In the midst of the #MeToo movement and the wake of the Kavanaugh confirmation, many well-meaning guys have been analyzing past decisions. Some of us have been wondering if there were times when we could have better supported the women in our lives or done more to put an end to the harmful behavior of other men. Take walking home at night, for example. While all Chicagoans have concerns about crime, some women told me they feel wary of any man they encounter on a darkened street....

For a brief period after its completion in 1974, the Standard Oil Building at 200 E. Randolph (now the Aon Center, previously the Amoco Building) was the tallest skyscraper in Chicago. The following year the Sears Tower was finished, claiming the crown for itself, but that June designer, sculptor, and sound artist Harry Bertoia unveiled a massive public artwork, commissioned in ’74, in the plaza of the Standard Oil Building. His “sonambient sculpture” originally sat within a 4,000-square-foot reflecting pool and consisted of 11 vertical rows of copper and brass rods ranging from four to 16 feet in height, arranged at right angles or in parallel....

Claire Greenway/Getty Images Frankie Knuckles and Danny Rampling at the Def Mix 20th Anniversary Weekender in 2007 To those who knew him well, there was a certain rhythm to Francis Nicholls, better known to Chicago and the world as Frankie Knuckles. Of course there’s the pulse of house music, which the late DJ and producer introduced to Chicago crowds and turned into a worldwide phenomenon. But as celebratory, inclusive, and uplifting as his music is, its power pales in comparison to what Frankie was like in person, according to friends and family who spoke at his funeral last night at Progressive Baptist Church, near 36th and South Wentworth....

Singer and multi-instrumentalist Alicia Walter of Oshwa is a classically trained pianist who studied composition with Marcos Balter at Columbia College, alongside her bandmate Jordan Tate; in interviews the group has cited the influence of avant-garde composers such as Scriabin and Bartók. As a vocalist, though, the 24-year-old Walter is entirely self-taught. Her playful, idiosyncratic singing on the band’s 2013 studio debut, Chamomile Crush, sounds a little like Gertrude Stein, but she’s happy to admit that her actual inspiration is Merrill Garbus, aka Tune-Yards—Walter’s been listening to her since finding the Tune-Yards MySpace page as a sophomore in college....

In 2001 mathy emo outfit Owls released their self-titled debut, a gnarly, complex record that until recently was their only full-length. In the years since, the band’s members have put out dozens of albums and EPs—with Noyes, Friend/Enemy, Make Believe, Owen, and Tim Kinsella’s main project, Joan of Arc, among others—but fanatics have continued to carry a torch for Owls, keeping the brief, spellbindingly strange Owls on repeat. (When I joined Tumblr five years ago, I got to be Internet friends with someone who repeatedly posted lyrics from “Everyone Is My Friend....

Haley Fohr started out playing sludgy noise rock with the duo Cro Magnon in 2007, and her solo project, Circuit des Yeux (“the nerve that connects the eye to sight,” as she explains on Facebook) began in 2008 with blasts of primordial skronk. She played dingy basement shows, often armed with only a Casio keyboard, a floor tom, and tapes, but a few leaked CD-R recordings piqued the interest of the DeStijl label, which in the late aughts released the primitive, experimental Symphone and Sirenum....

Bryan Cranston is already being touted as an Oscar contender for Trumbo, a biopic of blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, yet the man he plays had to watch on his living room TV set as screenplays he’d written but sold through front men—Roman Holiday in 1953, The Brave One in 1956—were honored at the Academy Awards. Trumbo was one of the industry’s most successful screenwriters when he joined the Communist Party in 1943; called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947, he refused to answer questions about his political associations and was charged with contempt of Congress, along with the rest of the “Hollywood Ten....

Reader staffers share stories that fascinate, amuse, or inspire us. Hey, did you read: • That the real winner in last night’s (hilarious, horrifying) Republican debate was Fox News? —Drew Hunt • That coverage of poverty accounts for less than one percent of American news, says Barbara Ehrenreich in a Guardian column about how only the rich can afford to write about poor people? —Ryan Smith • Rick Perlstein on the Obama Presidential Library and the history of corruption surrounding presidential libraries in general?...

Justin Townes Earle wrote his new album, Kids in the Street (New West), in the wake of a sustained period of stability and happiness thanks to a new marriage and several years of sobriety. Luckily the songs aren’t about kittens and high-fives—the main conceit of opener “Champagne Corolla” is to celebrate a woman who’s cool and confident enough to drive the titular automobile though “she should be driving something long and black....

Good times and bum times, I’ve seen ’em allAnd, my dear, I’m still here. . . . I’ve run the gamut, A to ZThree cheers and dammit, c’est la vieI got through all of last year, and I’m here. . . .Look who’s here, I’m still here. —Stephen Sondheim, “I’m Still Here” (from Follies) This is a classic Playwriting 101 dramatic conflict. But the beauty of Thatcher’s play is that it transcends the problem it presents....

