Manhunter Somewhat hidden among the slate of lackluster January studio releases is Blackhat, the latest film by the mighty Michael Mann, America’s finest purveyor of machismo ennui, neon expressionism, ebullient firefights, and dynamic shots of zooming speedboats. I wouldn’t necessarily count myself among the cult of Mann—next to Paul W.S. Anderson, he’s probably the most revered and obsessed-over filmmaker among auteur fetishists—but I’m far from a skeptic. I suppose I’m still getting used to his digital phase....

When Chuy Garcia forced a mayoral runoff with Rahm Emanuel, one of the first things I wondered was whether this meant Stump Connolly would stay out in the field for six weeks longer. “Stump Connolly” is the nom de precinct of Scott Jacobs, whom I’ve known since we were reporters at the Sun-Times. Full disclosure—we once wrote a play together. He wrote a scene; I wrote the next scene; audiences remarked that they seemed to be watching two different plays—though both had something to do with Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur....

For most of my life I’ve steered clear of choral music—I assumed it was antiquated, and my tastes in classical music leaned toward the contemporary (which usually means dissonance, unusual timbres, and odd structures). Of course, that assumption arose almost entirely out of ignorance. I’m still a novice when it comes to classical vocal music, but I’m coming around—not just because I’ve discovered the work of Baroque composers such as Henry Purcell but also because I’ve been programming contemporary music every week for nearly five years for my Frequency Series....

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. Ashby, Ostermann, Massoth, and Bromley became the core of the AOA, which went through drummers the way Spinal Tap went through keyboardists (and drummers, come to think of it). Eventually Ostermann found the bright side in the situation, deciding that the constant turnover “kept things fresh”—he didn’t have much choice, since in their seven-year original run AOA had at least a dozen different drummers (including acclaimed jazzman Paul Wertico, before his 17-year stint in the Pat Metheny Group)....

Michael Gebert Paul Fehribach with 1840s-style snowballs at a 2012 bourbon dinner The Big Jones Cookbook, the long-awaited southern-food cookbook from chef Paul Fehribach, hits the streets on April 22, and to mark the occasion Big Jones is throwing a pair of events that feature recipes from the book: a prix fixe family supper from 6 to 8 PM ($45), followed by a cake-and-cocktails event from 8 to 10 PM ($25)....

The last great public health emergency in Chicago on the scale of COVID-19 was the influenza epidemic in the autumn of 1918. Even though 8,510 Chicagoans died of influenza and pneumonia over a period of eight weeks, Mayor William Hale Thompson made no public pronouncements about the epidemic. The city’s response to the crisis was left to Health Commissioner John Dill Robertson, a man distrusted by Chicago’s medical establishment. To his credit, Robertson gave young men from disadvantaged backgrounds a shot at the medical profession....

After undergrad, I spent a dreary year in social work. I was terrible at it for a number of reasons, but most of all, I was spending my days providing care and counsel while completely denying my own rocky headspace. The signs were there. I’d spent years bombarded with crippling mood swings and impulsive tendencies. A few months after leaving the field, I received a bipolar II diagnosis. Naming the problem was revelatory; the liberation offered by therapy and medication—Lamictal and Fluoxetine—still feels like someone handed me superpowers....

We have a tradition here at the Reader of tasking one of the city’s most talented illustrators, Jason Wyatt Frederick, with creating a Where’s Waldo-esque tableau every year for Pitchfork, filled with a who’s who of Chicago personalities and small visual puzzles spelling out the music fest’s lineup. When it seemed clear that we would go at least one if not more years without a Pitchfork Fest, we knew we couldn’t go that long without a Frederick cover....

UnReal‘s tagline could be: “Money. Dick. Power.” It’s the phrase that Rachel (Shiri Appleby) and Quinn (Constance Zimmer), the producers of Everlasting, a Bachelor-style reality show, get tattooed on their wrists in the second season’s opening scene. To them, it’s the holy trinity—”in that order,” Quinn quips. It’s the motivation for every move they make in their professional and personal lives, which carry over to the contestants, who are just hoping to find love....

