I expect cartoonists everywhere to be showing solidarity with the cartoonists murdered in Wednesday’s massacre at the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris, but I’ll limit myself here to what Ted Rall had to say. One of the most politically ornery of American cartoonists, Rall reminded us on his blog that the killers were provoked. There’s not a whisper of justification in noting this; we must insist, and their coreligionists must insist in voices louder than our own, that murder completely dishonors their faith....

Lanford Wilson’s 1964 one-act The Madness of Lady Bright, a dynamic character study of an aging drag queen, is frequently cited as America’s first “gay play.” It premiered at Caffe Cino, an off-off-Broadway coffeehouse theater in New York’s Greenwich Village that also nurtured the work of emerging gay playwrights Robert Patrick, Tom Eyen, Jean-Claude van Itallie, and William M. Hoffman. Harvey Fierstein’s funny and moving Torch Song Trilogy opened on Broadway in 1982 after developmental productions off-off-Broadway in the late 1970s....

In his poem “Chicago,” Carl Sandburg wrote of our great city’s mirthful denizens, “Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.” This particular line of Sandburg’s rapturous ode came to mind as I watched the three short documentaries that comprise “Chicago Memories,” a program screening Saturday at Chicago Filmmakers. My favorite of the three, Bleacher Bums: Rabid Fans Of Wrigley Field (1998), profiles storied Cubs fans....

A sickness had descended upon my home. The walls echoed with wheezes, hacks, and croaks like a chorus of spitting coffee makers, while a malevolent fog of viral particulates hung in the air. I could feel it making a home in my lungs. What started as a wispy, scratchy tickle began to sound more like an open chest wound. Here that means his own version of tsukemen, the sauce based not on tonkotsu, but a chicken, vegetable, and pork broth emulsified with a blend of Ikehata’s red and white miso pastes....

“How do we define ‘professional?’” It was the warm-up question for a social justice workshop I am currently a part of. The answers ranged from clothing to conversation to language used in a workplace or to be eligible to enter a workplace. Most of us, people of color, talked about code-switching. Someone initiated a conversation about tattoos on Black men. I talked about needing to tame my hair when I was a child....

Since November, local media have been running celebratory stories about Chicago Police Department lieutenant John Garrido’s efforts to help Anthony Johnson, a homeless veteran. Garrido, who met Johnson at a dilapidated newspaper stand in Jefferson Park, launched an online fund-raiser that collected money to help him find a place to live and pay for a renovation to the shack. None of the television or newspaper reporters who covered the story, however, noted Garrido’s involvement in a push against an affordable-housing development in Jefferson Park that would prioritize veterans....

People are capable of acting like irresponsible idiots whether they’re traveling on foot, by bicycle, or in a car. And obviously the potential for causing death and destruction is exponentially greater when you’re piloting a high-speed, multiton vehicle. Drivers have also hit Lehrer. For example, she says, once when she was walking her dog in Rogers Park, a motorist ran a stop sign, knocking her over, and fled the scene. “But with drivers it’s different, because you know you’re in a danger zone....

On January 2 my mind was blown by a tweet from the Divvy bike-share account congratulating a guy named Kerdia Roland for being the program’s number one rider of 2017, with a staggering 2,462 trips for the year. “That’s 6,275 miles of riding—enough to get you to Alaska!” A lifelong Chicagoan who grew up in Streeterville, Roland transports everything from Big Macs to pricey French-Vietnamese cuisine from Le Colonial in the Gold Coast....

Celtic Crown University of Michigan Alumni Association viewing party. 7-9 PM, 4301 N. Western, 773-588-1110, celticcrownpub.com. In These Times Rep. Will Guzzardi kicks off the debate viewing with a speech about his involvement with the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign. BYOB. 7 PM, 2040 N. Milwaukee, first floor, 773-772-0100, inthesetimes.com. Timothy O’Toole’s Pub Chicago Viewing of the debate. 7:45 PM, 622 N. Fairbanks, 312-642-0700, timothyotooles.com.

After releasing her middling 2011 album, 101, and giving birth to her first child, French-Israeli singer Keren Ann largely retreated from the music business apart from some work in theater and film. In 2016 she returned with her strongest effort in years, You’re Gonna Get Love (Polydor), which sadly hasn’t been released in the U.S. Working with producer Renaud Letang (who’s wracked up credits with Feist, Amadou & Mariam, and Jarvis Cocker) and benefiting from arrangements by Brazilian great Eumir Deodato, she maintains the placid, shimmering beauty of her past work....

