Nan Zabriskie belongs to a subset of the population that really “geeks out” over wigs. It comprises mostly hairdressers and theater people, but every now and then you come across what she calls “wig hobbyists”—people who just really like wigs. And they’re apparently really patient. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » She’s met more than a few wig hobbyists at Wigs & Hair Chicago, a series of five-day programs that teaches wig maintenance and from-scratch wig building....

From The Other Side of the Mountain The Peace on Earth Film Festival continues through Sunday at the Cultural Center, presenting free screenings of documentaries and fiction films that “raise awareness of peace, nonviolence, social justice, and an eco-balanced world.” Surely the most remarkable movie in the lineup is The Other Side of the Mountain, the first fiction film produced in North Korea by an American citizen. It screens tomorrow at 4 PM with writer-producer Joon Bai in attendance....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I’m also of the opinion that free improvisation isn’t his strong suit. When he uses computer processing and electronics to create textural, drone-based music–as he does in Masul, his duo with Swiss reedist Thomas Mejer–he can really nail it, but in more straightforward improv settings he struggles a little. Though he’s very skilled, he can be tentative when there’s no score or no clear leader....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Get in line. Or go to the head of it, perhaps, by entering the McKnight Knight News Challenge. The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation just gave this blog a nudge, so I’m passing on word that the foundation has some $5 million to give away “for innovative ideas using digital experiments to transform community news and information exchange,” and the deadline to apply is November 1....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » On Friday I opened the Tribune to its Perspective page and confronted the headline “The most insufferable fans in sports live in St. Louis.” The essay, by Jonathan Mahler by way of Bloomberg, asserted that “people are finally getting nauseated at the pious gloss that’s endlessly smeared across this ‘storied franchise,’” said franchise being the Cardinals, of course, now engaged in their third NLCS in three years....

According to this post on DNAinfo New York, tapes recorded by a wire-wearing informant that are being used as evidence in a racketeering case against Genovese crime family associate Carmine “Papa Smurf” Franco include segments where two alleged gangsters discuss the merits of punk icons the Sex Pistols: There’s not much to add to this other than to point out that the universe is an amazing place that will blow your mind out of the back of your skull if you give it even half a chance....

Dying is easy but comedy is hard, as the saying goes. I’m not sure where drama fits in, but Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, the writing and directing team who made Half Nelson (2006) and Sugar (2008), create a fine ensemble cast for this third feature by combining skilled character actors (Viola Davis, Jeremy Davies, Adrian Martinez) and professional comedians playing straight (Zach Galifianakis, Jim Gaffigan, Aasif Mandvi). The resulting story, about a depressed high schooler (Keir Gilchrist) who naively checks himself into a hospital psychiatric ward and then discovers he has to stay five days for observation, inhabits that wonderful and elusive space between comedy and drama where genuine human behavior resides....

Over the past few years local stand-up Vanessa Fraction has opened for Cedric the Entertainer, performed in a U.S. military tour, and landed a small role in Barbershop 2. Her look and demeanor communicate a silky soul-sista vibe that’s jarringly, sometimes hilariously at odds with her casual, call-it-like-it-is vulgarity. She’s comfortable joking about both female self-empowerment and master/slave role-playing with one of her “annual white boys.” There’s an endearing eagerness and sincerity to her persona as an ambitious young actress-comedian, but equally attractive is the way she savors ribald experiences....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, which may be the reason Adventures in Plymptoons (Cinema Libre Studio), Alexia Anastasio’s flattering new video documentary on cult animator Bill Plympton, suffers from some of the same problems as Plympton’s feature-length animations. A master craftsman of surreal sight gags, Plympton shines brightly in his short films (39 to date) and his countless TV spots, while the features I’ve seen (Hair High, Idiots and Angels) are so vaguely plotted that they grow tedious after a while despite their wildly imaginative art....

The Age of the Album—which lasted a little more than 30 years, from the late 60s till the early aughts—was a very good time for the business of selling music. The album format had a much higher profit margin than the previously dominant single, and it funded a period of music-industry excess that seems positively Caligulan, especially from the vantage point of the relatively austere Age of the Download. Best of Chicago voting is live now....

