Should 50-year-old elm trees die in Oak Park so that new sod can be watered in Naperville? The Du Page Water Commission, endowed with vast powers by the Illinois legislature, has embarked on a mammoth multimillion-dollar project to bring Lake Michigan water to the parched and thirsty instant communities springing up in the western suburbs. Their contractor, Kenny Construction of Wheeling, has burrowed through the west side of Chicago and fetched up in Oak Park....

Early in the game against Green Bay two Sundays ago–during the Packers’ first drive, in fact–middle linebacker Dante Jones stepped in front of a Brett Favre pass at the Bears’ 14-yard line and returned the interception to the 20. In the grip of a Green Bay tackler, he handed the ball off to cornerback Jeremy Lincoln trailing the play. Lincoln skirted the sideline for 80 yards to give the Bears their first score and a 7-0 lead....

A friend and I were discussing the fate of the “singing nun,” popular for a time in the 60s when we were kids. We agreed she left the convent, entered into a lesbian affair and, in a state of despondency over money matters, committed suicide. But neither of us can remember exactly why. Could you possibly help? –Hethryn Haryse (?), Los Angeles Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Let’s not make this any more lurid than it already is, Hethryn (or whatever your name is–I swear, what this country really needs is a good dose of Palmer method)....

To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » When Tina called and said, come over for a piece of cake, it was half a cake tin. She fed the neighborhood. And it was good. So was her mostaccioli. It was the entree of the block parties. Although I doubt Tina would use that word. Rose was a cat lady. She found my wandering cat more than once....

WOMAN IN MIND Luckily, this annoyingly Joycean symptom clears quickly, only to be replaced by a second more persistent one: Susan begins to have periodic hallucinations, which we also see. Married to a stodgy, selfish, and bullying vicar named Gerald, she dreams she has another younger, wealthier, more handsome husband named Andy. And instead of having a “cranky” son (who belongs to a weird religious cult that won’t let him speak to his parents) Susan believes she has a delightful, dutiful daughter who cares about Susan’s well-being almost as much as Andy....

Friday 4 Gonna Find Out Who’s Naughty and Nice is this year’s double entendre title for the Chicago Gay Men’s Chorus’s annual holiday concert; the guys’ll be singing traditional carols and providing, so they say, “light-hearted choreography with a holiday flair, including dancing reindeers, teddy bears, toy soldiers, the beloved sugar plum fairies, and a guest appearance from “Bette Davis’ performing an unforgettable rendition of “Twas the Night Before Christmas.”‘ There’ll also be an audience sing-along....

Pierre Boulez, one of the seminal figures of contemporary music, may also be its most eloquent defender. When he interprets Schoenberg, Bartok, or even his own work, he does so with clarity and intellectual vigor. Listen to a performance conducted by him and you’re apt to gain insights into, say, the method behind serialism’s seeming arbitrariness. At these CSO concerts, concluding his latest visit, maestro Boulez will conduct an all-Stravinsky program that shows the far-ranging talent of the titan of modernism....

Shortly after 11 PM on Saturday, December 29, about 5,000 fans started leaving the Public Enemy and Sonic Youth concert held at the Aragon Ballroom. As they hit the street, they found themselves walking into a horrible scene–police were shouting at and beating up on the crowd in the street. As far as most observers could tell, the police were arresting people for being upset that the police were arresting people....

To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » My disillusionment came with reading your obscenely prejudiced and scathing piece on Truth or Dare [June 21]. Let’s begin with your indictment that the movie is a docudrama rather than a documentary. Throughout your diatribe you portray Madonna as a maniacal control freak. Why then, I ask Bill Goldman, I mean Wyman, is it “hugely contrived” that the woman you describe as “so unsure of her image that she can’t bear to let it out of her control even for a second” (you obviously didn’t see Shanghai Surprise) wouldn’t want to wait until the following morning to remove the half empty beer bottles soiling her posh hotel suite?...

