Sons have endless questions about their fathers. Michael Hainey is a journalist, someone more given than most to asking questions, and his father died when he was six. The mystery of the man was large enough to fill a book. This is a child’s memory. Why does it move me as I read it? Why do I remember the Sun-Times newsroom of the same era in roughly the same way—as a conglomeration of simple elements?...

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I’ve written before about how there’s always that moment of commitment to a Chicago sports team, how a typical Chicagoan keeps his or her final emotional involvement in check until giving in entirely, for better or worse. Well, there was nothing like that for me with this year’s White Sox; I was theirs all the way, and vice versa....

There are so many great ways to celebrate Independence Day, and this year I’ve got a new one: listening to Dan Deacon’s four-part “USA” suite from his excellent 2012 album, America. It’s both beautiful and harsh, which is a hallmark of many of Deacon’s best songs, and with a run time that exceeds 20 minutes, it’s also got an epic scope. Deacon just released a corresponding video for “USA” through Adult Swim; director and editor Dave Hughes made it using footage taken from around the country and warping those clips to resemble an acid-washed technicolor collage of the United States....

Wally Badarou’s Echoes For the past week or so, I’ve been intermittently listening to the outstanding mix that Norwegian producer/DJ Todd Terje created for BBC’s Essential Mix series. Though it covers everything from disco to house to jazz fusion to a dub version of Men at Work’s “Down Under,” I find myself listening to the mix’s opening chunk the most, which includes Jim Morrison’s discofied “Ghost Song” and Herb Alpert’s slow-burning “Rotation....

Block Cinema’s revival of the silent classic The Wind featured live music as well as live sound effects. Chicago has such a tremendous repertory film scene that every year we get to see as many great old movies as new ones. So in addition to compiling a list of my favorite Chicago premieres, each December I make another list of the year’s best revivals and rediscoveries. I’ll acknowledge right out the bat that this list is incomplete—as much as I try to keep up with all the city’s worthwhile programming, inevitably there are screenings that pass my attention....

Anjal Chande is a study in contrasts. Trained in classical Indian dance, she’s also improvised with jazz musicians and used a traditional hand gesture to mime brushing her teeth. Yet she doesn’t see her work as a one-woman campaign to haul bharatanatyam into the American mainstream. “I just want to have my own voice,” she says, “and explore my interests.” A dedicated DIYer, Chande often accompanies herself with her own recorded singing, chanting, and texts....

Ladies, here’s a way to test that new beau: take him to see Off Off Broadzway‘s next show. If he can stand the broadz’ relentless heckling of male audience members—not to mention their members—without going limp, he’s a keeper. The all-female parody burlesque troupe’s latest effort, Day Drinking and Sleep Eating, was filled to the brim with ball-busting barbs. On the night I attended, “lady pimp” Dolly Natrix (Jill Valentine) closed the show by screaming at an aptly named and appropriately embarrassed fellow, “Look at me when I’m menstruating, Peter!...

The Reader’s Choice: Ryan Fenchel, Isak Applin, and Lilli Carré (tie) Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Ryan Fenchel’s elegant sculptures, collages, and drawings combine contemporary iconography with the mystical hermeticist notion of God as a master of secret magical arts. For a multimedia installation at Vega Estates last fall he spent months carving an abstract sculpture out of a block of salt, a substance dense both in mass and in associations from alchemical lore....

I would advise you to avoid the criminal courthouse at 26th and California. If you can’t, I’d at least suggest you avoid being one of the guys on trial. And as I’ve been forced to learn, when you show up, your time at the security checkpoint will be shorter and sweeter if you follow a few practical suggestions. Don’t try to carry in an unmarked bottle of ibuprofen, as I unwittingly did....

BRYAN SHEFFIELD Local Natives If you’re like me you’re still recovering from the weeklong live-music binge that is SXSW (you can read my thoughts on it here), and the idea of seeing another musical performance sounds about as tempting as a slice of pizza when you’ve already finished off an entire extra-large pizza by yourself. But Chicago has an extremely generous schedule of shows worth checking out over the next few days....

