Truthiness in Advertising For the last ten years of his life Roger Keith Coleman lived truthily on death row as an innocent man. If he’d written the book that was obviously in him–about injustice, anger, and personal growth–Talese and Winfrey could have taken him under their wing and given his nightmare a chance to galvanize the nation. And last week when DNA testing finally told us that Coleman had indeed committed the murder in 1981 that he was executed for in 1992, they could have protested indignantly that for millions of readers Coleman’s memoir “remains a deeply inspiring and redemptive story....

Bebe Miller’s new evening-length piece, Landing/Place, has its origins in a 1999 trip she took to Eritrea to teach. Nervous before her first class, she became so involved in warming up she failed to notice that a group of 25 dancers had gathered round and were all trying to copy her stretching movements. Startled by this impromptu game of Simon Says, she stood up and started doing jumping jacks. The moment brought home to her how different the North African country was from New York, where she lived at the time....

Fourth in a series devoted to Chicago restaurants offering regional Mexican dishes The Spanish brought several ingredients essential to huachinango a la Veracruzana (Veracruz-style red snapper), perhaps the most popular Mexican fish preparation. Traditionally the snapper is simmered whole in a complex tomato puree with olives, capers, and garlic. In Chicago, however, the fish is often deep-fried, a technique rare in old-school Mexican cooking but faster and easier. A survey of places that offer the dish turns up a number of variations on the classic sauce....

Since the late 90s jazz heavy David Murray has found an especially effective backing for his soul-searing improvisations on tenor sax and bass clarinet, working with musicians from Senegal and Guadeloupe as part of a bracing exploration of African diasporic fusion. On his new album, Gwotet (Justin Time), he’s paired again with Klod Kiavue and Francois Ladrezeau, a pair of killer Caribbean percussionists (gwo-ka are island drums) who craft an irresistible bed of dense polyrhythms and vocal chants for his high-flying solos....

Since the late 80s the Swiss trio Day & Taxi has been led by Christoph Gallio, a self-trained saxophonist who’s made a virtue of restraint, both as a composer and improviser. The group’s albums are peppered with short pieces that succinctly express a concise idea, and even on longer tunes Gallio and his various cohorts have emphasized economy and precision. Gallio is fluent on alto but especially good on soprano, where he reminds me a little of Steve Lacy, perhaps the instrument’s most recognizable practitioner....

Last Saturday, to get ourselves in the mood to see a play about John Wayne Gacy, my friend Randall and I paid a visit to the site of Gacy’s northwest-suburban home, where he buried many of the 33 young men and boys he tortured and killed in the 70s. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I knew Gacy was the creepy clown with the crawl space and a penchant for brutal gay sex, but that was about it....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Local company Great American Cheese Collection distributes cheeses from small artisan makers in 28 states to restaurants all over the country. But until now it’s been tricky for Chicago consumers to get their hands on these domestic gems without visiting restaurants like Tru, Sepia, or Charlie Trotter’s. This Saturday from 8 AM to noon, though, as well as December 8 and 22, the company is opening its warehouse at 4727 S....

Lead Story Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Arrested in Lewisville, Texas, in February on charges of drug possession, driving while intoxicated, and driving without a license: Fred Flintstone, 34. Taken into custody in Miami in February to begin serving a one-year sentence for his participation in an alien-smuggling conspiracy: King Kong, 52. And buried in San Diego in November: Dom Perigion Champagne, 18. (His parents are Jeron Champagne and Perfect Engelberger....

Lead Stories Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In January Cardinal Gustaaf Joos of Belgium declared that only 5 to 10 percent of gays and lesbians are genuinely so and that the rest are “sexual perverts.” In March the commissioners of Rhea County, Tennessee (site of the 1925 Scopes “monkey” trial), voted 8-0 to request a new state law allowing the county to charge homosexuals with crimes against nature, even though the Supreme Court declared similar laws in Texas unconstitutional last year....

Lots of synth pop is so sweet and overearnest it makes me gag–I can’t stand that lovey-dovey doe-eyed little-girl crap. But I find Oly strangely touching, probably because her forlorn-orphan melodies and almost bluesy vocals don’t give me the impression that she’s looking for a hug–she’s actually OK with being sad. She has to take deep breaths to fit what she wants to say into her phrases, but not because she’s piling up the syllables or even bracing for an earth-shaking confession; it just seems to take a lot out of her to disclose anything at all....

