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Catherine Cohen, Patti Harrison, and Mitra Jouhari, who all work together on the show It’s a Guy Thing, consider one another the funniest women alive. The three of them have contributed to nearly every part of the modern comedy landscape: writing for AMC and HBO, acting in The Big Sick and Broad City, and performing in East Village cabarets, The Tonight Show, and now the Hideout as part of the Tomorrow Never Knows festival....

Q: I’m a 43-year-old straight woman, and I spent the majority of my 30s celibate. At 40, I realized that while I wasn’t interested in dating, I was tired of my vibrator. I also realized that it was time to go forth and fuck with the body I had instead of waiting for the idealized body I was going to have someday. Over the past three years—despite being as fat as ever—I’ve consistently had fun, satisfying, exciting, creative, sometimes weird, occasionally scary, but mostly awesome sex....

Toronto’s late mayor Rob Ford was notorious for his crack cocaine consumption, but there were some other white lines he didn’t care for. The Chris Farley-esque politician, who famously called bicyclists “a pain in the ass to motorists,” made a point of having existing bike lanes removed to create more room for cars. This led to a memorable showdown in 2012, when protesters temporarily stopped the removal of the Jarvis Street bike lanes by laying down in the street to block the pavement-scraping machine....

Many cannabis enthusiasts saw it as another reason to light up: in a span of three days, the Cook County state’s attorney and the Illinois house both took steps to reduce penalties for marijuana possession. It’s the latest incarnation of what the Reader calls the grass gap: while people smoke marijuana all over Chicago—and Illinois, and beyond—almost everyone busted for it is black. Citing those findings, the Chicago City Council passed an ordinance in 2012 to go easier on some pot possessors....

Aimee Levitt The first Norsemen to wear horned helmets were characters in Wagnerian opera in the 19th century. The horned helmet became a patriotic symbol of Scandinavia after Germany invaded Denmark in 1864. It was adopted by heavy metal enthusiasts in the 1970s. Vikings did not wear helmets with horns on them. They probably bathed and combed their hair—or at least, the archaeological record shows they were very attached to their combs....

Chicago, longtime home of the MacArthur Foundation and its famous “genius” grants, is now also the headquarters of the United States Artists Fellows awards, which were celebrated at a festive three-day event last week at the Lake Shore Drive W hotel. And if you’re thinking maybe a State Department traveling fellowship, it’s understandable, but also wrong. In spite of the generic and official-sounding moniker, United States Artists has nothing to do with the government....

For more than two decades, singer and guitarist Matt Christensen has led Zelienople, a Chicago trio that explores the outer limits of slowcore by dismantling its melodies and song structures. Christensen focuses on similar territory in his solo work—at least, that’s the impression I get from what I’ve heard so far. His Bandcamp page features more than 120 releases he’s made since 2011, though one is a retrospective-slash-primer compilation he put together as part of a 2018 interview for Glassworks Coffee’s website (the roaster’s founder, Ben Crowell, worked for Touch and Go before launching his coffee business)....

With all due respect to Republicans and “good-government” civic citizens, I’m not joining your posse, riding out to string up House speaker Michael Madigan, the state’s most powerful Democrat. The General Assembly—which Madigan controls—did pass legislation favorable to Commonwealth Edison, including overriding then-Governor Quinn’s veto to pass the Energy Infrastructure Modernization Act in 2011. Yes, Madigan should step down. But then I thought he should step down—or be forced out—after it became clear that he’d ignored staffer Alaina Hampton’s request that he stop another Madigan operative from harassing her....

It’s tough enough to go through a breakup without being in the midst of a pandemic, but now partnerships are being tested, some are going virtual, and others are even dissolving. In the time BC (before coronavirus) getting over a breakup may have included going out, surrounding yourself with friends, distracting your thoughts, or even having a one-night stand. Nothing better than getting over someone by getting under someone, right?...

Last summer, Chicago DJ and producer Jerome Derradji returned to his native France for the first time in a decade. He needed to clear his head after a legal battle with a New York distribution company nearly sank Still Music, the dance label he’d founded in 2004. After spending a few weeks abroad, he felt better personally, but his business was in the same sad state he’d left it in. It was a lousy time for him to get a phone call from an unfamiliar record dealer offering him a very expensive once-in-a-lifetime opportunity....

