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Lead Stories Al Gore was elected by write-in votes as director of the Marion County (Oregon) Soil and Water Conservation District board, but was disqualified because he owns no land in the district. And in Hartford, Connecticut, Terrell Bush beat out Johnny Gore to become homecoming king of Weaver High School. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Recurring Themes Wayne’s World A judge in Thornaby-on-Tees, England, granted John Turner a divorce after a 38-year union, persuaded by testimony that Mrs....

Though not especially artful, this 2000 British TV documentary by Alan Lowery and John Pilger addresses an issue so urgent it demands attention. Since the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, United Nations sanctions against Iraq have been blamed for the deaths of anywhere from 100,000 to a million children; when confronted with a figure of 500,000 by 60 Minutes in May 1996, UN ambassador Madeleine Albright notoriously declared, “I think this is a very hard choice, but…we think the price is worth it....

Electronic-music producer Prefuse 73, born Scott Herren, was raised in Atlanta and currently lives in Barcelona; his moniker refers to one of his favorite sample sources–prefusion jazz recorded before 1973. On 2001’s Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives (Warp), he devised a mutant hip-hop in which rap vocals were merged with the other instruments in the mix, the voice becoming just one rhythmic element among many. On last year’s The 92 vs....

Larry was in big trouble, and he knew it. For six months he’d been having sex with Laura, the 16-year-old daughter of his fiancee, with whom he was living in a town house in the western suburbs. It was mid-December 2000, 12 days before he and Joan were to be married. Laura was talking to Joan in her bedroom, and as he stood in the upstairs hallway he could hear his name being hurled back and forth....

On her impressive solo debut, Been Here and Gone (2001), Thalia Zedek showed finesse that was often lacking on the bluesy records she made with Come and her noisy work with earlier bands like Live Skull and Uzi; her voice was always dark, but its anguish was suddenly complemented by a subtle melodic tenderness. That album marked the beginning of an ongoing partnership with violist David Michael Curry and ex-Come drummer Daniel Coughlin, which also produced a fine 2002 EP, You’re a Big Girl Now....

Menopause the Musical Press materials indicate that Linders, who’s also the producer, hopes her show will be another Vagina Monologues, which recently closed at the Apollo after running there for a couple years. But Eve Ensler didn’t just natter on about women’s private parts. She told individual stories, based on interviews, that revealed women’s rich, complex feelings about sex, body image, men, and relationships. She celebrated specific women, and in doing so connected with women generally....

TONY REEDUS QUARTET Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » From his very first recordings–with bands led by his uncle, pianist James Williams–Memphis-born drummer Tony Reedus has offered listeners a tight beat and no-nonsense swing derived from classic hard-bop models like Art Blakey, Louis Hayes, Philly Joe Jones, and Art Taylor. Reedus’s drive, along with his explosive solo style and good command of drum-kit colors, has created a reasonable demand for his services in the New York mainstream: he’s worked regularly with Art Farmer, Freddie Hubbard, Bobby Hutcherson, and Joanne Brackeen, to name a few....

Don’t know much about history? Don’t know much biology? Well, you can either retake those classes you slept through the first time or spend an evening watching the Galileo Players’ new revue, A Comedic Tour of the Universe. Forgoing stale send-ups of current events, celebrities, and relationships, this smart production digs out the humor in science, philosophy, and other painfully academic topics using a lively combination of comic scenes, improvisation, and songs....

Conceived and directed by Sharon Greene, this noble meditation on noble futility–written and performed by Greene, Shawn Huelle, and Jay Torrence–has its heart in the right place but never quite achieves the associative synergy it seeks. Riffing elliptically off Cervantes’s novel rather than retracing, recasting, or unpacking it, the performers intertwine two main narratives: one revisiting Greene’s tenure with Planned Parenthood, the other recounting Huelle’s drive to the Arctic Ocean with a crazy friend....

Three Tales Court Theatre Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The Hindenburg explosion is presented first, as the last gasp of the mechanistic mind-set that enabled the industrial revolution. Korot’s video shows the great steel skeleton on which the zeppelin’s skin was stretched; images of mechanics holding heavy tools form a repeated motif. And the sight of the burning, earthbound hulk inevitably suggests that great all-purpose symbol of extinction: a dinosaur in its death throes....

