Two years after Mayor Rahm Emanuel closed the mental health clinics, he’s finally allowing his City Council allies to hold a hearing on them sometime this month. In fact, the mayor repeatedly went out of his way to avoid any face-to-face encounters. “They said they were cousins,” recalls Matthew Ginsberg-Jaeckle, a mental health activist. “Mo said he was a laid-off construction worker and he was pissed off at the 1 percent and had decided to join the Occupy movement....

It’s like you hear FXX (FX but slightly sexier?) is airing The Simpsons in its entirety, all 25 seasons marathon-style, then life intervenes, and the next thing you know the day of the kickoff came and went and you kinda missed it. Yes, it’s the obvious choice; no, I don’t care. Conan O’Brien wrote this near-perfect episode (proving his talents had been squandered at SNL) that established the “Springfield in crisis” trope: the town is conned out of its multimillion-dollar windfall by the smooth-talking Lyle Lanley (the great Phil Hartman), who sells them a monorail they couldn’t possibly need....

Many years ago Berny Stone, the legendary former alderman of the 50th Ward, taught me an axiom about Chicago politics that’s stood the test of time: you can do pretty much anything you want, so long as you don’t block people’s driveways. I was thinking of Alderman Stone’s lesson when I got a call from a friend to tell me about “Argylegate,” the little tempest that’s been raging in Lincoln Square....

Peter Margasak, Reader staff writer Ensemble Pamplemousse, Raanna Jedaku Hearing this New York composers’ collective perform its own works this summer brought its experimental aesthetic to life for me—in its music, the absurd dances with the sublime, and playfulness collides with rigor. The seven pieces on this 2011 double CD have greater resonance now that I’ve seen Pamplemousse’s charisma in the flesh. Doug Perkins, percussionist Joey Baron Joey Baron’s drumming is a constant inspiration and obsession for me....

Exit 63 Theatre presents the Chicago premiere of Henry Murray’s inchoate 2009 imagining of an apocalyptic future in which three boys must playact something resembling a nuclear family. The play begins promisingly, with the three leads silently moving about the decrepit shack in which they spend their days. The walls are decorated with crumpled maps and other remnants from a society that has collapsed; the floor is littered with ripped-up shopping circulars and worn books....

The list of chefs who’ve cooked under the Bayless banner and then gone out to spread the gospel of Rick is long: Kahan. Satkoff. Arreola. Valencia. Bahena. Pine. Enyart. I’m sure I’ve forgotten plenty, but there’s no arguing that this diaspora has affected the evolution of Mexican food in the United States in much the same way that Charlie Trotter’s many minions have influenced fine dining everywhere. Anselmo Ramirez, a native of the southern Mexican state of Guerrero and a longtime cook at Frontera Grill and Topolobampo, is the latest to strike out on his own, bringing a somewhat dated but very much needed breath of fresh cilantro to Albany Park....

In a season when practically every new Hollywood release aspires to be like a five-scoop ice cream sundae, Magic Mike XXL goes down like a dish of lemon sorbet—light, tangy, and refreshing. For a couple hours the film invites viewers to enjoy the company of its characters, along with Alison Faulk’s athletic choreography (which is even more impressive here than in the first Magic Mike) and some pleasant southern locations. It makes little pretense at storytelling....

Summer is here, a time for ice cream, beach frolics, and giant dicks bobbing gently in the breeze. This weekend you can take your pick of three randy new sex comedies: Magic Mike XXL, a sequel to Steven Soderbergh’s 2012 hit, brings back Channing Tatum as the title character, a male stripper known for reducing women to jelly with his chiseled physique and killer dance moves. The Overnight, the latest indie project from sibling producers Jay and Mark Duplass, is sort of a “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Kink?...

New York pianist Cooper-Moore brings a characteristic mix of elegance and fury to his parts on Meditation/Resurrection (Aum Fidelity), a new double album by bassist William Parker. But as explosive as his performance gets, with percussive runs that summon the spirit of fellow travelers such as Cecil Taylor and Don Pullen, Cooper-Moore is clearly working as a member of a group, pulling together with alto saxophonist Rob Brown and drummer Hamid Drake to bring Parker’s bluesy, stormy compositions to life....

Aimee Levitt A plate of french fries and lobster roll Last week I noticed a few desperate posts from the east coast portion of my Facebook feed that consisted of a few pithy sentences mourning the end of lobster season and photos of valedictory lobster rolls. The end of lobster season coincides with Labor Day, and it’s apparently a very sad time. But I was distracted by the pictures of the lobster rolls....

