This innovative, well-researched tribute by Larry Weinstein to one of Germany’s great modern composers elevates the music-video format to a new height: it’s a seamless sequence of some of Weill’s greatest and most obscure musical numbers, sung by celebrities from the rock and opera worlds, as well as his philosophical ruminations. Imaginatively filmed in a cavernous warehouse on cleverly designed sets, the vignettes range from the predictable (Nick Cave crooning “Mack the Knife”) to the unexpected (the hip-hop dance troupe Ghettoriginal deconstructing a little-known song), from the inspired (Betty Carter in a regretful mood in “Lonely House”) to the demented (William S....

S/M Four years ago, when Mary Zimmerman first started getting citywide attention for her stage adaptations of The Arabian Nights and Vladimir Nabokov’s Laughter in the Dark, one of the most frequently repeated criticisms of her work, both in the press and on the gossipy street, was that she was a mere disciple of Frank Galati and her work a slavish outgrowth of his better-known experiments in adapting nontheater texts to the stage....

By Ted Cox Take the early-season game in Vancouver against the expansion Grizzlies, when the Bulls looked miserable. Every other team in the league would have tanked it, saving their resources for the next opportunity. But the Bulls–led by a Jordan explosion in the fourth quarter (he finished with a team-high 29 points)–rallied from two points down entering the final period to win 94-88. Or consider the time this season that the Bulls blistered Orlando in the first half of its first visit to Chicago, but the Magic’s talented array of three-point shooters jeopardized the Bulls’ double-digit lead late in the game....

While reading your first book I came across a reference to President Zachary Taylor dying of eating strawberries on a warm day. The only other reference I have heard to something like this was in The Book of Lists, which mentions someone having eaten cherries with milk on a warm day and dying. Everything else I have ever read to find out why this is has been mysteriously mute, though my mother, when I mentioned it (out of fear, because I love cherries), warned me against the practice....

All in the Family Ravinia has a new staff member with a last name already quite familiar to the festival’s em-ployees and audiences: Mervon Mehta, son of Ravinia executive director Zarin Mehta, has just come on board as a talent coordinator with a particular focus on pop music. He re-places Ron Pateras, who had been booking the festival’s pop and jazz events since 1988. Needless to say, Ravinia is trying to play down the appearance of nepotism....

AN AGNOSTIC’S HELL Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The first thing to notice about Vincent Balestri’s work in An Agnostic’s Hell is its unassuming simplicity. The stage has the sparse, functional, yet comfortable feel of a bachelor’s apartment. Two black sheets are spread out on either side of the stage. On one is a foam cushion with a rust-colored sheet taped to the middle; at each corner of the other are four folded sheets of different colors....

Two years ago, while Justine Jentes was volunteering at a prochoice benefit auction, an art collector friend took her by the arm and encouraged her to purchase something. That evening Jentes came home with three paintings. With a mixture of pride and responsibility she thought, “Oh my god, I own art!” She stayed up all night deciding where to hang it. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Jentes, 28, knows there are a lot of people in their 20s and 30s who didn’t grow up with much exposure to art....

Tom Billings is hunkered down in his “terrorist art bunker,” next to his Lay Away Visual Arts Gallery, in the basement of Wicker Park’s Flat Iron Building. He’s wearing a T-shirt stamped with the “signature” he uses on all his works (and which is tattooed on his left arm): a TV set with a skull inside. Billings reaches into his pocket and produces a crumpled Bazooka Joe bubble-gum comic. In the comic, Joe dreams he’s rooming with Picasso....

Chesterton grew up as a railroad town, but the train doesn’t stop here anymore. The big event seems to be the annual Oz Festival, held in September and featuring some of the real Munchkins from the 1939 movie, The Wizard of Oz. Chesterton also has a year-round Oz Fantasy Museum (route 49 and Yellow Brick Road, 219-926-7048), but unless you’re a die-hard fan you’ll probably want to save the quarter it costs to get in....

By Jill Riddell Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » A young boy with blond hair, long eyelashes, and a grasshopper in his hand pushed open the door. He trotted back to a man at the counter, showing him the bug. “I need to get some grass for him to eat,” he explained, and the man obligingly walked outside with him to find some. Meanwhile the woman had done a search of her own for butterflies and spiders, and offered me a stack of selected materials....

