GRAHAM’S AVENUE Greenhouse, South Hall Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Even though we guess the secret known to only one of the two mothers in Homecoming, once it’s revealed Graham addresses what’s to be done about it. By the end of the play nothing definite has been said–for Graham’s characters rarely say more than necessary–but we have the proper Texas matron’s grim expression to tell us the denouement....

Hoop Dreams: the Outtakes Joravsky, a Reader staff writer, was hired by Kartemquin Educational Films to write the book version of Hoop Dreams. The book was commissioned by the Turner Broadcasting System, whose Fine Line Features subsidiary distributes Kartemquin’s movie. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “By the second part the filmmakers were much more involved with the families. They had a much stronger sense of what they were doing, and I think they had some money....

To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Early juries, as you intimated, assessed taxes, and this meant that a group of neighbors could moderate your taxes, as Lysander Spooner tells us. Not only were juries neighborhood, but they made the law of the land, as documents from around the time of Magna Carta prove. Magna Carta is a document of tax resistance. It protests that the king collected fines against the law of the land–i....

Lead Story In November Brazil’s heaviest woman, Joselina da Silva, who weighs 900 pounds, was admitted to a posh health spa in Sao Paulo. A specially adapted ambulance was required to transport her to the facility, and when she arrived fire fighters had to remove a window and part of a wall so she could be taken to her room. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In court papers submitted in July federal prosecutors moved to revoke the parole of convicted Irvine, California, bank swindler Charles J....

Oscar Chavez’s 30-plus-year career, during which he’s released more than 70 recordings, has made his name something of a household word in Mexico; he’s known for both his interpretations of traditional songs and his own compositions, many of which feature satirical political comment. I’ve heard this guy described more than once as a sort of Mexican Johnny Cash–and to judge from what comes across on his live recordings, it’s an interesting comparison, one that refers as much to the persona Chavez projects as to his actual music....

Poi Dog Days Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Right now Orrall is awaiting pressed copies of a new, companion release, Electrique Plummagram, a club-oriented, dance-mix affair that combines three remixed Pomegranate tunes with four new songs. Poi Dog is often lumped in with the so-called H.O.R.D.E. bands–Grateful Dead-style jamming outfits typified by Blues Traveler or Dave Matthews. But Poi Dog has a bit more world-music influence, somewhat offbeat Texas and Hawaii strains of hippiedom, and much less boogie....

Quimby’s Queer Store is no ordinary bookstore. Browsing in it can make you dizzy. “My goal is eventually that when people walk in they’re just overwhelmed: like, ‘Oh my god what is this.’ I want them to be stunned,” says proprietor Steven Svymbersky. You might have been more than just overwhelmed had you walked in off the street on a certain Friday night last September. You would have been witness to the sight of Svymbersky stripped to the waist, strapped to a bookshelf, getting 33 birthday lashes from dyke dominatrix Bliss, who was wielding a leather cat-o’-nine-tails–while Wiseacre riffed away on music from Jesus Christ Superstar....

Two things everybody knows about movie director Nicholas Ray are that he made Rebel Without a Cause and wore an eye patch. Go any further into his career, into the depths and shallows of Johnny Guitar, Party Girl, or The Savage Innocents, for instance, and suddenly you’ve joined the cult. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Johnny Guitar, on the other hand, that cubistic, near-hysterical, woman-dominated western so beloved of French intellectuals (Jean-Luc Godard never stopped praising it), made Ray physically ill....

A Pirate’s Lullaby Goodman Theatre Studio Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Daisy Armstrong, a shy, pregnant history professor, travels to North Manitou Island in Lake Michigan with her mother Natalie, an obsessively conformist, highly intelligent alcoholic. The government is purchasing their land to create a national park, so this will be their last visit to the place that’s been a sanctuary for three generations....

“Personally I like comedy to be intensely modern, and like my tragedy to walk in purple and to be remote,” Oscar Wilde wrote. He would have admired actor-director Steven Berkoff’s staging of Salome, the poetic drama Wilde adapted from the biblical tale of the teenage temptress who lusted for John the Baptist. Berkoff, who plays Herod in this touring production (originally presented at the Royal National Theatre of Great Britain), eschews the sumptuous exoticism generally associated with the material, opting for a dark, severe visual scheme and a dreamlike, slow-motion performance style that keep the audience at a distance from the story....

