Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Despite its ridiculous name, I really wanted to like Hoppin’ Hots. The appearance of the Sonoran dog in this part of the world had shown that there’s a whole slew of things that might taste good on a hot dog, like bacon or beans or even fried eggs. After all, we dress up burgers. Why not hot dogs? Why not with gourmet ingredients?...

I’m not settling in at the keyboard to write about Anderson Cooper, but let’s start with him. On my lap is an op-ed from the New York Times that’s about Cooper allowing he’s gay. “All this talk about privacy reveals deep and troubling assumptions,” argues the writer, Daniel Mendelsohn. “Mr. Cooper compared disclosure of one’s homosexuality to revealing ‘who a reporter votes for’ or ‘what religion they are,’ but in a post-Freudian age in which sexuality is seen as a core aspect of identity, this comes across as disingenuous....

Amaranth, barley, farro, quinoa, and other ancient grains are making a comeback these days, finding favor with chefs who appreciate their earthy flavors, chewy textures, nutritional benefits, and novelty value. On the local scene, chefs are dreaming up new preparations, seeking out rare varieties, and even helping to resurrect grains that have become almost extinct. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Enyart also uses quinoa, wild rice, and Chinese black rice, but Iroquois white corn has a special place on the roster: the Frontera Farmer Foundation is helping Spence Farm in downstate Livingston County rescue it from near extinction....

Aesthetically, Samm-Art Williams’s Home belongs to a radical tradition. Like a lot of other works that have emerged from New York’s experimental scene, the 1979 play, running now at Court Theatre, uses stripped-down storytelling techniques to achieve a populist immediacy. It requires little in the way of set or props and only three actors. Williams says he made the logistics simple enough that a cast could perform it in the streets....

If you spend more than five minutes a day on the Internet you’ve probably already seen the video for “Shine,” by a Christian rock band from Midland, Texas, called Final Placement. You know, the one with the kids who look like they’re probably really nice and Texas polite playing some of the shittiest rock music ever made. Surprisingly, a person claiming to be the guy responsible for the song’s meme-worthy guitar solo has jumped into the comments section on a post dedicated to the video at the blog Dangerous Minds....

Unlike Paul Kahan’s other ventures (Blackbird, Avec, the Publican), Big Star is a bar. But you may have to remind yourself of that, because it’s got probably the tastiest Mexican menu of any bar in Chicago. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The queso fundido (browned Chihuahua cheese and chorizo with a lush poblano underlayment) is surpassingly wonderful. The tacos are fatty and salty (like bar food should be), but the pork belly and lamb are of such high quality that a little extra lard and sodium are way worth it....

Now dilapidated and covered in graffiti, Brach’s Candy Factory stands broodingly on Chicago’s west side as a reminder of the city’s forgotten candy industry. The once prosperous candy-making monolith—built by German immigrant Emil Brach nearly a century ago—shuttered in 2003 when then-owner Barry Callebaut, the world’s largest chocolate manufacturer, showed the last of the factory’s 3,500 employees the door (Brach’s was later purchased by Farley’s & Sathers in 2007). The palace was a sweet tooth’s promised land, manufacturing thousands of pounds of gum, nougat, malt balls, and coconut candies a day....

Two weeks from today Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds will release Push the Sky Away, their 15th album in 30 years and the latest evidence that Cave will one day go down in the history books as one of the baddest dudes of all time. Now in his mid-50s, he’s started to resemble Neil Diamond’s hoodlum little brother, but as usual the man’s indelible elegance means he can pull the look off....

EVA PERON TRAP DOOR THEATRE Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The next morning Le Figaro called the play “sinister, inept, indecent, odious, nauseating and dishonest.” The string of insults probably delighted the playwright, flamboyant Argentinean expatriate Raul Damonte Botana, better known by his pen name, Copi. Like the exuberantly anticommercial Trap Door Theatre, now giving Eva Peron an intriguing but overly embellished production, Copi showed no interest in mainstream bourgeois tastes....

