If I tell you what artistic director Molly Shanahan’s new piece is “about,” you might not go: the nature of action and perception, the supposed difference between art and “real life,” the unity of the self–or lack thereof. But you should know that the 45-minute So-Called Repetition is far from dry. Beautiful, oblique rather than didactic, and deeply felt, this mostly solo work is performed by Shanahan with a little help from a second dancer and a lot of help from her collaborators: Esther Palmer, who’s expertly manipulated the video footage Shanahan shot, and Kevin O’Donnell, who’s composed a brilliantly layered, often sad and thoughtful score for piano, violin (played by Andrew Bird), and percussion....

“We wear these masks ’cause we’re so damn pretty,” says “Senor Spanish Fly,” the unofficial spokesman for Chicago’s first full-contact bowling team, Los Diablos Guapos. Speaking with the confidence bestowed by his glistening Mexican wrestling mask, he adds, “And we still score every night.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The Guapos wear colorful singlets and wield character-specific props like the “elefante spray” that Gigante (a Web designer) uses to exterminate his competitors....

Back before MP3s, CDs, cassettes, LPs, 78-rpm records, and Edison cylinders, the primary medium for the sale of songs was sheet music, and sheet music stores were as common as florists or dry cleaners are today. With every technological advance in the sale of music, the sheet music trade has dwindled a little further, and some anticipate that the latest threat–the Internet–will be the death of brick-and-mortar sheet music retailers....

“He noticed everything,” says Mimi Brav of Stan Brakhage, the world-renowned avant-garde filmmaker who died last month. Brav met him in 1972, when he was lecturing at the School of the Art Institute. “I was very young,” she says. “I had never experienced anyone with the degree of sensitivity he had. He would see a thousand things within a few blocks, pointing out every bit of Louis Sullivan architecture, the features of people on the street and the way they moved, the light in the sky, sounds you wouldn’t be that conscious of....

The CollaborAction Theatre Company’s second annual festival of short plays includes entries by David Mamet, Eric Bogosian, Brett Neveu, Regina Taylor, Beth Henley, and Wendy MacLeod. This “progressive mixed-media festival” also features visual art (environmental design by Wesley Kimler as well as a display of drawings by local artists, including Ed Paschke and Tony Fitzpatrick, which will be silently auctioned throughout the festival); DJs creating soundscapes 45 minutes before each performance; and a live video Web broadcast on closing night....

Dear Mr. Miner: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I was sorry to read about the personal motivation behind Steve Neal’s editorial regarding Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn and Studs Terkel’s review of the Ayers book [Hot Type, September 28], but it was still very important and very relevant for Neal to mention Terkel’s opinion that this book is “a deeply moving elegy to all those young dreamers who tried to live decently in an indecent world....

Where Was Daley? As it was, Chicago voters did a pretty good job of rallying on their own. Kerry won all 50 wards–including the 41st, which has the city’s only Republican alderman–racking up about 81 percent of the total vote. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Nevertheless registration and turnout were slightly lower this year than in 2000, when Daley’s brother William was Al Gore’s campaign manager....

Now that the “Chicago school miracle” bandwagon has moved on…Some pedestrian facts from the education committee of the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago, from the July report “Left Behind: Student Achievement in Chicago’s Public Schools”: “Today, in Chicago’s public high schools, only 36% of 11th graders meet or exceed state reading standards. Only 26% of 11th graders meet or exceed state math standards, and only 22% meet or exceed state standards in science....

DAVID JOHANSEN & THE HARRY SMITHS Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » From his days as front man for the New York Dolls to his more recent incarnation as lounge lizard Buster Poindexter, David Johansen has often relied on an unstable mixture of gifted role-playing and heavy-handed irony. But with his new band he seems to have found a better fit–though “folkie” may be just another role for him, it’s one he can inhabit sincerely....

The elegant but spare sculptures of Doug Cocker, a resident of rural Scotland, are crafted of unstained wood without nails, screws, or glue and shaped to echo farm implements or natural scenes. The 16 pieces of Speaking in Tongues, part of the exhibit at the John David Mooney Foundation, include wooden plows and yokes; mirrored in clean wood on a gallery wall, the tools’ dynamic forms are more apparent–one can almost feel the plow’s curves cutting into the land....

