusia Strus (Mrs. Claus).

The Truth About Santa runs throuh December 20 at the Kraine Theater (85 East 4th Street). Tickets can be purchased at www.horseTRADE.info.

Labels: 2008-2009, emile durkheim, Greg Kotis, new york, off-off-Broadway, religion, the truth about santa, theater review, university of chicago, Urinetown

Image via WikipediaFrom John Kay of the Financial Times:

The University of Chicago is appealing for $200m to establish a Milton Friedman Institute. The plan to honour the university’s most famous economist is arousing controversy. A petition to the university’s president from a group of professors reports that “many colleagues are distressed by the notoriety of the Chicago School of Economics, especially throughout most of the global south, where they have often to defend the University’s reputation in the face of its negative image”.

To see what is wrong with this statement, change it only slightly – “many colleagues are distressed by the notoriety of the Chicago School of Anthropology, especially throughout most of the business community, where they have often to defend the University’s reputation in the face of its negative image”.

Kay's point is that Milton Friedman was an academic first and a political figure second; dismissing Friedman would be dismissing one of the University of Chicago's greatest, most distinguished scholars. Friedman pioneered his field in a way most academics can only dream of. Dismissing him for his politics actually does more to dismiss academic integrity of the scholars who oppose the institute's name (scholars, who, may I add, come almost exclusively from the anthropology, sociology, and English departments).

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Labels: Chicago School of Economics, Financial Times, John Kay, Milton Friedman, university of chicago

Image via WikipediaSo with Tina Fey's strong Chicago roots (which are relayed in her Liz Lemon 30 Rock character), and considering the strong Chicago roots of Fey via Second City, could this be the closest to a Scav Hunt reference network television will ever get?


There isn't quite as strong of a University of Chicago/Second City connection anymore, but unless they're referring to a clearly inferior hipster North Side "all-night Scavenger Hunt," I'm inclined to take this as a win.

Labels: 30 rock, chicago, scav hunt, second city, tina fey, university of chicago

Image by Getty Images via DaylifeRyo Chijiiwa, inventor of TwitterRank, is no scammer. He's one of the sweetest people I know. He was my dormmate at the University of Chicago, in Hitchcock House in Snell-Hitchcock Hall. It was a pretty insane dorm, but Ryo was one of the most genial people in it. I can think of like 100 people from the dorm who would be more likely to commit fraud than Ryo.

First off, made homemade ice cream for the entire dorm. But if that wasn't awesome and non-spammy enough, he created an "ice cream co-op" to make sure that the money for supplies in making the ice cream was split fairly and evenly. That's about as far from fraud as you can get. Also, he made this video:

Man, how can a fraudster make this video?

This is all Peter Griffin's fault.

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Labels: ducky at the reg, Ice cream, Ryo Chijiiwa, snell-hitchcock, twitter, university of chicago

NYU's campus, via WikipediaAlana Taylor's up to no good again at the PBS MediaShift Blog (in a good way). Alana focuses on the rise of NYU Local and the threat it poses to the more traditional print NYU paper, the Washington Square News. In Alana's mind, the WSN has lagged behind in its online presence, and has failed by staying dependent on its print edition. She wants to see more NYU Local's and less WSN's in the future.

Alana's perspective works for NYU, but it runs into problems when you try to expand the argument to other colleges. As the title on MediaShift points out (but the article itself doesn't really mention), NYU has no campus; it's decentralized, sprawling nature essentially makes all of lower Manhattan its campus. For that kind of scattered environment, a print newspaper would be hard to get to the right people. For NYU, an online newspaper like NYU Local makes sense.

Most colleges, however, are not like NYU. They have a rather small, centralized campus, a campus which most students either live on or near. When I was an editor at the Chicago Maroon at the University of Chicago, our core readership even among college students in 2007 was students who picked up the paper in the dining hall, the student center, or the dorms. In fact, at the American Journalism Review, Philip Meyer noted that the only way newspapers can stay dominant in the future is with a strong local presence and community influence. There's very few places where that can apply more than on a small college campus. On a side note, the Maroon has vastly improved its website since I left the paper. But while that will certainly increase its presence in the city of Chicago and in online media, it's influence on campus is still dominated by the print edition.

So in sum, Alana's call for more of an online presence for college newspapers only really works with a college with a sprawling, decentralized space with a large commuter presence. For a more traditional college, print will continue to dominate for the time being.

