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Richard A. Chapman/Sun-Times Legal guns are not Chicago’s real gun problem. Some say the editorial page is a newspaper’s Department of Futile Gestures, as the opinions expressed therein turn a nifty phrase or two a lot more often than they turn public opinion. There’s even a word by which journalists celebrate this futility, Afghanistanism—which is two-fisted advocacy in the service of remote corners of the earth that readers haven’t the slightest interest in and the paper hasn’t the slightest influence over....

“When I was growing up, all I would eat with cottage cheese were these really syrupy, densely packed peaches,” says Kiel Schelich, bar manager at Eight Bar (the previously nameless bar/restaurant downstairs from Maple & Ash). But when Steve Gleich of Luxbar challenged Schelich to use cottage cheese in a cocktail, his mind didn’t immediately go there. Schelich’s first thought was to make a drink modeled after a cement-mixer shot, where lime juice is added to Bailey’s to curdle it....

ARTIST: Scott Williams SHOW: Soul Summit DJs with Soulman at Double Door on Sat 7/18 MORE INFO: scottwilliamsdesign.com

Warning: This review contains spoilers. Decker never shows her characters discussing how an audience might respond to their work—or, for that matter, whether they intend to present their work to an audience. This omission has the perhaps unintended consequence of making the performers seem self-indulgent, especially when the art making we do see looks ridiculous and childish. Like the actors’ awkward posturing (which suggests a sort of dance therapy for people who can’t dance), Decker’s filmmaking consistently walks a line between exuberant and embarrassing....

1515 W. 18th 312-421-1517 Runner-Up Frontera Grill

947 Garfield, Oak Park, 312-772-3257, waynebeals.com If you’re the type of home buyer with buckets of money to put down and the means to bid significantly over the asking price for that perfect West Loop loft or Logan Square two-flat, this is the real estate market for you. If you’re not that person, be prepared to hustle—and to have an open mind. Real estate agent Wayne Beals might be based in Oak Park, but the man knows every corner of Chicago (and beyond) inside out, and he will patiently explore your housing options in any of them....

Chicago alt-rock four-piece Post Child celebrate the release of their second full-length, Wax Wings, this Thursday, January 26, with a free show at Wicker Park’s Emporium Arcade Bar. Post Child’s members also play in several other local bands (Elephant Gun, High Priests, the Peekaboos, the Brokedowns), and together they’ve been dabbling in fuzzy, 90s-flavored indie rock since 2012. On their previous full-length, 2014’s New Age Whatever, they added insanely catchy hooks to their midtempo, wall-of-buzz guitar stomp, and Wax Wings takes this sound to the next level....

Dave Attell, patron saint of after hours, has some thoughts on women who mix hard alcohol with diet sodas: “You’re drinking whiskey, the wildest drink known to man. Are you really counting calories when you’re drinking whiskey? . . . ‘I don’t want to look puffy as I’m screaming the N-word at an eclipse. ‘” It’s been more than a decade since Comedy Central’s cult hit Insomniac last aired, but based on his most recent special, Road Work, the New York-based stand-up veteran seems only to have sharpened in the interim....

Reader staffers share stories that fascinate, alarm, amuse, or inspire us. • How presidential candidate Lindsey Graham thinks Princess Buttercup from the 1987 fantasy movie The Princess Bride would oppose Ted Cruz’s foreign policy? —Ryan Smith

Earlier this week downstate emo icons American Football announced they’d reunite to perform a couple shows, the first of which will be in September at the tenth Pygmalion Festival down in Champaign; tickets go on sale tomorrow at 11 AM. I bet the group will end up on the Riot Fest bill, but I can’t pass up the opportunity to see them play in their hometown. The three-piece started in 1997, a little more than a decade after the birth of emo during the 1985 Revolution Summer in Washington, D....

An Inconvenient Truth, Davis Guggenheim’s Oscar-winning 2006 documentary, thrust former United States Vice President Al Gore back into the media spotlight. In the movie he made a succinct, persuasive case for the exponentially growing threats to our planet caused by greenhouse gas effects from carbon emissions. A decade later, Gore returns to the big screen in An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, directed by Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk, who shadowed Gore closely across several continents to record how man-made climate change—or global warming, as it used to be called—has drastically worsened....

Division between Damen and Paulina renegadecraft.com/chicago Runner-Up Old Town Art Fair

78 E. Washington 312-744-6630 chicagoculturalcenter.org Runner-Up The Rookery

Sometimes television has an elegant way of coming full circle. In 1994 we slid headfirst on a gurney through the doors of Chicago’s fictional County General Hospital, where we’d spend more than a decade soaking up all the drama (and George Clooney) ER could supply. Presumably the popularity of workplace dramas—particularly those where Chicagoans’ lives hang in the balance—spawned Dick Wolf’s Chicago Fire (2012) and Chicago P.D. (2014), and now the Wolfman’s preparing to launch Chicago Med, a decidedly ER-esque jaunt back into a hospital starring Oliver Platt, S....

Supposedly breeds tolerance Reader staffers share stories that fascinate, amuse, or inspire us. • Nicholas Kristof on car control and gun control? (“As we’ve learned to treat cars intelligently, we’ve gone in the opposite direction with guns.”) —Steve Bogira

ARTIST: Erin Page SHOW: Arriver, Replica Republic, and Nonagon at Burlington Bar on Sat 10/13 MORE INFO: erinpageforever.com

Seth Olenick His lobster claws aren’t that big in person Over the years Hannibal Buress has been a reliable surprise guest at stand-up shows across the city. Coming up in the Chicago comedy scene, he’s always stayed loyal to the open mikes and venues that helped him get his start. Fitting, then, that he came back to tape his latest Comedy Central special, Hannibal Buress: Live from Chicago, over the course of two sets at the Vic on Saturday night....

Belle In this week’s print edition, to inaugurate my reign as the most reliable movie critic in America, I misidentified Misan Sagay, the screenwriter of Belle, as a man. My apologies to Ms. Sagay; that’s the sort of sexist thinking that makes some people (myself included) wish there were more women writing about film. Belle, which opens this week at Landmark’s Century Centre and Showplace ICON, is a fictionalized biography of Dido Elizabeth Belle, a mixed-race woman who was given an aristocratic upbringing in 18th-century England....

Joshua Ishmon www.facebook.com/joshualishmon Runner-Up Haley Stone

When Felix Biederman and a couple friends launched the political comedy podcast Chapo Trap House in March 2016, they imagined it would connect with a sliver of a niche audience. How many people would tune in to a socialist-friendly show that skewers lukewarm Clintonian liberalism and parodies inside-the-Beltway pundits? Perhaps a handful of like-minded Twitter denizens, Biederman thought. What do you think is behind the resurgence of socialism in Chicago and elsewhere?...