Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » When this post goes live, the horror hounds over at the Massacre, the annual 24-hour scary-movie marathon hosted this year by the Patio Theater, will have nearly reached the end of their excursion—or at least those dedicated enough to see the whole thing through will have. This year’s highlights include George Romero’s Martin, Dario Argento’s Deep Red, and Fred Walton’s April Fool’s Day....

Late last month, after 23 of 28 American Theater Company ensemble members—including three founders—announced their mass departure to form a new theater, citing “administrative and artistic differences,” ATC’s artistic director PJ Paparelli offered an explanation of his own. In an interview reported by Chris Jones on his Chicago Tribune blog, Paparelli said, “Our title says that we’re an American theater, and that has to include Americans of all races, ages, and sexual orientations....

Teen detective Nancy Drew, of all people, led Peggy Wilkins to Playboy. It was July 1978 in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and 13-year-old Peggy was a huge fan of the TV series. That summer the actress who played Nancy, Pamela Sue Martin, appeared on the cover of Playboy. Coyly holding a magnifying glass, she was wearing an artfully draped trench coat and clearly little else. Peggy had to have it. But how?...

You need to give equal space to the boatnerds instead of taking one man’s opinion–which was very incorrect [“The Steel Sailors,” February 9]. Yes, we do exist and can be found wherever we can photograph a boat. You should really attend the annual Unplanned Picnic, this year on June 28 at Mission Point in Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan. We will also attend Engineers Day at the Soo Locks and continue photographing at Mission Point and the Rock Cut....

Wait For Pleasure On Mother’s Day, I went to Lincoln Hall to catch Canadian noise-rock powerhouse Metz (who have recently built up the bro-iest fanbase ever, apparently) and TV Ghost, a dramatic postpunk act from Indiana. First up on the bill was No Joy, another band from Canada who had been added only the day before. I’m glad I got to the show early enough to catch them, because their set was really excellent....

I tried to look up Forbidden Root online, but their website was just their logo, with nothing to click on and no further information. There were just two posts to their Twitter page, so it didn’t seem like a reliable avenue of communication. But the list of brewers for the sixth annual Oak Park Micro Brew & Food Review on August 17 included Forbidden Root, so I figured if I headed out I’d be able to find somebody to bother in person....

Richard A. Chapman / Sun-Times Media William Daley, a scion of Chicago’s greatest political dynasty, was tapped to serve on the transition team for governor-elect Bruce Rauner. Early on in his campaign for governor, Republican Bruce Rauner ripped into a rival candidate he described as an example of the “career politicians” and “cronyism” that dominated Illinois politics. “We are committed to assembling the most talented team of leaders that’s ever been assembled to turn around a state government anywhere in America,” Rauner said at a downtown hotel....

You can imagine that Theo Gilbert would have sided with the free commune of Perugia in the Salt War of 1540. That’s when the Umbrian city rebelled against Pope Paul III after he dumped a new salt tax on their heads. Perugians lost the war and were absorbed into the Papal States, but stopped putting salt in their bread, an act of civil disobedience that resulted in the pane sciapo, or “bland bread,” they still bake today....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Several Rogers Park residents are upset at aldermanic candidate Don Gordon for handing out bananas to commuters at el stations. They think Gordon, who’s challenging alderman Joe Moore in the April 17 runoff, is sending a not-so-subliminal message designed to play on the “Juneway Jungle” nickname folks use for Juneway Terrace, the economically depressed and racially mixed community just north of Howard Street....

Life’s tough for Chicago’s smokers. Between strict smoking laws and the months of miserable winter weather that make even the briefest outdoor excursions a nightmare, the city is not the most hospitable place for those craving a little nicotine. The real kicker, though, is the exorbitant price of one measly pack. That’s why Cigs at Pitts is such a godsend, with hand-rolled cigarettes for only $3.25 per pack. The setup is, admittedly, a little strange—it’s on the second floor of the Chase Bank building, and you have to be buzzed in....

