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“I believe that the truth matters,” Oprah Winfrey assured her viewers last year following her on-air confrontation with author James Frey. By then the Smoking Gun had revealed that Frey’s best-selling “memoir,” A Million Little Pieces, which Oprah’s book club had promoted, was partially concocted, and Oprah was pissed. “I feel that you conned us all,” she admonished him during a stern and thorough grilling. Her indignation had been slow to develop, but once it had (following public outcry) it wasn’t reserved for Frey alone....

Latvian Community Center, 4146 N. Elston; last Friday of the month at Southport Performing Arts Conservatory, 3433 W. Peterson; 847-846-8139, ethnicdance.net; $6 suggested donation For more than 25 years Paul Collins has been teaching people Ghanaian highlife, the Scottish reel, the Bulgarian horo, and what seems to be every other folk dance in the world. These days his group, Ethnic Dance Chicago, meets most Friday nights at the Latvian Center in Irving Park, starting with lessons for beginners at around 8 PM and ending with a dance party, requests from his 13,000-plus tracks welcome....

What do you next when you’re a hoppin’ breakfast-and-lunch spot in hot Ukrainian Village? Dinner, of course. Jam chef and co-owner Jeffrey Mauro (Charlie Trotter‘s, North Pond, La Pomme Rouge, Powerhouse) is now whipping up Hawaiian walu sashimi, pan-roasted Amish chicken breast, and an appealing prix fixe menu in the open kitchen of this little gray-and-white storefront, which feels like a stylish New York find with its mirror-lined walls, retro Lucite-and-chrome chairs, stone-black tables, and woven red placemats....

When it comes to art, everybody wants an original. Brian Bonebrake’s paintings, in which everyday subjects—plump fruits, frosty popsicles, dead fish, shiny tricycles, voluptuous nudes—are rendered in epic scale and bright saturated colors, fulfill every definition of the term. They also help support a lifestyle that includes two kids, a wife, two cars, three motorcycles, and a West Loop home and studio. “I’ve been able to sell at least one painting a month without being in a gallery since 1995,” he says proudly....

Doug Bruno should have been dismayed to see me walk into the gym. I blame my father for this situation. He had two faults as a parent: he taught me to be loyal, and he loves the Cubs. I developed similar values. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » But enough about the Cubs—no need to touch that matter until a few months from now, when they’re squaring off with my second-favorite baseball team, the Kansas City Royals, in the 2012 World Series....

It’s awards-show season, and the north side stand-up community now has one of its own. Tom Lawler and Mark Geary–producers of Lincoln Lodge, one of the city’s best stand-up showcases–mulled over the concept for a couple years before moving forward with this first annual event. “We think the quality of the Chicago scene has never been stronger,” Lawler says. Five anonymous judges, described by Lawler as “passionate” regulars at various venues who are not “personally affiliated” with the comedians, have come up with the candidates and will select the winners in three categories: “Best,” “Most Improved,” and “Most Innovative....

Last month Peter Margasak posted about the imminent Chicago debut of the Sonar Festival, which has been showcasing electronic and experimental music in Barcelona since 1994 and in 2009 organized small events in New York and D.C. The Chicago installment of Sonar will be at Pritzker Pavilion from September 9-11, and though the full lineup hasn’t been released yet, several acts were just announced, including Kid Koala’s project the Slew, German proto-glitch artist Oval, stony beat maker Nosaj Thing, and a selection of Catalonians to add authentic Barcelona flavor....

The greater problem is that the Web has expanded the Sun-Times‘s competition from a few sources to millions. Not just in terms of indirect competition–in the past, a Chicagoan like me wouldn’t be choosing to devote five minutes of my time between QT and if charlie parker was a gunslinger, there’d be a whole lot of dead copycats–but also in terms of direct competition. Not only do Jay Mariotti and Rick Telander have to compete against Sam Smith and Rick Morrissey, they have to compete against Deadspin, Free Darko, Chauncey Billups (well, not anymore, unfortunately), John Hollinger, and others....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » No less an authority than Tony Adler of the Chicago Reader has called Jeremy Menekseoglu “one of the most ambitious, prolific, original, and gifted playwrights in Chicago.” Menekseoglu is the presiding spirit at Dream Theatre in Pilsen, where he writes, directs, and acts in practically everything that goes onstage. His enormous, often surreal output ranges from short studies of sexual anomie in Texas to an epic three-part reinvention of the Oresteia that climaxes at the dead center of hell....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Though Wills’s essay ran in the May 1 issue of the New York Review of Books he wrote it several days before Wright made his notorious appearance at the National Press Club. Yet it’s not diminished in the least by subsequent events — by which I mean not merely what Wright said about Obama and Obama said about Wright but also what the press then said about both of them....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Here’s what Obama said Tuesday in Virginia, “John McCain says he’s about change, too — except for economic policy, health care policy, tax policy, education policy, foreign policy, and Karl Rove-style politics. That’s just calling the same thing something different. You can put lipstick on a pig; it’s still a pig. You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change; it’s still going to stink after eight years....

