Just put fans everywhere and you’ll be fine. According to research conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, cockroaches avoid areas where there is “abundant air flow.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Great places to crawl. A recent press release tells us that “Cole Taylor Bank awarded a $100 savings bond to Sophia Lugo, Chicago, after she crawled across the finish line in first place at a recent ‘Baby Derby’ race”–where?...

Lightning strikes more frequently than weather records based on thunder indicate, according to the Illinois Water Survey. “Between 22 and 40 percent of lightning bolts are ‘silent’–not accompanied by thunder,” reports the Nature of Illinois (Winter 1989). “This could have adverse implications for businesses like nuclear power plants, which have had to base risk analyses on old, conservative reports.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Back for a third year and going strong....

VICTIMS Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » That’s both good and bad for Victims, written by another Afrikaaner, Antony Van Zyl. The play may well benefit from renewed interest in South Africa, displaced in the headlines these days by the turmoil in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. But though Victims is certainly powerful theater, unlike Gordimer’s writings, which explore the nuances of apartheid’s degradation, it’s all broad strokes....

Friday 26 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Chicago Park District Commissioner Rebecca Sive, one of Mayor Harold Washington’s earliest supporters, has a long history of involvement with progressive causes. As the Chicago-area rep for the New Israel Fund, she will talk tonight about NIF’s efforts to promote better relations between Jews and Arabs, and about the organization’s role in fighting for civil rights in Israel for everyone, including gays....

These masked dancers are Tarascan Indians taking part in one of the many annual festivals held in their southwestern Mexican state of Michoacan. They are dressed as viejitos, or respected elders. Their dance, which concerns the struggle between the viejitos, representing beauty and order, and the feos, representing ugliness and chaos, is a Christmastime ceremony that celebrates the initiation of the officers of the coming year’s festivals. Masks like these, and other ceremonial art, are included in the Scholl Museum of Folk Culture’s inaugural exhibition, “Fiestas of San Juan Nuevo,” running through March 4....

Pianist Charles Brown, one of the pioneers of the sophisticated, sweet west-coast blues style that emerged during World War II in California, made the smoky, romantic blues ballad–“Black Night,” “Merry Christmas Baby,” “Driftin’ Blues”–his forte. But dexterous subtleties of technique reveal his early classical training; one of his first public appearances was at a talent show in 1943 at LA’s Lincoln Theatre, where he got first place for his rendition of “Clair de Lune....

To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » One such point relates to the social/racial/ethnic composition of ACGLI. As was suggested in the article, many people have had a problem with what they see as the lopsided representation ACGLI provides a community as diverse as ours. Where there are gaps, and there are many, it is more likely inherent in the selection process imposed by City Hall than it is a problem caused by the community’s lack of interest or cooperation....

The very first film ever shot by the great American director Samuel Fuller was an amateur effort: as a U.S. army officer he filmed the liberation of a Nazi death camp in Czechoslovakia. French filmmaker Emil Weiss had the excellent idea of reviving this footage, getting Fuller to comment on it, and showing us various relevant locations in Europe today. Fuller’s commanding presence–as a speaker, thinker, and moral conscience–makes this an unforgettable and indelible experience....

The Illinois Department of Conservation (DOC) is spending $180,000 to study the eating habits of owls. Last week both the Tribune and the Sun-Times ran versions of an AP story out of Springfield that told about the project. Representative Ted Leverenz, a Maywood Democrat who is also chairman of the House Appropriations I Committee, declared, “Apparently the owl was wiser than we were”–a statement whose meaning I find rather obscure. His legislative aide said the chairman would like the money to be shifted into efforts to prevent poaching....

The peak of the nesting season has passed at Somme Woods, the forest preserve in Northbrook where I am helping with a survey of nesting birds. Mornings are quieter. The traffic noise no longer has to contend with hordes of male birds singing to maintain their territories. Now the songs come less often, and fewer species are singing. We are seeing more and more fledglings out of the nest, immediately recognizable by their stubby tails and awkward flight....

A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In light of this history, Goodman’s current 1988-’89 season closer, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, feels like a retreat from or even betrayal of the theater’s mission. A large, well-financed nonprofit house like Goodman should be committed to the most selective standards in its choice of material....

