Q I’m a straight college guy, age 21, and I share a house with some buddies and a couple. Anyhow, the interesting stuff: This couple has been together for four years. They’re both quite sexual, but she’s got more libido than he does. I’ve got a big sex drive too. Both of them have stated an openness to polyamorous situations. She started flirting with me three weeks ago, and flirting turned into no-sex threesomes with her and her BF every few nights....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The Great Webcasting War of 2007 between the burgeoning Internet radio industry and SoundExchange, the rather heinous tool of the RIAA, is turning into a drawn-out, mean-ass event. And since the only people who side with SoundExchange on the matter are label execs desperate for revenue and a few recording artists who haven’t figured out that you can’t collect royalties from a format once it’s been legislated into extinction, public opinion is solidly against the greed-heads....

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 » Guess who I ran into again? Sandra, my ultimate style icon, who was featured in one of my early Street Views. This very fine lady always amazes me. How can someone look so age-appropriate, chic, fun, and on-trend at the same time?...

With December 25 still three weeks off, the Reader performing arts listings so far include ten shows with “Christmas” in the title, of which five are versions of A Christmas Carol. And that’s just the tip of the North Polar iceberg. Reverent holiday theater is so ubiquitous it’s bred an almost equally ubiquitous backlash. Here are our reviews of some of the alternative holiday shows. —Tony Adler Best of Chicago voting is live now....

RE|Dance Group’s gentle new Homeland weaves darkness through the bright threads of a childhood in the country. Choreographer Michael Estanich, who leads RE|Dance with Lucy Riner, grew up in the tiny Appalachian town of Nemacolin, Pennsylvania, the son of a coal miner. That down-home milieu colors his 45-minute dance-theater piece—especially its music, which includes recordings by the newgrass Fiddlers 4 and folk-roots trio the Wailin’ Jennys. A clogging section took me back to dancing I saw at an outdoor music festival in Virginia, with elders and children alike stamping on plywood laid over mud....

A first-person account from off the beaten track, as told to Anne Ford. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “It’s so tempting to just lump them in with plants, because they don’t move around. But we’ve known for a long time that they’re actually more closely related to animals. All fungi need to feed on other organisms, as opposed to plants, which generate their own food....

“All nations are invented,” Bilal Dardai reminds us near the start of The Sovereign Statement, the new Neo-Futurist production he wrote and appears in along with five other actors. Sure, countries may possess hard assets like land and resources, industries, armies, and infrastructure. They may find identity in a dominant language or religion or DNA strain. But at heart they’re all intellectual properties: abstract notions with real-world implications, constructed out of a set of rules and an official narrative....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » A few more thoughts on Crust: for all its populist appeal, the orange plastic and formica aesthetic doesn’t exactly make for a relaxing meal. Between the bright lights, plastic chairs, and just-the-other-side-of-comfortable sound level, the whole enterprise really seems designed to move units as fast as possible. Oddly enough the patio, despite its vastness, actually looks a lot cozier (it was too cold the night I went to eat alfresco)....

On Monday, January 21, at the Portage Theater, the Northwest Chicago Film Society presents yet another essential 35-millimeter screening of a rare classic: Chicago native Phil Karlson’s undervalued 1958 western Gunman’s Walk. A familial drama about the freewheeling, combative Ed Hackett (Tab Hunter) and his tumultuous relationships with his enabling father, Lee (Van Heflin), and his conciliatory brother, Davy (James Darren), the film is a lyrical tragedy with Shakespearean ambitions. It ranks among the best westerns of the late 1950s, a transformative era in which directors began to tamper with the genre’s established symbols and archetypes—where Native Americans had been represented as savage, untrustworthy others, for instance, they came to function as stand-ins for the burgeoning civil rights movement....

Jen Heaslip‘s fourth solo show at Bert Green Fine Art features the male nudes that’ve long been her concern. She doesn’t provide an artist’s statement, which adds an element of mystery to the work; according to the gallery, the paintings are meant “entirely as a visual experience with no mediation, no explanation, no guides.” The figures are represented in drab colors—near-silhouettes against a dusky background. Their faces aren’t always visible, but when they are, the men are impassive or forlorn....

