A first-person account from off the beaten track, as told to Anne Ford. “I’m on the plane, and there’s a curtain with beds behind it, because they switch out the pilots. So halfway through the flight, the curtain opens, and a bunch of pilots in their underwear come out, and they all shriek to see me. They’re like, ‘We’re so sorry—no one told us you were on the plane.’ And then they were like, ‘Well, since you’ve seen it, we’re just gonna spend the rest of the flight in our underwear....

Old Man Gloom, the space-metal collective consisting of members from Cave In, Converge, and Isis, plays the Bottle on Sunday, but they’re not the only Boston-area heavy metal supergroup in town this weekend: Mutoid Man, featuring Cave In singer Stephen Brodsky and Converge drummer Ben Koller plays at Reggie’s Rock Club tomorrow night. While Old Man Gloom focuses on punishing, guttural sludge, Mutoid Man operates at the opposite end of the heavy spectrum, playing melodic, technical psych-metal with proggy flourishes....

Bob Rubel Lenny Bruce was arrested at the Gate of Horn nightclub in 1962 for contributing to the delinquency of a minor. This Sunday marks the start of Banned Books Week, an event usually confined to schools and libraries where celebrants curse the philistines who have had the temerity to ban Judy Blume and Harry Potter. This is important and entirely necessary, but what is often forgotten is that books for grown-ups get banned, too....

In many ways I’ve been drunk with bloodlust since I tried the tire siga at Selam Ethiopian Kitchen earlier this spring. Those are the first sized chunk of raw beef you whittle at with steak knives, dredging the scraps through a potent spice blend known as mitmita, or berbere-spiked awaze sauce, or the sinus-scouring mustard called senafitch. Its good way to engage with your primal forbears, such an elemental way of eating that it leaves you craving more as if you’re some kind of hungry creature, like I dunno, a wolf that stands on two feet....

Tax day has gone and with it went whatever anxiety came with crunching numbers on a year’s worth of finances. Now’s a pretty good time to take a moment and celebrate getting past that hump, right? I’d suggest giving a listen to “Taxes” by Chicago duo the Guys, aka Fya Starta and Smelly LP. The tune’s got a syrupy, twilight euphoria, and when the MCs proclaim “we don’t think about no taxes when we walk into the store” I can’t help but be reminded of the sudden feeling of freedom that comes once I’ve successfully filed all that paperwork—taxes have a way of hovering over my head for months like a grey cloud, so the strange feeling of relief I get when I’m done with them is euphoric in a way you generally don’t associate with filling out government forms....

When Chicago artist Dave Ford was commissioned to build a kinetic children’s sculpture six years ago, he turned to his daughter for inspiration. Combining the then five-year-old’s two favorite activities—swinging in the park and banging on pots and pans—he constructed the Swing Set Drum Kit. Launch the swing and the Rube Goldbergian setup of wires, wheels, and weights triggers an outburst of snares, bass drums, and cymbals; in one swift motion a single swinger acts as a marching band drum trio....

Is the storied post of managing editor disappearing from American newspapers? Asked what’s happening to the position, Kirk ordered his thoughts and e-mailed me this: “Traditional newsroom manager roles are changing as the emphasis shifts to digital. You’re seeing newsrooms shift to more editor/content producers who are working with reporters but also generating content, aggregating, curating, posting video, and, increasingly more importantly, distributing more through various social channels. The focus is on accuracy, speed and distribution and that is drastically changing roles that were created for print deadlines....

In recent years the sprawling variety and prolificacy of works by musician, composer, and community force John Zorn have been showcased in appropriately ambitious, multiconcert marathon events presented all around the world with enormous casts of musicians. Last month I experienced one of the largest such efforts when Jazz em Agosto, in Lisbon, Portugal, turned over its entire ten-day lineup to Zorn’s music and artists from deep within his circle such as Ikue Mori and Robert Dick....

Watching Greek auteur Yorgos Lanthimos’s latest film (his third in English and his first period piece), I was reminded of a young woman whom I once knew slightly and hadn’t thought of in decades, an articulate, pretty, graceful blond gold digger, who took her mother’s example to heart—to wit, it’s just as easy to marry for love and money as it is to marry for love alone. Luckily (depending on your level of cynicism) for her, this twentysomething Lorelei Lee’s wealthy drug addict husband obligingly died in a road accident while driving under the influence, leaving his widow very comfortably well off and ready for her next conquest....

