Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » There are so many things to say about today’s 12 O’Clock Track, “Sheena Is a T-Shirt Salesman.” There’s the fact that it’s the first single off The Plot Against Common Sense, the forthcoming full-length from Welsh punks Future of the Left, whose Travels With Myself and Another was one of my favorite albums of 2009. There’s its tongue-in-cheek title, a not-so-subtle call-back to the Ramones’ classic “Sheena Is a Punk Rocker” that points up the band’s frustrations with the state of the music marketplace....

There’s a whole mess of Pitchfork Music Festival aftershows and preparties taking over clubs around the city throughout the weekend—you can read about them in the Reader‘s guide to the three-day blowout—and it all starts tonight. Moody Canadian electronic duo Majical Cloudz play a late show at Lincoln Hall this evening, and it’s one of the few festival-related parties I’ve had my eye on for weeks; the group’s recent Impersonator has slowly grown on me since Matador released it in May, particularly the standout single “Bugs Don’t Buzz....

7 Seconds first full-length, The Crew, released damn near 30 years ago I’ve wondered exactly in how many different ways Kevin Seconds can create a vocal melody with nothing much more than Whoooooaaa! Whooaa! Whoa!. But seeing that he’s fronted Youth Crew pioneers 7 Seconds for nearly 34 years now—building a formidable catalog from The Crew forward of fast-and-faster hardcore punk (with a slight detour into reverb in the late 80s/early 90s)—it’s probably safe to assume there’s no bottom to the bag of sing-alongs....

The opening sequence of the Second City’s new main-stage revue had me worried. First there’s an amusing but indeterminate sketch introducing us to six people riding a Greyhound bus, apparently into the twilight zone. That’s followed by movie-style credits projected on the walls of the stage. It looked to me like a setup for a theme—maybe something where the riders pop up at telling moments throughout the evening, singing about how we’re all on this Bus of Blah-blah-blah together....

People often ask me, given my preeminence in the study of Cubness, whether it’s fair to judge the 2008 team based on the Cubs’ gloriously uninterrupted history of failure. Back when I landed my first media job at age 11 delivering the Bridgeport Post in Connecticut, I would have said yes. But as I’ve grown older, my position, as John McCain might say, has “evolved.” Best of Chicago voting is live now....

In the 15 months since the release of Ghost’s debut album, Opus Eponymous (Rise Above), American fans of the Swedish metal outfit—not to be confused with the legendary Japanese psych-rock group of the same name—have been teased by YouTube evidence that the band’s live shows are chock-full of high-camp occult theatrics and muscular hard rock. Unfortunately, the band’s visa issues have kept most Americans from experiencing the real thing. Before embarking on a rescheduled U....

Think of the International Voices Project as a theater-themed world cruise—only free and with a significantly lower chance of seasickness. In a joint effort with Premiere Theatre and Performance, Chicago cultural institutions representing eight foreign nations (Argentina, Egypt, France, Canada, Ukraine, Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland) host concert-style readings of plays written by their native sons and daughters. All scripts will be performed in English. Here’s the full ten-week schedule: Best of Chicago voting is live now....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Playing off the current Art Institute exhibit The Last Harvest: Paintings by Rabindranath Tagore, Northwestern University will host a two-day symposium on the art of Tagore and the great Bengali filmmaker Satyajit Ray. The event, which is free and open to the public, begins tomorrow afternoon at 3:30 PM with opening remarks by Mukta Dutta Tomar, Chicago’s Consul General of India, and continues through Friday evening....

900 Shops 900 N. Michigan 312-915-3916 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Woman cannot live on chic little boutiques alone—sometimes you need to go someplace with a mix of department stores, chains, and stand-alone shops. In other words: the mall. If Marshall Field’s were still around, I would be tempted to name Water Tower Place as the best, thanks to the addition of au courant stores such as Akira, Aritzia, and CUSP in recent years....

To many Chicagoans, the beaches are fine for toe dipping but no place to go for a real swim on a steamy summer afternoon. That’s because the lifeguards tend to want to do their jobs, which, in the view of some authority somewhere, means no one is allowed in water much deeper than the average adult’s sagging waistline. Officially, it’s not any better along the rest of the lakefront—as sign after sign warns, swimming off the seawalls and breakers is a fineable offense....

Presented by the Gene Siskel Film Center, the Black Harvest festival showcases films and videos by black artists from around the world, with screenings continuing through Thursday, September 2. Following are reviews of selected films screening from Friday, August 20, through Thursday, August 26; for more information and a complete schedule see siskelfilmcenter.org. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Inside a Change Like Spike Lee’s 25th Hour, this thoughtful urban drama follows a young New Yorker (Ephraim Benton) during his final day of freedom before going to jail for dealing dope....

