And a Nightingale Sang, Shattered Globe Theatre. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Survival becomes a story in itself during wartime, which gives this affectionate period play by the late British playwright C.P. Taylor a built-in urgency. Originally produced here by Steppenwolf Theatre with a splendid Joan Allen as the narrator-daughter Helen, And a Nightingale Sang is a fond recollection of a Catholic family living precariously in Newcastle during World War II, contending with blackouts, ration books, and air raids....

Readers of Marc Foster’s weekly column in Gay Chicago have become well acquainted with the intimate details of his life since he began writing three years ago. Like a dutiful diarist, Foster’s chronicled his coming-out story each week in painfully honest installments. Regular followers of the column can tell you how Marc fretted that his appearance alone might give away his homosexuality. Or about the time he introduced his first girlfriend to his new boyfriend....

Not since the end of the Beatles and Lennon and McCartney’s scathing recorded swipes at each other have we seen such public rock-star spatting as in the wake of the splintering of N.W.A. After this immortal bunch of gangsta-rap nogoodnicks (whose first album, Straight Outta Compton, put out-there rap on the map) saw the departure of its most distinctive voice and most thoughtful writer, Ice Cube, the remaining members, led by label owner Eazy-E, recorded a track that promised to “cut yo’ head off and fuck you with a broomstick....

How would you like to spend your vacation along the lower Colorado River between Lake Havasu City and Yuma, Arizona, searching–by boat and four-wheel-drive vehicle–for nesting sites of the rare Yuma clapper rail and the elusive black rail? Or if your tastes run to cooler weather, how about spending a few weeks searching the virgin forests on Prince of Wales Island near Ketchikan, Alaska, for nests of the marbled murrelet or the northern goshawk?...

What’s the appeal of Half Japanese? This documentary profile by Jeff Feuerzeig makes abundantly and hilariously clear that the punk rock band founded by brothers Jad and David Fair 20 years ago has acquired a rabid cult following. In filmed testimonials, an assortment of fanzine critics and fellow rockers wax apostolic over the band’s purity and sweet romanticism, and magician Penn Jillette weighs in with funny anecdotes about how he used money earned from a gig on Miami Vice to fund the label (50 Skadillion Watts of Power) that produced the band’s classic album Charmed Life....

There are two kinds of laughter in the comedy world: the laughter of anesthesia and the laughter of enlightenment. Most stand-up comics aim for anesthesia, dispensing a kind of comedic narcotic to deaden our pain and allow us to deny, however fleetingly, our problems. San Francisco-based monologuist Marga Gomez does something much more difficult in her performances. She takes her most personal foibles and most painful childhood memories and transforms them into a very liberating kind of comedy....

Various Artists Th Sea and the Bells Into this morass the Rhino label has hurled a real depth charge. The five-CD progressive-rock comp Supernatural Fairy Tales is a fairly exhaustive survey of the era (1967-76), and it sheds some light on the music of our own era as well. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » But Supernatural Fairy Tales isn’t just a journey through the past; it’s also a tarnished mirror in which one sees uncanny reflections of the post-rock present Today’s arty experimenters may not wrap themselves in gold capes , but they are resuscitating prog rock s ambitious musical climate....

By Ben Joravsky “It’s the combination of motorcycles and liquor that galvanizes opposition,” says Paul Jay, member of the Rogers Park Manor Block Club, which opposes the project. “The phrase ‘volatile mix’ is the one I use over and over.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » What makes them popular to the upscale crowd is what made them popular to the Hell’s Angels: they’re big and loud....

Do kids still read the Gettysburg Address in school? If they do, its majestic cadences must sound pretty odd to their pierced little ears, as antiquated as anything they might dig out of Cicero. (I mean the dead European male, not the suburb.) As they know him, the president of the United States is some oaf drawling, babbling, or dozing in front of the mike: will they believe that anyone from that low fraternity could utter poetry like “of the people, by the people, for the people”?...

Alonzo Spencer describes himself as a man who always had a social conscience. He was active in the civil rights movement. He joined the PTA when his kids were in school. He wrote his congressman from time to time on issues that concerned him. But he didn’t begin to think of himself as an environmentalist until about 13 years ago, when he first heard of a plan to build a huge toxic-waste incinerator in a residential section of his hometown, East Liverpool, Ohio....

