RINI TANDON Similar bifurcations can be found in most of Tandon’s pieces here. Dark Horizon consists of a smooth gray wood block with a narrow slit in the front. A black rubber mat hangs from the slot and reenters the box through another slit at the bottom. I thought immediately of a rest room towel dispenser, but of course this object is utterly nonfunctional. Viewing it as art, one notices the difference between the ribbed rubber and the smoothly lacquered wood; one notices the way the rubber creates an enclosed space between it and the wood....

By Jack Helbig Eight years ago, as a founding member of Theater Oobleck, Dorchen was at the center of the hottest avant-garde theater troupe in Chicago. His Oobleck plays–including The Slow and Painful Death of Sam Shepard, Ugly’s First World, and Mysticeti and the Mandelbrot Set–were among the group’s best work. In the almost five years since he split with Oobleck, Dorchen has grown from a writer of sprawling, entertaining pastiches to a more focused, original thinker specializing in pieces for one or two actors....

It was a conversation with a second-grade teacher from the local grade school that convinced Drake Shepard to teach his two sons at home. Though there’s no way to know exactly how many children are schooled at home, Chicagoan Dorothy Werner, who has taught four of her six children at home and leads several home-school networks, estimates there are 3,000 such kids in Chicago. Some parents teach their own kids because they want to intertwine religious and book learning....

We met the Count at Diversey-River Bowl, stocking up on Halloween treats. His party hearty gear and malevolent grin growled upscale bachelor bash. But our Fashion Cryptologists–still curious, if cautious–wanted to know more . . . maybe more than was good for them. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Blue bloods of the era opted for basic black. Edward (aka Bertie), prince of Wales, commander of the world’s largest wardrobe, insisted that high-flying nightlife be conducted in funereal trousers and tails, a refined version of the proletarian split riding coat....

When the ditches are full of purple loosestrife, in bloom during July and August, it is a treat to drive along the highways. It is happily a common sight since the seeds are carried far and wide by the ditch waters. –Katherine McKenzie, Wildflowers of the Midwest What makes loosestrife such a successful competitor? Two factors are mainly responsible according to a 1987 publication of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Spread, Impact and Control of Purple Loosestrife in North American Wetlands....

Summer Shorts With Summer Shorts–two programs of thoughtful one-acts, “Forced Perspective” and “Still Life”–the Neo-Futurists give themselves the opportunity to shape an entire evening. Creating a unified show from several pieces by different writers is a notoriously difficult task, and for the most part the unity here is aesthetic rather than thematic: Summer Shorts is highly formal, at times somber, more often elegantly austere. In almost every piece the actors remain motionless, gesturing minimally, thinking through decidedly complicated material....

To appreciate Jeff Garlin’s sense of humor you just have to listen to him for a few minutes, during which time you are darn near guaranteed two snickers, several guffaws, and a belly laugh if you’re lucky. To appreciate his craft you have to watch his work develop. I saw Jeff Garlin: Uncomplicated in its second preview performance, when it was a sputtering two-hour shipwreck of an evening. Two weeks later, he and director Mick Napier have refined this seemingly aimless collection of vignettes about the pitfalls of show business into an efficient, engaging, and remarkably unified piece of theater....

EILEEN WALTER-GREENE: A WING AND A PRAYER Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In her quiet, contemplative studies of the hawk’s wing, often shown hung by a thread from a nail and surrounded with cloth, Walter-Greene also brings about riveting transformations. Some of her paintings are simply objective studies that describe the wing’s shape, structure, and coloration. In these, the wing’s new, rather mundane role as an object for visual study seems far removed from its original powerful function....

On September 13 for two years running members of a New York writers’ collective have lined up along the Brooklyn Bridge and recited erotic poetry to passersby. “Once you get past the first two poets you get used to it,” says Sharon Mesmer, a former Chicagoan and member of the collective. “Most people are pretty open to it. Nobody throws anything.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “It’s a gentle kind of terrorism,” says Mesmer....

The surprising thing about the first English-language feature (1993) of Iranian filmmaker Amir Naderi (The Runner, Water, Wind, Sand) is that it has nothing at all to do with Iran or Iranians. Rather, it tells the story of a laid-off American newspaperman (John Wojda), separated from his wife and child and at the end of his economic resources, traveling across New York City in an effort to find enough money by the end of the day to keep himself from becoming homeless....

