On its opening weekend in May 2003, antique dealers and vendors braved thunderstorms to participate in the Chicago Antique Market in the West Loop. Although Sally Schwartz, the co-founder of the event, advised most of the vendors to pack up their booths and get out of the rain, most of the vendors said they sold more in the pouring rain than they ever had.

A rogue ninja battles a swarm of zombies in Chicago’s Landmark Centre Cinema, 2828 N. Clark St. He’ll later send one of the theater employees hurtling off the building’s fourth-story railing. It is no coincidence that these cinematic scenarios seem to have been dreamt up by a bored theater employee with the imagination of a frustrated artist. Columbia grad Matt Brookens fueled these images into his first independent feature project, the HD horror comedy The Art of Pain. Writer/director/producer Brookens is screening the film at the 1104 Center, 1104 S. Wabash Ave., on May 19 before its midnight screening at the Music Box Theatre, 3733 N. Southport Ave., on May 24.

Dancing in bare feet and utilizing every position the body can form, two senior dance majors will take to the floor and combine their experiences and visual movements into a dance showcase where their bodies and minds will become one as they move about the floor, twisting and bending around fellow dancers.

There is nothing blindingly original about Harold and Kumar. They’re cheerful all-American stoners in the tradition of Bill and Ted who allow their instinctual desires—women, weed and White Castle—to lead them into raunchy, crowd-pleasing misadventures. The duo’s ethnicity isn’t treated as an issue of relevance—except for all the bigoted white loonies they meet.

Chicago, known for its growing theater life, has seen a rise in local theaters producing plays written by Chicago writers. As the academic year winds down, a new batch of recently graduated Chicago writers will emerge from Columbia, eager to submit their manuscripts for consideration.

When I was growing up, I used to tell my friends my mom was dead. Yes, it sounds a bit extreme, since it wasn’t true, but it was the only way I, a 10-year-old, could think of explaining why my mom was never around and never showed up to my Girl Scout ceremonies or softball games. If I told my friends my mom was working, they would retort, “Or maybe she doesn’t love you.” But if I told them my mom was dead, they would shut up and drop it. Plus, it was funny to see their reactions when my mom would rise from the dead and actually show up.

I, admittingly, watch the brainless show known as “The Hills” on MTV. There’s some strange allure to watching girls cry over first world problems (ex: “Oh my God, should I go to Paris with Teen Vogue or stay in a really nice condo in California with my boyfriend for the whole summer? Life is so hard!”) and fight over best friends with the word “like” interjected every five seconds. For some reason it’s a great, not to mention hilarious, thoughtless escape from my daily activities. Although, I think I started watching it out of pure jealously of their fake journalistic lifestyle.

Each evening, headscarf-shrouded women seeking romantic advice gather at book stalls lining a rush-hour intersection in Nigeria’s Islamic heartland. With the sun setting red behind a nearby mosque, the women thumb through northern Nigeria’s unique, female-authored literary offerings: cheaply bound but popular volumes that address issues confronting women in a Shariah society: courtship, polygamy and the meaning of love.

They are rare, intimate images of John Lennon just before the breakup of The Beatles: He’s hunched over a piano writing songs, smoking pot, joking about putting LSD in President Nixon’s tea. Almost four decades after the footage was shot at Lennon’s estate in England, his widow is in court, fighting to keep the images private.

“It was an opportunity to take what I think has been a maligned world—to sound crass, a franchise—and treat it in a way that made it something that I wanted to see,” said Abrams, who finished shooting on Star Trek, due in theaters May 8, 2009. “To take the characters, the thoughtfulness, the personalities, the sense of adventure, the idea of humanity working together, the sense of social commentary and innovation, all that stuff. To take it and apply it in a way that felt genuinely thrilling.”