In December 1914—four months after a rampaging servant burned down his Wisconsin retreat and hacked to death seven people there, including his mistress—Frank Lloyd Wright was living in a little red-brick house at 25 E. Cedar in Chicago. He’d just made it clear to his wife, Catherine, that he wouldn’t be coming back to her and their six children in Oak Park when he received a flattering letter of condolence from an intriguing stranger....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “Every July I watch eagerly a certain country graveyard that I pass in driving to and from my farm. It is time for a prairie birthday, and in one corner of this graveyard lives a surviving celebrant of that once important event. It is an ordinary graveyard, bordered by the usual spruces, and studded with the usual pink granite or white marble headstones, each with the usual Sunday bouquet of red or pink geraniums....

Cases Against Charters Waukegan residents were not allowed to attend LCU’s charter school planning sessions unless they happened to be a member of LCU. The public “informational” meetings they did allow the commoners to attend were nothing more than LCU pep rallies, with no real questions being answered and no real information. I have nothing against charter schools. I had a problem with THIS charter school proposal and the tactics used by the group pushing for it....

For me, guilty pleasures don’t get much guiltier or more pleasurable than Loreena McKennitt, the fluttery-voiced Canadian soprano whose new-age fusions of world music and poetry represent what’s best and worst about having eclectic taste in an age of cultural imperialism. On her seventh album, An Ancient Muse (Quinlan Road, 2006), she continues to romanticize all over the map, taking lyrical inspiration from The Odyssey and Sir Walter Scott and setting it to music evolved from klezmer and the Byzantine Empire....

This week the Gene Siskel Film Center screens seven “energetic, irreverent independent comedies that have been turning heads and generating cult audiences at festivals including Sundance, Slamdance, SXSW, and CineVegas.” Following are revews of selected films; for a complete schedule see siskelfilmcenter.org. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Adventures of Power It’s such a fine line between clever and stupid, and this Spinal Tap-caliber cult item maintains a perfect balance....

The faux-Polynesian empire Vic Bergeron started in Oakland, California in 1934 has reestablished a Chicago beachhead after vacating one of its oldest outposts, at the Palmer House Hilton, four years ago. I find it impossible to dislike Trader Vic’s—home of the original mai tai—though even as I write that I realize it’s going to be a hard sell after my visit to the new Viagra Triangle location. Despite a few terrific bites, it’s not a great place to eat, and worse—despite the extensive list of exotic cocktails—it’s not even a particularly good place to drink....

Presented by Music Box and WBEZ’s Sound Opinions, the Summer Music Film Festival runs Friday through Tuesday, June 28 through July 2, at Music Box. Following are reviews of selected films; for a full schedule see musicboxtheatre.com. Downloaded This engrossing documentary traces the rise and fall of Napster, the free file-sharing service that revolutionized music consumption, ran afoul of the record industry, and became a test case in copyright law. Writer-director Alex Winter focuses on the partnership between Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker, who founded Napster in 1999, and the excitement of discovery and entrepreneurship is almost as potent here as in The Social Network (in which Parker figured as a character)....

In 1989 Pete Jordan was a 23-year-old college dropout with no money and no idea what he wanted to do. Hence, dishwashing. The jobs were easy to get and required little skill, thought, or commitment. The work struck a weird spark inside his slacker skull, and Jordan soon transformed himself into “Dishwasher Pete,” an insouciant craftsman who spent the next 12 years traveling the country in a quest to bust suds in all 50 states....

Given the ongoing mania for retooling old pop genres (alt-country, disco punk, freak folk) it seems almost preordained that the 60s girl-group sound will get its day in the sun. At first glance, this act from Brighton, England–singers Becki, Rose, and Gwenno plus an all-boy backing band called the Cassettes–might seem like a silly joke. But the Pipettes (with a soft i, not like the chem-lab gear) are as authentically inauthentic as any Phil Spector creation....

DAVE SUMMERS Courtesy of Pet Symmetry’s Facebook page By now you’ve probably read that Riot Fest announced another wave of bands slated to play its three-day punk blowout in Humboldt Park, most notably the Pixies and Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. (Unfortunately Motorhead and Bad Brains dropped off the bill due to “unforeseen circumstances.” Ohio crabcore outfit Attack Attack! also cancelled on Riot Fest, but that’s a relief.) There’s obviously a lot of hubbub around the newest bands at the top of the bill even though, say, the Pixies will be performing without Kim Deal (she left the group last month), so it’s fairly easy to ignore the smaller bands, but I’m pretty excited about one group listed at the very bottom of the lineup—local emo three-piece Pet Symmetry....

