Arts And Entertainment

THURSDAY, MAY 29 -more-

The world is full of hope. But not for us,” Franz Kafka once replied to someone who questioned the “hopelessness” of his stories. -more-

When I first became a jazz fan (short for fanatic) in high school, I saw European classical music as the enemy. The 19th century composers were easily characterized as a pack of pretentious, highfalutin, hoity-toity, high-hat, pompous, stuffy, overstuffed, snobby, snooty, effete and elitist fuddy-duds, not to mention being middlebrow, bourgeois, sententious and musically platitudinous, to boot; instigators of gargantuan aggregations of performers intoning their vast musical stories full of profound meanings, all of which reeked of the academy and salon and smelled of the lamp. -more-

Poets James Schevill and Luis Garcia, both Berkeley natives, will be joined by Clemens Starck from the Oregon coast range to read at Moe’s Books on Telegraph, 7:30 p.m. Monday, June 2, as part of the Monday At Moe’s series. Admission will be free. -more-

The dressing of the stage—Ashby Stage, that is—says it all in advance of curtain. With a platform that makes the audience feel savagely ringside or fashionably rampside; a long counter below the apron with microphones set for a panel, backed by a sextet at the ready; a bank of fans as a wall behind—it’s clear the epic poem of Anglo-Saxon academe is to be subjected to a deconstruction via The Media, Big Time Wrestling and Vegas floor shows ... alliterative Beowulf has finally arrived. A little unkempt, with a sweep of gore-matted hair, in the carefully dishevelled, talking head-laden, close-up world of the early 21st century, replete with Rabbit’s Foot Mead for sale outside (sweet, but not cloying) to swill while said hero waxes grandiloquent. -more-