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Personally, I think the Medill School of Total Information Awareness should steal him away from the law school, because it would be funny. None of my amusement at this, incidentally, has anything to do with having gone to the U. of C. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » You might have supposed that Springer’s astonishing conflation of himself with despicable neo-Nazis would have left his critics speechless....

I won’t judge Jessica Hopper’s review of Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation on the album itself, since that wasn’t her intention in the first place [“The Fountain of Sonic Youth,” June 15]. Hopper’s criticisms on the “reissue” album and its evocation to recall the fountain of perpetual youth is quite bizarre if not lacking in any substance. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Yes, people grow older....

NOISE: The experimental scene loses its best Enemy On July 4 DIY experimental-music venue Enemy ended an extraordinary seven-year run—for a DIY space, seven years is usually a few life­spans—with a show headlined by Baltimore weirdos Nautical Almanac. “Nobody’s shutting us down or anything like that,” says Enemy founder and noise artist Jason Soliday. “We could still keep going.” He simply wants to focus more on his own projects: “I need a break....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » After the critical and commercial success of The Wrestler, writer-director Darren Aronofsky pivots from the wrestling ring to the ballet studio, and from a battered Mickey Rourke to the delicate Natalie Portman. She plays a New York City ballerina whose demanding and lecherous director (Vincent Cassel) awards her a starring dual role—as the virginal “White Swan” and the sensual “Black Swan”—in his new interpretation of Swan Lake....

Caroline, or Change Court Theatre Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Set in Lake Charles, Louisiana, in late 1963, the show focuses on Caroline Thibodeaux, a black, illiterate, 39-year-old divorced mother of four making $30 a week as a cleaning lady. Caroline is stuck in a rut and sinking—depressed and sullen, disappointed with her life, acutely aware of her social inferiority, and angry at herself for letting things get to their current state....

Nelson Lichtenstein, a crusading labor historian at the University of California at Santa Barbara, has written books on the history of unionism and the automobile industry, but over the last few years he’s spent much of his time thinking about Walmart. To research his 2009 book on the corporation, The Retail Revolution, which is newly out in paperback, he combed through scores of articles from Discount Store News, thousands of pages of legal filings and memoirs produced by Walmart employees, and piles of transcripts of in-house management videos recorded by a production company Walmart fired in 2006....

Demonic dwarf Glenn Danzig turned 55 this year. He’s almost older than Satan! The li’l guy was perusing the stock at the Wicker Park Reckless before his Congress Theater gig on Sunday, and according to sharp-eyed fellow shoppers, Mr. Tell Your Children Not to Walk My Way bought records by Rick James and the New York Dolls—perhaps taking style notes on how to really rock some platform boots? Best of Chicago voting is live now....

Breast cancer rates may be down in the U.S., but the literature of breast cancer metastasized at a steady pace in 2008, continuing what one scholar has called “a veritable torrent.” Breast cancer memoirs have become such staples—reliably displayed during Let’s Wave Pink Ribbons for Breast Cancer month—that it’s hard to remember a time when women didn’t document their journey from onset through the catalog of treatments to restored health, stabilization, or imminent death....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » First, on the day he backed out of a mayoral campaign, Jesse Jackson Jr. refused to rule out endorsing Mayor Daley, even though he’d spent the previous two years blasting his leadership. A couple of weeks later, former Daley opponent Bobby Rush said he thought Daley had done a great job and deserved another term, and a pair of wealthy black businesswomen held a Daley fund-raiser....

It was ten at night. In the basement. A sound near the top of the stair. The door opening and closing. A footfall on the steps. Had to be his daughter, seven, interrupting. The lights out. Listening for the rush of small feet. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Obviously it was Lisa, his wife. Only, she too—asleep, dead to the world. “I couldn’t do it,” he says with a chilly laugh....

The Bulls claimed Andres Nocioni from Argentina, but now Chicago can give back — in a way. The varsity Grizzlies of Walter Payton College Prep are taking on a group of local celebrity basketball players — pols, school honchos, and media bigwigs — in a hoops fund-raiser to benefit the Payton team’s trip to Argentina this summer. The Grizzlies will face a team that includes congressman Jesse Jackson Jr., state treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, Cook County commissioner Forrest Claypool, Tribune columnist Eric Zorn, and Chicago public schools chief Arne Duncan, the dude with the long arms and skinny legs in the photo....

