Thursday, June 17, 2010

UCB Comedy goes after BP

A theatre group which has roots in Chicago (created in the city in 1990), Upright Citizens Brigade Comedy (Now in New York and Los Angeles), goes after BP... with a certain amount of audience success (almost 5,000,000 people have watched the 3-minute video below):



Posted by at 3:47 PM
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1910s 1919 Riot 1920s 1930s Aaron Elster Achy Obejas Advertisements Airports Al Capone Alaa El Aswany Allan Bloom Ana Castillo Andrew Greeley Andrew Patner Angela Jackson Anish Kapoor Architecture Argonne Arne Duncan Arnold Jacob Wolf Art Artists B-Movies Barack Obama Baseball Bernie Mac Billy Sunday Black Belt Black Metropolis Black Power Blues Bob Boldt Bronzeville Bruce Elliot Burnham Plan Carl Sandburg Carol Mosely Braun Carolyn Rodgers Catholicism Center for the Study of Politics and Society Cherien Dabis Chess Records Chicago Board of Trade Chicago Defender Chicago in France Chicago River Chicago Spire Chicago Sun-Times Chicago Symphony Orchestra Chicago-Paris Christopher Robert Reed Chuck Berry Cinema Climate Community Service Crime Novels Cubs dance hall culture David Ansell David Plouffe Democratic National Convention 1968 Detroit Diane Wood Documentary Films Dominic Pacyga Du Sable Museum Economics Economy Ecumenism Education Eileen Johnston Elections 2008 Elizabeth Alexander Employment Energy Enrico Fermi Environment Erik Whitaker Ernest Hemingway Evangelicalism Famous Chicagoans Fashion Feminism Fiction Film Fire Firearms Frances Cabrini Frank Easterbrook Frank Norris Franklin Park Frederick Douglass Fundamentalism Gangs gangsters Garrison Keillor Genealogy Grant Park Gun-Control Gwendolyn Brooks Harold Washington Harriet Monroe Haymarket Health Hillary Clinton History Howard Zinn Hull-House Humbolt Park Hyde Park Ikram Goldman Image Union Immigrants Jake Austen James Green Jane Addams Jazz Jazz Institute of Chicago Jean Castex Jean Howard Jeff Berkowitz Jeff Richmond Jesse Jackson Jr. Joe Fournier John Callaway John McCain Joseph Cardinal Bernardin Joseph Lowery Journalism Judaism Kenwood Law Lee Zacharias Li-Young Lee Links Literature Louis Sullivan Lynn Becker Marc Smith Martin Luther King Mary Brogger Maxwell Street Mayor Rahm Emanuel Mayor Richard Daley Michelle Obama Mies van der Rohe Milton Friedman Muddy Waters Museums Music Naomi Klein Nathan Lerner Neighborhoods Neil Harris Nelson Algren New Bauhaus Newspapers NORC Northwestern Olympic Games Oprah Winfrey Patrick Quinn Paul Laurence Dunbar Peace Works People of Faith Periodicals Pilsen Places of Worship Poet Laureate Poetry Poetry Foundation Poets Police Department Politics Poverty Prohibition Project Vote 1992 Psychology Rachel Maddow Radio and TV Rahm Emanuel Reader Real Estate Religion Restaurants Richard Copans Richard J. Daley Richard Posner Richard Wright Riots Rock Rod Blagojevich Roger Ebert Roland Burris Ron Santo Sandra Cisneros Santiago Calatrava Sara Paretsky Sarah Palin Saul Bellow Science Scott Simon Second City Skokie Skyscrapers Sociology Soldier Field South Side Sports Sterling Plumpp Stockyards Stuart Dybek Studs Terkel Suburbs Taxes Terra Foundation The Chicagoan Theatre Thomas Pynchon Timeline Tina Fey Tourism Transportation UCB Comedy Universities University of Chicago University of Illinois Urban Planning Valerie Jarrett Violence Voices War Washington D.C. West Side Wicker Park William Ayers William LeBaron Jenney Wilton Gregory Women Workers World's Columbian Exposition 1893 World's Fair WPA Wrigley Field Writers Writing

Poetry from Chicago

A little corner to encourage you to read and listen to poetry from Chicago.

