Hold your nose and high-five Embeya’s Thai Dang for offering durian, the world’s stinkiest fruit. If you skipped ahead and looked at that single item on the dessert menu, you might expect this polished project from the L2O vet and his partner, Attila Gyulai, to be full of risks and rewards. The custardy tropical fruit that emits the seductive scent of banana, pineapple, and rotting flesh is the ultimate test of the human will to endure suffering in the pursuit of the Delicious....

West-side promoter Henry L. Survillion (aka Shorty) puts together a rotating crew of accomplished blues, soul, and R & B sidemen for this weekly Friday night gig. Many of them have done road work with well-known names, and among them they’ve got just about every old-school style at their disposal. That’s the idea: for the band to be able to effortlessly back an eclectic parade of vocalists, from veteran crooner Still Bill to feisty soul-blues singers like Lady Kat, Miss Jesi’, and Z....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Hundreds of self-proclaimed dykes along with transgender, queer, and bisexual people and their allies gathered in Margate Park this past Saturday for the 16th annual Chicago Dyke March. Created in 1998 as an alternative to more popular and widely endorsed Pride celebrations in Chicago, the march sought to create a safe space for those who don’t usually attend such events: youth, undocumented people, and those who feel left out of Pride Parade’s traditional image....

QI am a 30-year-old trans guy, on T since college, happy and comfortable with my sexuality. However, I can’t find any helpful health info on a fetish I’ve developed: I insert needles directly into my clit, maybe an inch and a half in. I’m not talking through it, like a piercing, but into it, going in at the head and moving down into the shaft. There are lots of porn/BDSM sites that discuss piercing all sorts of “female” anatomy, and many that cover the excitement of needles inserted into the glans of the penis, but few go into details about putting needles directly into the clit itself—and none that I’ve found cover safety....

thursday8 Thursday8 MaxwellMiguel Zenon Friday9 David BowlinCoathangersGojiraMurder City DevilsYuganautMiguel Zenon Saturday10 CalifoneChristina CourtinTelefon Tel AvivAnna TernheimMiguel Zenon Sunday11 CalifoneFresh & OnlysSian Alice GroupMiguel Zenon Monday12 Orquestra de Sao Paulo with Evelyn Glennie Tuesday13 Kurt Vile MIGUEL ZENON A few years ago New York jazz saxophonist Miguel Zenon began looking to his native Puerto Rico for inspiration. His 2005 album Jibaro is informed by the music of the island’s back-country troubadours, especially the traditional ten-line stanza or decima, but the connections are mostly abstract—though he might echo rhyme structures with patterns of phrases or favor chords built on fifths, he borrowed only snatches of melody from the songs themselves....

In 2012 the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events has made all kinds of blunders—shit-canning the Music Without Borders series, eliminating the majority of the live music at the Chicago Cultural Center for most of the year, allowing bureaucratic hokeypokey to compromise the World Music Festival—but it was smart enough to keep hosting European Jazz Meets Chicago, the mini fest that kicks off the annual Umbrella Music Festival. This year European Jazz Meets Chicago, featuring players from nine European countries alongside top-notch locals, is Wed 11/7 and Thu 11/8 at the Cultural Center, and the fest continues through Sun 11/11 with concerts at the three regular Umbrella Music venues: Elastic, which hosts improvised ­music on Thursdays; the Hideout, which hosts the Immediate Sound series on Wednesdays; and the Hungry Brain, which hosts the Transmission series on Sundays....

A few facts about the life of legendary Delta bluesman Robert Johnson are more or less universally accepted. He was born in Hazlehurst, Mississippi, on May 8, 1911. With the help of Don Law of the American Record Company, he recorded for ARC subsidiary Vocalion in San Antonio and Dallas in 1936 and ’37, respectively, cutting 29 songs in total—his entire studio output. He died on August 16, 1938, at age 27, and decades later he would become one of the most influential artists in the history of American popular music....

Is there any proof that breast-feeding is better for a baby than formula or vice versa? Benefits of breast-feeding are said to include bonding between mother and child, and the fact that the mother is passing immunities to her child through her milk. The main arguments I have heard for formula are that the vitamin content is just right for the baby, whereas breast milk lacks nutrients a baby needs such as vitamin D, and that formula digests more slowly than breast milk so the baby sleeps longer....

Local punk blowout Riot Fest has steadily grown since it began as a two-day affair at the Congress Theater back in 2005, but it kicked things up a notch last year when it moved into Humboldt Park and transformed into a multistage outdoor carnival, Ferris wheel included. The experiment clearly paid off, as all three days of this year’s Riot Fest will take place in Humboldt Park beginning Fri 9/13—last year’s festival kicked off at the Congress for one night before moving to the park....

