Exit Squires Icy! Well, what did anyone expect. Jim Squires couldn’t stand Madigan and he’d let Madigan and everybody else know it. Actually, in his eight and a half years as editor, Squires hardly got along with anybody in the Tower hierarchy, save for Stanton Cook, CEO of the parent Tribune Company and nominal publisher of the Tribune, and Charles Brumback, who preceded Madigan as president of the Tribune. Of course, those were the two that counted....

Calling Fritz Hauser a drummer is like describing a hologram as “a snapshot.” Technically correct, it quite misses the point. A master colorist, this Swiss percussion virtuoso layers not just rhythms but sounds, from the distant rumblings of soft-pedaled dual bass drums to the wildly expressive sparkle of widely tuned cymbals; a superlative composer, he uses his drum kit as both desk and orchestra, the place where his carefully structured pieces are both conceived and fully executed....

It was Mark Roth’s exasperation with Kerouac’s On the Road that set him off on his first journey. He put the book down after 70 pages–and got on a bus. What was the point of reading about other people’s adventures, he thought, when he could have his own? So he set off in 1984 to go see a Chagall exhibit in Philadelphia. What he found when he got there was the Beach Boys giving an Independence Day concert on the steps of the museum underneath the “Rocky” statue....

THE COLD EYE (MY DARLING, BE CAREFUL) With Kim Ginsburg, George Deem, Powers Boothe, Saskia Noordhoek-Hegt, Ella Troyano, James Barth, Maggie Grynastyl, and Valda Setterfield. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The more singular view of The Cold Eye makes us immediately aware of how arbitrary the film image is. As Cathy’s attention wanders during a conversation, the image may shift from the face of her friend to a seemingly random part of the room–a book, a part of the floor....

In Chicago, even-numbered years bring the odd productions from around the world to town. At least they have since 1986, when Jane Nicholl Sahlins, Bernard Sahlins, and Pam Marsden first launched this sometimes controversial, visionary biennial event. When the festival was founded, Chicago was routinely omitted from major national theater tours, whose producers gauged that the attentions of Windy City audiences were preempted by local shows. Although that has changed in the past year, the festival is still Chicago’s only affirmation that there’s more to French, British, and Canadian theater, say, than Les Miserables, Phantom of the Opera, and Aspects of Love....

“I’m a cynical person,” says filmmaker Denis Mueller, “but it was much worse than I thought.” He learned about the systematic program of disinformation and repression launched against radical black groups in the late 1960s in the process of making a film. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The term “black nationalist” should not be taken too literally here. By this time the FBI had already harassed Martin Luther King Jr....

The flag! We’ve got to act quick if we’re going to save it. Please, please, read this. A constitutional amendment? Does anybody realize how long it takes to get an amendment through? Our forefathers, those guys in the powdered wigs and funny hats, what did they know about urgency? An amendment? First the House. Then the Senate. Then the states. It takes three quarters of just about everybody, maybe even the governors....

To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Instead of interviewing dissident Teamsters in Chicago, he chose to list the Italianate names of many Teamster leaders and their a/k/a nicknames, and wondered aloud if Ron Carey had one. The names were from a federal indictment which never went to trial. The court-supervised and directed election which resulted in Carey’s win was part of the out-of-court settlement by which the Teamsters avoided yet another racketeering trial....

Just clean will be enough, thank you. Advance publicity for Procter & Gamble’s “1990 Black Family Reunion Celebration”: “Attendees will marvel at the vibrant colors of the portable toilets–hot pink, peach and seafoam green.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » There are 935 partners in Chicago’s seven biggest law firms–Sidley & Austin; Mayer, Brown & Platt; Katten Muchin & Zavis; McDermott, Will & Emery; Kirkland & Ellis; Winston & Strawn; and Jenner & Block–and of that total one is Asian, two are Hispanic, four are black, and 928 are white....