In 2011 a private collector of exotic animals went mad and turned his charges loose on a little town in Ohio. He was then eaten by a tiger, and the police killed 50 of his former pets. A bad scene all around, and it rippled outward, drawing the curiosity of legislators and journalists. At about the same time, a number of Chicago-based artists found themselves wondering about the fraught nature of human-nonhuman relations, and it was gratifying to see them produce work that excelled in complex, often beautiful analysis....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Today is chef Giuseppe Tentori’s first day on the job at Boka–a swanky, loungy place on North Halsted–and when I called the restaurant earlier I was told that they were still finalizing the menu. It’s now been unveiled, and it’s about what you’d expect from a nine-year veteran of Charlie Trotter’s, where Tentori was chef de cuisine: creative, ambitious, and filled with seasonal and organic thises and thats (you can get a side of braised organic carrots)....

The-Drum Over the past year the Chicago production duo the-Drum have made the leap from comfortable obscurity to, at least in certain quarters, possible Next Big Thing-ness. If that doesn’t happen—knock on wood—it won’t be for lack of effort. They have an LP called Contact set for a June release, and having been lucky enough to get an advance copy, I can assure you it slaps. If that doesn’t work out, there’s also a record by the local R&B trio JODY that they produced on its way....

Brewing beer is, in itself, an ancient technique. Garrett Oliver writes in The Oxford Companion to Beer that “the history of beer, quite literally, is the history of human civilization. Some anthropologists believe that man moved away from a hunter-gatherer existence to a settled agriculture-based existence largely to grow enough grain to brew large amounts of beer.” Check out four spots for sampling age-old beer styles Off Color Brewing: Scurry Scurry, Off Color’s Kottbusser-style beer, isn’t the brewery’s only flagship beer based on an ancient recipe—both its gose and farmhouse ale would fit that bill—but it is the most unusual....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » When I get to Logan Square to talk with the Sass Dragons and all but one member of Prizzy Prizzy Please, the atmosphere is, well, informal, but they all seem genuinely flattered that I’m giving them this opportunity to . . . express themselves. The apartment, home to Sass Dragons drummer James Ryan Adamson and bassist Mike Oberlin, is like a nicer version of the punk houses they’ve stayed in on their tours over the years....

As the annual roll call for summer music festivals continues to balloon, a select few set themselves apart from the pack. Below are our festival picks for the summer, including both the local neighborhood bookings and the familiar blowouts like Pitchfork, Blues Fest, and Lollapalooza. Neon Marshmallow Fest For its second edition, the experimental/noise festival rolls out an impressive lineup that features Lucky Dragons, Pelt, Bill Orcutt, Morton Subotnick, Oneohtrix Point Never, Mountains, and others....

Desperate for something—anything—worthwhile to say about the inert lump of postapocalyptic tedium that is Babylon A.D., film critics the world round have taken to comparing it unfavorably with Alfonso Cuaron’s crazily overrated 2006 futuristic thriller Children of Men. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The protagonist of Children of Men (Clive Owen) is a disaffected bureaucrat coerced by a shadowy resistance group into smuggling a young pregnant woman out of a totalitarian England torn by terrorism and civil conflict, while his counterpart in Babylon A....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Federal regulations prevented Jeppson’s Malort founder George Brode from marketing his aggressively bitter wormwood spirit on its supposed medicinal qualities. But at least some of his customers believed in it–particularly in its value as a digestif. One man brought a bottle of kidney stones into Brode’s office, claiming his faithful consumption of Malort had helped him to pass them, according to Brode’s former secretary and Jeppson’s honcho Pat Gabelick....

Waiting for the Blue Line train at Oak Park station the other day, I crossed paths with a vigorous-looking young man clad in sandals, a brown, hooded, ankle-length robe, and a simple belt fashioned of rope. Take away his wire-framed glasses and shave a helipad onto his melon and he would have been the very picture of a medieval Catholic monk. “I can wear whatever I like,” he said. “But I was wearing sandals year-round long before I joined the Franciscans....

The Chef: Patrick Fahy (Sixteen)The Challenger : Chris Teixeira (Homestead)The Ingredient: Quince Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » He compared the flavor of quince to that of apple and pear—they’re in the same family—and said that you can treat it the same way you would the other two fruits. “With the exception of cider,” he added. “I’ve never heard of quince cider, although that sounds pretty cool....