Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “But the year’s best comeback has to be Roger Ebert. After losing his voice, Ebert has funneled all of his energies into expressing himself on the page, most often through his blog. And he’s been a delight to read, whether he’s demolishing Ben Stein or making mischief by reviewing only eight minutes of a movie. While other essayists have ossified in their old age, Ebert appears to have developed some much-needed piss and vinegar....

When a friend recently happened across an original (and rare) vinyl copy of the Crucifucks’ Wisconsin, I was reminded of the in-depth profile Sam McPheeters did for Vice four years back on the midwestern hardcore-punk band’s provocative, often-abrasive vocalist, Doc Dart (aka 26). In it McPheeters visits Dart at his East Lansing home and dissects not so much the band’s trajectory but the instigating nature of its front man and the series of events that led him to change his name to a seemingly irrelevant number and become an eccentric recluse who opted to cut himself off from the world’s news feed....

The Reader’s Choice: Windy City Media Group Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The Free Press is arguably broader in and puts less spin on its news coverage than the opposition, Tracy Baim’s Windy City Times, but a visit to Windy City’s Web site takes you not merely to the Times but (to eavesdrop on its own boasting) to “an online podcast, two weekly publications, one monthly ethnic online magazine, and an online resource guide....

In late 2009 Jim Zespy took over the American headquarters of London-based Southern Records at Fullerton and Western and launched his own Chicago Independent Distribution to pick up Southern’s slack. He also turned the space into a record store specializing in vinyl, in particular oddball genre releases most shops consider an afterthought. Even better, purchasing your obscure postpunk or reggae or country find grants you access to a backroom arcade that Zespy’s stocked with a couple dozen vintage video games and pinball machines from his collection, all of them set to free play and in fine working condition....

“Wanderlust / Relentlessly craving wanderlust,” Bjork sings on the new Volta (Elektra), and she might as well be describing her aesthetic strategy–few artists seem so devoted to constant change in their musical surroundings. Though longtime associate Mark Bell contributes beats, three tracks were coproduced by Timbaland (including one featuring the Congolese likembe band Konono No. 1) and another incorporates jagged drumming from Lightning Bolt’s Brian Chippendale. Three other pieces are dominated by the kind of stately brass arrangements Bjork used on the soundtrack to Drawing Restraint 9, a film by her husband, Matthew Barney, and she gets simpatico string sounds from Min Xiao-Fen on pipa and Toumani Diabate on kora....

A new party called Unbound gets off the ground this Friday at Reversible Eye, and the principle behind its bookings will have a familiar ring to anyone who spent many a delightful night at the Fireside Bowl in its grody heyday: bringing bands from different sounds and scenes onto one bill. The flyer lists those scenes as “Classic Goth, Deathrock, Post-Punk, Grave-Wave, Minimal-Wave,” which is not a terrifically wide range, but hey, old goths and nu goths should mingle!...

Twice last winter, I heard cultural affairs commissioner Michelle Boone’s pocket speech on the city’s new cultural plan. Both times she brought along a chart studded with dozens of red check marks indicating progress on some of the plan’s hundreds of goals. Redmoon is getting $100,000 from the city for planning the event, which could cost about $1 million to produce and will be supported by both public and private funds....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Pop quiz: You’re making this recipe for garbanzo bean and turkey sausage soup. After sauteeing the garlic and sausage, you realize that the only tomatoes you have are crushed, not diced, which means they’re more like tomato sauce than tomato chunks. You: a. Decide to turn the recipe into tomato sauce and cook some pasta to go with it....

Columbia College professor Zafra Lerman has weathered some stormy relationships in her 33 years at the school. She lost the chairmanship of the science department—which she founded—in the late 1980s, after a significant faction in the department rebelled against her. And three years ago Columbia brass ordered a midnight raid on her lab at the college’s Institute of Science Education and Science Communication. The break-in led to the firing of a member of Lerman’s staff, who allegedly used a lab computer to generate cartoon images of Columbia president Warrick Carter that had been popping up on posters around the school and on a Web site....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Nothing. Then I pulled out the Saturday editorial page. Again, nothing about an endorsement. Then I hunt around on the Web site, digging through the Opinion tab and then clicking on endorsements. There I find the Obama endorsement, dated 2:33 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 17. It has yet to appear in the printed newspaper of which I am a seven-day-a-week subscriber....