Norwegian guitarist Hedvig Mollestad has an uncanny ability to merge rock and jazz in arrangements that transcend the cliches of both genres. On her new album, Ding Dong. You’re Dead. (Rune Grammofon), this hybrid sound is defined in no small part by a sense of play. She returns to her long-running trio following the 2020 detour Ekhidna, where she was backed by a larger ensemble. The perpetual shredding on the new record could sound over-the-top alongside some of the more somber work on Ekhidna, but it’s well-suited for this trio setting....

Today’s the first official day of fall, but the heat is on as if it’s the middle of summer. Here’s some of what we recommend for your weekend: Sat 9/23: Choreographer Shen Wei, best known in the West for the opening of the 2008 Summer Olympics, makes his Chicago debut with Folding and Rite of Spring at the Auditorium Theatre (50 E. Congress). 8 PM, $15

Walking down the stretch of North Milwaukee between Diversey and Fullerton is enough to give you whiplash. To your left, there’s a farmers’ market; to your right, a movie theater; to your left, an arcade; to your right, a giant mural; to your left and your right and your left and your right again, a craft cocktail bar—I’m getting dizzy just thinking about it. The first time I actually walked through Comfort Station’s doors, it was daytime and I wasn’t going to or coming from a local watering hole....

Here’s a rule of thumb that will never let you down: if you come across a magazine more than 20 years old, pick it up. We all like to think we live in exciting times, but the truth is we’re all so jammed by the details of lives needing to be lived that today is in many ways the least interesting day there is. The article I came to was a discussion of Marston Moor, the biggest and bloodiest battle of the English civil war, the one that put Oliver Cromwell in power and Charles I on the chopping block in the early 17th century....

Japanese multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter Eiko Ishibashi has spent the past couple decades working in a multitude of idioms, including art-pop, jazz, postpunk, and free improvisation. It’s been thrilling to hear her move among styles and ideas from album to album, and her latest, Hyakki Yagyō (“Night Parade of One Hundred Demons”), is one of her most arresting to date, replete with tantalizing, haunting atmospheres conjured by electronics, acoustic instrumentation, and field recordings....

Claude McKay Love recounts his life in two parts that many will be familiar with: before college and after college. At just five years old, Claude is abandoned by his mother and father who he’s been told have moved to Missouri from Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood, leaving Claude to be taken care of by his grandmother and her longtime best friend, Paul. Before they leave, the young Black boy sees his parents’ friends disappear, setting the stage for a series of moments of abandonment....

Shailene Woodley (right) with Gabourey Sidibe and Mark Indelicato in White Bird in a Blizzard In The Spectacular Now and The Fault in Our Stars, Shailene Woodley plays kind, idealistic, but hardly naive young women who find actualization through romantic love. One of the more compelling things about Gregg Araki’s White Bird in a Blizzard—which is now available to rent at Redbox stands after it failed to get a theatrical run here last fall—is how it plays with and against Woodley’s screen persona from those other films....

For Grizzly Bear’s first album in five years, Painted Ruins, the band broke from its independent roots to join forces with major label RCA. Produced by bassist Chris Taylor, the new music has a glossier surface finish than ever, and the band hasn’t simplified its intricate style. In fact, the tension between the world-weary lyrics of Ed Droste, Daniel Rossen, and (for the first time) Taylor and the churning grooves, ethereal harmonies, and sparkling melodies of the music does nothing to reduce life’s complexities into digestible bites....

This week’s gig poster was created by local illustrator Ryan Duggan, whose work has been featured here many times before. Duggan designed and printed this poster for the Hideout’s annual event A Day in the Country, a festival of honky-tonk, bluegrass, and Americana music. As usual it was curated by musician, DJ, and Hideout bartender Lawrence Peters, but this year it will happen entirely online, livestreaming via the Hideout’s Facebook page....

Chicago MC Neph gets so wrapped up in his verses that I wouldn’t be surprised if recording his performances is an afterthought for him. In fact, on the new EP More to Come, he gently pumps the brakes on his soporific flow partway through “Cadillac Palace,” asking how much time he has left—and even though Neph’s question fits into the rhyme scheme as well as the song’s laid-back mood, the impromptu vibe he creates suggests that he’s reacting in the moment, even if every other syllable was planned out....