To the editors, Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » To all concerned, I really enjoyed parts of the article, and I’m glad that you chose to write about Trax in the Reader. Some of the great tongue-in-cheek-styled comments about things like the poor quality vinyl on early releases was accurate, and your graphic description about the kid playing with a record in a sandbox made me laugh like hell!...

Ky Dickens remembers watching Freaky Friday as a seven-year-old in Hinsdale and praying to God that one day she’d find herself in the body of a boy, just long enough to kiss a girl. At 13 she got obsessed with the movie Fried Green Tomatoes, watching Idgie and Ruth’s romance unfold almost daily. Dickens didn’t come from a very religious family–her father is agnostic; her mother took them to a local Lutheran church only on holidays–but she was still scared to tell them she was lesbian....

Fifteen minutes of improv follow an hour of sketches in this iSalsation! production, whose message can be reduced to “How the Gringos Stole Texas,” also a heavy-handed bedtime story enacted in one scene. The diminutive Eva Rios, whose energy is inversely proportional to her stature, and Esteban Andres Cruz, who’s often cross-eyed and cross-dressed, anchor the cast; Cruz sparkles in the show’s best bit, a musicalization of Scarface. The nine writer-performers represent a refreshing range of shapes and sizes but are myopically preoccupied with exposing ethnic stereotypes: Latin lovers, labor workers, Che Guevara (here a stand-up)....

Mayslake Hall provides an appropriately posh setting for Oscar Wilde’s comedy about the tribulations of 19th-century England’s upper crust. When two bachelors take the same alter ego named Ernest–one to avoid responsibility (“Ernest did it!”), the other to trick a young woman–the resulting misunderstandings make for amusing farce and for plenty of Wilde’s catty observations (“Women will call each other ‘Sister’ only after they have called each other many other things first”)....

In this hapless comedy by the new Freshwater Theater Company, writer-director Adam Hummel tries to send up the cliches of romantic comedy while lazily using them. The protagonist, Jack, isn’t defined by anything but cinephilia. A video store clerk who lives with his parents, he’s advised by his whacked-out shrink to overcome the stasis in his life by behaving as if he were the leading man in his own movie. True to cinematic tradition, the schlub somehow gets hot if vapid chicks to fall for him....

Produced for the BBC in 2004, Adam Curtis’s three-hour polemical essay about the conceptually nonsensical but mythically potent “war on terror” is the most informative and stimulating film treatment of the subject to date. Curtis begins with the collapse of liberal idealism, charts the parallel development of radical Islamism (starting with Egyptian author Sayyid Qutp) and American neoconservatism (starting with Leo Strauss), and argues that Osama bin Laden encourages the lies and hype of Bush and Blair....

As public support for the Bush administration’s invasion and occupation of Iraq continues to dwindle, there’s certainly no shortage of published critiques of the enterprise. But Thomas Ricks’s sober assessment Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (Penguin) stands out not only for its panoramic sweep but also for the author’s willingness to criticize officers and troops in the field as much as politicians in Washington. Ricks, a senior Pentagon correspondent for the Washington Post, apparently knows plenty of angry people in the U....

Paul Dana was always more than my dear friend–he was a real-life literary figure. When you spent time with him, it didn’t matter what you were actually doing–being typical college kids biking drunk around Evanston in search of pizza, driving to Milwaukee to go bowling, sitting on the couch debating environmental policy–because Paul had a way of observing people and telling stories, sometimes as they were happening, that made routine events feel like chapters in a novel....

If you go to your share of rock shows, you’ve probably seen Dan Urban do the dance that’s made him one of the most recognizable fixtures on the Chicago music scene. He pogos buoyantly right at the edge of the stage, probably wearing a headband, possibly not wearing pants. You might know his nickname, Dan the Fan–and if you’re like me, you’ll be surprised to learn he turned 50 last Saturday....

“It’s hard at first to start ripping and drawing and painting in a book,” says Oak Park artist Polly Smith. “But once you get past that first rip, it’s easy.” Since she began incorporating text, photos, paintings, and collages into the pages of existing tomes–mostly used hardbacks–two years ago, she’s completed about 100 “altered” books. “It’s a wonderful way to take things that aren’t being used and turn them into something people can look at and enjoy,” she says....

