Mary Zimmerman’s revival of her 1997 show, based on a Persian epic by 12th-century poet Nizami, contains all the rich visuals, tight ensemble work, whimsical stagecraft, and moments of epiphany characteristic of her work. The pace is decidedly unhurried–the show unfolds over two and a half hours–and the layers of narrative within each of the seven tales require careful listening. But by refusing to conform to contemporary expectations of breakneck, sliced-and-diced, anachronistic pop-cultural takes on classics, Zimmerman and her creative team honor the poetry and mystery of these beguiling legends....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » For a forgotten Olympic Games that truly were of singular importance, I refer you to the research of my friend A.E. Eyre, which I discussed in a 2003 Hot Type. Eyre makes an irrefutable case that the oft-maligned 1904 games in Saint Louis (my hometown) were actually The Games That Made America. Because 533 of the 625 competitors were Americans, who won 238 of the 282 medals, the rest of the world ridiculed the Saint Louis games as meaningless....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » On Wednesday brilliant New Orleans singer and guitarist Snooks Eaglin died after suffering a heart attack. He was 72. To me Eaglin represented the wonderful sprawl of New Orleans music as much as any single person–on his recordings he mostly killed it with the blues and R & B, but he was kind of an old-school songster, a musician who could tackle just about anything....

Further: Obama’s speech. Sam Cooke, Lincoln, puppies, and the Bible. The omen I should have picked up on was catching a truly gifted Red Line busker singing “A Change Is Gonna Come” the other day. Probably the best busker I’ve ever seen–a saintly voice. It takes guts to do “A Change Is Gonna Come.” And he pulled it off. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » All the “Yes we can” and “Si se puede” chants on Michigan leaving the rally....

A cover of a 70s funk album There is plenty happening tonight. Plenty. Blown-out concerts, decadent theater, get-downs that will annihilate your ability to stand up. The Reader has documented many of these and made the general Chicago public aware of their existence. But New Year’s Eve is also all about how one looks in his or her sparkly getup, and if you want a particularly funky sort of inspiration while scouring an overflowing closet, press play on today’s 12 O’Clock Track, the J....

Look, up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a combat drone! No, it’s Superman, returning to multiplexes in a complete reboot seven years after Bryan Singer’s tedious Superman Returns. Warner Bros. decided that one didn’t merit a sequel and instead started over with Christopher Nolan and David S. Goyer, who wrote the “Dark Knight” trilogy. This raised the prospect of an anguished Superman dealing with the new problems of the 21st century (hurricane season alone would keep him busy for an entire movie), yet aside from a few topical gestures (just outside his Fortress of Solitude in the arctic, a polar bear hops from one shrinking ice floe to another), Man of Steel is a battle between supermen, with humans mainly looking on....

In the last few years Chicago has become the epicenter of a national debate about the merits of turning over public assets to private corporations. It started in 2005, when city officials made a deal to lease the Skyway for 99 years to a pair of overseas firms for about $1.8 billion plus a guarantee they’d maintain it. It was the first privatization of a major highway in the United States, and it paved the way for others—including the Indiana Toll Road, leased for 75 years in 2006 for $3....

It doesn’t take a lot to rock the boat at tiny Shimer College, where the current enrollment is 110, the full-time faculty count is 11, and everything is always up for discussion. Founded in 1853 as a seminary, Shimer evolved into a women’s prep school, a junior college, and an affiliate of the University of Chicago. In 1950 it became a four-year coed college focused on the Great Books curriculum developed by U....

This week’s live music offerings can’t be committed to a true-to-form theme; but after some deliberation, I found a way to jam these round pegs into their square holes. One trail blazed her own genre (Patti Smith), another oscillates somewhere in between noise rock and what-the-fuck (Black Pus), and one can’t seem to pick a favorite (Deer Tick), but this grab bag of performers share one lot of common ground—experimentation. Unconventional in both purpose and approach, the artists headed to Chicago this week have taken refuge in their own artistic ideals and the fact that no one else does it quite like them....

