Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Every year seemingly mild-mannered, soft-spoften types in sun hats line up outside the park’s greenhouse like they’re waiting for Van Halen tickets. They pore over the proffered list of tomatoes, flowers, herbs, and vegetables, waiting for the gates to open before filing into the greenhouse’s narrow aisles to pick out plants that promise freakishly beautiful fruit with names like Green Zebra, Banana Legs, Cherokee Purple, Mr....

Last year I broke Larry Blasingaine’s heart. For more than 40 years he believed he’d played guitar on the Jackson Five’s first single, “Big Boy,” a local hit released in January 1968 on Steeltown Records out of Gary, Indiana. I was the one who had to tell him he hadn’t. But my research into the group’s early history also led to the discovery of a tape no one knew existed—the Jackson Five’s earliest professional recording....

According to curators Lili Carré and Alexander Stewart, the Eyeworks Festival of Experimental Animation aspires to “blend an appreciation of classic animation with the sensibilities of avant-garde cinema and the visual culture of alternative comics.” That mission statement all but promises a wide range of styles and subjects, and each year the festival has delivered just that—you never know what you’re going to see from one short to the next. The fifth incarnation of Eyeworks, which opened with a program on Tuesday but continues this weekend, is typically eclectic; the Saturday-night programs feature examples of hand-drawn, stop-motion, and computer animation....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In a 2005 ruling the full Seventh Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals dismissed the suit brought by graduate student-editors Jeni Porche and Margaret Hosty at Governors State University, who accused GSU’s dean of student life of unconstitutionally running the school paper out of business. Appellate Judge Frank Easterbrook’s opinion, laced with condescension toward campus papers, found that “Hazelwood‘s framework is generally applicable,” and that the law was so murky the dean of student life shouldn’t be held liable even if she got it wrong....

Early last week, in anticipation of a gig at Reggie’s by the legendary Swedish black-metal band Marduk, I spent an afternoon watching live Marduk clips on YouTube. My favorite was from a recent show in San Francisco, where front man Mortuus flipped a guy who’d gotten onstage and apparently tried to give him a hug. As far as I’m concerned, it was pretty close to a perfect translation of black-metal attitude into real-world action....

The mural that Tyrue “Slang” Jones painted last fall on the shabby-chic wood-plank facade of Wicker Park’s Violet Hour lounge was a traffic stopper: a twilight-hued, larger-than-life nightclub scene that posed curvaceous women in slinky gowns and a couple of strangely reptilian little waiters against heavy drapery and a backdrop spangled with sea horses. At one end, a fanged Mickey Mouse seemed to lunge across a swooping piano keyboard, his giant gloved hands proffering an upturned hat....

Having access to so much free music that you can’t find enough time to listen to even a small fraction of it is the very definition of a first-world problem. On the surface it seems about as serious as “My high-def TV only does 720p,” but it’s a problem that’s actually having a serious impact on music. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » On October 10 the Atlanta rapper, backed by mix tape producer DJ Drama, dropped The Burrprint: The Movie 3-D—a reference to Jay-Z’s recent The Blueprint 3 and his own infatuation with diamonds (diamonds —> ice —> brrr)—a 20-track collection that like most of his work was posted online for free and propagated virally across a cross section of the blogosphere broad enough to encompass hard-core hip-hop heads, pop-music aficionados, and hipster tastemakers....

Both the Jazz Festival and the Blues Festival took a hit from the tough economy this year—the former lost its big Thursday-night kickoff show, the latter its entire Thursday—so I was expecting the World Music Festival to slim down too. In fact, early this summer festival director Michael Orlove told me that there would probably be only 20 acts total, about 60 percent fewer than in past years. The show with Watcha Clan on Friday night at Navy Pier will be broadcast live on WBEZ (91....

To a good number of the people who went to the Intonation Festival last year, one of the weekend’s highest high points was Saturday’s afternoon set by the Boredoms, where Eye, Yoshimi, and two drummers blasted a crowd full of Sparksed-up Bloc Party fans with a faceful of powerful, meditative noise. Anyone who still had the Boredoms mentally filed under “sounds like warring chimp tribes hitting each other with guitars” was probably baffled by the eerily spiritual, almost sacred, power of their performance....

