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Kate Joyce Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House Last Thursday evening, Mies van der Rohe’s iconic Farnsworth House in Plano was bathed in computer-controlled lights in intricate sequences and patterns. A team of artists called Luftwerk—namely, Petra Bachmaier and Sean Gallero—was previewing for the press its forthcoming installation INsite at the 2,400-square-foot home, a modernist glass box that used to be a secluded escape for Dr. Edith Farnsworth, a Chicago nephrologist....

Remember Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Olympics, when we placed fourth behind Rio de Janeiro, Madrid, and Tokyo? 1. He left his heart in San Francisco. Well, yes, there are reportedly more than 50 Norman Rockwell paintings. That potentially leaves about 499,950 plastic light sabers and Yoda mugs. 2. We have no idea what’s in his collection of a half-million objects. 3. No one’s told us what would make the Lucas museum a worthy peer to the world-class institutions that would be its siblings on the museum campus....

The summer I was 12, there was nothing I wanted more than an aquarium. (I had given up on a horse, settling for what I believed to be more realistic obsession.) I ripped out probably the entire pet store section of the Yellow Pages and, armed with that and a map, begged my grandmother to drive me from place to place in search of electric-hued tropical fish and neon gravel and mermaid figurines and whatever else a fish tank required....

It feels like ages since Gossip Wolf has heard from drone-tastic Chicago sound artist Nicholas Burrage (formerly Nicholas Szczepanik), whose long-form pieces are perfect zone-out material—Reader critic Peter Margasak has described them as “ethereal drift,” and this wolf is inclined to agree! Last year dude got married and took his husband’s name (maybe he got tired of spelling the old one for people), and he’s also launched what he calls an “appropriation project” whose first series reinterprets Mariah Carey’s hits....

As we prepare for Thanksgiving, I’d like to suggest something to spice up your feast: the Illinois Racing Form. The Racing Form has maps of the state’s 59 senate and 118 house districts. It breaks the populations of those districts down by race, ethnicity, income, and age, and by how the districts voted in the 2014 gubernatorial and state’s attorney general races. Rauner doesn’t have enough votes to pass a budget, so hasn’t really tried....

When CMH Records released The Return of Dr. Octagon in 2006, hip-hop DJ and producer Dan the Automator said, “That wasn’t a Dr. Octagon record. . . . Dr. Octagon is me, Kool Keith, and Q-Bert. The label didn’t have the legal right to use the name, but I didn’t want to get involved in a legal battle.” I mean, yes, word. Dr. Octagonecologyst, the 1996 debut of Dr. Octagon (and technically the solo debut of Ultramagnetic MCs member Keith), is brilliant because of the equally valuable contributions of all three of its principals: Keith’s avant-weirdo, thesaurus-scouring rapping; Dan the Automator’s spooky, dusty, and trip-hop-heavy beats; and Q-Bert’s scratching, which is to spinning records what Eddie Van Halen is to electric guitar....

Colleen Durkin All dressed up for the IKC Dog Show “Why do we have dog shows?” asks Debbie Manichelli, a dachshund breeder from North Carolina with a very loud voice who is serving as an official tour guide at the International Kennel Club of Chicago Dog Show over the weekend at McCormick Place. “So it’s not really about the dogs at all,” ventures my female cotourist. It probably goes without saying, but mutts and mixed breeds are not welcome here....

Kuchar’s classic Hold Me While I’m Naked (1966) played in town last week. If you’re bummed about missing last week’s program of films by the Kuchar brothers (or if you were there and left hungry for more), then you’re in luck. This Saturday at 7 PM the Nightingale will present two more Kuchar films, George’s House of the White People and Unstrap Me! (both 1968). The entire program will be projected from 16-millimeter film....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Friday, June 23, 2017. Have a great weekend! Durbin slams Senate GOP health-care plan: “You can put a lace collar on a pit bull and it’s still a mean dog” Senator Dick Durbin slammed the Senate Republicans’ new health-care bill Thursday, saying, “You can put a lace collar on a pit bull and it’s still a mean dog.” Republican senators have been trying to claim that its newly released draft legislation is not as “mean” as even President Trump at one point proclaimed the House version to be, but that’s not true, according to Durbin....

Once the refuge of the nerd, the otherworld of video games is now accessible to nearly everyone. An untold number of hours are spent gaming on home computers, on cell phones during el rides, and, increasingly around these parts, at bars stocked with classic arcade cabinets. We called a couple of authorities from the indie gaming realm to help us assess two of Chicago’s arcade bars. Tibitoski found out at DePaul....

