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Next time you think you’re busy, look at Tomeka Reid’s schedule. Even though the cellist was already committed to touring Europe with Rob Mazurek’s Exploding Star Orchestra and the Art Ensemble of Chicago, she just assumed the position of Darius Milhaud Distinguished Visiting Professor at Mills College in Oakland, California (even though she’s based in Queens, New York). And when she’s not racking up the miles to meet playing and teaching engagements, she’s squeezing in a tour to support the release of Old New (Cuneiform), the recent second album by the Tomeka Reid Quartet....

Q: I’m a 45-year-old straight male. Politically and socially, I consider myself an ardent feminist. There is nothing I enjoy more than giving a woman an orgasm or two. I’m very GGG and will cheerfully do whatever it takes. Fingers, tongue, cock, vibrator—I’m in. If it takes a long time, so much the better. I’m OK with all of that. Now and again, though, I really like a quickie, a good old-fashioned “Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am!...

When Blackstar came out in January 2016, I got my hopes up. Maybe, just maybe, this new album meant that David Bowie would go on tour. I made a promise to myself that I would spend anything—sell anything, take out a loan, do anything—for the chance to see Bowie live. Of course those hopes were dashed when just two days later the Starman died, and I’ve spent a lot of time since wondering what it would have been like to be in the presence of such an amazing performer and artist, how it must have felt to see him in his prime....

Among the matches burning in the dumpster fire of U.S. immigration is the system of chutes and ladders facing foreign artists. To make a long, very complicated story short: Overseas artists who want to stay in the U.S. without obtaining a U.S. spouse— or those who’ve already married another foreign national—must apply every three years for an artists visa. This is also known as the O1B: Individuals with Extraordinary Ability or Achievement....

No Small Plans Productions @NoSmallPlansChi Runner-Up: So Ready to Bang

Chicago history is black history—the city was founded by a black man, after all, and we have a regional library named for the father of what has become Black History Month—so it’s no surprise that we go big in February, with events nearly every day. All year: The opening event is sold out, but more programming is planned throughout 2019 about race and journalism, segregation and public education, literature, and more....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Tuesday, September 6, 2016. Chicago Public Schools graduation rates improved in 2016 Nearly three-quarters of ninth-graders in Chicago Public Schools go on to earn a high school diploma within five years, according to new data from CPS. The graduation rate increased for the class of 2016, and about 1,400 more students graduated from high school in 2016 than in 2015. Improvements at neighborhood schools were the reason for the increase, according to CPS chief education officer Janice Jackson....

Second City’s She the People Ms. Blakk for President at Steppenwolf Finalists: Miracle at the Royal George, Super Richard World III at Otherworld, Amicable at Theatre Above the Law

On August 2, while OutKast headlined the second night of Lollapalooza in Grant Park, Bongripper capped a two-day DIY bash called Gnarfest with a free set at the Illinois Centennial Monument in Logan Square. The local instrumental doom band stood at the head of the broad steps that lead to the monument, its column at their backs. Hundreds of fans filled the stairs and lawn around and beneath them (or sat atop the monument’s high marble base), nodding their heads in slow unison as Bongripper plowed through “Into Ruin,” the grim, lumbering 28-­minute track that closes 2014’s Miserable....

The indomitable Ina Pinkney has hardly been idle since shuttering her beloved namesake breakfast joint, Ina’s, at the end of 2013. The Breakfast Queen’s been touting her cookbook, penning breakfast columns for the Trib, doing a double act called “Post Traumatic Restaurant Disorder” for private groups with that other so-called retiree “Hot Doug” Sohn, and holding court at breakfast tables all over the city. When I sat down with her a few weeks ago at Grandma J’s in Humboldt Park, she helped owner Layla Malia troubleshoot her French toast recipe....

Another nudgy shareholder just surfaced to complain that the present management of Tribune Publishing isn’t up the job of running the company. Towle adds its voice to that of Oaktree Capital, which has made its lack of faith in Ferro crystal clear, and until the other day was Tribune’s second largest investor, behind Ferro. But this week Ferro unveiled a new ally: biotech billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong of Los Angeles has supplanted Oaktree at number two by making a $70....

Hyde Park United Center 

The Cousin From Nowhere Chicago Folks Operetta, which specializes in producing neglected works from the post-World War I “Silver Age” of European operetta, delivers a winning revival of German composer Eduard Künneke’s 1921 Berlin hit. Translated by Gerald Frantzen and Hersh Glagov from the original text by Fritz Oliven (aka “Rideamus”) and Herman Haller, the libretto is whimsical fluff: 18-year-old heiress Julia (Heather Youngquist) falls in love with a wandering stranger (Nicholas Pulikowski), who she thinks is her long-absent childhood sweetheart, upsetting the scheme of her greedy uncle and aunt (James Judd and Rose Guccione) to arrange a marriage for her so they can control her fortune....

During my infancy at the Reader some seven years ago, I got to know Jessica Hopper through her writing. Although she was a regular freelancer for the paper, she was rarely if at all seen in the office. Instead, Hopper was part of a nomadic bunch of music-journo idealists who took obvious pleasure both in the freedom of the freelance life and in the writing itself. There’s also some serious journalism....

In honor of this week’s plants issue, I’m going to write about . . . TIFs! So, if you think of TIF property tax dollars as the nutrients that fertilize development—especially in low-income communities—then the way Mayor Rahm distributes this money helps explain why some areas are overgrowing with condos and commerce while others are made to feel lucky to get so much as a grocery store. On March 7, as the council’s zoning committee—speaking of rubber stamps—voted 9 to 4 to OK Lincoln Yards, Rahm issued a press release declaring, “While the City Council was deliberating Lincoln Yards today, thousands of south side residents and shoppers turned out to open the first grocery store to operate in Woodlawn in more than 40 years....

Parachute and Prop Thtr Chicagoans like their off-Loop theater a little scruffy—not their fine dining. That’s the beauty of Avondale-based Prop Thtr’s new neighbor, Parachute, a top-flight Korean-American joint run by the husband-and-wife duo of Johnny Clark and Top Chef alum Beverly Kim. A show at Prop preceded by a bite at this Beard nominee for best new restaurant can make for an unforgettable evening: on my last foray an exquisitely sizzling bibimbap with duck egg and kale was followed by large helpings of fake blood courtesy of Bare Knuckle Productions’ thrilling History of Violence....

The Globe Pub Cleos Bar and Grill Finalist: A. J. Hudson’s Public House