THE KEY TO BEIN’ ME Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » None is a professional performer. And when they’re feeling unsure of themselves, they tend to mumble. The songs are sung earnestly but not always on key. Every once in a while one of them will break into a great big grin during a dance number that’s obviously going awry. By that time, unless your heart is made of stone, you’re grinning back....

High, up above, in the lights of Comiskey Park, the nighthawks glided, flapped rapidly, twisted, fluttered, swung to the left, feeding on the varied bugs attracted by the lights, glided but did not relax, ascended, dove down, refused to accept the ease of flight and fought the air, flapping, for every inch of motion, did so in a fashion, well, best described as, perhaps, arrhythmic, that is arrhythmically–without rhythm. Best of Chicago voting is live now....

Art vs Architecture in Prairie Avenue District Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The CAF maintains that the Swiss Products structure, which the city bought in 1976, not only has no redeeming architectural value but also blocks what should be the main entrance to the Prairie Avenue Historic District, which the CAF has been working to develop. They want a park on the site. “We’ve worked so long to make the district a mini-Williamsburg,” says CAF executive director John Engman, “and the Swiss Products building is an eyesore that ruins the integrity of the district....

To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I’m commenting about Cate Plys’s article “Miscellany: Man Track,” [March 29] on Playboy. I’m surprised to see such an obvious prejudiced article and as a longtime subscriber who actually purchases the magazine for its written content, I am offended. Ms. Plys states several times that the magazine is obscene; many two-bit prosecutors have been trying to prove this in court for 30 years without success....

Friday 17 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The sovereign nation of Freedonia–actually a neighborhood bar that’s seceded from the U.S.–has its strong points. A national saying (“Look! Freedonia!”), for one thing. A very high pretzel consumption per capita, for another. And Joe’s Handy Guide to Revolution Made E-Z, a new production at the Playwrights’ Center written by Louis Anders and Brendan Baber and directed by James Pelton, fills out the story....

Chicago Theatre Installs New Manager; Will It Get a New Owner Too? Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Though al Chalabi says money matters were not a factor in Sode’s departure, recent developments suggest that the theater’s shaky financial situation has been worsening. “The recession has had a dampening effect on what we thought was going to be a better year than last year,” notes al Chalabi, who said the theater hoped to book 108 performance days in 1992, approximately the same number as last year....

Here’s good news for those doubters who fear for the future of homegrown Chicago blues: guitarist David Lindsey, the west-side-born-and-bred son of local blues legend Big Bad Ben, is beginning to make himself known to a wider audience. Lindsey’s been featured for several years at clubs like Mister Tee’s (at Lake and Saint Louis), and did a stint as Kansas City Red’s lead guitarist. Like many young musicians, he’s still finding his own voice: his B....

A recital appearance in Orchestra Hall is many a young soloist’s dream come true. So it is for pianist David Schane. Only 24, Schane already lays claim to a remarkably lengthy association with the Chicago Symphony: at age seven he became one of the youngest finalists in the symphony’s youth auditions; since then he’s performed in several of the CSO’s outreach youth concerts. While juggling a fairly rigorous touring schedule (including recent stints with Chicago suburban orchestras and with the Grant Park and Houston symphony orchestras), Schane has also managed to obtain a degree in music from the Interlochen Academy and a BA in political science from Northwestern (where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa)....

Last week 200 great egrets were counted at McGinnis Slough, along with 100 double-crested cormorants. This is the sort of sight people travel to the Everglades to see, but if you are not an active birder you may be surprised that such a concentration of these spectacular waders could show up in Cook County. McGinnis Slough is a vast shallow lake in the town of Orland Park in the southwest corner of the county....

It’s not a job and there’s no future in it, but it is some of the easiest money the average person can make. The more average the person, the better. If you’re thinking, “Easy money? I’m as average as the next guy–how do I get in on this bonanza of dollars?” you may be able to turn even your bad habits into bucks. First: Get on a list of people who are available for market research surveys....

Funny Business And Wee Pals is history, we said. “What happened,” says Nicole Hollander, “is one day I woke up and someone called me and said, you’re out of the paper. I mean a friend, not the Sun-Times, which is their style–they did it before. So [later that day] I got a call from the Tribune and they said, what’s happening? I said, I believe I have been dumped.” Best of Chicago voting is live now....

