It was a severe disappointment, Beyle [Stendhal] writes, when some years ago, looking through old papers, he came across an engraving entitled Prospetto d’Ivrea and was obliged to concede that his recollected picture of the town in the evening sun was nothing but a copy of that very engraving. This being so, Beyle’s advice is not to purchase engravings of fine views and prospects seen on one’s travels, since before very long they will displace our memories completely, indeed one might say they destroy them....

friday27 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » You Am I You Am I have long outlived their buzz-band years, when they were hyped to the gills by the likes of Soundgarden and Sonic Youth. Lee Ranaldo even produced the first two records, which somehow made sense despite the quartet’s seedy British Invasion vibe (except they’re Australian, so think louder and drunker). Convicts, which dropped last year and was released on Yep Roc in January, is a hooting, decadent mess, like a cheerful rounds-buying lush who’ll take a swing at you when you least expect it....

friday24 Local MC IOMOS MARAD is a kindred spirit; his 2003 debut, Deep Rooted, featured J-Live on one track. His new EP, Go Head, documents his growth as a blunt-talking truth seeker in the tradition of his cohorts on Chicago’s All Natural label. cplanes mistaken for stars There’s so much about this Denver hipster-metal band that ought to be off-putting: artsy name, too-clever song titles, wrist-slitter lyrics, repetitive staccato punches. Oh–did I mention beards?...

The Uneasy Chair Evan Smith’s The Uneasy Chair could be Nagg and Nell’s backstory–the tale of how they ended up in those trash cans. Albeit in a loose sort of way. Written in the late 1990s, Smith’s comedy was almost certainly never meant to be anything more than a frothy exercise in creative anachronism, demonstrating his command of high Victorian setting and style. But as that outspoken audience member recognized and explained to the rest of us on October 6, there’s a touch of hellishness to The Uneasy Chair that Beckett might have appreciated....

This Neo-Futurist lecture-demonstration on American militaristic zeal is mistitled. Thankfully its droll ironies are decidedly unchildlike, and its many stylistically diverse segments form less a history than an idiosyncratic inquiry into select wartime atrocities. Writer-performers Greg Allen and Donovan Sherman struggle to find a coherent thread through their onslaught of props, and often their politics–particularly their racial politics–are too broad to be meaningful. But at times their tiny gestures artfully convey the enormity of mass destruction: they stage the U....

Ed Clark Ed Clark’s bright abstractions at G.R. N’Namdi are energetic, even boisterous, with huge swaths of color interrupted by splatters or the engaging swirl or two. Clark, 80, is a second-generation abstract expressionist who grew up in Chicago but lived in Paris and New York in the 50s; he knew some of the original abstract expressionists, drinking with them at the Cedar Bar. But his paintings are more improvisational, open, and lushly sensuous than their work, in which abstraction was often meant to be a path to some truth....

On June 28 the City Council chamber was buzzing. Before things got going, aldermen, city officials, reporters, and even state and county leaders moved about the chamber floor glad-handing and gossiping about the latest developments in the John Stroger saga. That morning word had circulated that Democratic Party leaders had worked out a plan for replacing the County Board president on the November ballot with his son, Todd Stroger, who’s served as Eighth Ward alderman since Mayor Daley appointed him in 2001....

The 22nd annual festival continues Friday through Sunday, November 4 through 6, with weekend programs at Facets Cinematheque and the Vittum Theater, 1012 N. Noble. Tickets are $8, $6 for children, and $5 for Facets members; for more information call 773-281-2166 or 773-281-9075. Following are some of this week’s programs; a full festival schedule is available at www.cicff.org. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Offbeat and bittersweet, the Finnish feature Pelican Man (2004, 84 min....

Andy Warhol’s first sync sound film (1964) is not for action fans, but this nearly static 70-minute tableau of four actors lounging on and around the famous Factory couch is perversely endearing. Though Warhol used a sound camera, none of the actors speaks; improvised commentary is provided by three offscreen men, including playwright Ronald Tavel in the first of many collaborations with Warhol. The fixed, microscopelike high-angle shot articulates Warhol’s passive-aggressive cruelty, but at the same time there’s an almost sculptural beauty to the compositions....

What makes Jody Davidson’s adaptation of this popular children’s book so playful and fun is that she doesn’t try to literally transcribe Laura Joffe Numeroff’s witty, fast-paced story and Felicia Bond’s marvelous illustrations. Instead she and Emerald City Theatre Company director Nick Saubers provide just the essentials: a silly mouse, an empty stage (representing a tidy house), and a handful of larger-than-life props, including the cookie that starts the story’s cascade of comical catastrophes....

