Cthulhu rises from the nightmare corpse-city of R’lyeh. Maybe you missed both of Goose Island’s 25th-anniversary parties in May. Maybe you haven’t seen their excellent 25th-anniversary ESB, which was distributed so thoroughly that I was able to pick up a six-pack at the Dominick’s two blocks from my apartment. But anyway, yes, Goose Island turns 25 this year. And the Clybourn brewpub (which operates independently of AB-InBev) is getting in on the action by hand bottling a series of small-batch beers....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » And from the looks of things, not a lot of other men either—at the matinee screening I attended last weekend, well more than half of the nearly packed theater was of the Y chromosome persuasion. Not that movies are church, mind you, but doesn’t this need a little explaining? Well, there’s the ex-Catholic seminarian angle, the gay utopian angle (“basically the same angle” I can hear the cynics sniping), the salvation through physical ordeal angle (a bit like spring football practice), all those invidious stereotypes we’ve come to know and love, where biology equals destiny in whatever gender form—though the fact remains that most serious writing about religion and what’s generally described as the “mystical” experience comes from the pens (and now the laptops) of men....

Kurt Vonnegut’s home town of Indianapolis officially misses him, and to prove it they’re having “The Year of Vonnegut” this year, full of “events and activities to honor Vonnegut and his contributions to American literature and art.” Mayor Bart Peterson says that Vonnegut “mixed dark humor with critical thinking and impacted the way many view the society we live in.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » IOW, don’t let the kiddies actually READ that stuff....

Fringe Focus Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » While I am pleased that Chicago is going for this, the focus is off the mark. Chicago is a fringe CITY, that’s what makes us unique to a city like New York where, while there is much fringe theater to be had, the focus is on big-budget spectacle work with more of a wow factor than risk....

This letter is in reference to the article regarding the improv classes at the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center [February 16]. In that article it was stated by Carolyn Minor that they “took over” the Live Bait Theater improv class at the facility. That is incorrect. Live Bait Theater is currently conducting classes there. Our programs are running concurrently. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Our most recent session of improv classes began on February 21 and is planned to run through April 11....

The 16th European Union Film Festival continues through Thursday, March 28, at Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State, 312-846-2800. Tickets are $11, $7 for students, and $6 for Film Center members. Following are selected films screening through Thursday, March 21; for a compete schedule see siskelfilmcenter.org. My Worst Nightmare Isabelle Huppert may be approaching self-parody as an icon of Gallic frigidity, yet the talented writer-director Anne Fontaine puts that to excellent use in this broad, obvious, but consistently funny bedroom farce....

Erin Thompson was about to turn 11 when her family moved from Aurora to the little rural town of Waterman, Illinois, in 1994. The transition got easier when they found the Northern Illinois Children’s Choir—a “wonderful program” that “became my home,” she says. By the time Thompson, a mezzo-soprano, was 16, choir director Carol Stubbs had taken her on as a private student and encouraged her to develop an opera repertoire and enter competitions....

Guitarist Phillip Walker was born in Louisiana, but he came of age in Texas, where he was immersed in an array of musical styles–from zydeco and honky-tonk to early rock ‘n’ roll-. Around 1953 he moved to California, where he absorbed the smooth jazz-blues style pioneered in the postwar years by T-Bone Walker (no relation), Johnny Moore, and others. Walker recorded his first 45 in 1952 and has long been a major player on the live blues circuit, but his own discography is rather slight....

There was plenty of polite pomp surrounding the opening of “Benin—Kings and Rituals: Court Arts from Nigeria” at the Art Institute of Chicago last week. A royal entourage from the Kingdom of Benin—now part of Nigeria, and not to be confused with the independent Republic of Benin—came to town for the show, which originated in Vienna and consists of 220 works, primarily brass sculpture and intricately carved ivory culled from major European and American museums....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Per usual, all the best movies to see today have absolutely nothing to do with Christmas, but that shouldn’t deter you from checking out some of the most anticipated films of the year, including Quentin Tarantino’s shoot-’em-up western Django Unchained; Judd Apatow’s latest autobiographical comedy This is 40; Tom Hooper’s version of Les Miserables, and the family comedy Parental Guidance, starring Bette Midler and Billy Crystal....

