Mon., Oct. 8 Jive

Good afternoon, it’s Monday, October 8th, 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 Maria Johnson, host of the new show “Reasonably Catholic,” a discussion of progressive issues of faith and action, airing every 1st, 3rd and 5th Tuesday from 4 to 4:55 p.m. Tune in on Oct. 16 or find the audio archived at reasonablycatholic.com.

Here’s what’s happening in our area:

Tonight, at the Buttonwood Tree, it’s the weekly Anything Goes Open Mic night, with sign-up at 7:30 p.m.

On Wednesday evening, 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 on Wednesday 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.

At the Russell Library from noon to 3 p.m. tomorrow,  there will be a screening of director Frank Borzage’s [pronounced with a hard g: Bar-ZAY-ghee’s] film “No Greater Glory,” one of the greatest cinematic statements on the senselessness of war, to be followed by a talk titled, “Hollywood Romantic: The Films of Frank Borzage.” Scott Higgins, a film historian and an Associate Professor of Film Studies at Wesleyan University, will lead the discussion. Viewers are invited to bring a sandwich and the library will serve dessert and beverages.

On Wednesday at the 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.

Tonight, down at Toad’s Place in New Haven, you can catch A Night of Smooth Jazz with Rohn Lawrence & Friends.

Then Wednesday brings 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 Acoustic Open Mic w/ Miss Kriss.

Tomorrow, it’s 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, tonight is Jazz Monday, and tomorrow brings Michael Palin’s Other Orchestra, an 18-piece band jamming and working out new material.

Wednesday 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.

Tomorrow 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 shows 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: Monday, 5:05-6pm, enjoy Afternoon Jazz with Charles Henry, a well-rounded jazz show for true jazz heads.

Then, from 6 to 6:30, it’s Free Speech Radio News, your daily dose of alternative international news and reporting from the Pacifica Network.

From 6:30 to 8 p.m., it’s 75 Percent Folk, with Michael Benson, a serving of contemporary folk and acoustic, etc., music. Filling in for Michael tonight will be Psychedelic Rick, playing a 75-percent Folkish mix of music.

Then from 8 to 9:30 p.m., it’s Anvil Isle, with Nate, a musical monsoon of all kinds of music. A musical monsoon of alternative, blues, dream, funk, hard rock, indie, punk, reggae, surf and world music. Bury your feet in the sand and let the waves come crashing through your speakers.

 From 9:30 to 11 p.m., filling in for The Attention Deficit Disk Jockey will be DJ AWOL, the host of A Hate Supreem.

Then, from 11:30pm-12:30am, it’s The Noisy Wheelbarrow with Zach and Peter, merging noise-rock and other noise-based music with poetry and verse, highlighting both seminal and up and coming artists who have blended the spoken word with experimental music.

From 12:30-1:30am, Bazaar Sounds with Mac Taylor, highlights a different country and corresponding underground/experimental music scene every week, selecting international music that’s noisy, pretty, and everything in between.

Then from 1:30-2:30am, it’s a guess what we have to offer you, but it’s bound to be wonderful.

From 2:30-3:30am, it’s Maximum Rock and Roll Radio, a weekly show featuring the best DIY punk, garage rock and hardcore from the astounding, ever-growing Maximum Rocknroll record collection.

And from 3:30-4am, it’s DJ Vegetable Reads Missed Connections. You’ve lost someone. Let’s find them.

 The BBC World News Service kicks on at 4AM and then at 5am it’s Morning Edition from NPR.

That’s all for today’s Jive at Five, if you didn’t get a chance to write down some of the information mentioned in our community calendar, the script is published online at www.wesufm.org/jive, and if you know of any events that you’d like to have announced on the Jive, send them to jive@wesufm.org

If you tune in to WESU for information and music that you can’t find elsewhere, then we are counting on you to help support the service you depend on. Please take a moment to make a donation of any size online at www.wesufm.org, every dollar counts and we need to hear from you.

Now stay tuned for Afternoon Jazz with Charles Henry.