Rich Hein/Sun-Times Media Some of the 7,444 illegal guns Chicago police say they recovered last year. Illinois lawmakers advanced legislation this week that would ban military-caliberstyle guns as well as magazines that hold more than ten rounds of ammunition. The moves came in response to the Newtown massacre—and to the end of another bloody year in the streets of Chicago. Chicago already has the most restrictive firearm laws in the country: handgun owners must undergo three background checks, take a training class, practice shooting at a range, and register with the police department....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Show: Tim and Eric Awesome Tour, Great Job! Chrimbus Spectacular 2010 There’s more creativity, audacity, risk, and fearlessly inventive comedy in the average ten-minute episode of Adult Swim’s Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! than in the last ten years of SNL. Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim’s Chrimbus Spectacular promises to emulate the show’s breakneck pacing, interspersing live material with short films and a preview of an upcoming Chrimbus television special, which will be broadcast at midnight on Sunday, December 5—which, if you didn’t know, is Chrimbus morning....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Two days ago, in honor of Weed Week on the Bleader, food writer Mike Sula started up a series documenting dishes best consumed while under the influence (or recovering from such) with a post on the platillo nopal loco at El Gallo Bravo. I haven’t had a hangover in ages—I guess I drink just enough bourbon to inoculate myself—but if I were to, I know where I’d head: tiny Noon Hour Grill....

In sophomore year religion class, I stare at the pair of feet under the desk next to mine. They’re like canoes, covered in blue plaid Chuck Taylors with taut laces. They belong to a Taiwanese exchange student. Sometimes I use my peripheral vision to peek at his doodles, but they’re the same every day: headshots of women with hair shaped like lightning. “That won’t ever happen,” I’d say, jaw tight....

Green Zone directed by Paul Greengrass Ari Gold couldn’t have cut a cannier deal: Universal Pictures gets to say the movie was “inspired by” a critically acclaimed piece of journalism, and Random House gets to put a picture of Matt Damon on the book jacket. But of course this synergistic flimflam hardly compares with the political flimflam that led the U.S. into a disgraceful war, establishing a precedent for preemptive invasion and killing at least 100,000 Iraqi civilians....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Arpino cofounded the Joffrey in 1956 with his onetime lover, choreographer and dance historian Robert Joffrey. They started small–six dancers touring the country in a station wagon pulling a trailer, performing original pieces by Joffrey. But by the late 1960s the Joffrey was recognized as a major company on a par with New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theatre....

Brian DePalma’s Phantom of the Paradise was not shot in 70-millimeter. Sometimes anticipation can bring out the best in a crowd. Case in point, the hundreds of people who went to the Music Box Theatre on Friday night to see 2001: A Space Odyssey on 70-millimeter—as part of the theater’s two-week celebration of that format—didn’t seem to mind waiting outside in the cold for nearly an hour, nor did they complain much when the film didn’t start on time....

Already the author of a pictorial history of the Chicago el and a look at the city’s “hidden treasures,” Greg Borzo turns his attention to cycling in the useful new guide Where to Bike Chicago. The first U.S. offering in the Where to Bike series—which started in Australia and covers places from Canberra to London—Borzo’s spiral-bound book features 72 rides in and around Chicago, 27 of them geared especially for kids....

3, 2, 1 Countdown to Christmas Chicago designers Heidi Hess, Kate Boggiano, Objets d’Envy, and Lara Miller offer discounts on their wares. Thu-Fri 12/17-12/18, 6-9 PM, Heidi Hess, 210 N. Halsted, heidihess.com. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Christkindlmarket Inspired by the famous Christmas market in Nuremberg, this 14th annual event features handblown ornaments, nutcrackers, cuckoo clocks, and more. Glühwein and other European specialties will be available....

Ting Shen/Sun-Times Media Tari Kelly as Ado Annie Carnes and Usman Ally as Ali Hakim in Oklahoma! A few years ago we went to a local production of Oklahoma! that was billed as “revisionist.” I sort of wish I hadn’t known about that ahead of time, for I sat there looking for the curveball; instead of simply enjoying the show, I kept wondering when the revisionism was going to kick in....

The juggernaut that is Lollapalooza rolls back into Grant Park (Columbus and Jackson) from Friday till Sunday, bringing 121 bands on seven stages. This week’s List includes writeups on four festival artists—Depeche Mode, Bat for Lashes, the Low Anthem (who also play an aftershow at the Hideout on Saturday), and Zap Mama—and the schedule’s many other highlights include Of Montreal and Fleet Foxes on Friday, Animal Collective, Ida Maria, TV on the Radio, and Lykke Li on Saturday, and Band of Horses, Dan Deacon, Gang Gang Dance, and the one and only Lou Reed on Sunday....

