Purchase tickets by calling: 312-922-2322, or visiting: aidschicago.org). Hilton Chicago, 720 S Michigan Ave. 6–10pm, $75 in advance, $100 at the door.

Austin City Limits 7-8pm, PBS. Elvis Costello and The Band of Heathens perform.

The Godfather, Part II 7-11:30pm, AMC. There’s really not much on tonight, so why not take in a classic?

John Fogerty: Live by Request 8-10pm, WTTW. The musician performs songs that are requested by viewers.

Saturday Night Live 10pm-midnight, NBC. Taylor Swift does double duty as host and musical guest. If you’re a teenage girl, you’ve got to be in heaven.

MUSIC - The Numero Group’s Eccentric Soul Review

SHOPPING & STYLE - Beta Boutique sample sale
Lakeviewers are in luck this weekend as Bucktown’s brick-and-mortar Beta Boutique holds court in the old Ciao Bella space for a two-day sample sale. Expect the same goodies you find at the store, such as looks by local designers including dIETERbeNNET and Lara Miller marked anywhere from 40–90% off. Ciao Bella, 3829 N Southport Ave (betaboutique.com). El: Red to Addison. Bus: 9, 22, 152. Sat 7, 11am–6pm; Sun 8, noon–5pm.

FILM - Johnny Guitar
We’ll admit to having a soft spot for weird overblown Westerns from the 1950s (Anthony Mann, Budd Boetticher…love ’em), but trust us; Johnny Guitar is a crazy-great Western, with Joan Crawford as a saloon owner and Sterling Hayden as a guitar-strumming gin-for-hire. 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. Fri 6 at midnight, Sat 7 at midnight. Sat, Sun at 11:30am. Regular and midnight $9.25, first daily show $8.75.

NIGHTLIFE - The Goodness
Rude 1 hosts this party to push the hip-hop envelope past the drivel that makes up most mainstream rap these days. Monthly he keeps it real with a mix of high-brow beats and the odd bit of turntablism. This month he’s lined up Edan, whose obscure ’60s rock and psychedelia sampling productions have garnered him quite a following. Lava. 9pm, $10.

THEATER - Silent Nightmare—A Christmas Dirge
What, seriously?! Didn’t you just finish cleaning up yakked-up candy corn from last weekend’s Halloween party? Yep, it’s true: The Annoyance has 2009’s first Christmas show out of the gate. At least it has the decency not to be sentimental; this collection of twisted holiday shorts is for the resolutely tarhearted. Annoyance Theatre, 8pm, $15.

Meyer's iconic sign can be seen in the new Gene's Sausage, which opens tomorrow.

This may be old news to you, but it bears repeating anyway: A slew of iconic, old-school food joints are back from hiatus this weekend. Here’s a list:

- Delicatessen Meyer, which closed in March 2007, is coming back tomorrow, kind of. Gene’s Sausage Shop has moved into the space, but the essence (and signage) of Meyer will be in full force. 4750 N Lincoln Ave.

- Sun Wah, the much-loved Chinese barbecue joint, has reopened after a brief hiatus. 5039 N Broadway.

- Salam—perhaps the most authentic and delicious Middle Eastern food in the city—will reopen on Saturday in a bigger and ostensibly less-divey space. (And if the Grand Re-Opening deal—a meat combo plate with humus, babaganouj, fries or rice, salad and pita for $6.95—is any indication, the prices are not going up.)

- And Ba Le—well, Ba Le is still around for now, but in two months it will move to a bigger space next door. So when it see that it’s gone, don’t freak out. If it isn’t obvious already, these types of restaurants have a tendency to reappear.

Update: TechCrunch reports that the Twitter account in question was fake all along, and the legit newsstream preceding the offensive tweets (obviously not included in the above screengrab) was only a cheap attempt to deceive overzealous media peeps (like your’s truly!). Here is the official link to MSNBC’s news feed.

