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The thing everybody wants to know is, does the Sunshine Fix sound like the Olivia Tremor Control? Bandleader Bill Doss was half of OTC’s braintrust, and what he takes with him on the Sunshine Fix’s debut LP, Age of the Sun (Emperor Norton/Kindercore), are the ultracatchy hooks, the gear-shifting bridges, and those elaborate 60s-style harmonies. But Doss strips away the layers of sonic experimentation that distinguished OTC (who are now officially “on hiatus”): electronic manipulation contorts some piano riffs and vocal harmonies, and there’s some beguiling percussive confusion on “See Yourself,” but by and large the production favors clarity....

Jose Fernandez Torres, better known as Tomatito, was only 15 when he started playing guitar professionally, and he didn’t mess around. He quickly became the main accompanist for Spain’s premier flamenco vocalist, Camaron de la Isla (born Jose Monje Cruz), a gig he held until the singer’s death in 1992. Camaron’s place in flamenco history is hard to overstate–he introduced the world to groundbreaking guitarist Paco de Lucia and by the late 70s he’d revolutionized the music, bringing in electric guitar, drums, and flute....

Rock, Pop, Etc. OSWALD BERTHOLD Sat 11/29, 9 PM, 6Odum, 2116 W. Chicago. 773-227-3617 or 312-666-0795. CRADLE OF FILTH, TYPE O NEGATIVE, MOONSPELL See Spot Check on Moonspell; all-ages. Sat 11/22, 7 PM, Riviera Theatre, 4746 N. Racine. 773-275-6800 or 312-559-1212. GIN BLOSSOMS Fri 11/21, 8 PM, the Hemmens, 150 Dexter, Elgin. 847-931-5900. LIZ LARIN Free in-store performances. Fri 11/21, 8 PM, Borders Books & Music, 6103 N. Lincoln. 773-267-4822. Sun 11/23, 2 PM, Borders Books & Music, 2817 N....

A prizewinner at the New York Underground Film Festival, Jon Leone’s Receiver documents teenage backyard wrestling in Belvidere, Illinois: contestants smash each other with garbage cans, throw each other into beds of thumbtacks, and wrestle in a ring laced with barbed wire. Kurt “the Strangler” Jensen, a star of these painful displays, says he “always loved the blood” but complains about his fans, “bloodthirsty bastards” who demand ever-increasing mayhem. Most of these videos vibrate with the same anarchic energy: in Joe Fournier’s Evil Has Landed activists deface and replace billboards on public transit (one mock ad for McDonald’s celebrates “Slaughter Day”), and in Doug Lussenhop’s Triple Check staccato cutting makes office and laboratory machines seem as alive as the workers....

All Eyes on Bob Al Qaeda could have made a major move in Chicago last Sunday or Monday, and nobody in the media would have noticed. “I knew him at the Sun-Times 30 years ago,” I told a TV producer about Bob Greene. She asked, “Do you want to go on camera?” By Friday evening, when he was posing for pictures with the poet laureate of Nebraska, Greene must have had a very good idea that his career was crashing....

ANYTHING GOES, Drury Lane Oakbrook, and ANYTHING GOES, Stage Right Dinner Theatre. It’s hard to believe this lightweight 1934 musical came out of the Depression. But its silliness was probably the point. A throwback to such Jazz Age obsessions as flappers and gangsters, the book was reassuringly retro. Americans Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse and Brits Guy Bolton and P.G. Wodehouse devised a plot that’s a grab bag of novelty numbers, vaudeville turns, now dreadful stereotypes, and antediluvian shtick....

Rose Rage Hall and coadapter Roger Warren set Shakespeare’s bloody version of England’s War of the Roses in a slaughterhouse–or more accurately a killing floor-cum-locker room, not inappropriate considering that the cast is all men. And an abattoir is apt given the plays’ scenes of butchery and the scripts’ references to slaughterhouses. Throughout the performance, white-clad butchers lurk on the stage’s periphery, knives and cleavers ready. Silent agents of death, they sharpen their blades in unison whenever a character makes a step that seals his fate....

“Gays and lesbians have nothing in common,” writes Paul Varnell in the Chicago Free Press (August 21). “Gay men like men. Lesbians like women. What could be more different? That whole notion that we share a common ‘homosexual orientation’ is just semantic fraud. You might as well say that atheists and Christians are just alike because they both have opinions about the existence of God. Or: If you buy lots of clothes and I buy lots of books, do we have a ‘purchasing orientation’ in common?...

On their superb second album, Walking With Thee (Domino), the Liverpool quartet Clinic once again plunder several decades’ worth of rock quirk–but they’re getting better at wiping their fingerprints off the stolen goods. Bypassing most of the blatant 60s garage elements that gave the group’s debut, Internal Wrangler, its dirty sneer, they pare things down: Ade Blackburn’s guitar is often spare if not totally absent, which graduates the frenetic rhythms of drummer Carl Turney and bassist Brian Campbell from skeleton to body....

Spanglish One reason I can’t regard Pauline Kael as a great film critic is her unshakable belief that she needed to see a movie only once–that she could immediately form an opinion and never have to revise it. She was thought of as an industry gadfly, but her blind faith in first impressions often fit industry calculations perfectly, helping to validate things like test-marketing and seeing movies as disposable. Best of Chicago voting is live now....

