Lead Story Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Among the cast of characters in a Martinez, California, trial that was nearing conclusion at press time: Glenn Taylor Helzer, a former stockbroker who pleaded guilty to several murders, extortion, and kidnapping as part of a plan to hasten Christ’s return; his brother Justin, who’s been convicted of the crimes but says he was insane and under Glenn’s control; their roommate Dawn Godman, who pleaded guilty too and testified about (among other things) Glenn’s plot to train Brazilian orphans to assassinate elders of the Mormon church, allowing him to take over as its sole true prophet; self-professed “good witch” Debra McClanahan, who said the Helzers and Godman borrowed some carpet cleaner from her late one night, then got her to help with their alibi; and Keri Mendoza, a former girlfriend of Glenn’s who wasn’t charged with any crime but testified reluctantly for the state (she said Glenn had given her the confidence to eventually become Playboy’s Miss September 2000)....

Barebacking–unprotected anal sex–has to be one of the most incendiary issues going for gay men. But writer-choreographer-performer Peter Carpenter tackles it in Bareback Into the Sunset, an hour-long nonlinear show with just a few characters: a thin white man seen early on in a hospital bed, a black woman narrator, and a health-care worker. The movement ranges from country line dancing to postmodern dance; what remains a constant is the slipperiness of the narrative....

The Psychic Ills are the first band on Social Registry to thoroughly grab hold of my ears and mind. The cover of their debut, Dins–a reproduction of Wolf Vostell’s Three Hairs and Shadow–was deceptively static at first glance; a grainy print of a helicopter augmented with a few spots of color, it’s attractive enough, but didn’t seem to conceal anything beneath the surface. Then, just as familiarity was setting in, something snapped: now it was an image shaped by sublime mystery, oozing dread....

Neil LaBute’s stab at a sensitive exploration of relationships follows a writer about to be married around the country as he meets up with old girlfriends. Joe Jahraus’s intensely intimate staging is solid, and Kristin Collins and Sarra Kaufman, as the writer’s high school and college girlfriends respectively, movingly convey the desperation and anger seething beneath their polite smiles. The problem is Darrell W. Cox as the writer: he uncovers the character’s childish self-involvement, but it’s difficult to buy that anyone would fall for such a selfish shit in the first place....

The cafe at the new and improved Chicago History Museum was closed when I arrived an hour early for the annual members’ meeting last Thursday afternoon. I’d planned to grab a late lunch in the bow-windowed corner once occupied by the Big Shoulders Cafe, but made my way instead across the street to Michael’s, which used to be Mitchell’s, and is at least still open round the clock. The History Cafe, as it’s now called, is run by Wolfgang Puck and serves the same Chinois chicken salad that made him famous on the west coast....

If Mike Royko was a fox, John Kass is a hedgehog. Royko had a way of looking at the world, and no matter what his eye fell on he entertained us with his take on it. Kass is different. A couple weeks ago a panel of federal appellate judges upheld George Ryan’s conviction on corruption charges but stayed his prison sentence while the entire Seventh Circuit decided whether to hear his appeal....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Driving across northern Ohio the other day, my wife and I broke for breakfast and the Bob Evans hostess seated us right outside the toilets, which may account for my aggressive meditation on the framed photos on the walls. This was the rust belt, and the pictures recalled a time when the rust was steel and life was good....

Bryn Magnus’s eerie character study for the Curious Theatre Branch is too long and isn’t shaped well–it plods along in the beginning. The staging is awkward given the skinny space, and it’s weighed down by occasional mugging. Yet by the end this is a transfixing piece of theater. Seven quirky Humboldt Park characters intersect, including a sadistic cop (Beau O’Reilly), a world-weary bar owner (Clover Morell, whose energy lights up the stage), and two kooky mothers (Jenny Magnus and Teresa Weed)....

Jay the Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore I paid my dues at Jay the Joke when I wrote about Jay Mariotti a few weeks ago. Jay the Joke’s the Web site that Matt Lynch and Pat Dahl set up to give Mariotti mockers a place to hoot from, and it served a sort of purpose when Ozzie Guillen called Mariotti a faggot and Mariotti let it be known he wasn’t happy with the support he was getting from his paper and disappeared for a few weeks....

A gay inmate and a political prisoner share their sustaining fantasies in this richly persuasive musical by John Kander, Fred Ebb, and Terrence McNally (inspired by Manuel Puig’s novel). Susan Finque’s revival keeps it real, which wasn’t always the case with the overwhelming Broadway production. Even the morphine-fueled production numbers, headlined by Katherine Lynne Condit’s riveting performance in “Spider Woman,” are clearly the escapist dreams of these battered convicts. Brenda Didier’s Fosse-fueled choreography never gets too Vegas slick, and Stan Q....

