Good afternoon, it’s Tuesday, October 9th, and this is the Jive at Five – WESU’s Daily community calendar and rundown of night time programming here on 88.1 FM WESU Middletown, your station for NPR, Pacifica, independent and local public affairs by day and the best in free-form community programming week nights and weekends. I’m Isabelle Gauthier, host of the Fuss, an interview show with people from the Middletown area airing the 1st 3rd and 5th Fridays of the month from 1:00-1:30
Here’s what’s happening in our area:
Tomorrow, at the Buttonwood Tree, it’s the “Evening Oasis” belly dancing presentation.
Thursday – and the second Thursday of every month – brings Writers Out Loud!, an open mic night and critique of literary prose; sign up at 6:45.
Friday evening, Karaoke with Deni comes to the Buttonwood.
And Saturday, from 1 to 4 p.m., it’s a free afternoon of readings by International Poets – their only Connecticut stop on a whirlwind tour, with live music, an open mic, and a lavish reception with Indian foods.
Saturday night, from 8 to 10 p.m., catch “Explorations in Sound,” with Rich McGhee and Margaux Modimo at The Buttonwood Tree. Tickets are $10.
On Sunday, “Food Not Bombs” shares food in front of the Buttonwood beginning about 1 p.m.
Information about all Buttonwood events can be found on its website at www.buttonwood.org.
The Wesleyan Center for the Arts’ Music & Public Life series continues at 4:15 tomorrow with Rachel Mundy, class of 2000’s “Birds, Bytes, and the Natural History of Music.” Now a University of Pittsburgh Assistant Professor of Music, Rachel will examine the public discourse around the complexities of birdsong. To be held in the Daltry Room on campus at 50 Wyllys Avenue.
For more information, visit Wesleyan.edu’s Music & Public Life site.
Also at Wesleyan on Wednesday, at 8 p.m., poet and biographer Lisa Jarnot reads at the university’s Russell House. Jarnot’s acclaimed biography of the San Francisco poet Robert Duncan was published this year, and her Selected Poems is forthcoming next year. She teaches poetry and works as a freelance gardener in Queens, New York.
On Thursday at Wesleyan, your favorite radio station, WESU, will host Ilya Marritz, Wesleyan class of ’99, as the station’s lecture series continues. Marritz is a business reporter for WNYC and has worked as a producer for the Brian Lehrer Show and NPR’s All Things Considered. He has contributed stories to NPR’s Morning Edition and reported with radio stations in Berlin and Prague about everything from employment and economic development to energy and the environment. His talk on Thursday at CFA Hall about his experience working in public radio will be from 8 to 9:30 p.m.
Tomorrow at Russell library, everyone who cares about Middletown and the Russell Library is invited to “Bringing Together People and Ideas for the Future.” Attend one of the Library’s Public Forums on either Wednesday evening at 6:00 p.m., or on Saturday morning, November 10, at 9:00 a.m.
The forums will be led by Alan Gray, a planning consultant with extensive experience in libraries, the business world, and in education.
On Saturday at the Russell Library, the Russell Knitters meet from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Look for more info at www.russelllibrary.org
Over at the Wesleyan Potters gallery shop, through Nov. 2, you can catch “Fibers,” a show of baskets and weavings in the Gallery Shop. www.wesleyanpotters.com
With the arrival of fall, farmers’ markets have given way to country fairs, including this one: the Portland Fair on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, on the Exchange Club Grounds, Rte 17A in Portland. Go to www.portlandfair.com for details.
For the latest in local arts and entertainment anytime you’re not hearing it on our Jive, go to arts2GO.org – the City’s website for what’s going on and what’s to do with a highlight on the arts in Middletown. That’s arts2GO.org.
Tomorrwo night, down at Toad’s Place in New Haven, you can catch The White Panda to the Toad’s stage, as well as 2 A.M. Club and Kinetics and One Love, as well as the usual EDM Night.
Thursday, it’s WAKA FLOCKA FLAME, along with Reema Major and Wooh Da Kid.
Then Friday, it’s EOTO and Jansten.
Sunday, catch Rebelution, Passafire and Through the Roots.
Details at www.toadsplace.com.
Over at Café Nine in New Haven, tonight is the Todd Kramer, with Matt Sucich.
Wednesday , TACO HUT MUSIC Presents: Fake Babies; Netherfriends; Mission Zero; and Ports of Spain.
Thursday, it’s Black Top Forest.
And Friday, the happy hour features Billy Calash & Friends, followed by Rosie Ledet and the Zydeco Playboys.
Saturday’s Afternoon Jazz Jam will be hosted Gary Grippo and Friends, followed by the Manic Productions presentation of the David Liebe Hart Band of Tim and Eric’s Awesome Show and Adult Swim.
Sunday afternoon brings Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School to Café Nine: What do you get when you combine art school and alcohol? A great time and some creative drawings. Come down and enjoy a fun three hours of life drawing.
That’s followed at 8 by the Sunday-After-Supper Jam, with host Kevin Saint James and the Legendary Cafe Nine All-Stars.
More info at www.cafenine.com.
