THE AMERICAN CLOCK And that’s natural–even healthy, if it helps us figure out what’s been happening to us. How we got to this time of plague, debt, and homelessness, when public malfeasance and corporate greed are not only rampant but considered to be, well, kinda sexy. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Trouble is, our hindsight’s so bad. Of the shows mentioned above, only Animal Farm is a genuine success, making a concise, coherent, painfully vivid statement about the subversion and destruction of an ideal....

THE ROMANCE OF TRISTAN Of course Wagner came up with the most famous and definitive version of the story of Tristan and Isolde’s doomed love–the one in which Isolde sings for more than 20 minutes before death transports her to the Valhalla for postsuicidal couples. But Wagner was by no means the first to capitalize on the tale’s dramatic and commercial potential. In the 12th and 13th centuries, poets and musicians on both sides of the English Channel padded the Celtic legend into long-running serials that gripped the popular imagination....

Lead Story The Reverend James Bishop canceled the lunch he had promised to eat, alone, atop the steeple of his Baptist church in Glen Burnie, Maryland, in April as payoff for increased Sunday school attendance. Reason for cancellation: just hours before Bishop’s lunch, a huge lightning bolt split the steeple in two. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The Jasper, Texas, panty bandit (not related to the Salt Lake City or Tempe, Arizona, panty bandits) was arrested in January after an 11-month reign, hampered by several victims’ reluctance to report details of the crime to police....

Lead Story Richard Rohrbacher, a summer-camp owner in West Stockbridge, Massachusetts, was called before local authorities to respond to neighbors’ complaints about loud music on Labor Day. He blamed the noise on his weekend tenants, a women’s rights group whom he called a group of “aggressive lesbians” and who he said had imprisoned him for most of the weekend on the campgrounds. He said the group’s $16,000 check bounced. Best of Chicago voting is live now....

Once one of the finest theaters in the country, the Sheridan Theatre now serves as a premier playhouse for vandals, the homeless, and the curious. The front doors now stand open for months at a time, even though the theater has been closed for years. Reckless renovation, fires, and public dumping have all but destroyed the building’s original magnificence. There were plans to resuscitate it a few years ago, but strangely enough they were scuttled by the city....

The interrogators themselves called it “the $64 question,” in joking reference to the TV game show of the day: “Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party?” Members of the House of Representatives Un-American Activities Committee–HUAC, as it came to be known–asked the question of a stream of witnesses during a ten-year period starting in 1947. It was the era of the cold war and Korea, an era when politicians found that a good way to make national reputations for themselves was to proclaim their intention to weed out “communist influences” in the arts–and an era in which artists found themselves challenged to submit to HUAC’s inquiries about themselves and their friends, or to defy HUAC on constitutional grounds....

To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In April of 1990 (April 6th Reader) I had a concert at Southend Musicworks. It was the opening weekend and Mr. Tesser wrote a column for your calendar pages about the weekend’s activities at Southend. Nowhere in this article does my name appear, this despite the fact that I put one of the concerts together, wrote music for it, paid the musicians and had Bill Smith of Toronto as a guest artist and collaborator in that concert....

One minute I’m looking out at the oppressive Saturday afternoon sky, thinking that rain never falls on Chicago anymore, even when it looks like it will. Extended forecast: hellish; 99 percent chance of perspiration. On the grass strip between the sidewalk and the curb, an oscillating sprinkler goes on sprinkling. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I light a cigarette and cross 55th Street, aiming vaguely for the museum, but before I get to the park at 56th the rain returns....

My grandfather, Harry Stern, who was German, was a tenor with La Scala. His stage name was Enrico Sterlio and his best friend was Enrico Caruso, who I thought from the sound of his name must really be Harry Caray. My grandparents were so anxious to assimilate that my mother wasn’t taught a word of German, but she made things up from what she overheard. Things like, “In my whole leibkuchen, I never heard of such a thing,” thinking leibkuchen was the German word for life....

CHICAGO STRING ENSEMBLE Two premieres highlighted the ensemble’s latest concert. Robert Lombardo’s Aria variata, written for the CSE, is a sensuous, lyrical ode to a painful, faded love. The text–a poem by the composer’s wife, Kathleen Lombardo–is full of bird images: a wren that stands for the woman singer and imposing predatory birds–an Asian bird, a halcyon, an eagle–that are specters from a relationship the narrator must come to terms with....

