Countercultural publishing has never lacked for diversity, but there aren’t too many periodicals where you can find a 16,000-word essay on yippie exorcism of the Pentagon side-by-side with a matzo ball soup recipe from the Black Keys, a piece on filmmaker Haskell Wexler, and relationship advice from Mississippi bluesman T-Model Ford. That’s where Arthur comes in. The exuberantly eclectic free magazine, based in Los Angeles and Gaithersburg, Maryland, is distributed all over the country, in parts of Canada, and even in the UK, and it’s established a strong foothold in Chicago....

Any excuse to tell this story, reported by Robert Wilder Blue on the on-line magazine USOperaWeb, is good enough for me: Nearly four decades ago, when Catherine Malfitano auditioned for the Juilliard School and was rejected, three of the five judges advised her to “give up all hope of having a singing career.” Today, after hitting all the major opera houses of the world, Malfitano is still singing–and inspiring music as well....

Every morning Nathan Keay wakes up at 6 AM in his Albany Park apartment and by 7 he has the day’s mantra ironed onto a plain white T-shirt, which he’ll wear for the next 24 hours. When he wakes up the next day, he’ll shoot a photo and post it–complete with sleepy eyes and bedhead–on his Web site, www.iwanttofitin.com. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » He’d been collecting phrases for years when he started the project in November 2001–song lyrics, literary quotes, thought bytes....

In 1886 a little-known architect was hired by an undertaker’s family to design a Queen Anne-style residence at 303 W. Eugenie. Adam Boos, according to the Real Estate and Building Journal of May 15 that year, would be constructing the three-story building out of brick and stone. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “He thought this would be a better job,” recalls Chris Birren, a fifth-generation embalmer....

It’s hard to miss Mickle Maher’s brilliance in this ingenious retooling of the Faust legend, which he wrote and in which he stars as the jittery, self-recriminating doctor watching the last 60 minutes of his life slip away. Maher’s Faust is not the Renaissance braggart of Marlowe or the Romantic titan of Goethe but a skittish nobody plucked from the most pathetic comedies of Gogol. This Faust has purposely shrunk his life to a series of meaningless, forgettable tasks, reasoning that if he becomes nondescript Mephistopheles won’t recognize him when it comes time to claim his soul....

The 12th annual edition of this multidisciplinary fall arts festival, which was founded by the late Jim Happy-Delpech to showcase artists in Chicago’s Wicker Park and Bucktown neighborhoods, features offbeat theatrical fare ranging from the Schadenfreude improv group to stage versions of Anne Sexton poems and Heckle & Jeckle cartoons. The following listings are based on information provided by theater coordinator Jonathan Pitts; see listings elsewhere in this issue for information on poetry, dance, film, musical attractions, and visual art....

Friday 6/7 – Thursday 6/13 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Ladies and gentlemen! Behold the circus banners of Fred G. Johnson, a social commentator and master painter of flash art who lived for almost a century. Step right up to witness his genteel portraits of so-called freaks, like Emmett the Armless and Legless Boy, who’s painting a landscape with a brush in his mouth....

Chatto Wright traveled thousands of miles across continents and oceans to find a home in Chicago. Then she crossed one of the city’s great divides and opened a beauty shop on Oak Street. “Sometimes we all need to know how fortunate we are,” says Chatto, who’s known almost exclusively by her first name. “It’s also that way with me.” She settled in Chicago, determined to make her way by cutting hair....

CUBICLE RATS, Conspiracy Theatre Company, at Second City, Donny’s Skybox Studio. Like a lot of jaunts to the office-humor supply room, this show hinges on the weirdness of the workplace. Even the best-matched colleagues are bound to become surreally familiar through endless on-the-job shoulder rubbing, a state Cubicle Rats hyperextends ferociously. Its six coworkers (Joel Gray, Marz Timms, Jake Martin, Joanna Buese, Josh Walker, and Dori Goldman) drift through a lucid catatonia, seeming to one another–and to the audience–like ghosts or monsters sprung from a lithium dream....

