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Discussing his horror-vacui installation Das Auge (The Eye), Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn told Gregory Burke of the Power Plant gallery in Toronto, “I want to give a form which resists facts, which resists opinion and which goes beyond actuality. . . . The eye doesn’t need to know—the eye just sees and that’s what counts.” Similarly, Zachary Cahill’s USSA 2012: The Orphanage Project is designed to present a profusion of information and artifacts adding up to neither a consistent formalism nor a coherent concept....

Between his weird Internet experiments, his weather forecasting, and assorted other polymathic ventures it’s easy to forget sometimes that, oh yeah, David Lynch makes records too, and that some of them are actually pretty great. He has a new one called The Big Dream coming out July 16 on the extremely in-fashion NYC label Sacred Bones, home to the Men, Psychic Ills, and Cult of Youth. The album’s first single, “I’m Waiting Here,” just hit the Internet....

By far the most visible advocate of the referendum is Patrick Quinn, who is considered an all-around populist by his allies and a cause-of-the-week gadfly by his foes. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In August Chicago waxed nostalgic. Twenty years earlier, a lot of white kids had been roughed up in the parks during the “police riot” that accompanied the Democratic Convention. Many of those kids were now movers and shakers....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Political blogs have reshaped the American political landscape and become a lightning rod for controversy over the past several years. Is the wide spectrum of bloggers and never-ending supply of content arming us for informed political action or just creating a news cycle based on the attention span of over-sugared six-year-olds? On Tuesday night Phil Ponce, a journalism professor at Loyola University and host of WTTW’s “Chicago Tonight,” discusses the issues raised with this new form of journalism at a free panel discussion: “Chicago’s Top Political Bloggers: Pundits, Prophets or Self-Promoters?...

Because we’re in Chicago, I don’t imagine I need to recap the story of Revolution Brewing for you. They’ve been making their TV Party Rye IPA at the brewpub for a couple years, and all the while the style has been growing in popularity—it’s even been mainstreamed by the ubiquitously distributed Sierra Nevada Ruthless Rye. I’ve already reviewed one example, in fact—Three Floyds’ Rye da Tiger double rye IPA. Bottles of TV Party first arrived in stores a couple weeks ago....

In college I had a friend, one who in today’s parlance would admittedly be considered a frenemy, who swore that once we graduated, she would move to Los Angeles and become an actress. At a time when most of us were perfecting keg stands and wearing pajamas to our morning classes, she was cultivating an air of worldly sophistication with pencil skirts and martinis. She would regale us with tales—true or otherwise—of her trips to Europe and seduction of much older men....

You can’t really pin Ryley Walker down to a single style. With the combo Heat Death, the guitarist whips up a skronkfest that will scorch your ears and scour the walls; on his instrumental cassette The Evidence of Things Unseen, he’s a consummate practitioner of the American Primitive acoustic style. But why would you want to pin the guy down when he’s not even 24 years old? The latest step in his journey of self-discovery involves a newfound capacity to channel the greats of British folk-jazz....

The LITTLE HILL THAT FACES THE MAIN ENTRANCE TO THE PAVILION Green Bay and Lake Cook, Highland Park 847-266-5100 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » If your idea of a fine night at the Ravinia Festival is getting soused, carrying on a lengthy conversation, making public love, playing video games, chasing your screaming kids, or staging a reunion, head for the far lawn. But if you’re interested in the subtler pleasures of a lawn seat ($10-$32)—namely the freedom to eat, sip, stretch, roam, or flop flat on your back and stargaze while actually paying attention to the concert—then set yourself up on the little hill that faces the main entrance to the pavilion....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » There’s also the wild match-up between punk legend Marky Ramone and party monster Andrew W.K., who will be playing together at the Double Door on Tue 10/8 as Marky Ramone’s Blitzkreig. The band, which W.K. will be fronting, are playing a set of 35 classic Ramones songs. I can’t even imagine hearing those timeless numbers sung by anyone other than Joey, so it should be an experience to see how this all unfolds....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I suspect the superb Japanese feature The Drudgery Train will not receive a commercial U.S. release anytime soon. Nobuhiro Yamashita isn’t a name director (though one of his features, Linda Linda Linda, played at Facets several years back), nor is his style especially pronounced. Even in the context of Japanese cinema, the movie doesn’t really fit into any trends of art or genre filmmaking: it’s a character study with traces of humor, magic realism, and violent psychodrama, though none of these qualities determines the complex central portrait....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » With our baseball teams racing each other into the abyss heading toward next weekend’s interleague city series rematch, the managers are doing their best to keep the media and the fans entertained — with their quotes off the field. My favorite of the season so far has come from the Cubs’ Lou Piniella, who when asked about the club’s offensive woes said, “Let’s talk about some bikinis on the beach or surfers on La Jolla....

