A day-off short list of cheer for you. Thanks for hanging out on PSA land this year! Various dates through Wed 12/30: Ballet Chicago presents several different versions of The Nutcracker that they’ve done through the years, ticketed streaming hosted by the Athenaeum. Sat 12/26, 7 PM: The National Museum of Mexican Art presents “Beyond the Music: A Musical Geography of Mexico,” a virtual tour of the music of Mexico guided by the Sones de Mexico Ensemble and streamed live on the NMMA’s Facebook & YouTube pages....

John H. White/Sun-Times Seventh Ward alderman Natashia Holmes will have to survive a ballot challenge and nine opponents to hold onto her seat. If she can stay on the ballot, Seventh Ward alderman Natashia Holmes faces a crowded field of challengers, including Keiana Barrett, who served as former alderman Sandi Jackson’s chief of staff. Holmes didn’t return calls for comment. Neither did Barrett. Yet there are stretches of the ward “where nothing exists....

Thanks to Donald Trump, the funding outlook for the long-awaited $2.3 billion Red Line extension—proposed and postponed since the Nixon administration—looks pretty bleak right now. To find out, I rode the train to 95th and traced the path of the proposed extension, buttonholing neighbors near the planned station locations. After 111th, the Red Line would continue to hug the Union Pacific line as the railroad turns southeast and climbs an embankment to an overpass near 116th and Michigan....

In a bare six weeks you’ll be getting your heart warmed by Scrooge and Rudolph and the rest. Right now, though, it’s time to contemplate getting it pulled out through your rib cage and eaten by some ungodly beast. Below you’ll find reviews of seven Halloween shows. We’ll be seeing a lot more soon, so check back next week. —Tony Adler Camp Psychopathways Danny Galvin and Brad Pike aim for camp and hit wacky in this satirical musical (with songs by Galvin, Pike, and Robbie Ellis) about a dysfunctional summer camp for psychopathic girls: one is a sadist, another a wannabe arsonist, the third a narcissistic cell-phone addict, etc....

The rise of Albert, Duke of York, from stammering puddle of self-doubt to global champion in the fight against Nazis is a story with all the right stuff. There’s a scandalous royal romance, a world on the precipice of disaster, and in “Bertie,” an underdog who’s easy enough to root for. In director Michael Wilson’s staging of David Seidler’s drama for Chicago Shakespeare Theater there are also Downton Abbey-worthy period costumes by David C....

The reviews are in for the Utah House of Representatives’ educational rap video, which parodies the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme song, and they’re not great. The Utah House of Representatives made a rap video about how a bill becomes law, and somehow it’s worse than you would expect pic.twitter.com/Dq3U7RwGBu — Robert Maguire (@RobertMaguire_) March 1, 2018 If Bruce Rauner has made an amateur rap video, he’s thankfully kept it to himself....

On July 15, 1974, as President Nixon was being driven from office, a 29-year-old TV journalist in Sarasota, Florida, interrupted her morning talk show for a dramatic announcement. “In keeping with Channel 40’s policy of bringing you the latest in blood and guts, and in living color, we bring you another first,” Christine Chubbuck told her viewers. “Attempted suicide.” She then pulled out a .38 revolver and shot herself in the back of the head....

Not Too Fancy Productions brings this musical comedy to Chicago after previous runs in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Written by Ben Budick, Steve Mackes, and Dave Ogrin, Wild Women of Planet Wongo takes up two spaces in the Chopin basement: a bar/lounge area where Wongotinis are served and game shows are played and a standing-room-only space where the plot plays out. After a crash, astronauts Ric and Louie find themselves marooned on all-female Planet Wongo, known for its population of warrior wonder women....

The Back Room Deal features radio personality and longtime Reader political writer Ben Joravsky arguing local Chicago politics with Reader staff writer Maya Dukmasova. With sharp wit and stinging analysis, Joravsky and Dukmasova cut through the smoky haze of the elections to offer you a glimpse of the current Chicago races—ward-level and, of course, mayoral. Will these historic elections be determined in back-room deals, like so many in Chicago’s past? Let Ben and Maya talk you through it....

