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It is hardly surprising that Zarin Mehta, Ravinia’s new executive director, was brought up steeped in Western classical music despite his having been born and raised in India. His father Mehli Mehta was a violinist and the founder and concertmaster of the Bombay Symphony, so it was only natural that his children should develop such an interest. (Mehta’s brother is Zubin, the internationally known conductor and music director of the New York Philharmonic....

To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Hopefully it will make a positive difference and help secure his long-awaited release. It tells the true story, and explains the hatred and bias that has characterized this unjust disposition of what is still an inflamed issue. Inflamed after nearly half a century, due to a large extent to the hate and bitterness of the brother and sister of the young victim, who feel duty-bound to make sure that somebody pays....

“The United States is essentially a commonwealth of third-rate men. . . . No sane man, employing an American plumber to repair a leaky drain, would expect him to do it at the first trial, and in precisely the same way no sane man, observing an American Secretary of State in negotiation with Englishmen and Japs, would expect him to come off better than second best. Third-rate men, of course, exist in all countries, but it is only here that they are in full control of the state, and with it of all the national standards....

Very little on the exterior of the big old building on the northwest corner of Barry and Kenmore suggests what goes on within. A granite cornerstone dated “A.D. 1924” proclaims the structure’s age; the dingy red bricks, high vaulted windows, and fading flecks of spray-painted graffiti suggest a disused school. Only a wooden sign, its bright purple clashing with the dusky wall on which it hangs, and a flamboyant purple logo on the orange front door advertise the current identity of this venerable neighborhood landmark....

SEXUAL PERVERSITY IN CHICAGO Bernie’s near-breakdown is director Joe Jahraus’s most inspired choice in this production, because it demonstrates his keen understanding of the seriousness of the stakes in Mamet’s play. This is not a cute comedy about the singles scene, like the bastardized film version of the play, About Last Night . . . Rather it is a powerful and nearly debilitating indictment of what one character calls “the physical and mental mutilations we perpetrate on each other, day in, day out ....

One partner to go. According to a recent Wendy’s survey, “About 10% of Chicagoland respondents either met their mate or proposed to their sweetheart in a fast food restaurant.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “Like an unforgiving mirror, Lake County reflects what’s good and what’s bad about metropolitan Chicago. High-tech manufacturing exists side-by-side with shuttered machine shops; sparkling corporate headquarters offer stark contrasts to boarded storefront businesses; and million-dollar estates sprawl within walking distance of wretched public housing units,” writes Tom Andreoli in Chicago Enterprise (March 1989)....

The large crowds pouring in and out of Wrigley Field are no longer so offensive now that the Cubs are playing better; that is, the people in the crowds might still be offensive, from person to person, but the Cubs’ attracting sold-out crowds is no longer so objectionable. For a while there, it was almost disgusting that the Cubs, kicking the ball around like cast-offs from the original New York Mets, were drawing packed houses....

Two questions. First, does it bug you when people write you questions on bar napkins, like I am? Second, as we leave a stoplight in our cars and look at the wheels of the car next to us, we notice that when the RPMs reach a certain point we get the optical illusion of reverse rotation. What causes this? –J.R. Newman, Washington, D.C. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Basically what you’re seeing is a strobe (i....

In film and painting, dance and theater, even most forms of music, the deep, wise, elderly artist is a touchstone, a hero. But a mature rock ‘n’ roller is an oxymoron. The only honorable option for an aging rock star is to retreat to some island somewhere and grow old gracefully, but instead there’s a growing population of middle-aged rock figures who put me in mind of no one so much as Norman Mailer–pushy and arrogant, ruthlessly trafficking in long-ago triumphs, growing fatter, more opinionated, and less coherent as time goes on....

Friday 24 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Walter Benjamin: Marxist Moses, an evening of readings and discussion of literary critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin, celebrates a man who is now considered one of the 20th century’s most influential thinkers. An acclaimed journalist and critic, Benjamin was driven out of Germany by the Nazis; he turned to academics in France, but committed suicide while on the run from the gestapo in 1940....

