NABJ’s Conundrum Yet in a time of casual passions and crackpot philosophies, many serious journalists believe a line is more necessary than ever. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » As black journalists began to enter the business in significant numbers a quarter century ago, they were met with the question: Are you blacks first or journalists first? It put them in a quandary, in large part because the choice posed was a false one....

NAKED BREATH Before Queer Nation zaps my office’s fax machine or Babble spits out a nasty editorial on my betrayal of the gay community, I will of course acknowledge that artists working outside a white, Eurocentric, heterosexist tradition have historically been relegated to second-class status in our culture, when they’ve been acknowledged at all. The art world can only benefit from embracing diversity and questioning the standards it uses to evaluate art....

A woman in a scarlet evening dress backs onto the stage on tiptoe, as if wearing invisible sky-high heels, holding her long, full skirt out to either side. She looks lost and luxurious, a figure from an ad for an expensive perfume; a rich female voice singing Mozart provides the aural setting. The dancer arches back, farther, farther, and slides into the floor–then flips into the yogic “plow” position, her panties visible, her legs like two halves of a compass mechanically measuring the space around her....

In December Dominique Gosbout, of Abitibi, Quebec, petitioned the legislature to restore one word of the province’s old civil code. In the new 1992 code, article 441 lists the only obligations of married persons as “respect, fidelity, care and help.” For the first time in 200 years “love” is no longer required. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Vicki Jo Daily, 36, filed a lawsuit in July in Jackson, Wyoming, against the widow of the man she collided with and killed in a February accident....

Hey, Faggot: –Peter Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Let’s get the important stuff out of the way first: it’s “regardless,” not “irregardless.” Add this to the mix: the fact that gay men are, first and foremost, men, suffering from the same “intimacy issue/fear of commitment” bullshit that plagues our breeder brothers; the not-so-tender mercies of the AIDS crisis; the never-ending slander and assaults on gay people’s rather limited rights by the Pat Robertsons of this world–and it’s a wonder gay men can get out of bed in the morning, let alone form lasting, loving, healthy relationships....

AALIYAH 21 . . . WAYS TO GROW Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In most genres coming-of-age records are somewhat rare (rock’s proliferation of coming-of-middle-age records doesn’t count), but in R & B they’re a staple. Typically the COA recording signals an artist’s move beyond the influence of their Svengalis or their childhood selves into a realm where they can put their own spin on the music....

SILKWORM Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » There’s usually a thin line between pretense and genuine artistic vision. When someone plumbs the depths of his or her soul, more often than not sewage is all that will be dredged up. In the case of the Seattle trio Silkworm, there’s some honesty strewn in with their shit. On their new double album, Firewater (Matador), their first without founding cosongwriter Joel Phelps, drunken confession coexists with dime-store philosophizing, melodramatic narrative, and elliptical metaphor....

SubUrbia Stays Put Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Turk says the buzz about SubUrbia convinced her the show, about a group of troubled teenagers who hang out in the parking lot of a local convenience store, could become a hit. Still, without evidence to support her hunch she wasn’t sure enough to ask Mazzonelli for a lease extension. Because of the first-rights lease agreement she thought she had with the Theatre Building, Turk wasn’t worried about losing the north theater space....

THE LOMAN FAMILY PICNIC Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » A certain bitterness pervades Margulies’s play, which includes a couple of truly tasteless references to Kristallnacht and how terrible a relative who endured the concentration camps looks at a buffet table. Worse, in his effort to deconstruct the classic image of the American Jewish family, Margulies shows us the underside of sitcom characters instead of real human beings....

The Secret Garden, Pegasus Players. On Broadway and in the touring version seen earlier this year at the Shubert, this musical version of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s children’s story was a moving work of dark enchantment, thanks to the individual quality and unified interaction of Marsha Norman’s libretto, Lucy Simon’s music, Heidi Landesman’s storybook set, and Susan H. Schulman’s sensitive direction. But this emotionally flat non-Equity production is utterly lacking in wonder, excitement, romance, and suspense as it recounts the tale of an orphan girl who overcomes her own isolation to bring joy to her morbid uncle’s spooky manor on the moors....

To the editor: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The article attempts to provide support for (director of the Jewish Community Relations Council) Michael Kotzin’s suggestion that “segments who didn’t support the [Palestinian-Israeli] peace process” might be inclined to “act out” violently to vent their frustrations over the ongoing negotiations. It’s bad enough the Reader decided to highlight segments of Pick’s story supportive of this nonsense; the author fails to provide Kotzin’s suggestion with any concrete evidence....

