[snip] “The murder rate in CHA developments has nearly doubled since 1999, the year before the city launched its Plan for Transformation,” report Brian Rogal and Beauty Turner in the Chicago Reporter (July/August). One resident says, “It’s like they took all the gangs and mixed them up.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » [snip] Neither Bush nor Kerry has a plan to reduce the federal deficit, but Bush falsely claims he does....

The title character in this pocket-size musical by Greta Mae Productions is the imaginary friend of eight-year-old Lucy–a relationship eliciting the jealous disapproval of her mother, who’s long since ceased believing in fairies of any type. The metaphors in Joe Latessa’s hour-long fairy-tale opera, using a score dominated by waltzes, prove elusive. But in this intimate space, under Jim Glaub’s direction, the show does create humor and empathy. Intense performances by Kristen Freilich as the embittered mother and Ashley Bush as the lonely child (Elaine Robinson played the larder-dwelling sapphist on opening night) spurred hearty applause when the women eventually decided to forge on together....

Friday 3/22 – Thursday 3/28 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In a 1998 interview for Salon.com, self-described “old Jewish-American writer lady” Grace Paley told A.M. Homes that “whatever your calling is, whether it’s as a plumber or an artist, you have to make sure there’s a little more justice in the world when you leave it than when you found it.” Over her 40-year career she’s tried to do her part through poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, and her wry voice and uncompromising passion for social justice have netted her both a 1987 senior fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a 1978 arrest for protesting the arms race on the White House lawn....

Dave Holland was already the most highly regarded bassist of his generation–owing largely to his work in such divergent and complex projects as Miles Davis’s first electric bands and Anthony Braxton’s bionic avant-garde quintet–when he formed his first group in 1983. With this quintet, Holland presented an alternative to Wynton Marsalis’s neoclassicism, then at the height of its influence–instead of re-creating older styles, Holland’s group reassessed them, while also taking into account the progressive implications of fusion and free jazz....

GARNET ROGERS, CONNIE KALDOR Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Canadian singer-songwriter Garnet Rogers’s stentorian baritone is a double-edged sword: it sometimes overwhelms the fragile melancholy of his lyrics, but it’s also an ideal instrument to express the determination that drives many of his characters. On his current CD, Sparrow’s Wing (Snow Goose Songs), Rogers does some of his best work when he holds a little of his power in reserve....

SoCal roots-scene stalwarts Chris Gaffney (leader of the Cold Hard Facts, member of Dave Alvin’s Guilty Men) and Dave Gonzalez (front man and guitarist for rockabilly-blues trio the Paladins) first teamed up to play a friend’s birthday party in late 2002. They soon began writing together and gigging as the Hacienda Brothers, exploring their shared passion for 60s country and soul. A demo grabbed the attention of Memphis songwriting legend Dan Penn–author of “Cry Like a Baby,” “Dark End of the Street,” and countless other classics–and he wound up penning a pair of songs for and producing the Haciendas’ self-titled debut, due from Koch Nashville in February....

Mirandola In 1727, a 20-year-old law student named Carlo Goldoni was so traumatized one day by the torture of a “sinful monk” in the town of Modena that he wanted to renounce the world. But his father, a country doctor, proffered an unusual prescription for his son’s melancholia: visits to the theater. After attending a few productions, young Carlo was hale and hearty. Even at that time Goldoni manifested two beliefs that would define his career: a passion for the common people (of which he was one) and an unwavering belief that theater could transform the human heart....

The sun had just set on the sixth night of Hanukkah, and the august rabbi sat solemnly, his hands folded on the head of his cane. With his long white beard and his gray hat, he was the picture of old-world formality. The social hall of the synagogue was nearly full but no one sat near him, although a few watched to see his reaction to Farbrengiton, the band about to rock the Agudas Achim North Shore Congregation....

Last time Slumber Party were in town some meatheads in the audience started singing the words to “Vacation” by the Go-Go’s to the dames’ own songs. It was rude but not entirely off base–their songs are reminiscent of almost any simple pop tune. Yet Slumber Party bring a listless gravitas to the melodies that makes them sound more Nico than Lesley Gore. Onstage they look like porcelain dolls, have a hard time harmonizing (a shortcoming that can be charming in its earnestness), and use the least amount of energy necessary to play their instruments....

It’s difficult to imagine where Barrie Cole learned to write plays. While most young playwrights work overtime to excise any hint of ambiguity from their scripts, writing as though television sitcoms were the pinnacle of literary achievement in Western culture, Cole revels in strangeness. She sets the hour-long Something Made Up in the apartment of a woman who spends every waking minute reading a book on ventriloquism and a man who tries to convince himself he’s a shaman by mixing kitchen spices in a bowl....

