JAN/FEB 2010 William Burroughs: A Man Within; Wuhnderlust; Catfish; Jess Row & Emma Straub

The Raconteur, The Forum Theatre, and The Metuchen Cultural Arts Commission present
8 PM, Sat. Jan 8
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS: A MAN WITHIN
W/Special Guest Director YONY LEYSER
Film Screening/Q&A
Hailed as the grandfather of punk and the godfather of the beat generation, Burroughs was a bartender, a private detective, a factory worker, an exterminator, a heroin addict, and a writer. His novel, Naked Lunch, one of the last books to be banned by the U.S. government, remains one of the most recognized literary works of the 20th century. It celebrates William S. Burroughs: A Man Within is the first and only posthumous documentary about the legendary "Pope of Dope." Narrated by Peter Weller, who played a Burroughs-like character in David Cronenberg’s film version of Lunch, Leyser’s portrait of the formidable proto-Beat author is a kind of genealogy of hip that connects Burroughs with many currents of America’s outlaw cultural tradition. He was a close friend and sometime lover of Allen Ginsberg, an idol of the Clash, the Dead Kennedys, Iggy Pop and Sonic Youth. Featuring never before seen footage of Burroughs and exclusive interviews with John Waters (who calls him "a religious figure"), Patti Smith (who recalls having a crush on him), Gus Van Sant, Laurie Anderson, Amiri Baraka, Jello Biafra, and David Cronenberg, with a soundtrack by Patti Smith and Sonic Youth, Leyser’s intimate documentary delves into the troubled and fascinating world of one of the greatest authors of our time. TICKETS: $12. TO PURCHASE ONLINE, CLICK HERE. THE FORUM THEATRE, 314 Main Street, Metuchen, NJ.

8 PM, Fri & Sat. Jan 28 & 29
THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN
Radio Play/Rent Party
Ages 8 & up!
Featuring Carlyle Owens, Jeff Maschi, and Laurence Mintz
More bad news is on the way for winter-weary New Jersey residents. Accuweather expects up to six inches to fall tonight and into Friday morning. This only days after Tuesday's ice storm and only a week after nearly a foot of snow was dumped on parts of the state. It goes without saying that this recent onslaught of "weather" has been horrible for business. Our staged presentation of the chilling radio play, "The Abominable Snowman," is an attempt to offset such wintry assaults and the woefully slow retail days they produce. North of the Main Central Thrust, the highest ranges of the Himalayas rise abruptly into a realm of perpetual snow and ice. It is here, on the frozen slopes of the great mountain, terrified, caught in a blizzard, that our two heroes and their loyal Sherpa, Nah Song, realize that the hulking bear-like biped they've been doggedly hunting has suddenly...become the hunter! Theatrical lighting! Sound FX! Complimentary wine (and juice). As noted above, this is essentially a "rent party," with a suggested donation of $10.00 (but no one will be turned away). Please note: our radio plays are among our most popular events and reservations are strongly suggested. To reserve a seat for either Fri or Sat, reply to this e-mail with your name, the number in your party, and the evening you wish to attend.

7:00 - 9:30 PM, Tues., Feb 1 - March 1 (no class 2/22)
THE RACONTEUR WRITING WORKSHOP
Register Now! Sessions fill quickly.
In The Spooky Art, Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Norman Mailer talked about crisp words "clamping down…sticking." In an interview shortly before his death, noir author Raymond Chandler spoke of perfectly pitched sentences "walking off the page." Despite using opposing metaphors, they are obviously describing the same thing. Good writing. A key focus of the class is this acoustical quality. The profound difference between how a sentence sounds and its mute presence on the page. Participants should come prepared to revise/resolve a prior project or to draft a pre-existing idea. The workshop does not assign exercises, but rather use the students' own projects to instruct. The cost of the workshop is $200.00 payable at the beginning of the first class ($150.00 w/student ID). Returning participants may sign up for single workshops at a reduced rate of $25 per class. Individual instruction can also be arranged. Complimentary wine is served. For further information or to register, e-mail raconteurbooks@gmail.com with INFO or ENROLL as the subject.

8 PM, Feb 3
WAHNDER LUST
LA Funk Band
Live Music
From Pultizer Prize winning poet Paul Muldoon to Peaches on Flavor of Love. I've always wanted to say that. And now I can. Wahnder Lust features Kim Manning (a.k.a. Peaches) and Lantz Lazwell. Manning has performed a decade as a featured vocalist for George Clinton and the P-Funk Allstars and on the Grammy Awards, the David Letterman Show, Jay Leno, and, of course, VH1's Flavor of Love. She can be heard on albums alongside Snoop Dogg, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and recently Sly Stone. Lantz Lazwell has drawn comparisons to Jimi Hendrix, Jack Johnson, and Stevie Wonder. He took home the LA Music Award for Best Rock Vocalist in 2007, and joined the all-star lineup of Trulio Disgracias which included members of Fishbone, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, and his future Wahnder Lust partner, Kim Manning. Fresh from performances at the House of Blues, San Francisco's Great American Music Hall, and SXSW, Wahnder Lust now plays your favorite bookstore. FREE! Comp wine.CDs on sale at event.

The Raconteur, The Forum Theatre, and The Metuchen Cultural Arts Commission present
8 PM, Sat. Feb 12
CATFISH
W/Special Guest Director Ariel Schulman
Film Screening/Q&A
We meet New York photographer Nev Schulman, brother of director Ariel, as he unwraps a painting of one of his photos by a young Michigan girl named Abby. They become Facebook friends, which eventually leads to Nev’s online romance with Abby’s older sister, Megan. But as he comes closer to meeting Megan in person, Nev uncovers some unsettling information.…I'll respect the studio's wishes by abbreviating the plot description, suffice it to say Catfish is a mash up of Blair Witch and The Crying Game in the world of Facebook. The Social Network is about origins, but Catfish, at once narrower and more universal in implication, is about consequences. Mr. Zuckerberg may be the genius who invented Facebook and cashed in on its success, but many of the rest of us live, at least some of the time, in the world he made, and on the evidence of Catfish, it can be a pretty creepy place. But the story Catfish has to tell, at least in part, is older than the Internet, and certainly not limited to the latest technology. You may have read The Confidence Man, by Herman Melville, or followed the strange literary career of J.T. Leroy, or you may cherish the lore of your own favorite frauds and hoaxsters and impostors, from Jay Gatsby to Don Draper. America is the land of spurious, seat-of-the-pants self-invention, and Mr. Joost and Mr. Schulman, a couple of young men with cameras and college degrees, find themselves in a real-life variation on a venerable American theme. TICKETS: $12. TO PURCHASE ONLINE, CLICK HERE. THE FORUM THEATRE, 314 Main Street, Metuchen, NJ

Upcoming: JESS ROW, EMMA STRAUB, WESLEY STACE, JONATHAN ROE, and BILL PLYMPTON

DEC 2010: Rac/Benn @ NYC's KGB Bar; Penny Dreadful; Holiday Hootenanny

7 PM, Mon. Dec 13.
GET LIT!
The Raconteur presents BENNINGTON in MANHATTAN
The KGB Bar
85 East Fourth Street, NYC
(btwn Bowery and 2nd Ave),
Students/graduates of the Bennington College MFA Writing Seminars (ranked as one of the top three programs of its kind by Poets & Writers Magazine) read from recent work. Willa Carroll, Megan Mayhew Bergman, Liz Arnold, Jeremy Oldfield, Robert Hansmann, Lisa Alexander, Hannah Tennant-Moore, Jennifer Acker, Alex Dawson, and the acclaimed poet/Bennington professor Timothy Liu. The work of student participants has appeared or is forthcoming in The New York Times, The New Republic, The Guardian, Tin House, n+1, The Sun, Mississippi Review, Gulf Coast, Tricycle, Cimarron Review, Surface, The Best Buddhist Writing, Mary Magazine, Tuesday Journal, Ploughshares, One Story, The Kenyon Review, Shenandoah, Oxford American, and the 2010 anthology New Stories From the South.

