It’s not easy being an opening act, never mind the first act of a daylong festival bill. That’s the challenge that Chrissy Murderbot, aka local producer Chris Shively, faced at last year’s Pitchfork Music Festival: he had to take a set that he usually blasts at nightclubs in the wee hours of the morning and make it work outside at lunchtime, shortly after the fest’s gates opened. Shively’s party-ready, genre-leaping style and energetic, upbeat performance probably would’ve been enough to win over the curious (and quite a few of the folks camping out for bands playing hours later), but he wasn’t taking any chances....

Chicago Theater Collection at the Harold Washington Library Center 400 S. State, ninth floor 312-747-4875 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Located on the ninth floor of the central library, this special collection contains memorabilia dating back almost to the time of the city’s incorporation in 1837. Playbills and scrapbooks document performances at such long-gone venues as McVicker’s Theatre and Crosby’s Opera House, and production budgets, personal correspondence, posters, and reviews chronicle homegrown companies ranging from the Goodman to the Godzilla Rainbow Troupe....

After a particularly brutal loss midway through the Blackhawks’ season, members of the media crowded around goalie Corey Crawford, seated at his locker. Few noticed among the pack, but from across the room backup goalie Ray Emery approached warily. He bent over a little, and peered through the bodies to see if Crawford was all right, as if he were checking on some cornered animal trying to survive an attack of wild beasts....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The Supreme Court celebrated Independence Day a few days early by unshackling the Second Amendment, declaring the freedom of Americans to defend our lives, liberty, and property by keeping guns at home. Anyone who, like me, was viscerally dismayed by the 5-4 Roberts bloc (therefore doubly suspect) ruling, written by Justice Scalia (therefore triply suspect), could take comfort in critiques that emotionally dismissed it as “wrongheaded and dangerous” or coolly dissected it as ahistorically reasoned....

The fourth Chicago International Documentary Festival continues through Sunday, April 8, with screenings at the Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division; Portage; Society for Arts, 1112 N. Milwaukee; and Univ. of Chicago Doc Films. Unless otherwise noted, tickets are $9, $7 for seniors and students, and $7 for shows before 2 PM or after 10 PM. A festival pass good for ten screenings is available for $70 but does not include the closing-night gala; for more information call 773-486-9612....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The club is in Lakeside, Michigan, where Addams owned property and spent the summer months, along with a number of other prominent Chicagoans. Other notable visitors and/or members included Chicago Bears founder and coach George Halas, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Luis Alvarez, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, and Oriental Institute founder James Henry Breasted. Carl Sandburg was another. He had a home in nearby Herbert....

When Carnivale bartender Luis Rodriguez received his challenge, caraway seed, from the Paramount Room‘s Allison Hagio, he says the first thing he thought of was a pastrami sandwich, the meat piled high on pumpernickel bread. As it happened, Carnivale executive chef David Dworshak had some house-made pastrami on hand. Coiled on a toothpick, it serves as the garnish for Rodriguez’s “very Carnivale-like” cocktail based on tomato water, made from tomatoes grown on the restaurant’s roof, and Bombay gin infused with toasted caraway seeds....

Lots of bands don’t even exist for as long as it’s taken these locals to find the sweet spot in their heavy-duty hybrid of dub, funk, art-rock, electro, and hardcore–they’ve been playing together in one configuration or another for a decade, but only in the past three or four years have all their fascinating ideas made the leap from the drawing board to the sound system. The new Heavy International (Aesthetics) is the second album front man Damon Locks and bassist Wayne Montana have recorded with drummer Tim Mulvenna, who’s turned out in many ways to be the trio’s missing link....

Book it over to the 28th Printers Row Lit Fest—this year hosting 160 author events, 200 booksellers, and an estimated 125,000 fans of the writer’s art. Here are the highlights, chronologically: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » First thing Saturday, June 9, former CBS news anchor Dan Rather discusses his new autobiography, Rather Outspoken: My Life in the News, with Tribune reporter Rick Kogan (Sat 10 AM, Harold Washington Center, 400 S....

Violinist Hilary Hahn entered the Curtis Institute of Music at age 10, appeared with the Baltimore Symphony at 11, received an Avery Fisher Career Grant at 15, and debuted at Carnegie Hall at 16. Now 27, she’s played with nearly every major orchestra, making her CSO debut this weekend long overdue. A prolific recording artist, she’s won numerous awards, but none of her releases yet top her Grammy-winning 2001 recording of the Brahms concerto....

