Open-and-Shut Case Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Fitzpatrick says he chose Stein to run the gallery because he was impressed by his previous efforts at Carl Hammer and because Stein promised to bring considerable financial backing to the business, including $16,000 that was needed to pay the gallery’s rent for 1995. In order to secure a low monthly rate, World Tattoo had agreed to pay the rent in one annual chunk, due before the end of 1994....

Leslie Thornton’s remarkable, mind-boggling experimental feature-length cycle of short films which she’s been working on and releasing in episodes since 1981 is a postapocalyptic narrative about two children feeling their way through the refuse of late-20th-century consumer culture; the films employ a wide array of found footage as well as peculiar, unpredictable, and often funny performances from two “found” actors. Apart from one startling and beautiful color shot in the penultimate episode, Whirling, the whole cycle is in black and white....

Dear Sir/Madam: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » On August 4, 1995, the Reader published a front-page article written to extol the accomplishments of Dr. Robert Simon, the Chairman of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Cook County Hospital. The article also supported his contention that the use of emergency-room observation centers would reduce health-care expenditures nationally in a significant way. The article made some convincing arguments on both of these topics....

The Whole Foods Market, which opened in March at North and Sheffield, is the new hangout for the politically correct. They’re loading their shopping carts with natural pet foods, nontoxic cleaning agents, recycled paper products, naturally brewed beers, and wine from organic grapes. They’re buying nitrite-free, hormone-free, organically fed, free-range poultry, beef, lamb, and veal (all of the animals presumably committed suicide). Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » They’re also getting an education from the in-house shopper’s guide, finding out why the store, which is part of the country’s largest chain of natural-food supermarkets (21 publicly owned stores), will not sell irradiated foods: nutrients are destroyed, long-term effects are unknown, and untested compounds are created that may be carcinogenic....

Illinois is third among states in pesticide use, applying 54 million pounds per year of herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, defoliants, growth regulators, and soil fumigants (after California with 152 million and Florida with 55 million), reports the National Center for Food and Agriculture Policy (Pesticides and You, Spring). Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Identities R Us. “Race and class intersect in different ways for young people than they do for their parents,” says Mike Perez of Oakland, California, quoted in the Chicago-based The Neighborhood Works (June/July)....

The First Wives Club With Bette Midler, Goldie Hawn, Diane Keaton, Maggie Smith, and Sarah Jessica Parker Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » On one level, The First Wives Club is a snappy satire, well written by Robert Harling (also the author of Steel Magnolias–another vehicle for women). When Elise moans in ecstasy, “Do it to me. Do it to me now!” she’s talking to her plastic surgeon, asking him to “fill up” her lips with collagen....

Emmett Miller The Minstrel Man From Georgia (Columbia/Legacy) “Yeah, but ’bout the time he started at me he’s liable to go color-blind.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Hank Williams’s hit rendition of “Lovesick Blues,” recorded in December 1948, was modeled after Miller’s 1928 version; western-swing pioneer Bob Wills called Miller’s sublime treatment of “I Ain’t Got Nobody” his favorite song; the Singing Breakman Jimmie Rodgers’s blue yodel reveals Miller’s influence; and Merle Haggard dedicated his raucous live album I Love Dixie Blues to Miller....

Any string quartet worthy of its name makes a point of promoting new works, and while the highly respected Vermeer Quartet isn’t nearly as new-music crazy and eclectic in taste as, say, the Kronos, it’s done more than its share. At this recital the De Kalb-based foursome will highlight Lowell Lieberman’s Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking. Lieberman is a young New Yorker with a doctorate from the Juilliard and a penchant for tonality and accessibility; this 1993 work for voice and string quartet is a eulogy to Wait Whitman on the centennial of the poet’s death....

For all its seeming irrationalities–the baroquely elaborate plots, the vehement scapegoating of seemingly innocuous characters, the obsessive cataloguing of minutiae–the world of the conspiracy theorist is an eminently rational one. In this world nothing happens by chance; everything–from the outcome of presidential elections down to the hiring practices of the Texas School Book Depository–is carefully planned and masterfully executed. “How can we account for our present situation unless we believe that men high in this government are concerting to deliver us to disaster?...

African Film Festival In the colonial Martinique of 1931 a black woman (Darling Legitimus) works to save her grandson from the life of the sugar plantations, determined to send him to the city to get an education (1983). An unusual portrait of life in the French colonies, graced by a convincing evocation of time and place but compromised by a formulaic, conventionally sentimental screenplay. With Garry Cadenat and Doula Seck; Euzhan Palcy (A Dry White Season) directed....

