LAKEPORT, Calif. – Mark your calendar for a “Harmonica Slapdown” at the Soper Reese Theatre in Lakeport from 7 to 10:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 12.

This WWF wrestling style battle will include lots of audience participation in a mock World Championship boasting 4 master harmonica players.

Headliner Mitch Kashmar has shared the stage with some of the most influential rock and blues giants such as Albert Collins, Charlie Musselwhite, Pinetop Perkins, William Clarke, Kim Wilson and Roy Gaines. Kashmar also toured with the classic 70's funk-rock band “War,” and appeared with Eric Burdon & War for their reunion concert in 2008 at London's Royal Albert Hall.

Aki Kumar is a blues harmonica star and vocalist with a number of successful tours throughout the United States and Europe. Recently Kumar made a big splash in the blues world with his record Aki Goes To Bollywood , a fusion of Aki’s Hindi roots and Chicago and West Coast blues.

Gary Smith has been part of the blues tradition in the Bay Area since the 1970s, and is a featured guest at festivals and venues from Europe to Brazil. He is considered to be one of the rare "big tone" harmonica players delivering world class blues no matter whether in a smoky bar or a large festival.

Andy Santana is a Delta Groove recording artist known at most of the major blues and jazz festivals in California, as well as in Seattle and Belgium. This past week he was inducted into the Sacramento Blues Society Hall of Fame.

Get your tickets now at The Travel Center in Lakeport or online at www.soperreesetheatre.com.

Advance tickets cost $25. Tickets at the door cost $30.

Proceeds will be donated to survivors of the Mendocino Complex fires.

In September of 2017 we had hundreds of thousands of Painted Lady butterflies passing through Nebraska, and at times the air was so full of them it looked as if all the leaves were falling at once.

Samuel Green is the former Washington State Poet Laureate, and a very fine writer whose most recent collection of poems is All That Might Be Done, (Carnegie-Mellon University Press, 2014).

He and his wife live on Waldron Island and pay close attention to the life around them.

This poem is a wealth of butterflies.

Butterflies

Some days her main job seems to be
to welcome back the Red Admiral
as it lights on a leaf of the yellow
forsythia. It is her duty to stop & lean
over to take in how it folds & opens
its wings. Then, too, there is the common
Tiger Swallowtail, which seems to her
entirely uncommon in how it moves
about the boundaries of this clearing
we made so many years ago. If she leaves
the compost bucket unwashed to rescue
a single tattered wing from under the winter
jasmine or the blue flowers of the periwinkle
& then spends a whole afternoon at our round
oak table surrounded by field guides
& tea until she is sure—yes—that it belongs to
a Lorquin's Admiral, or that singular
mark is one of the great cat's eyes
of a Milbert's Tortoiseshell, then she is
simply practicing her true vocation
learning the story behind the blue beads
of the Mourning Cloak, the silver commas
of the Satyr Anglewing, the complex shades
of the Spring Azure, moving through this life
letting her sweet, light attention land
on one luminous thing after another.

American Life in Poetry does not accept unsolicited manuscripts. It is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2017 by Samuel Green, "Butterflies." Poem reprinted by permission of Samuel Green. Introduction copyright ©2018 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006.

KELSEYVILLE, Calif. – The Ely Stage Stop is back in action.

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NIGHT SCHOOL (Rated PG-13)

Kevin Hart and Tiffany Haddish make a great pair as student and teacher, respectively, in “Night School.” For the uninitiated, Hart, a comedian of short stature, seems to be a regular immature screw-up and Haddish basks in the glow of a big splash last year in “Girls Trip.”

The premise of this comedy is fairly simple, despite the fact that six writers, with one of them being Hart, have a hand in crafting a story that is at best uneven yet nevertheless filled with enough gags and laughs.

Hart’s Teddy Walker is a high school dropout. In an early scene, Teddy makes a big stink during the SAT exams, walking out on his classmates and informing them he’s going to succeed in the real world without a diploma.