The smart money has been on Cassandra Wilson for a couple of years now: to jazz insiders, this is the woman who might take vocal improvisation to the next level, building on the accomplishments of Ella, Sarah, and Carmen to do as much for her era as those earlier giants did for their own. That may seem an unlikely projection–but only if you haven’t heard her sing. Describing Wilson’s rich, bottomy contralto in musical terms doesn’t quite work....

CHEKHOV, STEVE AND LEO Stan Rutledge is expecting an IRS representative to come audit his none-too-orderly books. He desperately attempts to get out of his situation; upon learning that his auditor is a young woman, he even tries to distract her by flirting with her. By the end of his ordeal, he has discovered that his taxes are not as exorbitant as he had anticipated and that the competent Ms. Hendricks is rather attractive....

Daniel Lanois and his brother Bob were running a small but effective studio in Hamilton, Ontario (at the far west end of Like Ontario), when they ran into Brian Eno in the late 1970s. Much of Eno’s Ambient-period sound experiments came out of the Lanois brothers’ studio, and Daniel became Eno’s protege. The pair coproduced U2’s awesome Joshua Tree, and Lanois came into his own handling Peter Gabriel’s So, the Neville Brothers’ Yellow Moon, and, most recently, Dylan’s nice Oh Mercy....

“I don’t have a normal job,” says Jim Hurd, gleefully. He gestures at a cavernous loft filled with rows and rows of bicycles. “Everyone else here has to think of next year’s model. I’m the only one that gets to think about last year or 100 years ago. And they actually pay me to do this. That’s the most amazing thing.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “This is the King Tut’s tomb of the bicycling industry,” he says....

DU BARRY WAS A LADY at the Civic Theatre Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Porter’s words and notes seemed destined for each other–just what should happen when a composer fuses them himself. Those songs save DuBarry Was a Lady from itself. A vehicle tailored to the talents of Ethel Merman and Bert Lahr, DuBarry Was a Lady feels as if Porter dashed it off between cocktail parties....

Lead Story The city of Portland, Oregon, announced in February that the highest-paid municipal worker last year was a 911 operator who made $64,869 in overtime on top of a $30,000 salary. The mayor makes $72,592. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Arizona state representative Bobby Raymond, videotaped in a sting operation, pleaded guilty to five felony counts in February. Among his words on the tape: “My favorite line is ‘What’s in it for me?...

Chicago is known worldwide as the home of modern gospel, but more traditional forms of African-American Christian music are seldom heard here anymore. This performance will be a rare exception. Guitarist Reverend Leon Pinson and harpist Reverend Elder Wildson were both born in Mississippi; their songs are solidly in the old-time sacred vein, given extra poignancy by the subtle eloquence of Pinson’s slide work overlaid by Wilson’s voicelike harmonica lines. Pinson’s resume includes work at various folk and heritage festivals, including an appearance in Africa, and his playing is famous among aficionados for its adherence to the original intent of slide guitar–to the sounds, cadences, and timbre of the human voice....

PAUL-ANDRE FORTIER Lane Alexander With the poetic compression of Doris Humphrey’s Day on Earth, this dance covers the course of the man’s life, as he discovers the shape of his small world, paces its length, tries to escape it, rebels against it, despairs, accepts his small world, loves it, and is buried in it. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Fortier’s performance was the first of four in the Dance Center’s New World/New Art ’92 festival, which continues through November 14....

Springtime in Prague On May 6, 1990, we came through Pilsen by train. Enormous American flags hung from apartment buildings. A party of Czech revelers boarded the train actually dressed in U.S. Army fatigues. As our Prague hotel clerk would tell us a few hours later, “Last year we heard it was the Soviet army [that freed Pilsen]. This year we can say it is the American army.” Best of Chicago voting is live now....

Attitudewise, Teenage Fanclub is Scotland’s answer to the Pixies–their languid, almost indolent approach to craft and career makes their rising success seem almost inadvertant. Whether, like the Pixies, they’ll hang on to this blase attitude and become annoying remains to be seen. Soundwise, of course, they’re nothing like the Pixies: the pulsing guitars, the effortless melodic articulation, and a lot of the other stuff they do come out of the Big Star Guide to Pop ‘n’ Roll....