Mark Evanier tells us about Peter Leeds.

UPDATE: Peter Leeds was a wonderful character actor who passed away a little more than ten years ago. For several years, Peter Leeds worked more days than any other member of the Screen Actors Guild.

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I have an Everyday Problem, could you please direct me to an Everyday Solution?

-- Loyal Reader

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Esquire, October 2006

A National Knife Fight: Illinois Sixth Congressional District


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Once again, disappointment.

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Can't fight this feeling

BY STEFANIE PERVOS | STAFF WRITER
spervos@pioneerlocal.com

Excitement and wonder top off village's 50th birthday bash, REO concert

Elk Grove Village's 50th Birthday Bash went off "without a hitch," Mayor Craig Johnson said.

Despite a slow start because of the heat, about 7,000 residents filled the stands of Haskell Memorial Stadium at Elk Grove High School by the end of Sunday evening. The celebration ended without any arrests or health problems.

More about the winners and Pam Scully's take on the event. Page 5

"It was really possibly the finest night Elk Grove has ever had," Johnson said.

Entrance to the event was free and included an REO Speedwagon concert, brownies and ice cream and a fireworks display.

Johnson kicked off the evening by thanking Elk Grove High School and District 214.

"Have you ever seen Elk Grove High School change from a football field to a concert stadium so quickly?" he said.

Over the past eight months, more than 13,000 raffle tickets for the Hometown Home Giveaway were sold at $50 each. Johnson presented 11 civic groups with a check for $11,500 each from the contest's proceeds.

The 10 finalists for the giveaway, already the winners of $1,000 cash, lined up in the order they purchased their tickets. Each had a chance to win the fully furnished, $600,000 home at 1099 Cheltenham Road, built by Centex Homes. From a fishbowl, each chose the key they hoped would open the door of the model replica of the home on stage.

Chris Soriano, assistant finance director for the village, was up first. He tried his key in the door but it did not budge. The next finalist, Kim Mills of Elk Grove Village, was also out of luck.

Emil Schiavo, a freelance photographer hired to take photos of the birthday celebration, was up next.

He chose his key and handed it over to his wife, Barb, so he could take the picture. To her complete amazement, the door opened.

"I want to know where Fire Chief Miller is with the ambulance" she said, the color drained from her face.

Emil Schiavo was shocked he had won the contest, though he had been predicting he would be the winner.

"Even though I was hopeful I'd win it, it's still a surprise to pick the key that would open the door," he said. "It's kind of strange because I had this feeling all along that I would win."

The couple has lived in Elk Grove Village since 1969 in two different Centex Homes. They are planning to move into their new dream home, at least for a short while.

Before the excitement of the giveaway died down, REO Speedwagon took the stage. Lead singer Kevin Cronin told the crowd it had been 35 years since they had last played in Elk Grove Village, and it was time to come back and educate young residents on their music.

The band rocked out to classics "Can't Fight This Feeling," "Keep On Loving You" and "Time for Me to Fly." They also introduced a few new songs of their new album, which comes out next year.

Peter Roskam, 6th District congressional hopeful and an avid REO Speedwagon fan, was invited by the mayor to attend the bash with his family.

"Hearing REO kind of takes me back," he said. "They're one of those garage bands that made it big."

Michelle Graves, another REO Speedwagon fan, has lived in Elk Grove Village for 24 years. Though she was disappointed not to have won a new home, she thought overall the 50th Birthday Bash was a success.

"I think they did a lot of planning and the mayor does a great job," she said.

http://www.pioneerlocal.com/cgi-bin/ppo-story/localnews/current/eg/07-20-06-982943.html

Stem-Cell Issue: Republicans' Undoing?
Disgruntled Party Moderates
Could Pose Threat in Some
Suburban Congressional Districts
By JACKIE CALMES
July 21, 2006; Page A4

ELMHURST, Ill. -- At her home in this Chicago suburb, 68-year-old Alice Doyle has a sign in her front window for the Republican candidate for governor. But on a recent morning, she joined a small group at her neighbor's house to lend support to the Democrat running for Congress in this historically Republican district.

The candidate, Tammy Duckworth, 38, is an Iraq-war veteran and double amputee. Her subject at the coffee this day is public funding for medical research using embryonic stem cells. She endorses it; her Republican rival, Peter Roskam, 44, has led the fight in the Illinois Senate against it. Not coincidentally, 600 miles away President Bush was about to cast the first veto of his presidency against a bill permitting federal funding for such research, charging that it "crosses a moral boundary" in promoting "the taking of innocent human life."

While Ms. Duckworth jumps on the issue, Mr. Roskam dodges it. "There are bigger issues going on in this campaign." says spokesman Ryan McLaughlin, declining to make the candidate available despite several requests over two days.

