[ Features Index | Silicon Valley | Metroactive Home | Archives ]

Biter Slide on In Your summer schedule of events By Richard von Busack Historic Bumpkinville Slide-Whistle Roundup Slidewhistle players from around the tri-state area meet in Bumpkinville to jam on this much-maligned instrument. Headliner: Rolando "Slide-Boy" Tucker, who claims to have performed the slide-whistle solo on T-Rex's "The Slider"--although at this late a date, who can say if he'll really show. Sliding-scale admission, appropriately enough. (July 7-8) Cotton Ball Museum of Blighton "King Cotton: The History of the Cotton Ball" (closes July 15). "Swabs for the Swabbies: Royal Navy Medical Supplies, 1800-1900" (opens July 16). Kids will really "cotton" to this! OOF Collective The Ohio/Ontario Fete-de-Dancer debuts its new work by director Seraglio Ungentine: Lament for the Underfunded, a cycle of pieces about the slashing of city art budgets. (Aug. 14-28, Cutseyville Veterans Memorial Auditorium) Roadapple Springs Bluegrass Fest This four-day event features the Squalor Holler Boys, banjo man Sixfingers Tarleton, the Gawk Mountain Rebels, the albino kid from Deliverance and that weapon of sour-mash destruction Peavey Felonious. Dulcimer endurance contest, child-bridal-wear exhibition. Hog-calling Saturday night, God-calling Sunday morning. (July 4 weekend, Roadapple Springs Campground, Doakey Oakes Regional Park) Gustav Parvo Tonight! Few visitors to Chlorine Lake realize that this hamlet was the summer home of Gustav Parvo, who was shortlisted for the 1922 Nobel Prize for Literature. Parvo is best known for his 1913 historical romance of the court of Count Josef the Unsettling, The Maid of Gewürztramminer. However, Parvo also wrote 15 volumes of memoirs and poetry, praised, under duress and with great reservation, by critics of the time. Actor Terry Otiose gives a one-man performance as the distinguished if long-winded literary lion. (Saturdays in August, Chlorine Lake High School Gymnasium) Battle of Coonskull Ridge Historical Re-Enactment Camp Sept. 20, 1865: Little knowing that the treaty at Appomattox has been signed five months previously, Union Brig. Gen. Amos "Flathead" Johnson makes a daring 3am raid on what he believes is a Confederate encampment. (Later, he learns that the soldiers tenting that night on the old campground were also Union troops, under the command of Maj. Gen. Bustard Foxworthy.) The resulting skirmish is faithfully re-enacted by volunteers who get very put out if someone's wearing boot laces of an anachronistic diameter. The number of skinned knees, strained backs and slapped faces often dwarfs the casualty list at the actual battle of Coonskull Ridge. (Sept. 20, Coonskull Ridge National Historic Area, Duckyville) Eighth Annual Point Despondence Film Festival Point Despondence's showbiz connection is strong: seems like everyone in the greater P.D. area's got a son or daughter in film school somewhere! Scheduled guest: Golden Age screenwriter W.W. "Bob" Trowbridge. In the 1950s, Trowbridge was beige-listed for knowing people who knew communists. He's bounced back to write his guidebook Write Your Script the W.W. Way!, which will be on sale in the lobby of this seaside town's historic Odium Theater. Some of Trowbridge's films include Muttonhead Morgan's Screwiest Caper (1940), Not In the Face, Please! (1940), Two Saps and a Dope (1940), Dr. Devil's Parlor of Misery (1940) and The Magic Mushrooms of Razzle Q. Whooperdoopus (1972). Also in competition: A Dog, Another Dog and Yet Another Dog, cutting-edge director Sylvia Grimm's documentary about her attempt to finish her first film; Argentine master Sensualdo Favella's Honor Does Not Move Sideways Like a Crab, a five-hour epic about the rivalry between two gauchos; and, from Poland, Wozzhye Wozbohrne's Film No. 459. (July 10-15) Send a letter to the editor about this story to letters@metronews.com. [ Silicon Valley | Metroactive Home | Archives ]