Everyone has dating war stories, and we asked for yours: bad first dates, good breakups, online exploits, and one-night stands. Much to our surprise, that’s exactly what we got. There was the cougar who said dating in Chicago was like being a kid in a candy store, the guy who offered a look at the same-sex habits of postal workers, and one with the memorable first line, “If I had to measure it, I’d say it was approximately a pint worth of shit....

SPRING AWAKENING Promethean Theatre EnsembleGIRLS VS. BOYS The House Theatre of chicagocabaret The hypocrites Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Stephen Murray’s staging of Wedekind’s play for Promethean Theatre Ensemble attempts to borrow some of the contemporary sheen of the Sheik and Sater musical, in which the songs function as interior monologues for the anguished kids. Snippets of rock play during scene changes, and one or two anachronistic bits of dialogue (“this sucks”) work their way into the mouths of teenagers living in a profoundly repressed German provincial town at the end of the 19th century....

“People used to compare him to Jesus,” says a backstage manager as David Bazan walks offstage, guitar in hand. “But not so much anymore.” He went on to explain that since 2004 he’s been flitting between atheist, skeptic, and agnostic, and that lately he’s hovering around agnostic—he can’t flat-out deny the presence of God in the world, but he doesn’t exactly believe in him either. Best of Chicago voting is live now....

NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images David Koch Last week, Michael Miner wrote about the possible sale of the Chicago Tribune to brothers David and Charles Koch, multibillionaires who are particularly well known for their controversial libertarian politics and flagrantly anti-Obama stance. As Miner wrote, many people fear that a Koch takeover would radically change the Tribune for the worse; tomorrow, some of those people will make their voices heard. According to a press release, the protest is scheduled for 11:45 tomorrow morning outside of Tribune Tower....

Is it too early for end of summer cleaning? We are in the ‘dog days of summer’ so I think now is a good time to start cleaning in order to prepare for the autumnal equinox. It’s kind of nice to bag and throw away things that have collected over the year(s), kind of like when you break up with someone and do that whole cleansing process: throw out old photos, erase phone numbers, start looking at the time wasted, er, i mean spent together differently, and so on and so forth....

The holiday shopping season has kicked into overdrive, and the Reader is helping to push. For the past few years I’ve been chipping in by picking my favorite box sets and reissues. Some of them have been widely covered already (especially the remarkable Bob Dylan set), but others are likely to be unfamiliar to you—these aren’t stocking stuffers or last-minute ideas. (I’ve reviewed the CD version of each, but several come in more expensive LP versions too....

If you’re a carbonation junkie, it’s easy to be distracted by all the pop bottles at the Filbert’s Root Beer factory. So many flavors, so many colors—even antifreeze blue! (That’s raspberry, by the way.) But don’t be so dazzled that you neglect to look up, because you’ll be missing one of the best sights in Bridgeport: Ron Filbert’s beer cans. There are 2,000 in all, neatly arranged on custom-built shelves, the product of a decade of serious collecting during the 70s and 80s....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Manifest, the free end-of-the-year art party at Columbia College, happens today from 9 AM to 9 PM with events celebrating the work of more than 2,000 graduating students. Highlights include Poetry Po-tent, an improv-poetry event from noon to 6 PM in the parking lot at Balbo and Wabash; an art car derby from 2:20 to 5 PM at Balbo and Wabash, and a main stage tent (9th and Wabash) with 11 student bands playing hip hop, punk, folk, R & B, and more, from 1 to 9 PM....

Frances Madeson sees herself as a “change agent,” and in her view change agents don’t effect enough change if they all stay in Manhattan. In 2010 she left New York City and moved back to Missouri, setting up shop in Farmington, a town of 16,000 about 60 miles south of Saint Louis. She ran a little business that provided writing services—resumes, cover letters, and in one case a letter for a woman who wanted to persuade her daughter to stop smoking pot....

Anita Alvarez may have launched her first run for office without any political experience or Democratic Party support, but just a year later she looks like she’s figured a few things out. “I don’t think there’s room to have officers who are abusive on the force,” she said. “I’ve worked with some very good police officers and outstanding police officers, but I’ve also prosecuted and convicted three members of the now infamous SOS unit....

Higgins Road As a longtime reverse commuter to the northwest suburbs who’s back working downtown, I can now freely share this secret. Already known to savvy cabbies, it’s a reliable fallback at all hours. No matter the traffic or weather, it’s ten minutes from Lawrence to Harlem, so whenever traffic is crawling on the expressway, it should be considered. Get off at the Lawrence exit and take Lawrence left. Just past the railroad overpass, veer right onto Avondale, then left onto Ainslie, and jog across Milwaukee and onto Higgins....

