As absurdist comedy goes, the Father’s Day greeting I got from, of all people, Illinois governor Bruce Rauner was right up there with Better Call Saul, the AMC television show about a sleazy, con-artist lawyer. First of all, Bruce—don’t act like you’re my friend. Second of all—why are you bugging me? I’m the last guy who’d give you a dime. Sure, his campaign probably got my e-mail address from some mailing list it purchased with the millions Rauner’s already got stashed in his war chest....

Courtesy Thrill Jockey OOIOO 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.

“Loose squares, loose squares!” rang through the aisle. “CDs, loosies, smell-goods!” yelled another man draped in lime green. He paraded his merchandise left to right for his potential patrons to see. A long rush of wind from his push through the emergency door pressed most people past interest in even seeing what he was selling. Most just looked back at their phones, but a few had to get their fix....

In its largest form, Scabby the inflatable rat stands 25 feet tall, towering over the union laborers who use the grotesque balloon to attract attention during demonstrations. You’ve probably seen Scabby around town perched on the picket line in front of a building, forever reared up on its hind legs, its blood-red eyes glistening, its mouth full of yellowed fangs. And last July, Scabby was back in the headlines when a man passing by a Teamsters’ demonstration in the Loop allegedly pulled out a box cutter, plunged it into the air-filled rodent, then ran over Scabby’s remains with his vehicle....

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

It’s been four years since the psych-laced spaceship-rock duo of Steve Moore and Anthony Paterra put out a full-length Zombi record. But devotees to the band’s canon—which features synth symphonies fueled by crisp but hypnotic drumming—will be wholly satisfied by the pair of tracks that Zombi’s released in advance of the upcoming arrival of their next LP, Shape Shift. Today’s 12 O’Clock Track, “Mission Creep”—the follow-up to “Pillars of the Dawn,” which was dropped last month—is a sprinting dirge, in that you feel like you’re running in a hamster wheel toward an unattainable Dune-like mirage....

It’s no secret that I love local trash-thrash three-piece Oozing Wound, so any news on an upcoming release of theirs is always going to be something that gets me excited. This time around the band is gearing to drop a split LP on Thrill Jockey with labelmate Black Pus—the super weird solo outing of Brain Chippendale, drummer for spazzy noise monsters Lightning Bolt. The projects shared a bill at the Empty Bottle about a year ago, and it was those paths crossing that ultimately lead to Oozing Wound’s Thrill Jockey signing, so it was only natural for them to wind up on the same disc together....

Revisiting Andrei Tarkovsky’s sci-fi classic Stalker this past weekend at the Gene Siskel Film Center, I was struck by Tarkovsky’s audacious anticlimax, which I now consider crucial to the film’s unique power. After more than two hours of following the three principal characters as they search for the mythical Room—which is believed to grant the innermost wish of whomever enters it—Tarkovsky declines to reveal whether the characters actually go inside the Room once they find it....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Thursday, March 16, 2017. CPD top cop Johnson releases police reform road map Chicago Police Department superintendent Eddie Johnson has released a “road map” of reforms for CPD. There aren’t many deadlines or details for the proposed changes to police training, supervision, and discipline, according to the Tribune. Still, Johnson told the crowd during a news conference, “Make no mistake about it, we’re not just saying we’re going to reform—we’re showing that we’re reforming....

In comments to be found in the program for Strawdog Theatre’s production of his 2015 satire, Barbecue, Robert O’Hara identifies a TV genre he calls “watching white people do shit.” “There are all these reality shows: watch the white guy build a house, watch the white guy fix the car, watch the white guy go around the world and eat,” he says. “Or the show where you watch the white girl who is 16 and pregnant....

When 48-year-old Joseph “Pepe” Porter came of age on Chicago’s southeast side in the 1980s he was submerged in the world house music. “There’s a very large amount of DJs who, during the origination of house music back in the early 80s [came] from the southeast side, who’ve gone on to 30-plus-year careers,” Porter says. According to Porter, each block had about two or three house DJs, and they’d spin at local parties—they provided Porter with ample opportunity to dive into the culture in his backyard....

It’s a half hour before game time at Wrigley Field, and a river of fans is streaming toward the stadium. There’s a carnival atmosphere on the street, a loud, happy stew of anticipation and solicitation. On the north side of Addison, between the Red Line station and Sheffield Avenue, a vocal cadre of sidewalk vendors is hawking T-shirts, pennants, peanuts, bottled water, and tickets by the fistful. Mark Weinberg, one of Left Field Media’s attorneys and a veteran of a similar lawsuit that established his right to sell a book critical of Blackhawks management outside the United Center, says the context for this battle includes the park makeover, the related ceding of public sidewalks on Waveland and Sheffield to the Cubs, and a concern that the area will be sanitized and in effect Disneyfied....

Chicagoans is a first-person account from off the beaten track, as told to Anne Ford. This week’s Chicagoan is Ryan Shannon, 30, veteran and Warrior Games athlete.“ Then when we left New Hampshire, we had a fire drill. The alarm went off while we were sleeping. A buddy of mine was in his [bunk], the third rack up. He jumped down, and both of his heels hit me where your neck meets the base of your skull....

The Death of Mr. Lazarescu The 2014 Cannes Film Festival, led by jury president Jane Campion, will release its lineup this Thursday, and, per usual, there’s lots of speculation about which films will compete for the top prize. But for over a decade, the more interesting category at Cannes hasn’t been the Palme d’Or but the Un Certain Regard, which has already announced the first film in its lineup: Marie Amachoukeli, Claire Burger, and Samuel Theis’s directorial debut, Party Girl....

Wreckless Eric Outside World Two years ago Outside World, cofronted by Hazel Rigby and former Brain Idea bassist Ben Scott, dropped its first songs and quickly became one of my favorite bands in town. The band’s two tape EPs—one self-released, the other on Night-People Records—are full of sunny, jangly indie-pop with a strong 90s influence. When the band first began, Scott said his and Rigby’s goal was to sound like Polaris, the band probably best known for writing the theme song from The Adventures of Pete & Pete....

When I first reported to the University of Missouri, the first thing I heard was that it had been designated the nation’s top party school by respected authorities in the field. I’m not sure anybody knew who those authorities were, but it didn’t matter; we wanted to believe so we did. In the same vein, everyone believed Jim Lowe’s “Green Door” was inspired by a notorious Mizzou dive called the Shack....

Boundless enthusiasm. This is what comes across most clearly in the photos that make up Too Fly Not to Fly, a book published last year that invites children ages three to seven to think critically about issues such as health and colorism, using words connected to letters of the alphabet—D is for dream, H is for history, Y is for youth. The book also contains a collection of bright, playful, and ultimately thoughtful photos—some staged, some spontaneous—that celebrate Chicago and its youngest occupants....

Photoconcepts Kids and Kites Festival 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.

Getting a foothold in a city’s underground music scene ain’t easy treading, especially if you’re an outsider. Publicity for shows at hole-in-the-wall unlicensed spaces is mostly limited to flyers stapled to telephone poles—an attempt to avoid unwanted attention (read: cops). And in Chicago, where dingy basements and barely habitable hovels often double as stages, the X that marks a venue’s spot is never as conspicuous as an Old Style sign beaming above the entrance....

Hulu Malocchio Jr., Prock, and Muscle Man are super. Some folks have hit their saturation point for all things comics-related, but not me. Some folks think we’ve plumbed the depths of all things superhero-related, but I don’t think that. And while I might have still been riding the high from seeing Guardians of the Galaxy (which was amazing), I enjoyed the season two premiere of Hulu’s original series The Awesomes....