Dear Sir: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » On the strength of Lawrence Bommer’s glowing review of Henry IV at the Folio Theatre in a recent edition of the Reader [February 4], my husband and I made the effort to see it. After surviving the experience, I cannot help but wonder if we saw the same production of the same play as did Mr. Bommer....

Three years after his recording debut, the lionization of saxist Joshua Redman has just about reached its conclusion. Having recorded with, among others, his father Dewey (the former sideman with Ornette Coleman and Keith Jarrett), Pat Metheny, and Jimmy Smith; having won awards and polls and acclaim at festivals around the world; having signed a contract (just last month) to wear the clothes of hip designer Donna Karan, what’s left? Well, he might begin by finding a way out of the formulaic cage he’s built for himself....

By Michael Miner The papers were contemplating the mayor’s lovely idea of transforming Northerly Island into a nature preserve. But by this summer their enthusiasm had all but evaporated. An offshore haven from Chicago’s shocks and stresses mattered less to them now than the damage it posed to the city’s infrastructure. The park lay somewhere off in a gilded future. The closing of Meigs Field was real and imminent. “But ask the city about impacts of the closing that aren’t addressed in the reports, and officials respond that if it isn’t in the study it isn’t a significant factor....

A group of local new-music advocates has formed New European Music Overseas (NEMO) to introduce Chicagoans to the cutting edge of the European composing community, and its founding on the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II is no coincidence. The war’s end ushered in the postserial style and a fascination with newfangled electronic technology that was taken up with a vengeance by Karlheinz Stockhausen in Cologne, Pierre Boulez and Pierre Schaeffer in Paris, Luciano Berio in Milan, Milton Babbitt at Princeton, and Edison Denisov in Moscow....

THE DAY ROOM A succession of characters arrive on the scene, each claiming to be sane while declaring that all who went before them were mad. By the end of act one DeLillo has undermined our expectations to the point where we can’t be sure if anything is true. Who’s mad and who isn’t? Are we in the hospital room where we thought we were or in the “day room,” where the insane spend their days bouncing their “lonely monologues” off the white walls?...

The Man Who Reformed the Post Office Late last week we visited the Lakeview and Lincoln Park post offices, two of the most notorious branches in Chicago. Every window was open, framing a smiling face. Everything looked spanking clean, and there were no lines at all. “Top management–you can quote me on this–has suggested in years past, as recently as last year, that I was out to destroy the paper,” said Nicodemus....

Did the Swiss army really use the Swiss army knife? Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » But of course. I know this because I heard it from one Tanya, a Swiss citizen living in the U.S. whose father served in the Swiss army. Tanya confirms that her dad was issued a regulation Swiss army knife not unlike the ones we civilians are familiar with. I was going to ask Tanya for more details, but unfortunately I lost her phone number, one of the hazards you face in this business when you start doing research via talk radio rather than the library....

Every so often I see a car with a license-plate holder that says “Los Angeles” above the plate and “KMA367” below it. The first time I encountered one of these things, I assumed it was a ham radio call sign. Having come across the same thing on dozens of other cars, however, I’ve discarded that interpretation. The most plausible explanations I’ve heard are that it is a license-plate dating service or a system for identifying the personal cars of law enforcement officers....

How do banks profit from automated-teller machines? ATMs have sprouted up all over during the last couple decades, and their convenience can’t be beat. But I thought banks make their money holding on to our money, so why would they bother doing something that would make it so easy for us to take our money back? I’m rarely charged an ATM transaction fee, but I suspect that using ATMs may not be as free as it seems....

Most of us, at some point, have had the desire to smash a computer. Perhaps our own personal computer, after the umpteenth crash, after we watch hours of work disappear with a single little blip. Maybe someone else’s computer–the one at school, storing a grade you’d rather forget; the one at the Department of Motor Vehicles that remembers your tickets so persistently. In a recent article in the Nation, in fact, Sale applauds the central message of the bomber’s long treatise....