After Peter Falk and Burgess Meredith, Graham Elliot is now the third-most-celebrated television personality to have inhabited historic Tree Studios. Of course the outspoken Elliot, who plays Good Cop on Gordon Ramsay’s MasterChef (and moonlights as a real chef), doesn’t actually live in an artist’s garret there, feverishly concocting wacky sandwich reinventions and crafting clever Tweets. Nor could a busy celebrity such as he be expected to spend a terrific amount of time in his eponymous sandwich shop....

On NPR this morning I heard a tease for an interview with Tom Hooper, who directed the new movie version of Broadway’s Les Miserables. In it they had him talking about how unnatural it is for characters to break into song every so often, the way they do in the typical musical. I wasn’t in the car long enough to hear the actual piece, and there are only highlights available online as I write this, so it’s entirely possible that the tease was completely misleading and Hooper segued into a brilliant defense of the stage musical as it’s come down to us through Rodgers & Hammerstein, Bernstein, Kern, Sondheim, and the rest....

If you were to classify a label that releases improvisational jazz and experimental music in limited runs of 100 CD-Rs as one that lives on the margins of obscurity, you’d be right on. But when Brian Labycz began the Peira label in 2007, he wasn’t focused on the masses—he just wanted to release a duo album he’d recorded with bassist Jason Roebke. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Labycz, 34, had wedged himself into Chicago’s improv community upon his return from a stint in Japan in 2003, where he lived for four years....

SurachaiTo No Avail (Handshake Inc.) Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Low-fidelity recording techniques have been a big part of black metal for much of its history, and as a consequence, the majority of the stuff sounds just fine on dinky laptop speakers—one of the few things any black-metal band has in common with Katy Perry. In recent years, as the style’s rigid orthodoxy has collapsed, black-metal artists have been making records that demand (and deserve) a higher-quality playback experience....

In this city there are plenty of ways to bid 2014 adieu, from a haunted house to a Hawaiian feast to a night of improv. Traditionalists need not worry—you can also indulge in parties complete with countdowns, balloon drops, and party favors, not to mention there’s nary a square foot of Chicago without a champagne toast at midnight. Some of our top New Year’s Eve picks are below, with an ever updating list here....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Naturally, Jackson herself best describes her bold stand. “This week I’ve begun challenging Gerard Arpey, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of American Airlines, to ‘suspend’ American Airlines’ plan to charge $15 for the first checked bag of luggage and $25 for the second bag on the basis that the proposed plan discriminates against those who can least afford the fee,” she said in a press release issued in nearly identical forms by her office, her husband, Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr....

Q I have a bit of a situation. I’m a 23-year-old heterosexual male, and I’m married. My wife and I also happen to have a girlfriend now, making our arrangement a polyamorous triad. We all love each other very much, and we’re getting to the point where we’re thinking about how to tell our parents about our relationship. If we shouldn’t disclose, then how do we deal with things like family holidays and other group events?...

HORACE SILVERLive at Newport ’58(Blue Note) Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Producer Michael Cuscuna, who helped prepare the Monk-Coltrane tapes for release, found this superb recording of the Horace Silver Quintet headlining the Newport Jazz Festival in 1958 while he was digging through the Voice of America tapes at the Library of Congress—the same vast trove where the Monk tapes were discovered. It’s hard to imagine Live at Newport ’58 causing the same kind of excitement, since Silver doesn’t have the exalted aura of a Coltrane or a Parker, but it’s still a wonderful addition to the pianist’s catalog....

On Sunday, May 13, Fletcher Weatherspoon steps out of his limo at the Sabre Room in southwest-suburban Hickory Hills, framed by the wide cascading-waterfall fountain draped over the venue’s entryway. A handsome dandy even at 80, he cuts an impressive figure—sharp bone-­colored suit, dark hat and shirt, matching tie and pocket square—and he stands tall and smiles proudly as he watches well-dressed couples pour into the banquet hall. They’re all coming out for the 2012 Mother’s Day Dinner & Show hosted by Dove Productions, an entertainment and promotions company Weatherspoon founded in 1973....

Sarah Nardi Hot Daisy When I heard that Sushi Wabi had closed, I felt my heart physically break. Sushi Wabi had been a mainstay of my 20s, a spot that, despite its location on Randolph Street’s restaurant row, still had a feel of the clandestine. It was the place you suggested for a date to demonstrate that you were in the know. It was where you brought people visiting from places like New York to prove that Chicago isn’t all steak houses and hot dogs....

