MIDDLETOWN, Calif. – The Higher Logic Project comes to Middletown Art Center on Friday, Aug. 23, from 7:30 to 11:30 p.m.

The MAC welcomes this beloved local band to perform in the MAC gallery, surrounded by artwork from the “Nature” exhibit currently on view.

DJs will provide additional dance music. Enjoy Reggae-infused dance rock and soulful melodies with lyrical consciousness.

The cover charge is $12. A no-host bar will be onsite.

The performance is the Higher Logic Project’s debut of it newest lineup which is bursting with flavor and harmony.

“We have added a new drummer, keyboardist, guitarist, steel pan and three new vocalists to add even more spice to our sounds as we prepare to get back in the studio to cook up something new for our fans!” said Dooby Logic, founder of the band.

Dooby (Derek) Wells, lead vocalist and song-writer, began his venture into reggae under the moniker Fuzzy Logic.

Wells has been a local fixture in the Lake County music scene for a number of years. Originally from Santa Barbara, he has made a home for himself here, a place where he can truly express himself and where his “creativity flows through his heart.”

In a shared vision of enriching life in South Lake County through the arts, Matt Barash of Luvbug Presents has partnered with MAC to bring live musical performances to the area. Concerts will feature both local musicians and guests from afar.

Up next on Sept. 27 is headliner Milk for the Angry, an alternative psychedelic rock band from the Bay Area with local bands, Wormhead, Death and Taxes and JFK.

“We hope that these shows will be set the foundation for exciting live musical performances here for a long time to come,” said Barash. “If you are a local band looking to be heard and seen in a Lake County feel free to send your inquiries to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..”

Middletown Art Center is located at 21456 Highway 175 at the junction of Highway 29.

Visit www.middletownartcenter.org or “like” Middletown Art Center on Facebook to stay up-to-date with what’s happening at MAC.

Check out MAC’s nominal cost “Locus” classes at www.middletownartcenter.org/locus.

The Higher Logic Project music can be found on Facebook or download the group’s CD.

LAKEPORT, Calif. – The 1943 adventure drama, “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” starring Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman, screens at the Soper Reese Theatre on Tuesday, Aug. 27, at 1 and 6 p.m.

Entry to the film is by donation.

Based on the novel by Ernest Hemingway, this tale of love, derring-do and sacrifice during the Spanish Civil War is laced with tragic fatalism.

Hemingway himself chose Cooper and Bergman to play the leads, with both of the actors receiving Academy Award nominations.

The movie is sponsored by Jim and Carol Dvorak in honor of Sen. John McCain. Rated G. Run time is 2 hours and 40 minutes.

The Soper Reese Theatre is located at 275 S. Main St., Lakeport, 707-263-0577, www.soperreesetheatre.com .

During the 14 years we've published this column we've shown you many fine short poems, and the newspapers that print our weekly selections like it that we don't take up too much of their "news hole."

I thought this week it might be good to show you a haiku, which as you know is a Japanese form that tries to capture life in a spark-like flash. This one is by Lori Becherer of Millstadt, Illinois, and I found it in a 2017 issue of Modern Haiku. There's a great deal of life, and of life's end, in these eight words.

no more dandruff

no more dandruff
on his blue suit
open casket


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 Lori Becherer, "no more dandruff," from Modern Haiku, (Summer, 2017). Poem reprinted by permission of Lori Becherer and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2019 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.

‘THE KITCHEN’ (Rated R)

The empowerment of women in the crime business is hardly a new premise, and the gritty, female-driven mob drama “The Kitchen,” with strong leading characters, doesn’t break a lot of new ground.

Only a year ago, Sandra Bullock assembled a female team for a stylish robbery of an art museum in “Ocean’s 8,” and “Widows” followed wives executing a heist after their husbands were killed in a botched getaway.

Sophisticated illicit behavior is not what is in store when mob wives in “The Kitchen” take a criminal enterprise into their own hands after their not-so-bright husbands are caught robbing a liquor store.

