If you’re going to celebrate the August birth of Charlie Parker (as Joe Segal’s Jazz Showcase does every year), you can’t top Phil Woods as your headliner. Woods remains so active–recording frequently, judiciously updating his long-running band, touring regularly–that it’s easy to lose sight of his extraordinary musical stature. Along with his contemporary Cannonball Adderley, Woods essentially defined the alto saxophone in jazz after Parker’s death in 1955, and over the succeeding four decades he has honed one of the most personal and recognizable styles in all of jazz....

**** BITTER MOON Directed by Roman Polanski Written by Polanski, Gerard Brach, John Brownjohn, and Jeff Gross With Peter Coyote, Emmanuelle Seigner, Hugh Grant, Kristin Scott-Thomas, Victor Bannerjee, Sophie Patel, and Stockard Channing. “No–not exactly.” “It wasn’t the same, I tell you. You can’t bathe twice in the same river because it’s never the same river–nor the same bather.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Moreover, What?...

DAMBUILDERS, SLEEPYHEAD 7/8, LOUNGE AX Aggressive Boston pop quartet the Dambuilders piques curiosity on two fronts on its recent Encendedor (East-West). First is the convincing manner in which it incorporates the violin playing of Joan Wasser, eschewing the prog-rock excesses of Jethro Tull and instead integrating the instrument both contrapuntally and in warm harmony with Eric Masunaga’s guitar. Second is the band’s sly humor: “Smell,” for example, not only addresses bisexuality (“She goes to bed with the smell of another woman / Of another man”) but unabashed masturbation (“Strained through years of one-hand worship / Longs for your naked body clothed”)....

Sun-Times Shake-up–Who’ll Rise to the Top? “They were very nice to me. They did not want me to leave,” Jaffe said. “They’d always told me they had big plans for me, and one day I would move up to be editor at one of their papers or publisher at one of their papers. But right now this is a good move. I don’t think I’ve finished everything I want to do in sports....

That’s Entertainment! Letting my kids have totally free rein to watch whatever they want would be akin to letting them write the household dinner menus. A small serving of Chicken McNuggets goes a pretty long way for me, and the same goes for Barney the Dinosaur, Thomas the Tank Engine, and all of their peers and minions. Things that are designed to be kid-friendly today too often seem designed to be hostile to adult appreciation....

THE WATER ENGINE Written in the form of a radio play, The Water Engine concerns a Capra-esque little guy, the likable, soft-spoken immigrant inventor Charles Lang, who builds an engine that runs on water and for his trouble is persecuted and ultimately destroyed by representatives of one or more large, corrupt, unnamed corporations. If only, we’re invited to believe, Lang had been allowed to patent and market his water engine, America wouldn’t be nearly as polluted or as dependent on foreign oil as it is....

Twenty Year Friends, ETA Creative Arts Foundation. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Ever wonder what old numbers runners, card sharks, and pimps do when they’re off duty? Well, judging by Twenty Year Friends, they relax in comfortable homes, grumble about how the neighborhood’s deteriorated, kvetch about how kids nowadays don’t respect their elders, rhapsodize over the condition of their bowels, bore their friends with much-repeated yarns, and though they might occasionally cheat on their wives, generally remain faithful to their patient spouses, showering them with lavish presents....

Saved Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » What a boon to Chicago theatergoers that he’s resettled here (working as a temp paralegal!), and that his exquisite artistry is currently on display once a week at Cafe Voltaire in Frederik Norberg’s one-man play Saved. Thorn plays Dr. Ignatius Lodge, a junior theologian addressing the World Symposium on Metaphysics and Religion. Unfortunately his address–“Belief in the Divine”–has been scheduled at the same time as the conference’s main-draw lecture, “Adam and the Black Hole,” resulting in a decidedly poor turnout for Lodge....

When the Ku Klux Klan was granted a permit to rally on the Illinois state capitol steps the day after Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, it made instant news. The Klan’s an anachronism, its endurance a signifier of how far we’ve come and how far we’ve yet to go. Undeniably evil, not as bizarre as racist skinheads or as politically slippery as neoracists like David Duke, the Klansmen are almost exotic in their old-fashioned, pedantic approach to hatred....

At one time the art world drew hard distinctions between the fine arts (painting, sculpture, works on paper) and crafts (ceramics, glass, wood, metal, and fiber). But in the last half century–since the founding of the American Craft Council, which is holding its 50th-anniversary celebration here this weekend–those distinctions have increasingly blurred. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Functionality has traditionally divided craft from art: craft items are typically things we can use–vessels, furniture, cutlery, apparel, jewelry–and fine art is something we admire hanging on a wall or perched on a pedestal....

