Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The occasion for this week’s Variations on a Theme is Black Friday, last Friday’s shopping frenzy, in which stores cut prices (often to the items’ lowest price points of the year) in order to get people to buy products. Incidentally, Black Friday reminds me most of the Steely Dan song of the same name, which refers to an event not all that unrelated to the current iteration of the term....

Jim Nutt won his first fame as a member of the Hairy Who, a group of Art Institute-trained Chicagoans who began exhibiting at the Hyde Part Art Center in 1966 and became notorious for what New York Times critic John Russell called “outstandingly repulsive works of art.” “There is no doubt that the Hairy Who artists were perceived as odd characters,” writes curator Lynne Warren in the catalog for Jim Nutt: Coming Into Character, a retrospective running January 29 through May 29 at the Museum of Contemporary Art....

The Festival of Wood and Barrel Aged Beer: Still completely ridiculous, still definitely great Not remembering shit is a common side effect of FOBAB, as I pointed out in my thorough but barely coherent review. These beers are more than a match for the puny human brain, but I still managed to write more than 1,700 words about them. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Cerveza de los Muertos: Where did this stuff come from?...

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The slogan for Bill Kim’s latest restaurant, BellyQ, is “Tradition. Amplified.” But Mike Sula finds the food at this Randolph Row redo surprisingly muted, its “modern Korean” showing little of the cuisine’s muscle, heat, or funk. The few meats available for tabletop grilling come in small portions unlikely to inspire “the sort of primal, gluttonous fire party” you’ll find at traditional Korean barbecues like San Soo Gap San or Hai Woon Dae (don’t look for late-night hours, either)....

OK, let’s make this clear: Links Hall, 35-year-old hothouse for some of the city’s most innovative dance and performing art, is no longer at Links Hall, the Wrigleyville building that was its longtime home. This spring the organization signed a ten-year lease with musician and producer Mike Reed, and now makes its home at Constellation, otherwise known as the former Viaduct Theater, at 3111 N. Western. The new space, a still-grungy storefront in the shadow of a soon-to-be-deconstructed overpass, has two spacious studio theaters: a white-washed 60-seater with natural light and a beautiful new sprung-wood floor; and a black box that seats up to 150 with a portable dance floor (on loan until the next phase of renovations)....

two-for-one coupons at Cozy Noodles & Rice 3456 N. Sheffield 773-327-0100 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Winner of our 2008 Readers’ Choice Award for best restaurant bathroom, Cozy Noodles & Rice has more to offer than just a kitschy toilet. Last year owner Suppaluk Meunprasittiveg, aka Tee, offered Cubs fans two-for-one entrees with a ticket to the day’s game (the restaurant is a stone’s throw from Wrigley, hidden on a residential stretch of Sheffield)....

Cardinal George One measure of the strength of an idea is the quality of the opposition to it. The General Assembly could vote this week on the Religious Freedom and Marriage Fairness Act, a bill legalizing gay marriage in Illinois, and on Tuesday Cardinal George issued a letter urging Catholics to ask their representatives to vote against it. The cardinal’s argument is along the lines of Abraham Lincoln’s admonition: “How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg?...

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center offers a comprehensive archive along with exhibitions and public programs. But the closest Chicago has come is the Chicago Theater Collection at the Harold Washington Library Center. Squirreled away in a small reading room on the library’s top floor, the collection comprises materials donated by individuals (like the late Warren Casey, who coauthored Grease) and local companies ranging from the Goodman and Steppenwolf to defunct troupes such as Hull House Theater, Body Politic, and David Mamet’s St....

Courtesy Patisserie Coralie Paris on My Lips at Patisserie Coralie For a little while, life was perfect at Patisserie Coralie, the new French bakery/cafe in Evanston where Cafe Mozart used to be. There was a pain au chocolat on the marble counter in front of me, a cup of hot Julius Meinl coffee off to the side. The pastry was crisp and flaky. The coffee was rich and dark. Behind all that, downtown Evanston turning all fuzzy and blue in the December twilight....

