Lead Story Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In October the borough council in the London suburb of Romford, England, issued a massive report–300 pages, according to the Romford Recorder–on its 12-month, $19,000 investigation to determine which councillor had interrupted a September 2005 meeting by repeatedly making “baa” noises. The probe narrowed down the field to four suspects, to be questioned this month. And in September the Guardian reported on criticism of an antipigeon program instituted in 2003 by London’s mayor, Ken Livingstone, in which two hawks were hired to patrol the area around Trafalgar Square; animal activists called it cruel, while other politicians objected to the cost–about $430,000, they said, or roughly $170 for each of the 2,500 pigeons scared away or eaten so far....

Lead Story Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The UK’s Department of Work and Pensions acknowledged in April that it had a system in place for providing benefits to members of polygamous households that are formed legally in other countries but later settle in Britain, where polygamy is illegal. For instance, a polygamous husband and one wife can qualify for roughly $184 per week in joint unemployment benefits, then claim additional wives as adult dependents, each of whom receives an extra $67....

Manny Tamayo’s new play for Factory Theater–a convoluted parody of 1970s horror films in which government-created humanoids steal people’s souls and contaminate their drinking water–is not only confused but bloated with unnecessary characters and dead scenes. Nick Digilio’s elemental staging creates traffic jams anytime more than 6 of his 25 cast members are onstage at once. But only a neophyte would expect theatrical cohesion from the impudent, vulgar, ingeniously adolescent Factory, known for raising bodily-function humor to giddy heights....

In the words of my friend J.R. Nelson, a local punk writer, “Teenagers are geniuses. I think the teenage me, the infantile and deeply stupid suburban milk baby who resented the entire world and just wanted a pair of Air Revolutions because they were expensive, was the purest me to ever grace this rotating shit orb.” I spent a few weeks on the 2004 Warped Tour, doing research for a book and hanging out with my boyfriend, who was performing....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “I was recently imprisoned on a remote island with lots of relatives, including the men that my mother and her sisters married. Through an open window, I heard a conversation between two of these men, both ministers in different Protestant denominations. One of them described to the other a recent training session he had to attend for ministers to be aware of and sensitive to the issue of sexual harassment and to learn to recognize and avoid it in their churches....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “During the fourth century of the Common Era, both great Eurasian empires were threatened with permanent dissolution. The empires founded by Augustus in 74 C.E. and Shih huang-ti in 221 B.C.E. each faced invasion by peoples termed ‘barbarians’ and had, as a result, suffered significant reductions in imperial size, wealth, and even legitimacy….” Yang Chien and Justinian the Great both did pretty well at winning back territory, but Justinian’s successors couldn’t keep it, losing Egypt, Syria, the Balkans, North Africa, and Mesopotamia....

PLASTIC CRIMEWAVE SOUND | No Wonderland (Eclipse) Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » You might not think that’d be a huge plus for hairy, wild-eyed, let-it-all-hang-out music like this, but the discipline that the members of Plastic Crimewave Sound seem to have learned from freakishly focused masters like Keiji Haino and Makoto Kawabata is more Shaolin monk than Sunday-school teacher. They elevate their instincts above their egos, occupying sonic space (or leaving it empty) according to the logic of the music–a way of doing what’s natural that paradoxically comes only from deep-in-the-bone training....

I very much appreciated Mick Dumke’s article “The Awful Truth About Recycling in Chicago” [July 21], but I’m afraid it barely scratches the surface of our city’s neglect of its own recycling standards (or any other reasonable standards). Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I find it particularly amusing that an environmental engineer who oversees green initiatives for the Department of Procurement Services describes the recycling program in city offices as “aggressive” because “you can hardly walk down the hallway here without running into a blue bin....

Five years ago James Drake began placing a banquet table set with candelabras, a white tablecloth, and a nice spread–turkey, potatoes, cranberries, wine–in wild areas of south Texas. Then, hoping animals would visit, he’d leave the table there with two cameras running. The result of that project is a 15-minute video triptych, City of Tells, on view along with Drake’s charcoal drawings at Rhona Hoffman. The video image on the left shows feral pigs nibbling at the food, then climbing on top of the table....

