Leonard C. Goodman is a Chicago criminal defense attorney and co-owner of the newly independent Reader. This time around, Democratic Party insiders appear to be playing the same game. Throughout 2019, corporate Democrats and their media allies disparaged and minimized Bernie’s campaign, asserting that it had little chance of winning the nomination. But these tactics didn’t work. In late December, Sanders was leading in polling in Iowa, New Hampshire, and nationwide, and was close to the lead or within the margin of error in other important primary states like South Carolina, Nevada, California, and Texas....

After Urochromes posted the video for their frazzled ripper “Hair So Big” to YouTube this spring, a commenter promised, “Before I die I will give Gilbert Gottfried a Urochromes record.” I like to think Gottfried came up because Urochromes’ debut performance (captured on the band’s 2016 compilation Anthology) features front man Jackie “Jackieboy” McDermott unloading some harsh screams that sound ripped from the famously obnoxious comic’s throat. Jackieboy launched the two-piece band in western Massachusetts in the mid-00s, and his original concept for the group is basically performance art: he’d wanted to play the part of a Jewish comedian from New York who’d stumbled into the role of singer for a neanderthal hardcore band, and to split Urochromes’ sets evenly between music and stand-up....

[Image-1] Bad Hunter Early October Kitsune Late November or early December

ARTIST: Chris Day SHOW: ACRE Zombi Disco dance party with DJ Ariel Zetina, DJ Pluto, DJ Cqqchifruit, DJ Gabba Ghoul, and DJ Allen Moore at ACRE Projects on Sat 10/26 MORE INFO: instagram.com/cchhrriissddaayy

Valerie June’s best-known album, 2013’s Dan Auerbach-produced Pushin’ Against a Stone (Sunday Best), is a raw, playful mix of blues and country. Eclectic and ambitious as that effort is, though, it doesn’t capture June’s full range. On the cover of her new fifth album, The Moon and Stars: Prescriptions for Dreamers (Fantasy), June wears a spectacular silver gown, and the music matches the portrait’s dreamy, dazzling sophistication. Produced by Jack Splash (who’s also worked with Alicia Keys and John Legend), the album is dense, lavishly arranged R&B....

Speed isn’t about hastiness—it’s about taking action. The “rules” of sleep apply to different people differently. This year’s William and Greta Flory concert, “We Can Be Heroes,” focused on the careers and artistic output of recently departed rock stars Bowie and Prince. Hosts Rob Lindley and Bethany Thomas guided the audience through a musical journey—featuring flamboyant and powerful performances from JC Brooks, Mark Hood, Evan Tyron Martin, Andrew Mueller, and Malic White—following Bowie and Prince’s differing names, personas, and musical styles....

When Ellenor Riley-Condit was in fifth grade, she learned about the legend of Bloody Mary. At a sleepover, she and two friends looked into the bathroom mirror and said “Bloody Mary” three times, and even though nothing happened they were all too scared to sleep. It wasn’t until much later that Riley-Condit researched the real story behind the conjuring of the spirit who can supposedly tell you your future and thought more about why these stories make us so scared....

The Reader‘s archive is vast and varied, going back to 1971. Every day in Archive Dive, we’ll dig through and bring up some finds. One service that Banks did not investigate was Jane, the now-legendary collective of women who performed abortions themselves in two apartments in Hyde Park. But Jane never advertised; information was passed along through word of mouth.

For many Chicagoans, going to shows at small clubs and DIY venues is a way of life. So during our shelter-in-place order, we’re not only missing close friends and loved ones, we’re also missing the sights, sounds, and camaraderie of our local music community. Deeper, Auto-Pain Melkbelly, Pith Last week’s reviews: Midnight, Rebirth by Blasphemy

The Chicago History Museum bought 40,000 photos in 2016 from the estate of Raeburn Flerlage, a music promoter, salesman, and radio host. The photos include shots of blues greats like Koko Taylor and Willie Dixon as well as folk artists like Bob Dylan. Here are ten of our favorites.

Based on his groundbreaking hit play, playwright Florian Zeller writes and directs the big-screen adaptation of The Father, which made its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 27, 2020 and after a year of pandemic-induced rescheduling is finally available for everyone to watch via VOD. Starring Academy Award-winners Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman, it is the story of a man suffering the effects of dementia and his daughter trying to manage the changes....

