Sat. May 5

Honesty being rather important in this line of work, we should say we're friends of Kim Airs - and have been so long before she opened her sexuality boutique, Grand Opening! in Coolidge Corner. (We knew her when she was in academia, but that's all we'll say of those days.) At any rate, Airs (in photo) had a radical idea for a female-oriented sex toy shop and it had a good run. She also produced some local amateur, uh, erotica called "You Oughta Be in Pictures." Last year, Airs left for the west coast. But she's back in town Saturday May 5 and here's what she's got planned for the Coolidge Corner Theatre.
"Well, you know, everyone says they don't know what to make for the 'You Oughta Be in Pictures show - my night of locally made, amateur adult video, so I thought I would throw together some clips of movies that are out there to show them how easy it is to do.  The SmorgasPORN show goes one step further, though... I'm going to have some funny contests happening while the show is going on - best porno soundtrack sounds (because in the old days, they recorded the soundtracks separately which is why the moans just never quite match the mouths of the performers), best scene reenactment - WITH CLOTHES ON! - and a few other things.There will be some running comments by yours truly which will give you some insights in the porno world but also be pretty damn funny because, well, I think most of porno IS!
Most of the videos I am showing are straight oriented, although there's a little here and there of other sexualities as well.  And oh yeah, there's lots of prizes for those brave enough to show their stuff on stage.  Legally, of course!
Tickets are ten bucks each, ya gotta be 18 years old or more, and you can get them right from the Coolidge Corner Theatre website and for more info about the show and to get tickets, just go to this website below. Shows start at midnight.

290 Harvard St., Brookline, 617-734-2500 coolidge.org/node/800

Fri. May 4

 Has there ever been a more tragic heroine than Rosemary, the kept-in-the-dark mother in Roman Polanski's "Rosemary's Baby"? (Well, yes, there has: Shakespeare created a bunch, and more than a few others have as well.) But Ira Levin created Rosemary and Polanski and Mia Farrow - now mostly a child advocate/avid adoptive mum, infamous for having both Frank Sinatra and Woody Allen as ex-hubbys - brought her plight to life. It's all about creating a child whose education in numerology starts and ends with "666," and it's as spooky a tale of deception and evil - trust no one! good life lesson - as you can imagine. It's about duplicitous doctors, Adults in Service of Satan, a hapless actor selling his soul (that is, Rosemary and the baby) for a shot at fame. It's also a great mystery. How does Rosemary unravel the plot against her and her child? When will she see the benign smiles and reassuring pats? All of this niceness in the face of unspeakable horror - you birthed the devil's child - makes for an excruciating good time. We've seen this film several times, and never fail to stop when we're cable surfing and it's on. You can do better than that, though at the Video Underground in Jamaica Plain on Friday May 4 at 8 p.m. This film, made nearly 40 years ago, presented by Karen Brown and her group Cinescare, a group that believees "Horror cinema is the most revealing vulnerable and significant storytelling human civilization has ever invented... Only horror cinema provokes real-world action - be in objection or attraction - onthe part of its audience." Cinescare was launched last Halloween and its objective is present over 80 years of horror movies and examine, with the audience, the narrative, characters and themes for a sociological lens. We're not sure if there's much value doing this for the routine slice-and-dice movies, but we can certainly see them doing a number on "Hostel." "Rosemary's Baby" sounds like the perfect film for a prodcution called "Horror Springs Forth 2007." This is free, and free pizza comes from Bella Luna.