Ohad Knoller stars as the title character. A heart surgeon (Ohad Knoller) is so committed to his career that it seems unhealthy. Regularly taking extra shifts, napping at the hospital because he can’t sleep at home, he’s using work to fill a void in his life; anyone can see that. His colleagues want to help him but don’t know how; he’s so stoic that no one can tell exactly what his problem is....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » At the opening of “Storm Thorgerson—Computers Have a Lot to Answer For”, now on display through November 2 at Wicker Park gallery Public Works, the titular artist auctioned off a print of one of his famous album covers; the auction was unusual in that it was a trivia auction. The question: What is the lowest three-digit prime number wherein each digit is a prime number, the sum of which equals a prime number?...

Karen Lewis is president of the Chicago Teachers Union.*She left high school after her junior year. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The 1968-’69 school year was one filled with turmoil and unrest. Black students across the city organized to address inadequate funding, irrelevant curriculum, and crumbling school buildings. The resultant “Black Monday” walkouts brought together an unprecedented number of supporters who mobilized against the hated “Willis Wagons” (mobile classrooms set up in parking lots and playgrounds purportedly to ease overcrowding in the city’s south- and west-side schools), obvious symbols of years of neglect....

Dick McCracken first fell in love with viande fumée, Montreal-style smoked meat (aka pastrami), when he visited the famous Montreal deli Schwartz’s back in the 80s. A “foodie at heart,” he was haunted by it over the years, going so far as to develop his own recipe. Finally, he proposed a whirlwind trip to Montreal to his wife, Joan, and on Valentine’s Day 2009 they found themselves standing in line at Schwartz’s; a 45-minute wait in the cold paid off when they snagged the last two seats at the counter....

Jai Ho! at Big Chicks 5024 N. Sheridan 773-728-5511 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In addition to the weekly Stardust at Berlin there’s an ever-expanding roster of monthly don’t-miss queer/trans/GLBTQ dance parties around town (the aforementioned Chances, FKA at Big Chicks)—but the most elusive is also the most distinctive. Jai Ho!, named for the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack hit, happens just a few times a year....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » (Note: I haven’t meant to harp on FN so much recently, it’s just that it’s so … loud. I swear I’ll write more about other TV creatures soon, like hottie Andreas Viestad–Norway’s Naked Chef?–from New Scandinavian Cooking. Despite Viestad’s bizarro halting delivery, I do like watching him cooking outside in brisk apple-cheeked health, doing fearless things to salmon. There must be some good dirt there....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I had reason to be optimistic about Telepathique because in 2003 singer Mylene Pires made a pretty swell solo album, Mylene (Fast Horse), that tweaked MPB (Música Popular Brasileira) with well-deployed electronic flourishes courtesy of coproducer and percussionist Ramiro Musotto. Her slightly husky voice brought a sensual warmth to the melodies, and the tunes gently blended samba, reggae, and rock into an inviting whole....

I must take issue with Mr. Rueter’s disturbing and somewhat pompous response regarding the road to recovery that Kevin Junior has chosen to travel [Letters, January 26]. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Mr. Rueter’s condescending letter to the Reader was absent of any human compassion, empathy, or intellectual insight into the complexities regarding substance abuse, especially with persons such as Kevin who are dually diagnosed with depression....

I follow a lot of beer people on Twitter, and because I’ve had a lot of fun watching Off Color cofounder John Laffler and Metropolitan general manager Jess Straka sparring with each other online, I invited them for a Gchat about beer. Straka started at Metropolitan as a volunteer in March 2009, just a few months after Doug and Tracy Hurst launched their lager-only operation. Metropolitan plans to open a new brewery somewhere in the city this year, which will initially triple production....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I’ve been wrestling with Phil Rosenthal’s recent insight that April 1 is a day that’s turning into a season. The Tribune‘s media columnist pointed to Time Out Chicago‘s recent ten pages of blithe coverage of that magazine’s sale to Donald Trump, deceptive nonsense helped along by being published a week before readers would be looking for it. Rosenthal is concerned....

Music festivals are thick on the ground in Chicago these days, from summer behemoths like Taste of Chicago and Lollapalooza to niche events like the Neon Marshmallow Fest and the Umbrella Music Festival. Record labels have gotten in on the action too, celebrating milestone anniversaries by presiding over lineups drawn from their rosters past and present: Thrill Jockey, Touch and Go, Bloodshot. “I loved the relaxed mood of everybody compared to New York....