Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Tuesday, January 17, 2016. Obama grants interviews to local Chicago TV reporters for the first time in his presidency The White House invited five Chicago TV reporters to Washington, D.C., for four-minute interviews with President Barack Obama for the first and last time in his eight-year presidency. The administration didn’t give an interview to Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg and instead let him provide local press pool reports during Obama’s farewell address visit to Chicago....

In a key scene from The Founder, a new drama about the making of McDonald’s, 52-year-old salesman Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton) tries to persuade the McDonald brothers, Dick (Nick Offerman) and Mac (John Carroll Lynch), to let him franchise their revolutionary fast-food business across the nation. The brothers are small-time operators, content with their thriving restaurant in San Bernardino, California, but Kroc, an Arlington Heights entrepreneur who’s been chasing business opportunities all his life, has a special feeling about McDonald’s....

Five years ago Chicago’s brewpub scene was as quiet as its brewery scene—and since then it’s grown almost as quickly. The original stalwarts—Piece, Goose Island, and Rock Bottom (plus Moonshine, which closed last year)—now have lots of company. Hamburger Mary’s began brewing its own beer in 2009 (the brewery side is now called Andersonville Brewing), followed by the higher-profile Revolution Brewing in 2010 and Haymarket Pub & Brewery in early 2011....

Midway through the first act of Terrence McNally’s 2007 Some Men, a surface-skipping journey along a singularly privileged arc of modern gay history, Michael and Camus connect in an AOL chat room. Amid the cruisy, bitchy chatter they find a deeper bond, at least momentarily. It turns out the last book both men read was the Bible. Michael seems something of a biblical scholar; when Camus mentions the verse that led him to turn to the scriptures—”Son, observe the time and fly from evil”—Michael can instantly cite it....

Mike Sula The Vienna Beef Store’s Reuben Last week while I was fulminating about the overpriced sloppy reproduction of a Reuben at Bergstein’s NY Deli, all I could think about was the Reuben served at the Vienna Beef Factory Store, the cafe and retail operation at the foot of the venerable meat processor’s sprawling plant near the perpetually constipated intersection of Damen, Elston, and Fullerton. Is it the Platonic ideal of a Reuben?...

Akram cursed the day when he had compressed his age from seventy down to twenty, because the impotence of childhood became mixed up with the impotence of old age. Painful memories intermingled with happy ones, success united with failure, and marriage united with divorce. Laughter mixed with tears, and friends and enemies were fused in the same melting pot. The borders between positives and negatives disappeared. The magical influence of time that heals pains and calamities vanished into nothingness....

Trouble in Paradise, a meeting of the minds between tastemaking Chicago label Trouble in Mind Records and North Carolina’s heady Paradise of Bachelors, takes place over the same weekend as Riot Fest, but this intimate Empty Bottle-based festival offers a musical and philosophical opposite to its sprawling counterpart. There’s no nostalgia, overhyped reunions, or overblown egos, just some of the freshest, most innovative, and most interesting indie-rock sounds out there. The distinctive identities of the two labels are represented across the festival, with a mix of artists from both rosters appearing each night....

During his year as a children’s attendant in Cook County’s Juvenile Temporary Detention Center, Mark Dostert loses count of the number of boys he meets who’ve been shot. Eventually their “names, faces, and disfigured flesh patches blur into a single mass of resignation, the boys’ and mine.” Many of Dostert’s fellow attendants are even more cynical about their jobs and about the kids they’re trying to keep in line. They look the other way at abuse by colleagues and cover up incidents with phony reports....

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. 

JOHNNY KNIGHT Hank Williams: Lost Highway 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.

It was out of necessity and a certain degree of showmanship that Will Duncan created the party in a box he calls the Punch Trunk. The beverage director at the Pilsen nightlife trifecta of Punch House, Dusek’s, and Thalia Hall, Duncan receives invitations to serve delicious quaffables all over town. But as a matter of pride and quality Punch House serves all of its namesake drinks on draft, so Duncan was tasked with devising a portable punch-dispensing system....

Street View is a fashion series in which Isa Giallorenzo spotlights some of the coolest styles seen in Chicago.

Deana Lawson’s current exhibition at the Art Institute consists of 14 photographs that, according to the AIC member magazine, are designed to propel dialogue by “investigating black culture and speaking to the ways in which the body can channel personal, social, and political histories.” However, the exhibition lacks cohesion, and largely fails to produce much that is worth more than a passing glance. The photographs vary in style, from live action to staged portraits, from color to black and white, and include found photos as well as originals....

ARTIST: Scott Williams SHOW: Soul Summit at Logan Square Auditorium on Sat 5/13 MORE INFO: scottwilliamsdesign.com

Kirkpatrick, who studied architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology, has been obsessed with Lego for several years now, to the point it has impacted her living situation. When the 28-year-old moved from a small apartment in Palatine to a garden unit just west of Rogers Park, she did so to be closer to her job downtown, but also to have a dedicated Lego room to work on new builds. “In Palatine, I had all my Lego in the dining room, and as the years went by, the Lego collection grew into the living room and continued to move out,” says Kirkpatrick, who participates in 15 to 20 shows a year and estimates she spends between $5,000 and $10,000 annually on Lego....

The record skips. You’re nine again. Your brother is twisting your arm behind your back and the pain feels so close but still so distant, as though it’s happening to someone else. He calls you a little shit for snitching. Then you’re on the ground and the too-familiar taste of your own blood fills your mouth like molten copper. And the record skips. You’re down. You’re down and he’s on top of you and the cuts in your face from his ring are pouring blood....

Before the city approves one dime for the massive Lincoln Yards redevelopment project, I propose we have at least one public hearing somewhere outside the north-side community where the project will go. Lincoln Yards is the glitzy $5 billion redevelopment project proposed by developer Sterling Bay for 70 or so acres of land between North and Webster on the North Branch of the Chicago River. Then he sold that vacant fleet facility land to Sterling Bay....

Brian O’Mahoney / Sun-Times Media Children who undergo religious education are more likely to have a broader view of what’s possible. The trouble with scholarly papers is that the scholars who write them don’t know how to write catchy headlines. They need to be shown. HuffPo: “Children Exposed To Religion Have Difficulty Distinguishing Fact From Fiction, Study Finds” My advice: if you want to be outraged—as so many of us do—stick to the abstract, which keeps it simple....