Holiday get-togethers are in full swing but after indulging in more than a few drinks, the last thing you want to do is squeeze yourself onto a crowded CTA bus or drop your last $20 on cab fare home. Miller Lite Free Rides picks up where being chauffeured by your mother left off: Starting tomorrow night from 8pm to midnight, and continuing every Saturday through December 26 (plus New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day), the behemoth beer brand will offer free doubledecker bus service with stops in booze meccas such as the Loop, River North, Old Town, Lincoln Park and Wrigleyville. Miller says the free rides are intended to remind Chicago consumers to celebrate the season responsibly and to prevent drunk driving: We can raise a glass to that but there’s also much to be said for sequestering all the drunks on one big party vehicle. Let the sober folks have their lurching cabs and overstuffed buses. For route and schedule information, call 800-FREE RIDES (1-800-373-3743); text the word “RIDE” to 44636; or visit MillerLiteFreeRides.com.

Friday 20
If chocolate carries as much weight as wine, check out le Flour’s Chocolate Tasting class. Learn the history, varieties and how to taste. Be prepared to journal and get your chocolate fill. 6701 N Olmsted (leflour.com, make your reservation: 773-631-1400). 6–10pm, $25 (adults only).

Organic School Project is hosting its Fall Harvest Dinner/Fundraiser. G0 and enjoy the seasonal fare prepared by chefs from Rockit, Foodlife and Goose Island. Kick off the season right. Leslie Hall, 1111 N Wells St (purchase tickets). 6–8pm, $40.

The Beaujolais Nouveau is out. Get your fill at Brasserie Jo. Order it by the glass ($8) or the bottle ($39) while you enjoy the chef’s special beef bourguignon pairing. 59 W Hubbard (brasseriejo.com, 312-595-0800).

Saturday 21
La Madia is promoting lazy Saturday afternoons by hosting a Wine and Cheese Class. Sit back and enjoy lunch (pizza and salad) while you learn about holiday entertaining, wine and cheese (you get to eat/drink the wine and cheese too). After all that relaxing, who wants to throw a holiday party anyway? 59 W Grand Ave (dinelamadia.com, call to make your reservation: 312-329-0400). 11am–1pm, $30.

Center on Halsted (serves as a catalyst for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities that links and provides community resources, and enriches life experiences) is hosting a Potluck Thanksgiving Party. Show up with our favorite appetizer or dessert and learn more about their programs. 3656 N Halsted (centeronhalsted.org, call for reservations: 773-472-6469). 3–6pm, FREE.

If you are hitting up the 18th Annual Lights Festival with the kids, head over to Osteria Via Stato for dinner. The restaurant is serving up The Famous Italian Dinner Party menu (aka family style). Kids will dine for half the price. 620 N State (osteriaviastato.com, 312-642-8450). 5–9:30pm. $24.95–$38.95 (full price).

Know the ins and out of beer? How about the ABCs? Check out The Globe Pub’s Beer: A-Z event. Bar-goers will actually taste one beer for every letter of the alphabet while learning some beer basics from Eric Hobbs of Goose Island Brewery. Just make sure you can still say your ABCs at the end of the night. 934 W Irving Park Rd (purchase tickets). 6–9pm, $40.

Take the kids to visit the pickle tree at The Berghoff. In honor of the Bavaria-American tradition, kids can look for the pickle ornament on the holiday tree. Kids who spot it, win a root beer float (and a year of good luck). And you thought we were joking. 17 W Adams (312-427-3170).

If you’re o.k. with sketchy details, a shocker of a dinner and BYOB, then X-marx is for you. Check out this underground dining experience at a place unknown (that is until you sign up).  We do know there will be seven(+) courses, but that’s all we got. (purchase tickets) 7–11pm, $95.

Stop by the Hotel InterContinental and warm up at the Lights Festival with some hot chocolate ($1) or roasted chestnuts ($4). Corner of Illinois St and Michigan Ave. noon–6pm.

One last Lights Festival stop before the end of the night: FREE cupcakes at more. Enough said. 1 E Delaware Pl (312-951-0001). 7–9pm.

Sunday 22
Hosting Thanksgiving…not a clue where to begin? Check out A New Dawn’s class at Whole Foods. They’ll point you in the right direction (demos, tastings, BYOB). 1550 N Kingsbury (purchase tickets). 6:30pm, $45.

Learning how to make pasta sounds like a perfect way to spend a Sunday afternoon (note: Bears play at night). Make reservations for the how-to class at Quartino. A Sunday with pasta tasting, wine and a new cookbook in hand who needs football anyway? 626 N State (reservations required: 312-698-5000). 1–2:30pm, $24.95.

