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Thomas Sheehan has always had a penchant for carrying things to their logical conclusions–and maybe a step or two beyond. In 1965, when he was a graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley, he was entitled to a draft deferment. But his antiwar feelings were so strong that he insisted on registering as a conscientious objector–the first in the San Francisco area during the Vietnam era–and doing alternative service in place of military service....

West meets East in The Land of Smiles (1929), the wildly popular operetta from Franz Lehar’s second (and unexpected) creative phase, which is distinguished by the touching showcase arias written especially for the matinee idol Richard Tauber. The plot involves the familiar triangle of two men of contrasting temperament in love with the same beautiful young woman, but here the twist is that one of the suitors is a Chinese diplomat....

Are We Ready for the Chicago Music Awards? If seeing Richard Marx and Peter Cetera live onstage at the Chicago Theatre immediately calls to your mind the glories of Chicago rock ‘n’ roll, you’re on the same wavelength as the organizers of the upcoming Chicago Music Awards. The group, a New York-based outfit that calls itself the National Music Awards, comes into cities and puts together star-studded events that it says are designed to (a) highlight local talent and (b) make some money....

It might have been vaguely tragic if it had been a good idea, but the collapse of a bad idea never seems like anything but the work of merciful destiny. The funny thing is that even now that the brouhaha has died away, everyone involved still seems surprised that their plans for a judicious, philosophical discussion about abortion went awry. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “They’re dedicating everything at our school,” says Kirsten Olson, vice-president of Chicago-Kent’s Women in Law society....

“It started as a joke,” Vince Francone says. “Just a joke. It was just a goofy thing. I’m kind of a crazy guy.” Francone drew his first face on the black blank wall of the Trio Lounge in 1973. Trio’s owner, Dominick “Snooky” Santore, and another regular more or less prodded him into it, he says. “After that they gave me carte blanche. It got pretty crazy. People would give me drinks–sometimes they’d pay me, you know, $20, to put them on the wall....

A pair of bluebirds is nesting at North Park Village. Laurel Ross, the naturalist in charge of the nature preserve at Pulaski and Peterson on the site of the former municipal TB sanatorium, called me Monday morning with the news. Lately they have been making a modest comeback, thanks in part to the bluebird trails–groups of nest boxes scattered through suitable habitat–that bird lovers have erected to give the species a hand....

Jane Byrne was mayor when the city first promised the residents of West Garfield Park a renovated library. Radford-Hill and other neighborhood activists are fighting. They want to see a renovated library linked with nearby schools to form a “cultural corridor to the community.” To meet this end, they’ve enlisted Bethel New Life, a not-for-profit social service and community development group of which Radford-Hill is an officer, as well as several business leaders....

“Hey, Scott, come over here! There’s a building on fire! You can still see flames.” The weekend crowd milled around the site of the fire—the block bounded by Superior, Huron, Orleans, and Sedgwick—staring at the smoldering ruins of the six-story walls of brick, which two days before had been the cornerstone of the River North gallery district. The devastation was complete. Everyone made the same analogy; the building looked like something out of World War II—the London blitz or the Dresden firebombing....

You haven’t heard of them, but this is one band with big shoulders and plenty of horsepower; then again, what would you expect from an alliance of Chicago and Detroit musicians? Kenneth Green is the pianist, from the Motor City; Dushun Mosley, the Chi-town drummer (best known as one of Ed Wilkerson’s Eight Bold Souls), shares responsibility for this puissant sextet, which ripples with avant-soul improvisations over a strong and steady pulse....

CHICAGO YOUNG PLAYWRIGHTS FESTIVAL It’s tricky to generalize about drama, whether by young Americans or ancient Greeks; at their best, these plays are too real to be merely representative. This year’s batch of four plays is tighter in construction, less preoccupied with love than with the challenge of finding decent work. The mothers portrayed are more potent than the (mainly invisible) fathers. Curiously, the plays don’t indict society for causing the crises depicted but do focus on the effects of cultural inequities–especially sexual stereotypes and class snobbery....

