My friend and colleague Chris Tillman and her husband Joe Losurdo, working under the name Regressive Films, have collaborated on a new documentary about the history of punk rock in Chicago. Titled You Weren’t There — A History Of Chicago Punk 1977-1984, the film will have its world premiere on Saturday, November 24 at the […]
Entries Tagged as 'Peoria'
Coming in November: The History of Chicago Punk on Film
Posted by Ocelopotamus on October 26th, 2007 at 3:10 pm
Tags: Culture · Music · Chicago · New Wave · Film · History · Video · Punk · Documentaries · Illinois · Peoria
Liking Norma Rae
Posted by Ocelopotamus on July 10th, 2007 at 2:24 pm
After reading this piece, which originally ran in The Nation, I bumped Norma Rae up on my Netflix queue and was very glad I did. I was really too young for it when it came out in 1979, and had somehow never gotten around to renting it in the years since.
And seeing Norma Rae now […]
Tags: News · Politics · Culture · Media · Activism · Film · History · Labor · U.S. Congress · The Economy, Stupid · Peoria
Weekend in Peoria, and a Sign of the Times
Posted by Ocelopotamus on June 27th, 2007 at 12:26 pm
You may have noticed things have been a little slow around the OcPot this week, because I spent the past weekend visiting my parents in scenic Peoria, Illinois. I’m now paying the usual price for taking a couple of days off, with everything I have to do piled up to twice its normal height. It’ll […]
Tags: Meta · Culture · Food · Journal · LGBT · New Wave · The B-52's · Books · U.S. Senate · Labor · Photos · Vegetarian & Vegan · Illinois · Restaurants · The Economy, Stupid · Peoria
Tolkien’s Children of Hurin: Break a Leg, Professor
Posted by Ocelopotamus on April 17th, 2007 at 6:22 am
It appears that Christopher Tolkien has one more book to produce out of his father’s magic hat, although this one will almost certainly be the last. The Children of Hurin by J.R.R. Tolkien goes on sale today, three decades after his death:
Tolkien’s son and literary executor Christopher, now in his eighties, constructed “The Children of […]
Tags: News · Culture · Journal · Books · Lit · Mythology · Tolkien · Fantasy · Peoria
Music: “We Can Get Together”
Posted by Ocelopotamus on April 11th, 2007 at 4:51 pm
Here’s Icehouse’s ecstatically edgy crossover single “We Can Get Together” from 1980, which never fails to give me that particular New Wave frisson that results from just the right ratio of synthesizers to spiky guitars complemented by a sublime angst-in-my-pants vocal style.
And oh yeah, they were still called Flowers when they made this video, […]
