One night, the cast of the improvised rock musical Anarchy receives the suggestion “Applebee’s.” The ensemble members step out one by one to sing a verse, each ending with “Can I get an appetizer?” As the stage fills, the refrain becomes more harmonic. The appropriately named Mike Gospel concludes by belting the phrase at a powerful volume. His vibrato echoes through the theater, and the show kicks off on that strong, heightened note that makes it clear: this is an improvised musical, not musical improv that aims for cheap rhymes and cleverness....

Activists gathered behind the Art Institute along Columbus Drive Thursday afternoon to board buses bound for Washington, D.C., as part of a trip the local branch of Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER) had organized to protest President-elect Donald Trump’s Friday inauguration on Capitol Hill. “It’s important that we show in numbers our opposition to this administration,” said another bus rider, Amy Dean of Oak Park. “The world is watching us....

Not that this wolf is complaining, but Ty Segall seems to play in Chicago every two months! Dude just can’t stay away from our fair city. On Sunday, March 26, the grungy California rocker will put a different side of himself on display for us—and you can take “display” quite literally! That night, Drag City Records hosts an opening reception for the first solo show of Segall’s paintings, “Assterpiece Theatre,” at the label’s performance and exhibition space, Soccer Club Club (2923 N....

As Ivy Lab, London producers Gove “Sabre” Kidao and J “Stray” Fogel are associated with UK bass—an ambiguous melange of British-born electronic subgenres: drum ‘n’ bass, UK garage, dubstep, and a little bit of grime. But Ivy Lab don’t make that style of music as much as they thoroughly distort it; on 2015’s 20/20, Vol. 1, recorded when producer Laurence “Halogenix” Reading was a member of the group, they seem to slow their UK bass down with cement bricks—eliciting slow, mutant groans and unexpected bass drops....

Anyone interested in the question of where queer artistic representation stands today should see “Strange Bedfellows.” I deliver this recommendation not because I think this show will thrill minds and conquer hearts, but because, in its sometimes hesitant and sometimes even problematic ways, this traveling collection of collaborative work manages to be evocative rather than simply declarative. It leaves open the many questions it raises: What do we mean by queer art today?...

Voyage to Italy The Italian neorealist classic Open City is currently screening at the Gene Siskel Film Center in a new 4K DCP digital restoration, said to be a marked improvement on the previously distributed 35mm prints. (As of this writing, I haven’t seen the new digital version, so I obviously can’t say that it is in fact an improvement, but at the risk of inciting the ongoing film-versus-digital argument, I will say that I’ll take anything over the shoddy, barely visible print I saw a few years ago....

ROBERT STREIFER The Bristol Renaissance Faire Looking for something to do today? Agenda‘s got you covered. For more on these events and others, check out the Reader’s daily Agenda page.

Sam Ash McHale Danny Maupin and Tyler Jackson With the Late Late Breakfast, Tyler Jackson and Danny Maupin have created an innovative game show/stand-up hybrid that takes place before most comedians even smack their snooze buttons—and maybe that’s why there are free, freshly made pancakes being served at 3 PM. At this month’s performance a roomful of nearly 30 comics attended the afternoon hangover—Bloody Marys were flowing—prepared to do their duty no matter what nonsense the hosts threw their way....

Frank Ockenfels 3/AMC Thanks for the help getting our buds out of Terminus, guys. So many spoilers ahead . . . Despite a number of fancy slogans that refer to their solidarity, it’s safe to say that the cannibalistic residents of Terminus are guilty of putting an I in team more often than not. Sure, they’ve been burned, but who hasn’t in the new reality? Not unlike zombies traveling in packs, they stick together because it makes it easier to feed, and in a merciless few minutes of television, we see their method of slaughtering human prey....

From Ernst Lubitsch’s “grotesque comedy” The Oyster Princess In a recent blog post, film scholar David Bordwell examines The Wolf of Wall Street to revisit some old questions about narrative form in cinema. It’s a valuable piece that gets into the nitty-gritty of how movies work—and like much of Bordwell’s writing, it’s both rigorous and accessible, communicating the deep pleasure he derives from watching movies. In one section, he investigates Wolf‘s tone of “grotesque comedy....