HOOK With Dustin Hoffman, Robin Williams, Julia Roberts, Bob Hoskins, Maggie Smith, Caroline Goodall, and Charlie Korsmo. With Warren Beatty, Annette Bening, Harvey Keitel, Ben Kingsley, Elliott Gould, Joe Mantegna, and Bebe Neuwirth. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Bugsy, by contrast, is clearly meant to convey an overall sense of loss, even though much of the movie registers as comedy. The only attempt at any final uplift–which is significantly missing from Toback’s published version of the script–is a title that informs us that Bugsy Siegel’s doomed investment in Las Vegas went on to yield billions of dollars after his death, and it’s a credit to the film as a whole that this title, while undoubtedly accurate and perhaps even heartfelt, has a decisively hollow ring....

JAZZMO Made up of six “scenes” improvised to music (each about ten minutes long), JazzMo features an ensemble of young, agile, and athletic actors who express themselves entirely through movement set to contemporary jazz (Keith Jarrett, Bass Desires, Jace Ira Blue, etc). They run, they leap, they spin, they kick; following the beat, they move across the stage, alone or in groups of two or three, all the while creating intriguing stage pictures....

THE BIG BREAK Sometimes it’s nice to be proved wrong. This LP won’t win any awards for pathfinding blues vision or revolutionary musicianship, but it’s one of the most savory I’ve come across in a long time. It crackles with fresh, irreverent humor, and it’s mined with enough influences and obscure references to keep musicologists hitting the books for weeks. Moreover there’s a tastefulness to both the playing and singing that’s almost unheard-of in musicians this young....

CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA I understand completely. This is not to take anything away from Solti, Giulini, Levine, Abbado, or any other conductor who may have performed or recorded the Mahler First with the CSO, but Tennstedt’s reading of the work–first heard here nearly five seasons ago–is so original and persuasive that you feel as if you’re hearing the piece for the first time. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In recent years some have argued that the “Blumine” movement, the original orchestration, or the program should be restored....

MEASURE FOR MEASURE Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In the play’s central crisis Isabella, a convent novice, must choose between letting herself be raped by Angelo, the power-drunk deputy of Venice, and letting her brother Claudio be executed–for the very crime that Angelo intends, fornication. (And Claudio only did it with his fiancee!) It’s hard to explain hypocrisy like Angelo’s, or his chilling taunt when Isabella threatens to expose him: “Who would believe thee?...

Accordionist Guy Klucevsek intones one caveat for those tempted to come to his concerts. “Remember,” he cautions, “this isn’t weird music for polka people, these are polkas for weird people.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The light bulb that eventually resulted in “Polka From the Fringe” popped on over Klucevsek’s head in 1986, while listening to pianist Yvar Mikhashoff’s tango collection. Klucevsek began asking his composer friends–Bobby Previte, Christian Marclay, Lois V....

SCARRED GROUND Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In an attempt to dramatize this struggle to know the unknowable, Jones has created in addition to Cobb (Craig Spidle) two young adults who both lost their fathers to the Vietnam War. Alexandra (Moon Hi Hanson) and Millard (L. Kent Brown) meet at the wall, where they have come to find their fathers’ names. Alexandra is a desperately frightened black girl from the big city who compensates for her insecurities–in a series of unfortunately interchangeable scenes–by trying to prove herself to Millard....

Legal eagle by day, young man with a horn at night, Steve Schneck demonstrates that he’s a born musician every time he plays: as a sideline, he makes music with enough clarity and taste to make you reconsider your worst impressions of lawyers. Schneck brings a warm, full tone to his instruments (trumpet and flugelhorn), and his admirable ability to direct an improvisation from start to finish offers another clue to the identity of his models, the hard-bop giants Clifford Brown and Art Farmer....

One way to spot an honest car dealer, according to the newsletter Tirekicking Today, headquartered on North Francisco: “Check the help-wanted ads in your Sunday newspaper. The qualities a dealer seeks in a salesperson can tell a lot about the kind of treatment you’re likely to receive as a customer.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “Remember that every time you patronize Gill’s [which sells beer in bulk for $4....

THE SUNSHINE BOYS Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Happily, however, Neil Simon can take you back to the glory days. Though his career began after vaudeville’s decline, the King of Gags honed his comic writing on anything-for-a-laugh classic burlesque–its one-liners, double and triple takes, pratfalls, slapstick, slow burns, spit takes, and punch lines; you can taste them in the stuff he wrote for Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows, The Phil Silvers Show, and Simon’s incredibly popular plays, films, and musicals, especially the sidesplitting Little Me....