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As I lurch deeper into the overgrown woods of middle age, I’m grateful I still have friends who can surprise me with bonkers records I’ve never heard of. This isn’t because bonkers records I’ve never heard of are in short supply—it’s a big world out there—but rather because most folks give up on seeking out unfamiliar music well before they turn 50. Formed in 2018 by Belgian multi-instrumentalist Guillaume Cazalet, Neptunian Maximalism is a confounding collective with an unstable lineup....

I’ve watched Bio-Dome at least 12 times. And naturally, during these turbulent times, I’ve picked up Bud (Pauly Shore) and Doyle’s (Stephen Baldwin) habit. So here I sit, tuning in for my 13th time with my weed pen, ready to catch up with my two favorite stoners. I’ve talked to many folks in metropolitan areas who are yearning for nature. From my couch on the south side, living in the Biosphere 2 bubble doesn’t seem so bad....

Chicago rapper Herbert Wright III, better known as G Herbo, has become the kind of public figure whose smallest social media movement is fodder for the content mill. When Herb’s girlfriend, Taina Williams, recently blocked him on Instagram, the nonevent inspired blog posts at Complex, HotNewHipHop, and Bossip. Thankfully, whatever strains and pressures come with this level of celebrity don’t seem to have impacted Herb’s music. On his latest album, 25 (Machine Entertainment Group/Republic), he’s still doing what launched him to fame in the first place: dispensing vivid, complex verses about growing up in a neighborhood beset by gun violence that also express deep empathy for survivors, victims, and bystanders....

For those who dream of living inside a Miami house with a suite of Chippendale chairs and a loud sofa—and where it never stopped being 1987—there can be no entertainment more joyous than this sequel to last year’s smash from Hell in a Handbag Productions, The Golden Girls: The Lost Episodes. Picture it: three women of a certain age who no longer feel like hiding their unflagging desires And make the women drag queens....

You can tell a lot about a place of business by its bathroom. Are the facilities pleasantly lit, or are they so dim you can barely see the outline of your own body parts? Is the air laden with perfume that smells better than anything you’ve ever worn on your own body, or does it make the word “foul” seem inadequate? Is it a room where you feel comfortable enough to rest, or would you rather, um, evacuate?...

The Chicago chapter’s afterschool program supports students in overcoming the barriers that come with the experience of refugee resettlement, including language, social isolation, poverty, acculturation, and navigating a new school system. The program offers play, homework tutoring, and art making. 

“Wow, this is very 2012 dubstep,” my 16-year-old quipped when he heard Demigod (Kannibalen), the latest album from DJ and producer Kai Wachi. Sure enough, Wachi did get his start that year, and he’s been keeping the faith ever since—which my son and I agree isn’t such a bad thing. The title track doesn’t exactly smash any Skrillex paradigms, but the sound is enormous: synths rev up to thrash-metal speeds and beats drop from great heights to smash open with a screech of filthy static....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Thursday, February 11, 2016. Obi-Wan Karen has a message for the Board of Ed. The Force is with us! #faircontractnow pic.twitter.com/xLNjkSvHIn — ChicagoTeachersUnion (@CTULocal1) February 9, 2016 And, President Obama gifts CTA with funds to rebuild Red Line north The former state senator didn’t come back to Illinois empty-handed. The CTA will receive up to $281 million from the federal government for the Red Line reconstruction project if Obama’s budget proposal is passed....

This autumn marks 30 years since Ken Vandermark moved to Chicago. The reedist plays tenor and baritone saxophones as well as B-flat and bass clarinets, and his staggering output—he’s put out six releases this year alone, one of them a five-disc set—can be divided and analyzed according to any number of metrics, including where he spent most of his time while producing the material. Early on, he mostly played in Chicago, gigging frequently around town in various ensembles....

I wonder what childless people do for terror. Since my two sons were born, all my worst fears have revolved around their lives. Not their natures or their choices but their lives. Though they’re both fully grown and self-sufficient now, the possibility of . . . something terrible . . . befalling either of them still scares me so much that I can’t bring myself to call that something by its right name here....