I found a shoebox the other day full of old letters, pictures, a cell phone, ticket stubs, and other assorted dated (emphasis on date) items that I had accumulated over the years. It was like I had this time capsule under my bed, a Chuck Taylor shoebox full of sentimental value that came from a time not so long ago with memories, which in some cases, are from people who seem from a time very very very long ago....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Megan Tady’s February report in the New Standard (since picked up by Alternet and by Rachel’s Health & Environment newsletter) reminded me. She finds a number of environmentalists arguing that Greenpeace is way too conservative, maybe even holding back environmentalism by merely calling for “various regulations and market-based actions to reduce greenhouse-gas output by 60 to 80 percent over the next 43 years....

The first few times I heard Chromeo I didn’t like them much; something about their retro electro-funk style struck me as a little too ironic. But after I saw them live my mind was changed completely–bands that don’t respect their material simply can’t rock it that hard. Chromeo’s jams are double cheesy, the sort of gleefully nasty pop Prince would bust out after he’d had one too many Frankie Beverly records, but you won’t catch these guys winking....

Aimee Levitt Half an El Jefe chicken at the Art of Chicken Civilization may have been awesome for a lot of things, but no cooking technique has yet improved upon roasting meat over fire. Your meat can come from the supermarket, pale and colorless, injected with water to make it look plumper. Your marinades can be subpar amalgamations of whatever you happen to have in the pantry at the moment....

Alex Wroblewski/Sun-Times In downtown Chicago yesterday, demonstrators protested the acquittal of George Zimmerman. The acquittal of George Zimmerman Saturday “sends a message that it’s okay to pursue, to hunt and to kill black men,” Bernard Jakes, pastor of the West Point Missionary Baptist Church on South Cottage Grove, said at a news conference yesterday. “It says that black life is of no value.” “Yesterday, we watched the justice system fail miserably again,” Father Michael Pfleger told his congregation at St....

Elizabeth Gomez Chorizo-black-bean hash, Danny’s Egghead Diner When the folks behind Broadway Cellars installed Danny’s Egghead Diner in the erstwhile Alps East they did little to brighten the drab North Center diner’s floral vinyl granny aesthetic other than hanging some Mexican folkloric art on the walls. But they did quite a bit better by installing chef Danny Coronel of North Park’s late What’s Cooking? to lead the kitchen. Coronel’s turned up the Mexican influence slightly on a menu that still bears all the diner standards (eggs, pancakes, burgers, “signature benedicts,” etc)....

Sound artist and vocalist Carol Genetti says of her installation Send Help, “I didn’t know it would sound so beautiful.” Part of the Museum of Contemporary Art’s new Here/Not There series, it consists of eight tape recorders mounted on the walls of the 12 x 12 gallery, each playing an enunciation of a different letter in the phrase “send help.” Synchronized at first to deliver the phrase, the recorded sounds devolve into gibberish as time passes....

The Chef: Chris Teixeira (West Town Bakery and Homestead)The Challenger: Joseph Rose (Lockwood)The Ingredient: Black cumin Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » According to Wikipedia, Bunium persicum, which is related to regular cumin, is the true black cumin. Nigella sativa, however, is more common—especially in black cumin seed oil, which is sold as a health supplement (it’s an antioxidant and anti-inflammatory, and is rumored to cure pancreatic cancer)....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I’d expect the Washington Post‘s ombudsman to write about the First Amendment with more precision than Deborah Howell did the other day. She was discussing a full-page ad in the Post that announced–screamed is more like it–the offer by Hustler publisher Larry Flynt of up to $1 million for “documented evidence of illicit sexual or intimate relations with a Congressperson, Senator or other prominent officeholder....

Billy Pierce: Baseball’s Class Act If he had the Yankees behind him like Whitey Ford he would have been in the Hall of Fame on the first ballot! —Craig B Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Hynes trying to out-wonk Quinn? Next week Quinn will hold a press conference & post a FORTY page PDF, “I’ll see your progressive income tax and raise you full school funding....