Last week I finally bought a CD at full retail from one of those cavernous Mag Mile stores that borrows its retina-raping interior design from video arcades and casinos. It was worth it, though: no one else had Ladytron’s new Extended Play (Rykodisc), which salts a bunch of remixes from last year’s Witching Hour with a few non-album cuts. At this stage in their development, Ladytron are probably the most remixable group in the world....

Last May Mitsuko Uchida conducted the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from the piano in performances of Mozart’s 12th and 19th concerti. With the smallest gestures this petite woman, who won a 1989 Gramophone award for her recording of Mozart’s complete sonatas, summoned from the orchestra some of the most refined, sensitive, and sublime Mozart I’ve ever heard. Her playing was just as stunning. She’s always true to the composer, and her tonal range and quality are exceptional, whether she’s creating an unbelievably soft pianissimo or a rich fortissimo....

No Lesser Evil Lee sued the federal government on the curious grounds that its disclosures to reporters violated his privacy. Reporters for the Times, the Associated Press, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and ABC were subpoenaed and asked to turn over the names of the sources he thought had abused him, and when the reporters refused to cooperate a federal judge found them in contempt of court and threatened them with fines of $500 a day....

German photographer Sabine Springer haunts Dortmund discos like a naturalist collecting specimens of the supernatural. The eight black-and-white C-prints from her “Kokon” (cocoon) series on display here suggest a nightmare montage from an expressionist film. Club kids, never dancing, look like lost souls in transit. Tightly packed in inky darkness, they’re studies in disconnectedness; intimacy is invisible. Shooting infrared film, Springer uses an infrared flash that fires outside the range of human vision....

I’m a married guy with a good job and a wonderful kid, and my wife’s a good lady. The problem? Sex. She rarely wants/needs it, and when I can get her in the mood it’s the same old dull routine. Same position, I do all the work–she won’t even touch my dick!–and it’s over in 15 minutes. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I don’t want my child hating me forever, but I also want to be happy....

This New York-bound revival of the 1966 musical boasts a star who combines kooky clowning, innocent charm, and heartbreaking pathos. No, it’s not leading lady Christina Applegate as taxi dancer Charity Hope Valentine, a role created by the great Gwen Verdon. The most exciting performer in this dance-filled show is nondancing former off-Loop actor Denis O’Hare, playing Charity’s neurotically shy suitor, Oscar Lindquist. Their unlikely romance–she’s a “girl with a past” and he’s a naive romantic who thinks he’s found the unsullied virgin of his dreams–is the crux of the story, inspired by Federico Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria and brought to the stage by playwright Neil Simon, songwriters Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields, and original director-choreographer Bob Fosse....

Four years ago Sam Weller, a onetime New City staff writer who’d written a guidebook, Secret Chicago, was covering the midwest for Publishers Weekly and freelancing stories to the Tribune magazine. He proposed a profile to mark the 80th birthday of Ray Bradbury, the sci-fi master who was born in Waukegan. Bradbury had resisted three or four earlier proposals from would-be biographers. “They were fact collectors,” says Bradbury, “and that wasn’t enough....

THE ENCHANTED, Simple Theater, at the Athenaeum Theatre. Even in translation (by Maurice Valency), the mercurial language of Jean Giraudoux’s 1933 confection delights. Aptly enchanting, the script plays deft variations on the theme of life and death. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Isabel, a schoolteacher in a provincial French town, finds herself seduced by the ghost of a murderer–aided by the sympathetic village doctor, she wants to learn from the handsome ghost the answer to the riddle of death....

By joining forces for the first time, Steppenwolf and Second City have raised expectations for this show, and its two men in pajamas deliver with the stuff of dreams: absurdity displaces logic, characters morph midsentence, humans embody horses and alphabet letters. Writer-performers Shenoah Allen and Mark Chavez, who’ve worked together since the early 90s, inhabit an eccentric comic world unburdened by the self-congratulatory pop-culture references of most improvisers. Though it’s scripted, the show resembles long-form improv....

I work for an electric utility. I’ve heard tales over the years of invisible high-pressure steam leaks in power plants that have “cut people in two.” Any truth to this? –99gre, via e-mail Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » It’s been well documented that jets of high-pressure gas (which is what superheated steam is) can cause injuries even without the added complication of heat. OSHA warns against possible amputation from high-pressure gas and limits air pressure for industrial cleaning to 30 PSI....