The setting is 1978 New York City, when Times Square, far from the global attraction it is now, was seedy and dangerous, where drug dealers and prostitutes roamed freely in an area populated with sex shops and peep shows.

The grittiness of that era overran the nearby neighborhood of midtown Manhattan known as Hell’s Kitchen, a bastion of working-class Irish-Americans in a place that later on succumbed to inevitable gentrification.

The Irish thugs in Hell’s Kitchen were obviously not Rhodes scholars. Kevin O’Carroll (James Badge Dale), Jimmy Brennan (Bryan D’Arcy James) and Rob Walsh (Jeremy Bobb) get caught in an ill-conceived holdup.

Working for Irish gang boss Little Jackie (Myk Watford), the foot soldiers for the mob had been under surveillance by an FBI crew run by agent Gary Silvers (Common).

When Kevin, Jimmy and Rob are sent to prison, their respective wives Ruby (Tiffany Haddish), Kathy (Melissa McCarthy) and Claire (Elisabeth Moss) expect that the gang leader will provide for their welfare as loyal spouses.

No such luck is forthcoming from the odious Little Jackie, who shorts their take to the extent that the wives don’t even get enough to pay the rent, let alone put food on the table.

The situation is no better with the Irish mob matriarch Helen O’Carroll (Margo Martindale), a nasty racist who despises the fact that her son Kevin had the audacity to marry a black woman.

The absence of financial support and inability to find gainful employment is a big problem for the ladies, especially for Kathy who has two small children to feed and clothe.

Ruby prods the other two desperate housewives to seize an opportunity to fill a void created by the incapacity of their husbands to provide protection to local businesses they had long subjected to extortion.

But Kathy and Claire, though facing dire circumstances, are not so easily convinced to make a risky move that would inevitably lead to getting on the wrong side of Little Jackie’s hair-trigger temper.

Albeit grudgingly, Kathy realizes the need to take care of her family, and Claire, who has been scarred by the emotional and physical abuse of her vicious spouse, slowly comes around to gaining some self-respect.

In short order, the three women take Hell’s Kitchen by storm, offering better deals and superior protection to the businesses, aided by the fact they poached on some of Little Jackie’s crew for the muscle needed to help their clients.

Their seemingly effortless success as enforcers is readily apparent when counting such large piles of cash that they can’t even keep track of this new revenue stream.

It’s almost surprising that they are not immediately buying furs and expensive jewelry, although they start wearing nicer apparel, and Claire wonders if they should dress up for a sit-down with a rival gang.

Getting deeper into the criminal world proves to be liberating as well as transformative for the women. They soon exhibit brutally violent tendencies that hardly set them apart their male counterparts.

The ladies get some extra help from hitman Gabriel O’Malley (Domhnall Gleeson), who has been on sabbatical outside the city but has not lost his touch on how to dismember his victims for easier disposal in the Hudson River.

Brooklyn-based Italian mob boss Alfonso Coretti (Bill Camp) is so intrigued by the aggression and business sense that Kathy, Ruby and Claire display that he offers a partnership deal they can either accept or reject at their own peril.

Destructive behavior is on full display when the ladies shake down a group of Hassidic Jews to use their approved construction workers on a major development project. The lone holdout meets a fatal end.

Things get really dicey when the husbands are released early from prison and think that they should shove the women aside and take back what they consider their rightful positions within the mob.

Conflict becomes unavoidable, leading to some double-crosses, surprising twists and brutal retributions. Ugliness is no surprise when one of the women has no qualms about dismembering dead victims in a bathtub.

While the female leads deliver good performances, the film is a thinly-drawn generic gangster movie that fails to make the women entirely convincing as criminals.

In the final analysis, “The Kitchen,” although it nicely captures the period details of a decaying metropolis, proves to be a crime story that is equally predictable and yet not credible.

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

LAKEPORT, Calif. – The Lake County Symphony's Chamber Orchestra will play Baroque music on Sunday, Aug. 18, at 2 p.m. at the Soper Reese Theatre in Lakeport.

