WOMEN WHO SWING–CHICAGO Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » At century’s end, you’d think we’d have left the need for all-girl bands in the dust. But most women still have to play a little bit better than their male bandmates to get the same respect–which means it never hurts to turn a spotlight on their efforts. I can’t promise that a devotion to equity inspired Big Chicago Records to compile the new Women Who Swing–Chicago (the label’s two previous collections made money, and it doubtless hopes the third will too), but whatever its purpose, the disc functions as a lively reminder of who’s doing what on the city’s distaff side....

Focus on the Family Hendon says most of the story’s true, and he adds a few details of his own: “I also heard that [Burnett’s] sister came to the door. She said she was voting for me and not voting for him.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Hendon’s assertion does not “deserve an answer,” counters Burnett. “He’s crazy. I’m praying for him, I tell you....

The Seagull –Anton Chekhov Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Just about everyone in The Seagull is desperately in love with someone unattainable or, worse, indifferent. Artists either have little talent and aspire to greatness or have little talent and have achieved greatness. Passion smolders but rarely flames; it’s most pitiable in the figure of Irina’s elderly brother Sorin, who owns the estate where the play is set....

By Tori Marlan “They’re very prolific,” says Ed Koziarski, editorial-page editor of the Daily Southtown. “A lot of days their letters are here before I am.” “I was sitting outside a coffee shop in my neighborhood reading something,” he recalls, “and this guy came out there–a schoolteacher in Chicago–and he pointed at me and said, ‘Murderer. Murderer. Murderer.’ And I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ And he said, ‘What you wrote about abortion....

By Michael Miner You reminisced. “It was the day after New Year’s, and I was thinking I ought to try something new and outrageous this year–like I do every few months. I typed out a short letter, sent them a picture, and completely forgot about it until they called me two weeks later….I’m not typical Playboy material. I’m too old–31, which is a sad commentary on Playboy, I think–too thin, too pale, my hair color is natural, and I’ve never modeled or stripped or done anything remotely like this....

One Touch of Venus Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Strike Up the Band–the inaugural production of the “Ovations!” series of musical re-creations at the Auditorium Theatre–was a terrific calling card for a grand new venture. Nothing was stagy about this concert performance, which may have omitted sets, period costumes, and choreography but offered superb singing, faithful orchestrations, a great band, and a pitch-perfect staging....

By David Whiteis He wasn’t the first white fan to investigate Chicago blues. Bob Koester had been a south-side habitue since arriving here in 1958 from Saint Louis, where he had recorded long-ignored jazz and blues artists as head of Delmar Records. In Chicago, Koester’s renamed Delmark label had become an internationally recognized jazz and blues outlet, and his Jazz Record Mart was a gathering place for fans and artists alike....

African Film Festival The 1991 first feature of Julie Dash, set in the islands along the south Atlantic coast of the U.S. around the turn of the century. A group of black women carrying on ancient African traditions and beliefs as part of an extended family preparing to migrate north confront the issue of what to bring with them and what to leave behind. Lyrically distended in its folkloric meditations, with striking use of slow and slurred motion in certain interludes, this doesn’t make much use of drama or narrative, and the musical score and performances occasionally seem at war with the period ambience....

Leland H. Gregory III grins at a press release from Colorado State University. It says the school will conduct a study with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to determine whether surgically castrated prairie dogs will still protect their turf. “That’s too funny,” he says. The study’s goal–finding a way to control the prairie dog population–may be worthwhile. But Gregory muses, “What I’d like to know is how much it’ll cost.”...

Broadway Bound? Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Light Opera Works seems more determined than ever to trade in its musty operettas for Broadway razzle-dazzle. After dumping Philip Kraus as artistic director in February, the board of directors for the Evanston-based company has replaced him with Lara Teeter, a confirmed song-and-dance man whose Broadway performance in On Your Toes earned him a Tony Award nomination in 1983....