The name refers not to any particular group of musicians–way too generic–but to the locally focused radio program that deejay and sometime producer Dave Freeman now hosts on WDCB. And these days, with all the albums by Chicago artists arriving on local and occasionally national labels, Freeman has more than ever to choose from. Some of those musicians–including Joanie Pallatto (Passing Tones on Southport), Rich Fudoli (Continental Attitude on Sunlight), and Howard Levy (featured with Trio Globo on the Silver Wave album Carnival of Souls)–will show up Sunday afternoon for a live-audience taping of All Chicago Jazz, involving performances and interviews; the show will broadcast later this month....

Most people think of dancers as physical beings, as superbly toned and trained bodies that can do things other bodies can’t. But I’m convinced that a dancer’s spirit, far more than his or her physical prowess, is the measure of greatness: the body merely clothes the spirit, makes it visible. The dancers of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater have that extra edge, that larger dimension that comes from trying just a little bit harder and a little bit harder still....

Another Theater Company Bites the Dust Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Six years ago Synergy spent $12,000 building a comfortable and functional 96-seat proscenium theater in a space it rented at 1753 N. Damen. “We believed there was real revenue potential in opening our own space,” says Fritts. But the expected revenue never came. “In the past couple of years, the theater companies that could afford to sublet our facility were fewer and fewer because most of the small theater companies have less and less money to invest in productions,” he adds....

Aaron Kramer and George Pappadakis Ranging from three inches in diameter to beach-ball size, Kramer’s spheroids are at once all the same and all different. They look like weathered, slightly rusty versions of the plastic mesh Wiffle balls that briefly appeared in American backyards before the advent of Nerf. Kramer fashions them from material he finds in and around the streets of Los Angeles, where he lives (though he got his start in Chicago), including concrete-reinforcement rods, aluminum strapping, and bristles that have fallen off street-cleaning machines....

In 1832 the Sauk chief Black Hawk led a group of warriors and their families–a total of 1,500 people–across the glacier-flattened, sparsely settled prairie of northern Illinois and up into Wisconsin. Their goal was the recovery of former homelands on this side of the Mississippi, but near Lake Geneva, the strength of his party diminishing and an army of volunteer soldiers in full pursuit, Black Hawk decided to turn back. He headed west and north, into the hills of the driftless (nonglaciated) country west of Madison, and on to the steep, wooded bluffs on the east bank of the Mississippi....

Friday 19 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Photog Philin Phlash started out chronicling the hard-core demimonde in Boston, where he helped start the Boston Rock fanzine and shot for both the Globe and the Phoenix for nearly a decade. He’s been in Chicago for five years; the title of his new show at the David Leonardis Gallery, The Public Eye, is a nod to his move toward more general nightlife documentary and reflects the flash-drenched garishness of his paparazzi-style shots....

Every time Paul Talanda drives by a Kentucky Fried Chicken he’s an emotional cocktail: he feels depressed, alienated, hurt, nostalgic. For 15 years he worked for the company at restaurants north of Chicago. He started in high school as a part-time server and within two years advanced to management, eventually opening new restaurants, hiring and training employees, and conducting orientation sessions. In 1990 the restaurant Talanda managed had such high profits and received such good evaluations that the company promoted him into the President’s Club, an elite group of managers whose members were called on to train new managers and attend division meetings on new products and procedures....

Here Comes Another Art Fair Two developments certain to add an interesting twist to the Chicago art-fair scene: (1) A group of local and out-of-town gallery owners and collectors have started a new company called Expressions of Culture, which will organize a series of annual Chicago-based art and design shows. (2) Former Lakeside Group staffer Mark Lyman is on a short list of candidates being interviewed to run the new organization....

“I’m not that good,” the comic says in that unmistakable voice, deep, growling, loud–a roar actually, something that should emanate from the mouth of a cartoon lion. “I’m really, really, really not that good.” Take the entire city of Chicago. Beginning in 1983 the citizens heard Freeman’s term “Council Wars” so many times over the next couple of years that most thought he was a brilliant stand-up comic. He hammered Council Wars home at CrossCurrents, at Second City, during TV and radio interviews, and in newspaper guest editorials....