Timothy Liu is the author of For Dust Thou Art; Of Thee I Sing, selected by Publishers Weekly as a 2004 Book-of-the-Year; Hard Evidence; Say Goodnight; Burnt Offerings; and Vox Angelica, which won the Poetry Society of America's Norma Farber First Book Award. Liu edited Word of Mouth: An Anthology of Gay American Poetry and his poems have appeared in American Letters & Commentary, Bomb, Grand Street, Kenyon Review, The Nation, New American Writing, Paris Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, and Virginia Quarterly Review.

Labeled "Best Literary Venue" in Manhattan by New York Magazine and The Village Voice, the iconic KGB Bar, once the expat meeting house of Ukrainian socialists, has grown over the last decade into one of the choicest venues for literary talent. Ricky Moody, Susan Orlean, Michael Cunningham, Robert Bly, Jimmy Breslin, Budd Schulberg, Joyce Carol Oates, Luc Sante, Jonathan Franzen, David Foster Wallace, Jerry Stahl, and Jonathan Lethem have all appeared on its hallowed stage. FREE!

8 PM, Thurs. Dec 16
2,5 PENTYLSENTIRATE: THE PLAY
A Staged Reading/World Premiere
A New Steampunk Penny Dreadful by KAYLA BASHE
W/Carlyle Owens, Gwen Owens, Laurence Mintz, and Kristy Lauricella
The plucky young scientist, Ms. Anna Cartridge, and her bubbly best friend, the mildly famous actress Poppy Valdene, travel to a deceptively charming cliff side resort to save Dr. William Boyle, her fiancé and the ingenious inventor of 2,5-pentlyl sentirate, from the contemptible clutches of long-time rival and nefarious hypnotist, Charles Rawlingson, a would-be scientific mastermind. Running time: 45 min. FREE!

Kayla Bashe is one of my writing students. Witty, precocious, and sixteen, she self-published her first novel at thirteen, and was a recent runner-up in a poetry contest hosted by the Young Adult Review Network. Pentylsentirate is Kayla's first full-length play.

8 PM, Sat. Dec 18
HOLIDAY HOOTENANNY
Steve Kaplan/Guitar & Paul Caluori/Violin
Live Music/Party
400 years of music: from Gustav Holst's "In a Bleak Midwinter" to Coltrane's groovy "Greensleaves" to classic Zep (Led, that is), with detours into Celtic folk and Victorian dance hall. Steve Kaplan and Paul Caluori bring their love of traditional folk, classical music and acoustic jazz into sharp focus by using truly acoustic instruments to perform, exploring sonic possibilities without the "clutter" of other instrumentation. Their approach to the music is deceptively simple: wring out as much emotion as possible without losing the essential structure of the pieces they're playing. Expect a variety of spiked nogs, puissant punches, and a withering concoction called Yukon Cornelius, along with a range of baked, roasted and boiled dishes (capon anyone?), marinated tench, and an edible lifelike scene sculpted in colored marzipan. Plus Cream Wafers, Date Drops, Honey-Filled Biscuits, Cinnamon Stars, Zucker Hutchen, Fattigmands Bakkels, Drumkake, and Buttery Nut Rounds. FREE!

The Loom; The Hermaphrodite; Impossibly Funky; Erotic Open Mic

8 PM, Thurs. Nov 11
THE LOOM
Live Music
The New York Times just labeled them "The Next Big Thing," The New Yorker regularly refers to them as a "beloved Brooklyn sextet" and nyctaper calls them "a revelation." Working heavily in gothic watercolors, The Loom kick out glow-in-the-dark folk wailers that flirt with the anthemic, but never abandon the quiet spaces they were born in. The Loom's rich amalgam of folk and americana-influenced indie rock features male and female vocals, acoustic and electric guitars, French horn, trumpet, piano, pedal steel, bass, drums, ukulele, accordion, and banjo. FREE! W/Ben + Vesper and Child of Dawn. CDs on sale at event.

8 PM, Tues, Nov 16
DANIEL GRANDBOIS
Reading/Signing
THE HERMAPHRODITE: A Hallucinated Memoir
Daniel Grandbois' writing has been described as "avant-garde stand-up," "Dr. Seuss for adults," and "between Brautigan's and Basho's." Alfredo Benavidez Bedoya's surreal and satirical woodcuts are collected by major museums all over the world. Together, they have created a happening as much as a book, one that notorious Beat poet/Fugs founder Ed Sanders simply calls, "A work of art." This is a book to be carried in the pocket, taken on journeys, opened to any page and consulted for its nutty brand of wisdom. Grandbois' other book, Unlucky Lucky Days, a collection of nonsense and absurdist tales praised by Lydia Davis as “funny, bizarre, moving,” was picked by Book Sense as an "Indie Next Notable Book." Grandbois' writing has appeared in Conjunctions, Fiction, Boulevard, Sentence, Del Sol Review, and the anthologies Freak Lightning and Online Writing: The Best of the First Ten Years, among others. Also a musician, Daniel has played in three of the pioneering bands of "The Denver Sound:" Slim Cessna's Auto Club, Tarantella, and Munly.

8 PM, Thurs, Nov 18
MIKE WHITE
Read/Signing
IMPOSSIBLY FUNKY
w/a special screening of COCKFIGHTER
Harangue for Hollywood! From the urban blight of Detroit came enfant terrible Mike White and his mutant publication, Cashiers du Cinemart. For fifteen years the writers of Cashiers du Cinemart provided a treasure trove of passionate, often prickly writing on film and popular culture. This book collects the best articles from the magazine with sections dedicated to Quentin Tarantino, Star Wars, Black Shampoo, Charles Willeford, and much more. "Mike White and his Cashiers approach film writing from a point of the compass I never knew existed. It’s wild navigating out there in the film world and Impossibly Funky makes it a brisk and exhilarating trip while keeping one cool hand on the tiller!" – Guy Maddin, The Saddest Music in the World.

Followed by a rare screening of Cockfighter, an art film for an exploitation audience set in the gaming pits of the Deep South (White has written extensively about the oft banned Monte Hellman flick and its author, Charles Willeford, and Mike White’s Who Do You Think You're Fooling?, a full-motion montage highlighting the too-close-for-comfort similarities between Quentin Tarantino’s 1992 film, Reservoir Dogs, and Ringo Lam’s 1989 Hong Kong movie, City on Fire (White achieved notoriety in the early nineties for being the first to expose Tarantino's "homage.") Check out Mike’s Tale of the Tape for more on this saga. FREE! Comp wine. Books on sale at event.

9 PM, Fri. Nov 19
PIECE OF TALE
Erotic Open Mic
Poetry, prose, songs, comedy, etc. All work must emphasize fornication or heavy petting. Reply to this e-mail to reserve a 5 min. performance slot. Every month. The bluer the better. How blue are you? FREE!

UPCOMING:
Oscar Nominated Animator Bill Plympton, best known for his Academy Award nominated Your Face, hosts a special Raconteur screening of Idiots & Angels, his brand new animated comedy featuring the music of Tom Waits. Don't miss the NJ premiere of the movie the New York Times is calling "relentless and brilliant." 8 PM, Sat. DEC 10. More info soon.

RAC in NYC, The KGB Bar (labeled "The Best Literary Venue in Manhattan" by New York Magazine and The Village Voice, 7 PM, Mon. DEC 13. People Under the Stereo, The Raconteur's vintage vinyle & clothing shop, opens DEC 15! The Raconteur Holiday Hootenanny featuring Steve Kaplan on guitar & Paul Caluori on violin 8 PM, Sat. Dec 18.

On Stage! NOSFERATU: THE FIRST VAMPYRE Oct 21 - 30 @ MCC; 7 SHOWS ONLY!

