By Jonathan Kaplan

A particularly sexy shot from "Zombie Strippers" (2008)

What better way to celebrate the most fear-provoking of holidays then with hot naked women covered in blood? John LaFamboy agrees wholeheartedly when he and the rest of his crew in Zombie Army Productions decided to put on tonight’s brain-devouring event, “Night of the Stripping Dead.”

Normally I wouldn’t venture out to a gentleman’s club because it’s jut not my thing and I really don’t have the cash to throw around on girls pretending to like me for the length of one song, but when I heard “zombie strippers,” I made a justified exception. The Admiral Theater is considered to be the best of the best when it comes to skin joints in the city and I must say, it was surprisingly classy. As I sit in a white leopard arm chair in the VIP section of the club watching these ladies gyrate to the goth-industrial tunes blasting over the speaker, covered in lacerations, impaling wounds and glow-in-the-dark nipple rings, I feel less like a creepy old man standing behind the fence of a middle-school playground and more like a necromantic luster of the lifeless. Read the rest of this entry »

A University of Illinois at Chicago student is gaining national recognition in the business world this year. Saeb Ahsan, a 21-year-old senior finance major at UIC, is one of only five students across the country in the running to win Entrepreneur magazine’s College Entrepreneur of 2009 contest. Ahsan’s entry is the Flux Collection, a company that creates wearable art, transforming paintings, sculptures, photographs and drawings—many from emerging local artists—into t-shirts. “Being selected among the top five college entrepreneurs has been a huge honor for my whole team and me,” says Ahsan. “I’ve been a fan of Entrepreneur since I was 18. I’m very excited because the Flux Collection has built momentum within the local art community with the help [of the magazine].” The winner, to be announced in January, will receive $5,000 in start-up capital, a profile in January’s “Entrepreneur” and a trip to Miami for an awards luncheon.

This Week’s Biggest Gainers

1 Jay Cutler
The Bears quarterback signed a two-year contract extension worth $30 million. Read the rest of this entry »

By Rob Brezsny

ARIES (March 21-April 19): You may be as flooded with briny emotion as a Pisces on a meandering binge. You might be as embedded in a labyrinth of your own creation as the Geminis who verge on being too clever for their own good. You may be as cagey a listener as a Scorpio who’s searching for a hidden vulnerability in an ally. In other words, Aries, you’re not exactly yourself. But it’s one of those rare times when that’s a good thing. Halloween costume suggestion: the opposite of what you think you are. Read the rest of this entry »

The cars pull up one by one into the desolate suburban parking lot of Hunter’s Nightclub in Elk Grove Village. Transgender activists and people of all gender identifications dressed in varying degrees of drag step out of the vehicles and start organizing. Behind them, a trans flag hangs from the roof of a station wagon. The protesters excitedly look over talking points, pass around a petition and take a moment to hug and catch up. “You’ve got a beard, look at you!” someone in the crowd shouts. “We should give out genderfucked cards,” says another. The party is hastily broken up, however, when the bar’s manager arrives on the scene, accompanied by a bouncer. Asked if the group could enter the bar rather than be kicked out, the manager replies, “If you’ve got IDs.”

Hunter’s, one of the best-known gay bars in the northwest suburbs, has served Chicago’s LGBT community for twenty-seven years. A couple of months ago, Hunter’s instituted a policy that requires patrons to show IDs that match their “gender presentation.” Read the rest of this entry »

Once there was a time when Halloween was for children, and grownup involvement was mostly limited to dragging kids around the neighborhood, or staking out the front door with a box of candy for the legions of trick-or-treaters. Those times are no more, as the holiday has morphed into a night of playful mayhem for adults, whether it’s at the cineplex, where far-from-G-rated fare rules the day, to nightclubs to music to theater and beyond. Here’s what we’re talking about: Read the rest of this entry »

By Rob Brezsny

ARIES (March 21-April 19): “The clouds are the most fertile part of the sky,” writes Guy Murchie in his book “The Seven Mysteries of Life.” Microbes with short life cycles live there in abundance, “eating, breathing, excreting, floating, swimming, competing, reproducing.” Next time you look up at a puffy cumulus, see it as a large city that hosts a teeming host of living things. Speaking of invisible fecundity, let’s turn our attention to you. According to my analysis of the astrological omens, you are largely unaware of how much creative energy has been building up within you. Your homework is to tap into it and unleash it. Read the rest of this entry »

By Patrick Roberts

It is school picture day, and the little girl in pigtails won’t stop crying. Perhaps she thinks the camera will steal her soul. I am tempted to reassure her with a firm and pointed “Relax!” but fortunately for her (or actually her parents), photographer Brian Warling has far more patience than I. “Peek-a-boo,” he says from behind the oval light reflector. Sitting on a low table in front of a white backdrop, the sobbing girl turns her head in Warling’s direction. He steps out from behind the reflector and hoots like a monkey. It’s the smart move of a professional who takes pride in his work because, well, who doesn’t love a monkey? Warling’s ploy is just enough to get the girl smiling, sort of, and he quickly takes some photos. When finished, the little girl climbs off the table, gives one last cathartic sob, and then turns her attention to a helium-voiced kid banging on the foosball table in the corner of the room.

“Anyone who hates children and animals,” W. C. Fields is said to have remarked, “can’t be all bad.” For me it depends on the children and the animals. I personally hate ferrets and the Little Rascals. Brian Warling very much likes children (and animals too from the sound of it), which is a good thing because over the next few months he will personally shoot more than three thousand of them. A commercial photographer who specializes in children, Warling started his company Picture Day five years ago with one school. Today he shoots school pictures in more than thirty. Add in summer camps and other youth-oriented gatherings, and all told he and his part-time staff will photograph approximately 20,000 kids over the course of a year. Read the rest of this entry »

“A lot of churches don’t recognize animals as souls,” says Linda, the proud owner of an adorable barrel-shaped mutt named Buddy that they found in an alley a few years back. Along with her husband Jim, the family ventures out on a brisk Saturday afternoon to The Irving Park United Methodist Church in Avondale to join their fellow dog lovers in a seasonal event called “Dog Bless America.”

Standing outside the church are a gaggle of furry barking friends and their owners waiting to walk up to the steps and receive a little holy good fortune. Virginia, a member of the community, says this is her first time getting her dog blessed, but has seen other churches participate every year around early October. Read the rest of this entry »

This Week’s Biggest Gainers

1 Barack Obama
The president of the United States was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Read the rest of this entry »