385 Centre St., Jamaica Plain, 617-522-4949 thevideounderground.com cinescare.com

ongoing

Dame Judi Dench pulled off a Best Supporting Actress nod for her performance as the embittered old crow of a schoolteacher she plays in "Notes on a Scandal." And shouldn't she? God, what a delicious character! Dench is Barbara, a repressed, duplicitous, aged lesbian who gleefully snares the younger teacher Sheba, played by Cate Blanchett, in a trap of Blanchett's making. She's a queen of machinations. Sheba, a former punk fan headed toward middle age and mired in a dead-end marriage to an older man, falls for a 15-year-old male student and has more than a few illicit trysts with him. (Yes, the plotline seems ripped from the headlines a la "Law and Order.") When Barbara, a self-described "battle axe," discovers one said tryst, she realizes she's got great material for blackmail. And maybe ... love? Well, Barbara is sharp-tongued, smart and scheming, but rather dim when it comes to courtship. Some of the action she relates in a voice-over - the "notes" she's keeping in her diary. This is an English "Fatal Attraction" without the ... no that would give it away. Let's say, that the only animal that dies is Barbara's cat, Portia. (Barbara's lone redeeming quality is her love for that cat, which she must put down. Sheba's refusal to accompany her on that journey is the spark for the confrontations and conflicts.) The tension is palpable, Philip Glass's music is often bombastic and Hitchcock-ian (Alfred not Robyn), and the relationships - all of them, really - are frayed. It's based on a novel by Zoe Heller and directed by Richard Eyre of "Closer" fame. (Trivia: Both Blanchett and Dench have played Queen Elizabeth in films. Punk connections: Sheba's teenage daughter sports a CBGB t-shirt early on, and Sheba references her those-were-the-days moments with a Siouxsie & the Banshees album photo and their song "Dizzy" plays in the background.) At the West Newton Cinema at 8:50. Tickets: $9.

1296 Washtington St., Newton, 617-964-8074

Thurs. May 3

How prepared is Massachuseets for disaster? Well, let's see, with most of the National Guard off working the international beat in Iran (soon to come: Iraq!), we'd probably wager that we're not prepared very well at all. We all know what happened when Katrina hit - a perfect storm of governmental ineptitude and overwhelming devastation. What about those LNG tanks? Thought about the avian flu recently? Honestly, we block much of this out because it has a potentially crippling effect: If we really knew how bad off we could be, how would we go on day-to-day? The answer to that, maybe, is just live one day at a time - and hope that those in charge are taking these potential threats seriously for a change. (And we don't just mean cutting back on civil rights.) On Thursday May 3, the Ford Hall Forum presents Dr. Paul D. Biddinger, (in photo)  chairman of the Mass. Medical Society Committee on Preparedness and Dr. Lisa Stone, Hospital Preparedness Coordinator of the Mass. Dept of Public Health in a discussion moderated by the Globe's public health writer Stephen Smith. You'll be invited to weight in as well. It's at the Old South Meeting House at 6:30 and is free.

310 Washington St., 617-373-5800 fordhallforum.org

Thurs. May 3

 How can you not fall in love with a band whose debut album is called "Poor Little Critter On the Road"? Have we not all felt that way? That was what the Knitters called their first album back in 1985 and the Knitters were notable because they were the country offshoot of X, the raging punk band from L.A. Were they the first punk band to discover an alter ego? Not sure, but it was a good idea: Same artistic sensibility filtered through a different prism. And the singer-songwriters, Exene and John Doe (an ex-couple at that) were one of the greatest male-female tag-team vocal acts. Each has done many things since. Exene's band The Original Sinners are particularly cool and Doe's carved out a strong solo career over five albums. (The Knitters also include guitarist Dave Alvin, who we just saw in town at the Paradise and he played a scorching double-bill with James McMurtry.) Anyway, the Knitters were always an occasional thing for all concerned. In 2005, they put an album together called "The Modern Sound of the Knitters" for Rounder/Zoe. At the time, Doe said, "The Knitters, like their music, don't do anything hasty. Since our last record's been out a for a while and we it did pretty good, we figured it was about time to put out another." That was two years ago. For some reason or another, the Knitters are now on the road and they're stopping for a show at the Paradise Thursday May 3, with support from the Downbeat 5. Joining Exene, Doe and Alvin are bassit Jonny Ray Bartel and drummer D.J. Bonebrake. Should be a smashing good time, with songs of love and loss ringing out loud and clear. Tickets: $16. Starts at 9 p.m. (Here's a bit of "small world" stuff. We've known the people in the band for years, but somewhere in the '80s our mum, in Sarasota, Fla., was doing her swimming exercises at a local facility and she struck up a friendship with a very nice lady. My mum said her son wrote about music for the Boston Globe; she said her son sang and played bass in a band called X. How about that! No, her real last name was not Doe. We're not telling.)

969 Commonwealth Ave., 617-562-8801 thedise.com