Reeling: The 25th Chicago Lesbian & Gay International Film Festival continues through Sunday, November 12, at Chicago Filmmakers and Columbia College Ludington Bldg. Tickets are $7-$10, $5-$8 for members of Chicago Filmmakers; for more information call 773-293-1447. RJack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis “Maria Montez gave socialistic answers to a rented world,” declared underground filmmaker, photographer, and performance artist Jack Smith (1932-’89) in a statement that was reportedly printed and handed out at his funeral....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I’m amazed it lived as long as it did. I’m amazed it was still there for me when I was a college freshman in 1986 — the first time I went there, with my fake ID, I wound up on the guest list by nefarious means. (There was only a little tongue involved, and no, I’m not going to say which band....

Dexter WHEN Sundays, 9 PM WHERE Showtime Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » He’s just as restrained in his personal life. In one episode his girlfriend (Julie Benz–she was Darla on Buffy the Vampire Slayer) shows up unannounced at his door in a Lara Croft costume and proceeds to give him a blow job. “That was unexpected,” he murmurs politely, taking a steep spike into mild surprise....

To the doctor on duty in a Philadelphia military hospital one day shortly after the close of the Revolutionary War, the unconscious soldier Robert Shurtliff probably seemed like just another feverish body on another sweaty sickbed. But when the doctor put his hand on Shurtliff’s chest in search of a pulse, he discovered that his patient suffered from a condition then extremely rare among soldiers–womanhood. As a later writer coyly put it, on Shurtliff’s body were found the “breasts and other tokens of a female....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Last fall Afro-Peruvian singer Susana Baca spent a month and a half at the University of Chicago researching the development of African-American music in New Orleans, intending to compare it to Afro-Peruvian traditions. (Her plans to do that research at Tulane University in New Orleans were scuttled by Katrina.) Sadly and strangely, Baca has yet to perform here since releasing her latest album, Travesias (Luaka Bop), a gorgeously restrained outing that features some of her most extensive collaborations with American musicians — including guitarists Marc Ribot and Kevin Breit, as well as the Tosca String Quartet....

Richard Powers calls it highway hypnosis–the hallucinatory state of mind that descends upon a weary traveler at the end of a long day on the road. In the late 1990s, the novelist was driving alone from Illinois to Arizona when in Nebraska he came upon what he thought was a mirage: thousands of three-foot-tall birds falling from the heavens. Powers was so shocked that he almost drove off the highway. The next day he learned that what he’d seen were sandhill cranes on their annual migration to the Platte River....

The special prosecutor’s report on the Chicago police torture scandal is expected to be issued shortly, perhaps in a matter of days. Special prosecutor Edward Egan has uncovered 192 victims (there may well be more) claiming to have been abused by Jon Burge and detectives serving under him from the 1970s into the 1990s, scores of them not identified in any published list. The scale of criminality is immense: hundreds of assaults (most victims were subjected to more than one attack), hundreds of acts of misconduct qualifying as felonies....

Since 6:15 AM a trio of fashion students from Mount Mary College in Milwaukee had been waiting in front of the H&M on Michigan Avenue. Armed with a plaid blanket and printouts of clothes from the retailer’s Web site, they’d road-tripped the night before to be first in line for the November 10 unveiling of the new women’s collection by designer Stella McCartney. By 9:30 the line stretched to the end of the block....

Pianist Vladimir Feltsman, born and trained in Moscow, emigrated to the United States in 1987, but he didn’t bring the unbridled Russian style with him. The cerebral Feltsman is best known for his Bach, and his program here opens with the English Suite no. 2 in A Minor, a mostly buoyant precursor to the better-developed partitas. Feltsman plays Bach with more clarity than emotion, eschewing the romantic approach of Barenboim or Argerich....

Pedro DeJesus, a relatively unknown 37-year-old lawyer, is making his first run for office in the March 16 Democratic primary–he wants to be the state representative of the 39th District on the city’s near northwest side. Most observers say he won’t win. Yet over the past few weeks the local regular Democrats have been using, as one insider puts it, “honey and vinegar–whatever it takes–to coax or coerce him out of the race....