Northeastern Illinois University is on the hunt for a new provost. The last one, Lawrence Frank, stepped down late last year after an earlier faculty vote of no confidence in the school’s two top administrators—himself and president Sharon K. Hahs. Hahs remains, but the job description posted for Frank’s replacement suggests the turmoil she continues to face. NEIU’s looking for a provost who will “move the culture of the institution to one that is more collaborative and collegial....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The third Village Voice Jazz Poll, put together by critic Francis Davis (not to be confused with their Pazz & Jop Poll, which runs next month), is in the paper’s current issue; 79 jazz writers submitted ballots. I participated for the first time this year, and it was a little strange paring down my regular (and discombobulated) year-end list to include only “jazz” titles....

I walked over to her place in the blizzard around 7:45, planning to order delivery food and just hang out. When I got there she was shoveling her walk, and we walked inside to her place. She had two dogs, one 15 lbs and one about 30 lbs. The big one was excited and jumpy and wouldn’t stop getting in my face when I was sittingdown; the other one long haired and wet from the snow and wanted to sit on my lap....

In the old days of mainstream media, ambition was easy to spot. Journalists with lots of it wanted columns, wanted to anchor, wanted glamorous beats and glittering prizes. Life is simpler in the new-media era: ambitious reporters want to get paid. Sekoff wrote back, “We’ve always appreciated your contributions to the group blog. . . . In the days since OffTheBus, you obviously have transitioned into one of our top line bloggers....

I worked under-the-table jobs in London when I was in my early 20s, living in squats or cheap, crowded rental rooms. My version of Manhattan’s famously edgy Chelsea Hotel was a place called Arthog House, just south of the original Chelsea. It was the sort of place where you’d start your day as the only American woman among strangers and end it with a new tribe: allies who’d spot you their scant money and a lover with whom you now shared a mattress on the floor, having entirely skipped over the dating phase and become an instantly symbiotic couple....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Ben Sachs: We don’t have that in the U.S. either—our network television also skews towards entertainment during primetime. Speaking of which, I’m curious as to how U.S. movies are received in Brazil. You say that they’re unavoidable, but which ones are most popular with Brazilian moviegoers? And are these the same ones admired by Brazilian critics and historians?...

As the director of the Medill Innocence Project, I am writing in response to Michael Miner’s article, “The age of innocence is over: Did Willie Donald do it? The Medill Innocence Project no longer cares,” published May 29, 2012. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » How Miner reached the conclusion that the Medill Innocence Project doesn’t care about freeing the innocent is astounding because I’ve never met Miner in person and have spoken to him by telephone maybe three times in my life for a total of about 30 minutes....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I’m not exactly sure where New York’s Begushkin fits in the current rock ecosystem, and to me that’s always a good sign. The group’s mastermind, Dan Smith, sings in a voice that likewise eludes categorization–it’s a little too raw for the psych-folk tribe, a bit too majestic for indie-rock types. He sounds a bit like Will Oldham with most of the warmth sucked out, touched by the sharp whine of early Jeffrey Lee Pierce....

Mon 12/16: Red Fang at Logan Square Auditorium Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Heavy metal band Red Fang might be best known for their beer-soaked music videos, but they kill it on record too. “A lot of people have probably heard Red Fang and just don’t realize it. Over the past three years or so, two of the band’s music videos have gone viral—’Prehistoric Dog’ off their 2008 self-titled debut and ‘Wires’ off 2011’s Murder the Mountains—earning more than 2....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » For reasons due as much to geography as anything else, I usually make a beeline for the Twisted Spoke when I’m craving a fistful of ground beef on a bun — and a Fatboy (medium rare, swiss, grilled onions, no ketchup) rarely fails to satisfy. But after an excursion to Kuma’s Corner last week, I gotta say that if I ever move to Logan Square I’ll be able to forget the Spoke in a heartbeat....

Poco a Poco/Wikimedia Commons The entrance to the Adler Planetarium Even though I think they’re all pretty much the same, I’ve never been disappointed by any of the Adler Planetarium‘s space shows. Those domed screens just leave me defenseless. The image is not just above but all around you, meaning you have to arch your neck all the way back if you want to see everything. You can’t, of course, but that nagging frustration—as well as the slight discomfort of stretching your neck—only adds to the experience....

