Nixon’s Nixon Writers’ Theatre Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » So it’s not much of a leap to the fantasy offered in Russell Lees’s 1995 play Nixon’s Nixon, set on the night before Nixon will become the first U.S. president to resign. The “smoking gun” White House tape revealing Nixon’s efforts to get the FBI to stop the Watergate investigation has made impeachment a certainty....

Last I looked, Chicago’s public schools were so broke that Mayor Emanuel had to close 50 of them, fire hundreds of teachers, and slash budgets so deeply that in some cases funding disappeared for librarians, chess teams, and even toilet paper. Well, when you put it that way . . . Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I love lil’ Lincoln! It’s a great, high-scoring school filled with wonderful children and caring parents....

Prix Fixe rrr Discreetly located in a town house spitting distance from chef Grant Achatz’s first employer, Charlie Trotter, Alinea is marked only by a valet’s sandwich board at the curb. Inside, a dining room and glass-walled kitchen share the first floor; up a set of glass stairs covered by metal mesh mats are two more small, luxuriously spare dining rooms. The menu has changed since I went there, but the concept remains the same: prix fixe tasting menus of experimental cuisine in 12 ($135) or a daunting 24 ($195) courses; wine pairings add to the bill....

“We’re going to have a Ferris wheel, a Tilt-a-Whirl, a Yoyo. Carnival games like throwing darts at balloons,” says Riot Fest founder Mike Petryshyn. “Just picture a state fair—that’s kind of what we’re doing.” As he describes this year’s version of the annual punk-and-proud music festival, I’m able to picture it pretty clearly—right up until I remember that this particular state fair will feature four stages of bands, including the Stooges and the Jesus & Mary Chain, playing smack in the middle of Humboldt Park....

Q Please settle a difference of opinion that stumped our small group at the coffee shop: Why do guys wear socks on their feet in porn? I say it’s a tradition. My friends claim it is a foot-fetish thing. My credibility rides on this, so thanks for answering. —Socked in Denver Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » A The most obvious possibility: the strap-on was a late Christmas gift presented to him to be used on him, not by him....

When the music ends at the Jazz Festival, it’s usually just starting somewhere else in the city. Worthwhile options each night include loose jam sessions and full-blown concerts—far more than I’m listing here—and as usual there’s one morning event, Delmark’s annual brunch at Jazz Record Mart. For fans of straight-ahead blowing, the Jazz Showcase is usually the hottest spot in town all weekend; multi-­instrumentalist Ira Sullivan and pianist-vibist Stu Katz (who plays with pianist Willie Pickens at the Cultural Center on Thursday afternoon) host the club’s customary jams....

thursday27 Thursday27 JayhawksKing Tuff, Hex DispensersNellie McKayMitsuko UchidaMars Williams & Mike Reed Friday28 Claire Chase & Jacob GreenbergJayhawksPomegranates?UestloveMitsuko Uchida Saturday29 Mitsuko Uchida Sunday30 Acid BirdsOlafur ArnaldsJohn HammondTyvek Tuesday1 King Tuff headlines and the Hex Dispensers open. 10 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, 773-276-3600, free with RSVP to rsvp@emptybottle.com. —Miles Raymer Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » CLAIRE CHASE & JACOB GREENBERG Flutist Claire Chase is one of contemporary classical music’s most imposing figures....

The Sunday before Christmas, Frank “The Sodfather” Balestri deftly scattered fistfuls of fennel powder, crushed red pepper, cayenne, paprika, salt, and Calabrian chile paste over 50 pounds of raw, coarsely ground pork butt and some sirloin. He splashed it with wine, then he and a pair of old pals, Ron Ranola and Phil Speciale, plunged their hands into the cold meat, kneading the spices into it and plucking out chunks of white fat....

But there’s more: “A spire is finally poised to be placed atop the Trump Tower here, bringing the skyscraper to 1,361 feet, the tallest American building since the Sears Tower was built three decades ago.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » And a whole bunch of famous locals–Rick Bayless, Scott Turow, Jeff Tweedy–think Chicago’s a wonderful place to live. And, true, a nice new bridge will soon connect the Art Institute to Millennium Park, which, by the way, was so over cost that we had to sell a bunch of parking garages [scroll down] to pay off the bills....

