When ShaRita Alexander drives to class at National-Louis University at 7 AM she often sees her father, Roosevelt Alexander, ambling down the sidewalk. He’s always alone, moving slowly, his eyes focused straight ahead. “Why don’t you come to church with me?” she says, softening her tone. Early in his career, his fellow aldermen told the Review, Roosevelt earned a reputation for “acute self-awareness,” theatrics, and an ability to pose “the devastating question at the appropriate moment....

For 20 years Luis Gutierrez has billed himself as a backer of progressive Democratic politics in Chicago. But on March 17 he stunned even his core supporters by endorsing a Republican for town president of Cicero. And not just any old Republican. He backed Ramiro Gonzalez, the candidate handpicked by Ed Vrdolyak, the former Chicago alderman who’s had a big hand in running Cicero Republican politics. Of course Gutierrez isn’t the first independent politician who got to Congress by joining the machine....

Zorn and Ebert Play Beanball I E-mailed Ebert my thoughts, and we had an exchange. We agreed that Royko lost something when he crossed the street. It seemed to me he might have been happier being unhappy at the Sun-Times than he was being unhappy at the Tribune, and I tried to imagine the columns he would have written about the new lights at Wrigley Field if he’d stayed at the Sun-Times to write them....

“So you construe the Y2K crisis as some sort of success story!” said Eyre in astonishment. So we overestimated the crisis, I said. Steppenwolf Strikes a Nerve Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Grace, a Steppenwolf subscriber, settled into her seat for Hysteria expecting a “comic farce.” There were reasons for her to think so. Playwright Terry Johnson and artistic director Martha Lavey had called the play a farce in Backstage, the company’s quarterly magazine....

Cornetist Rob Mazurek began assembling his pals under the various Chicago Underground rubrics–Duo, Trio, Quartet, Orchestra–back in the mid-90s, but he’s never been real precise about his nomenclature. Both of the trio albums the group has made for Delmark feature four musicians, for example. Only Mazurek and percussionist Chad Taylor play on Axis and Alignment (Thrill Jockey), the latest effort attributed to the Duo, but thanks to electronics and overdubbing the album sometimes sounds like the product of four or five musicians....

Let’s build a swamp–but do it right this time. “Despite progress in the last 20 years, the goal of no net loss for wetland function is not being met,” according to a press release announcing a new National Research Council committee report. In theory, developers who can’t avoid filling in wetlands can make up for the damage by building new ones. The committee, chaired by Joy Zedler of the University of Wisconsin, found that practice doesn’t follow theory....

“From Chicago you look down upon all the other cities of the world like looking at the past,” wrote reporter, novelist, and photographer Heinrich Hauser. Born in Berlin at the turn of the last century, Hauser was fascinated by Chicago: in the summer of 1931 he shot a 70-minute black-and-white documentary titled Chicago–A World City Stretches Its Wings, and the same year he published his book Feldwege nach Chicago, in which he marveled at the city’s might and strangeness....

“Good Evening Africa,” the African arts showcase that convenes once a month at the Ethiopian Diamond restaurant in Edgewater, was about to hold its first stand-up comedy night. The African hosts–immigrants from Zimbabwe, Congo, Nigeria, Angola, and Sudan–were going to trade jokes with four members of Second City’s all-African-American Words improv ensemble. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Ibe had invited the Words ensemble, which regularly does outreach performances across the city, because he likes to mix Africans and African-Americans on the same bill....

Bob Fosse’s dances are known for their sexy, sassy, strutting style–the splayed fingers and serpentine arms, the scrunched shoulders and pumping pelvises. But what marks them as the work of a genius are the intricacy of his group compositions and the ingenious physicalization of a score’s internal rhythms and instrumental textures. His brilliance is on full display in this anthology of familiar and little-known numbers from such Broadway shows as Chicago, Sweet Charity, The Pajama Game, Dancin’, and the ill-fated Big Deal as well as TV’s Liza With a Z and the brilliant films Cabaret and All That Jazz....

Following a string of documentaries, Werner Herzog returns with his first dramatic feature in a decade, and though it’s based on the true story of Zische Breitbart, a Polish Jew whose feats of strength astounded Weimar Berlin, it unfolds with the elemental power of a legend. Zische (Jouko Ahola), a simple blacksmith from a modest family, is lured away from his shtetl by a wily theatrical agent, and once he arrives in Berlin he’s booked at a cabaret presided over by a wicked clairvoyant (Tim Roth)....

A wildly successful Nashville songwriter, Jim Lauderdale has delivered hits for George Strait, Patty Loveless, and Vince Gill but has never managed to achieve critical mass as a performer. At times it’s seemed like his efforts to narrow that gap have worked against his talents: he hit a creative peak with 1994’s Pretty Close to the Truth (Atlantic), a catchy blend of blue-eyed soul, subtle blues rock, pure pop, and old-fashioned honky-tonk, but his subsequent more commercial releases never did full justice to his quirky melodic gifts....

