Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » There are interesting links between Bernstein, Blitzstein, Candide, and Threepenny. As a Harvard senior in 1939, Bernstein organized a student production of Blitzstein’s Brechtian musical The Cradle Will Rock—which had gained notoriety two years earlier when the New Deal program that funded its development, the Federal Theatre Project, attempted to cancel its New York premiere in response to Republican attacks on arts funding....

When Christopher Shively, aka producer, DJ, and label head Chrissy Murderbot, was pursuing his master’s degree in American studies at the University of Amsterdam in 2005, he had an epiphany. “I’m gonna sound like a horrible nationalist,” he says, “but I became convinced that when it comes to dance music, midwesterners and also the British get it in a way that other people don’t, because it’s native to us and we grow up with it....

Arya Bhavan Cheerful pink napkins decorate the tables and colorful Rajasthani crafts brighten the walls at Arya Bhavan, which means “our home.” But the main room is dominated by a 20-foot buffet, which on the weekends is laden with all-vegetarian curries, sweets, appetizers, rice, salad, and cooling raita. Along with traditional favorites like chana masala and mutter paneer are original creations by chef Jay Sheth. One of his best is the addictive undhia, a complex curry of eggplant, sweet potatoes, and plantains....

Omnivorous columnist Mike Sula knows what he likes—and what he doesn’t. A good plate of chivo, a well-made cubano, an epicurean feast from the sea? All good. Budweiser foam, all-you-can-meat, stripper poles? No thanks. Here are his picks for the best new Chicago restaurants so far this year, from the humble but heartwarming storefronts that sustain so many of us to the upscale restaurants that continue to make this town a culinary mecca....

AP Photo George Zimmerman If Anderson Cooper, at the conclusion of his excellent interview on CNN with “Juror B37,” had asked, “Was justice served?” and the juror had been honest with herself, I think her answer would have had to be no. But it’s an unfair question. It’s hard enough just to serve the law. Juror B37 had voted to acquit George Zimmerman of any crime in the killing of Trayvon Martin....

The playbill includes multiple definitions of heavy–of which “hard to bear” is the most relevant. This series of sketches and monologues about being fat is amateurish across the board. Thanks to an impressively drab, carpeted set and feeble sound, scenes often come off like basement rehearsals. The three writer-performers, two overweight men and a height-weight proportionate woman, seem novice actors (one struggled seriously with lines), and under Lavina Jadhwani’s direction the bits lack rhythm and the obesity issues are neither sympathetic nor laugh-out-loud funny....

Argo Tea Cafe16 W. Randolph | 312-553-1551 F 7.9 | S 6.9 | A 8.9 | $$$$ (19 reports)American Contemporary/Regional | Breakfast: Monday-Saturday; Lunch, dinner: seven days | Sunday brunch Bistro 110110 E. Pearson | 312-266-3110 Walk into this chic cafe just off the lobby of the Sofitel hotel and you could easily think you’re in Paris (where the chain is based) or Milan. Pierre-Yves Rochon’s stunning decor features 5-foot-tall light fixtures suspended from 50-foot vaulted ceilings, brilliant red banquettes, and backlit translucent bar walls that change from green to purple....

Courtesy Lucas Museum of Narrative Art Don Bacigalupi heads from Crystal Bridges to Chicago’s Museum Campus. The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art announced today that Don Bacigalupi will be the organization’s founding president. He’ll be leaving his current job as president of Alice Walton’s Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, to join the Lucas Museum on January 15. “Don shares my vision for building an education-focused, world-class museum that expands public understanding and appreciation of narrative art,” said George Lucas, Founder and Chairman of the Lucas Museum....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Reviewing Tarsem Singh’s grisly sword-and-sandal epic Immortals (2011), I took a stab at prognostication and described him as “a talented and eccentric visual artist with no creative future in the movie business.” I’m not quite ready to retract that judgment, but this fractured fairy tale provides him with a much more congenial vehicle for his florid imagery, more in line with his spellbinding fantasy The Fall (2006)....