The Republican's reticence is understandable. While Mr. Bush's position cheers religious and social conservatives in the Republicans' base, nationwide it has alienated many moderates and has some questioning their fealty to a party increasingly defined by its cultural conservatism in emphasizing its opposition to issues such as gay marriage and abortion. "I think the Republican Party is in the Dark Ages on this," says Mrs. Doyle, a registered Republican who says she now "tends to vote Democratic."

Moreover, as the party has grown more socially conservative over the past quarter-century, the suburbs where many Republicans live have become more diverse and politically independent, marked by a mix of fiscal conservatism and social liberalism that is testing Republicans' dominance there. "Those districts aren't as reliably Republican as they were," says campaign expert Bernadette Budde of the business-backed political advocacy group BIPAC.

That, in turn, has Democrats hoping to capture some of their foes' strongholds, by picking up disgruntled Republican moderates as well as independents. Whether they do could determine if Republicans keep their majorities in Congress after November's elections.

In Missouri, the stem-cell issue is prominent in Democratic Auditor Claire McCaskill's campaign to unseat Republican U.S. Sen. Jim Talent, and a separate initiative backing research is on the ballot, stoking interest. The issue also figures in Senate races in Ohio, Arizona, Minnesota, Montana and Virginia, and in suburban House contests in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Colorado and Washington. In Missouri's Aug. 8 Republican primary, conservative Rep. Todd Akin, a foe of the stem-cell bill, is challenged by state Rep. Sherman Parker, who strongly supports expanded research and has written that such debates "will determine whether we are a party controlled by social fundamentalists."

The president's position is a minority one, even among Republicans, polls show. The question of government aid for embryonic stem-cell research is popular across all regions, ages and political groups, amid scientists' claims that the cells hold the potential for treatments or even cures for diabetes, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and Lou Gehrig's diseases, multiple sclerosis, cancer and neurological and spinal-cord injuries.

"This is a big deal in a lot of these suburban districts," says political consultant David Axelrod of Chicago, who is working for Ms. Duckworth. "Republicans are trying to satisfy their base, but I think there's some cost."

But at the National Republican Campaign Committee, spokesman Carl Forti predicts the stem-cell question will be a "nonissue" by the fall, and White House aides agree, noting that it never became the big issue in the 2004 campaign that some had forecast.

The race in the congressional district west of Chicago will be a test. For nearly 32 years its representative has been Republican Henry Hyde, nationally known as an abortion foe and a leader in the House's impeachment of Bill Clinton. While the district includes the parts of Cook County outside Chicago, its heart is affluent DuPage County, dubbed "America's Most Republican County" by the local party.

But there are signs of change. Mr. Hyde's re-election vote dropped from a typical 65% in 2002 to 56% in 2004, his lowest ever. While the first President Bush got 68% of DuPage's vote in 1988, his son won 54% in 2004.

Now 82, Mr. Hyde is retiring. Mr. Roskam, his would-be successor, is a trial lawyer who was an aide to Mr. Hyde and former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay before going to the Illinois House and then the state Senate. He's "a younger version of Henry Hyde," the DuPage Republican Party chairman, state Sen. Kirk Dillard, has said.

Mr. Dillard illustrates the way the stem-cell issue has split his party. He switched to support funding for research in the state Senate, imploring, "How can you not be for this?" In an interview, he says he was influenced by advocates from nearby Children's Memorial Hospital and a local pediatrician.

Another proponent is the Republican leader of the Illinois House, Tom Cross, a protégé and former history student of U.S. House Speaker Denny Hastert of Illinois; his 13-year-old daughter has juvenile diabetes. "Everybody knows somebody who's got some connection" to conditions that might be helped, he says. "But has it translated into people leaving the party? I haven't seen that, yet."

Just as Mr. Hyde argued in House debate that embryos are human beings -- "I myself am a 992-month-old embryo" -- Mr. Roskam likewise was passionate in successfully blocking any state funding for research in the Illinois Senate. "We are asked to pit one life against another," he said in 2004. In an interview with the Journal earlier this year, Mr. Roskam called his views "well within the mainstream" of the district. Those voters who do disagree with him, he added, support him because they share his views on keeping taxes low and other issues.

Not Mae Pearson, a 77-year-old widow at the Duckworth coffee. "I was raised Republican -- strong Republican -- and I thought it was so wonderful to move to DuPage County after I got married" in 1950, she says. "But it's just too hard to be a Republican anymore because it's not the Republican Party I grew up in."

"Embryos count, people don't," complains George Strejcek, 62. He and wife Elizabeth, 58, describe themselves as former Republicans. "Goldwater I could tolerate," he says. "But with these Republicans, they forget we live in a democracy, not a theocracy."

"They're not fiscally responsible either," his wife says.

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB115344108408113095-hD7H5_rBzlQQrtkxAYAGOtHuTgM_20060819.html?mod=tff_main_tff_top

The awesome Acid Mothers Temple
Greg Kot, Tribune music critic.