The cover of The College Dropout Monday was the ten-year anniversary of Kanye West’s debut album, The College Dropout, and I want to take a second to throw in my two cents about why Kanye is important to me. We were on the heels of the Nelly, Ja Rule, P. Diddy, Ludacris years. “Spaceship,” “All Falls Down,” “Never Let Me Down,” “Jesus Walks,” “Family Business.” Those were anthems of mine that I kept in the back pocket of my heart as I walked the line between black people finding me too white or proper and white people clamoring for me to be their “black friend....

A twenty five year anniversary is a considerable achievement, especially when it comes to Hollywood marriages or restaurants, and owner Trushar Patel has real reason to be proud of his Hyde Park Indian and Southern comfort food cafeteria-style local gem, Rajun Cajun, officially in business since 1993. And you can join in the celebration during the entire month of December with a special 25% savings when you dine at the restaurant (takeout and delivery orders not included)....

Alinea What happens when babies run freely at Alinea Did you hear about the worst people in the history of the planet? Alinea chef Grant Achatz tweeted about them on Saturday evening: Michael Nagrant: Now, there are some real issues here having to do with Alinea’s unique approach to being possibly the most acclaimed restaurant in America—specifically, its ticketing system. Many high-end, much-in-demand restaurants extract a credit card for reservations, but as the chef and manager of an almost equally acclaimed restaurant in Chicago admitted to me, nailing people with a several-hundred-dollar charge for not showing is not exactly a way to make customers love you and speak highly of you to others, and they rarely actually do it....

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. Older strips are archived here.

With Tim Cawley recently leaving his high-ranking Chicago Public Schools central office position, I started to wonder whether there were any survivors left from the original dream team Mayor Emanuel assembled to save public education. Before I take you through the list, though, let me remind you that the mayor’s dream team didn’t actually save our public schools. But back to that article in my scrapbook, which includes head shots and snappy bios of the mayor’s seven key school appointees and hires....

The term of the latest contract between the city of Chicago and the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7, the union that represents some 12,000 rank-and-file officers in the Chicago Police Department, expired on June 30. The city and the union are now supposed to be negotiating the next contract, but because the process is confidential it’s impossible to say where these negotiations currently stand. Until a new contract is agreed upon and ratified, first by the FOP membership and then by the City Council, the terms of the previous contract remain in force....

When my Twitter buddies Kim Kelly (metal editor at Noisey) and Ed Blair (cofounder of the zine Black Metal of the Americas) both talk about the same band, I pay attention. And this winter their tweets convinced me to check out A Pessimistic Doomsayer, the current release by a duo from St. Catharines, Ontario, called Vile Creature. “Pessimistic is about utilizing fantasy in all of its mediums (books, comics, TV, film) as an escape from the harshness of reality,” says guitarist and vocalist KW....

Once again Riot Fest has enlisted a slew of acts to play their “classic” albums front to back. How have the years treated these allegedly timeless recordings? I listened to them all so you wouldn’t have to. The verdict: Snoop Dogg is so silly now that it’s easy to forget what an amazing rapper he is. This nearly flawless record demonstrates exactly why Snoop became a superstar. It’s also really, really raunchy—I now totally understand why my parents flipped out when they caught an eight-year-old me listening to this tape in my bedroom....

Earlier this summer alto saxophonist Nick Mazzarella celebrated the release of his trio album Ultraviolet (International Anthem) with a performance at Constellation. The group—with bassist Anton Hatwich and drummer Frank Rosaly—has been the one that Mazzarella has played with most often during the last half-decade, and its third release is also its strongest. On Monday the trio plays a free concert at the Empty Bottle with Health & Beauty and Marrow—once again celebrating the release of the new recording (this particular evening fetes the emergence of the vinyl version of the album, so I guess the earlier show was just for the CD)....