“In some sense,” says the composer, saxophonist, and musical facilitator John Zorn, “it is true that my music is ideal for people who are impatient, because it is jam-packed with information that is changing very fast.” And that about sums it up. Zorn’s hyperenergetic musical intellect devours music from around the globe and across time–from the cartoon sound tracks of Carl Stalling to obscure bebop compositions to Japanese ceremonial music–and his pieces typically include a bewildering range of these influences....

I don’t know if it bothers Larry Novak that he’s not more famous; I know it bothers me. Oh sure, there are plenty of Chicagoans–and touring performers–who remember Novak’s many years as house pianist at Mr. Kelly’s, and he’s busy enough with various composition projects that he doesn’t need to be playing the nightclub circuit these days. But if Novak were more famous, he’d have to acknowledge that attention by playing more gigs, and that would suit my selfish desires just fine....

CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Expectations for the remainder of his Chicago tenure have not been high. No new pieces were slated for his recent appearances here–instead, three weeks of standard repertoire, primarily television tapings and dress rehearsals for recording sessions and this fall’s European tour (Solti’s last as music director). Included in the first week were the Schumann Konzertstuck for four horns (with four soloists from the orchestra), the Villa-Lobos Bachiana brasileira no....

The 50-odd performing groups in the eight week “festival of Chicago’s international arts” includes a dozen theater companies; those performing October 11 through 17 are described below. On nights when only one theater company is listed here, be assured at least one other program of music, dance, or poetry is also planned, with discount prices available to viewers buying a ticket to all performances on a single night. (A pass to the whole festival costs $40....

NOT I and Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Eugene Ionesco frequently illustrated his favorite theme–the isolation of the individual in a world of banality–by placing an ordinary middle-class couple in a room and then having something attempt to invade the room. The menacing annoyance might be a war (A Hell of a Mess), a growing corpse in the next room (Amedee), or a stream of invisible guests (The Chairs)....

WHITE OAK DANCE PROJECT We saw a motley crew of brilliant dancers drawn from the ranks of some of the country’s top ballet and modern-dance companies perform four works by a smart, talented man. So, yes, it was a good concert. But the steep ticket prices and the fact that the benefit could not keep MoMing alive had to color the whole experience. It seemed there must be some message here for the future of dance–will it survive, and how?...

TATUM FAMILY BLUES ETA Creative Arts Foundation Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Charles Michael Moore claims to have structured Tatum Family Blues along the lines of a jazz piece. The theme–“put your own house in order”–seems clear enough. But though the playwright’s attempts at variations on that theme can be detected, the narrative’s allegorical content is coupled with an earthbound TV-comedy execution that makes for some irritating dissonances....

TRU Truman Capote just hated California; to die in Los Angeles, he thought, was redundant. Of course, when he did die there–in 1984, one month shy of 60–plenty of people thought his physical passing itself was redundant. Artistically and emotionally he was apparently exhausted, and his descent into drug and alcohol abuse and dangerously reckless behavior seemed to signal a barely unconscious suicidal drive. A once-brilliant artist and tireless mover and shaker had turned into something like a walking corpse....

ANGEL CITY at the Rudely Elegant Theater Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Angel City is more a play of dreams and ideas than of action. There are through lines–the most cohesive is Wheeler’s physical deterioration and eventual metamorphosis into a lizard–but if you hang on to the story too tightly, you miss the point. Shepard paints pictures with stage images, language, and music (the script calls for tympani and saxophone performances), and he requires the audience to put it all together as best they can....

In the Sixth Ward Regular Democratic Organization’s inner sanctum, a leonine Gene Sawyer sat behind an imposing polished black desk. “Was that a three-pointer?” he asked, pulling a long brown More cigarette from between his lips. He focused on the other side of the room, where a Bulls game glowed from a TV set. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “Jesus, look at this,” said Sawyer’s son Roderick....

Artists have a long tradition of using technology’s most advanced discoveries in their creative work. While art and science may appear to be polar opposites–science the realm of fact and logic, art the realm of imagination and intuition–there is a working unity between them. Scientists and artists are explorers. Leonardo da Vinci once noted that painting “has invented the characters in which the different languages are written, she has given the ciphers to the mathematician, and has described the figures of geometry, she teaches opticians, astronomers, mechanics and engineers....