Riff, iO’s new late night musical improv show, plays in the theater’s private event space. It’s the only room configured to accommodate a live band, but nevertheless this choice gives off the impression Riff is a red-headed stepchild. The space has no raised stage, and this configuration shatters any physical or mental barrier between performers and audience and invites interaction and provides glimpses of the cast’s camaraderie. Like Whose Line is It Anyway?...

I recently watched a twentysomething man in a Cubs jersey pose for a picture at the northeast corner of Upper Wacker Drive and Wabash. He instructed his companion with the camera to make sure she framed the Trump International Hotel & Tower just so in the background as he, wearing a smirk, flipped the bird in the direction of the skyscraper. Shortly thereafter, a young couple who’d been waiting in the wings staged the same scene for a selfie....

This week I’ve been scheming up ways to time travel back to 1990 and revisit some old haunts, à la Christopher Reeve in Somewhere in Time. If you’re unfamiliar, this is the one where Reeve’s character travels back in time to meet a woman that he sees in a 1912 photo while he’s on retreat at the Grand Hotel on Michigan’s Mackinac Island. Reader contributor Dave Kehr called the movie “amateurish” but you be the judge; it’s rentable on several of the streaming services....

The polished promotional video for what’s being promoted as the world’s first Hyperloop route, between Chicago and Cleveland, features a rough-voiced narrator extolling the no-nonsense virtues of the midwest. Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT) claims that within three to five years it can build a 340-mile corridor of vacuum-sealed tubes on pylons for shooting passengers in pods as fast as 760 mph, reducing the journey to less than 30 minutes. The Hyperloop craze launched in 2013, when tech guru Elon Musk introduced and named the concept....

Sharmili Majmudar is the executive vice president of Policy and Organizational Impact for Women Employed, an organization that pursues equity for women in the workforce by effecting policy change, expanding access to educational opportunities, and advocating for fair and inclusive workplaces so that all women, families, and communities thrive. It happens all the time—and it’s a major reason that, even though we’ve made progress since your mom entered the workforce a generation ago, the gap between what women and men make, across the board, is definitely not closing fast enough....

The story behind Purim has the same basic narrative as many other Jewish holidays: they tried to kill us, they failed, let’s eat! At Purim, you eat triangular cookies called hamantaschen, meant to represent the hat worn by the villainous Haman. (Just go with this story, OK?) These are stuffed with some sort of filling, traditionally poppy seeds or jam, though I personally prefer chocolate or salted caramel. Traditionally, you also wash them down with vast quantities of alcohol, which helps out a lot while performing the two other great Purim traditions: making a lot of noise to drown out the name of the villainous Haman and wearing a silly costume....

In David Gosz and Leo Fotos’s clinically subtitled new show, Tru: A Musical for Mental Health, an English teacher (Stephen “Blu” Allen) grapples with his codependent relationship to his undiagnosed mental disorder in the most literal, theatrical terms. “Her” (Meredith Kochan), the teacher’s ghostly, emotionally manipulative and physically abusive lover whom only he can hear or see, beckons Truman to lie in bed all day, casts doubt on his impact as an educator, and pushes him toward self-destruction....

Can you guess which “emo night” this flyer is for? On Thursday the front room in Logan Square bar the Burlington debuts a DJ night geared toward emo from the late 90s and early 2000s, and it’s called, well, Chicago Emo Night. It’s not the only genre-specific DJ event focused on the evolving punk subgenre—Tom Mullen, who hosts his own DJ night in New York City, put together a handy map of many of the emo nights in the U....

The latest viral video to take over Adult Swim’s 2 AM slot (home of such disturbing classics as The Salad Mixxxer and Too Many Cooks) is This House Has People in It, an 11-minute horror-comedy short shot on surveillance video cameras. It’s the work of Wham City Comedy, a three-man Baltimore group who create nonsensical multimedia anticomedy with a dark twist. Ben O’Brien, Robby Rackleff, and Alan Resnick specialize in the type of content that is meant to be paired with a marijuana haze and a bag of Cheetos—it’s impossible to look away from a video like Unedited Footage of a Bear at 4 AM after a round of bong hits....