FRED ANDERSON & HAMID DRAKE Life on the Fly (Drag City) Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » On her third solo album, former Scissor Girls and Bride of No No leader Azita Youssefi continues her exploration of 70s left-coast jazz pop. For the opener, “Wasn’t in the Bargain,” she slips right into the snarkily cerebral tone and Bard College phrasing made famous by Messrs. Becker and Fagen as guitarist Jeff Parker does his best Skunk Baxter imitation....

Selective Indignation Two years ago when Senate Democrats were blocking the nomination of Miguel Estrada to the federal court of appeals, the Tribune ripped their conduct as a “shameless display of partisanship.” There was no way to write this editorial without allowing that Senate Republicans had acted the same way (actually worse) when Bill Clinton was president. GOP senators “have gained a reputation as procrastinators,” the Tribune had said back then, wagging a finger and looking stern....

Like last season’s successful Holmes and Watson, Terry McCabe’s latest adaptation owes much to the passive-aggressive partnership of Don Bender’s prickly-perfect sleuth and Will Schutz’s wonderfully game chronicler as they play out Holmes’s miraculous powers of deduction and Watson’s dogsbody reliability. Perhaps Arthur Conan Doyle’s most extravagant adventure, Hound combines melodrama, criminal psychology, and a romantic feeling for the desolate moors of Devonshire. Kevin Theis’s respectful staging discourages any camp overkill, and his seven enterprising supporting performers convey a much larger scene than their number suggests....

A look at the honor boxes on any busy streetcorner shows Chicago’s stuffed with printed matter, from the society rag CS, a local project that expanded to other cities, to the nightlife guide UR Chicago to the green living Conscious Choice. Factor in Time Out Chicago, the local edition of an international chain, glossy monthlies like Chicago magazine, and neighborhood pubs like the salmon-colored Chicago Journal and it would appear the town is covered from Rogers Park to South Shore....

Friday 8 SHELBY LYNNE Though she made some fine albums early in her career, Shelby Lynne has sounded like she’s in retreat ever since Love, Shelby (2001), her miserable, irony-free play at mainstream success. On 2003’s Identity Crisis she favored Nashville cliches and settings that were either stripped-down or nostalgic; on the new Suit Yourself (Capitol), which she produced herself, she takes great pains to demonstrate her authenticity, throwing in lots of behind-the-scenes audio verite....

You’d figure people would have packed the City Council chambers last summer when the council held a zoning hearing on the Artful Dodger building in Bucktown. The owner was asking for a zoning change that would allow him to replace the single-family unit with town houses or a multiunit building. The three-story Queen Anne, with its distinctive witch’s-hat turret, is the sort of historically significant structure that most residents–not to mention preservationists–would rally to save....

Six years after her only solo record and almost a decade after her departure from Veruca Salt, Nina Gordon is on the verge of turning into another whatever-happened-to story from Chicago’s 90s alt-rock boom. But there’s no scandal or tragedy behind her long absence from the public eye. Though she’s left Chicago for LA, where she’s settled down with longtime boyfriend and former Tonic guitarist Jeff Russo, she hasn’t abandoned music....

Wherever bicyclists gather–bike shops, Critical Mass rallies, Chicagoland Bicycle Federation events–Allen Walker is there, handing out his homemade flyer. It shows a photograph of the mangled remains of his $1,800 Italian racing bike. All that’s left is the frame, which looks like a daddy longlegs squished by a piece of earth-moving equipment. Above the picture is a warning: “Don’t let this happen to you.” Best of Chicago voting is live now....

This second annual showcase of collaborations between local musicians, filmmakers, and performing artists with counterparts from around the world is organized by the Borderbend Arts Collective and runs Wed-Sun, 10/24-10/27, at various locations. The schedule was still evolving at press time; for more information call 312-543-7027 or visit chicagocalling.org. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Northwestern University Local musicians Mars Williams, Clifton Hyde, Jerome Bryerton, Jon Godston, Paul Hartsaw, Joel Wanek, Bill MacKay, and Dan Godston play with musicians at Virginia Commonwealth University via Internet2 for this dance recital by Asimina Chremos....

Cirque du Soleil’s latest production, Corteo, sets the company’s hallmark dreamlike imagery inside a dream–an aging clown’s fantasy of his funeral procession. People and props are over- and undersized, objects mysteriously fall from above and sink, and there’s lots of glitter. The gypsy characters and costumes conjure the show’s plebeian roots in the streets of Quebec, but playful aerial work–at one point performers hang from chandeliers–epitomizes the company’s daring high-wire tradition....

