Pete Holmes Disconcerting fact about Pete Holmes: he voices the baby on those irritating E-Trade commercials. Other than that, though, he’s a pretty engaging comedian who seems comfortable in his neurotic skin. Unlike his glum, lethargic peers, Holmes sweats for his jokes, yukking it up and welcoming his audience into a progressively more interactive set. On his 2011 album, Impregnated With Wonder, he comes across as a 32-year-old white male bitterly shaking his fist at a broken world—then realizing he’s only got 32-year-old-white-male problems and making fun of himself because it’s the right thing to do....

When Stan Schutte began the transition from conventional to organic farming nearly ten years ago, he says people treated him like he’d quit the medical profession to become a chiropractor. “My peers looked at me like I was nuts,” he recalls. Now just a year after finally earning certification for the entirety of his 200-acre Triple S Farms in downstate Stewardson, he’s taking on another project some of his neighbors probably think is crazy: frustrated by a shortage of facilities that can process the cattle and hogs that make up the bulk of his business, he’s decided to build himself an organic slaughterhouse....

The long-lived Duluth trio Low is a big, dreamy beast with a slow metabolism, so when guitarist Alan Sparhawk wants to show his more efficient and carnivorous side he does it via side projects: the Black Eyed Snakes are a garage-blues terror, while the Retribution Gospel Choir specializes in a mournfully anthemic classic-rock sound. A 2005 version of the band was a collaborative effort with the Red House Painters’ Mark Kozelek; this time it’s just Sparhawk, Low bassist Matt Livingston, and drummer Eric Pollard with an Econoline van full of Crazy Horseisms and spacey guitar solos and oddball covers....

Q Do you think post-op transgender people have any obligation to tell their lovers they were once the other sex? —On the Fence I believe she’s depressed. She refuses to get help, saying that if only I would do this or that, she’d be more willing. But I do this and that, and she’s still not interested. After a lot of talking, she suggested that I find a girlfriend. However, she set conditions that were unrealistic: she wanted to meet and approve of her before I slept with her; and I could only see this other person late at night, with the wife’s permission, which would only be granted after all other family obligations were satisfied (kids in bed, bills paid, trash taken out, etc)....

Near the end of his fascinating new book, How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ‘n’ Roll (Oxford University Press), Elijah Wald gives the lie to his own somewhat sensational title. “History is often written as a series of conflicts, whether the wars are between nations or artistic styles,” he writes. “Battles tend to be more exciting to read about than marketplaces, though cultures have met far more frequently in trade than in war, and there are always more countries coexisting than fighting....

QI recently discovered that my 14-year-old stepson, who lives with us full-time, has been stealing, wearing, soiling, and hiding his toddler sister’s pull-ups. I’ve found them after he hides them in his closet, which also serves as a general storage area. After discussions with him, I’m certain that wearing them is a pleasure thing for him. (He says “curiosity,” but this has been going on so long that he knows what it feels like....

Moshe Tamssot visited the Museum of Holography at 1134 W. Washington for the first time 21 years ago, when he first moved to Chicago. The museum’s owner, Loren Billings, gave him a tour. He was impressed. But later, when he tried to bring friends to see it, he discovered the museum was closed. Billings had been persuaded by a group of unscrupulous investors to take out a $1 million bank loan, using the building at collateral....

The name fits: Viable Theater Company’s Suspicious Clowns is a sketch ensemble that uses a lot of physical comedy to communicate a cynical, at times anarchic worldview. Under director-performer Vincent Truman’s nuanced direction, their ninth revue showcases tight, clever writing and loose, confident performances. It’s refreshing to watch a show move along so unpredictably and get laughs in so many ways. There’s slapstick (Mr. Al Qaeda senselessly wallops his meek wife), inventive plot twists (a mean kidnapper turns out to be a hostage’s well-intentioned henchman), sight gags (an armless grocery cashier), over-the-top funny talk (sex-act slang at a kids’ show), and metatheater (a “bit player” requests more stage time)....

Bruce Bendinger has sold everything from Popeye’s Chicken to Gerald Ford. John Iltis sold the movie Hoop Dreams to Fine Line Cinema. Now the two veteran marketing professionals have teamed up on a campaign of their own. “We want to give a country back its history,” Bendinger says. The Chicago connection goes back to 1902, when local plumbing magnate Charles Crane recruited Tomáš Masaryk, a philosophy professor and Czech nationalist who’d served in the Austro-Hungarian parliament, to lecture at the University of Chicago....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Old Galveston, which is the tourist area with the shops and museums and little train, is pretty much still all shut down, except for the Starbucks. Handfuls of tourists wander around, looking for something to go into. The rugged modern buildings, like the 24/7 Kroger’s on the inland side of Seawall Boulevard, shrugged off Ike, but when I drove to the Kroger’s late one night for supplies, a storm had knocked out power in that part of town and the stock boys were idling at the front entrance waiting for it to come back on....

