Four Reader critics did triple—and, yes, even sextuple—duty last weekend, checking out entries in this year’s Chicago Fringe Festival so that you can see or strategically avoid them during the fest’s final days, September 8 through 11. For times, tickets, and other info, go to chicagofringe.org. —Tony Adler Elieida Rhiannon Frazier and Kate Farmin are so close to a classical vaudeville duo at times, the electrical charge between them so nearly attuned, that Ellieida should be required viewing for every self-respecting Marxist (Groucho, not Karl) in the greater Chicago area....

Richard A. Chapman/Sun-Times Come to the Hideout tomorrow for First Tuesdays to hear Karen Lewis talk to Mick and Ben about charters. As part of my ongoing effort to be more appreciative of every little good thing—no matter how little it may be—let me take this opportunity to congratulate the school board for postponing a decision on Noble’s latest charter high school application. Sorry, that outburst was not in spirit with my resolution to be cheery....

Denny Tedesco—whose father, guitarist Tommy Tedesco, was one of the greatest session musicians of the rock era—started working on his documentary The Wrecking Crew shortly after his dad was diagnosed with cancer in 1996, but it didn’t premiere until 12 years later, at the South by Southwest Film Festival. Another seven years elapsed before Denny could raise enough money to license the dozens of hit records excerpted in the movie, by artists as diverse as Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, the Beach Boys, the Monkees, Sonny and Cher, Ike and Tina Turner, and Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass....

The films in the 17th Annual African Diaspora International Film Festival do what much media and even the public school system fail to do: educate. Through robust programming that gives meaning to the word “diverse,” the selections in this year’s festival illuminate the experiences of those living in the African diaspora around the world. The New York-based husband-and-wife programmers, Reinaldo Barroso-Spech and Diarah N’Daw-Spech, have chosen more than a dozen films that, through a variety of modes and genres, further dimensionalize already complex issues specific to those living in these communities....

2020 leveled everything and everyone. There was civil unrest happening. There was no place to go. Everybody got stuck. Do you just give up and succumb to it all? Or do you push, do you ride through? What do you do? There’s no way I can let these kids give up. I need to lead by example. That means creating space. That means we can talk about it. That means we can write a song about it....

You might remember Gossip Wolf shouting out all-ages nonprofit arts center Pure Joy, which is looking for a space to call home. Turns out one of its board members, Jes Skolnik, plays guitar and sings for Chicago punks Split Feet, who release their full-length debut, Shame Parade, on Fri 2/6. This wolf would happily march with a big placard calling this band the bee’s knees—their claustrophobic, spooky sound recalls classic early-80s death rock and postpunk!...

“You either have someone come flush the pills for you or I have to call an ambulance,” my therapist tells me after a recent failed suicide attempt. It is the middle of April and I have been quarantining in a studio apartment alone with two friends down the hall, people whose phone numbers I list as emergency contacts in case things escalate. Outside quarantine, inpatient means time spent in a hospital under the watchful eye of medical staff....

Boogaloo and Graham Starting Friday at Landmark’s Century Centre you can see each of the 87th Academy Award’s nominees for Best Live Action Short Film. The two worst offerings from this year’s nominees suffer from similar issues, most glaringly a surplus of plot unfit for the short-film form. Similar to Butter Lamp (more on that later), the British drama The Phone Call richly—and wisely—explores a single scenario. A woman working in a suicide prevention center (Sally Hawkins) receives her first call of the day....

Timing is everything. Oh Hell Yeah, a new improv double bill consisting of the iO teams Alterboyz and Wet Bus, clearly demonstrates this truism. Alterboyz practices slow, patient improv while Wet Bus speeds through its set with quick wit, rapid physicality shifts, and bold scene initiations. Wet Bus masters the tempo while Alterboyz falls victim to it. Alterboyz’s scenes are full of pregnant pauses, which read as trepidation about the next line or where a scene is headed....

L ast September, former White House press secretary Sean Spicer appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and was asked about the president’s obsession with fake news. Spicer took a breath, futzed with his jacket, and explained how news has moved beyond “true or false” and into an arms race for the truth adjacent. “They’d rather be first than right,” Spicer said of modern journalists. “That’s unfortunate, and it gives a bad name to those who actually do take the time....

