Make-Belive Baseball When the baseball strike began, the Sun-Times shifted to the tumult and shouting of a “make-believe season.” STATS, Inc., of Skokie is syndicating this computer-generated fantasy to papers in most big-league cities, and the Sun-Times is giving it a page a day–a big commitment. Last Friday, Mike Maksudian cracked a three-run homer as the Cubs came from behind to beat the Mets 5-4. Maksudian’s blast came in either the seventh inning (box score) or the bottom of the ninth (game brief)....

NED ROTHENBERG Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The versatility of the jazz musician is something you don’t hear about all that much. Many jazzers find their niche–Dixieland, postbop, free improv–and settle in for the long haul. Reedist Ned Rothenberg vigorously cuts across specializations yet excels in any context. And there are lots of contexts. He’s a member of the evocative reed trio New Winds; he explores cerebral funk patterns in his Double Band; he maintains a long-running collaboration with the stunning Tuvan vocalist Sainko Namtchylak; he investigates computer-tempered work with guitarist Paul Dresher; and on his most recent album, the superb Power Lines (New World), he displays sharp arranging and writing skills....

Guitarist Phillip Walker’s versatility reflects the diverse blues and R & B heritage of Louisiana and Texas, where he was born and raised. He can segue from a swinging roadhouse jump blues to a stark Lightnin’ Hopkins moan, then heat things up with a steaming dose of R & B funk and finish with a dazzling guitar flourish that melds a sophisticated linearity akin to T-Bone Walker’s with a backwoods grit reminiscent of Lonseome Sundown and other Louisiana jukers....

In the late 80s Penn Jillette (of the magic/comedy team Penn and Teller) did two things that may have saved the rock band Half Japanese from permanent obscurity. First he rescued the master tapes to the band’s landmark Charmed Life album from a label deadbeat in LA who sat on them for several frustrating years while the music languished at a pressing plant. Then he started his own label, 50 Skadillion Watts of Power, from profits earned guest-starring on an episode of Miami Vice, and proceeded to release the album himself, along with a number of the band’s other albums....

The Italians keep coming! The Italians keep coming! Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Artichokes are a mainstay of Genoese cooking, and we had them in several dishes, including raw artichoke salad ($5.75), a unique, crunchy experience; the vegetable was sliced thin and dressed with lemon, fine olive oil, and a dusting of parmesan. Grilled calamari were dressed with lemon as well and bedded down on some delicate tasting spinach ($5....

Recently I posted the following question to the alt.fan.cecil-adams news group on the Internet: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » BPH replied: “You’re incorrect. The former is not proper, and the latter, while not improper, is verbose, even though it is common. ‘Whether’ denotes a differentiation between several choices, and should not be used with a single antecedent. The proper word to use for the subjunctive clause in the first sentence is ‘if,’ as in, ‘I don’t know if it will rain on Monday....

It takes little more than a quick perusal of the Weekly World News, or one episode of The X-Files, to realize that the American public hungers for divine or supernatural intervention. We want to believe in something that can’t quite be explained by science. We yearn for miracles. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Even the miracle-loving organization that has waged the longest-running war on science has called a truce....

From Al Salvi’s Senate campaign announcement speech, September 29, 1995: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “In order to service this [$5 trillion] national debt, we pay more than one out of every six tax dollars on interest…. The bureaucratic programs which led to this crisis are outdated, outrageous, and out of touch. Ronald Reagan said in 1964 that…’a bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth!...

By Cara Jepsen A few years ago I was lucky enough to catch Sergei Eisenstein’s film Alexander Nevsky accompanied by a live orchestra at Ravinia. The performance was magical and infinitely better than New Ager Philip Glass’s accompaniment to Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast last year. Tonight you can see Eisenstein’s 1925 classic Potemkin, accompanied by the Grant Park Symphony Orchestra, which will perform a reconstructed score by Dmitri Shostakovich, who penned the original music....

Friday 11/8-Thursday 11/14 Sleep with the fishes and live to talk about it at Shedd Aquarium’s family overnighter. Cost is $45 per person and includes a marine-mammal behavior presentation, access to the frogs exhibit, and a pizza dinner and continental breakfast. Participants should bring their own sleeping gear (no flashlights–you’ll scare the fish). Doors open tonight at 6:30 at the aquarium, 1200 S. Lake Shore; party’s over at 8:30 tomorrow morning....

