Years ago people used to call Nick Lowe “Basher”–he had a reputation as a fellow who liked to play hard, drink hard, and get his business in the studio over with quick. But then Curtis Stigers covered his tune “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding” on the Bodyguard sound track, which would eventually sell 17 million copies, and, as Lowe is wont to joke, the Brinks truck pulled up to his house and started dropping off bags of money....

Stephen Fiehn and Tyler B. Myers, who perform together as Cupola Bobber, premiered this piece at last year’s PAC/edge Festival, then remounted it in September in a short run at Link’s Hall. Petitmal draws heavily on the sort of endurance art that pioneers like Linda Montano explored; as in one of her early works, Fiehn and Myers spend a chunk of this 80-minute show running on treadmills and delivering texts, in this case from a variety of sources, notably Kevin Bacon’s rhapsodic paean to dance in Footloose, which they repeat several times....

From the parking lot of the Black Hole, an arcade in a Little Village strip mall, it seemed like an ordinary Saturday night. Guys cruised by in cars, kids zoomed past on bikes, couples walked in the street. The only sign that anything unusual was taking place was the three boys and a girl, covered in zits and Amebix patches, hitting up people for spare change, trying to scrounge together enough money to pay the arcade’s $10 cover charge....

Pagans So why did Hudson act like he’d been dragged out of bed to play the show? His voice sounded the same as ever–a snotty, torn-up, nasal squawk–but he sang like he was nursing a sore throat, rarely pushing a syllable, never straining and convulsing like he does on the Pagans’ recordings. He lingered at the back of the stage between songs, even between verses, and though he complained about the heat, I’m not sure he would’ve broken a sweat if he hadn’t been wearing a suit jacket the whole time....

Samantha Hunt’s moody debut novel, The Seas (newly out in paperback from Picador), is set in an isolated, declining fishing village in the far northeast. Despite the surrounding natural beauty of ocean and sky, it’s a bleak place that claims the highest rate of alcoholism in the country: as in many isolated rural towns, there’s not much to do there but drink. The introspective 19-year-old narrator endures mainly through her imagination....

Devin Welch’s life as a band member has been almost comically cursed. Every group he’s helped get off the ground–the Vogue, the Soiled Doves, and the Chromatics–has been hailed as the second coming of postpunk in the northwest, only to burn out shortly after one album. For his latest combo, Shoplifting, Welch has reteamed with Chromatics drummer Hannah Blilie, also of the Gossip. On their debut, Body Stories (Kill Rock Stars), the personal-is-political party line of their old band is still raging, as are the gender polemics, even if the exact intent of a song like “Male Gynecology” is tough to figure out....

It took 25 years, but the makers of Blade Runner finally got it right. Preceded by at least six editions, five of them seen by the general public, this “final cut” is the optimal form of Ridley Scott’s 1982 masterpiece. Neither a complex revision nor a simple restoration, it’s a retooling that presents the project as it was originally conceived. Although some of the violence has been intensified and stretched out, new footage isn’t really the point....

Dear editor: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » On one hand, legally, Ed was probably “wrong” to paint over the mural. Some thoughts on that are: private property, contract for space, free speech. And I’m not familiar enough with the whole clean-up-graffiti-in-the-neighborhood program to know how that would serve as a reasonable justification. It is true that one has to feel a bit bad for the guy hired to paint the mural/ad....

Players’ Ring West, an offshoot of a 14-year-old company in New Hampshire, initiates its plans to import works by Portsmouth playwrights with Noah Sheola’s intermittently imaginative but theatrically inert retelling of the last ten years of Marie Antoinette’s life. Sheola tries to camp up the hapless Hapsburg’s calamities during the Affair of the Diamond Necklace and the Reign of Terror, but since there’s no meaningful point of view the jokes seem like filler and his lead character never develops–she’s ditzy, imperious, and screechy for two solid hours....

The Story Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Wilson’s play is loosely based on the 1981 Janet Cooke case–the mother of all journalism scandals. A black reporter at the Washington Post, Cooke won a Pulitzer for “Jimmy’s World,” an article about an eight-year-old heroin addict. She refused to reveal the boy’s real name or where he lived, citing the need to protect her sources. The paper’s editors initially stood by her, but once they found that she’d lied extensively on her resume they confronted her, and she admitted making the whole thing up–later blaming pressure from Post editors to produce award-winning work....

