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This original Christmas show (story by Larry Little, music by Dylan MarcAurele, book and lyrics by Jaclyn Enchin and Jennifer Enchin, with additional lyrics by Mike Ross) is no worse, and no better, than your average holiday children’s fare. The story, charming and silly, follows Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey: a young woman, unhappy with her dreary life, is transported to another world where she performs a heroic deed (saving Santa Claus), before she returns to the ordinary world, changed by her experiences....

Christian K. Lee/ For Sun-Times Media Jesus Garcia accepts the endorsement of Willie Wilson (right) this morning at the Chicago Baptist Institute. At left is Reverend Greg Seal Livingston, who managed Wilson’s campaign. At a south-side church this morning, Willie Wilson formally announced his endorsement of Jesus “Chuy” Garcia for mayor. As of this writing, Wilson has yet to rescind it. Four days later, Wilson told CBS 2 Chicago he’d vote for Garcia, but possibly endorse Emanuel....

Quenchers Saloon will close for good next Sunday, June 17, and one artifact of the decades it’s spent in the building at Western and Fullerton is already gone: the original 1991 Wesley Willis drawing of Quenchers. In the back of the live room, on the wall where the drawing was displayed, there’s now a strip of masking tape that says “Prints available now.” At least until Quenchers shuts its doors, you have an easy way to buy a reproduction of Willis’s drawing—for $20 you can just order one over the bar with your beer or sandwich....

When we last checked in with Mr. Harlan’s fifth-graders at Brentano Math and Science Academy in Logan Square back in December, they were putting the finishing touches on the monster stories they’d been working on all semester under the editorial guidance of volunteers from 826CHI, a nonprofit writing and tutoring center in Wicker Park. Now they, and a few fourth-graders, are published authors who will be making their public debuts at the Printers Row Book Festival, reading from the new anthology of their stories, The Monster Gasped, OMG!...

Michael Gebert Matt Ryan at the Talking Farm Matt Ryan looks and sounds the part of a lifelong farmer. He’s lanky, soft-spoken, a little weatherbeaten, and clad in flannel—so even with that look being popular among urbanites right now, I’m still surprised that he’s only been a full-time farmer since January. After volunteering for the Talking Farm in Skokie for the last couple of years, he became the urban farm’s first official farmer, as part of its five-year plan for developing a sustainable teaching farm selling locally grown vegetables to area restaurants....

Last month, DePaul University philosophy professor Jason Hill wrote an opinion piece for the Federalist, a conservative online magazine, that argued for Israel’s “moral right” to annex the West Bank and Gaza. The petition, which also cites tweets made by Hill, charges that “[h]is comments create unsafe and uncomfortable spaces for everyone, especially Palestinian and Muslim students who now all refuse to enroll in a class that is taught by Professor Hill....

There’s a notion in Jewish mysticism that the Torah appears in different forms in different eras, depending on how much the people of that era can absorb—a collection of fables, say, at one time, the pure presence of God at another. Something similar seems to apply to Leo Tolstoy’s 1878 novel Anna Karenina. Interpreters have treated it as everything from a bodice ripper to a deep philosophical treatise. For her stage adaptation, getting its world premiere production now at Lifeline Theatre, Jessica Wright Buha turns the tale into a meditation on the nature of love....

Singer and songwriter Ashley Monroe has built a career with one foot deep inside Nashville orthodoxy as a member of Pistol Annies (with Miranda Lambert and Angaleena Presley) and a Warner Bros. solo artist, and the other staunchly outside of the middle-of-the-road sentimentality typical of mainstream country. Monroe made her latest album, Sparrow, with de rigueur producer Dave Cobb, who’s helped fashion a rich blend of countrypolitan gloss with sleek soul undercurrents....

Robyn Beck Just the facts, sir. Brian Williams has got himself in a spot. The NBC news anchor admitted that his brush with death covering the war in Iraq in 2003 didn’t actually happen. The military helicopter hit by a rocket-propelled grenade? It wasn’t the chopper Williams was riding in, despite the story he’s told for years—it was a chopper ahead of his. “Why is Williams so desperate to be considered a hero?...

Over the past decade, it’s often felt like everyone in Chicago’s underground-rock subscenes was legally required to have multiple projects, and Jeff Kelley certainly cleared that bar. He fronted frazzled art-rock group Vaya, mathy indie-pop outfit Dick Wolf!, and ragged new-wave band New Drugs. When he wasn’t making music, Kelley helped document the scene as cofounder and creative director of Chicago Singles Club, a hybrid music-journalism outlet and record label whose activity sadly tapered off in the late 2010s (the site stopped posting monthly artist profiles in 2016, but continued to host events for about another year)....

