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“It was on a dreary night in November,” intones teenage Mary Shelley, thrusting a candelabrum in the air and compelling her glib and glamorous friends, poets Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron, physician John Polidori, and stepsister Claire Clairmont, to act out the ghost story roaring from her imagination. It’s the gloomy summer of 1816 in a cabin by Lake Geneva. The result: Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, a dark allegory of human creativity remembered for the monster Mary made....

It was one step forward and, alas, another step forward on the road to financial ruin. As I explained last week, Mayor Emanuel recently agreed to give Wall Street lenders $110 million in fees—which will come out of your property taxes—as part of a deal to lend CPS $725 million to pay off old debt. Yes, my oldest obsession. Yes, I’m writing another column about TIFs. I really don’t want to....

Leonard C. Goodman is a Chicago criminal defense attorney and co-owner of the newly independent Reader. Congress has responded in typical fashion by protecting its donors—the investor class—the only people in the country who didn’t need help. By unrecorded voice vote, Congress passed the CARES Act, rushing $1.77 trillion in taxpayer money out the door to help their friends on Wall Street. This bailout also saved the stock market and preserved the wealth of the 10 percent of Americans who own 85 percent of the stocks and bonds....

When you hear the word “bread,” what do you imagine? A bakery? A sandwich? The beginning of a meal? Isabelle Frances McGuire, who rejects gender binaries and doesn’t seem to approach anything in a straightforward way, thinks of the artist’s own body. The title “I’m a Cliché” comes from the song “I Am a Cliché” by 70s British punk band X-Ray Spex, whose lyrics often dealt with feminism and anti-consumerism. Relatedly, the setup at Prairie Gallery is somewhat spartan—a small, windowless room whose walls and floor are painted white....

Adverses Chicago novelist, poet and playwright Rey Andújar is equal parts philosopher, aesthete, and insurrectionist—all put to expert use in this savvy, ceaselessly inventive reworking of Euripides’s Electra. This time queen Clitemnestra is a power-hungry, pseudo-feminist nymphomaniac, while princess Electra is a wannabe Marxist revolutionary. Andújar’s stage world is impishly nonsensical (murdered King Agamemnon’s coffin has air holes cut in it), yet the malignant passions that consume everyone—jealousy, ambition, lust, revenge—are unsettlingly true to life....

Chicagoans love to commiserate about the character-building extremes of our weather, and chances are most of your conversations in the last week have involved some combination of the words “record-breaking cold,” “instant frostbite,” and “tissue-killing temperatures.” If you suspect your landlord isn’t complying with the ordinance but you don’t have a thermostat inside your place, several free smartphone apps measure indoor air temps. Landlords can be fined up to $500 every day per violation, so don’t be shy about reporting them to 311....

By definition, vodka should be odorless and flavorless. Kalak Single Malt Vodka is neither—and that’s exactly why bartender Julia Momose likes it. “What I love is the fact that the flavors really shine through,” she says. “I get notes of lemon, freshly baked brioche and croissants, hints of cacao. It’s opened up the possibilities for vodka—that it has all this flavor and complexity that can be played with [in cocktails] is really intriguing....

Thom Andersen The Thoughts That Once We Had With Mad Max: Fury Road, writer-director George Miller returns to the futuristic story that put him on the map, reimagining in greater detail the dystopian Australia of his original action cycle from the 70s and 80s (Mad Max, The Road Warrior, and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome). Ben Sachs looks at the summer blockbuster in this week’s long review, and in a shorter piece I consider The Thoughts That Once We Had, the latest from the masterful film essayist Thom Andersen (Los Angeles Plays Itself)....

UPDATE Saturday, March 14: this event has been canceled. Refunds available at point of purchase. Once upon a time, in a room that looked like a fifth-grade classroom after a firebombing followed by an era of mildew, a man named Katurian (Martel Manning) was being questioned. Katurian was a writer of stories that felt like Edward Gorey had infiltrated the dreams of Franz Kafka. In a totalitarian dictatorship such as he was in, the resemblance of recent child murders to the themes of his writing has been taken as practical proof of his guilt....

Move over, Divvy: a new form of bike share could be coming to town. The new bikes are rolling out in cities across the country, including Rockford, which earlier this month got 500 bright green bikes maintained by the San Mateo company LimeBike. That company is one of several vying to operate in Chicago—causing concerns among other operators because Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s former top adviser, David Spielfogel, is on LimeBike’s board of directors....

Chicago artist Nesbitt “Nez” Wesonga broke out in the early 2010s with hip-hop production crew Nez & Rio. By 2014, they’d helped make a bona fide hit album: Schoolboy Q’s Oxymoron features three Nez & Rio tracks, including the triumphant single “Man of the Year.” Q had previously enlisted the duo for 2012’s “Druggys Wit Hoes Again,” which contains flashes of Chicago house—and nearly a decade later, Nez is still finding ways to express his love of house music....

Last year Chicago rapper Fatimah Warner, better known as Noname, explained to Greenroom magazine why she was going to call her forthcoming debut mixtape Telefone: “I like the idea of what it means to be on the phone with someone for the very first time and all its little intricate idiosyncrasies. From the awkwardness to the laughter or various intimate conversations you can have over the phone, I want my project to be very conversational....

Participating vendors Sunday, August 7 11am – 5pm Plumbers Hall 1340 W. Washington Blvd., Chicago, IL 60607 vendor map (PDF) The Made in Chicago Market is back! It’s a fun celebration of all things DIY—showcasing some of the best apparel, housewares, and food and drink that Chicago has to offer! Shop local and support your neighborhood makers. Free admission! Free parking! You should come! #MICM #MadeinChicago Brought to you by...

The Cubs and Reds were tied at two in the 14th inning Tuesday night in Cincinnati, and the north-siders were running short on players, when manager Joe Maddon’s neurotransmitters began heating up in the dugout. After the game, Maddon explained his machinations, but without PowerPoint it was hard to follow. There’s always a method to his Maddoness, but sometimes one suspects that a basic ingredient is simply having fun. Maddon allowed that when he made his first left-field change, “The infielders were kinda giggling....

These days, nihilism isn’t a choice—it’s a corner that we’ve boxed ourselves into in a feeble attempt to preserve some semblance of peace of mind. By 2020, Protomartyr had already spent more than a dozen years making malaise seem ineffably cool, with vocalist Joe Casey serving up tongue-lashings over gummy bass lines and bristling riffs. On the band’s new fifth album, Ultimate Success Today, Casey confronts the decline of his own health alongside the decay of our planet due to human recklessness....

Ex Libris: The New York Public Library, the 41st documentary feature by Frederick Wiseman, bears a close resemblance to its subject. It’s huge (197 minutes) and incredibly varied, with something new and interesting popping up every time you turn the corner. And as with a public library, the sheer magnitude of the movie can make you a little drowsy. Wiseman is a master editor, capable of sustaining a documentary for two, three, or even four hours, but compared, for instance, to his 1997 masterpiece Public Housing, which also ran about 200 minutes, the new film can feel static and self-indulgent, the work of an octogenarian (born in 1930) who thinks he’s earned the right to relax and enjoy himself....

Why did Clare Barron’s success bring her so much shame? The performer-turned-playwright received widespread acclaim after the 2015 debut of her play You Got Older, but this didn’t lift her spirits and she needed to know why. The big twist in Dance Nation is that the members of the middle-school dance troupe who are determined to make it to a national competition in Tampa Bay are played by adult actors covering an age range of nearly 50 years—a decision made to illuminate how teenage experiences shape adults....

As Cook County state’s attorney Kim Foxx’s first year in office has drawn to a close, a group of independent justice system observers have published a new report evaluating her leadership thus far. Foxx ran against former state’s attorney Anita Alvarez on a reformist platform, vowing to institute a variety of changes to the prosecutor’s office, from greater data transparency to changes in criminal charging practices. The report found that she’s making progress on some of her promises, but there’s plenty of room for improvement....

With Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter, Austin-based writers David and Nathan Zellner have constructed an engaging, even surprising feature around just a few jokes. Their understated approach goes a long way toward keeping these jokes fresh—no matter how many times they’re deployed, one rarely sees the punch line coming. An even more valuable asset is Rinko Kikuchi’s nuanced lead performance; on paper the title character sounds like a cartoon, yet Kikuchi (Norwegian Wood) transforms her into an enigma—heroic, childlike, pathetic, and touching....