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JOSE SOTO Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » It may be lucky for Jose Soto that the Gypsy Kings’ half-baked version of flamenco is the one most familiar to Americans–it’ll be that much easier for him to blow us away when he makes his U.S. debut this week. The singer and guitarist helped launch a new flamenco movement in his native Spain in 1981, when he founded the group Ketama with Juan and Antonio Carmona–two brothers who like Soto are descended from a storied clan of Gypsy musicians....

Love in the Balance This is the finale of the Flying Griffin Circus, a charming, ragtag little show put together by the Evanston-based Actors Gymnasium, and Lijana wants to give the audience a healthy thrill before they go home. Hanging midway through a line of straps by her feet, she’s “walking,” removing one foot from a strap and hooking it through the next, making sure the arch of her foot is nestled securely....

Starship Troopers With Casper Van Dien, Dina Meyer, Denise Richards, Jake Busey, Neil Patrick Harris, Clancy Brown, Seth Gilliam, and Patrick Muldoon. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » By national cinema, I mean a cinema that expresses something of the soul of the nation that it comes from: the lifestyle, the consciousness, the attitudes. I wouldn’t want to quibble with anyone who argues that Starship Troopers is American in the same way or to the same degree that french fries are French....

gilmore.qxd Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » As a person with multiple sclerosis, I read last week’s cover story [“Can Bee Stings Cure MS?” August 22] with steadily increasing dismay. Whether or not bee venom is a viable therapeutic option is not what I found so objectionable about the article. Rather, I was at a loss to understand why your reporter chose to profile someone so obviously in need of help to deal both emotionally and physically with her MS....

Optical Displacements: Films by Ken Jacobs and Pat O’Neill Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Avant-garde filmmakers usually work in 8- or 16-millimeter, but Ken Jacobs and Pat O’Neill use the greater detail of 35-millimeter to spectacular effect, producing an extraordinary visual poetry that explores the nature of seeing. In parts of Georgetown Loop (1997) and Disorient Express (1997), Jacobs takes footage shot from a moving train and prints it twice, running the images side by side with one frame upside-down; the doubling of the train’s movement produces a kaleidoscopic effect in which the image seems to grow, like an ever-renewing vision, out of the edge where the frames meet....

Many arts organizations survive year after year operating on a shoestring, but what happens when the shoestring breaks? Two years ago Ballet Theater of Chicago burst onto the scene with an ambitious, low-budget production of Giselle that won raves from local critics and drew healthy crowds. But now its production of Bournonville’s La Sylphide, originally scheduled for six performances in May at the Athenaeum Theatre, has been canceled, and its tireless founder and artistic director, Mario de la Nuez, has been ousted as executive director of the Lexington Ballet, for the past year Ballet Theater’s sister organization....

neudel.qxd Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I found it disturbing that the article was framed primarily in terms of a battle between physicians over the credit for an analysis of the real nature of amniotic fluid embolism, rather than a battle between patients (and their families) and a medical profession more interested in its own convenience and kudos than in the welfare of those they are supposed to be serving....

Hey, Faggot: Call her puff. If your girlfriend’s new occupation is a deal-breaker, then tell her–explain that she can have you or she can have her cigs, but she can’t have both. You might discover she’s already made a kind of conscious/subconscious decision; she’s, well, sending you smoke signals. Maybe she’s sick of your ass, but doesn’t have the guts to end it herself. So she’s smoking you out. So smoke her right back....

Isley Brothers A list of the artists the Isley Brothers have influenced reads like a brief history of cutting-edge pop: the Beatles covered their fist two hits and emulated their three-voice group sound; Jimi Hendrix patterned the vocal-instrumental interplay of the Experience after tracks he’d cut as an Isley Brothers sideman; the Beastie Boys, A Tribe Called Quest, and numerous other rappers have sampled them liberally; and R. Kelly’s chart-topping sexy soul balladry reflects the timelessness of the Isleys’ later, mature R & B style....

By Michael Miner Crown: “What is your relationship with Grupo Financiero Bancomer?” Fitzgerald: No answer. Three months ago Crown submitted to Fitzgerald for comment a list of accusations that began: “1. The massive VIOLATION of the ILLINOIS GOVERNMENTAL ETHICS ACT which occurred in the Illinois State Senate with your ‘yes’ votes on SB 935, SB 232, SB 1397…” To Crown’s regret, his published reporting on Fitzgerald’s banking interests is pretty much the only reporting....