Anna Tsymbaliuk, 31, works as a babysitter and takes ESL classes at Truman College. We met at her apartment in Edgewater, where she prepared syrniki, fried cheese pancakes, according to her mother’s recipe. Most people make them flat, but hers are spherical, like fritters. She insists they taste better this way. She served them with coffee. Starbucks doesn’t compare to Ukrainian coffee, she says, but Metropolis comes close. I’m from Dnipro in Ukraine....

Matthew and Sarah Johnson own a spacious two-flat in Logan Square, nestled in a tidy tree-lined street around the corner from the “square” proper. The house was built in 1896. It has five bedrooms, three and a half bathrooms, high ceilings, a spacious yard, and a quaint front stoop. Yet the Johnsons live with their two children in the basement. Despite possessing no major renovation experience whatsoever and a tool kit consisting of a hammer, a screwdriver, an assortment of nails, and nothing else, the Johnsons took the plunge to transform the two-flat into a single-family home....

Warm up this week at one of Chicago’s many events. Here’s some of what we recommend: Tue 1/16: The Chicago Moth StorySlam, at Lincoln Hall (2424 N. Lincoln), is open to all. Prepare a five-minute story on tonight’s theme, “visitors and callers,” and enter your name for a chance to speak to the crowd. Experience not required. $8 PM, $10 For more things to do this week—and every day—visit our Agenda page....

Derry Queen takes the stage in a laced leather corset and a black skirt. He begins performing a traditional lip sync to Lady Gaga’s “Paparazzi.” And then things turn sour. An edited sound bite of Anderson Cooper declares that “Derry is a top,” a term in gay culture that, well, you can look it up, and Derry runs from the stage in shame. “I’m not a top!” he protests as Britney Spears’s “Piece of Me” plays him off and performers posing as paparazzi snap photos of him....

A few days before Governor Rauner’s State of the State speech, I woke to find a couple of unusual comments on my Facebook time line. With that I was hit by a jolt of panic not unlike the “midnight terrors” that the great Daily Southtown columnist Phil Kadner recently described in his farewell column. And that’s how I discovered that a column published April 15, 2014—with a now outdated wisecrack about the Bears—had suddenly gone viral....

Chicago hosts one of the world’s most vibrant improvisational scenes, so it’s not automatically remarkable when three of the city’s musicians get together to create in a live setting. But this combination stands out because of the unusual affiliations each member brings to this first-time encounter. In addition to playing low-key rock music with Zelienople and abstracted folk themes with Scott Tuma, percussionist Mike Weis performs ambient soundscapes with Mirror of Nature and solo material influenced by forms of Korean rituals....

Burgers are about more than just the meat, say Molly Birnbaum and Dan Souza, the people behind Cook’s Science. On Thursday, October 13, they’ll be at the Athenaeum Theatre for the second stop of Cook’s Science Live: The Burger Tour, explaining just what makes the standby such a crowd-pleaser. “We go through each part, everything from the bun to the ketchup to the burger to the onions,” Souza says. “There’s a lot more going on in each element than you would first imagine....

“Mexican-American fusion” is not a phrase that generally inspires confidence, evoking visions of dumbed-down Tex-Mex that runs the gamut from chile con queso to fajitas. Albany Park’s T&B Grill, however, has a more tightly focused menu than you might expect: it offers half a dozen tacos, about the same number of burgers—and that’s about it apart from a few sides and specials and a couple desserts. Even the drinks menu is limited to a few sodas, though you can BYOB with no corkage fee....

When 50th Ward alderman Debra Silverstein and other city officials broke ground on a new bike and pedestrian bridge in the ward on February 15, they were metaphorically shoveling dirt onto a particularly perplexing aspect of former alderman Berny Stone’s legacy: his inexplicable effort to kill the project some 14 years ago. During the 2007 municipal election, 50th Ward challenger Naisy Dolar used the bridge as a campaign issue. At the time, Stone told Time Out Chicago that he had vetoed the bridge because the eight-story Lincoln Village Senior Apartments building was being constructed just west of the trail near the proposed span site....

Between Bernie Sanders’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton and the conference Socialism 2016, which concluded in Chicago earlier this month, left-leaning residents might need a new outlet for their fix of noncapitalist rhetoric. The annual Bughouse Square Debates—the 30th edition takes place on Saturday, July 30—is an attempt to reconnect citizens to the city’s radical roots. Mainstream American disdain for communism after World War II led to a decline in the park’s popularity—until 20 years later, when community members sought to rejuvenate the park....