As soon as Cook County Board commissioner Forrest Claypool announced that he was running as an independent for county assessor in the November general election, the war was on. Berrios’s other opponents, Republican Sharon Strobeck-Eckersall and Green Robert Grota, are underfunded and virtually unknown, so bouncing Claypool, who’s popular on the north side and in the suburbs, is tantamount to winning. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » To foil Claypool, Berrios has brought in Thomas Jaconetty, his longtime aide, as well as the legendary Michael Kasper, who generally handles election-law cases on behalf of state Democratic Party chieftain Michael Madigan....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » At the Green City Market’s annual Chefs’ Summer BBQ Festival Thursday from 6 to 8 PM in Lincoln Park (between 1750 N. Clark and Stockton), more than 50 chefs, including Kendal Duque of Sepia, Bruce Sherman of North Pond Cafe, Paul Virant of Vie, and Tim Graham and Meg Galus of Tru, will prepare tastings using the market’s offerings....

See also: Friday • Saturday • afterparties • Listen @ Spotify Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The Devil Makes Three1:45-2:30 PlayStation stage California roots trio the Devil Makes Three have a nice diversity to their reconstructionist old-timey sound on their four studio albums (which front man Pete Bern­hard maintains on his two solo records)—there’s a hint of punkiness, a bit of bluesiness, and more than a little of the down-home stoniness of Jerry Garcia’s acoustic work....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The concept of Sausage King of Chicago was derived from past hit movies (we all know the one!) and just seems to be a humorous play on words. I’m not entirely sure if there ever really was a real Sausage King for Chi-Town . . . but there sure is now! The creators of SausageFest (greencurtainevents.com) thought of an ideal gimmick to promote the event while reminding the public that charity for the Prostate Cancer Foundation is involved....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » So this year I’m picking by feel–it’s as valid as any other approach–and I like the Brewers. They’ve been rebuilding for years, and the talent has finally arrived in the form of Prince Fielder, Rickie Weeks, J.J. Hardy, and Corey Hart, and I think they’ll get some help yet from Ryan Braun once he polishes his fielding back in the minors....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The indefatigable Martin Marty reports that of the 14,720 lines written in his column “Sightings” since 1999, only 7 were devoted to the late fundamentalist politico Rev. Jerry Falwell. “Accuse us not of overdoing comment on [the religious] Right,” Marty wrote last week. “We resolved early on not to over-comment on over-done subjects that need no one to do any ‘sighting....

“Justice and the law belong to the people, not to the bar associations.” While the circumstances make it easy to blame those lawyers, or the canon that put them in that position, I have to say that I’d want someone of their commitment to their oath to represent me. It scares me that my lawyer might decide, contrary to what his code of professional ethics dictates, what counts as justice and work toward that end instead of mine....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » So here we are more than half a century on, and that very invidious “tradition” Truffaut considered inimical to “authentic” film expression is pretty well our default condition—at least in terms of what year-end “best” movies, those Oscar-worthy candidates, are expected to dish up. As proof look no further than this award season’s prime example of literary posh and attitude—Joe Wright’s Atonement, as adapted by Andre Cayatte … I mean, Christopher Hampton, from Ian McEwan’s best-selling novel....

When it opened early last spring I thought of Tallulah—Troy Graves’s comeback from Meritage—as a relative bright spot on Lincoln Square’s increasingly mediocre restaurant row. Now with Eve, emerging from the crypt of the late Flapjaws Cafe, it seems he’s bringing the same relief to the Viagra Triangle. Touted as a more refined version of Tallulah, Eve is accordingly pricier and similarly congested—a condition slightly ameliorated by decorative smoke and mirrors, or rather sky blue paneling and mirrors....

If you’ve looked toward the South Loop recently, you’ve seen the future of Roosevelt University on the skyline, a majestic blue glass slab that rose over the last two years on Wabash near Congress and now looms behind Roosevelt’s longtime home in the landmark Auditorium Building. It’s probably impossible to overstate the actual and symbolic importance of this structure to the university, which, like many other private colleges, has been hit by both the bad economy and a slew of new, for-profit rivals....

