The Mariotti Rules Nothing improves a good book more than reading it. Sometime last week, Jay Mariotti halted his cascade of white-hot prose on The Jordan Rules long enough to pick it up. Then he learned what only turning pages could tell him: it’s a carefully researched, closely observed portrait of the Bulls during the season they came to be the world’s best basketball team. Far from being the scandal-roiling screed that Mariotti announced on November 11 “might become one of the most damaging books ever written about a sports team,” it told the Bulls nothing about themselves they didn’t already know....

My girlfriend is half black and half white. While she was filling out a form recently I noticed when it came to the question of race she checked “black.” I asked her why she didn’t mark white since she is as much one as the other. She replied that in America one is considered black if the amount of black parentage is one-eighth or greater. Is or was this true? Why?...

A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN Quite the opposite, in fact. When the three hours were up, I was disappointed the play had ended so quickly. Of course A Moon for the Misbegotten is not nearly as dark as Long Day’s Journey, dealing as it does with the themes of forgiveness and redemption instead of mucking around with accusation, damnation, and long-festering resentments. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » With her handsome Nordic features and slender build, Kirsten Sahs hardly fits O’Neill’s description of Josie Hogan: “almost a freak–five feet eleven ....

“I believe anybody who can read and write can run that office,” said Thomas Fuller, a candidate for the Democratic nomination for clerk of the circuit court. “The only real value of the clerk’s office is jobs.” The three dozen or so citizens seated before him chuckled. From Fuller, a wiry, often contentious politician, it was an awful and somewhat unexpected truth. After Fuller’s presentation, the membership discussed his honesty and his compatibility with their stand on the issues, as well as how viable Fuller would be as a candidate....

One dilemma confronting the contemporary composer is how to fashion coherent, meaningful, and relevant music from the bewildering wealth of techniques and materials at his disposal. Local new-music maven Frank Abbinanti believes that one way is to create works that are free, more or less, from the rigidities of a predetermined structure–sort of a compromise between Cagean indeterminate process and quasi-improvisation. All this may sound heady, but the recital/lecture he’s organized to elucidate his theory includes some pretty interesting music, mostly by German composers....

One of Chicago’s special contributions to the jazz heritage is a line of unique bassists that stretches from the earliest years of the art form up to today. Most famous are probably Milt Hinton in the swing era, Wilbur Ware in the bop era, Malachi Favors and Fred Hopkins today; all have played or are playing bass characterized by elastic swing, sophisticated harmonies that grow from deep rich folk song soil, and solo lines that rise from rhythmic impulses....

In the back of Stuart Brent’s bookstore on Michigan Avenue, Larry Heinemann stands a few feet from walls that hold framed photographs of celebrated Chicago writers, among them Saul Bellow and Nelson Algren. There’s a move and pull to this room, a certain flow and rhythm that’s really a competition to be heard. Some other writers have come by to pay their respects. At the moment, Cyrus Colter, a tall, distinguished lawyer who didn’t start writing until he was in his 50s, is trading war stories with Heinemann....

LA, April 30 I’ve lived here, in this idiot airless town, for 17 years and have never for a moment felt the slightest stirring of anything you might call civic pride. Through the goddam Olympics, through winning Laker and Dodger seasons, through all these superimposed film and arts festivals: nothing, never, far from it. Not until yesterday, that is, the second day of the uprising, the “riot,” when suddenly like lightning it hit me: this was its finest hour!...

MOJAVE Folio Theatre Company Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In the old days the west’s cruel adversaries were disease, warring Indians, and locusts. These were adversaries a man could battle, and when he won, he was a better man for the struggle. But in Mojave, which explores the post-Vietnam west, the Aztec City of Gold–Mexico City–is choking in a cloud of car exhaust, John Deere tractors cost $500,000, and babies born near toxic dumping grounds have no heads....

You can name a band anything you want, of course; but the last group of jazz singers to use a name out of the legal directory was Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, and I’ve got to think the similarity is intentional. In any case, Sharon Montgomery, Rebecca Plant, and Billy Stritch (who also plays a lot of piano) have themselves one solid and versatile trio: they jam a little, scat a little, and manage to make those three-part harmonies sound surprisingly fat....