Robert Mitchum in The Story of G.I. Joe On Monday Doc Films at University of Chicago begins its winter calendar with The Story of G.I. Joe, the first in a series devoted to actor Robert Mitchum (the subject of a recent Bleader post by Drew Hunt, incidentally). It’s one of those “deep cuts” of American film history that Doc programmers are so good at rooting out, a risk-taking studio film by an underappreciated auteur....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “It’s often said that conservatives seek out converts, while progressives seek out heretics. That’s too often true of the green community. Everyone’s supposed to pass all these tests of consistency and commitment before they’re allowed to speak out. Gore’s got a big house. Arnold’s got Hummers. Lester Brown probably pees in the shower. We constantly worry about whether people deserve to speak out about the environment, whether impure spokespeople will tarnish the movement, whether offering people too-easy personal solutions will anesthetize or stupefy them, whether passing imperfect legislation will forever exhaust our political capital....

I know a lot of people who read this blog do some from work, and as far as I’m aware most bosses aren’t cool with their employees watching the entire 17 minute long (!) YouTube commercial for the 11th Annual Gathering of the Juggalos. “But,” you’re saying, “I absolutely need to know what to expect from the 11th Annual Gathering of the Juggalos because I already bought my tickets without even checking what sort of entertainment they have planned because I am a diehard juggalo and the Gathering is the highlight of the summer for my husband and myself....

Four years ago, off-Loop theater pioneer Stuart Oken pitched his dream idea to Northwestern University. He envisioned an incubator for new musicals: professional writers and composers, working with students, would develop shows that would be produced on campus but could eventually make their way to real-world venues, both nonprofit and commercial. The incubator would fill a gap in an industry where producers were finding it increasingly expensive to workshop new shows, and the students would get invaluable practical experience....

A despairing realtor falls apart at a suburban open house in Steve Spencer’s hilarious dark comedy. After his wife leaves him, Jack’s a mess. He passionately embraces another man’s wife, prods a couple into physically assaulting him, and downs tequila with a prospective buyer. But only a happy liberal couple, at whom Jack spews a dark tirade of distrust, contributes–unwillingly–to his rapid downfall. Jack’s not alone in his angry unhappiness, which makes it easier for audiences to laugh at Spencer’s acerbic commentary on globalism, commercialism, and sweet hopes for the American Dream....

San Francisco metal band Deafheaven (see also Soundboard) started in 2010 as a low-key collaboration between vocalist George Clarke and guitarist Kerry McCoy, who wrote the songs for their demo using a nylon-string guitar and recorded with borrowed gear. In the three years since, they’ve developed a robust and original sound that melds black metal, postrock, emo, and ambient; Deafheaven’s recent second album, Sunbather (Deathwish Inc.), is beautiful, harsh, and huge....

In July 2008 guitarist Nathaniel Braddock was backstage at the Pitchfork Music Festival, waiting to go on with his group the Occidental Brothers Dance Band International, when he got an unexpected phone call from Samba Mapangala. They’d never met or even talked before, but Braddock knew exactly who Mapangala was. The veteran singer, born in the Congo, had been a major star in Africa for nearly four decades, most of them as the leader of Orchestra Virunga—one of the most revered practitioners of the golden-age African guitar-band music that the Occidental Brothers were trying to re-create....

HARM | Brian W. Aldiss | Del Rey | Having read loads of Brian Aldiss’s sci-fi stuff in the 70s, I thought for sure he must be dead by now. But at 80, with more than 75 books under his belt, he’s not only alive and kicking–he’s kicking hard. His latest is a feverish novel examining paranoia in a terrorism-obsessed world creeping toward totalitarianism. British citizen Paul Fadhil Abbas Ali has written what he considers a comic novel a la P....

The writer Paula Kamen has had a constant, mostly medium-grade headache for 22 years. In 2005 she published All in My Head, a memoir about her efforts to make it go away and about how she learned, eventually, to deal with the constant pain. The process of creating the book, she says, introduced her to a community of people grappling with the same issues. Best of Chicago voting is live now....

Deanna Isaacs Lyric Opera’s Ring team: Rob Kearley, Denni Sayers, David Pountney, Marie-Jeanne Lecca, and Matthew Rees Set designer Johan Engels was a nearly palpable presence at Lyric Opera’s press briefing with its very subdued Ring cycle creative team on Tuesday. And Rees’s models for the Ring sets, built to Engel’s specifications and embodying his vision, were in the room—hidden behind blackout curtains. But this much was clear: we won’t be seeing any revisionist spins on the Germanic myth making that (along with his anti-Semitism) made Wagner a Nazi-era favorite....

Julia Thiel Bitterness in a bottle That’s what I did today, anyway—along with Fat Rice chef Abraham Conlon, Reader editor Mara Shalhoup, and Morning Show host Tony Sarabia; we were on WBEZ talking about the Reader‘s upcoming Key Ingredient Cook-Off. This Friday, 25 of the chefs who’ve participated in Key Ingredient will prepare a dish using one of the five assigned ingredients: durian, Malort, millet, celery, or dried shrimp (VIP tickets are sold out but regular tickets are still available)....