Courtesy of Bossa IV’s Bandcamp page Matthew McGarry A few years ago local singer-songwriter Matthew McGarry caught my ear with his debut album, Slow Cloud, which he released under the name Upholstery & Carpet Cleaning. I liked the album so much I named it one of the five best overlooked local releases for the Reader‘s 2012 Year in Review. On Friday McGarry released his second full-length, and I fear this new album, Fuga Azzurri, may also get overlooked, largely because of a name change—McGarry dropped “Upholstery & Carpet Cleaning” in favor of the name Bossa IV....

A line of white people snaked around the entrance of Saint Agatha’s Catholic Church in North Lawndale Wednesday. Inside the sanctuary the Chicago chapter of Showing up for Racial Justice (SURJ) was convening the first in a series of workshops called “Ally Is a Verb: Finding Your Role in the Movement for Black Liberation.” Lydia, another SURJ member, talked about the history of predatory real estate practices targeting African-Americans in North Lawndale and organizing around racial justice and civil rights issues in the neighborhood by groups such as the Contract Buyers League....

What good is a procedural drama when it gets the procedures wrong? HBO’s The Night Of is based on the British show Criminal Justice, reset in present-day New York City by show cocreators Richard Price and Steven Zaillian. The story concerns Nasir “Naz” Khan (Riz Ahmed), a naive young man who borrows his father’s taxi to go to a party and winds up being accused of murdering a girl he takes home....

If you want to follow the Profiles Theatre story and all its developments from the very beginning, here, in chronological order, are all the stories and blog posts the Reader has run since June 8, when the original investigation was posted on our website: 

Catherine Cohen, Patti Harrison, and Mitra Jouhari, who all work together on the show It’s a Guy Thing, consider one another the funniest women alive. The three of them have contributed to nearly every part of the modern comedy landscape: writing for AMC and HBO, acting in The Big Sick and Broad City, and performing in East Village cabarets, The Tonight Show, and now the Hideout as part of the Tomorrow Never Knows festival....

Q: I’m a 43-year-old straight woman, and I spent the majority of my 30s celibate. At 40, I realized that while I wasn’t interested in dating, I was tired of my vibrator. I also realized that it was time to go forth and fuck with the body I had instead of waiting for the idealized body I was going to have someday. Over the past three years—despite being as fat as ever—I’ve consistently had fun, satisfying, exciting, creative, sometimes weird, occasionally scary, but mostly awesome sex....

Toronto’s late mayor Rob Ford was notorious for his crack cocaine consumption, but there were some other white lines he didn’t care for. The Chris Farley-esque politician, who famously called bicyclists “a pain in the ass to motorists,” made a point of having existing bike lanes removed to create more room for cars. This led to a memorable showdown in 2012, when protesters temporarily stopped the removal of the Jarvis Street bike lanes by laying down in the street to block the pavement-scraping machine....

With much fanfare, Mayor Lightfoot signaled the start of the budget season with last Thursday’s state of the city address. “Tonight, I want to speak to you about the state of our city and its finances.” Things are so bad, she doesn’t know what to do. So . . . “If we followed the old playbook, we could have tried to muscle through another historically large property tax increase, relied upon a massive borrowing scheme, shortchanged pensions, or some measure of all of the above....

Many cannabis enthusiasts saw it as another reason to light up: in a span of three days, the Cook County state’s attorney and the Illinois house both took steps to reduce penalties for marijuana possession. It’s the latest incarnation of what the Reader calls the grass gap: while people smoke marijuana all over Chicago—and Illinois, and beyond—almost everyone busted for it is black. Citing those findings, the Chicago City Council passed an ordinance in 2012 to go easier on some pot possessors....

Aimee Levitt The first Norsemen to wear horned helmets were characters in Wagnerian opera in the 19th century. The horned helmet became a patriotic symbol of Scandinavia after Germany invaded Denmark in 1864. It was adopted by heavy metal enthusiasts in the 1970s. Vikings did not wear helmets with horns on them. They probably bathed and combed their hair—or at least, the archaeological record shows they were very attached to their combs....

Chicago, longtime home of the MacArthur Foundation and its famous “genius” grants, is now also the headquarters of the United States Artists Fellows awards, which were celebrated at a festive three-day event last week at the Lake Shore Drive W hotel. And if you’re thinking maybe a State Department traveling fellowship, it’s understandable, but also wrong. In spite of the generic and official-sounding moniker, United States Artists has nothing to do with the government....