Hear Gwendolyn Brooks read "the mother" from A Street in Bronzeville (1945) and other poetry (Poetry Foundation's Essential American Poets selected by Donald Hall, in a recording made at the Library of Congress, January 19, 1961).


Chicago Architecture



2003. Skybridge, 1 N. Halstead Street, 39 stories.

1980. Xerox Center, 55 W. Monroe Street, 41 stories.

1975. Metropolitan Correctional Center, 71 W. Van Buren Street, 27 stories.

1973. Sears Tower, 223 S. Wacker Drive, 110 stories with a skydeck.

1972. Aon Center (Standard Oil Building), 200 E. Randolph Street.
CNA Plaza, 44 stories, 325 S. Wabash Avenue.

1970. John Hancock Center, 875 N. Michigan Avenue, 100 stories.

1969. Chase Tower (First National Bank Building, then Bank One Plaza), 10 S. Dearborn Street, 60 stories.

1968. Lake Point Tower, 505 N. Lake Shore Drive, 70 stories.

1964. Marina City, 300 N. State Street, 61 stories.

1925. Tribune Tower, 435 N. Michigan Avenue, 36 stories.

1910. Robie House, 5757 S. Woodlawn Avenue.

1892. Masonic Temple, demolished in 1939.

1889. Monadnock Building, 53 W. Jackson Boulevard, 17 stories.

1888. The Rookery, 209 S. LaSalle Street.

1885. Home Insurance Building, 10 stories.

You can get more detailed information about these buildings and others through several websites devoted to Chicago's architecture:

—Chicago architectural Landmarks, by name of architect, on the City of Chicago web pages.
—a Global Architecture Encyclopedia,  http://www.glasssteelandstone.com.

Chicago goes to the Movies



2008. Chicago 10 by Brett Morgen. See trailer.

2007. And They Came to Chicago: The Italian American Legacy by Gia Marie Amelia. See clips from the website.

2006. Running Scared by Wayne Kramer. See trailer.
2003. Chicago, City of the Century by Austin Hoyt for PBS.

2002. Chicago by Rob Marshall. See trailer.

Road to Perdition by Sam Mendes. See trailer.

2000. High Fidelity by Stephen Frears. See trailer of this film based in Wicker Park.

What Women Want by Nancy Meyers. See trailer.

1998. Blues Brothers 2000 by John Landis. See trailer.

1997. My Best Friend's Wedding by P.J. Hogan. See trailer. See 2 minutes from film.

1996. Chain Reaction by Andrew Davis. See trailer.

1995. While You Were Sleeping by Jon Turteltaub. See trailer.

1993. The Fugitive by (?). See 2 minutes from film.

1989. When Harry Met Sally by Rob Reiner. See excerpt.

1987. The Untouchables by Brian De Palma. See trailer.

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles by John Hughes. See excerpt.

1986. Ferris Bueller's Day Off by John Hughes. See trailer.

About Last Night by Edward Zwick. See excerpt.

The Color of Money by Martin Scorsese. See excerpts. See New York Times review (October 17, 1986).

Running Scared by Peter Hyams. See opening scene, with views of downtown Chicago.


1984. Sixteen Candles by John Hughes. See trailer.

The Natural by Barry Levinson used Wrigley Field as a backdrop. See trailer. See Robert Redford's batting practice scene.

1980. The Blues Brothers by John Landis. See trailer.




1964. Robin and the 7 Hoods by Gordon Douglas. See trailer.

1963. The Fugitive by (?). See trailer.

1959. The Untouchables by Alex March. See opening.

North by Northwest by Alfred Hitchcock, featuring the Ambassador East hotel. See trailer.

