Curtis Mayfield The hero of blaxploitation cinema strutted across the urban landscape of the 70s looking clean and carrying a large can of Whupass. He (or she, in the case of sisters like Coffy or Cleopatra Jones) was usually a streetwise private eye righting the wrongs of the Man, but he would take out a brother or two if they stood in his way. The fire in his belly was eased only by his woman’s love or the inevitable big payback: pumping major heat into some diabolical ofay....

Spice Girls at the New World Music Theatre, July 27 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » We shouldn’t be surprised that the Spice Girls blew up so big. They rose like postfeminist giants, stomping on all comers with their great platform boots. After years of Pearl Jam clones and traumatized girls with acoustic guitars, the world needed some light entertainment. The Spice Girls’ music is fun....

TONY BEVAN Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » British saxophonist Tony Bevan is living proof that you can’t measure an improviser’s talent by the length of his discography. He’s released about as many albums in his decade-plus career as guys like John Butcher and Evan Parker do per year, and the most recent, a 1998 three-inch CD called Three Oranges (Foghorn), is tiny both physically and temporally....

Griller Now Bogosian has made this character and his credo of conspicuous consumption the basis of a two-act comedy-drama. Griller–presented in its world premiere this week at the Goodman–is the third full-length play for Bogosian, who’s best known as a monologuist. It takes place in the sprawling backyard of a suburban home in New Jersey, where Gussie, a wealthy travel agent, has become a local celebrity on the strength of his TV commercials....

By Tori Marlan Many of her neighbors there were elderly, and as she got to know them, she became increasingly concerned for their welfare. “Several of them had very serious problems,” Binder recalls. “They should have been in some kind of retirement home or assisted-living situation. But they all said, ‘What would happen to my animals?’” So she began helping them walk their dogs and change their cats’ litter boxes....

Warning: Getting busted may result in extrajudicial punishment. Danielle Gordon writes in the Chicago Reporter (March): “Between January 1990 and September 1998, 177 African Americans, 80 whites and one Asian American died in police custody or jail in Cook County.” Most died of natural causes, though there were 78 homicides and suicides, and “in 14 incidents, death was related to the victims being restrained by police.” Best of Chicago voting is live now....

FRIDAY 3/26 – THURSDAY 4/1 While the layers of Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient take time to fully reveal themselves, the author’s poetry tends to be clear and concise–yet full of depth. Tonight Ondaatje will read from his new collection, Handwriting, at 6 in the Art Institute’s Rubloff Auditorium, Columbus and Jackson. Admission is free. Call 312-443-3600 for more. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Since 1970 the artist-run Chicago Public Art Group has involved communities in making large-scale mosaics and murals....

EITHER/ORCHESTRA Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Here at the very fin of the siecle, you can’t place too high a premium on irony and postmodernism. The Either/Orchestra reworks the past as deftly as anyone, but also boasts an inventiveness and irresistible musical humor that keep it from suffocating under its own cleverness. Like Thad Jones on the one hand and Spike Jones on the other, this ten-piece outfit from Boston both celebrates and subtly sabotages the big-band tradition with skill, wit, and wild-man passion....

Today conveniences like double sinks and dishwashers are considered standard in most new homes. But in 1959 such amenities were still a novelty, at least until House Beautiful presented its Pace Setter House for that year. Readers already anxious about keeping up with the Joneses were confronted with a centrally located 30-by-12-foot kitchen outfitted with the aforementioned sinks and dishwasher as well as laundry facilities, two ovens, a “utility center,” a disposal, a bar, and a mixing area....

Headline Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I cannot decide whether to be saddened or amused by Peter Margasak’s silly, pointless, and inexplicably mean-spirited missive on Jae-Ha Kim’s job change at the Sun-Times [Post No Bills, July 25]. On one hand I am saddened that Mr. Margasak has nothing better to do with his time than take bitter cheap shots at a fellow reporter. On the other, I was perversely amused by his nonsensical blatherings....

