News Net Lolla goes South, DeRo flips out

Since sifting through dull newspapers, hyperbolic blogs, and overflowing RSS feeds for meaningful news can be an arduous process, News Net catches and compiles both the amusing and the significant reports that were overlooked throughout the work week. Here are some things to think about as the weekend begins. 

• C3 Presents, the promoters behind Lollapalooza, announced that they’d be expanding the fest down south—way south—to Santiago, Chile. The two-day festival will happen this April and, hopefully, when Lolla rolls up here next summer, it will bring some of the Chilean acts with it, according to Perry Farrell.

Local music bard Jim DeRogatis has long been a critic of Lollapalooza’s short-fallings, and he just about shit a brick on this one. He says the artist exchange means, “Lollapalooza is likely to have more Chilean groups than Chicago acts… But the festival never has been overly concerned about the Chicago musical community anyway.” He goes on to criticize Time Out Chicago’s soft-ball Lolla question to local politicians in its recent feature, “The Culture Candidate,” implicating that the magazine is bowing too much editorially to its advertisers. Damn, Jim!

• Graham Elliot posted a hilarious picture on Twitter this week from the height of his “reggae phase” freshman year in High School. Jah Rasta!

• R. Kelly posted a Christmas remix of “Love Letter,” the lead single off his upcoming album of the same name, due out Dec. 14. Guess we didn’t know Kellz was into Santa like that.

• Chef Art Smith cooked with Elmo this week, who apparently loves Chicken Pot Pie. The media-friendly chef and the Muppet are going to make response videos to people who ask questions of them on YouTube.

• The Chicago Reader’s editor, Kiki Yablon, announced she was stepping down this week. Yablon had just taken over for Allison True after she was fired in June, shocking much of Chicago’s media community. Yablon says she’s leaving to take a job outside journalism.

• The Chicago area’s most expensive home, “Le Grand Rêve” in Winnetka, has been on sale since last summer. But just this week, the owners dropped the price an additional $5 million. Of course, the thing’s still going to cost any prospective buyers a cool $23 million, but hey, it has a private massage room.

• Kelsey Grammer has signed on to play the Mayor of Chicago in Boss, an upcoming Starz series directed by Gus Van Sant. That should hopefully give the world something to talk about Grammer-related other than how awful his soon-to-be-ex-wife Camille is on The Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills.

• The net’s best local video this week is ABC 7’s footage of a wild coyote running down State Street near Randolph this week. It’s too good not to be fascinated by.