Game six, Red Sox-Yankees, on the car radio. The Red Sox have just pulled ahead by one run in a crazy seventh inning, and if they don't keep this lead, they're dead.

But I can't listen. I've gotta go watch Vermont Stage Company perform a play I've already seen twice. I know I wasn't the only one in the audience at Prooflast Wednesday night thinking, "Thishad better be good."

And I know I wasn't the only one who, as soon as it began, breathed a sigh of relief.... Read more

"It remains to be seen how many people in our time will make that journey from war to nonviolent action against war. It is the great challenge of our time: how to achieve justice with struggle, but without war." These words from iconoclastic historian Howard Zinn will reverberate through downtown Burlington during the Vermont International Film Festival (VIFF), which begins this Thursday, October 16, and concludes on Monday.... Read more

Four men and two woman mug and gesture as they mimic an incompetent royal entourage preparing for a hunt. (It's important to taste the animal's droppings.) The harmonies emitting from their lips are as sweet and ethereal as their pantomime is absurd. This is the Oxford vocal ensemble I Fagiolini, performing at the University of Vermont's Recital Hall on November 5. While their playfulness might startle those who expect a concert-hall experience to be "heavy," it's surprisingly in tune with the spirit of early music.... Read more

A soft knock on the door of the recording studio in Chuck Eller's Charlotte home sets off his two Cairn terriers, Ruby and Bing. I flinch at the sudden disruption to a recording session inside, then instantly recognize my own naïvete. Obviously, no one can hear the barking dogs from inside a soundproof room Ñ or my knocking, for that matter.... Read more

For someone who decided to give music a rest less than a year ago, Michael Chorney has been awfully busy. Recently the former viperHouse director-composer-saxophonist holed up for two months in a studio space at a converted mill near his Bristol home. The result of the project, with vocalist Miriam Bernardo, is Songs and Music of Paul Bowles. The nine-track CD is a teaser at a mere 23 minutes, but with a quarter-century of music making behind him, perhaps Chorney knows it's best to leave 'em wanting more. And more is exactly what he has in mind.... Read more

Sometimes even a remarkable real-life story and stellar performances do not add up to a film that can galvanize an audience. Veronica Guerin -- which opens this weekend at The Roxy in Burlington -- is based on actual events in Ireland during the mid-1990s. The premise involves a crusading reporter who exposes the ruthless drug lords intent on pushing heroin in Dublin's working-class neighborhoods.... Read more

The only thing more ridiculous than Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor of California would be Arnold Schwarzenegger as president of the United States -- an unthinkable proposition under the U.S. Constitution, but one that recent events should warn us is now a distinct possibility.

Sure enough, Republican Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah -- a great friend of Arnold's, apparently -- has proposed a Constitutional amendment that would allow any foreign-born meathead to become president "if he or she has been a U.S. citizen for 20 years and a resident for 14 years."... Read more

At ear-splitting volume, about 40 student musicians onstage in the Hunt Middle School auditorium are energetically warming up their instruments for a rehearsal. The band director, Craig Olzenak, puts two fingers in his mouth to whistle for their attention. The cacophony subsides. These lively Burlington eighth-graders seem well aware of the mantra behind every aspiring virtuoso: practice, practice, practice.... Read more

One of the monsters of the TV news midway was in beautiful downtown Burlington Monday morning to interview our favorite presidential hopeful Howard Dean at the Firehouse Gallery.

Peter Jennings told Seven Days that ABCNEWS is preparing "a series of long, fairly in-depth personal interviews with the Democratic candidates." They'll air coast-to-coast in December. Ho-Ho's is the first one they've shot.... Read more

A soft hum is wafting through the warehouse district of Burlington's South End. It's an unusually warm evening for October and the air seems mismatched with the crunch of dried leaves underfoot. Inside one of the many nondescript buildings lining Pine Street, waves of guitar punctuate the muted groan of an electric piano. Amanda Gustafson and Eric Olsen, cofounders of Burlington art-rockers Swale, are settling into the first song of an impromptu rehearsal.... Read more