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In June, the Washington Post published an article about the June 4, 1989, slaughter in China’s Tiananmen Square, when armed tanks and the Chinese army opened fire on tens of thousands of protesters peacefully demanding the country’s repressive, authoritarian regime move toward a democracy. The death count ranges from hundreds to thousands—China has made statistics unavailable and scrubbed the country’s Internet of any mention of the uprising. As the Post noted, many Chinese born after 2000 don’t even know the brutally repressed revolution happened....

Plenty of ensembles in jazz and new-music circles have put their spin on the idiosyncratic compositions of the blind New York composer Louis Hardin, aka Moondog, who died in Germany in 1999. Self-taught and usually homeless, he was derisively known as the Viking of Sixth Avenue for the eccentric headdress and spear he sported. Moondog was a sui generis presence among the city’s jazz and classical communities during the 50s and 60s, hanging out with musicians at the New York Philharmonic by day and jamming with beboppers in clubs by night....

A charismatic person somehow emanates levity, intimacy, and self-assuredness, all at once. Charisma is talked about like it’s an inborn quality—but I think it’s something that’s summoned. My story this week is born, in part, from a desire to understand what charismatic people are like when they’re not being watched—and who gets hurt when image supersedes reality. In this case, two progressive arts organizations serving Black and Brown youth—Young Chicago Authors and Free Write Arts & Literacy—are reeling over allegations of sexual abuse by a former employee....

I would rank Zama, an Argentine period drama playing this week at the Gene Siskel Film Center, alongside Johnnie To’s Life Without Principle, Aleksei German’s Hard to Be a God, Jean-Luc Godard’s Goodbye to Language, and Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice as one of the major cinematic events of the decade. The film marks the long-awaited return of writer-director Lucrecia Martel, who hadn’t released a film since The Headless Woman in 2008....

Does a “master drawing” have to be drawn by a master? What is a “master drawing”? Furthermore, how does one qualify as a “master” draftsman? The Art Institute’s new survey show, “Master Drawings Unveiled: 25 Years of Major Acquisitions,” won’t answer any of these questions, but it does contain enough pleasurable works to interest those who appreciate the art of drawing—in particular, people who draw, whether for a living or for recreation....

Apartment 3A Talk about your sweet nothings! Written by Jeff Daniels (best known lately for his turn as TV news anchor Will McAvoy on HBO’s The Newsroom), this romantic comedy wouldn’t amount to much even if director Ron OJ Parson could make it work. As things stand, though, it’s a silly absence with a spooky twist, about a woman named Annie who’s been rubbed raw by a bad breakup and a frustrating job as director of fund-raising for a public-television channel....

Chicago native Meg Remy began recording and performing noise collages as U.S. Girls roughly a decade ago, and through the years she’s inched her sound closer and closer to pop; her 2012 track “Work From Home” sounds like a doo-wop number that curdled during the recording process. Whatever the outcome, her songs serve as reminders of the dark underbelly that often hides beneath pop’s sheen. Now based in Toronto, Remy teamed up with area jazz band the Cosmic Range (which includes her husband, Maximillion Turnbull, aka Slim Twig, as a member) to make In a Poem Unlimited (4AD)....

Scott Olson / Getty Images Cook County state’s attorney Anita Alvarez says her office will start dropping charges against people caught with less than an ounce of pot. Cook County state’s attorney Anita Alvarez says she’s not encouraging anyone to toke up. In 2014 her office prosecuted nearly than 15,000 misdemeanor cannabis possession cases, according to the court clerk’s office. About 2,000 cases ended in convictions, while the rest were dropped or dismissed....

The Seattle-based Twitter feed Dockless Bike Fail hilariously showcases the downside of dockless bike sharing, one of the newest developments in the shared-mobility boom. With this technology, customers can use a cell phone app to locate and access cycles distributed around a city and secured with built-in locks. Unlike traditional bike-share systems like Chicago’s Divvy, there’s no need to install expensive docking stations, and users can leave the cycles right at their destinations....

Welcome to autumn and all of its gorgeous chill! Even though many of us are still trying to observe a measure of caution while socializing and traveling through public spaces, the world keeps turning and there’s a bevy of events and exhibitions scheduled for the coming weeks. One way to feel good about going out is making sure that you’re taking health precautions as you need to, and one path to health is getting tested for the presence of COVID-19....

