Shootings in Chicago have spiked this year—we’re on track to pass 700 homicides, a number the city hasn’t seen in nearly two decades. It’s difficult to get your head around so much loss of life, to say nothing of the psychological and emotional damage it does to the communities that endure the worst of it. The students involved in Little Village Lawndale High School’s Beats & Bars rap about growing up in neighborhoods wracked by violence on the music-making program’s second release of the year, the new The Lawndale Project....

When Will and Kevin Hines perform together as the Brothers Hines, they aren’t just attempting to capitalize on the success of sibling comedy teams through the ages (or, as it were, the success of dancing brothers Gregory and Maurice Hines). They’re actually blood relatives, which I asked them to confirm, much to their befuddlement. “Growing up we watched the same shows and movies,” Kevin says. “If something makes one of us laugh, it’s going to make both of us laugh....

Tamale-Spiced Tomalley

This week the Ear Taxi Festival celebrates Chicago’s rich new-music scene on a large scale. From Wednesday, October 5, through Monday, October 10, it presents a dazzling potpourri of new work, curated by composer Augusta Read Thomas and musician Stephen Burns (leader of Fulcrum Point New Music Project), at a variety of venues around town: the Harris Theater, the Chicago Cultural Center, Rockefeller Chapel, Constellation, Daley Plaza. More than 350 musicians will perform pieces by 88 different composers—including 54 world premieres—at nearly two dozen shows....

Chicago Public Library You don’t need one of these anymore. Reading is, by nature, an antisocial experience. If a book is really good (and sometimes even if it’s not) you want to be able to immerse yourself in it completely. Paradoxically, a lot of socializing now—the kind that happens over computer networks—involves reading, which also makes it kind of antisocial. This is the first time any library in the country has attempted anything like this....

Via @tunameltsmyheart on Instagram Get out of here with that, Tuna. It all began in 2010 when Courtney Dasher found a four-month-old Chiweenie with an exaggerated overbite, a lower jawline dysfunction, and a tendency to crawl on his belly because of the emotional trauma of being abandoned. She brought him home only intending to foster the pup, but that quickly changed. After a week, Dasher knew something was special about Tuna (a name based on his “cartoonish” features) and made the decision to adopt him....

If I’m going to root for one player above all others during the World Series, it won’t be one of the Cubs. And I mean no disrespect to the Cubs. When he was sentenced, the courtroom was packed with well-wishers. Judge Amy St. Eve had already read hundreds of letters championing Kipnis; she’d looked over a petition asking for mercy that had been signed by a hundred people at the Sun-Times (where Black and Radler were despised)....

“In the last decade,” Kathryn Keane, vice president of National Geographic Exhibitions, says in a statement, “some of our most powerful stories have been produced by a generation of photojournalists who are women.” It can be argued that this method is also suited to women photographers, who can have access to spaces men do not, particularly spaces occupied primarily by other women and children. But, as Jodi Cobb says in the wall text that precedes her work, “At first I resisted photographing women because I felt I was being pigeonholed....

Straight white Americans are the worst. Especially but not exclusively straight white American men. How do I know? I saw a lot of theater in Chicago this year. Sure, you might glean the same conclusion from news stories (Harvey Weinstein, Roy Moore) or history books (slavery, genocide) or social media (@realDonaldTrump). But a play distills behavior in a way nothing else can. And the distillate left by a remarkable number of recent shows is the message that straight white Americans suck....

Love, love, live, love, lobotomy, love. Valentine’s Day is upon us next week (I know, already!) and even those of us who usually eschew the holiday might want to at least spend some time reaching out and tending to our nearest and dearest. Let’s let them know that as soon as these antidepressants kick in, we’ll find them desirable. Thu 2/11, Sat 2/13, and Sun 2/14, all at 7 PM: Laugh Factory hosts three online comedy nights featuring Pat Tomasulo, Sarah Perry, Correy Boyd-Bell, Paul Farahvar, and more....

About 24 hours after David Axelrod, spin master supreme, publicly predicted in the Sun-Times that his old pal Mayor Rahm Emanuel was too loyal to ever—and I mean, ever—sack his other good buddy, Chicago Public Schools CEO Forrest Claypool, down came the boom. Of course, there was no need for Rahm to fear Claypool, who’s been a loyal factotum for years. One of my favorite revelations from the trial of former governor Rod Blagojevich was the taped 2008 conversation in which Emanuel, who was leaving Congress to work as President Obama’s chief of staff, asked Blago to fill the vacancy with Claypool....

Harold Pinter started out 1957 as a 26-year-old English actor of no particular distinction, working as “David Baron.” But then, the story has it, a director friend named Henry Woolf asked Pinter to write a quick play for him. Pinter had done some poetry and fiction before, but never a play. He refused Woolf’s invitation, saying he’d need a minimum of six months to come up with something. Yet four days later Woolf received Pinter’s script for The Room, which A Red Orchid Theatre is currently presenting in a rare and interesting, if flawed, revival....

In the promotional materials for his superb new album I Long to See You (Blue Note) veteran reedist Charles Lloyd calls himself a “sound seeker,” and says that “the deeper I dive into the ocean of sound, I find there is still deeper and further to go.” Lloyd is 77, and I can think of only a few musicians of his generation and age who’ve continued to push their music forward by working in new contexts....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Thursday, November 16, 2017. Chicago Police Department superintendent Eddie Johnson is expected to announce Thursday that Englewood shootings and homicides “are on pace to reach historic lows in 2017,” according to the Sun-Times. Recent data refutes Englewood’s reputation for being one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the city and even in the U.S. There were only 158 incidents of gun violence reported in the neighborhood as of October 31, compared to 302 during the same time period in 2016....

The tenth annual Chicago South Asian Film Festival (CSAFF) features 65 films that center on the experiences of South Asians across the diaspora and shed light on a range of social issues that impact their communities. The festival kicks off with a series of films at the ShowPlace Icon Theatre and DePaul’s CDM Theatre on Thursday and Friday, before Friday night’s official opening event at Venue Six10, which features an awards ceremony and screenings of Aapke Aa Jane Se and The Last Color, which is directed by Michelin-star chef and MasterChef India host Vikas Khanna....

The premise of Meridith Friedman’s 2015 drama sounds all too familiar: Patrick, a popular white politician running for a high office and doing well in the polls, may be brought down by revelations of racist behavior in college. As part of a fraternity initiation, he and another white boy spray-painted “Go Home [N-word]” on the door of a black student’s dorm room. Now, Friedman invites us to believe, he is being forced to face the consequences of his actions....

This year’s edition of the Onion City Film Festival (formerly the Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival) holds together nicely. Several clear themes emerge from the four-day event: the experience of women and other underrepresented groups, revolutionary politics, the relationship between people and their environments, and the humorous possibilities of experimenting with the film form. Curator Emily Eddy has wisely spread these themes evenly across the nine programs, so attendees can get a sampling of each no matter what day they go....