VEE DEE PUBLIC MENTAL HEALTH SYSTEM (CRIMINALIQ) Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Vee Dee’s only other full-length, Furthur, came out five long years ago, and in that time the group has been beset with a series of troubles no less frustrating for how banal they are in underground rock‘n’ roll. Myers and bassist Dan Lang have had problems holding on to a drummer (Ryan Murphy, who also tours as a lighting technician for Leonard Cohen and Wilco, is number four), they’ve had members tied up by stints in other bands (Myers played for a spell with venerable locals Plastic Crimewave Sound), and they’ve struggled with a nonexistent studio budget (they recorded Public Mental Health System for free during a month of weekends in the basement studio of Mark “Ears” Freitas, from Vee Dee’s Criminal IQ labelmates the Rotten Fruits)....

Marina Shifrin and I both studied journalism at the University of Missouri, and at roughly the same age—she’s 25, I used to be—we quit jobs that didn’t suit our talents. I remember nervously approaching the guy who ran the ad department of the Disciples of Christ publishing arm in Saint Louis to tell him I was moving on. “I can’t believe you stayed as long as you did,” he said. The other day, Shifrin went into her empty office at 4:30 AM and made a video she called “An Interpretive Dance For My Boss Set To Kanye West’s Gone....

New Too ITALIAN | LUNCH: MONDAY-SATURDAY; DINNER: SEVEN DAYS | OPEN LATE: FRIDAY & SATURDAY TILL MIDNIGHT, OTHER NIGHTS TILL 11 | RESERVATIONS FOR LARGE GROUPS ONLY CONTEMPORARY/REGIONAL, SMALL PLATES | DINNER: SUNDAY, TUESDAY-SATURDAY | SATURDAY & SUNDAY BRUNCH | CLOSED MONDAY | OPEN LATE: FRIDAY & SATURDAY TILL MIDNIGHT, THURSDAY TILL 11 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » It’s hard to imagine a cozier place than Lincoln Square’s Fork (formerly Fiddlehead Cafe), with its warm tones, exposed-brick walls, and soft lighting....

Bob Schwartz is standing at the counter of Murphy’s Red Hots in Wrigleyville, telling counterman Bill Murphy about his last visit to the cardiologist. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Schwartz knows his Polish. He calls himself the “official schmoozer” of Vienna’s 1,200-some vendors and, as the bio in his new book Never Put Ketchup on a Hot Dog (out September 2 from Chicago’s Books Press) puts it, he’s “spent the last third of a century developing and enhancing strong emotions for the business and for the people who operate hot dog stands....

I am from a city called Mashhad, country of Iran. Mashhad was an odd place for me to grow up, because even though it’s the largest religious city in Iran, I didn’t exactly feel that religious mindset. Of course in school there was a fair part of the education devoted to making us religious, giving us all the Islamic teachings. But as a child I grew up in a very urban, Chicago-like environment, where there were kids running around, you know, and bikes....

Robert Sorich and three other former Daley administration workers were convicted of fraud or perjury charges in 2006 after a federal investigation into illegal patronage hiring at City Hall. Today their appeals were denied [PDF] by a federal appellate court that reiterated how for years they helped politics trump policy: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “Sorich was the mayor’s so-called ‘patronage chief,’ and held the title Assistant to the Director of IGA....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » What happened, according to commentator John McEnroe, who won the same tournament four times himself, was the third set. Djokovic had outplayed Nadal in the second set and was outplaying him in the third set, breaking Nadal’s serve in the first game and a few games later having him on the ropes at love-40. But somehow Nadal won that game....

Jean Rouch completed this quasi-documentary in 1958, and it still feels ahead of its time. Rather than make his own record of Treichville, a district in the Ivory Coast city Abidjan, Rouch recruited several local men and women to create scenes based on their lives. With this innovative working method, Rouch raises a question implicit in all nonfiction filmmaking: Who’s the genuine auteur, the director or the subjects? And yet the results don’t feel at all cerebral....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Judging by its first day, one thing that Riot Fest has going for it is that it feels like a real, old-school festival. The volume of people induced sparse or nonexistent cell phone reception, which prevented festival goers from spending hours staring into iPhones and Androids and prompted them to focus on the festival itself. And all around are candy-colored ferris wheels and faux-plushy prizes and Coney Island-esque stands for corn dogs and nachos, all of it looking like a twisted, rockabilly version of the erstwhile Kiddieland Amusement Park....