Opponents call it the “blank check amendment.” Proponents say the proposed amendment to Section 1 of Article X of the Illinois Constitution–a change generally known as the Education Amendment–will make school funding fairer, by forcing the state to pick up at least 51 percent of the tab instead of making local property owners foot virtually the entire bill. They claim it will improve the quality of education in Illinois, where funding for education, they say, has lagged badly behind other states’....

Henry II dies in a quizzical jump cut, Arletty’s voice is run backward to suggest the speech of an Abyssinian snake princess, and writer-director Sacha Guitry plays several parts (including Francis I and himself telling the film’s story to his wife). It’s often been said that you have to know French to fully appreciate Guitry’s cleverness and genius (much as you have to know English to get the full measure of Preston Sturges)....

AMERICAN BALLET THEATRE The first movement, an eruption of vibrant male energy, establishes the tone and texture of the entire work. In Sinfonietta, musical and choreographic phrases are perfectly synchronous but independent in mood, emotion, and climax. Seven men hurtle through space with unremitting force–leaping over and over with no preparations, no transitions, no accents, very few steps. We see the same movements doubled and redoubled: no dancer is ever alone on the stage for more than a moment; the ensemble is all....

EROTICA: LITTLE BIRDS Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In a 1976 preface to one of her collections of erotica, Nin recounts, “I realized that for centuries we had had only one model for this literary genre–the writing of men. I was already conscious of a difference between the masculine and feminine treatment of sexual experience. I knew that there was a great disparity between Henry Miller’s explicitness and my ambiguities–between his humorous, Rabelaisian view of sex and my poetic descriptions of sexual relationships....

They’re a couple of eccentrics who flirt with disaster instead of girls. Who’ll yank you and tell you, hustle you and laugh because you’re the one paying for their fun. Their magic is truth and lies, fact and fiction, image and illusion. And interviews are just another stage for deceit. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » We did this thing with the Asparagus Valley Cultural Society....

BILLY BATHGATE With Dustin Hoffman, Nicole Kidman, Loren Dean, Steven Hill, and Bruce Willis. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Billy Bathgate, Benton’s latest film, isn’t a project he originated. But he was under contract at Disney, and it’s their style to use either inexperienced directors or directors who haven’t had a commercial hit in a while. And Benton is a perfect example of someone who functions within a studio system....

POSTCARD FROM MOROCCO Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Don’t go running to your regular opera reference books for information about Postcard From Morocco. Most of them stop sometime shortly after World War II, and this work didn’t hit the boards till 1971. It is supposedly set in a train station in Morocco in 1914, but the setting is unimportant and really provides nothing more than a catchy title....

A straightforward folk song like “Anchorage” might lead one to think that an evening with Michelle Shocked would be quiet and tasteful. But “Anchorage” isn’t straightforward: it’s a complex, brutal, defiant, and ultimately uplifting triumph of a song, and while, yes, its singer and composer is a folksinger, she’s also something of an anarchist. (Her new record, Short Sharp Shocked, includes both the beautiful “Anchorage” and a scary punk number called “Fogtown,” which doesn’t appear on the label....

In October 1989, photographer Nuccio DiNuzzo was diagnosed with chronic leukemia. Doctors offered two choices: DiNuzzo could continue treatment with drugs, which might add five years to his life, or he could pursue a bone marrow transplant in an attempt to rid his body of the cancerous cells. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Knowing he might never leave the hospital, DiNuzzo was determined to record the ordeal for posterity and peace of mind....

When word first broke three years ago that the state was going to build the White Sox a new stadium, Pat and Pudi (pronounced “Puddy”) Senese cheered. Never once did they imagine the project meant trouble for them. “We’re not looking for money; we don’t think the taxpayers should subsidize our bar,” says Pudi Senese. “We only want the state to rent us two lots across the street from the park, like we were promised....

In the climate of today’s Catholic church, hell hath no fury like a family accusing a priest of sexually abusing their child. Usually the fury is expressed through civil litigation, and the cases can be exceedingly bitter, pitting Catholics against the institution of their faith. Since 1985, more than 200 American priests and brothers have been reported for molesting minors, in most cases boys–an average of one case every ten days....