Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Wednesday, August 30, 2017. Attorney general Madigan sues the city to enforce police reform Illinois attorney general Lisa Madigan is suing the city of Chicago, asking for the appointment of a federal judge to oversee reform of Chicago Police Department through a consent decree. A scathing report issued by the Department of Justice in January recommended this step among other reforms, but Jeff Sessions, attorney general under the Trump administration, has repeatedly expressed skepticism about such measures....

Interrobang Theatre Project presents Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour’s experimental one-person show, in which a different actor is handed a script he or she hasn’t read and asked to involve the audience in a drama that may or may not result in the actor’s demise. The setup is simple: an actor, a script, a table with two glasses of water and a vial of an unknown powder, a chair, and a stepladder....

Last week, shortly after sewage-laced floodwaters left Chicago’s brand-new stretch of the Riverwalk coated with something brown and squishy, Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced the launch of programming there to celebrate its grand opening. Friends has been around since 1979, with a mission “to improve and protect the Chicago River system.” It played a major role in turning the river from the garbage dump it was to the recreational boon it’s becoming, and it also operates the McCormick Bridgehouse & Chicago River Museum at Michigan and Wacker Drive....

As the hunger strike by Dyett High School activists moved into its 12th day, Mayor Emanuel finally broke his silence on the issue to declare that he wasn’t sure there were enough students on the south side to justify opening another high school. But now that he’s safely reelected, it’s as though he suddenly discovered there’s no compelling demographic reason to reopen Dyett—what with the school system being broke and everything....

Julia Thiel Dana Cree’s pine sap ice cream with celery-root cake, goat cheese mousse with pine honey, and apple Turkish delight It’s time again: the Key Ingredient Cook-Off is returning for its second year, this time on May 9 at the Museum of Broadcast Communications. Much like our biweekly chef-to-chef challenge, Key Ingredient, the cook-off tasks local chefs with creating a dish using an ingredient assigned by another chef. Past challenges have included cod milt, bamboo worms, ghost peppers, rabbit lungs, and fish eyeballs....

Nick Kluding and Ricardo Mendoza are getting married on June 2. For the past few weeks they’ve been meeting with caterers, hunting for a cake topper, and shopping for suits for themselves and their 21-month-old twin sons. The one thing they haven’t had to worry about is the venue. They’ll be getting hitched in the Kovler Atrium of the Museum of Contemporary Art and having the reception out on the terrace overlooking the sculpture garden, including the famous Sol LeWitt installation, and Lake Michigan....

Update: This event is now sold out. Please tune in to the live stream of the party beginning Thursday at 9 PM here on the Bleader. Tomorrow night is the first of a new Reader-hosted series of DJ showcases that will be taking place in offbeat, obscure, or otherwise surprising spaces and places around Chicago. These free events have limited capacity and are invitation only—but you, dear Reader reader, are invited....

Lake Davenport isn’t blue or sparkling. It isn’t even a lake—just the muddy Mississippi as it flows past Davenport, Iowa. The Lake Davenport Sailing Club, founded 1935, hosts races on the river Wednesdays and Sundays, Memorial Day through November. One of the first things beginners learn is to steer clear of the dam downstream, past the old Wonder Bread factory. Like other cities in the Rust Belt, the Quads have tried to reinvent themselves, setting up riverfront entertainment districts with attractions such as brewpubs and art galleries, Moline’s iWireless Center (home of minor-league hockey team the Quad City Mallards), and Davenport’s Figge Art Museum....

The power couple: Lynn Rondeau, 45, and Katy Bird, request for age denied!Years together: 17Occupations: Lynn’s a producer at a postproduction recording studio; Katy’s a professor and mathematician. Lynn: Yes. We do very well as long as we’ve got plenty of coffee for the morning start, and possibly some bacon. Katy: Lynn is the DJ of the house because I can’t remember the names of any songs written after 1986....

Plenty of metal bands use horror to sharpen their fangs, but few are as transparent about their interest in courting pop music with goblins and ghouls as Finland’s Lordi. And few have been as successful as Lordi. In 2006 the band performed dressed in elaborate monster costumes—as is their signature—for the long-running, multinational Eurovision Songwriting Contest. Long-haired front man Mr. Lordi wore platform boots, demonic battle armor, makeup that’s essentially a collection of deep gashes and horns, and black wings that emerged from his back during the breakdown of “Hard Rock Hallelujah,” a ballad filled with lyrical riffs on horror cliches....

Dorothée Munyaneza’s Unwanted begins with a woman telling the audience how cruel she is to her son. She mocks him. She beats him. She hates him. She never wanted him. He reminds her of the violence done to her. She can’t remember his father. It happened too many times. Another woman envisions her suckling infant as a hyena ravaging her body. Munyaneza gnashes her teeth together rhythmically, a hollow, dangerous sound....