Q My girlfriend and I are into male-orgasm denial. We’ve recently tried putting Orajel on my cock and then covering it with two condoms so she can use me as a dildo without me getting off or even feeling anything. It works great. Is there any chance of long-term health issues if we do this once a week or so? —Numb-Dicked Dude Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Any responsible sex-advice professional would read the paper in its entirety and inform you about the likelihood that you’re killing off cock cells when you smear them with Orajel Advanced Tooth Desensitizer....

Q I have lived with my boyfriend for almost two years. He says he loves me and does a lot of loving things for me. We are both in our early 60s, but we have the sexual energy of 20-year-olds. Here’s the problem: I am overweight (size 18). I was overweight when he met me. I now know that he hates fat women. You should hear his disgust when he sees them on TV or on the street....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Friday’s opening reception paired works of sculpture, ready-made, and paper art with a performance from Douglas R. Ewart and Quasar, along with special guests Ann Ward, Jeff Parker, Lester “Helmar” Lashley, and Harrison Bankhead. One visitor, six year-old Indigo Valiant, a frequent jazz concertgoer, tried to describe how she danced to the music: “It’s complicated,” she said. The Logan Center’s partitioned design allowed for a quieter exhibit space at the front of the building and a louder performance space in the back of the building....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » A few weeks back Mr. Clair was good enough to ship up four and half pounds of assorted mulefoot cuts in dry ice. The pig had been fed on a great deal of grain, said Mr. Clair, partly due to drought in his area. Now his pigs are on pasture, which he prefers. “Now its so green we can’t even find them,” he says....

Cameron Esposito, stand-up comic of Side Mullet Nation, El Circo Cheapo Cabaret, and Grab Them Aghast, is tearing up over: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Weepin’ Willows I’ve lived in Logan Square for most of what I consider my adult life. While the character of the neighborhood is ever changing—we’ve got fancier pancakes now—unreal Patsy Cline cover band Weepin’ Willows remains one of my favorite Logan Square perks....

Baccala Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » John Bubala’s Italian awakening continues with this recasting of Thyme Cafe as BACCALA, a Piedmont-influenced trattoria inspired by Bubala’s 2006 visit to the region as a delegate to Slow Food International’s Terra Madre Conference. Bubala is known for his rigorous sourcing of local ingredients, here manifested in a short menu of simple, deeply satisfying dishes prepared along northern Italian models....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » For me, the most fascinating part of the 70-millimeter print of Tron that the Music Box screened this weekend was the distinct look of the actors’ faces and hands. As I learned later from the movie’s IMDB trivia page, the “computer world” sequences were shot on black-and-white 65-millimeter film, printed on high-contrast Kodalith sheet film, and then shone through with colored light before effects teams added the pioneering CGI effects frame by frame....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Sometimes life is bitter, but sometimes it’s really sweet. This weekend the Associated Press reported that an audience of parents and children at a multiplex in Holtsville, New York, were expecting to see The Last Mimzy, a gentle, PG-rated fantasy in the Spielberg tradition, but instead got a face full of The Hills Have Eyes 2, an R-rated sequel to the gruesome 2006 hit about cannibalistic mutants in the New Mexico desert....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Local powerviolence band Weekend Nachos, who have been punishing listeners with their brutal heavy metal for the past ten years, are about a month away from releasing their new Relapse LP, Still. They’ve made a couple of tracks available on their Bandcamp page, and as expected, they’re wild ones. Weekend Nachos started off in DeKalb as a kind of lo-fi, hardcore-leaning grind group, and have managed to get progressively heavier and scarier with each release; the new tracks, “S....

No shit. But if you think directing scarce resources towards merely impressing Olympic officials is a pain, keep in mind that if we impress them we actually have to host the Olympics. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “The city wants to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on temporary Olympic arenas while many neighborhoods face a critical shortage of park and sports facilities. The public schools still have no indoor tracks or batting cages—haven’t they heard we have winter in this town?...