Dear editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Judge Holt’s ruling cited the prosecution’s failure to enter victim Rocky Gamboa’s medical records into evidence. This omission left only Gamboa’s hearsay testimony that a doctor had told him his injuries were permanent. Thus, one of the aggravating factors necessary for a prison sentence was not proven up. Neither the Tribune, Sun-Times, or the Reader mentioned this....

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra will be joined by an A-list group of soloists and three choirs here in performing one of the largest works in the repertoire, Mahler’s Symphony no. 8. Deborah Voigt’s powerful voice has made her one of the reigning Wagnerian sopranos, and Stephanie Blythe’s mezzo is glorious. Conductor Christoph Eschenbach isn’t known for stunning Mahler interpretations, but the CSO is a great Mahler orchestra and can play around their leader if necessary....

To the editor: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The proposed parking garage is poorly planned, grossly out of scale with its surroundings, incompatible with the residential neighborhood, and an irresponsible waste of public resources for private development with no community input and no public benefit. The project has been misrepresented from the start, and the city’s planned development process used to circumvent normal zoning requirements to allow a combination of excessive height, bulk, and density not permitted anywhere in the 50th Ward....

2023 W. Division Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » When corporate litigator Paige Ormond adopted her cat two years ago, she says he was the ugliest one in the whole place–he smelled bad and was missing half his fur. But, she says, “I’m a sucker for the animal that nobody will take.” After about a year of visits to a vet and a dermatologist, she figured out what was wrong: Oscar had a food allergy....

“Estrogen Fest 2005: Changing the Rules!” runs through 6/5 at the Storefront Theater in Gallery 37 Center for the Arts, 66 E. Randolph. Presented by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs in conjunction with Prop Thtr, this annual showcase of women’s performance features artists in the fields of theater, spoken word, poetry, dance, and music. The festival consists of two alternating programs of short works. Program A, “History, Fantasy, and Myth,” runs through 6/4: Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 5 PM....

Ole Ole Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Ole Ole, a new nuevo Latino spot run by former Winner’s Sports Bar owner Gina Pavone, is a welcome addition to Andersonville. But if you’re seriously into music or wine you may have a few hurdles to get over before you can relax. On a recent visit my friend and I heard “Bamboleo” by the Gipsy Kings three times, and though there were only two wines offered by the glass, our server wasn’t sure what they were....

Flashpoint Academy Open House Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Turns out that was part of the strategy. “We’re focusing on digital technology,” says Paula Froehle, the school’s dean. “The idea is to direct people to the Web site.” Froehle, who gave up a tenured job at Columbia College, where she was associate dean of the film department, to go to Flashpoint in June, explains that it’s a brand-new entity–“a two-year, high-end, immersive learning institution” that offers a hands-on, collaborative approach....

A year ago attorney Kate O’Malley decided to combine her frustration with dating and her interest in theater. The result was this sketch improv/dating event, which she also produces. At the door, audience members get a little-black-book playbill and a dating questionnaire that requires mingling during the 30-minute intermission; the show’s first half is a series of vignettes about dating and the second consists of improvisations drawing on the questionnaire responses....

Todd Bailey, 27, a resident of the alternative space known as Camp Gay, designs electronics for toys by day. On his own time he’s invented a binary wristwatch called Concept = Bling. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Binary is typically represented by ones and zeros, but it’s really just a numbering system based on twos. Instead of one and zero, a person could represent binary with any set of opposites: on or off, true or false, up or down, etc....

The ghazal, a form of vocal music that originated in Persia before migrating to India in the 12th century, takes its name from an Arabic word meaning “to talk amorously with women.” More pointedly, Toronto-based singer and composer Kiran Ahluwalia calls the ghazal a “highly literate pickup line.” Born in India to Punjabi parents, she first learned the music growing up in Toronto in the 70s, later traveling to Hyderabad to study with ghazal master Vithal Rao....