This concert will have open seating along with tables set up in “Night Club" style. There will not be a discounted open rehearsal performance for this concert. Tickets are $15 for adults with no charge for those under 18.

A chamber orchestra is a smaller group of musicians which, during the Baroque period (1600-1750), would often perform at peoples’ homes and in smaller venues.

The concerto and the sonata were new styles at that time, pioneered by Bach, Vivaldi and Handel.

Much of what we know as “Baroque” originated in Italy, including the cantata, concerto, sonata, oratorio, and opera and uses contrast as a dramatic element.

Music for this concert will include “Serenade in D” by Wolfgang Mozart. Although he is an early classical composer, this piece was written in the Concertino-Ripieno style which was popular in the Baroque era in which a smaller group of virtuoso instrumentalists (Concertino) plays in contrast to the larger group (Ripieno).

The soloists in the “Concertino” group are Andi Skelton and Sue Condit, violins; Jeff Ives, viola; and John Weeks, cello.

Another selection by Austrian classical composer Franz Joseph Haydn is Trumpet Concerto in E Flat, and features local musician and symphony member Gary Miller as soloist.

Beth Aiken, another longtime member of the symphony, will be soloist for the “Oboe Concerto in B Flat Major” by German-born English composer George Frideric Handel.

The orchestra will also play Symphony No. 5 by Baroque English composer William Boyce. It is in the three-movement format that was popular in the Baroque era before the four-movement symphony of the classical era.

The program will also include the familiar “Entrance of the Queen of Sheba,” the Sinfonia” that opens Act 3 of Handel’s Oratorio “Solomon.” It is a bright and sprightly orchestra piece featuring two oboes and strings. This piece has often been used outside the context of the oratorios as a processional piece, as when it was featured at the 2012 London Olympics opening ceremony.

The Soper Reese Theatre is located at 275 S. Main St. in Lakeport.

Tickets may be purchased at www.soperreesetheatre.com or by phone at 707-263-0577.

Tickets will be available the day of the performance two hours before show time.

MIDDLETOWN, Calif. – The Middletown Art Center announces its upcoming fourth wildfire commemorative exhibit “All That Is Now.”

This year, the MAC has invited artists from all over the Northern California region to participate with work that explores the breadth of the wildfire experience, its aftermath, ongoing recovery, and the acceptance of what Is now.

There is still time to submit work. The exhibit will open with a reception on Friday, Sept. 13, from 6 to 9 p.m. and runs through mid-November.

Each year since the devastating Valley fire of 2015, the MAC has hosted a commemorative exhibit and poetry reading to honor our collective experience, memorialize loss, and celebrate our healing.

About half of MAC's 60 affiliated artists at the time lost their homes and studios or place of work in the Fire.

The Valley fire of 2015 still burns in the fabric of everyday life in south Lake County, and that loss is reinforced each year with more fires.

Since 2012, more than 50 percent of Lake County has burned, and Lake County shares the wildfire experience with communities throughout the region.

“Making and viewing art has the capacity to heal and reframe trauma by giving expression to the experience through materials, color, and form,” said Lisa Kaplan, director of the MAC. “We are honored that artists from neighboring counties of Napa, Sonoma, Mendocino, Butte and the rest of California are submitting work. We continue to encourage artists who have responded to the experience in their work to join us for what is sure to be a very compelling exhibit.”

Artist submissions close on Wednesday, Aug. 21, with accepted work delivered to the MAC on Monday, Sept. 9.

For information on how to submit, visit www.middletownartcenter.org/artists.

Samples of work from previous commemorative fire exhibits at MAC can be viewed at www.middletownartcenter.org/exhibits.

Middletown Art Center is an arts nonprofit located at 21456 State Highway 175 at the junction of Highway 29 in the heart of Middletown.

To stay up to date on classes, exhibits and events, and support this valuable Lake County arts and culture resource visit www.middletownartcenter.org.