QOpen marriages—do they ever work? Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Then about a year ago, I met someone who turned from a friendship into a strong attraction. Instead of having an affair, I told my husband that I wanted to be able to pursue sex with this person since I wasn’t getting what I wanted at home. Husband got pissed and said no way (no surprise), but that if I did do anything, he didn’t want to know about it....

Q OK, I need a kick in the face or something. My boyfriend of two years and I broke up a little more than a week ago. He cheated. But there’s a bit more to the story: He was a raging alcoholic, and I’ve broken up with him a few times. One of those times—when he was at our place and supposed to be packing his things and be gone by morning—I kind of rebounded off of some guy, had sex with him, then came home later the next day and found out that my boyfriend was still at my place....

I’m a 29-year-old married man. My wife and I are both active people (rock climbing, cycling, and kayaking), and our sex life is good. However, since high school I’ve been turned on by thick, big-butt, big-tit, ugly, trashy girls. Earlier in my 20s I would secretly go to bars in the suburbs to pick up these thick, ugly girls. But I’ve only ever been in relationships with fit, attractive, intellectual girls....

Like most White Sox fans, I’ve spent the winter trying not to think about the elephant in the dugout—the elephant the Sox are stuck with for three more years, and to whom they still owe $44 million. Williams told reporters he signed Dunn because of his “consistency.” Dunn did prove remarkably consistent last year, hitting .160 in the first half of the season and .158 in the second half, while whiffing with Herculean efficiency against lefties and righties, starters and relievers, at home and away, in the afternoon and at night, with the infield shifted or tweeting....

When I was young, I had the idea that Martin Luther King Jr., who earned his PhD in theology, was actually a medical doctor. With a word or a laying on of hands, I imagined, he could mend wounds, cure diseases. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In The Mountaintop, her punchy, irreverent 2011 play, meticulously staged by Court Theatre, Katori Hall sweeps aside the gauzy mythos....

These bottles of Rolle Bolle are almost as sweaty as I am. New Belgium Brewing’s new summer seasonal, Rolle Bolle, has been around since April (and will continue shipping through September), but this past weekend was the first time it got hot enough for me to think, “You know, I could really use an unassertive, sessionable beer that doesn’t taste like somebody wrung it out of a stale hamburger bun....

Kathryn Bigelow follows her Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker with this gripping account of the search for Osama bin Laden, focusing on bureaucratic infighting at the CIA as the political winds shift and new intelligence brings Seal Team Six to bin Laden’s door. Jessica Chastain plays a CIA officer who grows more obsessed with each al Qaeda attack and, persuaded that bin Laden is hiding in Abbottabad, Pakistan, crosses swords with Islamabad station chief Kyle Chandler in her determination to move on the intelligence....

saturday5 Saturday5 Bryan Scary & the Shredding Tears Dead Meadow Polvo Sunday6 Ahmad JamalLucky 7sThe RaceSpits Tuesday8 Happy Mondays Wednesday9 Chris Corsano, ThronesKing Wilkie Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » POLVO Polvo‘s moment was a long time ago: their reign over the indie-rock dominion lasted maybe four years in the mid-90s, peaking with 1996’s Exploded Drawing, with all its punchy riffs and angles and meandering guitar queerness....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The subject of this week’s cover story, Mark Mavrantonis, executive chef at Fulton’s on the River, is a nice guy and a helluva storyteller, but if you read some of his writings without meeting him first, I wouldn’t blame you for being a little nervous. In 2003, after leaving the San Francisco-based seafood chain McCormick & Schmick’s, he fueled up on coffee, sat down at the keyboard, and pounded out the frustrations built up over years working in the corporate galleys....

I saw this as a joke somewhere, but it got me wondering what the answer was. Why is the alphabet in that order? Who decided A was the first letter, B was the second, and so on? –Eric S., via e-mail Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The alphabet used in English, and with some variations in most other European languages, comes from Semitic speakers who adapted it from Egyptian hieroglyphics about 4,000 years ago....