Coronation by Computer By 1974 the AP and UPI (as the UP had become) were waiting until after the bowl games to name their champion. This reform made sense, but because the two top-ranked teams often played in separate bowls, supremacy remained open to argument. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » So in 1998 the fathers of football came up with a plan. The six strongest conferences, in collusion with the four most important bowls, invented the Bowl Alliance–today the Bowl Championship Series....

Daniela Mercury became a superstar in Brazil by making the deep Afro-Brazilian rhythms of her native Bahia appealing to a broad audience, layering her powerful voice and frothy pop melodies over the thundering beats. (Her good looks and dance skills didn’t hurt either.) Mercury’s music, called axe (pronounced ah-shay), is an exuberant mishmash of samba, reggae, frevo, and other Caribbean styles, but its foundation is the sound of blocos afros–the drum crews that dominate Carnaval parades....

Craig Lynch’s alter ego will forever be stuck in the bleachers, but Lynch has found a better seat at Wrigley Field. “The guys that were out there, they knew the game, or at least they thought they did, and they bet on everything. It would get somewhat heated. It was a bit coarser out there than it is today, but it was more about baseball.” Everyone watched the game closely, because whatever the situation on the field there’d be money riding on it, though Lynch says he didn’t bet much....

Neil Giuntoli’s economical, mercurial performance in his own new play is so compelling it almost compensates for the script’s lack of urgency. As Mayor Richard J. Daley, he’s never less than fascinating, eclipsing everyone else in the cast: Hizzoner is a one-man show waiting to happen. Like Anthony Hopkins in Nixon, Giuntoli evokes rather than impersonates his character, a savvy kingmaker who can destroy most anyone’s career with a phone call–though he can’t comprehend why Negroes would riot in the wake of Martin Luther King Jr....

Lead Story Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The London Times reported in June on the controversy surrounding a new device intended to combat the extraordinarily high incidence of rape in South Africa: an intravaginal sheath, worn like a tampon, that in the event of rape enfolds the penis and attaches to it with microscopic hooks. According to its inventor, Sonette Ehlers, the rapist will be unable to remove the device without seeking medical help, increasing the likelihood of arrest....

A few of us–the girls–were out all evening, and we’d been drinking. We weren’t really drunk, but we had been having a good time. We went to go flag a cab, but it was late and there weren’t a lot around. We saw one about a block away at a stoplight, and this girlfriend of mine started to flag it down. She got out in the middle of the street, took down her panties, bent over like a pretzel, and mooned the cab....

Though he’s only 25 years old, Rattawut Lapcharoensap writes like an old pro. Born in Chicago but raised mostly in Bangkok with periodic sojourns back here, he brings a mature, bicultural sensibility to the seven stories in his debut collection, Sightseeing (Grove Press). In the touching opener, “Farangs,” a Thai boy falls for a flirtatious American girl in a Budweiser bikini. He uses his pet pig, Clint Eastwood, to woo her, but soon runs afoul of her boyfriend and his cohorts; the poor pig’s ensuing harassment by the vacationers shows perfectly their disdain for the locals....

Framed by giant portraits of themselves naked (private parts are hidden by graffiti describing what they love and hate about their bodies), six Latinas tell stories about their own experiences and those of other Teatro Luna members. The ensemble-created monologues and vignettes cover sexual encounters with men, falling in love with women, trying to get pregnant, having an abortion, and other equally charged subjects. Tanya Saracho sparkles as the only recurring character, a phone sex operator....

The recent killing of at least eight Iraqi civilians in a shoot-out that involved Blackwater USA security guards makes this documentary on private military contractors especially timely, but it’s essential viewing for anyone who wants to understand the changing nature of war in the 21st century. Directors Nick Bicanic and Jason Bourque interviewed security executives, foreign policy scholars, journalists, and modern-day mercenaries to learn how PMCs have become an integral and problematic component of the U....

For nearly two decades the landscaped vacant lot next to the AMA building, between State and Wabash and right across the street from the Reader’s office on Illinois, has served as an ersatz neighborhood park–complete with sniffing dogs, lunching office workers, and drug dealers. When we heard recently about plans for a 35-story residential/hotel tower there, we knew the benches and fountains were history. Worse, the plaza’s 26 red maple trees seemed doomed....

Sandwiched between bands at the Pitchfork Music Festival opening-night party is master stand-up stylist Todd Barry. Skinny, bald, and pale, Barry looks innocuous, but his material, though clean, isn’t. His voice has an aching timbre, and he mutters jokes with a permanently constipated expression. His timing is deceptively methodical, and he carefully controls his sarcastic tone–he can smirk and still come off bone dry. At the 2002 Friar’s Club roast of Chevy Chase, Barry addressed the challenge of skewering the guest of honor: “It’s not as easy as shooting fish in a barrel....