Osa Obaseki, aka rapper-singer Osa North, grew up in Uptown, but in 2006 his parents sent him to live with his aunt and uncle in the capital of Nigeria’s Edo State, Benin City. He was 11 when he arrived, and he lived there for five years, soaking up Nigerian culture as he came of age—he took a particular liking to Afrobeat. North returned to Chicago in 2011, and within a year he’d recorded his first rap song, working with his younger brother....

The death of John Prine on Tuesday from complications of COVID-19 is a cruel blow to anyone who favors decency, empathy, community, and good jokes—you know, all those things that once defined the American character but in the face of the federal malfeasance surrounding this pandemic feel like sentimental niceties from a bygone era. I hope I’m wrong. Folk music has always denounced scoundrels—only the names change. Today they’re called “deplorables....

When word broke about Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s behind-the-scenes role pushing for the merger between American Airlines and U.S. Airways, I happened to be flying on an American flight to New York—my legs wedged against my chin, my rowmate’s elbow just about in my ear. But ProPublica’s revelations remind me that this “new” Rahm is just that—a relatively new political creature invented out of necessity during the fallout over the Laquan McDonald video....

When a generic Irish sports bar falls in this city, does it make a sound? The ubiquity of the tricolor-flying, flat-screen-blaring, jalapeño-popper-slinging, Gaelic-font-fronting, leprechaun-buggering, all-purpose faux-Irish public house is such that it renders most of them invisible to me. That’s why I’m sure I never even noticed West Town’s Division Ale House prior to hearing that it’d been shuttered by its owner only to rise up, completely reconcepted, as a Cajun-creole concern called Fifolet, bedecked with sparkly Mardi Gras masks and soundtracked by blaring brass bands for those unfamiliar with the most prominent cliches of the Crescent City....

Alarmist founder Gary Gulley gets into the Beer and Metal spirit. That hydrometer jar should really be the skull of a fallen enemy, but I don’t think he has any enemies. Two years ago, when I talked to John Laffler of Off Color and Jess Straka of Revolution Brewing (then of Metropolitan) as part of the Reader‘s Chicago Craft Beer Week coverage, the conversation turned to emerging brewers who had business plans robust enough to help them survive increasing competition for shelf space and tap handles....

Q: I’m a 27-year-old, feminist, conventionally attractive, straightish, GGG woman. Over time, my tastes have changed, and now I find myself more of a kinkster. A few years ago, my desire for kinkier sex and my willingness to take a chance came together in a mutually beneficial, exciting D/s relationship. I’ll be honest: I wasn’t as smart as I could have been. I met this guy on Tinder, and after verifying his identity, I told some friends where I’d be and I met up with him....

Hanukkah shows are hard to find, relatively speaking, but there are two running locally right now: Grace and the Hanukkah Miracle with brand-new Chicago Immersive, and the return of Strawdog’s Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins, adapted by Michael Dailey from Eric A. Kimmel’s 1989 children’s book. Whereas Grace uses the story of Hanukkah and a missing menorah as an emblem of one family’s journey from pre-World War II Germany to America, Hershel draws upon traditional Jewish folklore—Hershel of Ostropol being a Jewish trickster who takes down the powerful with his wits....

On Friday Kanye West‘s GOOD Music drops the self-titled debut by Hxlt, pronounced “Holt”—it’s the stage name of Treated Crew member Nigel Holt. Hxlt has been a known quantity around these parts for more than a decade, albeit as Hollywood Holt. In a 2015 interview with MTV, Holt explained the change: “When I rap I’m Hollywood Holt, and since I’m not rapping it’s just Holt.” Listening to Hxlt reminded me of that tour with Fall Out Boy....

Michael Gebert Matzoh ball soup at Frances’ Deli The state of deli food in Chicago—or, rather, the lack of deli food in Chicago—is a common topic of conversation among food enthusiasts. As recently as the 1960s and 1970s there were healthy deli scenes in Rogers Park and other parts of town, but when it comes to vintage places still going today—the local equivalents of Katz’s in New York or Schwartz’s in Montreal—the conversation tends to start and stop with Manny’s in the South Loop, in the area once known as “Jew Town,” which dates to circa 1949....

I’m in a great position going into indefinite isolation, because I get to read jokes, like this one from Malic White (@malicwhite), on Twitter all day, every day: “Any queer who makes it through quarantine without giving themself a weird haircut wins 9 lives.” While some people are avoiding social media altogether to keep themselves from having a panic attack, over the past handful of years I have surrounded myself with comedians on every platform....