GOLDEN CHILD SILK ROAD THEATRE PROJECT INFO 312-857-1234, ext. 201 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » As he did in his best-known play, the 1988 Broadway hit M. Butterfly, Hwang analyzes the way complex, conflicting, and sometimes soul-warping concepts of male and female dominance and submission shape domestic life in Asian and European cultures. M. Butterfly tells the fact-based story of a French diplomat whose passion for the image of fragile Asian femininity draws him into a disastrous affair with a Chinese opera singer–who turns out to be a female impersonator and communist spy....

QI am uncircumcised, and the opening at the end of my foreskin is not large enough for the head of my penis to pass through. This means my foreskin doesn’t pull back when I get an erection. The Internet says this is a condition called “phimosis,” and a lot of medical websites recommend circumcision. I’m not superexcited by that idea. I don’t have any pain or difficulty with sex or urination, and I’ve never had any health problems related to being uncircumcised....

A few weeks ago The Colbert Report did a segment about civic-minded volunteers in Arizona who were building their own fence along the Mexican border. I like to imagine one of those xenophobic spoilsports stuck at a Gogol Bordello show, slouching against the wall with a tumbler of scotch while everybody else dances like they’re on fire. This family-size New York band, fronted by the explosively charismatic Eugene Hutz, is a wild-ass celebration of immigrant culture that proposes an unstable common ground between Gypsy music and other archetypally marginalized genres like punk and dub....

Leor Galil Single Mothers’ tour camera Buying band merchandise has become such an integral part of the live-music experience that these days musicians have to apologize if they don’t have any records, apparel, posters, and whatever other things one could possibly sell. It’s pretty common to go to a concert and pass by a merch stand clogged with an overabundance of paraphernalia, and if you attend shows with any regularity all the T-shirts and CD jewel cases kind of blur together....

friday17 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The new Harvest Grill at the Chicago Marriott is making a signature wine with Sangiovese grapes, and it’s inviting the public to participate in the grape-crushing portion of the venture. There’ll also be a tasting of Grassfields Farms cheddar cheese made by Marriott chefs, and wine. 4:30-7 PM, 540 N. Michigan, 312-245-4707, free. City Provisions Catering hosts a dinner at Faith’s Farm in downstate Bonfield, with a hayride tour of the farm and a talk by Jim Ebel, brewmaster at Two Brothers Brewery in Warrenville....

It may be time I faced facts about my . . . preferences. The other night I saw the Lookingglass’s revival of The Arabian Nights. When they got to the story about the epic fart, I surprised myself by laughing my ass off. Before that I’d seen Theater Oobleck’s Strauss at Midnight, which revels in sophomoric provocations like depicting a famous U. of C. philosopher as a dog. In hell. Delightful....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Right now controversial superstar photographer Terry Richardson (I try to not let some of my minor issues regarding what I know about him as a person interfere with my very real enjoyment of his work) is on the road with Lady Gaga, shooting her Asian tour. The pair have collaborated before on a photo book, Lady Gaga x Terry Richardson, and Richardson has become more or less her official photo documentarian—it’s a pretty synergistic and fun-looking relationship....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » If you ask me, too much of the discussion leading up to the release of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy has been concerned with the spectacle surrounding it (and Kanye himself). I propose less “35-minute music video” and “what Kanye talks about when Kanye talks about Kanye” and more “Oh my God did he really make a completely sick rap beat out of a King Crimson song?...

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » You’d be hard-pressed to find material less suited to the American musical stage, with its penchant for plucky optimism and emotional schematics. The creative team of Doug Wright (book), Scott Frankel (music), and Michael Korie (lyrics) tries to make it work by creating a backstory in the first act. It’s 1941, and Edith is about to throw a party to celebrate Little Edie’s engagement to Joseph Kennedy Jr....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Swindles? It obviously didn’t occur to Drew that the ratty old poker table might have fetched a “tidy sum” simply because Algren, at this late stage in his life, wasn’t exactly made of money, and a well-wisher wanted to contribute significantly to his stake. And if this altruistic twist on the bare facts isn’t exactly accurate either, the well-wisher being neither that thoughtful nor that decent, let it be said he was also not a credulous putz....

From Lake Shore Drive to the North Shore, from earliest morning to the middle of the night, from clothed to fully naked—in the summer, Chicago bike enthusiasts take their pick of roads, rides, and races. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Udder Century The 29th annual Udder Century Ride offers routes of 32, 51, 61, 75, and 100 miles and a pasta dinner at the finish....