In early July, after six months of increasingly strained relations, the board of directors of the Center for International Performance and Exhibition (CIPEX), which governs the nonprofit arts and culture venue HotHouse, suspended founder and executive director Marguerite Horberg without pay. Horberg and the board had fallen out over HotHouse’s impending transition to a dual-leadership structure–she was to remain executive director, handling programming and fund-raising, and a business director was to be hired to take over other day-to-day operations....

Local blues singer Jesi’ Terrell is coming out of her shell. On her 2000 debut, Come Get This Love, her talent for nuance and understatement made it easy to forgive her uncertain phrasing and intonation: on ballads she reinforced her vulnerable, kittenish croon with an undercurrent of resolve, and on more aggressive fare she steered clear of cheap hoochie-mama posturing. Onstage, though, she still had a frustrating tendency to remain in a slow or midtempo ballad groove for an entire set....

Although Polygon Cities (Monolake/Imbalance Computer Music) was made with the assistance of a fellow calling himself T++ (aka Torsten Profrock), it still sounds very much like the solo work of Berliner Robert Henke, who’s been releasing chilly techno records as Monolake for nearly a decade. His sleek, twitching electronic grooves have flashes of the digital glitchery that was all the rage in the late 90s, but Henke often looks farther back for inspiration....

Schwa Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » These days it seems like every other restaurant is all local this, seasonal that, and SCHWA is no exception: “Schwa uses only the freshest, finest and organic ingredients when possible,” the menu brags. But those are more than just buzzwords for this place, which has taken over the old Lovitt space and whose executive chef (and co-owner) is Michael Carlson, formerly Lovitt’s sous-chef....

Playwrights Jed Alexander and Joe Kendall must be trying to set a weight record with their concept-heavy Shakespeare. My Richard is a fictional dress rehearsal of a one-man adaptation of Richard III performed by Glen the schizophrenic, whose “mental deformity” is meant to parallel the murderous king’s physical one. The 50-minute script is sketchy and implausible. This supposed dress rehearsal is presented to a live audience, yet actor, director, and stage manager spend half their time arguing as if no one else were there....

I was freelancing here and my work partner said, “Today is the day that the five millionth rider is going to win two tickets to anywhere in the world. We should go.” It was late fall and I was whining a lot about how cold it was. We rode the Ferris wheel but we weren’t the winners, so we decided to ride again. As soon as we cleared the turnstile a confetti gun went off....

The most independent and resourcefully frugal of American underground filmmakers, Jon Jost thrives in isolation, but his work often suffers from his lack of connection, particularly his disinclination to remain in any one place for long. This experimental documentary (2003, 116 min.) about Jost’s first encounter with Paris is a notable exception; with a minimal narrative, it pays sensitive tribute to such Parisian art as Eugene Atget’s photography, impressionist-era paintings, music by Satie and Debussy, and the youthful romance of Godard’s early films, played out here by Helene Fillieres and James Thierree....

Doug Zell makes his living roasting coffee for most of the city’s high-end retailers and restaurants as well as many of its citizens, but you won’t hurt his feelings if you ask to buy the beans green. Roasting your own “can be fun, and I think people are looking for sensual kinds of things, things that they can put their hands on,” he says. Customers at his shop, Intelligentsia–arguably Chicago’s finest coffee-roasting operation–started asking him about it a few years ago....

The first thing I noticed about Jesse Mumm’s extensive letter to the Reader [“A Pinata Can’t Speak for the Community,” August 24] about the lack of coverage of the resident Latino community in Logan Square [The Logan Square Issue, August 10] was that his signature contains the title “anthropologist.” I find it humorous that Mr. Mumm states indignation about the frustration of longtime Latino residents being displaced in the name of gentrification disguised as diversity....

Bill Cain’s familiar 1990 drama about a troubled Latino Catholic high school is the flip side of David Wilkerson’s inspirational priest-versus-gangs classic The Cross and the Switchblade. The priest in charge of Trinity Mission School has two words of advice for idealistic new teacher Tom Griffin: “Be callous.” Squashed into a suitably claustrophic space, Nicolas Minas’s staging for Blindfaith Theatre is passionate, blending professional actors and energetic performers from the Duncan YMCA’s Youth Theatre Workshop....

The Public League boys basketball semifinals were seemingly designed for the aficionado, almost to the exclusion of everyone else. The last few years they’ve taken place at DePaul’s Athletic Center, where the Fullerton el stop around the corner fails to make up for the tight parking, which discourages less avid fans. And this year the semis were scheduled for a Friday night, which seemed to drag down student attendance. It was just as well, because there’s no spare seating in the gym–just matching banks of bleachers on both sides of the court–and the place was filled by the end of Friday’s first game....