FIGHTING FOR AIR: THE BATTLE TO CONTROL AMERICA’S MEDIA | ERIC KLINENBERG (METROPOLITAN BOOKS) Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » A tenured professor at NYU, Klinenberg is best known as the author of Heat Wave, a controversial 2002 study of Chicago’s deadly summer of 1995. He’s heir to the sociological tradition of the great C. Wright Mills, who encouraged colleagues to connect personal troubles with public issues....

The actual tickets Valentine’s Day is one week from today. Of course, many of you couldn’t care less about the expensive prix fixe dinners and lovey-dovey pink shit everywhere, and we here at the Reader don’t blame you—we did just drop an issue titled “Romance Is for Suckers,” after all. But we also figure some of our readers want to get out of the house that day, regardless of their relationship status....

Zeke adheres to a very specific principle: sometimes it needs to be dumb and fast. A great deal of the Seattle band’s catalog of hardcore punk—infused with a heavy dose of rock ‘n’ roll sleaze, ala the Dwarves—consists of two-part scorchers that might clock in at more than one minute, but rarely two. Front man Blind Marky Felchtone is a frenetic guitarist, hammering through flaming solo after flaming solo as drummer Donny Paycheck (there’s just something beautiful about corny band nicknames) keeps the beat simple but urgent....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Reedist John Carter and cornetist Bobby Bradford were pioneers of free jazz on the west coast, adapting to their own magnificent end the concepts of fellow Texas native Ornette Coleman, who in 1965 happened to suggest their partnership. Their band employed a variety of rhythm-section members over the years, but the one here is probably the best, with bassist Tom Williamson and drummer Bruz Freeman, the elder brother of Von and George Freeman....

The Chicago Park District is so short of funds it’s cutting programs, raising fees, and telling community groups that if they want a playlot, soccer field, or running track, they’ll need to raise the money themselves. Nevertheless, it has somehow found roughly $22 million to spend on Streeterville real estate for its central office. The district has been renting there since 2001, and officials say the conversion to ownership, which the board approved in February, will save about $720,000 a year in property taxes....

Over the past 30 years John Flansburgh and John Linnell, cofounders and core members of They Might Be Giants, have earned a reputation as the ur-geek band, thanks to their intentionally gawky, horn-rimmed aesthetic and a catalog that includes nerdy odes to Belgian painters, songs that explain the nuclear fusion process inside stars, and children’s albums aimed at the exceptionally precocious. But seeing the Johns as simply a couple of cartoony geeks overlooks their daring experimental side, including their ahead-of-the-curve use of samplers and drum machines, their innovative pre-Internet Dial-a-Song service (fans could call a number to hear exclusive TMBG content over the phone), and the subtly devastating psychological portraits in early material such as “I’ve Got a Match” and “They’ll Need a Crane“—an approach they’ve returned to on their upcoming 16th album, Nanobots (Idlewild/Megaforce)....

The Reader’s Choice: Stranger Waves Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I first saw the Stranger Waves accidentally, when my bandmate and I got booked to spin at a Bottle show in November with Baby Alright and White Mystery. The Stranger Waves were opening, and though they looked pretty young, they were dressed cool and seemed to be having fun—even before they picked up their instruments we thought they’d probably be decent....

I feel bad saying this—considering she’s my best friend and all—but my dog really smells. Like, perpetually. It’s not anyone’s fault. Well, except hers for being a dog. As such, it’s always been really important to have a reliable, reasonably priced place to get her to not smell bad, at least for a little while. Logan Pets does her one better: she actually smells good for a little while. Located across from Logan Theatre on Milwaukee—which is great; if you time it right, you can catch a movie while your dog gets scrubbed—Logan Pets is fast, thorough, and really, really friendly....

The Chicago Improv Festival celebrates its tenth anniversary with 45 sketch and improv groups from around the world. This is perhaps the best opportunity all year to check out the cutting edge of improvisation, a form that continues to fuel the entertainment industry, from The Daily Show and TV commercials to theater and film. CIF regulars anchor the main-stage shows, while an extensive slate of newcomers reflects the festival’s commitment to emerging talent....

[Pure Fiction home] When I sit back in my seat I feel dampness on my ass. My jeans came in contact with some mystery liquid on the lavatory floor. I finish filling out the declaration card. I’d stopped in the middle after reading that I’d have to declare any meat products I’m bringing into Canada. I could’ve thrown out the hot dogs, but I’ve brought them from Chicago for Simmy because all the kosher butchers in Winnipeg have gone under and he loves traditional Jewish food....