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David Feiner and Laura Wiley made it into regional theater and then decided they wanted out. They met at the Yale School of Drama in 1992, where both were pursuing master’s degrees. After working for several years, he at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., and she here at the Goodman, they’d soured on big-city theater–at least when it meant established companies mounting prestige plays for bourgeois subscribers. Says Wiley, “These companies need a subscriber base of thousands, and so a lot of energy goes into propagating the operation....

So far American audiences have taken Sean Tillman’s lil’ lothario shtick with a big grain of salt, but our counterparts overseas have embraced his Har Mar Superstar character with an alarming intensity. The pudgy prince of ironic do-me R & B spent the summer in Europe, stripping to his skivvies on the festival circuit, conducting a phenomenally popular weekly residency on the party island of Ibiza, and writing a column for the NME; in August a daily in his native Minneapolis reported rumors that Britain’s Channel 4 wants to give him his own sitcom....

Two years ago the city removed the memorial to Vietnam veterans that was on Heald Square, a concrete island in the middle of Wacker Drive just west of Wabash. “They moved it because of the Wacker Drive construction project,” says Barry Romo, a member of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. “We figured they’d put it back when the project was over.” Romo became a company commander who trained infantrymen, and he saw plenty of combat....

Lead Stories In October a first-grade teacher in Rialto, California, taped a disruptive student’s head to a classroom wall. Also in October seventh-grade teacher Carrie White was accused of flinging a dictionary and a calculator at two unruly students in Lodi, Ohio. In June high school substitute teacher Steven M. Catena was fired in Keansburg, New Jersey, after reports that he wrapped one student in masking tape and butcher paper in class and suggested students give another classmate a “swirly” (dunk his head in a toilet and flush)....

A sleek forward named Demetrius Evans snares a pass from guard Temi Soyebo and dunks the ball to punctuate Von Steuben’s victory over south-side Catholic power Brother Rice. As the scoreboard clock counts down toward zero, Evans, Soyebo, and the other Von Steuben players celebrate at center court. Since the emergence of DuSable, Marshall, and Carver more than five decades ago, the city’s top boys basketball programs have been located exclusively on the west and south sides....

For the past several weeks the Cambodians of Uptown have been telling anyone who will listen the sad tale of how the county snatched away their land and sold it to someone else. Observers say it’s a classic case of trusting, easily intimidated newcomers getting victimized by a complicated system. “This case is like the layers of an onion–it gets stinkier and stinkier as you peel it away, and after a while it just makes you cry,” says Mike Quigley, a Cook County board commissioner from the north lakefront....

Joel Bruner says it all started his senior year of high school in Kansas City, Missouri, when Logan Bay was playing bass in a band covering the Troggs’ “Wild Thing” for a talent show. Bay sent word around that he needed someone to fill in on vocals and guitar, and Bruner stepped up. All the other acts, says Bay, did step dancing and rap routines, but the crowd went bananas for their bad rock ‘n’ roll anyway....

On Sunday, May 10, 1992, a private plane landed at Whiteside County Airport in Rock Falls, Illinois, about 100 miles west of downtown Chicago and 12 miles north of Tampico, population 800. Today, Amy and her husband, Lloyd, run the Ronald Reagan Birthplace Museum at 111 S. Main, a half mile north of the church in a storefront on the block-long strip that is downtown Tampico. On a recent morning so cloudy it’s difficult to discern where Tampico’s white grain elevator ends and the colorless sky begins, McElhiney stands behind the counter of the museum....

There was a time when the Japanese owned Clark Street. After the end of World War II, Japanese immigrants clustered around Clark and Division, moved up to Wrigley Field, and headed north all the way to Andersonville. Dozens of stores and restaurants opened to cater to them. Now Chicago’s Japanese population has scattered to the six counties, and to buy Japanese products one has to go to a Korean store. Still, a few remnants of the Japanese domination of Clark Street persist....

What was I saying about the White Sox being dangerous? The Sox turned on the Cubs like a wounded animal in their home-and-home series, winning the first two games at Wrigley Field two weeks ago before the Cubs salvaged the finale, and doing the same last weekend at Sox Park. These series were a source of great joy to Sox fans, and anguished their Cubs counterparts. There are Sox fans who hate the Cubs and Cubs fans who hate the Sox, and when their team wins and the other loses they say, “We took two today....

