Friday 10/10 – Thursday 10/16
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
“There are a lot of poker books out there,” says Jake Austen, “but they’re all about how to win in Vegas, and have a lot of math and stuff.” Austen, publisher of the zine Roctober and producer of the cable access show Chic-a-Go-Go, put together A Friendly Game of Poker: 52 Takes on the Neighborhood Game after the idea was tossed out by the host of his regular game–Chicago Review Press editor Yuval Taylor. The book, published by CRP last month, features contributions from 44 writers and artists on subjects ranging from appropriate poker drinks and snacks to how to kick an unwanted player out of the group to poker as a country-music metaphor. “The only way this book would help at a poker game would be as a conversation starter,” says Austen. “Or you could use it for misdirection–like bring up an interesting story so the other players don’t see that you have an inside straight.” Austen, Taylor, and contributors Dan Kelly and Starlee Kine will read tonight at 7:30 at Quimby’s, 1854 W. North. There’ll also be music by one-man band Bud Melvin, Kenny Rogers karaoke, and a nickel poker game. It’s free; call 773-342-0910.
11 SATURDAY The proposed West Loop Transportation Center–an ambitious four-level underground structure running along Canal Street that would link the Ogilvie Transportation Center to Union Station and include a busway, a high-speed rail port, and a new subway line offering express service to O’Hare–will be one of the topics on the docket today at the Midwest High Speed Rail Coalition’s Fall Conference. It runs from 1 to 5 at the Chicago Architecture Foundation, 224 S. Michigan, and tickets are $20. For more information call 773-334-6758 or see www.midwesthsr.org.
14 TUESDAY The music of gay American modernists like Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein is “the music that’s widely heard as signifying America’s land and people,” says University of Michigan music and women’s studies professor Nadine Hubbs. “It’s that simultaneously classical and populist idiom that’s invoked when the U.S. Navy or the American Beef Council…wants us to picture America in its vast, rugged beauty, and in the strength and integrity of its people.” Hubbs will elaborate today at a 3:30 lecture titled “Orchestrating National Identity: Queer Modernists’ Creation of ‘America’s Sound,’” part of Queer Origins of Modern American Culture, a series of free talks sponsored by the University of Chicago’s Lesbian and Gay Studies Project. It’s at the University of Chicago’s Classics Building, 1010 E. 59th. For more information on the series call 773-834-4509.
