Playwright Charles L. Mee, darling of the American quasi avant-garde, delivers his usual pretentious noodlings in this aimless 2001 piece, which Robert Rauschenberg called a “parody of cliches of my thinking.” He was being generous. If you believe the critics, Mee’s 43 unrelated scenes–a homeless person directs an imaginary action movie, a scientist marvels at the basics of relativity, a guy dives repeatedly into a pile of laundry, everyone square-dances–explore the American ideals embodied in Rauschenberg’s exquisitely chaotic works....

The only themed programming among Taste of Chicago’s music offerings, the Country Music Festival returns with good news and bad. The bad news is that many of the top-billed acts are contemporary country radio staples–Sunday’s headliners in particular will likely deliver hours of overcooked, rock-driven ballads and stompers. But the fest’s organizers have shown some interest in mixing things up: Saturday’s lineup emphasizes various strains of bluegrass music, while Sunday’s daytime programming is exclusively devoted to Illinois talent–though most of the acts seem likely to finish out their careers without leaving the state....

Chris Dorland’s Human Potential is a moving tribute to and critique of modernism’s utopian dreams. A circular balcony with a few spectators hangs above a vast city whose circular shape suggests our planet. The city’s hub-and-spokes plan and the boats regularly spaced in the river suggest a desire for perfection; but since the city is obviously a miniature model, it becomes a grandiose unrealized fantasy, and Dorland’s fuzzy-edged style turns the entire scene into a subjective dream....

Most burlesque shows are all about beautiful women dancing seductively in skimpy outfits. There’s no message, and the musical interludes need only maintain audience interest. Flirt has all this down cold. Attractive, appropriately aloof dancers perform Eddy Ocampo’s tantalizing choreography, showing off fit bodies as they strut and shimmy in an array of lingerie, and singer Dante’s first-act songs are slyly funny and sensual, compensating for her too languid second-act number....

Betsy Waffle vividly remembers the chain-link fence at Angel Guardian Orphanage, the Rogers Park institution where she spent her childhood from the age of 12 on. Six feet tall and covered with high bushes, it divided the playground, separating the boys from the girls. “My brother Tom lived on the other side,” she says. “After dinner, when everyone would go out to play, I’d go to the top of the slide to look for him....

“Whatever you write,” says Peter Guralnick, “whether it’s a short story, novel, biography, or liner notes, if you don’t end up somewhere other than where you started out, you haven’t done your job.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In the years that followed, he wrote liner notes for various Cooke reissues (including a 1994 box set of songs released by the singer’s SAR label) and interviewed intimates like Cooke protege Bobby Womack and Cooke’s younger brother, L....

The day JoAnne Powers picked up her first saxophone, she decided to test it out in front of a strip mall; within 20 minutes she’d made two dollars, and five months later she was supporting herself as a free-jazz busker on the streets of Madison. Over time she’s developed a massive tone and enormous stamina, inspired partly by the example of free-jazz sax icon Peter Brotzmann, but also by her need to be heard over wind, traffic, and the chatter of passersby....

Kali Z. Fasteau first got noticed in the mid-70s while working with her husband, Chicago-born bassist Donald Rafael Garrett (who died in 1989), but she’s since made a name for herself on her own. Though primarily a saxophonist, she plays piano, cello, percussion, and various Asian instruments too–and also runs Flying Note, the label that’s just released her 12th album, People of the Ninth. That’s “Ninth” as in Ninth Ward: recorded in September 2005, the disc memorializes the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and features Kidd Jordan, the patriarchal New Orleans free-jazz saxist....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “It is unprecedented, and to date unheralded by the mainstream media. But it is happening. It is sparking, sputtering, glowing and growing like a prairie fire. There is a growing movement among conservative and progressive Christians alike to boycott Tyndale House, the Christian publishing house that publishes the Living Bible and Tim LaHaye’s Left Behind novels and also licenses the controversial videogame Left Behind: Eternal Forces, along with any chain stores or megachurches that plan to distribute the game....

“I’ve always found it impossible to function in any kind of society,” says Eric Goulden. “I feel like something that’s come here from outer space and got sucked in.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Now 51, Goulden will be in Chicago this weekend for an afternoon gig at the Hideout, his first appearance here since 1980. These days he’s playing solo, switching between acoustic and electric guitars and mixing songs from throughout his career with salty stories from his 2003 autobiography....

