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No doubt about it, alto saxophonist Mike Smith is a Cannonball Adderley man through and through–what’s most personal about his music, though, are his differences with Adderley. He’s got Adderley’s big, hearty sound, his melodic essence, his all-pervasive blues richness, his harmonic sophistication expressed in exhilarating leaps and chord substitutions. But Smith is driven by a carnivorous intensity that leaves no room for deocrative excesses. For all Smith’s skill and finesse, his hard-swinging music is of the belly and loins, which makes the cool, calculating trumpet and flugelhorn of Ron Friedman an ideal foil for him....

To the editors: Furthermore, they would never discuss a law case in progress as Kerson did both in the article (toward the end) and while the trial was going on. He was there, and the third day of five days, he returned to the neighborhood and “spread it around” that “things were not going well” for me and the neighborhood association. I asked him not to discuss the case. My impression was that he didn’t think he had done anything improper....

Off the Hot Seat, on the Record The public schools, he knows now, do not need defending: the one thing the system does well is perpetuate itself. “I discovered after many years of heading the system–and this was something I adopted almost as my reason for living during my years as president–I underestimated its ability to be clever, to survive. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “The whole reform movement has basically been concentrating on who shall hold the decision-making power,” Munoz said....

6:30 AM. The city has barely begun stirring, but the Busy Bee restaurant is already packed. Many of the customers eat in silence, each in his own separate universe. A woman in a green-and-white “Winos and Italians” T-shirt occupies one stool. A man with salt-and-pepper hair, mustache, glasses, white shirt, and tie sits next to a businesswoman type clad in khaki skirt and blouse. Both sip their coffee and stare glumly ahead....

Sleepy LaBeef’s prowess as a performer is legendary among rockabilly and roots-rock fans. He can ignite an audience seemingly at will, but his success is virtually impossible to analyze in terms of technique. Onstage he appears stolid, almost reserved most of the time, peering out at the crowd from under heavy, drooping eyelids. Even so, the passion that pours from him can elevate a crowd of drunken cowboys or bright-eyed baby boomers with equal facility, and his devotion to the country and rockabilly music tradition verges on the fanatic....

After years of jogging through Lincoln Park, Erma Tranter knew that the city’s parks had problems. But she didn’t know how many problems until Friends of the Park, of which she is executive director, completed an exhaustive study of 40 different parks. To do so, the group chose three parks from each of the city’s 13 districts–one small, one medium, and one large–visited them, and recorded their impressions. “I don’t want to criticize Madison, because from what I see in the newspapers he’s on his way out,” says Tranter....

Hyde Park was still a lively, stimulating place when Roscoe Mitchell lived there in the 1960s. He played his woodwinds and “little instruments” all over the neighborhood, from the University of Chicago’s Mandel Hall and campus lounges to a church, a school, the small theaters of the day, and on the lakefront at the Point on summer mornings. Musically it was an exciting time: he was leading his Art Ensemble in its formative period, as it discovered new forms, sounds, and structures–as it evolved into the Art Ensemble of Chicago....

On the top floor of the State of Illinois Building, Governor Thompson’s immense, glass-encased tribute to himself, five members of an Illinois Senate committee sat in a large hearing room one day last month and listened to testimony concerning the erection of yet another immense structure–one that would dwarf this one in both size and cost: the Chicago Bears’ proposed stadium south of the Loop. The chairman of the committee, Senator Richard H....

SILENCE IS . . . “Silence Is . . .” marked an acknowledged departure for Jeff Abell. Instead of constructing his work around intelligently scripted and elaborately orchestrated language, his trademark method, Abell explored the evocative presence of silence in performance. This focus on watching silent activity rather than hearing a text, while problematic at times, gave Abell’s work a simplicity and occasional elegance that nicely complemented the bare-bones performance space at N....

When eating ice cream and sno-cones too fast I often get a “cold headache.” What causes this? What would happen if you kept chowing down on those frozen treats? –Chuck Nevitt, Dallas Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Ice cream headache occurs most frequently after you’ve worked up a sweat or during very hot weather. Typically it occurs when you cram too much cold stuff into the roof of your mouth....