Saturday 7

More than 2,000 kids are expected to join the one-mile Fall Fun Run in Washington Park (5700 S Russell Dr), where there will also be Nike giveaways and pre-run warm-ups with former Olympians Connie Moore and William Scherr. 10am–noon, FREE.

Old Town School of Folk Music Wiggleworms instructor Lisa Derosia plays a family show at pop-up shop Kooky (3447 N Southport Ave). (Stream some of her awesome grown-up tunes with her country roots band Lush Budgett here). 2pm, FREE.

The Gene Siskel Film Center (164 N State St) brings back last year’s popular program devoted to master Muppeteer Jim Henson with Muppets, Music & Magic: Jim Henson’s Legacy. The month-long program screening movies, commercials and shorts kicks off today with a 90-minute screening of rare clips hosted by Craig Shemin, vice president of the Jim Henson Legacy organization. 8pm, $5-$10.

Sunday 8

The Chicago Humanities Festival is hosting two great family events in conjunction with the grown-up Laughter! fest: Trickster!, spotlighting the mischievous characters in classic folklore, including West Africa’s Anansi the Spider and King Ravana from the Hindu story Ramayana. (Thorne Auditorium, 375 E Chicago Ave) Noon-1pm.  Insect Antics: A Louse-y Sense of Humor explores science and comic aspects of bugs with entomology expert May Berenbaum and writer Amy Leach. Harold Washington Library Center, 400 S State St, 1:30–2:30pm. Each event is $10, $5 in advance at 312-494-9509 or the CHF web site.

“I want my clothes to be your friends,” Diane von Furstenburg told a couple hundred guests at Neiman Marcus last night after models donning looks from her winter and resort collections had finished struts down the catwalk. “I want you to reach into your closet for my clothes when you want to feel good.”  In a charming thank-you-for-coming wrap-up, the woman who made wrap dresses an eternal gotta-have-one item explained that nothing makes her happier than hearing a woman say she was wearing a DVF piece during an important event that marked a new beginning in hlife—like a marriage proposal, or a successful job interview. “And no matter how old or young you are, there are always new beginnings,” she added. The crowd-pleasing collection had a characteristically happy DVF vibe: jumpers, dresses, tunics, pin-up style bathing suits and cardigans came in ethnic prints, polka dots, bright-hued sequins, flowy chiffon and hot pink. And just about every look—minus the giant, over-the-top bow turbans—looked as wearable as DVF’s ubiquitous wrap dress.

Here are selected events that didn’t make it into this week’s print edition. Unless otherwise noted, events are free.

In the West Loop, ebersmoore holds special hours for its new show “Rob Carter: Stone on Stone” today until 9pm.

In River North, David Weinberg Gallery debuts recent wax-infused abstract paintings by Eric Blum and mixed-media assemblages by Hunt Rettig in “Infuse” Friday 6, 5–8pm.

Wicker Park/Bucktown First Friday takes over the Flatiron Arts Building Friday 6, 6–10pm. ($5 suggested donation.)

Lincoln Square’s Fill in the Blank Gallery highlights humorous prints by Gretchen Huffman in “Choose Your Own Adventure” tonight, Friday 6, 7–10pm.

On Saturday 7 at the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago artist Silvia Malagrino explains how Spanish artist Francisco Goya (1746–1828) influences her work as part of the museum’s Artist Connect series. (1–2pm, free with museum admission.)

The Art Institute also hosts “Photography Conversation,” a Chicago Humanities Festival event, from 1–2pm. Curator Matthew S. Witkovsky speaks with artists Liz Deschenes and Gaylen Gerber about the new works they prepared for the Modern Wing’s inaugural photography exhibition. ($5, educators and students free.)

In the West Loop, McCormick Gallery hosts a reception for “Melville Price: USA,” which highlights the W.P.A. artist’s 1960s works, Saturday 7, 4–7pm.

At Pilsen gallery and boutique Golden Age, Alex Fuller (of the Post Family) and Gabe Usadel celebrate the release of their book The Incredible Journey That Is Consciousness from 7–11pm.