Lead Stories In July the state of Massachusetts filed a civil complaint against convicted murderer Sean Smith, 34, on behalf of three of Smith’s fellow inmates who said he bilked them out of $55,000 in an investment scheme. And three days later a judge in Tampa denied tobacco-litigation lawyer Henry Valenzuela his $20 million share of $200 million set aside for legal fees from the state’s 1997 settlement with tobacco companies because he had been late paying his $2,500 share of a litigation expense....

Mike Cramer: 3Reel/3Real Hogan, Best, and Haynes are inventions of Cramer’s imagination. For each persona he has prepared a sketchy exhibition history, critical apparatus, and distinct personality based on popular stereotypes of “the artist.” Cramer has also produced an ersatz documentary with about ten minutes on each of the artists, complete with interviews, critical commentary, “slice of life” footage, and shots of himself as each of the artists at work. The documentary, directed by Kim Clark (and showing at 8 PM on November 10, 11, and 17 and December 1 and 8), is crucial to understanding Cramer’s masquerade....

In the opening minutes of Frederick Wiseman’s Public Housing a woman named Helen Finner argues on the phone with an official from the Chicago Housing Authority. “But it is an emergency,” Finner insists. “She’s a young girl with a baby and no place to stay.” The scene distills to a single conversation Finner’s two decades of battling the CHA. She complains about the red tape that leaves 200 units at the Ida B....

A friend writes: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Pete Miller’s Steakhouse in Evanston is full on a Friday night. There’s a line at the door, and two young women in the dining room are having a salad and a baked potato between them. The manager approaches their table and informs them that she won’t ask them to move but the steak house has a room for diners having light meals; the dining room is for customers who are having dinner....

RUINS Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The long-running Japanese duo Ruins–drummer and composer Yoshida Tatsuya and a series of bassists, most recently Sasaki Hisashi–burns the fat out of 70s progressive rock until all that’s left is a chewy, blackened crust. They’re terrifyingly tight even at warp speed, barking and crooning nonsense words through headset mikes as they hammer out impossible chains of number-crunching riffs....

By Ben Joravsky There was only one problem. Parents at Hillard, a series of high-rises near 23rd and State, had been pressing the board for a new school for their children. “The Hillard parents had been promised a school by the board,” says Woodard, who has been working in local schools for over 30 years. “They deserved it, they needed it. Their children were in old, substandard mobile units.” Best of Chicago voting is live now....

Why can’t Cecil get his facts straight about the origin of the nickname “Big Apple” and mention John J. Fitz Gerald? My work is on the Web page of the Museum of the City of New York, and I dedicated “Big Apple Corner” at Broadway and W. 54th Street. Why can’t Cecil mention this? –Barry Popik Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In a 1977 column about the origin of “Big Apple” I wrote, “Of the many theories advanced, the most reasonable seems to be that the phrase originated in showbiz circles....

THE DYING GAUL, Apple Tree Theatre. After all the commercial success Craig Lucas has had, it’s extraordinary that he still can’t write a coherent play. In his newest puffed-up trifle, The Dying Gaul, he tells the story of first-time screenwriter Robert, who’s peddling a script based on the recent death of his lover from AIDS. When studio head Jeffrey offers Robert a million dollars if he’ll make the gay characters straight, it seems this will be yet another Hollywood morality tale....

I abide by strict expenditure limits while thrifting. Size, condition, usefulness–these things matter less than low price. To spare myself the agony of seeing things I desire that are marked beyond my limits, I don’t often hit thrifts with better goods at better prices. But I stopped in the White Elephant anyhow, seduced by two blond mink throw pillows in the window. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I knew they’d be over my limit, but I just had to know for sure....

It’s a pity that the Music Box’s Francois Truffaut retrospective omits the best and most revealing of his late films, the deeply disturbing The Green Room (1978). But the most neglected and underrated of his early features–which are still his best overall–is his fourth, La peau douce (1964). It charts with tender and quirky precision the fleeting and desperate adulterous affair between a very successful middle-aged literary critic who’s married (Jean Desailly) and an airline stewardess who isn’t (Francoise Dorleac, in what may be her greatest performance)....