Day: February 20, 2003

Raves

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

“About Schmidt” — Jack Nicholson deserves the Oscar for the final scene alone. A heartbreaking epiphany of a moment pulled off the way only he could. Overall, a hilarious movie that is deeply moving as well. I’m sorry it wasn’t nominated for best picture.

“The Pianist” — Polanski avoids the Spielbergian excess and just lets this story stand on its own legs, unadorned by anything but the brutal, miraculous reality.

“Cross the Green Mountain” — Bob Dylan’s new original song for Ron Maxwell’s feature film, “Gods and Generals,” has no hook and no chorus. But it features some beautiful organ work and wonderful lyrics and phrasing from the master. My CD came with a DVD that includes a music video for the song — cool!

“The Bootleg Series, Vol. 5: Bob Dylan Live 1975” — Once again, a new Dylan from-the-vaults release brings to the official canon what bootleg trades have known all along. Dylan reworks some of his classics to wonderful effect and his intensity on songs like “Isis” is electric. A few of the solo treatments are duds, save a “Tangled Up in Blue” with new lyrics, but the album does feature the best duets with Joan Baez I’ve ever heard. It actually sounds like they’re singing together!

Alejandro Escovedo at Old Town School of Folk Music, Valentine’s Day — The singer-songwriter was accompanied by two cellists, a violinist and another acoustic guitarist. The sound suited some of his songs better than others, but when Escovedo & co. came down into the crowd, only feet away from where Karen and I were seated, for the encore, it was a moment to treasure.

After two hours of music and as the clock neared 1:30 a.m., it seemed we’d gotten all we could ask for. Then Escovedo introduced what would be his last song of the night, which he wrote as a wedding present for a friend. “This is it,” I told Karen. It was his gorgeous “Wedding Day,” which I first heard a year ago and knew instantly would be the song Karen and I first danced to as a married couple. And it was.

What a Valentine to us, especially since Escovedo had, to my knowledge, never performed the song in concert before. When you write a song like “Wedding Day,” you’re doing yourself a favor because you know people will play it at weddings. But it’s a curse, too. You don’t want to wind up as just another wedding singer. Escovedo doesn’t have to worry about that, I don’t think.

Elections? We don’t need no stinkin’ elections

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

Sixty-eight percent of those surveyed by the Chicago Tribune recently said they will vote to give Richard M. Daley, Mayor, another four years in office.

Though we are less than a week away from election day, there have been no debates. Daley won’t stoop to that. There have been no TV ads for mayoral candidates other than Daley. The most you see around town to even give you a clue there’s an election coming up are huge signs with Daley’s name at the top and the name of the aldermanic incumbent on the bottom. It’s a wonder they bother to switch out the names. I suppose “Daley/Daley Stooge” would be too obvious.

Where to start? More than half of the City Council has been appointed by Daley. His political forces control everything that happens in the city. He has been busted several times for giving contracts to cronies, and treats public records as if they were his personal property.

A misguided system of tax preferences for big companies that threaten to leave town means Daley gets good publicity when they decide to stick around — if they do — but the average citizen (and business owner) has to pay that much more to make up the difference. And when Daley realized — whoops — that revenues were down and the city would be millions in debt, rather than force the government to take the hit he sicced his parking goons on the suckers too poor to afford a garage and too unskilled to have a job that gets them home at 5:30 p.m. so they can find a spot on the street.

Education? The test scores have inched up a little bit, and things may be a little better than they were before the city took control of the school board under Daley. But where are the charter schools that have flourished in other cities? Where’s the voucher program for poor kids that Milwaukee and Cleveland have? Where’s the competition to force government-run schools to improve?

Chicago is now the No. 1 murder capital, yet continues to push an ineffective gun ban and the useless war on drugs. The city still struggles to attract businesses. Money is poured into wasteful, big projects like the disastrous new Soldier Field, the three times over budget Millennium Park, and the long-delayed expansion of O’Hare Airport. Daley has made privatization a dirty word by taking the formula set forth in cities like Indianapolis and used it as an excuse to make his cronyism harder to track.

Essentially, no one trusts that the privatized contracts are actually going to the most lowest, most qualified bidders and that the contractor’s delivering the best service at the lowest price because no one trusts the process. How could they, when Daley’s administration routinely hides mundane details about how contracts are awarded and so many escape any meaningful bid process at all?

In other words, things are not hunky dory. But opposition candidates have been beaten mercilessly and by progressively larger margins since Daley took office in 1989. No one wants to pour the money and the time into a losing race. And so they are co-opted by a very clever politician who may not get much done but knows how to make sure that everyone gets his little piece. Even the news media score an occasional coup and can sneer at the mayor without ever really doing anything about it (except voicing the obligatory “buts” before unanimously endorsing him).

What a waste. And no one else to vote for. Not anyone who cares about liberty. Not in Chicago.