This ambitious showcase of experimental theater, performance, and music from Chicago’s fringe began as part of the Bucktown Arts Fest. Now it’s produced by the Curious Theatre Branch; in addition to the Curious folks, participating artists this year include John Starrs, Julie Caffey, Michael K. Meyers, Michael Martin, Free Street’s MadJoy Theatrics, and other ensembles and soloists. Taking its name from surrealist painter Salvador Dali’s use of the term “rhinocerontic” (it means real big), the 13th annual Rhino Fest runs through October 13....

Skyscraper Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » David Auburn’s Skyscraper revolves around half a dozen people affected by the approaching demolition of a landmark building. Though Auburn’s math-inflected play Proof won a Pulitzer in 2001, the seams show in this 1997 work: it comes off as more schematic–even formulaic–than genuine, and as something of a filmic wannabe. For one thing Auburn inserts neat little meditations on randomness....

Rock, Pop, etc. MICHAEL BOLTON Sat 9/1, 8 PM, Star Plaza Theatre, I-65 and U.S. 30, Merrillville, Indiana. 773-734-7266 or 312-559-1212. CITY LIGHTS ORCHESTRA performs ballroom dance music at Chicago Summerdance. Sun 9/2, 3 PM (preceded by dance lessons at 2 PM), Spirit of Music Garden, Grant Park, Michigan between Harrison and Balbo. 312-742-4007. CHEME GASTELUM, GEORGE PORTER, ZAK NAYJOR & JAMES HURT Tribute to Eddie Harris and Les McCann. Fri 8/31, midnight, Logan Square Auditorium, 2539 N....

The Aurora label Bobsled Records has released some fine albums in the past three years–by the Chamber Strings, Velvet Crush, and Adventures in Stereo–but none so unexpected as the Waxwings’ debut, Low to the Ground (2000), a grimy blast of psychedelia and Merseybeat pop charged with the energy of Detroit garage. According to the label’s folklore, owner Bob Salerno struck up a conversation with songwriter Dean Fertita at the Detroit record store where Fertita worked, and Fertita sent Bobsled a demo tape that got him signed....

The Stockyards Theatre Project’s third annual showcase of woman-centered drama, coproduced with Link’s Hall, features storytelling, dance, improv, stand-up comedy, and other forms. The festival runs October 24-26 at Link’s Hall, 3435 N. Sheffield. Performances are at 8 PM; each evening features a different lineup of seven to nine pieces (scheduled times for individual presentations each night are listed below). Latecomers will not be seated until intermission. Tickets cost $12 per night; call 773-281-0824 for reservations or 312-409-2641 for general information....

“Do you want with bacon or without bacon?” asks the waitress at Paprikash. She’s talking about the turos csusza, homemade egg noodles covered with farmer cheese and sour cream. That’s a side dish. Before that comes Jokay’s bean soup, based on a recipe from the 19th-century Hungarian novelist and journalist Mor Jokai. A spoonful of sour cream melts into the red broth, thick with sausage and vegetables. And on the table, instead of salt, is a shaker of paprika....

For two years Cristalle Bowen put her chemistry degree to good use at the Chicago Heights offices of Silliker, a food safety laboratory. But in July she quit her chemist’s job there to concentrate on her career as a rapper. “The more serious you get about music, it becomes a 24-hour-a-day thing,” says Bowen, aka Psalm One. “So I was kind of like, ‘I have my degree. I might as well let go and really try to make a living at this rap thing....

Fred Anderson’s tenor saxophone playing is a happy paradox: he’s a classic free-jazz fire breather who flies by the seat of his pants, but his burly tone and blues-draped sensibility hark back to golden-age Chicago tenors like Gene Ammons. On the solo improvisation “Ladies in Love,” which kicks off his new On the Run, Live at the Velvet Lounge (Delmark), he reaches back further still, to early inspiration Coleman Hawkins, who defined a big tenor sound in the first place....

This probing drama by British writer-director John Duigan (Wide Sargasso Sea) is set against the rise of fascism in Europe, yet the conflict that drives it–between personal liberty and social responsibility–hasn’t aged a bit. A glamorous libertine (Charlize Theron) bonds with a radicalized Irish student (Stuart Townsend) in prewar Britain but continues to take lovers of convenience; in Paris the two form an idyllic menage a trois with a Spanish nurse (Penelope Cruz), but the friendship is shattered when the student and the nurse run off to join the fight against Franco....

Finnish soprano Karita Mattila has a voluptuous, glowing, dramatic voice, with a stage presence to match. Her international career began in earnest when she won the Cardiff Singer of the World competition in 1983, and in the mid-90s she rose rapidly into the first tier of opera singers worldwide, becoming a confident and disciplined diva, equally at home with weighty Wagner roles and lighter, more psychologically complex Mozart parts. Lately she’s sung Janacek’s Jenufa, Wagner’s Isolde, and Beethoven’s Leonore, turning each into a flesh-and-blood character....