Warning: David Gilbert’s new play is about people who never learn, never change, and take forever to leave the stage. True, he’s filled his nearly three-hour fictional biography of a blacklisted screen actress with lots of heated arguments, melodramatic speeches, and appearances before congressional committees, not to mention a series of amazingly bad career moves (she passes on starring roles in A Streetcar Named Desire and Little Big Man). But the noise never adds up to a compelling story....

BITTER TEARS The Logic of Building the Body Plan | Flameshovel Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The members of this three-year-old indie-rock band all have respectable day jobs–their lineup includes a high school history teacher, a scientist, an art director, and a corporate financial adviser–but they may not be working them much longer. Though their previous output consists of a single three-song EP, last year’s Change Comes at Fourteen and a Half, they’ve recently become the object of interest from major indie labels like Domino and Barsuk....

Lead Story In April the state government of Victoria, Australia, authorized a new cemetery near Darlington to go ahead with its plan to offer what it says is a more environmentally friendly and economical alternative to standard burial: vertical burial. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » When Gregory Withrow staged a protest in April (opposing U.S. immigration policies, he said, among other things) by having his hands nailed to a board as he stood across the street from the California state capitol in Sacramento, he came prepared....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » He then proceeds to tick off a handful of long-take faves—from Murnau’s Sunrise (pictured above), Welles’s Touch of Evil, Kalatosov’s I Am Cuba, Godard’s Weekend, Antonioni’s The Passenger, Sokurov’s Russian Ark—and proposes establishing a “Long Shot Hall of Fame” to honor the whole aesthetically malingering crew. “Any consideration,” he goes on, “would land soon enough before the busts of Mizoguchi, Jancso, Tarkovsky, Angelopoulos”—who from my point of view deserves a wing of his own—but then “what about the long shots we’ve forgotten about, or never heard praised?...

THE SECOND CITY’S ROMEO AND JULIET MUSICAL: THE PEOPLE VS. FRIAR LAURENCE, THE MAN WHO KILLED ROMEO AND JULIET, Second City, at Chicago Shakespeare Theater. Writer-director Ron West’s work with Second City was always sharp but not necessarily groundbreaking. But in The Second City’s Romeo and Juliet Musical, written with Phil Swann, West displays some of the fearlessness that eluded him on the main stage. This bawdy revisionist take on Romeo and Juliet–bit player Friar Laurence gets framed for the murders of every Capulet and Montague in Verona–offers a master class on satire....

I’m a runner, and I’m always having to take grief from people (especially my wife) who happily point out that you’ll get the same benefit walking three miles as you will running the same distance, and you won’t risk crippling arthritis of all your major body parts. So the other day I had a flash! Going back to high school auto mechanics and some hot-rod magazines, I explained to my wife that since I’m exerting the same force to move the same mass the same distance, I’m doing the same amount of work–but since I’m doing it twice as fast, I’m exerting two times the power and probably using twice the calories....

Touch and Go has been a crucial part of the Chicago landscape for so long now–establishing residency in 1986–that it’s easy to take the label for granted. But back in the late 80s I remember anticipating nearly every release like it was Christmas morning, whether it was Big Black, Killdozer, the Butthole Surfers, the Laughing Hyenas, or Die Kreuzen. Along with a handful of other labels that are either defunct (Homestead) or on catalog-driven life support (SST), Touch and Go defined the sound that came to be known as indie rock–though at the time anyone on the label probably would’ve just called it punk....

It’s easy to take this institution for granted, but Alvin Ailey struck a real blow for African-American dance when he founded the company in 1958, and his successor, Judith Jamison, has kept it at the forefront of the dance world since he died in 1989. She contributes a new piece to the programs being performed here this weekend: Reminiscin’, set in a bar/dance hall to music by female jazz artists, among them Sarah Vaughan, Diana Krall, Ella Fitzgerald, and Roberta Flack....

Volo Restaurant Wine Bar Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Jon Young, the chef and owner of Kitsch’n on Roscoe, has jumped onto the small-plate bandwagon with Volo Restaurant Wine Bar. Talented executive chef Stephen Dunne (Spago, MK) executes a limited, constantly changing menu of seasonal dishes. Sweet, plump mussels were steamed in white wine and butter and flecked with parsley. Long shards of sesame flatbread poked out of three quenelles of steak tartare served with crunchy radish sprouts....

The man approached me like he’d just figured out the answer to a riddle that had been bothering him for ages. His denim button-down shirt was tucked into jeans, and clear snot was collecting in the divot between his nose and upper lip. “Hey!” he yelled. He stared at my shirt, which had leather appliques arranged in a vaguely Inca-looking pattern. “That’s a nice top. It’s like Cleopatra, but subdued.” He drawled “subduuuued” like Keanu Reeves....