From the pages of mister density By Generic Mike Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Recently I was browsing through the used and discarded videos at my local Blockbuster Video, where among the seemingly endless copies of Ernest Goes to Camp and Dorf on Golf was Crispin’s made-for-TV movie, High School U.S.A. I quickly snatched up this prize before it could fall into the wrong hands and threw it on the counter along with my cash....

A masterpiece by Stanley Kwan, the greatest Hong Kong film I’ve seen (also known as Ruan Ling Yu and Center Stage). The story of silent film actress Ruan Ling Yu (1910-1935), known as the Garbo of Chinese cinema, it combines documentary with period re-creation, biopic glamour with profound curiosity, and ravishing historical clips with color simulations of the same sequences being shot–all to explore a past that seems more complex, mysterious, and sexy than the present....

Life After Rock Chicago’s Tortoise was held up as a proud exemplar of the post-rock ethos, but the band resists any sort of pigeonholing. Tortoise records for Thrill Jockey Records, which soon will release work by the young Chicago trio Rome and the experimental German trio Oval. Both these bands exude a certain glee about leaving rock in the dust, and they intentionally “misuse” recording technology to produce new sounds. The musical connection between them is tenuous at best, but as the dominant sound of alternative rock continues to calcify, Rome and Oval stand together, intentionally or not, in fierce response to rock’s stasis....

Each of the three recordings I’ve heard by Lebanese composer and oud player Marcel Khalife contains an odd amalgam of musical styles that include traditional Arabic sounds, thick strains of the Western classical tradition, pop melodies in the Tin Pan Alley mold, and the sprightly bounce of classic Hollywood film scores. Extremely popular among Palestinians throughout the Middle East, Khalife found his voice during Lebanon’s civil war in the 70s, gaining notoriety while performing in abandoned Beirut concert halls amid carnage and confusion....

To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » (1) The statements quoting me about UIC are a fair rendition of my telephone interview. (2) The statement about the columns sinking has never been verified and on my visual inspection was inaccurate and as the saying goes “for want of a shim.” (3) The workers destroying the concrete told me that they had never seen such uniformly good concrete and wondered why it was being destroyed....

MMM . . . TATTOO SCREAMS OF LOVE Even when they’re not clearly autobiographical, one-person shows are tricky. I’ve never had much appreciation for pieces whose sole function seems to be letting the artist “work through” her problems. Mmm . . . Tattoo Screams of Love isn’t strongly crafted enough to alter that opinion entirely, but it is the most absorbing self-revelatory monologue I’ve ever seen, at once fascinating and disconcerting....

NOT FADE AWAY: THE ON-LINE WORLD REMEMBERS JERRY GARCIA, edited and with introduction by David Gans (Thunder’s Mouth Press, $14.95). Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » REPRESENTATIVE QUOTE: “The summer of 1971, I was living with some buddies from high school and college, in La Jolla (most of us went to UCSD). One day Bob and I were returning from driving up to Del Mar to score a lid, and up on the mesa just north of the campus we saw a hitchhiker…[another 100 words never mentioning Garcia or the Dead] sampled the freshly acquired herb, and got down to the serious business of entertainment....

Supple in Combat Drama, though of course it may have its elements of exaggeration, absurdity, or downright ridiculousness, is not a game for the dishonest. The playwright can lie his fool head off, but the play has to ring true. Even if you’re writing about a liar and the heartache he causes. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Creating a Washington-based drama about private lives undone by public declarations, juxtaposing the doublespeak of the nation’s capital with that of a married couple who can no longer communicate honestly, is an intriguing if somewhat obvious idea....

BIG BLONDE, THE FAT GIRL, and EROSION, Studio 108, at Chopin Theatre. If ever there were a show to walk in late on, it’s this one. In fact, I urge you to miss the first piece in this evening of loosely connected plays. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Erosion, written and directed by Greg Nagan, is an intellectually confused and confusing audio work. All of the actors are prerecorded, their voices played back over the theater’s sound system accompanied by minimal visuals–curtains, a bare stage, a single light that grows in intensity....

To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Sun-Times editors would have us believe that we can “retake our city” by mouthing platitudes and “sharing our pain.” Actually, they, and to a greater extent TV news, compound the problem by glorifying punks, pimps, teenage killer sluts, entertainers, and anyone else rich or evil enough to be shameless. No wonder teenagers don’t know the difference between fame and infamy....