On the hot and humid evening of Thursday, August 1, several dozen people gathered in a union hall near the corner of Jackson and Homan to oust Mayor Daley from office. The room was sweltering, but for the most part the rhetoric stayed cool. Convened by the Accountability Committee (TAC), a newly formed activist coalition, the meeting was more tactical planning session than pep rally. The overwhelmingly African-American audience appeared to take neglect of and hostility toward the black community–as evidenced by the shortage of affordable housing and the low number of blacks in top city jobs–as a fact of the Daley administration....

For over a decade plenty of activists and independents in Lakeview pleaded with restaurateur Tom Tunney to run for alderman of the 44th Ward. And last month Tunney, the popular owner of the Ann Sather restaurants, finally agreed. But instead of cheers from his old friends and allies, Tunney’s getting brickbats. Last summer many residents decided they’d had enough. They said the ward was too congested. There was no place to park....

I am writing to discuss your review of “Big Names on the Street” [Post No Bills] in the June 20 edition of the Reader. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » You state: “Taste of Lincoln Avenue has booked 10,000 Maniacs, but most of the 30-plus other acts it’s scheduled are the contemporary equivalent of those 80s bar bands, unoriginal if popular groups like Hello Dave, Underwater People, and Mike and Joe....

10 on Ten Abbas Kiarostami’s recent features satisfy few of the usual expectations about narrative films. Yet in 10 on Ten–a documentary about his most recent feature, 10, showing twice this week at the Gene Siskel Film Center–he appears to be slavishly living up to those expectations. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “Making of” documentaries have been a cottage industry around the world for some time, not simply as DVD “extras” but as promotional tools....

Jacques Charonne’s novel Les destinees sentimentales follows a Protestant minister turned factory owner over the first three decades of the 20th century, and one suspects that director Olivier Assayas (Cold Water, Irma Vep, and Late August, Early September) was attracted to the material partly as a way of exploring his own Protestant roots. The hero (Charles Berling), doubting the fidelity of his wife (Isabelle Huppert), asks her to leave their home in the Charente region of France, and she takes their daughter with her....

Judging from its new Quasar, Kinetic Dance Theater works in the most popular of Chicago’s traditions, that of accessible, joyous, jazz-inflected dancing. Much of this hour-long piece shows the influence of Bob Fosse on founder-choreographers Joanna and Ryan Greer. There are worse influences to have, and it’s a witty idea to build an evening around songs that refer to the night sky: Van Morrison’s “Moondance,” Hoagy Carmichael’s “Star Dust,” the title piece by Herbie Hancock and Bennie Maupin....

Lead Stories In France, a deaf, partly blind, mentally retarded 17-year-old boy won a wrongful-birth lawsuit in October against doctors who failed to counsel his parents that the mother’s rubella during pregnancy almost certainly would cause birth defects. In December a Chinese couple was considering a lawsuit against the Tangxia Central Hospital for failing to disclose ultrasound examinations that showed their child, born in October, to have two heads. In January a Texas appeals court reversed a trial court decision that had awarded a couple $42 million for their daughter’s dismal quality of life; born prematurely, she is blind, incontinent, brain damaged, speechless, and paralyzed in three limbs....

Lead Stories Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In June, Milwaukee police officer Robert Henry, 34, was awarded lifetime disability benefits due to work-related stress, which he claimed was caused by the department’s decision to fire him after catching him roughing up a suspect on videotape in 2002. Henry, who joined the force in 1998, was awarded an immediate lump sum of $23,000 and $39,000 a year for the next 29 years–after which he’ll be eligible for full pension....

When Julie Toole started teaching at Pablo Casals Elementary in west Humboldt Park in 1992, the school offered music classes and an after-school program that taught students everything from tap dancing to violin. The curriculum changes–which included dumping the music teacher in favor of a writing lab position–came about in the wake of a 1996 School Reform Board decision to require that third-, sixth-, and eighth-graders meet minimum Iowa scores in reading and math before being promoted to the next grade....

Driving for Thrills in McHenry, IL Just past the castle to the north, the vague edges of the Volo Bog begin; a little way off to the right is the approximate location where the dead guy was found. Continue west around the bog, then take a right on Brandenberg Road. After another pair of right-left twists, you’ll come to the bog’s formal entrance; even absent a corpse, the bog is worth a look....