Entertainment

Remember Rita? She’s sort of a cross between a fairy godmother and Gracie Allen, with her own style and grace, delivering innocent questions and observations with a delivery that packs a punch.

She’s originally from Miami and was a dancer on Broadway before entering the comedy biz. Woody Allen and Jack Benny are considered influences. More recently she can often be found performing in Vegas.

I had a different show picked out, but in the last day or so it was removed from YouTube, so instead of Check Your Neck, we’ll visit Jeff Foxworthy in the early 1990’s via his “You Might Be A Redneck” special.

Foxworthy is famous for his “you might be a redneck if…” jokes and TV shows, but how many knew that he did a five year gig maintaining IBM mainframes?

Winter Sunshine Series opens with The Three Little Pigs

PUTNEY- Sandglass opens its series on January 31st with two performances of WonderSpark’s Three Little Pigs, at 1pm and 3pm. The classic tale retold with hilarious puppet pigs and a silly wolf – with an emphasis on ‘being prepared’. Join storyteller and puppeteer Chad Williams for a highly interactive show with tabletop puppets and lots of audience participation. “Little pig, little pig, let me in!” “Not by the hair on my chinny chin chin!” Three Little Pigs build their houses of hay, wood and bricks – but will they withstand the Big Bad Wolf?

Russell Brand is quick witted and politically-minded. In this stage show, filmed live at Hammersmith Apollo in London, Brand looks at media, poverty, symbols, advertising, image and values.

The show starts off with some audience banter, but soon he gets down to business. Jesus, Malcolm X, Che Guevara, and Gandhi are the icons that frame his larger discussion, and it makes for quite an evening of laughs as well as provocation of thought as he discusses each one.

Almost everyone certainly knows of Ellen from her current talk show superstardom. It’s not a bad gig, but she also had a period when she was paying her dues and working her way up. That’s where we head this week.

She was breaking ground in comedy with a unique style. She’d deliver a line, then digress, and digress again. Her humor comes in waves, and she has kid-like, almost-innocent revelations about topics. Audiences get layers of jokes piled on thickly.

Is it the bugged-out look on his face? His nervous energy? The self-deprecation? Maybe we just don’t get the respect we deserve, and Rodney speaks for us.

Rodney Dangerfield is old-school, but hip nonetheless. Here we find him performing in 1995, reeling off nearly an hour of non-stop one-liners. Jokes about being ugly, the wife, sex, drugs, being old, and of course, getting no respect. Jokes like “My father wouldn’t take me to the zoo. He told me, “If they want you, they’ll come and get you.”

I say, old chaps, I wonder if you mightn’t enjoy this 52 minute Sherlock Holmes episode with the irrepressible Jeremy Brett.

It has all the elements of what any decent Anglophile who appreciates the late-Victorian period would enjoy.Should you accept this most sensitive assignment of the highest order of the Empire, this message will self-destruct in 5 seconds.

The Second Stain by Arthur Conan Doyle

Let’s try something different in the New year, shall we? Instead of weekend concerts, we’ll do weekend comedians and see how that goes. Everyone needs a laugh, right? Plus, there are many, many funny people out there.

To kick things off, we’ll attend a show in NYC featuring George Carlin. This one has Italian subtitles, adding to the already-ample humor.

Carlin, to me, is best known for his love of language and observation of details. Some of his funniest pieces are about the way we use words, and things we do out of habit.

Time for another experience that you won’t soon forget..this one features Allegedly Dave from the U.K. He will talk about practical free energy devices that you can make all by yourself

Join us Tuesday from 6-8 pm on Brattleboro Community Radio www.wvew.org and 107.7fm in town

For any skeptics and scoffers out there, I would say that you should consider looking to the skies tonight, sometime after 6 PM. Our best psychics on the faculty at the University of Brattleboro, (the Oldest Non-Existent University in New England) when the UFAUXs are expected to materialize, somewhere above Elliot or Flat Street.

Seems like time to feature some Frank and Bing singing Christmas songs, in glorious “something-color.”

Classic haircuts, suits, and decorations are part of what makes this a fun holiday special that, for some reason, never made it to classic status. Maybe we can give it a boost 60 + years later.