“Graphic Novels and Identity” Sat 4/28, 1 PM, Studebaker Theater, 410 S. Michigan, chicagohumanities.org, $20, $15 members, $10 students and teachers. I teach in an MFA in Comics program now [at California College of the Arts], and it is the worst thing when someone brand-new to the medium wants to embark on a really big, long project. I tell people: It’s possible, clearly, but you have to be a little crazy....

This wolf has been a big fan of the intense sound of Chicago rock four-piece Haki ever since catching wind of ’em, and on Fri 1/9 they’ll drop the provisionally titled Haki’s Big New E.P., their first new music since the self-­released LP Positive in April 2014. The Reader described that album as veering “from mellow dub hypnosis to feral punk that teeters on the edge of noisy chaos,” and Haki guitarist Yusuf Muhammad tells Gossip Wolf that the EP is “the most punk-rock thing we will ever make....

Update: To help slow the spread of COVID-19, this show has been postponed to a date to be determined in the future. Ticket holders should check with their point of purchase for refund or exchange information. It’s only March, but this lineup will be hard for any other heavy rock show in 2020 to beat. Sleep bassist-vocalist Al Cisneros and drummer Chris Hakius founded deep stoner trance outfit Om in 2003, and in 2008 Emil Amos took over for Hakius (who retired from music entirely the following year)....

If you’re reading this on Thursday it’s too late. Matt Courtade, coleader of monster garage outfit Heavy Times, leaves Chicago for sunny Los Angeles today—when this wolf spoke to him last week, he was considering taking up a friend’s offer of a temporary stay in one of Carrie Fisher’s guesthouses. But if it’s still Wednesday night or earlier, drop your plans and head to East Room to see Heavy Times play a release show for their brand-new HoZac seven-inch, Black Sunglasses....

The lineup for the 2016 Pitchfork Music Festival dropped this morning, and as always the organizers have proven their ability to put together an endearingly eclectic lineup. The bill for the three-day festival includes plenty of curveballs: Brian Wilson performing all of Pet Sounds, the legendary Sun Ra Arkestra, Canadian pop wonder Carly Rae Jepsen, and the Hotelier, the first emo band I’ve seen listed on a Pitchfork lineup in its 11 years....

On October 24, 2004, white Minneapolis police officer Scott Mars shot and killed a black 15-year-old named Courtney Williams. According to Minneapolis Public Radio, the police department claimed Williams was holding a gun when he was shot—a BB gun was entered as evidence—but the Williams family and members of Minneapolis’s Police Community Relations Council disagreed. In 2005 a Hennepin County grand jury decided not to indict Mars for the shooting....

It’s no longer particularly remarkable when a rock band continues to soldier on more than four decades after it started, but it’s another matter when a group continues to produce strong new music rather than exploit nostalgia. David Thomas is the only member left from the original lineup of Pere Ubu, but despite the stunning cast of musicians that have played in the band over the years, including synthesizer master Allen Ravenstine and guitarist Jim Jones, among others, it would be hard to dispute that it’s always been his outfit—no element has defined the band’s music more than his slightly unhinged yawp....

In my favorite photo of my parents, they’re sitting next to each other, looking directly at the camera, their cheeks slightly touching. My mom’s legs are crossed and slanted towards my dad. His left hand hangs gently over her knee as she rests hers on his stomach. They look comfortable and happy. Behind them is a bright Puerto Rican flag. Its red and white stripes fill the frame as my parents sit proudly in front of it....

By now you probably know a depressing amount about the shooting at Orlando gay nightclub Pulse that claimed the lives of at least 49 people early Sunday morning. It’s hard to know how to move forward from the deadliest such atrocity in modern U.S. history, because nothing relevant has changed since the last time a mass killing dominated the nation’s headlines—that is, this December, when a married couple killed 14 in San Bernardino, California....

When 50th Ward alderman Debra Silverstein and other city officials broke ground on a new bike and pedestrian bridge in the ward on February 15, they were metaphorically shoveling dirt onto a particularly perplexing aspect of former alderman Berny Stone’s legacy: his inexplicable effort to kill the project some 14 years ago. During the 2007 municipal election, 50th Ward challenger Naisy Dolar used the bridge as a campaign issue. At the time, Stone told Time Out Chicago that he had vetoed the bridge because the eight-story Lincoln Village Senior Apartments building was being constructed just west of the trail near the proposed span site....