Q: I’ve been spending a lot of time lately thinking about myself and my sexuality and my romantic self. I can log on and easily find someone to fuck. I’m a bear-built top guy. There are ladies in my life who choose to share their beds with me. I can find subs to tie up and torture. (I’m kinky and bi.) What I can’t find is a long-term partner. The problem is that after I fuck/sleep with/torture someone, my brain stops seeing them as sexual and moves them into the friend category....

A couple of weeks ago “Merce Cunningham: Common Time,” a major exhibition devoted to the work and associates of the relentlessly experimental choreographer, opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art. The show incorporates sets, costumes, video, and photographs along with other ephemera reflecting Cunningham’s deep connections with visual artists like Bruce Nauman, Jasper Johns, and Robert Rauschenberg. His most famous collaborator in art and life was composer and thinker John Cage, who helped foster Cunningham’s fertile partnerships with some of the most important experimental composers of the 20th century—Maryanne Amacher, Toshi Ichiyanagi, Annea Lockwood, Pauline Oliveros, Gordon Mumma, Jim O’Rourke, and Yasunao Tone among them....

Smoque BBQ 3800 N. Pulaski Runner-Up Green Street Smoked Meats

There’s only one thing better than a long car ride late at night, and that’s a nice long walk. Everything looks different in the dark. Things smell better. Your thoughts start moving in unexpected directions—and conversations, too. Have you ever been able to say you don’t know someone better after a late-night stroll? City streets are OK for aimless meditative wandering, but on the busy stretches there’s too much light and noise....

Every time I’ve seen Devonté Hynes perform as Blood Orange—including sets at Pitchfork festivals in 2013 and 2016, an intimate show at the Empty Bottle in 2014, and a fantastic headlining concert at the Vic in 2016—I’ve walked away shaking my head that he isn’t a global superstar. In a better universe, his albums Cupid Deluxe (2013) and Freetown Sound (2016) would be considered world-beating touchstones by now. Since I first heard them, their depth has only become more apparent to me....

Aimee Levitt The amazing $9 plate of mac ‘n’ cheese bites The Commonwealth Tavern in Roscoe Village is loud, and there aren’t enough tables or chairs. The decor is minimal: a lot of framed letters and proclamations from the less impressive U.S. presidents—James Buchanan, Herbert Hoover—line the walls. Commonwealth Tavern, 2000 W. Roscoe, 773-697-7965, commonwealthchicago.com

The weather was gorgeous last Thursday around sunset, and there were plenty of people with bikes on Roosevelt near Pulaski in North Lawndale. Johnny Harris, 60, was cycling home on a Gitane road bike, while Thomas Chatman, 56, wore a straw fedora as he stood on the sidewalk with his hybrid, which had unfortunately caught a flat. (Story continues below) “An officer has to have probable cause in order to conduct a search,” Brooks said....

A half-dozen students at Northwestern University’s prestigious Kellogg School of Management are accused of blatantly cheating on final exams in accounting and statistics classes earlier this fall, by sharing information and copying from each other while their professor was out of the room. As Baron notes, the “honor code” not only protects students—it also protects Kellogg’s reputation by allowing the school to keep complaints under a lid, while making it impossible to know how they’re being handled....

Dream Theatre Company, 5026 N. Lincoln, 773-552-8616, dreamtheatrecompany.com Already known for thoroughly immersive theater experiences, Dream Theatre sealed its standing with Jeremy Menekseoglu’s Halloween show Audience Annihilated Part Two: Gold Star Sticker, the most chillingly horrific 15 minutes I’ve endured in recent memory. As in Audience Annihilated Part One: Women Only Train, staged back in 2011, audience members play the part of the lead, in this case six-year-old Princess, who’s subjected to a junkie amputee careening a bit too close for comfort, a cold hard bitch of a mother whispering beer-soaked expletives (the unflinching Nicole Roberts), and Bear, a cruel teddy whose catchphrase “I don’t like things the way they are” still pops up in my mind quite unsettlingly....

One American’s promised land is another’s Egypt. Unless you’re a Native American (in which case you’ve got problems all your own), you and yours came here either to get free or to be sold into slavery. No wonder there’s so little commonality between this country’s white and black people, quite aside from the horrors of racism: Even if it were possible to wave a magic equity wand over the nation, so that everybody suddenly had a fair chance, our narratives would still be diametrically opposed....

ARTIST: Keith Herzik SHOW: Scummer Slam at East Room on Sat 8/26 MORE INFO: alamoigloo.blogspot.com

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Tuesday, August 22, 2017. CPD expands body camera program to three more districts The Chicago Police Department is expanding its body camera program to officers in the Grand Central, Grand Crossing, and Chicago Lawn districts, the mayor’s office announced Monday morning. By the end of 2017, every police officer on the streets will have a body camera, according to DNAinfo Chicago. “Body cameras offer a firsthand look into the dangers face officers every day and will allow us to see what we’re doing right and where we can improve our training and tactics,” Chicago Police Department superintendent Eddie Johnson said....

This week, Chicago’s being treated to dueling performances of Mozart by the city’s two major opera companies. For the fan of Mozart’s unfailingly beautiful music, these are two strong productions that play off each other in interesting ways. One (Figaro) is a comedy, the other (Silla) a drama. One is sumptuous, the other striking. Both stories are about a powerful ruler with a yen for a woman who’s in love with someone else....

Music Box Theatre 3733 N. Southport Runner-Up The Logan Theatre

5219 N. Clark upstairsgallerychicago@gmail.com upstairsgallery.tumblr.com Runner-Up Chicago Truborn

At 7 PM this Friday at the Stony Island Arts Bank, Black Cinema House will present a program of two superb short documentaries, Sparky Greene’s American Shoeshine (1976) and Eleva Singleton’s Shinemen (2015). Both films consider the social significance of shining shoes, particularly in Chicago. American Shoeshine offers a panoramic view, interviewing a number of shoe shiners and addressing the history of shoe shining as an industry. Shinemen, on the other hand, focuses on one individual, Bill Williams, who owned a few shine shops in town and worked for the Chicago tourism bureau for three decades....

Sleight—which opened in wide release last Friday to little fanfare—is a minor film with major virtues: tenderness, imagination, and a strong grasp of character and setting. It takes place in working-poor Los Angeles, and one of its strengths is how it grounds the story in a palpable sense of economic desperation. The story features a young hustler who winds up in over his head—a conflict familiar from classic film noir—yet J....