Moby-Dick ranks up there with the Bible on the short list of literary masterpieces that are very nearly unreadable. Like the Good Book, Herman Melville’s 1851 novel about the doomed voyage of the Pequod is cosmic in scope, rich in interpretive possibilities, extraordinarily powerful in places, and, for long stretches, tedious beyond imagining. Captain Ahab may have been single-minded in his pursuit of the white whale that done him wrong, but his creator tends to get distracted, repeatedly breaking away from the narrative to teach us lessons on sailing and the finer points of cetology....

Tomorrow night Doc Films will screen Days and Nights in the Forest, one of Indian director Satyajit Ray’s greatest accomplishments, and on Friday Hong Sang-soo’s minimalist Grass opens at the Gene Siskel Film Center for a weeklong run. What do these movies have in common? For one thing neither seems particularly interested in storytelling—both feel like collections of social observations, organized around the characters’ unforced behavior. (Both films are, in fact, exquisitely written, developing themes and even subtle suspense through the careful sequencing of nonevents....

Philadelphia guitarist Nick Millevoi juggles disparate approaches to music, including aggressive prog rock in Many Arms and post-Television-style melodicism in Solar Motel Band (where he plays foil to Chris Forsyth), but the element that usually holds them together is that his sounds conjure emotions stoked by ephemeral sorts of nostalgia. He’s as much a jazz musician as he is a rock player, and though he’s dug into both traditions he’s definitely found his sweet spot leading the instrumental Desertion Trio with bassist Ben Rosen and drummer Kevin Shea (Talibam, Mostly Other People Do the Killing)....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Tuesday, August 23, 2016. Skokie woman joins Trump’s National Hispanic Advisory Council GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump has tapped Skokie resident and JCR Group founder Jovita Carranza for his National Hispanic Advisory Council, which met with Trump Saturday in New York. Carranza was a Small Business Administration executive in George W. Bush’s administration and currently sits on the Illinois Enterprise Zone Board. [Sun-Times]

Most people in Chicago don’t consider Japanese food in regional terms, but when Koichiro “K.C.” Kimori was plotting to open Umacamon, his Rolling Meadows restaurant, he was thinking about his hometown, Fukuoka. There are plenty of Kyushu favorites, but Umacamon isn’t simply a specialist. With more than a hundred items on the menu, it offers a dizzying selection of sushi, yakitori, and shareable drinking dishes. At lunchtime the focus narrows to sushi and homey comfort foods—donburi, noodles, curry rice plates, and a few yōshoku (Western-style) dishes such as the demiglace-glazed burger patty, more meat loaf than sandwich, and the fried rice-wrapped omelet omurice....

Late last year, Victor Cervantes began posting gauzy, sweetly melancholy bedroom-pop tracks to Soundcloud and Bandcamp, adopting his first name as his nom de upload (he styles it with a terminal exclamation point). Last month the 17-year-old Chicagoan made his physical-media debut with the CD-only EP Glitter98, a self-released collection of six songs that he sold for $10 (the deluxe version, which includes bonus tracks and a lyric booklet, cost $15)....

QMy boyfriend and I both spent a lot of time masturbating when we were young, and pretty much trained our brains to come only one way. He can only come from masturbating furiously, or sometimes from a marathon of jackhammer sex. A few years before I met him, I toned down the masturbating to retrain my brain and pussy and tried a bunch of new things, and I can now come from different acts and positions....

Q: I was raised in a religious home and didn’t lose my virginity until the embarrassing age of 26. I was told by the church to save it for marriage and I was a virgin until I met the woman who would become my wife at a party. I said to hell with it, we had a one-night stand, and we’ve been together now for eight years. I’m tall and slim and my wife is short and heavy....

A few years ago Matthew Hord, who fronts Chicago-based noise-punk mainstays Running (and played alongside yours truly in a handful of local bands over the years), moved to New York City and linked up with guitarist Jordan Lovelace and drummer Peter Buxton, both of whom had played a similar style of jumpy, blown-out garage rock in their band Pampers. The new trio gave themselves the confusing-on-all-streaming-platforms name “Brandy,” which makes them nearly impossible to Google and (according to at least one Instagram story) has resulted in disappointing showgoers anticipating a performance by the 90s R&B icon....