Here's my selection of events in Rochester this week:
Thursday, October 16

• Tonight at 6 p.m. in Carlson Auditorium at RIT is a William A. Kern Speaker Series lecture with Lisa Hostetler discussing The Photography Collection at George Eastman House: Past, Present, Future. [source: City Newspaper events calendar, 2014-Oct-13]
• Starting at 7 p.m. at the MAG is a screening of what they're calling The Origin of the Post Punk and New Wave Movement but what I think is Punk Britannia 3: Post-Punk 1978-1981 (Ben Whalley, U.K. 2012, 60 min.) as part of the Alternative Music Film Series. [source: MAG website, 2014-Oct-13]
• Starting around 8 p.m. at Star Alley Park is fantastic, subdued "gypsy folk" from The Pickpockets. [source: City Newspaper events calendar, 2014-Oct-13]
• Over at Bernunzio Uptown Music is The Cordovas, and MD Woods starting around 8 p.m. [source: Bernunzio Uptown Music website, 2014-Oct-13]
• The Dryden will screen Ganja and Hess (Bill Gunn, U.S. 1973, 110 min., 35mm) starting at 8 p.m.
  

  While excavating the ancient city of Myrthia, archeologist Hess Green (Duane Jones in his only role after Night of the Living Dead) is stabbed by a dagger carrying mysterious, ancient germs. He awakens to find himself with an insatiable appetite for human blood and struggles to keep it a secret from Ganja, who has fallen in love with him despite the mystery surrounding her missing husband. Originally titled Blood Couple and with a tagline boasting "A man and woman possessed by the devil!," Ganja and Hess remains one of the most enigmatic and audacious films of the 1970s, paving the way for countless vampire films to follow.

  [source: Dryden website, 2014-Oct-13]

Friday, October 17

• Tonight at Hedonist Artisan Chocolates is a Tasting from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. for the Peanut Butter Honey Truffle featuring the Prophecy Design by Krystal Petitto. [source: flyer, 2014-Oct-14]
• Starting at 6 p.m. at the Little is an ImageOut screening of Appropriate Behavior (Desiree Akhavan, U.K. 2014, 90 min.) [source: the proverbial grapevine, 2014-Oct-8]
• From 7 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., the Flying Squirrel is hosting a Panel Discussion titled "The Whole Damn System is Guilty!" From Prison to Ferguson. [source: Flying Squirrel website, 2014-Oct-13]
• Tonight at 7 p.m., 9:15 p.m., and 11:30 p.m. in Hoyt Auditorium on the University of Rochester Campus, the UofR Cinema Group is screening Muppets Most Wanted (James Bobin, U.S. 2014, 107 min.)
  

  While on a grand world tour, The Muppets find themselves wrapped into an European jewel-heist caper headed by a Kermit the Frog look-alike and his dastardly sidekick.

  [source: University of Rochester Cinema Group website, 2014-Oct-13]

• Updated: This week's 7 p.m. movie at the Cinema is Guardians of the Galaxy (James Gunn, U.S. / U.K. 2014, 121 min.) "A group of space criminals must work together to stop the fanatical villain Ronan the Accuser from destroying the galaxy." Then at 9:05 p.m. is Let's Be Cops (Luke Greenfield, U.S. 2014, 104 min.) "Two struggling pals dress as police officers for a costume party and become neighborhood sensations. But when these newly-minted 'heroes' get tangled in a real life web of mobsters and dirty detectives, they must put their fake badges on the line." [source: Cinema coming soon page, 2014-Oct-16]
• Starting at 8 p.m. at Eastman Theatre is Jason Alexander. [source: Eastman School of Music calendar, 2014-Oct-13]
• Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. through October 25, the MuCCC is hosting performances of Triquetra: An Evening of Classic Irish Theater from the Irish Players of Rochester. [source: MuCCC website, 2014-Oct-13]
• Don Alder, and talented singer-guitarist Kinloch Nelson perform at Bernunzio Uptown Music tonight starting around 8 p.m. [source: Bernunzio Uptown Music website, 2014-Oct-13]
• The Dryden will screen Live Nude Girls Unite! (Vicky Funari and Julia Query, U.S. 2000, 75 min., 16mm) tonight at 8 p.m.
  