Where does the candle wax go? –Dave, Vanessa, Jill, Susannah, and everyone else we know Where do you think it goes? It burns, just like the logs in a fireplace. You evidently have the idea that candle wax is only there to hold the wick upright. On the contrary, the wax is the fuel for the flame, the wick being merely the conduit for drawing melted wax up by capillary attraction....

Susan Anton said the only other time this happened to her was when she went to Fort Bragg and sang for 5,000 troops who had just returned from the Persian Gulf. Anton–singer, actress, Broadway star, and this year’s American Cancer Society spokesperson–was scheduled to speak at a high-society benefit luncheon/Bob Mackie fashion show at noon at the Hilton. But two hours before it started, an ACS board member/luncheon chairman suggested that her husband could escort the exquisite, towering Anton onto the floor of the Chicago Board Options Exchange so she could see what it was like....

LBJFKKK I’ll admit I wasn’t dying to see this play. I mean, there’s so much garbage out there. All these pathetic little comedy groups modeling themselves after Second City, which has been a dreadful bore for years. Face it, it’s just comedy for drunks. And LBJFKKK didn’t promise to be anything different. The title alone–which turns out to be as irrelevant as it is dumb–is enough to make you stay home....

BALLAD OF A MAN Mike (Kevin Friend) is a real estate salesman specializing in pyramid schemes, a scam artist whose rapid decline begins when his wife Virginia (Elaine Dame) surprises him in bed with his sales assistant Lisa (Tamara Fuhrman). Virginia accuses him of a lack of “self-awareness” and kicks him out, after which a very alienated Mike, a taker not a giver, dumps Lisa. Best of Chicago voting is live now....

It’s Tuesday night at Rosa’s, and strains of heavy bass and guitar playing are seeping out through the bar’s walls. Near the entrance, a giant-screen TV blares classic blues concerts. It overlooks a pool table, surrounded by players coolly draping their bodies into shooting position. The walls are covered with Rosa’s relics: pictures from the annual Blues Cruise, posters from past concerts, and a full-blown portrait of Mama Rosa herself....

“I would tell anyone to take their vacation in Yellowstone this year,” William Romme told me. “This is a natural event not to be missed.” The natural event he was talking about is the multitude of fires that have burned about 650,000 acres so far in Yellowstone National Park. Romme is a professor of biology at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, and he has spent ten years–five of them on a National Science Foundation grant–putting together a fire history of a section of central Yellowstone Park....

“There are four basic precepts you must observe if you wish to score with the world. One, use Wall St. Cologne–in this way you will score with women. Two, use Yardley’s Shaving Cream–in this way, clean-shaven, you will score with the general public. Three, change your socks daily–here you score with earthworms and all the good people who work underground. Four, always walk into the sun–now you score with the Sun People....

The set looks like a cheap Polynesian nightclub, with movie posters, bamboo shades, garish rugs, and a painted wicker bar. At center stage, four black women and three black men work themselves into an African-dance frenzy, goaded by three drummers. They’re wearing street clothes and broad grins aimed at an imaginary audience. A woman hovering offstage wears a ball gown and a towering 16-inch turban that both appear to be made of red cellophane....

DAVE RICHARDS: NEW WORK Pocket Pool is perhaps the most eloquent of these visual enigmas. This three-foot-by-five-foot piece features a stubby cross shape on the right side that looks like a human organ and is painted the color of dried blood. On the left side is a large black-and-white photographic cutout of a headless, armless nude standing with its back to us. The space separating it from the organ is painted the same deep red as the organ....

NEMICO MIO Like Waiting for Godot, Nemico mio deals in a humorous and haunting way with the bizarre relationship between two eccentric men as they wait in vain for something to happen. Like Estragon and Vladimir, their hopes are delayed and trod upon, but never extinguished. Unlike Beckett’s pair, however, the wasteland where Giulio and Tommaso wait is not an abstract country lane, but the mental institution they are confined in....