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“Can’t a black man just wanna hang himself for pleasure?” —Darnell in Hang Man Except, we quickly find out, this isn’t a lynching. Not exactly, anyway. It seems the black man hanging from the tree—a guy named Darnell, residing until that moment in what the script calls a “a shit town in Mississippi”—gets off on autoerotic asphyxiation, i.e., masturbating while he strangles. He’s done it many times before in the solitude of the woods, where he’s beyond the reach of the people whose money he’s gambled away and, per Portnoy, the mother who drives him nuts enough to seek release in dangerous sex....

On a frosty day in February, Dr. Nora Rowley sat on the floor of the mustard-yellow playroom in the Marjorie Kovler Center in Rogers Park helping five-year-old Oscar* push a dump truck around the room. The boy had recently come to the city with his mother from Guatemala, and Rowley asked him what he thought of his new home. Oscar said he didn’t like the wind and winter here. “My daddy,” Oscar replied....

Rejoice and be glad, oh ye Chicagoans, for a miracle has occurred: for the first two months of the season, both the Cubs and the Sox were in first place! And in honor of that miracle, ticket prices have gone up, so that a day at Wrigley Field could, hypothetically, set a family of four back $400. (A day at U.S. Cellular Field costs less, but find one die-hard Cubs fan who’d rather watch the Sox just to save a few bucks....

Q: You’ve said that everyone is entitled to a “zone of erotic autonomy.” I was wondering if you thought that “zone” extends to sending thousands of dollars to a “FinDom.” I’m a 33-year-old straight woman and I love my husband and we have a great (or so I thought) sex life. He’s very dominant and controlling in bed and I’m very submissive and I thought we were well-matched sexually. So it was a shock for more than one reason when I stumbled over evidence that he’s been sending money to a female sex worker who calls herself a FinDom....

Maintain Wume, the Baltimore-based duo of Al Schatz and April Camlin, have released a new music video from their upcoming record on Ehse Records. Originally formed here in Chicago, the band dominated the weirdo basement scene, sharpened their spacey sound, and released an LP on Rotted Tooth Recordings before relocating out east a couple of years ago. On today’s 12 O’Clock Track, “Ostinaut,” the two return to craft a hazy, psych-Krautrock epic, with Schatz’s layered, oscillating, blooping synths anchored in tight, locked rhythms by Camlin’s meticulous, syncopated drumming....

As if it weren’t bad enough that President Obama felt compelled to saddle us with Mayor Rahm Emanuel in 2011, he’s doubled down and endorsed him for a second term. For the anti-Rahm crowd—and I know you’re out there—that’s the glimmer of good news in this latest development. I rushed home to find two e-mails from the mayor’s campaign bragging about the endorsement. Apparently, Emanuel and his aides were so gleeful they mistakenly sent the same message twice....

Street View is a fashion series in which Isa Giallorenzo spotlights some of the coolest styles seen in Chicago. There are no regrets in Claire Wong’s worlds of style. The School of the Art Institute student doesn’t have cause to cringe at her sartorial past, for one, because it’s not all that different from her present; she has wardrobe staples that have been in circulation since high school, including the thrifted jacket and beanie....

In one of my first weeks of high school, my freshman English teacher provided our class with a short passage to introduce a discussion of literary tone. The passage was a straightforward description of a walk through a public park, with details of trees, benches, and such. Then, in the penultimate sentence, the narrator mentioned seeing two men stabbing a third man to death; the passage concluded with another bland line in keeping with the earlier sentences....

In the very crowded landscape of Atlanta rap, J.I.D is instantly recognizable. His stage moniker comes from a childhood nickname that was short for “jittery.” That word is also a good description of his flow—he races from word to word with a slightly nasal tone and profanely wiggy enthusiasm. His most recent album, DiCaprio 2 (Dreamville/Interscope/Spillage Village), finds a sweet spot between alternative and mainstream; it’s familiar enough to get radio play (it peaked at 41 on the Billboard 200) and quirky enough to hold critics’ attention, and his hooks are deployed artfully enough to avoid overstaying their welcome....