  This challenging and funny film documents the efforts of a group of Bay Area strippers to form the first union of exotic dancers in the United States. These sex workers confront the workplace problems faced by most workers without union contracts: long shifts, unsafe conditions, no job security, and the fear of termination for taking sick days. Fed up with these conditions, Query picks up her camera, organizes her sisters, documents their ensuing strike and first contract negotiation, and records her sojourn across the country organizing nude dancers everywhere. This documentary is a poignant saga of worker empowerment that leaves you cheering.

  [source: Dryden website, 2014-Oct-13]

• Starting around 9 p.m. at the Bug Jar is Little Lapin, Hunting Stories, fantastic, subdued "gypsy folk" from The Pickpockets, Greenhouse Heart, great modern-Americana one-man-band Hieronymus A. Bogs. [source: Bug Jar calendar, 2014-Oct-13]
• 5Head performs at Dinosaur Bar-B-Que starting around 10 p.m. [source: Dinosaur Bar-B-Que website, 2014-Oct-13]

Saturday, October 18

• Today from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. at Genesee Libby Studio (#225 in the Hungerford Building) is Home Movie Day. [source: the proverbial grapevine, 2014-Sep-21]
• The Little will screen The Age of Love (Steven Loring, U.S. 2014, 78 min.) today at 2 p.m. and at 6:30 p.m. with a panel consisting of director Steven Loring, Bill Armbruster, Theo Munson, Rebecca Priest, and Cindy Steltz at 2 p.m. and a discussion with Steven Loring at 6:30 p.m.
  

  The Age Of Love, a new documentary, follows the illuminating adventures of 30 seniors in Rochester, NY who sign up for a Speed Dating event exclusively for 70- to 90-year-olds. Moving from anxious anticipation, through the event, then out onto dates that result, the film delves intimately into the emotional lives of this often stereotyped and disregarded generation. As they take stock of life-worn bodies and still-hopeful hearts, comic and bittersweet moments reveal how worries over physical appearance, romance and loneliness, loss and new beginnings are universal, changing little from first love to the far reaches of life.

  [source: Little Theatre website, 2014-Oct-13]

• Today from 2:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. at the Henrietta Public Library is a program for kids titled Look Under the Microscope.
  

  Get up-close and personal with insects! Science Saturdays- Look Under the Microscope Ward's resident slides technician who specializes in zoology, embryology, and parasitology, will bring along their favorite microscope slides! This is your opportunity to see the unseen up-close and personal. Dust mites, bed bugs, and ticks can be viewed under a microscope.

  [source: Monroe County Library website, 2014-Oct-13]

• Today from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. is an in-store performance by Patrick Jaouen at the House of Guitars. [source: Facebook, 2014-Oct-13]
• From 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Flying Squirrel, Sister Grace Miller, and Harry Murray will discuss Vulnerable Populations/Critical Populations: The criminalization of poverty, homelessness, and dissent. [source: Flying Squirrel website, 2014-Oct-13]
• The Eastman Philharmonia perform in Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre tonight at 8 p.m. [source: Eastman School of Music calendar, 2014-Oct-13]
• Thursdays at 7 p.m., Saturdays at 8 p.m., and Sundays at 2 p.m. through November 2 is Bad Jews at the Centerstage of the Jewish Community Center (JCC, 1200 Edgewood Ave.)
  

  Things get personal when three cousins ignite a viciously hilarious brawl over who "deserves" a treasured family heirloom. A no-holds-barred dark comedy about family, faith and survival, JCC Centerstage is the first theatre in the country to license this acclaimed Off-Broadway sensation.If your family dynamics have ever been touched by a sense of entitlement, issues of inheritance or the legacy of an ancestor, you will love uncovering the good and bad in these "Bad Jews".

