I fully support gay rights and wrote a letter to the prime minister–I’m up in Canada–supporting gay marriage. But whenever I get into debates about the issue with right-wing acquaintances, they bring up the “thin edge of the wedge” and insist that gay marriage will lead to polygamy. This leaves me stymied. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “Her interlocutors are wrong, wrong, wrong,” says E....

Back in 2002, when this rambling, sprawling, experimental psych act broke its long-held habit of self-releasing CD-Rs and put out albums on actual labels, I imagine some folks figured Sunburned Hand of the Man was some kind of sellout. But I don’t think they’re all that concerned about how, when, and where their music gets out there, since they put out records the way most people breathe; so far this year they’ve released two albums, Zample and Anatomy, on their Manhand label, reissued a self-titled disc on Wabana, and have two more in the pipeline....

Nearly devoid of action and packed with long, mildly witty speeches, Moliere’s classic couldn’t be less in tune with the expectations of contemporary American audiences. Yet companies keep trying to draw them in with modern versions of the crabby 17th-century French aristocrat. The latest comes from Bruised Orange Theater Company, whose rendition is only a little worse than the other attempts I’ve seen. Shifting the action to Chicago today eliminates the need for elaborate historical costumes, but it also leads to plenty of jarring anachronisms, especially when characters refer to the king and his court....

I recently watched a karate/tae kwon do demonstration of breaking boards, and once again I wondered: What is the important part in making the board break? Is it the speed with which the martial artist moves his hands/feet/elbows, according to the laws of physics, meaning any other trained sportsman who achieved that same speed could do the same? Or is it mostly concentration, summoning of chi, etc, as martial artists claim?...

It’s a strange experience to see the exact same thing whether your eyes are open or closed. You can turn out all the lights in a room and your eyes will eventually adjust, at least a little. But last Thursday I was in a place so pitch-black mine never did. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I was pretty nervous about getting in the tank....

Steppenwolf’s “Traffic” series, usually made up of one-night stands on Mondays, is celebrating its tenth anniversary in high style. For almost three weeks straight, artists like Elaine Stritch, the Roches, Buddy Guy, and Kiki & Herb will get a chance to try out new work, reintroduce audiences to previous shows, and chew the fat about the creative process. David Cale, one of the finest solo performers of the last two decades, kicks off the party on December 1, with A Likely Story, a collection of tales about people caught in the throes of love (or lack thereof), obsession, and quietly humorous despair....

Jiwon Son: Aggregates Born in Korea in 1968, Son was raised in a village of only about ten families but within walking distance of the city of Kim Cheon. She grew up without TV or indoor plumbing. Though the family emigrated to the United States when she was seven, memories of her early childhood remain strong: “Our home was surrounded by mountains. Because we didn’t have a car, we walked everywhere....

RESORT 76 Infamous Commonwealth Theatre INFO 312-458-9780 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Shimon Wincelberg’s 1962 play Resort 76 (originally titled The Windows of Heaven), now receiving a midwest premiere by the Infamous Commonwealth Theatre, addresses the Holocaust’s horrors through a darkly humorous, fablelike story about a cat. It’s not on a par with Underground or Ghetto, by Israeli playwright Joshua Sobol, but if you’ve never read “A Cat in the Ghetto,” the 1959 short story by Holocaust survivor Rachmil Bryks on which Wincelberg’s work is based, you might find a lot to admire here....

The recent Suspicious Activity? (Columbia) opens with “Prehensile Dream,” a slowly intensifying ballad whose pretty, introspective melody wouldn’t sound out of place on a Radiohead album. But the song actually goes a long way toward refuting the accusation that this jazz trio has been cynically targeting younger, rock-oriented audiences. Bassist Reid Anderson wrote it for his 2000 album, The Vastness of Space (Fresh Sound/New Talent), a quintet effort; if anything the earlier version sounds more “rock” than the new one, and the differences between the two make it clear to me that the Bad Plus comes by its aesthetic choices honestly....

Anna Held, 5557 N. Sheridan, 773-561-1940. Behind the gilt-lettered awnings and plate glass on the first floor of the landmark pink Edgewater Beach building stands a soda fountain that first opened in 1927. The ambience trumps the ice cream: at the original marble counter and lone table are served–along with coffees, a few sandwiches, salads, and homemade soups–a standard selection of Blue Bonnet ice cream sundaes, splits, shakes, malts, and sodas....