For those who think they no longer have the capacity to be overwhelmed by music, consider Acid Mothers Temple and the Melting Paraiso U.F.O. The Japanese quintet's performance at the South by Southwest Music Conference two years ago was enough to dash even the most jaded hipster against the rocks of their seen-it-all complacency.

Here was a band that extracted space-trucking noise from chasms of near silence, tucked folk melodies inside screaming guitars and squalling synthesizers, and channeled the droning tonalities of Eastern throat singing while playing at crushing volume levels. The band flaunted more hair than Foghat, more volume than Blue Cheer and nearly as much speed as Hawkwind.

Trouble was, that awe-inspiring visual and sonic spectacle couldn't fully be appreciated on any of the band's albums. Their recordings were a mess, frankly--a sometimes gleeful mess, but a mess nonetheless, and difficult for all but diehards to sit through. Now there's "Mantra of Love" (Alien 8), and it marks a turning point for the band, one acknowledged by founding guitarist Kawabata Makoto in an e-mail interview. "On this album we prioritized the idea of song," he says. "You could say that we have changed from our previous focus on chaos and drones. But we have always had a `song' element in our music, and this album has just provided us with a chance to change that focus."

"Mantra of Love" consists of only two tracks, but they bring a previously unheard coherence and clarity to the band's aural delirium. The 30-minute "La Le Lo" opens with a long section of melodic, almost soothing wordless chanting and scatting by singer Cotton Casino, before the backdrop of sitar, guitar and analog synthesizer overtakes her. A dervish swirl of instruments builds in volume, speed and intensity before collapsing. The 15-minute "L'Ambition dans Le Miroir" is the chill-out after the frenzy, with Casino's voice and Higashi Hiroshi's moonscape keyboards drifting serenely out of earshot.

It's a culmination in many ways of a 10-year ride that began in the mid-'90s, when Makoto put together an array of outcast musicians called the Soul Collective, which morphed into Acid Mothers Temple.

"I had searched high and low [since 1978] for a record that combined Deep Purple-style hard rock with Stockhausen's electronic music, but hadn't found anything like that. So I decided to make my own," Makoto says. "That dream only became reality when AMT was formed. As we have played together we have slowly discovered that kind of music that we should be playing. I describe that music as `trip music'--but in a different sense from psychedelic rock."

The Soul Collective has some similarities to the communes of the '60s. It was forged, Makoto says, out of necessity, as a musical sanctuary of sorts for artists ostracized by Japanese society. "There is no work for us and we have rejected virtually all types of social responsibility and obligation," he says. But Makoto is not trying to re-create some hippie experiment in socialism. "My experience of living in hippie and beatnik communities only filled me with despair," he says. "They were no more than a smaller version of society, and they contained all the problems endemic in society at large. I became disgusted with the ideological hypocrisy of the ecology movement. Our only slogan is, `Do whatever you want come what may. Don't do whatever you don't want, come what may.'"

In the "don't" category for Makoto are chemical enhancements, even though the music sounds like it could've been made under their influence. "I tried all kinds of drugs when I was younger, mainly because I wanted to know what they could show you," he says. "But I have absolutely no need for them anymore. Drugs can provide you with a clue, but to find the `answer' you need to progress through them to the next stage."

The next stage, apparently, is in music that combines extremes of beauty and chaos. In that respect, Acid Mothers Temple shares a certain aesthetic with a handful of Japanese bands such as the Boredoms, Ghost, Ruins, High Rise and Fushitsusha. What's in the homeland's water that produces such boundary-pushing music?

"Not just Western music, but all kinds of culture are imported into Japan," Makoto says, "and the Japanese excel in the compression of sensory and intellectual data. When we were in our teens there was little information about rock music available to us, so many of us developed our own elaborate imagined fantasies about this music. I, for example, saw some photos of Pete Townshend and I imagined that in performance he played his guitar entirely with that swinging arm movement. Or I would look at all the amps and imagine that the distortion he played with was caused by all the amps being played at maximum. Those kinds of misconceptions have a played a great part in the formation of our performance styles."

The awesome Acid Mothers Temple, Chicago Tribune, May 28, 2004 Friday

The World Book Day poll conducted by the Museum, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA), in which librarians around the country were asked the question, "Which book should every adult read before they die?"

• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• The Bible
• The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by JRR Tolkien
• 1984 by George Orwell
• A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
• All Quite on the Western Front by E M Remarque
• His Dark Materials Trilogy by Phillip Pullman
• Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
• The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
• Tess of the D'urbevilles by Thomas Hardy
• Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
• The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham
• Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
• Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
• The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
• The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
• The Prophet by Khalil Gibran
• David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
• The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
• The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
• Life of Pi by Yann Martel
• Middlemarch by George Eliot
• The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
• A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
• A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzenhitsyn

Via Guardian Unlimited