Up in Hartford at Blackeyed Sally’s, tomorrow night at 8, it’s the weekly Blues Jam with Ray Morant. Sally’s is one of the longest running open blues jams in New England, featuring a different host each week.
Friday, the Eric Gales Band band takes the Sally’s stage. He plays his blues guitar upside-down and left-handed in the style passed down by his grandfather Dempsey Garrett, Sr, who was known to jam with Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf.
Saturday at 9, it’s the Bluegrass Hoedown with three bands for the price of one: Too Blue; Cornfed Dogs; and Chasing Blue.
More at www.blackeyedsallys.com.
Now let’s take a look at cinema off the beaten paths of central CT:
At Real Art Ways tonight, “Beauty is Embarrassing” continues, followed by “Liberal Arts,” in which a newly single 35-year-old makes his way back to his college where he reunites with fond memories and old relationships.
Tonight  brings “Science on Screen: 28 Days Later,” with an intro by science writer and blogger Carl Zimmer, who  has an interest in evolution and parasites. The speculative sci-fi/horror film, by Trainspotting director Danny Boyle, is about animal rights activists who free a group of infected chimpanzees to horrifying results.
Wednesday brings“ Inescapable Rhythms,” a second-Wednesday-of-the-month poetry reading and open mic series that takes its title from the Wallace Stevens poem, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.” Stevens was a major American Modernist poet and a badass Hartford resident.
Thursday at Real Art Ways features Improvisations, featuring Marco Eneidi on alto sax, Joe Morris on guitar and Stephen Haynes on cornet. Improvisations is an artist-curated performance series centering on improvised music.
Also on Thursday, the screening of Presidential campaign-season debates continues with the vice-presidential candidates battling it out on Real Art Ways big screen. The cafe opens at 5 PM, and the debate starts at 9 PM. Get your absolute political fill in addition to drink specials, debate BINGO and free WIFI for all of your tweeting, blogging or Facebooking needs.
The debates will lead up to a special election night event featuring a live, in-house broadcast by WNPR’s Colin McEnroe and John Dankosky.
Friday begins seven days of the documentary film “Bill W.,” the story of the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Saturday’s screening of “Bill W.” is followed by a one-time showing of “Breaking the Maya Code.” The complex and beautiful Maya hieroglyphic script was until recently the world’s last major undeciphered writing system. Its decoding has unlocked the secrets of one of mankind’s greatest civilizations.
That’s followed by “The Room.” Called “the best terrible movie ever,” it’s booked for monthly late show
s at Real Art Ways.
Then Sunday begins the series, “The Story of Film: An Odyssey.”
Prodigious, poetic, and unlike any other “history” of cinema, Mark Cousins’s The Story of Film: An Odyssey is, as the title promises, a thrilling journey. Cousins’s personal voyage—complete with side-trips and retraced steps—is an illuminating, idiosyncratic tour of the emotional and intellectual pleasures of cinema.
Offered in 15 weekly chapters, with a combined running time of 15 hours, the film is a treasure trove of clips from films both famous and underappreciated, interviews from a global who’s-who of filmmakers, and passionate, provocative commentary.
Sunday’s chapter covers the “Birth of the Cinema” (1900–1920); and “The Hollywood Dream” (the 1920s.)
More at www.realartways.com
Over at Cinestudio, Trinity College’s theater, “Ruby Sparks” continues through Wednesday.
Then Thursday brings a free, one-time showing of “The Cup,”  a fascinating and amusing look at the Western influences reaching into a Tibetan Buddhist monastery. High in the Himalayas, the young monks (who play themselves in the film) have devoted their lives to an ancient religious tradition and rigorous spiritual discipline. They are also high-spirited teenagers obsessed with soccer.
Friday begins screenings of “Beasts of the Southern Wild.” Armed with a 16mm camera and a limited budget, a New Orleans collective of filmmakers took off for a Louisiana bayou to make a movie (with non-professional actors) about a 6-year-old girl named Hushpuppy and her father Wink, living on the economic edge. What they came back with is homegrown magic realism and two astonishing performances – along with the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and the Cannes Film Festival prize for Best First Film.
Sunday, there’s also a matinee feature, National Theatre Live presents THE LAST OF THE HAUSSMANS, a three-generational drama set in a crumbling Art Deco cottage on England’s Devon coast. The matriarch, in a show-stopping turn by Julie Walters, has summoned her children and grandchildren as she recovers from cancer. No tea and scone-serving Granny, she is an alternately hilarious and selfish survivor of the 1960s, whose radical journey has brought an angry next generation home to roost.
Tickets and information at www.cinestudio.org
And now let’s take a look at tonight’s programming on WESU.
Right after the Jive At Five from 5:05 to 6:00pm it’s Finding Bliss:
words and music with DJ Lauren “Bliss” Agnelli, an interview, free-form talk show about people who are collowing their hearts and living authentically.

