Soprano Patrice Michaels Bedi didn’t take up singing seriously until her senior year in college, a late start for any classical performer. Now, some 20 years later, she’s pleased with her career choice, though at times she bemoans her status as, she says, a “second-tier, regional singer” still looking for a lead role in a major opera. “I’m not losing sleep over this,” she quickly adds. She wound up in Chicago in 1984 thanks to a misunderstanding....

[Re: “Cat Fight,” August 27] Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Between all of the he said/she said, it’s hard to dig out from underneath all of the good intentions, not to mention the needless references to race and society. However, a clearer perspective from someone in the animal care community (such as the Anti-Cruelty Society, briefly mentioned but only as a lawyer referral) would’ve better served this article....

POPCORN, Profiles Theatre. Surprisingly this clear-eyed, sharp-edged satire of contemporary Hollywood was written by a Brit. Maybe we’re all so wrapped up in entertaining ourselves that we can’t see things as clearly as Ben Elton. There isn’t a wrong move in his very funny dark comedy, about a violence-loving director (think Oliver Stone and Quentin Tarantino) who suddenly finds his house invaded by a pair of psychos modeling their killing spree on the director’s current bloody hit, a Natural Born Killers knockoff called “Ordinary Americans....

RONDELLES Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The Rondelles, formed in 11th grade at an Albuquerque high school and recently relocated to Washington, D.C., are the Angels to the Donnas’ Ramones: there’s an exuberant 60s charm to the teen trio’s punky little tunes. Guitarist Juliet and bassist Yukiko, who sing in sweet but ragged oh-oh-ohs, and drummer Oakley, who pounds his kit and an organ simultaneously, play up garage rock’s girl-group roots–and though I doubt Phil Spector would have stood for their frequent technical fumbles, today they seem charming....

Many of Steven Soderbergh’s better films seem to exist in the shadow of their predecessors. For all its freshness, Sex, Lies, and Videotape, his first feature, was a replay of many self-referential movies about movies dating from the 60s and 70s. The Underneath was a more direct remake, of the 40s noir Criss Cross, and it was an interesting variation rather than any sort of improvement. Yet part of what’s so good about The Limey, a contemporary thriller starring Terence Stamp as an ex-con avenging the death of his daughter, is the way it evokes Point Blank, which is still John Boorman’s best movie....

THE ROOTS Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » On their fourth album, Things Fall Apart (MCA), Philadelphia’s Roots navigate the divide between hip-hop’s cynical underground and its hedonistic mainstream by barreling straight down the middle, largely oblivious to the expectations aimed at them from both sides. Since 1987 the Roots have been the very incarnation of a deep love of hip-hop, and on their first three albums they struggled to strike a balance between mature lyrical content, musical innovation, and the fundamentals....

THE SEA AND CAKE/TRANS AM Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » It’s not unusual for bands to lose sight of their actual abilities while eyeing lofty creative goals, but on its recently released fourth album, The Fawn (Thrill Jockey), the Sea and Cake has once again demonstrated restraint and balance in the pursuit of a challenge. The foursome abandoned the usual procedures for song genesis and constructed the tunes piecemeal from samples, drum loops, and fragmented guitar lines....

Regarding Spam [May 1], is it true, as travel writer Paul Theroux claims, that the people of the South Pacific love their Spam because it tastes so much like…people? –Mary E. Sage, via the Internet Let’s start with the facts, then segue to the rumors. Spam is one of the favorite foods of Pacific islanders, including Hawaiians, who consume it in vast quantities and consider it a delicacy. This offends the upper-middle-class sensibilities of some writers, who consider Spam emblematic of all that is vile about Western culture....

Music listings are compiled by LAURA KOPEN and RENALDO MIGALDI (classical, fairs and festivals) from information available Tuesday. We advise calling ahead for confirmation. Please send listings information, in-cluding a phone number for use by the public, to Reader Music Listings, 11 E. Illinois, Chicago 60611, or send a fax to 312-828-9926, or send E-mail to musiclistings@chicagoreader.com. AMERICAN ENGLISH Beatles tribute band. Tuesday, noon, Chicago Historical Society, 1601 N. Clark. 312-642-4600....

By Joy Bergmann Meredith Wheeler is busy preparing for the June 26 and 27 taping, which will yield up to 15 hour-long episodes. “It’s a triple-crown event,” she says. Meredith strides in on Friday night wearing no makeup. A simple tank top reveals the rose tattoo on her right shoulder and a silver belly-button ring. Denim shorts show off her slender legs and secure a purple beeper. She’s miffed her cell phone is out of service and no one has paged her this evening....

