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Australian singer Courtney Barnett crafts a wonderfully lived-in, warm, and hooky melodic world on her second proper album, Tell Me How You Really Feel (Mom + Pop). Her singing has grown from the half-spoken delivery that marked her first EPs, elevating her conversational drawl into something far more indelible and inviting. With the exception of the biting postpunk snarl of “I’m Not Your Mother, I’m Not Your Bitch,” she rarely raises her voice, so most of the time it almost seems as if she’s sitting beside you, nodding along to the scrappy guitar-driven jams that her voice glides into with preternatural ease....

Karen Lewis, Chicago Teachers Union ctunet.com, @KarenLewisCTU Runner-Up: Mariame Kaba, Project NIA

Khalil Mack (Bears) Javier Báez (Cubs) Finalists: Anthony Rizzo, Tim Anderson, Sam Kerr

Anastasia Chatzka anastasiachatzka.com Runner-Up: Anna Hovet

On their debut album, Cliff, Chicago duo Big Branch combine warm vocal melodies with kitchen-sink instrumentals inspired by the dusty samples of underground rap. The record’s ramshackle sound recalls Beck circa “Loser” or Dubya-era TV on the Radio, a hybrid style the group calls “hop ’n’ roll.” Vocalist Jamal Semaan and guitarist and producer Rob Lorts originally went by the name Grimms & Blacknight, and they wrote the songs on Cliff during a 2016 DIY tour....

Q: I was a very experienced woman (five years as a swinger and partners numbering in the high double digits) when I first met the man who would become my husband. My husband-to-be was a virgin. Sex was barely OK and very infrequent. But we were both in our early 40s and ready to settle down. We also had an amazing friendship, and we were never as happy apart as we were together....

Imagine a world in which men, not women, are the ones who get pregnant. They’d be buying their abortion pills over the counter at the drugstore. There’s no way they’d make it criminal to opt out. The strategy among antiabortion forces—in the face of the constitutional right established by Roe v. Wade in 1973—is to chip away at that right until it disappears. The Supreme Court could make a decision this month on a Texas case regarding a law that, by setting stricter standards for abortion providers, would shut down most of the state’s clinics and would in effect invite other states to enact similar restrictions....

Joshua Harmon’s 2018 Admissions opens in an administrative office at Hillcrest, an elite prep school in New Hampshire, where two blonde women bicker about the new admissions catalogue. Admissions director Sherri Rosen-Mason (Meighan Gerachis) points out that the images intended to cozen the privileged into throwing down cash for high school en route to an implied Ivy League future fail to represent Hillcrest’s current population, which has, under her ministrations, grown to 18 percent students of color....

It’s every bicyclist’s nightmare: You’re riding on an arterial street, perhaps in a bike lane, when a truck appears on your left. The driver fails to check for bikes before making a right turn, causing a “right-hook” crash. The truck blocks your path, you’re struck, and you fall under the massive vehicle. The rear wheels roll over your body, causing severe, likely fatal, injuries. A candlelight vigil and “ghost bike” installation for Kondrasheva is scheduled for tonight at 6:30 PM at the crash site....

Urban Oasis Runner-Up: Massage Envy

Iconic singer Bette Midler cut her teeth at New York City’s Continental Baths, earning the nickname “Bathhouse Betty” and an adoring legion of LGBTQ fans. In an impersonation honed over the last five years, performer Caitlin Jackson expertly captures the exuberance, confidence, and devil-may-care sex appeal of the Divine Miss M in her formative years. But her talent can’t redeem a poorly constructed and written holiday revue. This Hell in a Handbag Productions show, adapted by Jackson and artistic director David Cerda and directed by Jackson and Marc Lewallen, is set in the early 1970s with a young Midler joking, “This is my 800th farewell appearance here at the Continental Baths....

Update: To help slow the spread of COVID-19, these shows have been postponed until August 27 and 28. Tickets already purchased will be honored at that time. Contact point of purchase for refund or exchange information. Black Pumas are an electrifying six-piece neosoul band led by Adrian Quesada and Eric Burton—a musical partnership made in heaven. Born in Laredo, Texas, and based in Austin, Quesada is a guitarist, composer, and Renaissance man (Texas Music Magazine called him “Texas’ version of Quincy Jones”), and he’s been central to a wide variety of influential musical projects in his home state, including the salsa-infused rock fusion of Grupo Fantasma, a norteño rock opera called Pancho Villa at a Safe Distance, and Latinx funk band Brownout....

My fascination with Rod Blagojevich knows no bounds. I used to live a couple blocks from him and would wave as he, inexplicably, jogged down the middle of the street. At parties—the ones I’m still invited to—I’m happy to find an opportunity to steer the conversation to Illinois’s disgraced former governor. And I once presented him with a magazine cover mocking his corrupt past and reality-show heel turn, which he signed: “Jonathan, you are F-ing golden!...

Like the earliest practitioners of film, the men and women who made silent pictures, today’s writers, directors, producers, and actors often come to moviemaking through other disciplines. Film is a collaborative medium; except for some rarified experimental efforts, it requires a team. But you don’t have to go to Hollywood to realize your vision, whether it’s for mass distribution or a niche audience. Two recent Chicago independent productions, The Curse of the Tempest Jewel (2015), a film noir-style caper, and The Spy Who Knew Me (2017), a riff on James Bond, are narrative features modest in scale but big on ambition, starring a local ensemble of young performers with Down syndrome....

Our cover illustration is by Danielle Deley. For more of Deley’s work, go to www.danielledeley.com. v

In the Basement Tomorrow at 7:30 PM, radio and TV personality Adam Carolla will be at the PortagePatio Theater to introduce a screening of Road Hard, a new comedy that he stars in, cowrote, and codirected. The movie’s a subtle prank in the vein of Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman’s Adaptation—it looks like a straightforward piece of autobiographical fiction, but it contains much more fiction than autobiography. The central joke is that Carolla’s autobiographical stand-in, like Kaufman’s in Adaptation, is nowhere as successful or socially competent as he is....

I was killing time with the boys in a bar Tuesday night when I suddenly realized: Holy shit, Billy C’s about to make another one of his fabulous convention speeches. Within an instant, I was on my bike, racing home as fast as I could pedal. And yet, he’s still got the great Clintonian moves—his timing and pace are perfect. He can still make his voice catch with emotion. I feel like I’m watching a great old quarterback limping to the huddle to lead his team on one last march up the field....

Looking back, Profiles Theatre’s 2010 production of Killer Joe, Tracy Letts’s black comedy about an insurance scam in a Texas trailer park that goes terribly wrong, was probably the high point of the company’s history. During its 20 years of existence, Profiles had developed a reputation as one of Chicago’s better non-Equity theaters, regularly producing dark and edgy new work, but Killer Joe was special. For months, audiences filled the intimate 50-seat storefront in Buena Park....

Akira Runner-Up: Penelope’s