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To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Mr. Lazare may perceive that the only “big job” is a logo design, but in fact it is the continuous presence of exhibition catalogues circulated to the nation’s libraries; exhibition and program announcements, brochures, and bimonthly calendars which are viewed and used by hundreds of thousands of visitors; street banners on Michigan Avenue; and thousands of MCA t-shirts that make up the fabric of graphic identity of an institution like the MCA....

SORE THROATS Commons Theatre Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Seeing her misery, Jack offers the classic blame-the-victim cop-out: “You can’t live in pain all the time.” Because he wants to force Judy to sign over a settlement he had promised her, he begins to slap and kick her with almost ritualized violence, declaring “Torture makes the world go round.” When she disobeys an order and tries to crawl away, he kicks her again and again until she gives him the money....

Here, goodness gracious, is one Chicago rock band that has it all: excellent original songs, two appealing and emotionally credible singers, a guitarist playing memorable licks, a rock-solid rhythm section–and yes, a name that people remember. Stump the Host play rock ‘n’ roll that’s been soaked overnight in a big bucket o’ country feeling and hung up to dry in the gritty air of the big city. It’s unlikely anyone would ever call them innovators; they just do what a lot of other local country-rock bands do, only better....

To the editors: How does Mr. Boeker begin his review? The sixth word is the adjective “tiresome.” Boeker places his value judgment immediately before the reader without even pretending to analyze the production in order to arrive at a reasoned conclusion. Only two sentences further, we read: “. . . this medicine show is about to teach us something, if only we can suffer through the ‘entertainment’ (Boeker’s quotation marks) ....

THE MISS VAGINA PAGEANT at Urbus Orbis Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » It helps that the Soloways offer a distinctly feminist sensibility that shows itself in the way Miss Vagina never stoops to mocking the women involved in the pageant. The five contestants are presented as neither bimbos nor semidivines but as individuals. Thus Beth Cahill gets laughs because her character, Denise Wittke, is such a perfect re-creation of a tough white girl from the southwest side....

When Ed Burke introduced a comprehensive recycling ordinance back in February, the bill looked like a sure winner. By introducing a recycling ordinance shortly before Earth Day, the 14th Ward alderman created a perfect opportunity to put his personal clout as City Council floor leader and finance committee chairman behind an issue with wide popular appeal. Burke’s bill complements an earlier recycling ordinance introduced by 44th Ward Alderman Bernie Hansen. The Hansen bill, which passed on February 28, covers the first stage of the recycling process, requiring the city to set up collection systems in all 50 wards by 1993....

THE ANCIENT AMERICAS: ART FROM SACRED LANDSCAPES Among the many masterpieces on view at the Art Institute’s exhibit of pre-Columbian art, “The Ancient Americas,” four are particularly potent examples of this art’s “cosmic,” outward-reaching aspects. At the center of a gold sun mask (Ecuador, La Tolita) is a moderately stern face; from three sides of the face shoot out golden zigzag snakelike rays, each much longer than the face is wide; at the end of each intact ray (a few are broken) is a human face....

Q. What does hedonic loss encompass, Mr. Smith? A. The word “hedonic,” first of all, does not mean hedonistic, which is a modern term. The word hedonic is an economic term and commonly used by economists. It refers to the non-financial attributes of something. So, for example, I in Chicago have a job which has a certain pay. That would be the monetary attribute of that job, the monetary characteristic of it....

A baseball-playing friend stymied me with this question. Seven batters step up to the plate in one inning, all from the same team. The inning ends and no one has scored. How? We came up with bases loaded, two pop-outs, a grand slam, and one more pop-out, when the other team claims the grand slam hitter didn’t tag third and the four runs are nullified. But we regard this answer as a copout, and the guy won’t tell us the solution....

I attended the Ohio Renaissance Festival recently. One of the acts was Thom Selectomy, a sword swallower. He invited persons from the audience to inspect his props, the swords. From all appearances the weapons seemed to be authentic. He then proceeded to “swallow” rapiers of varying lengths. Once he ingested two at a time, extracting them separately. At another point (no pun), he allowed the weight of the hilt (no hands) to force the blade down....

