Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “While Democrats have become increasingly uncomfortable with the anti-democratic consequences of the hard power of the war on terror, they seem more comfortable with a ‘soft power’ politics of fear: environmentalism. Environmentalism is one of the few movements on the left that presents itself in the same totalizing political terms that the war on terror does on the right, and its influence only seems to grow as the war on terror’s influence declines....

The Glamour Hammer Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Like the Chapmans, Givenchys, and Pauline Trigeres in the catalog, Leslie Hindman Auctioneers is a bit of history making a comeback. Hindman founded it in 1982, when she was a twentysomething from Hinsdale with four years of experience at Sotheby’s. Backed by corporate power brokers including former Sara Lee head John Bryan and MacLean-Fogg CEO Barry MacLean, she carved out a niche by doing what the big auction houses wouldn’t–taking on whole estates, selling everything from the heirloom jewels to the vacuum cleaner....

Cynthia Soto has served two terms as the Democratic state representative in the Fourth Legislative District, which covers the Humboldt Park area. She’s running for reelection with several thousand dollars in her campaign chest and the support of all the area committeemen, who’ll be dispatching dozens of precinct captains on her behalf come election day. Kathy Cummings, a Green Party candidate, is a retired CPS teacher running in her first race, with no campaign money to speak of and little more than a handful of volunteers....

Writer-director Im Sang-soo deftly weaves fact and fiction in this sardonic and gripping dramatization of the events surrounding the 1979 assassination of South Korean president Park Chung Hee, who ruled the country as de facto dictator for 18 years. Depicting the bloody, messy coup, Im focuses on Ju (Han Suk-kyu), chief agent of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency, whose anger toward the president boils over after he’s forced to straighten out one too many tawdry incidents involving a young prostitute....

I keep hearing claims that the Salem witchcraft trials were the result of poisoning by grain infected with ergot fungus, which caused convulsions and other symptoms that the simple souls of the day interpreted as signs of demonic possession. Any truth to this, Cecil?–Daniel L., Kenosha, Wisconsin Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Let’s start with the facts. During the winter of 1691-’92, several girls in Salem Village, a county-size jurisdiction surrounding what’s now the city of Salem, Massachusetts, came down with a strange illness, experiencing pain, fever, and convulsions and behaving oddly....

The core members of Balkan Beat Box, reedist Ori Kaplan and drummer Tamir Muskat, are regulars on the polyglot New York underground scene that’s best known for spawning Gogol Bordello. In fact Kaplan used to play sax with those self-styled Gypsy punks, and Muskat worked with lunatic Gogol front man Eugene Hutz a couple years back on a frantic dance-floor travelogue appropriately entitled Gogol Bordello vs. Tamir Muskat. But you’ll hear little of Gogol Bordello’s lascivious late-night hedonism in the detailed, organic-sounding jams on BBB’s debut, Balkan Beat Box (JDub)....

Two local playwrights and four from LA explore deliberately dangling conversations in six one-acts focused on reconstructing emotions from the words that exploit and distort them or connecting a tragedy to the failure to communicate. The strongest scripts, Stephen Cone’s The Dancer and Chris Kelley’s Salt Ink, show how misspoken love ensures its own reversal. The most accessible, Robert Fieldsteel’s Bad Language and Bob Wilson’s No Uncertain Words, playfully spoof our ambivalence about obscenities, which are useful only so long as they retain their shock value....

For the past two years Greg Summers, who lives on the 52nd floor of one of the Marina City towers, has been watching the on-again, off-again construction project on the other side of the Chicago River. Last month he noticed something strange. “I watched them destroy the very thing I saw them construct over a year ago,” he says. “You hear about make-work projects in Chicago, but it’s a little startling to see one going on right outside your window....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Tom Roeser is old enough to have had Dennis Hastert in a summer-school politics class back when the current Speaker of the House was just a wrestling coach with a yen for politics. At his blog, Roeser traces Hastert’s remarkably fortunate career, concluding with the envenomed truth of which only he is capable: “Sappy tolerance for homosexuality should be eradicated from the Republican party....

HOSTILE TAKEOVER: HOW BIG MONEY & CORRUPTION CONQUERED OUR GOVERNMENT–AND HOW WE CAN TAKE IT BACK | David Sirota | That government and corporate America are in bed isn’t news, but the blatant mendacity, venality, and bipartisan suck-up that David Sirota details in his new book, Hostile Takeover, are appalling. Sirota, a senior editor at In These Times, exhaustively documents how the rights of average citizens are being trampled in favor of big business interests, all of it abetted by legislators in thrall to campaign cash and corporate-funded junkets....