This is a truly funky line-up, and perhaps my favorite era for James Brown. Everyone in the band was great.

We have Bobby Byrd, backing up James on vocals. We have the horn section that included Fred Wesley, Darryl Jamison, Chicken Gunnells. We have young Bootsy and Catfish Collins, Cheese Martin, and two drummers Jabo Starks and Tiger Martin.

This film isn’t great quality, but it has it all: funky suits, dances, and breaks, plus crazed Italian fans, and what seems to be Sophia Loren’s sister acting as a narrator in parts. My Italian isn’t so good, but she was talking about Sonny and Cher for a moment. If any of you can translate, please share/Cher…

If you missed the Sunday Keene Sentinel, here is a. At Larry’s request, his first wife and “dream companion,” Laura Bloch Bourque, gathered together the many boxes of carefully saved calendars and photos of their nightclub into one amazing book which must be seen to be appreciated. Bands such as the Dave Mathews Band, Phish, Hootie and the Blowfish and so many others played at Wetlands Preserve in the 1990s.

The Sentinel article tells about the love that went into the writing and publishing of the book. The book itself is for sale at Everyone’s Books on Elliot Street in Brattleboro and Toadstool’s in Keene and Peterborough, NH

A new king of pop? New hardest workin’ man in show business? Bruno Mars might be that person.

Mr. Mars hails from Hawaii and in his earlier years spent some time doing Elvis, Michael Jackson, and Little Richard impersonations. You’ll see it in the way he moves today.

According to prominent scientists at the University of Brattleboro, there will be a “visitation” to Brattleboro on the Saturday closest to the solstice. With realtive pinpoint accuracy, they predict that it will be seen some near Elliot Street or Flat Street, sometime after Sunset, probably close to 6 O’clock.

So, I’m in Boston and my friends want to go to a Holiday Inn to listen to a DJ. I’m not looking forward to it, but we get there and the music was really good. At one point, a song comes on that sounds like an old funk number… maybe something by a James Brown spin-off? Some female soul singer? I had to find out who it was.

It was Jamiroquai, said the DJ. I asked if it was from the 70’s or 80’s. He said it was current, in the late 90’s and the female singing wasn’t female. I was musically disoriented, and went to the record store to get the CD at my next opportunity.

WESTMINSTER, VT- On Saturday, December 13th, Compass School will host a Caribbean dinner and a musical performance by Eugene and Julian’s Latin Party Band featuring renowned musicians Eugene Uman and Julian Gerstin.

Eugene Uman is a pianist and composer who has performed with Sheila Jordan, Jay Clayton, George Mraz, Jimmy Heath, Donald Byrd, and many others. Uman has written over 120 wide ranging jazz compositions; three of his original compositions were recorded by Latin Jazz star Sammy Figueroa on his 2005 Grammy Nominated CD. Uman appears in numerous ensembles including The Convergence Project, the As Yet Quintet, and Zabap, and he is the director of the Vermont Jazz Center and serves as an adjunct professor of music at Amherst College and Marlboro College.

This tuesday, November 25th, join DJ Pockets on “buttahmilk” as he speakes to Dayna Martin about radical unschooling.

Radical Unschooling: A Revolution Has Begun focuses on the evolutionary aspect of parenting and human consciousness. We are parenting and educating our children today to succeed in a joyful, productive life by following their passions, not someone else’s agenda.

Some excerpts from Dayna’s book…

To compliment the show with Prince last week, let’s take a look at one of my favorite Prince side projects, The Time. We’ll begin with the 30 minute “opening band” performance they did just prior to Prince’s show last week.

Yes, this is video from the same night, at the Capitol Theatre in Passaic, NJ, in January of 1982.

The Commons, Windham County’s local independent weekly, is proud to host Jerry Levy and Acting on Impulse Productions presenting Levy’s 10th Anniversary Celebration of Howard Zinn’s one-man play about the life of Karl Marx, MARX IN SOHO, at the Hooker-Dunham Theater, 139 Main St, Brattleboro VT.

These benefit performances will be on the evenings of Thursday, November 20th and Saturday, November 22nd at7:30 p.m.