A lot of people think of college as a chance to reinvent their style–but not Harry Kagan, who’s 18 and fresh out of Walter Payton College Prep. At freshman orientation at Ithaca College, he says, just his regular street wear was radical enough: “It didn’t seem like anyone really understood my fashion sense. Most of them were from small towns.” When putting together an outfit, Kagan usually starts at the bottom, with a pair Nikes or Vans, which he buys at Saint Alfred in Wicker Park, and goes from there....

The “I” stands for “Ideas in Motion” in Chopin Theatre’s annual presentation of European solo performances (each about one hour), featuring artists from Slovenia, Switzerland, Poland, Lithuania, Austria, Ukraine, Germany, and one domestic offering–Walkabout Theater Company’s Poor, Poor Lear. The festival runs through 11/12, and all performances are at the Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division. Tickets are $10-$20 per night, which includes the performances, postshow discussions, and a reception. Most of the performances are in languages other than English; those that are in English or mostly nonverbal are indicated below....

This shorts program was originally compiled for a personal appearance by director Jim Jarmusch at last December’s Movieside Film Festival but proved so popular that the organizers have scheduled an encore screening. It’s indicative of Jarmusch’s singular taste that all but two of these items–Sara Driver’s energetic documentary The Bowery (1994) and Hype Williams’s equally energetic music video I Got ‘Cha Money (1999)–are in black and white. The others, in chronological order of release, are Buster Keaton’s wonderful The High Sign (1920); Max Fleischer’s wild surrealist cartoon Bimbo’s Initiation (1931); Carl Dreyer’s spooky public-service short on auto safety, They Caught the Ferry (1948, in Danish with subtitles); Orlando Jiminez Leal and Saba Cabrera’s celebration of Havana street life, P....

In John McNally’s new novel, America’s Report Card, 24-year-old Charlie Wolf, fresh out of the University of Iowa with a master’s in film studies, jumps onto the fast track by taking an entry-level job grading standardized tests. Luckily for him, his hot, sexually ravenous Russian girlfriend gets a job along with him, but after she ditches him for a doctor and splits for Chicago, Charlie arranges for a transfer to track her down....

John Vanderslice is a born songwriter–his talent emerged fully formed in the mid-90s, with his band MK Ultra, and hasn’t needed to “grow” much since. The odd but unobtrusive arrangements on “Trance Manual,” from last year’s Pixel Revolt (Barsuk)–which feature flute, strings, church bells, and invented instruments–sound like products of a smart, restless curiosity, not desperate stabs at novelty. Even his most ambitious and dramatic sound constructions–like “Angela,” with its anachronistic blend of beatbox, strings, and futuristic sound effects–are fraught with humanity and vulnerability....

Gentile/Jewish romantic relationships have been a staple of theater at least since Abie’s Irish Rose, Anne Nichols’s 1922 comedy. And Sharon Evans’s sweet but slight piece, first presented by Live Bait in 1989, has a distinctly retro feel, as small-town Tennessee party girl Adelle discovers an erotic fixation on Jewish men during a Holy Land trip with her Bible-thumping mama. Mark Richard directs with a sprightly hand, and the cast, particularly Erin Myers as the good-hearted but somewhat clueless Adelle, exudes likability....

Like Costa-Gavras’s Amen. (2002), this German drama uses a true story to examine the Catholic church’s response to the Holocaust, but it focuses less on institutional politics than on personal conscience and responsibility. It’s based on the diary of Father Jean Bernard of Luxembourg, who spent four years in the “priest block” at Dachau for resisting the Nazi occupation; in February 1942 he was released for nine days with orders to persuade his bishop to endorse national socialism....

The Madman and the Nun Experimental Theatre Chicago sent out a press release in fall 2003 that made me hate the new company instantly. Its stated goal was “to establish Chicago as a national center for experimental theater.” What next, I thought–turning Chicago into the home of deep-dish pizza? They proceeded to throw down the gauntlet of experimentation by producing a script by Paula Vogel, a playwright so radical only the most rebellious fringe companies–the Goodman, Northlight–have dared to stage her work....

Friday 27 APPARITIONS As This Is Futuristic (Machine), the second album from this Lexington quintet, is an apocalyptic science fiction collection, with grim little stories about robots and vengeful angels and huddling survivors waiting to die. The lush, densely packed riffs and harmonies are sunny on the surface, but the songs have a sinister bite underneath–imagine the Flaming Lips turned dystopian and mean. SundayRunners and DJs John Ciba and James Porter open....