Here’s another sign that poet Carl Sandburg’s ode to Chicago as “Hog Butcher for the World” is hopelessly out of date: Barkaat Foods, which owns the city’s last remaining slaughterhouse, doesn’t butcher hogs. That’s because swine’s not halal, and Barkaat caters to the Islamic market. The slaughterhouse, in the back of an unassuming brick building on a stretch of South Halsted near West 38th, is indistinguishable from its neighbors except for its distinctive gamy smell....

For ten hours each night over ten days, 12 people constructed Chicago’s largest public artwork to date—Jessica Stockholder’s Color Jam. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » What makes up your record collection—and, if you’re of a certain age, encases your couch—now covers four buildings and splashes the pavement of State and Adams streets. According to Chicago Loop Alliance outgoing executive director Ty Tabing, the vinyl project—Art Loop‘s newest public piece, officially unveiled Tuesday, June 5—is even bigger than the Chicago Picasso sculpture and the recently removed Marilyn Monroe statue....

Born Naked Theatre Company’s courageous cast can’t save noted children’s author and Playboy writer Shel Silverstein from his theatrical weaknesses in this collection of seven short pieces. “One-act” doesn’t have to mean one setup or one joke, but too often with Silverstein it does, as one-dimensional characters milk transparent conflicts, then achieve unenlightening resolutions. And the wordplay so captivating in his poetry is only occasionally evident–there are two rhyming hookers in “Buy One, Get One Free....

Dear members of the International Olympic Committee Evaluation Commission: Here’s the fundamental problem: We can’t afford the games. We’re broke—and I mean damn near destitute. The public school system is about $475 million in the red and the city’s facing its own deficit of at least $200 million. Just a few months ago Mayor Daley said he’d balanced the budget by raising fees and fines and slashing the city payroll, but already expenses have risen and revenues have dropped faster than anticipated....

Film critics rarely refer to narrative movies when writing about experimental cinema—or vice versa—and this might create the impression that the two are entirely separate forms. Yet they’ve overlapped for as long as movies have existed. For instance, the innovative editing of Sergei Eisenstein’s 1920s features owes much to the experiments in montage that other Soviet filmmakers were constructing around the same time. More recently, well-known narrative filmmakers like David Fincher (in Seven) and Gus Van Sant (in his “death trilogy” of Gerry, Elephant, and Last Days) have shown the influence of experimental cinema in their films’ textures and atmospheres....

The Reader’s Choice: Big Chicks Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Dollar burger specials can vary pretty widely—and usually they vary from greasy little sliders to institutional beef patties served dry on the bun. But on Mondays the Uptown gay bar Big Chicks, with its 50s-diner-meets-Mapplethorpe vibe, serves up juicy, delicious quarter-pound beef patties with lettuce, tomato, pickle spear, and a choice of either crispy battered fries or organic mixed greens; another buck gets you a premium topper like Brie, bacon, or avocado....

youtube.com/user/seijinlee There have to be at least two Sei Jin Lees. Or he’s got a teleporter. It’s mind-blowing to me that Lee can get to so many shows per night—sometimes four or more—and capture them all on video. Lee has been uploading clips to his YouTube account since 2007, and his punctuality is as admirable as his tirelessness: I’ve often gotten home from playing a show to find my band’s set, along with every other set of the night, already online for your viewing pleasure....

Baauer This Sunday I turn 36 years old, and—strangely enough for someone whose life revolves around music—I don’t think I’ve ever thought to look up what was going on in the music world on my birth date. Turns out I was born the same week Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours and Hall & Oates’s “Rich Girl” were released, and historyorb.com tells me that I came into the world while Rod Hart’s “C....

Randy Stearns was old enough to drive, but not old enough to vote, when he put up signs for Walter Mondale in the mostly Republican city of Mountain View, California, in the run-up to the 1984 presidential election. While studying printmaking at Northwestern, he says, he did a little volunteer work. In 1992, while working as a freelance graphic artist and temp, he called voters from Evanston on behalf of Bill Clinton....

Honky Tonk Bingo INFO 773-252-7767 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Honky Tonk Bingo was introduced in February 2004 to stir up business on slow winter nights at the Wicker Park bar. Owner Bud Eggert says he wanted to play up the bar’s hillbilly aesthetic–it’s in a former gas station–with a game that combined country music and barroom fun. To his mind, bingo was “a redneck thing to do....