Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » As I’ve written before, White Sox general manager Kenny Williams seems content to take another victory lap with his 2005 championship team — in 2008, mind you. But his deal of starter Jon Garland for shortstop Orlando Cabrera means the Sox will field a better team — four out of five days, anyway. For that reason, it’s always been an old baseball saw that you don’t trade an everyday position player for a pitcher, and the illustrations of that being wrong are few and far between (although the Detroit Tigers trading Howard Johnson for ace reliever and soon-to-be 1984 MVP Willie Hernandez comes quickly to mind)....

Writing remains the House Theatre of Chicago’s weak suit. Time-travel stories are bound to get confusing, but the narrative of this new play by Chris Mathews and Jake Minton is slight and muddled from the get-go. Despite moments of genuine charm and wit, by the second act it’s disintegrated so completely you’re wondering what its dramatic “conflict” even was, and whenever it delves into the heavy stuff–suicide, grief–it’s just unconvincing. But stagecraft and exuberance have always been the House’s selling points, and this show’s flat-out spectacular special effects represent one more leap forward....

Bedspreads and tablecloths your grandmother might have owned are embroidered with nudes, some in sexual positions, in Orly Cogan’s show at Carl Hammer. The exhibit is provocative–sort of grannies gone wild–with Cogan using her own family and their relationships to get at universal truths. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Her colorful figures are made with running stitches–they’re like sketches that become part of the original prints and patterns, like contingent thoughts....

Like the man who composed it, Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms is a work of great contrasts. Commissioned in 1930 by Serge Koussevitzky to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, it’s not a traditional symphony but a large work for orchestra and chorus in three movements, usually performed with almost no pause. Stravinsky tried to avoid expressing personal emotion, yet this work, with its wonderful textures and sonorities, is profoundly moving....

One occupational hazard of my job is occasionally getting weird shit in the mail. Some weird shit I like, like the lady who drew pictures on manila sales tags with cryptic messages like “Can I help you? You missed a good moment when I walked down to the lake.” Some of it confuses and disturbs me, like the guy who sent a magnet showing old women talking about penises and a birthday card with cartoon lesbians excited about a giant dildo–and it was nowhere near my birthday....

Star Wars: Episode III–Revenge of the Sith What I wouldn’t give to see President Bush’s expression when Revenge of the Sith screens at the White House and the freshly annointed Darth Vader, hoping to seduce Obi-Wan Kenobi to the dark side, declares, “If you’re not with me, then you’re my enemy!” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The overt reference to contemporary politics may seem strange, but for years Lucas has been trying to live down the impression that he’s a militarist or, even worse, a closet fascist....

More than 30 years ago Tom Wolfe and a pride of fellow literary lions in the making sparked a revolution in nonfiction writing by tossing out old rules about objectivity, authorship, fact, and fiction. Now, in The New New Journalism: Conversations on Craft With America’s Best Nonfiction Writers, Robert Boynton, head of the magazine journalism program at NYU, makes the case that a contemporary group of journalists is at the forefront of an equally important revolution in long-form narrative reporting....

I figured a life coach must be a cross between a fortune-teller and a personal trainer: someone who tells you what your future holds while whipping your ass into shape so you’ll look good when you get there. But last Tuesday afternoon Dr. Joe Siegler, founder of the Full Life(R) coaching method, which “offers the chance of empowerment while celebrating progress as goals are achieved,” showed me that it’s so much more than that: life coaching is therapy without the crying....

I’m a 25-year-old bi female with a bi male partner the same age. My boyfriend likes stuff up his butt–really likes it. Not being someone who enjoys anal myself, I’m continually shocked by his ability and willingness to, uh, take on new challenges in this department. After a few months of playing with plugs and vibrators, I asked him if he would be up for pegging. He responded enthusiastically, so I ran out and bought a strap-on harness and a silicone cock....

White hipster ass has been a hot commodity for the past couple years–just think of all the dance-oriented rock bands competing to get it moving. Last year D.C. avant-rock group El Guapo rebooted itself in the funkier form of SUPERSYSTEM, just as the market for guitar-and-drum-machine dance punk reached its saturation point, and Always Never Again (Touch and Go) got lost in the crush when it came out in April. Retro-styled PiL-heads still pull more heat in the press, but Supersystem fucks with dancehall, electro, and Ethiopiques funk in ways that are more compelling to both the brain and the booty....

