Results tagged “christmas”

Move over Donny and Marie... your Chicagoist staff is going to be appearing in a shopping mall food court sashaying like these incestuous two. (What is up with their side-stepping dance?) A word of caution: use of star filters aside, this might make you ill. Particularly when Donny sits in Santa's lap.

Show where your el loyalities lie by hanging this Blue, Red or Brown line handmade felt ornament in a prominent place of honor on your Christmas tree. Or share the love and just buy all three. $8.50 each.

         

Zoolights is one of our favorite Chicago holiday traditions. Every night, from now until January 4th, Lincoln Park Zoo is filled with bright lights and holiday-themed activities for the whole family. Best of all? It’s free! We visited Zoolights last Friday night to bring you a glimpse of the colorful display.

First, a few words from George Bailey on our current economic crisis:

Monica Eng vented about the long lines at Garrett Popcorn's Randolph Street location in the Stew today, and also expressed gratitude that they've opened a temporary "Holiday Express" location on Boul Mich (625 N. Michigan) for pre-packaged popcorn only. So those of you wanting to buy Garrett for gifts now know where to go so the rest of us don't have to wait in line waiting for you to decide on a tin.

This made us laugh out loud. Much better than the just kind of weird Obama short. Even without the jokes, the thought of Malkovich reading the classic Christmas poem gives us the creeps.

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If there's one thing we can be sure of, it's the high level of vitriol with which locals despise Macy's for forcing out Marshall Field's. But now we've come up with a plan that may allow you to get a little bit of revenge and help a charity in the process. Macy's is running a campaign this holiday season called Believe based on the New York Sun's famous 1897 editorial, "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus." Ha ha. Anyway. Each store is equipped with a "Believe Station" at which the young and young at heart can write a letter to Santa and drop it in the Santa Mail box. For every letter received, Macy's will donate $1 to Make-A-Wish, up to $1 million. So that got us thinking: how can we make sure Macy's has to shell out the full cool million and allows us to express our contempt for the store at the same time? Why, by stuffing the mailbox, of course!

Gorilla Tango Theatre, 1919 N. Milwaukee Ave., Fridays and Saturdays through 12/20, 11:30 p.m., $16

Stephen Colbert + Christmas + Willie Nelson dressed as a shepherd = Goodness.

One of our annual traditions the day after Thanksgiving is to try and burn off some calories by walking around the Christkindlmarket at Daley Plaza, then hanging around for the lighting of the Christmas Tree (trivia: it's actually about 130 smaller trees lashed together). So we were a bit surprised when we heard that the lighting ceremony has been moved this year to Tuesday, December 2 at noon. Whaaa? How can you have an event featuring a bazillion lights and fireworks (and boy won't those wake up the downtown cubicle dwellers) in the middle of a weekday? Is anyone even going to be able to tell when the Mayor flips the switch?

We unsuccessfully fought the urge to not post this, as we are still in the throes of Halloween fever, but these Chicago Christmas greeting card sets are just too delightful to ignore for now. Three Christmas variations on the Chicago flag theme come separately as a 12 card set, supplied with red envelopes. Beautiful! But probably the best part about these cards is the greeting on the inside: "Chicago Christmas. Celebrate early, celebrate often." $16

In news of the bored today, the Chicago Public Library finally updated their website. You know the one that was just white with a little bit of green and just linked to a bunch of PDFs? Now it's all pretty and red and green like, yeah, kind of like a Christmas tree, but the redesign is better organized and most exciting, has an entire section devoted to digital media with ebooks, audio books, and archival photos available.

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra has just announced its 2008 / 2009 season. Tickets are already on sale, so here are a few Chicagoist recommendations to keep in mind:

At the risk of feeding the hype machine, we still have to offer a congratulations to Mr. Kanye West for pulling in some Grammy gold last night. While we still don't buy the Grammys as an accurate barometer of the music industry and what's actually, you know, good in music these days, it's still the industry's main award show so there's something to be said for coming away with multiple trophies. While the night's big winner was Amy Winehouse, Kanye still managed to pull in four awards, as well as one of the night's most memorable acceptance speeches (surprise!) when he gave producers the verbal smack-down for trying to run him off in the middle of a tribute to his mother.

You might have the headline to this week's installment and thought, "Isn't it a bit late to review a Christmas ale?" And you may have a point, if you're a Grinch.

With Wednesday night's win over the Indiana Pacers, the Bulls reached the half way point in their season on a high. Not only did they win the game, but they did so without Luol Deng, Chris Duhon and Ben Gordon, who are all currently injured.

There are no shortage of opportunities to see a theater performance in Chicago, and that certainly applies to children’s theater or theater based on children’s literature. A number of of these productions have enjoyed some popular success as well. This goes to show that these performances are not attended only by dutiful schoolchildren, but are considered to be viable options in the Chicago theater scene, due to the effort and imagination that goes into adapting children’s literature for the stage.

We just pissed away, oh, an hour perusing the Chicago Postcard Museum. Howdy, The City Beautiful, Hi, Hi There Toots and the Aragon are our faves.

The Museum of Science and Industry is raising its prices. Adult Chicago residents will now pay $12 (up from $10), adult non-Chicagoans $13 (from $11), Chicago children $8.50 ($6.25), non-Chicago children $9 ($7), Chicago seniors $11 ($8.75), and non-Chicago seniors $12 ($9.50).

We all know that Chicago has a little something for everybody. As far as dance classes go, there are bountiful opportunities throughout the city to try something new, develop a new skill, or just plain old embarrass yourself in front of your significant other. We went ahead and found some of the more interesting offerings in the way of dance classes:

Patton Oswalt finally eats a "failure pile in a sadness bowl," but he can only choke down a few spoons of it.

Hope the new year is treating you well so far. Here's the first Made in Chicago of the year to help you spend the rest of your Christmas monies from estranged family members.

Hunter Podschwit is one lucky dog. Or one really unlucky dog, depending on how you look at it. Unlucky to be shot point-blank in the head by a police officer, certainly, but extremely lucky to survive the shooting, yes?

• SFist saw Christmas Day turn tragic after a Siberian tiger escaped from her pen at the San Francisco Zoo, killing a visitor and mauling two others.
• Phillyist counted down the top ten items on Philadelphia's New Year's wish list.
• Gothamist looked at the wooden bikes being offered for NYC's first bike share program on Governors Island.

Uh...like an actual head. Nice catch, karlakaulfuss. Although the idea of a headface is going to haunt us. Maybe forever.

For those of you who are checking in today, we thought we'd also take some time to pay our respects to two giants who passed away on Christmas Day. It was one year ago that James Brown passed away. If you don't have a copy of "James Brown's Funky Christmas", buy it or download it now. It is a necessity of Christmas listening. We managed to find a clip of "Soulful Christmas" dubbed into some footage of the Godfather's legendary 1968 Boston concert for your listening and viewing pleasure.

For a sizable chunk of the US population, Christmas is a time for... wondering when it's going to be the 26th. Jews have the stereotypical routine of Chinese food and a movie (Chicagoist has deemed Charlie Wilson's War the family-friendly-but-still-interesting-enough-not-to-bore-dad-who-likes-foreign-films movie of the season), but what to do for the rest of the day?

We are. Now what're you gonna do the rest of the day? You could....