Sunday 8, 11am–6pm, Bruce Thorn hosts a “Studio Exhibition” in Ravenswood with work by William Conger, Susan Michod and several other local artists.

In Oak Park, the mysterious New York artist Donelle Woolford (Google her, you’ll see what we mean) visits The Suburban Sunday 8, 2–4pm. Woolford exhibits recent paintings and gives a performance, Dan Graham Withdrawal Syndrome, at 2pm.

The Robinson brothers

The Black Crowes were something of platinum-record selling anomaly during the grunge-pop ’90s with a Stonesy swagger and the Southerned flavored bluesy rock that was more traditionally rock n’ roll than the punk-inspired fare from Seattle. But after talking to Crowes drummer Steve Gorman earlier this week, I’m more convinced than ever that the Crowes were a key band of the ’90s and not so different from the underground acts of the same era, at least in attitude. Tonight, Atlanta’s Black Crowes take the stage the Riviera.

Here are some of the highlights from my rather lengthy conversation with Gorman. Thanks Steve.

On recording Before the Frost… Until the Freeze live with an audience at Levon Helm’s studio in Woodstock, New York…
It was very inspiring, but it wasn’t an intentional Let’s go try to capture something The Band was into. The more we plan, the less we get done. How we get from A to Z is anyone’s guess. We were picturing a conventional studio and inviting 20 or 30 of our fans in. What would that do? Chris went to see one of Levon’s Midnight Rambles. And he went This is it. And we thought What if we get a live record out of it? As it turned out, we got a full live album out of it because we thought it was good enough.

On being on an independent label vs. working with a major…
The thing is, when we were dealing with record companies which tend to be full of strongly opinionated people, we never cared what they thought anyway. I’m not saying that with bravado or isn’t that funny, it kind of hurt us in a lot of ways. I wish we had been more amenable to working with people, looking back. We were stubborn just to be stubborn. We’re cutting off our nose to spite our face. We can say we will get in line to work with people, but we haven’t found people we trust enough so let’s quit kidding ourselves, we’re not a part of that machine and when that machine still existed and helped us greatly—we didn’t get it, faked it and tried and ended up pissing people off. We felt, as young guys, Who are you to tell us what to do with our band? And okay, that makes sense to a point, but everyone is just trying to do their job.

This time around, labels were saying Let me hear some songs and we were like You know what, we don’t what to play demos for somebody and get an approval. Let’s just do this one ourselves. I wasn’t offended by that at all. If I started a record label, I wouldn’t be signing anybody I didn’t have demos on. I get it.

On the band getting to a wiser place…
Truth be told, not wise enough. Within the band, we’re better at realizing This is just what we are. As much as you hear about the brothers, its everybody, everyone is a strong willed character. Anytime anyone says they’re the third Robinson brother, I just want to punch ‘em, I’m like What the fuck are you talking about? I’m me, and they’re not the same, those guys can’t stand to be lumped together. The hardest part about being in a band is being in a band. Ask any group of four, five or six men… you just want to have a little space. There’s a big difference between what you are doing on stage and what you are doing backstage.

On stretching out stylistically…
We tried a lot of things in the ’90s, they didn’t end up on the albums. The difference with Warpaint, is we felt more confident. Other than By Your Side, every album was pretty sprawling. If you go back and look at the b-sides, the elements are all there. We’ve always done country covers and straight-blues covers, but we never felt the songs we were writing in that vein were real enough. All the stuff we wrote on the last two albums were written completely organically. There’s no conversation about where’s this going, its just going. Whatever inertia we create, we don’t try to corral it.

On the band’s original sound…
When I was 25, I told people just put the ’70s and the ’80s together. It came from mostly Southern independent bands that we could see all the time, with a few exceptions, like Midwestern bands. The Replacements were huge to us and the Violent Femmes. Any of those band that came out and were allowed to make the records they wanted. If they were on I.R.S., I just assumed they were really cool, so I bought it.