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The Japanese performance collective Dumb Type basks in the cold light of pure reason as its members contemplate the space between life and death in OR, a title that refers to both operating rooms and binary systems–which of course don’t offer any choice other than A or B, life or death. With its assaultive lighting, its weird sound design (the clicks, buzzes, and beeps of life-support machines as well as “soothing” waltz or jazz music), and its cruel vignettes of people posing as dogs on leashes, OR envisions the transition from life to death as a chilly intellectual passage as cold and lonely as a trip through the Alps....

Andrzej Domanski: Portraits Tim Lowly: Moving Pictures Domanski’s oil portraits seem to belong to neither the present nor the past. Four of the eight works displayed at Eastwick include backgrounds of castles, ancient cities, or pristine greenery, yet his figures’ resolute poses and traditional dress exude a startling calm that lifts them out of time. Domanski showed me an article in which Polish writer Ryszard Kapuscinski speaks of a desire for “serene art” that would not “attack and scream,” that lacks the aggressiveness of a modern street....

V-ROYS 3/12, THE HIDEOUT; 3/13, FITZGERALD’S The traditionals on this Knoxville roots-rock quartet’s sophomore album, All About Town (E-Squared), give off a convincing back-porch smell: the mandolin’s breezy and the fiddle’s hairy, and even the Bill Monroe cover sounds fine, thanks in large part to guests Ronnie and Robbie McCoury, sons of Monroe’s old sideman Del McCoury. Where bands like this usually lose it is when they try to rock out–it takes some real expertise to breathe excitement back into this conservative form....

SUSIE IBARRA TRIO Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Last year drummer Susie Ibarra left the David S. Ware Quartet, the group with which she first stormed onto the free-jazz scene. In the quartet and in various settings with her husband, tenor saxophonist Assif Tsahar, she’s done her mentor Milford Graves proud, more than holding her own in the soul-searing sax workouts and kinetic group interplay that’s earned the tag “ecstatic jazz....

The Legend of Spirit Mountain, ETA Creative Arts Foundation. This company, dedicated to producing new plays from the African-American community, often stages works in progress–and The Legend of Spirit Mountain certainly fits that bill. Playwright K.M. Nkosi is a lyrical storyteller whose almost mythological play offers a fresh, interesting take on familiar issues: saving an “at risk” black male, struggling to preserve traditions, fighting to maintain hold of the land. But the play needs a serious edit....

patt.qxd In 1990 Jerry Meites resurrected the judicial evaluation committee (I think it had met last in the 1960s). Letters were sent to all IVI-IPO members who were attorneys, inviting them to join the committee or, if unable to attend meetings, to submit in writing any information they had about judicial candidates. Although given the option of anonymity, most members signed their responses. Invitations were not extended to nonattorneys, although any member who knew of the existence of the committee was allowed to serve....

AERIAL M/MICK TURNER Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » David Pajo isn’t exactly an effusive personality. As a guitarist for Louisville indie-rock legends Slint and current Chicago underground stars Tortoise he’s often willingly retreated into the background, and it’s been tough to pinpoint just what he was contributing. The debut album of his solo project, Aerial M (on Drag City), clears things up considerably. As in Slint, Pajo’s thorough investigation of pin-drop dynamics and hypnotic repetition takes place within the context of fairly standard rock structures....

By Ben Joravsky One coach at the park–I’ll call him Steve–screeches like a deranged bird at every call that goes against him. In his back pocket he carries a wrinkled copy of the league rules, and he’s always ready to argue with the ump, no matter how hot the sun. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » And then there’s a third coach–OK, it’s me–who fell into the habit of calling the outcome of a play before the ump had a chance to....

BEAUTIFUL HELEN OF TROY Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Light Opera Works’ playful English-language version of Jacques Offenbach’s 1864 operetta La belle Helene might be subtitled “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Iliad.” Director-choreographer Peter Amster’s near burlesque production amusingly updates the saucy spoof, in which the fabled Greek beauty Helen’s romance with the Trojan prince Paris prompts an epidemic of sexual permissiveness in Spartan society....