Julia Thiel Three-week-old eggnog (left) and year-old eggnog (right) look pretty much identical. Aging eggnog for a few weeks sounds a little dicey. Aging it for a year sounds insane. The perishable parts of eggnog—milk, cream, eggs—could easily last a few weeks if properly refrigerated. But how many people have voluntarily consumed year-old milk and eggs? The ratio of alcohol to other ingredients matters for sterilization, of course. Science Friday’s Flora Lichtman, who’s covered the Rockefeller experiments, said that the concentration of alcohol in the finished eggnog is 20 percent....

Politics in Uptown boils down to one woman: Helen Shiller, the long-serving alderman of the 46th Ward. And depending on your position on the political spectrum you either love her or hate her. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Funny, but not really fair: in a city notorious for its corruption, neither Shiller nor anyone in her organization has ever been indicted, much less convicted, for the sort of illegal electioneering alluded to by Royko....

Betsy Odom “I’ve Got the Horse and She’s Got the Saddle” If there’s a way to be reverently irreverent, Betsy Odom has found it. At first glance, her piece “I’ve Got the Horse and She’s Got the Saddle” is a beautifully executed leather work—detailed, delicate, precise. On closer inspection, that oblong aperture in the center of the saddle starts to look a little bit like a vulva. Then you think about the title again....

Those headlines would do if senators McCain, Clinton, and Obama had led the questioning. The coverage offered no evidence that they did. The Tribune article (top story in the Wednesday paper) offered details on a “complex, often indirect discussion” between Petraeus and the three senators who seek the White House. Note the verbs employed: “. . . said McCain. . . . McCain’s assertion. . . . she said. . ....

I discovered I don’t like kale very much. And I continued to look more yellow than pink. My family did more research and discovered kale unleashes its healing wonders best when cooked. So kale sandwiches were out and kale with pasta and kale omelets were in. I still didn’t like kale very much. But then it turned out parsley is almost as good a source of K when eaten raw! I like a little parsley on my tabbouleh and mushrooms grilled Spanish style, so this was good news—if it worked as a garnish it might be pretty tasty consumed in hearty mouthfuls....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » This week I write long on God Bless America, the lacerating new comedy from Bobcat Goldthwait. We also have new capsule reviews of Bad Fever, an indie drama about a small-town loser who wants to be a stand-up comedian; Close Quarters, a locally produced comedy with improv veterans Tim Kazurinsky, Susan Messing, Dave Pasquesi, and T.J. Jagodowski; Dark Shadows, Tim Burton’s big-screen remake of the supernatural soap opera; Headhunters, a Norwegian thriller about a corporate recruiter who doubles as an art thief; The Killing Floor, a historical drama about labor troubles at the Chicago stockyards during the World War I era; The Perfect Family, with Kathleen Turner as a mother whose gay daughter and philandering son threaten her chances of being named Catholic Woman of the Year; Sound of My Voice, in which a couple of documentarians try to infiltrate a cult; and The World in His Arms, a 1952 adventure by the great Raoul Walsh, with Gregory Peck and Anthony Quinn....

This article originally appeared in the Reader on November 14, 2003. I found his work the way many undergraduates do—through his anthologized 1952 story “The Best of Everything.” Its vivid New York dialogue reminded me of J.D. Salinger, but unlike the penthouse misfits of Nine Stories, Yates’s characters were an ordinary lower-middle-class couple, warily circling the knowledge that their impending marriage will be a colossal mistake. Two of my writing teachers, Robin Metz at Knox College and Mark Costello at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, had studied under Yates at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop back in the mid- to late-60s and urged me to check out his work....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Pre also appears on a much more imminent Skin Graft release, Sides 11-14 (scroll down a bit), the fourth in the label’s series of AC/DC tribute compilations. (The fact that Black Ice just came out is no coincidence at all.) It won’t be in stores till November, but according to Mark Fischer of Skin Graft the band will have copies at the Bottle....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Fifteen years ago this week I turned in my last set of college grades, and I’ve never looked back. Teaching wasn’t for me—I still cringe when I think of myself at a podium, hemming and hawing—but I have plenty of friends who’ve made it their life’s work. I doubt many of them would consider their profession well-represented in the movies....