London-based classical guitarist John Williams–not to be confused with the movie composer–established his credentials more than 40 years ago with a series of debut recitals in Europe’s music capitals. In his early teens he was already a prodigious talent, mentored by Andres Segovia; he quickly overcame his early limitations–a narrow repertoire and a rather straitlaced approach to interpretation–by embarking on an extraordinarily busy recital and recording schedule. CBS Masterworks (now Sony Classical) signed him in the early 1960s, and since then he’s averaged a record or two every year....

Bailiwick Repertory and the Lesbian Theatre Initiative have teamed up to present the first edition of what they hope will be an annual multidisciplinary lesbian-centered fest showcasing drama, stage combat, poetry, comedy, and music by artists from around the country as well as Chicago. The event runs through May 4 at the Bailiwick Arts Center, 1229 W. Belmont. Individual ticket prices are shown below; a festival pass costs $50. In addition to the shows, the festival sponsors workshops on performance techniques taught by Cin Salach and Bev Spangler Saturdays at noon; admission to these is $10 or “pay what you can” at the door....

The 18th annual Port Clinton Art Festival will be held this weekend in Highland Park, which also marks the end of the Suburban Fine Arts Center’s annual Recycled Art Sale. The Port Clinton event features 260 artists from all over the U.S., plus Canada, Israel, and France, along with food vendors, music, and kids’ activities. The Recycled Art Sale can be–if you find a treasure among the junk and kitsch–the greatest art bargain around....

Ben Joravsky does a thorough job of assessing the flap over inserting a naval academy into Senn High School, treated as a matter of local involvement (or lack thereof) and of triage of educational resources among various stakeholders (“School for Sale,” October 15). Five years ago this might have been state-of-the-art analysis, although even then the question of whether military-based training is necessary or optimal to import “structure” into students’ lives–particularly low-income students of color–would have been a vexed one worthy of debate....

Stick Men There’s a point where more information becomes too much information. Every year more records come out, more books are published, more E-mails come in, more Web sites go up. If I miss a new CD these days, it’s usually because I lost track of it in this overcaffeinated shuffle–not because it was hard to track down. And yet, amazingly, since I moved to Chicago from Philadelphia in 1984, I’ve still met no more than two or three people who’ve ever heard of the Stick Men–a remarkable early-80s quintet from Philly whose complete recorded output has just been reissued as the CD Insatiable by the prog-oriented D....

Dear editor: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The failure of the Chicago Tribune to take any action against Judy Peres for publicly endorsing Not in My Name (Hot Type, May 3) leaves one question in my mind: if she endorsed an organization less agreeable to her colleagues, would they have reacted in a stronger manner? To use an extreme example to make my point, if a Tribune writer publicly endorsed and contributed financially to, say, a white supremacist group, would things have passed quite so smoothly for her?...

Ihaven’t attended the Cannes film festival in five years, but one thing that keeps it fascinating from a distance is the ideological tension that gets exposed there. The Americans display a sense of entitlement, which tends to irritate representatives of other countries. And the conflict is played out in the form of rants from both sides about what’s shown in competition and what wins prizes. It’s hard to know what mustache- and smoke-filled films Ebert had in mind....

British producer Richard Blair–the brains behind Sidestepper–got his start as a producer at Peter Gabriel’s Real World studios, but a 1992 trip to Colombia changed his trajectory. Producing music for pop stars like Carlos Vives and Aterciopelados as well as traditionalists Toto la Momposina, Blair got sucked in by the local sounds. As Sidestepper he started to craft a patchwork of Latin American genres with a distinctly British club feel. On his debut album, More Grip (Palm Pictures, 2000), he meticulously wed Colombian cumbia, Latin boogaloo, driving salsa, and a touch of reggae to state-of-the-art dance beats, particularly drum ‘n’ bass; with the help of guest vocalists like former Bloque front man Ivan Bevavides and Aterciopelados singer Andrea Echeverri, he iced the cake with sophisticated pop melodies....

The Big Funk, Clock Productions, at the Chopin Theatre. John Patrick Shanley’s strange little concoction revolves around a knife thrower (Dave Hoke), his pregnant wife (Jennifer Fisk), an actor (Ryan Kitley), and a self-hating woman (Janell Cox) in a Pirandello-like tableau of disillusion and despair, mixed with dry humor and little smatterings of emotion. Employing a brittle structure that might be considered innovative–or just odd–Shanley presents his own strong opinions. The characters spell out their inner workings in candid comic monologues, and the dialogue is focused as much on preaching as plot development....