Founded by Chicago-based comic Orly KG in 2022, and utilizing a mighty showcase of hilarious comics from its growing roster of more than 80 standup who are also mothers, the Bad Momz of Comedy tour comes to Iowa and Illinois, this collection of gifted funnywomen performing at Davenport's Rhythm City Casino Resort Event Center on July 10 and Galesburg's Orpheum Theatre on July 11.
Making its eagerly awaited July 9 through 11 return, the Walcott Truckers Jamboree at the Iowa 80 Truck Stop will, in its 46th year, showcase more than 175 exhibits, displays, games, cookouts, fireworks, local and national country and rock musicians, and even a beauty contest for trucks in a celebration of America's big rigs and those who drive them.
Hailed by Texas Monthly for his edgy jokes' "blithe, understated lack of self-consciousness ... that elevate them beyond mere gross-out gags," actor, writer, and featured Saturday Night Live cast member Andrew Dismukes headlines a July 12 show at Davenport's Raccoon Motel, his film credits including the upcoming Super Troopers 3 and Call Me Brother, the latter of which earned him a Special Jury Award for Performance at the Florida Film Festival.
Five days of outdoor fun will be on hand when East Moline's Rock Island Country Fairgrounds hosts the annual Rock Island County Fair July 14 through 18, offering patrons mornings, afternoons, and evenings filled with carnival rides, games, food vendors, animal shows, racing tournaments, 4-H events, live music performances, and exciting happenings scheduled for the nights' grandstand entertainment.
With the latest program in the German American Heritage Center's popular “Kaffee und Kuchen” series offered by Ryan Saddler, MEd, the fascinating lecture Davenport Civil Rights Movement will be presented at the Davenport venue on July 19, the event featuring an emphasis on Charles and Ann Toney, widely known as the father and mother of the famed and historically essential movement.
About a week after the state budget passed both chambers in the dark of night, Attorney General Kwame Raoul spoke to the City Club of Chicago to complain that his budget was cut by $10 million.
The news earlier this month that the Illinois AFL-CIO has “deferred” all decisions on legislative and statewide endorsements in the upcoming fall election generated quite a bit of headlines.
In response to a question last week from my associate Isabel Miller, Governor JB Pritzker said he didn’t think a group of progressive legislators could pass their progressive revenue bills through both chambers by the end of the spring session.
Governor JB Pritzker last week squarely placed the responsibility for passing a Bears stadium bill on the team itself, and had some unsolicited lobbying advice for the Bears as he attempted to brush off his own session attendance issues.
Six days before the last day of the spring state legislative session, Senator Bill Cunningham, D-Chicago, gave me two big reasons why it was so difficult to push a Bears stadium bill across the finish line. Cunningham, as you know, is the chief sponsor of the Senate’s Bears bill.
One of the funniest and most presently controversial of William Shakespeare's comedies will be given a brand-new – and yet centuries-old – makeover in Genesius Guild's July 11 through 19 staging of The Taming of the Shew, director Cait Bodenbender's romantic farce that, as in the Bard's own day, will find its entire cast of characters composed of male performers.
Before Friday night at Eldridge's North Scott High School Fine Arts Auditorium, I hadn’t seen Guys & Dolls. Go on and clutch those poils, doll. I do not know the show. So sue me. But I had a swell time. In spades!
Winner of three 2009 Tony Awards and the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the wildly acclaimed Broadway hit Next to Normal receives a Blue Devil Productions "alumni staging" at Davenport Central High School from July 10 through 12, the New York Times raving that this ecstatically praised pop/rock musical “throbs with an emotional intensity” and “is steeped in an inescapable, aching compassion for people crippled by pain.”
Seussical, now playing at Omar – I mean, the Clinton Area Showboat Theatre – features an exuberant mash-up of plots from about a third of Theodor Seuss Geisel’s lifetime output of 60-plus children’s books. (And yeah, there were more Dr. Seuss books after he died. Peculiar thing, that.)
When I entered the Timber Lake Playhouse for its July 3 opening night of Cabaret and saw the stage draped with a gold foil fringe curtain and framed in marquee bulbs with a glowing red “KIT KAT KLUB” sign, the atmosphere felt equal parts seductive, artificial, and just a little bit unsettling.
Touring in support of their most recent album Better Days that Kansas City Pitch said "might be the band's most collaborative one yet," the Missouri-based indie rockers of Hembree return to the Raccoon Motel on July 12, their high-energy engagement closing the week of festivities celebrating the Davenport venue's week of fifth-birthday-party revelry.