Middlesex County College & The Raconteur present
NOSFERATU: THE VAMPYRE
8 PM, Thurs - Sat, OCT 21 - 30
(special midnight show on Mischief Night)
Based on the 1923 German Expressionist film by F. W. Murnau (in turn, based on Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula), Alex Dawson's stage adaptation additionally draws on Chinese shadow-play, Shakespeare, and explorer/orientalist Richard Burton's translation of Hindu vampire fables to tell the story of the moon-headed, rat-fanged Count Orlock looking for love even as he brings a boatload of Black Death to a German village. From the team that brought you last year's unsettling hit A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, with makeup by Tom Savini alumnus Dan Diana, the production, which opens with the terrifying image of the eponymous Nos suspended fifteen feet above the audience, will make even the swooniest Twilight fan forget RobPat and his teen beat vamps. The Studio Theater @ MCC 2600 Woodbridge Ave., Edison, NJ 08818. All tickets $10. Click HERE for more info and to purchase online.

CROPSEY: the scariest film you'll see this year! & NOSFERATU: THE VAMPYRE On Stage!

8 PM, Sat. Oct 2
CROPSEY
W/Director Barbara Brancaccio
Film Screening/On Stage Conversation/Q&A
First Presbyterian Social Hall
A real-life multiple-murder tale that could have been called "A Guide to Recognizing Your Boogeyman," Cropsey is the scariest movie you'll see this year.

Growing up on Staten Island, filmmakers Joshua Zeman and Barbara Brancaccio had often heard the legend of ‘Cropsey.’ For the kids in their neighborhood, Cropsey was an escaped mental patient who lived in the old abandoned Willowbrook Mental Institution. He would come out late at night and snatch children off the streets. Sometimes Cropsey had a hook for a hand, other times he wielded a bloody axe or a gleaming machete, but whatever the implement, Cropsey was always out there, lurking in the shadows, waiting to get them.

Later as teenagers, the filmmakers assumed Cropsey was just an urban legend: a cautionary tale used to keep them out of those abandoned buildings and stop them from doing all those things that teenagers like to do. That all changed in the summer of 1987 when a 12-year-old girl with Down syndrome, named Jennifer Schweiger, disappeared from their community. That was the summer all the kids from Staten Island discovered that their urban legend was real.

Now as adults Joshua and Barbara have returned to Staten Island to create CROPSEY, a feature documentary that delves into the mystery behind Jennifer and four additional missing children. The film also investigates Andre Rand, a former Willowbrook janitor/real-life bogeyman who lived in the tunnels under the school and was ultimately linked to the disappearances.

Embarking on a mysterious journey into the underbelly of their forgotten borough, the filmmakers uncover a reality more terrifying than any urban legend. Tickets on sale NOW. $10 & $15. Click HERE to purchase online. Click HERE for more info about CROPSEY. NOTE: This event is at the Social Hall of the First Presbyterian Church, 270 Woodbridge Ave (adjacent to the cemetery),Metuchen, NJ 08840.

Middlesex County College & The Raconteur present
NOSFERATU: THE VAMPYRE
8 PM, Thurs - Sat, OCT 21 - 30
(special midnight show on Mischief Night)
Based on the 1923 German Expressionist film by F. W. Murnau (in turn, based on Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula), Alex Dawson's stage adaptation additionally draws on Chinese shadow-play, Shakespeare, and explorer/orientalist Richard Burton's translation of Hindu vampire fables to tell the story of the moon-headed, rat-fanged Count Orlock looking for love even as he brings a boatload of Black Death to a German village. From the team that brought you last year's unsettling hit A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, with makeup by Tom Savini alumnus Dan Diana, the production, which opens with the terrifying image of the eponymous Nos suspended fifteen feet above the audience, will make even the swooniest Twilight fan forget RobPat and his teen beat vamps. The Studio Theater @ MCC 2600 Woodbridge Ave., Edison, NJ 08818. All tickets $10. Click HERE for more info and to purchase online.

Jazz Punk from Rome; Erotic Open Mic; Kevin Baker & Dreamland; Mike Edison & Banned Books; Horror Doc Cropsey

8 PM, Tues. Sept 7
NEO & TRIBRACO (w/special guests The Lady & the Furnace)
Live Music
Neo & Tribaco are two jazz punk bands from the Italian avant-garde scene based in Rome. Seriously. During their fifty day stateside tour, Tribraco will introduce their new album, and Neo will record their next one with renowned Pixies/Nirvana/PJ Harvey producer Steve Albini. And they'll play here. For FREE!

9 PM, Thurs. Sept 16
PIECE OF TALE
Erotic Open Mic
Poetry, prose, songs, comedy, etc. All work must emphasize fornication or heavy petting. Reply to this e-mail to reserve a 5 min. performance slot. Third Thurs of every month. The bluer the better. How blue are you? FREE!

8 PM, Thurs. Sept 23
KEVIN BAKER
Reading/Signing
DREAMLAND
A "Dickensian epic" (Entertainment Weekly), "a wild ride" (The New York Times), "a populist masterpiece" (Publisher's Weekly), a "virtuoso performance" (Esquire), this vast, sprawling carnival of a book, set in turn of the century Coney Island, features prostitutes, dogfights, Bowery bars, opium dens, and characters with names like Trick the Dwarf, Gyp the Blood and Kid Twist. Plus Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and Topsy, the elephant electrocuted by Edison. Dreamland opens with an act of misplaced--and very stupid--compassion. Eastern European immigrant and expelled member of the Jewish mob Kid Twist intervenes when villainous gangster Gyp the Blood is on the verge of murdering a young newsboy for sport. But surprise: that's no street urchin--that's Trick the Dwarf, self-proclaimed Mayor of Little City and a Coney Island tout, who dresses up as a boy, he says, as "a way I had of leaving myself behind." Trick hides Twist in the hind parts of the Tin Elephant Hotel, a place literally shaped like the great gray beast, and what follows is a remarkable, extravagantly plotted patchwork of bizarre stories and superbly drawn characters. All of it elegantly written and compassionate to the core. FREE! Complimentary wine. Books on sale at event.

8 PM, Tues, Sept 28
Former HIGH TIMES editor/blues keyboardist MIKE EDISON
Reading/Soundtracking
His Favorite BANNED Books
w/special help from BOSS HOG's Hollis Queens on drums
The American Library Association's Banned Book Week (BBW)is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read and the importance of the First Amendment. More than a thousand books have been challenged since 1982, with targets ranging from Harry Potter to Huckleberry Finn. Click here to see a map of book bans and challenges in the US from 2007 to 2009.

My first experience with a banned book was in tenth grade. I grew up on a horse ranch in Alabama and went to a private school forty minutes away called Macon Academy. My father, a writer who, divorced from my mother, lived in New Jersey, had sent me the Cabernet colored paperback of Catcher in The Ryefor Christmas (along with a Swatch that had a lime green band and a skeleton face of exposed gears). I was discovered reading it one day by my English Teacher, a bullied looking man named Mr. Edwards. He declared, with a sort of wooden vivacity, that if I persisted in doing a report on "the offensive book," I would get a an F. I consulted my Mom--a woman who, it should be noted, had recently backed my lobe with a wine cork and pierced my ear with a stove-flame sterilized sewing needle (to a rumpus of Academy demerits and suspension, natch). "Take the F," she said, "Once you read it, you'll understand." I did. And did.

Between 1985 and 1988, Mike Edison wrote 28 pornographic novels, reported on German whorehouses and Spanish coke dealers for Hustler, and published a series of erotic “confessions” for the legendary Penthouse Letters. In 1998 Edison became publisher/editor of marijuana counterculture magazine High Times. Following HT, he was named the editorial director for Jewish culture magazine HEEB, for whom he went undercover and exposed Jews for Jesus as a Baptist organization. He is the long-time drummer for New York cult-garage band the Raunch Hands and a frequent collaborator of infamous punk rocker GG Allin with whom he wrote a number of songs and recorded two albums. FREE! Refreshments served.

