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Chicago electronic artist Brett Naucke has been a scarce presence on the local scene in recent years, suggesting that his commitment has shifted toward forging new terrain in his home studio rather than performing. He’s released a steady stream of underground cassettes since his acclaimed 2014 album The Seed, but next month he’ll drop The Mansion, his second for the Spectrum Spools imprint. The record, a deeply personal effort that reflects on memories of his childhood home, registers as his greatest achievement thus far, and it’s instructive to hear what he’s worked through leading up to it....

The Chicago Underground Film Festival, which takes place Wednesday, June 6, through Sunday, June 10, celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. We take a look back at some notable features that screened in previous editions of the festival, movies demonstrating that “underground” is a happily elastic term. Migrating FormsChicagoan James Fotopoulos directed this stark 1999 drama in which a man and woman meet repeatedly in a mostly bare room for nearly wordless and apparently passionless sex, filmed in low-contrast black and white....

Lui Kit Wong/The News Tribune Trustafarians not included Reader staffers share stories that fascinate, alarm, amuse, or inspire us. • That the French parliament may set minimum weights for models to combat the persistence of anorexia? —Steve Bogira

Joe Freshgoods is a king of authentic Chicago DIY street fashion. A cofounder of the FatTiger Workshop, Freshgoods has gone from selling his designs out of his garage in Pilsen to heading a leading streetwear brand in Chicago. There is no word yet if items from the capsule collection will be available for purchase after Friday. But even its daylong release will be a game-changer for the Joe Freshgoods label and Chicago streetwear....

Aimee Levitt Donut Fest seemed like such a great idea when I volunteered to go—the prospect of spending a cold Sunday morning eating doughnuts and drinking coffee sounded like heaven! Well, what would make it even more heavenly would be to eat the doughnuts and drink the coffee in bed, bundled up in pajamas, instead of having to get dressed and go to Chop Shop in Wicker Park. But nobody was offering to run and fetch the doughnuts and coffee for me, so a trek through a cold, wet snow shower to Chop Shop it was....

T he impulse to render human likenesses of one kind or another has been with us for 40,000 years, since Paleolithic people first scratched figures onto the walls of their caves. But the idea of portraying individuals was thought to be a relatively modern phenomenon until the beginning of the 20th century, when the mummy portraits of Roman Egypt were excavated in the Faiyum region just south of Cairo. “Paint the Eyes Softer,” on view at the Block Museum through April 22, attempts to examine a few of these revelatory paintings not only through art-historical means but also by employing the latest imaging technology with the aim of uncovering these portraitists’ working methods....

Back in the day, NME music writer Andy Gill (not to be confused with the Gang of Four guitarist) described Bauhaus’s 1980 debut full-length, In the Flat Field, as “hip Black Sabbath.” That’s pretty accurate; the only way Gill went wrong was that he meant it as an insult. By the time of the album’s release the British postpunk group had already scored a runaway club hit with their 1979 single “Bela Lugosi’s Dead”—which was subsequently became adopted as the goth national anthem....

Q: I’m a 20-something more-or-less lesbian in an east coast city. I’m primarily into women, and I’m only interested in relationships with women, but I’m sometimes attracted to men and have enjoyed sex with men in the past. For various reasons, I decided a few years ago not to pursue physical stuff with men anymore and I publicly identify as a lesbian. This worked great pre-pandemic, but now, with a tiny social bubble and no dating prospects, I find myself feeling very attracted to a male friend/coworker....

The adjective “nequient” means “not being able”—though it hasn’t seen common usage since the 17th century. The more you know! Chicago hardcore four-piece Nequient released their debut full-length, Wolves at the Door, in May, and Gossip Wolf is sure they’re entirely able to kick up a major D-beat shit storm! Knuckleheads fond of getting rowdy to Converge and Disfear will find plenty of grist for the mill on the walloping tracks “Blast Beats and Cocaine” and “Cat’s Cradle,” where Patrick Conahan’s headlong guitar and Jason Kolkey’s tortured vocals race around each other....

Once a month Dylan Maysick cooks Shabbat dinner for 90. This Sunday he’ll be teaching a Montreal bagel class in an Albany Park shared kitchen. Last Friday he hosted a dinner party for ten featuring, in part, blintzes, stuffed cabbage rolls, and poppy-seed challah—a menu inspired by the pioneering Vilna Vegetarian Cookbook (1938) by Fania Lewanda, who ran a kosher vegetarian restaurant and cooking school in Lithuania before she was murdered in the Holocaust....