In the NeighborhoodTwenty more restaurants in Rogers Park teff, a tiny grain indigenous to Ethiopia; many restaurants substitute farina. There are African beers and wines on offer, and service couldn’t have been more welcoming. Parking is free and ample. —Kate Schmidt $African | Breakfast, lunch, dinner: seven days| BYO Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » A storefront plastered with gyro and pizza puff signage gives little hint that an accomplished Assyrian restaurant might lie within....

I’m a 26-year-old straight male interested in ball busting. At a party I met a lesbian who goes by “Buck.” She’s 20, dresses like a boy, and made it clear that she hates males and their anatomy. Before agreeing to play a friendly game of Truth or Dare, she specified that she would not “do anything” with a boy. My friend Kelly asked, “Would you punch a boy?” Assuming Buck is a butch dyke and not a retarded one, CBT, she knows damn well that you were getting off on her busting your balls....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Two radically different strains of Spanish music will be presented tomorrow night, February 1, at the Chicago Cultural Center. At 6 PM the Madrid-based group La Musgaña play their first Chicago date in more than a decade—they played the Old Town School back in 1995—working a style that’s got nothing to do with flamenco. On the recent Temas Profanos (Mad River) the group delivers an ancient sound that reflects Spain’s northern European roots, combined with Moroccan elements....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » If my 20 best list for the past year could have been based purely on artistic criteria rather than on packaging and marketing categories, Spike Lee’s When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts—which premiered on HBO on two consecutive nights in late August, a year after the tragedy in New Orleans—would have belonged somewhere near the top....

Though Sinnerman Ensemble is a brand-new company, its inaugural offering is a throwback. In Stephen Metcalfe’s disquieting, disjointed 1984 portrait of post-Lennon rock stardom, Willy Rivers attempts a comeback after being shot by a fan during a televised concert. But when he connects with people from his past, he discovers he’s more cipher than substance. Music-scene cliches abound: drug abuse, groupies, upper-middle-class kids feigning working-class roots. Jeff Ginsberg’s enthusiastic cast tackles the sometimes creaky material with gusto, making even the sentimental scene with Willy’s dad watchable....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » This week’s column focuses on Curry’s services to a prominent Paris, Illinois, businessman named Robert Morgan, who may have had absolutely nothing to do with a brutal double murder in Paris in 1986, but in the view of certain innocence industry cabalists deserved closer scrutiny than he ever got. Again Protess and his students got involved, and by 2005, when CBS’s 48 Hours came to town, Randy Steidl, one of the two local men convicted of the murders, was out of prison and the other, Herb Whitlock, had a figurative foot out the cell door (though he wouldn’t be sprung until 2008)....

I’m starting to feel sort of sorry for the Ricketts family, owners of the Cubs, who’ve been roundly pounded by politicians and pundits for proposing to spend at least $200 million in public money on Wrigley Field renovations (which, as it happens, is the subject of this issue’s cover story). Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Tom Ricketts, who led his family’s effort to take over the Cubs from Tribune Company a year ago, mishandled the current plan by bypassing Governor Pat Quinn before going public with it....

Intro | Friday | Saturday 1:45 PM Dianogah Pitchfork’s Chicago roots are showing. This local two-basses-and-drums trio hasn’t exactly lit the world on fire with its fusion of postrock and posthardcore—though the band has sustained a cultish following for nearly 15 years, thanks in part to its mastery of dynamics and sometimes lovely melodies, that following is just about exclusively Chicagoan. a Balance Stage —MR Best of Chicago voting is live now....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » About half an hour later, by his estimation, he twittered again. “A staff editor at the New Yorker assures me that TNY is not going bimonthly or monthly. The idea has not been discussed,” he announced, and deleted the original tweet from his file. In the half hour or so between tweets, the New Yorker rumor had flashed across the country, anguishing New Yorker readers and appalling New Yorker staffers....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Well over a decade in, Iron Lung has stayed true to its cause: writing less-than-one-minute powerviolence thrashers that are as abrasive now as they were back in the early aughts (and manning a label of the same name that’s released such divergences as Total Control’s Henge Beat). The duo’s most recent LP, White Glove Test, is 18 tracks of straight, no-frills fury, featuring scathing vocals and abrasive blast beats that will have the dude who claims he listens to every kind of music shaking his head in disbelief....