Conor McPherson and Martin McDonagh enjoy higher profiles, but Irish playwright Enda Walsh feels much closer to the spirit of Joyce and Beckett than either of his better-known contemporaries, who generally hew fairly close to the dictates of realism. Like Joyce, Walsh delights in wordplay and allusion, and like Beckett, his plays evoke closed environments where meaning, such as it is, comes from the repetition of stories and actions. In Bedbound (not yet produced in Chicago), a father and daughter deliver a series of voluble and recriminatory monologues from a filthy bedroom....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Since shifting from Medill’s money-making Media Management Center to take over the entire school in 2005, Lavine has alienated a lot of NU faculty (and alums) by acting with little regard for faculty governance to rewrite the curriculum and more closely integrate Medill’s two wings — its journalism and marketing programs. So it’s not so surprising that he would tout a marketing course....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » A few years ago guitarist Terrie Ex started releasing some fine albums of African music on his Terp label, including the first record by Congo’s Konono No. 1, the Malian kora player Djibril Diabate, and an astonishing double-CD (packaged in an extravagant book) by the Eritrean krar player and singer Tsehaytu Beraki. On the Beraki CD as well as last year’s eponymous disc by Ethiopian vocalist Mohammed “Jimmy” Mohammed, various members of the Ex and their associates—drummers Han Bennink and Michael Vatcher and bassist Massimo Zu—made cameos, blending in and strengthening rather than forcing their wills on traditional sounds....

You guffaw at bombings. Atrocities. Attempted suicide. You hate yourself. But in your defense, Guerra: A Clown Play—performed by the Mexico City-based troupe La Piara in collaboration with Chicago writer-directors Seth Bockley and Devon de Mayo—just might be the funniest take on the military since Dr. Strangelove. At a distant outpost, a flirtatious general and his runty, Chaplin-esque subordinate fill their days with flag-raising and medal-awarding ceremonies. Then an exciting new war is announced!...

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Both of the Roes work day jobs: Bill, 35, is production manager for Chicago Independent Distribution (formerly part of Southern), where he oversees the manufacture of CDs and LPs. Lisa, 33, is a librarian at the Chicago Public Library’s Logan Square branch. But CoCoComa’s second album, Things Are Not All Right, is due October 20 on Memphis label Goner Records, and they’re going on a European tour in December and January—hoping their bassist’s girlfriend will nanny for plane tickets....

On their second album, Tones of Town (Memphis Industries), Field Music continue in the vein of their 2005 self-titled debut, erecting a tastefully baroque edifice from the same prog-pop blueprint. Songwriters/brothers Peter and David Brewis and keyboardist Andrew Moore filter 70s Yes and Jethro Tull sensibilities (seen in details like strings, multilayered marimba, and lush vocal harmonies) through an adult-contemporary British pop aesthetic on standouts like “Give It Lose It Take It” and “Closer at Hand....

Chicago Supernatural Ghost Tours “Ghosthunter” Richard T. Crowe leads bus tours of graveyards, gangster massacre sites, and disaster locales. Through 11/1: Mon-Fri 7-11 PM, Sat-Sun 1-5 PM and 7-11 PM, Goose Island Brew Pub, 1800 N. Clybourn, 708-499-0300, ghosttours.com, $44-$54. Dungeon of Doom Haunted House 60 actors roam attractions like Dead Bums Alley, Cabin of Carnage, and Sewer Underground. Not recommended for kids under 13. Through 10/31: Wed-Thu 7-10 PM, Fri 7 PM-late (“till the last body crawls”), Sat 6 PM-late, Sun 6-10 PM, Dungeon of Doom, 2701 Deborah, Zion, 262-331-0092, dungeonofdoom....

David Lynch’s first digital video is his best and most experimental feature since Eraserhead (1978). Shot piecemeal over at least a year and without a script, this 179-minute meditation builds on Lynch’s Mulholland Drive (2001) as a sinister and critical portrait of Hollywood. But it resists any narrative paraphrase, with several overlapping premises rather than a single consecutive plot. Laura Dern plays an actress who’s been cast in a new feature, as well as a battered housewife and a hooker; there are also Polish characters and a sitcom with giant rabbits in human clothes....

The Chef: Dave Ford (the Bluebird)The Challenger: Toni Roberts (Roof, State and Lake)The Ingredient: Strawberries and rhubarb Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The first recorded rhubarb recipe—from a cookbook published in 1806-’07—is for a tart, but rhubarb was used in Chinese medicine for thousands of years before that. Its roots are a powerful laxative, and at one time the plant was believed to cure plague....