Need some brioche? Learn how to make it yourself. Head over to le Flour for the tutorial. Best use: French Toast 6701  Olmsted (make reservations: 773-631-1400).  2–4pm, $25.

Upgrade the lousy movie popcorn and soda to a prix-fixe wine dinner at BIN 36. The movie: Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? Dinner and a movie just got way better.  339 N Dearborn (call for reservations: 312-755-9463). 6pm, $48.

Karen O at All Tomorrow's Parties, Photo: Leigh Johnson

FILM/MUSIC - All Tomorrow’s Parties
The independent-oriented music festival, founded by Barry Hogan in 1999 as an alternative weekend getaway to larger, increasingly corporate festivals, doesn’t go for sponsorship logos and has allowed artists to act as curators, selecting their favorite acts to play on the bill for festivals held in spots with common live-in quarters for bands, fans and industry. ATP (also a record label now) pioneered the Don’t Look Back concept of artists playing classic albums in their entirety. This kaleidoscope DIY concert film features performances from Battles, Sonic Youth, Belle and Sebastian, Iggy and the Stooges, Portishead, and others. One night only. Otherwise, you’re stuck renting it on DVD with your buds. Facets Cinematheque, 11:30pm, $9.

THEATER - Rewind
When playwright Laura Eason was serving as Lookingglass Theatre’s artistic director in the mid-’90s (she’s still an ensemble member), she was also gigging at the Bottle and Cubby Bear fronting a power-pop band called Tart. Eason’s play Rewind, about a fictional band navigating the indie scene, debuts tonight at the side project. the side project theatre, 8pm, $18.

MUSIC - Brendan Benson
Brendan Benson success with the Raconteurs has led to a wider audience, bigger label and better producer for his latest solo trip across the ’70s AM-radio dial, My Old, Familiar Friend. Catch Benson downtown at the Apple Store on Michigan Ave for a free 6:30pm set before he heads uptown to Lincoln Park. Lincoln Hall, 10pm, $20.

SHOPPING & STYLE - Robin Richman anniversary
This Bucktown store has aged like fine wine: It just keeps getting better—and its customers are as loyal as they come. Stop in for a cocktail between 5–8pm, or come any time today for a 20% discount in honor of the store’s 12th (you read that right) anniversary. 2108 N Damen Ave (773-278-6150). El: Blue to Damen. Bus: 50, 56, 72. 10am–8pm.

NIGHTLIFE - Audion: Hecatomb
Matthew Dear has already done his fair share to further the cause of boundary-pushing techno. With Audion, Matthew Dear’s Big Hands and productions under his own name, most producers would have left if that. Not Dear, instead he’s upped the ante yet again with Hecatomb, an audio-visual performance he’s created with the help of graphic design and artist pals Will Calcutt and Eno Henze. The set consists of Dear, in his Audion guise, knocking the dance floor senseless with his punchy techno while kaleidoscopic pinwheel projections flood the dance floor in technicolor. Sounds like it’s the closest you’ll get to a psychedelic experience without the drugs. Smart Bar. 10pm; $12, $10 before midnight.

See? They're working on it.

Everybody just calm down a minute: The extremely anthropomorphic, vaguely sexual, highly entertaining and somewhat disturbing mural that you’ve seen countless times at Jake’s Pup in the Ruf is not—I repeat, not—gone forever. I know, because yesterday I called Jake and asked him why the mural wasn’t there anymore.

“Because we took it down,” he said. “Why? Who wants to know?”

Then he answered his own question by saying, sarcastically: “It’s only been on there for 49 years.”

In the half-decade the mural has been up it had gotten a little shoddy, so Jake wanted to refresh it. I suppose this is a good thing for  Jake’s, Jake’s customers and also people like me, who have never actually stepped foot inside of Jake’s, but rather treated it more like public art. But there is always that worry when iconic things get updated that things will change, maybe get a little more contemporary. What I’m saying is, I don’t want to see any Obama references on this window, you know? I want to see more dancing hot dogs.

Luckily, before Jake rushed off the phone, he told me that the mural, when completed, would be exactly the same as what it was. Only now, he said, “it’s going to be perfect.”

I’ve been thinking about youth a lot lately—especially in light of some remarks that Bill Clinton made the other night. Youth is often criticized for being a chaotic, irrational, impetuous time. But think of that youthful chaos like the essential random number in an equation or mutant gene that helps with evolution and it doesn’t sound so bad—it sounds essential. Youth’s randomness can teach us things both simple and profound—even show us the just-plain-obvious. Example: Kid, about one year old, randomly turning the dials on dad’s new car stereo, shows him that it is possible to scan through the MP3s without tapping a button a hundred times. Yes, this happened to me. Bill Clinton talked about the biggest challenge in the West today being the rigidity of modern systems—he meant healthcare—but we’ve also got to have our eyes open to the possibility that a faulty system won’t change without a bit of random, messy, peanut-butter fingered dial-spinning to show us the possibilities. Either that, or we need to read the user manual.