Celebrating more than 20 years of thrilling crowds with spectacular renditions of “Waterloo,” “The Winner Takes It All,” “Take a Chance on Me,” and additional favorites, the tribute artists of Dancing Queen: An ABBA Salute headline a July 12 outdoor concert in Bishop Hill's Village Park, their return engagement promising a mesmerizing ABBA experience for every Chiquitita, Super Trouper, Fernando, and Dancing Queen around.
A pair of unique indie acts share a co-headlining bill at Rock Islands Rozz-Tox on July 13, the evening boasting the talents of the Baltimore, Maryland-based Horse Lords and Jon Mueller's touring project Friend Less.
Touring in support of their new recording OM MOKSHA RITAM that The Obelisk called "among the most cohesive and engagingly plotted debuts of the year," the rockers of Insomniac headline a July 14 concert at davenport's Raccoon Motel, Head-Banger Reviews adding that the band's first album is "an experience that is truly mandatory for all who consider themselves even the most casual fans of heavy psych."
His repertoire boasting such classic tunes as “If I Had A Hammer," “Turn, Turn, Turn," “The Sinking of the Reuben James," and the iconic song of the title, gifted area singer/songwriter/storyteller Barry Cloyd brings his solo performance Where Have All the Flowers Gone, the Ballad of Pete Seeger to the Moline Public Library on July 14, an event guaranteed to get the audience singing along to some of America's best loved folk songs.
It's hard to think of a more ticklish recent ode to cinema than Minions & Monsters, which would've been just about perfect if its monsters were ditched entirely.
Going to the cineplex or staying in and streaming this weekend? Every Thursday morning at 8:15 a.m. you can listen to Mike Schulz dish on recent movie releases & talk smack about Hollywood celebs on Planet 93.9 FM with the fabulous Dave & Darren in the Morning team of Dave Levora and Darren Pitra. The morning crew previews upcoming releases, too. Or you can check the Reader Web site and listen to their latest conversation by the warm glow of your electronic device. Never miss a pithy comment from these three scintillating pundits again
Thursday, July 9: Discussion of Young Washington; previews of Moana, Evil Dead Burn, The Invite, and Gail Daughtry & the Celebrity Sex Pass; thoughts on the 2026 Emmy nominations; and Darren's and Mike's violent disagreement over Minions & Monsters. Well, not violent at all. The guys are super-chill. But boy do they disagree.
Given how bored I've been at so many cinematic superhero origin stories over the decades, I feel silly for actually feeling and writing this. But I really wish director Craig Gillespie's Supergirl had merely been a superhero origin story.
Thirty-one years after the franchise's debut, Disney/Pixar's latest animated comedy adventure is unusual in at least one regard: It's the first Toy Story that might be more fun to think about, and argue about, than actually watch.
In celebration of America’s 250th birthday, Davenport's Figge Art Museum is hosting American Art talks throughout the month of July, and on Thursday the 16th, guests are invited to hear from artist Connie Roberts of the new exhibition Connie & Michael Roberts: Portrait of America, Connie noted for bridging the realms of fine art and folk art, and for tackling many subjects with sharp wit and restrained humor.
In celebration of America’s 250th birthday, Davenport's Figge Art Museum is hosting American Art talks throughout the month of July, and on Thursday the 23rd, guests are invited to hear from Larassa Kabel in Focus on the American Landscape, the speaker a multidisciplinary artist based in Des Moines, Iowa, whose work captures the uneasy balance between humans and nature.
Four Chicago-based artists will present concurrent solo exhibitions across the galleries of Dubuque's Voices Studios through July 31, with the collective Quiet Intersections exhibit a multi-faceted experience that reveals how individual artistic voices can converge, diverge, and share creative space.
Telling the story of Raven, an important trickster figure in Tlingit culture who transformed the world by bringing light to people via the stars, moon, and sun, Preston Singletary: Raven and the Box of Daylight will be viewable at Davenport's Figge Art Museum through August 2, with the tale of Raven releasing or "stealing" the daylight one of the most iconic stories of the Tlingit people of Southeast Alaska.
With the latest Quad City Arts Center exhibition taking on a very specific theme, and a seasonally appropriate one at that, a pair of Midwestern artists currently have beautiful works displayed in Bicycle Worlds, the Rock Island venue treating patrons, through August 7, to bike photography by Ken Urban and bike illustrations by Jeff C. Williams.
You'll get both the current official narrative challenge and What's Happenin' in the Quad Cities.
(Did you know we publish a new Real Astrology and RCR Crossword every week?)
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