A tipping point isn’t something you’d normally want to associate with a skyscraper, but that may be what Jeanne Gang’s Aqua, an 82-story residential project at Columbus Drive and Lake, turns out to be. For almost a decade megatowers have been rising downtown like weeds, and the developers have been using classic skyline views to market what in every other respect is mediocrity on a grotesque scale. They’ve clearly decided that if you provide popular locations and floor plans and kitchens that are “works of art,” the quality of the architecture won’t matter to buyers....

As the Reader’s senior staff writer covering movies, Jonathan Rosenbaum gets first pick of the city’s offerings, and as any sane man would, he tends to choose titles that promise to be good or at least interesting. But there are too many good movies showing in Chicago for even two people to cover–last year alone the Reader reviewed 1,122 features and shorts programs, employing the talents of 28 writers (including longtime contributor Ted Shen, a perceptive and enthusiastic critic who passed away in October)....

In hindsight, championships look inevitable. Of course the Bulls were destined to win six NBA titles in Michael Jordan’s last six complete seasons with them, so the dangers they encountered along the way now seem minimal. All but forgotten is the way Scottie Pippen had to rally the scrubs with a 14-2 run to open the fourth quarter of the sixth game in 1992, setting the stage for Jordan to return and close out the Portland Trail Blazers, who would have had all the momentum going into the seventh game....

So Goldmine magazine has a story out (but not available online) on music-geek dramageddon. In a nutshell: Dude buys some records for a few bucks at a sidewalk sale in New York. One of them turns out to be a studio acetate of the first recorded version of The Velvet Underground and Nico, as it was originally intended to be released. The songs are in different order, and some of them are takes that are very different from the ones we all know, and some are at least radically different mixes....

Italian saxophonist and sound artist Alessandro Bosetti vigorously explores the possibilities of his instrument. Last year’s Zona (Grob) is a stunning representation of his extended technique as well as an expression of his interest in electronics: he recorded the piece using six microphones positioned at various distances, then digitally sewed the tracks together. Shifting from one mike to another, he creates a sort of 3-D listening experience: the closest mikes let you hear his breath (inhaling and exhaling, along with residual sputtering and whistling), his fingers manipulating the keys, and the full spectrum of his extended technique (popping, extreme overtones, tonguing maneuvers)....

The last time Riccardo Muti conducted the CSO, the Bears had just drafted Walter Payton. His return–a two-week stay at Symphony Center, followed by a seven-city European tour with the orchestra–could be an audition for music director. Muti opens with Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony (Pathetique). The composer declared that he’d put his whole soul into this work, and nine days after conducting its premiere he died (possibly by his own hand). In the most progressive of his symphonies, Tchaikovsky voices his sorrow and disillusionment, culminating in an ending that fades into gloom....

Local percussionist Mike Reed might be best known for his activities away from the drum kit: he’s one of the two curators of the Hungry Brain’s Sunday-night jazz series, and last year he was the lead organizer of Pitchfork’s great Intonation festival. But he’s been a steady presence in the local jazz and improvised-music scenes for the past five years, working with groups like the Treehouse Project, the David Boykin Expanse, and Rob Mazurek’s Exploding Star Orchestra....

Lead Story Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Having unsuccessfully tried to borrow a boat from friends in the days after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, Mark Morice found an 18-foot pleasure craft with the keys in it and used it to evacuate survivors from his flooded neighborhood and a nearby hospital, rescuing by his count more than 200 people. He then abandoned the boat, for other rescuers to use, he said; later he returned to the house where he’d found it to explain what had happened....

Burton Natarus, alderman of the 42nd Ward, is sitting in his third-floor City Hall office doing what he does best–kvetching. This time it’s about the preservationists who are upset with the way he’s handled development around the Newberry Library. “People don’t understand–they don’t always appreciate what I have to do,” he says. “This is a very complicated issue.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Natarus was slated to run for alderman in 1971 by 42nd Ward Democratic committeeman George Dunne, and he’s been in the council ever since–only 14th Ward alderman Ed Burke has been there longer....

QMy two roommates are in the same frat. Roommate A and his GF have been going out for about a year. Roommate A is a great guy, but maybe a bit too nice: recently, his GF cheated on him and he forgave her. Her infidelity did not come as a surprise to the rest of us. When she’s drunk, she acts inappropriately. She gets touchy and says suggestive things—it’s way beyond friendly flirting....