1938. In Old Chicago by Darryl F. Zanuck. See trailer. Reviewed in the New York Times (January 16, 1938).

1936. Chicago May Day by Maurice Bailen.

Peace Parade and Workers' Picnic by Maurice Bailen.

1934. Halsted Street by Conrad (Nelson) Friberg.

The Great Depression by Maurice Bailen.



Chicago in all things Literary: Fiction, Poetry, Drama, Essays and Criticism



AL ASWANY, Alaa, Chicago, tr. Abdel Wahab,  New York: Harper, 2008.
ALGREN, Nelson, Chicago: City on the Make [1951], Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.
BELLOW, Saul, The Adventures of Augie March, 1953.
—, Herzog, 1964.
—, Ravelstein, 2000.
BROOKS, Gwendolyn, Selected Poems [1963], New York: HarperCollins, 2006.
CISNEROS, Sandra, The House on Mango Street [1984], New York: Vintage Contemporaries, 1991.
DREISER, Theodore, Sister Carrie [1900] , .
DYBEK, Stuart, The Coast of Chicago [1990], New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux/Picador, 2003.
—, Childhood and Other Neighborhoods, Stories, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2003.
—, Streets in Their Own Ink (Poems), New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004.
FULLER, Henry B., The Cliff Dwellers: A Novel, New York: Harper & Brothers, 1893.
GUZMAN, Richard R. (ed.), Black Writing From Chicago: In the World, Not of It?, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2006.
HUGHES, Langston, "Chicago," in Arnold Rampersad (ed.), The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, New York: Vintage, 1994, p.616-617.
KIPLING, Rudyard, "Chicago," chapter 5, American Notes (1891).
LIEBLING, A.J., Chicago, The Second City [1906], Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2004.
MAMET, David, Sexual Perversity in Chicago, 1974.
—, "the Museum of Science and Industry Story," 5 Television Plays, 1975.
McQUADE, Molly (ed.), An Unsentimental Education: Writers and Chicago, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.
NESS, Eliot, The Untouchables, 1947.
PARETSKY, Sara, Fire Sale, 2005.
—, Writing in an Age of Silence, London: Verso, 2007.
PYNCHON, Thomas, Against the Day (2006).
SANDBURG, Carl, Chicago Poems, 1916.
—, The Chicago Race Riots, July 1919, 1919.
SHERWIN, Byron L., The Cubs and the Kabbalist, Denton, Texas: West Oak Press, 2006.
SINCLAIR, Upton, The Jungle [1906], New York: American Library/Signet Classic, 2001; New York: Random House/Modern Libary, 2002.
WRIGHT, Richard, Native Son [1940], New York: Vintage, 2000.


Chicago's Reality (outside of Literature)


