The listed events were chosen by the editors of Chicagoist and brought to you by the 2009 Toyota Corolla. Theater Pegasus Players and Live Bait Theater are the co-producers behind Steven Simoncic's "Heat Wave." Based on the book of the same name, this play takes a look at the heat wave of 1995 which took the lives of 739 Chicagoans and asks if the deaths could have been prevented and what went wrong. 1145......

The listed events were chosen by the editors of Chicagoist and brought to you by the 2009 Toyota Corolla. Music Gypsy jazz guitarist Alfonso Ponticelli and his band, Swing Gitan, are one of the go-to acts to fill in at the Green Mill whenever Kurt Elling is out of town for his regular Wednesday engagement. Ponticelli's faithful recreations of old Hot Club of Paris numbers, complemented with original compositions, are fresh and accessible without......

Taste Food and Wine is fast becoming one of our favorite specialty shops. A large reason for this is their tastings. This evening they'll be hosting a free wine tasting from 6-7:30 p.m. featuring Bordeaux selections from Château Lestrille. Louisa Chu of Movable Feast and Diary of a Foodie fame will be speaking at Kendall College tomorrow about what it's like behind the scenes of food television. Should be promising. Presented by the Chicago......

Joseph Pannell pleaded guilty today to shooting a Terrence Knox, a Chicago police officer, in 1969. He'll serve 30 days in jail, be on probation for two years, and contribute $250,000 to the Hundred Club of Cook County, a group that assists the families of police officers, paramedics and fire fighters killed in the line of duty. Pannel skipped bail and in 1974 fled to Canada, where he lived as Douglas Gary Freeman, worked at......

Jay Reatard gets a little closer to his fans. Jay Reatard is playing Reggie's Rock Club tonight and we've got a pair of tickets for one lucky Chicagoist reader. Reatard lives in some glorious time warp where rockabilly cuts itself with broken glass and bashes headfirst into Dischord records. His songs throb with a spasmic energy and their anarchic structure is guaranteed to get the crowd spinning in circles, and the fists pumping the......

Who doesn't love dogs? Besides these two, we mean. Many of us here at Chicagoist have our own pups that we lavish with too much attention and expensive things to chew. There's nothing that warms our hearts after a long day at the office like the excited look and wagging tail of our canine companions. That said, we've been fascinated with the show dog obsessives since the time our high school girlfriend's mother yelled at......

Baby, it's cold outside ... but Chicago's brightest musical talent is on display at a cozy venue near you. Here are some solid bets for this week: Wednesday 2/13: Cameron McGill, The Bon Mots, Tenniscourts at Schubas, 9:00 p.m., $8 Cameron McGill has been a staple on the local scene since moving here from Champaign several years ago, and his unselfconsciousness about shifting styles and band lineups ensures that his freak folk pop orchestration is......

Some events in the next seven days to consider saving your freshly shoveled parking space with a few chairs. The annual Grand Chefs Gala for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation kicks off this evening at the Fairmont Hotel. The black tie-preferred event runs from 6 p.m. - midnight and will feature a safari theme this year. Among the participating chefs will be sola's Carol Wollack, "Top Chef" alum Dale Levitski, Aigre Doux's Mohammad Islam, and Adam......

What a way to wind up the work week. Help those last few minutes slip by with this video mash-up of our very own Blue Ribbon Glee Club's rendition of "Waiting Room" over some archival live footage of Fugazi. It's actually kind of hypnotic, no?......

First things first: If you haven't read about it elsewhere, Anthony Bourdain taped an appearance on Sound Opinions when he was in town in November. The episode airs this evening at 8 p.m. The Artisan Cellar in the Merchandise Mart is hosting an appearance by Evert Nijzink, head winemaker of Paritua winery, makers of Stone Paddock wines. The meet-and-greet runs from 3-6 this afternoon. ChicaGourmets and the local chapter of Les Dames d'Escoffier is......

Photo by Jake Merten Live in the 44th Ward? Care a ton about Wrigleyville development? There's a public meeting tonight with Alderman Tom Tunney to talk about the proposed development on Addison. Yes, head to the Stadium Club at Wrigley (swank!) at 6:30 tonight for the airing of grievances. Er, discussion. Developer Steven Schultz wants to build a 10-story, 137-room hotel and a 9-story apartment building on Addison between Clark and Sheffield. While Mr.......

Do you crave comedy with a side of pancakes? If so, The Lincoln Lodge, located behind the Lincoln Restaurant in Northcenter, will get your carb-filled belly jiggling. In the mullet-like tradition of “business in the front, party in the back”, the forefront Lincoln Restaurant serves up some of the best diner food in town. But in the back room, the party rolls all weekend as The Lincoln Lodge showcases some of the most uproarious young......

And we're wearing Milkbone underwear. (Maybe our favorite Normism ever. Er, anyway....) The American Kennel Club released its list of the 10 most popular dog breeds in America today, and to the shock of no one, Labrador Retriever held the top spot for the 17th year in a row. This year's big news (well... "big news") is that the bulldog is now nationally the top ten. And what of local dogs, you ask. What indeed.......

Welcome to the second full work-week of 2008. If yours is going anything like ours, the term "hump day" doesn't even make you crack a smile. Here's (hopefully) some motivation to get you to the weekend: Remember the Dill Pickle Co-op benefit that was supposed to happen in November? Well, it was cancelled due to double booking conflicts and has been rescheduled for Saturday at AV-aerie. The lineup includes Detholz!, Pit er Pat, and Bobby......

President Bush is in town today to celebrate the anniversary of No Child Left Behind, hobnob with Mayor Daley to talk Olympics, and give a speech about the economy to the Union League Club. And the Sun-Times makes him feel welcome with a front-page smackdown of NCLB. Since the No Child law passed, average state test scores for high schoolers haven't budged. In fact, reading scores for minority students and for poor students are lower......