thursday17 Thursday17 Rise Against Friday18 The Merry WidowRise AgainstTreasure Fingers Saturday19 Detroit CobrasHamid Drake & Michael ZerangSnow Angels Sunday20 Hamid Drake & Michael ZerangJoan of ArcWiz KhalifaThe Merry WidowAram Shelton’s Fast Citizens Monday21 Hamid Drake & Michael ZerangNetherfriends Wednesday23 Covers For Cover II Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » THE MERRY WIDOW The scene that opens Lyric Opera of Chicago’s Merry Widow is a stunner, inspired by an 1873 Tissot painting: a tableau of belle epoque gowns in sherbet shades against a silver foil backdrop....

thursday4 Thursday4 Squish Friday5 Ani Aznavoorian & Lera AuerbachSquishRichard Thompson Band Saturday6 Masaki BatohGeorge JonesJunip, Sharon Van EttenGidon Kremer & Kremerata BalticaGert-Jan Prins & Bas Van Koolwijk Sunday7 Devin Townsend ProjectWatainWithered Monday8 Nile Wednesday10 MoondoggiesMarnie Stern friday5 RICHARD THOMPSON BAND Folk-rock legend Richard Thompson may or may not have realized that many of the records he’s put out over the past couple of decades suffer from studio-born fussiness, but either way his decision to cut the superb new Dream Attic (Shout Factory) in front of live audiences was a smart one....

On the morning of January 26, Anthony Hirschel, director of the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art, was on the phone with Michael Rush, director of Brandeis University’s Rose Art Museum, discussing Rush’s application to be admitted to the Association of Art Museum Directors. Rush was stunned. The museum had nothing to do with the school’s money problems. It was self-supporting and financially sound; maintaining the collection, acquired through gifts and donations, was an obligation....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » YEAR PURPOSE AMOUNT 1993-1994 child care $ 137,592.12 1994-1995 child care food program $ 30,772.10 $ 109,581.68 Head Start $ 11,492.70 1995-1996 child and adult care food program $ 31,314.24 $ 119,638.44 $ 103,845.42 1996 $ 45,691.43 1996-1997 conferences $ 6,500.00 HIV/AIDS programs $ 25,000.00 $ 55,404.81 day care $ 122,891.00 $ 122,876.00 $ 292,883.30 1997 not clear...

friday9 DOLLY VARDEN On the first album from these locals in five years, The Panic Bell (Undertow), the lyrics are darker than ever and the lovely melodies complicate rather than lighten the mood–you can’t always be sure what’s happening, but it probably isn’t good: “While the voice on the teevee jacks off your feelings / One million foreheads / Slow motion and grey / Coming over the ramparts in wave after wave,” leader Steve Dawson sings on the opener, “Complete Resistance....

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 » “Most bridal shoes—although they might be nice styles—are mass-produced in Asia. My shoes are very different; they are exclusive to my store. These are fine handcrafted shoes from Italy at 20 to 30 percent savings. When people come in, they tell me, ‘I hear your shoes are very comfortable....

EXPERIMENTAL | Peter Margasak Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Young moved to New York after finishing at Wesleyan in 2008 and promptly shifted into high gear. She continued with Till by Turning and Architeuthis Walks on Land, played in various Braxton projects—including the Diamond Curtain Wall Quartet and the Tri-Centric Orchestra, which performed his opera Trillium E—and joined indie-pop band the Fancy, as well as developing a stunning repertoire of solo bassoon music, some of which appears on her 2009 album Further Secret Origins (Porter)....

In solo recordings, this Swiss guitarist and sound artist often forces his long-form abstractions into overly familiar quiet-loud-quiet structures. The 19-minute “Thermo,” from 2005’s Effacement, starts out as a slow-growing collage of electronic glitches, like a petri dish seeded with squiggling static. Then, at the six-minute mark, Korber finds the overdrive switch, transforming these sounds into lacerating white noise, like an overmatched old TV pulling in a UHF channel that’s signed off for the night; finally the level drops and everything just fades away....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » #10: “The much bally-hoo’ed debate between the four docs who thought they could settle the centuries-old conflict over Calvinism turned out to be an embarrassing bust for all involved. Unable to contain themselves before the actual event scheduled for November in the new auditorium of Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia (the Mother Ship/Church of Liberty University), the four ‘intellectuals’ started unleashing on each other via email in the ugliest of terms over everything from the rules of the debate to the tone of each other’s emails regarding the rules of the debate....

Tape On Thu 4/16 at 8 PM, the Logan Theatre will screen Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused (1993), his early feature about a day in the life of Texas high schoolers in 1976. Linklater’s filmmaking career began in the early 90s, when independent American cinema experienced a groundswell of new talent. Of the directors who came of age during this period, some have enjoyed long, successful careers in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino, David O....