Late last month, Chicago rapper and teaching artist Matt Muse launched the second annual Love & Nappyness Hair Care Drive. Muse and his volunteer team are collecting hair- and skin-care products for Chicagoans in need—shampoo, conditioner, moisturizer, aftershave, soap, deodorant, individually packaged razors, and the like. Last year, the drive distributed more than 500 items, and Muse hopes to double that this year. The six drop-off locations include both Trap House Chicago stores and the Silver Room, and you can donate money via Cash App ($MattMuse12), Venmo (@MattMuse12), or PayPal (MattMuseMGMT@gmail....

It’s common knowledge, though not commonly admitted, that biographers tend to identify with their subjects. Local author Andrea Friederici Ross, who’s written a deeply researched, briskly readable account of the life of Chicago grande dame Edith Rockefeller McCormick, admits this to her readers right up front. During the decade of research and writing that went into Edith: The Rogue Rockefeller McCormick (Southern Illinois University Press), Ross says in her preface, Edith became an obsession, in part because her story “mirrored my own (minus the jewels, the collections, the millions)....

Water covers about 71 percent of the earth’s surface, leaving oceans, lakes, rivers, lagoons, and fjords ripe for exploration. Entire communities of aquatic creatures and a world of coral reefs, shipwrecks, and underwater caves lie below the tides we see on land, and some of these hidden gems are as close as the bottom of Lake Michigan. Jobs didn’t fall into place so easily, however, and after a couple of flops trying to work at other scuba shops, he finally said “screw this” and took matters into his own hands....

Now that Lollapalooza has announced its lineup, it’s time to make predictions about who’ll play Riot Fest in September. This wolf hopes the punk-­centric blowout is where reunited Britpop heroes Blur will make their return to U.S. soil. Other guesses? For now let’s say veteran indie rockers Modest Mouse, Compton rap prince Kendrick Lamar, resurrected San Diego postpunks Drive Like Jehu, Minneapolis hip-hop family Doomtree, shock rocker Marilyn Manson, punky Bright Eyes side project Desaparecidos, and Indiana shoegaze band Cloakroom....

Chicagoans is a first-person account from off the beaten track, as told to Anne Ford. This week’s Chicagoan is Stacey Espinosa, 31, global R&D senior manager for new benefits and mints, Mars Wrigley Confectionery. So I majored in chemical engineering. On the first day, the professor asked everyone why they had chosen chemical engineering, and I said, “I want to make candy.” And then years later, when I got the call to work for Wrigley—you know the Miss America cry, where she’s so excited and she can’t believe it?...

Q: I’m a cis male in my late 20s. I’ve recently become consumed by a specific fantasy I fear is unattainable, a fear that has been made worse by several failed attempts to research it. Into cuddling and general affection, some make-out sessions, and occasional hand jobs and blow jobs—but no penetrative sex or anal play. Now for my questions: Does anyone like this actually exist? Is there a name for the fetish I’m describing?...

Footwork producer extraordinaire and Teklife leader Rashad Harden, aka DJ Rashad, died almost a year ago, and today producer Machinedrum released a tribute EP called Movin Forward. The EP’s five tracks are steeped in all things Rashad: besides the two originals that Machinedrum says are heavily influenced by Teklife, one of the tracks is a remix of Machinedrum’s “SeeSea” by Rashad and Taso, and the two other tracks were previously unfinished collaborations featuring Rashad and Machinedrum....

Imagine America as a gigantic mahogany table around which sit the writers of America, deciding, as things fell apart, that it was time to step up, and therefore writing—and signing by the hundreds—an “open letter to the American people” declaring that “as a matter of conscience” they opposed “unequivocally, the candidacy of Donald J. Trump for the Presidency of the United States.” And having done that, imagine them leaning back in their padded swivel chairs at the gigantic mahogany table, sighing with satisfaction, Well, that’s our two cents’ worth, and reaching for the bowl of jelly beans set out as a reward....

After the crushing decision last month to cancel its long-awaited Ring Cycle, Lyric Opera today announced that the rest of its 2019/20 season has been postponed. Lyric says ticket holders for all these performances and events will be contacted directly to discuss their options. Requests for refunds will be honored. And CSO fans can tune into WFMT (98.7 FM and streaming on wfmt.com) at 8 PM Tuesdays starting April 7 for a series of six broadcasts of archival concerts, selected by Maestro Riccardo Muti....

