By Marilyn Ferdinand

You can’t be a serious film geek without accumulating along with your ticket stubs and memorabilia a raft of stories about your movie-related experiences. Some of the stories are impressive. For instance, I can boast of having a three-hour dinner at a film festival with Sam Elliott, as well as winning a vintage program from the 1961 King of Kings by naming three actresses known for playing flappers in the silent era (Clara Bow, Gloria Swanson, and Colleen Moore) at Roger Ebert’s Overlooked Film Festival.
Then there are my endurance anecdotes, like standing for 45 minutes in Arctic-like cold to attend opening night of The Exorcist at the Gateway Theatre; nearly bursting a kidney by refusing to miss one second of Edward Yang’s 4-hour A Brighter Summer Day; and sitting through not one or two, but eight film breaks to see Jean Renoir’s French Cancan at the Music Box.
And every film buff has a theatre that fills her or his imagination in some way. Some theatres, like the Elgin in New York City (“The Radio City Music Hall of Midnight Movies”), are the stuff of legend. Others are uncomfortable, even deplorably shabby, but still beloved for presenting those cherished or rare films we live for. And then there’s the Skokie Theatre.

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Posted on June 25, 2006

By Timothy Inklebarger

Star Wars was one of the first movies I ever saw in a theater, and afterward my parents took me to the TG&Y department store and bought me my first action figure. I picked Princess Leia in her evening gown, white cape, and mesmerizing side buns. The purchase would mark the first of many childhood collections – G.I. Joe, He-Man, Transformers – but none would surpass my legion of Star Wars figures. My rebel alliance alone was some 50 men strong at one point.
I watched the movie recently for the first time in maybe 10 years and was a little rusty on the plot, but I could easily identify each character by whether they had an action figure and if I had owned it. That’s how I came to notice Porkins.
Luke blows up the Death Star at the end of the movie, but the rebel army suffers a few casualties. One of them is Red Six, aka Jek Porkins, a guy who looks about two space cheeseburgers away from not being able to fit in an X-wing fighter. You would never know the guy’s name was Porkins if you missed a short line from pilot Biggs Darklight: “I’m going in. Cover me, Porkins.” Whaa? Did he just call that guy Porkins?

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Posted on June 17, 2006

Date: 6/11/06
From: Lincoln Square
To: Roscoe Village
The Cab: Seats padded like Double-Stuf Oreos; it seemed like too much of a good thing at first, but that extra layer of fluff made me wonder how I’d ever gotten by without it.

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Posted on June 16, 2006

Date: 6/10/06
From: Roscoe Village
To: Lincoln Square
The Cab: Reasonably clean and noise-free. Seatbelts functioning as they should. A fairly unremarkable physical specimen.

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Posted on June 16, 2006

Date: 6/10/06
From: Lakeview
To: River North
The Cab: A fine example of the growing and welcome tradition of exceedingly clean Chicago cabs, the lone item of clutter being the charming lucky penny just behind the driver’s seat. Classical music was kept to a barely-audible hum, clearly played solely for the driver’s personal enjoyment. Not a cell phone in sight.

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Posted on June 16, 2006

Date: June 2, 2006
From: Lakeview
To: River North
The Cab: Essentially clean, save for a deeply-perplexing stain on the ceiling. Closer inspection yielded the general consensus that it was a smudged boot print, leading the backseat occupants to contemplate what exactly had been done to, with or in this cab to cause such a disfigurement. Aside from this grubby enigma, the seat belts were functional, and the generously opened windows provided plenty of ventilation.

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Posted on June 15, 2006

By The Beachwood Puzzle Affairs Desk

Horoscope Writer: Krystal Ball
Puzzle Editor: Anna Gramm
Foreign Affairs Editor: Warren Peace
Handyman’s Corner Columnist: Jerry Riggs
Obituary Writer: Doug Graves
Book Reviewer: Paige Turner
Travel Editor: Skip Towne
Weather Page Editor: April Raines
High School Sports Reporter: Jim Shorts
Gardening Columnist: Rose Busch
* As revealed in the crossword puzzle of that name in The New York Times on Sunday.

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Posted on June 13, 2006

The girls smile because they have to, even as their bodies get thinner each day and their souls melt away. They smile because they have to – they are here to sell themselves to strangers every night. These particular girls are in Athens, but there are girls like them all over the world, girls locked in rooms all day, forced into the streets at night, beaten with bats and worse if they don’t bring back enough money. The voices that accompany the blows occupy their thoughts. “Not all the girls are as pretty as you,” one of the girls here was told. “They may not have customers, but for you there are always customers!”
And yet, freedom terrified her. She told an aid worker that if she tried to escape, her insides would expand and suffocate her. Or so the voodoo priest had said. Her family would suffer, too. So freedom terrified her. Besides, she took a vow. Of silence. Of obedience. Of shame.
The girls smile because they have to, but they smile without hope. They smile only for the dirty men with dollar bills.
The girls are the product in the $9.5 billion human trafficking industry, the crucial commodity in a global enterprise that now matches illegal arms dealing as the second largest criminal trade in the world, behind trafficking in drugs. And the human trafficking trade is growing faster than its narcotics counterpart.

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Posted on June 6, 2006

By Andrew Kingsford

1. Don’t be a girl’s dress.
2. Put your two-bob in.
3. He’s a yancee man.
4. If you’re looking to get a leg over . . .
5. To knock on a girl.
6. She’s got a sticky beak.
7. I’ve got shagger’s back.
8. It’s time to give the ferret a run.
9. In a pig’s ass.
10. Don’t chuck a spaz.
11. There are a lot of moisties there.
12. He’s a pooh job.
13. Did you punch him in the faghole?
14. If you want to stick your boot in . . .
15. He’s a ponce.

Posted on June 3, 2006