A classic's a classic (above). But just in case you were thinking about sitting through the latest CGI remake, here's a bad review review from local critics: Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: "Goes in one eye and out the other." Roger Ebert, Sun-Times: "Indeed the metaphysics of dubbing dubbed chipmunks who exist in the real world as animated representations of real chipmunks is ... how did this sentence begin?" Keith Phills, AV Club: "There's just......

Man is there a lot going on tonight. Are you sure it's only Wednesday? Because it sure feels like the party is already kicking into high Friday mode. The last few weeks have been a tad lackluster, music-wise, but December is taking this year out with a bang! Here are just a few of tonight's options. Evan Dando resurrects The Lemonheads tonight at Double Door. We caught him last time he came through town and......

Chicago has been selected as the host city for the 2008 Barclays Churchill Cup finals, the biggest international rugby tournament in North America. The Tournament will kick off in Ottawa, Canada on June 7th with several dates across Canada before converging on Chicago for the final day of matches. Teams from the United States, Canada, England, Scotland and Ireland will compete in the event on June 21 at Toyota Park. Last year, Toyota Park played......

Tomorrow Liar's Club is hosting the Fourth Annual Toy Drive To benefit the Schwab Rehabilitation Hospital Pediatric Playroom. They are hoping to provide toys and supplies to the KidsRehab program at the hospital. The folks at Liar's Club told us, "KidsRehab works with children who have sustained serious injury and need extensive physical, occupational and psychological rehabilitation." They need a whole bunch of stuff for the kids in the program (look after the jump for......

Who knew "celebrity" golf tournaments could be such a flustercuck? Not Caddyshack star Cindy "Lacey Underall" Morgan. She hosted a 2006 event, which was supposed to benefit the Illinois Military Family Relief Fund, turned out to be a disaster. A giant no-money-making, friendship-ending, lawsuit-generating disaster. Morgan says only about 100 people played golf, that the Caddyshack cast members who did show (Bill Murray and Chevy Chase weren't there) left early, and now she's on the......

We HATE the term Black Wednesday. We hold it in the same regard as other made-up holidays like Sweetest Day and Bosses Day. Growing up, we always knew it as "the weekend everyone is in town at the same time and gets fall-down drunk." Kind of like New Year's Eve, with longer legs and slightly less puking. Here are five spots with terrific musical happenings where we think the displaced weekend warriors will be few......

It's all gray and misty out, and today's essentially just a waiting day until vacation time, plus people are on edge about traveling and family and blahblahblah, we know what we need to do. Brace yourself. Get ready. Gird your loins. Did you? Time for some things that are awesome! This weird old TV from the 50s! It costs $500, which puts it out of our price range, but still, the TV itself is......

The Hyde Park Co-operative Market has faced some trying times recently. They closed their 47th Street location in 2005, but are still paying rent on the empty store space due to a lease in which they're locked in until 2023 that's held by Certified Grocers, who also serves as the co-op's supplier. While they've been paying rent on the 47th street location, they're a year behind on rent at their 55th Street store (note: Adam......

We now join another one of our irregular weekend crime & punishment updates, already in progress. Weird shit doesn't only happen on Craigslist: A woman answered a newspaper ad for a roommate and ended up getting robbed and sexually assaulted. It's easy to scare people away from the big bad internet when people meet up for a "Casual Encounter" and it turns out bad. Unfortunately, the traditional classifieds don't seem much safer, now do they?......

We always appreciate when the New York Times Travel Section takes time out of its busy day to come and visit our little Midwestern city. The last time they stopped by they discovered that the West Loop is cool! This time, they send "the frugal traveler" to answer one of life's big questions: Is it possible to spend a weekend in Chicago and spend less than $500? The answer, of course, is not only that......

Over on Kid Nation, the episode focused on money and greed, as the Council receives directions to go to an abandoned, bat-infested mine (eee!), where they discover a treasure chest full of the town's currency, buffalo nickels. Faced with the decision of distributing the cash among the kids or buying items that the town can collectively share, the Council takes the "big government" approach, buying toys for the town. Shockingly, the kids are A-OK with......

The Red Sox has permeated nearly every facet of Bostonist's lives. When they're not live-blogging the games, waxing poetic about the games, thanking Curt Schilling for his splendid work, or telling Dane Cook to watch his hair, they're watching certain presidential candidates hop on the Red Sox bandwagon (sorry, Gothamist). The Sox are so branded on the local brain that people are using the Series to spice up their sex lives. Speaking of spice, Bostonist......

Mexican Primera Division club Cruz Azul, or if you prefer, Club Deportivo Social y Cultural Cruz Azul, arrived in Chicago yesterday for their Wednesday night friendly with the Fire. The game will feature two of Mexico's more prolific goal scorers; the Fire's Blanco, who has been on fire, pun intended, since arriving in Chicago scoring four goals and providing six assists in just 12 games, will try to show up Cruz Azul forward Jared Borgetti......

Are you going to see Beirut at the Portage Theater tonight? You should be. The former movie house is hosting one of this beloved indie-folk band's few American tour dates, and the combination of 1920s movie palace splendor and whimsical orchestration may be enough to make your heart explode. (Think of that feeling you have when you look at a photo of a puppy and multiply it by 10.) Beirut's newest album, The Flying......

When Gary Huswit's documentary Helvetica screened earlier this year at the Siskel, it certainly brought all the typeheads out of the woodwork — it broke box-office records at the Siskel and is now the theater's highest-grossing film. Now you get another chance to see it if you missed it the first time around, but tonight and tomorrow is your your last chance. It's a fascinating examination of what it means to be modern (and post-modern),......