Writer-director Jen Ellison takes as her tired subject the oppressive conformism of the 1950s in this not terribly funny comedy. A housewife has an unsettling encounter with two people certified normal by the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, a test that corporate America has used to determine a potential employee’s normalcy–or lack thereof. Ellison means to show the arbitrary nature of such systems of human taxonomy and the way a bland conception of normalcy stifles personal freedom....

Lead Story After 34-year-old Pov Srun pleaded guilty to the sexual assault of two teenage girls in Montgomery County, Maryland (he’s accused of similar crimes in Pennsylvania), his wife, Cindy Michelle Srun, also 34, testified at a March sentencing hearing that because of her overbearing personality and numerous infidelities she was partly responsible for his actions. The judge gave him 35 years anyway. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In April the city of Espanola, New Mexico, agreed to pay $221,000 into an education fund for Jerry Trujillo to settle a lawsuit filed by his family over a 2004 incident....

This is an upscale bar, and one thing I notice about it is that a lot of older, rich white ladies hang out here. It reminds me of another bar where elderly or mature single women like to hang out. I was alone on New Year’s Eve and a bit lonely, and around ten in the evening I decided to go there and have a drink so I wouldn’t feel bad....

SPANKING THE MONKEY: DISPATCHES FROM THE DUMB SEASON | Matt Taibbi (New Press) Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Starting with the gross media undercounts of the massive antiwar demonstrations of January 2003–the largest since Vietnam–Taibbi suggests the press corps hasn’t just been asleep at the wheel but actively complicit in the dumb show that’s got us in the fix we’re in today. Speechwriter, reporter, political operative, and op-ed hack all speak the same empty language, within a rarefied bubble of plane, hotel, and campaign HQ....

The Suspicious Clowns often tip sacred cows to humorous effect. But this show, written by the sketch comedy ensemble’s members Robert Felker and Vincent Truman and directed by Felker, pushes too hard. Puerile sexual humor and jokes about shootings, rape, and pedophilia are used to skewer broad, often undeserving targets: the Germans are all Nazis, the Irish eat a lot of potatoes, Italians are dumb and violent, the Scots wear kilts and discuss their testicles....

Factotum With Matt Dillon, Lili Taylor, Didier Flamand, and Marisa Tomei Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Bukowski’s bitter appraisal of blue-collar work and its spiritual suffocation makes Factotum a daunting movie property. Henry Chinaski, his fictional alter ego, travels back and forth from Los Angeles to New Orleans, Philadelphia, Saint Louis, and Miami, working an endless series of crap jobs during and after World War II as he tries to make a name for himself writing short stories....

House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power In his new book, House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power, Carroll, a former priest and community organizer, details the inner workings of the building at the center of American power. Beginning with the Pentagon groundbreaking on September 11, 1941, he traces the ascendance of American military might up through and including that same date 60 years later....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I first encountered Roeser years ago, when I wrote about Bruce DuMont’s free-for-all radio show, “Inside Politics,” then on WBEZ. Roeser was the conservative sidekick. An accomplished curmudgeon, he was always willing to go one step farther than his liberal counterparts and (much to my disappointment) usually besting them. (The story appeared in the October 9, 1987, Reader ; colleague Robert McClory wrote up Roeser and conservative Catholicism May 6, 1988....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The author pitches the claim directly to the media or to organizations of nonhistorians, for pay. The author says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work. The sources that verify the new interpretation of history are obscure; if they involve a famous person, the sources are not those usually relied on by historians. Evidence for the history is anecdotal....

Friday 23 Black Dice headline, 13 & God plays third, Blood on the Wall plays second, and Boy in Static opens. 8:30 PM, Abbey Pub, 3420 W. Grace, 773-478-4408 or 866-468-3401, $15 in advance, $18 at the door, 18+. –Peter Margasak Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » HACKENSAW BOYS This group of college-town Virginians–now down to six members from a high of twelve–got a lot of attention in recent years touring with Cake and working the jam-band circuit....

Billed as “NPR without the dignity,” this satirical weekly quiz show has been taped before a live audience in Chicago since May 2005. Politics supply the jokes du jour as host Peter Sagal directs callers to answer current-events questions. Headlines weave through the taping–at this show, Cheney’s hunting and greedy Alaskans. But what happens off-microphone is often funnier. Sagal keeps the audience amused and informed, announcing during a commercial break, “Now we have to pause for eight minutes....

