A-SQUARED: Ann Arbor, home of the University of Michigan, which so aspires to join the Ivy League that it admits all the Chicago and New York suburbanites who can’t get into Yale. A few people from Michigan go to U. of M. too Bob Seger’s song “Main Street” is about Ann Arbor. Iggy Pop and the MC5, who claimed gritty Detroit origins, got their starts here too. THE BIG TIRE: Six-story tall Ferris wheel refurbished to look like a Uniroyal tire, on I-94 outside Romulus....

Merrily We Roll Along Bailiwick Repertory I admit that I’ve contributed to the “critical consensus” Barnes dismissed: reviewing Apple Tree Theatre’s 1993 production of the revised version of Merrily, I criticized the script as “full of moralistic cliches about selling out,” saying that the show’s major draw was Sondheim’s music. But Porchlight Theatre’s superb new production has brushed away my doubts about the script and made me appreciate even more the score’s remarkable richness....

wray.qxd On the 14th, I called to remind Ameritech that a technician was supposed to come out the following day to hook up my new service. Their customer service department happily reassured me that yes, they did indeed show that I had an appointment for the 15th, and if I would like to call back in the morning, they would be able to tell me if the technician would be to my apartment between 8 and 12 or between 1 and 5....

Billy Branch Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Blues harpist Billy Branch has always been mindful of his role as a keeper of the flame. He can evoke the better part of the Chicago harmonica canon in a single solo: He might start with a few of John Lee Williamson’s rollicking arpeggios, then segue into burnished Little Walter-style jazz licks, tempered by Big Walter’s bittersweet thoughtfulness and ornamented here and there with a piercing Jimmy Reed shriek or one of Rice Miller’s antic triplet runs....

To the editor: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Cecil Adams featured some of my work in two recent columns of the Straight Dope [September 17 and 24]. In May 1999 Rick Kogan did a story for the Chicago Tribune magazine about the origin of the “Windy City.” He again quoted the story that New York was competing with Chicago for the World’s Fair (Chicago held it in 1893), and that Charles A....

HEARTBREAK HOUSE, Headstrong Theatre. George Bernard Shaw’s 1920 comedy-drama, written in the wake of World War I and eerily prophetic of the greater conflict to come, is a complex portrait of dalliance and disillusion among an eccentric, slightly bohemian family and the outsiders drawn into their world. This talky, emotionally ambiguous work–inspired by a country weekend Shaw spent with Leonard and Virginia Woolf in 1916–is a real stretch for Headstrong, literally a storefront whose tiny auditorium is nestled behind a vintage clothing shop run by director-designer William T....

KEVIN WELCH Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Kevin Welch’s first 15 years in Nashville went pretty smoothly. Artists like Waylon Jennings, Trisha Yearwood, Ricky Skaggs, and Roger Miller recorded the native Okie’s songs, and by the early 90s he’d embarked on a solo career, releasing two albums of intelligent folk- and rock-tinged country (dubbed western beat for its literary qualities) on Reprise. The critics liked them and so did a respectable number of consumers, but the label wanted bigger sales, and the pressure led to a bitter split....

Making Chocolate Right Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Goossens was an invaluable resource but he also had one of the infamous attributes of many culinary artists–a terrible temper. “He was a pretty good instructor when he felt like it, but mostly I was a good student,” says Piron. He made the most of his internship by pulling long hours, keeping extensive notes, and trying to soak up every minute detail....

“Langston Hughes was one never to forget an artistically inclined child,” says jazz and classical composer Hale Smith. “He came to my high school in Cleveland in ’42–which he’d attended briefly many years earlier–and I was in the crowd to greet him. I handed him a sheet of music that I’d written. He autographed it. Four years later, right out of the army, I was in Harlem for a visit. I ran into him at the post office on 125th Street....

Ken Lim surveys the Friday-night crowd at Penang, the Malaysian restaurant his family owns in Chinatown. All the tables are full, and a line stretches outside the front door even though it’s past nine. “That’s a Filipino family,” Lim says, pointing to a table of ten. “The grandparents bring everyone here to taste home cooking. And over there, that couple is Indian–they’re eating our appetizer roti canai, which is an Indian-style pancake you can dip into a curry chicken sauce....

