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As if we needed another reminder of the catholic sensibilities of country auteur Jim Lauderdale, on August 3 he’ll drop a pair of disparate albums on Yep Roc that casually reveal his easygoing range and natural curiosity. Jim Lauderdale and Roland White is a previously unissued session he cut with the titular bluegrass picker of Kentucky Colonels fame in the basement of Earl and Louise Scruggs’s house in 1979, not long after Lauderdale had arrived in Nashville determined to make his mark....

It might seem bizarre to call Lucki the best conscious rapper in Chicago, given that the city is also represented nationally by the likes of Chance the Rapper, Saba, and Common. But hear me out. Conscious rap, which is loosely defined by the social commentary at its core, comes in two clearly identifiable forms: preaching and storytelling. Preaching is more common, and conscious rappers who deliver their commentary in this style typically state their topic, explain all the reasons it’s a problem, and (if we’re lucky) tell us how it can be fixed....

In the midst of his crusade against house speaker Michael Madigan, Governor Bruce Rauner recently played the property tax-assessment card. Rauner’s assault on Madigan’s tax-appeal practice is part of his larger campaign to prove that he, the governor, is a lone crusader valiantly battling the evil Cook County Democratic machine in the fight for “reform,” which happens to be union-busting legislation. Property tax payers can try to lower their taxes by appealing their assessments to Cook County assessor Joe Berrios, the three-member Cook County Board of Review, or both....

Based on S.R. Bindler’s 1997 documentary of the same name, this 2012 Broadway musical focuses on an annual Texas endurance competition in which contestants vie for a pickup truck by touching it. Whoever keeps a hand on longest wins. Meaning you end up with a musical where all the major characters spend most of the show standing around within arm’s length of a pickup truck. But in contemporary American musical theater, even doing nothing presents fine excuses for uplifting lessons in constancy and devotion....

More than six months after the Northalsted Business Alliance said it would abandon the name Boystown for the city’s principal queer enclave, business leaders in the community have made few changes and continue using the moniker that many have called misogynistic and transphobic. But banners bearing the Boystown name were removed from light poles throughout the neighborhood only days ago. Businesses still use the name in marketing materials, even those seemingly disseminated by the chamber....

The Reader’s archive is vast and varied, going back to 1971. Every day in Archive Dive, we’ll dig through and bring up some finds. If reading Maya Dukmasova’s feature on defense attorney Stuart V. Goldberg put you in the mood to learn more about local lawyers, Marianna Beck’s 1988 story on Michael H. Minton should do just the trick. In 1979, the divorce attorney won a landmark case that established a precedent for equitable treatment of housewives in a system that historically did not serve those without the financial wherewithal....

Originating on the streets of Argentina, filtered through European high society, blending African rhythms and immigrant spirit, tango, like a fine perfume, marries sophistication with an undertone of flesh. But if your primary association with tango is corniness, Sombras Tango Cabaret, created and directed by Jorge Niedas and Liz Sung for Tango 21 Dance Theater, with choreography by Niedas and writing by Sung, brings it to another level. You won’t see roses clenched in anyone’s teeth, but this pastiche of Cabaret and every summer stock show there ever was makes for a mostly cringeworthy evening....

“It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in a language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs,” declares Bathsheba Everdene, the young heroine of Thomas Hardy’s novel Far From the Madding Crowd. For a Victorian writer, Hardy has always struck me as unusually modern—especially in his simple, exacting, observational prose—but Bathsheba’s statement is positively postmodern in its understanding of how words create their own value system....

White Earth Tonight the Music Box Theatre will screen all five of this year’s Oscar-nominated documentary shorts in two separate programs. The first, which contains the Polish character portrait Joanna and an American social-issue doc called Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press, screens at 7 PM (and repeats this coming Saturday and on Sunday 2/15 at noon). The second, which screens at 9 PM (and again this coming Sunday and on Saturday 2/14 at noon), features the remaining three: White Earth, a tone poem about oil-field laborers in North Dakota; The Reaper, a study of a stoic Mexican slaughterhouse worker; and Our Curse, another Polish submission, a personal essay by the parents of a child with a rare, life-threatening illness....

Q: I’m a 38-year-old bi woman who has been sleeping with a married male coworker for the last eight months. We’re a walking cliché: I’m a nurse, he’s a doctor, and one night he ended up spilling a lot of personal information about his marriage to me (sexless, non-romantic, she might be a lesbian) before asking if he could kiss me. I declined. Three months and many text messages later, I met him for drinks....