Lyric Opera’s current production of Puccini’s final opera is a theatrical tour de force. The sets and costumes, designed by artist David Hockney, are exquisite, and the music is perhaps Puccini’s best–certainly his grandest. Set in ancient China, the story concerns Princess Turandot, an icy virgin who must marry the prince who answers her three riddles correctly. Suitors who fail are beheaded, the fate of many already, as the gruesome opening scene depicts....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Jeffrey Roberts, author of the excellent new Atlas of American Artisan Cheese, is all over the place this weekend, promoting his baby to the dairy-lovin’ masses. Friday at 6 PM he hosts a signing and tasting at the Marion Street Cheese Market in Oak Park. Saturday he’s at the Green City Market along with Prairie Fruits Farm‘s Leslie Cooperband from 9 AM to noon, at Fox & Obel from 1 to 3, and at Uncommon Ground from 5 to 7 PM–the last for a talk and tasting sponsored by Slow Food Chicago....

It’s interesting that this new play–the inaugural production of We’ll Show Them Theater–opened the same weekend that Crash scored its Oscar upset. Compared to the ponderously meaningful film, Cate Plys and Carly Figliulo’s comedy about five female friends hanging out at a Michigan cottage and confronting lots of racial and sexual stereotypes is refreshingly un-PC: those looking to be offended won’t be disappointed. But, like Crash, the play often feels contrived, relying on coincidence to advance the sometimes grim subplot....

Take Le Corsaire with a grain of salt. A big one. Attacked by four 19th-century choreographers over a period of 62 years and set to music by five composers, the full-length ballet contains innumerable melodramatic episodes. But the story can be boiled down to this: Conrad, the pirate of the title, frees a harem girl, Medora, and they survive a shipwreck to live happily ever after. The ballet is based on an 1814 verse tale by infamous libertine Lord Byron, and his influence shows: watching a “Dance in America” taped version, I couldn’t help thinking that this was the 19th century’s soft-core porn....

BORIS WITH MICHIO KURIHARA EMPTY BOTTLE, SUN 9/30 Since their first record in ’96, Boris has developed a reputation among noiseheads, heavy-psych fiends, and doom-metal fans on the strength of several collaborations with Merzbow, a live album with Keiji Haino, and a talent for sculpting dense, sepulchral drones that can suspend you in space for 20 minutes at a time. Starting in 2001, Southern Lord reissued some of their heaviest discs–Absolutego, Amplifier Worship, Akuma no Uta–and the sizable cult who’ll buy anything that label puts out (guilty!...

What do you call a town where most new jobs pay around $25,000 and most homes are for people making $100,000? Naperville. According to “The Metropolis Housing Index: Housing as Opportunity,” published in July by Chicago Metropolis 2020, Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics figures reveal that in 2000 Naperville had 11,728 new jobs paying between $20,000 and $30,000 a year–and just 91 single-family homes that someone with that income could afford....

Chicago blues singer Katherine Davis, with cowriter-director Tom Arvetis, tells the story of her life in this hour-long family-oriented show–well, the part when she was growing up in Cabrini-Green in the early 60s. A self-described “short, fat colored girl with no neck,” she surmounts her self-doubt to enter and win a talent contest. But much more powerful than the show’s inspirational message is its live music, ranging from doo-wop to gospel to blues....

I hang out here with my friends in the biz on Sundays, my night off. As a bartender you hear all kinds of things. One evening when I was working at the Pepper Lounge the phone rang after a busy night. The gentleman on the line went into great detail about how fabulous his food had been, particularly the chocolate mousse, and how much he wanted to compliment the chef and, oh, by the way, in the process of having dinner–perhaps while he was eating the mousse–he seemed to have lost a rubber ring about three and a half inches in diameter....

Outside family acts, most artists diligently try to avoid associations with more successful siblings who work in the same field, but hip-hop producer and MC Oh No, aka Michael Jackson, seems to have no such qualms. His brother Otis, aka Madlib, produced five tracks on Jackson’s terrific 2004 debut, The Disrupt (Stones Throw), and Madlib collaborator J Dilla produced a sixth. Much like his brother’s work, Oh No’s tracks on The Disrupt are an invigorating mix of quirky but soulful samples and dry, overlapping rhythmic loops that lurch, weave, and sputter in a way that sounds organic and flexible....