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Scotch the Filmmaker www.facebook.com/ScotchtheFilmmaker Runner-Up Glitter Moneyyy

I sat next to Brian Wells at the Rainbo Club for many years before I knew he was a painter. Wells is quiet and unassuming. When he talks, it’s deliberate: he pauses to think before he speaks. We often sat together and barely exchanged a word. Occasionally I’d overhear him talking about construction or carpentry jobs. But one day he complimented one of my paintings, which was hanging behind the Rainbo’s stage, and mentioned in passing that he was a painter as well....

Will Forte in Nebraska In the Isa Genzken retrospective that opened last weekend at the Museum of Contemporary Art, there’s a series of four stereo advertisements that Genzken enlarged and presented as found-art objects in 1979. The ads come from four different countries, though they’re remarkably similar in their layout. Each presents the equipment against a white backdrop and amid blocks of small type explaining the state-of-the-art technology employed by the new models....

When Reader music editor Philip Montoro sent me an e-mail a couple of weeks back simply titled “A bit of Danish D-beat for free,” I figured my tastes would agree with the Bandcamp link inside. Working with me for six years, Philip has gotten more than a tad accustomed to my likes and dislikes—making an elaborate explanation unnecessary. And Halshug very much fit into the “likes” category. Today’s 12 O’Clock Track, “Skyd Eller Dø,” comes from the threesome’s four-song EP Dödskontrol, which dropped last year on D-Takt & Råpunk Records....

Chicagoans is a first-person account from off the beaten track, as told to Anne Ford. This week’s Chicagoan is Othman Al Ani, a former refugee. “At the theater, I don’t know where to go, I don’t know how to pay, I don’t even know how to use money. I told the cashier, ‘This is my second day in United States, and I haven’t been in a movie theater before.’ She was very excited to help me....

Most major music festivals run fine-tuned hype machines designed to make the build-up to the big event feel like an eternity: the months of teasing out a lineup, the countdown to ticket sales, the slow crawl to announcing the schedule. But this year, due to sustained grassroots opposition in its host neighborhood, Riot Fest’s efforts to stoke fans’ anticipation sometimes felt anxious or even frantic. The 2014 festival had moved into the much larger northern section of Humboldt Park, shutting down access to many of its free outdoor facilities, and according to the city’s estimates it did around $182,000 in damages to the grounds—more than triple the previous year’s tab....

Multiple locations 630-336-7245 kayakchicago.com Runner-Up Urban Kayak

A long-standing member of the video-art collective Everything Is Terrible!, Katie Rife has great taste in garbage cinema. Last year she programmed the short-lived Wednesday Rewind, a weekly showcase of long-forgotten B and Z movies at the Logan Theatre that drew the kind of rowdy crowds the venue hosted in its grimy heyday. Currently Rife curates the Drop Box, a spiritual successor to Wednesday Rewind at Emporium Arcade Bar, where the sights and sounds of 70s and 80s video schlock perfectly complement the rattle and hum of vintage video games....

5121 N. Ravenswood 312-878-7988 koval-distillery.com> Runner-Up Few Spirits

A young black Chicago philanthropist has purchased a dormant local news site. But because that philanthropist is Chance the Rapper, and because he made the announcement in “I Might Need Security” (the best of the four new songs he dropped last night), the good news comes with an asterisk. What good news doesn’t? I’m cautiously optimistic, but I’m also concerned about a politically active celebrity buying a media outlet—and I would be whether the MTV incident had happened or not....

Next weekend’s Chicago Jazz Festival honors the centennials of three of jazz’s most colorful, enduring, and influential figures—Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, and Thelonious Monk—but those aren’t the only significant anniversaries it’s observing. At 6 PM on Saturday at the Pritzker Pavilion, the trio BassDrumBone—drummer Gerry Hemingway, bassist Mark Helias, and trombonist and Chicago native Ray Anderson—performs as part of an international tour marking their 40th year as working collective. Last year the group released a terrific double album called The Long Road (Auricle) to celebrate this milestone, and its music sounds as vital as ever....

—Ben Burden In fall 2014, Ben Burden had reached a crux in his collegiate soccer career at High Point University in North Carolina—as a junior, the starting midfielder knew he’d soon have to choose whether to pursue the sport professionally. A torn meniscus would end up making the decision for him, though, and after his injury the former high school All-American sank into a dark place. Burden felt betrayed by his coaches, who met with him multiple times, fishing for ways to end his scholarship....

Dre Green The first half of this week has a ton to offer as far as great shows go, and things kick off tonight with a free show at Wicker Park’s Emporium Arcade featuring Sandworm and local noise rockers Unmanned Ship; Lagwagon front man Joey Cape plays an acoustic gig at Gingerman Tavern tonight as well. On Tues 9/30, indie rockers Beach Fossils headline the Bottom Lounge while reformed black-metal outfit Liturgy play at Land & Sea Department....

The sad life and stunted dreams of French sculptor Camille Claudel are the stuff of feminist parable. In 1884, as a 19-year-old student, she joined the staff of Auguste Rodin, helping to execute some of his larger works, and eventually became his muse, model, and lover; when she began to develop as an artist in her own right, their work grew intertwined, but she could never establish her own reputation and the romance soured....

The Chicago Dancing Festival got under way Tuesday night at the Harris Theater with a program of five works by four companies. Ulbricht didn’t miss a step, handling the mishap so smoothly it could have been part of his plan. The suspender even got a nod when he took his bow.

AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite Clarence Thomas: Silent but deadly Reader staffers share stories that fascinate, amuse, or inspire us. • This profile of Rahm Emanuel in the Financial Times? —Tal Rosenberg • Or Sun-Times contributor Andrew Patner’s? —Kate Schmidt

photo courtesy FOX TV The truth is out there. Thanks to Netflix, I’ve been pretty immersed in the brilliant, creepy, and amusingly self-aware 90s TV series The X-Files. I watched some of season two and all of seasons three and four when it was originally on the air, but only upon rewatching the show am I starting to become aware of its true genius. Last night I was watching the season-two episode “Ascension,” and while deranged abductee Duane Barry is driving through the North Carolina woods with agent Dana Scully tied up in the back of his trunk, what’s playing but Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ “Red Right Hand....

I’m a bit of a freak about art-rock outfit TV on the Radio. For example, as a college senior enrolled in a small liberal arts school outside of Boston, I hopped a bus down to Brooklyn to catch guitarist-singer Kyp Malone play a solo set—it didn’t matter that I knew nothing about his non-TVOTR music, I just wanted to hear his heartbreaking falsetto in person. I don’t have to travel nearly as far to get a similar experience tonight, as Malone is on the bill for tonight’s free Empty Bottle show....