Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » So what makes this exhibit more than a live version of a Buzzfeed list of 50 Tasty Paintings You Have to See? The theory is that how we depict food is a reflection of who we are—or, more likely, who we want others to think we are. Food, like other appetites, always has a moral dimension, and the exhibit can be read for what it says about the people who created these works ....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The class, Raw Cheese I, covered the basics of making butter, yogurt, ricotta, and clabbered milk cheese. Working with gallons of liquid gold procured from the northland, Klehm walked us through the makeup of milk in its various varieties (cow, sheep, goat, buffalo . . .) and the processes by which the USDA strips it of most of its best elements through homogenation and pasteurization....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The Blackhawks get a week off for the All-Star break, and they looked like a team that needed it Tuesday night against Nashville at the United Center. They seemed a step slow in the first period, as when Jamal Mayers, sensing danger with the puck slipping out in front of the Hawks’ net, whiffed on a clearing swipe, allowing the Predators’ Crag Smith to sweep in a shot....

Chicago postpunk upstarts Stuck can make tension boil over slowly, and you can feel it all over their 2020 debut, Change Is Bad. In April 2021, they convened at Jamdek Studios to knock out a quick-and-dirty recording, intending its release to renew interest in the band as clubs, promoters, and artists prepared to re-emerge thanks to the mass rollout of vaccinations. That hopefulness warms up the resulting EP, Content That Makes You Feel Good (Exploding in Sound)....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I think this, plus the fact that he got his ass kicked so badly by Bobby Rush so early on in his political career, explains a lot about why a plausibly progressive candidate like Barack Obama lines up with the local machine every time. The Democratic party found itself in a bit of a fix, despite eight years of reasonable peace and prosperity under Bill Clinton (and might still be in a fix if it weren’t for eight years of staggering Republican incompetence), and it’s been suggested that part of the explanation is that neither Clinton nor anyone else did a particularly good job setting up an effective, long-term ground game....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head Brewery is all around town next Tuesday and Wednesday. From 7-9 PM Tuesday, he’ll lead a tasting of “funky beer and stinky cheese” at Sheffield’s along with cheese expert Dave Phillips. The $25 fee includes a sampling of 12 Dogfish Head brews, 8 of them on tap, and ten cheeses from The Cheese Stands Alone....

A beautiful thing about Chicago’s vibrant underground music scene is how many people are out there trying to document it—people like John Yingling (who’s officially heading to China!) and attorney-by-day, videographer-by-night Sei Jin Lee. Yet another music documentary project has come to the table, the aptly named Chicago Underground Music Archive, which is headed up by Notes & Bolts founder Kriss Stress, along with Hanna Johnson (who plays in scuzzy punk band Lil Tits) and Melissa Manfredi....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Last fall Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. announced that he was creating a political organization to back a slate of candidates in the February 27 municipal elections and beyond. Jackson said at the time that his goal was to develop an independent operation to counter the many ward and citywide political organizations (think HDO) aligned with Mayor Daley and other regular Democrats....

Adapted from a book by Martin Sixsmith, this absorbing drama recounts the British journalist’s relationship with Philomena Lee, an Irish woman who bore a child out of wedlock in the 1950s and was forced by nuns at the Roscrea convent to surrender it for adoption. The movie opens in 2004, as Sixsmith (Steve Coogan) begins researching a magazine story about Lee (Judi Dench) and her efforts to track down the child; their search leads them to Washington, D....

The gallant youths exchange glances. On the one hand, he has a point. On the other, not the goal but the game, in the deed the glory. So what the hell! They open fire, the cannons roar, and minutes later their bodies line the street. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Why? Rising Up Angry operated at a high pitch of left-wing ferocity, but wasn’t Chandler quite the lefty himself?...