Uniform Last year I reported on new-industrial duo Uniform’s first trip to Chicago, and tomorrow night they return, opening for Cult of Youth at the Empty Bottle. The Brooklyn-based band, made up of Ben Greenberg (formerly of the Men and Pygmy Shrews) and Michael Berdan (of Drunkdriver), combines simple, stripped-down, rapid-fire drum machines with wall-of-feedback guitar sounds and desperate, damaged vocals. Today’s 12 O’Clock Track is “Of Sound Mind and Body,” the band’s most unsettling song yet—over the course of its ten minutes, it goes from brutal noise rock into disjointed feedback, the electronic beat remaining unfazed as Berdan loses his mind over everything....

Egyptian American playwright Yussef El Guindi is mostly known to Chicago audiences from several productions with Silk Road Rising, including the world premiere of his 2005 comedy Ten Acrobats in an Amazing Leap of Faith, about an Egyptian immigrant family wrestling with assimilation in America. Back of the Throat, in which an Arab American man in post-9/11 America faces down government agents who take over his home in an increasingly hostile “investigation,” followed a few months later....

“We have eaten meat on a stick ever since the caveman killed his first chicken. It was a simple logic. Bones make great handles.” So said chef Sanjay Thumma, aka Vahchef, in a 2008 YouTube video posted around the time he sold his Chicago-area minichain Sizzle India, moved back to India, and went viral among the Indo-expat diaspora. In the video—which at press time was clocking just over 1.4 million views—Thumma demonstrates increasingly Fieri-esque variations on Hakka-style lollipop chicken wings—chubby frenched drumettes first marinated in a masala yogurt, then battered and fried hard in a turmeric-and-chile-stained fry suit....

Jacques Audiard is perhaps the only filmmaker in France who makes art-house films that could and should be successful Hollywood blockbusters. In his 2009 movie A Prophet, a green newly convicted felon is forced to commit a murder and from there gradually works his way up the ranks of the prisoners—it would fit perfectly on AMC daytime programming, right between First Blood and The Matrix. Rust and Bone (2012) is one of the most moving love stories of the past decade, and it stars trendy A-listers Marion Cotillard and Matthias Schoenaerts....

Until his recent fall for swapping zoning changes for Viagra, 25th Ward alderman Danny Solis was, in my opinion, the luckiest alderman in Chicago for his ability to dodge his way out of any predicament. But with Danny out of the picture—probably in witness protection for wearing a wire on Alderman Ed Burke—I’m ready to announce a new Alderman Lucky: Sox fans don’t like the Rickettses ’cause—duh, they own the Cubs....

Melkbelly shouldn’t work so well. This Chicago four-piece yoke together musical elements that seem about as compatible as a soap bubble and a shotgun: on the one hand you’ve got simple pop structures and eerie, often delicate vocals, while on the other you’ve got feedback, noise, disjointed rhythms, and a drummer who lashes at his kit like the second coming of Lightning Bolt’s Brian Chippendale. Plus their lineup includes two brothers and a married couple—and as anybody who’s ever been in a band knows, those kinds of close relationships are vulnerable to upheavals....

courtesy of No Quarter Records Bob Carpenter It’s no secret that in the music business, the business is often the biggest enemy of the music. The Canadian singer-songwriter Bob Carpenter provides an excellent but depressing case in point. In 1973 the folk-rocker signed a deal with producer Brian Ahern (well-known for producing some early classics by Emmylou Harris), who had his own arrangement with Warner Brothers Records. Together they made a lush, literate album called Silent Passage....

In a city with as much talent as Chicago, live music was going to find a way to keep happening, even with venues forced to close and public gatherings prohibited. Artists and institutions have begun livestreaming concerts (just as they’ve begun livestreaming classes, readings, theater performances, and much more), and some are even announced far enough in advance that the Reader can tell you about them. Below you’ll find a few to look forward to over the next week—some are one-off shows, while others are ongoing series....

Gossip Wolf has only heard one song by Charlie Reed, but if the beautifully languid, psych-tinged acoustic garage-pop of “Love Hangover” is any indication, then they’re gonna be one of the best new bands in town! That’s right, Charlie Reed are a band, not a person—with roots in the solo project that singer-songwriter Luke Trimble started after his band Uh Bones called it quits. Trimble decided to ditch Uh Bones’ shaggy electric guitars and experiment with a nylon-string acoustic, recording on an eight-track reel-to-reel in his bedroom....

Meshell Ndegeocello is a monster bassist and captivating singer who can mine gold in numerous styles, including funk, soul, electric jazz, pop, and rock. Her versatility once seemed to hold her back—early in her career she rapidly bounced between ideas—but she refined her style as time passed, and now she’s one of the most satisfying, rigorous, and varied artists in contemporary pop music. Ndegeocello’s new album, Ventriloquism (Naïve), carries on her winning streak....