Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » If you feel cynical about cutthroat politics undermining the U.S. presidential election, perhaps you’ll feel better about our system after watching Johnnie To’s Election (2005), in which rivals literally cut each others’ throats. The film concerns a long-standing Hong Kong triad whose chairman of 30 years is about to retire; according to organized crime tradition, this means the high-level bosses must elect a new chairman from among their ranks....

This month’s issue of Chicago Magazine highlights six big ideas Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Great big ideas have been foisted on Chicago every so often. Some worked well (reversing the Chicago River, Daniel Burnham’s city planning) and some not so well (most of what the Chicago Housing Authority did in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s; Groupon). Lately, tackling big ideas in new and unexpected ways has become a profession in the city....

A response to Michael Miner’s column from the director of the Medill Innocence Project Re: “Much ado about Lana Del Rey: Is there such a thing as being too pretty for indie?” by Miles Raymer, September 29 Impressive. With this article, Lana Del Ray has already run through the full “adoration, backlash, reappraisal” cycle before even releasing an official recording. This is a danger of a generation that defines […]...

Avreeayl Ra is quite literally a driving force in Chicago jazz. He’s an enduring member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) who’s spent decades drumming for countless local and visiting eminences, including Ernest Dawkins, Ari Brown, Fred Anderson, and Nicole Mitchell. While he can be counted upon to bring emphatic, surging […] Panama-born, Chicago-based drummer Daniel Villarreal is involved with myriad musical projects. He coleads the groups Dos Santos, Valebol, the Los Sundowns, and Ida y Vuelta; he’s collaborated extensively with grab-bag marching band Mucca Pazza, sibling duo Wild Belle, and soulful psych-pop singer Rudy De Anda; and he’s a familiar face on Pilsen’s DJ circuit....

According to U.S. federal agriculture statistics, Illinois is the country’s largest producer of pumpkins, with 14,800 acres devoted to the crop in 2007, most of them within a 90-mile radius of downstate Peoria. This bit of good news for locavores made me wonder what local chefs are doing with pumpkin. Mon Ami Gabi’s Pumpkin Festival ended on October 29, but there are still many seasonal savories on offer in addition to the ubiquitous pumpkin creme brulees, cheesecakes, cupcakes, and other sweets—not to mention cocktails with names like the Smashing Pumpkin....

Stefon Alexander was a teenage punk bassist when he discovered hip-hop via Company Flow’s Funcrusher Plus and cassette releases by the Rhymesayers collective–now a dominant presence in his hometown of Minneapolis. In 2004 he cofounded a hip-hop collective of his own, Doomtree, but he kept his old punk nickname–it stands for “Pissed-Off Stef”–when he released his debut as a rapper, Ipecac Neat. (He still plays punk rock too, most notably as a guitarist and singer for Building Better Bombs....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » He created urban ministries in New York, Cleveland, and Detroit before coming to Chicago in 1960 as executive director of the Community Renewal Society; as the head of CRS he gave John McDermott the green light and financial support to create the Chicago Reporter. Calling himself an agent for change, Benedict ran with the support of Mayor Harold Washington....

I was shocked to read your response to Not Giving Up last week. Dan, how could you? For years you have been our go-to guy for uncommon sexual knowledge. So it made me want to cry when I read your column about Joan Sewell’s book I’d Rather Eat Chocolate: Learning to Love My Low Libido. How could you write these words: “And I’m saddened to report that, according to Sewell ....

There’s a reason you haven’t seen much in-depth coverage of what’s probably the most important federal ruling to affect the music business since the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998–a ruling that, if it goes into effect, will change how tens of millions of people listen to music and very possibly silence Internet radio altogether. The reason is it’s painfully boring. To weigh in with more than a sound bite, you’ve got to navigate legislative language that even the most impassioned players in the debate admit is difficult and dry....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Charles Bidwill III, the nitwit scion of the same family that has mismanaged the NFL’s Cardinals for the last 75 years, thought it would be a good idea to convert Sportsman’s to a combination horse racing/auto racing facility. He spent $60 million to lay down an asphalt racetrack and built an enormous grandstand for the auto racing crowd. Horseplayers hated it....

