Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The Norwegian Shining (as opposed to the suicidal Swedish black-metal band of the same name) began their career in 1999 as an acoustic jazz combo, but I first heard them on 2010’s Blackjazz—and at that point the “jazz” elements apparently consisted of front man Jorgen Munkeby occasionally soloing on saxophone. These days Shining play vaguely industrial-sounding metal that balances bloodthirsty pop instincts and neck-breaking grooves against the residual avant-gardisms of their former life—tricky time signatures, rhythmic phasing, intricate high-speed unison riffs, and sprawling, oddball structures....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Among the old-school soul discoveries made by Gabriel Roth of the Dap-Kings, Lee Fields is a dazzling jewel. In fact, Fields was one of his earliest finds—Roth was working as a backing vocalist on a session for Fields when he met Sharon Jones, who’s become the Daptone label’s biggest star. (Charles Bradley is another fabulous talent the label has introduced to the world....

If, like me, you’re burned out on craft fairs, art openings, rock shows, and dive bars, look no further than Des Plaines. Hop on the el, get off at the Rosemont stop, wait for the every-ten-minutes, 24/7 free shuttle, and arrive at the glorious suburban oasis known as Rivers Casino. (Seriously, from Logan Square it takes less than 30 minutes to get there, all for the price of CTA fare.) The casino is only closed for two hours a day, between the hours of 7 AM and 9 AM, and in the wee hours you’ll find a wide range of characters, from serious gamblers to night-owl geriatrics to travelers shuttling over from O’Hare....

Not many civic experiences are worse than when you’re a CTA regular pitched into a train full of Wrigley-bound Cubs fans: you’re minding your own business—just trying to finish Fifty Shades of Grey or whatever—and there’s not even room to stand, let alone sit, because the car is so packed with besotted blond people who are always shouting to their buddies on the other side of the car. They seem to be new to public transportation....

Time to dig out the green body paint and the Spandex suit—the Chicago Comic Con is coming. Wizard World’s annual fantasy extravaganza features guest celebrities and wares calculated to impress the discriminating geek. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Fanboys and girls can stop by the exhibit booths in Artists’ Alley, sit in on a Q&A, get their pictures taken with a star, and, of course, buy stuff....

Challenged with fresh figs by David Hermach of Clark Street Ale House, Double A bartender Sean Still started by punning. The creator of drinks such as the From Sean to Dusk (gin, Chartreuse, creme de violette, pear, lemon, and shiso leaf), she first toyed with doing a take on the White Russian, to be called the Fig Lebowski. She also experimented with a drink she named the Figgy Pop—aquavit with muddled figs, lemon, and sake—but found that muddling alone failed to bring out enough fig flavor....

Challenged with lentils by Blackbird’s Mary Rose Braun, Balena bartender Natalia Cardenas started with the legume itself, making some white lentils (aka urad dal) spiced with cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, and a little coconut milk. From there, she says, “I was inspired by horchata,” the taste and texture of the cooked lentils having reminded her of the Mexican drink made from rice water. Her adult horchata calls for an aged rum infused with chocolate pu-erh tea, flavors she accents with mole bitters and cinnamon....

Strictly Seasonal Chalkboard | North Center | $$$ Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Walking into the airy, elegant Chalkboard space, it’s hard to believe it was formerly the gloomy Tournesol. But classy as the room is, the menu is decidedly friendly, offering dressed-up versions of classic American comfort food. Daily specials are listed on the restaurant’s namesake, a giant chalkboard, but often also on a paper menu that includes chatty asides from chef-owner Gilbert Langlois....

The Chef: Craig Schoettler (the Aviary)The Challenger: Iliana Regan (One Sister)The Ingredient: Dried bamboo fungus Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Craig Schoettler said he and Aviary bartender Jason Cevallos tried making 30 different drinks with dried bamboo fungus before finally settling on one that involved sherry, beer, scotch, rum, and champagne. The fungus, he said, has a “very earthy, sort of acidic umami profile....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Last week I got to hear U of C professor Jerry Coyne talk about evolution at the Graham School of General Studies. Coyne showed the accompanying graph, originally from a Science article by former Chicagoan Jon Miller (who was mentioned in this blog last August) comparing different countries on the percentage of their populations who believe evolution is a fact....

