Michael Gebert Ed Levine (in midchew) and Nick Kindelsperger at Serious Eats Chicago’s launch party in 2011 Every food-media website deserves notice on its way out the door, so this is mine for Serious Eats Chicago, which technically still exists but has largely been absorbed back into its New York mothership. That this was happening was obvious several weeks ago (when its Chicago focus was radically reduced and, more significantly, shifted to items of tourist rather than local interest), but is de facto confirmed by the departure of editor Nick Kindelsperger and the site’s general reorganization as a more recipe-driven site following the arrival of a pack of consultants....

He’s made only a handful of recordings under his own name, but trumpeter Hugh Ragin has been a forceful presence in American free jazz for nearly four decades, among other things as a trusted sideman to David Murray. The Texas native’s last album, 2004’s Revelation (Justin Time), is a deeply satisfying inside-out quartet recording propelled by the elastic rhythm section of bassist William Parker and drummer Hamid Drake, Israeli reedist Assif Tsahar sharing the front line with Ragin....

Abraham Conlon/Adrienne Lo A Portuguese vineyard, Quinta do Infantado in the Douro I recently interviewed wine retailer Craig Perman with a couple of other wine people for my podcast, and he mentioned that he had helped Fat Rice build a Portuguese-wine-based list—helped in the sense that he took Fat Rice owners Abraham Conlon and Adrienne Lo to Portugal for two weeks earlier this year to visit small producers and taste what would go well with their Portuguese-Macanese fusion cuisine....

The Chilean-born, New York-based Sebastian Silva (The Maid, Crystal Fairy & the Magical Cactus) is one of the more original filmmakers working today, and Nasty Baby (currently playing at the Music Box) offers ample proof of his talents. The film feels like few other comedies I’ve seen, sustaining a nervous energy that gives it the air of psychological horror even when relatively little is taking place. The unaccountable tone is exhilarating—you never know what’s going to happen next, and you watch the film in a state of constant suspense....

The Passage Theatre makes an auspicious debut with its revival of Mickle Maher’s deadly difficult 2003 play, a work so doggedly antitheatrical and conceptually absurd (like most of Maher’s dizzying scripts) that it seems designed to fail. Twelve dubious superheroes, with names like the Intoxicator, Fragrance Fellow, Memory Lass, and the Untangler, have apparently saved Fathomtown from archnemesis Professor Cannibal (his capture took 400 years) and are now in the midst of mounting a celebratory production of Shakespeare’s The Tempest....

Of all the local hip-hop releases that have come out during the past week few have left as much of an impression as Moon Shoes, the debut EP from Ravyn Lenae. The 16-year-old is an R&B singer, not a rapper, but as evidenced in the credits for Moon Shoes, hip-hop has a major presence on the EP. Lenae recorded the EP at Classick Studios, a west-side recording spot that’s played host to a long list of Chicago hip-hop veterans and rising acts—Crucial Conflict, MC Juice, Really Doe, King Louie, Sasha Go Hard, BBU, GLC, Katie Got Bandz, Rockie Fresh, Lucki Ecks, Vic Spencer, and all the heavy hitters in Save Money, not to mention a long list of others....

Conventional wisdom holds that the explosive, meme-enabled viral popularity of surprise hits like Baauer’s “Harlem Shake” is one of those things that simply can’t be bought, that it has to occur organically in order for people to buy in, and that the magic evaporates as soon as anyone sees a marketer’s fingerprints on it. Which is hilariously wrong—if there’s one thing that consumers of American pop culture have proven again and again it’s that they couldn’t give a shit where the stuff comes from as long as they’re sufficiently entertained....

Nineties Chicago pop-punk favorites the Smoking Popes reunited in 2005, but they haven’t made a full-length with their “classic” lineup—brothers Eli, Josh, and Matt Caterer and drummer Mike Felumlee—since the 2001 covers album The Party’s Over. On Friday, October 12, though, they release Into the Agony via Asian Man and throw a free meet-and-greet at Bucket O’ Blood Books and Records. Guitarist Eli Caterer says, “It’s the most natural and inspired album we’ve made since getting the band back together, which has a lot to do with Mike rejoining on drums....

Assuming their schedules jibe, Queen Elizabeth II and her prime minister meet once a week to bring the queen up to speed on matters affecting the realm she nominally rules. Inasmuch as Elizabeth ascended to the throne 64 years ago, that’s a great many meetings—or audiences, to use the royal terminology. Quite a few ministers too: when Peter Morgan‘s The Audience premiered, in 2013, a dozen PMs—11 men and one woman—had shared the little ritual with her majesty, starting with Winston Churchill and reaching up through David Cameron....

Like its protagonist—a 23-year-old DJ from the San Fernando Valley—the coming-of-age story We Are Your Friends is sentimental, eager to please, and full of energy. It trades in tried-and-true melodramatic complications, yet the charismatic players deliver them with disarming conviction. Director Max Joseph and editor Terel Gibson keep the movie pulsing with a glut of eye-catching stylistic strategies: Gibson sets much of the action to the rhythms on the soundtrack (the movie often feels like a musical), while Joseph incorporates animation, onscreen text, and extreme high- and low-angle shots....

