Spinanes Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » When the Spinanes released their debut album, Manos, in the fall of 1993 people were astonished that only two musicians–singer and guitarist Rebecca Gates and drummer Scott Plouf–could create such a full-bodied, resonant sound. Building upon the duo’s remarkably strong hooks, Plouf’s playing expanded his drums’ rhythmic function to also occupy the middle ground–the heft and power of his work giving plenty of depth to what might otherwise have been too spare....

Promotional letters we were too fastidious to finish: “‘Taste does not exist without scent,’ says wine expert Joshua Wesson. ‘The nose is nothing less than a fax machine to the heart and the oval office of the soul.’” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Taboo topic, according to Dale Calandra of Center Theater, in New Plays! (Spring): “We don’t limit people to, say, two-character plays or period plays or modern plays....

“My hands are my voice,” says actor Robert Schleifer, slowly and deliberately, as he holds out his palms. “Inflection comes with facial expressions, body language, and visual gestures.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » It worked, to an extent. To understand other people’s speech, Schleifer read lips. But he grasped some polysyllabic words easier with games of charades; he says his brother once referred to Tennessee by swinging an imaginary tennis racquet and pointing to his eyes....

Tim Hagans & Rick Margitza Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » While these two relatively young journeymen are less well-known than many of their contemporaries, that fact says more about the music business than it does about their capabilities: their previous Chicago appearance, about a year ago, provided plenty of intelligent and exciting jazz modernism. Tim Hagans, the trumpeter, has appeared in bands led by Woody Herman, Mel Lewis, and current media darling Maria Schneider, but his name still rings a bell only with the cognoscenti....

To the editors: After some thought, I felt compelled to write to you about the extensive article about Daniel Coffey [“The Architect Who’s Rebuilding Chicago,” August 27]. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Mr. Coffey seems to be well connected politically, with family in City Hall, and therefore gets a shoo-in to possible plum projects, such as the State Street Mall and the Chicago Theatre....

There were double-decker buses on Sacramento Boulevard in 1924, when I was ten. The big sport on Sunday afternoon was to ride up to the statue at Logan Square, which was the end of the line, and sit around until the bus decided to go back. Ten cents. And then you had to pay another ten cents to get back. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » We’d ride on the top down Sacramento Boulevard, the open top....

They’re tearing down the building at 333 S. LaSalle, so the barbershop there is going to have to move. That’s not an earth-shattering event, as even the shop’s owner, Vic Lala, admits. It’s just that there’s been a barbershop on that block for well over 50 years. “Things change so much in the city, sometimes you just have to take note,” says Lala. “In a few months most people won’t even know this place is gone....

There was a time, not long before Michael Jordan, when Norm Van Lier was the best guard who’d ever played for the Bulls and was worshiped by basketball fans all over Chicago. Some might see a contradiction between what he’s practiced and what he preaches, but he’s really quite consistent. He runs from no argument, he hides nothing of his past. He’s the freshest, most original voice in local sports broadcasting, the envy of the opposition, the only sports-talk host around with something interesting and entertaining to say....

BIRTHRITE Taube’s play, which he also directs, deals with difficult subjects–child pornography, incest, and family loyalty. The family at the center of Birthrite makes the warped crew of Pinter’s The Homecoming look like something out of Leave It to Beaver. Judge (Don Blair), a child-porn producer, has been feebly clinging to his role as family patriarch after brutally mutilating his wife and burying her alive after she had sex with their repressed son Frank (Johnathan F....

Burning Up the House Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Born and raised in the western suburbs, Carter was into music from a young age, but during his teens Chicago’s house scene sucked him in for good. Before long Carter became a strong presence in the city’s underground dance scene. “When I got my driver’s license at 16 my sneak ability was validated,” he laughs....

Is Leonard Bernstein’s Candide, an adaptation of Voltaire’s philosophical satire, an opera or a musical? The controversy has dogged this remarkable hybrid ever since its debut on Broadway in 1956. Certainly Bernstein’s background—celebrated conductor of the classical repertoire who crossed over to musical theater with Wonderful Town and West Side Story but failed in his only true operatic effort, Trouble in Tahiti—added to the confusion. His collaborators—Lillian Hellman and Hugh Wheeler penned separate books, and Richard Wilbur, Stephen Sondheim, and John LaTouche contributed the lyrics—were highly regarded theater folks with minimal operatic credentials....

