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Mysterious as it was on one level, the Bulls’ sudden ineptitude this season had a familiar look to a Chicago sports fan. Just as the White Sox couldn’t hit the ball and suffered through a debilitating slump early last season, the Bulls found they couldn’t hit a shot, which proved fatal for a jump-shooting team. And just as the Bears’ inability to mount a decent running game this fall left the defense on the field to tire late in games, the Bulls’ offensive struggles put too much pressure on their defense, which soon collapsed as the players took on a hangdog demeanor....

The Spice House 1512 N. Wells 312-274-0378 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » One trip to this emporium of high-quality spices and somehow the peanut butter some people slip into chili doesn’t seem to qualify as a “secret ingredient” anymore. Save that for something like Saigon cinnamon—ground on-site, it’s more than twice as strong as the stuff sold at Jewel—or the house-blended Back of the Yards Garlic Pepper Butcher’s Rub meat seasoning, made with both finely and coarsely cut pepper so as to stagger the flavor release....

I have a feeling the review of Neal Pollack’s new book was dead-on [“Alternative to What?” January 19], but the description of the negative response to his 2005 Salon article about his son’s expulsion from preschool for biting was less so. You wrote that the vitriolic (and it was) response was because he sent his son to day care and was “insufficiently sorrowful about it,” which doesn’t tell the whole story....

There is no summing up Sam—no writerly preface, no small-talk tidbits, no rundown of vital stats that can suffice. She is irreducible, like a prime number, or a quark. Mention a recent story about her that she didn’t much like, and she’ll snort. “I told my friend Robbie I wished that thing had been called ‘Fat Nigga Tells Jokes.’” Irby is not actually an id, or a stunted adolescent. That perception comes from the pop-culture confusion of persona with person, Belknap says, and “the insistent insinuation of writer into subject....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » • Cicchetti, the new Venetian bar and small-plates restaurant from restaurateur Dan Rosenthal (Harry Caray’s) and executive chef Mike Sheerin (Trenchermen), opens Monday. Beyond its Italian eats and Harry’s Bar-inspired cocktails, it’s also going to be the first restaurant in Chicago to open with a Green Seal certification for its use of sustainable materials in both construction and the operation of the kitchen....

Courtesy of Charlie Rose David Brooks An idea has come when its skeptics are more interesting to read than its champions. This week I’ve watched conservatives pundits—that is, the New York Times version of conservative pundits—grapple with gay marriage. “The conservative argument still has serious exponents,” Ross Douthat wrote, “but it’s now chuckled at in courtrooms, dismissed by intellectuals, mocked in the media and (in a sudden, recent rush) abandoned by politicians....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I’m fascinated by this video from the Shedd Aquarium, about how the belugas and dolphins were transported to their temporary home in Mystic, Connecticut, so that the Oceanarium can be renovated. The thing I keep scrolling back to is how the staff sits right on the edge of their “cradles” for the whole trip, feet in the water, “talking to the whales, petting the whales, and keeping them cool” as they’re rolled from the aquarium onto a truck and then on and off a FedEx jet....

These video works by artist Charles Fairbanks advance a sophisticated visual sensibility, cannily exploiting HD video’s extreme depth of field to observe multiple planes of action within the same shot. They’re also very funny—Fairbanks demonstrates genuine wit in his compositions, and his subjects tend to revel in their eccentricities to humorous effect. Four of the five shorts in this program are about wrestling, and it’s to Fairbanks’s credit that they never feel repetitive....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “For over two centuries of growth and struggle, peace and war, the Constitution has secured our freedom through the guarantee that, in the United States, no one will be deprived of liberty without due process of law. Yet more than four years ago military authorities seized an alien lawfully residing here. He has been held by the military ever since — without criminal charge or process....

On assignment in Arabia for Kurtis Productions In its desperation, journalism has dusted off Renaissance values. Students are told that to earn their keep they’ll need to know how to do everything. Prepare yourselves to create content, they’re told: to create it fast and on every imaginable platform—the ones we have and the ones we might have in 20 years. And in your spare time, light up the sky with an unending burst of brilliant ideas on how to reinvent the business....