Lead Stories Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Readers’ choice, part 2: In a well-publicized case, four men were charged with a variety of fraud- and sex-related offenses in Chino Valley, Arizona, in January. According to authorities, 43-year-old Robert Snow (a former sex offender) and 61-year-old Lonnie Stiffler had posed as the legal guardians of Neil Rodreick, whom they had met online and, believing him to be 12 years old, subsequently had sex with....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I said that this is going to be a vivacious, positive, intelligent, bright woman with a great sense of humor and buzzing with energy, and the film really needs to take its cue from that. Which in fact it does do, and yet the question lingers—not whether Poppy is a “good thing” or that more of us “ought to be like her,” like the unsinkable Molly Brown or Doris Day out on a Beverly Hills lark, but whether anyone so eerily … excuse me, “sunnily” predisposed is even motivationally credible....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In Sunday’s New York Times, Matt Gross checks out restaurants at (or near) seven airports to see what’s worth eating. Some of the best spots, he discovers, are outside the terminal. The Atlanta airport’s taxi assembly cafeteria, for example, serves great African food; at LAX you can hop on a parking shuttle to In-N-Out Burger, the uberpopular fast food chain with a cultlike following....

By the time you read about what I ate at Allison and Rob Levitt’s minimalist new Wicker Park restaurant, you may have to wait until next year to try some of it. That’s because much of the menu at Mado, in the space formerly housing Barcello’s, reads like a shopping list for the week’s Green City Market. Preparations are simple, with all due reverence given to the superior quality of the ingredients, raised by an A-list of regional agrarian rock stars....

Last summer, when Piccolo Sogno chef Tony Priolo asked Michael Loran Hansel to locate an obscure Italian herb that he wanted to grow on the restaurant’s back patio, the landscaper was stumped. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » It’s not hard to see why. Even the few English-language sources that have any information about the herb aren’t all that clear about it. The Oxford Companion to Italian Food confuses the plant with some of its cousins in the Lamiaceae family, identifying it as common pennyroyal but acknowledging that “sorting out these various kinds of mint, which cross and hybridise easily, is a bit complicated, and on top of that, the Italian names vary from place to place....

Two miles off Oak Street Beach, in the Carter H. Harrison Water Intake Crib, the phone rings. The chef looks up from his notebook, glances at the caller ID, and turns instead to a glass bong half filled with a corked ’82 Petrus. He fires it up and takes a long pull on the tube. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » D’Angelo, the 24-year-old son of a New York Stock Exchange trader, embarked on his meteoric culinary career seven years ago, after dropping out of his Upper East Side private school....

In San Francisco’s Bay Area there’s a public that doesn’t believe indignation and confrontation are best left to the local press. Consider this article I spotted the other day on the CNN Web site: Where are Chicago’s agitators? Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Cell phone videos of the fatal shooting of Oscar Grant were quickly posted on YouTube, and these fanned the flames. But in 2007 the Reader posted a similar video and it rolled off Chicago’s back....

Bob Calhoun is a big guy, six-foot-three and 300 pounds by his reckoning, with a big voice and a personality to match—several of them, actually. Under his given name he doesfund-raising research and freelance writing. But as Count Dante the 39-year-old is the Deadliest Man Alive—wrestler, rocker, and motivational speaker delivering infomercialesque spiels about his “Kung-Fu Rock and Roll Success Seminar that has transformed millions of worthless losers into martial arts millionaires!...

Michael Gebert Escargot at Paris Club There was once a great French restaurant in River North, owned by Lettuce Entertain You and run by Chef Jean Joho. Not great in the Michelin sense, perfection of technique and high-end service—for that you went into the Loop to Joho’s Everest. Great as in it looked like a Parisian brasserie, it was lively, the food was utterly reliable, and it felt like Gallic sophistication in the heart of Chicago....

QYou were recommended to me by an acquaintance familiar with your column and podcast. Lacking other resources at this particular moment, I’ve decided to write to you. I’m a 20-year-old male, and as such have certain desires that almost all 20-year-old males have (desires of a sexual nature). Get over yourself, faggot. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » If it’s possible for you to act on your unnamed-but-easily-identified desires in an ethical manner—if you desire to do whatever it is you desire to do with consenting adults who desire to take their turn doing it to you—this so-called expert on sexuality thinks you should crawl down off that cross and find yourself a boyfriend already....