MTV, the Distraction Factory, and the Academy Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I’d argue the point just on substance (barring CNN, I’d rather watch rock ‘n’ roll on TV than anything else, and it’s also the most adventurous radio station one could dream of) but also its “identity”–content aside, it does its job with greater panache, serves its audience better, contributes more to society, and is more aesthetically rigorous than any other station or network that’s ever been on TV....

Lead Story In April 21-year-old Rodney Williams appeared in the courtroom of Judge Robert Altenhof in Kelso, Washington, to explain why he had missed his court date on an assault charge. Fearing that the judge might not believe his excuse–his mother’s recent fatal illness–Williams brought his mother’s ashes with him in a plastic box and offered them to the judge to examine. Said Altenhof, “You think you’ve heard it all, but somebody always comes up with something new....

Lead Story A 17-year-old boy was hospitalized in Southington, Ohio, in March after he placed a .22-caliber bullet in a vise at his home and tightened it to see what would happen. The bullet exploded, embedding metal fragments in his fingers. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Francis Perlmutter, who inadvertently confessed to murder in Saint Paul, Minnesota, in June when he left a message on an answering machine, told reporters who were questioning him just after his arrest: “I don’t know what’s going to happen now....

As an art student at Northern Illinois University, Michael Banicki found himself overwhelmed by his new knowledge: seeking a way “to organize it all in my head,” he says, he began a group of 12 drawings called Artists’ Won-Lost Record. Each rated 20 artists on 30 different criteria. “A lot of the criteria were absurd,” Banicki says, but he was reading Albert Camus at the time, “so I was really interested in absurdism....

TODD MURPHY Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Murphy, an Atlanta-based artist who’s having his first solo show in Chicago at the Mindy Oh Gallery, uses a complex process to achieve his luminous effects. I think that if he were simply trying to simulate Old Master canvases, there would be more direct ways to do so. He takes mural-size photographs of human figures and paints out the backgrounds with tar....

Amps But that was her only songwriting contribution to the album, and indeed to the entire Pixies oeuvre. After that one moment of early glory she shut up and stood back while the head Pixie, someone calling himself Black Francis, grabbed all the attention. In a way it’s not hard to understand–Black Francis (who’s now calling himself Frank Black) is a consummate attention grabber, the kind of character who’s driven to prove himself the biggest voice in any room....

As contradictory as it may seem, experimental dance has its own well-worn paths–traditions that some choreographers follow and others throw brickbats at. For this Hedwig Dance Lab showcase, “Seeing Triple,” three young choreographers were given rehearsal space, feedback, and the chance to show their developing dances to the public. Amy Alt, who has made many steely experimental dances, went out on a limb by trying a traditional dance set to music she loves....

We are trilled* at the publicity for the Mythic Figs in the excellent article on the Gallery Cabaret [Our Town, April 29], one of the remaining strongholds for The Arts. Proprietor Ken Strandberg is in the Mythic Fig Hall of Fame for his continuing support. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » (I) No article about music at the Gallery (or in Chicago, if not the midwest) would be complete without mention of Mythic Fig Earl Pionke, “Thee Earl of Old Town....

The Spiny Anteaters are in love with the myriad sounds they coax from their own guitars: nonstandard cloudy swirls, long low drones, bright trebly accents, stabbing howls, and hazy tremolos. Comparisons to Crystalized Movements or very early Dinosaur come to mind, but the Canadian quartet’s emphasis on sullen songcraft is entirely its own. Their songs aren’t just excuses for instrumental grandstanding; nagging, insistent melodies emerge out of this home-recorded six-string murk....

THE TALES OF HOFFMANN Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The protagonist of Jacques Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann, the most serious and autobiographical of the Parisian composer’s operas, was loosely modeled on a dissolute mid-19th-century German artist and story spinner. Hoffmann is desperately searching for his romantic ideal, and along the way he’s seduced and abandoned by three women who embody various feminine wiles....

AN INTEREST IN STRANGERS Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The results of this survey are revealed near the end of the intermissionless 75-minute show. Of course they’re as meaningless as such statistics always are, reflective of “trends” artificially deduced by assessing a random assortment of people–whoever attended the show that particular night. This is information for information’s sake, compiled to use up time and delivered to divert, not enlighten....

