Saturdays

First, there is the smell.Familiar. Intoxicating. Some say ED-preventing.Then, just when you can barely take anymore, a smiling head pops through the door - “Anybody want some chocolate?”
 
Welcome to two-and-a-half hours of educational heaven, aka the Taste of Chocolate Workshop.
 
Run by the folks who have been bringing the legendary Mystery Café to Boston and beyond for years and hosted in the Elephant and Castle Pub in Downtown Boston (the same site as one of the most popular Mystery Café dinners), the Workshop tells you perhaps more than you ever wanted to know about chocolate (pretty much right down to the molecular level) and then lets you get into it up to your wrists (at least) through a hands-on truffle-making party.

ongoing, Fridays and Saturdays

 Sure, it's out of town - about 40 minutes from Boston - but so is Comcast Center and that can be a headache and a half when you consider traffic/parking/etc. If you like quality music outdoors and on a slightly smaller scale, we heartily recommend the Lowell Summer Music Series. We've seen Richard Thompson, Los Lobos, and recently Amos Lee and have yet to be disappointed by the music or the vibe. It's a bring-your-lawnchairs/bring-your-kids type of place and can seat several thousand folks. It's a summer with Lyle Lovett, the B-52s (in photo) and the Indigo Girls. Not bad at all. It takes place at Boarding House Park in the center of Lowell. JSInk spoke with programming director Peter Aucella about the series, past and present.

JSInk: How has the Lowell Summer Music Series evolved over time?
PA: I started the Series in 1990 as Boarding House Park construction was completed.  The trees have certainly grown much larger, but the venue is still in great shape as we proceed with our 21st season.  Our initial concept was to do ethnic music similar to the Lowell Folk Festival, but onegenre per night, since the immigrant story is part of the historyinterpreted by the Lowell National Historical Park.  We had a limited budget and free admission, so it was a modest affair.  We realized that it takes just as much work to do this for a smaller audience as it does for a bigger one, so we began to grow the series and the number of name performers steadily each year since then.  I don't think we ever envisioned having acts like the B-52s, Lyle Lovett, Indigo Girls, Jimmy Cliff and Herbie Hancock but people really love seeing these shows in such anintimate venue.

ongoing

Don't know about you, but when I was in high school my history courses concerned the US and Western Civilization. There was almost the unspoken agreement that nothing else mattered and, as a kid, I didn't really question it. Didn't all that matter concern these areas? Hopelessly naive and stupid, I know. But I'll also confess I didn't get much more world history in college - that's when we specialize, y'know - and what I've picked up I've done on my own. I'm kind of enjoying Newsweeks new, more worldly focus - even if the articles are brief, there's acknowledgment that in this self-absorbed land of ours, other places and people matter. I bring this up because I went to the opening party/screening at the Museum of Science for the film "Arabia," where 2000 years of Arabian history is compressed into a 45-minute film.

ongoing 

Would you pay $350 to watch each and every Patriots game? Whoa, sounds like a good deal, huh. You say, "Thank you Bob Kraft, see you in Foxboro." But this $350 isn't going to Bob and the family. It would be to gain entrance into Jerry Remy’s Sports Bar & Grill and access their Season Pass Program. This mean, you can eat food, drink alcohol and watch flat-screen hi-def TV, something you might also be able to do at home but without the surcharge. Now, the $350 doesn't get you free food and drink or anything; it gets you in the door, just like the inaugural Red Sox Season Pass did. And it sold out. (I still find it somewhat curious that if you're not inside Fenway Park - which I am, often - some fans feel the desire to be at a bar near Fenway. It enhances the experience somehow, the same experience you get, say, in Orono Maine where I grew up. Same broadcasat, just in closer proximity to where the action is. Now, Foxboro is a ways from Kenmore Square, but what the hey, Kenmore Square has been established as a Boston sports bar mecca, right, so the opportunity to cheer on all the athletes who wear Boston uniforms is extremely available at many fine eateries and drinkeries. Generally, you just don't pay for that "specialness" of being allowed in. But, heck, the House of Blues Foundation Room has this kind of deal and country clubs all over the world succeeded on this semi-exclusivity and so, I guess, the philosophy spills over to something as mundane and widely available as watching football on TV.

ongoing

  The feel-good movie of the summer? Yep, that’s “Winter Bone,” if you’re like the character in Lou Reed’s “Pale Blue Eyes,” when he sings “down for you is up.” “Winter Bone,” which took Best Picture last year at Sundance, is a grim, quietly relentless portrayal of a life and lifestyle not too many of us know to well. A meth-making family in the Ozarks, who’ve been ground down by poverty but still getting by, well, due to that poor-man’s coke concoction, which skilled entrepreneurs can make it home.
    As the movie - directed by Debra Granik and co-written by her and Anne Rosellini, adapted from Daniel Woodrell’s 2006 novel - begins, a teenaged Ree Dolly (played by Jennifer Lawrence) is facing quite a quagmire: Her father, Jessup, has been nailed by the law for his role (whatever that may be) in the meth-making, and faces trial. Thing is, he’s posted the family house as bail and has disappeared. If he doesn’t show up in court, there goes the homestead, ramshackle as it is. This is all Ree, her two young siblings, and her out-of-it mother have.
    Ree’s task is to try and track down her father’s whereabouts or if not that his body. This takes her from relative to relative, across this bleak terrain and she encounters both welcoming and hostile reactions to her quest.