I would love to believe the legends about the Mandan Indians, reputed to have descended from an ill-fated colony of Welshmen who arrived in ships in the 1100s. Their leader was a prince named Madoc. Are you going to burst my bubble? Or is there something to this? –Bill Morse, Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Owain Gwynedd, who died in 1170, was a real Welsh prince, but his putative son Madoc goes unmentioned in contemporary annals....

Last August President Bush came to Aurora to sign into law a transportation bill laying out more than $590 million for the much-anticipated, long-delayed Red Line extension project. So any day now construction crews will be working to extend the line from 95th to 130th Street, right? “Very funny,” says Lou Turner, research and public policy coordinator for the Developing Communities Project, a south-side community group advocating for the extension. “That’s a good one....

Sitting at the feet of elders to hear stories about the olden days seems to be out of fashion with almost everybody these days, but I’ll still give credit to the 60s folk revival for providing a model for teaching countercultural youth their history. Utah Phillips, a 70-year-old singer, storyteller, labor activist, and ex-hobo, has enjoyed something of a revival in the past decade thanks to the respectful attention he’s gotten from neofolkies....

What Ozzie Meant Over the years sportswriters have complained to me–perhaps out of jealousy, though I’ve never thought so–that Mariotti takes shots but doesn’t show up in clubhouses. Last Friday the Tribune’s Rick Morrissey went public with that indictment. He noted, in Tribspeak, that Guillen had called Mariotti a “derogatory term for a homosexual.” Morrissey wrote, “Inexcusable and indefensible,” then added context. “Guillen considers Mariotti a coward for not backing up his often-angry columns with even an occasional appearance in the Sox’s clubhouse....

Dead End | Griffin Theatre Company INFO 773-327-5252 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The “dead end” is a street along New York’s East River, where posh apartments butt up against waterfront slums. Here a pack of street kids loiters, pitching pennies, playing cards, swimming in the polluted river, and bullying weaker children. The group’s alpha male, Tommy, fends off challenges from his rival, Spit, so named because of his habit of spitting in people’s faces....

Last week the Sun-Times ran a story about a juicy little sex-and-clout scandal involving the Park Grill restaurant in Millennium Park. If you didn’t see the story you probably heard some of the seamier stuff, like the part about how Matthew O’Malley, one of the Park Grill’s two principals, had a baby with Laura Foxgrover, the Park District official whose department oversaw the bidding process for the Millennium Park restaurant contract....

Dear Reader editors and staff, Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I guess the board of directors must have forgotten to take a look at Creative Loafing’s flagship and namesake paper. Creative Loafing is kind of like the bad parts (or, all) of Time Out, RedEye, and the Red Streak put together. Put together sounds too organized and legible; I mean smashed together in a poor and ugly and unreadable design layout, which was tabloid-style last time I saw it....

1814 W. North Ave. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Since the first Akira opened in Bucktown four years ago, offering supertrendy, street-influenced style at reasonable prices, the company has spawned a mini empire, with four boutiques on one short stretch of North Avenue–men’s, women’s, shoes, and accessories–as well as storefronts in Lincoln Park and on State Street. Recently the Bucktown women’s store moved across the street to huge new digs–three rooms of flouncy skirts, skimpy tops, and skinny shorts, most under $100 and arranged by color, making it that much easier to zero in on what you’re looking for....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » When Alberto Gonzales stepped down, the Tribune really lit into him. “President Bush has done a lousy job of picking attorney generals,” the editorial began. “His first, John Ashcroft, was a grandstanding ideologue who demonized his critics by saying their efforts ‘only aid terrorists.’ His second, Alberto Gonzales, was a longtime Texas pal of the president who saw his role as toadying to the White House....

THERE ARE LOADS of ways to display your awesome skills in Chicago, and there’s no reason to stick to the big four of football, basketball, hockey, and baseball. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Columbus Park (5701 W. Jackson, 312-746-5573) on the west side are a paltry $15.50. If you want to go a full 18 holes, check out Jackson Park, another south-side course (6401 S....