Web Cam Jam; Green Drinks; Jennifer Egan; Jaret Middleton; Sugarbabies; Roadside Graves; Schayfer James & Honor Among Thieves

1 PM, Sun. Aug 2
TRANSATLANTIC WEB CAM JAM SESSION
Live Music
The first Sun of each month The Raconteur hosts a transatlantic jam session. The shop's session is concurrent with a very similar session occurring in Reading, England at a pub called The Retreat. Participants alternate, collaborate, and symphonize via a Google web cam. Raconteur musicians drink coffee and play in the rear of the shop. Retreat musicians quaff pints (morning here, Happy Hour there) and are projected onto a movie screen behind local performers. Web Cam Jam is more about the performers than the performance, but that doesn't mean you can't come and watch. NOTE: If you watched the Oscars last year, you heard Best Actress winner Kate Winslet mention this very same pub and the pickling contest her mother recently won there. Indeed, last April's Web Cam Jam, Kate's mom, Sally Winslet (now known as the Queen of Shallots), was in the foreground eating bangers and in January's Mr. Winslet sang the old broadside “Darlin’ Old Stick.” MUSICIANS WANTED! FREE! Comp cornbread (fresh from the oven)!

The only bookstore with a house band (the Roadside Graves), The Rac has hosted such music luminaries as Fugazi front man Ian MacKaye, Bouncing Souls front man Greg Attonito, poet/new wave punk Jim Caroll, 80s college radio darlings The Cucumbers, former High Times editor/GG Allin collaborator Mike Edison and his punk blues band Edison Rocket Train (featuring Boss Hog drummer Hollis Queens), and folk noir gangster John Wesley Harding, the first opening act for Bruce Springsteen in twenty years. Plus a slew of local bands: Like Trains and Taxis, Risk Relay, Glad Hearts, etc. YOU TOO CAN PLAY THE RAC! Your participation in the Web Cam Jam is your audition.

7 - 9 PM, Tues, Aug 3
GREEN DRINKS
It all started in 1989 at a pub called the Slug and Lettuce in Northern London, in which a handful of eco-conscious mates pulled some tables together and drank some beer. The concept evolved into GREEN DRINKS and now it's global. Each city has an organizer who arranges meetings in bars and restaurants (providing the greenest beer possible, and by green we mean enviro-minded, not colored; in our case, Climax, locally brewed in Roselle Park). Green Drinks meets in fifty countries from Argentina to Zambia. And now, METUCHEN! Jorge Szymanski, a Permaculture Design Consultant, will be on hand to moderate a round-table discussion on Permaculture and how you can use this design philosophy to plan, plant, and prosper with next year's garden. He will discuss the importance of composting, irrigation, micro-climates, and space planning to maximize garden yields while reducing chemical fertilizer use. Come have a beer and get green. FREE!

8 PM, Fri. Aug 6
JENNIFER EGAN
Reading/Signing
A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD
Expect to inhale Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From the Goon Squad. Then expect it to lodge in your cranium and your breastbone a good long while. I expect this brilliant, inventive novel to become enshrined. Such rash speculation is foolish, I know—we live amid a plague of bloated praise. But A Visit From the Goon Squad is emboldening. It cracks the world open afresh. Would that Marcel Proust could receive A Visit From the Goon Squad. It would blow his considerable mind. “Pitch perfect. Shape shifting. Is there anything Egan can’t do?" The New York Times. "A profound and glorious exploration of the fullness and complexity of the human condition. An extraordinary new work of fiction.” The New York Press. "A triumph of technical bravado and tender sympathy“ The Washington Post. "Clever. Edgy. Groundbreaking." The Chicago Tribune. “It may be the smartest book you can get your hands on this summer.” The Los Angeles Times. Read the recent front page NY Times rave for Goon Squad HERE. FREE. Comp wine. The Keep (her Escherian last book and one of my favorite modern novels) and A Visit from the Goon Squad on sale at event.

8 PM, Sat. Aug 14
Who is An Danotomine Eerly??
JARRET MIDDLETON
Reading/Signing
AN DANTOMINE EERLY
With special guests Jonathan Andrew & Rev. P.A.S.
As the Irish-American poet Dallin lay dying he recalls the surreal geography and traumatic events that lead to his end. A wind-beaten house, a still-looming tragedy, a ghostly barroom, and the campus of a condemned university. The ailed poet and his beautiful, haunting wife Aìsling flee an obscure political persecution that culminates in her planned murder. The impact of her death afflicts Dallin in ways he cannot comprehend. All this ends in his meeting An Dantomine Eerly. As Dallin confronts his moment of death, the book assembles itself as a collage of the affinities, falsehoods, and absurdities of memory and reality. Think pre-fame Palahnuik and early David Foster Wallace. Books on sale at event.

W/live music by Jonathan Andrew, formerly of The Angry Monsters, currently in Mike Ferraro & the Young Republicans. Comparisons run from Pixie lead Frank Black to XTC.

Plus spoken word artist/old school punk Rev. Pedro Angel Serrano, just your average Puerto Rican gay skinhead. Rev P.A.S. is the subject of the quirky doc Driving Jersey and the host of Old Man Pedro on WRSU.

8 PM, Sat. Aug 21
SNOWBABIES
Live Music
Subterranean indie stars Snowbabies have been packing New Brunfus basements for the past year. The Raconteur (along with their upcoming Maxwell's gig) marks their move to above ground venues. Their sound is elusive, hinting at everything from alt art-rock to old-school country to the two finger frets of Django Reinhardt. But perhaps the biggest influence on the band is the city around them—listen closely, amidst the whirling guitars and vocal harmonies, the xylophones and singing saws, you just might hear a Robert Wood ambulance or a George Street jackhammer. Special guest: O Lucky Man. FREE! Comp wine. CDs on sale at event.

8:30 Thurs. Aug 26
ROADSIDE GRAVES
After Party (Following their MCAC performance in the Sr Ctzn parking lot)
Live Music/Special Guests
Their sweet-tempered country-rock is far more slippery than it might first appear and often conjures images of a roadhouse Bad Seeds. “I've drank enough to know that I've drank enough," announces front man Gleason on the world-weary “Live Slow,” the one song that comes closest to encapsulating the enduring spirit of the Graves. Performed with an uncommonly deft touch and subtle grace, their songs concern themselves primarily with the pause for breath that comes after reaching original destinations, and the long, careful glance at the atlas that comes before deciding where to go next. FREE! CDs on sale at event.

8 PM, Fri. Aug 27
SCHAYFER JAMES & HONOR AMONG THIEVES
Live Music/Escapism/Sword Swallowing
Singer/songwriter/artful pianist Shayfer James just shot a video on the greasy outdoor pianos that studded Manhattan street corners this past month. His songs are dark, dense, and Dickensian, and his fingers tickle the keys with the dodgy subtlety of a Fagan pickpocket. He's performing here with Honor Among Thieves, a group of sideshow escapists known for lightbulb eating and power tool insertion. No fooling. FREE! Comp wine. CDs on sale at event.

8 PM, Sat. Aug 28
BRYAN HANSEN & Co.
Live Music
I saw Hansen sing when he was still a senior at Edison High. He was in their production of Cabaret. He played the asexual emcee opposite my girlfriend's cousin (the reason we were there) who played Sally Bowles. I'm pretty unforgiving when it comes to community theater, let alone high school theater, but this production of Caberet, specifically this kid's idiosyncratic performance as the emcee, absolutely blew me away. Anyway. Fast forward one year and I run into him at one of those strip mall Halloween superstores where I'm getting some last minute cobweb fluff for The Raconteur's haunted bookshop. I find out he has a band. I book that band. They play. Fast forward one more year. They return.FREE!