There’s an arresting dish served at Publican Anker, the latest offshoot of One Off Hospitality’s surging Publican brand, located in the Wicker Park crotch. It’s a Viking cauldron of swampy-looking green broth bobbing with perfectly cooked mussels, clams, and hake chunks, mounted atop a leather trivet. On the occasion I ordered it, it arrived with no bowls, no spoons, and no ladle, and until we wrangled our server, we were forced to contend with it caveman style, since the forks and small plates dealt out to handle almost everything else on the menu were useless....

It’s the season for year-end best-of lists, and one phenomenon that will likely provoke comment in many reviews of 2015’s music is the recent spate of instructional dance tracks. This year’s poster boy for making songs that encourage people to bust very specific moves is Atlanta’s Silento, who’s repackaged a handful of regional dance styles that have emerged in black communities over the past few years for a candy-coated pop-rap number called “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)....

Virtually everything that’s ever been written about post­apocalyptic Greek-American mourning diva Diamanda Galás focuses first and foremost on her voice—and rightly so, given that it’s a once-in-a-­generation instrument that’s only grown darker and wilder since her electrifying 1982 debut, The Litanies of Satan. There’s also a lot to say about her prowess as a composer (no one will ever write better ritualistic song cycles lamenting the AIDS epidemic or the Armenian genocide) and about her powers as an interpreter, by which she disassembles standards and puts them back together again (take for example her two new albums, All the Way and At Saint Thomas the Apostle Harlem)....

Gwendolyn Brooks, the great poet of Bronzeville, would have turned 100 years old on June 7. Although she won many honors and accolades before her death in 2000—she was the first African-American to win the Pulitzer Prize, in 1950 for Annie Allen, her second collection of poems; she served as a poetry consultant to the Library of Congress and, for 32 years, as Illinois’s poet laureate; and her work has been widely anthologized—her former student, poet Quraysh Ali Lansana, believes she deserves nothing more than a full year of celebration, throughout Chicago and the entire country....

Late last year, in anticipation of Presidents Day, C-SPAN compiled its 17th annual poll of American historians to determine a ranking of our country’s 44 previous presidents. Historians rated presidents in ten categories, including “public persuasion,” “crisis leadership,” and “moral authority.” There’s no category in the presidential ranking system for media relations, which is good for Trump, as he’s essentially waged war on the whole concept of freedom of the press....

Brown Brothers, Sterling, Pennsylvania Theodore Roosevelt campaigning in the 1912 presidential election Ken Burns came to the Francis W. Parker School Tuesday night to talk first to aspiring high school documentarians and then to an auditorium of PBS fans (most of whom were about as old as you would imagine) about his new documentary miniseries, The Roosevelts: An Intimate History. I belong to neither demographic, but I was there too, because I have loved Theodore, Eleanor, and Franklin for about as long as I’ve been able to read about them....

Chicago is usually considered to be the cultural magnet that brings some of the world’s most adventurous musicians to neighboring midwestern cities. But sometimes Chicago is piggybacking off of its neighbors. Every October Ann Arbor, Michigan, becomes a draw for progressive jazz and improvised music when the annual Edgefest occurs at the Kerrytown Concert House—the five-day extravaganza began on Tuesday and winds down tomorrow. We’re getting plenty of runoff, whether it’s the performance by Tomas Fujiwara’s trio that took place this past Wednesday or tomorrow’s concert by Tim Berne’s new quartet Decay....

Thom Wasluck was born in and is currently a citizen of Wilkes-Barre in northeastern Pennsylvania. That’s where I grew up as well. It’s a coal-mining region that stopped coal mining generations back. Thirty years ago the area was still dotted with giant heaps of black slag; there were even urban legends about how kids would get sucked into it like quicksand. The Wilkes-Barre population is old and getting older—young people leave when they can....

As progressives in Illinois wage what amounts to a two-front war against President Trump and Governor Rauner, they’re always on the watch for a two-birds-with-one-stone kind of weapon. As we all know, Trump’s the only major-party presidential candidate since the 1960s not to release any of his tax returns. (Actually, I’d take it back a step further: Republican intransigence didn’t start with the Tea Party. Republicans have been unbending in their opposition to anything the Democrats propose since former congressman Newt Gingrich seized control of the party in the midterm elections of 1994....

Story Arc Sketch Comedy Festival Sketch group Vienna Juvenile hosts this brand-new festival combining theater and sketch comedy. 6/1-6/10: Thu 8 PM, Fri-Sat 8 and 10 PM, Stage 773, 1225 W. Belmont, 773-327-5252, viennajuvenilecomedy.com, $15, $25 for all-night pass, $50 for five-day pass. Chicago Alternative Comics Expo For the sixth year this gathering (better known as CAKE) celebrates local independent comics with a weekend of workshops, exhibitions, film screenings, and panel discussions....