In 1988 Robert Simon accepted the position of chairman of the department of emergency medicine at Cook County Hospital and took on the task of cleaning up its once-notorious ER. “We’ve set up a good model program. We built a brand-new ER. Our ER is excellent in terms of its morbidity and mortality rate–it’s probably the best in the county. All of our physicians are board certified or are board eligible....

High Drama on the Fringe Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The legal battle began in late December 1994, when Doorika filed suit in Cook County Circuit Court alleging that after being dismissed from the theater company in May 1994 Dooley illegally continued to use the company’s name and logo and retained possession of props and costumes. Among other things Doorika members objected to Dooley’s taking out a classified ad in this newspaper that used the name Doorjka (a variation on Doorika also used by the company) to solicit actors for his new company, Dial Performance Group....

No American newspaper but the New York Times can match the Chicago Tribune in richness of tradition or worldwide fame. Its reporters were among the first ever accredited to cover the Congress of the United States. Its founder, Joseph Medill, called the meeting that resulted in the formation of the Republican Party. Medill’s grandson, Colonel Robert Rutherford McCormick, had been dead for 17 years by the time I was offered a job as the Tribune’s national political writer, but in newspaper lore the publisher still loomed as large as the great Gothic tower he had built on the highest point on Michigan Avenue....

A year ago, Kurt Cobain put a gun to his head. For all that’s been written about his suicide, the power it holds over our emotions and imaginations remains, for the most part, a mystery. It doesn’t come down to anything quite so simple as great songs, a great band, a great singer, or “the voice of a generation.” The answer doesn’t lie in poring over the details of his life either....

A lawn is an open field. A blank slate. A bare stage. A lawn underfoot should not be noticed. Ideally it’s something you hardly focus on, a perennial backdrop designed to show off what’s behind it or on it–a mansion, a picnic, a baseball game. When a lawn is noticed it’s usually because it diverges from manicured smoothness–when it’s suffered an outbreak of dandelions or crabgrass, or has grown to an unruly length....

MEDEA Founded by director Amy Eaton and actors Peter Cook and Marjorie Tanzar, Nature of the Beast is dedicated to producing shows with a strong physical emphasis, accessible to both hearing and hearing-impaired audiences. (Cook–seen in La Barraca ’90’s terrific The Sleep Walker’s Ballad last year–is deaf, and Tanzar is the daughter of deaf parents.) Their adaptation fuses several versions of the Medea tale, brought together in a script that includes outlined sections the actors improvise, both verbally and physically....

To the editor: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Readers of your article on the South Shore Cultural Center may have been left with the impression that the improvements there were accomplished by the ruthless wielding of power by an insensitive administrator who ignored community input and the rights of center employees. As president of the SSCC Advisory Council and a close observer of the workings of the Cultural Center for the past ten years, I want to correct any such mistaken impression....

Shake-up at the Terra Terra Museum founder and chief patron Daniel J. Terra has abruptly fired printing-company heir Robert Donnelley, who’s been the museum’s director since last winter. At his own request Donnelley’s appointment had not been widely publicized, and it appeared he was settling in for what he hoped would be a long tenure as, in his words, “an agent of change.” As recently as a month ago Donnelley, an art enthusiast and former banking executive who had served on the boards of several other cultural institutions, talked confidently in an interview about his long-term plans for the Terra Museum, including a possible move to a new location....

EX-IDOLS 1/20, METRO Prefab punk rock with the required lyrics obsessing on being a social misfit–the old “no one would accept me but my punk friends” spiel–the music of the Ex-Idols is designed expressly for the niche-friendly alternative rock market. On Social Kill (Relativity) they churn out a predictable lexicon of punk guitar riffs, but the flamboyant vocals of Gary Finneran, which drift between David Bowie, Ozzy Osbourne, and Stiv Bators, take center stage....