The Chef: Matthias Merges (Yusho)The Challenger: Ryan Poli (Tavernita)The Ingredient: Sea cucumber Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “You either love sea cucumber or you hate it,” Matthias Merges said. He used a pair of chopsticks to poke at one, imported live from a Tokyo fish market, and it moved a little in response. When he pulled the chopsticks away, thick strings of brown slime came away with them....

Kitty Pryde in “Dead Island” Earlier this week teenaged Florida rapper Kitty Pryde dropped a new song called “Dead Island.” The MC’s latest cut received plenty of attention, which is understandable considering she attracted a swarm of interest from plenty of music sites when she posted a video for “Okay Cupid” back in May. An odd blip in all the reporting of Kitty Pryde’s new tune, which is off her forthcoming D....

It always amuses me when Caucasian males discuss feminism. Noah Berlatsky (“Power to the Clueless,” March 2) makes a perfect example of cluelessness himself by beginning his review of a book on bisexuality with the line, “A largely bourgeois liberation struggle, feminism has always linked the pursuit of justice with the pursuit of self-actualization [. . .] offer[ing] the fuzzier prospect of personal transformation and utopian bliss.” Best of Chicago voting is live now....

Sid Yiddish got a surprise in the ladies’ room at Cafe Express last fall. Someone had taken a knife and slashed a big X through his poem “For the Love of Man (For Jobie Hughes).” Yiddish took it remarkably well. “It’s quite a compliment,” he says. “If they steal it or make something on it, it inspired the person enough to do something.” Gnomish with a scraggly beard and heroic gut, Yiddish seems naturally disposed to showy display....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » This year’s International Beethoven Project, a music festival organized by concert pianist George Lepauw, kicked off on Wednesday with the first of five days of performances at Chicago Urban Art Society. As its name might suggest, most of the pieces being played are either by Beethoven or by loose contemporaries (Haydn, Mozart, Handel), but this afternoon’s program, called Beethoven Today and curated by composer Mischa Zupko, features newer works....

When the off-Loop theater movement began in the late 1960s, its main thoroughfare was Lincoln Avenue near Fullerton. The street was home to several groundbreaking troupes, including the Body Politic, Organic, and Kingston Mines. Today’s equivalent seems to be Rogers Park–in particular the Glenwood Avenue Arts District near the Morse and Jarvis Red Line el stops. Four small companies in the neighborhood–Bohemian Theatre Ensemble, Lifeline, the Side Project, and Theo Ubique–are teaming up to offer a flexible subscription pass....

Q You neglect generic guy/girl/girl threesomes. My friends talk about these threesomes all the time, ’cause they’re the “Holy Grail” of sex for us straight guys. Here are some of our questions: OK, number three is a real question from me. And here’s a follow-up: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “Threesomes are undoubtedly the new ‘Holy Grail’ of sex,” says Vicki Vantoch, author of The Threesome Handbook: A Practical Guide to Sleeping With Three (Thunder’s Mouth Press)....

Q I’m a 33-year-old married male who has a WAM—wet and messy—fetish. I’m into mud and clay. I’ve played with various substances in the bathroom by myself over the years. It always ends with me masturbating myself into oblivion, wishing there were someone with me so we could sensuously rub against each other, etc, until we both climax. But I was always alone! Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Needless to say, I was mortified and disappointed, and there was $50 worth of clay in the tub that I didn’t want to go to waste....

Until three months ago, I lived in Saint Louis. I was there for five and a half years, and I loved it, even in the summer when the temperature reached 108 degrees, but I could never, in good conscience, call myself a Saint Louisan. You can’t be a Saint Louisan unless you went to high school there. In Saint Louis, the high school you attended is an indelible mark that carries important information about your religion, social class, and salient personality traits....

The holiday season starts earlier and earlier—Chicago has already had two tree-lighting ceremonies, for Saint Nick’s sake—but the purists out there have saved up their cheer for after Turkey Day. To reward your patience, we’ve handpicked the season’s best events and created a comprehensive holiday calendar with everything from Yuletide food and drink events to Christmas theater to nondenominational celebrations that just happen to benefit from a little snow. Ten of our top picks are below, but you can see our full, ever-updated list here....