English-language remakes of popular foreign films are becoming more common as Hollywood studios hope for a sure thing at the box office and stars look for leading roles. With the buddy comedy The Upside, in current release, Bryan Cranston and Kevin Hart attempt to surpass the original 2011 French hit The Intouchables (in terms of U.S. grosses, they already have). Bart Freundlich has remade Susanne Bier’s Danish love story After the Wedding (2006) as a vehicle for his wife, Julianne Moore (it opens next month)....

With anti-Semitism on the rise in the U.S. and Europe, it might make perfect sense to revisit Shakespeare’s most nakedly anti-Semitic work. Yes, Shylock gets that “hath not a Jew eyes?” speech, but anyone who is moved by the suggestion that a Jewish man is human like everyone else is probably not a trustworthy ally to begin with. To say the least. Charles Askenaizer’s intimate staging of The Merchant of Venice for Invictus Theatre Company sets the story in 1938 Italy, the same time frame as Vittorio De Sica’s 1970 film about the rise of Italian fascism, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis....

On May 9, 2010, Touche Amore opened for Converge, Coalesce, and Black Breath at Bottom Lounge. Every band on the bill was repping an album released within the past year, several of them great—but the Burbank five-piece appeared most in awe of their circumstances, most grateful to be sharing the stage. Just nine months after dropping their 2009 debut, . . . To the Beat of a Dead Horse, Touche Amore were being courted by Converge hardcore honcho Jacob Bannon and his Deathwish Inc....

Ranch dressing as we know it was invented by a Nebraska-born African-American cowboy working as a plumbing contractor in Alaska. It’s true. Steve Henson whipped up the concoction of buttermilk, mayo, sour cream, parsley, onion, garlic, and salt and pepper to feed his crew of hungry workers in the early 50s. Eventually, though, Henson and his wife, Gayle, moved to Santa Barbara and opened Hidden Valley Ranch, where the dressing grew so popular among their guests they began to bottle it and send it home with them....

Ashlee Rezin/for Sun-Times Media Mayor Rahm Emanuel said he “reformed” the parking meter deal, but city drivers continue to pay millions of dollars a month to the private meter company. As Mayor Rahm Emanuel searches for money to cope with the city’s grave financial health, the private firm that controls Chicago’s parking meter system collected another $131 million from city drivers in 2014 to wrap up its most lucrative year yet, according to a financial audit posted Tuesday on the city’s website....

Sunburned Hand of the Man are a loose Boston-based collective whose work has sprawled across multiple genres, including free improv, noise, folk, drone, and psychedelic jams. Founded in 1997 out of the ashes of art-rock trio Shit Spangled Banner, they became part of a scene that specialized in indulgence and reveled in long builds, endless permutation, improvisation, and minimalism that could get pretty damn maximal at the drop of a hat (or the stomp of a pedal)....

It has been 28 years since storyteller, comedian, and teacher of improv Jimmy Carrane debuted his 1991 solo “intimate evening,” I’m 27, I Still Live at Home, and I Sell Office Supplies at the then very outsider-ish Annoyance Theatre. At the time only a handful of performers did this kind of bracingly honest autobiographical work, most notably Spalding Gray. (Comedy clubs at the time were dominated by self-involved, proudly underinformed, testosterone-poisoned white guys, delivering rapid-fire punch lines about how irritated they were at everything and everyone....

As I wrote recently in a post about the horror film Winchester, I’m a fan of historical films that simply use the period as a backdrop to the story as opposed to using the story as a means of investigating the period. I find it encouraging to think that elements of human nature have remained the same over time—that there’s something I can feel that connects me with the people of the past....

Kaczmarek’s office, tucked in a corner, houses an extensive library of books and reference materials, a file cabinet stuffed with investigative paperwork, maps of supposedly haunted locations around Chicago and the burbs, and dozens of ghost knickknacks he’s collected over the years. Want to show off your space? E-mail space@chicagoreader.com.