By some accounts, the social security trust funds now have over half a trillion dollars, while others say the money in these funds is so phony it may as well have Art Linkletter’s picture on it. Are the assets in these funds actually worth half a trillion dollars, or is it all a sham? –Daniel Moore, Chicago Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » You enclose a published debate between two former social security officials that, like most things I’ve read on this question, manages to take the mildly confusing and make it completely opaque....

Metro, May 10 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Stereolab are often described as Marxist eccentrics juxtaposing Krautrock with slinky exotica, but their recent performance at Metro proved that they’re both a whole lot more and a bit less. Though they experimented more than they have in any of their other recent appearances (including some terrific gigs last summer while they were in town recording their new Emperor Tomato Ketchup), Gane remained a human metronome–even on the rhythmically complex “Percolator,” which used an off-kilter time signature that wouldn’t be out of place on a Dave Brubeck record....

MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY With Allen, Diane Keaton, Alan Alda, Anjelica Huston, Jerry Adler, Joy Behar, Ron Rifkin, and Lynn Cohen. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » As far as most critics are concerned, the turning point wasn’t Interiors but Manhattan (1979), the film that immediately followed it. Here at last was a movie that flattered and rewarded (while gently tweaking) the self-image of upscale urbanites so effectively that critics all but anointed Allen our official poet laureate out of sheer gratitude....

Daniel Barenboim is, by any standard, a prodigy. Born in Argentina in 1942, the grandson of Russian Jewish immigrants, he gave his first official piano recital in Buenos Aires at the age of seven. He moved with his family to Israel at the age of nine, and soon launched a career as a pianist and conductor that has led to international acclaim and several prestigious music directorships, including that of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra....

MARCH Saturday 25 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » A lecture and slide show this morning at the Edgewater branch Library, 1210 W. Elmdale, explores the evolutionary history of Lake Michigan. Northeastern University’s Frank Pranschke will discuss recent changes in the shoreline and information retrieved from underwater exploration. Hosted by the Edgewater Historical Society, the free program starts at 10. Call 334-5609 for more information....

DIZZY GILLESPIE 50TH ANNIVERSARY BIG BAND Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In his memoir, To Be or Not to Bop, Dizzy Gillespie said of the jazz orchestra he formed in 1946, “We wanted to sound in the same idiom as the small bebop unit with Charlie Parker”–in other words, to transfer the advanced harmonies, cubist rhythms, off-kilter melodic lines, and (most important) the intimate fire of the five- or six-piece bop group to the full 17-piece jazz orchestra....

By Elana Seifert The same week Mason learned that the Goldblatt’s building had been sold, Alcazar and fellow EVA member Rich Anselmo confronted Mayor Daley and his executive assistant Terry Teele when they came to East Village to celebrate the completion of a major sidewalk renovation along Division Street. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Alderman Jesse Granato has taken the vague position that he desires “something the entire community is comfortable with,” and insisting that only “overwhelming community support” could persuade him that Goldblatt’s should be saved at the cost of discouraging Delray from investing in the neighborhood....

** SPEED With Keanu Reeves, Dennis Hopper, Jeff Daniels, Sandra Bullock, and Joe Morton. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Speed amplifies our discomfort to action-film proportions, exaggerating some of the most common aggravations for mass-transit riders–drivers who don’t stop for passengers racing after them, buses that cut off cars and narrowly miss pedestrians, construction and repairs that cause delays and inconvenience. Here these routine nuisances become life threatening, the stress they normally induce replaced by sheer terror....

FOOD FROM TRASH Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Bob and Sudden, who work for Phil Cobb’s garbage company, are plagued by alcoholism and itchy, red forearms. It seems that something about garbage in general drives the spirit out of men and that something toxic in Phil’s garbage dump is slowly poisoning the community around it–though the effects on the workers and their families are so gradual that they don’t recognize the damage until it’s too late....

To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The most significant example of what I would call muddy thinking is the negative tone that he employs concerning the fact that the plan is based on financial projections that “remain untested.” It should be obvious that any business that makes any long range plan will base it on projections made at the time of the plan....

Small Craft Warnings By Albert Williams Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » A two-act rewrite of the 1970 one-act Confessional, Small Craft Warnings is a collection of character sketches–dialogue and soliloquies involving the denizens of a run-down bar on the California coast. Like the “small craft” alluded to in the title, they’re isolated vessels lost in a foggy night, drifters seeking temporary refuge in the hazy harbor that is Monk’s saloon....

