Play Dirty Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » This 1968 desert caper, the last film directed by veteran Andre de Toth, ranks among his best work. An inexperienced World War II captain (Michael Caine) leads a sub-Dirty Dozen crew on a mission behind German lines in North Africa; from the beginning the squad’s superior officers are ready to betray them, and they return the favor....

I am a 35-year-old Asian straight man. My girlfriend and I have been seeing each other for over a year, and recently I told her that I watch porn videos with my younger brother. She is OK with the fact that I watch porn but thinks it’s strange that I watch it with my brother. Do other men watch porn with their siblings? My younger brother says there’s nothing wrong with it....

DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS 9/24, SCHUBAS This Georgia quartet made a better record than smarmy song titles like “The President’s Penis Is Missing” and “Zoloft” might lead you to believe. Pizza Deliverance (Soul Dump/Ghostmeat) pairs thoroughly enjoyable slackerbilly with that time-capsuled Athens sound for something like the Bad Livers meet Guadalcanal Diary; the best tracks, like “Bulldozers and Dirt” and “Too Much Sex (Too Little Jesus)” (based on something overheard on a Christian radio call-in show), manage to be clever and touching at once....

Dear Chicago Reader, Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » There was some very interesting information in Neal Pollack’s article “Everyone Knows Thax” [August 13]. There were a few points I wanted to bring up. First of all, I am not sure how to interpret the ambiguity on the working relationship between Eric St. Clair and Thax. On one hand, Mr. St. Clair told Thax never to come on his show again, but on the other, Thax continuously refers bands to him....

Headline Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Does anyone in the performing arts realize that theater is going the way of the CTA? Prices are constantly being raised, ridership is declining, more and more bus routes, el stops, and schedules are being eliminated, and worst of all, no one seems to be making the connection. When will producers learn that by considering ticket prices such as $38....

The media coverage of the story of Andrew Cunanan–the 27-year-old gay man whose 1997 cross-country killing spree ended only when he killed himself–became nearly as fascinating and incomprehensible as the crimes themselves. When he first struck, the mainstream press was trumpeting its open-mindedness on gay issues by gleefully participating in the publicity surrounding Ellen DeGeneres’s protracted coming-out stunt. But after Cunanan killed his third victim, Chicago real estate developer Lee Miglin, reporters appeared to time-warp back to the 1950s, clumsily issuing ominous warnings about a “homicidal homosexual” on the loose....

This rough gem by George Bernard Shaw, written in 1935, is smartly polished in Shaw Chicago’s staged reading, the second in the company’s season-long tribute to the writer’s lesser-known works. Blending the mysticism of A Passage to India with the verve of a Punch cartoon, Shaw’s scattershot script describes a polygamous “superfamily” on a newly arisen Polynesian island. But this marriage of East and West founders on human perversity and celestial intervention....

Does environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) seriously threaten the general public’s health? The June 2 Straight Dope claimed this threat is “unproven at best.” To your credit, you did concede that this smoke is a “danger to vulnerable folk such as asthmatics, children, and the elderly” and is “harmful, broadly speaking.” You also found “impressive” the smoking opponents’ list of official pronouncements and studies, 63 of which found “some evidence of harm from ETS....

A guy I knew in college claimed to be doing his graduate thesis on photographic memory and how one could acquire it. Since I never saw said genius again I want to know if such a thing really exists or if it’s something out of spy novels. –Sharon Penn Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Handy though it might be for your next biology exam, photographic memory in the popular sense is probably a myth....

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. PAUL ANKA Next Saturday, April 1, 8 PM, Rosemont Theatre, 5400 N. River Rd....

Aliens Among Us These colorful envelopes are loaded with information about UFO sightings around the world, doctors who specialize in removing implants allegedly placed by aliens in people’s sinus cavities, and superintelligent children. Pat has provided me with books on understanding the trauma experienced by those contacted by aliens, books about psychic pets, Native American shamans, the mysterious and fatal power of crystal skulls–even books about aliens who live among us....

Anthony Gongora and Carrie Hanson Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » These two choreographer-dancers have a luxurious intimacy together. That sense of closeness takes a terrifying turn in Anthony Gongora’s Nature Stalling, a piece he and Carrie Hanson dance that’s centered around a Japanese-looking platform bed: the dancers’ everyday clothes and a cinematic pool of light enhance the feeling that we’re spying on a conversation way too private for third parties, perhaps a scene between our parents....

orr.qxd Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I believe in the mission of the IVI-IPO. We need a group which can act as a watchdog to the regular parties and define issues to benefit the voters over the insiders. IVI-IPO has had an important role in politics for over 50 years, and while the group is now struggling to redefine itself, I hope it will again become a leader in the battle for political reform....

By Ted Kleine So Michael Leider passed on the invitation to his 37-year-old grandson, Mike, whom he’s been grooming since boyhood to do two things: grow flowers and preserve the Leider family’s obscure heritage. Mike started working at the greenhouse when he was 12, and he started hearing about Luxembourg when he was barely out of the cradle. When he was 31, Mike was diagnosed with leukemia. A bone-marrow transplant from his sister Mary saved his life....

Headline TK Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » But if Latino Chicago decides to unload its Damen Avenue home, it must sell the building to another cultural organization. “Those were the terms in our sale agreement with the city,” explains Ramirez. A time-share arrangement among several theater companies is one possibility. Each would pay a fee to Latino Chicago for part ownership of the property and a chunk of time to use the theater....

Me and My Brother Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Written by Sam Shepard and director-cinematographer Robert Frank, this 1968 antidocumentary emphasizes the relationship between Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, and Peter’s brother Julius, whose diagnosis of schizophrenia is revealed when Peter contemptuously reads a document written by a doctor who once examined Julius. In the parts of this movie that most resemble documentary footage, Peter and Allen appear at ease being filmed, and Julius seems unaffected....

MICHAEL BRECKER QUARTET Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » With his new Time Is of the Essence (Verve), saxophone colossus Michael Brecker bestrides two shores: the album’s organ and guitar make it his funkiest of the 90s, yet it’s also true to the complexities of John Coltrane’s music, circa Giant Steps. Coltrane has always been his biggest influence, but Brecker stepped out of his shadow long ago; since then he’s used his idol’s permuted scales and extended harmonies to create a distinct style that’s proved almost as influential....

Reindeer Games Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Growing up in Hammond in the late 60s, Cerda knew how it felt to be out of step. The son of a steelworker, he was more artistic than athletic. “I was a failure in Little League,” he recalls. “I joined to please my dad, but I was so bad even he said, ‘No, you don’t have to play....

By Harold Henderson Part-timers rarely have organized, partly because they don’t think of themselves as part-timers and partly because they don’t work together and may not even see each other from one year to the next. But the biggest reason may be that they know how many others are waiting to take their place. Prestigious academic departments across the country continue to pump out new PhDs as if there were a 1980s baby boom for them to teach–when in fact academia has been a buyer’s market for more than a quarter of a century....

TRI-DIM Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In September, eight of Sweden’s hottest young improvisers were hustled around town to play in various combinations with the Chicago improv mob under the auspices of John Corbett and Mats Gustafsson’s Pipeline 2000 project–and though they were a mind-bogglingly talented bunch, the one who made the deepest impression was acoustic guitarist David Stackenas. From the originality of his post-Derek Bailey vocabulary to the split-second reflexes he demonstrated while working with others, he turned out to be that rare player who transcends the default gestures of free improvisation....