For vocalist Damo Suzuki, creativity is inseparable from spontaneity. In 1970, two members of the archetypal Krautrock ensemble Can encountered him busking on a Munich sidewalk, making up songs off the top of his head, and asked him to join the band onstage that night. He did–without any rehearsal–and proceeded to stay on for three of Can’s best years. Nowadays Suzuki practices what he calls “instant composition,” sort of a full-band version of his street performance all those years ago; at a House of Blues show in 1998, a rhythm section laid down steady grooves and two guitarists, including Can’s Michael Karoli, laced their liquid melodies with feedback while Suzuki twisted his elastic voice from a low growl into a keening wail, using words more for their sound than their sense....

Lead Stories In January two University of South Carolina professors used a “pursuit decision calculus” to determine that high-speed police pursuits are more dangerous the more cars that are involved, the higher the speed, the darker it is, and the more crowded the streets are. And the research organization Statistics Canada concluded in December that the more alcohol mothers drink the more emotional and behavioral problems their kids tend to have....

Last year I rode in the annual 12-mile Polka Ride. That was my first time. I was doing pretty good. Then, at mile 11, I fell on the ground and the bike fell on me really, really hard. The worst pain I’ve ever felt–and I’ve felt some pain in my life. As soon as I fell, people came to help me. This Irish guy named Steve had this bicycle taxicab–so I’m riding behind this cute guy....

Off Again, On Again Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » A Devo reunion was prohibitively priced, but to Tortoise’s delight Television agreed to play. “Barry [Hogan], the promoter, went through [Yo La Tengo’s] Ira Kaplan to Tom Verlaine–as far as we know they might’ve planned a reunion anyway,” says Tortoise bassist Doug McCombs. “Ira went to Tom and told him what the festival was about, and then he wanted to do it....

POIRE_Z Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The four members of the international quartet Poire_Z–Swiss percussionist and electronicist GŸnter MŸller, French turntablist Erik M, and the German duo of Andy Guhl and Norbert Mšslang, better known as Voice Crack–have spent years developing highly personalized approaches to sound. So it’s a testament to their improvising skills that on the group’s debut album, Poire_Z (on MŸller’s For 4 Ears label), their methods meld so seamlessly–in fact, it’s pretty much impossible to determine who’s doing what....

I was listening to the radio today and Rick Santorum was mentioned. The first thought that popped into my head was, “Santorum? That frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the by-product of anal sex?” and not, “Santorum? That conservative prick?” Your column has worked the new meaning so far into my brain that it pops up first! –Santorum Hits in Total Best of Chicago voting is live now....

Reaching the end of this exquisite Writers’ Theatre production, all I wanted was to watch it again, backward. I longed to see its bitter climax give way to the sweet beginning I’d enjoyed so much, even though I knew the sweetness was false: a little sugar to palliate the bad bets made, bad breaks got, bad fates set in motion, and loaded guns waiting to go off. The play begins with a kind of existential round-robin....

I must confess: although I am a great admirer of Mr. Rosenbaum’s work, his review of Shadow of the Vampire [January 26] must be one of the dumbest things I’ve ever read. Then again, I’m not sure how seriously I’m supposed to take it, seeing as it appears alongside a review calling the utterly reprehensible The Wedding Planner “worth seeing.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » But anyway....

It seems to be an era in which the unthinkable has become routine. Sammy Sosa hits 64 home runs, the next-to-last one an inside-the-park gallop around the bases last Saturday like a kid in a Little League game, yet still finishes nine behind Barry Bonds and his record 73. Jon Lieber, traded for the disgraced Brant Brown not three years ago, withstands the pressure of being the Cubs’ ace and wins 20 games....

The boys in THE FAINT are still in stylistic hock to all the usual 80s suspects on the new Wet From Birth (Saddle Creek), but now the Mancunian authors of “Blue Monday” are clearly their chief creditors. Sloughing off the claustrophobic gloom of their cybergoth synth-pop masterpiece, Danse Macabre (2001), the band seems intent on steering back toward the manic pre-neo-new-wave pastiche of Blank-Wave Arcade (1999) and the sweaty, undersexed voyeurism of its club-life critique....

Sometimes innovations are so thoroughly absorbed into an art that the innovator fades into the background, but 15 years after John Cassavetes died, he’s achieved near-mythic status. Few people forget their first Cassavetes film; his work confuses and confounds, but even those who don’t like it can find it difficult to shake off. Recently the Criterion Collection released a lavish box of eight DVDs collecting five of the director’s features: Shadows (1959), Faces (1968), A Woman Under the Influence (1974), The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976), and Opening Night (1977)....