ALL MEN ARE WHORES But still I marvel at the feeble, pretentious stuff he occasionally puts on the market. It makes me wonder if he isn’t, in fact, an unscrupulous capitalist himself. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I’m thinking of plays like The Spanish Prisoner, staged in Chicago in 1985. In this brief dialogue, two men sit in overstuffed chairs and talk about a Spanish galleon that disappeared in a hurricane more than 300 years ago, laden with treasure taken from exploited people....

Sometimes I pray silently during violin recitals: “Deliver us, O Lord, from the Juilliard sound.” With Anne-Sophie Mutter, my prayers have finally been answered. Her Solti-conducted CSO debut last year playing the Beethoven violin concerto was one of the most expressive and refreshing performances of that overdone war-horse I’ve ever heard, incorporating an astonishing variety of timbres and textures unknown among Juilliard-trained players. Now, the 26-year-old West German, who was discovered by the late Herbert von Karajan, makes her area recital debut as part of the Chamber Music Chicago 30th-anniversary series, and it could well be the debut of the year....

JUNE Friday 26 Only a symposium on the JFK assassination could bring together the likes of deposed house speaker Jim Wright, actor and political do-gooder Ed Asner, and comedian cum diet-promoter Dick Gregory. Wright, who rode in the fateful Dallas motorcade in November 1963, serves as master of ceremonies at a dinner tonight to kick off two days of lectures on various assassination-related topics at Northwestern’s downtown campus. Gregory and Asner will deliver keynote addresses starting at 6 at the Marriott, 540 N....

Friday 12 Don Reger is a mild-mannered Joliet engineer 364 days a year. But one day every year (he boasts it’s the only time) he becomes Rogue Reger, a tough-talking, merciless champ and the world’s greatest hearts player. Count on him to be sneering his way through the competition at the Sixth Annual Cutthroat Hearts Tournament beginning today at 9 AM at the Louis Joliet Renaissance Center, 214 N. Ottawa in Joliet....

Chicago Opera Theater’s Night of Horrors Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » But their problems weren’t over. The Idomeneo cast also found itself competing for the audience’s attention with a group of kids playing on noisy fire escapes outside the theater. After the show, around 11 PM, someone decided to activate the theater’s fire alarm, a move that sent remaining cast members rushing pell-mell from their dressing rooms into the cold winter’s night....

To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » That Michael Miner would try to explain the difficulties facing a fellow journalist, such as Chicago magazine’s Dan Santow [Hot Type, October 26], due to the time and space limitations he faced in writing about the school community here, is understandable and to be expected. That he would defend a story which depicts a high school that doesn’t exist in a suburban setting that doesn’t exist is a good example of how easily journalists can let their own realities obscure the view of the world in which their subjects live....

THE RAGGEDY RAWNEY With Dexter Fletcher, Hoskins, Zoe Nathenson, Dave Hill, Ian Dury, and Zoe Wanamaker. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » (3) Inspired by a legend told to Hoskins as a child by his grandmother that reportedly can be traced all the way back to the Hundred Years’ War (1337-1443), the movie is nonetheless given a setting so vaguely defined that the best description I’ve seen yet (published in the synopsis in Monthly Film Bulletin) is: “Sometime during the first half of the 20th century, in a European country at war....

At 6:30 AM on July 12, at exactly the time they are supposed to, a line of men files out of the Holiday Inn across from the Merchandise Mart and into two borrowed CTA buses. They are wearing polo shirts and T-shirts and khaki pants and jeans and caps and windbreakers. Some have potbellies, and some have hearing aids. One is paralyzed and in a wheelchair, two are missing arms, and at least a few are filled with shrapnel....

We tend to think of Music of the Baroque as masters of reviving grand-scale 17th- and 18th-century choral works, but for some time now its cantata series has revealed them to be just as zesty and assured with the more intimate, less ambitious gems of the Baroque repertoire. This season opener, like the series in general, is devoted to the music of Bach–not surprising given that Bach churned out more than 250 cantatas as a cantor in Leipzig....

It’s raining hard, but Alan Saks doesn’t care. At age 61, he’s president of Saxon Paint, a company his grandparents started 75 years ago out of a storefront on Roosevelt Road. The company’s worth millions these days and has 50 branches, some as far away as Milwaukee. People who have seen his ads for Saxon on TV recognize Saks. He enjoys his notoriety. Life’s been good to Saks–a little rain can’t spoil his day....