6:30 PM, Sun. DATE TBA
DICTIONARY TOSS
Field Event
Summer's here, which means it's once again time for The Raconteur's annual Dictionary Put. $5 for three throws. Participants hurl a hefty 15 lb OED bound in duct tape. Farthest throw wins a $25 gift certificate to the Raconteur and gets their name written on the fore-edge of the dictionary, which remains in the shop. This event is more similar to Open Stone Put of the Highland Games than the Shot Put of the Olympic Games. The toss allows a run up to the toeboard or "trig" to deliver the dictionary, and the thrower is allowed to use any style of release. Most athletes in the toss use either the "glide" or the "spin" techniques. Oakland Park ball field (just off Grove). To register YOU MUST E-MAIL raconteurbooks@gmail.com. Entry fee payable at event. Followed by pints at the pub in our cleats and piped baseball pants.

JULY 2010: Roy Chambers; Green Drinks; Revolutionary Readings; Trains & Taxis/Jordan & Sphinx; Dictionary Toss; Sam St. Thom; Jennifer Egan

8 PM, Sat. July 3
ROY CHAMBERS
Metalwork/Found Object Sculptor
Art Exhibition
Chambers effectively erased any memory of Allen Jones' fetishistic fiber-glass nudes with his milk bar cow skull in The Raconteur's production of A Clockwork Orange. He'll be exhibiting said skull along with forty other found object sculptures, including the horrifying orthodontic headgear for JAW, a five minute play by Alex Dawson, featuring Jeff Maschi as a retired-boxer-cum-side-show-freak who can remove the eponymous body part (think Rocky meets The Elephant Man), fully staged during the art show. FREE! Comp wine. Art on sale at event.

8 PM, Tues, July 6
GREEN DRINKS
It all started in 1989 at a pub called the Slug and Lettuce in Northern London, in which a handful of eco-conscious mates pulled some tables together and drank some beer. The concept evolved into GREEN DRINKS and now it's global. Each city has an organizer who arranges meetings in bars and restaurants (providing the greenest beer possible, and by green we mean enviro-minded, not colored; in our case, Climax, locally brewed in Roselle Park). The featured talk is by Joe Schaffer, engineer and co-founder of Green Environmental Associates. He'll give a brief (10 minute) technology review of gray water recycling, rainwater down-cycling, and composting toilets with a regulatory and practical overview of their use in New Jersey/New York. Green Drinks meets in fifty countries from Argentina to Zambia. And now, METUCHEN! Come have a beer and get green. FREE!

8 PM, Thurs. July 8
REVOLUTIONARY READINGS
Revolutionary Readings is a project conceived, directed, and performed by an ensemble of young theatre artists. The event comprises readings from Revolutionary Voices: A Multicultural Queer Youth Anthology, which collects poetry, essays, and theatrical sketches by LGBTQ high school students. Edited by Amy Sonnie, the book won the 2001 School Library Journal's Adult Books for High School Students award, but has just been banned in several New Jersey school districts having been deemed "pornographic" by a faction of Glenn Beck's 9-12 Project. RR's mission is to raise awareness of this book and to generate social and political pressure to combat its regressive banning.

7:30 PM, Fri. July 9
LIKE TRAINS & TAXIS
w/special guests JORDAN & THE SPHINX
One part pop, one part soul, one part jazz, LIKE TRAINS & TAXIS is one of the most appealing bands I've seen in a long time. As many of you know, I once tended bar and booked music at a sweaty little jughouse in NB. Every Weds through Sat. we slid over the slate pool table to make room for bands like 3 Piece & Biscuit, a lusty quartet that played some of the best original soul I'd ever heard. Until now. Upon the recommendation of Raconteur volunteer Mallory (you know her, she's the one with the Gilda Gray haircut and the tattoo owl that looks like a pineapple), I went to see LT&T play a gig at George Street Playhouse last year (Mal was playing accordion in a different band on the same bill). Backed by bassist Owen Susmen and drummer Mike Del Priore, Chris Harris (who styles himself as a modern-day urban love prophet in the tradition of Marvin Gaye) sat at his keys, porkpie askance, dancing in his seat like Little Stevie and crooning jazz pop grooves reminiscent of Maze's brightest days.

JORDAN and the SPHINX: this indie folk foursome from Arkansas almost called themselves Gary & Stupid, and occasionally play under the name Hairy Truman. They like glockenspiels and ukes, jaw harps, and shakes. They wear white framed sunglasses that they stole, along with a squeeze bottle of Coppertone, from a sorority emblazoned blanket in Fort Lauderdale. They have big, bushy beards that remind their fans of lion manes and Back in Black had the first licks they ever locked themselves in their room to learn. Their live performances include antics that stop just short of crotch-smashing eggs between Paco's scissoring legs. They will NEVER defecate on stage and set it ablaze. They describe their energetic sound as Southern opera freak out and cite a guy named Bob as their biggest influence. FREE!

8 PM, Sat. July 31
SAMUEL SAINT THOMAS
Reading/Live Music
Preacher-cum-blues singer Sam St. Thom reads from his memoir of Pentecostal Pennsy, Frying Spam, and growls out a handful of corresponding steel town songs. A child fascinated by speaking in tongues, the butchery of a Quaker goat, the exorcism of a gay demon, and the impending doom of the Rapture, Thomas fetches the fowl and explores a boyhood driven by a curiosity for all the things they said would land him in the lake of fire. FREE! Comp wine.

JUNE/JULY 2010: Web Cam Jam; Treasure Hunt; Welles Week; What's Your Exit?; Toenes Craig & His Dubious Repertoire

1 PM, Sun. June 6
TRANSATLANTIC WEB CAM JAM SESSION
Live Music
The first Sun of each month The Raconteur hosts a transatlantic jam session. The shop's session is concurrent with a very similar session occurring in Reading, England at a pub called The Retreat. Participants alternate, collaborate, and symphonize via a Google web cam. Raconteur musicians drink coffee and play in the rear of the shop. Retreat musicians quaff pints (morning here, Happy Hour there) and are projected onto a movie screen behind local performers. Web Cam Jam is more about the performers than the performance, but that doesn't mean you can't come and watch. NOTE: If you watched the Oscars last year, you heard Best Actress winner Kate Winslet mention this very same pub and the pickling contest her mother recently won there. Indeed, last April's Web Cam Jam, Kate's mom, Sally Winslet (now known as the Queen of Shallots), was in the foreground eating bangers and in January's Mr. Winslet sang the old broadside “Darlin’ Old Stick.” MUSICIANS WANTED! FREE! Comp cornbread (fresh from the oven)!

The only bookstore with a house band (the Roadside Graves), The Rac has hosted such music luminaries as Fugazi front man Ian MacKaye, Bouncing Souls front man Greg Attonito, poet/new wave punk Jim Caroll, 80s college radio darlings The Cucumbers, former High Times editor/GG Allin collaborator Mike Edison and his punk blues band Edison Rocket Train (featuring Boss Hog drummer Hollis Queens), and folk noir gangster John Wesley Harding, the first opening act for Bruce Springsteen in twenty years. Plus a slew of local bands: Like Trains and Taxis, Risk Relay, Glad Hearts, etc. YOU TOO CAN PLAY THE RAC! Your participation in the Web Cam Jam is your audition.

9:30 AM, Sat. June 12
2nd ANNUAL METUCHEN TREASURE HUNT
Ages 6 & up!
The Raconteur, in conjunction with the Metuchen Masonic Lodge (and What's the Scoop), is again sponsoring a Metuchen based treasure hunt! In keeping with the rollicking spirit of The Man who Would be King, Freemason Rudyard Kipling's fantastic tale of two masonic scoundrels who set off from 19th century British India in search of gold and adventure and end up as kings of Kafiristan, and The National Treasure, in which hoard hunter Benjamin Gates follows a series of cryptic clues to find an ancient cache intertwined with the arcane history of Freemasonry, young adventurers (boys and girls 1st through 5th grade) work in teams, following clues and unraveling a variety of knotty riddles as they move from one mysterious location to another (various stores and outdoor landmarks) within the town limits of Metuchen proper. Each cracked conundrum will lead players ever closer to the final treasure! Expect anagrams, number puzzles, and a brass plated, cylindrical device known as a Cryptex. Raconteur gift certificates awarded to all participants. To sign up, click HERE. Space is limited. The hunt is completely FREE. On the same morning, the Mt. Zion Masonic Lodge is also sponsoring a Pancake Breakfast starting at 8am. Bring an empty belly! Start your adventure on a full stomach! Any questions, or if you would like to help, please click HERE.