There’s more to passing legislation than voting on it, but why wouldn’t he make sure… oh. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In other words, his campaign tried to play it so that if McCain’s primary campaign failed, they could use public funding to pay off his debts, but if it succeeded and he raised lots of money, they could back out of the need to take public money....

Ghoulies star Mariska Hargitay Lately I’ve been catching up on the latest season of Law & Order: SVU on Hulu, and while the series is obviously suffering from the loss of Christopher “Detective Elliot Stabler” Meloni and from a general systemic fatigue after 311 episodes, we can all agree that it’s still better than Criminal Intent. Last night, while watching an episode about a sadistic hustler who preys on closeted gay men (“ripped from the headlines” angle: spousal privilege in the context of gay marriages), I was thinking about the fact that Mariska “Detective Olivia Benson” Hargitay is one of the only remaining members of the original cast, and I realized that I didn’t know much about her besides the fact that she’s Jayne Mansfield’s daughter....

friday11 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » c selim sesler Rom clarinetist Selim Sesler grew up in Kesan, a Thracian village in the northwest corner of Turkey, where Greece and Bulgaria meet, and the confluence of all those cultures is a big part of what makes his music so dazzling. Sesler’s 2000 album The Road to Kesan, a strictly folkloric affair, is still raucous as hell; his latest, Anatolian Wedding (Doublemoon), is a more accomplished work of alchemy, simultaneously vibrant and sorrowful....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Within the demographic loosely defined as “people who take music way too seriously,” there’s a broad range of record-collecting freakiness. I’m probably at the shallow end of the pool–my collection of 45s has enough eBay potential that I could eat off it for a minute if I had to, and I own more than a couple records in the Japanese import versions with the bonus tracks....

For heterosexuals, having babies can be—very often is—a no-brainer. That’s one huge cause of the suffering in the world, but it’s also a blessing for the race. How many of us would have children if we had to think too hard about it? The costs. The anxiety and inconvenience. The messes. Would we consider it a good deal to give up a minimum two decades of our lives raising people who are pretty much guaranteed to hate us for half that time and then to move out just when they start getting interesting and potentially productive?...

If repeated openings of high-ticket restaurants in remote or unlikely neighborhoods are a sign of a strengthening economy, just one more ought to be enough to indicate a light at the end of the tunnel—or at least validate a consistently practical response to enduring stagnation. Relatively low rents in far-flung digs away from restaurant densities allow chefs with fine-dining pedigrees to keep doing their thing without resorting to something as crass and humbling as ordering from Sysco or driving a truck—Phillip Foss already tried that, and look where he is now....

On the cover of Baby Teeth’s second full-length, The Simp (Lujo), bassist Jim Cooper is moping in a jacket and tie at the California Clipper’s handsome bar, looking like he just failed the audition for Bryan Ferry’s spot in Roxy Music, and from the first track to the last the band splurges like a soused middle manager on an expense account, indulging in almost every kind of flourish you can cram into a pop record–itchy disco strings, bursts of sunny a cappella harmonies, wicked hair-metal guitar solos, even a slide-whistle-and-slapstick vaudeville breakdown....

One of the most pleasant Saturday-afternoon spots to take out-of-town guests once brunch is over, Salvage One is first and foremost a massive three-floor vault of vintage and, well, salvaged junk. Looking for ornate doorknobs, a McCobb-style coffee table, or a frightening old-school dental chair? It’ll cost a pretty penny, but this is the place. And as you’re piddling around the space wondering how exactly an antique post office mail sorter will fit in your studio apartment, you’re likely to overhear some wedding chatter....

Syndicated columnist Victor Davis Hanson just made a damned fool of himself. I came across him in last Friday’s Tribune wondering “Why do we care about this transient fluff?” as if that’s something new to ask. As if it isn’t a question that’s haunted journalists forever, one that preoccupied bloggers and the MSM alike when the death of Anna Nicole Smith became the biggest story in the world. Or is my memory playing tricks?...

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » If you missed Ken Jacobs’s stunning Seeking the Monkey King when it played at the Onion City Film Festival in June, this weekend offers another chance to catch some of the filmmaker’s work on a big screen. Urban Peasants, an hour-long piece that Jacobs first presented in 1975, screens Sunday at 7 PM at Cinema Borealis (1550 N. Milwaukee) as part of a program titled “Home Movies and the Avant-Garde,” which was curated by the Northwest Chicago Film Society and Chicago Film Archives....