One day a few years ago police officer Daniel Godsel was browsing at a bookstore while his partner looked for a Christmas present. “While she was off shopping,” Godsel says, “I picked up a book on an artist. There was this guy in a suit next to me, and he’s staring at me and I’m ignoring him. I’m reading this book and he says, “Oh, are you interested in art?’ I said, “Yeah....

The tenth annual edition of the Chicago Latino Film Festival, produced by Chicago Latino Cinema and Columbia College, continues from Friday, April 29, through Thursday, May 5. Film and video screenings will be at Pipers Alley, 1609 N. Wells; at Facets Multimedia Center, 1517 W. Fullerton; at the Three Penny, 2424 N. Lincoln; at the University of Chicago’s Noyes Hall, 1212 E. 59th St.; at Northeastern University, 5500 N. Saint Louis; at Columbia College, 624 S....

Colin Andrews and Janette Fishell are a rarity: they’re an organ duo. If you think piano duets look tricky, you’d be amazed by the amount of choreography–of hands and feet–required for two organists to share one console. Unlike its piano counter part, which historically caught the fancy of many a composer and of the rising middle class, the organ duet has been far less popular–for the obvious reason that few 19th-century families could afford a pipe organ....

Daniel Barenboim may be an erratic conductor, but his interpretative unpredictability, which can nettle orchestra members, often adds freshness and spontaneity to his solo piano performances. It seems that his penchant for experimenting with familiar pieces yields most interesting results when Barenboim is answerable only to himself. And of course his keyboard technique–impressive in his prodigy days and now almost flawless–allows for a smooth execution of his ideas. For this recital, which kicks off the fifth year of his residency as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s artistic head, Barenboim has put together a program of works he’s performed many times before....

Once you know the name of this quintet’s leader–Dave Flippo, playing piano and synths–the rest of its odd designation falls into place. Of course at this point the whole idea of “world music” carries little novelty, either as a self-contained genre or as the most widespread new influence on every idiom from classical to rock; the phrase itself attained buzzword status back in the 80s. Most groups concerned with world-beat rhythms tend to attach themselves to a single culture–Brazilian, say, or West African or Middle Eastern–or to blend aspects of them all into a purportedly “universal” melange....

Anywhere Else Than Here Today When, exactly, did the labor movement keel over and die? How did the struggle for decent wages, tolerable working conditions, and adequate benefits become indistinguishable from communist insurrection? Who convinced us that whatever is good for the Fortune 500 CEO is good for the country, even as he builds his newest assembly plant overseas and ships foreign nationals here to toil in underground sweatshops? Best of Chicago voting is live now....

John Wayne Gacy’s botched execution last month seemed like a fitting end to a macabre tale. But the confusion and creepiness swirling around the late killer clown isn’t over yet. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The study of the human brain postmortem as a way to account for abnormal behavior is a murky pseudoscience with a questionable history. Scientists in the former Soviet Union preserved and examined the brains of their dead leaders, including Stalin....

GET READY Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The Doves’ dance captain and manager is acid-tongued, tough-loving Knobby; the Doves themselves are rambunctious, womanizing Johnson, superstitious, ever-hungry Bunch, one-eyed Frankie (whose angry girlfriend stole his false eye), wise, practical Vern, and the troublemaker, lead singer Roscoe. Their golden oldies–love ballads they warbled with sexy struts and killer smiles–are back on the charts, and so despite various mid-life crises, the Doves are ready to fly again....

A lot of blues and R & B artists come out of the church, but I can’t think of anyone this side of Solomon Burke who can match the Holmes Brothers for fusing the spiritually uplifting ecstasy of gospel music with the funky, sensual celebration of life that’s at the heart of the blues. The first thing you notice is their harmonies: sinewy as Sam and Dave at their best but with a feel of questing and ascension, the Holmeses’ voices bring a heartbreaking tinge to even a low-down Jimmy Reed blues grinder; when they erupt into a gospel chestnut like “None but the Righteous” you’re ready to throw away your beer and jump into the nearest body of baptismal water....

By Ben Joravsky “In many ways the state’s not interested in giving people information about the programs available–they’re only interested in cutting people from these programs,” says Sharron Matthews, the coalition’s executive director. “We’re getting more calls than ever–about 30 percent more than last year–and there’s more of an urgency in the voices of the people who are calling. They’re on the edge.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The hot line’s operated by two employees–only one full-time–who handle more than 1,500 calls a year....