Formed just two weeks ago by local composer C.P. First and two other Northwestern-prepped musicians, the Chicago 20th Century Music Ensemble is the latest addition to the city’s burgeoning new-music scene. While other groups make a point of showcasing area composers, this one, according to cofounder Todd Sullivan, intends to cover the “broadest possible spectrum” of modern musical taste and will emphasize unusual instrumentation. This (free) concert stars multifaceted Greek-born mandolinist Dimitris Marinos, who’ll play mostly pieces written for him....

Charles Brown The Early Years Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Texas-born Charles Brown is a college-educated bluesman who, while looking for work as a chemist in Los Angeles, hooked up with bassist Eddie Williams and guitarist Johnny Moore, the brother of the Cole Trio’s Oscar (both of whom were also native Texans). In 1942 they formed Johnny Moore’s Three Blazers, which they clearly modeled after the Nat “King” Cole Trio from their instrumentation to Brown’s rough but elegant croon (Brown frequently cited as his main influence singer Pha Terrell of Andy Kirk’s big band, but Cole undeniably shines through)....

Looking as though he’d just been hit by several trucks in rapid succession, playwright Bryn Magnus introduced the opening night of his Invisible Sympathies, an evening of brief plays and even briefer character musings, by saying, “This has been a hard day.” Then he dropped his glasses. “We were planning to rehearse a whole lot,” Magnus said to me after the show. “But we didn’t.” Probably the smartest mistake he ever made....

When you come right down to it Mark Kozelek is Red House Painters, the somber San Francisco folk-rock quartet who’ve released four unassumingly fine albums since 1992. Characterized by a veil of maudlin self-pity, snaillike tempos, and dark, largely acoustic textures, Kozelek’s songs unapologetically rhapsodize on his love life’s rampant failures, recalling a less artful Mark Eitzel of American Music Club, whose championing of Red House Painters led to their signing with England’s 4AD label....

Opera Overhaul The recently dormant Chicago Opera Theater announced last week that it had finished paying off more than $500,000 in debts and is about to start fund-raising efforts in hopes of mounting a season as early as spring 1994. Getting rid of that much debt would be big news for any company, but Chicago Opera Theater did it exceptionally fast: when the troubled company abruptly canceled its season last spring for financial reasons after producing only one of its scheduled operas, it expressed hopes of being back with a full season by 1995....

In a vast and vigorous metropolis that just renewed its world-class status by hosting an international sporting event and countless international visitors, locating an out-of-town daily newspaper seemed like the simplest of tasks. Quite honestly, it seemed like no task at all. Riding a wave of confidence, I went to the Stand one bright, sweltering Tuesday morning to make my purchase. The clerk was sitting in full view of passersby, making his way through an ultra-high-gloss publication titled Orgy....

Let’s see now: Danish jazz guitarist, committed to small-group introspection and influenced by Arabic and Balkan music as well as the compositions of Thelonious Monk, visits Africa; he gets hooked on the rhythms and the sweet percussive sound of the kora, a 25-string gourd instrument that sits somewhere between a harp and a lute; he then comes home and assembles a 13-piece band in which to stew this odd assortment of ingredients....

Squonk Opera’s onomatopoeic, jokey name suggests an irreverent troupe bent on creating a novel kind of musical theater, and the Pittsburgh-based band, which was founded only two years ago, largely fulfills that promise. Its five members draw on their varied backgrounds in experimental theater and classical composition and performance to create an often witty, always maddening and exhilarating melange of songs and instrumental pieces. Jackie Dempsey, the group’s self-described kapellmeister, says the group owes a debt to Frank Zappa and Tori Amos....

Don Stahlke: Teeth and Fruit The eccentric results–on view at Aron Packer are 43 etchings on teeth, 21 tattooed fruits, and 16 works on paper–are rather wonderful. Though Stahlke etched lines in and then applied acrylic paint to the teeth, he tried to respect their shapes and to include the lines in them that were the results of dentistry or gnawing. “Not hiding the fact that they’re teeth,” he etched on them tiny images of simple, single subjects: leaves, bugs, animals, a few humans....

Recently a friend and I got into debate over the price of stamps in the U.S. I was complaining that the price of a stamp in this country was too high, and talk of a price increase next year I found too odious to contemplate. My companion, who hails from the continent, claimed that we Americans were spoiled, and that the 29-cent stamp was probably the cheapest letter stamp in the world, and most assuredly in Europe....