Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Thursday, December 7, 2017. Jason Van Dyke lawyer makes tone-deaf comparison to torture of three black sharecroppers An attorney for Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke, who has been charged with first-degree murder in the death of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, made a tone-deaf comparison between Van Dyke’s case and that of “three black sharecroppers who were brutally tortured into confessing in a 1936 U....

While it’s become quite common for social-justice-oriented community groups to begin their events with an acknowledgment that the panel/forum/workshop is taking place on land once violently usurped by white colonists from this or that Native American tribe, the practice hasn’t yet become typical of more mainstream civic circles. But on Tuesday morning, as the Metropolitan Planning Council unveiled an extensive new report detailing strategies for achieving racial equity in the Chicago region, MPC vice president Marisa Novara emphasized that the conversation about remedying segregation must begin at the beginning....

On a scorching hot Sunday in early August, drag performers at Hamburger Mary’s in Andersonville braved the heat, wearing showstopping costumes and performing slickly choreographed routines for patrons on the burning pavement. If performers were tired or overheated, it didn’t come across to the audience as they utilized their new performance space, which now includes both a standard indoor dining room and an extended outdoor patio. While the queens’ overall drag styles varied between performers, they all sported the latest accessory within the community: over-the-head face shields to protect from potential exposure to coronavirus....

The other night I watched about 15 minutes of episode one of Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale and turned off the TV and went to bed, wondering if I should feel more guilty than I did. For isn’t it the responsibility of every American to know all there is to know about dystopias? But I’d already read the novel, so I knew its drift, as well as most of the standard dystopian literature—1984, Fahrenheit 451, It Can’t Happen Here....

The Reader‘s archive is vast and varied, going back to 1971. In Archive Dive, we’ll dig through and bring up some finds. During the 1991 NBA finals against the Lakers, Hodges approached Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson to suggest a walkout. “I wanted to stand in solidarity with the black community and call out racism and inequity,” Hodges told Joravsky. “It would be a united front with the whole world watching....

Rapper-producer Supa Bwe provided local hip-hop group Hurt Everybody with some of the heat that made their best material catch fire. As a rapper, he has an affection for Auto-Tune, and as a producer, he has a mosaicist’s eye for collage. He’d been making solo material on the side, but he’s since shifted his priorities—Hurt Everybody dissolved in January. Supa’s not done with groups, though, and recently announced that he’d formed Fight Me with local rapper UG Vavy and producer Shepard Hues....

Chimera Ensemble presents the Chicago premiere of MJ Kaufman’s 2014 drama. Four very different people decide it’s their life’s mission to be sent to Mars for the rest of their days in order to make it habitable for humanity. But in the final countdown before the “winning” candidates are chosen, each questions why they want to go and what it means to leave everything literally 142 million miles away. One way or another, all four would-be space explorers want to be part of the mission in order to lend meaning to their lives....

Like Hannibal from the A-Team, Gossip Wolf loves it when a plan comes together—especially when it involves new music from local power trio Beat Drun Juel! Their 90s rock style is worthy of MTV’s Buzz Bin—imagine if PJ Harvey were in Tad, maybe. On Friday, July 22, BDJ release the EP Suppressor, about which guitarist Donna Polydoros says, “It’s badass how much heavier our sound has gotten over the past year, since our current drummer joined....

When venerable comedy institutions in Chicago get shout-outs, ComedySportz tends not to top the list, not with Second City and the now-gone iO hogging so many of the famous alums. As Reader critic Jack Helbig wrote back in 2003, “Improv purists tend to put ComedySportz at the bottom of the food chain”—probably because of their crowd-pleasing emphasis on fast-paced competitive games, à la Whose Line Is It Anyway. But as artistic director Jason Geis and executive director and producer Renee Ross make clear, this isn’t the end of the road for the company by a long shot....