Two days after Governor Rod Blagojevich delivered his budget address back in February, a rare e-mail alert was issued by the Illinois Arts Council, the government agency that doles out grants to arts organizations statewide. Signed by IAC chair Shirley Madigan—the wife of house speaker and Blago foe Mike Madigan—it warned that the governor’s plan for fiscal 2009 won’t undo the previous year’s $4.5 million cut in arts funding. That message was followed a few days later by one from IAC executive director Terry Scrogum, confirming the bad news: the council’s budget would remain more or less flat, at $15....

Inspired by carpa—a form of outdoor folk theater that originated in Mexico and the southwestern United States—and by the lack of affordable performance spaces in Pilsen, David Pintor put up the Theater Tent for the first time in 2009. Each summer since, he’s used the cozy venue to host comedy shows with his sketch group, SIQ (Southside Ignoramus Quintet). Ma and Pa Pintor take money at the gate, and there’s a hole cut into the side of the wedding-reception white vinyl where Pintor’s girlfriend takes donations for beer....

“I hate mimes,” Billy the Mime has said. Blaming “bad practitioners” for the form’s reputation as pretentious and boring, he says mime can challenge and amuse. Watch his scene in The Aristocrats, cocreated by longtime friend Penn Jillette, and you’ll likely agree–mimes are known for pressing their palms against invisible boxes, not gleefully humping small dogs. Billy is the alter ego of Fresno native Steven Banks, who studied under Marcel Marceau and attended Ringling Brothers clown college in the early 80s....

The Gospel According to Saint Matthew The big new release this week is Ridley Scott’s actioner Exodus: Gods and Kings, his take on the ancient tale of the Hebrews and their Moses-led exit from Egypt. In his capsule review, Reader film editor J.R. Jones writes “[Scott] made this Biblical epic the old-fashioned way, casting thousands of extras instead of conjuring them up digitally, and the movie works well as big-budget spectacle despite a ho-hum script,” suggesting the film is the director’s attempt at a Cecil B....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » It can be a heartwarming sight when the next generation steps up — depending on what you thought of the first generation. Word comes that a string of nine small newspapers in Rhode Island is being sold to a company headed by Melanie Radler. Her father, David Radler, started out with his own little papers in Canada and wound up publisher of the Chicago Sun-Times and COO of Hollinger International, where prosecutors say he and his longtime (until recently) pal Conrad Black pocketed money hand over fist....

Democratic incumbent Pat Quinn and Republican challenger Bruce Rauner raised nearly $100 million between them—and presumably spent about as much to warn us that if the other guy were elected governor, a calamity would befall Illinois more alarming than having to watch their campaign ads. Since he no longer has to spend his time accusing his opponent of helping spread Ebola, we’d like some straight answers to a few questions about his plans....

Last month Stone Brewing of Escondido, California, released the 11th and final beer in its Vertical Epic series, the 12.12.12 ale (the numbers refer to December 12, 2012). The series began more than ten years ago with a beer called 02.02.02, making it nearly as long-running as the Bell’s Batch series. Subsequent entries have been released one year, one month, and one day apart (03.03.03, 04.04.04, and so forth), and each has been a unique one-off....

We haven’t heard much from Anatomy of Habit, Chicago’s unholy apostles of the long-form metal dirge, since original drummer Dylan Posa left town last March—but core members Mark Solotroff, Blake Edwards, and Kenny Rasmussen have two new tracks in the can that both top 20 minutes—and Solotroff says “Radiate and Recede” is “probably the heaviest thing that we have recorded.” Guitarist Will Lindsay (Indian, Wolves in the Throne Room) has replaced Greg Ratajczak, and Tortoise drummer John McEntire has taken over behind the kit; the sessions were at McEntire’s studio, Soma, with Sanford Parker behind the boards....

Miles Raymer, Reader music writer, is obsessed with . . . Native Instruments’ Massive synthesizer and Korg’s NanoKEY2 keyboard Massive is a polyphonic software synthesizer with enough oscillators and filters (and options for routing them into one another) that you have the potential for thousands of sounds before you even touch the virtual knobs or built-in step sequencer. It retails for $199, but if you already own certain Native Instruments gear you can download it free....