Kay Osborne noticed the first sign of something unusual about David less than two weeks after she brought the six-year-old back from Jamaica to live with her in Highland Park. “One evening after his bath I was lying next to him on his bed reading to him. All of a sudden he picked up my free hand, placed it on his genitals, and squeezed his legs together,” she says. “I was startled and removed my hand....

This was the first time my friend Mike Sweetman and I saw the band Rush. It was definitely Testosterone Fest ’02. I think there were about 12,000 guys and 450 women. Some “mulletude” but less than expected. Mulletude is the general persona that surrounds someone with a mullet–a Camaro-driving, ass-kickin’, beer-drinkin’ redneck type. Throughout the show Sweetman kept talking to the guys in front of us. They both had on satin Blackhawks jackets–one black and one red, and matching crew cuts....

I am an 18-year-old student. I have trust issues. I have been with my boyfriend for ten months now, and he’s very supportive. I am not a jealous person or a controlling head case–I have no problem with him going to bars or clubs with friends, going to parties when other girls are there, having conversations with other women, etc. However, I have an uncontrollable fear that he’s going to cheat on me....

“Look what that nigga sent me, man,” Marcus Toney said, pointing to the Sony VCR box shorn of its Marshall Field’s gift wrapping. “Come on, man,” said Butler. “Just open it. I’m here for you. Just get it over with already.” While reading the Tribune Metro section the following September, I saw a tiny item about this murder case. Its brevity was noteworthy because it breezed through bizarre details involving a female impersonator, an explosives-savvy Eminem-wannabe counterfeiter, a high-level Ameritech manager, a hanger-on named Jessie Jackson, an accountant with the TV show COPS, and a mastermind with a criminal past steeped in sexual cunning....

Not to sound ungrateful or–heaven forbid–unpatriotic, but I found myself increasingly troubled by the stunning performance of the United States in the Winter Olympics. A home-field advantage is one thing, but from beginning to end in Salt Lake City it seemed the Olympic system that once hindered U.S. athletes and U.S. interests now provides an undeniable benefit to athletes supported by U.S. capitalism. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » That said, it takes a blind eye to look at this year’s winter games and not see how the current system benefits American interests....

JOHN KRUTH 1/19, BEAT KITCHEN John Kruth is nothing if not eclectic. He’s a former touring member of the Violent Femmes and a collaborator of Elliott Sharp; last year he published a biography of Rahsaan Roland Kirk and now he’s working on one about Townes Van Zandt. And though he bills himself as “America’s Baddest Mandolinist,” on his latest album, Everywhere You’ve Never Been (Label M), he downplays both his virtuosity and his main ax, playing smarty-pants singer-songwriter over a mix of horns, reeds, whistles, and Middle Eastern instruments....

Teresa Mucha is sweet, gentle, and entirely contrary. While many young artists spend as much time developing their careers as they do making art, she recently left the star-studded studio of Tony Fitzpatrick, where she was a Big Cat Press master printer, to go out on her own–her White Wings Press opens next month. She also left her high-profile gallery, Vedanta, for the smaller Aron Packer Gallery, where she now has a solo exhibit, “Clipped Wings Can Grow Again....

The University of Chicago Press recently published a large-format, slick-paper book entitled Chicago Metropolis 2020: The Chicago Plan for the Twenty-First Century. The title looks to the future, but those who read what’s inside will learn that Chicago’s civic and business elites want to begin the 21st century much as they ended the 19th–by trying to get the rest of us centralized, coordinated, and unified. Politically, the 2020 planners would establish a new regional council and do away with many allegedly superfluous local governments....

A devastating performance by Olivia Williams (Rushmore) anchors this emotionally complex British drama based on Rosamund Lehmann’s 1953 novel The Echoing Grove. The plot centers on a handsome London businessman (Paul Bettany) who leaves his proper, rather acerbic wife (Williams) to pursue a life-affirming romance with her free-spirited younger sister (Helena Bonham Carter). The magisterial Eleanor Bron plays the sisters’ mother, who derails the affair for her grandson’s sake but ends up compounding the misery of everyone involved....

Boys-make-a-fort plays, first dragged under the gels by the likes of Harold Pinter and David Mamet, are a staple of off-Loop theater. The formula confines a handful of (usually male) characters to a claustrophobic setting in which they can do little save crack wise and stab each other in the back. The talky scripts, which call for few actors and require simple sets, treat serious themes yet can yield steady laughs....