Sandra Hall is a dusky-voiced R & B belter whose debut disc on Ichiban is an encouraging sign that sweet soul music remains a vital force in contemporary pop. Hall is no fresh-faced newcomer–she’s worked shows with the likes of B.B. King, the late Joe Tex, Jackie Wilson, and Otis Redding–but until recently her reputation had been strongest in Europe, where the appetite for American deep soul remains strong. Although Hall’s vocal range is not the most supple, she hits with authoritative power and effortlessly brings a sense of real-life testimonial to everything from murmurs to shouts....

Hey, Faggot: Hey, H: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » If being attracted to men unconvinced that flatulence = high comedy qualifies as a “psychological problem,” then you and I would be well-advised to start a support group. You are not alone in being attracted to men in touch with what for too long has been mislabeled their “femin-inity.” I say “mislabeled” because thus labeling good table manners, reasonable personal hygiene, the having of feelings, and the willpower not to let big ol’ farts rip whenever nature calls has created a tremendous disincentive for insecure straight boys to acquire these various and sundry social graces....

First, I’ve just got to mention that a good part of the audience at The Love of the Nightingale left during intermission. That’s funny, I thought, because I kinda liked this play. It’s such a good story–all about love, lust, rape, and honor, a modern twist on Greek tragedy written by one of England’s leading playwrights, Timberlake Wertenbaker. But some didn’t care enough to find out how the story ended....

By Rose Spinelli Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » For the uninitiated, Polenta con Funghi is a square of cornmeal cut to resemble toast points. On it is placed an intermingling of rich and fleshy mushrooms–portobello and cremini–hickory grilled and served with a demiglaze, the perfect companion for a rendezvous with a chunk of crusty Italian bread. The presentation is so lavish, the portion so bountiful, and the taste so full-flavored and texturally deceptive, you’ll swear you’re eating a juicy steak....

Friday 15 Iconoclastic theatrical entrepreneur Michael Flores debuts his new play, Andy Warhol: The Factory Years. “I like to think that even if you hate Warhol, the play captures the 60s, the pioneering spirit of people trying to re-create themselves,” says Flores, the playwright and director. The show–which features a film cameo by Teller, of Penn and Teller–opens tonight at Cafe Voltaire, 3231 N. Clark, at 9. Tix are $10. Call 509-4958 for reservations....

Charlie Edwards’s parents used to play a game called Quaker. Object: whoever stays quiet the longest wins. Edwards always lost. He was told, “If you don’t quit talking so much you’ll go deaf.” He heard this more often as his taste in music veered to increasingly loud rock ‘n’ roll, and now his story has become the name of a new record store: The Quaker Goes Deaf. Best of Chicago voting is live now....

The Scratchy Noose is mobbed with people Tug wouldn’t let attend his funeral earlier in the day. Budge is at the door stamping hands and is worried about capacity and fire codes. Hope is working the bar and is serving tonight’s drink special, a concoction of her own creation she’s calling Thanatonic. As fate would have it, Tug’s wake falls on my night off. That Tug launched himself into eternity with a bottle of horse calmatives was a big surprise to no one....

The slick flavor of Malian singer Salif Keita’s last few albums on the Mango label has reflected his own desire to make his music more accessible to Western audiences (it was Keita and not some label honcho who, after listening to some Weather Report records, chose Joe Zawinul as producer-arranger for the 1991 Amen). Ever since his move to Paris in 1982, his recordings have partaken of the same burblingly harmless “world beat” sound that now seems to have become one of the wallpapers of choice for a large segment of Western yuppiedom....

Saint Sebastian Players, at Saint Bonaventure Church. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Those who appreciate the exaggerated characters and neat justice of whodunits will find classic satisfaction in Saint Sebastian Players’ production of Tim J. Kelly’s The Burning Man, but the play doesn’t offer much enlightenment to anyone hoping for a deeper probe into human psychology. Set in a wealthy recluse’s remote hunting lodge (on a dark and stormy night yet), the script employs characters right off the Clue board, brought together for the reading of the recluse’s husband’s will: besides this bitter aristocrat we meet the dead husband’s niece and cousin (one young lady intellectual and reserved, the other a sweet ingenue), a suspicious butler, the professional but aloof lawyer, the Dragnet-ish detective, and, for comic relief, an eager rookie cop....

Chicago’s Next Dance Festival But events like Chicago’s Next Dance Festival, now in its second year, are today’s version of older choreographers’ showcases like those at MoMing, which provided opportunities for mostly modern-dance choreographers to show their work–audiences were happy if the hit-to-miss ratio was even. Like these, the Next Dance festival, organized by Winifred Haun, showcases a second tier of choreographers and companies newer or smaller or farther from the mainstream than the artists in the Dance Chicago series (though there is some overlap: Christine Munch, Haun, and Mad Shak Dance Company, all on this program, also showed works at the earlier festival)....