As Bees in Honey Drown Grassroots Theatre Company And now the Graces have conspired to bring us two plays by New York’s newest flash in the pan, Douglas Carter Beane, whose work displays the kind of shimmering fake seriousness that keeps so much contemporary playwriting on the brink of irrelevance. Best known for his screenplay To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar, Beane knows how to generate a buzz. Several years back he formed a New York theater troupe called the Drama Dept....

Before Syd Harris started photographing Chicago workers in the 1950s, he was one himself, logging 20-some years in the stockyards and behind the wheel of a beer truck. But he’d also fought with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade during the Spanish civil war and helped run the presidential campaign of Progressive Party candidate Henry Wallace in 1948; his decision to take up the camera at age 40, says his widow, Mimi Harris, grew out of his desire “to change the world....

The 14th annual Chicago Humanities Festival, this year themed “Saving + Spending,” continues Saturday and Sunday, November 8 and 9, offering dozens of lectures, readings, and discussions by writers, artists, and scholars (see schedule below) as well as films by director Costa-Gavras at Facets Cinematheque and theatrical and musical performances (see separate listings in this section and in Section Three). The following events take place at Alliance Francaise, 54 W. Chicago; Art Institute, Michigan and Adams; Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E....

CHRIS SPEED TRIO Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » On their recent album, Iffy (Knitting Factory), Chris Speed’s trio looks like a traditional organ combo, but he plays with the form’s conventions at every turn. The well-named opener, “A Little Odd,” swings straightforwardly at first, as keyboardist Jamie Saft lays down a walking bass line, but then Speed pulls out his clarinet, and his liquid tone makes for a strange mix of colors with the soulful sound of the organ....

Calling him a “terrorist” might help you get through. Tom McGrath writes U.S. Catholic (October) on the omnipresence of commercials: “If any of us were approached by a slick-talking stranger who said he wanted to come into our house and talk to our kids for a couple of hours a night–just to give them suggestions about what to wear, what to eat, what kind of music they should like, and what they should consider dorky–we would call John Ashcroft and try to have that person arrested....

Aptly subtitled “Incomplete Tales of Several Journeys,” the fifth feature by Austrian director Michael Haneke (2000, 117 min.) is a procession of lengthy virtuoso takes that typically begin and end in the middle of actions and/or sentences, constituting not only an interactive jigsaw puzzle but a thrilling narrative experiment comparable to Alain Resnais’ Je t’aime, je t’aime, Jacques Rivette’s Out 1, and Rob Tregenza’s Talking to Strangers. The film’s second episode is a nine-minute street scene involving an altercation between an actress (Juliette Binoche in a powerful performance), her boyfriend’s younger brother, an African music teacher who works with deaf-mute students, and a woman beggar from Romania, and the other episodes represent a kind of narrative dispersal of these characters and some of their relatives across time and space....

One of the many highlights on the Roots’ Phrenology is “The Seed,” a riff-driven gem written, sung, and played by 32-year-old Cody Chesnutt. A version of that song originally appeared on his ambitious 2002 double-CD debut, The Headphone Masterpiece (Ready Set Go!), a 36-track lo-fi collectionon which Chesnutt played every instrument–and where his potential is matched only by his braggadocio. His attitude, always cocky and sometimes mean-spirited, is pure hip-hop–on “Bitch, I’m Broke,” his one attempt at rapping, he upbraids a prostitute, “I got a big fat dick and that’s all you’re gonna get”–but his preferred musical style is a rich blend of soul and rock....

Letters: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Our civilization is headed for the dustbin of history (“The Courage of His Convictions” 01-28-00). In turning the pages to complete the article, I saw that Cecil (in “The Straight Dope”) came out for homosexual marriage which is an endgame death wish if I ever saw one! The eternal consternation of a lawmaker having been arrested 32 times for breaking the law!...

Now You Know, the recently released solo bow by former (and, the flacks assure us, current) Built to Spill front man Doug Martsch, isn’t actually new–it was recorded in 1999, between that year’s poppy Keep It Like a Secret and last year’s doleful Ancient Melodies of the Future. But it feels that way. Not just a band album that didn’t happen to be recorded by the singer’s usual band (like the new solo disc from Rhett Miller of the Old 97’s), Now You Know sounds out of place in the Built to Spill catalog, thanks to its pronounced blues feel....

Eagle Hills, Eagle Ridge, Eagle Landing, Factory Theater, at Stage Left Theatre. Lab Rats, Factory Theater, at Stage Left Theatre. Eagle Hills, Eagle Ridge, Eagle Landing is about men leading lives of quiet desperation. Lab Rats is a series of sketches suggesting that the solution is to crank up the volume. Each benefits from exceptional acting, but even strong actors require direction and a script, and neither piece has much to offer in either department....

