American Hwangap The Korean tradition of celebrating hwangap, a 60th birthday, provides an opportunity to reflect on one’s legacy and appreciate the blessings of a life long-lived; it’s also a recipe for a postmidlife crisis. For Min Suk Chun, a Korean immigrant who abandoned his wife and three children to move back to South Korea from Texas, the milestone is decidedly the latter. With the permission of his estranged wife, Chun returns to the States for a reunion, albeit an icy one....

When I was 12, I got my period one morning right before I left for school. I told my mom, she handed me a pad, and then we never really talked about it again. I was confused, scared and had a million questions but I understood this topic was not to be openly discussed to avoid making the men in my family uncomfortable. Pilsen native and president of the nonprofit Chicago Period Project Ashley Novoa has a similar story and says her introduction to her period was also scary and deemed an off-limits topic by her mother....

I hit puberty in the mid-90s, at the height of Nirvana and Calvin Klein’s heroin chic. This meant that my notion of ideal beauty was forged in the crucible of the grunge aesthetic as interpreted on runways and in magazines—listless, dead-eyed models who were underfed and underwhelmed. At 14, this is not a difficult look to emulate: bored and skinny are two traits that come pretty easily. But as I grew up and filled out, I had to confront the fact that my waifish days were behind me....

Last week Shannon Noll’s variety show Barron Trump: Up Past Bedtime debuted in the midst of a turbulent debate about whether President Donald Trump’s youngest son is fair game for comedians. Despite the decidedly affectionate approach of Noll’s production—a humorous homage to Pee-wee’s Playhouse in which Barron is master of ceremonies—the Chicago comedian now says she has been the target of an aggressive and alarming backlash on the Internet. Father God, Lord Jesus, please STRIKE DOWN Sick Psycho # ShannonNoll & others who attack son of our God-loving @POTUS @realDonaldTrump!...

On April 9, Gustav Åhr closed his sold-out show at Subterranean with a cover of Blink-182’s “Dammit,” the bratty 1997 single that became the California pop-punk band’s first hit. Shirtless and sweaty, Åhr belted out the lyrics in short, hoarse shouts, duplicating the regimented rhythms of Blink bassist-vocalist Mark Hoppus. Åhr loves pop-punk, and as a skinny white 20-year-old with dozens of tattoos and pink-and-black hair, he looks the part—but if you’ve heard of him, you probably know him better as rapper Lil Peep....

This is Lil Jon’s world, and the rest of us are just living in it. When people say this sort of thing it’s usually to indicate a celebrity’s level of industry clout and/or swagger, but in this case it’s actually kinda true. The period of time during the mid-aughts when Lil Jon and crunk music dominated the zeitgeist continues to reverberate throughout pop culture. He was the first superstar to make his name by kicking down the barriers between rap music and what would come to be known as EDM, creating a hybrid that’s more or less defined the sound of our current decade, and the club-wrecking hedonism that he so effectively promoted has become pop’s default stance....

Theo Green (left) and Jonah Parker in Breakfast With Curtis This weekend I checked out the ultra-low-budget Breakfast With Curtis (which screens again Wednesday and Thursday at the Gene Siskel Film Center) because its poster features a pull quote from no less than Paul Thomas Anderson. Not that I consider Anderson’s taste to be infallible, but it piqued my interest to see him endorsing a “micro-indie.” The maker of Magnolia and There Will Be Blood is famous for his formal ambition, whereas so many recent underground films have felt like glorified home movies....

Nobody embodied 90s cool quite like Oasis front man Liam Gallagher. Even his brother turned nemesis, former bandmate Noel, spent a good chunk of last year’s documentary Oasis: Supersonic musing about how tall, good-looking, well-dressed, and beautifully coiffed Liam is. When Oasis first appeared in 1994, Gallagher was the kind of rock star people hadn’t seen since the 70s—hard-­partying, off the rails, bursting with cockiness and swagger. He also had one of the greatest voices in rock history, a gorgeous blend of snotty whine and gin-soaked soul....

Update: According to an Instagram post by Experimental Sound Studio, Greg Fox’s flight to Chicago has been canceled. He will no longer conduct his workshop at ESS or perform at the Hideout. Drummer Greg Fox has been duly celebrated over the last decade for his mind-melting work with a range of heavy projects including Liturgy, Zs, Man Forever, and his own Guardian Alien. Now Fox has let his curiosity take him beyond his rock chops into different sound worlds....

Rex Harrison in Doctor Dolittle A week and a half ago I got doored while riding my bike. Apart from my bike’s frame I didn’t break or fracture anything, though I was sufficiently bruised for the ER doctor to prescribe six days’ worth of hydrocodone. I spent most of those days asleep and was still woozy for several days after that. To my pleasant surprise, though, I found this made at least one movie I had to watch for work seem more tolerable than I would have thought otherwise....

