CHICAGO — Here's what we're reading today.
Sideshow Bob To Kill Bart: After a string of bad news for fans of The Simpsons, including the recent departure of longtime cromulent cast member Harry Shearer, a glimmer of hope has emerged. Simpsons-crazed reporter Linze Rice is reading that the show's producers announced during a festival in Austin, Texas that Sideshow Bob will return for this year's annual Treehouse of Horror episode to finally kill mini-archnemesis Bart Simpson. Sideshow Bob, voiced by Kelsey Grammer and perhaps best known for his rendition of the entire H.M.S. Pinafore score and predisposition to stepping on rakes, has tried—and failed—to kill Bart in past episodes. The show's producers said they wanted to allow the audience to scratch an often un-itched suspenseful game of cat-and-mouse that unfolds throught a television series. The series-long plot was chronicled in Theater Wit's production of "Mr. Burns—A Post-Electric Play" earlier this year which sold-out during an extended run—embiggening audiences across the city.
Inmates at Cook County Jail prepare food in a pilot cooking program. [DNAInfo/Janet Rausa Fuller]
One Flew Over Cook County Jail: In the Atlantic, the headline “America’s Largest Mental Hospital is a Jail” refers, as many Chicagoans know, to Cook County Jail. In 1990, about 1 in 15 of the jail’s prisoners had a mental illness, but today, that number is 1 in 3. The author looks at the history of institutional mental health care in the United States, and speaks to inmates who are hopeful that they’ll break the prison cycle by going through Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart’s relatively new Mental Health Transition Center.
Uncle Bill's Band: Senior editor Andrew Herrmann spotted a couple Grateful Dead-related stories posted over the weekend in the Washington Post. The first describes the anger some Dead fans have over the ticket distribution for the upcoming shows in Chicago's Soldier Field and the guy in the center of the storm, promoter Pete Shapiro. (He's got a lot of obligations, including some Chicago Bears season ticket holders who got early dibs, says the Post's Geoff Edgars.) The other piece is a Q and A with former NBA player Bill Walton who says he has seen the Dead more than 850 times (and will be at the Chicago shows, too.) "I go for fun," he says. "But I also go to be healed, to think, to dream, to be inspired, and to see all my friends and family." Walton said he used to submit song requests to the band but then "I stopped asking and I tried to listen more. And I tried to let life, like the big river, find its course."
Bill Walton, former Boston Celtic, forever Grateful Dead fan. [Twitter]
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