Second City’s laugh-packed new main-stage revue takes aim at the cult of Obama, spoofing the candidate’s celebrity appeal and tweaking his attempt to link himself to Lincoln. Senator Clinton takes a hit too, in a hilariously nasty skit in which she tries to take out a contract on her rival. But most of the sketches focus on staples of the form: bickering married couples, horny college students, TV newscasters, sports mascots....

I neglected to mention Haptic in a November column on Chicago’s drone music scene–an unfortunate oversight, because the trio’s piece “Danjon Scale,” on a split 12-inch with the Milwaukee duo Mouths released last year by the British label Entr’acte, is among the most striking displays of sustained texture in recent memory. Adam Sonderberg and Joseph Mills operate various acoustic and electronic devices (everything from samples and oscillators to hurdy-gurdy) while Steven Hess handles percussion; the sound they create together is hypnotic and seamless....

The 46th Chicago International Film Festival continues through Thursday, October 21, at River East 21, 322 E. Illinois. Unless otherwise noted, tickets are $13 ($10 for students, seniors, or Cinema/Chicago members) or $5 for matinees Monday through Friday until 5 PM. Passes are $110 (ten admissions) and $210 (20 admissions). Tickets can be purchased in person at Cinema/Chicago, 30 E. Adams, suite 800, Monday through Friday from 10 AM to 6 PM; and at River East 21 from noon until the last screening has begun....

The Chilean feature Crystal Fairy & the Magical Cactus, which opens Friday at Music Box, feels anecdotal, even tossed-off. Set over a few leisurely days, it centers on Jamie (Michael Cera), a spoiled, insensitive American living in Santiago and obsessed with drugs. Along with his Chilean roommate, Pilo (Augustin Silva), and Pilo’s two brothers, he plans to take a road trip to a remote town called San Pedro, score a hunk of its native cactus, known for its hallucinogenic properties, and have an epic trip on the beach....

The past half century of American history has proved itself extremely cyclical. In many ways we’re now approximately where we were in the mid-70s and early 90s: we’ve got a troubled economy and a resurgent political right that’s ramping up the culture wars to dismantle any recent achievements by the political left, and the left is busy watching its optimism curdle into cynicism and generally feeling beaten down. That might be part of the reason why three of the acts I’ve recommended in the Reader over the past month—Odd Future, Iceage, and Cult of Youth—use such terrible imagery that they’ve compelled me to qualify my praise....

Presented by Facets Cinematheque, this festival of new narrative, documentary, animated, and experimental films from Spain runs Friday through Thursday, November 13 through 19, at Facets Cinematheque. Following are selected films screening; a full schedule is available at facets.org. For more information call 773-281-4114. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Camino More like a rosary than a movie, this 2008 Spanish drama is loosely based on the story of Alexia Gonzalez-Barros, a teenage girl whose Catholic devotion and sunny acceptance of an excruciating cancer death in 1985 have inspired a campaign for beatification....

A bottle of Founders Doom impersonating the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey I almost wish Founders had called its bourbon-barrel imperial IPA “Thrash,” as inapt as that name would be—that way it’d be marginally less awkward to use this review to talk about the death of founding Slayer guitarist Jeff Hanneman, who succumbed to liver failure at age 49 on Thursday. The organ damage that helped kill him was almost certainly related to his bout with necrotizing fasciitis, aka the flesh-eating bacteria, which he said he contracted from (of all things) a spider bite....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Holly Hughes is both a performance artist and dog person. She’s an associate professor at the University of Michigan, a Guggenheim fellow, and a regular audience member at dog shows, particularly ones featuring poodles. So it makes sense that Hughes’s new performance series, “Standing Heat,” focuses on the relationships between humans and animals. Although Hughes has always had an interest in animals, her ideas first took shape after her performance piece Dog and Pony, in which Hughes poked fun at the routines and obsessions of dog people, herself included....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The other pieces weren’t as friendly to nonprofessionals. Art critic Alan Artner writes: “Everybody has opinions on movies, television and popular music, and anyone long could feel free to express them; hesitancy was shown mainly in regard to more difficult areas such as the visual arts or classical music. But the world of radio, blogs and podcasts has dissolved any such restraint, making commentary on things artistic plentiful....