Right now in Chicago there are about 1,200 aspiring improvisers enrolled at the Second City Training Center, 600 at ImprovOlympic, and 100 at Annoyance Productions. Add them to the legions that’ve already graduated from these programs and you’ve got some 5,000 improvisers in the city, many of whom have come here specifically to study and perform. All of them want what Dan Bakkedahl had. “There were all sorts of fantastic reasons to stay,” he says....

Sonic Youth do nothing on Sonic Nurse (DGC) they haven’t done before. Kim Gordon is still yelping hoarsely about celebrity, this time on “Kim Gordon and the Arthur Doyle Hand Cream” (originally titled “Mariah Carey and…”), where she asks, “How was your date with Eminem?” The guitars still swell and ebb and clink and approximate bombs bursting in air, in pretty much the same proportions as ever. Lee Ranaldo still only sings once (“Paper Cup Exit”), though in many ways he’s the band’s best vocalist; drummer Steve Shelley still knocks out endless grooves like Can’s Jaki Liebezeit, albeit leaning on rolls and paradiddles in a way that human drum machine never did....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » But last night’s finale of The Colbert Report—sweet. Now, ever since Bill Clinton played the sax on The Arsenio Hall Show and some people thought it looked cool, the fine line between rock star, politician, and big ol’ dork has been terminally blurry. Nobody realizes this better than Colbert, who started a fake feud with the Decemberists over the idea of the “green screen challenge,” which Colbert started early this year to get fans to put snazzy backgrounds on footage of him throwing himself around with a light saber....

312-747-2101 or Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » around September 1 and April 1 each year the city’s Bureau of Forestry begins seasonal tree planting. With an annual budget of $3 million, the bureau estimates that it’ll plant about 6,000 trees a season–and if you’re a property owner you can request one or several for your parkway. The number of requests have gone up each year, from about 5,400 in 2004 to almost 9,000 in 2006....

Magnificent Obsession: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Buildings and Legacy in Japan Narrated by Azby Brown and Donald Richie Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The story of the two-way cultural traffic between Wright and Japan is so intricate that even a 128-minute film can barely scratch the surface. And the surface that’s scratched is mainly in Japan, not here. Wright’s visits to Japan spanned 17 years, starting with his very first trip abroad–in 1905, when he was 37–and culminating with his work on Tokyo’s awesome Imperial Hotel....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » From that proclamation, Lois Wille drew the title of her classic 1972 book telling the tale of Montgomery Ward’s lonely turn-of-the-century legal struggle to defend the lakefront. Any Grant Park debate will cite Wille. Her history recalled that the Illinois Supreme Court banned buildings from the lakefront in 1897 and even museums in 1909. (The Tribune said the Art Institute was the grandfathered exception....

SEEING A PLAY in Chicago can be easier and cheaper than going to the movies. Most theaters offer student rates, low-price or free previews and industry nights, and/or discounted rush tickets. Weeknights are usually cheaper than weekends (and seats are easier to get). Some theaters have a regular “pay what you can” policy; others offer free seats to volunteer ushers. Even high-priced commercial shows like Wicked and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee have day-of-show lotteries for bargain seats....

The fourth annual Chicago African Diaspora Film Festival runs June 16 through 22 at Facets Cinematheque. Tickets are $9, $7 for students and seniors; for more information call 773-281-9075 or visit www.facets.org. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The festival opens with Boy Called Twist (2004, 110 min.), in which writer-director Tim Greene convincingly transposes Oliver Twist to contemporary South Africa. A resourceful orphan (Jarrid Geduld) escapes from cruel rural taskmasters and hitches to Cape Town, where he falls in with the Rastafarian Fagin (Lesley Fong) and his light-fingered youths....

Performance art gets a bad rap–too many naked men smearing meat on their bodies and denouncing the Man, too many cake-spraying women straddling fish. Too often it’s like improv comedy, only not funny–a messy and embarrassing waste of time. But when it’s good, the ridiculous leads to the sublime, transforming a space, generating genuine emotions. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Laracuente said he selected pieces that had a mystical, ritualistic, magical vibe to them....

Cuban-born choreographer Eduardo Vilaro again deconstructs the Latino experience in his new Quinceanera, devoted to the Latin-American ritual of debutante parties for 15-year-olds. You might reasonably expect a party atmosphere, but this full-company work opens with warlike booming noises that evolve into difficult string music; meanwhile the movements of five women suggest sorrowful submission or exasperation. This emotional complexity continues as the work veers from whimsy to seduction to the hopes and fears underlying the mundane details of party planning: who will be there, what will I wear, will I be able to walk in heels?...

