I awoke Wednesday with an odd combination of relief and dread. Despite all hopes, I can’t turn on my television and readily witness someone being called an illiterate flip-flopper with the intent to pack the Supreme Court with Nazis, inject the flu...

A critic can always tell when a biographical film is a success. They always find themselves reviewing the title character more than the film itself. I thought about this before seeing “Ray,” the new film from director Taylor Hackford about the life...

Reggae. Giant bat costumes. Spooky drums and bass. Countless Catholic school girls. Zombie dance parties are not for the closed-minded. On Halloween, more than 100 freaks and ghouls finally got their chance to cut a rug at Otto’s, 118 E. Lincoln Highway,...

R. Kelly and Jay-Z are back ... again, with their collaborative album, “Unfinished Business.” In 2002, the pair made their first joint attempt, “The Best of Both Worlds,” which flopped - and the tour was canceled. R. Kelly faced rape charges that...

The Sahara Hotnights are what The Go-Go’s would have sounded like if they had rocked as hard as they partied. Not that the four Hotnights are nymphomaniacal drug addicts. They just know how to write catchy pop gems while playing the role of femme fatales...

Remember those horrible images of cafeterias that you had when you were younger? You’d picture yourself standing in a mile-long line waiting for a bitter, stone-faced woman to slap a spoonful of unidentifiable gumbo onto a tray and shove it in your...

The holiday comedy “Surviving Christmas” opens with a montage of people miserable at Christmastime, including a grotesque scene of an old woman sticking her head in an oven. And the movie doesn’t get much better from there. “Surviving Christmas”...

In the past few weeks I have learned two things: A singer would dare to lip-sync on “live” television, and horse slaughtering is a delicate and unfunny subject. This week, I tried my hand at saving horses from slaughter by joining the National Student...

You’re tired, cranky and you really have a hankering for some Canadian bacon. What’s happening? It seems you’ve come down with a case of the “Lost Election Blues.” You stayed up all night Tuesday huddled in the warm glow of your television -...

Editor’s Note: From time to time, Sweeps will be introducing you to the vibrant personalities that embody the 60115. These people are truly DeKalb characters ... Tired of “Hail to the Chief” and “Still the One”? Well, consider Playback your...

Bob Pritchard, R-Hinckley and Democratic challenger Bob Brown will learn of their political destinies tonight, but what have we, the voter, learned about them as regular people? Sure, the two distinguished candidates for the 70th District state representative...

The Freshman Bench, also known as the “Kissing Bench,” has been on campus for more than a century but still sees action today. Located behind Davis Hall, the multi-stoned bench was the premier hook-up site for past NIU students. The Freshman Bench...