When the northbound 36 Broadway bus stopped at Addison, he stood outside the back door. He looked at the closed door. He looked toward the front end of the bus, where a short line of people were shuffling on. It must have seemed a long way off. He held up his dollar. The door did not open. He looked around. He hesitated once more, then pulled open the door and climbed on....

Killer boats. State Department of Conservation figures show that boating accidents increased more than 50 percent in 1990 over 1989–and boating deaths were up almost 100 percent. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Political prophets struck out, according to political scientist David Everson’s review of the claims and counterclaims made during the 1980 debate over Patrick Quinn’s “Cutback Amendment,” which reduced the size of the Illinois House of Representatives by one-third (Illinois Issues, July): “None of the proponents’ claims were realized....

Hearts were steady, kidneys were slightly higher, and livers and pancreases were both up strongly–according to the 1988 report of the Regional Organ Bank of Illinois at 800 S. Wells. The six Illinois transplant centers receiving most of the acquired organs report that all kinds of transplants were up last year–except kidneys, “since less kidneys were imported from out of state.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “Chicago [is] something of an anomaly among big American cities,” writes Merrill Goozner in Chicago Enterprise (February 1989)....

THE GODS MUST BE LAZY, OR, THERE’S MORE TO LIFE THAN DEATH Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The result is paradoxically a show that is no livelier than previous efforts, but far more vulgar and offensive, as if the cast gave up long ago trying to imitate Mort Sahl or Severn Darden and decided to ape Lenny Bruce instead, but got no further than telling a few “dick jokes” and saying “shit” onstage....

THE HOUSE OF YES Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Set during a hurricane on Thanksgiving 1988, the black comedy depicts the Pascals, an amoral upper-class Virginia family who are fixated on trying to be like their neighbors, the Kennedy clan. At the head of the twisted bunch is the matriarch, a snob who’s helpless in the worst passive-aggressive way. Comparatively uncorrupted younger son Anthony is a college dropout who’s woefully unready for real life....

What is Kirlian photography? How is it that it captures on film an object that is no longer present? –J. Ramirez, Chicago Let’s not jump to conclusions, Ace. The “phantom object” effect ain’t what it’s cracked up to be. But first some facts. On second thought, bag the facts. Let’s start with the fiction, which, as usual, is more interesting. A common feature of your typical New Age mystic’s understanding of the cosmos is that every living thing is surrounded by an aura, a cloud of energy radiated by your inner being, also known as your “life force,” “bioplasma,” etc....

Ed’s Redeeming Qualities is a folk group gone seriously awry: the band comprises a ukelele player (who looks like a normal alternative-rock type), a violinist cum guitarist (a woman, ditto), a “percussionist” (who mostly plays bongos and looks like he should own an Italian restaurant) and, on record at least, the ukelele player’s late brother, who wrote a couple of songs and played on a lot of the band’s first album, More Bad Times....

To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » What was important about the Washington commissions is harder to measure and describe and therefore to compare: the representativeness and credibility of commission members; the freedom they felt to advocate for their constituencies; the openness with which the Mayor and his administration heard what they had to say; and what they accomplished as a result. I wish Levinsohn had compared the old commissions with new councils along these lines....

John Campbell’s home for the weekend. This doesn’t scan quite as well as, say, “Mackie’s back in town,” but it packs at least an equal wallop: even though he moved to New York in 1984, working regularly with Mel Torme and with Terry Gibbs’s group, he remains among the most versatile and popular Chicago pianists of recent years. With a little practice, you can almost recognize Campbell just from the sound he pulls from the piano....

An ambitious book is a presumptuous book; it aims at a certain bull’s-eye. Then there’s another sort of great book–the kind that grows to such proportions out of the nature of the material or the artist’s own curiosity. Don Quixote is an example of this second type. But the ambitious writer assumes he knows what greatness is and sets out to achieve it. And perhaps this presumption actually causes books like these to fall short of their goals....

After the rainfall Saturday night, the Cubs do not take batting practice Sunday morning. Wrigley Field is quiet as the New York Mets’ Keith Hernandez trots around the bases (working to rehabilitate his ailing knee), while Mitch Williams and Les Lancaster warm up in front of the Cubs dugout. Down in the dugout, encircled by a small group of reporters, Don Zimmer sits and talks. Zimmer, at these moments, is a pleasure to behold, and this morning he has even shaved for the occasion....

THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS All of these adaptations have contained their own sometimes quite substantial variations on the original. But most have shared a nearly singleminded emphasis on only one aspect of Grahame’s story: the saga of Mr. Toad, the reckless rascal whose misadventures land him in jail and test his friends’ loyalty. The tale of Toad is indeed the core of the book, but there is much more to The Wind in the Willows than an anthropomorphic amphibian careening about the English countryside in an automobile....

What’s special about pianist Jodie Christian is that he’s a jack of all trades–no, a master of all trades. Jazz is demanding–the player must simultaneously create, interpret, and complement his fellow musicians–and it’s no wonder that versatility among several jazz disciplines usually comes at the expense of distinctive character. Christian, however, forged his bright, complex melodies in the fires of ’50s and ’60s hard bop; then his quick, acid-edged harmonic responses inspired swing soloists (he always plays on Benny Carter’s Chicago appearances, for example) and cool jazzmen (he’s been a startling counterpoint to Lee Konitz and a surprising Dewey Redman)....

ALFRED STIEGLITZ LOVES O’KEEFFE at the Synergy Center Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The love that grew between them overcame a lot of obstacles over the course of its 30 years. Though Stieglitz supported women’s rights, he could be a tyrant in and out of bed. And it didn’t take long before his energy threatened as much as inspired O’Keeffe; she needed to cultivate an inner stillness corresponding to the serenity of her New Mexico landscapes and whitewashed skulls....

Founded in 1974 by the organist-choirmaster at Saint Luke’s Episcopal Church, Karel Paukert, Bach Week in Evanston was initially conceived as an annual spring event that would spotlight the superb Saint Luke’s Choir and area instrumentalists in performing masterworks of Johann Sebastian Bach. In recent years, Bach Week has expanded, and works of Bach’s contemporaries are performed as well. Under the careful direction of the present organist-choirmaster of Saint Luke’s, Richard Webster, Bach Week concludes this weekend with the CSO’s George Vosburgh and Michael Henoch in the Hertel Concerto for Trumpet and Oboe....

Four friends and I left the Salsedo Press party at 4 AM and squeezed into the gray Toyota I was driving that night. Ann, Ingrid, David, and I know each other from Ann Arbor; Mattias is from Sweden and is in the U.S. working on his dissertation on the sociology of religion, specifically Louis Farrakhan. As we headed north, a consensus emerged that in order to fulfill our proper role as cultural ambassadors, we should show Mattias something uniquely American....

When Herb Karoll was just a boy, his daddy wanted him to be a rabbi. But young Herb figured there wasn’t much money in that line and opted for business. Three bulky guys from the mayor’s office moved to the podium. “We were at least a size 16 and one half before we started on lunch,” said John Wilson, who almost burst the seams of his jacket. The crowd laughed; a husky fellow with a yellow tie who sat in the corner laughed particularly hard....

Friday 6 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Everything you ever wanted to know about housing the homeless–from guerrilla lean-tos to the toilet problem to large-scale building proposals–will be on the table this month at the Randolph Street Gallery in a coming together of architects, artists, planners, and political organizers. Counter-Proposals: Adaptive Approaches to a Built Environment tackles the problem of the homeless in particular and affordable housing in general; the gallery has an exhibit of drawings and photographs up through November 9 and ongoing programming through next spring on the varied subjects....

To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » At issue is whether artists may express their opinions in public. In Mr. Miner’s “Shirt Tale,” Bradley receives 100 lines to justify why his “one set of rules” should determine whose art should be shown in public. Yet description of our unique series of exhibits receives less than 10 lines. Mr. Miner visited our critic at his Dunkin’ Donuts haunt....

I got all shook up by that Tribune series about people Moving Out of Chicago–all those boldfaced quotes from people who say things like “The Schools Stink” or “You Can’t Live in a Nice House” or “Garbage and Rats! Crime and Noise!” Gee, I thought, will I be the last one here? Will I be responsible for turning off the light? Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I’m celebrating the loss of Charlie, a thin white balding man headed toward 40 and California....