Starting back in 2001 this electro-pop trio from the tiny hamlet of Shutesbury, Massachusetts, released three EPs of pleasant but unremarkable sequencer-informed indie rock. Then they moved to Brooklyn, signed to the electronica label Ghostly International, and earlier this year put out the outstanding five-song City vs Country EP–an eminently likable blend of percolating synths, catchy vocal melodies, chronographic guitar strumming, and slamming live drums. The songs are essentially pop rock, but they’re structured like club tracks, which lets the band get a lot of extra mileage out of its material: rather than leap from verse to chorus, they flow from one to the other in a series of small additive or subtractive steps....

Griffin Theatre Company’s first musical takes its cue from the “Once Upon a Mattress” school of fairy-tale deconstruction, adapting Jane Yolen’s kids’ book about a miserable princess, a good-hearted plain Jane, and a grumpy fairy godmother. Librettist William Massolia and lyricist-composer George Howe offer a sprightly reworking, and though the message–inner beauty is what counts–isn’t groundbreaking, the ensemble has a ball with the loopy material. Colleen McSherry is suitably hateful as the snooty princess, Jill Hames is a brassy godmother, and Matthew Lon Walker’s Toad (wearing Bill Morey’s clever goggle-eyed, paunch-bellied costume) narrates with aplomb....

Camp Nimrod for Girls Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Martha Watterson covers all the possibilities in her “Horse gets girl, horse loses girl, horse gets girl back” musical Camp Nimrod for Girls, now in its sprightly world premiere at Live Bait. Watterson–who attended a riding camp named Nimrod in her youth–is a first-time playwright, and her book gets a strong assist from Mary Scruggs and Live Bait artistic director Sharon Evans....

The inaugural offering by Drury Lane Theatre Water Tower Place strikes a savvy balance between naughty and nice. The 2000 musical version of the 1997 British sleeper comedy about unemployed steelworkers stripping down in order to beef up their finances and confidence boasts just enough contemporary panache to set it apart from the usual fare at Drury Lane Oakbrook. At the same time, the new venue’s plush crimson seats, big-ass crystal chandeliers, and gilded columns convey a comforting sense of theatrical luxury....

Film Capital of the Week Plenty of what the industry thinks we should be interested in was on display a month ago at the 30th Toronto International Film Festival. More than ever before the industry reps casually took over the city as they previewed their latest “indie” and “art”–as opposed to mainstream–product. Screenings this year are being held through October 20. Many directors and a few actors are scheduled to appear at screenings of their films....

A recent move has brought me to a comfy apartment building in friendly Medford, Massachusetts, complete with washer and dryer hookup. However, while having such a hookup is helpful, it’s much more practical to have a working hookup, which alas I do not (dirty scamming realtors are to blame). So I’m left with a dilemma: (a) walk up the street to the laundromat; (b) drive home to mum and dad (3....

Last night someone mentioned that once you are inside a fridge and have closed the door, it is impossible to open the door from the inside. Apparently this has to do with the pressure difference or some such nonsense. To me, it looks like one commits this impossibility every time the fridge door is opened from the outside. So, Cecil, before I empty the salad from my fridge and venture inside myself, can you tell me if I’ll make it out alive or if my chilled corpse will disturb those looking for a glass of milk?...

Friday 13 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » MERCURY REV The Doves headline this show, but Mercury Rev is going to be the big deal for some fans–they’re touring the U.S. for the first time in four years. This upstate New York band has flatlined more often than a Star Trek redshirt, but keeps coming back in a new and slightly refined form. The new The Secret Migration (V2) is an elaborate swirl of dreamy psych-pop crooning and suggestion that’s both sad and seductive....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » This change “was reflected in the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Shia revival and religious strife in postwar [sic] Iraq, and Hamas’s recent victory in Palestine. But not all the thunderbolts have been hurled by Allah. The struggle against apartheid in South Africa in the 1980s and early 1990s was strengthened by prominent Christian leaders such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu....

Friday 1/30 – Thursday 2/5 31 SATURDAY Hot on the heels of the fourth World Social Forum, the annual international meeting of anti-globalization activists that concluded January 21 in Bombay, the first Chicago Social Forum will bring together activists from around the city for a day of more than 40 discussions and workshops. Subjects range from affordable housing to the war in Iraq, and scheduled speakers include Carl Davidson (cofounder of Chicagoans Against War and Injustice), Reverend Calvin Morris (executive director of the Community Renewal Society), and University of Chicago sociologist Saskia Sassen....