It’s fairly easy to write off any show beginning its 17th season, even the institution Law & Order: SVU. How many more sex crimes can there possibly be for Olivia Benson (the delightfully badass Mariska Hargitay) to solve? Didn’t the show jump the shark when Benson was taken hostage by the guy from Orange Is the New Black? Is the show, in its awkward teen years, creeping into self-parody? All are valid questions, but thanks to the ceaseless cycle of terrible things happening in the world and some of the most talented actors on network television, the show continues to work....

According to all the travel guides, the charms of Albuquerque pale next to those of Santa Fe and the many little mountain towns of northern New Mexico. Though Albuquerque has views of the mountains and pockets of quaint pink adobe architecture, the town itself exists for the people who live there, not for tourists, and it looks that way. Still, I maintain there is something incredibly endearing about a city that has named its minor-league baseball team after an episode of The Simpsons—the one where Homer threatens a hunger strike when the Springfield Isotopes prepare to move to Albuquerque—and has statues of Homer, Marge, Bart, and Lisa inside its ballpark....

Musicals are famously expensive to produce. (Wicked reportedly cost $14 million to mount on Broadway; touring and local productions are less expensive but remain considerable.) And audiences for musicals are famously conservative, generally preferring shows written 50, 60, or 70 years ago by composers and lyricists who are mostly dead (or Stephen Sondheim) to something new by living artists. One of the three openers, Fanatical, is quite strong, however. And a 33 percent success rate is pretty good....

There was a time when air travel was considered glamorous, but then, there was a time when baseball fans wore suits and hats to Wrigley Field (the past truly is a foreign country). The three veteran flight attendants at the center of Marisa Wegrzyn’s Mud Blue Sky, now onstage at A Red Orchid Theatre, bear little resemblance to the Pan Am stewardesses of the old days, with their fashionable uniforms and youthful air of freedom and adventure....

Love haunted houses but wish they had a plot? Join the action of these immersive performances instead. To celebrate the centennial of Mary Shelley’s classic novel, four theater companies are putting their own spin on Frankenstein. Two are currently running through November: Remy Bumppo presents Shelley’s classic from the creature’s perspective (and Nick Sandys and Greg Matthew Anderson alternate in the roles of the doctor and the monster), while Lifeline Theatre turns Frankenstein Freudian and female....

“What’s old is new again” has always been a fashion shibboleth, but it sprang to life with the Wrigley Building’s recent renovation. The shimmering bright-white landmark, designed by Graham, Anderson, Probst & White and informed by the Giralda Tower in Seville, became the Mag Mile’s first statement piece when William Wrigley Jr.’s team finished the second tower in 1924. Fast-forward many packs of chewing gum and one ugly metal-and-glass wall later to 2011, when the abused old building parted ways with its namesake company and was scooped up by an investor group including the cofounders of Groupon....

Fulton Market nightclub the Mid will close for good in February 2019. Nightlife entrepreneurs Lucas King and Nick Karounos opened the club in 2010, and according to a press release, they’re closing it due to the rapid development in the neighborhood. I imagine there are other complications, though: the Mid opened during the boom of EDM, and catered to its exploding fan base as it rocketed to dominance in the dance-music world....

Early in Dukhtar (“Daughter“), a Pakistani drama screening at this year’s Chicago South Asian Film Festival, writer-director Afia Nathaniel presents a striking image of a woman preparing dinner for her husband in their small, mountainside home. A post in the middle of the home’s single room divides the wide-screen frame in half; the wife, Allah Rakhi, sits on the left side in darkness while the husband, Tor Gul, sits on the right side in light....

Tamarillo, also known as the tree tomato, is native to Peru, Chile, Ecuador, and Bolivia and is widely grown in New Zealand as a commercial crop. But it’s not easy to buy the fruit in Chicago, says Gabino “Bino” Ottoman of the Ruin Daily, who was challenged by Carlos Cruz (Saint Lou’s Assembly) to create a dish with it. Ottoman did find one store in Humboldt Park that sells pureed tamarillo, and Cruz was able to supply him with frozen whole fruit....

The MCA kicks off three weeks of new movement and music programming with works in progress by punk rock singer-composer Tamar-kali and vocalist/DJ/visual artist Damon Locks that explore black musical lineages and their relationships to present political problems. Tamar-kali’s Demon Fruit Blues, created in collaboration with choreographer Adia Whitaker and director Charlotte Brathwaite, is a theatrical concert experience that traces the Judeo-Christian roots of misogyny to Eve’s apple. “Under the climate we are experiencing politically as a nation, clarity is important,” says Tamar-kali....