It seemed within minutes of Governor Pritzker’s order to shut the door on dine-in customers at restaurants and bars (a not-intemperate reaction to scenes of drunken, emerald-colored idiots mobbing Wrigleyville and River North on Saturday), the Chicago restaurant community had mobilized. An organized campaign flooded social media, with independent chefs and owners thanking the governor but pleading for relief for the thousands of workers and small businesses bracing for a crushing hit once the ban took effect Tuesday at 9 PM....

Welcome to the Reader’s cannabis column To Be Blunt. We’re here to answer your canna questions with the help of budtenders, attorneys, medical practitioners, chefs, researchers, legislators, and patient care advocates. Send your cannabis queries to tobeblunt@chicagoreader.com. “For your first go at making ‘medibles,’ or for seasoned bakers who want a quick, easy treat, here’s a recipe that even the newest baker can get right. There’s no need to be intimidated by all the technicalities of decarboxylation* and infusion into butter or oil....

The COVID-19 pandemic has put tens of millions of Americans out of work, but even considering that bleak landscape, musicians have been hit especially hard—most of their jobs only barely exist now, and the infrastructure that might allow them to return someday is in danger of collapsing. Festivals have been canceled, larger concert halls closed, and smaller clubs either shuttered or restricted to fractions of their usual audiences. At least in the States, no one is touring....

My family’s beloved 16-year-old Siamese cat, Webley, died in my arms last year. He’d been a sleek fat kitty before he got ill, but he’d lost weight and lost weight till he was little more than a bedraggled shadow. At the end he could barely lift his head, and then the vet gave him the shot and he couldn’t lift his head at all. I was scratching his ears as I’d so often done before, and suddenly they dropped, and whatever I was petting wasn’t Webley anymore....

This week’s fantasy gig is one man’s not-so-secret dream. Local artist Jon Natzke created a poster for an imaginary concert to take place at a real venue (shuttered for now) on his birthday in July. To participate, please e-mail scollojulin@chicagoreader.com with your name, contact information, and your original design or drawing (you can attach a JPG or PNG file or provide a download link). We won’t be able to publish everything we receive, but we’ll feature as many as possible while the crisis continues....

I low-key love how Otherworld Theatre fully explores the concept of “theater nerd.” A recent Nintendo-covered update on Richard III was enjoyable and crunchy around the edges; it regularly offers Improvised Dungeons and Dragons. Otherworld is absolutely niche, but it’s absolutely itself. This is why I went into Countess Dracula with a huge appetite for sweaty-palmed, glasses-on geekery. Conceptually, the show fits right in with the current zeitgeist of Black, southern gothics, a la Lemonade‘s shadowy and foreboding moments and Angela Bassett in American Horror Story: Coven....

Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP The first business for America in Cuba after the embargo is lifted? Film an episode of Conan. Reader staffers share stories that fascinate, alarm, amuse, or inspire us. • About the director’s cut of Mark Christopher’s 54, which recently screened at the Berlinale? —Drew Hunt

Craig Sjodin/ABC via Getty Images Do you want more?!!!??! Reader staffers share stories that fascinate, alarm, amuse, or inspire us. • That Heather Mack and Tommy Schaefer have been found guilty of murdering Mack’s mother, an Oak Park “socialite” whose body was found stuffed into a suitcase in Bali last summer? —Tony Adler • That Rob Kuznia, the 2015 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting, actually left journalism a year ago because he couldn’t afford his rent?...

Reader staffers share stories that fascinate, alarm, amuse, or inspire us. Patrick Smith/Getty Images Mark Buehrle still has the heat. • That two of Pluto’s moons are apparently “tumbling in absolute chaos“? —Drew Hunt • About the impermanence and vastness of our digital music archives? —Leor Galil

Chicago Dyke March, founded in 1996 and held this year on Saturday, June 29, in Little Village, describes itself as a “grassroots mobilization and celebration of dyke, queer, bisexual and transgender resilience.” Photographer Robyn Day covered this year’s march from Little Village Academy to Piotrowski Park, asking folks, “Why is Dyke March important to you, at this time?” v