Friday 8/18 – Thursday 8/24 19 SATURDAY “Mestizos. Indios. Negros. Europeos. Indo-Afro-Euro Americanos. Latinos, Hispanics, call them what you will; they are the children of movement and encounter, meeting in love and suffering in slave ships and plantations, in mines and in chapels, in carnivals and in tool shops. How many hands in the Americas first met over a carpenter’s bench or a silversmith’s table, digging the treasures of Potosi or rowing the Magdalena or plowing the fields of Puerto Rico?...

David Howell spends a lot of time underground, both physically and in his dreams. He lives with his wife in his grandmother’s basement in Belleville, Illinois, and he passes most of his days thinking about mummies. From the time he saw his first sarcophagus, when he was five, at the Saint Louis Art Museum, he has been obsessed. He spent his childhood reading every book he could find on ancient Egypt, pestering his folks to take him to traveling exhibits....

After wading through Richard Meltzer’s convoluted bullshit titled “Vinyl Reckoning” [July 2], I remembered why I quit reading so-called rock criticism a short time after the disgusting genre reared its ugly little head. Similar to Meltzer’s crapola, it was more of an exercise in abject narcissism than it was a review of any record. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Even if it had been done more intelligently than it was, the entire concept was flawed to begin with, because taste is relative to the individual....

Intimate Exchanges, Janus Theatre, at Vail Street Cafe. This collection of six short plays from the Humana Festival in Louisville includes both comedies and dramas, but humor is definitely the Janus Theatre’s strong suit. Performing Dolores Whiskeyman’s So Tell Me About This Guy, Patricia True and Roberta Mulder are wonderfully expressive as women who know each other well enough to communicate without finishing sentences or, as far as the audience can tell, actually saying what they mean....

Landmark Decisions Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The Pumping Station, a historical landmark that predates the Chicago Fire, was closed to the public in fall 1996 following the demise of “Here’s Chicago,” a commercial venture that exposed tourists to the city’s past and various attractions. “We were in court for two years trying to get access to the building,” says Weisberg. “We talked endlessly to folks in the neighborhood about what they wanted us to do at the Pumping Station and held focus groups....

Wicker Park’s Underworld Used Books, a storefront operation with erratic hours on a scruffy stretch of Ashland, is closing its doors after just over two years in business. But that doesn’t bother proprietor Michael Workman: “From the beginning the store was never meant to be a long-term thing.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “When we first moved in,” says Workman, “it was almost beyond repair....

mirken.qxd Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » First, as far as the signers of the letter with whom I’ve spoken (Bob Lederer of Poz also circulated it) are concerned, the names of the judges who made this particular decision are not the issue. Our concern is that NLGJA have an awards process that is fair and which supports the goals of the organization, one of which is to promote coverage based, as the group’s brochure puts it, on “knowledge and truthfulness....

Shattered Image Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Raul Ruiz’s first mainstream release, which is getting its Chicago premiere at an art house rather than a multiplex, may not be one of his best–given his hundred or so shorts and features, there’s a lot of competition, and this is one of the rare Ruiz movies scripted by someone else. But it certainly provides some provocative and enjoyable jolts....

SLEATER-KINNEY Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » If rock ‘n’ roll is the music of individualism, then the human voice is the instrument of rock ‘n’ roll: with enough study a good guitarist can copy another’s style, but we’ll never hear another Elvis Presley, John Lennon, or Kurt Cobain. Yet much “indie” rock devalues the vocals, burying them under a morass of guitar or slurring the lyrics until they’re unintelligible to erase the classic-rock dichotomy between singing star and backing band....

By Cara Jepsen Hornburg revisits the land of his youth in his new coming-of-age novel, Downers Grove, which he’ll read from at Barbara’s Bookstore on Wells Tuesday. It’s told from the perspective of 17-year-old Chrissie–short for Crystal Methedrine–Swanson, a character Hornburg loosely based on his sister and her friends. Chrissie is a sharp but angst-ridden high school senior who fights with jocks and nearly gets raped, moons over a gas station attendant, and frets about her future....

I have heard that armadillos carry leprosy. Is this true? How about any other nasty diseases? You see why scientific progress is slow. I have, however, established that the answer to your question is yes–armadillos do carry leprosy. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Leprosy, one of history’s most dread diseases, has been around since ancient times. But it has never been easy to study because the bacillus that causes it, Mycobacterium leprae, can’t be grown in the lab....