Posts

One thing I think we can say with certainty: the state’s two most popular politicians are Jesse White and Lisa Madigan. As Steve Rhodes put it: “Lisa Madigan has been a success based on one simple quality: competence. It’s amazing that’s all it takes in Illinois!” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I suspect the state would be a lot happier if we could trade Kirk Dillard (who would have won) for Pat Quinn, and David Hoffman (who would have won) for Mark Kirk....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » If you’re going to the movies this evening and looking for something different, I recommend I Declare War, a Canadian feature that ends its weeklong run tonight at Facets Cinematheque. As I wrote in my capsule review, the movie—about preteens playing an elaborate and increasingly brutal game of capture the flag—is most commendable for its ambiguity. It’s never clear whether screenwriter Jason Lapeyre set out to write an allegory about war or the brutality of childhood bullying....

I’m 18 years old and my girlfriend and I have been engaging in sexual acts. She has no problem coming, but when it comes to sexual intercourse she can’t orgasm. Is my penis not doing the job correctly? She says she feels good but can’t climax. Could there be something wrong with her? I don’t know what to do. –The Lost Boy Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » So, TLB, it could be that the positions you’re fucking in don’t provide direct stimulation to your girlfriend’s clit, or she’s one of those women–one of the majority–who require direct, intense stimulation in order to come....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I’m not that shocked by the news that Roger Clemens and Barbara Walters had a secret affair. The way they never showed up together at nightclubs was the tipoff. Neither is it any big surprise that Hannah Montana is the love child of a former black U.S. senator – whose name I forget but I’m guessing Carol Moseley Braun....

Making one’s own beer at home requires a number of things: time, patience, a batch of decent hops. But all the fancy ingredients and good intentions in the world aren’t going to transform a 500-square-feet Chicago apartment into an appropriate place in which to brew. Not if you want to live in it. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Two years ago, development entrepreneur and major DIY guy Conrad Fuhrman found himself in that predicament—granted, his apartment was 530 square feet—and began brewing beer with CHAOS Brew Club....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Everyone knows Sly Stone’s been a little bit off the deep end for a while now, but even still the news getting around today that he’s currently living out of a camper van parked on a street in the Crenshaw neighborhood in LA seems to really be bumming people out. Stone seems to be OK with the situation, though....

One of the “biggest and liveliest literary gatherings in North America” is hitting Chicago. The conference and book fair of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs is expected to attract 9,500 attendees to over 400 readings, lectures, panel discussions, and book signings. Skewed toward academics, the conference itself is completely sold out. But there are still loads of events open to the public. (Unless otherwise noted, the following are free and take place at the Hilton Chicago Hotel, 720 S....

Drifters/Love Is the Devil 2011’s Badlands put Alex Zhang Hungtai, aka Dirty Beaches, on the map. The sparse, dark record sounded like Suicide’s first album made by the bad guy from a 50s beach-party flick. Hungtai’s greaser image paired with his damaged Elvis Presley whine made for one of the creepiest and coolest records of that year, one that I still spin frequently. Since Badlands dropped, Hungtai’s put out a small handful of releases as Dirty Beaches, including two more ambient and synthy film scores, and this month he’s back with a new proper full length, Drifters/Love Is the Devil, and as expected, it’s really great....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » For too long a time that “nobody” seemed to include Hollywood, though a couple of options were taken out and allowed to lapse. When I found out that Brosnan was in Serbia actually filming There Are No Spies (in which Devereaux comes out of retirement to hunt a Soviet mole), I got in touch with Granger’s agent, the Aaron Priest Literary Agency, to find out more, and this inquiry led to a couple of recent e-mails from Brosnan’s producer, Beau St....

reallisamarie.com If you can execute a moonsault, hip-hop will be a snap, of course. But when Lisa Marie Varon showed up last summer in the dance class I take, I had no idea who she was. Tall, slender, broad-shouldered, with a lightning-bolt streak of red in her dark hair, she had an eagle eye for new moves and the sinewy, serpentine strength to nail them. I was envious. Then my teacher—who’d met Varon in the 90s, when she was a fitness model—told me that this new student, who’d recently moved back to Chicago, was actually a champion professional wrestler, known as “Victoria” in WWE and as “Tara” (aka “Tarantula”) in TNA (Total Nonstop Action) Wrestling....

mystery corn dawg at Franks ‘n’ Dawgs 1863 N. Clybourn 312-281-5187 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Europeans use silverware for the craziest things: Everest’s French chef Jean Joho has told me he eats even emburgers with a knife and fork; my Italian grandmother nibbled fried chicken, meticulously, with silverware. But the hot dog remains a militantly hands-on foodstuff—especially that variant called the corn dog, and that holds true even at Franks ’n’ Dawgs, where the creations of chef Joe Doren show a European influence in saucing and fancy-pants condimentation....