A dapper salesman in a Madrid department store (Guillermo Toledo) lives a life of consumerist splendor, parading around in the latest fashions and bedding his beautiful clerks in the furniture department, but after he’s passed over for a promotion his resentment draws him into a tangle of criminal intrigue. Spanish cult director Alex de la Iglesia made his name with scruffy black comedies like Mutant Action (about terrorist freaks) and The Day of the Beast (about a trio of oddballs hunting down the Antichrist)....

Anybody remember Screeching Weasel? I know most Americans can’t remember what the leader of the free world said two lies ago, but I’m talking about something people supposedly listened to for fun. In case you blocked out the Bush years the first time around, in the late 80s and early 90s those locals made a name for themselves pounding out Ramones-inspired punk with a double-extra portion of snarly guitar and a front man who sounded like the dickhead little brother you can’t quit loving....

In November 1916 the Art Institute marked the appointment of an up-and-coming sculptor to its school’s faculty by placing one of his pieces on the city’s most prominent site–its own front steps. The statue, The Sower, by Czech immigrant Albin Polasek, already had an international reputation: Polasek had created the plaster model for it in Italy in 1912 as part of a prestigious Prix de Rome fellowship; in 1913 it had been cast in bronze and earned an honorable mention at the Paris Salon....

Beth Stockbridge’s political awakening came courtesy of the Chicago machine and Al Franken. “When I moved to Chicago I was pretty shocked by how corrupt the politics are,” says Stockbridge, who’s 26. Then this fall her husband saw Franken speak in Skokie, and she learned about a group devoted to furthering the progressive causes championed by the late senator Paul Wellstone. On Thursday, February 5, she and more than 650 other volunteers nationwide are holding informal discussions of Wellstone’s 2002 book The Conscience of a Liberal in cafes, libraries, and their living rooms....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » It’s fair to say that the level of interest was a little lower when the council’s 14-member housing committee met this week to hear an update on the city’s affordable housing record. One alderman–committee chairman Ray Suarez–was around for all of the 15-minute report, and for most of it he was the only member of the council present. Three others–Lona Lane (18th), Sharon Denise Dixon (24th), and Ariel Reboyras (30th)–each showed up for a few minutes apiece....

“Visual art has gotten to a point where it’s almost being ignored by mass society, just because it’s so expensive,” says Felipe Lima, one of the eight Northwestern students who make up the art collective and T-shirt company Shurpa. “The T-shirt is a reinterpretation of a canvas for everybody.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » About six months ago the Shurpa members were having one of those drunken conversations in which everything seems superimportant....

Lots of journeymen musicians have moved through the Lazy Cowgirls since the band formed two decades ago, but singer Pat Todd has always been in command. The Indiana native, who writes the Cowgirls’ tunes, is a true believer in the redemptive power of rock ‘n’ roll; despite the shuffling membership and a level of obscurity that might cause even the most committed rocker to throw in the towel, he continues to sing with the same go-for-broke gusto that convinced the Cowgirls’ earliest lineup that they should move to LA and make it big in the biz....

I hardly know where to begin . . . Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Robert Parry, the author of the aforementioned book, is quoted as writing in consortiumnews.com [Hot Type by Michael Miner, October 18] that “If the Times is correct that ‘this law does not apply to American citizens,’ why does it contain language referring to ‘any person’ and then adding in an adjacent context a reference to people acting ‘in breach of an allegiance or duty to the United States?...

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “The software used to run the system [Operation Virtual Shield, a collaboration between IBM and the Office of Emergency Management and Communications] will be able to recognize specific license plates, vehicle descriptions, and even patterns of behavior. If someone drops a briefcase on the El platform and it stays unattended for more than a minute, the system could alert the OEMC, which could then dispatch police officers to the scene....

Governor Blagojevich’s last-minute bailout spared CTA riders long-threatened doomsday hikes in fares and cuts in services–for the moment. Still, without a permanent tax hike to close the budget gap of $110 million a year the CTA is likely to slash bus routes and raise fares to as much as $3 a ride. At the same time, the local property tax machine is gearing up to send out property tax bills that will jump as much as 100 percent for some home owners....