CHICAGO — With 70 degree weather expected to hit Chicago this weekend, there are very few excuses we'll accept for spending the next two days inside. Reading stuff on the internet? Definitely not on that list. So we've done the heavy lifting and combed the web for somet interesting stories making the rounds Friday. Give 'em a read — then close your laptop and go soak up some sunshine.
Does Chicago Have, Or Need, a Style Icon? Elle magazine wants to know if Amal Clooney is New York City's new Carolyn Bessette (Kennedy). Sure, it's a puff piece, but you gotta admire Elle's commitment to its premise, including sifting through the photo archives to dig up a picture of Bessette in a NEAR IDENTICAL dress to one recently worn by the new Mrs. Clooney. Stop judging reporter Patty Wetli's choice in reading material long enough to ponder why there's no comparable style icon in Chicago. Or is there, and we just haven't heard of her?
Housing Regulations, Ward By Ward: Chicago's zoning code is a jigsaw puzzle of restrictions, but Daniel Kay Hertz, a student at the University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy, created an interactive map that highlights how different neighborhoods restrict certain kinds of housing. Lincoln Park reporter Paul Biasco is fascinated by Hertz's map, which shows how neighborhoods such as North Center, West Town and patches of the North Side are zoned to prohibit anything but single family homes. "Essentially, we’ve imposed classic suburban exclusionary zoning in North Center, West Town, and elsewhere," Hertz argues.
Space Cowboys: With the new Star Wars trailer wearing out the Internet, senior editor Andrew Herrmann is enjoying the re-posted Los Angeles Times 1977 review of the first film. Critic Charles Champlin saw a whole lot of cowboy in the futuristic film, saying it had a "splendidly familiar ring of yesterday's westerns." The sidekicks, he said, "are squatty robots instead of leathery old cowpokes who scratch their whiskers." Harrison Ford's character is "just the cocky sort to take our friends through hostile Indian country to the next territory." People "square off with laser swords instead of Colt revolvers." And "a western barroom scene is populated with mutants and monsters that are a fantasist's dream of Heaven," Champlin said. The headline? "Star Wars Hails the Once and Future Space Western." Indeed.
Chewbacca with a cowboy hat?
Darth Vader, Incompetent General: Never too much "Star Wars." Sam Cholke is reading — get this — an analysis of Darth Vader's seige on the ice planet Hoth from the "Empire Strikes Back" in Wired. "It’s a classic fiasco of overconfidence and theology masquerading as military judgment — and the exact opposite of the Empire striking back," writes Spencer Ackerman. Why didn't we see the scene where Emperor Palpatine chews out Vader for bungling it so badly?
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