Folk & Roots Festival: Anything Goes Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » On the surface it might seem like these choices are about money. In its first year, the Folk & Roots Festival was headlined by alt-country favorite Robbie Fulks and bluegrass hero Del McCoury; 9,000 people came. The next year it was twangy rocker Steve Earle and Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy and Jay Bennett; attendance more than doubled....

Once upon a time, in the early 70s, Grease was a humble little show–a loose collection of sketches and comic songs by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey performed at Kingston Mines. But it became one of the first big hits of Chicago’s burgeoning off-Loop theater scene, and in the middle and late 70s–thanks to the intervention of bigger theater fish–it became a Broadway hit, then a film vehicle for John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John....

The Lark Julie Daley’s performance as Joan of Arc is reason enough to see Eclipse Theatre Company’s production of The Lark, adapted by Lillian Hellman from a verse play by Jean Anouilh. Daley is marvelous: down-to-earth, straightforward, and natural yet utterly persuasive in a part that requires the audience to accept the spiritual and supernatural. Daley leaves no doubt that Joan’s voices connect her to God but also no doubt of her humanity....

JIM TROMPETER QUARTET FEATURING SCOTT WENDHOLT Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The jazz world holds a special niche in its collective heart for hot new trumpet players, much as the classical crowd maintains a spot for that next great operatic tenor. Whether the vagaries of fate and fortune will elevate Scott Wendholt to that niche remains to be seen, but he certainly has put himself in the running, with three ear-straightening albums on the Criss Cross label and his membership in the New York quintet led by saxophonist Vincent Herring....

oberman.qxd Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The council bases its evaluation on established criteria, including legal ability, integrity, temperament, and independence. Candidates are not rewarded or punished for their political views. We would like to clarify a couple of implications raised about the council’s evaluations. The council has been charged, over the years, with being racist, part of “the Harold Washington organization,” anti-Democratic, pro-Democratic, anti-Catholic, “liberal,” and a bunch of other things....

MYRA MELFORD QUINTET Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The great jazz bands usually establish their greatness in their own lifetimes, instead of waiting for record collectors to anoint them retroactively, and Myra Melford’s inspired and inspiring quintet is no exception. Her last several albums have drawn critics’ raves by imaginatively addressing the signal concern of 90s jazz–how to work postfreedom improvisation into firm but pliant structures–and the wide range of listeners they’ve also attracted speaks to the music’s breadth and clarity....

Lead Stories Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In Santa Ana, California, Correen Zahnzinger, 24, filed a lawsuit in May against her husband of one year, Valerie Inga, 29, for pretending to be a man. “They did have a sexual relationship,” said Zahnzinger’s attorney, “but I’m not allowed to say how it was perpetrated.” And two weeks earlier in Arlington, Virginia, Margaret Hunter, 24, was awarded $264,000 in her lawsuit for fraud against her ex-husband, Holly Anne Groves, 26, who had posed as a man and married Hunter in 1996....

More than 170 booksellers will show their wares on South Dearborn between Congress and Polk for the 16th annual Printers Row Book Fair, which also features dozens of readings, lectures, performances, and panels (and coincides with BookExpo America, the book industry’s annual trade show). The fair runs from 10 AM to 6 PM Saturday and Sunday, June 3 and 4. Events will be held at Dearborn Station, 47 W. Polk; Grace Place, 637 S....

The Cure for Poor Circulation? Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The New Art Examiner is a not-for-profit organization–a full third of this year’s $300,000 budget came from contributions (the rest was from earned income). While the publication has had more than its share of troubled times, Samuelson says the future looks bright. Last month he found out the National Endowment for the Arts will award the magazine the largest grant it’s ever received to support its art reviews section, and paid subscriptions have climbed to 3,000 this year, up nearly 30 percent from 2,100 three years ago (this is, however, down from 4,500 in 1992)....

I recently visited the beautiful state of New Mexico and was introduced to the legend of the wily jackalope. What is the origin of this legend, and should I stage an expedition to be the first to brave the jackalope’s habitat and bring one back alive? Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Ah, the fabulous jackalope, with the body of a jackrabbit and the horns of an antelope....