Chicago hip-hop fans used to speak strictly in terms of rappers, beat makers, and DJs, but over the past few years we’ve also started celebrating saxophonists, guitarists, band leaders, backing vocalists, and poets. As a listener, I get a lot of joy surveying this sprawling world and finding musicians who enhance my understanding of what Chicago hip-hop—and, by extension, Chicago music—is and where it can go. And this fall I’m particularly looking forward to new releases from rapper Roy Kinsey and singer-songwriter Tasha Viets-VanLear, who performs under her first name....

Photographer Alison Green has shot every Pitchfork festival since 2012 for the Reader, but this year she turned her camera away from the larger-than-life acts onstage and toward the everyday heroes who keep the festival running. It’s easy to forget just how many people it takes to put on an event this size—including gate personnel, security guards, the workers who check IDs and hand out those coveted 21-and-over drink wristbands, the vendors at the Book Fort, the CHIRP Record Fair, and your favorite food tents, and of course the roadies and engineers who set up the gear and run the sound checks so you can hear Jamila Woods’s silky, honeyed vocals or Vince Staples’s dense wordplay in his distinctive Long Beach accent....

In September 2006, Matthew Wilhelm, a 25-year-old mechanical engineering graduate who worked for Caterpillar, was cycling on the shoulder of a two-lane highway east of Urbana when he was fatally struck from behind. Police said the driver, 19-year-old Jennifer Stark, was downloading a ringtone on her cell phone at the time, and she was so far off the road that she hit Wilhelm with the driver’s side of the car....

Charles Dickens wrote only two of his 15 novels in the first person: David Copperfield and Great Expectations. Both are semiautobiographical and centrally concerned with class mobility. But in key ways they’re mirror images of each other. David Copperfield, published in 1850, charts the title character’s fulfilling progress from poverty to fortune, his talent and determination bringing him success and happiness. Great Expectations, published a decade later, focuses on young, impoverished Pip—equally talented and determined—whose efforts to better his station bring him mostly anguish, doubt, and a crushing loss of self....

Pitchfork’s second day of wall-to-wall entertainment presents festivalgoers with a lot of tough choices. Two Reader staffers and Fake Shore Drive deputy editor Ty Howard make their calls below—and while I’d never suggest that you follow any of these people around, their schedules sound pretty fun. —Philip Montoro Ty Howard Deputy editor, Fake Shore Drive 6:15 PM Danny Brown. J.R. Nelson Reader writer 1:45 PM Speaking of nuclear waste, it’s superior to most 2014 Brooklyn rap....

Q: I’m a kinky single woman who keeps attracting the wrong men for me—specifically, submissive guys into face sitting. I’m submissive myself, and face sitting is not a turn-on for me. But the vast majority of men who hit on me have this fetish. I think it’s a size-related issue—a my-size-related issue. I’m a full-figured/curvy woman with a big butt. Granted, it’s a fabulous butt, but my butt sends the wrong signals, apparently....

“I really shouldn’t be drinking right now,” says Stephanie, a bikini-clad twentysomething sucking down Modelo Especial from a can. “I’m having surgery in three days.” The unemployed hairstylist momentarily feigns concern before doubling over with impish laughter. Her smile beams bleach-white against a complexion that’s more self-tanner orange than sun-kissed brown. “I’m getting ’em done, again,” she explains, giving her breasts two quick squeezes. “I want ’em bigger—triple D, almost an E!...

Don’t pretend you’re immune—social media have hypnotized too many of us into interacting with one another in the forms of tweets, likes, and comments. But there are downsides as well as upsides to their spell, some of which are on display in ComedySportz’s new improv show The Social Musical, which utilizes Twitter for inspiration. Prior to the show, each member of the audience is handed an instruction card with the show’s Twitter handle (@social_musical) and a list of suggestions the players are seeking (categories, lines of dialogue, places, etc)....

Rich Hein / Sun-Times Media Appellate Judge Richard Posner: daring the Supreme Court to disagree with his ruling that same-sex marriage bans are irrational and senseless. Last Saturday I went to two weddings. It was a beautiful day and they made me so happy I was ready for two more. Illinois is one of 19 states in which gay marriage is legal, but that’s only been true since June. In Wisconsin, meanwhile, a constitutional ban on gay marriage was ratified by voters in 2006....

It’s easier than ever to be a futurist. Simply imagine what life will be like when driverless cars take over our streets and highways. Noah Smith, who’s a professor of finance at Stony Brook University, took a run at the question in an essay for Bloomberg reprinted Thursday as an op-ed in the Tribune. If all this sounds like deja vu to the attentive reader, Smith admits that it is. “You’ll notice that all of these are basically continuations of problems we’ve already seen in the U....