Best Reading Series or Open Mike aSun 7-10 PM, Green Mill, 4802 N. Broadway, 773-878-5552, greenmilljazz.com or slampapi.com, $6. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » So I’m giving in and choosing Mike Royko’s portrait of Richard J. Daley. Ostensibly it’s a biography, but it’s also history, sociology, and tabloid scandal, told in the wry, supercynical voice of arguably the greatest American newspaperman ever. Royko gives us cops and councilmen, petty graft and grand larcenies, neighborhood borders, ethnic rivalries, and racial shame—and above it all, the electorate’s stupefying embrace of corruption and mediocrity....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The African Festival of the Arts continues through this evening in Washington Park, with Brandy headlining at the Dee Parmer Woodtor Stage. City Winery hosts Holy Ghost Tent Revival, Charlie Parr, and more at its Bubbly-Q. Tuesday, a reunited Goodie Mob performs at the House of Blues. Wednesday, Parisian psych-rockers Catholic Spray play an in-store at Permanent Records, and Irish folkie Damien Dempsey plays Lincoln Hall....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Next month, the bakers of America will march on Washington. Agricultural economists are freaking out: “Some fear a bout of bad weather could unravel the country’s centuries-old identity.” What’s happening? The essential building blocks of the American diet, wheat, corn, and soybeans, are all at record or near-record price levels, because the Chinese are eating more meat and the demand for ethanol inevitably continues....

Mike Sula Polanco’s Spanish onion soup If a half-naked Aztec warrior-princess appears in a restaurant and there’s no one there to see her, does she cause a fuss? Remember last November when some anonymous upright citizen hollered cop about the exposed breasts on the fierce maiden who hung on the wall in Logan Square’s Real Tenochtitlan, and then management painted over them? Real Tenochtitlan is gone, but the painting, by muralist Oscar Romero, is back, and the areola mammae have reappeared as well, peeking out from behind some sort of binding antisupport garment....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » For the most part we were impressed. Me, I think the casual amiability of Trattoria Pizzeria I Monelli and the superfresh Pho Xua (where I had the meat-filled betel leaves pictured) balanced the bad karma dumped on the universe by the wretched Paddy O’Splaine’s and the checkered past of Chicago’s Home of Chicken and Waffles. Hammond’s arduous journey to Park 52 was rewarded by greatness at Mixteco Grill and exceeded expectations at Wrigleyville’s Purgatory Pizza....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The Culinary Historians of Chicago presents The Sweet History of French Pastry with Mark Seaman, pastry chef and owner of local catering company Marked for Dessert. He’ll discuss regional variations on French desserts and the influence of the French Revolution on madeleines, macarons, and crepes. “Reference materials” include samples of Seaman’s pastries. 10 AM-noon, Kendall College, 900 N. North Branch, 708-788-0338, rsvpchc@yahoo....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Even for somebody who lives in Rogers Park, Evanston can seem a bit far afield—away from the city’s nexus of nightlife, and particularly remote from the restaurant scenesters who cure their pork belly in the environs of Fulton Market, Randolph Row, and River North. So I don’t know what I was expecting on a recent visit to the new Chicago Avenue (that’d be the other Chicago Avenue) restaurant Found Kitchen & Social House, which comes from chef Nicole Pederson, who most recently oversaw the kitchen at C-House, and restaurateur Amy Morton....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » When proto Chicago food blogger Michael Morowitz retired eatchicago.net a little over a year ago he said the site no longer had anything to contribute to the increasingly cacophonous chorus of online food writing in Chicago. But Morowitz hardly stayed mum, continuing to moderate, administrate, and actively post trenchant dispatches and useful intel over on LTHforum. And now, even after a major career change and the happy arrival of twins, he’s launched The Local Beet, a loca-sustainable eating site that promises to tackle the scene “with a depth and insight not currently seen in the mainstream media,” with feature articles, blogs, discussion groups and other resources dedicated to advancing a practical approach to local and sustainable eating in these parts....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The Federer-Roddick final was long and dramatic, but at no time was it as interesting as the Federer-Nadal match the year before. This year’s last set went to 16-14, but not because neither player gave an inch in battle. No, it was simply that neither could handle the other’s serve. The problem with tennis is that a big serve compensates, or overcompensates, for a lack of those other qualities by which athletes ought to be measured....