Several Arrows Later (Altitude) finds the Brooklyn-based group Matt Pond PA tweaking their chamber pop toward perfection, for better or worse. Of their previous eight releases, the EPs showcase them best, as the brevity affords their somber sentiments the luxury of lingering a little longer and sinking in a little deeper. At first listen there aren’t any obvious flaws on Arrows; the band’s equation clicks on almost every track: mellow 70s rhythm section, pedal steel and strings (including Eve Miller of the Rachel’s on cello), and Matthew Pond’s forlorn but pleasant singing, which sounds like the guy from the Counting Crows ripping off Peter Gabriel instead of Van Morrison (and, y’know, chilled out a little)....

The patron saint of misunderstood artistes was stuck with the racist tag by no less an arbiter than NME back in 1992, after he released “The National Front Disco” and cavorted onstage with a Union Jack. Morrissey is still taken for a conservative from time to time, and I imagine Oscar Wilde is banging his head on a desk in heaven–but then, there’s nothing like being provocative and ambiguous to ensure that your politics will be misconstrued....

Rock, Pop, Etc Benediction, Nominion, Quinta Essentia Mon 10/22, 8:30 PM, Logan Square Auditorium, 2539 N. Kedzie. 773-252-6179. A Bright Eyes, Andrew Bird Fri 10/19, 7:30 PM, Chicago Theatre, 175 N. State. 312-462-6363 or 312-559-1212. A Tommy Emmanuel Fri 10/19, 7:30 PM, Park West, 322 W. Armitage. 773-929-5959 or 312-559-1212. A Illinois Brass Band Sat 10/20, 7 PM, First Congregational Church, 256 E. Chicago, Elgin. 847-741-4045. A Mambo Kings with the Elgin Symphony Orchestra....

Lead Story Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Accused of holding up a bank in Lowell, Massachusetts, 22-year-old Andre Guthrie argued in June that the charge of armed robbery while masked (which carries a five-year minimum sentence) didn’t apply in his case. According to his affidavit, he was wearing women’s clothing, a wig, and makeup that day not to disguise himself but because he dresses as a woman (and uses the name Andrea Guthrie) “as much as possible....

Continued from last week . . . Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » So this guy was standing there with a live scorpion in a box shining a light on it, and it was moving its legs and tail and I was shrieking, “It’s alive!” “Shhh!” he told me, looking over his shoulder, and I grabbed a camera so I could take a snapshot. Then people in the room started gathering around to see what all the commotion was about....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » When he’s home, Erik Olsen is in Lakeview. When he’s at work, he’s at the city’s Department of Construction and Permits, running the accelerated permit program for city buildings that meet some basic green standards. (As Olsen told me earlier this year, “Routine projects involving three or fewer units can typically be approved on a fast track within ten days, following a process that can be diagrammed on a Post-it....

This annual showcase of experimental theater, performance, and music from Chicago’s fringe, coproduced by Curious Theatre Branch and Prop Thtr, runs through 11/4. This year features “The Madelyn Trilogy” by Beau O’Reilly (Idris Goodwin’s “The Danger Face Trilogy” has completed its run). Admission is $15 or “pay what you can,” except where noted. Performances take place at the Prop Thtr, 3502 N. Elston, and the Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport, and elsewhere as noted below....

It’s only been a year and a half since Bob Mehr profiled the 1900s in the Meter, but my, how they’ve grown. Back then they were a somewhat untested combo that had only been playing shows for seven months, and they were still weeks away from their debut release, the EP Plume Delivery. But they already had a knack for engineering ambitious, baroque pop structures–though they’re a seven-piece, with keys and strings and boy-girl harmony vocals, their songs would sound epic and orchestral even played by a power trio....

This annual festival of solo performance, now in its fourth year, features more than 20 pieces by local, national, and international artists. It runs through 8/28 at Breadline Theatre, 1802 W. Berenice, and Theatre Building Chicago, 1225 W. Belmont. Tickets are $20 per show; $12 for students. Tickets for Breadline shows can be purchased by calling 312-498-3369; Theatre Building Chicago tickets are available at the box office and by calling 773-327-5252....

[snip] Ask questions first, shoot later. A National Research Council committee that includes economists Joel Horowitz of Northwestern University and Steven Levitt of the University of Chicago has found that nobody really knows whether popular measures against gun violence do any good (December 16 National Academics press release). For instance, there’s no credible evidence that right-to-carry laws either decrease or increase violent crime, and almost no evidence that violence-prevention programs intended to steer children away from guns actually do so....