8 PM, Fri, June 25
ROBERT KAPLOW
Introducing/Screening
ME & ORSON WELLES
NPR alum Robert Kaplow’s novel Me and Orson Welles, a beautifully rendered and hilarious valentine to the burly thespian, was recently turned into a movie by indie filmmaker Richard Linklater (Dazed & Confused, School of Rock). Click HERE for film site. Set in 1937 New York, Kaplow's novel tells of a teenager hired to star in Welles' production of Julius Caesar. The film starred Zac Efron, Claire Danes, and Christian Mckay as Welles. The New York Times described McKay's performance as one of "seductive power and full bore charm," Roger Ebert called the picture, "one of the best movies about theater I've ever seen," the New Yorker's David Denby included it in his "Top Ten Films of the Year," and The San Francisco Chronicle, said: "Christian McKay, as Orson Welles in Me and Orson Welles, gives what I believe is the most exact and uncanny screen portrayal of a historical figure, EVER." Kaplow will introduce the film with a short reading from his book and follow the screening with an onstage conversation with The Star-Ledger's Peter Filichia. Find out how a cantankerous bouncer at a local New Brunswick band bar discovered the unagented actor playing Welles (seriously) and what exactly the "O" stands for in Robert O. Kaplow. Books on sale at The Raconteur and The Forum. Tickets $15. On sale online and at The Rac June 8. Presented in conjunction with The Forum Theatre.

Please Note: the event is at The Forum Theater, 314 Main Street, Metuchen, NOT The Raconteur. WELLES WEEK kicks of Tues with double feature screenings of beautifully restored 35mm prints of Touch of Evil, The Stranger, and The Third Man! Click HERE for schedule (show times TBA).

8 PM, Sat. June 26
WHAT'S YOUR EXIT?
A Literary Detour through New Jersey
Reading/Signing
We're called The Garden State because our soil is so rich that no matter how much we pave it or waste it, the land still calls to us. This recent anthology, edited by Alicia A. Beale and Joe Vallese, features new and previously published work from over 40 writers who get in tune with those echoes. Among the book’s contributors are Joyce Carol Oates, Tom Perrotta, Robert Pinsky, Jason Biggs, Alicia Ostriker, Paul Lisicky, and Sung J. Woo. Released by indie publisher Word Riot. I make no promises, but I'm told guest readers may include any or all of the emboldened names. FREE! Complimentary wine. Books on sale at event.

8 PM, Thurs. July 1
TOENES CRAIG
Reading/Signing
HIS DUBIOUS REPERTOIRE
If you've seen those toxic green/neon pink chapbooks in the shop, you may be familiar with Toenes' work. He's a poet with an affinity for hot colors and dubious prose. FREE! Complimentary wine. Books on sale at event. Please note: this is a rental and, accordingly, The Raconteur makes no claims regarding caliber.

MAY 2010: OSCAR winner Pam Boll; Creep Cycle; Chris Grabenstein; Calouri/Kaplan; 2010 Oscar Winner Roger Ross Williams & Prudence; The Backpockets

8 PM, Sat. May 8
Academy Award Winning Filmmaker
PAMELA BOLL
Introducing & Screening
WHO DOES SHE THINK SHE IS?
Georgia O'Keefe. Edith Wharton. Janis Joplin. Emily Dickinson. Amelia Earhart. None of these women had children. Who Does She Think She Is?, the new documentary by Oscar winning filmmaker Pamela Boll (Born into Brothels), explores the competing demands of muse and mothering and the struggle to make art while nurturing life. The film, which follows five fierce women who refuse to choose, is a call to arms (rise up ladies! with your chisels and brushes and pens!) and ultimately demonstrates that creativity and care-giving are not mutually exclusive, but deeply connected. Followed by an on stage interview btwn Ms. Boll and Emmy Award winning cultural arts journalist John Bathke (News 12's "On the Scene").For trailer, click HERE. Bring your Mom! What better way to spend Mother's Day weekend? 6:30 - 7:30 PM Raconteur Cocktail Reception w/Ms. Boll. Join Oscar winner Pam Boll @ The Raconteur (431 Main Street, Metuchen, NJ) for some complimentary vino and up-close conversation before the movie.The reception is FREE! for Raconteur Society Members. $10 suggested donation for non-members.

7:30 PM, Thurs. May 13
JOHN HAMMEL'S SERIOUS FUN
The Creep Song Cycle
John Hammel (vocals/harmonica/percussion), Anthony LaMort (keyboards), Michael Cohen (bass. Classic rock and soul strung together in a thematic song cycle Opening set of poetry and free form improvisation by Hammel/LaMort/Cohen. FREE Will Donation. Please Note: this is a rental (budding bands, authors, and filmmakers regularly rent our space).

8 PM, Tues. May 18
CHRIS GRABENSTEIN
Reading/Signing
ROLLING THUNDER: A John Ceepak Mystery
Trojan Man Grabenstein continues his chronicle of the NJ beach dick, rounding out his Ceepak six pack with a can of whup ass called ROLLING THUNDER. A prominent citizen dies on a brand new roller coaster's first trip around the tracks. Was it a heart attack or did it just look like one? And why is Ceepak's skeevy father back in Sea Haven? Hang on for the read of your life!

A former improvisational comedian (he and Bruce Willis were in the same Greenwich Village comedy troupe in the early 1980s), Grabenstein spent almost twenty years writing commercials. He was, perhaps most famously, the copy writer who created Trojan Man. His writing talent was first discovered by James Patterson, the Creative Director at J. Walter Thompson Advertising. He won the Anthony Award for "Best First Mystery" for his debut TILT A WHIRL, the first in a series of John Ceepak stories to be set "Down The Shore" in a New Jersey tourist town called Sea Haven. The second book, MAD MOUSE, was called one of the "Ten Best Mysteries of 2006" by Kirkus. The New York Daily News called the fourth Ceepak book, HELL HOLE, a "must-read." FREE! Complimentary wine. Books on sale at event.

8 PM, Fri. May 21
CALOURI(violin)/KAPLAN(guitar)
Live Music
400 years of music: from Gustav Holst to classic Zep (Led, that is), with detours into Celtic folk and Victorian dance hall. Steve Kaplan and Paul Calouri bring their love of traditional folk, classical music and acoustic jazz into sharp focus by using truly acoustic instruments to perform, exploring sonic possibilities without the "clutter" of other instrumentation. Their approach to the music is deceptively simple: wring out as much emotion as possible without losing the essential structure of the pieces they're playing. FREE! Complimentary wine.

8 PM, Sat. May 22
2010 OSCAR Winning Director
ROGER ROSS WILLIAMS
Introducing/Screening MUSIC BY PRUDENCE
Followed by a Q&A with Williams and a concert by PRUDENCE!
Roger Ross Williams, the first African American filmmaker to win the Academy Award, introduces and screens the film for which he won the Oscar. "Music by Prudence" follows Prudence Mahena, a severely disabled Zimbabwean woman born into extreme poverty and believed to be the product of witchcraft, who transcends hatred and superstition to form an Afro-fusion band called Liyan, in which all eight members are disabled. The screening will be followed by an onstage interview/conversation between News 12's John Bathke and Williams, an audience Q&A, and a concert by Prudence herself! who's in from Zimbabwe for a slew of interviews with Williams (O Magazine, CNN, NPR, Gail King Show, and pending appearances on The View and Oprah) and the HBO premiere of the film. Admission: $20. To buy a ticket online, click HERE. To see the trailer, click HERE.THE REFECTORY (adjacent to the First Presbyterian Church), 270 Woodbridge Ave, Metuchen, NJ 08840

COCKTAIL RECEPTION FOLLOWING THE EVENT
Join 2010 Oscar winner Roger Ross Williams and Prudence Mahena for complimentary wine, up close conversation, and an exclusive a cappella concert AFTER the event. Attendance limited to 65! Cash menu and bar. Novitas Lounge, 25 Pearl Street, Metuchen, NJ. 10:00 PM - 11:00 PM. Admission: $15.00. To buy a reception ticket online, click HERE. Reception tickets available at The Raconteur starting Sat 5/15.