How big a battle is 17 percent? The Chicago New Party’s spin on 17th Ward aldermanic candidate Chuck Kelly’s 17 percent showing against a Daley-backed candidate in the April election: “The New Party and its allies sent a message to Mayor Daley that nothing will be conceded to him and his allies without a fight.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » One of the few benefits of segregation....

HANK MARR Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The organ-jazz explosion of the 50s and 60s had its hot spots–like Philadelphia, Newark, and Chicago–but a number of cookin’ little combos from Anywhere, USA, made national names for themselves too. Hank Marr did it out of Columbus, Ohio, making a string of rock-solid records for the Cincinnati-based King label that showcased his soulful, grooving, no-BS style on the Hammond B-3....

KELLY PRICE Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Even if you haven’t heard anything from her debut album, Soul of a Woman (Island), chances are you’ve heard Kelly Price. Her four years trilling behind Mariah Carey are perhaps the least impressive stint on her resume, and her hip-hop cameos–most notably on Notorious B.I.G.’s “Mo Money Mo Problems”–and her songwriting and production work with acts like SWV, Aretha Franklin, Brandy, and R....

Lead Stories Salespeople: The Next Postal Workers Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In March William Walker was charged in Albuquerque with trying to hack through an apartment door with an ax after the resident said he wasn’t interested in buying speakers from him. And in April two women were preparing for trial after being charged with murder in Frankfurt, Germany, for allegedly torturing and stabbing to death an underachieving male colleague in their door-to-door magazine-sales group....

ORBITAL Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Paul and Phil Hartnoll may be the most consistent artists in any techno subgenre, which is both a blessing and a curse. For ten years they’ve made one heart-in-your-mouth classic after another: the eternal “Chime,” the awe-kissed “Halcyon + On + On,” the suspenseful “Are We Here?,” even their reworking of the theme to The Saint (though it alarmed their cred-conscious fans)....

The Love Song of Saul Alinsky Terrapin Theatre at the Blue Rider Theatre Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Indeed, the overall ineffectiveness of this disjointed, seemingly unfinished drama is rather stunning–the subject would seem to make it a slam dunk. This is the story of a man who roused rabble from the Chicago stockyards to the New York ghettos to the California barrios, who took on Hizzoner, Mayor Richard J....

RICHARD DAVIES Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Not many musicians can take the time machine back to the psychedelic 60s and return with their own vision intact, but with his second solo album, Telegraph (Flydaddy), Richard Davies pulls it off, freeing his unabashedly lovely melodies and daydreamy vocals from the heavy burden of nostalgia. Davies, who also played in the Moles and Cardinal, understands how to give pretty pop an edge–or maybe it’s that he knows how to make the edge pretty....

Smart Move Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The professors and students involved in the projects combed through the museum’s holdings to find most of the objects for their shows, though in each case the budget allowed for one or two key objects to be included on loan from other museums. Graduate students penned almost all of the catalog essays, usually receiving course credit for their work....

Echo, another eclectic Wicker Park place, opened recently in the former Starfish space with chef Dirk Flanigan (of just-closed Madam B) running the kitchen. Starfish owner Sean Herron (who also owns Meritage) gave the room a cool yet comfortable new look with cast concrete tables, an aluminum bar, gray hardwood floors, and dusty blue walls. The menu features “small-plate cuisine,” tasting portions meant to be ordered several at a time. “We want our patrons to have a tasting experience, not just the basic appetizer and entree,” says Flanigan....

¹ By Bill Boisvert Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » As if to compensate, movies usually tie intelligence to more colorful and histrionic personality quirks–to juvenile delinquence in Good Will Hunting, to autism in Rain Man, and to acute psychosis in , this summer’s “indie genius” movie. Max Cohen is a brilliant mathematician (we learn this right off the bat from a combined stunt calculation/testimonial scene in which a little girl with a calculator quizzes him in long division); he’s obsessed with finding the hidden pattern that governs everything in the universe–especially that most profound manifestation of cosmic order, the stock market....