After the CTA’s latest whopping misstep on its controversial Brown Line reconstruction project you’d think it would have come up with a new strategy for winning public support. But no change in attitude has been on display, certainly not at a March 2 hearing at Lane Tech High School. “The CTA had a chance to make inroads,” says 47th Ward alderman Eugene Schulter, whose ward includes a long stretch of the Brown Line, “and they blew it....

Two years ago Manny Flores beat Jesse Granato in the race for alderman of the First Ward in part by campaigning against rampant development in East Village. Once in office Flores tried to freeze demolition permits, but city lawyers told him that was unconstitutional. Next he tried to downzone the area, but he was told there were already too many out-of-compliance buildings for it to qualify for a more restrictive zoning....

The 18th annual Chicago Humanities Festival, which addresses global warming with the theme “The Climate of Concern,” starts Saturday, October 27, and runs through November 11, offering dozens of lectures, readings, and discussions by an international assortment of writers, artists, and scholars as well as film screenings and theatrical and musical performances at multiple venues around the city. Programs are $5 in advance ($2 surcharge may be applied to purchases at the door) unless otherwise noted....

Now in its fourth year, the Chicago Palestine Film Festival continues through Thursday, April 28, at the Gene Siskel Film Center. Tickets are $9, $7 for students, and $5 for Film Center members. For more information call 312-846-2800 or see www.palestinefilmfest.com. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Shot on video and transferred to 35-millimeter, this 2004 documentary by Simone Bitton is a leisurely study of the Israeli security wall now under construction....

Agami Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » This new late-night sushi spot in Uptown is a psychedelic fun house of aquatic-themed design. Bulbous columns rise from the floor like giant sea anemones; a video wash turns one wall into a prismatic waterfall; a wide flat-screen monitor embedded in the wall-size wine rack separating the bar from the dining areas screens an endless loop of aquarium porn....

Cupcakes A year ago Antieau was living in Baltimore, rapidly burning out on his work as an art dealer; King was in Detroit, wrapping up a degree in physics. On a long road trip to Alaska last summer, casting about for a change that would put them both in the same city, they came up with cupcakes. Neither had a background in baking. But Antieau had lived in New York for a while in the 90s, and had seen firsthand the lines of New Yorkers waiting outside Magnolia Bakery in the West Village....

Thumbnail sketches of Brazilian music usually emphasize bossa nova legends (Joao Gilberto, Antonio Carlos Jobim) or tropicalistas (Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil), a tendency that unfortunately neglects the work of journeyman Jorge Ben Jor. One of the first songs Jor wrote, the 1963 bossa nova classic “Mas que nada,” has been covered by more than 200 artists, including Sergio Mendes, who had a hit with it in 1966; his rhythmically fierce ode to soccer, “Ponta de lanca africano (Umbabarauma),” has become one of the most instantly recognizable tunes from Brazil since it appeared as the lead track on the landmark 1989 comp Brazil Classics 1: Beleza Tropical....

Pianist McCoy Tyner turns 67 in a couple of months, and you’d think time would have taken its toll on the sheer physicality of his playing: barreling sonic booms from the left hand, stippled knife-edge melody lines from the right, and karate-chop chords from both. Despite the almost unnerving delicacy that also plays a vital role in his music–making his style at once massive and ornate–Tyner remains a power pianist, and like power pitcher Roger Clemens he refuses to bend to Father Time....

Although Missouri-born Rhonda Vincent has been a showbiz professional for nearly four decades–she joined her family’s bluegrass act, the Sally Mountain Show, at the age of five and became its drummer at six–she feels she’s only come into her own as an artist in the last five years or so. “I came to a crossroads, and that’s when I put my first real band together,” the singer and multi-instrumentalist has said....

I’m not sure what to do. I’ve had a fetish for straitjackets since I was 15. I’m now 35. I’ve only told two girlfriends about it–absolutely no one else. The last one went along with it just to please me; my current one wants no part of it. Problem is, I feel frustrated because whenever we have sex I have to fantasize about her wearing a straitjacket. When I was single the only way I could come when I jerked off was by fantasizing about girls/women in straitjackets....

Karyn Calabrese seemed pretty buzzed for a lady who’s given up booze. Though the room was packed and awfully warm, the freakishly youthful 57-year-old raw-food epicure and owner of Karyn’s Fresh Corner barely paused for breath during an hour-long ode to the culinary and hygiene habits she claims have saved her life. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Calabrese went on to outline the theory behind raw-foodism....