Matt Ulery Fri 9/19 and Sat 9/20, 9 PM, the Green Mill, 4802 N. Broadway, greenmilljazz.com, $12. In the last few years Chicago bassist and composer Matt Ulery has emerged as one of the most sophisticated, prolific, and versatile figures in town, leading the postbop quintet Loom and composing elegant chamber music for a circle of musicians including members of Eighth Blackbird and the singer Grazyna Auguscik—both of whom appear on his new album In the Ivory (the third of his LPs to be released on Greenleaf Music, the label owned by trumpeter Dave Douglas)....

An Adler astronomer’s ambitious new public outreach plan shoots for the stars by cycling to them. Symbolically, at least. That scale is logarithmic, meaning that each step is ten times as long as the previous one. If that sounds complicated, don’t worry, Walkowicz is ready to patiently explain it on the trip. At each of the seven stops on the eight-day journey (she’ll take a break in Normal to recover from a 70 mile-in-a-day bike-a-thon), she and the small Galaxy Ride team from Adler plan to discuss their logarithmic map at pop-up astronomy events using household materials like toilet paper, balloons, and string....

There are two primary ways to criticize Donald Trump’s presidency right now. They aren’t mutually exclusive, but they’re at odds. And both are showing up in the editorial pages of the nation’s newspapers. Consider Trump’s insistence that the only reason he lost the popular vote in November is that millions of votes for Hillary Clinton were illegally cast. He demands a full investigation. Some see this as a golden example of a president ruled by vanity and delusion....

The people of Chicago need to come to terms with the fact that they do not know almost anything about the art of pastry.” That’s what Natalie Zarzour told me in 2011, shortly before shutting the doors for good on Pasticceria Natalina, her superlative but notoriously dear Sicilian pastry shop. Among the dupes she lumped all but two professional pastry chefs in town and a handful of food writers, me included....

The Chicago Reader Presents The Margarita Trail – A journey to map the top margaritas in town! Gear up for Cinco de Mayo by traversing the El Jimador Margarita Trail. Visit ten different Chicago establishments for a series of hosted happy hours with some of Chicago’s best and brightest bartenders. Sip on custom-made Margaritas of all kinds and let El Jimador get you in the mood for Cinco. Happy hour times, locations, and bartenders: (Click links for bartender videos....

If you’re so desperate to sit in an air-conditioned room that you’ll see any movie in town, then you might take a forgiving attitude toward The Vatican Tapes, a forgettable horror film currently playing at a few Chicago multiplexes. I wouldn’t call Vatican a bad movie, just an exceedingly familiar one, rife with sequences you’ve probably seen in numerous other Exorcist knockoffs. The most surprising thing about it may be how serious it is, given that the director is Mark Neveldine—one half of the duo Neveldine/Taylor, who made the live-action cartoons Crank, Gamer, and Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance....

The family and friends of fallen cyclist Bobby Cann were outraged late last month when Cook County circuit court judge William H. Hooks sentenced motorist Ryne San Hamel, who killed Cann while speeding and drunk, to just ten days in jail. The video footage shows the moment when the two young men’s paths tragically crossed, around 6:35 PM. Cann appears as a small figure on his bicycle. Heading north on Larrabee, he slowly approaches Clybourn, then proceeds north through the intersection, through a red light....

Chris Sweda/Sun-Times More whites and fewer blacks are getting into Chicago’s elite public high schools, including Payton College Prep. When the City Council holds hearings on Chicago’s selective enrollment high schools this summer, I hope aldermen consider the larger questions about racial and economic segregation as well as the particular ones that prompted their interest in the subject. Equal access to the “pipeline” is a worthy concern. But the selective enrollment schools are intended to do more than help high achievers....

The most frequently retweeted #YesAllWomen post By now you’ve probably heard all about Elliot Rodger, the California college student who decided to punish all the women who wouldn’t sleep with him and were responsible for his being a virgin at the age of 22 by going on a shooting rampage in Santa Barbara last Friday night. He killed six other students and then—this is how these stories always end—himself....

The book by Gary Rivlin closest to the heart of the Reader will always be his first. Rivlin was fresh out of Northwestern when he started covering the Harold Washington era for the Reader back in the 1980s. His copy required heavy editing, but his stories were special for what they didn’t do: they didn’t share the mainstream media’s bewilderment and panic at the sight of an insurgent black mayor challenging the familiar white faces that ran Chicago....