The Tiff and Mom Show would never be considered great theater–the spaces are dirty, the costumes are cheap, and the jokes are dirty and cheap. But Tiff and Mom endure. For three years Todd Schaner and Robert Bouwman have been playing a booze-infested bimbo from Berwyn and her overweight teenage daughter at bars and shoddy theaters all over town. People seem to love them. Fans hang out after the show. They clamor for Tiff and Mom T-shirts but will happily settle for less–Tiff and Mom matchbooks, for example, complete with a charming photo of the smiling pair....

Technically Once a Cop is a sequel to the 1992 Supercop, which teamed Jackie Chan with the equally acrobatic Michelle Yeaoh, but in spirit it harks back to the martial-arts costume epics of the 70s that featured virtuous women warriors torn between duty and love. It’s also a vehicle for Yeaoh, who reprises the role of Yang, the tough police detective from Canton. Her boyfriend, a Chinese Vietnam vet disillusioned with penurious public service, has gone off to Hong Kong with his buddies to make a quick buck....

OPEN FACE Open Face, a collection of short monologues pulled together by producer Linda Lofstrom, explores the way in which art and life transform each other. But the pieces, performed by their writers, vary wildly. According to Lofstrom’s note in the program, all of the works focus on “a personal turning point; a growth spurt; a revelation”; nearly all of the artists have chosen to tell stories that seem pulled directly from their lives....

ROMEO & JULIUS, Bailiwick Repertory. The classic tale of secretly wed lovers whose passion defies family and society would seem an intriguing source for gay theater in a time of controversy over same-sex marriage. But this all-male version of Romeo and Juliet, adapted by Michael Halberstam and staged by Kerry B. Riffle, misses the point, ignoring the gay community’s real-life enemies–street punks and right-wing politicians. The title characters are destroyed instead by rival queer cliques in the “gay ghetto” of what the program redundantly calls “a large metropolitan city....

San Francisco Seals leader Barbara Manning has been one of independent rock ‘n’ roll’s most interesting figures for nearly a decade, but the wayward manner in which she’s pursued her career hasn’t exactly made her a household word. She’s spent a lot of time in bands that break up as soon as they release an album (28th Day, World of Pooh), and almost as much releasing singles on different labels: she’s told at least one writer that she wants to put out 100 singles on 100 labels....

Cynics might say that any show based on television–like, say, The Real Live Brady Bunch–is bound to be popular among the nostalgic vidiot generation. And there may be some truth to this. But there are also genuinely compelling reasons for the success of the musical-comedy revue Schoolhouse Rock Live!, adapted from ABC’s long-running series of educational “commercials” shown on Saturday-morning TV. For one, the songs–” Conjunction Junction,” “Three Is a Magic Number,” “Lolly, Lolly, Lolly (Get Your Adverbs Here)”–stand up to repeated viewings....

SERGIO AND ODAIR ASSAD Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » When doubled the quietly intense sound of acoustic guitar can approximate a small orchestra while still retaining the unique intimacy made possible by skin against string. In the right hands, such as those of the Assad brothers, the pairing can obviate all other sounds. Sent from their native Sao Paulo to study in Rio de Janeiro in the late 60s, the Assads have spectacular technique and worldly interpretive skills....

For I the lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation. –Exodus 20:5 Of course we were in Baltimore, revisiting Oriole Park at Camden Yards and reconsidering the way things are and might have been. The Sox were at the new Comiskey, playing in front of their dwindling faithful. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The new Comiskey, opened in 1991, was again a ballpark built with an eye for cutting corners....

SCRAWL 6/24, METRO The early charm of Scrawl came from their fairly inept but extremely exuberant performances, three women from Columbus playing catchy, raw punk rock because it was fun. Over the years they’ve grown beyond the manic, reckless spirit that produced gems like “Green Beer” and “Gutterball,” but their newfound wisdom arrives in the same lucid manner as their early celebrations. Last year’s Velvet Hammer (Simple Machines) captured a meditative band moving at a slower pace, plaintively delivering bittersweet lyrics; “Your Mother Wants to Know,” for example, is a poignant lope about screening dreaded maternal phone calls underpinned by a rather sad lack of communication....