Kirsten Leenaars, visual artist, is finding meaning in: “I Dozed, I Napped, I Writhed, I Dreamed“ What could be a better title for an art show during these languid summer days? Art programming tends to be on the lighter side during this season, yet visitors to Judith Brotman’s ongoing show at the Bike Room should not expect anything familiar or vanilla. I’ve been a fan of Brotman’s work long enough to know that it always comes with a pleasantly peppery bite....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » As someone who grew up among the latter categories, I wondered for a long time when the contentious debates over 60s and 70s politics would stop being an essential part of national campaigns. I thought that having candidates who were too young to fight or protest the Vietnam War would usher in a new era. Well, Chicago 10 is the cover story in the Reader this week and Bill Ayers is front page news again, so apparently I’m wrong....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In the summer of 1978 or ’79, I was making a road trip west with my family when a station wagon went roaring past us on the interstate. At the wheel was a white man with glasses, a beard, and hair past his collar; in the driver’s seat sat a moon-faced Asian woman with long black hair; and in the backseat frolicked a little boy about three years old....

Celebrating its 15th anniversary this summer, the Warped Tour returns to the First Midwest Bank Amphitheatre (I-80 and Harlem in Tinley Park) for a long Saturday of punk rock, power pop, ska, hardcore, hip-hop, and more. As usual the lineup is heavy on bands that owe a debt of influence to the early-90s Epitaph and Fat Wreck Chords rosters, and the presence of a few dyed-in-the-wool old-timers—Bad Religion, TSOL, the Exploited—will make flavor-of-the-month crunkcore kids like Brokencyde, Attack Attack!...

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Last week the increasingly great Awesome Tapes From Africa label released Shaka Bundu, the 1994 debut album from homeless-janitor-turned-pop-star Penny Penny (ne Giyani Kulani Kobane). The singer got his break when he was caught teaching himself how to use the equipment in the recording studio he worked nights cleaning up. Joe Shirimani, a producer specializing in dance music, was immediately taken and ended up making the album with Kobane using only an Atari computer, a Korg M1 synthesizer, and a reel-to-reel tape for his wonderfully gruff, soulful vocals....

Portfolio reports that the Art Institute’s flood of acquisitions for the new modern wing is driving prices up on modern art around the world, and also gives a peek at what’s in store when it opens. Indiana-born, Madison-educated artist Bruce Naumann will get three rooms dedicated to his work, including the deeply unpleasant Clown Torture, which should fit right into the panopticon that is Chicago. Works by the prolific Belgian painter Luc Tuymans will be on display; I love his painting Pigeons, which is a bit overdescribed (“Luc Tuymans offers a chilling ultimate truth about humankind”) here....

Face it: kids aren’t cool. They cry for their mommies and play with their poo, fixate on blankies and throw their food. Their taste in music runs to the sweet and singsong. But Neal Pollack is determined that his kid will be different. In his new memoir, Alternadad, the satirist who once staged a reading in a men’s room details his struggle to not only raise a cool kid but stay cool himself....

The Nightingale 1084 N. Milwaukee Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Indie superproducer Ted Hope (American Splendor) is among the voices calling for the revival of old-school film societies as one way to rescue the cinematic experience from obsolescence in the face of online and mobile video. By fostering a sense of community and interaction among audiences and artists, film societies capitalize on the distinct value of going out to watch movies in a dark room with other people, making it competitive with the convenient but solitary small-screen experience....

For years politics in East Village and Ukrainian Village was dominated by one man: Big Dan Rostenkowski. Inheriting the 32nd Ward Democratic organization built by his father, longtime alderman Joe, he held office—state rep, committeeman, congressman—for more than 40 years. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Rostenkowski and Gabinski controlled their villagers with the stick of brute force and fearmongering and the carrot of services like garbage collection and snow removal....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Last year Billboard changed the way it tallies its Hot 100 chart to include streams from services like Spotify and YouTube, causing some immediate and fairly significant shakeups. Taylor Swift, who had just released her album Red, benefitted immensely as her fans’ digital-native listening habits were finally acknowledged, and overnight a half dozen songs from the album—most of which weren’t being officially promoted as singles—popped up on the chart....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The Palm Chicago hosts a dinner Thursday at 7 PM devoted to the tequilas of Jalisco’s 130-year-old Casa Herradura. Each of four courses will be paired with a Herradura blue agave tequila—a lump crab and cantaloupe margarita starter with Herradura Silver, for instance, or an entree of oven-roasted cumin-crusted mahimahi with Herradura Añejo. Company rep Ruben Aceves will discuss Herradura history and describe the process behind each tequila....