Andy Eninger, head of the writing program at Second City Training Center, tests his faith with: God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything I just finished Christopher Hitchens’s God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Halfway through, I lost the book—was it God’s revenge? Hitchens would argue that it was not. I bought a second copy and good-Christian-soldiered on. Hitchens stomps through all the tenets of the big religions to debunk myths and scold repression....

Thomas Murray, founder and artistic director of Waltzing Mechanics, enjoys the view from: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Cityscape Bar There are myriad rooftop bars and clubs around the Loop surrounding the spectacle that is our city’s skyline. Unfortunately, I’ve found the added altitude also generally inflates the price of drinks; a glorious glass of vino above it all quickly tastes sour once the check comes....

In February 2007, the University of Chicago announced a new program that promised to transform the lives of its graduate students. Beginning the following fall, almost every entering grad in the humanities and social sciences divisions would receive an annual stipend of $19,000 for five years, along with free tuition, guaranteed teaching opportunities, and other benefits. The $50 million program looked downright princely, until it became evident that none of the university’s 800 or so current grad students in those disciplines would be included....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Years ago, my father had heart surgery. My mother and I sat in the waiting room together for hours, silent. It was nothing like you see on TV. There was no praying, no crying, no holding hands. No nervous pacing with coffee from a machine in the corner. We simply sat there, numb, suspended in a space where emotion isn’t really possible....

I usually blanch when I hear about a “world music” act that tries to put in at every port of call, but this New York group, led by a pair of polyethnic Israelis, does it right. Drummer Tamir Muskat has said that the members of Balkan Beat Box believe in “listening to localities,” and they do throw practically everything into their global olio, but their second album, Nu Med (J Dub), is no touchy-feely Putumayo comp....

It’s been a frustrating season for the Illinois men’s basketball team. It was a rebuilding year to begin with–Dee Brown and James Augustine, the last major players from the 2004 team that reached the NCAA championship game, are now freshmen in the pros. And then the rebuilding went awry: top guard prospect Eric Gordon of Indianapolis committed to Illinois, then changed his mind and decided to attend Indiana next fall, and coach Bruce Weber didn’t react by making a late run at Simeon guard Derrick Rose (who opted for Memphis), thus cementing his reputation as a fine coach but a poor recruiter....

THEATER Readers’ Choice: Steppenwolf Theatre Company Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In three years Polarity Ensemble Theatre has produced five full-length shows (mostly original adaptations of meaty classics), staged a new-plays competition in a Moroccan cafe, and published a book. By Chicago theater standards they’re slackers, and until recently I’d have said they were indistinguishable from any number of other ambitious but destitute itinerant companies....

Richard Cahan and Michael Williams’s CityFiles Press has so far published two gorgeous hardcover photo collections that delve into Chicago history: Edgar Miller and the Handmade Home and Richard Nickel’s Chicago: Photographs of a Lost City. The latest offering, The Lost Panoramas: When Chicago Changed Its River and the Land Beyond, documents the reversal of the Chicago River—aka, “the eighth wonder of the world.” The 175 duotone photos included in Lost Panoramas were culled from thousands of glass-plate negatives discovered by chance in the basement of the James C....

It’s been a humbling day for Chief Keef, who was sentenced to 60 days in jail for violating his probation during a video interview with Pitchfork at a gun range last summer. Keef’s popularity and infamy have made him an inescapable presence in the rap world, and as such any news outlet with a vague interest in covering hip-hop has been keeping tabs on this court case. And yet the scene inside the Cook County Juvenile Court Building was fairly modest; a group mostly made up of journalists, legal professionals, and Keef’s family filled three wooden benches in a small, off-white courtroom....

Challenged by Justin Anderson (Branch 27, the Bedford, La Sirena Clandestina) with the cheese packet from a box of Kraft macaroni and cheese, Naha bartender Steve Carrow looked north to the land of cheeseheads for inspiration. The name of the cocktail he concocted derives from diner slang: “wilbur” is bacon, “cackleberry” egg. Carrow’s unorthodox but effective technique for simultaneously emulsifying the egg and chilling the drink is detailed in his new guide, The Potation Handbook....

