PJ Powers, artistic director at TimeLine Theatre Company, which is currently performing 33 Variations, cracks one open for: Life, on the Line I am passionate not only about theater but also food. In particular, I’m often drawn to biographies of great chefs or to exposés that take you behind the scenes in notable kitchens. In many ways, it’s similar to my world of producing theater and the challenge of delivering a transformative experience for a new audience every night....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Tomorrow at 2 PM, the Edgewater branch of the Chicago Public Library (at 1210 West Elmdale) will screen selected moments from The Century of the Self, the 2002 documentary series that first brought Adam Curtis to international attention. This free event is part of the branch library’s “Modern Lives & Movements” program, an ongoing series of lectures and discussions on various topics....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » An intriguing transcontinental performance called “Sonic Bridge” is happening at 9:30 PM at Brown Rice: performers here and in Mexico City and Buenos Aires will interact in real time via a telematic link. The participants from Chicago are flutist Christopher Preissing, reedist Guillermo Gregorio, amplified ukulele player Williwaw, reedist and percussionist Jayve Montgomery, and trumpeter Dan Godston. Bassist Matthew Golombisky, who just left Chicago, is among the Argentine crew....

Thanks to Whet Moser for this gem: Wired blogs that the army is seeking a “Professional Celebrity Rock Music Band” to tour military bases in Afghanistan and Kuwait. No, the entire entry isn’t written in Borat-speak–the rest of it’s in Pentagon legalese, which is even worse. Or better. (“Any criminal conduct, unexcused tardiness or absence which prevents timely starting of the performance(s) required hereunder, indecency or obscenity, drunkenness, damage to Government property, failure to discharge indebtedness to the Government, influence of narcotics or hallucinatory drugs, threatening breach of national security, violation of the rules and regulations of the Host Nation, Government or TFF MWR are grounds for termination of this contract....

Did you know they have a park and kiss lot at the airport? Yeah, true story. You can drive to the airport and make out in this designated kissing zone (pretty good date idea. The chick thinks I am taking her to Paris but really I drive all the way out to the airport just to make out. I think it’s romantic). I am guessing that there are some time restrictions given that it’s main purpose is for dropping off or picking up a significant other but they still allow you to hang out for a moment and bid farewell....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » At Untitled, the River North “speakeasy” that announces its name only on a sign touting valet parking, Mike Sula finds an initially appealing hideout with imposing black doors, curtained booths, a back patio, a “secret” entrance, a “whiskey library,” and performance spaces hosting jazz and burlesque. Given its scope and ambition, the food’s impressive: chef Joseph Heppe makes good on promises of seasonality, offering “arugula with firm but sweet grilled peaches, delicately battered and deep-fried squash blossoms filled with warm farmer’s cheese, favas and mache sprinkled about with bloodred bresola shavings....

A lot was made of how comedians couldn’t joke after 9/11 until Gilbert Gottfriend told “The Aristocrats” joke at a roast for Hugh Hefner in New York City, in a moment memorialized in a documentary film. I’ve felt the same sort of chill among Cub fans — until a fellow sufferer, my old pal Neil Tesser, sent me a link to this video today. I think it’s been around already, courtesy of Bad Kermit at the aptly named hirejimessian....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In only its second year, the National Hockey League’s Winter Classic has become a highly successful publicity stunt. Last year, the Buffalo Sabres played host to the Pittsburgh Penguins in a New Year’s Day game outdoors in a football stadium — and in a near-blizzard. This year, as every Chicagoan is already well aware, it will be played at Wrigley Field with the Blackhawks taking on the Detroit Red Wings....

QI’m a heterosexual guy in my early 20s. I’ve been dating my girlfriend for about six months, and we’ve been having some fights recently. The problem: I have a high sex drive in comparison to hers. I want to be intimate on a weekly basis (at least!), and she’s told me that she’s more of a once-every-three-weeks-or-so person. I’m trying not to put pressure on her. I don’t want her to feel uncomfortable—she’s a virgin (no penetration), and the thought of the pain of that first time scares her a bit....

The sixth annual Hyde Park Jazz Festival features more than 40 performances at 13 different venues over the course of two days. On Sat 9/29, music begins at 1:30 PM and wraps up at 10 PM. The wide variety of shows includes Miguel Zenon at Rockefeller Chapel (11 PM, 5850 S. Woodlawn), Jason Adasiewicz’s Sun Rooms at the Logan Center Performance Penthouse (9 PM, 915 E. 60th), the Pharez Whitted Quintet at Hyde Park Union Church (6:30 PM, 5600 S....