Mount Carroll, Illinois, is populated by more dead bodies than living people. At least that’s what Mount Carroll lifer Jim Warfield told us after a marathon tour of the Raven’s Grin Inn, the year-round haunted house he operates and also lives in. Maybe it’s a thing he says for dramatic effect—but after spending the previous six hours wandering around town, it’s not a stretch to imagine that corpses outnumber the living....

Rogers Park’s Heartland Cafe “is precariously close to shutting its doors for good,” said the press release, e-mailed on September 28. And a fledgling arts organization called the Seen will be holding a benefit to help keep it alive. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The release was sent out by Heather Bodie, 25, an actor, painter, and—by day—freelance financial services rep. Bodie founded the Seen, which is meant to bring all kinds of artists together and is still in the process of getting its nonprofit designation....

A free newspaper for Chicago sports fans is being launched this week by two publishers who may not know how much they don’t know. Igor Golubchik says that Chicago Sports Weekly, despite its title, will not limit itself to Chicago sports, and in two or three years he and Vlad Veren intend to extend the brand to other cities. “If you drop the word Chicago it becomes Sports Weekly,” he said, “and that’s what it is....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Or! Barack Hussein Obama, whom a nontrivial portion of the electorate believes, against all facts, is 1) a Muslim 2) lying about it, won. Ideology aside, I think it’s reasonably impressive (imagine, if you will, someone named Klaus Hitler VonSomething running in the mid-20th century) and should be kept in mind when considering the some-guy-on-the-Internet trend story. Anyway, I’m grateful for new technology which allows us to observe, in real time, the fact that there are lots of crazy people in the world, since it’s one of the most important lessons the Internet can impart....

Mayor Daley got a standing ovation when he appeared at the national conference of the Theatre Communications Group, the trade association for nonprofit theaters, at the Palmer House Hilton on June 19. And the admiration was mutual. Daley was full of praise for theaters and what they can do for cities—Detroit could use more of them, he said—and for artists of all stripes. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “I think the Board of Education should hire more artists from the community to participate with our students,” Daley added....

During the first weeks at NANA, a busted computer made for Homeric wait times. Then city workers cracked a gas pipe, forcing a lunchtime evacuation. Such mishaps were exacerbated by slowish service. Fortunately, waits are decreasing, due in part to whip-cracking servers like ours, who was heard querying the cooks sarcastically, “You want me to come over there and help you out?” Cafe 28 pastry chef Maria Solis (aka Nana) and her sons, Omar and Christian, preside over this genuinely friendly, slightly crunchy upscale diner, which generally adheres to the standards set by the USDA’s National Organic Program....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » If I have one complaint about Facets’ exceptional Lucian Pintilie retrospective (which continues through Sunday), it’s that the series, at ten days, doesn’t last long enough. Of course, this isn’t Facets’ fault: theaters rarely get to keep traveling prints for much time. But given the consistency of the five Pintilies I’ve seen this week, I worry these films will run together in mind since I’ve seen them in such close proximity to each other....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Goodman Theatre artistic director Robert Falls has clearly got a big emotional stake in his production of Desire Under the Elms, which closes this weekend and then heads to Broadway. So big that he’s done the unheard of and gotten involved in the critical discussions of it. Back in January, when O’Neill expert Harley Hammerman wrote a negative evaluation of the show, I posted Hammerman’s remarks here and drew a rebuttal from Falls....

An image from Agnes Varda’s Vagabond, sans halo On Saturday afternoon the Gene Siskel Film Center projected Agnes Varda’s Vagabond from 35-millimeter film. Throughout, the celluloid image appeared just larger than the screen, and so a halo of light flickered on the wall to its left. I realized during the screening just how much I value this property of film projection. (I also thought of the painting Rabo Karabekian unveils at the climax of Breakfast of Champions, but that’s neither here nor there....

A few years ago at a Portland performance festival, a couple of local guys, Dutes Miller and Stan Shellabarger, dug two side-by-side graves for themselves, with a tunnel in between so that they could hold hands. Partners in marriage as well as art, the pair bring a real sex-death thing to work that often explores queer identity; in a public performance project this month at the Museum of Contemporary Art, they crochet opposite ends of a long pink tube they’ve been working on now for ten years....