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Barbra Streisand Retrospective? Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » One snag, however, is Kutza’s inability to nab the Chicago Theatre for opening-night festivities. A Chicago Theatre gala would give Kutza more than 3,600 opening-night tickets to sell to Streisand fans, but the theater is booked that week for a stage musical, and at the moment it appears Kutza may have to fall back on a smaller spot such as the Fine Arts, which would mean a sharp drop in ticket revenue....

Friday 23 The longest bicycle in the world, made a few years back by a bunch of enterprising Marquette University engineering students, is 97 feet long, weighs five tons, and handles 36 riders. For the second year in a row, the bike is one of the centerpieces of the Ronald McDonald Children’s Charities Christmas Parade today along Michigan Avenue. Also featured will be the Shriners’ “Big Wheels” bicycle corps, all riding those fin de siecle models with the huge front wheel and tiny back wheel....

Friday 8 A wet dog may be just a smelly canine to you, but not to those at the Anti-Cruelty Society who will be around the society’s parking lot at Grand and Wells for DogWash ’88. There will be dozens of volunteers to suds up every dirty Dane and mastiff that strolls in. The annual fund-raiser runs from 10 to 3 at 157 W. Grand. If your dog weighs up to 25 pounds, volunteers will spoil it for only $5; if it’s between 26 and 49 pounds, $10; anything 50 pounds or over, $15....

Friday 29 After working for more than 14 months without a contract, members of the United Mine Workers of America walked out on the Pittston Coal Group in southwest Virginia last spring. The miners, who are still striking, were protesting the end of benefits for widows and retired and disabled miners, cutbacks in health benefits, and the hiring of scabs, among other things. Since the walkout, more than 3,000 arrests have been made, and fines exceedinging $13 million have been levied against the miners, who are in dire need of support and funds....

Helen Finner remembers the autumn day two years ago when she was strolling outside the Ida B. Wells housing project, where she lives. A teenage mother was walking toward her. “One baby in her arms, one baby in the stroller, and one baby dragging behind. I saw the frustration in her face. She was cussing the baby walking behind her. And I said, ‘Sweetheart, don’t do that.’ And she said, ‘I’m tired....

The scholarly Reverend Alfred Momerie of the Church of England came to Chicago in September 1893 to take part in the first World’s Parliament of Religions. Afterward. he called it “the greatest event so far in the history of the world.” The parliament did inspire a rapturous if not entirely justified optimism. Paul Carus thought it signaled “the dawn of a new religious era” in which “the narrow Christianity will disappear....

Mary didn’t have quite the right background to sell newspaper ads. But in October 1988 she applied to become an account executive at the Times Standard, a daily in the northern California city of Eureka, and informed ad manager Judi Pollace that she simply had to have the job, even if she didn’t have all the qualifications. Pollace, who hadn’t had great credentials when she went back to work after raising her four children, admired Mary’s pluck and decided to take a chance on her....

A stirring and informative account of the Sandinista struggle, made up almost exclusively of personal testimonies from Sandinistas, this documentary by Deborah Shaffer–who won an Oscar in 1985 for her Witness to War: Dr. Charlie Clements–is loosely based on Omar Cabezas’s book about his own training as a guerrilla fighter in response to the Somoza dictatorship. The physicality and mythical dimensions of the guerrillas’ experiences in the mountains are an important part of the story here, but the film includes much more: newsreel footage and Nicaraguan witnesses speak of American invasions throughout this century, and the commentaries of Cabezas (now vice-minister of the interior of the new Nicaraguan government) and others are intelligent and pointed, moving beyond slogans to give a detailed portrait of their history, problems, and aspirations....

LOVE, SEX, AND THE I.R.S. Other characters stumble into this preposterous situation. Kate, who is engaged to Jon but having an affair with Leslie, becomes the object of the tax collector’s drunken advances. The landlord keeps making surprise visits, hoping to find that the two men are harboring a female roommate, in violation of their lease. Jon’s mother shows up unexpectedly for a visit. After being introduced to Leslie, still in full drag, she flees the apartment and returns with a preacher who promises to cure her son for a mere $10....

The huge Spanish colonial arch at Kedzie that greets visitors driving west along 26th Street should provide a clue. This is not the stereotypical depressed, abandoned shopping strip many people associate with minority neighborhoods in Chicago. Instead, the 26th Street strip from Kedzie to Kostner, which forms the heart of the neighborhood known as Little Village, bustles with furniture, clothing, and small department stores, record shops, restaurants, and bars with large satellite dishes facing southwest to pick up boxing and soccer matches from Mexico....