As the novel coronavirus pandemic takes an ever-increasing toll on the United States, it’s now widely publicized that COVID-19 deaths haven’t been experienced evenly across all segments of the population. Across the country, Black people are dying from the disease at disproportionately high rates. One of the first researchers to identify the severity of this trend was Dr. Clyde W. Yancy, chief of cardiology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine....

I’m sure you’re expecting a takedown here, since at some point in the past two decades it apparently became unforgivable for a band to record a phoned-in cover of “I’m a Believer” for a family movie starring an animated green ogre. I don’t blame anyone who sees Smash Mouth as a joke, since they’ve squandered much of their early promise, but I do wish more people could remember the band’s ingenuity....

Last week, in the midst of news that wheelchair-bound nonagenarian George H.W. Bush pats women on the rear and tells dirty jokes and that Brandeis University is canceling a play about Lenny Bruce because it’s offensive, came the announcement that the Chicago Comedy Film Festival has pulled its November 11 showing of a documentary about comedian Andy Dick. Dick has denied the groping charge, but none of the many people interviewed in the documentary would be surprised by any of it; like the millions who’ve watched this pansexual free spirit with an admitted sobriety problem on television, film, and the Internet, they’ve been mostly laughing at it for years....

The music of Berlin-based violinist Biliana Voutchkova crosses styles and spans centuries. She plays Baroque classical and free improvisation with pianist Antonis Anissegos, she interacts with dancers and electronic musicians in Grapeshade, and she recently released the triple album Blurred Music (Elsewhere) with clarinetist Michael Thieke. The collection includes three complete concerts of freewheeling, microtonal chamber music, one of which was recorded at the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Carr Chapel. In that performance, the two musicians blur the lines between composition and free improvisation by spontaneously interacting with their own prerecorded material....

Ethan Lim’s family members were apprehensive about the Cambodian fried chicken sandwich. But the Cambodian fried chicken sandwich is among a trio of newer sandwiches for which Lim has drawn upon his family’s own home cooking. It made its debut in early August, just as the hysteria surrounding Popeyes spicy fried chicken sandwich set off, and featured a skin-on chicken thigh marinated in the foundational herbal spice paste known as kroeung—here, lemongrass, garlic, galangal, turmeric, and makrut lime leaf—along with fish sauce, soy sauce, and sugar....

When Chicagoan Laura Yee supplies brownies for a potluck, people wonder if she baked brownies, or brownies with a secret ingredient. “Everyone always asks, ‘Is there weed in that?’” she says. The publication itself is attractive, leading with plenty of food and weed porn. On page seven, right after the table of contents, is a full-page close-up photo of two fingers holding a bud. Its orange follicles and crystalline texture appear in sharp focus....

Workaholic Chicago rocker and audio engineer Greg Obis has suffered through a challenging five years. Both of his parents died (his mother in 2015, his father in 2018), and his ferocious but underrated punk band Yeesh broke up in 2017. That same year, Obis spent time on the road playing bass in indie-rock outfit Clearance; on long van rides, he’d listen to contemporary postpunk bands like Uranium Club and Omni, who tussle with rawboned guitars and relentlessly driving....

Francine Maombi, 30, settled in Chicago a little more than a decade ago. She and her family spent years fleeing war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, at various times sheltering in Rwanda or Burundi. When she arrived here she put down roots in Rogers Park, joining the Mennonite Living Water Community Church. Last year she found herself in need of part-time work that would allow her to continue caring for her two small children at home....

Al Podgorski / Sun-Times Media Challenger Amy Crawford says the 46th Ward needs more police. During his campaigns for alderman in 2007 and 2011, James Cappleman vowed to crack down on crime, saying gang activity and public drinking were discouraging new businesses from coming into the 46th Ward. His solution: more police, which he promised to fund by targeting wasteful spending. Since then, Cappleman has claimed to clamp down on crime while also attacking affordable housing that he considers problematic....

Stories of C.K. behaving in this way have been floating around for years. A 2012 Gawker post, filed under the tag “blind item” and headlined “Which Beloved Comedian Likes to Force Female Comics to Watch Him Jerk Off?,” describes a rumor about a female comedy duo’s encounter with a “our nation’s most hilarious stand-up comic and critically cherished sitcom auteur.” The details of the incident in the Gawker item are remarkably similar to the event Goodman and Wolov recount in the Times story: As soon as they sat down in his room, still wrapped in their winter jackets and hats, Louis C....