8 PM, Tues. May 25
THE BACKPOCKETS
Live Music
The Back Pockets is three girls, two boys, and one old geezer who looks like a cross between Dusty Hill and the guy with ripped flannel elbows drinking brekkie shots of Ten High who just stole your smokes. They play banjos and bongos, fiddles and flutes. Sometimes they lay electric guitars across their laps and saw on them with a violin bows. The girls dress like flappers, acrobats, or, on occasion, the Daryl Hannah android from Bladerunner. The boys wear Mexican wrestling masks and fencing helmets. They like sidewalks at night, homemade things, and carnies. They frequently rig and engage tightropes and trapezes during their shows, and have played whole songs hanging from their knees. The sound is folk, but the experience is Stomp. They're painters as well as musicians. They hail from Atlanta, GA. They sometimes describe themselves as Jefferson Airplane meets Blue Man Group. FREE! Complimentary wine. CDs on sale at the event (you remember their CDs, they come in little canvas pockets embroidered with doodles fastened with Velcro).

APRIL/MAY 2010: Noah Baumbach; Qtet; D&D Tournament; John Ciardi; It Ends in a G; Lenny Bruce; Oscar Winner Pam Boll; Myra Ciardi

8 PM, Fri. April 2
KICKING & SCREAMING
Directed by Noah Baumbach
Film Screening
The heavy anxiety that takes center stage in Noah Baumbach's just released Greenberg and his Oscar nominated Squid and the Whale is already waiting in the wings in his stingingly funny first feature. One of the highlights of the nineties indie film scene, Kicking and Screaming mines J. D. Salinger territory (to cite a writer often linked to screenplaymate Wes Anderson--they co-wrote Mr. Fox--as well as to Baumbach), speaking directly to a generation of would-be adults unable to reconcile their hermetic educational experience with workaday responsibility, and posing the eternal question: where do we go from here? FREE! Comp wine.

8 PM, Fri. April 9
QTET
Live Music
The music the Qtet plays is jazz-based but reflects the wide diversity of its co-leaders, Ware & Kaplan. Vibraphonist Bill Ware toured with Steely Dan on their live comeback tour in the mid 90s and was a founding member of the ground-breaking acid jazz group the Groove Collective, and the jazz/theater group the Jazz Passengers, which often featured ex-Blondie singer Debbie Harry. Saxophonist Mike Kaplan currently leads his 9 piece horn-proud jazz unit the Mike Kaplan Nonet, and has performed with the Joneses, the Glenn Miller Orchestra, and the Chico Mendoza Latin Jazz Dream Band. Kaplan has had original arrangements and compositions performed and/or recorded by the Composers Big Band, Juan Oliva y sus Progressiva, and Orquesta Royal. Also with bassist Saadi Zain and drummer Lou Petto.FREE. Comp wine.

12 (noon) - 10 PM, Sat. April 10
DUNGEONS & DRAGONS ROLEPLAYING MARATHON
Hosted by Peter & Ian Fairclough (his 13 year old son)
Beginners Welcome! (Ages 10 & up)
Before ergonomic gaming consoles and wireless controllers utilizing Bluetooth technology, there was twenty-sided dice and octagonal graph paper. Before Xbox 360, there was D&D. When I was ten, my mother and stepfather moved my brother and I from suburban NJ to a seven hundred acre ranch in Alabama. Apparently feeling we should be further isolated, they took us, every summer, cross country to Nebraska, where we camped and lived in a hybrid house/horse trailer so they could train gundogs on prairie grouse. It was here my brother and I discovered D&D, playing it the trailer's drop table, trying to kill those long flat days while our parents fieldworked and trialed the dogs. Though our D&D backgrounds differ (us, ten and twelve, on the plains of Nebraska; him, British, early twenties, throwing extravagant "D&D Fancy Dress Parties" in Eastern England), when Fairclough expressed interest in organizing an open-door D&D marathon, I immediately offered the shop as a venue. And with its museumized charms and medieval clutter (pig-faced helmets, basket-hilted swords), what better venue for the dice based fantasy game? FREE to participate (natch).

8 PM, Sat. April 17
FIVE BANDS hosted by IT ENDS w/a G
Live Music
Can't say much except the front man for the organizing band has an Abe Lincoln beard and thick black glasses and sort of looks like a Civil War Buddy Holly, and one of our shop volunteers, a twenty-something muppety hipster I call O' Lucky Man after the Lindsay Anderson film (his last name is Lukman), is playing a short set, and it will likely be loud, and crowded with those kids you usually see boarding (skate, not water) in the Pearl Street parking lot.

7 PM, Weds, April 21
LENNY'S BACK! (& Boy is He Pissed)
A One Man Show Starring General Hospital's RONNIE MARMO
I know, groan, General Hospital. But c'mon, it's LENNY BRUCE! And maybe this dude's no Dustin, but he looks just like Lenny. Immortalized on the cover of Sgt. Pepper and in songs by Simon & Garfunkel, Nico, Frank Zappa, and Bob Dylan ("he was bad, he was the brother you never had"), Lenny Bruce fancied himself an oral jazzman and worshiped the gods of Spontaneity, Candor and Free Association. His tongue would often outrun his mind and he would say things he didn't plan to say, things that surprised him, delighted him, cracked him up. His provocative stand-up paved the way for such comic greats as Richard Pryor, George Carlin and Robin William, all of whom cite Mr. Bruce as their primary influence. Recently performed in Hollywood to rave reviews ("The performance is flawless," Teller (of Penn & Teller); "Thoughtfully funny...poignant," L.A. Times; "Perfectly paced," LA Weekly, LENNY'S BACK moves to NJ for a three day run at Edison Valley Playhouse (where Ronnie got his stage start fifteen years ago). Why? Who knows. Something to do with a soap opera convention at the Meadowlands Hilton. But Ronnie is doing a TEASER of the show for FREE at The Raconteur before the EVP opening on April 22.

8 PM, Sat. May 8
Academy Award Winning Filmmaker
PAMELA BOLL
Introducing & Screening
WHO DOES SHE THINK SHE IS?
Georgia O'Keefe. Edith Wharton. Janis Joplin. Emily Dickinson. Amelia Erhardt. None of these women had children. Who Does She Think She Is?, the new documentary by Oscar winning filmmaker Pamela Boll (Born into Brothels), explores the competing demands of muse and mothering and the struggle to make art while nuturing life. The film, which follows five fierce women who refuse to choose, is a call to arms (rise up ladies! with your chisels and brushes and pens!) and ultimately demonstrates that creativity and caregiving are not mutually exclusive, but deeply connected. Followed by a Q&A with Ms. Boll and video updates of the five mother/artists in the film. For trailer, click HERE. Bring your Mom! What better way to spend Mother's Day weekend? Cooler than a pot of poppies! General Admission: $15 (tickets on sale soon). Note: Screening is at The Forum NOT The Raconteur.