The Architecture and Design Film Festival runs Thursday through Monday, May 5 through 9, at the Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State, and the Wit Hotel, 201 N. State. Tickets are $10, $7 for students, and $5 for Film Center members. Reviews of selected films follow; for a complete schedule see siskelfilmcenter.org. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Contemporary Days: The Designs of Lucienne and Robin Day Married for more than 50 years, British designers Robin and Lucienne Day combined practical insight with the imagination of great artists: Robin’s sleek and sturdy furniture, made from sparse materials, drew inspiration from his experience living on rations during World War II, and Lucienne’s textiles found a popular function for the innovations of modernist painting....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The Umbrella Music Festival continues through Sunday night, and I suggest reading Peter Margasak’s guide to the city’s most daring jazz festival. There are plenty of other shows too. Tonight there’s Bridesmaid at Empty Bottle and Basia Bulat at Schubas. Tomorrow you can check out Allen Toussaint at SPACE or Grant Hart at Red Line Tap. Saturday you can see the World Is a Beautiful Place and I Am No Longer Afraid to Die at Saki in the afternoon or at Beat Kitchen in the evening....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » No one in court was accusing Thompson of dishonesty as the board of director’s fiscal watchdog, but no one was accusing him of competence either. Black and Radler were charged with pocketing millions of dollars — in noncompete payments — that should have gone to shareholders when Hollinger began selling off papers in the late 90s. Thompson testified that his committee often didn’t approve these payments and didn’t even know about them....

In her one-woman show Courtney Berne says that the experiences of the women she’s met as a surgical assistant at an abortion clinic have stuck with her. But they don’t stay with us very long after this 50-minute evening of monologues ends. The clinic patients fall mostly into one of three camps: overwhelmed teen, rape victim, or smug liberal. Jemma Alix Levy’s staging for Pegasus Productions does little to help Berne focus her work, and the characters are insufficiently differentiated vocally and physically....

Sansculotte/Wikimedia Commons Richard Neutra, who designed this Los Angeles residence, is one of the architects profiled in the film. Tonight at 7:30 PM Chicago Filmmakers kicks off a new ongoing series of documentaries about architecture and technology called REdesign. First up is Coast Modern, an hour-long piece about modernist architecture as it developed on the west coast of North America. The movie argues that west-coast modernism is distinguished by its sensitivity to nature, presenting buildings that show the influence of nature and oftentimes blend in with their surroundings....

From Yasujiro Ozu’s Late Spring “The Japanese film audience still behaves much as it does at the theater,” wrote Donald Richie in his A Hundred Years of Japanese Film. “Members . . . rarely leave the theater during the projection and often remain seated until all the credits have been viewed and the lights go up. For whatever reason, the film is watched in silence, in marked contrast to film-viewing habits elsewhere, but much in keeping with Western theater-going behavior....

Italo-Europeo Our correspondent learned a lesson or two from London town. Freshly home from London, I empty the notebook . . . • Chicago media made a big to-do last fall when the CTA rolled out its newest cars on the Green and Pink Lines—cars that will be introduced this month on the far more heavily traveled Red Line. The controversy turned on the cars’ longitudinal seating—a configuration new to Chicago—and the contoured design of those seats, which arguably constrain and vex the ampler haunches nestled upon them....

A still from EMA’s video for “Satellites” Rock bands hate the Internet—or at least they’ve turned their hesitations and anxieties about hyperconnectivity into fertile ground for songs. You’ll find it in the first Death From Above 1979 album since they came out of hibernation and all over the latest Parquet Courts side release; you can hear its echoes on EMA’s new album and in certain pockets of a new St....

QI just started an intense relationship with a guy who has a boyfriend. This guy and I love each other. However, he is uncomfortable with me meeting his boyfriend. I’ve asked if it’s OK that we’re fucking, and he said they’re in an open relationship so it’s OK. I asked if it’s OK that we’re in love, and he said yes. So why the secrecy? My lover’s only explanation is that his boyfriend doesn’t want to know about the guys he fucks around with....

I’m sure there’s an intriguing backstory to this tale, which will perhaps someday be told in a memoir by Lewis or Emanuel. But for the moment, it’s safe to say that this is as close as the mayor can come to mustering an apology for his wretched behavior. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I’m not sure why he’d deny that quote. It’s probably his single greatest contribution to the American vernacular, one that may someday gain him entry into Bartlett’s....

Malcolm X, who would have been 88 last Sunday, grew up in Lansing, so it’s probably no surprise that his last car was also a product of Michigan: a 1963 black Oldsmobile 98. In 1972, seven years after he was assassinated, his widow, Betty Shabazz, donated the car to his namesake, Malcolm X College, where it sits in the lobby, looking out onto West Jackson Boulevard. It’s a development that would have pleased Malcolm, says Shelia Pegues-Porter, the college’s director of public relations....