Can This Eyesore Be Saved? Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Morton, however, hasn’t given up. He’s formed an organization, Citizens for the Adelphi Theater, launched a Web site (adelphitheater.org), and collected more than 1,000 signatures, many from folks too shy to include a last name or address. Last week, Morton says, Citizens for the Adelphi “actually had the opportunity to meet with Mayor Daley” to plead their case....

“When my kindergarten teacher asked me what my father did I said, ‘He puts monkeys into refrigerators with wires in their heads,’” says Mark Adkins. “My teacher later told my father, ‘Mark has a very vivid imagination,’ and my father replied, ‘That’s pretty much what I do.’” His memories of his psychologist father showing him the monkeys he was experimenting on as well as brain diagrams helped inspire his ten untitled drawings at Gescheidle....

If a guy in suspenders with a waxed mustache playing upright piano isn’t your idea of compelling silent-movie accompaniment, the original scores of the Devil Music Ensemble might be more your speed. The group’s three core musicians–Brendon Wood (guitars, lap steel, synth), Jonah Rapino (electric violin, vibraphone, synth), and Tim Nylander (drums and percussion)–met in Boston in 1999, and since then they’ve composed and performed sound tracks for The Cabinet of Dr....

In the PR for 20/20 (ABB/Capitol), MC and producer Evidence says the Dilated Peoples approached the new album like they were making a bunch of 12-inches: “We weren’t worried about how it was going to connect and if we had two love songs and one party song,” he explains. Thank the Lord. Given that the group broke out on the strength of classic singles like “Work the Angles,” they ought to be thinking like that about every full-length they make....

I always assumed Kraftwerk’s celebrations of the union of man and machine were supposed to be dystopian: pairing the line “We are the robots” with the Russian phrases for “I’m your slave” and “I’m your worker” seemed like a pretty clear statement. But after a 1991 remix album, core members Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider fell silent for years, disappearing into an obsession with cross-country cycling–and when they finally did release another full-length in 2003, it was hardly a glimpse into a soulless mechanized future....

“We live in an increasingly stupid and narcissistic culture, so good writing that turns a critical eye on the city and world around us will continue to find a smaller and smaller audience.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » It would be incorrect to assume that this particular staffing change was made hastily or without exploring other options. But needless to say, we’ve gotten some heat for our decision....

This lovely little show is like a Shakespeare comedy set to Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sheherazade, full of wise and generous leaders, beautiful young couples, comic relief, and easily averted trouble. Or perhaps it’s a counter to The Merchant of Venice, since the wrath of Jew haters is turned away by a soft answer and a Jew’s daughter clings to her father rather than seeking to escape from him to Christianity. In any case, the Chicago Festival of the Arts’ debut production–Paul D’Andrea’s adaptation of Gotthold Lessing’s 18th-century play about the Crusades, set in Jerusalem during the 12th-century reign of the tolerant sultan Saladin–is the best Christmas show you’re likely to see this year, full of peace on earth and goodwill toward everyone....

“I’m going to say a horrible word,” warns UIC architecture professor Roberta Feldman. “Trailer trash. We link it with people we consider uprooted and mobile.” Housing built in a factory doesn’t exclusively mean double-wides, and it may offer an affordable alternative to the usual–and more expensive–practice of building homes from scratch on-site. But it’s hard for many people to get comfortable with a type of housing they usually encounter only in jokes....

I’m a 26-year-old lesbian in a relationship with a 21-year-old. We’ve been together for five years. She’s a brilliant student with a bright future. I love her, but I feel that we need to part. OK, GFBG, if she’s really that brilliant an undergrad, then your girlfriend can figure out how to take care of herself. A little fiscal misery, like a little barely legal lesbian action, is a cherished part of the college experience–and putting your own ass through college can be every bit as educational as those other opportunities she’s earned through her hard work....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “Fifty aldermen sitting in the City Council are hos. I want to change that culture. I don’t want to be one of them. I don’t want to be sitting in the City Council and have someone call me ho.” Unsuccessful 50th Ward aldermanic challenger Salman Aftab, speaking at a candidate’s forum during last winter’s campaign. “Alderman Schulter has always been concerned about the small businesses in his ward....