Mark Lanegan has made an album to satisfy the yuletide yearnings of those who find holly and hellfire equally enchanting. Even before his old band Screaming Trees hung it up in 2000, the singer-songwriter had begun his career as a serial collaborator—highlights over the past 20 years include his work with Queens of the Stone Age, his three albums with Belle & Sebastian’s Isobel Campbell, and his Gutter Twins project with Greg Dulli—but in 2012 he added to his equally impressive solo discography by self-releasing a six-track EP of holiday songs titled Dark Mark Does Christmas 2012....

Omni has canceled due to a family emergency. A duo of Bill MacKay and Ryley Walker will headline instead. Multi-task by Omni Sun 11/5, 9 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $12, $10 in advance

Killer Queen at Logan Arcade 2410 W. Fullerton 872-206-2859 loganarcade.com Even drinking the beer with the highest alcohol content at one of Chicago’s ever-growing roster of arcade bars can’t mask how poorly 1980s arcade games have aged. Asteroids is dreadfully boring, and Donkey Kong now feels more like a Sisyphean exercise in frustration than a lighthearted pastime. But the genius of Killer Queen—created a couple years ago by a pair of Brooklynites—is that it borrows the lo-fi visuals and simple single-button mechanics of games of the Reagan years while introducing innovative new ways to play....

Detroit producer and rapper James Dewitt Yancey—better known as J Dilla—died in 2006 from complications of a rare blood disorder. His stature continues to grow, though, and on Friday, February 9, at Thalia Hall, a 15-piece band led by Sidewalk Chalk keyboardist Charlie Coffeen will re-create Dilla’s classic 2006 instrumental album Donuts in its entirety. Some of Coffeen’s Sidewalk Chalk bandmates are helping out: trombonist David Ben-Porat wrote the horn parts, and Sam Trump is one of three featured singers....

“Chicago is a bird watcher’s paradise,” said Scott Judd, an experienced birder. Birder and environmental worker Miranda Wecker says the city is better for spotting birds than rural Washington state, where she has lived for many years. The green spaces and lakeside location make approximately 350 species of birds observable in Chicago. Lake Michigan’s elongated shape is ideal for migration, as birds prefer flying over the city instead of directly over the water....

Peter Tsai Baconfest 2015 in its full glory. “You know you’re in the first world when you’re at Baconfest,” said the man at the Kanela Breakfast Club table, just before handing us plates of bacon-infused loukoumades, Greek doughnuts covered in maple syrup sitting in some sort of thick bacon paste. He gave us forks, too, but said we shouldn’t use them. “You need to eat it all at once to get the full bacon experience!...

Completed in 1985, when it was known as the State of Illinois Center, the Thompson Center has reached a dangerous age: too young for city landmark status (which is restricted to buildings at least 50 years old) and, after years of deferred maintenance by the state, too decrepit for the likes of Rauner. Eddy, a movie buff, had loaded up on film courses at NU but had no idea how to make one....

Emporium (three locations) Logan Arcade Finalists: Replay (three locations), Uptown Arcade

Music Box Theatre Gene Siskel Film Center Finalists: Doc Films, Facets

South Loop Animal Hospital Runner-Up: Uptown Animal Hospital

2018 saw the legalization of hemp in all 50 states and subsequently there was a huge boom in the CBD oil market. Before you could only buy CBD oil from a few companies, but now there are hundreds, possibly even thousands of businesses that let you buy CBD oil. It’s become almost impossible to track, a simple search on Google for “CBD oil Near Me” or “Best CBD Oil” sees more and more businesses and brands pop up every day....

Todd Rosenberg Brian Jagde as Mario Cavaradossi and Tatiana Serjan as Tosca in Lyric Opera’s production of Puccini’s Tosca On January 12, Lyric Opera general director Anthony Freud announced that Misha Didyk, the Ukrainian tenor scheduled for the leading role of Mario Cavaradossi in Puccini’s Tosca had dropped out of the production “for personal reasons.” The production, on the other hand, directed by John Caird and commissioned for Houston Grand Opera when Freud was there, is as dark and gloomy as the opera is tragic....

There’s plenty to do this week. Here’s some of what we recommend: Thu 10/6: At this edition of The Interview Show, Mark Bazer chats with Easy creator Joe Swanberg, authors Jen Lancaster and Tania Munz, and Stranger Things‘s Joe Keery, all at the Hideout (1354 W. Wabansia). 7:45 PM

The English language is full of words journalists can’t do without. Troubled is one. Wherever reporters go things are troubled, and they make sure they say so. After all, if things weren’t, why were they even there? Which is a lovely thought—lovelier than the world deserves. At any rate, I put my finger on something interesting. Having laid claim to push to signify anybody doing anything on behalf of whatever, the press is mining it for nuances....

Halfway through the first act of Falsettos, Trina, a woman whose husband has left her for a younger man and who is on the verge of remarriage to her husband’s therapist, sings, “I’m tired of all the happy men who rule the world. They grow—of that I’m sure. They grow—but don’t mature.” But the men in William Finn and James Lapine’s 1992 musical (revived under Lapine’s direction at Lincoln Center in 2016 and now making a brief but glorious touring appearance here) are neither as happy nor as powerful as Trina imagines....

This year’s incoming freshmen at the University of Illinois at Urbana-­Champaign can choose from among roughly 1,400 registered extracurricular groups: more than 100 athletic clubs, including Badminton for Fun and Numenor Foam Fighting, “a full contact sport based on medieval combat”; close to 100 fraternities and sororities; and more than 100 cultural organizations, among them the Phoenix Improv Company, BeatBox Club, and a LARPing society called Elysium on the Prairie. But once those students finish school, not many will continue to care about the stuff they did to amuse themselves between classes, even if they thought at the time that a role in, say, the Illini Voter Coalition might look good on a resumé....

Like a host of contemporary playwrights, New Yorker Jen Silverman hasn’t fully discerned the difference between creating characters and assembling signifiers. In her 2015 play, given an unfailingly agreeable Steppenwolf staging under Phylicia Rashad’s good-natured direction, she erects two strategically differentiated fiftysomething women from theatrical sign posts. Sharon is Domestic Innocence: an Iowa divorcee who doesn’t go out much, thinks most New Yorkers are gay, and uses words like “joshing” with a straight face....

Winter can be a stressful time, especially around the holidays, but Andrew Bird’s annual string of hometown shows at Fourth Presbyterian Church, which he’s christened “Gezelligheid” after the Dutch word for conviviality or coziness, have the potential to temporarily melt away seasonal anxieties. The multi-instrumentalist and songwriter has played in many settings throughout his illustrious career, and because I’ve seen him in a wide variety of them, I’ve concluded that these solo performances are where he’s most eager to explore....

Bay Faction are a band with roots in cyberspace. In 2013, lead singer James McDermott was studying at Berklee College of Music in Boston when he posted a call for bandmates on a Facebook page for local musicians. The only replies came from two fellow Berklee students, bassist Kris Roman and drummer Connor Godfrey (later replaced in Bay Faction by drummer and producer Alex Agresti). The band found a pocket of success among fans of east-coast emo (especially in the r/emo subreddit) for their 2014 self-titled debut EP, which has a sound akin to contemporaries such as Modern Baseball and Glocca Morra....

La Scarola Runner-Up: Piccolo Sogno