At first listen Combustible Edison has the dubious syrupy charm of mere lounge-act shtick, which has become all the rage these days among many veterans of the punk/alternative circuit (see: Grenadine and Love Jones). But further examination reveals it to be a quirky, sophisticated blend of disparate musical influences. Combustible Edison is the brainchild of Liz Cox and Michael Cudahy (now working under the names Miss Lily Banquette and the Millionaire, respectively), whose previous band, Christmas, was much admired among late-80s cognoscenti for its brainy, skewed, sometimes brilliant pop songs....

FRANK MORGAN QUARTET Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » When altoist Frank Morgan returned to making music in the mid-80s–after most of a lifetime spent shuttling in and out of prison on various drug convictions–he suddenly had the jazz world on a string. Critics hailed him as the rightful heir to Charlie Parker’s musical legacy, and audiences rushed to buy his albums and hear his performances, finding their faith validated in guest shots by some of the music’s brightest young stars....

With a rounded, assertive tone and sturdy yet sensitive improvisations, soprano saxophonist Jane Ira Bloom brings a complicated feminism to her music. She doesn’t “play like a girl”; she plays like a woman, and one who has plenty of impressive music on her mind. When Bloom began listing “live electronics” in her album-note resumes in the mid-80s, she raised a few eyebrows; the purists associate any mention of electricity with “fusion,” and the rest of us simply didn’t know what the phrase meant....

JOE McPHEE Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Though sadly he remains unknown, Joe McPhee is one of the most distinctive voices to emerge from the free-jazz movement of the late 60s. Raised in Poughkeepsie (where he still lives) by his trumpet-playing father–who provided his first horn lessons–McPhee studied technique while serving in the military and later cut his teeth playing aggressive, post-Ayler energy music in the late 60s with the great trombonist Clifford Thornton....

Lead Story Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » New York state senator Howard Babbush won reelection despite prosecutors’ efforts over the last five years to bring him to trial on corruption charges. Babbush has claimed for the last two years that he is too ill to stand trial. Said he, “There’s a big difference between standing trial and taking care of the needs of my constituents....

**** POOR LITTLE RICH GIRL In 1965 some friends and I started a film society at MIT. We showed many “underground” or “experimental” movies by filmmakers such as Kenneth Anger, Stan Brakhage, and Andy Warhol, who were just starting to attract public attention. Often some first-time viewer, baffled by a film that was out of focus, moving very rapidly or too slowly, or lacking any conventional plot, would leave his seat a few minutes after it began, approach one of us, and ask, “Is the rest of it going to be like this?...

The Sixties By Fred Camper Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Long before Larry Clark directed the movie Kids he was a still photographer known for his portraits of teenagers on the pharmaceutical and sexual brink. His best photographs capture with raw directness a seamy underside few of us would otherwise see. But his untitled 1968 photo of two attractive teenagers in a bathtub also questions our participation in such scenes....

Stomp Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Even those who’ve grown roots into the couch over the past couple years probably know what Stomp is: the group on MTV and in commercials for Target, Heineken, and Coca-Cola who make music with found objects or by slapping their own bodies. Those who venture off the couch may have seen them here about a year ago, also at the Shubert Theatre....

PUDDIN ‘N PETE at Shattered Globe Theatre Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Ultimately West’s outlook is more optimistic than she would have us believe at first, however, and her optimism is so infectious, her characters so multilayered and human, and this production, directed by Gilbert Wadadazaf McCauley, so sensitive that it’s easy to overlook some of the more predictable turns in the plot....

If, like me, you find things to admire in all of Gus Van Sant’s films, you may be especially gratified by what he’s done with this satirical anti-TV script by Buck Henry—suggested by a real-life crime and adapted from a Joyce Maynard novel—and a spot-on performance by Nicole Kidman that may be the best of its kind since Tuesday Weld’s wicked sexual turn in Lord Love a Duck. Charting the ruthlessness of an ambitious bimbo telecaster in Little Hope, New Hampshire, this staccato black comedy sustains its brilliant exposition and narration until the plot turns to premeditated murder, complete with hapless and semicoherent teenage accomplices....