Until recently, Harley Budd’s big black 1979 Cadillac sat in front of his restaurant at Willow and Howe streets as if waiting for him to return and drive it maniacally through the side streets, never giving way, deliberately intimidating small foreign cars. Now only the Tap Root Pub sign remains. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The city was determined to tear down Budd’s restaurant, which he had bought in 1962 and which he claimed had been a gathering place for the neighborhood since 1862....

Once in a while, Loreta Corsetti likes to give names to the clothes she makes. There’s the Phantom of the Opera Dress, for example: a sleeveless, black, knee-length dress with fringe around the bottom, rhinestone buttons, and in the back, yards of black-and-white striped satin forming a sort of bustle like bunting at a political convention. Then there’s the Apple Dress, a narrow, black-and-white plaid wool jumper. At the neck, there’s some hand-crocheted lace, a houndstooth applique, and a red plastic apple the size of a golf ball....

It’s a big buck, full grown, antlers in velvet, and it turns to face the cop straight on. They always do that. Crippled deer know about eye contact. You can’t shoot me now. “What do I do now?” This car, the cop has decided, no matter what the driver says, is not going to be drivable. Another cop on the scene, that’s what he wants. Another cop could put a bullet into that deer, end its suffering....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » THE WARS OF THE ROSES Practically a festival unto itself. The English Shakespeare Company took seven of Shakespeare’s history plays and assembled them into a grand epic, encompassing a period of 100 years and the reigns of five kings. Stick around long enough and you’ll see three Henrys and two Richards–not to mention one fat Falstaff–duke it out for control of a kingdom....

It’s Gruesomely Graphic! Appallingly Violent! And Only $19.95! Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Most Chicago-area book dealers apparently bought the book weeks ago, as part of a mass order of winter offerings, with no clear sense of its bloodcurdling contents. Last week, veteran bookseller Stuart Brent professed total unfamiliarity with Ellis’s book, though Simon & Schuster Chicago sales rep Vicki Warthen said copies had been ordered for his high-toned Michigan Avenue shop....

Sandra Michels Adams is wearing a loose, chocolate brown halter dress in the manner of her idol, 1930s American designer Claire McCardell. Her feet are bare. The sharp edges of her russet hair fall against smooth, pale cheeks. Her glasses are tortoiseshell, her necklace and earrings clunky copper. She sits on a straight-backed couch in her study, surrounded by books with titles like Clothes Tell a Story and The Book of Beauty and Fascination, boxes of old Vogue magazines, rattan mannequins, and fringed scarves–the very picture of the fashionable and scholarly costume historian....

Jon Jost’s ninth feature focuses rather elliptically on the everyday lives of a group of friends in San Francisco–chiefly Claire (Barbara Hammes), who works in an architect’s office, two of her former lovers (Jon A. English and Nathaniel Dorsky), who are close friends, and a recent boyfriend (Jim Nisbet). Masterfully shot and for the most part very persuasively acted, mainly by nonprofessionals (the film’s use of locals is one reason it captures the San Francisco milieu so perfectly), Rembrandt Laughing is a good deal more ambitious than it might first appear....

When Judy and Jason Lai opened a Chinese restaurant on the northwest side, they had no plans to serve their own regional cuisine. “We opened Dragon Palace in December 1984,” Jason Lai says, “but we did not serve only Hakka food. We served mainly Cantonese and Szechuan dishes because Americans are more familiar with these.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Today the Dragon Palace is known primarily for its Hakkanese and Taiwanese cooking, and may be the only restaurant in Chicago–and probably the Midwest–that serves these cuisines....

THE DREAMER EXAMINES HIS PILLOW Tommy (David Atkinson) is an unshaven, slack-jawed wastrel of 27 who lounges around in rump-sprung jeans contemplating his self-portrait. Donna (Joan Jurige) is a similarly untidy young woman who wears crumpled cocktail dresses with slippers and no stockings. The play begins with Donna storming into Tommy’s flea-trap apartment. She’s mad at him for flirting with her 16-year-old sister and wants him to stop. She rages on for a while about Tommy’s slovenly surroundings, his lack of ambition and artistic talent, his cruelty at leaving her and hitting on her sister, and so on and so on....