By Ben Joravsky After months of research Bearden discovered that Fredonia Parrish had been born in 1840 in Virginia and had died in Mississippi in 1913. “You could have knocked me over, my heart was so filled,” says Bearden. “I knew Fredonia had been a part of the westward movement and through her I was part of that migration. I was a part of that history. I can’t tell you what that has done for me....

Like many working stiffs Tom Nicholson likes to meet his buddies for a drink at the end of the day. He sells rocks to road builders, and about 30 years ago he often found himself on the same jobs as a guy from U.S. Steel named Tom Shaughnessy. One night Shaughnessy introduced Nicholson to his favorite place to grab a beer and a snack before heading home, and soon Nicholson was a regular too....

This arresting example of camp documentary–a form that’s an antidote to mockumentary as well as straight documentary–historicizes male-physique photography of the 50s, combining archival images, fictionalized narrative based on real events and people, and interviews with former photographers and models (including Jack LaLanne and Joe Dallesandro). The main “character” is photographer Bob Mizer (Daniel MacIvor), who with the help of his ambivalent mother ran a business called the Athletic Model Guild until he was prosecuted for vice....

Cathi Watson wants both your spirit and the backs of your thighs to be as lovely as her own. Raising a toned gam through the slit in her silver lame lounging gown, the 65-year-old exclaims, “There’s hope no matter what your age is.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “It was at the old Goldblatt’s on State Street,” she says. “I was modeling a low-cut Balenciaga gown for a fund-raiser of haute couture there....

We’re number five! We’re number five! Illinois jumped from sixth to fifth among states in dollar value of foreign exports between 1994 and 1996, according to the summer edition of “Export Matters,” published by the International Trade Center on West Bradley Place. State exports rose from $26.4 billion in 1994 (5.1 percent of the U.S. total) to $34.7 billion in 1996 (5.6 percent). None of the top four exporting states–California, Texas, New York, and Michigan–are in any danger of being overtaken....

Driving Force But then she picks up her second foul and has to sit out for a while. When she returns she can’t play as aggressively. Despite some missed shots and turnovers, Young manages a five-point lead at halftime. Marshall recovers from its funk at the start of the third quarter, using its superior quickness, depth, and offensive rebounding to gain control. Pointer is off her game. Early in the first quarter she took a hard foul on a layup, falling to the floor with a loud thwack....

A Mexican tamale vendor named Candelaria Gonzalez appeared in court on the afternoon of Wednesday, June 30, to face charges of illegal peddling. Her case had been dismissed in April because the ticketing officer hadn’t shown up. But at the request of neighborhood activists on the northwest side, the city had reinstated the charges against her. The city had already tried to put the eloteros out of business, in 1997, but a last-minute protest won public sympathy and prevented legislation from passing in the City Council....

By Jeff Huebner Elliott’s ten-paragraph editorial, titled “Cultural Vandalism: The Tradition Continues,” concluded: “The men and women who created Chicago built a great city, but the greed and indifference of so-called ‘corporate mentality’ has all but destroyed it. There is little likelihood that the mindless cultural demolition of Chicago will not be complete by the end of the century.” Born in Pennsylvania in 1839, Benjamin Franklin Ferguson moved to Chicago after the Great Fire in 1871 and made a fortune running a planing mill and a lumber company, both on the south side....

Dear Reader, Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » It appears the reason Joravsky points out the holes in the Times story is to cover up his own weak reporting. I’m guessing the reasoning goes something like this: “The Times didn’t explain what the erroneous or misleading information in Sykes’s petition was, and I can’t get ahold of any Norwood Park Chamber of Commerce officials myself, so I might as well point out my secondary source’s failure’s instead of mine....

When juries rule the way we would have, they’re wise. When they don’t, they’re crazy. Last week one Chicago jury declared 15th Ward alderman Virgil Jones guilty of accepting $7,000 in bribes from a government mole, finding it unlikely that Jones would accept thousands of dollars in legitimate campaign contributions inside a rolled-up newspaper. Another jury acquitted former state senator Miguel Santiago of being a ghost payroller in the county treasurer’s office, finding it believable that Santiago could monitor relevant state legislation for the treasurer for four and a half years without jotting down a single note....