Date TBA
Myra Ciardi
The late John Ciardi's daughter discusses her famous father. More info soon

MARCH 2010: Svankmajer's ALICE; Welcome Back Kotter's Bobby Hegyes

8 PM, Fri. March 19
ALICE
Directed by Jan Svankmajer
Film Screening
Think Burton is gloomy? Well, comparing him to Czech surrealist filmmaker Jan Svankmajer is like comparing Chuck Jones (the creator of Pepe Le Pew) to, say, Chuck Palahniuk. Svankmajer, previously acclaimed for his short subjects, made his feature-film debut with ALICE, a grotesque adaptation of Lewis Carroll's classic starring Kristyna Kohoutová, the only human character in the film. The other roles are variously filled by animated taxidermy, disarticulated skeletons, clay figurines, puppets, and slabs of dancing meat (yes, meat). After falling asleep beside a stream, Alice follows a stuffed rabbit (not stuffed in a plush, propped-on-your-pillow sort of way, but stuffed in a shot dead, posed-on-peice-of-wood sort of way), bristling with mounting pins and trailing sawdust, into a nightmarish world where she encounters a menagerie of other stop-motion monsters (including a tube sock with teeth), all of which might have emerged from the triptychs of Heironymus Bosch. It's not 3-D, but it's one of the most inventive films I've ever seen. Not for kids (unless you're progressive, arty parents and your children are fearless and sleep without nightlights or those sticky glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling). FREE! Comp wine.

8 PM, Fri. March 26
Former Sweathog ROBERT HEGYES
Q&A
Since my very first associations with Metuchen I've heard marveled murmurs about three celebrities with erstwhile Metuchen addresses: John Ciardi, a poet/translator so popular he was on Johnny Carson twice; David Copperfield, a magician famous for epic stunts like disappearing the Statue of Liberty and levitating over the Grand Canyon; and Bobby Hegyes, best known for his portrayal of Juan Epstein in the 1970s television series Welcome Back, Kotter. Ciardi's long deceased. Copperfield lives on a secluded Musha Cay island. But Hegyes, after a thirty-five year absence, has come home. Following his five year run on Kotter, Hegyes starred as series regular "Manny Esposito" in the Emmy Award-winning drama, Cagney & Lacey, and has since appeared in more than 30 television shows, including Saturday Night Live with Quentin Tarantino (who, on the set of Pulp Fiction, reportedly sat on the floor and played the Kotter board game with Travolta). Hegyes will talk about the Kotter years, Cag & Lace, his enduring friendship with John Travolta (he's the godfather of his daughter), and babysitting Bon Jovi (they're cousins). Plus assorted Kotter memorabilia, including a foot tall Epstein action figure and Hegyes' pride and joy, his Mad Magazine cover. FREE. Comp Wine.

8 PM, Tues, March 30
BEARCUBES (with special guest)
Live Music
Known for the distinct penetrating sound of their twin oboes (an instrument that sounds sort of like a duck, if a duck were a songbird), The Bearcubes' deceptively straightforward music(literate, witty lyrics and catchy compositions) embody timeless qualities of humanity, optimism, emotional insight and a boundless sense of humor, untainted by cynicism or transient notions of hipness. Essentially poppy songs played by folk instruments. Not cool enough for you? Well, maybe their too cool. Maybe they're so cool, their hot. Free. Comp wine. CDs on sale at the event. FREE!

FEB/MARCH 2010: HELP! A Concert for Haitian Relief; BENN @ RAC

8 PM, Sat. Feb 27
HELP!: A Concert for Haitian Relief
Featuring The British Invasion (more than just The Beatles) and emceed by yours truly
I've never seen The British Invasion perform and, generally speaking, I'm not a big fan of tribute bands (Sack Blabbath aside), but Hard Days Night is a favorite flick, and these pseudo-Merseybeaters have opened for the likes of Eric Clapton, Leon Russell, Glen Burtnik, The Rascals, and John Cafferty. They cover everything from Beatles to Zep, have played everywhere from Six Flags to CBGBs, and keyboardist Mick Seeley was a member of Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes. And hey, it's for a good cause. The Forum Theater, 314 Main Street, Metuchen, NJ 08840. Tickets: $20.00 (available at the Raconteur). All proceeds go to Episcopal Relief and Development, a charitable group with boots on the ground in Haiti.

8 PM, Sat. March 6
BENN @ RAC
Readings/Live Music
In keeping with my previous efforts to bring accomplished Bennies to Metuchen (Pultizer Prize finalist David Gates, South African author Sheila Kohler, travel writer Rolf Potts), I've extended an open call to my fellow MFAers. Bennington is a place where the students are almost as accomplished as the faculty and this weekend seven of my Bennington College colleagues will be descending on The Raconteur from various Seaboard states for a night of poetry, music, and prose. The evening will include such illustrious guests as Steve Lafond, a roller derby mascot (seriously, his day job has him wearing a red astronautical jumpsuit and elaborate Planet of the Apes-style latex to play a Soviet chimp called Drago) married to a pig-tailed, ink-armed skater nicknamed "Monster," who writes stories inspired by his life in monkey make-up and the rink; Willa Carroll, an acclaimed Manhattan modern dancer-cum-poet recently published in Tin House and labeled an "angel who stirs up trouble" by the Village Voice, whose onstage unicorn-horned wrestling was praised by the New York Times; Jeremy Oldfield, an apropriately surnamed former farmer once dedicated to rejuvenating fallow land who sings songs about, among other things, compost; and myself, reading a very funny story which begins with the kneeslapper, "When I was ten my stepfather hit me in the head with an axe." Also with Jennifer Acker, Jamie-Lee Josselyn, Robert "Vee" Hansmann, and Sue Repko. Plus a surprise guest. Free. Comp wine.

UPCOMING: National Book Critics Circle finalist Martha A. Sandweiss (Passing Strange); Raconteur Haitian Benefit w/Mike Edison; Oscar winning documentarian Pamela T. Boll screening her latest doc "Who Does She Think She Is?"; literary rappers FUSE; D&D Marathon; scrap metal sculptor Roy Chambers (of Clockwork Orange cow skull fame); STEREO (Chris Pastras & Jason Lee) skateboard exhibit; Mutate #9601 (a one man show about the comic book character Wolverine); "League of Gentleman" radio play

FEB 2010: Web Cam Jam, more events TBA

11 AM, Sun. Feb 7
TRANSATLANTIC WEB CAM JAM SESSION
Live Music
The first Sun of each month The Raconteur hosts a transatlantic jam session. The shop's session is concurrent with a very similar session occurring in Reading, England at a pub called The Retreat. Participants alternate, collaborate, and symphonize via a Google web cam. Web Cam Jam is more about the performers than the performance, but that doesn't mean you can't come and watch. Raconteur musicians drink coffee and play in the rear of the shop. Retreat musicians quaff pints (morning here, Happy Hour there) and are projected onto a movie screen behind local performers. All instruments welcome. Expect a jaw harp, two kazoos, a beer bottle organ, and something called a fluba, which appears to be a tuba-sized fluegel horn. NOTE: If you watched the Oscars last year, you heard Best Actress winner Kate Winslet mention this very same pub and the pickling contest her mother recently won there. Indeed, last April's Web Cam Jam, Kate's mom, Sally Winslet (now known as the Queen of Shallots), was in the foreground eating bangers and in January's Mr. Winslet sang the old broadside “Darlin’ Old Stick.”

MUSICIANS WANTED! FREE! Comp cornbread (fresh from the oven)!

The only bookstore with a house band (the Roadside Graves), The Rac has hosted such music luminaries as Fugazi front man Ian MacKaye, Bouncing Souls front man Greg Attonito, poet/new wave punk Jim Caroll, 80s college radio darlings The Cucumbers, former High Times editor/GG Allin collaborator Mike Edison and his punk blues band Edison Rocket Train (featuring Boss Hog drummer Hollis Queens), and folk noir gangster John Wesley Harding, the first opening act for Bruce Springsteen in twenty years. Plus a slew of local bands: Like Trains and Taxis, Risk Relay, Glad Hearts, etc. YOU TOO CAN PLAY THE RAC! Your participation in the Web Cam Jam is your audition.