We request your wisdom to investigate a story (fact or fiction) regarding exploding mosquitoes. Many years ago I was told that when a mosquito is engaged in dinner one should flex or tighten the muscle in the general vicinity. This would trap the hapless female, along with her proboscis, causing her to overfill and explode. Recently I read an article on the same subject, with the only exception being one should pull taut the human skin around the offending wench, which would also trap her, causing her the same fate as fable number one....

Smilla’s Sense of Snow With Julia Ormond, Gabriel Byrne, Richard Harris, Robert Loggia, Vanessa Redgrave, Jim Broadbent, Peter Capaldi, Emma Croft, and Mario Adorf. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » By the 50s, when paranoia about the atomic bomb and cold war fantasies about alien infiltration took over the conspiracy thriller, a sense of government bureaucracy became more important to the genre. In later decades this feature was succeeded by–or equated with–the influence of corporations and then multicorporations....

WITCHES & DEVILS Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The best reason to see Witches & Devils–wild-man reedist Mars Williams’s homage to visionary saxist Albert Ayler–used to be the band’s take on the unadorned folk-song melodies, extended harmonics, and guttural poetry of Ayler’s widely influential mid-60s work. But these days Williams so rarely performs with his blood brother Ken Vandermark–the former’s role as leader of Liquid Soul has been taking him on the road more and more, and several of the latter’s recent projects don’t use a two-reed front line–that the combination has become Witches & Devils’ main attraction....

The Stockyards Theatre Project, whose mission is “supporting women theatre and performance artists and the pursuit of the femaleist viewpoint,” presents what it intends to be the inaugural edition of an annual showcase of women’s theater, performance art, comedy, storytelling, and music. Running November 17 through 19, the event features professional artists as well as teenage performers from Chicago public schools addressing such issues as motherhood, female friendship, lesbianism, HIV/AIDS, eating disorders, class and racial conflicts, sexism, family relationships, mental illness, and bungee jumping....

Dear editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I’m writing to complain about your February 12 Spot Check column. Your writer, Monica Kendrick, trashed one of my favorite bands, the Nields, and if her writing were based on actually listening to and constructively criticizing the band, then her Spot Check column would serve its purpose: that we readers might make an informed decision on what acts we’d like to see....

AWADAGIN PRATT Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Pianist Awadagin Pratt isn’t a particularly introspective or subtle musician, but his powerful keyboard attacks and insouciant manner let him quickly connect with an audience. That’s one reason he was hired by Ravinia for one of its “Classical SoundBytes” extravaganzas, which speed through excerpts from perennial favorites in about an hour and a half without intermission. Pratt, whose father emigrated from Sierra Leone, is one of only a handful of African-Americans in the world of classical instrumentalists....

Bailiwick Repertory Directors’ Festival Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Bailiwick Repertory’s 11th annual showcase of projects by emerging directors features programs of one-acts, ranging from one to three per evening, that run the gamut from established classical and contemporary selections to avant-garde rarities and untested original material. The fest runs August 2 through 25 at Bailiwick Repertory, Bailiwick Arts Center, 1229 W. Belmont, 773-883-1090....

Friday 8/20 – Thursday 8/26 “Gender is a drag,” Patti Smith once said. Her comment is the stepping-off point for Mindy Faber’s short video poem “The Man Within Me.” It’ll be screened with two more of her videos and work by Alexandra Halkin and Deb Ellis, Paula Froehle, and Vivian Yu at Illinois’ Own: 1999 Illinois Arts Council Media Arts Fellowship Recipients. The free Chicago Filmmakers-sponsored event starts at 7 in the Claudia Cassidy Theater at the Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E....

“To your knowledge has fraud ever been committed by management in an organization you have worked for?” Forty-seven percent of the 223 responding members of the Illinois CPA Society checked “yes” in response to this question on the group’s recent annual opinion poll. And who would be in a better position to know? Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “We will have new generations of youth rebellion as certainly as we will have new generations of mufflers or toothpaste or footwear,” concludes Tom Frank in his new book, The Conquest of Cool....

Possibly others have written to note that Harold Henderson proved himself guilty of the same know-nothingness he ascribes to others in his December 27 article headlined “Don’t Know Much About History.” If not, allow me to do so. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » However, the fact is that when Custer reached the Little Bighorn he divided his regiment, the Seventh Calvary, into four detachments....