Hi people, Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I was intrigued by your article about the so-called VR developers. Here, I thought, was a bunch of out-of-mainstream creative people who do something else. So I went to one of their stores and gave it a try, and realized that your story missed a humangous point: content. The “scenario” of the game these people offer consists of a few guys blasting each other to smithereens....

** SERIAL MOM “Outside it’s hot and muggy. I buy a carton of cigarettes, ever bitter that I’m taxed so highly (11) on the one purchase that actually brings me happiness. They ought to tax yogurt (12); that’s what causes cancer. A neighbor, who always seems too familiar for her own good, passes me and makes the mistake of saying, ‘Good morning.’ ‘Shut up!’ I snap, making a mental note of her hideous tube top (13) and ridiculous Farrah Fawcett hairdo (14), so popular with fashion violators....

To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » For a few years now, I have read the two major jazz critics at the dailies blast WNUA and blame us for everything wrong with jazz and the Chicago Jazz Festival. Even this year, when our profile was low, we continued to get blasted in print. I’ve come to expect it from them, but certainly not from Neil Tesser, someone who, while not agreeing with what we do, understands more than most jazz purists what we do....

Willy DeVille is an ace songwriter out of time. In the late 70s and early 80s he fronted Mink DeVille, a tough-as-nails New York outfit that made music that harked back to rock ‘n’ roll’s roots: Phil Spector-ish vignettes of urban romance and no-nonsense, streetwise rock ‘n’ roll with a strong R & B current. This pairing may sound familiar; it was also favored by a guy from the other side of the Hudson named Bruce....

A MOUTHFUL OF BIRDS Nomenil Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Of course, Dionysus, the wine-soaked lord, is still making mischief today: just look at any crowd at a sports event. And women are capable of violence as savage as that perpetrated by men. Nor are charismatic spiritual practices unknown today, when daily newspapers regularly carry horoscopes and fortune-tellers advertise openly. But Caryl Churchill and David Lan, who cowrote A Mouthful of Birds, have to buy into the myths of female pacifism and a society dominated by reason in order to rebut them....

Frank Fishella and Paula Frasz Frasz appears committed to challenging our perception of traditional dance harmony. In her five pieces–the first half of the concert–an observer would be hard-pressed to identify a single recognizably traditional pattern of movement. Her goal seems to be to introduce her audience to a new awareness of beauty by engineering an aesthetic of awkwardness abounding in constrained lateral steps, hyperextended angular arm movements, and stop-action interruptions....

Legendary pianists don’t fade away; they count on disciples and spouses to keep the flame going. Such is the case with Mieczyslaw Horszowski. In a distinguished career that started at the turn of the century, when he was nine years old, and ended a year ago with his death, the Polish-born pianist was best known as a first-rate accompanist and teacher. His playing style, which can be traced to Beethoven and Czerny, had an old-world aura, graceful and melodic yet forceful and precise....

In this Cook County Theatre Department revival, found and original texts provide the voices for a juxtaposition between two worlds. The clowns, limpid and theatrical, re-create classic bits of physical comedy and mime. The wrestlers wrestle, read letters to the audience about why they ran away from training camp, and generally struggle with controlling their impulses without losing the edge of pure aggression they need to succeed. There’s no dialogue per se, and there’s no perceivable plot....

PLAY MORE MUSIC Having engaged in more than my share of self-righteousness in the past, I’m pretty tolerant when I run across others indulging this particular frailty. But on their new album (as in the past) Consolidated overstep even my flexible boundaries; the utter vacuousness of their textbook radicalism makes me wince. Sherburne’s lyrics are incoherent, awkward, sometimes little more than a conglomeration of politically correct concerns tossed together without regard for logic or even much of a rhyme scheme–e....

Cedar Walton, who leads his quartet from the piano, is a “musician’s musician.” He still doesn’t figure high in the popularity polls, but hundreds of jazzmen have tapped his talents for their record dates, more than validating his feathery touch, soulful pulse, and inexhaustible knowledge of chords (the music’s harmonic building blocks). And Walton writes: in his ability to concoct an instant jazz standard, such as “Bolivia” or the more recent “Firm Roots,” he has grabbed the baton from the great jazz tunesmith Benny Golson....