One problem for anyone trying to write about Twin Peaks: The Return, of which four episodes have already aired on Showtime, is that it’s impossible to predict where it will go next. This predicament was also somewhat true of Twin Peaks, the ABC TV show produced by Mark Frost and David Lynch that debuted in 1990, ran for two seasons (one consisting of eight episodes, the other an oddly weakened 22), and led to the feature-film prequel, written and directed by Lynch, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me....

Gossip Wolf loves a record-release show, especially when more than one act is partying! On Thursday, April 20, five solid local bands play at two different venues, and they’re all celebrating new releases. This wolf is gonna need a wheelbarrow to carry the merch! The Hideout hosts three of the bands in question: psych merchants Dark Fog (see concert preview), stoner-rock combo Bionic Cavemen, and funky rock weirdos the Velcro Lewis Group, who describe their own Taking Frogg Mountain as sounding like Funkadelic bootlegs, Euro-horror erotica, and Hawkwind....

Three years can be an eternity in the course of a young, razor-sharp punk band, but on their bristling new album Nose Picker (Trouble in Mind) Chicago’s Negative Scanner sound almost as if they’ve been on ice since the release of their blistering self-titled 2015 debut. I mean that as a compliment; the sense of fed-up fury in the vocals of the intensely charismatic lead singer Rebecca Valeriano-Flores sounds undiminished in their intensity and indignation....

Coming soon there’s a new Jim Jarmusch film called Kissing Vampires, starring Tilda Swinton, and I can’t wait to see it—c’mon, a Jarmusch vampire movie with Tilda Swinton? When I think of Jarmusch I sometimes think of Lies to Live By, one of the many records I’ve sold during periodic purges of my collection—that decision still stings. These days some of us have heard the director’s satisfying guitar duets with Jozef Van Wissem, but for me his best work as a musician was with the Del-Byzanteens, the band responsible for the 1982 album I hawked when I was a dumb college student....

Friday, May 9, 7-10 PM The winners of the 2014 Key Ingredient Cook-Off, as determined by an audience vote, were: Aaron Arnett, Davanti Enoteca (honeycomb tripe) Barry Sorkin, Smoque (tamarind) Meg Galus, NoMi Kitchen (sheep’s milk) Andrew Deuel, Tesori (chestnut flour) Abraham Conlon, Fat Rice (miso) Judges’ choice for best in show:Duncan Biddulph, Kinmont (tamarind) Participating chefs Aaron Arnett of Davanti Enoteca (Watch Arnett cook with green peppercorns) Dana Cree of Blackbird (Check out Cree sweetening up pine sap)...

No one makes cop movies like David Ayer. Born in Champaign but raised on the streets of LA’s South Central, he understands what makes policemen tick, so his screenplays always accumulate some emotional weight even when the situations consist of standard action-movie machismo. Most people know him for the hit thriller Training Day (2001), with Denzel Washington as a corrupt LAPD narcotics detective giving a bitter education to rookie cop Ethan Hawke....

Thank goodness for Elizabeth Harris, who under the name Cupcakke gleefully throws a wrench in the gears of hip-hop. For a couple years now the Greater Grand Crossing MC has challenged what we’ve come to accept as the norm for female rappers, Chicago rappers, and female Chicago rappers, with raunchy songs and wry rhymes that hit hard. Cupcakke has become a sharper writer since dropping her breakout viral hit, “Vagina,” in October 2015, and in the process she’s accumulated a sizable fan base while doubling down on her freaky pop persona....

Mike Sula The Mother of All Pork Chops, Knockum Hill BBQ All that bad barbecue I wrote about last week put me in a coma. But I did see a bright shining light while I was out, and heard a pleasant southern drawl beckoning me toward it. Suddenly I found myself in heaven or, rather, beautiful southwestern Kentucky, where the angels took pity and told me of a magical pit on a hill out in the country....

For the past five years Chicago Film Archives has sponsored a local artistic collaboration called the Media Mixer. In each year, CFA commissioned three Chicago-based media artists to create new works with material taken from the organization’s archival footage. Nancy Watrous, executive director of CFA, says that the artists could choose and use any footage that they wanted, as long as CFA had the copyrights or the works were in the public domain....

When most rockabilly artists make comeback albums, they always seem to include at least one song that looks back on the way things were at the dawn of their genre. Carl Perkins probably did this more than anybody, reminding everyone that He Was There When Rock ‘n’ Roll Started. The title track of Wild! Wild! Wild!, the new Bloodshot release from Robbie Fulks and Linda Gail Lewis, continues that tradition, reminiscing on rock’s early days while taking a few potshots at today’s sounds....