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features

411
Seven Days in Chicago

Fava greens
Apparently, ifilm.com frequenters couldn't help but notice the Greenskeepers video for their song "Lotion"--they've downloaded it more than 50,000 times. The song, which was written in honor of the famous "put the lotion in the basket" sequence between Buffalo Bill and Catherine Martin in the 1991 movie "The Silence of the Lambs," was written well before the video idea was realized--a complete re-editing of the scene in Bill's lair, made so the killer looks to be singing the lyrics. "A month after we made the song, I saw the movie on cable," says James Curd, half of Greenskeepers and the editor and "director" of the video. "I sat and watched it and I thought, `Aw, fuck, I'm gonna gank this off of VHS and get it into Final Cut to make it look like he [Buffalo Bill] is singing." Since Curd put the video up on the band's web site, the file has been downloaded a whopping 160,000 times. "It really spread like wildfire," he says. "I mean, if you were between the ages of fifteen and twenty when that movie came out, you love it...If you were born in Europe though, you don't get the video. People in Europe email me all the time and are like, `man, Greenskeepers must've had a huge budget.'" And did he get permission to reuse the Oscar-winning footage? "Aw, hell no."

The C Word
There's a place for censorship everywhere, even in the art of quilting. After receiving Diane Johns' work entitled "The L Word," DeKalb's County Quilters Guild revoked her entry from last week's quilt show because board members found the material "demeaning and inflammatory." "I sent a Polaroid [of the quilt] and knew the words were not readable," says Johns of her quilt that's covered in phrases like "queer," "butch" and "power tools are a girl's best friend." "I was even willing to write an explanation [for the show]." Once the guild flipped their acceptance to rejection, Johns protested the unexpected decision with the help of letters from her supporters. Although the board stuck to its decision, Johns had the last say. Following up the city's celebration of Banned Books Week, Johns hosted a "Banned Quilt Show" at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in DeKalb, exhibiting her own creation along with the work of four others who pulled their quilts from the show.

(2004-10-13)









Copyright Newcity Communications, Inc.




Copyright Newcity Communications, Inc.

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