Strange bulbous creatures appear to creep across the floor in Jo Hormuth’s new installation Frozen Turkey Dinners. Based on balloons folded into various shapes, each looks like it’s ready to pop. Unmistakably sexual, the sculptures seem “to be bursting and throbbing,” according to Hormuth. She also says they’re “democratic”–they seem to have “breasts and penises at the same time.” Arrayed on the floor and on small crates, a few are alone but most are in groups....

By Derrick Mathis Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » What am I doing here? About a month ago I was invited by Richard Lange, one of the owners of Circa Gallery, to participate in a multimedia group show entitled “Manhood: A Graphic Portrayal of Masculine Virility.” I thought he was joking, but he wouldn’t let up. “Oh, come on, you’re a writer, aren’t you?” I assured him that I was making a stab at being one, but I didn’t see myself as part of a multimedia lineup at an art gallery....

Ministry Ministry’s seven albums and handful of singles tell a story rife with contradiction and permutation. Both derided as derivative and hailed as revolutionary, the band have done their best to be a little of both, shifting from frothy synth-pop to heavyweight guitar rock, from sample-heavy, drum-machine prefab to stripped-down, live-to-two-track organic. They’re a longtime dance-club favorite, but most of their output is hard to dance to. One record they made for an indie label is so commercial it became a beer commercial; then they arguably became for a time the least radio-friendly band on a major label....

Vocalist Jean Smith and guitarist David Lester of Vancouver–known collectively as Mecca Normal–possess a remarkable ability to create symphonic breadth of sound. While their earliest work sounds like angst-ridden sociopolitical folk with a punk edge, their subsequent, more interesting recordings use Smith’s voice as an additional instrumental force while Lester’s guitar playing exhibits an ever-expansive palette. On last year’s Flood Plain (K Records), the pair’s individual contributions come together with more depth than ever: Smith’s alternately–and sometimes simultaneously–cutting, mewling, piercing, and floating voice conveys a presence at once ethereal and bracing, while Lester’s six-string extrapolations are capable of the same stunning range, from delicate arpeggios to crushing blasts of distortion....

The Cotton Club’s brightly lit facade stands out like a palm tree in Alaska on the desolate strip of South Michigan between 17th and 18th streets. People are here from all over the south and west sides to see a club favorite, Terrence Cain. He’s been playing the club’s Monday open-mike nights almost every week for the past couple of years. And he’s done so well that he’s headlining this Wednesday- night “best of the open mike” show....

Lead Story In June in Camden, New Jersey, two-year-old Matthew Mikel slipped while reaching for a cat on a balcony. He and the cat fell three stories. Doctors said Mikel survived because the cat cushioned his landing. The cat, however, did not survive. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In 1993 the Social Security Administration office in Fairbanks, Alaska, rejected Athabaskan Indian Altona Brown’s application for Medicaid benefits because she wasn’t poor enough....

Dear Ms. True: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » About Jim Williams’s role as mayoral press secretary: As press secretary, Jim Williams is responsible for keeping the lines of communication open between the press and the Daley administration. A respected member of the mayor’s “inner circle” of advisors, he shares and weighs input from other city officials on critical press matters. But contrary to the assertions of Tumia Romero, a former employee whose disputes with colleagues hastened her departure, final decisions on press issues are made by Jim and the mayor–period....

Sculptor Dennis Adams’s Bad Idea Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Adams noticed that the shopkeepers took chairs outside to enjoy the warm weather, but they always sat with their backs to the park. He came up with the idea of reproducing the different signs along Madison and building tables and benches out of these reproductions. He says the signs, many of them handpainted, included a variety of images, ranging from portraits of Malcolm X to pictures of items for sale in the stores....

STEREOLAB Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The Franco-English pop combo Stereolab seamlessly integrate influences from 30-odd years of musical eccentrics like the Silver Apples, Neu, the Modern Lovers, and Esquivel into richly textured, indelibly melodic songs. The group’s signature sound–a blend of cooing multilingual vocals, clipped rhythms, and droning vintage keyboards–is as fetching as it is instantly identifiable. Their concert performances have been marked by a reserved antipresence onstage and haven’t always measured up to the records....