Dennis Rodman came down with one of his awkward, rag-doll rebounds and flipped the ball to Michael Jordan. Jordan immediately went on the attack–shoulders low and forward on the dribble, head up and studying the court–but the defense got back so he pulled up shy of the basket. He passed the ball to Rodman trailing the play, and Rodman signaled for Jordan to post up. Jordan ignored him. He went out and took the ball back from Rodman....

How come the portraits on coins are always in profile while the ones on paper money are always full face? –Jim Bohannon, Arlington, Virginia Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Aside to the Teeming Millions: What do you mean, this is a stupid question? This is a great question, although I’ll grant you Ted Koppel probably isn’t going to devote a show to it. While full-face portraits on coins aren’t completely unknown, they’re definitely rare, showing up mostly on commemoratives....

Extremists invoke as holy writ the proposition that “the power to tax involves the power to destroy.” Even reasonable people accosted by the tax man cite the 1819 warning of Chief Justice John Marshall as the wisdom of the ages. Jugum’s an assistant chief counsel for California’s Board of Equalization. I called him expecting an unctuous defense of confiscation. Instead I found a sportsman. In a nutshell, his position on taxing newspaper art is a jaunty what-the-hell-it’s-worth-a-try....

CD-ROM WASN’T BUILT IN A DAY, OR INFORMATION HIGHWAY TO HELL Second City Northwest Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » True, there are some soft focuses, easy touches, and brand humor here: masochistically loyal Cubs fans, Dawn Clark Netsch as pool shark, Michael Jordan’s fielding. But something like “Love at First Sight” is a laugh symphony: a mousy spinster previews her video dates, a parade of DOA losers played with quick-change dexterity, seemingly re-creating every love fiasco in the book....

A deserved hit in its Uptown premiere at the Black Ensemble Theater last spring, Doo Wop Shoo Bop is now receiving a two-night revival at Navy Pier. Like all of Black Ensemble’s cultural reclamation efforts, this one doesn’t just celebrate its subject–African-American doo-wop groups and pop stars of the 1950s–or go for easy nostalgia. Jackie Taylor’s script and staging reconnect the El Dorados and the Mills Brothers, Dinah Washington’s classic barn burners and Laverne Baker’s stolen successes, to a mainstream musical establishment that both nourished and exploited their slinky harmonies and bluesy ballads....

Arguably the most compelling tragic opera since Tristan und Isolde, Richard Strauss’s Elektra exploits the Wagnerian notion of music drama. Adapted from Sophocles but given a Freudian spin by librettist Hugo von Hoffmannsthal, this 1909 work is a cacophonous combination of psychopathic passion and torrid accusations. For one hour and 50 minutes–in one continuous act–the singers shout and scream to make themselves heard through the all but impenetrable mesh of sounds....

After months of effort, Bill Valentine and I have finally finalized a final report on the nesting birds of Somme Woods, 1992. I had the help of a computer, but Bill compiled his part by paging through a stack of spiral-bound notebooks and rearranging three months’ worth of sightings into a species-by-species account, using no weapon stronger than a ballpoint pen. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The contenders in the category of Most Common Bird, were the American robin, red-winged blackbird, song sparrow, and gray catbird....

I’m hovering near the checkout counter at a used-book store on Lincoln when I catch wind of a discussion at the counter that reeks of conspiracy. The cashier, an abundantly bearded middle-aged man in horn-rimmed glasses, cultivates the Karl Marx look. His eyes are cast in a wide, empty stare as he leans over from his elevated perch to comprehend his inquisitor. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I remember that maybe ten minutes ago the kid entered with a middle-aged suburban-looking couple....

The low-tech recording revolution began in the early 80s, when Daniel Johnston first started releasing homemade tapes of songs that chronicled his struggles with dead-end jobs and mental illness. Now bands all around the world bypass the conventional strategies of recording in studios and releasing their music through record companies. Since 1986 Guided by Voices has recorded seven albums in various living room and garage studios around its hometown of Dayton, Ohio, but it’s never distributed its albums beyond the city limits; whether it was indifferent to mainstream success or just didn’t know how to go about out-of-town distribution is unclear....

Whenever the dream comes, Maurice falls out of bed. He doesn’t fall very far, since his mattress rises only a few inches above the linoleum floor. Nor does he fall very loudly, because the bed is ringed by a thin but complete cushion of shirts, socks, underwear, and baseball cards that muffle the thump of a small body. The sound does not awaken Rufus, his younger half-brother who shares the mattress in the small apartment above the bar on Sedgwick Street....