Lead Story China’s Nanjing Daily reported in May that farmer Li Hongzhong, 42, has eaten a snake nearly every day for the past 20 years and feels miserable on the days he can’t eat one. Not surprisingly, he’s had difficulty meeting prospective marriage partners. Reporters witnessed Li eating a two-foot snake that was twisting violently as he swallowed it. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » People Unclear on the Concept...

POWER GOING DOWN Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Busiel’s characters, who all work at the same corporation, have just emerged from a distressing meeting when a power outage lands them in the aforementioned predicament. Trapped together are the head of the firm, Mr. Wilson, his personal secretary Donna, and three underlings, Robby, Terry, and Steve. Steve has just gotten a contract that Terry desperately wants, and this provides the play’s main plot line....

RAGE OF THE AGES Rage of the Ages is pseudo science fiction, populated by mortals and superior Others. The mortals are at varying stages of knowledge about the existence of the Others, but during the course of the play all are introduced to them. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » It is never made quite clear who or what these Others are, but the ones we meet are named Gaius and Chamile, and their names and abilities suggest godlike stature....

ORD. LAX. JFK. You’re standing at Gate 27B. You’ve already checked in for the ugly 12-hour flight to Europe or Africa or South America. Bags loaded, aisle seat assigned, nothing to do now but mill around the concourse. Bingo. Eureka. That’s it! You dolt, you’ve forgotten to bring something to read. Idiot! You’ve just got time, maybe, to sprint to the gift shop, grab a few books from the rack. Next 12 miserable hours you’ll be caged alongside 500 other geeks–experiencing the romance of travel, the cattle car of modern flight....

This may seem like a stupid question, but hey, I have no pride. Our psychotic dwarf rabbit, Slick, has an unusual urge to chew on things. He does it pretty indiscriminately and I have some chewed up T-shirts to prove it. Annoying as this is, my sister claims if he didn’t do it, he would die. She showed me a gruesome picture of a woodchuck with incredibly long and deformed chompers, and says that’s what would happen to Slick if he didn’t chew....

Clint Eastwood’s most assured and interesting job of direction to date is an adaptation of Peter Viertel’s roman a clef about the events preceding shooting of The African Queen, with Eastwood playing the John Huston part–a director who decides to shoot a movie in Africa in order to hunt elephants. In a daring departure from his usual roles, Eastwood doesn’t so much impersonate Huston as offer a commentary on him and on macho bluster in general, and thanks to the beautifully structured script by Viertel, James Bridges, and Burt Kennedy–which also has a lot of interesting things to say about colonialism and Hollywood (both separately and in conjunction with one another)–it’s a devastating portrait of self-deceiving obsession, and a notable improvement on Viertel’s book in terms of economy and focus....

The editor complained when he saw the story. You can’t apologize for a terrorist, he said. Respected? Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “Yeah, not to mention his service in the early years of Vietnam. He was a hero; the army awarded him the Bronze Star for valor.” “You sound like the government. They stonewalled me for five weeks, and then when I finally got the interview some flunky of the warden insisted on standing over us keeping time....

The Chicago String Ensemble’s “American Night” concert, yet another example of the group’s thoughtful, exploratory programming, turns out to be a posthumous salute to Aaron Copland, the doyen of American music who died last month. Originally devised to honor Copland’s 90th birthday and Samuel Barber’s 80th, the program includes seldom-performed pieces by both masters. The Copland work, Quiet City (1940), is obscure compared to its popular sibling Billy the Kid, but its spritely syncopated depiction of urban hurly-burly definitely warrants another hearing....

On a Monday morning, up in the Leo Burnett building, they looked like a couple of young advertising execs taking advantage of a corporate policy pushing on-the-job fitness. Casually dressed, they carried bulky gym bags into the elevator. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » There are other Vince and Larry clones on tour around the state, visiting public schools and county fairs. The actual number and gender of these Vinces and Larrys is a low-level state secret kept by the Illinois Department of Transportation....

The idea of naming official state birds grew out of the first great American environmental movement. This began late in the 19th century and continued well into the 20th. It numbered among its achievements the founding of the national forest system and the creation of laws protecting songbirds from capture or killing. The campaign for naming state birds was a sort of PR operation designed to get people, especially young people, emotionally involved with birds....