MARIO SCHIANO & SEBI TRAMONTANA Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Though figures like Giorgio Gaslini and Enrico Rava have achieved some recognition in the U.S., Italian jazz doesn’t have much currency. In fact, to many jazz listeners it has no meaning. Yet over the last three decades it has come into its own, creatively and humorously appropriating American traditionalism and the edginess of European free improvisation and imaginatively blending them with Italian folk forms....

Thirty-year-old Swedish saxophonist Mats Gustafsson is a striking free-improviser obsessed with the sound of his instrument and the power it’s capable of unleashing. Greatly influenced by brawny German sax uebermensch Peter Brotzmann, Gustafsson channels his power into gorgeously finessed machinations. When he’s blowing full on, his tone cuts through any setting like a scythe, a concentrated bundle of sound relentlessly driven yet willing and eager to change direction depending on the mood of his compatriots....

Mancow Muller, the frenetic morning disc jockey at WRCX FM, only arrived in Chicago last July. Yet according to the latest Arbitron ratings, his time slot has moved from 19th in the metropolitan market to 5th among all teenage and adult listeners. And among 18-to-34-year-olds, a coveted demographic among advertisers, he has soared to first, besting Tom Joyner at WGCI AM and sending Kevin Matthews at WLUP FM from second to third place....

Video makers Kate Kirtz and Nell Lundy first learned about Jane–the 1960s underground abortion-referral service–by reading a newspaper article on the history of the pro-choice movement. This weekend they’ll premiere an hourlong documentary on the volunteer group, which broke the law to ensure that women had access to safe abortions. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In four years of direct service–1969 through 1973, when Roe v....

I was disappointed to see the one star accorded to The Hudsucker Proxy in your April 1 review. I quite enjoyed and appreciated the film for what it is. I thought: It’s a shame that Jonathan Rosenbaum’s rather tiresome and verbose review can’t get beyond a simplistic compendium of motifs and Trivial Pursuit style gurgitation of references to the films of Sturges and Capra and any other film he sees as obviously seminal in the “formulation” of HP....

Dear Reader: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » My letters, like those of Ms. Kanner, to the mayor’s office also go unanswered no matter what the subject. I happen to be on the local school council for the Jacob A. Riis elementary school as a community member. Riis serves the children of the Chicago Housing Authority’s ABLA homes. I am on the council because of my commitment to the belief that education can help open economically disadvantaged children’s eyes to the possibilities in life when most of what they see day to day are drug dealers and violence in the Chicago Housing Authority....

No news here for stay-at-home mothers. “Be sure you want to do it, because it is hard on you mentally,” stay-at-home dad David Smith advises men who might follow his example, in the Loop-based newsletter Moments (March). “My experience is that housewives don’t treat me as an equal and men don’t take me seriously.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » News flash–Kennedy resurfacing called off as foundations decline to renew grants....

He won’t tell you. Of 333 sexually active bisexual men interviewed by UIC researchers recently, 54 percent said that none of their female partners knew they went both ways. And the figure remained the same for those in steady relationships with women: “54 percent believed their female partners were not aware of their homosexual activity. Of women who were aware, 44 percent found out after first having sex with the men....

Asians as the model minority is a stereotype that flatters and stifles. This 1993 feature, made for the Canadian Broadcast Company, turns the cliche on its head in chronicling the tawdry true-life encounters of a Vancouver runaway teenager who aspires to be a poet. Caught between disapproving parents with traditional expectations and her own curiosity-driven literary bent, Lau flees to the streets, turning to drugs and hooking. Yet, as Barry Stevens’s adaptation of Lau’s autobiography suggests, she remains a Candide-like waif, a nonjudgmental observer of the follies around her....

THE METAMORPHOSIS Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The most ballyhooed adaptation of Kafka’s novella The Metamorphosis in recent years was the one penned by bad-boy Brit Steven Berkoff, who used the story as a vehicle for a Marxist critique of the plight of the working class in England. It gave Mikhail Baryshnikov and Roman Polanski the opportunity to flop around on various American and European stages as Gregor Samsa, Kafka’s legendary man-turned-insect....