BATTERY Tight & Shiny Theatre Productions at Greenview Arts Center Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Daniel Therriault’s Battery (described as an “electric love story”) is not simply another gothic parable, however. The hubris reflected in Rip’s boast that he “controls electricity” is genuine enough, but his foray into do-it-yourself electroconvulsive therapy is motivated as much by a wish to heal his partner the way he mends broken lamps and toasters as by any selfish desire to prove himself master of the universe....

Bluff Trade The strike that would have emptied the Sun-Times city room last Monday was scheduled to begin at noon. To no one’s surprise that perilous deadline passed without incident. An hour later the two camps were still negotiating at the Executive Plaza, and strike headquarters remained almost empty. “That’s interesting. ‘BBM says we’re not striking.” Once again journalists had proved that the only story they’re sure to be beaten on is their own....

The Lyric Opera kicks off its 40th anniversary this weekend with an appropriately lavish production of Boris Godunov. Based on Pushkin’s account of Byzantine palace politics in late-16th-century Moscow, Mussorgsky’s sprawling saga of a cruel czar’s tragic fate is part drama and part agitprop. His musical idiom, which tries to capture the nasal sonority and irregular meters of Russian speech, was radical for its time, and his orchestration–“polished” as a favor by Rimsky-Korsakov in a subsequent revision–is daringly original, deftly juxtaposing primitive sound and lush, stately pageantries (it’s said to have influenced Debussy and Prokofiev)....

Chicago Symphony Orchestra Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Richard Goode is probably the finest American pianist working today. Sure, Murray Perahia, Ursula Oppens, Emmanuel Ax, and Peter Serkin may be better known, but as Goode’s skills have blossomed, so too has his reputation. His interpretations of Beethoven’s sonatas reveal a thoughtful, majestic, yet nonegotistical approach. A top-notch technician, Goode always allows a composer’s personality, if not intentions, to emerge–his playing is natural, unmannered, almost self-effacing....

To the editors, Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I suppose it wasn’t enough that they already managed to trash the McClurg Court theater, which before their sterling fig management took over, was one of the best showcases in town. That Chicago area moviegoers continue to put up with this shit, with nary a comment from local critics (who usually view films in separate press screenings anyway), always astounds me....

Regarding David Futrelle’s article suggesting that sports represent an outlet for male aggression (“Culture: Confessions of a Bad Sport,” September 23): Had you consistently addressed football or boxing throughout your waste of space, I would have certainly appreciated your opinions. But to generalize sports as being merely sublimated aggression, you fail to account for the thrill one obtains from skiing down a mountain. Is rollerblading no longer a sport? And I suppose it is rare for males to enjoy tennis or squash, where competitors are not yet permitted to beat each other over the head with their rackets?...

By Jill Riddell The mosquitoes drift out into the open, each intent on accomplishing the next task in its life cycle. Some males visit flowers for sips of nectar, dipping the tips of their proboscises into the fluid and gently inhaling it. Other males head into a swarm that forms over the chimney; once inside, they begin to vibrate violently in preparation for mating. Sometimes a female will venture into the swarm and do it right there and then, but more often a male leaves the swarm and uses his highly sensitive, hairy antennae to track her high-pitched whine....

Fred Anderson’s career has already spanned three decades, but over the last couple of years it’s shifted into high gear. In the 60s he was a charter member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, and since then he’s divided his time between making a living and honing his very personal approach to the tenor saxophone. A melodic craftsman with a gift for beautiful lines and a deeply moving harmonic sensibility, Anderson has a tone by turns gruff and radiant, with the confidence of age and the searching quality of youth....

Beat Happening Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The event–three days of the usual panel discussions, seminars, and schmoozing, followed by three nights of dense performance schedules–is long overdue in coming to Chicago, considering that the city is generally regarded to be the birthplace of house music. House, which has become the foundation for most dance music, started pricking up the world’s ears 15 years ago, and while Flick’s summit is only three years old, the first two were held in San Francisco....

Dear Mr. Henderson: How dare you even mildly claim that overall the scattered site program by the federal government is a success [“Scattered Successes,” October 14]! Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The federal government has been doing this program to us in Humboldt Park for years and all we have to show for it is old abandoned CHA housing attracting gangs and drugs and masses of new housing drawing the same....