Last summer, sometime during the five weeks he spent stringing Swedish moss on a 950-square-foot expanse of chicken wire for Olafur Eliasson’s Moss Wall at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chris Hefner heard an NPR piece about the legendary last meal of French president Francois Mitterand: a tiny songbird called the ortolan that’s force-fed, drowned alive in Armagnac, plucked, seasoned, cooked, and then devoured—bones, innards, and all—by gourmets with napkins draped over their faces....

1 Pondering what to get the booze enthusiast in your life now that Four Loko’s changing its formula? Consider one of Paul McGee’s how-to classes for the budding mixologist. McGee, drinkmaster for hip hang the Whistler (2421 N. Milwaukee, 773-227-3530), is teaching a weekly two-hour Cocktails 101 course starting January 16, covering topics like booze history, bartending basics, and how to make your own signature drink. Participants get three drinks during class and a handbook to take home....

It’s been a lousy year for the local public schools—even by Chicago standards. “How was my summer? Oh, don’t ask,” says one north-side principal I’ll call Jackie. “I’m like a juggler with these budget cuts. If people only knew.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » It’s a neighborhood school, which means it accepts any child within its boundaries. The student population is almost evenly divided between Hispanics and whites, and much of it is low-income....

The fledgling Metronome Celebration, now in its second year, returns to Logan Square—specifically the quarter-mile stretch of Milwaukee between Armitage and Rockwell—this Saturday and Sunday, June 12 and 13. The festival’s two stages of music have different themes each day: the north stage will present Latin rock on Saturday (booked by the Congress Theater) and folk on Sunday (booked by the Chicago Bluegrass & Blues Festival), while the south stage will present indie rock on Saturday (booked by the Empty Bottle) and punk on Sunday (booked by MP Productions)....

Lead Story Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » A female ring-necked duck shot and brought home by a hunter in Tallahassee, Florida, in January was rushed to medical attention after the hunter’s wife discovered it alive in their refrigerator a day and a half later. While undergoing surgery at a local wildlife sanctuary, the duck stopped breathing twice but both times was revived, via an oxygen mask and thumps on the chest....

A Wisconsin math teacher vacationing in Europe (Johnny Depp) gets swept into an international intrigue by a slinky babe (Angelina Jolie) who wants the agents surveilling her to mistake him for her money-laundering lover. This swanky Euro-thriller kneels at the altar of Alfred Hitchcock, and its second-hand North by Northwest plot is particularly entertaining when you realize that the suave and capable Cary Grant persona has been inherited by Jolie, not Depp....

In January, John Caldow was inducted into the Illinois Track and Cross Country Coaches Association Hall of Fame, a testament to his 40-plus years of coaching excellence at DePaul University and other high schools across the city. Good question. And I can’t tell you what the official answer is since Monique Bond, spokeswoman for the Chicago Public Schools, has not returned my calls. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Of course, given the district’s massive budget hole, it’s probably hard for some people to get worked up over the track and field program while schools CEO Ron Huberman is talking about laying off teachers, increasing class sizes, and scaling back special ed....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Released in 2003, Tommy Wiseau’s The Room has vaulted to the top of the bottom rank, challenging Ed Wood Jr.’s Plan 9 From Outer Space for the title of worst movie ever made and, even more impressive, dislodging the venerable Rocky Horror Picture Show as America’s most popular audience-participation ritual. I’m not about to watch The Room again—ever—so I’ll just quote from my original review: “Wiseau stars as an eerily placid and good-natured banker whose live-in girlfriend is secretly getting it on with his best friend, though the filmmaker often strikes out in different directions, only to bump into the wall and come back....

The nightclub industry is a breeding ground for gossip, and rumors that Sonotheque was closing—its last day was Saturday the 14th—had been floating around for some time before Time Out Chicago Web editor John Dugan confirmed the news in a November 10 blog post. He also reported that the dance-music venue at 1444 W. Chicago was being sold. My Twitter feed was immediately swamped with reaction, and oddly most of the tweets I saw focused on the bare fact of Sonotheque’s closure, not on the identities of the new owners....