Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » But it’s increasingly clear that politics are going to push the Daley administration toward ever-greener policies that extend beyond downtown demos. People across the city are bugging their aldermen about environmental issues, and aldermen don’t like to be bugged that much. And say what you will about Daley, but he’s not going to let aldermen out-green him. Approval of Malec-McKenna was never in doubt, but aldermen took the opportunity to tell her how much they’d like to see the environment department become more prominent and aggressive....

Me and You and Everyone We Know Or Samaritan Girl Miranda July’s account of the inspiration for Me and You and Everyone We Know gives an indication of her wistful comedy’s strengths and limitations. “This movie was inspired by the longing I carried around as a child, longing for the future, for someone to find me, for magic to descend upon my life and transform everything,” she writes in the press packet....

Congratulations! You have a new review! Reviewed by: Sister Jean Marie, Immaculate Sisters of Mercy He scrolled down the list of other reviewers from months past, names that held an almost magical power for him. These were the names of kind souls from across the country who had reviewed his book–and not only reviewed it but praised it to heaven! Barnaby Q. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » He navigated to the description of a controversial new best seller, whose author claimed that Moses was homosexual....

Machiko Munakata’s five ceramic sculptures at Dubhe Carreno reflect a lifelong quest to organize her world. Compellingly strange, they balance smooth but surprising geometric configurations with repeating painted designs on the surface. “I feel very chaotic,” she says, “and compelled to seek order. I would always fix my friends’ toilet paper so that it came up over the top. I still check three times that the alarm clock is set correctly....

Lead Story Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In May the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported on proanorexia Web sites that encourage the worship of eating disorders as embodied in a quasi-deity called Ana. The sites contain Ana prayers, Ana psalms, and Ana commandments; one provides instructions for building an altar to Ana and signing a contract with her in blood. One version of the Ana Creed reads in part: “I will devote myself to Ana....

I love coming here for dinner and a bottle of Veuve Clicquot. It reminds me of a wild night at my friend Vincent’s home in Paris, where I used to live and where my husband, Federico, is from. We were there for a wedding along with two friends of ours, and we’d arranged for them to come to dinner at Vincent’s. We started off with lots of champagne and foie gras, and Vincent was showing us vacation pictures from a trip he’d taken with his boyfriend....

This multidisciplinary event, presented by Performing Arts Chicago and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, runs weekends through Sunday, April 10. The avant-garde showcase, now in its third year, features established and emerging artists (including a number of SAIC students and alumni) working in theater, performance, circus arts, puppetry, storytelling, dance, music, video, and sound and installation art. The shows range from family-oriented to adults-only. Participants include Goat Island, the Curious Theatre Branch, Free Street, Theater Oobleck, the Hypocrites, the Neo-Futurists, Plasticene, Teatro Luna, Mathew Wilson, Mad Shak Dance Company, and many more....

The whole trouble with this two-man sketch comedy show is the venue. It needs a more intimate environment, like a basement rec room. The stuff Mike Foster and Josh Zagoren do might seem funnier in a context involving chips, beer, a few friends, beanbag chairs, and the four-disc Star Wars box set. Bits like Zagoren’s mime to the Green Day song “Good Riddance” would have a giggly charm. And the one where Boba Fett writes a letter home from summer camp would make the guys spray dip out their noses....

QDan! I can’t believe you wrote that response to Hawt and Royally Depressed! He wrote because his wife of ten years had “let herself go.” Men and women were hitting on him and he had to resort to stoning before he could be with her. And you told this asshole to “be honest with her.” Your version of “honest” was the verbal equivalent of hitting her with a sledgehammer! If what HARD says is true, it sounds like his wife is depressed or has health issues....

Mary Zimmerman abandons the ancient myths and epic legends that have served her so well in the past with this adaptation of Alessandro Baricco’s 1996 novel, about a French silkworm trader and his unconsummated love for a mysterious woman he meets in Japan in the mid-19th century. Zimmerman’s piece starts slowly–it’s far more heavily narrated and less flashy physically than earlier works like the 1995 Journey to the West. But she has a firm grasp of the delicate balance between the daily “regime of measured emotions” and the wistful, inchoate longings we carry for a lifetime....