Mommy Jennifer Aniston has collected some of the best reviews of her career playing the scarred, emotionally brittle survivor of a terrible car accident in the indie drama Cake; it screens at River East 21, and our review is here. Also in this week’s issue, Ben Sachs spotlights the best work from this year’s Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival, Drew Hunt takes a look at the program “Oscar Nominated Short Films 2015: Live Action“, and I recommend Mommy, the latest from French-Canadian wunderkind (or whatever wunderkind is in French) Xavier Dolan....

Welcome to Flopcorn, where Reader writers and contributors pay tribute to our very favorite bad movies. In this installment, associate editor Jamie Ludwig and culture editor Aimee Levitt consider the filmography of Elvis Presley on what would have been his 83rd 84th birthday. AL: No! Sacrilege! JL: One thing I learned this week is that true Elvis fans consider Blue Hawaii the beginning of the end in terms of quality....

For years and years, the biggest right-wing windbag in Chicago sports was Mike Ditka, former coach of the Bears, who could be counted on to say anything, no matter how daffy, to promote the Republican cause. Until Urlacher revealed what was in his mind and heart, I’d never seen such contempt for Black people so openly expressed by a Chicago celebrity. And earlier this year, Urlacher visited Trump in the White House....

Warning: This review contains spoilers. Daniel Kaluuya plays a captivating Fred Hampton, and LaKeith Stanfield an anxious Bill O’Neal, with a cast of strong supporting actors—including women who show just how essential they were to the Black Panther Party. And with these knockout performances comes an examination of the need for revolutionaries when pushing for real change. But, Hampton and the other members of the Black Panther Party were also young....

Seattle-based musician, composer, filmmaker, ethnographer, and record collector Robert Millis is fascinated with antique formats, and his obsession has evolved from crate digging to a vein of pure, obscure research that just won him a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He has written two books: 2015’s Indian Talking Machine (Sublime Frequencies) and 2008’s Victrola Favorites (Dust-to-Digital), the latter coauthored with Jeffery Taylor, his collaborator in experimental rock band Climax Golden Twins....

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. Shines nonetheless followed his hero around, watching him play whenever he could and trying to learn his licks. Lore has it that Shines first performed onstage during one of Wolf’s juke-joint gigs: while the big man was taking a break, Shines hijacked his guitar and got the place jumping....

On one level, Keep the Change (which opens today at the Music Box) is a formulaic romantic comedy about a man and woman who meet cute, fall in and out of love, then rediscover their affection for each other. On another level, the film is a documentary-style portrait of what it’s like to be an adult with autism and learning disabilities—the principal characters are played by people who actually have these conditions, and writer-director Rachel Israel (expanding on a 2013 short of the same name) shows them engaging in activities they would likely pursue in their real lives....

If you’ve ever been to a comedy show—or, if you’ve ever been minding your own business at a bar before being ambushed by a comedy show—you know that Chicago’s known for being a robust comedy city. Part of what makes it formidable is the strength of Chicago’s comedy photographers. You know the ancient adage: if a comedy show happens and no one sees it on Instagram, did it really even happen?...

Welcome to the Reader’s morning briefing for Friday, July 8, 2016. Weather: Partly cloudy, breezy WBEZ finds that Chicago school construction furthers class and race segregation Architect asks George Lucas to reconsider leaving Chicago, build museum at U.S. Steel site New York-based architect Michael Sorkin penned an open letter to George Lucas and Mellody Hobson, asking them to reconsider their decision not to build the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Chicago....

Toronto group Okan make heady, jazzy, superbly crafted music driven by two virtuosos born in Cuba’s cultural capitals: violinist Elizabeth Rodriguez hails from Havana, and percussionist Magdelys Savigne is from Santiago. Rodriguez was a concertmaster for Havana’s Youth Orchestra, and Savigne is trained in orchestral percussion, but since moving to Toronto about five years ago they’ve both honed their chops in a variety of styles, notably with Juno-nominated postrock band Battle of Santiago and Grammy-nominated jazz group Jane Bunnett & Maqueque....