Setting themselves a double challenge, the Free Associates aim to parody both the real White House and the liberal wet-dream television version–in addition to accomplishing their usual feat, improvising a coherent full-length show based on audience suggestions. They weren’t up to it, at least not on opening night. Though a few individual performances captured the tics of West Wing characters–Sulamith Folz as Kate Harper, Ross Foti as Toby Ziegler, Duncan Teater as Will Bailey–the show’s homey feel was missing....

It was pure happenstance that Peter Zelchenko learned about a property-tax hike for the owners of the buildings that line Lincoln Avenue between Webster and Diversey. “I went to my alderman, Vi Daley, to ask if she could put trash cans on the street,” says Zelchenko, who lives on the 2200 block. “She told me about the SSA.” His immediate response was “SSA? What SSA?” Best of Chicago voting is live now....

John Paul Weier, 25, wants to be the official Cubs mascot, but when he dresses as “Billy Cub” he’s not even allowed into Wrigley Field, which has a no-costumes policy. Undeterred, he’s greeted fans outside the stadium at every home game this season. Weier is the author of a football novel, 4th & Inches; his Web site is billycub.com. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » It’s basically a full bear suit in three pieces: a huge body piece, feet, and head....

CHICAGO DOESN’T LACK for great bars, from world-renowned jazz venues like the Green Mill (4802 N. Broadway, 773-878-5552) to ancient neighborhood watering holes like Hyde Park’s Woodlawn Tap (1172 E. 55th St., 773-643-5516), which has catered to U. of C. students since 1948. Some places, however, hang beneath the radar, an Old Style or Schlitz sign their only calling card. These, too, are neighborhood treasures, serving up booze and bonhomie to a clientele that, from day to day, might only vary by a face or two....

The Chicago Festival of Israeli Cinema continues Friday, September 8, through Sunday, September 17, at Webster Place and at Renaissance Place in Highland Park. Tickets are $10, and a festival pass, good for six screenings, is $50. For more information call 312-423-6612; a full festival schedule is available at chicagofestivalofisraelicinema.com. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Dekel Adin gives a winning performance as the title character of Mimon (2005, 79 min....

Dan Whitford, the one-man wonder behind CUT COPY, owes a debt to early Human League and New Order that can’t be overstated. But to me the glowing grays of his sonic palette feel culled from a more specific place, where overcast puddle reflections burst into petrochemical bloom–the rarefied realm of Heaven 17, Visage, and Talk Talk. And though there’s an undeniable Sumnerity to his lyrics and vocals, I also hear brighter, more psychedelic shades in his guileless warble....

Peter Rehberg, the Vienna-based computer musician who makes records under the name PITA, has spent most of the last decade actively defying expectations. He’s a techno music adherent whose first records sampled refrigerator tones and who, despite his lack of formal training, exploited his keen listening skills to become a member of the heavyweight MIMEO (Music in Mouvement Electronic Orchestra) with the likes of Keith Rowe, Phil Durrant, and Thomas Lehn....

This fascinating oddity from Alain Corneau (Tous les matins du monde) adapts Amelie Nothomb’s autobiographical novel about the office life of a young Belgian (Sylvie Testud) working for a huge corporation in Tokyo. Though she’s spent her childhood in Japan and speaks fluent Japanese, a string of cultural blunders leads to one humiliating demotion after another. Testud took a two-month crash course in the language to play this part, and though the notations on cultural difference are far richer and subtler than anything in Lost in Translation, I can’t help but wonder what Japanese viewers might think of this film’s blistering critique of some of their hierarchies and protocol....

The Factory Theater’s spoof of Elvis Presley movies (in particular G.I. Blues) stars Scott Oken as Chet, a rockin’ recruit stationed in 1961 Germany who’s assigned to chaperone a visiting general’s daughter. Writers Oken and Ernie Deak nail the films’ inane plots and leering humor, while Oken’s score would sound at home in a real Presley pic. Oken’s comical Elvis impersonation is enhanced by his incongruous Jackie Gleason-like girth, and director Nick Digilio has coached high-energy performances from the 15 actors, especially Manny Tamayo (in a Don Rickles mode) and Tucker Curtis as Chet’s buddies and Jennifer Santanello as a hyperhormonal teen....