Philip Montoro, Reader music editor, is obsessed with … Rorcal, Vilagvege Swiss band Rorcal titled their third full-length with the Hungarian word for the end of the world. Vilagvege combines the frenzied nihilism of black metal, the barely coherent rage of hardcore, and the suffocating density of doom—plus the drummer sounds like he’s playing on garbage trucks with cannonballs. Lung-collapsing screams scour guitars that swing from seesawing dissonance to tooth-­grinding drone to what sounds like the wandering melody of an ecclesiastical chant, all of it blackened by heat as it plunges to earth at 40 times the speed of sound....

Sarah Bruni’s debut novel, The Night Gwen Stacy Died, is a coming-of-age story set in the landscape of a psychological thriller; the mood is dark, and the characters reckless as the inhabitants of a Dylan song: “People are crazy and times are strange . . . I used to care, but things have changed.” The protagonists take on the personas of Spider-Man characters in order to solve a mystery that may save a life—even as they tackle the mystery of their own lives....

On their latest, Country Ghetto (Alligator Records), Floridian JJ Grey and his band Mofro call up an image of the south that’s defined not by geography but by a state of mind. Grey’s scarred, churchy vocals summon spirits like Hank Williams, James Carr, and Janis Joplin–all of whom are nearly as famous for their troubled lives as they are for their music–over a blend of Tony Joe White swamp funk and willfully brain-dead blooze rock seasoned with fatback horns....

They all heard the boom–the drivers stuck in traffic, the cluster of people smoking in front of the rehab center, the detailer outside the car dealership waxing the hood of a car, the pedestrian who’d just scored a bag of heroin and helped himself to a few snorts. Some of them also saw what caused it: a gray Ford Crown Victoria slamming into a boy and girl as they crossed Grand Avenue....

The original hardcover jacket In middle school my favorite author was Daniel Pinkwater and my favorite book was The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death, which he wrote in 1982. (Lizard Music, Pinkwater’s first young-adult novel, was a close second.) I realize today that my admiration stemmed from how closely I identified with the main characters, a couple of misfit kids who bond over weird movies. Initially “Snarking out” refers to their ritual of slipping away in the middle of the night to see old movies at the 24-hour Snark Theater, but it comes to define a variety of late-night adventures: taking part in public debates, discovering hidden cafeterias, and helping Osgood Sigerson, the world’s greatest detective, find a kidnapped mad scientist....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Basically, I’m sticking with my picks from last year in the pennant races. In the American League, I’ll take the Boston Red Sox to fend off the suddenly talent-rich — because they’re just plain rich — New York Yankees, who will squeeze out the defending AL champs the Tampa Bay Rays for the wild-card slot. Even diminished from last season, the Anaheim Angels behind manager Mike Scioscia should win the West in a cakewalk....

On October 18, a much longer Tribune article called the environmental travesty to Chicago’s attention. We learned that British Petroleum is installing new equipment that is tripling the amount of petroleum coke produced by its refinery in Whiting, and that to avoid the most stringent terms of the Clean Air Act, the petcoke is being shipped to storage sites in Chicago. The upshot is that the expansion “will turn the sprawling Indiana plant into the world’s second-largest source of petroleum coke....

Kinsella Watch, part one: Mike Kinsella‘s solo adult-contemporary emo band, Owen, released a new seven-inch September 28 on Polyvinyl. The B side is a cover of Wilco‘s “Always in Love,” which may best the original, but Kinsella’s coif is no match for the Golden Fluffy Hair of Pat Sansone. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Also employing Kickstarter to fund a recording: live hip-hop ensemble Animate Objects....

New TooOther recent openings Mana Food Bar1742 W. Division | 773-342-1742 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » This Wicker park vegetarian spot from Susan Thompson (who also owns De Cero and Sushi Wabi) and Jill Barron (executive chef at De Cero) is small but pleasant, and the closeness of the tables in the outdoor seating area encourages conversations between strangers. While it’s always nice to be able to grill the people at the next table about what they’re eating, our waiter’s suggestions were also good, especially the salad of Thai watermelon with cucumbers, spicy green chiles, mint, and lime....

Q My husband of eight years confessed to wanting to watch me with another man. I asked if he meant it. He said yes. I asked if he wanted me to set it up. He said yes. I found a guy, and he agreed to a full STD screening—at my husband’s suggestion and our expense—so that we wouldn’t have to use condoms. Before Ryan walks us through what’s so straight about your husband dipping his dick in another man’s spunk, SECONDS, let me get this off my chest: Sex at Dawn is the single most important book about human sexuality since Alfred Kinsey unleashed Sexual Behavior in the Human Male on the American public in 1948....