ADDAMS, Jane, My Friend, Julia Lathrop, New York: Macmillan Co., 1935.
ADLER, Jeffrey S., "'Halting the Slaughter of the Innocents,': the Civilizing Process and the Surge in violence in Turn-of-the-Century Chicago," in Social Science History 25.1 (2001) p.29-52.
BACHIN, Robin F., Building the South Side: Urban Space and Civic Culture in Chicago, 1890-1919, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.
BULMER, Martin, The Chicago School of Sociology: Institutionalization, Diversity, and the Rise of Social Research, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.
CARSON, Mina, Settlement Folk: Social Thought and the American Settlement Movement, 1885-1930, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.
CONDIT, Carl W., The Chicago School of Architecture: A History of Commercial and Public Building in the Chicago Area, 1985-1925 [19 ??], Chicago: U Chicago Press, 1973.
CRONON, William, Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West, 1991.
DEEGAN, Mary Jo, "W.E.B. Du Bois and the Women of Hull-House, 1895-1899," American Sociologist 19.4 (Winter 1988), p.301-310.
DIAMOND, Andrew, "From Fighting Gangs to Black Nations: Race, Power, and the Other Civil Rights Movement in chicago's West Side Ghetto, 1957-1968" Revue Française d'Etudes Américaines 116 (Spring 2008) p.51-65.
DRAKE, St. Clair and CAYTON, Horace R., Black Metropolis, A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City, [1945], Revised and Enlarged, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.
DURKIN KEATING, Ann, Chicago Neighborhoods and Suburbs: A Historical Guide, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.
DZUBACK, Mary Ann, Robert M. Hutchins: Portrait of an Educator, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.
EBNER, Michael H., Creating Chicago's North Shore: a Suburban History, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.
GENET, Jean, "The Members of the Assembly," Esquire (November 1968) p.
GREEN, James, Death in the Haymarket.  A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement and the Bombing that Divided Gilded Age America, New York: Pantheon Books, 2006. Read first chapter here.
HARRIS, Neil, The Chicagoan: A Lost Magazine of the Jazz Age, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.
HOLLAND, Robert A.  Chicago In Maps: 1612-2002, Rizzoli, 2005.
HYRA, Derek S., The New Urban Renewal: The Economic Transformation of Harlem and Bronzeville, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.
KUSCH, Frank, Battleground Chicago: The Police and the 1968 Democratic National Convention, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.
MARCEL, Jean-Christophe, "Maurice Halbwachs à Chicago ou les ambiguités d'un rationalisme Durkheimien," Revue d'Histoire des Sciences Humaines, 1:1 (1999) p.47-68.
MATHE, Sylvie (ed.), Regards Croisés sur Chicago, Aix en Provence: Publications de l'Université de Provence, 2004.
MEIS KNUPFUR, Anne, The Chicago Black Renaissance and Women's Activism, Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006.
MULLEN, Bill V., review of A.M. Knupfer's The Chicago Black Renaissance and Women's Activism in Women And Social Movements in the United States 10.4 (December 2006).
OBAMA, Barack, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, [1995], Revised Edition, New York: Three Rivers Press, 2004.
PACYGA, Dominic A.  Polish Immigrants and Industrial Chicago: Workers on the South Side, 1880-1922, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991, 2003.
ROYKO, Mike, Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago, 1971.
ROWE, Mike, Chicago Blues: The City and the Music [1973], London: Perseus, 1975.
SAWISLAK, Karen, Smoldering City: Chicagoans and the Great Fire, 1871-1874, Chicago: U Chicago Press, 1995.
SCHULTZ, Rima Lunin and HAST, Adele (eds), Women Building Chicago 1790-1990: A Biographical Dictionary, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001.
SKLAR, Kathryn Kish, "Hull House in the 1890s: A Community of Women Reformers," Signs 10 (Summer 1985) p.658-77.
SMITH, Carl, Urban Disorder and the Shape of Belief: The Great Chicago Fire, the Haymarket Bomb, and the Model Town of Pullman, Chicago: U Chicago Press, 1994.
—, The Plan of Chicago: Daniel Burnham and the Remaking of the American City, Chicago: U Chicago Press, 2006.
SOLZMAN, David M., The Chicago River: An Illustrated History and Guide to the River and Its Waterways [19 ??], Chicago: U. Chicago Press, 2006.
TERKEL, Studs, Division Street: America, 1967.
—, Chicago, 1987.
YELLEN, Samuel, American Labor Struggles [Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1936], 1969, 1974.

Chicago: Reference Works

GROSSMAN, James R., DURKIN KEATING, Ann, and REIFF, Janice L. (eds), The Encyclopedia of Chicago, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.




Chicago: Tourism


CANNING BLACKWELL, Elizabeth, Frommer's Chicago 2007, New York: Wiley Publishing, 2007.
HOLDEN, Greg, Literary Chicago: A Book Lover's Tour of the Windy City, Chicago: Lake Claremont Press, 2001.



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Sweet Home Chicago


Recently popularized in the movie The Blues Brothers, the song was first performed by Robert Johnson in the 1930s. It has been sung by many artists, including Eric Clapton and Buddy Guy.











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