It is one of urban summer’s most iconic images: kids frolicking on the asphalt in front of the cooling spray of an open fire hydrant. Wrenching open the street-side water pumps is also one of the city’s most enduring illicit seasonal practices. But for overheated children, an open hydrant provides what New York Times writer N. R. Kleinfeld once called “the ocean of their imagination.” It enables “the recreation of last resort,” especially for residents for whom an air-conditioned house isn’t a given, a trip to the nearest public pool is an infrequent luxury, and to whom the sandy shores of Lake Michigan may seem as remote as a crater on the silver surface of the moon....

The sexual act is hard to get across onstage. Directors have had to unlearn all the old ways it was once done. Billowing drapery, the dimming of lights, a sudden curtain: that entire evasive language is old hat, as obsolete a thing now as barrel staves and buggy whips. Jack, a traveling businessman, is HIV positive. He lies to Samra’s bartender about this at first. He then comes clean. Nobody in this play keeps a secret from anyone else for very long....

Takashi Miike’s White-Collar Worker Kintaro (aka Salaryman Kintaro) You never know what you’re going to retain from a movie. It could be the story, a theme, or one of the characters. Or it might be something smaller—an image or a line of dialogue. Coming out of it you decided you were unimpressed by the film as a whole, but later on you find parts of it occupying your thoughts as you might crumbs in a pants pocket....

One of the best television fun facts of all time is that the late-80s/early-90s sitcom Full House was originally supposed to be a show about three single stand-up comedians cohabitating, called House of Comics. Besides having a name that sounds like an eastern European adaptation of an American sitcom, House of Comics, had it been green-lit as it was, would’ve robbed us of Donna Jo, Michelle, and Stephanie Tanner. OK, we all could’ve lived without Michelle—the blog Full House Reviewed is an excellent chronicle of her awfulness—but we grew up with Stephanie, from the time she was just a tiny Honey Bee to the time she was an awkward teen trying cigs with that bad bitch Gia....

From her first dreary-but-dreamy garage-rock single as Lala Lala, 2014’s “Fuck With Your Friends,” it was clear Chicago musician Lillie West was planting the seeds of something great. Since then she’s developed her artistry over a handful of independent releases, and tonight she celebrates the release of her brand-new album, The Lamb (Hardly Art). On this record West (backed by Ben Leach on drums and Dehd’s Emily Kempf on bass and backing vocals) continues down the road she started on years ago with intimate recordings of confessional lyrics laid over pushy, hazy, and dark chords....

Memphis band Nots, fronted by former Ex-Cult bassist Natalie Hoffman, are in town tonight, playing a free gig at Logan Square late-night spot the Owl. On last year’s We Are Nots (Goner)—without a doubt one of 2014’s tastiest slabs—the four-piece tore through simple, raw punk rock, cutting to the point with short bursts of bratty aggression. But on their new Goner Records single, “Virgin Mary,” their synth-punk tendencies step to the forefront....

Anaal NathrakhDesideratum (Metal Blade) DawnbringerNight of the Hammer (Profound Lore) Genre-hopping Canadian producer Ryan Hemsworth pals around with a loose Internet-­based network of like-­minded artists, and since the release of last year’s Guilt Trips, that network has grown. These days he co­produces Tinychat-based concert series SPF420, and he’s launched a free Web label called Secret Songs. Musicians from both camps appear on Alone for the First Time: the shape-shifting post-R&B tune “By Myself” features cameos from local smooth talker the GTW (an SPF420 alumnus) and ethereal Swedish singer Little Cloud (who released “You” on Secret Songs last month)....

Technically, Margo Jefferson grew up in the south-side neighborhoods of Park Manor and Hyde Park. But metaphorically she comes from Negroland—her name for a small segment of black America “where residents were sheltered by a certain amount of privilege and plenty.” Her father was the head of pediatrics at Provident Hospital; her mother graduated from the University of Chicago. Her family belonged to the most exclusive black clubs, and their friends included the city’s most prominent lawyers and clergymen, academics and publishers, plus an opera singer and an Olympic athlete....

The Air and Water Show flies through town this weekend, but there’s plenty of other things to do. Here’s some of what we recommend: Sat 8/19: Former colleagues and friends speak about the vaunted late film critic Roger Ebert—friendly foil to Gene Siskel on TV’s Siskel and Ebert—at his Chicago Literary Hall of Fame Induction hosted by the American Writers Museum (180 N. Michigan). Ebert’s widow, Chaz Ebert, accepts the award on his behalf....

Ever since some D.C. punks rejected the hardcore aesthetic they brought to bear in the mid-80s, emo has been about change. It’s morphed with each subsequent wave while retaining an essence that connects the dominant contemporary vision back to the roots of the family tree. D.C. duo the Obsessives are as much a representation of a band ready and willing to muck it through the trenches of emo’s rising fourth wave as they are one that may soon front the genre at large....