The Tomorrow Never Knows festival has been growing steadily since its inception in 2005—last year it included shows at Schubas, Lincoln Hall, and Metro, and this year it adds Smart Bar and the Hideout. TNK runs Wed 1/11 through Sun 1/15 and features local and national acts playing pop, indie rock, hip-hop, dance music, and more—and in a first for the fest, it hosts three nights of stand-up comedy, all at the Hideout (Hannibal Buress on Thu 1/12, Todd Barry on Fri 1/13, and Wyatt Cenac on Sat 1/14)....

Worth noting that’s a best-of for one host, who has been on the air for three hours over a couple weeks. Her name is Darlene Jackson; she’s a club DJ as well as a “writer, producer, record label owner and creative director.” She kicked off her best-of by talking to someone about her vacation home in Beverly Shores, Indiana, asking the sorts of questions that would be of value to a club DJ....

The Garfield-Clarendon Model Railroad Club has been around in some form since 1947, back when Chicago was still a major passenger-railroad hub. In the course of its long history, the club has built five model railroads, first in its original home in the Garfield Park fieldhouse, then in the Clarendon Park Community Center. Work on the current railroad, the Garfield Central, began in 1974. It now comprises 1,500 feet of track and nine stops, ranging from an isolated mining outpost to a small city, all set in a rolling landscape that resembles Appalachia....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » That is, it’s slow. Not as slow as, say, Moss—who I’m convinced can actually stop your blood from circulating—but still stupidly slow. With music like this, you don’t listen for riffs so much as for the rich, chocolatey guitar tone (though I suppose a comparison to confectionery might seem silly for something as heavy as a neutron star). The riffs themselves are so dilated it’s sometimes almost impossible to perceive their shapes—maybe if you scanned through the song on CD they’d be catchy....

No sooner had Missouri congressman Todd Akin revealed his curious theories on rape and reproduction than I started getting calls, texts, and e-mails from readers offering insights along the lines of: what a fucking dumbass! On the larger matter of abortion, however, the Land of Lincoln has quite a few elected officials who see eye to eye with Akin. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Several share his belief that abortion should be banned even in instances of rape and incest, according to a survey by Illinois Citizens for Life, an antiabortion group....

We’ve received loads of letters, calls, e-mails, and online comments in reaction to the recent story by Mick Dumke and me detailing how the city cut corners and kept key information from the public as it rushed to lease its 36,000 parking meters to a private company (“FAIL: How Daley and his crew hid their process from the public, ignored their own rules, railroaded the City Council, and screwed the taxpayers,” April 9)....

Open since 1949, this Evanston shop charms in its attempt to replicate a French deli, with vintage posters and photos of France hanging on the walls and a sign that reads WE ACCEPT EUROS behind the cash register. A simple approach to European sophistication—the very same tactic that makes its food so enjoyable, from Mackie’s haggis-flavored potato chips to chewy caramel macarons to an array of fresh sandwiches (my favorite: smoked salmon and brie on buttered boule)....

Family life is pretty typical fodder for comedians. My wife, my kids, my cat, whatever. But Chris Condren‘s discovery a year ago that his dad ran and designed the now defunct website gaypornart.com is a tad outside the realm of a farting-in-bed joke. He didn’t hesitate to integrate the news—as well as a substantial amount of hand-drawn penis portraiture—into his stand-up, like any good son would do. I caught the joke during a visit to Sean Flannery’s Blackout Diaries, and as the lanky twentysomething—usually sporting at least one article of fluorescent clothing—awkwardly bobbed around stage smiling and laughing and clicking rapid-fire through penis drawing after fellatio drawing, Condren endeared himself to the audience....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Last week I swung by South Loop studio Force One Seven to speak with buzzing local MC Chancelor Bennett (aka Chance the Rapper) for this week’s installment of Three Beats. He’s gearing up to release a mixtape called Acid Rap, and he played me a bit of the eclectic and hooky new material, some of which is still in the works....

Hearing that Mayor Daley has decided not to seek re-election was a moment of shocking surreality on par with finding out that Marilyn Manson is obsessed with Eastbound and Down to the point of impersonating Kenny Powers in public. As much as I respect Daley’s megalomaniacal hustle, when it comes to the music in Chicago he’s been an absolute fucker apparently concerned only with profit margins (as applied to people with close enough ties to the mayor’s office) and avoiding another E2 incident....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Show: Jayhawks Original Jayhawks members Mark Olsen and Gary Louris, who parted ways 15 years ago, appear to have realized that they do their best work together. At these shows a reunited version of the group will play two classic Jayhawks albums in their entirety: 1992’s Hollywood Town Hall on Thursday and 1995’s Tomorrow the Green Grass on Friday....