Last week while I was shimmying into my white and blue striped cheer skirt (four red stars emblazoned across its form-fitting spandex torso), about to start writing my annual year-end recap of how glorious the year in eating was, food writer John Kessler over at Chicago Magazine was dropping a big deuce on the city’s restaurant scene. The former Atlanta Journal-Constitution restaurant critic, who’s been a Chicagoan for some three years now, wrote a brutal five-point takedown of a once celebrated dining culture now wallowing in complacency and blinded by its own defensive, blinkered boosterism....

In a press release for Carmen, Lyric general director, president, and CEO Anthony Freud says the company’s intention is to present this most popular of all operas with “the energy the piece had when it was new.” That’ll be tough, because the promiscuous title character was a shocker to audiences when the work premiered in 1875. What is sure to still fascinate, however, are her fierce independence and Bizet’s melodic score....

Deanna Isaacs The courtyard of Mecca Flats as seen in city historian Tim Samuelson’s installation Chicago-based Israeli artist Jan Tichy’s “aroundcenter,” which opened earlier this month at the Chicago Cultural Center, features three contiguous galleries filled with Chicago-centric photographs and videos, starting with selections from the 1986-’87 documentary photo project “Changing Chicago.” Like most scavenger hunts, this is more about the process than the payoff. History of Painting, for example, is a trio of window shades constructed of thousands of slides from the SAIC’s art history collection....

The Vancouver duo of guitarist Gordon Grdina and drummer Kenton Loewen have formed a serious bond over two decades of collaboration, shifting the tone of their partnership depending on context or the involvement of additional musicians. But they always sound plugged in to each other,seeming to adapt as easily as one turns a dimmer switch. Earlier this year, the duo released their self-titled album as Peregrine Falls (Drip Audio), which couches their flinty, fiery improvisation in heavy hard-rock grooves....

Michael Gebert Roasted pig at Boka’s party Boka Group, the restaurant group behind Girl & the Goat, Balena, and other restaurants here or soon to come, held a tenth anniversary event at their first, namesake restaurant last night. Cofounder Kevin Boehm pointed out that the group actually started 12 years ago, when he teamed up with Rob Katz, but spent two years watching deals fall apart, with Boehm even moving back to Nashville at one point....

It was not by accident that F. Scott Fitzgerald’s big-shouldered Tom Buchanan was “Tom Buchanan of Chicago.” There have been exemplars of this mighty, striving figure across all Chicago sports—”Man of Steel” middleweight Tony Zale, scrap-happy hockey hunk Keith Magnuson—but the most indelible model was the Chicago Bears football team of the early 1940s, dubbed “Monsters of the Midway.” Even their intrasquad scrimmages were opportunities (echoing Sandburg) “to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning....

The most recent issue of the Point—the Chicago magazine of philosophical writing named for south-side Promontory Point—wrestles with the question posed on its cover: “What is America for?” One way they’re approaching the question is to ask people who recently came here “Why?,” and then, what the reception was when they did. To this end, earlier this month the Point cosponsored a panel discussion with Contratiempo, a Chicago magazine of Hispanic literature and culture, at the Lincoln United Methodist Church in Pilsen....

Back in January, Chicago slacker-rock four-piece Post Child released the excellent Wax Wings, a fuzzy homage to alt-pop’s 1990s heyday. Today, the Reader has an exclusive premiere of the video for album track “Fake Sex,” produced by film duo New Trash, who are based in Los Angeles and Chicago and have made videos for other locals, including the Peekaboos and Son of a Gun. The “Fake Sex” clip follows Post Child singer Bryan Alvarez on a journey through the halls of a weirdo warehouse rager, though he remains unmoved by all the debauchery unfolding around him....

This spellbinding Australian trio have adhered to a singular method for three decades now, consistently pushing one another to build meditatively powerful performances from the simplest of kernels: a short phrase or pattern generated in real time by keyboardist Chris Abrahams, bassist Lloyd Swanton, or percussionist Tony Buck, then elaborated on for about 60 absorbing minutes. But despite the Necks’ roots in jazz tradition and deep improvisational chops, their live results are genre agnostic, shying away from any particular sound, and on recordings the trio have relaxed their modus operandi, deploying overdubs and postproduction....

Mischa Richter Dolly Wells and Emily Mortimer The closer we are to people, the weirder and more complicated those relationships tend to be. I figure good friendships are made when the reward increases in tandem with the weirdness. Seriously, if you’re close to someone and everything is smooth sailing, maybe you’re not as close as you think you are. For Dolly and Emily—that’s Dolly Wells and Emily Mortimer, the real-life best friends playing fictionalized versions of themselves on HBO’s new Doll & Em—that weirdness is a subtle and ongoing competition....