Sun-Times Media Peter Lisagor Is it a time to worry? Sue Stevens sounds just as blase. She joined the Headline Club in 1969, she’s a former president, and at the moment she’s regional director of the Society of Professional Journalists, the Headline Club’s parent group. She’s seen it all. “With journalists it’s like herding cats,” she tells me. “You don’t know until the last minute what you’ve got.” Ever since the bottom fell out of (1) mainstream journalism and (2) the economy, Stevens has been expecting a Lisagor contest to come along that nobody would enter because nobody could afford to, not even the handful of journalists with actual jobs....

Next weekend’s Chicago Jazz Festival honors the centennials of three of jazz’s most colorful, enduring, and influential figures—Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, and Thelonious Monk—but those aren’t the only significant anniversaries it’s observing. At 6 PM on Saturday at the Pritzker Pavilion, the trio BassDrumBone—drummer Gerry Hemingway, bassist Mark Helias, and trombonist and Chicago native Ray Anderson—performs as part of an international tour marking their 40th year as working collective. Last year the group released a terrific double album called The Long Road (Auricle) to celebrate this milestone, and its music sounds as vital as ever....

—Ben Burden In fall 2014, Ben Burden had reached a crux in his collegiate soccer career at High Point University in North Carolina—as a junior, the starting midfielder knew he’d soon have to choose whether to pursue the sport professionally. A torn meniscus would end up making the decision for him, though, and after his injury the former high school All-American sank into a dark place. Burden felt betrayed by his coaches, who met with him multiple times, fishing for ways to end his scholarship....

Dre Green The first half of this week has a ton to offer as far as great shows go, and things kick off tonight with a free show at Wicker Park’s Emporium Arcade featuring Sandworm and local noise rockers Unmanned Ship; Lagwagon front man Joey Cape plays an acoustic gig at Gingerman Tavern tonight as well. On Tues 9/30, indie rockers Beach Fossils headline the Bottom Lounge while reformed black-metal outfit Liturgy play at Land & Sea Department....

The sad life and stunted dreams of French sculptor Camille Claudel are the stuff of feminist parable. In 1884, as a 19-year-old student, she joined the staff of Auguste Rodin, helping to execute some of his larger works, and eventually became his muse, model, and lover; when she began to develop as an artist in her own right, their work grew intertwined, but she could never establish her own reputation and the romance soured....

“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” Rahm Emanuel famously said in November 2008. Then chief of staff to president-elect Barack Obama, Emanuel was referring to the nation’s financial crisis. “It’s an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before,” he told the Wall Street Journal. “Things that we had postponed for too long . . . are now immediate and must be dealt with....

Just off Keslinger Road in DeKalb, Illinois, is a tiny stone and timber building constructed from the remains of a turn-of-the-century dairy barn that once stood nearby. In the 1960s, the cows gone, it functioned as a picnic shelter and sleeping porch for the men who farmed the surrounding 2,000 acres. Fifty years later, enclosed and renovated to include plumbing and air-conditioning, it’s classified as a roadside stand, licensed to sell products from the farm that still surrounds it....

I love the way that music and memory work together—a song can remind me of an experience, and an encounter can bring a specific piece of music to mind. Last week I presented a concert at Constellation that included the Switzerland-based percussionist Jason Kahn. I hadn’t heard him perform live since the late 80s, when he was a member of the LA band Universal Congress Of, a group led by guitarist Joe Baiza, who first made his name with the weird postpunk combo Saccharine Trust....

In early 2007 a little restaurant called Baccala opened in Wicker Park, inspired by chef John Bubala’s visit to Piemonte, in northwestern Italy, one of the greatest food regions in the world. Bound on three sides by the Alps, it has given the planet a lot of treasure: revered wines like Barolo, Barbaresco, and Asti; cheeses like robiola and Castelmagno; egg-rich pastas like agnolotti and tajarin; classic dishes like vitello tonnato and the magisterial bollito misto; and the king of the Tuber genus, the white truffle of Alba....

Usama Alshaibi of the Chicago Underground Film Festival and Carlos Jiménez Flores of the Chicago Latino Film Festival discuss depictions of race and ethnicity in popular media. For Love in the Caserio Adapted from a play by Antonio Morales, this 2013 drama transplants Romeo and Juliet to a Puerto Rican ghetto, with the handsome young lovers (Anoushka Medina and Xavier Antonio Morales) divided by feuding drug crews. Director Luis Enrique Rodriguez shot the movie in the shabby Llorens neighborhood near Ocean Park, recruiting some players from the area, and the montage sequences offer some vibrant local color....