Local indie rockers Sybris are rolling the dice with a new three-song seven-inch called Voyage of the Stag Party, and you can too: it’s packaged in a playable Dungeons & Dragons module, based in part on two of the EP’s ragers and inspired by the six years of weekly gaming sessions the Sybris folks have enjoyed with pals from Indiana craft brewery Three Floyds. Maps and characters are included—all you need are some of those crazy dice and a turntable!...

The holiday shopping season gets under way in earnest on Friday, and record labels have been preparing with the usual outpouring of elaborate box sets. A fair number of those titles are being released as part of the Black Friday offshoot of Record Store Day, but this year the RSD offerings are particularly lame—most of them just repackage music that’s already widely available. In an attempt to provide an antidote to that foolishness, I’ve reviewed ten of the best box sets I heard in 2013—all these releases put music first, bells and whistles second (when there are any bells and whistles at all)....

Backstory Cafe There are used books for sale in this socially/environmentally conscious cafe at the Experimental Station. For more, see Restaurants. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » 57th Street Books The Seminary Co-op’s more mainstream sister is one of the city’s most venerable independents. Though the steep stairs leading down to its basement location can look a little foreboding, the interior is well-organized and easily browsable, with a smart selection of recent titles always featured on the front tables....

The first punk scene in Chicago was a motley assemblage of music geeks, drag queens, and wasteoids who gathered at a north-side gay bar called La Mere Vipere starting in early 1977—and it flourished for almost a year before anybody started the city’s first punk band. Judging by Joe Losurdo and Chris Tillman’s 2007 documentary You Weren’t There: A History of Chicago Punk 1977-1984—still the only major effort to chronicle this cultural moment—the city’s earliest punks were all about decadent self-expression but not so much about making their own music....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Kenny Johnson’s campaign for state rep in the 26th District sent out an e-mail Monday morning highlighting his lead in a recent poll. The poll, conducted more than a week ago, reportedly found Johnson favored by 20 percent of voters in the long lakefront district, followed by educator and activist Phillip Jackson with 16 percent and the three other candidates–incumbent Elga Jeffries, former legislative aide Will Burns, and attorney Paul Chadha–each with less than 10 percent....

Try to imagine this: A new attempt at online journalism is launched in Chicago. But its creators aren’t following the usual model—setting out on a wing and a prayer, betting that notice and funding will come their way before the operation collapses. McClellan called her “chintzy” and explained, “So I thought to myself, if she wants to help these people with their new venture—and these are people who worked years and years for her late husband and whose efforts helped build his fortune—why not give them the $2 million they need?...

Julia Thiel Whisper Kisses at Small Bar A few years ago I read a Sherman Alexie story in which a character said he hated Trader Joe’s because every time he fell in love with a product, they’d stop making it. It stuck with me because I can relate (seriously, if anyone with influence there is reading this, can you bring back those big multigrain crackers?). Now Solemn Oath, a year-old brewery in Naperville, wants to do the same thing to me....

The 19th Chicago Underground Film Festival runs Thursday, May 31, through Thursday, June 7, 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 programs; for a full schedule see cuff.org. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The Fourth Dimension Commissioned by Grolsch Beer, this anthology film collects three shorts about the title concept, which most of the artists interpret simply as “time....

I think we can all agree that Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s recent proposal to rename Stony Island Avenue for Bishop Arthur Brazier is a thinly disguised ploy to boost his standing with black voters, most of whom are upset over school closings and budget cuts. So the family obviously has ties to City Hall. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » By the way, I urge you to read the 2011 book by Moore and Williams, The Almighty Black P Stone Nation....