Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Ribbon’s motto was, “There’s no wisdom you can’t make a little wiser.” Today this aphorism held his attention: “A lie travels halfway around the world before the truth has got its boots on.” It sounded like something an old-fashioned copy editor, back in the day when newspapers had them, might have said when explaining the world to a copy boy....

If we truly lived in a town that cared to eat well, restaurants like chef Chris Pandel’s beercentric The Bristol would be distributed evenly instead of concentrating in overcrowded, gentrified ghettos like Bucktown or Lincoln Square. The seasonal menu at this new arrival promises interesting variety at accessible prices, including of late a broiled eel sandwich, a perfect pairing of grilled mackerel and romaine in the Caesar, and “Scotch olives,” a mutation of a Scotch egg (a boiled egg encased in sausage and deep-fried) and Italian olives all’Ascolana (fat green olives stuffed with pork and veal and deep-fried)....

The first scene of A Separation, the extraordinary new drama by Iranian writer-director Asghar Farhadi, is a four-minute shot of a husband and wife, Nader (Peyman Moadi) and Simin (Leila Hatami), seated side by side in straight chairs and addressing the camera as if it were the judge who speaks on the soundtrack. Simin has filed for divorce, and as the judge questions her, a messy family situation begins to spill out: she and Nader have obtained a visa to leave Iran that expires in 40 days, but he refuses to go because of his elderly father, who suffers from Alzheimer’s and requires constant attention....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » . . . so I missed this unfortunate gem from Richard Roeper, gunning for the Bob Greene Memorial Voice of the Silent Majority Award (here’s another entry). I think it explains a lot about the Paris Hilton phenomenon. “You might feel sorry for them, if there weren’t so many stories about them behaving badly, so many videos of them acting as if they owned the world, so much evidence that they walked through life with a sense of entitlement until karma stepped up and smacked them silly....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The oxymoronic phrase “best buffet” has been on the questioning minds of some Friends of the Food Chain over the past few weeks. Most have been hard-pressed to name a single one that is consistently good at a good value. But based on the ever present stockpile of pierogi and golumpki that once filled my mom’s freezer, I was under the delusion that Polish food had a long shelf life, and that your standard Polish buffet was an exception to the commonsense maxim to stay away from a smorgasbord that has no line in front of it....

Rasputina have never gotten the props they deserve. Bandleader Melora Creager is more than just a tireless advocate for cellos and corsets or a role model for people who want to live in Tim Burton movies–she’s exactly the sort of oddball alternate-world-building songwriter, artiste, and polymath who, were she male and her iconography less insistently girly, would surely command the devotion of countless shambling, shaggy-faced hipsters. Fortunately, she doesn’t seem to need ’em....

Dear readers: Folks who have the Savage Love app get the Savage Love Letter of the Day (SLLOTD) delivered to their iPhones or Androids. This week I’m running three recent SLLOTDs to give my online or print-only readers a taste of what they’re missing. I’m also giving myself a bit of a break: I’m currently dashing around the country on a book tour for It Gets Better: Coming Out, Overcoming Bullying, and Creating a Life Worth Living....

I think I have a condition. I guess we could call it a heart condition for the sake of this blog but a condition none the less. See every time I find myself in a lame relationship or dating a girl that makes me question what the hell it is I am doing with her, I become all tense. I get all locked up and hardly say a word which is way out of character....

AIG has acted with all the dignity you would expect from a company that just destroyed the market. NY AG Andrew Cuomo discovered that the “retention bonuses” were not only ineffective for guaranteeing performance, they weren’t even good at guaranteeing retention. Can Obama hire Scott Boras to be the Assistant Secretary of Not Getting Screwed? Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Perhaps even more outrageous is the white paper AIG sent to Timothy Geithner (PDF)....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » This March Platinum Equity bought the formerly prosperous, influential San Diego Union-Tribune — for what online newspaper analyst Ken Doctor said was reportedly a “song” — and brought in Canadian publisher David Black (no relation to Conrad) as strategic adviser. Two years earlier Black had bought the Akron Beacon-Journal, and Doctor looked to Akron for clues as to what Black intended for San Diego....