My older sister’s bedroom is mostly pink and white. A 16-year-old’s Barbie bedroom with a splash of school spirit. She has pictures on her dresser in white frames with hearts on them. One is me. My fourth grade picture. She likes it because she did my hair that day and it actually came out all right. Myrtle spent forever on those two limp pigtails with damp curls on the end. It’s the only school picture where I’m smiling....

On their fifth and best album, Cow, Fish, Fowl or Pig (Sugar Hill), the Austin band the Gourds sound more like a contemporary version of the Band than ever. They don’t merely drift from country rock to bluegrass to gospel–they toss all those styles together, with no apparent self-consciousness or calculation. Kevin Russell, Jimmy Smith, and Max Johnston howl harmonies that are ragged yet right, and the quintet juggles a multi-instrumental arsenal that includes guitars, banjo, mandolin, fiddle, accordion, ukulele, and piano....

Chicago Opera Theater is finally saying good-bye to the Athenaeum. The double production of World War II-era operas Brundibar and Comedy on the Bridge, opening there next week, will be COT’s last fling at the venerable theater that’s been its home for most of its 29 years. For the last three seasons, since Brian Dickie took over as general director, the pairing has made for an extraordinary experience. Patrons have climbed the stairs of the more or less decrepit Lakeview venue (built in 1911 as an appendage to Saint Alphonsus Church), paid $35 to $75 for tickets (half that for students), settled into backbreaking seats in the cozy old auditorium, and had their socks knocked off by world-class productions of Baroque and modern work, some of it pretty obscure....

Lots of Lifesavers, All in One Package “That was business as usual,” says Scott Baltic, editor of Homeland Protection Professional. “I don’t think anyone’s going to stand for that in the future. I don’t think the public will stand for it. I don’t think the people whose lives are on the line will stand for it. When you lose 343 lives, that’s an indelible mark.” Best of Chicago voting is live now....

Classical Indian dance is laden with paradox. Bejewelled performers in elaborate costumes are supposed to convey the immateriality of the material world. Actresses perfect the communication of emotion in order to tell stories that advocate transcending our passions. In Dhrasta (“The Seer”), dancer-choreographer Krithika Rajagopalan aims to capture the “formless being” that is the basis of happiness. But inevitably the dance has a structure–it’s divided into three parts–and it relies on well-known forms: bharatanatyam, yoga, and modern dance....

I need your advice. My parents are bugging me to come home for Thanksgiving. The thing is, as a kid I always hated holidays. No, I loved holidays; what I hated was my parents. Growing up, I was ignored on holidays except when my mom would order me to wait on my brothers and dad. As an adult it’s no better. My family spends most of the time talking about work, but I’m not allowed to talk about my job because it isn’t a “real job,” since I do low-paying social work....

The Affair of the Necklace With Hilary Swank, Adrien Brody, Jonathan Pryce, Christopher Walken, and Joely Richardson. With Will Smith, Jon Voight, Mario Van Peebles, Jamie Foxx, Ron Silver, Jeffrey Wright, and Giancarlo Esposito. With Meg Ryan, Hugh Jackman, Liev Schreiber, Breckin Meyer, and Philip Bosco. With Howard Keel, Kathryn Grayson, Ann Miller, Bobby Van, Keenan Wynn, James Whitmore, and Bob Fosse. With Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Liv Tyler, Viggo Mortensen, Sean Astin, Cate Blanchett, and John Rhys-Davies....

Rock, Pop, etc. BLACK CAT MUSIC Free in-store performance. Sat 2/16, 3 PM, Reckless Records, 1532 N. Milwaukee. 773-235-3727. MARGARET CARLSON WITH FRANK MANTOOTH & FRIENDS Concerts for a Cause benefit concert. Sat 2/9, 7:30 PM, Shannon Hall, Eastside Community Center, 14 N. Van Buren, Batavia. 630-761-8298. CROSBY, STILLS, NASH & YOUNG Sun 2/17, 8 PM, United Center, 1901 W. Madison. 312-455-4500 or 312-559-1212. FLYING LUTTENBACHERS, CHEER-ACCIDENT, MIASIS, DOLOROUS CENTER Fri 2/8, 6:30 PM, room 130, McGaw Hall, DePaul University, 802 W....

Bert Stabler calls Johnny Monomyth, a comic he created with Noah Berlatsky in 1999, a “poetic collage.” The 32 pages tell the loose story of a superhero, a villain, and a girl through text cribbed from Greil Marcus’s Lipstick Traces, Fortune magazine, Diamonds Are Forever, and Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thousand Faces. When the panels are unbound and arranged into a two-and-a-half-by-six-foot grid, however, they form a single intricate work rich with detail....

In 1954 Shelly Stark graduated from South Shore High School, and last year he came back. The 67-year-old retired marketing executive–who’s a legend among local basketball aficionados for the summertime hoop tournaments he once ran–has taken an unpaid job as a one-man booster for his alma mater. “This is my mission, my love, my life,” says Stark. “This is where I want to be.” In his senior year at South Shore, Stark was the starting guard on a basketball team that won its division....