Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Monday, June 12, 2017. Rahm will allow the Cubs to build skyboxes if they invest more in security outside Wrigley Field Mayor Rahm Emanuel will support the Chicago Cubs’ plan for skyboxes at Wrigley Field if they invest more money in security for outside the ballpark. “It’s time now to invest in the security around your field. You have a new plaza. You need a new plan for security,” Emanuel said....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Tuesday, July 18, 2017. Chicago Water Department e-mails show attempts at firearms deals and jokes about the city’s gun violence The latest batch of e-mails from the Chicago Water Department show “a supervisor in the scandal-plagued water department used his city email account to negotiate firearms deals and make light of deadly Fourth of July violence in black neighborhoods by offering ‘Chicago Safari’ tours,” according to the Tribune....

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. 

In a recent Ghettoblaster interview with Mark Perro and Nick Chiericozzi, who cofront postpunk band the Men, Perro described the creative approach that’s led the group to produce its stylistically scattered series of albums: “We’ve tried to make the same record forever. We’ve tried to make the same exact record since the beginning, and in my mind, we haven’t accomplished that.” Despite that alleged failure the Men have emerged with some great music since they formed in 2008, particularly during their three-album run at the beginning of this decade, bookended by the pig-fuck crush of 2010’s Immaculada and 2012’s country-tinged Open Your Heart....

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

With the rise of the maker movement in the mid-2000s came the creation of “maker spaces,” places where people with shared interests and ideas could come together to create and engage with tools and technology and learn from each other. In July 2013, the Harold Washington Library opened the first publicly accessible maker space in Chicago, the Harold Washington Maker Lab. Harold Washington Maker Lab Mon-Thu 1-8 PM, Fri-Sat 10 AM-4 PM, Harold Washington Library Center, 400 S....

James Prinz The Walk Looking for something to do today? Agenda‘s got you covered. James Prinz For more on these events and others, check out the Reader‘s daily Agenda page.

It’s debatable whether Al Jackson left his profession as a middle school teacher in Miami to pursue a dream in stand-up comedy, or left because he had too much material from being a middle-school teacher in Miami not to pursue stand-up comedy. Either way, the smart comic is more than obliged to incorporate life lessons he learned during his time at the head of the class. His tale about the couldn’t-give-a-shit student who read a report on the Wright brothers for a Black History Month-themed assignment is practically precious (and only slightly bleak)....

In this week’s issue Leor Galil takes a hard look at Spike Lee’s Chi-Raq, which opens Friday after considerable hubbub. And we’ve got capsule reviews of: The Armor of Light, a documentary about a rabidly pro-life evangelical leader who becomes a convert to gun control; Creed, the new Rocky sequel, written and directed by Ryan Coogler (Fruitvale Station); The Dark Valley, a German western about a vendetta playing out in a frontier town; The Forbidden Room, the latest camp fantasia from Canadian director Guy Maddin (The Saddest Music in the World); James White, a powerful indie drama with Christopher Abbott and Cynthia Nixon; Janis: Little Girl Blue, a new documentary portrait of Janis Joplin; Legend, starring Tom Hardy as the British gangsters Ronnie and Reggie Kray; Movement + Location, a low-budget sci-fi drama about time travelers; and The Office, a Chinese musical from crime-movie specialist Johnnie To (Election, Sparrow)....

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

Later this week, the University of Chicago’s Doc Films screens the documentary Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff, a look at the legendary UK cinematographer. The film chronicles Cardiff’s long and varied career in the movies, including his directorial efforts and stint as a child actor, so it’s a decent introduction if you’re unfamiliar with his influence, but why bother with a biographical doc when you can dive right into the work itself?...

The jury’s still out on whether Kiki loves Drake or not, but it’s pretty clear that the rest of the world does, and with good reason. On his fifth official full-length release, this summer’s Scorpion, the Toronto child star turned rapper proves that he’s one of the most consistent artists out there right now; though he churns out material at a seemingly nonstop pace, it’s always high quality, and it always manages to connect with his listeners....

Q: I’ve read your column for as long as I had access to the Internet and was interested in sex, so here goes: I’m a 27-year-old male with a 42-year-old girlfriend. We met at work; we were both going through divorce. At the beginning, holy moly! My dream girl in the bedroom. We’ve been together for a year, and the sex is still the best I’ve ever had—she says she feels the same—but it’s vanilla....

During emo’s pop phase in the 2000s, pointed, unambiguous sexism was unfortunately welcome, but as the bands propagating that message began gasping their last breaths at the end of the decade, Buffalo trio Lemuria emerged from the underground with Get Better (Asian Man). Not only did the album hint at emo’s groundswell of creative rejuvenation, but it also suggested the genre could be more than a boys’ club. The glum and forceful “Lipstick” is particularly evocative....

On tour in support of her third LP, the new On Dark Horses (Sargent House), singer-songwriter Emma Ruth Rundle brings her captivating guitar sounds and ghostly vocals to the Empty Bottle for a set of haunting, melancholic postrock. Formerly of dreamy postrock trio Marriages and instrumental rock band Red Sparowes, Rundle has a style reminiscent of doomy shoegazers True Widow, but she imbues it with a folksy darkness that’s heavy on melody....

There’s something about Cirque du Soleil shows that drives me crazy. I mean in a good way—at least kind of in a good way. I mean, I love its shows to pieces, don’t get me wrong, but they also frustrate me, a lot. They obsess me, send my thoughts off in a thousand different directions at once. I leave Cirque du Soleil floating in a cloud of unknowing, bemused, silenced by a surfeit of images and feelings, with so many assorted pieces of the show floating around my head—costumes and performers and bits of music and overwhelming moments of aesthetic ecstasy—that when I try to put it all together and articulate what it all means ....

At Constellation on March 29, 2014, Chicago string ensemble Spektral Quartet celebrated the launch of a charming and savvy project called Mobile Miniatures, for which the group had commissioned 47 composers to write short pieces intended as cell-phone ringtones. The quartet played in the usual spot on the floor, surrounded on three sides by seating, but they’d set up a lot more than just their chairs and music stands. To the left and right of the performance area, toward the back of the room, the audience could use headphones to audition recordings of the ringtone compositions at iPad listening stations....

It’s telling that Mary Chase’s Harvey won the Pulitzer Prize in 1945, the final year of World War II. The previous winner had been a metatheatrical chronicle of apocalypse, The Skin of Our Teeth; the next would be a satire about political corruption, State of the Union. But as Allied forces advanced on Berlin, the gentlemen of the Pulitzer committee chose to honor a light comedy centered on one Elwood P....