Some of the most exciting improvised music happens when musicians from disparate backgrounds face off–the situation forces players to adjust, stretch themselves, and look for common ground. The Williamsburg Sonatas (Wallace) exemplifies that spirit: the members of the trio who created the album might seem incompatible on paper, but they achieved a wonderful synchronicity in the studio. Italian saxophonist Gianni Gebbia, even though he’s mostly worked in free-improv contexts, has a solid grasp on more conventional jazz vocabularies and techniques....

The Reader’s Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Palo Alto-based SuperGreen Boards makes skateboards out of sustainable bamboo, which is 17 percent harder than maple, and uses low-VOC epoxy to laminate them. Buy one of three existing models or have a custom board made. a$175 for a deck only, $275 ready to ride, up to $400 for most custom orders, supergreenboards.com. Fund research on soil restoration in Kenya, buy a Mayan community an hour with a lawyer to defend its land from mining companies, help researchers monitor coral reefs in the Turks and Caicos—these are just a few of the gift donations you can choose from at Changing the Present, a new nonprofit whose board of advisors includes the heads of the Sierra Club, Amnesty International, Teach for America, and other established nonprofits....

On Back in Time (Pi), released last month, guitarist James “Blood” Ulmer reconvenes his sporadically active group Odyssey the Band, featuring violinist Charles Burnham and drummer Warren Benbow. It’s with this trio that Ulmer has best assimilated the various strains of music he’s played in his lengthy career–the harmolodics-style improvisation he gleaned during his 70s stint with Ornette Coleman, the post-Hendrix rock he recorded in the 80s when Columbia Records tried (and failed) to market him as a guitar god, and the deep blues feeling that’s always been at the core of his earthy music....

Shit-stupid pop music is a palate cleanser: after listening to challenging sounds by talented people, sometimes it’s nice to bliss out in the land of the brain-dead, where JC Chasez dwells. He’s trying to ride the coattails of fellow ‘N Sync refugee Justin Timberlake, despite a charisma deficit and the fact that his debut, Schizophrenic (Jive), came out in February, more than a year after Justified. The album is 15 more tracks of sleazy crooning meant to moisten the ladies’ panties, and the lyrics will no doubt scandalize his young fans (or at least their parents)....

At first I disliked Johanna Billing’s music video You Don’t Love Me Yet, which shows a group of Swedish amateurs performing a sappy version of Roky Erickson’s 80s song. Following music-video convention, she intercuts group shots with solo views and intersperses high and low angles. But she also edits with real subtlety, avoiding predictability by not cutting to a new shot on every new verse and only rarely syncing cuts to the beat....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » President Bush is showing Mayor Daley how to do it. Daley’s been haunted for years by questions about police torture–about what he knew and did or didn’t do to stop it while he was state’s attorney back in the 80s, and about what he’s done or hasn’t done as mayor to get to the bottom of it. One of these days Daley might find himself so cornered he’ll have to produce some answers....

This noise trio, formed in Hartford but now dispersed to Chicago, Brooklyn, and Montreal, radiates an oxymoronic vibe that’s half hermit mystique and half teen-lust dry hump. Last year’s I Trust My Guitar, Etc. (Ecstatic Peace/Apostasy) is alluring and antagonizing, the kind of tangle that hints at some royally entertaining band infighting: Pete Nolan whacks at his drums like he thinks he has to prove his masculinity (or make up for how low his mikes are turned down), and Leah Quimby and Elisa Ambrogio scribble on guitar and/or bass like dirtbag punks, cutting electric orange streaks through his rattling and thumping....

In the summer I always take a class here called Chicago Shanties. We sing things like “What Do You Do With a Drunken Sailor,” “Leave Her, Johnny, Leave Her,” and “Haul Away, Joe.” These songs come from the tall-ship days–maybe the 1700s, 1800s. They’re easy to sing, easy to harmonize to, and have a lot of repetition, and they’re usually done a cappella, because it’s hard to work on a whaler and play an instrument at the same time....

Not in Their Names Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In October, Hernandez, Padilla, and Ramirez sent a certified letter to NNWAC’s board asking for a meeting to discuss the situation and for copies of any grant applications over the last decade that listed them as staff or board members. “It concerns us that since we three are Latino artists with strong connections to the local Latino community, that our names have been in grant awards for programs and workshops that might never have been delivered,” the letter stated....

Eight different sausages were served for lunch at the inaugural symposium of the Greater Midwest Foodways Alliance last month. There were Chicago Polishes, Wisconsin brats, Illinois smoked bratwurst, Toledo-bred Hungarian sausages, and Springfield-style corn dogs. A Michigan hot dog got the Coney Island treatment (which originated in southeast Michigan), and a Vienna Beef wiener got the classic Chicago fixings. And then there was the south-side specialty known as the mother-in-law, where the so-called sausage is a meat-stuffed tamale covered with chili and served on a bun....