In 1994, Imre Hidvegi and Edgar Alvarez opened Chicago Soccer, a soccer supply store, in a vacant storefront on the 4800 block of North Western. “It was just the two of us, and we did maybe $50,000 in business” to start, says Hidvegi. The block in question is part of the Western/North tax increment financing district. As faithful readers know, a TIF puts a 23-year cap on the amount of property taxes in a given area that goes into the public coffers, diverting any new revenues into a fund controlled by the mayor....

Hell hath no fury like a headbanger bummed. When former Faith No More front man Mike Patton introduced his group Fantomas at a San Francisco club in 1997, there was no advance word of what the band would sound like, but a capacity crowd was stoked about the lineup: Patton, Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo, Melvins guitarist Buzz Osbourne, and Mr. Bungle bassist Trevor Dunn. But instead of the alt-metal superset anticipated, the audience got a flurry of minute-long noise-skronk fusillades, prompting an angry revolt....

The mischievous menagerie from Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type are back, this time with plans to dupe their gullible caretaker, a city-boy accountant, when Farmer Brown goes on vacation. While he’s away the cow, chicken, pig, and duck play–and eat pizza (not the frozen kind). Way more intelligent than your average children’s fare, adapter James E. Grote’s book beefs up Doreen Cronin’s simple story with a comical farm-family dynamic, delivering laughs for kids and parents alike....

Margo Jefferson’s On Michael Jackson (Pantheon) is partly a slim primer on the things that earned her subject that “wacko Jacko” tag: the dysfunctional family, the plastic surgery, the “Jesus juice.” But it’s also an honorable attempt to humanize Jackson, and if her arguments don’t always wash, Jefferson is for the most part convincingly empathetic without coming off like an apologist. She’s at her best when making close, considered readings of Jackson’s revealing moments as a performer: the “Thriller” video (“Walpurgisnacht in the suburbs”), his “melancholic” role as the Scarecrow in The Wiz, his uncannily mature “ABC” come-ons (“Get up, girl!...

My Senegalese friend Jimi and I engage in a little friendly banter when we’re here. We don’t hurl racial epithets, but we’re not exactly PC. For example, when the Iraqi elections were on I asked him if he’d voted. He said, “What are you talking about?” I said, “Just because you’re over here doesn’t mean you can’t vote.” He said, “My people are from India, not Iraq”–as if I didn’t know that....

The Five Obstructions What the Bleep Do We Know? When is an “experimental film” not an experimental film? This might seem a niggling matter to the ordinary paying customer, but it’s a serious issue for artists who’ve devoted their careers and lives to experimental filmmaking, knowing that they’ve given up the possibility of a wide audience by doing so. They’re not likely to be sympathetic when someone with a dilettantish interest in this genre decides to make an experimental film–by which I mean simply a film that experiments with form or content–for the mainstream....

I’m a gay man who’s been in a relationship for two years. I would say that we’re in love–love in the sense of the emotional kind of love and not so much in terms of the sexual. I do think of my partner as my husband, and we’ve had a commitment ceremony. We want to start a family and have begun looking into adoption. Best of Chicago voting is live now....

Bill Scheurer is a man on a mission. Make that missions. The Lindenhurst attorney and entrepreneur wants to stop war, convince the orthodox of all religions to embrace one another–and resurrect the short story. To those ends, in the last year or so he’s run for Congress, written a theological tome, and launched a publishing company, Hourglass Books, which will put out nothing but short-story anthologies. The first of them, Falling Backwards: Stories of Fathers and Daughters, is out this week and will have a reading Saturday at the Printers Row Book Fair....

Khaela Maricich, aka the Blow, wrote a blog entry a couple weeks ago explaining why her next record needs to be different from her last. “Nobody,” she said, “needs to hear another song about how it felt to get overwhelmed with love and get dumped and get over it.” Try telling that to the heartsick indie kids who’ve treated her like an icon since the release of Paper Television (K Records) in 2006....

Friday 4 BUILT TO SPILL Turns out Built to Spill’s lackluster Ancient Melodies of the Future, the group’s sole studio effort from the past half decade, was indeed a fluke–it may have been a gasp, but it certainly wasn’t their last. On the new You in Reverse (Warner Brothers) Doug Martsch sounds reenergized, having sharpened his low-level, late-night paranoia into something more tense and clear-eyed while still leaving room for cosmic gags like “When I was a kid I saw a light / Floating high above the trees one night / God was an alien / Turned out to be just God....