Ralph Waldo Emerson said the poet is “the complete man” who “apprises us of not of his wealth, but of the commonwealth.” He is also general manager of the Chicago office of Ruder Finn, a highly respected New York-based public-relations firm; he presides over PEN’s midwest chapter and serves on its national board; he periodically lectures on public relations at Columbia College and Northwestern University; and he races his sailboat, paints, and served until very recently on the boards of directors of several not-for-profit organizations–he’s still on the board of the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce....

I can’t understand why this wouldn’t be a cure for someone infected with HIV, the AIDS virus: put them in one of those plastic bubbles like they use for people with genetic immunological deficiences. No germs, no opportunistic infections, no AIDS, right? –Bob Kernell Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The other problem is that AIDS makes you vulnerable to germs that are already in your body....

Is there such a thing as cow tipping? I have two friends, both sons of farmers. One says it can be done and is great sport. The other says no way. Do cows sleep standing up? Can they be tipped? I suppose this will take some late-night research. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I recently discussed the fine points of cow tipping with a reformed tipper named Robin, who had done it (once) as a student....

BARBIE THE FANTASIES At last, a theater company that doesn’t mind causing some trouble. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Barbie the Fantasies was developed through the cast’s improvisation, then scripted by director Steven Milford and assistant director Lance Hunt. The result is eight intentionally disconnected scenes that depict Barbie (of doll fame, of course) and her cohorts in a series of ludicrous and increasingly perverse situations....

Friday 10 The 1993 Winter D-Tour is the latest gallery walk sponsored by the West Side Gallery District. Today and tomorrow from noon to 5 there’ll be open studios at 25 locations roughly centered around the intersection of North, Damen, and Milwaukee. Besides seeing the art, you can play a sort of poker game by collecting playing cards at the different galleries and then registering your hand at Idao Gallery; the three best hands get prizes....

MARCH Friday 30 Performance artist James Grigsby introduces a new collaborative work, Unexplained Mysteries, and a new solo piece, Hard Coin, at 8 tonight at the Dance Center of Columbia College, 4730 N. Sheridan. Tickets are $7, $5 for students and seniors. Call 271-7928. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The Old Town School of Folk Music’s four-week “Masters of the Guitar” rock ‘n’ roll workshop begins at 1:30 today....

To think of Vivaldi only in terms of the crowd-pleasing Four Seasons is to slight the more significant accomplishments in his lengthy and prolific career. L’estro armonico, his opus 3 (1711), for example, is acknowledged by musicologists as perhaps the most influential collection of instrumental work to appear during the whole of the 18th century. Most of us, no doubt, are familiar with two or three individual pieces from it, such as the Concerto in A Minor; but the dozen string concerti are so seldom performed as a set that few concertgoers have had the chance to savor the strikingly elaborate architectonics that startled Vivaldi’s contemporaries....

Artist John David Mooney is explaining to a genteel audience in the ArchiCenter gallery that he had a much larger project on his mind when the invitation came along to design a dollhouse. It was 1981, and Mooney, with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, was busy dreaming up ideas for the redesign of Navy Pier. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » He accepted, though the project stumped him at first....

Under a sparkling blue South Carolina sky, a bright yellow Mustang–11 years old but in a state of perfect preservation startling to anyone who’s battled the salt and grime of Chicago–was rocketing through the red-clay, pine-lined countryside near the North Carolina line. Inside were my 20-month-old daughter, Louisa, singing quietly to herself in her rented car seat; my mother, named Eleanor but known as Dolly; me; and the owner of the car, my mother’s cousin–also named Eleanor, but known as Winkie....

It seems like the entire goddamned Boston music scene has been camping out in Chicago of late: last weekend the Lemonheads were in town, and this weekend we have the Blake Babies, who maintain at least a temporary residence in Beantown, Ultra Vivid Scene’s Kurt Ralske, who came of age there, and Galaxie 500, one of the town’s proudest current exports. The percolating three-piece, led by guitarist and singer Dean Wareham, only does about one thing, but they do it with such eclat–they’re so convinced of its desirability, no, its necessity–that you go along with it....