Los Angeles-based stand-up comic Georgia Ragsdale–who’s launched a tongue-in-cheek campaign to replace the term “lesbian” with “sporty girl” because it’s “less alarming”–will be in Oak Park this weekend to celebrate the local premiere and DVD release of her latest film, Wave Babes–It’s Never Too Late to Ride the Big Ones. In the movie, she plays one of three former surfer girls who get together for a reunion at the beach. Featuring scenes like a catfight in the sand between lead Tina Carlisi and her ex-husband’s new trophy wife, Babes is already on its way to “cult classic” status–at least according to Ragsdale....

GADJITS 2/1, FIRESIDE BOWL Hard to believe this Kansas City outfit was once a third-rate ska-revival band. Signed to Hellcat by Rancid’s Tim Armstrong while still in their teens and dropped after their tastes changed, they’ve evolved into a sweet-sounding, clean-toned unit playing somewhat garagey rock ‘n’ soul: in the best moments on their new Today Is My Day (on Chicago’s Thick label), uplifted by organist Hilary Allen, they sound like formerly wholesome kids going wild under the influence of really hairy sounds....

At a distance John Reth’s intriguingly ambivalent Excerpts From the Land of Plenty: Lunch Turds, part of a group show at Betty Rymer, looks like a pile of shiny black rocks about to tumble off a pedestal. A closer look reveals round forms wrapped in electrical tape, each with a PLU sticker indicating the type of produce rotting inside. Dianna Frid’s more intricate and complex “To Go to the Moon” series also uses common materials–thread, tinfoil, tape–to examine contemporary attitudes....

Joe and Gloria Smith Torres were photographed in their home by Jane Fulton Alt in March 2000 as part of the CITY 2000 photodocumentary project. Gloria was interviewed a month later by radio producer Andrea De Fotis, who was then CITY 2000’s audio editor. I prepared this text from the transcript of that interview and a follow-up visit in February 2001. He’s on medication so he doesn’t shake. One of the problems is he falls....

“This is Julian Eltinge,” says Jill, pointing to a photo of a stout, coquettish woman in a large Edwardian hat. “Eltinge was very big in vaudeville. ‘Women went into ecstasy over him. Men went into the smoking room’–that’s what W.C. Fields said about him.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Among the things on display is some sheet music from the 20s featuring photos of Karyl Norman....

In October 1996, Alex Mishulovich went to Latvia to pick up women. Mishulovich: Well, I don’t think I am that ugly… G: All right. How long have you been a ladies’ man? Mishulovich spoke in Russian, something of a handicap in a nation that only recently threw off the Soviet yoke, but he had Pede in tow. She would offer reassurance in Latvian, saying she was Mishulovich’s girlfriend, this was a wonderful opportunity, and she would be taking up the offer herself....

R. Buckminster Fuller: The History (and Mystery) of the Universe Fuller, who died in 1983, was one of the 20th century’s most original and idiosyncratic thinkers, devoting over 50 years of his life to what he called “comprehensive anticipatory design science.” It was his conviction that “emphemeralization”–doing the most with the least material–could eliminate want. Efficiently designed technology, driven by humanitarian impulses (there’s the rub), could provide everything to everyone, rendering selfishness “unnecessary....

By Cara Jepsen Not long after his return, Rayson published his first zine. The Peoples’ Polar Express was a crude, “ultrarhyming stream-of-consciousness antigovernment political zine” that he xeroxed at his father’s law office. He gave 80 copies to friends, acquaintances, “anyone who was willing to take it. I was real naive and young and hopeful we could use the crest of this huge antiwar movement and all the other movements that blended into it, and get rid of the damn government....

Two for Brazil–the duo of Brazilian-born guitarist and singer Paulinho Garcia and homegrown reedist Greg Fishman–have released four inventive albums in less than three years. Accordingly they’ve drawn good crowds on tours in Europe and Asia–but they’ve still gotten relatively little recognition here at home. In that sense they’re representative of Chicago’s entire Brazilian music community, a small but vibrant group of transplanted players operating at a consistently high level but flying just under most listeners’ radar....

A jazz sax quartet wedded to a pianoless rhythm section is hardly a new idea–the World Saxophone Quartet, for one, has fooled around with additional personnel over the years. But with Dead Cat Bounce twentysomething Boston saxophonist Matt Steckler livens up the mix: incorporating a sensibility weaned on rock and at least on speaking terms with jam bands, the music easily morphs from straight-ahead jazz rhythms into a cool backbeat, a tango lilt, or a punk-derived pulse....