How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found

THEATER - How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found
A bloke has the ultimate identity crisis in Brit playwright Fin Kennedy’s smart, unsettlingly funny play. Carlo Garcia leads a shapeshifting ensemble in the Midwest premiere. Mary-Arrchie Theatre at Angel Island, 8pm, $18–$22.

MUSIC - Ouled Bambara: Portraits of Gnawa Release Party
Drag City hosts a release party/screening for this fascinating CD/DVD set documenting the Gnawa—a North African sect of Sufi musicians merging West African culture and Islamic mysticism. Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art, 6:30pm, FREE!

FILM/AROUND TOWN - Cinema Slapdown: I’m Not There
Columbia’s riotous Cinema Slapdown, in which a film is screened and then two people debate its merits, is back with Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There, which should never ever be described as a biopic about Bob Dylan. It’s a meditation on aspects of Dylan’s persona and career. WXRT personality Terri “Solid rock!” Hemmert and WGN radio’s Garry Meier debate Todd Haynes’s film I’m Not There after it screens. Ron Falzone, a Columbia Film & Video faculty member, moderates. Columbia College, Film Row Cinema, 1104 S Wabash Ave, eighth floor (312-369-6708). 7–10pm. FREE!

GAY & LESBIAN - Love Potion No. 9
Kit Kat celebrates its nine-year anniversary with an open bar (woo-hoo!) and Bahamian vacation raffle giveaway. Kit Kat Lounge, 3700 N Halsted St (773-525-1111). El: Red to Addison. Bus: 8, 152. 5:30pm. FREE!

SHOPPING & STYLE - Chicago-based designer accessory trunk show
Show your local love by checking out this two-day exhibition of Chicago designers’ wares. Find looks by lines such as Elda de la Rosa Couture, Double Stitch, Dana Reed and others. Macy’s, 111 N State St (312-781-1000, macys.com). El: Red to Lake; Blue to Washington. Brown, Orange, Purple (rush hrs) to State/Lake. Thu 19, Fri 20, 10am–6pm.

Starting Friday 20, The New York Times will attempt to give the Chicago Tribune a run for its money, publishing two pages of Chicago content twice a week, generated by local start-up Chicago News Cooperative (CNC). Over the past several weeks, the CNC, which was founded by former Tribune managing editor James O’Shea, has lured some staffers out of Trib Tower, including big gets like City Hall reporter Dan Mihalopoulos and business columnist David Greising. Sitting on the CNC board is former Trib top editor Ann Marie Lipinski. My favorite line critiquing this curious amount of Trib recruits came from Gawker: “New York Times Hires Gang Who Killed Chicago Tribune to Kill Tribune.” NYT editor Jim Schachter has the task of ensuring that “The Times’s standards of excellence are maintained” at the CNC, his paper announced this week. Good luck, Jim.

BOOKS - Jonathan Safran Foer
Novelist Safran Foer (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Everything Is Illuminated) gives meat-eaters meat sweats with his new book on vegetarianism, Eating Animals. Harold Washington Library Center, 6pm, FREE!

THEATER - Lunatic(a)s
The ladies of Teatro Luna revisit and revise their 2007 hit about la luna and the little bit of crazy in all of us. Read our review of the original. Teatro Luna at Chicago Dramatists, 7:30pm, $15–$20.

MUSIC - Brother Ali
The albino rapper represents the Rhymesayers formula and he’s a refreshingly positive voice in today’s game. Metro, $15, 9pm, 18 and older.

AROUND TOWN/CLASSICAL - Beers and Baritones
Leave the tuxes at home for this informal opera evening. Featuring performances by soprano Leila Bowie and baritone Martin Woods of the Chicago Opera Theater’s Young Artists Program, this might be the only time when you can catch some red-hot opera, swig a beer and nosh some appetizers all at the same time. Music, beer, wine and finger foods are included with tickets. Rock Bottom Restaurant and Brewery, 1 W Grand Ave (312-704-8414, chicagooperatheater.org). 6–8pm, $25.

ART & DESIGN - “The Hydroacoustic Show”
Artist Ben Russell curates an evening of aquatic films and videos by Pipilotti Rist and six others. Gallery 400, UIC, 400 S Peoria St. 7pm. FREE!

Female mud-wrestling troupe the Mud Queens of Chicago got down and dirty last night at Reggie’s rock club as the Bad Knights (a quartet of what looked like former-D&Ders in cardboard medieval helmets) comically ripped through speed-metal riffs.

