A show called Support Group For Men? Written by a woman? At this particular juncture in the life of the nation? I’d expect a bunch of smug white, cisgendered, y-chromosomed assholes getting their privilege-and sundry other parts-handed to them on a pike, to the roar of the woke masses. Fairey’s script is far too pat and ingratiating to matter much. It’s also dated, referencing old Chicago news like the gentrification of Wicker Park....

Q: I’m a woman who married young (21), and I’ve been with my husband for seven years. Within the last year, I’ve realized that my falling libido probably comes from the fact that I am not turned on by our boring vanilla sex routine. I had some great casual sex before we met, but it turns out I’m into BDSM, which I found out when I recently had a short affair....

Sometimes an anniversary celebration can also be the perfect time to end a chapter. Such is the case with strident UK rock band UFO, who turned 50 this year and are on the road with what they’ve claimed will be the last tour with their one constant member, gritty-voiced vocalist and front man Phil Mogg. Mogg has announced he’ll retire following this jaunt, and in an official statement he says he hopes folks don’t call this a farewell tour—though UFO have named it Last Orders....

Sun-Times Print Collection Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, chapter one The New York Times reported the other day that 2015 is the 150th anniversary of the first publication of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Americans are celebrating too. The president of the Lewis Carroll Society of North America said the Alice books—Lewis Carroll published Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There six years later—are “likely the most frequently quoted works of fiction in the English-speaking world,” rivaled only by Shakespeare....

Director Kimberly Senior’s monumental staging of Sam Shepard’s career-defining Buried Child has all the heft and anguish of Long Day’s Journey Into Night, the play Shepard called the greatest in American history. Like O’Neill’s masterpiece, Buried Child focuses on a spiritually bankrupt family torn asunder and glued together by unspeakable secrets. When estranged grandson Vince, heading out west to reconnect with his errant father, stops by the Illinois homestead, he’s drawn inexorably into the childhood home where everything’s familiar and nothing’s recognizable....

“Today fashionistas turn to Instagram and its influencers to see the latest styles,” says Virginia Heaven, guest curator of a new exhibit at the Chicago History Museum. “This exhibition explores the emergence of a distinctively American glamour: fresh, independent, stylish yet easy to wear and comfortable . . . It showcases how the costumers in Hollywood were the original influencers of American Style.” “Silver Screen to Mainstream,” which runs through January 2020, features 30 garments that illustrate just how influential Tinseltown was in the 30s and 40s, a time when unemployment in Chicago hit 40 percent....

In the category of up is down and down is up, Alderman Ed Burke—yes, that Ed Burke—played the role of reformer at last week’s City Council meeting. Alright, the details . . . Activists of the lefty persuasion—i.e., my kind of people—cried foul. And then the mayor dragged out budget chief Susie Park to do what budget chiefs are always being asked to do: keep a straight face while they tell you something that everyone knows is utterly absurd....

What have you taken comfort in during this terrifying, infuriating, exhausting year? Maybe oblivion in an ocean of whiskey? A relentless, endorphin-pumping intake of pasta and pastry? What about just living like there’s no tomorrow with your best friends and lovers? If you’ve answered yes to any of these questions, you’ve likely been taking regular advantage of the great comforts offered by the Chicago restaurant industry. Whether you go out eating and drinking to exorcise your rage or to forget your fears, 2017 had your back....

Mike Sula Anchovy pizza, Pizza East When the British-born private club/hotel Soho House opened off Randolph Street last year I was less offended by the idea of an exclusive playground that requires head shots to vet its privileged potential membership than I was by the idea that it came with a pizza restaurant. Pizza East is dedicating those ovens to a number of other worthy causes. Don’t decline the garlic bread that precedes your order....

THEATER PICKS (KERRY REID) On the heels of the Trump impeachment, City Lit may have snagged the “good timing” award with this revival of Kristine Thatcher’s 2000 play about Barbara Jordan, the Black Texas congresswoman (and the first elected from the deep south) who first came to national prominence during the Watergate hearings. Thatcher’s play also delves into Jordan’s longtime relationship with speechwriter Nancy Earl and her struggle with multiple sclerosis....

ARTIST: Plastic Crimewave SHOW: Plastic Crimewave Syndicate, Wet Tuna, Ash & Herb, and the Drag City DJs at the Hideout on Thu 5/3 MORE INFO: plasticcrimewave.com

Dear Cecil: Cecil replies:

Nick Hornby is a mensch among writers. He writes warm, big-hearted novels and deliberately nonsnarky music and literary criticism. He publishes books to raise money for charity. Even his biggest flaw as a writer is menschy: he won’t let his characters come to any serious harm, even though they’re imaginary, and even if a little pain would do them good. But this sharpness does not extend to the two most important pieces of the novel: Sophie and Barbara (and Jim) itself....

Chicagoans is a first-person account from off the beaten track, as told to Anne Ford. This week’s Chicagoan is Ashlyn Sparrow, 29, game designer. So we’re the Game Changer Chicago Design Lab, and we’re focused on creating games around health. We are trying to see if these games can change people’s attitudes. And we’re trying to see what games actually do, beyond the question “Do violent video games make people more violent?...

Although newly minted Cook County state’s attorney Democratic nominee Kim Foxx was the focus of the night in Chicago, Hillary Clinton stole the national spotlight by defeating Bernie Sanders in Illinois in a late-contested race. What was predicted to be an upset for Sanders turned into a decisive victory for the former secretary of state. Support for Sanders was also apparent at the Urban League event, though that was outweighed by the the belief that he wouldn’t be able to win in a general election....

Walk through the doors of the cavernous 5,500-square-foot YOUmedia space and your senses are overwhelmed immediately by the whirring of 3D printers, the shouts of middle schoolers locked in a tense game of Mario Kart, and ecstatic rhymes in the recording studio from a young artist who, years later, you’ll swear you knew them way back when. On a typical school day afternoon, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, it wouldn’t have been unusual to see 100 teens stream into—of all places—the Harold Washington Library downtown....

Q: Gay, thirtysomething male in D.C. My boyfriend of three years has been acting strange—not taking his antidepression meds, says he’s feeling weird. He has withdrawn from me, sleeps 15 hours a day, and has been canceling on commitments to socialize with friends. That I am fine with—he’s blue and I get it. Here’s why I’m writing: He was doing an online crossword, and when he got up, I was going to write a message in it—to be funny and sweet....

Reading through some old columns, I just came across one I wrote in 1994 about an ad touting a sandwich shop that was giving away condoms. The ad was held out of the Evanston Township High School newspaper for the reason—which I called “hoary” even then—that it was a little too raw for “impressionable teenagers.” It was a time, apparently—though did anyone ever actually think this?—when it was supposed that impressionability was something teenagers grew out of as they became adults....

The show begins before you enter the theater lobby on the 14th floor of the Cambria Hotel, before the costumed attendants greet you just past the revolving door at the northeast corner of Randolph and Dearborn and usher you into the elevator, before you step off or out of your preferred mode of transport and into the entropic eddies that are the awkward traffic of humans and cars learning to move en masse again, where some shop and some shout and some gawp agape across the street from—yes—street performers on trumpets outside the Macy’s....

In 1994, a live broadcast of O.J. Simpson’s white Bronco racing down the LA freeway crashed televisions across the country; it was the start of a very complex story about the criminal justice system, race, abuse, and celebrity. Let’s not forget, the LA riots took place just two years earlier; many saw O.J.’s prosecution as yet another incident in which the LAPD prejudicially sought to convict black men. And then there’s the notion that celebrities can get away with anything (while Simpson raced down the highway, fans lined the road cheering him on, “Run, O....