Leonard C. Goodman is a Chicago criminal defense attorney and co-owner of the newly independent Reader. The differences between Democrats and Republicans on issues like abortion and gay rights are important to be sure. But the areas of agreement between the two parties— both parties favor the interests of corporations over their workers and the environment— are also important. And these issues don’t get discussed because there is no disagreement. It is just accepted by both parties that a lawyer must be business-friendly to qualify for a federal judgeship....

Boy, oh boy, the residents of tiny Gilead, Wisconsin, need some hope. Good thing they’re living in a musical. You see, greedy loggers swooped in a while back and cleared out all the mature trees in the local forest. Then the quarry where many residents worked shut down. But since dramatizing the effects of a sweeping regional economic downturn is patently beyond the reach of this quaint 2001 musical’s creators (music and book by James Valcq, lyrics and book by Fred Alley), they pin the town’s crippling despair on the disappearance of the town’s favorite son during the Vietnam war a couple decades back....

ARTIST: Jessica Seamans SHOWS: Phish at Wrigley Field on Fri 6/24 and Sat 6/25 MORE INFO: landland.net

As with all crazes and phenomena, I was slow to “feel the Bern.” I was watching him on The View—I know, the things I watch—and as a gag they had him shooting baskets. And I realized—holy shit, this thing’s for real. I still don’t think he’s going to beat Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, but he’s clearing tapping into a deep and righteous rage over a system that’s rigged....

ARTIST: Ech SHOW: Lights Over Bridgeport, Kowloon Bay, and Cheryl Rodey at GMan Tavern on Sat 4/28 MORE INFO: miguelechemendia.com

Since 2004 Plastic Crimewave (aka Steve Krakow) has used the Secret History of Chicago Music to shine a light on worthy artists with Chicago ties who’ve been forgotten, underrated, or never noticed in the first place.

ARTIST: Andrew SchmidtSHOW: Tame Impala at the Riviera Theatre on Fri 5/15MORE INFO: etsy.com/shop/StarmanPress

Seeking: A good-hearted woman Occupation: Teamster What do you do when you’re not working? His friend says: “He will help anyone out in a jam. He’s half tough guy half really goofy dude.” Spend time with friends, read nonfiction books and novels, and see live music. Smoker? No. Pets? No, but I’m an animal lover. Dietary restrictions? None. Children? Religion? Not religious. What’s your idea of the perfect Chicago date?...

At 5 PM Saturday, March 21, Governor J.B. Pritzker’s COVID-19 Executive Order No. 8, aka the Stay at Home order, took effect. Here’s a daily-ish journal of how Reader staff, our friends, family—and our pets—are spending our time. Anything suggesting local journalism isn’t worth saving What we’re realizing:

Curious Theatre Branch touts its annual Rhinofest as “Chicago’s longest-running fringe festival,” and that’s been true for the longest time. But in putting together edition number 27 this year, coartistic directors Beau O’Reilly and Jenny Magnus may have inadvertently broken the streak. Although it’s hard—and maybe foolish—to set rules for an event as inherently various as a fringe festival, every one I’ve ever heard of is moderately to completely wide open....

I wish I were prescient enough to have predicted that a boom in southern and soul food was coming our way, a welcome respite from the relentless Italian-food invasion. We have good southern food here and there, both high and low end, but the depth and breadth of regional southern cooking has yet to be thoroughly explored, which is hard to fathom given Chicago’s strong connections to the south. Most of the shrimp I tried at Luella’s was remarkably good, fat and sweet, swimming in a buttery New Orleans-style barbecue preparation (not actually barbecued) and resting in a pool of ultracreamy grits....

Q: My son is straight, cute, accomplished, 25, and has friends. He’s never been kissed. I suspect he’s terrified. I can’t talk to him about it. Should his dad talk to him? Should he go to a sex worker? Would this undermine his confidence? Q: I am familiar with demisexuality—the idea that some people cannot develop a sexual relationship without an emotional or a romantic bond first—but what about the opposite phenomenon?...

Seth Perlman/Sun-Times Media The Trib and Governor Rauner are still in their honeymoon phase. I can’t look inside the heads of the members of the Tribune editorial board. If they write that Bruce Rauner impressed and excited them when he visited the board for an hour last week, then that must be what he did. But I wonder what reservations, if any, got swallowed as they approved his message....

Manuscripts Don’t Burn Spike Lee reaches back to the 70s heyday of blaxploitation for his latest project, Da Sweet Blood of Jesus, a remake of Bill Gunn’s low-budget cult item Ganja & Hess. Also in this week’s issue, I recommend Manuscripts Don’t Burn, an uncompromising drama about government censorship, repression, and murder from Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof (Iron Island).

Welcome to the Reader’s morning briefing for Wednesday, February 3, 2016. $100 million in cuts at Chicago Public Schools The day after the Chicago Teachers Union rejected the city’s contract offer, CPS announced it must make $100 million in budget cuts. But the cuts could be rolled back if the two sides reach an agreement. CTU President Karen Lewis called CPS’s move “the latest act of war.” [Sun-Times]

Ages of Man Theatre Above the Law presents three Thornton Wilder one-acts about how children relate to grown-ups. Wizened babies struggle to express complex thoughts while their adult caretakers can’t share simple ones, children playact themselves into understanding how much they need their parents, and teenagers realize the impossibility of walking in another’s shoes. This superb production moves nimbly from humor to heartbreak with spartan means, and the excellent cast juggle multiple roles effortlessly....

“He may be a jerk, but he’s a great man.” The Beach Bum is somewhat looser in structure than most Hollywood movies, borrowing its look and rhythms about equally from indie film and music videos. Moondog wanders around Miami and the Keys in ragged beach wear, ingesting controlled substances, having casual heterosexual intercourse, and encountering outrageous characters played by recognizable performers like Snoop Dogg and Martin Lawrence. Moondog almost misses his daughter’s wedding; he goes to rehab; he beats a disabled man and steals his money....

Hermetically sealed inside the idyllic heartland like a Kraft Single, The Bridges of Madison County is the most delicious kind of cheese. Intimately staged in Theo Ubique’s new digs in Evanston, this fish-out-of-water musical follows homesick Italian immigrant Francesca as she wilts on the vine from the boredom of pleasant domesticity in Iowa. When her husband and two kids leave her home alone for a long weekend, hunky photographer Robert Kincaid conveniently shows up at her house to ask for directions....

Inside a snug, spartan room at the Harold Washington Library Center, Shimon Marcucci had fine-tuned what probably amounted to several albums’ worth of music before I’d ever played a note there. For four years, the middle-aged bureaucrat turned amateur composer had spent his lunch break on the eighth floor of Chicago’s mammoth central library, soprano saxophone in tow. Standing in one of the six first-come, first-served rehearsal rooms—each outfitted with an upright piano and available for an hour at a time to anyone with a library card—Marcucci had been dreaming up and polishing a range of world-jazz fusion material that would eventually become a self-released record....

Since the summer, my buddy Nick and I have convened weekly to watch movies through Squad, a chat app with a screen-share function. For months, Nick has evangelized for free streaming site Tubi: it’s got lots of forgettable 2000s comedies featuring famous actors who’ve scrubbed those jobs from their CVs, plus tons of the absolute trash we both love, including way too many movies produced by Full Moon, a churn-’em-out horror-film company that makes Roger Corman look like John Carpenter....