[UPDATE: Friday, the Chicago Sun-Times issued it own statement in support of longtime critic Hedy Weiss: read it here.] Meanwhile, the Chicago Theater Accountability Coalition, the group that posted the petition and promised to release a list of about 70 theaters that would be going along with the invitation ban by the end of last week, apparently has changed its mind, at least for now: no list has been released. In a heartbeat, more than 3,500 artists in our community signed a petition created by the new Chicago Theatre Accountability Coalition (ChiTAC), calling on the theatre community to cease inviting Chicago Sun-Times theater critic Hedy Weiss to productions....

Julia Thiel Journeyman Distillery’s O.C.G. apple cider liqueur The Chicago Independent Spirits Expo is one of my favorite events of the year; the offerings from the hundred-odd distilleries that participate always include new spirits from distilleries I already know and like, new spirits from brand-new distilleries, and well-established spirits from well-established distilleries that I’ve just never happened to taste before. The next day, though, regret always sets in: a product not of overimbibing the night before (not usually, anyway), but of looking again at the list of participating distillers and realizing what a small percentage of their spirits I managed to try before I reached my limit....

Full disclosure: the only reason I first attended the variety show the Curio Show was to see my friend and colleague Gwynedd Stuart perform a reading making fun of the cable access TV show Stairway to Stardom. Those familiar with her work here at the Reader know she’s one of the best when it comes to pop-culture takedowns, so I knew that she at least would entertain even if the other performers flopped....

There’s plenty to do this week. Here’s some of what we recommend: Tue 5/16: Journalist Joan Esposito hosts “How Do We Elect More Women & People of Color?”, a discussion at the Montgomery Club (500 W. Superior) about the challenges women and people of color face when trying to get on the ballot for the 2017 and 2018 elections. The panel includes Jonathan Peck, Rebecca Sive, Shobhana Johri Verma, and Angelica Heaney....

A promotional image for Tomorrow Never Knows This January, Chicago’s yearly midwinter music festival Tomorrow Never Knows will return to fill some of the city’s more intimate venues with bands and concertgoers who aren’t daunted by the freeze. Presented by Schubas and Lincoln Hall, the four-day fest also hosts shows at the Hideout and the Metro. Last year’s headliners included Superchunk, Darkside, and Oneohtrix Point Never. Now, TNK has announced its 2015 roster, and it’s filled with acts whose 2014 albums are cutting through the static....

Night Moves This year’s edition of the Chicago African Diaspora Film Festival kicks off Friday with Freedom Summer, a strong documentary about the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee’s summer 1964 campaign to register black voters in Mississippi. Check out our coverage of the festival, with six new reviews. Also this week, we recommend The Case Against 8, about the legal battle to have California’s ban on same-sex marriage struck down; Mother Joan of the Angels, a 1960 Polish shocker about a Catholic nun possessed by demons; Night Moves, the latest from writer-director Kelly Reichardt (Wendy and Lucy), with Jesse Eisenberg, Dakota Fanning, and Peter Sarsgaard as eco-terrorists plotting to blow up a hydroelectric dam; and The Signal, a paranoid sci-fi mystery about three young people who, chasing after a mysterious hacker, come in contact with an alien life force....

Richard A. Chapman/Sun-Times Media Ezekiel Emanuel, pictured here with brother Rahm, says he knows when to say when. Last Wednesday’s Tribune found columnist Mary Schmich remembering her mother’s death. “She was stooped and attached to an oxygen machine, her fingers so gnarled she could barely hold a coffee cup much less play her beloved piano.” And yet—”until very close to the end, she took pleasure in her day. . ....

Collaborators and friends of fondly remembered local musician Stephanie Morris, who died in 2009, honor her with a memorial show at the Hideout on Sat 11/1. The concert includes sets from Dianogah with Nora O’Connor (the trio will also debut songs by a new project, Whelms, with C-Clamp guitarist Tom Fitzgerald), Holly Muñoz with Morris’s backing band the Rest, and members of Scotland Yard Gospel Choir and Warm Ones joining John Huston, Morris’s partner in the Pawners’ Society, to reimagine that acoustic duo’s material....

All right, everybody—time for a political quiz! For ten trivia points and a bucket of fried chicken at the restaurant of my choosing, who’s the most progressive-voting Democrat in the General Assembly? Toni Berrios is the daughter—and the pride and joy—of Cook County Democratic chairman Joe Berrios, who also happens to be county assessor. Actually, it wasn’t hard to imagine that he could at least give her a good run. The district covers parts of Logan Square, Humboldt Park, Belmont Cragin, and Portage Park, and the Logan Square precincts in particular are flooded with hipsters of Guzzardi’s generation....

Readers: A crowd of smart, engaged students packed a theater for Savage Love Live at Centenary College of Louisiana last week. Centenary is a terrific liberal arts school in Shreveport. Centenary students submitted more Qs than I could possibly A in the 90 minutes I had with them. So here are some bonus answers to questions I didn’t get to during my time there. Q What do you do when your male friend who is already in a relationship (engaged) wants to have sex with you but lets you know via social media?...