Arts & Events

TUESDAY, JULY 17 -more-

For the last two weeks, Maestro George Cleve has been teasing Mozart aficionados with hints of what they can expect at this year’s upcoming 33rd Annual Midsummer Mozart Festival. -more-

To the strains of “Makin’ Whoopie,” the Impact Briefs 8: Sinfully Delicious ensemble (Steve Budd, Elissa Dunn, Leon Goertzen, Jon Lutz and Monica Coretes Viharo) hits the stage with a round-robin confession, disguised as a survey: The Last Sinful Thing You’ve Done—ran over a frog, poked a badger with a spoon, talked to my ex under an assumed name, shoplifted an onion, mooned the Pope, touched myself and thought of Prince Gomovilas, had a secret orgasm onstage (“Just now?”) ... and the humor gets equally bad in proportion to the sins. -more-

The week before the Fourth of July we were up at Lassen Volcanic National Park watching the traffic at Hat Lake. The place was jumping. -more-

TUESDAY, JULY 17 -more-

FRIDAY, JULY 13 -more-

Promising “more song-and-dance than a Bush Administration press conference,” the San Francisco Mime Troupe will be Making a Killing this weekend, for free, at Cedar Rose Park, a block from Cedar and Chestnut Streets. -more-

It has been 35 years since the Berkeley Museum brought New York’s Museum of Modern Art exhibition, “Sculpture of Matisse,” to the Bay Area. The current show as SFMOMA permits us to re-examine the great painter’s three-dimensional work. The museum’s press release speaks of his “sculptural masterpieces.” -more-

This Friday Trinity Lyric Opera opens its second season with Aaron Copland’s The Tender Land at its new home in the Castro Valley Center for the Arts. -more-

It’s a perverse world that lets the name of Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami remain obscure to the vast Western film-going public. He is considered by many to among the three or four greatest artists in cinema today, the creative force behind some of the most thoughtful and compelling films of the past 25 years. -more-

Around the turn of the 20th century, Berkeley was promoted as a City of Homes. In 1905, the Conference Committee of the Improvement Clubs of Berkeley, California published an illustrated booklet bearing this title and featuring various private residences. But the concept of home would soon change. The San Francisco earthquake and fire brought a flood of refugees into the East Bay, and many real-estate entrepreneurs quickly rolled up their sleeves to meet the housing demand. -more-

I’ve talked about a couple of ethical aspects of gardening over the past two weeks: ethical suppliers and basic kindness to plants, the reason I don’t buy Arizona desert species for my shady, poorly drained Berkeley garden. -more-

Do you know The Consultant’s Song? It goes: Maybe it’s this way, or maybe it’s that way and I get paid’O in either case’O. -more-

At a retrofit seminar last weekend, I saw a photo of a braced chimney that had fallen in an earthquake, just like its un-braced neighbors. -more-

FRIDAY, JULY 13 -more-

Tuesday’s review of Crowded Fire Theater Company’s Anna Bella Eema at Ashby Stage mistakenly attributed last year’s production of The Typographer’s Dream to Crowded Fire. The play was actually produced by Encore Theatre and remounted at Ashby Stage in association with Shotgun Players. -more-