Lead Story Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In the April 2003 issue of the American Journal of Roentgenology, two Seattle radiologists described a case of bowel obstruction in a 35-year-old man who was suffering from severe abdominal pain but had normal vital signs. He was found to have the heads of several Barbie dolls lodged in his small intestine, and explained that he’d been swallowing them because he liked the feeling he got when he passed them....

Do you believe art drives social change? Venita Griffin does, and as director of marking and communications for the Community Renewal Society, she found herself in a position to act on this belief. CRS publishes the Chicago Reporter, which this year sponsored the first ever John A. McDermott Documentary Film Competition. It was her idea. On October 14 Beyondmedia Education, a production house that focuses on marginalized women, got an e-mail from Griffin that began, “Congratulations....

Born in 1957 in Lyon, France, pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard won four first prizes while studying at the Paris Conservatory and at 15 won the Olivier Messiaen International Competition. Four years later Pierre Boulez invited him to be a founding member of the Ensemble Intercontemporain, with which he played for 18 years. In the past decade he’s become one of the world’s leading performers of 20th-century and contemporary piano music, particularly that of Messiaen and Ligeti....

No one in Japan’s contemporary improvised music scene is as hard to fit in a box as guitarist TETUZI AKIYAMA. Like fellow guitarist Taku Sugimoto and electronic musician Toshimaru Nakamura, he’s a deft practitioner of gesture-based minimalism; his ensemble Bject (with reedist Masahiko Okura and synth player Utah Kawasaki) injects long-form improvisations with almost imperceptible but striking details. On Pre-Existence (Locust), an all-acoustic solo album he released last year, Akiyama puts a distinctive spin on fingerstyle guitar, unleashing rapid-fire tangles of notes and dissonant snarls and letting his endings hang inconclusively....

Sculptor Erik Blome called the Reader a couple of weeks ago wondering if someone could do a story about a project he’s trying to get off the ground. Blome, who has an international practice but lives and works in the Chicago area, is putting together an exhibit of art by Ethiopian orphans that he plans to tour–along with a video and photos of the orphans and information on how Americans can support or adopt them....

Enoteca Roma “The guy who makes this has got the craziest mullet,” he says, pouring from a 2003 bottle of Au Bon Climat pinot noir. Of the next sample, an Andrew Murray Syrah: “The wine is, like, fighting with you; it’s got all these crazy ideas.” I ask him to describe it using typical wine jargon, and he winces. He says he’s got a good memory for tastes and names, but verbal descriptions aren’t his forte....

Though the Museum of Contemporary Art had to cancel the Hip-Hop Theater Festival last fall, programmers say they’re still interested in showcasing new work in that evolving genre. In Word Becomes Flesh, a kinetic exploration of fatherhood, Oakland-based spoken-word artist and dancer Marc Bamuthi Joseph interweaves his experience as a prospective dad with mini history lessons about the role of dance in African-American culture–or, as he puts it, the way African-American dancers “improvised truths around false structures....

How anyone could live in sunny California and stay as chronically pissy as Greg Lowery, bassist and songwriter for the Zodiac Killers, I never want to find out. This band, formed in 1999, is the latest in the Lowery-brand line of spite squads, casts of would-be dangerous goombahs playing catchy, defiantly rudimentary garage punk and belting out fake-stupid lyrics with cheerful venom. Over the past 15 years Lowery’s bands have included the Infections, the Rip Offs, and the legendary Supercharger (with guitarist Darin Raffaelli, later teensploiter to the Donnas)....

When Tim Seeley showed up for work late last week at Devil’s Due Publishing in Ravenswood, he planned to spend the day drawing elves. Instead he wound up dealing with a mailbox full of congratulatory e-mails and interview requests. Variety had just reported that Rogue Pictures, the genre division of Focus Features, had purchased the rights to Hack/Slash, the satirical horror comic he thought up two years ago while soaking in his tub....

These two Norwegians, Dag-Are Haugan and Espen Sommer Eide, make music that on the surface seems like just more glitchy electronica–their latest album, Miniatures (Rune Grammofon, 2005), has its fair share of soothing, skittering synthesizer melodies. But a careful listen reveals a lot more going on underneath; the album’s second half in particular is dominated by field recordings and conventional instruments played in unconventional ways. “St. Paul Sessions II” employs a kind of homemade Steve Reich-style minimalism, with a staccato guitar chord pulsing beneath jagged, chiming patterns on xylophone and vibraphone....

“I just want to relax the spines of dhrupad listeners,” says Faiyaz Wasifuddin Dagar in the liner notes to one of his albums. “It’s not necessary that you understand music to enjoy it.” Dagar, for his part, understands dhrupad intimately–he’s part of a family that’s been playing the ancient form of Indian classical music for 20 generations. Dhrupad is considered austere in comparison to more modern styles, which employ acrobatic techniques or richly ornamented melodies, but it can be just as dazzling–at its highest level the singer enters a trancelike state....