It wasn’t so long ago that dope dealers and prostitutes were peddling their wares from the front entrance of the Rosemont Apartments, a nine-story building at 1061 W. Rosemont, in Edgewater. “I don’t think many people could do what Candace has done–she’s a remarkable woman,” says John McDermott, a community organizer for the Edgewater Community Council. “But there is a message here for other communities. Candace created a problem-solving partnership with the police to crack down on a local trouble spot....

ICARUS’S MOTHER and Raven Theatre Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The games these two creeps play operate on a system of reward and punishment, where the only stakes are belonging. A small airplane flying overhead prompts Howard to create a fantasy in which the pilot is waving to his adulterous wife–whose role he insists his girlfriend Pat take despite her discomfort. When Pat (played with tingling vulnerability by Adrianne Krstansky) expresses a desire to take a walk alone for a while, Howard leads Bill and the others–Bill’s girlfriend Jill (Kerry Richlan) and the nerdy hanger-on Frank (Adam Goldman) –in a ritual of ostracism so brutal that it reduces Pat to tears; then Howard’s aim shifts as he guides the rest of the group in mocking Frank’s wish to go off by himself for a pee in the woods....

Since 1965, when he exploded onto the charts with “Shotgun,” saxophonist Junior Walker has represented the epitome of hard-driving soul exuberance. Walker was born in Arkansas but developed his musical talents in the rather unlikely setting of South Bend, Indiana, in the 50s. At age 16 he was discovered in Battle Creek, Michigan, by producer Harvey Fuqua, who eventually introduced him to Berry Gordy Jr. of Motown. Walker’s music on the Motown Soul label–“(I’m a) Road Runner,” “Hip City-Pt....

LETTERS HOME Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Sylvia Plath’s suicide at the peak of her career left a legacy of questions that have attracted a cult obsessed with trying to find answers. The people she left behind often seem to be victims of this cult. Plath wrote highly personal poetry, and many academics (rightly or wrongly) use it to analyze her relationships with her mother, her husband, and even her dead father to determine what drove her to kill herself....

To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Secondly, the reason that I selected the “barrage” of names was, as the letter stated, to offer a set of exempla which demonstrate the fact that there is no scholarly consensus on the “facts” Mr. Sheehan claims. Mr. McClory’s response in this latter respect sounds quite shrill, unless he is willing to admit that three men (including Sheehan) make for a consensus in a field where thousands labor....

NANCY REILLY It’s impossible to say that she stopped the show because in fact she didn’t bat an eye, staying in her character as a tough-talking barmaid in a losers’ bar. “Want a seat?” she asked the startled woman who’d emerged at the bottom of the steps, late for the show. The woman, unsure, stared at her. “Come on,” Reilly said, her gestures and voice so consistent and sure that, scripted or not, this event became part and parcel of Reilly’s story about a suffocating little bar where chaos is constant and despair is the norm....

Ed Bennett says that he began to doubt when he was 14. Doubts, he had been taught, were the devil’s work. He would say to himself, “If you could just pray a little more, if you could be just a little bit purer as a Christian, if you just dedicate your life a little bit more, maybe you’d get rid of those doubts and become the perfect Christian.” The result was that he nearly shut down emotionally....

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST A play that declares “We live in an age of surfaces” proves it with its machinery. The characters seem such conventional creatures that the subversion each addlepated non sequitur expresses is totally unexpected. Wilde said that “the very essence of romance is uncertainty,” but the maxim also applies to his comedy, where surprises–especially verbal surprises–are of the essence. Here, for instance, without sensing the slightest contradiction, Cecily can describe her diary as “a very young girl’s record of her own thoughts and impressions, and consequently meant for publication....

The Bears are once again proof of the continual pop-culture significance of sports. Many players remain from the 1985 world-championship team, but the Bears’ overall personality is completely different. The mid-80s were an urgent, ruthless, marauding time, and the Bears reflected that. With their quick outside linebackers, Otis Wilson and Wilber Marshall, tackling opponents the way junk-bond firms devoured other companies, their defensive coach coming up with secret plans almost as complicated as those of the CIA’s Bill Casey, their head coach raging on as the prototypical Type A personality, and Walter Payton and Mike Singletary lending an air of class to the whole operation, the Bears ran at the cocky, speeded-up pace of the cocaine boom....