Journey to the West Zimmerman was enchanted. Not just by the costumes but also by the sight of so many grownups being playful and childlike. Adults just didn’t act like that in her world. (Zimmerman’s mother wasn’t the only academic in the family: her father taught physics at the university level.) Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Zimmerman told me this story by way of explaining how she first fell in love with theater, calling this event her “primal scene....

GREENLAND Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Unfortunately British playwright Howard Brenton’s 1988 Greenland exemplifies political theater. In the first act he presents a caricaturelike cross section of British society on the day of a parliamentary general election: the disillusioned Labour Party candidate Joan (Consuelo Allen) and her long-suffering assistant Bill (Scott Kennedy), the fundamentalist zealot and “moral campaigner” Betty Blaze (Lee Roy Rodgers) and her lesbian feminist activist daughter Judy (Holly Cardone), and the morally bankrupt aristocrat Paul (Benjamin Werling) and his utterly despondent wife Milly (Kirsten Sahs)....

The McGarrigle sisters leapt onto the folk-rock scene in the mid-70s, after Linda Ronstadt had a hit covering Kate’s “Heart Like a Wheel.” As a singing-songwriting team their output over 20 years has been limited and sporadic, but each McGarrigle record is packed with more than a single LP’s worth of warm charm, memorable tunes, razor wit, and deadpan humor. Produced by the brilliant Joe Boyd (who also produced key records by Fairport Convention and Nick Drake), their eponymous debut introduced the world to their marvelous reedy vibratos–somewhere between Cajun-nasal and Mamie Smith’s shaky blues–as well as their delightful compositions and incisive meditations on the ins and outs of relationships....

Dear Sir or Madam: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I am also an unhappy client of Richard Rinella [“Legally Screwed” by Rob Warden and James Tuohy, October 1, 1993]. My complaint involves money, not sex, but the pattern of abused trust is similar to that alleged in your article. Rinella imposed a charge of $10,000 for very little work for a scant five-month representation and refused to give me any explanation....

Lead Story Thomas Springer, 46, was arrested in October and charged with bank robbery in Vienna, Virginia. He might have escaped had he not stopped during his getaway to urinate alongside the road. A disgusted neighbor called 911. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » One of the finalists in a Los Angeles radio station’s crazy-stunt Super Bowl promotion in January was Mike Garcia, 25, who planned to swallow his glass eye, regurgitate it, and reinsert it....

The essence of Louisville’s Palace Brothers is the quavering, forlorn, achingly beautiful voice of Will Oldham–a vulnerable warble somewhere between Neil Young and Meat Puppets II-era Curt Kirkwood. On last year’s breathtaking There Is No-One What Will Take Care of You (Drag City), Oldham was surrounded by a shifting cast of musicians, including several former members of underground demilegend Slint, who crafted an idiosyncratic, folky melange spiced with baroque flourishes like plucked banjo and waves of nauseous pedal steel....

WHITE OAK DANCE PROJECT Pergolesi has a certain boastful musicality, and the fast footwork of the opening section shows off Baryshnikov’s quickness and his soft, strong feet; but what we mainly take away from the dance is the way the dancer thumbs his nose at us, playing with our expectations of a great but aging performer. Turning, Baryshnikov pretends to fall off his center or get dizzy; he continues a successful series of turns until the audience applauds, then looks at us disgustedly–he couldn’t quit, it seems, until we clapped....

There are about 20 candidates on next week’s Democratic primary ballot who have decidedly bad reputations. They’re usually referred to in the daily newspapers as “followers of right-wing political extremist Lyndon LaRouche Jr.” The Democratic Party of Illinois is handing out thousands of palm cards that shorten the label to “LaRouche extremist,” backed with several nasty allegations about the still more abbreviated “LaRouchies.” Take Rose-Marie Love, the candidate for secretary of state....

ROMEO AND JULIET Folio Theatre Company Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Performed on a severe set (mostly composed of the brick wall of Folio’s storefront space) with only the (uncredited) costumes to establish the period, Wild’s Romeo and Juliet is strongest when it plays as if, moment by moment, no one knows what’s next. To achieve that refreshing sense of unpredictability the Folio players jettison the foreshadowing prologue and tighten the scenes....

Hey, Faggot: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » We hadn’t been drinking. The argument was fierce for us, but no more so than arguments we’ve had in the past. He apologized for hours and seems genuinely contrite and as upset about the whole situation as I am. Should I break up with him? I drive around town with a “You Can’t Beat a Woman” bumper sticker on my car, I take self-defense classes, and–how’s this for ironic?...