From Alain Resnais’s Mon Oncle d’Amérique I’ve had surrealism on the brain since Alain Resnais, arguably the last living heir to that movement, died a few weeks ago. Nowadays writers commonly use the word “surreal” when they simply mean dreamlike, disregarding the philosophical and political moorings of the original surrealist movement. How far that word has been stretched in the 90 years since André Breton published the first Surrealist manifesto, which reads practically like a call to arms:...

There is Too much TV in the world. This year alone there were more than 400 scripted series on the air, according to Variety, and who knows how many more reality and documentary shows. Also, I am just one person. Sure, I would love to do nothing but watch television, but then I would have no free time and I probably still wouldn’t be able to watch everything. There are plenty of shows that are possibly among the best of the year that I just haven’t seen (looking at you Game of Thrones and Fargo) and just as many that I love because they’re so trashy and ridiculous they aren’t making the cut (Married at First Sight, any iteration of the Real Housewives franchise, every competitive cooking show)....

With his dense new album Tributary Tales (Motema), pianist and composer Gerald Clayton acknowledges the influence of new people and new sounds on his music and life, tracing his course from straight-ahead player who grew up on the west coast in a family of jazz heavies to New York musician charting his own path. That journey is thrillingly represented on a track like “A Light,” with saxophonists Ben Wendel and Logan Richardson briskly sketching the sort of slaloming bebop lines one might expect from a Lennie Tristano tune while drummer Justin Brown collides hip-hop flavors within an explosive attack marked by frantic accents, adding to a groove that teems with the complexity of New York’s current jazz vanguard....

Journalism has always been a big, sloppy business in which, for warmth and succor, the highest principle curls up alongside the most shameless shilling. Most of the time we barely think about the contradictions. Once in a while they yank our collar. On Monday night the Headline Club sponsored an advance screening of the new movie Spotlight at the Lake Street Screening Room. Spotlight is a newspaper movie: it tells the story of the 2002 Boston Globe investigation into decades of pedophilia within Boston’s priesthood that the Catholic archdiocese tolerated and concealed....

The Tribe is a brilliant formal achievement that marks Ukrainian writer-director Miroslav Slaboshpitsky as a filmmaker to watch. It takes place at a boarding school for deaf children, with all the roles played by deaf performers; the dialogue is entirely in Ukrainian sign language, and there are no subtitles or narration to translate the conversations for hearing viewers. (Even those schooled in American Sign Language will be baffled.) Slaboshpitsky uses ingenious strategies to draw the audience into the characters’ world while respecting fundamental differences between the deaf and the hearing....

“This is the people-watching event of the summer,” a friend said yesterday evening at the tail end of a weekend spent observing Pitchfork’s parade of humanity through Union Park. When it comes to festivals, the most interesting sights are often offstage—and that’s especially true of Pitchfork. Throughout the fest’s beautiful final day, Reader photographers saw the multitudes in all their glorious variety: a (seemingly) happy couple dry humping, friends collapsed in nap piles, a man in a flesh-toned body stocking, another wearing cat ears, loners looking ready for Burning Man, a shirtless dude in an umbrella hat, and still more babies wearing headphones to shield their tiny eardrums from the likes of the Julie Ruin and Run the Jewels....

Leor Galil Gwar at Riot Fest in 2012 I first heard that Gwar front man and founder Dave Brockie had died late Sunday night via handfuls of comments from fans on Twitter shocked about the then-unconfirmed news that the man better known as Oderus Urungus had passed away. That sort of reaction is common when someone dies unexpectedly, but considering Brockie spent three decades touring as part of a monstrous intergalactic metal outfit that slaughtered countless earthlings and how easy it was to fall under the spell he cast during Gwar’s graphic, theatrical performances, it was therefore difficult to think that Brockie wasn’t the invincible, ferocious warrior he played so well....

My first issue—six weeks ago—hadn’t even hit the streets yet when I got an email from a thoughtful young man inquiring if I had any advice for revitalizing the recently shuttered alt-weekly in his town, and similar notes have been coming from all over the country at a steady pace ever since. There are emails and tweets and comments made in the coffee shop: Chicagoans excited about what’s going on, alternative-newspaper-wise, folks elsewhere curious, maybe a little jealous....

If the Boiler Room’s PBR Bingo is your idea of a hard-core game, then you’ve got a lot to learn, rookie. Copernicus Center Thursday Night Bingo isn’t some amateur-hour, rinky-dink distraction for you and your pals at your local watering hole—this is serious bingo for serious people. After consulting a friend whose job it is to call bingo numbers in the burbs, I was told that this is a “real game....

Alliance Française de Chicago staff watched the Paris attacks unfold Friday with grave concern for colleagues and loved ones in France’s capital city. At least 60 people were reported dead and dozens others were wounded in a series of coordinated attacks on some of the city’s most visible cultural institutions Friday night. Geoffrey Ruiz, director of the learning center at Alliance, says executive director Jack McCord is in Paris but safe: My grandma is in Paris at this time and all my friends are close....