Tosar (left) in Operation E There are numerous reasons to see the docudrama Operation E (2012), which screens again at the Gene Siskel Film Center tomorrow at 7:45 PM (it’s part of the sidebar of new Spanish cinema in the European Union Film Festival), but chief among them is Luis Tosar. In every performance of his I’ve seen, this Spanish actor seems to transform himself from the inside out—each character has his own body language, his own way of making eye contact....

The Republican debates inspired me to take a second look at the Bill of Rights. And I tell you—our farsighted Founding Fathers knew what they were doing. It was a good night for the redressing of grievances—the candidates all brimmed with grievances they swore they’d redress the moment they arrived in the White House—but everything else took a beating. Speech, religion, assembly. . . As for the press, among Republican candidates its perfidy has always gone without saying....

“Vibrant camouflage” might sound like a oxymoron, but the concept has recently catapulted Candida Alvarez’s paintings into Paris Fashion Week. The School of the Art Institute professor was one of the artists chosen to collaborate with Comme des Garçons on its Fall 2017 “Shirt” and “Homme Plus” collections—no small feat considering the iconic status of the Japanese brand founded by Rei Kawakubo, who herself picked six of Alvarez’s works after seeing them online....

“Yes, You’re in Heaven” as a name for a gallery show seems to demand to be taken ironically, as a cynical art-world sneer at the declasse smiling herd. No doubt there is a touch of the tongue-in-cheek here, but overall the title is fairly accurate for a show that has exuberance to spare. The work in this Gold Coast pop-up gallery exhibition of emerging Chicago artists, some of them recent School of the Art Institute grads, has an air of bursting forth, an eagerness to engage both a viewer’s eyes and his sense of humor....

A Reader staffer shares three musical obsessions, then asks someone (who asks someone else) to take a turn. Luca is curious what’s in the rotation of . . . The discography of Dome In 1980 postpunk band Wire went on hiatus. Bassist Graham Lewis and guitarist Bruce Gilbert continued playing together in various projects, my favorite of which is Dome. By the time Wire released 154, their final prehiatus LP, they’d started moving toward art-punk....

GREG KEITH PORTER Snow Days Looking for something to do today? Agenda‘s got you covered. For more on these events and others, check out the Reader‘s Agenda page.

Courtesy Galerie F “Grief” 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.

Mike Sula Wang mandu, Joong Boo I’ve been remiss in failing to report on the great leap forward in the state of the dumpling in this town, which has come thanks to the wang mandoo stand outside Joong Boo Market* in Avondale. Wang mandoo (aka mandu), or king dumplings, are a ubiquitous street food in South Korea, though they’re a specialty of the North Korean province of Hwanghae, and are probably descended from Chinese baozi....

Earlier this month at a hearing on the North Lake Shore Drive reconstruction study—dubbed “Redefine the Drive”—officials assured the public that all options for rebuilding Chicago’s coastal highway are still on the table. But the Illinois Department of Transportation, which has jurisdiction over the drive, isn’t seriously considering the simplest way to help more people travel more efficiently: trading existing mixed-traffic lanes for bus-only lanes. During the recent hearing at the Chicago History Museum, planners from IDOT noted that North Lake Shore Drive sees 70,000 transit trips a day on nine routes, accounting for one-fifth of all passenger trips on the drive....

Frode Gjerstad once explained the concept of his group Detail as “too free for the jazzers and too jazzy for the improvisers.” The 69-year-old Norwegian reedist, who currently favors alto saxophone and B-flat clarinet, has struck that balance throughout his career. Gjerstad grew up in Stavanger, Norway, which had next to no free-music scene. He figured out early on that he’d have to get out of town to find like minds, and so he’s developed long-­standing relationships with musicians from Europe, South Africa, and the U....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Tuesday, February 7, 2017. Lyft expands Chicago-area service north to Milwaukee and west to Elgin Ride-sharing service Lyft is expanding its service in the Chicago area to go as far north as Milwaukee and as far west as Elgin. “The main reason is we saw a lot of drop-offs in those areas, but people couldn’t get picked up in those areas,” Jean-Paul Biondi, the company’s Chicago marketing lead, told the Tribune....