Rock, Pop, etc. BIG WU, UMPHREY’S McGEE Sat 1/27, 8 PM, the Vic, 3145 N. Sheffield. 773-472-0449 or 312-559-1212. STACEY EARLE, CHRIS MILLS Fri 1/26, 7:30 PM, Old Town School of Folk Music, 4544 N. Lincoln. 773-728-6000. DJ FRANKIE KNUCKLES, DISAPPEAR FEAR, KRISTEN HALL with DJ Lora Branch, DJ Gloria, Lakeside Pride Jazz Ensemble, Pulsation, Venus Envy, and Women of Song; benefit concert for the Lesbian Community Cancer Project. Sat 1/20, 7 PM-1 AM, South Shore Cultural Center, 7059 S....

Noted architect Edward Burling built the Renaissance-style mansion that houses BIGGS STEAKHOUSE AND WINE CELLAR in 1875 for financier John de Koven and his family, who turned it over to Joseph Biggs’s catering company in the early 1900s. It wasn’t until 1964 that the historic landmark became Biggs Restaurant, a fancy French dining room whose glory days ended in the late 70s. Several changes of hands later, Lezlie Keebler, her husband Louis Grant, and their partner Dan Cummins have taken over the lease....

Mark Weinberg eases toward the Loop on a congested Kennedy Expressway, the gas needle of his old Honda hovering just above empty. He’s hoping, perhaps against reason, to get downtown in time to find Jessie Thompson working the rush-hour crowd. As Green talks, he periodically interrupts himself to greet an acquaintance or thank a benefactor. “Hey, sweetie, how you doin’?” “Hey, thank you, partner. Have a good day.” “Hey, Rita, let me pick up this cup....

BELLRAYS Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » There must be 100,000 black chicks in America who dream of being Tina Turner but can’t find a band, and 300,000 white dudes who dream of being the MC5 but can’t find a singer who can testify. Why all 400,000 of them haven’t managed to locate one another is beyond me–but at least four of them have, and while the BellRays’ formula may seem glaringly obvious once you’ve heard them, that doesn’t make it any less brilliant....

Chicago’s annual literary festival continues through October 30, with readings and book signings by local and national writers, poets, and scholars as well as discussions, lectures, workshops, tours, and children’s activities at bookstores, public libraries, and other venues. Some events feature the city’s “One Book, One Chicago” selection, Tim O’Brien’s National Book Award-winning novel The Things They Carried. Admission is free unless otherwise noted. For more information call 312-747-4300, see www....

Chicago’s annual literary festival, formerly known as Chicago Book Week, is now a monthlong event. This year’s edition runs through October 30, with readings and book signings by local and national writers, poets, and scholars as well as discussions, lectures, workshops, tours, and children’s activities at locations throughout the city. Admission is free unless otherwise noted. See separate listing in Readings & Lectures for “One Book, One Chicago” discussions of Willa Cather’s My Antonia....

Chuchito Valdes Afro-Cuban Ensemble Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » No, it’s not a misprint. The same week that the grand old man of Cuban jazz, pianist Jesus “Chucho” Valdes, performs solo at Orchestra Hall, his son–pianist Jesus Valdes Jr., aka Chuchito–plays the first of several upcoming engagements with a Chicago band built around his considerable talents. A child prodigy raised in Havana and now living in Cancun, Chuchito has inherited more than his father’s famous name: on an as-yet-unreleased recording made here last summer, he displays the hell-bent intensity and daredevil technique of the elder Valdes–qualities recognized worldwide as hallmarks of Cuban jazz....

Stephanie Kennedy Sailor is running against Jesse Jackson Jr. for the Second District congressional seat, but she won’t be making any speeches, shaking any hands, or kissing a single baby. She’s running her campaign almost entirely on the Internet from her home in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Sailor’s also in favor of school choice. She promises to use zero dollars on her run and asks that any donations be made instead to the Jessica Fund, a scholarship program she’s set up and named after her opponent’s daughter....

The Kirov Orchestra has traditionally performed as a pit orchestra for the Kirov Opera and the Kirov Ballet at Saint Petersburg’s imposing Mariinsky Theatre, a cultural center in that most cosmopolitan of Russian cities since it opened in 1860. But over the past decade the orchestra has been establishing an identity of its own, delving into the symphonic literature under the guidance of 48-year-old maestro Valery Gergiev. The media-savvy conductor has been cultivating strong ties with the West, conducting concerts and organizing festivals from Rotterdam to San Francisco, and as head of the Mariinsky–a position he’s held since 1996–he’s used those connections to rescue an institution threatened by bureaucratic chaos and broken budgets....