Soon thereafter, Teddy’s making his mark as the top salesman at an Atlanta barbeque grill store. He drives a fancy sports car and lives way beyond his means. In short, though not referring to his height, Teddy is a showboat.

One thing he has going for him, which could prove his undoing during his deceptions, is a beautiful girlfriend in savvy businesswoman Lisa (Megalyn Echikunwoke) who favors an expensive lifestyle.

How their relationship will last becomes a question once he loses his job in an explosion and resorts to menial work at a fast food joint. Meanwhile, he learns from old school pal Marvin (Ben Schwartz) that he’ll need a GED to get a position as a financial analyst.

The comedic scenes start to roll when he joins a night school class taught by Carrie (Tiffany Haddish), a tough cookie who won’t tolerate Teddy’s frivolous behavior in a classroom filled with hopeless losers.

The great ensemble includes a housewife (Mary Lynn Rajskub) eager to free herself from her children, a Mexican waiter (Al Madrigal) who wants to be a singer or dental hygienist, a furniture mover dumber than a lampshade (Rob Riggle), and Romany Malco’s conspiracy nut.

Unfortunately for Teddy, the school principal (Taran Killan) is an old nemesis from high school days who wants nothing more than to be a thorn in his side. Thus, Teddy organizes a heist of the GED exam and all sorts of mayhem breaks loose.

“Night School” gets a passing grade for its humor and laughs if the scoring is done on the curve. In any case, this comedy is a silly trifle that amuses in the moment but is unlikely to leave a lasting impression beyond a date night outing.



‘THE GOOD COP’ ON NETFLIX

Netflix has an eclectic mix of programming, but it may be fair to say that a lot of its series tilts to an edgier genre than you would find on network television. “The Good Cop” would likely fit right in on the CBS or FOX schedule.

A taste for traditional fare in a police procedural with plenty of wisecracking and one-liners should hold appeal for an older demographic. After all, “The Good Cop” has Tony Danza starring as Tony Caruso, a former hotshot NYPD detective out on parole for corruption charges.

As a condition of his release, Tony has to live with his uptight, nerdy son Tony Jr. (Josh Groban), an NYPD detective who goes by the name T.J. as if to separate himself from the tarnish placed on the family name.

Ordered to stay away from police work, Tony insinuates himself into every case assigned to his son. While father and son won’t work as a team, they make a terrific odd couple almost as if Tony Randall and Jack Klugman were police detectives suffering each other’s foibles.

As opposed to the disgraced rogue Tony the failed role model, T.J. is so by-the-book and straight-laced that he argues the moral imperative about the offense of his father pinching sugar packets from IHOP and napkins from Dunkin’ Donuts.

The family dynamic may be dysfunctional, but they both need each other for different reasons. In the first episode, both father and son end up as suspects in the shooting death of a cop plugged by bullets traced back to T.J.’s police-issued handgun.

The resolution of the case has a few twists and turns but in the end you know some logical explanation is at hand for why T.J. is no more a cold-blooded killer than Mother Teresa. “The Good Cop” won’t disappoint as far as tidy outcomes are achieved.

The show has some delightful banter and wisecracks. A veteran cop tells a colleague that a lot of things don’t make sense. He makes his case by questioning such things as “why are nickels bigger than dimes.”

He goes on with asking “why does Hawaii have an interstate highway,” and “why did The Flintstones celebrate Christmas.” This is the sort of thinking that could lead to interesting parlor games.

“The Good Cop,” benefitting from the pairing of Tony Danza and Josh Groban, is easy to take for an entertaining diversion from grittier cop fare.

Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.

LAKEPORT, Calif. – The 1978 drama, “Days of Heaven,” screens at the Soper Reese Theatre on Tuesday, Oct. 9, at 1 and 6 p.m.

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MIDDLETOWN, Calif. – Come explore the characters of the NEA Big Read novel, “Into the Beautiful North,” through art at the Middletown Art Center on Sunday, Oct. 7.

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