This should have been the biggest week for Ministry in years—at least since the pioneering industrial band played four nights at Chicago’s House of Blues in May 2008 to end their final stateside tour. But thanks in part to a bout of bitter legal wrangling, Ministry front man and sole constant member Al Jourgensen is sitting the whole thing out. “Why isn’t Al there?” Angie Jourgensen asks of the screening. “They never invited him....

12:30 PM: Locate the best dream spot of all time in one of the Reader‘s two Bike Villages. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » 1 PM: Check out Psychic Paramount‘s instrumental firebombs for the second time in less than 14 hours and see how well a fog machine translates during an early-afternoon beatdown of sweltering heat. 3:45 PM: Take the first of several beer and shade breaks, followed by a cookie-dough cone of Temptation Vegan Ice Cream, because it’s Pitchfork and, hey, I’m letting loose....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In February 2003, Death Cab for Cutie vocalist Ben Gibbard and Jimmy Tamborello, who records electronic music under the name Dntel, released an album as the Postal Service called Give Up. For an electro-pop side project from two relatively unknown indie-rock musicians the album did surprisingly well, landing at number one on Billboard’s Dance/Electronic Albums chart and placing in the top 20 on the Heatseekers and Independent Albums charts—the single “We Will Become Silhouettes” even cracked the Hot 100....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » On Friday at the Burlington, local math-pop trio Paper Mice will be playing their last show with bassist Adam McCormack, who is heading out west with his family to be closer to his parents in LA. Drummer John Carroll tells me that this won’t be the end of the band, though. “(Guitarist) Dave (Reminick) and I are looking for a replacement,” he says, “although its not gonna be easy....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In the back of the van now, trying to catch up (recover?) from six weeks of constant shows. I’m somewhere between Iowa City and Milwaukee (wasn’t I just there?—touring can feel like Fight Club sometimes), on my way to my second show with Iron & Wine. I’ve been out on tour since August, doing the final Pavement dates in North America, double-dipping with Sonic Youth on the last two shows, and then heading with them down to Austin City Limits....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » For the past hour or so the Internet’s been a-sizzle over a certain contentious pop songstress’s new video, but for all of the brilliant jokes it’s produced regarding dudes who look like the merch guys for vegan screamo bands and the cost of renting a couple of largish tigers, the clip mostly just makes me think of 90s Meat Loaf videos....

LET THE RIGHT ONE IN sss Directed by Tomas Alfredson Written by John Ajvide Lindqvist, based on his novel With Kare Hedebrant, Lina Leandersson, Per Ragnar, Henrik Dahl, and Karin Bergquist. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Eight decades later, the vampire genre is more popular than ever, partly because writers have dragged the undead out of their remote, neogothic settings and into ever more familiar locales....

THURSDAY25 Thursday25 THE HOLD STEADY PETER BJORN AND JOHN SUPREME CUTS Friday26 I CAN HEAR MYSELF LEVITATE SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE WAR ON DRUGS Saturday27 SUSANA BACA BRAID LOST IN THE TREES NRBQ RELEASE THE SUNBIRD Sunday28 Monday29 Tuesday30 VREID Wednesday31 JIM WARD FRIDAY26 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I CAN HEAR MYSELF LEVITATE This Chicago quintet got some buzz last year for their debut EP, What Is Left; this show celebrates the release of its self-released follow-up, A City Submerged, which their press release describes as “the story of a city’s demise brought on by a leader’s lack of dignity, morality, and selflessness....

In the latest Late Nite Catechism installment, the nun known only as Sister teaches a seminar on morality in film. While based on the same archaic Catholic-school experience as its forerunners, this work is the first that feels dated. It dwells on the most obvious nostalgia (Spencer Tracy as Father Flanagan in Boys Town, The Sound of Music) and breezes past anything current or controversial (save for a nod to The Sixth Sense and a recycled Da Vinci Code bit)....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » This year’s budget hearings are at least a little different. Aldermen, truly freaked out that constituents will blame them for service cuts and slowdowns, are looking for answers under every rock they stumble across. “Some of us believe there is a little bit of overprinting that’s going on,” said the 46th Ward’s Helen Shiller, suggesting that city departments produce fewer copies of whatever it is that they produce [PDF]....