The “New” Wisdom Bridge Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Careful readers of Stagebill will note that a “new” theater company is presenting Lanford Wilson’s Redwood Curtain, now playing at the Ivanhoe Theater. “Wisdom Bridge Theatre Chicago Company” is one of two entities quietly incorporated last spring as part of what Wisdom Bridge staffers are calling a reorganization of the company long known as Wisdom Bridge Theatre....

Marcel Pagnol’s The Baker’s Wife (1938) has aged surprisingly gracefully. If you can overlook its stagebound conceits–Pagnol was, after all, a playwright who used film more or less as a recording device–you may be captivated by the sincerity of this rustic moral fable and beguiled by the friendliness of its characters. Quintessentially French in its outlook, the simple tale dwells on the predicament of a Provencal village whose new baker isn’t up to making good bread because his young wife has run off with a handsome shepherd....

Sound’s like a good idea to me. In the Chicago-based Student Lawyer (September), Di Mari Ricker describes a legal-writing professor driven to distraction by ignorance of apostrophes: “Benson gives his students a fifth-grade-level test with 10 sentences that need apostrophes. Students are allowed to take the test as many times as they wish, but if they fail it they don’t pass his legal writing class.” Best of Chicago voting is live now....

The Royal George Lights Up Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Some 18 months ago, when Jujamcyn and Perkins took over the complex, they talked about keeping the theaters lit with new plays, revivals, and Chicago productions of important works from New York and elsewhere. But since the national tour of Angels in America departed last February, Jujamcyn and Perkins have had difficulty delivering on that promise....

By Ted Cox Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » By that point humility came off as an unnecessary affectation. Still, to a man the Bulls maintained– quite rightly–that records are nice but an NBA championship at the end of it all is the only goal that matters. For most of the first half of the season we took pleasure in the Bulls for the beauty of their play and the force of their personalities, to the point where it came almost as an epiphany to be reminded that a sports team is ultimately judged by a very simple measure: win or lose....

The cow goes “moo.” The sheep goes “baa.” What do little kids in Africa learn instead? What does the wildebeest say, for example? –Bill Kinnersley, via the Internet. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » You are a lucky guy. I’ve just been reading a book on this subject by Hank De Zutter, an English professor and honorary chairman of the zoophilology department here at the Straight Dope Institute of Knowledge....

STONE TEMPLE PILOTS Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » From the beginning–which for STP was a big hit called “Plush”–the group has been called “the poor man’s Pearl Jam.” Indeed, on “Plush” that famous grunge sound was evident: guitars that echoed Alice in Chains, the soft verse/hard chorus/soft verse method made famous by Nirvana, the emotional but rather senseless Vedder-esque lyrics, and, more than anything else, STP vocalist Scott Weiland’s soulful, heavy voice, almost indistinguishable from Eddie’s....

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM at Chicago Dramatists Workshop Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The wisdom of Oak Park Festival Theatre’s excellent production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (their third in 20 years) is to treat the supernatural turf battle between Titania and Oberon–but little else–seriously indeed. Here the fairies’ civil war touches everyone, in mistaken identities triggered by misapplied magic, but also in the benediction the placated fairies offer the closing marriages....

Having gigged professionally only since 1991, Beau Jocque reportedly has become the south Louisiana zydeco circuit’s biggest draw, besting such established names as Boozoo Chavis and Buckwheat Zydeco, all while demonstrating how to modernize a traditional style without sucking the soul out of it. As a melodist, he’s no Mozart, but he compensates for that through sheer heartthrobbing rhythmic panache, ripping his way through pumping funk beats, ska-ish meters, and boogie shuffles with the assistance of a powerful rhythm section that slams this shit harder than it’s ever been slammed....

Life Is a Rock (but Y107 Can Still Roll You) Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The only pop station in Chicago that indiscriminately plays music by whites and blacks side by side is a silly, calculated, artificial, and wholly pleasurable new operation that went on the air just after the new year. The station’s call letters are WYSY, it goes under the nom de radio of Y107....

Lead Story The New York Times reported in January that officials in Beijing recently had adopted a massive program to rid the city of flies. During “attack weeks,” teams of youth and elderly people use up to 15 tons of pesticide and 200,000 flyswatters. In one successful week last August, they reduced the fly population by an estimated 20 to 30 percent. However, measurements indicated that as many as 33 flies remained per room....