Kelly Kleiman’s review of “Equal Footing/Equal Earing” (“Same Old Song and Dance,” 6/21) entirely missed the point of the series–and in its mean-spirited tone did much to set back any semblance of intelligent discourse on performance in Chicago. At the risk of being accused of sour grape syndrome, I write to rectify the skewed lens through which Kleiman viewed the performance. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The “Equal Footing/Equal Earing” series is a laudable attempt by curators Dave Pavkovic and Sheldon B....

No Cheering in the Press Box is the title of an old book by former Tribune sportswriter Jerome Holtzman, and as something of an old-school sportswriter myself, I follow that edict. My record is exemplary but for the odd groan when Jose Valentin boots a grounder or an oooh for a Sammy Sosa homer, not to mention the ohmigawd! I remember uttering in the auxiliary press box in the rafters of the old Chicago Stadium when Michael Jordan executed his famous tomahawk-dunk-transformed-into-a-left-handed-layup in the second game of the 1991 NBA finals against the Lakers....

STEFON HARRIS Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The vibraphone is a true child of the 20th century: without electricity, which rotates the metal discs below its tone bars, it couldn’t produce its signature vibrato. But the vibes’ gelid timbre and percussive attack haven’t become a widely used color in the musical palette. In jazz, only one generation has produced even two contemporaneous vibes giants–the baby boomers, who gave the world Gary Burton and Bobby Hutcherson–while the piano or saxophone consistently see a crowd of iconic players in any given year....

To make a true tequila you first need to tramp out into the agave fields of Mexico and whack a ten-year-old plant with a long sharp stick. Back in the distilleries, they watched the fermentation process. The heavy pineapple-shaped agave hearts (or pi–as) are first steamed for 24 to 36 hours, a process that softens them up and heightens the sweetness of the albuminous juice inside. Then they’re shredded and ground to a pulp....

The Rabbit Foot, Chicago Theatre Company, at the Parkway Community House. Leslie Lee’s drama uses two powerful Old Testament archetypes–the Flood and the Jews’ exodus–as parallels for the great migration of blacks to the north beginning in 1920. Ostensibly an examination of the early days of black vaudeville performance, The Rabbit Foot actually combines two distinct but related stories of misfortune, chronicling a minstrel troupe’s travels and the unraveling of a family of Mississippi sharecroppers....

Rock, Pop, etc. ANJB3 performs as part of the Version>02 festival exploring digital media. Fri 4/19, 10 PM, Kanter Meeting Center, Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E. Chicago. 312-397-4010. BRUNER & BAY perform as part of the Version>02 festival exploring digital media. Thu 4/18, 10 PM, Kanter Meeting Center, Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E. Chicago. 312-397-4010. CHICAGO STUDIO OF PROFESSIONAL SINGING performs works by Gershwin, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Porter, Berlin, Sondheim & others at a dinner concert....

Truck in Pieces, Curious Theatre Branch, at the Lunar Cabaret. Notwithstanding its central character’s mantra–“I’m not going anywhere; where’m I gonna go?”–Beau O’Reilly’s new play tells the story of a journey. O’Reilly’s Bloom, like Joyce’s before him, spends a long day traveling on the fringes of the urban landscape as he struggles to square his memories with the present. And though every detail resonates with Ulysses, the play also stands on its own as a character study of “Truck” Bloom, a never-was boxer in midcentury Chicago....

The video-game industry of the late 70s and early 80s gave rise to a twee, minimalist style of musical accompaniment that was shaped by the limits of technology and that rewarded coding expertise as much as compositional talent. Video-game sound tracks have since become studio-recorded opuses nearly as lavish as their movie counterparts, but to purists the magic is long gone. Hence VGM Mix Tape #8, released on the local No Sides label by Billy Sides, self-proclaimed savior of the genre....

XZIBIT Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “Xzibit steps up to the mike / Layin’ down the hard-core, real raw, underground,” announces KRS-One in the intro to “Kenny Parker Show 2001,” from Xzibit’s third album, Restless (Loud). But though the “underground” tag is a convenient rationalization for the lack of commercial success the Los Angeles MC saw prior to his recent breakthrough, it’s never been particularly accurate....

10 Naked Men, Theatre Building Chicago. According to writer-director Ronnie Larsen, Hollywood is a homosexual whorehouse where physical, artistic, and ethical prostitution is the norm. This sexploitation farce focuses on an effeminate, no-talent actor attempting to find employment in the movie biz and erotic gratification in the adult-services ads of gay magazines. Here the entertainment industry is a place where naive young actors and “escorts” spend all their time eluding the predations of sleazy, power-abusing producers, like billy goats fending off trolls....

San Francisco director Rob Nilsson casts his digital videos from an acting workshop he founded called the Tenderloin Ygroup, some of whose members are homeless people or inner-city residents. They improvise many of their lines, and because their performances lack calculation, they evoke the rough and tenuous quality of life on the periphery: people interrupt each other, repeat themselves to distraction, and explode in rage, yet their arguments are weirdly pointless....