To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Your author then proceeds to quote Bronwyn Elkuss, and her quote is prominently displayed as a teaser above the second page of the article. Ms. Elkuss may indeed have authorized the quote, but the Reader article should also have credited the News-Star, since this is a barely paraphrased version of the same quote from the earlier article....

Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism As a corrective to this lyrical vision of race relations, the city should consider endorsing Sundown Towns, a new study by James Loewen, author of the best-selling Lies My Teacher Told Me, that methodically upends many of white America’s preconceived notions about race. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Sundown towns aren’t exactly unknown in popular culture; William Burroughs, Maya Angelou, and Tennessee Williams all mention them....

Harold Pinter’s 1978 play enlivens the old story of a young wife having an affair with her husband’s best friend by telling it backward, setting each scene earlier in time than the one before–a device that allows full hindsight into the waning of the illicit couple’s ardor. Bob Bills Productions gives Betrayal a tidy staging under Bills’s direction. Brad Walker and Kelli Cousins as the adulterers make effective use of the script’s enigmatic silences to suggest the lovers’ fundamental lack of communication....

Chris Uphues Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Local artist Chris Uphues, whose work appears this month in the 12 x 12 space at the Museum of Contemporary Art, is clearly an exponent of this recent trend, especially in the two of his four works here using found objects. One of them, Swarm, is a supernova of small plastic lids of various sizes affixed to the wall....

At least Dr. Frankenstein knew when to stop, writes Columbia College film studies professor Daniel Dinello in his new book, Technophobia: Science Fiction Visions of Posthuman Technology (University of Texas Press). The good doctor made one monster, but in the end he refused to create a mate, sparing the world their ghastly progeny. Dinello sees Mary Shelley’s 1818 tale as the first in an ongoing series of science-fictional warnings against the disastrous potential of scientific knowledge run amok....

On Everything Ecstatic (Domino), the fourth album by Kieran Hebden’s solo project Four Tet, the sampling maven makes an abrupt change of course. As he’s explained in interviews, he wanted to rebel against the critics who pigeonholed his previous work as folktronica, one of the more cringe-inducing music-press coinages in recent memory. The album is a shift from the beautiful assemblages of acoustic music he wove together on 2003’s Rounds, but the music isn’t more difficult now–what’s changed is how much more forceful, austere, and rhythmic the songs are....

You know that moment when you’re listening to a DJ, you hear the bass line creeping up and you’re like, oh shit, here we go? Spastic geek Gregg Gillis, aka Girl Talk, lives in that transitory moment 100 percent of the time. One of the fastest-shifting, most interesting, and most fun cutters still working in the mashup biz–admittedly there aren’t many of ’em–he’s one of a few people who can make playing the computer look like fun....

When Paul and Carol Hinderlie took over a broken-down bar and grill and reopened as the Harbor View Cafe 25 years ago, many locals were outraged that they’d raised the price of eggs from 15 cents to 20. “Back then,” says Paul, “real men didn’t eat omelets. And poached eggs? And corned beef hash? I don’t think so. Unless it’s out of a can–then it’s OK.” But since then the cafe has become the economic engine of tiny Pepin, a Wisconsin town on the Mississippi River whose only other claim to fame is being the birthplace of Laura Ingalls Wilder....

The Silent Theatre Company, a spinoff of the Journeymen, makes its Chicago debut with this remount of the parent company’s 2002 silent-movie-style adaptation of expressionist godfather Frank Wedekind’s “Lulu” cycle–best known as the basis for the G.W. Pabst films that catapulted Louise Brooks and her haircut into immortality. Here it takes shape as an artful blend of stylized movement, projected intertitles, and a programmatic piano score played live by its composer, the marvelous Isaiah Robinson....

Lead Story Family Values Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Elizabeth Bragg, 23, of Huntington, Indiana, was sentenced in February to three years in prison after pleading guilty to neglect of a dependent. According to prosecutors, Bragg was taking five children on a car trip when she became angry with one of them, her four-year-old stepdaughter, for falling asleep despite being told not to. She reportedly ordered one of the other kids to unbuckle the offending girl’s seat belt; after telling everyone else to hang on, Bragg sped up, then slammed on the brakes, causing the girl to hit her head....

When Doug Litowitz graduated from Northwestern’s law school in 1988, he got what most of his classmates wanted–a nice-paying job in a big downtown firm. He didn’t like it much, judging from the title of his recent book. The Destruction of Young Lawyers, published late last year by the University of Akron Press, is an attempt to explain why, in Litowitz’s opening words, “lawyers are pathologically unhappy.” DL: I attribute it to a number of factors, starting with law school....