Rolando Castellon at Feigen Incorporated, through April 19 In its use of materials and its tunic shape, Found Object IX recalls the traditional art that Castellon’s work constantly references. But the artifacts of pre-Columbian cultures were mostly made for use; Castellon’s pieces are firmly rooted in the modernist art world, in which art is made only to be exhibited. No one would, or could, wear this “tunic.” Its lack of functionality, dense and dark surface, and mixture of irregularity and symmetry give it an inwardness, a hermetic air, linking it to contemporary art while suggesting that it sprang from a lost culture that will remain forever obscure to us....

My husband and I are passionately in love. Our sex life is truly amazing. Our problem: As far as I’m concerned, he is obsessive about collecting sexual material. He continually purchases all kinds of porno magazines. He keeps a photo album of us (which he claims he looks at most frequently) and also has a collection of pussy/cocks/tits videos. When he isn’t looking at porn he’s reading books about different sexual positions or how to enhance orgasms, and he keeps talking about going on a nudist vacation somewhere (I have no problem with that, I love to be naked)....

Worrisome cracks appeared in the Bulls’ facade as the 1996-’97 regular season came to an end. Not only did they lose three of their final four games to fall short of 70 wins, each of those losses came at the hands of a potential playoff opponent: the Detroit Pistons, the Miami Heat, and the New York Knicks. It was the Pistons’ first victory over the Bulls in 20 games, and the first ever for both second-year coach Doug Collins and third-year star Grant Hill....

KINA 8/18, AUDITORIUM THEATRE Detroit-born Kina, an R & B singer turned woman-rock belter, occasionally pulls off a move of minor genius like bringing a whomping gospel choir in on an intelligent chorus like “Don’t just say it’s all right / My life fell into ten pieces / Don’t just say it’s fine / Just let me have a cry.” But though she writes her own lyrics, generally of the bruised-but-uplifting school, many of the tunes on her Dreamworks debut, Kina, were written by producer London Jones, who composes the way he programs the synths and drums–one from column A, one from column B....

Based on Marie Brenner’s 1996 Vanity Fair article “The Man Who Knew Too Much,” this docudrama exposes Big Tobacco with low-key fervor. It resists obvious opportunities to sensationalize the dilemmas of a former head of R and D who had to decide what to do with what he knew and a 60 Minutes producer who found he didn’t necessarily have the support of his network, almost cagily creating understated drama from high-stakes reality....

My roommates and I are having an argument about electroshock therapy after watching Jack in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. What actually happens when someone gets zapped through the brain? Jack convulses for a number of seconds after he gets zapped, but one of my roommates contends that would not actually happen and there would be no convulsions after the initial shock (i.e., after the electrodes are removed). Can you give us the Dope?...

A friend of mine is selling these “corona discharge” air filters–she has severe asthma and swears this little gizmo is better than pooping gold bricks. Is this truly the miracle we asthma sufferers are looking for? This unit claims to be a “miniature miracle” made possible by “a revolutionary discovery in electrodynamic negative corona discharge purification technology.” Supposedly it’s “more advanced than any filter/fan air purifier or HEPA filtration device” and cleans air “naturally…....

Awkward Festival Association House Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » These days, very young theater artists have taken the Neo-Futurist aesthetic into their souls and measure their own work against its standard. Indeed, repeated trips to Too Much Light by Max Alper, a 1998 graduate of Evanston High School, inspired him to create his own merry band of Neo-Futurists, calling itself the Theater of the Awkward....

By Ben Joravsky Well, the mighty crash coming out of Albany Park last week was that other shoe landing with a thud. The city produced its final plan for the spot, and the Ainslie and its 88 units are coming down all right–along with some 80 other units of affordable housing a block west in the 4900 block of North Sawyer. But they aren’t making way for a park; they’ll be replaced by a much-needed school....

By Ben Joravsky The Park District approved the plan, appropriated money to implement it, and was set to hire a contractor in the spring of 1995 when the newly elected Colom halted the process. There was, she said, a silent majority of seniors and young mothers who opposed the courts for fear they would attract gangbangers. “Tots and teenagers don’t mix,” she told me at the time. “It would be dangerous if courts went up....