Debra Pickett’s book Reporting Lives Journalists who turn to fiction know better than to make their alter egos paragons. What journalists do—or at least the way we do it—is morally sketchy even to ourselves, and the finest thing about us is that we do it anyway. After all, liberty dies when ignorance reigns, and if it’s up to raffish reporters to hold ignorance at bay, well, someone has to. Then again, journalists also think of themselves as the finest people alive....

Chicago brewers Ale Syndicate, who started selling beer in March 2013, introduced their Sunday Session ale on draft last spring, and I first tried it at the Mash Tun Fest in June. I didn’t know that’s what I was drinking at the time, because I was judging, but when the hurly-burly was done, I learned it’d been one of three finalists my judging partner and I had picked from among the 22 entries in the session-beer category, “Every Day Is Like Sunday....

Q: I am a cis woman in my mid 20s. I get a pang or a spasm of pain in a place deep in my clit/urethra area. I can’t pinpoint which part exactly. It takes me by surprise every time it happens, so I jerk around and press my crotch for a hot second—which doesn’t help, but it’s about the only thing I can do. This obviously does not look cool in public, and regardless of when it happens, the episode irritates me....

The Reader’s archive is vast and varied, going back to 1971. Every week in Archive Dive, we’ll dig through and bring up some finds. There are plenty of “best of 2018” lists popping up this time of year (including a few to come here at the Reader), but do you ever wonder what were the most memorable movies, meals, and moments of 1971? If so, boy do we have the list for you!...

Actress, Ghettoville (Werkdiscs/Ninja Tune) British electronic-music artist Actress (aka Darren Cunningham) hails from the same quasi-grimestep/post-IDM interzone that’s home to artists as disparate as Burial, Kuedo, Flying Lotus, Lone, and Zomby—in fact, Lone and Zomby have released music on Cunninghan’s Werkdiscs label. But Actress also takes as reference points a few hipper bits of music-­critic catnip: Suicide‘s menacing throb, Throbbing Gristle‘s creaky protoindustrial noise, and Cabaret Voltaire’s surface grit. Actress’s fourth full-length, Ghetto­ville, is being promoted as a sequel to the project’s debut, 2008’s Hazyville, but out of everything Cunningham has released so far, the new one is probably least like that album—like Autechre, he’s ventured further and further into abstraction and distortion over the years....

Irazu 1865 N. Milwaukee Runner-Up Taste of Lebanon Restaurant

1650 N. Halsted 312-335-1650 steppenwolf.org Runner-Up Goodman Theatre

Pizza Time If for some reason you love live music so much that you need to see more after the three-day Pitchfork festival, you’re in luck, because there’s still more to take in. “Jolie Holland’s latest album, Wine Dark Sea, is the most aggressive, colorful, and dynamic batch of songs she’s made since her 2003 debut,” says Peter Margasak about the folksy singer-songwriter. “She fronts a resourceful band that gives her a rich, varied platform, and her voice is a stunner—pretty, precise, by turns breathy and guttural, and always assured....

The first time I played Cards Against Humanity I was buzzed on cheap wine, sitting on a friend’s hardwood floor and shuffling through a random pile of books and puzzles looking for something to entertain me. This was before the “party game for horrible people” was omnipresent at department stores. The set we played with was printed out from the website and hand-cut into jagged, flimsy paper rectangles. At the time we enjoyed it for what we thought it was: an inappropriate novelty game meant to embarrass Grandma at a holiday gathering or entertain friends under the influence ....

Here is a sign that you’ve become a person of consequence: you’re standing in line at a coffee shop, waiting to pay for your drink, when one of the baristas recognizes you and declares her love for you by using your Twitter name. Instead of backing away slowly in alarm, you respond with perfect poise, “Thank you! That’s so sweet!” In her scholarly research, Ewing studies how and why the city’s inequalities came to be....

Sometimes I think Christmas is wasted on the wrong people. On account of being Jewish, I have never gotten to celebrate a whole Christmas from start to finish—though I’ve gotten bits and pieces, thanks to friends and roommates and my boyfriend’s mother who one year gave me my very own stocking—but because of years of exposure to movies and popular songs I know all about it. And if you do it wrong, I will judge you....

As the days slowly tick down toward next year’s epic gubernatorial showdown, a conventional strategy has emerged as to how Democrats can unseat Governor Rauner. Rally behind a Chicago-area personality—preferably one wealthy enough to match our billionaire governor buck for buck—who will coalesce all of the city’s animus toward Rauner and Trump. (Lord knows there’s a lot of that!) Then use the massive resistance to overwhelm Rauner’s downstate support. “I’m probably the only shop teacher who’s ever run for governor,” he says....

Who’s next: Martinez has challenged Damian Arms of the J.W. Marriott Lobby Lounge to make a cocktail with huitlacoche, a fungus that grows on corn and is common in Mexican cooking.

Bassist, composer, and bandleader Ben Allison is one of the most deliberate and focused figures in jazz, a musician who conveys a clear-cut conception in everything he does. Over the years he’s led a wide variety of bands with shifting personnel, but whether through a lineup shuffle or a total overhaul of his stylistic framework, the sounds he shepherds change in sharp, satisfying ways. His forthcoming new quintet album, Layers of the City (Sonic Camera), is no exception....

702 W. Fulton 312-850-5005 carnivalechicago.com Runner-Up Old-fashioned at Longman & Eagle

Stile.Foto.Cibo stilefotocibo.com Runner-Up SWGRUS

Halloween is long over, but here’s one last chance to go dark before the tryptophan takes hold. This week Ben Sachs reviews In the Basement, a documentary about Austrian bondage aficionados by the reliably warped filmmaker Ulrich Seidl. And Neil Hamburger stars in Entertainment, the latest from indie doomsayer Rick Alverson (The Comedy).

AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez A leaping Brandon Marshall snares a second-quarter touchdown pass last night against the 49ers. He added two more TDs later. Last week’s season-opening overtime loss to the Buffalo Bills put some Chicago sportswriters in full panic mode, no one more than Steve Rosenbloom of the Tribune. Rosenbloom declared that “the Bears’ season is over,” and added, “Raise your hand if you think the Bears could challenge for the No....

Since breaking out in the 90s as front man of Brit-pop powerhouse Blur, Damon Albarn has turned into the rare rock star who’s unable to make a bad record—but that doesn’t mean everything he’s done has been great. As the wizard pulling the levers behind the curtain of Gorillaz, Albarn has managed to gift the animated cartoon rock band with a consistent, sometimes affecting hip-hop-inflected pop sound through a series of albums made with different Frankensteinian supergroups....

No other group of footwork producers carries as much weight in the international electronic-music community as Chicago collective Teklife. Its members include the biggest names in the genre, among them the pioneering RP Boo and world-class evangelists DJ Spinn and DJ Rashad. Of course, not everyone in Teklife has enjoyed the acclaim that’s greeted its stars, most notably DJ Rashad—but to Rashad’s credit, he always seemed eager to share his fame with the rest of the footwork community....