Street View is a fashion series in which Isa Giallorenzo spotlights some of the coolest styles seen in Chicago. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Ariyah, pictured above, amped up the glamour factor when she added a cape to her tres ornate look. I think The Incredibles‘ Edna Mode had a point when she said that capes are not meant for superheroes. They’re certainly not practical....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Here’s what seems to have happened recently at the Chicago Defender: Roland Martin, the outsize personality who as executive editor brought the Defender back from the ranks of the living dead, told Editor & Publisher that he didn’t intend to stay on after his contract expired in March. E&P’s Mark Fitzgerald published the story online January 18 and made his own feelings clear: “Martin’s self-promotion ....

Noon | Claudia Cassidy Theater Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Ordo Sakhna I sometimes think even midwesterners used to the Great Plains would feel a terrifying agoraphobia if suddenly transplanted to the Central Asian steppes. But their wide-openness seems to inspire a sort of intimacy in the traditional music of the nomadic tribes who call them home. Their songs certainly evoke the miles yet to travel and the rocking and galloping of the horses who’ll help them do it, but they’re also flirtatious, witty, and full of a very down-to-earth feel for the joys and sorrows of the community....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In last week’s issue of the Reader, I wrote about Portland artist Brenna Murphy and her forthcoming appearance at the Gene Siskel Film Center (Thu 9/27, 6 PM), where she’ll be presenting her work as part of the ongoing experimental film series, Conversations at the Edge, in collaboration with Lampo, a nonprofit organization dedicated to experimental multimedia events in Chicago....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Dubya’s been keeping his head pretty low, probably relieved to let the news cycle chew on someone else’s ass for a bit. But even though it looks like he plans to stay on cruise control until January, he’s still finding new ways to fuck up the federal government. Today he signed into law the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act, clearing the final hurdle in his administration’s quest to create a cabinet-level piracy czar....

Classical: So Percussion founder Doug Perkins moves to Chicago One of the highlights of the 2012 classical season was August’s performance of the John Luther Adams percussion piece Inuksuit, which took place all over the Pritzker Pavilion grounds despite steady rain. Percussionist Doug Perkins masterminded the concert (as well as a New York performance in February), and it was an auspicious sign for him: he’d just moved with his family to suburban Glenview, where his wife works as a doctor, to begin an open-ended residency with Eighth Blackbird at the University of Chicago....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » One of the little perks Frank Sennett was looking forward to in his new job as editor of Time Out Chicago was reconnecting with some of the old gang from New City. Sennett was that paper’s managing editor in the mid-90s, James Porter was a staff writer specializing in blues and soul, Craig Keller a freelance writer, and Nicole Radja a freelance photographer....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » When the Tribune Company announced last year that it was going to start charging employees who smoked an extra $100 a month for medical coverage, it had an excellent rationale for doing so: while recouping a little of the $100 million a year it was spending on medical coverage, the company would encourage smokers to quit — if they completed a company-sponsored cessation program the surcharge would end and be refunded....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Of course, Eurydice is generally thought of as a supporting character in that story: the woman who triggers the most famous adventure undertaken by Orpheus, the poet-musician whose songs could charm stones. In the traditional version, a snake kills her on their wedding day, and Orpheus follows her down to the land of the dead, hoping to bring her back up with him....

Malabar Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » From the outside Malabar looks like another one of those Bucktown boutiques where $300 is cheap for a blouse. So it was a pleasant surprise upon browsing to find high-heeled platform shoes by Oh . . . Deer! in red patent leather ($110) and leopard-print ponyskin ($120) and a black sweater minidress from Paris-based Aoyama Itchome on sale for 25 percent off its original price of $125....