Dear Reader, Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » First of all, I want to thank you for your article, “First Person: The Killer Inside Me” [January 27], because it reminds me of how self-centered, afraid and hopeless I once was. I have had HIV for nine years in April. I was diagnosed in a prison in Georgia. When I was informed of the diagnosis, I was placed in a segregated cell house for HIV+ inmates....

By Michael Miner A familiar name in Chicago political circles, Jacky Grimshaw coordinates transportation programs at the Center for Neighborhood Technology; she’s also codirector of the Chicagoland Transportation and Air Quality Commission, a coalition that’s developing its own long-range regional transportation plan. When she spoke at a recent public hearing in New Lenox against the North-South extension, accusing Springfield of neglecting the city in favor of pushing new roads into the corn belt, the Tribune deemed the hearing a local event and slashed its coverage in half for city consumption....

Friday 15 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Clark Street will be closed between Randolph and Washington tonight, except to people dropping off nonperishable food and personal items like soap and shampoo, for the Chicago Anti-Hunger Federation’s Good Neighbor Food Drive. Cosponsoring the event is WMAQ, which will be broadcasting it live. It promises to be a big street party from 7 to midnight, with free performances at the adjoining Daley Plaza....

Known as the “barefoot diva,” 54-year-old Cesaria Evora hails from Sao Vicente in Cape Verde–a group of islands off the coast of Senegal that were colonized by Portuguese slave traders more than 500 years ago. A bit of a late bloomer, she recorded her first album in France in 1988, and over the course of five albums she’s become a star throughout Europe. A master of Cape Verde’s indigenous morna form–gorgeous, often sad songs of longing and love–she sings with a beautifully subdued yet powerful emotional range, uncannily recalling the emotion-ridden work of Billie Holiday....

Dear Reader, Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » To read the letter from Jae-Ha Kim to Bill Wyman [May 12] was like a dream come true: critic ripping critic to shreds! As a musician who has occasionally had the misfortune of reading unfavorable reviews about my own work, I can attest to the sinking feeling of helplessness that occurs when a critic takes months or years of your creative energy, and, on an impulsive whim, publicly bludgeons it in print through a few “clever” paragraphs....

There still are times when I find it difficult to listen to Eugene Chadbourne. His stubborn insistence on playing the clown can seem the most infuriatingly adolescent put-on; his frantic jumps from idea to idea can seem an inability to stick with one inspiration and develop it. But if you’re in the mood to keep up with Chadbourne’s cartoonishly anarchic muse, you can hear his jumble of noise gradually resolve into an aggregate sculptural texture that really sounds like music rather than some asshole’s overclever attempt at originality....

While growing up in India in the 1970s Amir Khan was wild about movies. He’d sit through the same feature three or four times at a stretch. Some of the films he saw were American (a favorite was the disaster movie Airport ’77) and others were from Hong Kong (Bruce Lee was a boyhood hero). But most were from Bollywood, the name Indians use for Bombay, the center of the world’s busiest movie industry....

Like fellow Columbus townies New Bomb Turks, Gaunt spit out a furious garage-style punk rock that takes no prisoners. Rapid one-two-three-four count offs initiate manic rhythms loosely connected to an attack of buzz-saw guitars; snotty Jerry Wick rants hysterically over the top. Saying that Gaunt offer a more diverse strain of punk rock than NBT is a bit like claiming that new, improved Tide offers a significant difference from the old formula, but nonetheless their raw punk melodicism adds something to rock ‘n’ roll’s bloodied carcass....

After several seasons in search of a suitable principal maestro, the Grant Park Music Festival has landed a real catch. At 41, Hugh Wolff is in the ranks of such up-and-coming Americans as Gerard Schwarz and James Conlon, both poised to head major orchestras within the next decade. Certainly he has the right credentials: a Harvard diploma, studying piano with Leon Fleisher and composition with big-shot avant-gardist George Crumb, and enagagements with the requisite leading ensembles on both sides of the Atlantic....

STEVEN MACGOWAN MacGowan, 41, has lived most of his life in small Michigan towns; he now resides in Sodus. His present direction dates from 1984, when he saw a painted wood carving of a western scene at an art fair; afterward he sought out wood-carvers for instruction. He begins with photographs taken on trips to New York and Chicago, then makes a drawing that’s usually a composite of several photos. The wood panel he begins with is typically made of two-inch-thick butternut boards laminated together....

Even though he turns 55 this year, the profile of percussionist Jerry Granelli has only recently started to come into focus; the emerging picture has plenty to recommend it. It would have come as little surprise if Granelli–who studied with Dave Brubeck’s drummer Joe Morello and who has a host of sideman credits on his resume–had settled into a discernible niche playing straight-ahead jazz. His refusal to do that, however, stands responsible for a wide range of noteworthy projects....