When I climbed the steps into the grandstand before the first game of the National League Championship Series, Wrigley Field appeared more beautiful than I had ever seen it. After a full day of Indian-summer sun the park was warm and welcoming–even if Sammy Sosa, taking batting practice, had already settled into fall fashion and sported a blue watch cap. The wind wafted out to straightaway center, and the ball carried well, each crack of the bat echoing off the grandstand with a little extra crispness in the thin autumn air....

Theatre Building Chicago hosts a weekend-long showcase of seven new musicals, offered here in varying stages of readiness. The lineup compiled by artistic director John Sparks includes concert-style performances (with the actors at music stands), staged readings (with the actors moving about while using scripts and scores), and fully memorized and staged studio presentations. The festival gives audiences and aspiring writers a chance to discuss the art, craft, and commerce of musical theater as they rub elbows before each show and during meal breaks....

Depending on your disposition, the light cedar slats, hickory floors, and blond oak benches at AVEC–a gem from the owners of Blackbird–can make you feel like you’re sitting in a sauna, a cigar box, or a coffin. It’s a charming space if you don’t mind sharing food and making new friends: there are just five eight-person communal tables. The menu is the first solo effort from chef de cuisine Koren Grieveson (she’s worked with Paul Kahan for five years at Blackbird), and if her homemade salami–genoa, sopressata, bresaola, lomo–isn’t to your taste, there’s also a tantalizing selection of artisanal cheeses and a variety of rustic but sophisticated small plates coming out of the wood-burning oven....

Young Playwrights Festival, Pegasus Players. Those who feel cynical about the state of theater and the younger generation can take heart at Pegasus Players’ 16th annual showcase for teen writers. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » This year’s lineup–four plays directed, designed, and performed by professionals–shows a refreshing tendency to avoid the cliches of adolescent angst. Emily Rabkin’s The Downtown Train is the only work with a teen protagonist, and her story–a shy girl meets a schizophrenic boy on the el–provides an offbeat view of how we learn to trust others and ourselves....

Ornate reliefs of angels and lions adorn the redbrick facade of the apostolic church at the northwest corner of Ogden and Kedzie, the tallest and most ornamented building in the vicinity. Vestiges of the building’s past also greet worshipers on their way in: over the front entrance are the words Douglas Park Auditorium, and an inlaid terrazzo doormat says WC Lyceum. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Minister Oatis Hunter claims the building dates back to the late 1880s, though the American Institute of Architects pegs its construction at 1910 and the city’s Department of Buildings has it at 1911....

Friday 1/28 – Thursday 2/3 Pre-Columbian music from Raiz Viva, traditional Mayan theater and music from the Konojel Junam ensemble, and Latin tunes spun by DJ Estrada highlight Casa Guatemala’s tenth annual Human Rights Awards Dinner. This year the immigrant- and refugee-rights group is honoring Betsy Brill of the Girl’s Best Friend Foundation and David Lindstrom and Vicky White from the Foundation for Human Rights in Guatemala, among others. It’s from 7 to 1 at Michelle’s Ballroom, 2800 W....

Friday 10/19 – Thursday 10/25 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame is, of course, about a half-blind hunchback named Quasimodo who lives in that medieval cathedral. So it’s fitting that tonight’s screening of the first film version of the story–Wallace Worsley’s silent 1923 classic, starring Lon Chaney–will take place at Hyde Park’s historic Rockefeller Memorial Chapel. Jay Warren will accompany the film with his original score on the chapel’s E....

David Kaiser Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In Network#101501, a latticework of thick white paint on white canvas is covered with many tiny, intricate black and pink shapes resembling flowers or fireworks explosions. Refined enough to suggest that each line was painted individually, these mix symmetry and delicacy to achieve a fragile beauty. The areas of canvas not covered by white paint–which look like the holes in Swiss cheese–contain small, offhand pencil marks....

Friday 12/12 – Thursday 12/18 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » 13 SATURDAY William S. Burroughs and Anthony Balch’s cut-up film Towers Open Fire, Carl Dreyer’s motor safety industrial short They Caught the Ferry, and Buster Keaton’s The High Sign are among the picks on a program called “Jim Jarmusch’s Favorite Short Films,” which screens tonight at 8 as part of this weekend’s Movieside Film Festival....

In last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, novelist, book critic, and GQ staffer Walter Kirn had some Very Important Things to say about burgeoning anti-American sentiment. Apparently, back in 1983, Kirn won a Rhodes Scholarship. Or, as he put it, he “enrolled at Oxford University on a prestigious two-year fellowship meant to promote international understanding.” Anyway, young Kirn was stunned to discover that his fellow “Oxfordians” hated America, and therefore hated him, despite his tweed jacket and his familiarity with various philosophers....