RECKLESS Throughout, playwright Craig Lucas takes limp satiric aim at a variety of easy targets–Christmas sentimentality, the psychiatry industry, TV game shows, the computer revolution–while visiting upon Rachel a seemingly endless assortment of gratuitous calamities. Loved ones and strangers drop around her left and right, at times the innocent victims of a murderer whose target was Rachel herself. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In a play loaded with misanthropic and misogynistic ridicule of its characters, Susan Nussbaum as Pooty submits to a role that exploits every snickering sick-humor stereotype that has accompanied, and limited, the image of disabled people....

Tom Palazzolo thrives on creative chaos. It’s Wednesday afternoon, ten days before his latest feature is to premiere at the Film Center, and the elder statesman of the local independent film scene is counting a sheaf of hundred-dollar bills. “Oh, excuse me,” he apologizes absentmindedly. “I want to make sure I’ve got enough money to get the sound print out of the lab. They demand cash. Then I have to edit some more....

When Dr. Paul Sherry moved from Chicago to Cleveland earlier this month, he admitted he was leaving “with some trepidation.” And well he might. Sherry is taking over as president of the United Church of Christ. With 1.7 million members, it is among the dozen largest Protestant denominations in the United States, but it’s also one of those mainline churches that have been hemorrhaging at a steady rate for 25 years....

Sun-Times Goes Hollywood Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The filmmakers first approached the Tribune, but decided the feel of the newsroom there was wrong. They found the less pristine Sun-Times more to their liking, says Lydon; they also liked its proximity to a vacant space directly across the Chicago River that was transformed into a coffee shop used extensively in the film. Then began the serious negotiations....

“I knew a foreign woman who moved to Chicago back in the 1960’s. When she moved back home, she asked me how she could take WFMT with her,” writes William J. Leahy in Leahy’s Corner (July 1989). “Well she might ask. When I later lived in London, Dublin, Paris, Cairo, and elsewhere, I found that only Chicago had a 24-hour classical music station. The BBC has a radio channel playing such music, but it signs off at night....

From the first major confrontation between police and demonstrators on Sunday night, August 25, 1968, self-serving assertions of what happened in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention have roiled over people’s memories like the tear gas rolling over Lincoln Park and the Loop. Christopher Chandler, then a Chicago Sun-Times reporter directly familiar with the events of convention week, characterized the Walker Report in the Chicago Journalism Review as “the most amazing example of dodging the major issues that has been produced in the long history of middle-of-the-road committee studies....

RUMORS You know Rumors is going to be farce from the moment you see the set, a living room in an upscale suburban home. The doors tip you off: four on the first floor, three on the landing of the second floor. Mistaken identity and disguised intentions are the stock-in-trade of farce, requiring many frantic, cleverly timed entrances and exits. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Set in the elegant residence of a well-heeled New York City deputy mayor (the play was conceived during the scandal-ridden administration of former mayor Ed Koch), Rumors concerns mishaps at a formal dinner party celebrating the politician’s tenth wedding anniversary....

New book. Urgency Addiction: How to Slow Down Without Sacrificing Success. Says urgency addicts constantly pressured by time. Walk fast. Talk fast. Eat fast. Constantly looking at watch. Always have somewhere to go, something to do. Everything’s a priority. Sounds important. Must read it ASAP. Heard about it on radio this morning while making instant coffee in the microwave. Still takes eight seconds. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Note: Call Fred’s Florist and have him deliver two roses to office for smelling next Tuesday at 10:30 AM....

ALL MY SONS Vietnam was a long war, and its effects were slow to manifest themselves. But World War II passed swiftly and finished abruptly, leaving its supporters shaken and disoriented, wondering what had happened to them. The fervency with which Americans donned the trappings of normalcy during the 50s–marriage, family, home, cars–reflected the pace of the adrenaline-fueled call to arms. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Joe Keller’s family is wearing just those trappings in the lazy August of 1947, the setting of All My Sons....

To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » On the other hand, these ordinances allow police harassment of African American youth. In doing so, black leaders reasonably fear that the values and the prejudices of the white community, frightened as it is of young black men, are being codified into law. With the history of de jure segregation and racial oppression in this country, institutionalizing police power to disperse blacks on the street corner should give one pause....