Ran Blake’s piano solos still strike me as music’s answer to recombinant DNA. Blake, who is a genuine iconoclast among the world’s artists, answers to no single bell and marches to every drummer he can find: in improvising upon a famous or obscure song, he tends to first de-compose the tune–chipping its corners, flaying its expectations, dissecting its heart–before reassembling its component parts and adding in plenty of others. He jumbles the sacred and the profane, mixing blues and Berlioz, Greek folk tunes and the art-funk of Monk, hints of salsa and spidery wisps of film themes, and blends it all into one discernible current: the elusive “third stream” that seeks to synthesize new forms from disparate influences....

All the world’s a stage–even the world south of the city, where six professional, semiprofessional, and nonprofessional performing groups have banded together to request the attention of area audiences. This first-ever effort of its kind, conceived and coordinated by Michael Sean McCarthy, features 10 different productions in repertory over the next two weeks: November 13 through 29, with shows Tuesdays-Saturdays at 8 PM and Sundays at 7:30 PM; each show consists of two or three one-acts....

THE TOOTH OF CRIME Sterling Theatre has expended a lot of energy exploring this script and has delivered a production that is not only remarkably lucid but also deeply felt. The Tooth of Crime is something of a two-hour extended metaphor, in which the rock-and-roll industry is likened to organized crime, where superstars and aspiring talents use strategic kills to achieve or maintain success. The play follows the pathetically paranoid fading star Hoss (Rick Reardon), holed up on his leather and leopard-skin throne as he awaits the impending attack of Crow (James Schneider), a hot young performer whose thirst for stardom is unquenchable....

To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The exploitive media coverage being referred to are the two shows of Oprah Winfrey and Geraldo Rivera. Each show had the basic claim that they were going to explore the topic of skinheads and find out more about this violent movement. But, all that these shows managed to do was help give the skinheads a chance to give strength to their movement by means of national television....

The students are four brides-to-be, one groom-to-be, and a transvestite named Billy. They are in a little banquet room at the Sheraton Plaza, taking notes on how to have a perfect wedding. Except for Billy, who says he is at the seminar “just kind of getting information,” all the attendees are getting married within the next ten months. The teachers–wedding consultants Melissa Henz and Nancy Sarlo–furl their brows; a lot of banquet halls and florists and photographers are already booked through 1992, they say....

To the editors: I’m deeply offended by the gross inaccuracies of your February 24 article on a Cajun restaurant in Oak Park that should have been balanced by the author’s knowledge which obviously was woefully lacking or professionalism, i.e., a little bit of research. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I couldn’t believe the restaurant owner, Patsy Younghouse, was actually talking about Creoles as if they are white....

In the basement of Orchestra Hall a young girl drums her leg with her fingers, practicing an arpeggio. Another girl listens to a Walkman, trying to memorize a portion of a piece of music. A small boy tucks a violin under his chin and starts to tune it. The other people in the room glare at him, and he puts the violin down. At a table in the back two boys play a game of chess, and at another table two girls in their early teens, Katherine Lee and Eva Huang, talk about playing football....

I don’t care if we only pay our way for a time, if we can ultimately have a school that will be appreciated. –Frances Wood, c. 1853 “I saw that they admitted people before high-school graduation, and that it was far away from home,” recalls Groth. “I didn’t know anything about the Great Books.” She applied in the fall, was promptly accepted and slated to start in February 1971. “My father was a little dubious about this place....

For immediate release: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In chapter two, “The Names,” Bob makes public what the Bulls really call each other–“Pax,” “Scottie,” “Horace,” “Michael”–and uses the occasion to deny rumors that he’s known on the copy desk as “Old Raisin Thumb.” In chapter three, “The Tactics Behind the Charm,” Bob talks with the Bulls beat writer from the Arlington Heights Herald and passes on the team’s deepest secret strategies: “On defense, they stick to a box-and-one zone or its complicated offshoot, the Ruy Lopez, while the backbone of their offense remains the famous ‘Pick ‘n’ Shovel’ play first chalked by basketball’s inventor, Dr....

Friday 6 January brings with it Mystery! A Winter Festival–a full schedule of literature, lectures, and films that pay homage to detective fiction–at the Sulzer Regional Library. The fest kicks off today with a talk at 11 AM by FBI agent Roger Nielsen, who will describe “Profiles of Modern Day Criminals.” At 1 PM, Donald Duck’s Crimes will be screened just before Alfred Hitchcock’s classic The 39 Steps. It’s all free at 4455 N....