Collage, claimed Donald Barthelme, was “the central principle of all art in the 20th century.” The form has been around since the Chinese invented paper, but it wasn’t until 1912 and 1913 that Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque tapped into the greater mixed-media possibilities of the style Braque called papier collé—”pasted paper.” Their early collages would inform Cubism as well as Russian constructivism, Dada, surrealism, and abstract expressionism, whose practitioners developed the technique into a form that by its very essence conveys the fragmentation of modern life....

That’s my haul pictured above–six bottles of Dark Lord (white wax this year, and metallic labels–about the only way they could get more metal than they already were), three of the new Dogfish Head/FFF collaboration Popskull (which I haven’t tried yet), and two of Dreadnaught, just because it was cheaper at the brewery and I love it so. My two DLD Golden Tickets entitled me to eight bottles of Dark Lord, but I figured 11 22-ounce bombers was quite enough to be hauling around for the rest of the day....

Gossip Wolf is psyched to hear that a new record store has set up shop in town—and it’s not even in Logan Square, Pilsen, or some other designated “cool” neighborhood. Funk Trunk Records has made its home in Rogers Park (specifically at 6960 N. Sheridan, suite A), and the cozy spot carries soul, jazz, boogie, and of course funk, among other things. It opened for business Sat 11/22 and reopens on Wed 11/26 (regular hours are Wednesday through Sunday), so you can go hunting for some killer LPs and 45s before Black Friday....

After four years with House Call Entertainment, talent buyer Darren Olsen has left to work in-house for Subterranean and Beat Kitchen—two venues where House Call has been booking for years. Olsen plans to open them up to other promoters and bookers alongside House Call. “It’s kind of a grand experiment,” he says. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Since 2010 local powerviolence band Sea of Shit has been barfing minute-long chunks of hate and punishment into our ears, but Gossip Wolf hesitates to call them “songs”; they’re more like brutally concise musical temper tantrums....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Slow City, headquartered in an industrial park in Niles, is the first makgeolli maker in this hemisphere, thanks to an arrangement between president John Oh and Korea’s Baesangmyun Brewery, producers of a range of distilled and fermented Korean beverages. That’s an important distinction: imported makgeolli is made shelf-stable with preservatives that kill its natural enzymes. It tastes the same on the day you open it as it did on the day it was bottled....

“What is the point of going to all the trouble of creating natural and organic foods and products if we harm the environment to bring them to market?” 156,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions would be avoided (equivalent to 27,000 cars driven 200 miles a week). Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » As I shop at my local Whole Foods in River Forest, I notice “all natural” and “organic” products are sold in SBS packaging....

City CFO Saffold Says Meter Suit Has No Merit The lawsuit is wholly without merit, both factually and legally, and the City will vigorously defend against it. In their press conference and legal filings, the organization made a number of misstatements of fact, and their allegations have been both erroneous and irresponsible. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » First, the City did not delegate the ability to set rates for parking meters, as the organization and its counsel assert....

The Old Town School of Folk Music and the Lincoln Square Chamber of Commerce bring more than 60 acts, heavy on rootsy and traditional sounds from the Americas and abroad, to this year’s Square Roots festival. Its eclectic lineup of performances and workshops occupies five indoor and outdoor stages: the North Stage (at 4500 N. Lincoln), the South Stage (at Lincoln and Montrose), and the Old Town School’s Maurer Hall, Szold Hall, and East Lobby....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Just as I believe it’s only fair to let a few episodes of a new sitcom go by before drawing conclusions, I’m reluctant to judge the “new look” Sun-Times until I see it on a day when there’s actual news in it. Wednesday’s debut edition, with its front-page pictures of a pucker-faced Dalai Lama (alongside the headline “Hello, Dalai”) and a wary coyote that wandered into the Loop, was longer on attitude than content and longer on repackaging than attitude....

Gossip Wolf has seen goofy, glammy Chicago four-piece MTVghosts slay at a slew of local shows—and last weekend the self-­proclaimed “dreampunk” band dropped Tri-Pop, a free eight-song album, via Bandcamp. This wolf thinks the hooky “She’s Really Mine” and “Apology” have more than a passing resemblance to Todd Rundgren’s mid-70s AM radio-style pop. MTVghosts plan to give Tri-Pop a physical release through FeelTrip Records early next year. In the meantime, they’ll play an all-ages show at Martyrs’ on Fri 12/19....