Suzannah Martin’s friends will tell you that before last fall she wasn’t a total fashion disaster. “She was just a rugged Vermont girl,” says Suzi Crawford, a friend of Martin’s fiance who’s gotten to know the 36-year-old mother of two over the last three years. “She’s down-to-earth, and her style and clothes reflected that.” But to DeCarla Hilliard, the office manager at the Evanston Koenig & Strey real estate agency where Martin’s worked for three years, down-to-earth wasn’t good enough to make the leap from selling north-side condos to million-dollar North Shore homes....

Schubert loved to quote himself, and did so in many of his most famous pieces–the Wanderer Fantasy, the Rosamunde Quartet, and perhaps most famous of all, the Trout Quintet, which owes its existence to his short, wonderfully evocative lied “Die Forelle” (“The Trout”). Set in five movements and scored for piano, violin, viola, cello, and double bass, the quintet is one of Schubert’s happiest works–its first movement, a sprightly allegro vivace, is followed by serene lyricism in the second and a sudden burst of energy in the third....

MERLE HAGGARD | THE BLUEGRASS SESSIONS (MCCOURY MUSIC) Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Still, there’s an upside to country’s conservatism: the genre’s stars aren’t contractually obligated to engage in extended acts of self-parody as they age. Rock and pop are all about being cutting-edge, dangerous, and rebellious in varying combinations, which is fine for musicians in their 20s. Once they hit 40 or 50, though, they start to look like–well, like Elvis Presley in his jumpsuit years....

Ken Vandermark (reeds), Nate McBride (acoustic bass), and Paal Nilssen-Love (drums) really stretch out on their third and latest album, Cuts (Okka Disk): the shortest of the five tracks is more than eight minutes long and the whole disc clocks in at 74:24. But the playing is so focused that every gesture counts, and the transitions from full-steam-ahead free jazz to rumbling acoustic funk to near-silent ballads sound effortless. Vandermark’s compositions designate the primary melody, melodic accompaniment, and rhythmic content, but decisions about which player will take each role and the order in which different parts of a piece will be played are renegotiated at each performance....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Twisty at I Blame the Patriarchy takes on the New York Times story (in its paid archive) about Slut-O-Ween, when women and grade-school girls alike can act out someone else’s sexual fantasy. Vanessa at Feministing isn’t pleased by the racial angle of some costumes, either. “I’ve twice been able to talk guys into dressing as a woman for Halloween....

thursday18 Halloween comes early at Viand’s Fantasy Ball–costumes required–hosted by drag queen Miss Foozie and featuring go-go dancers and a DJ. There will also be a Brazil-ian tapas buffet and fresh juice bar. Price includes the buffet and three martinis. a 8 PM-midnight, Viand, 155 E. Ontario, 312-255-8505, $75 in advance, $95 at the door. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Alleviate someone else’s hunger by eating a meal prepared by top Chicago chefs including Gale Gand (Tru) and Susan Goss (West Town Tavern)....

Last Days A film about a junkie rock musician, played by Michael Pitt at his most narcissistic, doing nothing in particular for the better part of 97 minutes isn’t my idea of either a good time or a serious endeavor. Yet a few of my colleagues seem to be responding to Gus Van Sant’s Last Days the way some responded to The Passion of the Christ–taking it without a grain of salt or an ounce of irony....

Tasneem Paghdiwala: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Thank you for the article on the forsaken breed of pit bulls [“Born Bad?” February 24]. I’ve owned three pit bulls now and would own just as many if all the laws and bad information about them weren’t so ill informed. My last pit bull was just five weeks old when I got him. I was able to keep him only six months before my landlord decided he was too high risk and that her insurance would have to be substantially increased because he was on the property....

Both these veteran English prog-rock bands conspicuously lack a sense of urgency–their laid-back music gets there when it gets there. They seem to belong in another age, in all likelihood an imaginary one, when people could actually sit still while somebody recited the Iliad. I’ve always found that approach delightful: sure, life is short, but rushing from one jump cut to another won’t make it any longer. Alas, making unruffled music doesn’t necessarily translate into smooth sailing in real life....

One can debate the premise of the old joke about Mendelssohn–that he was born a genius and died a good composer–but not that his octet for strings is a work of young genius. Written when he was just 16, it was both inspired and groundbreaking, integrating the voices of all eight instruments–four violins, two violas, and two cellos. He noted that the work should be “played by all the instruments in symphonic orchestral style,” and it’s easy to be swept away by the exhilaratingly powerful musical current, though close listening to the complex writing for the instruments has its own rewards....