Lead Story The Washington Times, citing a Federal Protective Service report, revealed in May that staff and volunteers at the 1993 Clinton inaugural stole $154,000 worth of electronic equipment used for the festivities. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In January an investigation by a British network TV news program revealed that the late Ferdinand Marcos stashed away a gold fortune totaling 1,200 tons–the equivalent of 15 percent of the contents of Fort Knox and about 1 percent of all the gold ever mined in the world....

HUBBARD STREET DANCE CHICAGO Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The opening tableau is stunning–the stage is draped in white cloth reminiscent of classical statues. Four of the seven dancers are completely wrapped in the same cloth and look like nightmare versions of classical statues. Two dancers, each in brightly colored but mismatched tights and leotard, step from behind statues and begin a somber duet on the dimly lit stage....

“She was smart, funny, and absolutely gorgeous,” says Caleb Urry, describing one of the Playboy playmates he’s met. “Drop-dead gorgeous. I mean, I was thinking that she was like Helen of Troy–I couldn’t believe that, like, some foreign country hadn’t claimed her and forced us to go to war over her.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » It would seem the college market would do just fine left to itself–in fact, it’s hard to imagine more avid readers than 18-to-21-year-old guys–but apparently it’s been in need of a boost lately....

Taking the poetry out of parenthood. According to the Illinois Caucus on Teenage Pregnancy in LSC Network (May), a school cannot prevent a pregnant student from being valedictorian or homecoming queen, or taking part in any other activity, because of pregnancy. “Remember: treat pregnancy as a temporary disability such as a broken leg.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Feeeeeelings, wo, wo, wo, feeeeeelings… Michael Wallace, chief nuclear operating officer of Commonwealth Edison, as quoted in Nuclear Energy Info (May): “When the [Nuclear Regulatory] commission placed Zion on the watch list, it was a significant emotional event…....

Tony ‘n’ Tina’s Wedding created an interactive genre that mocks the last frontier of “family values”: the marriage ceremony. But I never understood why these voyeuristic extravaganzas were more fun for audiences than the real thing until Tony ‘n’ Tony’s Wedding, which adds camp playfulness to the usual mix of drunken guests, disgruntled family, and mock melodrama. Jay Leggett has scripted a charming love story peppered with drag queens and other ambiguously gendered characters to dance with, talk to, or observe–whatever your fancy....

To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » According to the Associated Press standard code of journalistic ethics, an honest and vigorous effort must be made to include reasonable opposing views in matters of significant controversy. The code also specifies that safeguards to avoid error should include systematic verification of facts and corroboration of critical information. Mr. Futrelle never contacted Believe the Children to verify the “facts” as he presented them, nor did he make an effort to present opposing views in his article....

BARDO POND Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Psychedelic rock, like most rock-crit pigeonholes, has become an utterly meaningless term that’s applied indiscriminately to whimsical pop, meandering jams, and trippy electronic dance music. Bardo Pond take psychedelia back to its roots; two of the Philadelphia-based quintet’s albums, Amanita and Bufo Alvarius, are named after hallucinogenic substances (mushrooms and toads respectively). The guitars of brothers John and Michael Gibbons turn out a viscous wall of sound that’s given definition by Clint Takeda’s purposeful, melodic bass and woozily orbited by Isobel Sollenberger’s languid flute and dreamy singing and Joe Culver’s unhurried drumbeats....

In the tattered photo they look like they are on their way to church: the women in long dresses, coats, and hats; the men in suits, coats, and ties. They seem tight-lipped, stiff, almost comically incongruous as they pose in a Michigan wood. Lined up on a sandy dirt road in front of a rented bus that brought them 270 miles from Chicago, they look formal, serious, as if posing for history....

Used to be blues-picking folkies were a dime a dozen. Fortunately, most of the cut-rate ones have left the scene, allowing artists like Chris Smithers to take center stage. Smithers is a storyteller whose lyrics, in the great balladeering tradition, often contain wry lessons (he penned Bonnie Raitt’s “Love You Like a Man”); his blues are gritty and heartfelt, and he doesn’t attempt any blue-eyed-soul-brother posturing. What sets him apart, though, is his musicianship: rather than pour on the notes like many latter-generation disciples of country blues, his style is a sparse, deeply emotional one–wrought from the various schools of southern folk blues and the white pre-C&W folk tradition, as well as 60s-era pop-folk melodicism–that tends to linger in the mind longer than other, more technically spectacular styles....