Aimee Levitt A sign of things to come in Rogers Park? One sign that a neighborhood is truly gentrified and done for is the presence of a restaurant that serves brunch. (Another is a store that sells handwoven tablecloths and clocks made from old books. And also a dog groomer.) Brunch is for people who would rather go out and pay $15 for something they could just as well assemble at home by scrounging through their refrigerators and pantries without having to bother with getting out of their pajamas....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Thursday, April 13, 2017. Rahm returns to Washington to discuss infrastructure, meet with DeVos Mayor Rahm Emanuel returned to his old stomping grounds in Washington, D.C., Wednesday to discuss infrastructure at a Wall Street Journal event and meet with U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. In order to improve infrastructure, President Donald Trump will have to spend federal money and not rely on tax credits, Emanuel said at the WSJ event....

On Friday remarkable Scottish folksinger Alasdair Roberts released yet another fantastic record, Pangs (Drag City). I’ll certainly write about that soon, but right now another record with which he’s intimately involved is stuck in my head. Roberts is a member of UK folk group Furrow Collective, along with singers and multi-instrumentalists Lucy Farrell, Rachel Newton, and Emily Portman. As each of them do in their own careers, the group draws its repertoire from the vast UK folk tradition, but compared to its members’ solo work, Furrow Collective’s arrangements generally tend toward a sweeter, gentler pop-flavored sound, with gorgeous harmony singing and a comforting blend of guitars, fiddles, and harp....

Postponed, indefinitely UPDATE: Late this afternoon, Evanston Library director Karen Danczak Lyons reported that she’d just spoken with Ali Abunimah by phone and that “we’re back on track.” The program has been rescheduled for the same date, August 11, at 7:00 PM in the large community room of the main library. No new date was announced. *Library director Karen Danczak Lyons has since posted the following on their website:...

Anyone that follows the Chicago music scene closely has surely encountered drummer Charles Rumback, one of the most versatile and tasteful musicians in town, a player who moves easily between jazz, free improvisation, rock, and folk communities. His hard work ethic often means his own projects convene only sporadically, and his regular collaborations with musicians who don’t live in Chicago—like Denver trumpeter Ron Miles and New York saxophonist Tony Malaby—further limits their activity....

The Asian arowana, or dragonfish, the creature that gives its title to U. of C. prof Vu Tran’s first novel, looks like a golden Chinese dragon and is supposed to bring good luck. But the book itself more closely resembles a hermit crab: a literary novel that borrows the snail shell of noir to give itself a form and structure. The soft underbelly is the story of Hong Thi Pham, a woman who, with her daughter, flees Vietnam by boat after the fall of Saigon and lands in a ghost-filled Malaysian internment camp....

courtesy of Devious Planet The Standells (circa 2014) Few bands are more synonymous with the sound of garage rock than the Standells, whose hit “Dirty Water” about the Charles River is not only a Boston rock anthem (“I love that dirty water / Boston you’re my home”), but also one of the most identifiable and durable gems from the original Nuggets compilation. Apparently various reconstituted versions of the band have been performing live since the mid-80s—the quartet’s original run began in 1962 and petered out unceremoniously in 1972—but the current lineup is in the midst of a U....

Let’s face it: there’s no way this is going to be a definitive list of the best books of 2015. There were too many books that came out this year and too few reviewers to read them all. Plus, there are some books you’re just more interested in reviewing than others, either because you have definite preferences in authors or genres or because you’re more willing to accept certain recommendations than others....

One of the most commanding, entertaining critics of contemporary culture, Roxane Gay is never one to shy away from tough topics. The 41-year-old writer and Purdue University associate professor tackled rape in her 2014 novel An Untamed State, race and gender in the essay collection Bad Feminist that same year, and since being named a contributing op-ed writer for the New York Times in March has weighed in on everything from Sandra Bland’s death at the hands of police to the bizarre reality-TV mating ritual of The Bachelorette....

David Grubbs teaches classes in creative writing, performance, music, and technology at the Conservatory of Music at Brooklyn College, and before he arrived in New York 15 years ago, he lived and played in bands in Chicago. A Louisville native, he’d moved here in 1990 to attend grad school at the University of Chicago, but if you knew about him then, you probably knew him as a musician. His trio Bastro, founded in Washington, D....