From 6-6:30 is Free Speech Radio news from the Pacifica Network, your daily dose of alternative international news and reporting.

From 6:30-8:00 is Acoustic Blender with Bill Revill, an eclectic selection of Americana, country with root influence.

From 8-9pm is The Voice of the CITY with J-Cherry, your source for live and local Connecticut arts and music at its best.

From 9-10:30 is Wonderland with DJ Cheshire Cat, he writes in, Ive got a song in my heart, a chemical imbalance in my head, and a musical library at my fingers. From krautrock to post-rock, grunge to garage, novelty to New Romantic, punk to prog, Wonderland has a place for it.

From 10:30-11:30 is Record Roulette with Avery, featuring random, risky vynl.

From 11:30pm-12:30 am is Hardly Strictly Bluegrass with DJ Sleepy Girl, the dulcet tones of bluegrass and folk–just not entirely.

Wednesday, 12:30-1:30am is The Boss with DJ Moe, all about Bruce Springsteen: revered, remembered, relived. Each week shines the focus on a different era of the Boss.

Wednesday, 1:30-2:30am is Six Degrees Of David Bowie with Monica Kornis, where by connecting various artists to David Bowie in six steps or less we will observe his ubiquitous influence on modern music, as well as explore his many collaborations and influences.

And that’s all for today’s Jive At Five. Tune in each weekday at 4:55 pm to hear about what’s going on in the community and on the air right here at 88.1 FM WESU, a community service of Wesleyan University since 1939.

The written form for what you’ve heard on today’s jive is online at wesufm.org/jive

And if you value WESU as a source for information and entertainment in your life, how about supporting the station with a donation? You can make that donation online at wesufm.org anytime. Thanks for listening!