Backstage before show time, the colorfully-named cast of hard-drinking Mud Queens—among them Smother Theresa, Twisted Fister, Tinker Hell, and Andy Kaufman’s Cancer (printed on her shirt: “You can fight cancer, but you can’t beat it”)—were most of the way through a 30-pack of PBR cans. However, the troupe’s founder and ringleader Meg Bell (wrestling name: the Fulsom Prison Manhandler) was a little worried. “You can show your whole breast in public, but you can’t show nipples,” she said, wondering aloud whether the girls should should apply duct tape to their nipples before hitting the ring—you know, just in case. “No one said anything about it, so I think we’re okay,” she concluded, tipping back her head of jet-black hair toward the ceiling and taking a big gulp of beer.

Bell’s concerns were not baseless: As the bikini-clad Mud Queens pummeled each other in the ring of mire, it seemed bared nipples were unavoidable. Lucky for Bell and Reggie’s, the cops didn’t show.

Read more »

AROUND TOWN/BOOKS  - Superfreakonomics!
Terrorism, global warming, altruism: All will be tackled here. Best-selling author Steven D. Levitt gives listeners his view on what causes each, using sources ranging from environmentalists to pimps. This lecture is presented by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and is preceded by a reception at 5:30pm. The Ritz-Carlton Chicago, 160 E Pearson St (312-726-3860, thechicagocouncil.com). 6pm; $30, Chicago Council members $20, Young Professional members $10, President’s Circle, Corporate and student members free.

ART & DESIGN - “Italics: Italian Art Between Tradition and Revolution 1968–2008.”
On Tuesdays, the MCA’s new Italian art show is open late and free. Bravo! Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E Chicago Ave. 10am–8pm. FREE!

MUSIC - Marissa Nadler + Alela Diane
Oddball neo-psyche folkie Alela Diane is a perfect match for Marissa Nadler, whose own ethereal take on folk has a way of sneaking up and nestling in your brain like a subconscious ghost with mysterious intentions. Schubas, 8pm, $12.

NIGHTLIFE - Syrup
Zebo and Major Taylor may spend most of their time playing club tunes to the weekend warrior set, but they don’t let that define who they are as DJs. Taking to the earth-friendly confines of Butterfly Social Club every third Tuesday of the month, the duo dedicates the evening to the slow and low tempos, playing lovey and mellow jams all night long.
Butterfly Social Club, 10pm. FREE!

THEATER - Emergency
Playwright-performer Daniel Beaty portrays more than 40 characters in his Obie-winning solo show, in which a phantom slave ship rises out of the Hudson in front of Lady Liberty. Hal & Martha Hyer-Wallis Theater, Northwestern University, 7pm, $30.

Ken Isaacs, Knowledge Box, 1962/2009. Photo: James Prinz.

ART & DESIGN  - Modern Mondays: Knowledge Box Re-created
Designer Ken Isaacs speaks about his Knowledge Box, an immersive teaching device, invented in 1962, which is a highlight of the exhibition “Learning Modern.” Sullivan Galleries, SAIC, 33 S State St, seventh floor. 4:30–5:30pm. FREE!

AROUND TOWN/SPORTS & REC/MUSIC - Mud Queens
Dirt and sometimes panties fly when one woman wrestles another woman in the mud. Dedicated to promoting a “mud-slinging, hootin’ and hollerin’ kind of culture,” this battle royale is preceded by showcases from the bands the Bama Lamas, Get Up with the Get Downs and the Alright Alreadies. Patrons must be 21 or older. VIP tickets include balcony seating. Reggie’s Music Joint, 2105 S State St (mudqueens.com). 7pm; $10, VIP $25.

FILM - Ong Bak 2: The Beginning
Let’s be clear on this: If you go to see a martial arts movie, you’re not looking for Citizen Kane or subtle psychologically rich performances or complex plotting. You’re there for the stunts. In Ong Bak 2: The Beginning, Tony Jaa delivers. Watching him plow through a string of opponents armed mostly with just his hands and feet is great fun. Music Box, 3733 N Southport Ave between Grace St and Waveland Ave (773-871-6604). El: Brown to Southport. Bus: 80 Irving Park, 152 Addison. Mon 16—Thu 19. See musicboxtheatre.com for showtimes. Regular and midnight $9.25, first daily show $8.75.

MUSIC - Devendra Banhart
The freak-folk forerunner’s latest, What Will We Be, is a honey of a record, filled with songs so warm and inviting, you practically want to lean into them. Vic Theatre, 7:30pm, $28.50, all ages.

GAY & LESBIAN/NIGHTLIFE - Chances Dances
Lasting longer than most gay relationships, this four-year-old queer party still rocks Wicker Park. Subterranean, 2011 W North Ave (773-278-6600). El: Blue to Damen. Bus: 50, 56, 72. 9pm, FREE!