At the beginning of their allegedly self-made video for “One Way or Another (Teenage Kicks)” the members of globally dominant British boy band phenomenon One Direction explain that the song was recorded to benefit the British charity Comic Relief. Which is great. Charity work is laudable, and honestly there should be benefit singles from ridiculously massive pop acts being released on a regular basis. But their brief explanation doesn’t even come close to touching on the biggest question that the song raises, which is why there is a One Direction version of the “Teenage Kicks” that now exists in our world....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Roasting peppers is a pain in the ass. I’m not against making stuff myself—I love making hummus, and I spent the summer growing basil so I could make pesto. But the way I roasted the peppers (in the broiler; other options I found online and rejected are over the flame of a gas stove or in the oven) took probably 40 minutes or so, and I had to check and turn them every 5-10 minutes....

The world is full of noises. Even as we seek silence, it’s hard to quiet the chatter in our brains—the remnants of a Twitter feed may invade our mental landscape; a shadow of a blue Facebook box pops into a subconscious mental slide show as we finally submit to sleep. We talk so much these days, even when it’s not out loud. We debate the big issues and the small—we passionately expound on gun violence one day and Instagram’s terms of service agreement the next....

Q I’m a 23-year-old bi dude seeing a guy who is intelligent, sweet, attractive—the works. We’ve been together for six weeks. The problem is, after our first night together I lost sexual interest in him. When I do get horny—which is rare at the moment due to work pressures—I prefer to beat off alone, because I can fantasize about some sort of transgression or other when I do it, e.g., having sex where I’m at risk of being discovered, rape fantasies, incest scenarios....

Wicker Park Fest offers three stages of rock-leaning acts from all across the musical spectrum this Saturday and Sunday. On both days music begins at 2:20 PM on the North Stage, 3 PM on the Center Stage, and 2:05 PM on the South Stage. On Saturday the whimsical Man Man headline the North Stage, after the likes of Bahamas, Delicate Steve, and Kid Karate; country-fried punk legends the Meat Puppets headline the Center Stage, with support from Leagues, Young General, and the Bright White, among others; New York indie-pop band Cults headline the South Stage, sharing the bill with Tera Melos, local emo “supergroup” Their/They’re/There, the Lighthouse & the Whaler, Minor Characters, and more....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » • The hints from Grant Achatz and Nick Kokonas are proving true: Next’s next theme will be “Chicago Steakhouse,” 50s-era, says Food & Wine. And as everyone knows, Next did not get a Michelin star, but in past years Michelin had said that Next’s changing genres every three months, and the scarcity of tickets, made it impossible for them to judge the restaurant by their normal methods....

America’s eight-year war in Iraq officially ended in December. It took two additional months for the city of Chicago to end its legal battle with demonstrators arrested for protesting on the first day of the conflict. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In addition, the city spent at least $3.8 million on outside legal help, records show. That brings the total cost of fighting these cases to roughly $12 million....

Dano (“everybody just knows me as Dano”) tends bar twice a week at the Skylark in Pilsen. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I met a bartender at Club Lucky named Rick. Quite honestly, I stole his style. He was a classic bartender: white shirt, great tie. I took that idea and went more the art deco route. I walked in here on opening night three years ago with a vest and a tie, and that’s where it all started....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Well, what do you know? A sentence of 17 months in prison had been handed to Anthony Duffy, a plumbing contractor who omitted the names of former mayor Richard M. Daley’s son Patrick and nephew Robert Vanecko (not to be confused with indicted Daley nephew Richard “R.J.” Vanecko) from the list of owners of his sewer company, which was awarded millions of dollars in contracts with the city....

When The Color Purple premiered on Broadway in 2005, New York Times critic Ben Brantley complained that the stage musical based on Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel was overstuffed—that it tried too hard to do too much too fast, and suffered as a result. “Watching this beat-the-clock production summons the frustrations of riding through a picturesque stretch of country in a supertrain,” Brantley wrote. “The landscape looks seductively lush and varied; the local populace seems lively and inviting....

Young Jazz Lions Stage Jazz on Jackson Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » 2:20 PM Jason Adasiewicz’s Rolldown Jazz has produced some illustrious vibraphonists, but the list of current top-shelf players is a short one—there’s Bobby Hutcherson, Khan Jamal, Gary Burton, and maybe a few more. Young Chicago vibist Jason Adasiewicz belongs near the top of that list these days. He’s an expansive improviser with a responsive ear and a talent for writing exciting compositions, which his outstanding quintet Rolldown gives the spotlight they deserve—its granite-solid lineup features hyperexpressive cornetist Josh Berman, gentle alto saxophonist Aram Shelton, propulsive bassist Jason Roebke, and the fabulous Frank Rosaly on drums....