Ronald Martinez/Getty Images Adam Dunn celebrating Sunday after the A’s made the playoffs. His postseason career was short-lived. After 2,001 games, Adam Dunn finally made it to the postseason Sunday. He had one of the best seats in the house last night, and now his playoff career is over. He went out watching, deprived of the chance of striking out even once. In the last of the ninth, Jarrod Dyson stole third and scored on a sacrifice fly, tying the game....

Cary’s Lounge 2251 W. Devon 773-743-5737 caryslounge.com @CarysLounge

CHIRP Radio chirpradio.org @CHIRPRadio Runner-Up Better Yet

Oh, brother—it’s so difficult to pick just one! Every day brings another blessed release from the mayor’s press operation heralding something wonderful that our fabulous leader has done or is doing for us. Sometimes he just wants to bring us a little good news—like our restaurants are second to none. But I think my favorite is the one he released on the occasion of Arbor Day, in which he (or one of his PR peons) took a moment to comment on the importance of trees in our lives....

Last June local artist Tiffany Pruitt scored herself a Brother Entrepreneur 6 (the mother of all embroidery machines) and with the help of fellow artist Mike Simi started Approaching Happiness, “R-rated custom embroidery for the masses.” For now they primarily operate through Instagram, where they first caught my eye with a nearly perfect T-shirt featuring an embroidered John Goodman and Roseanne Barr. Since then one of their most popular designs (and the company’s sort of unofficial motto)—fuck you, i’m perf—has made its way onto patches, T-shirts, pillows, and most everything else that can be slid through Pruitt’s embroiderer....

Chicago’s literary scene seems to be in perpetual start-up mode—a constant stream of newly launched reading series, websites, and presses means there’s always some fresh blood. Back in 2003, Doug Seibold started Agate Publishing in just this vein, working out of his basement with, as he told the Reader in 2012, “a cell phone, a laptop, and a DSL line” and beginning with African-American fiction and business titles, both fields he’d worked in during his 15 years in local publishing....

Jessica Koscielniak/Sun-Times Media Seventh Ward alderman Natashia Holmes says city job cuts have a “dramatic impact” on struggling black neighborhoods. Even in job losses, there are two Chicagos. In a city as segregated as Chicago, that adds up to a serious blow to black and Latino communities already struggling with disinvestment and crime. These public-sector jobs formed the economic base of middle-class neighborhoods that are now imperiled, especially on the south and southwest sides....

Brian Posehn has a thing for farts—and he wants to share. Hell, his last two comedy albums are titled Fart and Wiener Jokes and The Fartist, and the bulk of his material can be boiled down to the basic idea that flatulence is funny. It’s simplistic stuff, for sure, but there’s something endearing about Posehn’s sophomoric outlook, which also focuses on subjects like weed and masturbation. But Posehn, the self-professed science-fiction and heavy-metal maniac, is 48 years old, and as he explains on The Fartist, it’s time to let go of such childish things....

You’re seated at the kitchen table, chatting with your mother, sister, and a classmate between bites of spaghetti when a gunshot rings out from somewhere near your house. Are you in danger? It’s possible, but you’ve lived in Englewood all your life and now that you’re 18 years old, you’re relatively used to the disruptive sound of random gunfire. And so you remain seated. “I’m so tired of all these shootings,” your ten-year-old sister, Taylor, says....

Richard A. Chapman/Sun-Times Media Could Anthony Porter be guilty after all? The abolition of the death penalty in Illinois is a story that goes back to the moment a bewildered governor, George Ryan, watching TV at home in 1999, saw Anthony Porter released from prison into the arms of a Medill professor and a handful of students. Ryan said to his wife, “How the hell does that happen? How does an innocent man sit on death row for 15 years and get no relief?...

Noah Kalina Olga Bell Olga Bell joined Dirty Projectors as a keyboardist and singer in advance of its most recent album, the wonderful 2012 release Swing Lo Magellan, and there’s clearly a shared sensibility between that group and her solo work, as her forthcoming album, Krai (due out April 29 from New Amsterdam), evinces. Born in Russia, Bell lived there until she was seven, and she wrote all of the songs on Krai in her native tongue....

You’re cranky, because you’re hungover. You woke up beyond hungry, and your food cravings quickly have become as intolerable as your headache. You need something sweet but also something savory and definitely something deep-fried, and you need caffeine to start the assault on your throbbing cranium and some booze to finish it. And you need it immediately. Enter Endgrain. While it’s usually worth sitting at a table and waiting for one of the open-faced biscuit sandwiches (the biscuits here are legendary, with good reason), your condition prevents such a delay....

3540 N. Clark 773-248-0055 sluggersbar.com Runner-Up Murphy’s Bleachers

Party Noire The Promontory

Runner-Up Ike Holter

5044 N. Clark 773-271-1219 early2bed.com Runner-Up Tulip

Max Sansing maxsansing.tumblr.com @MaxSansing Runner-Up Penny Pinch

The number of craft breweries in Chicago continues to grow exponentially. Over the past year, the newcomers I’ve written about for my Beer and Metal column—just a fraction of the total—include Temperance, Penrose, DryHop, Une Annee, Transient, Forbidden Root, Middle Brow, and Cahoots. This expansion demonstrates the difference between a bubble magicked up by financial-sector legerdemain and organic growth driven by an actual product that real people want—and it guarantees that the Illinois Craft Brewers Guild’s fifth annual Chicago Craft Beer Week, which runs from Thu 5/15 till Sun 5/25, will be more than a rehash of last year’s extravaganza....