Two women begin with motion that is rapid and unrelenting, fearlessly yielding to momentum, whirring limbs about the axis of the spine, then creating new axes and leveraging shared weight to tumble together through space. Their endurance is remarkable. You can hear the sound of impact—flesh to flesh or floor. Though alike in stature and both bold, they are impossible to mistake for one other—each has her own center of gravity and her own texture in space, like neighboring atoms on the periodic table....

McDonald’s appears to be ready to join Randolph Street’s famed restaurant row—potentially adding a fast-food eatery to a thoroughfare better known for cutting-edge restaurants like Girl & the Goat and Leña Brava than greasy burgers. A McDonald’s spokesperson would not confirm any details of the opening or the menu.

Chris Farren is the best kind of punk prankster; he pokes fun at himself as much as anything else, but is also full of earnestness. Although the 31-year-old is a punk-scene veteran, he’s still relatively green to recording and performing as a solo artist—the result of a circuitous path. Farren’s previous band Fake Problems went on hiatus roughly five years ago, and in 2014 he teamed up with contemporary underground punk hero Jeff Rosenstock to form Antarctigo....

Lionel Bart’s musical adaptation of Charles Dickens’s 1839 novel Oliver Twist first premiered on London’s West End in 1960, went on to a Tony Award-winning run on Broadway in 1963, and in 1968 was made into a hit movie that won six Academy Awards, including Oscars for best director and best picture. But that was a long time ago. And it shows. In Bart’s tunes (full of nostalgic looks back to England’s now long-dead music hall tradition), in the melodramatic story (hinging on several unbelievable convenient coincidences), and in cringeworthy running gags about nagging wives and poor, beaten-down husbands....

Inherent Vice would be a landmark in movie history even if it weren’t good. More than just an adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s 2009 novel—indeed the first official Pynchon adaptation, period—the film engages with the author’s literature on the whole, attempting a filmic analogue to his virtuosic prose. Arguably the James Joyce of postmodern American fiction, Pynchon created a new kind of epic novel with V. (1963) and Gravity’s Rainbow (1973), combining literary references high and low, probing considerations of postwar history, goofy counterculture humor (frequently about drugs and sex), and flights of formal experimentation....

Photographer Tim Nagle weathered sweltering heat and thunderstorms to go behind the scenes with three artists at Pitchfork 2019. Here are the candid moments he caught with Tasha from Sunday, July 21, 2019.

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Wednesday, March 2, 2016 Proposed River North sex club isn’t going to open River North residents went into an uproar in November when a fetish lounge called Galleria Domain 2 submitted a zoning application to open a new location at 356 W. Superior. But the club withdrew the application in February, Chicago’s deputy commissioner of planning and development told DNAinfo Chicago. [DNAinfo Chicago]

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Thursday, September 15, 2016. Viral ‘paleta man’s” fund-raiser becomes the biggest GoFundMe campaign ever in Illinois More than $335,000 has been raised for the 89-year-old “paleta man” in a viral GoFundMe campaign. Fidencio Sanchez sells paletas (frozen treats similar to popsicles) from a cart on the west side. He was spotted by Joel Cervantes Macias, who decided to set up a fund-raising page for Sanchez....

Chicagoans is a first-person account from off the beaten track, as told to Anne Ford. This week’s Chicagoan is Subi Shah, maker, Gossip Girl fan, and podcaster. “OK, so I’ve loved Gossip Girl since the third season. I saw it, and I was like, ‘Oh, my God, this is the worst show I’ve ever seen. I love it so much.’ It’s a bunch of overprivileged white youths, and their issues are like, ‘My maid isn’t waking me up on time....

History hasn’t been this much fun since Hamilton. With its high-energy score, stadium lighting, and angular, bedazzled Tudor costumes that evoke a set of futuristic playing cards, Six, now in its North American premiere at Chicago Shakespeare, is more concert than musical. Writers Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss (who also codirected with Jamie Armitage) kick the standard “marginalized women reclaiming their narrative” plot into overdrive with a crisp, electric book and a score that magically makes clunky plot summary uproariously hilarious....

On the bitterly cold night of New Year’s Eve, heat emanated off the parquet dance floor at Man’s Country. Dozens of nearly nude men, most wearing little more than jockstraps or leather harnesses, plus shoes, bounced to a throbbing disco beat. There were chests fuzzy and hairless, firm and flabby. Bearish beards, porno-ready moustaches, and boyishly smooth faces. They drank and chatted, embraced, and kissed while they moved in a steamy mass to the music....