If you’re not a habitue of hole-in-the-wall taquerias, you may never have encountered tacos al pastor, a staple of places serving humble Mexican fare. They’re made of meat cut from a rotating vertical cone—cooked by a central heating element—in the style of Greek gyros or Middle Eastern shawarma, sometimes crowned with a hunk of pineapple or onion. The meat’s sliced rather than ground, and unlike shawarma, it’s usually pork, marinated in vinegar, spices, and orange red achiote....

Confronted with Pere Ubu, rock-encyclopedia-style career narrative proves insufficient–as do the nerves of most mortals. Oh, it may be possible to face David Thomas alone, at least when he’s doing something relatively mundane–say, singing “Drunken Sailor” with all the authentic grotesquerie of a Melville hallucination on the latest Hal Willner theme anthology, Rogue’s Gallery. But with the entire Ubu apparatus behind him, he’s as ominous and paranoia-inspiring as the Red menace circa 1952....

Joining broad comic antics with breezy wit and class commentary, 18th-century French dramatist Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux delivers a lively farce. Reverie Theatre Company plays the humor to the hilt under Chris Pomeroy’s direction, performing Stephen Wadsworth’s translation and adaptation full blast, taking their characters to extremes without overdoing it. Especially good are the four leads, who bring intense feeling to the script’s romances: Silvia and her maid trade places just before Silvia’s husband-to-be, Dorante, and his valet arrive....

Recently I found an article on the Web stating that the Children’s Crusade is most likely fiction, and is regarded as an actual event simply because everyone “knows” it happened. Personally I find this theory amazingly plausible. However, it seemed best to ask for a second opinion. –Chris Williams, via e-mail Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Chalk this one up to the generation gap, medieval version....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » This Heat was nominally a rock trio, but they paid little heed to the conventions of the genre. Despite how influential they were, the band’s scant recordings have regularly gone in and out of print. That’s part of what made the release of Out of Cold Storage earlier this year such an event: an essential box set containing all of the group’s music....

The large orange X on the sidewalk half a block from my apartment marks the spot where my dog nearly died three months ago. It was the first Sunday in March, about eight o’clock in the evening. It had rained all day. I was walking Faustus, a rescued 45-pound chow mix, down Addison just east of Broadway, the same block we’d walked twice a day for close to four years. We were almost home, but as we passed a street lamp his back legs suddenly gave out....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The Park Grill, Park Cafe, and concession stands in Millennium Park feature “regional delicacies” as part of the Great Performers of Illinois Festival this Friday through Sunday. Among the offerings at the Park Grill: chilled corn soup with creme fraiche and American caviar, pork with a horseradish lime vinaigrette, soybean and watercress salad with pecorino and orange zest, and sweet corn flan, as well as wine from local wineries....

Puerto Rican reggaeton star Daddy Yankee made his name weaving gangsta iconography into street-smart Spanish raps, and he’s rarely strayed far from that formula. On the recent El Cartel: The Big Boss (El Cartel/Interscope), though, he does his best to reach across the language barrier. Yankee’s famous enough at this point to attract major American producers like Scott Storch and Will.i.am, and he mixes things up with more bilingual rhymes and more cameos by hip-hop and R & B stars....

Porno Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » This two-act opens with the screenwriter-director, Ernie, rehearsing a cast of five variously horny, awkward, brain-dead, and overeager performers in a paneled, shag-carpeted basement. He hopes that his version of the great love story of Dido and Aeneas, filtered through Marlowe’s 1594 play, will be his masterpiece. In Graney’s lyrical, childlike blank verse, Ernie calls the tale “that magical something hoo humdingy / That’s beyond explanation....

Local troupes are joined by national and international ensembles in this annual showcase of Latino theater, which runs 8/4-8/20. Coordinated by Henry Godinez, the fest features staged readings (all in English) and performances and discussions in both Spanish and English, as noted below. All events take place at the Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn, 312-443-3800. Following is the schedule through 8/10; a complete schedule is available at www.chicagoreader.com. Best of Chicago voting is live now....