Favoring a greener environment is like favoring school reform: it’s a lot easier to say you’re for it than to bring it about. Del Valle also found time to discuss his positions with the Reader. Spokespersons for Emanuel and Chico said their candidates weren’t available, and Braun’s office didn’t respond to interview requests. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The Fisk and Crawford coal-powered plants emit five million metric tons of carbon dioxide a year, as well as sulfur dioxide and particulate matter, into the Latino-immigrant neighborhoods of Pilsen and Little Village....

One of the strangest side effects of studying a foreign language is the desire not just to immerse yourself in a new culture but to become a part of it, indistinguishable from a native speaker. Few writers have chronicled this phenomenon better than Alice Kaplan, in her 1993 memoir French Lessons and last year’s Dreaming in French, a triptych of portraits of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Susan Sontag, and Angela Davis, each of whom spent a year in Paris in her early 20s....

PRODUCTION – PLAY “Enchanted April” – Circle Theatre“In Arabia We’d All Be Kings” – Steep Theatre Company“Mariette in Ecstasy” – Lifeline Theatre“The Mark of Zorro” – Lifeline Theatre“Our Town” – The Hypocrites“Rose and the Rime” – The House Theatre of Chicago Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » DIRECTOR – MUSICAL OR REVUE Fred Anzevino – “Evita” – Theo Ubique Theatre Company in association with Michael JamesFred Anzevino – “Jacques Brel’s Lonesome Losers of the Night” – Theo Ubique Theatre Company in association with Michael JamesMary Beidler Gearen – “The Christmas Schooner” – Bailiwick Repertory TheatrePaul S....

Somehow, in the middle of the night, a story went up on a Sun-Times blog site called Voices, which apparently had the three- and two-star winners and linked to the complete list. The link to the complete list never worked, and the story is gone now, but the report is exactly what you would expect if you assume that Michelin is going to be as stingy as possible, and so far it seems confirmed by Michelin....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Sometimes I suspect that effects-heavy multiplex movies are at the mercy of expensive technology and not the other way around. Several reviews I’ve read of the upcoming Hobbit movie fault it for being overlong and containing too-little story, yet this same criticism could be applied to multiple blockbusters of recent years that exceed two-hour running times. I understand the logic behind the growing lengths—blockbuster movies cost so much, both to make and to see, that studios and spectators alike want to get their money’s worth....

Why do most people assume that all nonmonogamous relationships are destined to fail? Because we only hear about the ones that do. If a three-way or an affair has played a factor in a divorce or breakup, we hear all about it. But we rarely hear from happy couples who aren’t monogamous, because they don’t want to be perceived as dangerous sex maniacs who are destined to divorce. Best of Chicago voting is live now....

QI’m a straight woman who loves my boyfriend, but sex isn’t a priority for me. His sex drive, on the other hand, is ridiculous. He gets very upset when I don’t have sex with him and accuses me of not being interested in him anymore, which isn’t the case. I just can’t fuck on demand! Most people would probably say that my boyfriend is an insensitive asshole for pressuring me for sex....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Within just a couple days of the news that the City Council would vote on an independent-promoter ordinance this Wednesday (see my amended post below), a torrent of outrage erupted that crossed all social and genre lines, sweeping up experimental-music fans and superstar rapper-producers alike. My inbox has been flooded with mass e-mails from bands, venues, DJs, bloggers, and regular old people who like to go out to clubs–even people who don’t live in Chicago–all of them calling for organized opposition to the measure....

The Chicago Blues Festival, like most blues fests, makes commemoration part of its mission as a matter of course. This year a multitude of blues and boogie pianists are on hand to celebrate the centennials of Albert Ammons and Sunnyland Slim, and former sidemen of Howlin’ Wolf (who would’ve been 97 on June 10), Muddy Waters (Wolf’s greatest rival, brought by Sunnyland in 1947 to the label that became Chess Records), and Sunnyland are reuniting for sets in honor of their old bosses....

Pity the writer with a story to tell that everybody but him is telling. This story dates back to March of 1963, when the lily-white Mississippi State Bulldogs sneaked out of their state—in defiance of its governor and a court order—to play an integrated Loyola of Chicago team in the regional semifinals of the NCAA tournament. Mississippi State lost. So did jim crow. Four years earlier Lenehan had decided the ’63 Loyola Ramblers were a book begging to be written....