A central character in Mia McCullough’s new play is a former Sudanese boy warrior, Ater, now a man who’s emigrated to Chicago. Yet the story revolves at least as much around the grieving North Shore widow trying to rebuild her life by volunteering to help Ater adjust to America. Directed with a light hand by Russ Tutterow, Since Africa is a straightforward drama about family and friendship that’s also about race, religion, and the sense of self....

For its first fully staged production, ShawChicago has chosen George Bernard Shaw’s alleged melodrama. A case of mistaken identity in 1777 brings together dissolute rebel Dick Dudgeon, an upstanding minister and his ditzy wife, and acid-tongued General Burgoyne, whose defeat by the Yanks is presented here as the result of an aristocrat back home taking vacation before executing orders despite an impending crisis (ahem). Robert Scogin’s staging takes almost the whole first act to find its legs....

Jazz in Search of Itself The introduction to the book helps explain his thinking. Discussing the numerous disciples of saxophonist Lester Young, Kart writes: “Any thought that jazz could be viewed from a safe, museum-like distance now seemed absurd; this was an art in which history was always happening, and it was happening to us.” To Kart’s mind, when jazz starts to romanticize its antecedents, rigidly emulate past accomplishments, and place less emphasis on personal investment, it ceases to be a living thing....

Unlike a lot of fashion designers, Soo Choi doesn’t dream of becoming the next Marc Jacobs. “It’s all just money–you’re forced to mass-produce all this work, every season,” says the 27-year-old. For now she finds it easier–and more meaningful–to sew pieces for people who see her designs and decide they must have one. The sleeveless gray wool dress she’s wearing here, made for one of her fellow waitresses at Lula Cafe, is outfitted with adjustable straps that can be used to pull up the hem or change the shape of the garment; Choi says it was influenced in part by the simple repetitive music of Philip Glass....

Edward Albee’s 1991 play sounds awfully complicated. Act one: a rich, very old invalid ping-pongs between senile reminiscence, sharp-tongued lucidity, and incontinence before falling into a coma triggered by the memory of something her husband once did with his “pee-pee.” Act two: she splits into three selves–youthful, middle-aged, and old–to look at her life as her son visits her deathbed. The intricacies multiply when you know that the son is Albee himself....

The release of the long-awaited report by special prosecutor Edward Egan and his assistant Richard Boyle, expected to provide considerable detail about torture committed by Chicago police officers under the command of Jon Burge, is being held up by one man, a lawyer fighting hard to keep his testimony under wraps. Judge Toomin had been asked to rule on Doe’s motion because Paul Biebel, the chief judge of the criminal court, who appointed the special prosecutor, recused himself from this single aspect of the special prosecutor’s case....

A sweet-faced, leather-skinned, crazy-eyed woman in an inside-out black sweatshirt and dusty-assed black jeans asked all the wallflowers except me and the guy standing next to me to dance. Everyone politely declined but she kept on asking anyway, smiling obliviously like Jack Pumpkinhead. Neither of the proprietors, Ryan Shuquem and Elena Kenney, knew who these people were. They were just people from the neighborhood hanging out. And that was exactly what they’d hoped for when they opened Reversible Eye....

A Site for Poor Eyes Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Koenen says the site’s been a gleam in the department’s eye since 2003; information specialist Sara Schnadt, who’ll be responsible for its day-to-day operation, joined the Cultural Affairs staff more than a year ago and began working with outside Web design firm Tractiv on its structure last winter. It cost $200,000 to build, Koenen says, and is being funded through contributions to the Chicago Cultural Center Foundation, including matching funds from a national donor (Leveraging Investments in Creativity) that they’re still working to meet....

Architectural Digest sponsors this three-city program of tours “celebrating leading voices in the fields of architecture and design” (the others are being held in LA and New York City). Tickets are available at www.architecturedays.com; advance purchase is required. Proceeds benefit the Chicago Architecture Foundation and the Wright Preservation Trust. Details on where to meet, appropriate dress, etc will be provided upon ticket purchase. Call 800-320-2710 for more info. Mies and Modernism...

Calling All Party People Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Each event, preceded by an invitation-only open-bar reception, has paired two respected underground artists for DJ sets: so far the matchups have included Prefuse 73 with Aesop Rock, Def Jux owner El-P with Stones Throw head Peanut Butter Wolf, and rapper Jean Grae with hip-hop poet Saul Williams. This week it’s Anti-Pop Consortium vet Beans and TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe....