Werner Herzog is a connoisseur of exotic landscapes who brandishes a marvelous disgust with natural and supernatural disasters. In the 52-minute Lessons of Darkness, broadcast not long ago on the Discovery Channel, he covers post-gulf-war Kuwait, mostly from the vantage point of a reconnaissance helicopter: his cameras soar over vistas of twisted, rusting war debris and desert oil fields where pillars of flame attain biblical proportions while firefighting crews gesture at him and inexplicably reignite the very infernos they have extinguished....

It has never occurred to the student that the goldfish might be happy in its bowl. If anything, she’s pitied the creature. But now the master is telling her that when she advances to the next level of tai chi, she will be approaching the happy mindlessness of the goldfish swimming in his bowl. Here the master does a creditable imitation of a goldfish hanging motionless in the water, giving just an occasional flick of his tail....

THE WILLIES The set is comprised of a bed with blue linens, perched on its foot, facing the audience; when Magnus “reclines” on it she’s really standing. To the left of the bed is a bat, which she uses in one section, and three old-fashioned windows hang artfully in the air. Scott Turner’s lighting design is magnificently subtle: when the lights come up, they often shine through the engraved opaque glass of these windows, appearing at times like the moon, a streetlight, or a lamp, as though someone indoors had turned on a light and we stood outside gazing in, voyeurs....

Chicagoan Lazlo Kondor got his job as a war photographer by fibbing to army recruiters. He told them he was the official photographer for the first Mayor Daley. Trained as an infantryman and equipped with battle gear he sometimes used, Kondor spent two years in Vietnam on missions that civilian photographers were barred from because–unlike Kondor–they could not fight. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “War is an emotion....

Wayne Polak had no idea his depiction of the stations of the cross would raise such a ruckus. “This is so bizarre and ironic because I don’t consider myself a religious artist–I don’t even go to church anymore,” says Polak. “I certainly never expected my work to generate opposition, particularly by atheists. Everyone’s putting emphasis on the religious aspect of the piece and they’re overlooking its artistic merit. Once you have a religious theme does that mean it’s no longer artistic?...

R & B vocalist Syl Johnson first hit the national charts in 1967, but with his series of singles on the Memphis-based Hi label in the 70s he secured his place in R & B history: on these he augmented his trademark muscular flamboyance with a deeply affecting hard-won tenderness enhanced by the flawless artistry of the Hi rhythm section and producer Willie Mitchell. In recent years he’s fallen somewhat from popular consciousness, but his new CD on Delmark reunites him with the Hi rhythm section, and the results are nothing short of astonishing....

I have thought about becoming a bodybuilder, but I’m getting mixed signals from my peers. The guys say I’ll catch more girls, but the girls say most guys they’ve dated who are into bodybuilding have very small penises. From observing many bodybuilders in pose trunks I’d say the girls seem to be right. Please help. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » If your concern is that having a godlike physique is going to shrink your privy member, S....

After arriving in Chicago in the mid-80s, art student Dan Peterman started to experiment with different materials: “I lined a cargo net with a sheet of plastic with its edges budged up, stuck a hose in it, suspended it from the ceiling, and turned the faucet on.” He watched the bundle balloon and sag, shutting off the water when the ceiling started to groan. “It was a way of exploring the properties of the materials,” he says, “and of seeing how if you start to push something in a certain direction what it conveys will change....

“People say my father’s a very unusual person,” Holly Greenberg muses. “He doesn’t have preconceptions about how somebody should behave. There were no gender-assigned tasks in my family: we had to go out and help my father put leaves and twigs in the mulcher or lay insulation in the attic.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » So while Greenberg’s mother thought her three daughters would just be in the way in the kitchen, her father put them to work, teaching them “male” things....

BITCHES THE ANGRY SHOW Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Popular teen-queen Sindee (Abley) is devastated when she doesn’t make the squad, and her mother Charlene (Mike Meredith, charmingly masculine despite the housecoat) is no help. Bingeing on a bag of Fritos, Sindee tearfully relays the news to her mother, who reacts by slapping her upside the head for accepting such a crippling defeat. Charlene advises Sindee to find a way back onto the squad, pronto, “and when you’re done with those Fritos go make yourself throw up because it’s almost dinner....

Chanticleer, the a cappella men’s chorus from San Francisco, is deservedly celebrated for the purity and precision of its singing and for the versatility of its repertoire, the 12 members impersonating with equal conviction ascetic medieval monks and rambunctious barbershop quartets. It probably doesn’t hurt that they’re clean-cut, all-American types. The group, founded in 1978 and named after the “clear-singing” Chaucerian rooster, has a blend of voices, from bass to countertenor, that allows plenty of flexibility in styles, textures, and emotional payoffs....