I don’t know why they call Detroit’s Johnny Jones “Yard Dog”; it seems to me that “Moanin’ Wolf” might be more exact. His guitar playing has a sweet mournfulness that’s remindful of mid-period Johnny Heartsman–he even borrows Heartsman’s “moaning” technique–and his voice modulates from the barking grittiness one would expect of an Arkansas native to a soulful vibrato. What’s probably most amazing about the Yard Dog–who’s spent most of his life in Detroit, creating his own particular fusion of blues, pop, and soul–is that he’s managed to avoid the dreaded Motown assembly-line pop-soul anonymity....

The Lyric Opera appears to have been taken over by the staff of TV Guide. In this year’s subscription brochure, the Lyric’s 1995-’96 season is described in prose usually reserved for hyping new sitcoms or video releases of Michael J. Fox movies. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Susan Mathieson, director of marketing and communications for the Lyric, says the synopses are meant to convert people who don’t understand the inherent intrigue of operatic tales....

PJ Harvey’s third studio album, To Bring You My Love, from its grandiloquent title on down to its nerve-twitching songs, sees its creator atop a secure peak. The howls of the first album and the sardonicism of the second under control, her stated penchants for rude humor and the blues flow here with unchallengeable force. The blues, particularly, seep out of the album’s pores, from the growled vocal litanies and crawling bass to the abrasively carnal expostulations that give the album its thrills and chills....

To the Editor of the Reader (att Bill Wyman): Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Yo–Wyman is absolutely correct about the new revised Jones & the Rolling Stones which sucketh mightily as evidenced by DooDoo Lounge [Rock Etc., September 23]. I have E-mailed my opinion thereof to the Keefstone at Stones@delphi.com (as printed in Esquire) and indeed with copy the keefness thereat–can’t wait till I figure out how to do a website–Wyman is pretty smarmy however about the Tribune’s naivete on the Infobahn [Hitsville, December 23]–hey–well at least they’re on it–what’s your avatar Wyman–it is not hip to make fun of newbies–in fact, what’s the Reader’s Infobahn address–I think City Hall should make its presence felt on AOL in the Windy City Chat Room, in fact why doesn’t the Reader & NewCity hold a weekly salon–maybe a salon held for 2 hours on Sunday evening–a real development of a news conference–like Jagger was on AOL’s Center Stage–the Stones may be old, but they aren’t newbies–if anyone out there wants to hire a bottled in bond cyberdude who’s old enough to be a grandfather, check out Octagon Consultants in St....

Was the turkey bigger than Tiny Tim this year? “The holiday turkey business is somewhat resistant to recession,” according to a letter promoting Northbrook-based Loewy Foods as an economic barometer. “When economic times are softer, a significant number of companies still buy holiday gifts for associates, however they give smaller-sized turkeys. When the economy is on an upswing, businesses give larger turkeys and sometimes even hams.” Come the depression, look for Spam....

Why is Richard Phelan luckier than Shedd Aquarium? Because the carp the Cook County Forest Preserve District is poisoning in order to “rehabilitate” the Skokie lagoons for fishing are not nearly as cute as the beluga whales the Shedd keeps in captivity for the edification of tourists. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “Fort Sheridan is being made available to private developers without having first been screened by state and local governments for acquisition for public purposes,” according to the Lake Michigan Federation....

Hedwig Dances at the Harold Washington Library, May 12 and 13 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Sheldon B. Smith often gives his dances inscrutable titles; his newest piece is called Dog-Leg, Drag-Line (Drum Groove Tolerance). The press release says that it’s “a physical exploration of inhibition/introversion and exhibition/extroversion,” but I see it mainly as a wonderful series of physical jokes. The best joke is Smith’s cornucopia of inventive movements, which start out being one thing but take sharp turns into something different....

Who invented the smiley face, that obnoxious little design you see plastered on stickers everywhere? Some anonymous hero lost in the quagmire of Commercial Art History? A team of dedicated iconographers hoping to devise the perfect expression of mindless optimism? Will we ever know? Hey, this is what we pay you big money for. –Ivan Brunetti, Lansing, Illinois Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Hmm, your check must have gotten lost in the mail....

Joseph Holmes I was right. Kevin Iega Jeff, the new artistic director of Joseph Holmes Chicago Dance Theatre, is the kind of guy who exudes charisma in theater lobbies and generates standing ovations in the theaters themselves. At its best, his choreography goes straight to the heart; at its worst, it’s slightly kitschy, in a musical theater way. Given his background, his knack for theater comes as no surprise. He debuted on Broadway at age 17 in The Wiz, then went on to create the dances for Spike Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It and for an international tour of Porgy and Bess....