Under the name Cuco, LA-area bedroom-pop artist Omar Banos makes pop music of the future. Since the age of 16, he’s been crafting unassuming, easygoing songs that juggle the sounds of hip-hop, Muzak, yacht rock, indie rock, and shards of other genres as if they’d always been meant to be experienced together in such a fashion. Now 20, Banos has two self-released albums and an EP to his name, and his ability to handle every aspect of the creation process while molding his sound to his collaborators suggests he could be a one-man hit factory....

Stephanie Izard Girl & the Goat, Little Goat, This Little Goat

Galter LifeCenter 5157 N. Francisco Runner-Up Chicago Athletic Clubs

Q: I’m a hetero guy in need of advice. Back in college, I met this girl. Suffice it to say she was into me but I had some shit to work through. So we ended up being a missed connection, romantically. Despite that, we still became fast friends. I’m less awkward now, in large part because our friendship changed my life. We each married other people, and everything worked out great....

In 1949, Maurice Chevalier was the first member of the Friars Club to be roasted. The tradition began as a raucous and sometimes obscene way of honoring members of the entertainer fraternity—by making them the butt of the joke. In the 1960s it evolved into a spectacle broadcast as part of The Dean Martin Show, and more recently it became a staple of Comedy Central. The events are no longer contained exclusively within the walls of the Friars Club in New York City or limited just to men, as the club was until the late date of 1988....

Davies considered making a dish with truffles but changed his mind once he realized how expensive it would be. Instead, he made orechiette with the black walnut stock, semolina flour, and all-purpose flour, and black walnut vinaigrette with bacon, caraway, shallot, garlic, black walnut syrup (which he bought from Rare Tea Cellar), and vinegar that he’d steeped with black walnuts. 500 grams semolina flour 500 grams 00 flour (or all-purpose flour) 500 grams black walnut water*

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Wednesday, March 1, 2017. “Gary from Chicago” was released from prison just two days before the Oscars Gary Alan Coe, also known as “Gary from Chicago,” became an online sensation after appearing at the Oscars. Fifty-nine-year-old Coe, who was plucked from Hollywood Boulevard and given a free bus tour that took him to the awards ceremony, was in prison in California for more than 20 years and was released just last Friday....

Maja Komorowska and Leslie Caron in Zanussi’s The Contract (1980) Read part one of this interview. Well, the censorship was very tough [in Soviet bloc countries] on that subject matter. In The Constant Factor, the censors wanted to cut the story about the death of the [hero’s] mother [from cancer], because she was pronouncing a concept that is in fact only Christian, that suffering might make sense. In other religions, people think about how to avoid suffering....

Leor Galil: Rosh Hashanah technically didn’t start till sundown—about the time I saw Jimmy Cliff wrap up “The Harder They Come” with a spry air kick—but that didn’t stop me from finding a little quiet time in the afternoon to call my grandma and wish her a happy new year. I don’t think “listen to scummy hardcore songs” is what my grandma had in mind when she wished me a sweet new year, but once I hung up with her I watched Dwarves tear through all of Blood, Guts & Pussy (with assistance from former Queens of the Stone Age bassist Nick Oliveri)....

We have a tendency to romanticize cramped, chaotic used bookstores (for an example, see last year’s critics’ pick). Organization and cleanliness just seem so—corporate. But maybe that’s what’s helped After-Words thrive in ultracorporate River North. And, frankly, space to breathe and browse inside a bookstore is totally underrated. At 8,000 square feet, the Illinois Street store isn’t as gargantuan as a Barnes & Noble, thank god, but it’s well lit, spacious, and downright airy compared to many of its contemporaries....

“In sickness and in health, until death do us part.” The stock vow had a heightened meaning last November during the marriage ceremony of Vernita Gray and Pat Ewert, who made history as the first gay couple to tie the knot in Illinois. A longtime advocate of LGBTQ rights, Gray had terminal cancer and was not expected to survive the seven months until June 1, when Illinois’s same-sex marriage law would take effect....

3316 N. Lincoln 773-525-7773 chicagomusicexchange.com Runner-Up Andy’s Music Chicago

2537 N. Kedzie 773-489-9554 lulacafe.com Runner-Up Ciao Amore Ristorante

jillianconley.blogspot.com Runner-Up Adam Levin

various locations krisers.com Runner-Up Wiggleyville

“Pull into that spot and turn off your car!” he barked. “Those guys over there pointed you out,” he said. There are other pluses too. But whether they add up enough to make it worth it depends on your expectations—and whether they’re low enough. North Chicago’s ordinance was another change we Ubers didn’t know about. So my total gross from driving was $2,089.88, from which Uber took $531.81. (That will be more for a driver starting now with the new 25 percent cut)....

Time to plan the week. Here’ s some of what we recommend: Thu 12/10: Prove you know everything about the show about nothing at An Airing of Grievances: Seinfeld Trivia at Reed’s Local (3017 W. Belmont). The winners receive a special holiday gift: their very own Festivus pole. 7 PM

“If you go to the corner of State and 27th now,” says Chicago historian Tim Samuelson, “you find a bunch of dirty parking lots. But if you went there in 1905 or 1906, you would find something very different: the Pekin Theatre.” “When everyone thinks of Chicago,” says Samuelson, “they think of jazz and the blues. But in the first decade of the 20th century, it was a syncopated city....

The namesake of Greg Lowery’s Rip Off Records—the San Francisco garage-punk label that was unstoppable for a stretch in the 90s, releasing cuts by Teengenerate, the Reds, and more—the Rip Offs also happened to be one of Lowery’s bands, and their sole full-length, 1994’s Got a Record, is chock-full of dirty, treble-loaded lo-fi winners. Today’s 12 O’Clock Track, “She Said Yeah,” is a raw and simple minute and a half about a girl’s cheating ways....

The weirdest thing about this play, Otherworld Theatre’s first full production in their new digs off Irving Park, is not that it’s a superhero comic come to life, one blatant affront after another to the naturalistic bylaws concerning who can and can’t fly and how to fight crime while flying or fight flying crimes in plays. It’s how enjoyable and moving playwright Kelly Jean Fitzsimmons’s excellently plotted saga turns out to be....