Signal Ensemble Theatre’s production of Edward Albee’s 1975 Pulitzer winner, which features an interspecies double date on a beach, follows on the heels of City Lit’s delicate staging last fall, and Ronan Marra’s playful revival does equal justice to the play’s mysteries. The mature human couple, Nancy and Charlie, are torn between settling into retirement and setting out for new adventures. Leslie and Sarah, the reptilian couple (wearing Laura M. Dana’s wonderful lizard garb), put their plight in perspective by providing a lesson in emotional relativism....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Talk to Action, a group blog that keeps a mainstream eye on wacko Christians, has a link-filled post on the latest chilling development: “Seven Virginia Episcopal churches, including two of the largest and wealthiest in the American Episcopal Communion in the American Episcopal Communion, voted to break away and, as a New York Times story written prior to the vote put it, ‘report to the powerful archbishop of Nigeria, Peter Akinola, an outspoken opponent of homosexuality who supports legislation in his country that would make it illegal for gay men and lesbians to form organizations, read gay literature or eat together in a restaurant....

A character in Christopher Buckley’s 1994 novel Thank You for Smoking (now a film) quotes a then-current prediction printed in the medical journal the Lancet: “[In the] next ten years, 250 million people in the industrialized world are going to die from smoking–one in five.” It’s now 12 years later. I certainly hope the Lancet’s prediction–which I am guessing was bona fide, and not an invention of the novelist–proved to be overpessimistic....

A friend of mine told me that if I wanted a low-calorie snack, I should eat celery because it actually has negative calories. He claimed this meant that I would burn more calories chewing and digesting the celery than I would actually get from it. Is what he claims true? Are there any other negative-calorie foods? Oh, and you wouldn’t happen to know a good low-calorie dip for the celery, would you?...

A note from Cecil Adams | Plus: Is Prevagen, the cognitive supplement, as effective as its TV ad states? From the outside, our bodies appear to be: eyes, ears, arms, and elbows. That’s the not the real problem with vector-borne diseases. Bill Cosby’s conviction leads Cecil Adams to a consideration of whether and how presidential pardons could be overturned. A bold new era for earwax research has dawned. Cecil goes crazy in this week’s Straight Dope....

A cross between Nicholas Nickleby, HBO’s occult Carnivale series, Charlie Daniels’s “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” any number of fairy tales, and lots of other things I can’t quite put my finger on, The True Ballad of Fall’s Blessings has the makings of an endearingly eccentric entertainment. It should be a hell of a show when it’s finished. As it stands, though, we’re given just enough to let us know that too much is missing....

HotHouse closed in July and the Jazz Showcase has been homeless since January, but even in the absence of two of the clubs that used to anchor the postfestival action, there’s plenty of after-hours music. The Velvet Lounge looks to be the most happening spot this weekend: Hard-bop drummer Dana Hall leads a quartet on Thursday, and on Friday and Sunday saxophonist Edward Wilkerson fronts his superb 8 Bold Souls–joined on Friday by guitarist Fareed Haque and on Sunday by New Orleans free-jazz saxophonist Ed “Kidd” Jordan, making his traditional festival-weekend visit....

Who Was Haroon Paryani? Neither the ad nor the Web site mentions Jackson or drops a hint as to who’s behind the campaign. Jackson’s life partner, John Castronovo, told me the Web site “is a collaborative effort of the friends of Mike Jackson, a group of over a dozen.” When I asked if he was part of the group, Castronovo replied, “I’m a friend of Mike Jackson.” Best of Chicago voting is live now....

Regarding “A Dumping Ground for the Poor?” published in the October 14 Reader, it seems Ben Joravsky may need to do more research before writing his articles. He especially misses the mark in his fourth paragraph when describing the 7600 block of Paulina: “now occupied by two social service agencies and a weed-filled vacant lot.” Not only is there also a grocery store, a U.S. post office, a coffee shop, and a medical facility (Rogers Park One-Day Surgical Center) on the block, but the lot he speaks of is neither vacant nor weed filled....

This funny, moving revival of David Mamet’s wry 1977 one-act perfectly captures the clipped rhythms, cryptic pauses, casual profanity, and semantic precision that are hallmarks of a writer for whom drama lies in character and language rather than action. Thematically, too, this is quintessential Mamet, charting the evolving relationship between an ambitious youngster and his mentor, a world-weary veteran. Hilarious parodies of classic drama are interspersed with scenes in which the men talk about the craft of acting and the meaning of art....