One is a Russian feminist punk band/protest group whose members were once jailed in Moscow for subversive performances critical of Vladimir Putin. The other is an Illinois gubernatorial candidate who calls himself the middle-class candidate for governor. “Umm, I’m not sure they have a formal endorsement process,” says Elliott. we’re going to rally in a couple of cities pic.twitter.com/ZF8115zelB — Pussy Riot (@pussyrrriot) March 1, 2018

It’s come to a point in the Rich East High School basketball practice where the coach, Craig Hodges, has seen enough and can take no more. The problem is pacing—his players are rushing and need to settle down. So he whistles practice to a halt and gathers the team to the sideline to hear what he has to say. “When you think of great players, the way they play, the game slows down,” he tells them....

Nikki Kahn/Getty Images Ruth Bader Ginsburg doesn’t have time for your shit. Reader staffers share stories that fascinate, alarm, amuse, or inspire us. • That Lake Michigan is so clear right now that you can see shipwrecks from the air? —Aimee Levitt • An interview with sociologist and photographer David Schalliol—illustrated with his work? —John Dunlevy

Q: My ex-girlfriend, who I dated for nine months, called me two months after we broke up and accused me of giving her HPV. She was going on, telling me how I needed to tell any future person I had sex with that I have HPV. I’m a 38-year-old man, and I’ve never had any signs or symptoms of any sexually transmitted infections. I know HPV is very common, often clears up on its own, and cannot be tested for in men....

Once upon a time, before there was a Record Store Day, Dusty Groove‘s morning basement sales were an annual highlight for many an obsessive crate digger. Begun in 2001, the sales have become rarities (the most recent was outdoors on a side street in 2014), but this wolf used to enjoy trying to spot famous musicians waiting patiently with the plebes to sort through the store’s marked-down goodies—and is still convinced that Dean Wareham somehow cut the line in 2002....

“Trouble Over Me,” the first track on Tift Merritt‘s solo debut, 2002’s Bramble Rose, is very nearly a perfect country song. It’s so good that it took me months to listen to the rest of the album—when I first heard it a few years ago, I just kept on replaying “Trouble Over Me” over and over. Born in Houston and raised in Raleigh, North Carolina, Merritt earns frequent comparisons to Emmylou Harris with her graceful voice and rootsy rhythm guitar....

Ioulex Maya Beiser As a founding member of New York’s Bang on a Can All-Stars cellist Maya Beiser has long embodied a broad-minded aesthetic that routinely travels well outside the confines of contemporary classical music. She’s a technically gifted player with a wild imagination, and tomorrow night she rolls through town for a rare local performance at Northwestern University’s Pick-Staiger Hall at 7:30 PM. She studied under Isaac Stern, worked with composer James Newton Howard on numerous film scores (including M....

Mindy Kaling’s book Why Not Me? comes out in September. When Aimee Levitt made her New Year’s reading list back in January, I was trapped somewhere around page 250 of Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove, with no evident escape route. I was stuck on that book for a solid month. My life at Northwestern University wasn’t allowing me much reading time. I needed a spark, and right on cue, the bathroom strategy emerged....

Q: Borrowing Gen Z’s love for labelling everything, I’m a 46-year-old homoromantic asexual Canadian faggot. For me that means I’d like to love and be loved by another man but I’d hate having sex with him. To add a vexing complication, I also need some sort of power imbalance. Ideally, I would fall somewhere between being a man’s sub and being his slave. I’ve been searching for this since I came out in my early 20s....

As I write this, there are still several hours left for people to vote—so greetings from the distant past, when people still didn’t know who the next president would be! To calm my nerves, I’ve turned to Willows Weep, the latest album from Chicago garage punks Flesh Panthers. They first got my attention with unhinged songs that sounded like they’d burst into flames before their final choruses, but since last year’s NGC 2632 the band seem to have gotten a grip on themselves....

I’m a late adopter of celebrating the annual National Coming Out Day in October, but two years ago, after moving back to Chicago and ending a relationship, it seemed like a good time to “wave at the people.” I was careful to use a smiley face emoji when letting people know “Yep, pretty sure I’ve always been this way,” because I wanted to convey positivity. It’s great. It’s a positive thing....