Meadville's Artist Cup Cafe will be featuring live music all day Saturday with no cover as part of the city's Halloween festivites. The 1-2 slot is still open. Call 814-337-8287. They're also looking for an artist to play November 23rd.

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Crazy Scaife's Trib Review explores ways to enjoy Pittsburgh's arts on the cheap.

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This weekend is the Monroeville "The It's Alive! 2007 Zombie Fest.":

[They're] less fancy than vampires. I think, overall, zombies are just sort of a nice all-inclusive group. They aren't discriminatory about whose brains they eat.

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This Sunday, at 2 pm, Dr. Louis Zona will give a gallery talk at Youngstown's Butler Art Museum entitled Wyeth in Context, The Continuum of American Realism as part of the museum's "Andrew Wyeth: Watercolors and Drawings" show that runs through December 21st.. Free, call 330.743.1107, ext. 210 to reserve.

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Don't forget to show up at Franklin's Little Theatre (1223 Liberty St) tonight for a reader's theatre edition of the comedy, Orson's Shadow. $3 at the door which opens at 7:30. There's cussin' in the play, so as you might want to leave the yung'uns at home.

Venangoland has been updated.

The NyTimes profiles theatres that have MySpace presences. Locally, that would include The Erie Playhouse

I couldn't help by notice in the NYTimes Sunday edition , while reading the article about Leroy Nicholas Barnes (the guy who became rich and famous by flooding African American neighborhoods with heroin in the 70s) that a former "associate" of Barnes said:
If he runs a Laundromat in Dubuque or a grocery store in Slippery Rock, that’s one thing,” the associate said. “But the man has a tremendous amount of charisma and intelligence. I don’t think he’s going to be innocuous anywhere.

Now I just have to decide if I should feel proud or offended...

"No one in comics stays dead except Uncle Ben". The NYTimes eulogizes Captain America.

Iggy Pop is the voice of the revolutionary uncle in the film adaptation of the graphic novel, Persepolis. (Which is also one of the book selections this year at Youngstown State's English Festival)

Eggers in Meadville

Really big news from Justin:

Big time author Dave Eggers will be in Meadville, tonight at the Tattered Corners Used Books (247 Chestnut St.) at 7:00 p.m. promoting Egger's book what is the what.
Valentino Achak Deng, real-life hero of this engrossing epic, was a refugee from the Sudanese civil war-the bloodbath before the current Darfur bloodbath-of the 1980s and 90s. In this fictionalized memoir, Eggers makes him an icon of globalization. Separated from his family when Arab militia destroy his village, Valentino joins thousands of other "Lost Boys," beset by starvation, thirst and man-eating lions on their march to squalid refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya, where Valentino pieces together a new life. He eventually reaches America, but finds his quest for safety, community and fulfillment in many ways even more difficult there than in the camps: he recalls, for instance, being robbed, beaten and held captive in his Atlanta apartment. Eggers's limpid prose gives Valentino an unaffected, compelling voice and makes his narrative by turns harrowing, funny, bleak and lyrical. The result is a horrific account of the Sudanese tragedy, but also an emblematic saga of modernity-of the search for home and self in a world of unending upheaval.

How did Eggers wind up Meadville? Deng now attends Allegheny.

Hands of Steel (No, not the crazed cyborg movie) a film about Youngstown Steel Workers is looking for extras at Y-town's Our Lady of the Afflicted Shrine Social Hall on Januray 17th at 7 p.m. Call 330-506-3907 for more info.

The Sobol Award Which had been a chance for agentless writers to win money and a Simon and Scuster contracted, has been cancelled.

The Costa Book Award (which I still call the Whitbread, its old name. Not because it's cool to do so, but because I can't remember anything.) has been announced:
William Boyd's Restless
Stef Penney's The Tenderness of Wolves
Brian Thompson's Keeping Mum

This weekend is Allegheny's "8 Hour Drawing" invitational show. Saturday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Free and open to the public.

Perfect spring semester T shirt? f(X) =sheep(x)m