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex Mary Roach (W.W. Norton) Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Roach, in fact, doesn’t want to discuss those experiments, at least not at any length. In the first place, she notes, they are “ghastly,” hardly in keeping with her sunny, sex-positive tone. But she also believes they “may tell us something about sadism in human beings but not a whole lot about copulation....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » On the heels of last weekend’s performance before a packed house at the Harris Theater, Luna Negra Dance Theater announced today that founding artistic director Eduardo Vilaro is leaving the company to become artistic director at New York City’s Ballet Hispanico, where he danced before coming to Chicago. Vilaro will begin his new job August 1. He’ll remain with Luna Negra until then, and will maintain his connection after that as an ex-officio board member....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Well, Sicily’s a small part of Italy, but its cuisine is certainly big enough to accommodate two restaurants’ very different takes. Where Next set out to reproduce the high points of the island’s traditional cuisine, Telegraph’s menu (which is in addition to its regular menu) is more like jazzy improvisations on rustic Sicilian flavors. I’m not sure I believe that you would ever have a briny flavor of anchovy in a cauliflower puree, as the lamb dish on this menu claims, but I can believe in both of them as Sicilian, so why not put them together?...

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Sometimes it’s easy to forget that Lloyd was once not only one of jazz’s most popular artists, but he achieved mainstream stardom back in the 60s. His 1966 album, Forest Flower (Atlantic)—cut with the powerhouse quartet of drummer Jack DeJohnette (who gave a remarkable performance last night in Millennium Park), pianist Keith Jarrett, and bassist Cecil McBee, all musicians largely introduced to the world by Lloyd—was a platinum seller, and he was a frequent draw at rock venues like the legendary Fillmore West....

If you view leadership as the ability to shove useless stuff down the throats of people who don’t want or need it, then you’d have to conclude that Mayor Rahm Emanuel is having one heck of a year. Have you ever noticed that the promises he keeps are usually the ones you didn’t want him to make in the first place—and vice versa? And the mayor closes the debate with his favorite argument of all: I know that change is hard and makes you emotional, but the status quo is not an option....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Pest control company Orkin just published its annual list of the country’s most bedbug-infested cities, and Chicago comes in at number two for the second year in a row. It’s one of the few cities that didn’t change spots, along with Cincinnati (number one) and Denver (number four). I’m a little skeptical that this is an accurate representation of how many bedbug infestations there actually are in each city, for the same reasons I gave in a story I wrote about bedbugs in January: the data behind the rankings hasn’t been published, and it could fluctuate depending on how much business the company does in any given city (they could be more popular in Cincinnati, say, than New York—which is number nine)....

The front-page story in the Tribune today – at least on the newsstand tab version – is a look at “high profile” attacks on cab drivers, with the implication throughout being that in these tough economic times, cabbies are at a higher risk of being mugged. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » But I couldn’t help but think of this, from Kari Lydersen’s October cover story in the Reader about Walid Ziada:...

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Ice cream Get three free scoops from Chicago churners Bobtail Ice Cream, Lindy’s Chili & Gertie’s Ice Cream, and Margie’s Candies, then vote for your favorite. 1-3 PM, parking lot of St. Teresa of Avila Church, 1037 W. Armitage at Seminary. Interior design consultations Bring photos, blueprints, or video and sign up in person for a half-hour consultation with one of several designers Domino rates to be among the city’s best....

It seems like Mannequin Men spent half our tour in NYC, which was sometimes good (seeing friends, taking a break from our fast-food diet to have some incredible meals) and sometimes bad (using up our tour budgets to fund overpriced drinking expeditions). All in all a pretty great time, though. One thing that definitely helped was sharing a couple of bills with the Back C.C.’s. Their straight-ahead garage punk would only sound innovative and original to someone who’d been in suspended animation since the early 60s, but their execution is satisfyingly dirty and snotty, which when you’re talking garage punk is really about the best thing you can say....

dominiqueansel.com The elusive cronut It’s been only a month since Dominque Ansel started selling cronuts. Only a month since he started making a mere 200 per day, since New Yorkers started lining up outside Ansel’s SoHo bakery at the butt-crack of dawn in order to get a shot at purchasing their allotment of three precious pastries apiece, since the cronut became the talk of the pastry world beyond New York, since disappointed would-be cronut buyers started flipping off Ansel’s baristas, since several apparently-thriving cronut delivery services opened for business on Craigslist, operating, in some cases, at an 800 percent markup....