To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » This is simply not true, as even a fairly brief reading of the gay press of the past five years will show. Daley has been on public record in support of gay and lesbian civil rights protection for at least that long. He endorsed an earlier form of the recently passed Human Rights Ordinance during the 1983 mayoral campaign, and also appointed Julie Hamos as a liaison to the gay and lesbian community during that race....

To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Harold Henderson’s story [“What a Waste!” September 28] pretty well documents the dynamics of the negotiation breakdown between Chicago area environmental activists and the business community, but left out a few crucial facts which could have helped readers judge who was being unreasonable. The people who are fighting landfill and incineration sitings aren’t exactly afraid of the unknown....

IN THE WAKE OF THE WELDED It seems we’ve come to expect less of theater than we used to. Like this woman, if we’re entertained, if we’re able to relate, then we don’t expect much more. We smile warmly at the gentle simplicity of Driving Miss Daisy or have a foot-stompin’ good time at Pump Boys and Dinettes and are content. But anyone who’s witnessed one of those few transcendent productions, the kind that dazzle, affecting us more profoundly than any book or film, spends a lot of time at the theater dissatisfied....

Rich Daley a reformer? In announcing his candidacy for mayor in December, Cook County State’s Attorney Richard M. Daley put it this way: “I ask only that I be judged on my record, my experience, and my ideas for our city’s future.” Daley also promises the strong leadership Chicago needs. But when Council Wars held the city hostage for three years, Daley sat on his hands, while even his own alderman voted in lockstep with Vrdolyak....

The crematorium explodes, shooting fire into the sky. The prisoners at Auschwitz cheer in jubilation, peering through electrified barbed wire at the conflagration. Amid the alarms, SS guards rush, rifles out, at the imprisoned Jews. “Inside!” a guard barks. “Everyone inside the barracks! Schnell! Schnell!” Until the late 1970s Schindel thought he was alone. He came to America in 1950 and changed his name from Salomon Schindelheim. For years he lived among his few surviving relatives who had left before the war, all of whom are now dead....

On the east end of the street is the Rose of Sharon Spiritual Church; the Holy Raiders Revival Church is just a couple of blocks away. Both look more like garages than anything designed for ecclesiastical purposes. Around the corner, at Wilcox and Karlov, a car stops in the middle of the intersection; a loitering man saunters up, hands over a small brown paper bag to the driver, and riffles through the wad of small bills he’s handed in return in a leisurely manner....

Everything in this world ultimately connects; I believe this with all my heart. No problemo! I like to say. No problemo. And neighbors who know better smile at this foolish gringo fumbling the graceful mother tongue. They are kind to me, a dignified senior citizen complete with bus pass, monthly checks from the government, and an old house that is constantly in need of repair. Here is a partial list of things you can buy at Handy Andy:...

It’s a guitar! It’s a violin! It’s a synthesizer! Or maybe it’s flutist extraordinaire Robert Dick. Dick has developed such technical mastery on the instrument that to hear him play is to marvel at how he manipulates the familiar timbre of the flute. In the tradition of past New Music Chicago concerts introducing performers who stretch the usual capabilities of their instruments, Dick will give a recital of his own unusual compositions on everything from wooden and bamboo flutes to the largely unfamiliar bass flute, usually only heard in science fiction movie scores....

Selling Unidentified Human Remains Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Boldly mounted by British director Derek Goldby, with a cast primarily made up of New York and Canadian actors, Unidentified Human Remains is putting Frazier’s marketing skills to the supreme test in this generally conservative city. While he hopes to lure a good chunk of the audience that previously supported such relatively tame Halsted Theatre Centre productions as Oil City Symphony, Sammy Cahn: Words and Music, and Forbidden Broadway, he also wants to reach people not frequently seen in theaters, particularly those in the under-30 crowd....

THE MONTEVERDI CHOIR AND THE ENGLISH BAROQUE SOLOISTS at Pick-Staiger Concert Hall The libretto is entirely scriptural. The first part consists of texts taken exclusively from the Book of Exodus, describing in very broad fashion the Israelites’ enslavement by the Egyptians, their cry to Yahweh, his reply in the person of Moses, and the various plagues that fall upon Egypt. The narrative here is so sketchy that anyone not familiar with the biblical story would be helpless to follow the action....