Given the affectionately derisive, sometimes sentimental nature of Davy Rothbart’s Found magazine, an erratically published collection of discarded or lost notes, love letters, photos, greeting cards, and miscellaneous scribblings, I was surprised by the five dark stories in The Lone Surfer of Montana, Kansas (21 Balloons), his first work of fiction. To wit: they’re pretty good. In the opener, “Lie Big,” a lifelong friendship is tested by dishonesty and betrayal. “First Snow,” about a prison work gang, is a distressing depiction of group cruelty....

Cheer-Accident Great pop is about giving the people what they want, but great experimental music is about giving the people something they didn’t want, because it hadn’t occurred to them yet. Lots of music fans don’t particularly want too much of the element of surprise: they aim to nurture and maintain a specific mood and don’t like being snapped out of it, which is why genres that celebrate the familiar sell so well....

God in the Front Row Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Jennifer Cullins says there was something divine about the way she hooked up with the Christian screenwriting boot camp Act One: Writing for Hollywood. “I was minding my own business at a Kinko’s I never go to, up on the north side, and a priest walked in. And my spirit was like, ‘Talk to this priest, talk to this priest right now....

“The big question about violins is why do the good ones sound like they do and why do the crappy ones sound like they do,” says Northwestern University ethnomusicologist Stephen Hill. Hill makes his living pondering questions such as “Why is it that all human societies have music?” He’s also an amateur fiddler and woodworker, with a yen to build his own instrument. It’s a daunting project, he says. Violins are made of 70 pieces and four or five woods, including dense, stable maple for the back and light, springy spruce on the front....

Good DJs know that the key to manipulating an audience is to work around a record, not straight through it. Alejandra Iglesias (aka Miss Dinky) eliminates the flash and sometimes spine of a track, extracts secondary melodies or bits of background noise and catapults them through the speakers, unexpectedly capturing the heart of a song in its tiniest elements. Born in Chile in 1975, Iglesias has studied ballet, modern dance, and music theory since she was a child; as a teenager she once danced onstage professionally with Peter Gabriel....

Every time I’m here and I hear “The Thong Song,” I’m reminded of what has to be the ultimate VIP club experience of my life. A group of us met a millionaire and went out with him a few times before he vanished into thin air. The rich dude picked us up one early afternoon and drove us to a totally awesome penthouse suite. We hung out drinking and having a good ol’ abusive time....

Kim Snyder first fell ill in 1994. “It felt like the flu, but there was something eerie about it,” says Snyder, a filmmaker who splits her time between New York City and East Hampton. “There was an ominous, terrible feeling….I was more than dizzy, and I was just scared to death.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Nearly a year later, Snyder participated in a study at Johns Hopkins University Hospital....

Close friends Betty N. Butler and Itala Langmar decided to respond to each other’s work for this two-person show, and their 22 gentle abstractions, made “with the concept of the Mandala in mind,” seem to dance quietly with and around one other. Butler uses broad, gestural brushstrokes; Langmar often covers her more muted pieces with Japanese lace paper, then paints over it. A faint red streak only slightly disrupts the circles and squares in Langmar’s Mandala Rising, while a large red brushstroke violently cuts into a black orb in Butler’s Mandala Pointing....

Blood Brothers Screams in rock ‘n’ roll used to emphasize something; now they rain down indiscriminately. (The Rapture emphasize nothing more than how little emphasis their words deserve.) But at least the Blood Brothers have a sense of what constant shouting is good for: the Seattle band’s knotty, shape-shifting punk sounds like “Bohemian Rhapsody” rendered by torture victims, which makes for some entertaining Muppets-meet-Murphy’s Law art rock live. Unfortunately the Brothers epitomize a questionable trend–“screamo”–even as they make it seem more promising than it is....

Theatre Building Chicago hosts a weekend-long showcase of new musicals, offered here in varying stages of readiness. The lineup 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, artists, and entrepreneurs a chance to discuss the art, craft, and commerce of musical theater as they rub elbows between each show and during meal breaks....