With 21 candidates vying to be the next mayor of Chicago, hearings on challenges to their nominating petition signatures and other paperwork began this week at the Chicago Board of Elections. The agency will issue its decisions on the challenges by Christmas. Many of the candidates will likely not be able to prove that they have the 12,500 valid signatures from registered Chicago voters necessary for making the ballot. “As a young girl in eighth grade I used to get teased and called a raccoon because I had dark rings around my eyes,” she went on to say....

A shriek is more unnerving when it seems to come from a distance, because you can’t tell which circle of hell spit it out. On “Body Betrays Itself,” a teaser for Pharmakon’s upcoming Bestial Burden (as well as today’s 12 O’Clock Track), Margaret Chardiet’s faraway screams are primal and otherworldly, simultaneously seeming to lure and banish whatever evil waits on the other side. The track is a volatile mix of pulsing thunderous booms and ominous, subterranean buzzes, and it comments on the “disconnect between mind and body,” as Chardiet puts it....

QI’m the bisexual everyone loves to hate, because I want to be in a poly relationship with both a man and a woman. I am a woman who is into commitment, loyalty, love, trust, and honesty. I am not looking to cheat on anyone. But I discovered after one failed marriage to a man and one long-term relationship with a woman that I want to be in a romantic, sexually committed relationship with a man and a woman at the same time....

Before the Sun-Times told its staff late last month that it would begin publishing content from the Daily Herald, it was already publishing content from USA Today and picking up stories from the Reader. And it was decades ago that the paper began publishing content provided by the AP and other wires. Even at their biggest, strongest, and richest, the dailies never went it alone. “Once they sold them off,” Lampinen explains, “it made sense to reach out and say, ‘Hey, we’re not going after each other’s throats any more....

Mike Sula There’s a rack of ribs under that candy coating. I may be forgetting a few, but over the past 14 months or so I’ve written about at least ten new barbecue restaurants within the city limits. In the cases of all but two or three I can neatly sum up their problems by invoking America’s most lovable nihilist, Rustin Cohle: “Life’s barely long enough to get good at one thing....

Previously of the Daily Beast and Fusion, culture and investigative reporter Sujay Kumar has been hired as managing editor for the print edition of the Reader. An agreement has been signed between Sun-Times Media, owner of the Chicago Sun-Times as well as the Chicago Reader, and a private investment group that has formed an L3C to purchase the Reader to ensure it remains a vital voice in the local media landscape....

Cesar Merino Made to Break In the liner notes for Provoke (Clean Feed), last year’s debut album by his quartet Made to Break, reedist Ken Vandermark writes that the band emerged from two impulses or threads he’d been exploring over the years with other projects. He first cites FME and Frame Quartet as ensembles that explored modular forms—compositions with multiple moving parts that can be reordered on the fly by participants; then he cites Spaceways Inc....

The cover of DJ Dog Dick’s The Life Stains Gossip Wolf first reported that Empty Bottle owner Bruce Finkelman closed a deal on Pilsen’s Thalia Hall back in July, and tonight the four-story landmark hosts its first public concert—Animal Collective’s Panda Bear headlines and eccentric NYC noisemaker DJ Dog Dick (aka Max Eisenberg) opens the show. A couple recent stories on Thalia Hall’s debut mention that Panda Bear will christen the venue, but the reality is Eisenberg will be the first person to perform for the ticket-buying public....

As part of an ongoing retrospective of films starring Nicolas Cage, the University of Chicago’s Doc Films screens John Woo’s Face/Off on Thu 1/30 at 9 PM. I can think of few films that better exemplify the whacked-out enthusiasm of a Cage performance (except for maybe Bringing Out the Dead, which is also included on the program). To that point, I can think of few directors better equipped to harness said whacked-out enthusiasm than John Woo, action director par excellence, who’s known for his fascinatingly over-the-top work....

Courtesy the artist Brian Costello 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.

Nacho Vidal Delorean 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.

Don’t use brunch as an excuse for getting a late start on your Riot Fest plans this weekend—not only because brunch deserves better (I think), but also because those coveted huevos rancheros will be on special in perpetuity to cure your hangover. Lug your corpse out of bed, submerge it in coffee, and drag it to Douglas Park by noon. It’s easy to never mind the opening bands at a mega music festival in favor of the marquee acts—some of them inexplicably reunited, some of them Nine Inch Nails—but early arrivals can catch several of Riot Fest’s most out-of-bounds artists, maybe even with elbow room to spare....

At the end of last week local bike shop Rapid Transit, a 21-year-old industry veteran, announced on its website and Facebook page that it will close its doors soon. In an excellent piece on Streetsblog Chicago, John Greenfield reports that Rapid Transit has been struggling since the economic crash in 2008, and owners Chris Stodder and Justyna Frank say they don’t have enough cash to make it through the winter. Both locations (the original one in Wicker Park, and a second one in University Village), will close within the next two months....

Don’t let “big talk” Rahm fool you. This is a mayor on the ropes yet again, but he’s sure to return to his old ways. In a March TV ad, he sat nestled beside a table, openly admitting to many of his glaring flaws, if only to show how mortified he’d be if voters kicked him out of City Hall. “I can rub people the wrong way—or talk when I should listen....

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

With his original 70-minute Christmas “fairytale play,” Joseph Zettelmaier takes a stab at creating a new family-friendly holiday classic, and director Lauren Nicole Fields makes a concerted effort to up the Hallmark coziness of the surroundings. Audience members can sit on big, comfy sofas, ensconced amid a half dozen tastefully decorated artificial Christmas trees, and listen to Grandfather tell young Cora the legend of the Winter Wolf while sipping hot cocoa on Christmas Eve....

Deborah Stratman’s Village Silenced screens as part of tonight’s shorts program at the Museum of Contemporary Art. The Nightingale, the Noble Square microcinema and multimedia arts venue, seems to be enjoying a busy month. Ten days ago the venue’s programmers embarked on a four-week collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Art, curating four sets of experimental shorts for display in one of the museum’s exhibition rooms. The program changes each week—the second set premieres tonight at 6 PM, with one of the Nightingale programmers introducing the selections....

BBC Clara (Jenna-Louise Coleman) says hello to the Twelfth Doctor (Peter Capaldi). It’s been three days since “Deep Breath,” the season eight (counting from the reboot in 2005) premiere of Doctor Who, and the response seems to be a collective sigh—of relief. The show has had twelve actors in the lead role and over 800 episodes since debuting in 1963, yet every new lead and season is met with some resistance....

There’s a lot going on in Chicago this weekend—here’s some of what we recommend that you check out. Sat 8/25: Local experimental pop duo Ohmme perform at Thalia Hall with the Hecks and V.V. Lightbody. “They sculpt a sound that’s rich yet agile, and summon a virtual orchestra using only their voices and guitars,” writes Reader‘s Peter Margasak of the group. 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, $12, all-ages

Among the uncountable curiosities that cycle and recycle through social media is a page of historic black-and-white photographs somebody colorized, apparently to remind us that people like Charles Darwin and Mark Twain didn’t live their lives in monochrome—that they once had flesh-toned skin and stylishly dyed clothes, just like us. The point is obvious, but the effect is still remarkable. People we’re used to seeing as chronologically remote are suddenly comprehensible as warm-blooded souls....