Falling in Love With Love, National Jewish Theater. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » This 140-minute Richard Rodgers retrospective is a triumph for director Sheldon Patinkin, musical director Kingsley Day, and choreographer Linda Leonard, as perfectly packaged and solidly conceived as NJT’s superlative Irving Berlin tribute, Puttin’ On the Ritz. With brains and heart, Falling in Love With Love triumphantly showcases 40 years of beloved but often buried song treasures, from the easily elegant “Blue Moon” to the contagiously happy “Oh What a Beautiful Mornin’” to the urbanely flippant “The Lady Is a Tramp....

For Michael Fusco, it all began with a side job in the summer of 1989. He managed Nite Life, a bar on the northwest side, and moonlighted as a construction worker. People would come into the bar and ask him to build their decks or do electrical work. Fusco, a lifelong Chicagoan, grew up in the Belmont-Central area. His father abandoned his family when he was five years old, and his mother, a Polish immigrant, had to take a job in a sweatshop....

PETER BROTZMANN TRIO At times I too have been seduced by this unabashedly romantic fantasy. But if you think about it, it’s a bit problematic. To say that jazz emanates from some place outside civilized, “sophisticated” musical conventions and therefore to associate it with primal expression and emotions (rather than intellect) implicitly denigrates the music whether that’s what the utterer intends or not. In fact these comments are characteristic of both early racist dismissals of jazz and their “opposite,” exoticist embraces....

Robin Lakes can’t stand pretty dances, where the movement flows by smoothly but doesn’t leave a trace. She likes dances that stay in memory. Her “rough dances”–a term derived from Peter Brook’s book The Empty Space–deal with stark realities like prisons, concentration camps, urban alienation, and wakes. Like Brecht, Lakes tries to awaken her audience; if that requires rough treatment, it can’t be helped. Still, she stays within the inherently pretty language of modern dance....

Six months ago, Pinata Full of Bees was the funniest and most daring show Second City had produced in years, with its edgy cruel sense of humor, its constant tweaking of the audience, and its mock rally against Blockbuster–much like something the hipper Upright Citizens Brigade would do. I really wondered how the show would fare with the loss of writer, actor, and UCB cofounder Adam McKay–along with Pinata’s director, Tom Gianas–to Saturday Night Live....

PIGFACE 12/1, METRO The most positive way to describe Pigface is to call it an industrial-disco all-star combo. But a more accurate assessment is bound to arise when you actually listen to the music. Feels Like Heaven (Invisible), the latest offering by this revolving cast headed by former PiL drummer Martin Atkins, effectively posits the group as an unfettered wank-off vehicle. Joining the fray for two performances tonight are Skinny Puppy’s Ogre, Die Warzau’s Jim Marcus, Chris Connelly, and numerous other practitioners of goth-dappled self-indulgence; if observing musical malcontents mope around the stage wondering what shocking thing to do next sounds exciting, then this veritable antimusical jam session should temporarily quell your longing for Trent Reznor’s codpiece....

There’s no nice way to say it. A growing number of Chicagoans believe that the city government is using their tax dollars to poison them–by burning their garbage. The Chicago Northwest Waste-to-Energy Facility, at 740 N. Kilbourn near Chicago and Cicero, is a “death machine,” according to Cook County Commissioner Danny Davis. A “monster,” says Lillian Drummond of the South Austin Coalition Community Council. The Center for Neighborhood Technology, in an October report, merely calls it dirty, expensive, and superfluous....

You won’t find Eric Zorn outside Stateville holding a candle during executions. He isn’t your typical death penalty opponent, and not just because he has a column in the Chicago Tribune. Still, Zorn stays on the losing side of the argument. Last year he took up the case of death row inmate Rolando Cruz in a series of 15 columns and 8 subsequent columns, exhaustively examining evidence he maintains shows Cruz’s innocence in the 1983 rape and murder of ten-year-old Jeanine Nicarico....

I’d been attempting pasta all week, and turning out rubbery strips with more bounce and heft than seemed appropriate. Eventually, we were ready for a bowl of the more ordinary variety, which is exactly what we got at Strega Nona. The menu’s been streamlined since the restaurant opened in the spring, but the general effect–dishes more interesting on paper than on the plate–remains the same. Best of Chicago voting is live now....