Very early on a Monday morning in September, Reuben Johnson-Bey left his home in Washington Heights to pick up the buffalo fish. As he’s done nearly every September for the last 50 years, he drove north through the south side hunting for deals. He spotted a sale at Fish #1 on Stony Island. “If you see a bargain, capitalize on it,” he likes to say. He bought 30 pounds, taking his time to look for a razorback variety that’s pulled from the Mississippi down in Arkansas and piling them into coolers....

When a friend I’ll call Michelle moved to LA last September her landlord stiffed her for the $1,875 security deposit. She and her husband sent him an e-mail and left messages on his answering machine, but he didn’t respond. When they asked their old next-door neighbor to talk to him he said he’d sent the check. “You’re not one of these people on the form?” she said. Best of Chicago voting is live now....

Last year Logan Square got a new neighborhood library. Last month it unexpectedly got another one, on the sidewalk around the corner from Lula Cafe. It’s small, unfunded, and self-maintaining–in fact, it doesn’t have any employees at all. It’s easy to miss it altogether, but if you look again at what appears to be an old newspaper honor box, you’ll see the words on its side, painted in bright green over white puffy clouds: free books!...

What the hell is wrong with straight people? I looked at Terry and made my “am I allowed to answer this question truthfully?” face. He nodded and made his “if you must” face. When we were done our neighbor’s eyes widened and she leaned in and grabbed my arm. The double standard relentlessly promoted by opponents of gay marriage is that marriage is about having children. Since gays and lesbians can’t have their own biological children, opponents argue, we shouldn’t be allowed to marry....

Jeffery Carlisle estimates that during peak times 25 people per hour walk by his Edgewater chiropractic and acupuncture clinic. “Of course, you always look for them limping,” he says. Nova Pain Management has been open for only a little more than a month, and he needs the business. Carlisle usually spends at least some of each Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday outside his office, on Broadway south of Catalpa, handing out brochures, business cards, key chains–and free consultations....

If college-age fans of Aloha were to sit their middle-aged parents down and make them listen to the group’s new Some Echoes (Polyvinyl), I have a feeling the kids might start finding Genesis CDs slipped into their care packages of tube socks and instant coffee. Aloha’s fourth full-length is a constellation of vintage progressive rock reference points: “Your Eyes” has a programmatic, Lamb Lies Down on Broadway feel that’s noticeably distinct from the Duke-era pop cruise of “Weekend....

Presented as part of the Chicago Humanities Festival, whose theme this year is “The Climate of Concern,” this series runs 10/29-11/8 at Facets Cinematheque, 1517 W. Fullerton. Tickets are $9; for more information call 773-281-4114 or visit facets.org. Following are screenings through 11/1; for a complete schedule visit chicagoreader.com. The Highwater Trilogy Bill Morrison (Decasia), who creates art films from deteriorated celluloid stock, created this 31-minute piece from footage of natural disasters....

The last time I saw work incorporating an artist’s blood, he had AIDS and was using blood to make a statement. But aside from its clinical aspect, Nina Leo’s Trace 1 doesn’t suggest illness. For this installation she’s taken a sample of her blood each day since July 7, 2003, and placed it on a microscope slide, then dated it. Though the full version includes all the slides, only a portion of them are on the walls at Lobby; Trace 1a, also on display, consists of slides from the same series but stacked so they can’t be viewed individually....

As soloists, double reedist Kyle Bruckmann and trumpeter Ernst Karel are versatile and fluent, but as the electroacoustic duo EKG their sound world is scrupulously bounded. Using analog electronics, they generate Geiger-counter blips, shortwave crackles, and lonesome feedback whistles. Their horns, typically routed through effects or amplified so that an intake of breath sounds like a gale-force wind, fit right in; it’s a bit of a shock when Karel blows a lovely blue phrase at the beginning of “Days,” a piece from their new CD, No Sign (Sedimental)....

Gwenda Jay/Addington’s “Good Vibrations” show of California artists includes three engaging 2003 works by Eleanor Coppola, wife of movie director Francis Ford Coppola, who’s been showing her art for three decades. For each she gathered olive branches, removed some leaves, twisted the branches, and attached them to large sheets of white paper. “I edit the branches and leaves to create something similar to a drawing,” she says, and their twists and bends do have a fine drawing’s rhythmic elegance....