Dustin Park Delicious Reader staffers share stories that fascinate, amuse, or inspire us. • About the Evanston woman who kidnapped herself? —Brianna Wellen • That Nandini Khaund will be serving the pig’s blood cocktail she made for the Reader‘s Cocktail Challenge for one night only tomorrow at the Charleston? —Tal Rosenberg

Mike Sula Tips al trunko, Alice’s Bar-B-Q Earlier this month when I wrote about Bronzeville’s new Puerto Rican spot Maracas, I made a note to point out that despite the ongoing gentrification in the neighborhood, one old, reliable joint is still going strong. Alice’s Bar-B-Q rarely gets mentioned in discussions about the south side’s great aquarium smokers like Lem’s, Barbara Ann’s, and Uncle John’s. But they’ve been smoking tips, links, ribs, chicken, and turkey legs for at least 20 years through some very dark days....

Zanussi’s Family Life (1971) screened at the Chicago International Film Festival this past weekend. The great Polish writer-director Krzysztof Zanussi was in town this past weekend to introduce two of his movies at the Chicago International Film Festival: his 1971 breakthrough Family Life and his latest feature, Foreign Body. (The latter screens again on Saturday at noon.) As I wrote in May when three of his major works—The Illumination (1973), Camouflage (1977), and The Constant Factor (1980)— came through town as part of a touring series of Polish classics, Zanussi is one of the smartest people ever to make movies....

Papa G soundcloud.com/djpapag

Recording engineer Jamie Carter, who owns East Pilsen studio Carterco, met Nigerien guitarist Hamadal Issoufou Moumine (better known by his nickname, Almeida), in October 2008: the African was in town to play with jazz guitarist Bill MacKay and percussionist Jamie Topper at Dan Godston’s Chicago Calling Festival, and Godston brought the three of them to Carter to document their collaboration. During the late-night session, Almeida began asking about Carter’s ability to do mobile recordings, and two days later, after returning to his home in Niamey, he invited Carter to produce a recording by his popular working band, Tal National....

In the months leading up to this past weekend’s election for chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Republican commentators were already playing the Farrakhan card on Minnesota congressman Keith Ellison, one of top candidates for the gig. In fact, Farrakhan had repudiated Ellison for having repudiated him. No, they forgot all about the Farrakhan connection, at least for the moment, and simply found another wedge issue to exploit—the still unhealed Clinton/Sanders divide....

Screamadelica Last summer I randomly pulled out Primal Scream‘s kaleidoscopic, Stones-meets-the-Orb masterpiece Screamadelica (Creation/Sire, 1991) from my CD collection and ended up playing it to death. When the weather’s warm, few things sound as good as a fusion of gospel-blues, midtempo drum breaks, and Bobby Gillespie’s slurring, druggy vocals. One of my favorite tracks on the album is “Loaded,” a mostly instrumental track built around a Lee Perry-esque horn loop, crackly gospel piano, and a killer bass line; the song is actually a remix of a Primal Scream song called “I’m Losing More Than I’ll Ever Have” by Andrew Weatherall....

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Late last month local rapper-producer Valee dropped 1988, a mixtape that draws strength from its brevity. Valee’s songs often last less than two minutes, and he packs every second with his sui generis personality. Last week Lucki followed suit with the full-length project Watch My Back, whose tracks are almost as short—many barely pass the two-minute mark. Lucki’s rapping can make it feel like time has slowed to a crawl, and on Watch My Back he doesn’t adjust his drowsy flow much—he’s more blunt, though, and sometimes he colors his monotone vocals with a whisper of urgency....

When the Violet Hour‘s Patrick Smith was challenged by Maria Carlin of Big Star to create a cocktail using black sesame, he says he was relieved: “It’s not a terrible ingredient to work with.” He describes its flavor as “like tahini, but darker and fuller.” Smith says the drink—which he named Black Magic Woman after an early Fleetwood Mac song—is “dark and extremely boozy, but goes down easy. Kind of like a painkiller....

For his long-overdue Chicago debut, Berlin-based Danish sound artist Jacob Kirkegaard presents Aion, a multimedia work built around a recording project he conducted in October 2005 within the radioactive zone that surrounds the decommissioned Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Released in 2006 as 4 Rooms (Touch), it consists of four pieces recorded in an abandoned gymnasium, church, swimming pool, and auditorium, where Kirkegaard set up microphones and captured ten minutes of unmediated ambient sound (in other words, “silence”), drawing inspiration from composer Alvin Lucier’s I Am Sitting in a Room (1969)....

I was introduced to postindustrial, antidisco band Factory Floor by Reader music editor Philip Montoro—meaning he assigned me to write about them for the upcoming Pitchfork Music Festival, and I had no choice but to oblige. And I thank him for it. The London trio’s self-titled debut that dropped late last year is a sinister dance party of bare-bones beats—created by live and computer drumming—and warped, lifeless vocals. The backbone of today’s 12 O’Clock Track, “Two Different Ways,” is a herky-jerky, scratchy rhythm that’s reminiscent of something you might hear at a strobe-filled rave that takes place well beneath the earth’s surface....

courtesy Illinois Holocaust Museum Ruth Gruber in Alaska, looking more fabulous in the freezing cold than you could ever dream. Ruth Gruber, the 102-year-old photographer whose work goes on display this Sunday at the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center, has had an amazing life. Some of it has been described in a preview of the exhibit, called “Ruth Gruber: Photojournalist”: her travels in the Soviet arctic and through the Alaskan frontier; her stewardship of 1,000 Jewish refugees who traveled from Italy to upstate New York in 1944 aboard the ship Henry Gibbins; her photographs showing the deplorable conditions aboard another ship of refugees, the Exodus, which had been denied entry into Palestine by the British and was eventually sent back to Germany....

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I first heard today’s 12 O’Clock Track four or five years ago at the Hideout, when bassist Joshua Abrams was spinning records between sets during one of the club’s old weekly jazz nights. It riveted me immediately thanks to the funky, propulsive drumming of James Black, one of many great timekeepers from New Orleans, and within a few bars I was totally sold. I learned that the song, “I’ve Got What You Need,” appeared on Psychedelphia (Funky Delicacies), a compilation of tracks by singer Mary Jane Hooper, and I quickly tracked it down—but I’m slightly embarrassed to admit that I didn’t listen to the album again till this past weekend....

Quasi at the Quackadero It seems to be experimental-animation month in Chicago. Two weeks ago the local outfit BAWSY Animation presented the first Scored Silent Film Festival, which featured new animated shorts with live musical accompaniment. This week Chicago Filmmakers will present a program of independent animated works from the 1970s and ’80s, all of them on 16-millimeter. “These films were all painstakingly created over the course of years,” notes the Filmmakers website, “all before computers were involved with the art form....