Rebecca Lipton Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » RL: You really have to do the detective work. One person smokes all their life and dies of old age at 100; someone else smokes five years and they’re done. There’s no doubt smoking causes lung cancer, but other risk factors are involved too. Chronic diseases usually come from processes and exposures that start years before the disease ever shows up....

There’s a genre of British humor in which an obnoxious boor inexplicably bullies harmless and/or stupid citizens too polite to resist. Larry Shue’s 1981 comedy isn’t precisely in this mode–his socially inept title character actually has a motive, revealed only at the end. But the story presents the same challenge: keeping the audience engaged through many repetitions of repellent behavior. Rogue Theater Company tries hard to raise the IQ of an exercise that’s trifling at best....

For decades I’ve wondered, and, assuming the answer would be highly personal, have failed to ask: what’s the deal with the extra-long pinkie fingernail on people from the Orient (Middle East, India, Southeast Asia)? –Jim Mundy, Pawhuska, Oklahoma In the old days in China, long fingernails were a sign you were rich and didn’t do manual labor. Now they grow out the pinkie as a sign of culture, breeding, and wealth....

Since Chuck Prophet released the bleak masterpiece Homemade Blood in 1997, bringing down the curtain on the alt-country and roots-rock stage of his solo career, his music has come to encompass a dizzying array of styles. Multigenre hybrids like 1999’s The Hurting Business and 2002’s No Other Love nodded to influences as diverse as Bobbie Gentry, Dr. Octagon, Chuck Berry, and Maxine Brown. On Age of Miracles (New West), which comes out this week, Prophet indulges an affection for sweeping pop-soul and funky spaced-out blues....

Since the late 90s the New York trio Dave’s True Story has been outfitting pop jazz with ironic lyrics, a tactic that’s prompted one critic to describe the group as “Cole Porter meets Seinfeld.” But the sly and languorous songs on Nature (BePop), their fourth album, still sound deeply engaged with the world and its discontents. Kelly Flint isn’t quite Piaf, but her breathy vocals convey genuine sorrow, and the lushly layered comping of guitarist-songwriter David Cantor, bassist Jeff Eyrich, and various guest hornmen and percussionists intensifies the lonely closing-time mood....

Most good modern art disrupts the image one way or another, but the best pieces in this four-person show do it unconventionally. Mark Ottens’s Obsessive Paintings of Various Sizes groups 13 abstract panels whose inventive designs are so different–sharp-edged triangles, a weave of lines, out-of-focus blobs–they form an inventory of possibilities, each of which seems to undercut the others. His Pastoral interrupts its grid of brightly colored stripes and rectangles with fetching cartoony landscape fragments, the conflict between the two styles reminding us that all pictures are pure color....

Monica Kendrick [“Dark Magic,” July 29] goes to hell in the end! Although there are no doubt a lot of people more deserving of damnation in this world, there should be a special corner of hell for reviewers who spoil books and movies by revealing crucial plot points. Whether you think of the Harry Potter books as high literature or kid stuff, Ms. Kendrick, to give away the most devastating plot turn possible in your review of the latest episode is mean, small-minded, and really unforgivable....

“Rubbing alcohol,” Mortimer Snerd once observed, “doesn’t improve its flavor.” Snerd, of course, was a dummy, but the Jim Beam Distilling Company didn’t hold that against him or his pal Charlie McCarthy in 1976 when it issued a pair of collectible china decanters in the image of the two wooden stars of Edgar Bergen’s Charlie McCarthy Show. Bruce DuMont, host of WLS’s Beyond the Beltway and founder of the Museum of Broadcast Communications, isn’t sure how a set ended up in the museum’s collection, but says Bergen’s widow requested that they not be displayed....

HOW “WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE?” HAPPENED, Hell in a Handbag Productions, at Theatre Building Chicago. Trying to camp up the 1962 film classic would be an exercise in futility–wisely, playwright David Cerda focuses on a fanciful behind-the-scenes saga of titanic egos battling for the title of greatest Hollywood has-been. But given the material’s explosive potential–imagine what Charles Ludlam might have done with it–Cerda comes up nearly dry. The occasional moment of grotesque parody–Bette Davis’s head replaces the infamous rat on Joan Crawford’s dinner plate–can’t compensate for the near complete lack of story: instead of escalating stakes we get a series of petty skirmishes interspersed with dead-end subplots....