Tap phenom Savion Glover finds nothing odd about doing two sets a night with his fellow “band” members–spoken-word artist Reg E. Gaines and saxophonist Matana Roberts, a Chicago native–in a space that seats 150 people. “This is what we do,” the laid-back Glover says over the phone. “I’ve performed in clubs for 20 people–and in stadiums.” For audiences, however, the chance to see Glover, Roberts, and Gaines (who wrote the book for the Tony-winning Broadway musical Bring in ‘da Noise, Bring in ‘da Funk) in an intimate venue is something special....

James McManus’s new nonfiction book is decidedly less sexy than his best-selling 2003 poker memoir, Positively Fifth Street. But in Physical: An American Checkup (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) he addresses a topic that should concern everyone, including faddish cardplayers–our national health. For a magazine assignment McManus undergoes the Mayo Clinic’s storied “executive physical,” including an undignified but essential colonoscopy. Turns out he’s in decent shape but really should cut way down on the smoking and drinking and get more exercise–standard advice, but easier said than done for a guy who went on to write a poker column....

Two months ago musician and Oakland resident John Benson bought an old bus for $5,000 from a wind-turbine engineer, and he and his friends rigged it to run on vegetable oil, put in a new floor, built loft beds, and constructed a stage. Two Wednesdays ago, in a Garfield Park warehouse parking lot, they hosted a show inside it. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » G–just G–was short and stout with long, stringy gray hair and a beard that covered most of his face....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » It’s no secret that Louisiana is the cauldron where so many of the ingredients of what has come to define American music were first boiled, but too often the credit seems to go to New Orleans. In the Cajun backwaters, country and French Acadian music intermingled in ways that paralleled what blacks were doing in the Crescent City. The Red Stick Ramblers, a young outfit from Baton Rouge, do a bang-up job of conveying this musical sprawl; on the band’s new album, Made in the Shade (Sugar Hill), they zip effortlessly between old-fashioned honky-tonk, Cajun jams, western swing, zydeco, blues, and even straight-up jazz, without ever sounding like glib dilettantes or overambitious pretenders....

AIDSCare, a residential facility for people with AIDS, is in a mansion in a high-end Lakeview neighborhood, but its founder and CEO, Jim Flosi, never worried about gentrification driving him out. He figured that if anyone was immune to the pitches of real estate brokers and developers it was the sisters of the Society of Helpers of the Holy Souls, the nuns who owned the mansion and had invited him to set up his nonprofit there....

Immediately after a tornado demolished downstate Utica last spring, around 30 ambulances and fire trucks from across the state raced to the aid of the little town. Among them, a red-and-white 1975 Mack fire truck marked lost creek fire company eng. 886 stood out. Its driver stopped for directions at the North Aurora Fire Station, which had already dispatched a crew of emergency workers, then sped toward Utica. State police were manning a roadblock in front of a vehicle staging area set up about a mile north of town....

Scott Herren made Surrounded by Silence (Warp), his third full-length under the name Prefuse 73, as something of a showcase for his friends and acquaintances from the worlds of hip-hop, indie rock, electronica, and experimental music. His hyperactive, chopped-up, peripatetic sampladelia hasn’t radically changed–beats still sputter and flow, tripping from jittery bursts to funky breaks, and blink-quick snatches of hijacked sound still tumble out in an overwhelming crush. But the motley cast of guests–including Aesop Rock, the Books, Kazu Makino of Blonde Redhead, Ghostface, and El-P–gives the disc a sprawling, if not disjointed, feel....

This annual showcase of experimental theater, performance, and music from Chicago’s fringe, coproduced by Curious Theatre Branch and Prop Thtr, runs through 11/12. This year’s festival includes an emphasis on work by, or inspired by, Samuel Beckett. All performances are at the Prop Thtr, 3502-4 N. Elston, unless otherwise noted. Admission is $15 or “pay what you can,” except where noted. For information and reservations, call 773-539-7838 or visit rhinofest.com. Following is the schedule through 11/2; a complete schedule is available online at chicagoreader....

This annual showcase of experimental theater, performance, and music runs through 10/31 at Prop Thtr, 3502-4 N. Elston. Rhino Fest is coordinated by the Curious Theatre Branch, and features emerging and established artists from Chicago’s fringe. Performances take place in Prop’s north and south theaters. Admission for most shows is $15 or “pay what you can”; exceptions are noted below. For information and reservations, call 773-267-6660 (except as noted below) or visit www....