On August 30, 2005, OK Go released Oh No, the follow-up to the expensive, underperforming major-label debut that a lot of people expected to ruin their careers, and the muted reception it received didn’t seem to promise much hope. On August 30, 2006, it was the 188th best-selling album in the country. Right now it’s sitting at #72, which more than makes up for its early weak showing. It’s a good-to-decent album, with big enough hooks to sastisfy the pop listener, and a respectable T....

Pennsylvania native Dan Harris has found himself a seat on the Hollywood gravy train writing blockbusters like X2: X-Men United and the forthcoming Superman Returns. But his ticket aboard was the script for this personal, mordantly funny black comedy, now his feature directing debut. Like Ordinary People, In the Bedroom, and Moonlight Mile, it’s a study of how grief can eat into family relationships, as the suicide of a high school swimming champ traumatizes his mother (Sigourney Weaver), father (Jeff Daniels), and younger brother (Emile Hirsch)....

Lead Story Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In November police in Brooklyn, New York, set up a sting and arrested a 40-year-old man and his 22-year-old accomplice for kidnapping a teenager and demanding $20,000 in ransom from his mother; earlier in the day the pair had released their victim (who went straight home), but they continued to demand the money–so the mother arranged a rendezvous, supposedly to hand over the cash, and when the kidnappers arrived the cops were waiting....

The John Dwyer I’ve come to know and love is a crotch-rubbin’, anal-expulsive SOB with no reverence for nuthin’: past projects include spazcore duo Pink and Brown and fake-German leather-daddy power-goth outfit Ziegenbock Kopf, and he’s still sweatin’ to the oldies in Coachwhips. But now he’s turned my world upside down with OCS, his duo with Patrick Mullins. They’ve both put in time in concrete-slab noise outfit Burmese, but here they play firefly-chasing, dilapidated-porch faux folk–there’s even a reasonably straight Elizabeth Cotten cover....

Here’s my wah-wah: I’m 20, gay, and my boyfriend of eight months is into tying me up. I work out a lot and have pretty decent muscles, and something about tying me up makes him extra horny, which is a turn-on for me too. I’m wondering if I have anything to be worried about–not necessarily psycho killer worried, but, well, is this gonna warp me somehow? Why is it so much fun?...

That Funny Opaque Kind of Transparency Fat chance of that. TIFs are the only planning subsidy in town, so aldermen either go along with them or watch development dollars go to other wards. There are now 140 TIF districts devouring well over $300 million a year in property taxes. “I didn’t create this system,” Colon says. “But I have to play in it.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The TIF running through the 35th Ward is typically vexing....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “Ever since 9/11,” Billmon writes, “there’s been this attitude among the Bushies that the most important thing is to convince the world that America’s enemies (who are now identical with Israel’s enemies) represent the ultimate in evil–the Wal-Mart of evil, the Pittsburgh Steelers of evil, the Dr. Evil of evil. Once that goal has been accomplished, why then of course the ‘free world’ will line up and enlist in Uncle Sam’s army....

Hurt McDermott’s modernized, unfunny adaptation for TUTA (The Utopian Theatre Asylum) dulls the satiric bite of Aristophanes’ classic comedy. The bland script makes few sharp observations on politics and peace, and its fleeting moments of wit can’t compensate for the ensemble’s listless delivery. Director Zeljko Djukic seems so concerned with making this an extravaganza that he overlooks basic storytelling: the central shift in the protagonist, who’s arrived to keep peace among the birds but is corrupted by ambition and power, has too little impact in this production....

To the editor: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Lawrence Bommer is one of Chicago’s important critics. He’s constructive, rarely cruel, and always generous when a production merits it. His review of Gift Theatre Company’s new production of The Glass Menagerie appeared in last week’s Reader [Section 2, October 28]. I have not seen this production but wish the company all the best. Mr. Bommer’s statement that this otherwise excellent production is marred by “onstage smoking” is an affront to the memory of Tennessee Williams....

On a sunny Wednesday last November, 16 students sat around a University of Chicago seminar table with two unpublished typescripts in front of them. The students were taking a course on the philosopher Leo Strauss, and “politics and policy” was the day’s topic. “In some ways it was easy to select the readings for this subject,” announced Nathan Tarcov, a professor of political science, “because Strauss wrote almost nothing about practical politics....