Carp Fishing in America Not many distinguished visitors stop in the village of Montgomery, Illinois. Thill, a member of the angling team that won the 1982 World Club Championship, is leading a school of fishermen in the fourth annual Mid-West Team Challenge. The winners get to represent the U.S. at next summer’s world championships in Italy. A few minutes before the end of the break, Thill realizes he needs to talk strategy with a teammate who’s setting up far downstream....

CHICAGO CHAMBER MUSICIANS Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » None of the 14 members of the Chicago Chamber Musicians, about half of them CSO or former CSO players, is second-rate. The string players (aka the Chicago String Quartet), just for example, are lucid, thoughtful interpreters, and Larry Combs, a CSO star and jazz aficionado, is a Benny Goodman-like chameleon who can execute breathtaking arabesques and add a touch of eloquence to the plainest phrase....

bottari.qxd Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » One has to but consider for a moment the sheer power of the divine Foerster and Broski. They are accountable to no one, have unlimited powers over the lives and property of thousands, and even have the power to extract whatever funds they need out of the very pockets of those they will lay low. Lavicka and Balkin have only succeeded in angering this mighty pantheon, and retribution will be swift....

Resurrection David Hodges If Bonami’s “Unfinished History” evidences a rapidly industrializing world in which air travel is cheap due in part to cheap oil, “Resurrection” is a show concerned with what Stefan calls an “overindustrialized society” producing an excess of manufactured goods. Like the curator, these artists have stayed close to home in creating their work, in part out of materials found on Chicago streets. And rather than using high-tech video projection or hiring skilled craftsmen, as many of the “Unfinished History” artists did, these three make fairly simple, low-tech assemblages themselves....

Of all Yvonne Rainer’s films, this 1972 first feature most clearly bridges her formidable career as an avant-garde dancer and choreographer and her subsequent work as an experimental filmmaker. Its 14 fiction and nonfiction episodes chronicle and/or comment on Rainer’s performances, using sound and intertitles in various inventive and unorthodox ways and concentrating on issues of power and gender that culminate in a reenactment of the movie stills that illustrate the published screenplay of Pandora’s Box, the silent G....

Ron Ellingson, who opened Aspidistra Bookshop on the 2600 block of North Clark 26 years ago, got a rough start. “I had under $1,000–I was broke in two weeks,” he says. After a year, however, he was on his feet, and in 1977 he found a partner, Darrell Simmons. Together they built up the store’s stock. “New arrivals is the name of the game. They sell right away and keep people coming back....

MIKE HENDERSON & THE BLUEBLOODS Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » At first glance singer-guitarist Mike Henderson’s recent transformation from first-rate Nashville tunesmith to raunchy bluesman may seem strange, but a closer inspection reveals that the styles are merely different sides of the same coin. (After all, the 1957 Howlin’ Wolf hit “Sitting on Top of the World” was recorded by Milton Brown’s great western swing band back in 1934, and such casual genre bending was responsible for the birth of rock ‘n’ roll....

Breaking Boundaries Dance Chicago ’98 at the Athenaeum Theatre, October 15; repeats October 29 For example, Emergence Dance Theatre’s Vastation is wildly overproduced and undernourished while Fluid Measure Performance Company’s The Doorman is underproduced and underdramatized. Vastation has gorgeous design elements, beginning with the sounds of dripping water, birdcalls, and a distant flute. Backlit in a soft blue, it also features evocative projections and textured light. The costumes are more problematic: six young women are covered head to toe in white veils, which makes them look like brides or nuns....

Marva Lee Pitchford Jolly By Fred Camper Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Jolly’s “story pots” are rough, imperfect vessels as much as two feet high, decorated with figurative designs and often filled with intentional cracks. The designs recall the directness and simplicity of children’s drawings and of some outsider art, while the pots’ irregularities at first suggest a beginning ceramist. But they also evoke the organic integrity of nature, and the figures proceeding around them have some of the dignity of a classical frieze....

carson.qxd Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I was furious when I read Edward H. Kim’s letter to the editor in your November 14 issue. How could any Northwestern student, who is surrounded by hundreds of arguments pro and con on this issue [Neighborhood News, October 31] in every paper he looks at every day (this is getting unbelievable coverage up here), totally ignore the biggest complaint of the Evanston taxpayers: who is paying for this development?...