JULES BATES/ARTROUBLE Bob Casale Yesterday, Devo guitarist Bob Casale died at age 61 “from conditions that led to heart failure,” according to his brother Gerald. There have already been plenty of obituaries for the musician, an original member of the brilliant experimental rock band from Akron, Ohio, who found unexpected success on the pop charts with their 1980 single “Whip It.” I have distinct memories of having my little mind blown when they performed on Saturday Night Live in 1978—I had no idea who they were, but they made a strong impression....

You could probably assume as much by the review’s disdainful headline, but Bill Wyman was not enamored with Lollapalooza ’92. Never one to mince words, the former Reader writer, now a culture critic at Al Jazeera America, wrote a scathing critique of the second Lollapalooza to hit the Chicago area 23 years ago at Tinley Park’s World Music Theater (now Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre), which you can read here. He cited the festival’s weak lineup and—surprise—the rainy weather: “For those of us who were there,” wrote Wyman, “the rain that began around the time Pearl Jam started their set and quickly grew to downpour proportions meant that the words Lollapalooza ’92 will forever conjure up the pungently aromatic memory of tens of thousands of soggy teens....

Chicago playwright Brett Neveu has received nearly unrivaled attention on local stages (not long ago, four of his plays opened in a single season). Yet mainstream success has eluded him, in large part, I imagine, because his ineluctable, often seemingly plotless scripts withhold the sort of narrative ease and emotional transparency theater audiences love. And given the hyperbolic media interest he surely knew A Red Orchid Theatre’s premiere of his new full-length play Pilgrim’s Progress would generate (not, mind you, because A Red Orchid has one of the most accomplished ensemble’s in town but because one particular ensemble member in the cast, Michael Shannon, has made some movies and is thus deemed more worth staring at than when he was just a great local actor), this should have been Neveu’s moment to cash in....

Taking its title from singer Dinah Washington’s 1960 R&B hit, this 2017 two-hander by Minnesota playwright Harrison David Rivers—a Chicago premiere from About Face Theatre—focuses on thirtysomething gay lovers Jesse (Sheldon Brown) and Neil (Daniel Desmarais). Jesse, a black man from a conservative religious upbringing in Kansas, has come to New York to become a playwright. Neil is a white trust-fund baby who, freed from having to work for a living, devotes himself to activism in the Black Lives Matter movement....

Jason Wyatt Frederick Some people have strange talents. Take Patrick Stanton—he has managed to win this contest for the second year in a row. Patrick correctly identified a mind-boggling 46 characters on this year’s B Side cover, no small feat. This year, we’ve provided a detailed key of everyone and everything that appears on Jason Wyatt Frederick’s Pitchfork cover. Take a look below and see what you might have missed (and use the image above for reference)....

I was suffering from mental gout two and a half years ago when the Gold Coast’s Maple & Ash opened in the midst of a citywide steak-house glut. When I proved unable to face another expense-account feedlot, Julia Thiel soldiered on in my place as I treated my symptoms with white rice and raw ginger. But are we now in the midst of an open-hearth glut? Seems like over the last few years the restaurant scene has been swept by forest fires with the proliferation of the likes of Hyde Park’s the Promontory and the West Loop’s Roister, El Che, and Lena Brava, et al....

Lauren FitzPatrick/Sun-Times Troy LaRaviere The mystery of Blaine Elementary is how it became what every neighborhood school is supposed to be—an anchor of its neighborhood. Years ago I noticed that it had been freshly tuckpointed; no longer a weary 19th-century brick fortress, it looked alert and inviting. Then I became aware of the large number of kids with backpacks, many escorted by young parents, converging on the school each morning along the sidewalks of Greenview and Jannsen and Grace; this was the rare neighborhood school in a white, wealthy part of Chicago that actually drew from the neighborhood around it....

In the wake of the Dominick’s shutdown, the Mariano’s grocery empire expansion of 2014 has been a boon not just to hungry shoppers and out-of-work clerks. It’s also benefiting a more niche segment of the population: working pianists. Inspired by a shopping experience at Nordstrom’s Oak Brook location, which once employed people to tickle the ivories, founder Bob Mariano has had a piano installed in each of his store’s more than two dozen locations, and a Wisconsin firm called the Entertainment Company sends a pro player, drawn from a pool of about 150, to entertain customers....

Hemera Technologies/Photos.com Zeke Emanuel and the New York Times would have us think that there’s an STD epidemic among seniors. My problem with numerical illiteracy among journalists, which I’ve argued before in this space and surely will again, might boil down simply to this: numbers intimidate us. Journalists’ skepticism stops where statistics begin. Contributing op-ed writer Ezekiel Emanuel (a brother of our mayor) contributed a piece on sex among seniors....