You’d never know it from the graceful symmetry they achieve on 2002’s Snake Eyes (Delmark), but brothers Eddie and Jimmy Burns seldom played together until a few years ago. Eddie was born in Belzoni, Mississippi, in 1928 and has lived in Detroit since 1948. He’s best known for his work with John Lee Hooker, first on harmonica (in the late 40s on Sensation) and later on guitar (those are his leads snaking through “I’m in the Mood” and “One Scotch, One Bourbon, One Beer” on Hooker’s seminal mid-70s album The Real Folk Blues)....

LOVELIGHT SHINE, MOODS FOR MODERNS Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Like the 50s in Happy Days, the 70s are a lot more palatable the second time around, and a band like San Diego’s Lovelight Shine (whose guitarists and drummer played together in the emo outfit Jejune) can celebrate the outlandish pomp of AOR’s golden age even as they hold it at arm’s length. Their debut EP, Makes Out (Big Wheel Recreation), begins with a pair of ballistic power-pop numbers, but by the fifth and final track, “The March Is On,” it’s grown positively operatic, its gigantic power chords laden with synthesized strings, harmonic double guitar solos, and regal us-against-the-world choruses....

Metalux Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » After a series of personnel changes in the past two years, the local darkwave project Metalux seems to be back down to core members J. Graf and M.V. Carbon–who both also contribute guitar to the mysterious and scientifically fractured rock of Bride of No No. In this outfit they take a slightly less accessible approach, torturing their axes with kitchen knives or barely playing them at all and augmenting their mutant sounds with quivering samples, creepy carny keyboards, and ominous synth drums....

Moreno +2 made an auspicious debut in 2001 with Music Typewriter (Luaka Bop), a forward-looking collection of sambas and bossa novas. The trio, fronted by Moreno Veloso (son of Caetano), built elegant, simple ballads around soothing acoustic guitar figures, then integrated smart electronic touches–“Enquanto isso” was driven by drum ‘n’ bass thumping; synthesizer and theremin squiggles livened up “Das partes.” Moreno wrote most of these songs, but the group members shifted duties for its excellent second album, Sincerely Hot (released last year and thus far available only as a pricey import on Nippon Crown): it was percussionist Domenico Lancelloti’s turn to lead....

Jill Benjamin’s exploration of dating and other painful rituals has apparently gained several IQ points since its run last fall, thanks to some innovative rewrites, Ron West’s restaging, and Benjamin’s peas-in-a-pod chemistry with new partner Brian Shortall. Here’s the trick as I see it: instead of parading a string of drawn-out Love, American Style scenarios, Benjamin cuts right to the punch lines and delivers them with machine-gun rapidity. For example, the show opens with Benjamin and Shortall on either side of a door placed center stage....

Each of the five studio albums British folk-rock great Richard Thompson put out on Capitol between 1988 and 1999 was what you might call a quality effort, a collection of smart, catchy songs punctuated by Thompson’s unpredictably wrenching guitar solos. But he seemed to be settling into a routine, and his music rarely burned with the sense of purpose that fueled his great 70s and early 80s work with his wife Linda....

My girlfriend and I have been together for two years, and while it’s the best relationship I’ve ever been in, we’re not sexually compatible. Her ideal amount of sex would be twice a month. For me the number is closer to once a day. We’ve reached a compromise that usually comes out to three times a week, but that number leaves her feeling oversexed and me feeling undersexed. The reason she claims to not like sex is that she’s usually unable to climax without fantasizing that she’s being drugged and taken advantage of by evil research scientists....

BLACK EYED PEAS 5/25, HOUSE OF BLUES This LA trio, which combines the flower-child vibe of De La Soul with the syncretic futurism of the Roots, is fast becoming the ideal hip-hop group for people who don’t like hip-hop very much. The group’s aptly titled second album, Bridging the Gap (Interscope), is packed with high-profile cameos by the likes of De La Soul, Macy Gray, Les Nubians, Mos Def, and Wyclef, which never allow the music to get too subtle....

Can a person request to be buried in his backyard rather than a cemetery? A guy in West Virginia said in June that he planned to be buried in his yard; the city council had to pass a new law to prevent it. I say a person (in California, where I live) can be buried anywhere he wants as long as he complies with health department laws, even if it is in his yard (front, back, or side)....

You haven’t had a really odd column in a while–how about an overview of trepanning? Who are some of the people availing themselves of this “earliest known surgery” and why are they allowed to run around loose (if in fact they are)? KIDS, DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME! –hraka Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Archaeological evidence of trepanning has turned up all over the world, in the form of skulls with holes up to two inches in diameter bored into them....