Labels: alana taylor, chicago maroon, college newspaper, New York University, Newspaper, NYU Local, university of chicago, Washington Square News

Here's an article I wrote in a moment of inspiration Saturday after reading about the Milton Friedman Institute Protests. This was deemed too hot for the Chicago Maroon!

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I love the University of Chicago as much as any Simpsons-quoting, Durkheim-referencing nerd. One thing I do not miss about the U of C, however, is its hopeless self-absorption, thinly-veiled sense of elitism, and unrepentant collective narcissism when it comes to political protest. Over my 4 years at the U of C, I saw a lot of protests that involved U of C policy. I saw virtually none that involved the world outside of Hyde Park. What made it all the more frustrating was that some of the world’s major issues were filtered into protests that made the U of C into the Great Satan against social justice. If you had listened to STAND in the 2006-2007 school year, the U of C administration would be personally responsible for murdering innocent Sudanese (a joke that made it into the recent Fire Escape Film Carmen: The Movie). If you had listened to the Kick Coke off Campus protesters, you’d think providing Coke in Bartlett (to students who would have bought it at Walgreen’s otherwise) would make the University personally responsible for Colombian farmers starving to death. And now, if you listened to the Milton Friedman Institute protesters, you’d think the name of an economic institute in 2008 is personally responsible for electrocuting the testicles of Argentineans 30 years ago.

The problem is that the issues that actually matter to the lives of college students go virtually ignored. The protests for healthcare, which a significant portion of undergrads will go without once they graduate, were nearly unilaterally attended by 60-year-old men. There have been no major protests against government wiretapping at the same time the NSA has been probably ready and able to look at every Chicago student’s Facebook profile and emails. The War In Iraq, the darling of political protests before the war started in 2002/2003, went completely un-protested from 2004-2008 when I was there, mainly because it was too depressing to contemplate (and also because the U of C probably has a disproportionately low number of undergrads with a sibling or relative fighting in the war).

Along the way came some particularly ironic moments that symbolized the pathetic qualities of the University’s myopia. The protest against the Common Application drew 5 times the number of people who protested weeks later with STAND, symbolizing that U of C’ers place more value in fighting the way applicants fill out pieces of paper than they do in fighting genocide. The same anti-Common App protesters sold shirts saying “I Am Uncommon,” not realizing the irony of having hundreds of students walking around with identical shirts promoting their uniqueness. One of my personal favorites is the website urging the University of Chicago to Kick Coke Off Campus, which leaves the “Background Information” section on the reasoning behind the protest blank. And now, when the current economic climate means most undergrads will struggle to find jobs when they graduate (especially those who chose the U of C to become I-Bankers), the main economic issue drawing ire is naming an institute after a scholar who hasn’t been all that controversial in the past 20 years (unless you’re in the anthropology department). In reality, the brainpower that would occur behind that artificial name can only help the current economic crisis.

The University has a long tradition of being blind to external political issues unless they affected the U of C. Even the student riots of ’68 were only brought on after a radical sociology professor was denied tenure. After when the students took over the administration building, they still went to class. But what bothers me most is how easily distractible the U of C’s political conscience can be, and how in focusing to a ridiculous extent on the school’s own problems, students have largely overlooked the ones that affect the rest of the world, including those who live, you know, a few blocks away, west of Cottage Grove. These are supposedly the brightest intellectual minds in the country, the least gullible to taking any ideology verbatim, and who can use their intelligence to solve the world’s problems.

I’m not sure who can directly address the school’s political self-absorption—it’s too dangerous for Zimmer to address at this point. The main issue is that there’s not a strong enough infrastructure of political organization on campus to do it. What we see instead are certain lunatics who have the least shame (or to some, the most balls), to go all out and eventually dominate the schools political spectrum (and the Maroon’s coverage). It’s time to burst Hyde Park’s collective bubble, as scary and unpredictable as that may sound.

Links:
Faculty Convene Over Friedman (UChiBLOGo)
Tell the University of Chicago to Kick Coke off Campus! (Union Voice)
STAND requests student funds for refugee protest (Chicago Maroon)

Labels: angry young man, chicago maroon, politics, protesting, self-absorption, university of chicago

For its fundraising campaign, of all things. Rep-re-sent-in'! [Chicago Business]

Labels: university of chicago