In her first feature, High Art (1998), writer-director Lisa Cholodenko created a convincing milieu of media professionals who were both sexy and unpredictable. This sophomore effort is even better, confronting two uptight lovers (Christian Bale and Kate Beckinsale) with the rock music scene when they graduate from Harvard Medical School and head west to complete their studies. Bale’s mother (Frances McDormand), a famous record producer, is sleeping with the lead singer (Alessandro Nivola) of the British band she’s recording at her Laurel Canyon home, and after she invites her son and his fiancee to move in, all sorts of unexpected things happen....

Born Leslie Johnson in Pointe Coupee, Louisiana, in 1933, Lazy Lester was captivated early on by the music of DeFord Bailey, the Grand Ole Opry’s diminutive African-American harmonica player; soon he was playing harp himself. Lester learned guitar by jamming with his brother and a local fretman named Guitar Gable, and by his teens he was playing alongside local bluesmen like Buddy Guy and harpists Raful Neal and Slim Harpo. In 1956 he landed a gig in Crowley, Louisiana, as a session man for producer Jay Miller, who worked for the Nashville label Excello....

Anyone who saw flamenco artist Maria Pages in Riverdance is bound to remember her: her dancing cut like a knife through the bloated heart of that overproduced show. (As I recall, she was supposed to represent “the birth of fire.”) Born in Seville in 1963, tall, somewhat raw-boned, she was outstandingly supple, powerful, and precise; “This is an artist whose command is so great,” I wrote, “she can afford to fool around....

In 1867 Henrik Ibsen fashioned a well-known Norwegian folktale into a metaphor for modern man’s fixation on illusory personal freedom and self-aggrandizement, anticipating scads of 20th-century plays. The episodic, organic structure of his existential romp, thick with muted action and thunderous pauses, is key to its haunting mix of immediacy and distance–but also makes it a tough sell without Grieg’s immortal 1876 score. But director Kathy Scambiaterra and her cast nail the unadorned text in a production that’s equal parts imaginative stagecraft and actorly aplomb....

When I saw a trailer for the film Bad Santa, in which a department-store Santa Claus screeches at a child and his elf sexually demeans the store’s head of security, I thought, someone finally got it right. Home movies from the time show the fear and determination in our faces as we watched Santa enter–a thin man with an ugly, stained blue-and-pink burlap Santa mask to which was pinned a flattened cotton beard....

Thank you for your article about Thomas McBride’s tragic death, and the legal proceedings against his assailant [September 21]. Like Randy Neufeld I’m not sure this article is really about bicycles and traffic. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I am hoping that the unspeakable tragedy we suffered on September 11 will prompt us as a nation to do more than just wave flags and demand revenge....

Mr. Rosenbaum: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Mike D’Angelo (I know you lie awake at night wondering what Mike D’Angelo thinks of you) said that you have “gone off the deep end of late, interpreting innocent genre films in a bizarre neo-Marxist framework,” although you have never been a communist in your life, and if one actually READS your books and reviews, there seems to be a more aesthetic approach to film in general that a one-paragraph reviewer like D’Angelo can only approximate....

Through frequent self-stimulation, I have developed my love muscles to the point where I can ejaculate four to five feet in the air. Is this considered a normal level of ability, or does my range surpass that of the average American male? A related problem: my precious bodily fluids often hit my eyes during that climactic moment, which results in my eyes being pasted shut when I awaken in the morning....

I need your help. On Saturday, February 17, I went out dancing with some friends from work. We ended up at Electra (in Cincinnati), where I wound up dancing with this really attractive Asian woman. We danced all night and built up a really magical rapport. Her ride was pressuring her to leave, so in haste I borrowed a pen from the bartender and scribbled my first name and phone number on a napkin....

Vintage Red and the Dust of the Road, Visions & Voices Theatre Company, at Strawdog Theatre Company. It’s hard to decide what to praise first in this outstanding production of Robert Koon’s thoughtful new play. Though the winery setting suggests a number of facile metaphors, Koon uses them sparingly, creating characters instead of archetypes. After five years of self-imposed exile, Ted returns to California for his father’s funeral to confront his ex-wife, brother, and sister....

Ma went to the doctor and found out she had high blood pressure. The doctor gave her medicine. She finished the bottle, and she felt good, so she never got any more. She just quit. She figured that what she took made her better, so she didn’t need any more. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » It was pa’s birthday, January 4, and the family came over....

It’s a surprisingly big pile, bigger than three refrigerators. It’s 113 cubic feet and, at two tons, heavier than a Jeep Cherokee. Its contents: 5,250 unsold issues of the Imp, Dan Raeburn’s zine about comics. The pile sits in Raeburn’s Kenwood basement, not budging, not shrinking. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In a way, every mistake Raeburn made on Imp number four was a direct result of the success of Imps one through three, each of which profiled a different comic book artist with illustrations and long personal essays written by Raeburn....

Sometimes a choreographer’s physical circumstances dictate what we see onstage. CMC coartistic director Cindy Brandle was in the midst of a difficult pregnancy and confined to bed rest when she began creating her new Uncertainties of Life. So she sat in a chair to make this piece for six women, which she says is about “waiting, about being in limbo.” You can see that simultaneous yearning and stasis in the work, especially in one characteristic motion: one arm wrapped behind the back, the other reaching....

If the state lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math, the residents of zip codes 60619, 60628, and 60617 need a remedial class in the worst way. According to Leah Samuel’s study of Illinois Lottery receipts (Chicago Reporter, October), these three south-side zip codes generated the most lottery sales in fiscal year 2002. Those who live in predominantly black zip codes spent $1.57 out of every $100 of income on lottery tickets, compared to $1....

Emerson wrote, “The only gift is a portion of thyself,” but try that one out on Valentine’s Day and you’re liable to find thyself sleeping on the sofa. Even those of us who know better have been so beaten down by commercial culture that we feel compelled to spend a certain of amount of cash to prove our love—which makes tonight one of the biggest date nights of the year and February the perfect time to release a romantic comedy....

I just wear white when I take X rays; the rest of the time I wear Renaissance clothing. I’ve always dressed like this. I love velvet. I’ve been doing this since 1988, when I first went to the Renaissance Faire. In the summer you can find me there lacing women into bodices–it’s the job that every man wants! I have at least 50 Renaissance outfits: quite a few bodices, some leather, one is custom-made with my band logo, a lot of brocade, probably 15 or 20 sets of matching velvet leggings, poet shirts, a number of long dresses, Tudor skirts (six or seven of those), maybe 20 pairs of boots....

Every time I come here I’m reminded of my infamous makeover. My cousin Gwen was visiting from Michigan, and we decided to do a spa day. They were running a special deal that included a makeover. Before they started I said, “I want to look stunning!” So Anna–I think that was her name–proceeded to work her magic. The result was that movie-star, oh-my-God-can-I-have-your-autograph, you-have-money look. I said to Gwen, “We have to take this face on the road....

Rumors of war were troubling my mind. Every day I read another news story about the president’s mania for overthrowing Saddam Hussein. Last fall I met a man who predicted that the war with Afghanistan would launch an apocalypse. The other day I sought him out to learn what war with Iraq might bring. “The war will involve a great power,” he said. “The United States is a country that has done a lot of great things....

I was watching Dr. Phil on television the other day with my wife. He was talking to a woman who discovered, after marrying her husband, that he was a cross-dresser, or at least had cross-dressing tendencies. Dr. Phil counseled the woman to leave the man because of his “perversion” and told her that no one could ever be sexually satisfied with a cross-dresser for a husband because he would always be masturbating while wearing her underwear, and so on, instead of sexually pleasing her....