  [source: Facebook, 2014-Oct-13]

• Over at Abilene starting around 8 p.m. is "the roots/folk/country-rock sounds of Jeff Riales and The Silvertone Express Band followed at 9:30 p.m. by The Younger Gang. [source: Abilene website, 2014-Oct-13]
• Starting around 10 p.m. at Banzai Sushi and Cocktail Bar is NO SCRUBS: A (Mostly) 90s Hip-Hop Party featuring DJ ALYKHAN, and DJ AdotEdot. [source: Facebook, 2014-Oct-13]
• Phantom Chemistry, Cavalcade, and Trevor Grant perform at Monty's Krown starting around 10:30 p.m. [source: Facebook, 2014-Oct-13]

Sunday, October 19

• Today from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. starting at Harts Local Grocers (10 Winthrop St.) is the 5th Annual Rochester Tweed Ride.
  

  Dig out your tweed, argyle, and other fall fashions. Fix up your old three-speeds, strap on a picnic basket, and pump up your tyres. We've a nice splendid tour to and through some uncommon neighborhoods. Bust out your old Kodak Brownie and bring a date!

  [source: Facebook, 2014-Oct-13]

• From 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. in Rundel Auditorium on the 3rd Floor of the Rundel Library Building is a discussion of Rochester's Rich History on Form, Function, and Mount Hope Cemetery with Dennis Carr.
  

  While intended to appear as a work of nature, Mount Hope Cemetery is Rochester's greatest example of romantic landscape design. "Reading" this cultural landscape and its evolution reveals the social, religious, economic and intellectual forces that influenced the design of the cemetery, and defined the built environment of Rochester. A veritable museum of architecture, art, and landscape design, we'll look at how Mount Hope Cemetery fits into the greater span of American history, culture, and design, and why it is still relevant today.

  [source: Monroe County Library website, 2014-Oct-13]

• Starting at 2 p.m. at the Memorial Art Gallery, Diane Muldrow will discuss her book Everything I Need to Know I Learned from a Little Golden Book in conjunction with the Golden Legacy: 65 Years of Golden Books exhibit. [source: MAG website, 2014-Oct-13]
• The Dryden will screen the impenetrable vampire-ish film Trouble Every Day (Claire Denis, France/Germany/Japan 2001, 101 min., 35mm, French w/ subtitles and English, 35mm) today at 2 p.m.
  

  Newlyweds Shane and June Brown (Vincent Gallo and Tricia Vessey) have just arrived in Paris for their honeymoon when Shane begins acting strange. Disappearing for long periods of time, he is distant and despondent. As he visits clinics in search of a mysterious, exiled Dr. Leo, Shane struggles with an illness that seems to be outside of human understanding. Meanwhile, Leo keeps his wife (who may or may not be among the undead) locked in his house in an attempt to prevent her from causing harm to others. With a violently shocking conclusion, director Claire Denis brands her unique vision onto this atmospheric, horrifyingly plausible tale, welcoming the vampire folklore to the twenty-first century (while simultaneously leaving it behind) and creating an unprecedented (and sadly overlooked) entry into the horror genre.

  [source: Dryden website, 2014-Oct-13]

• From 3 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at the Lovin' Cup is Assisting an Angel II, a Benefit Concert for Diane Draheim with 5head, great classic rock/soul band Anonymous Willpower, The Dan Eaton Band, Watkins and Rapiers, and Infrared Radiation Orchestra. [source: Lovin' Cup website, 2014-Oct-13]
• Tonight at 8 p.m. at the Kodak Center for Performing Arts (200 W. Ridge Rd.) is An Evening with David Sedaris. [source: Writers and Books website, 2014-Oct-13]
• Starting around 9 p.m. at the Bug Jar is The World is A Beautiful Place and I am No Longer Afraid to Die, The Hotelier, Rozwell Kid, and Posture and The Grizzly [source: Bug Jar calendar, 2014-Oct-13]

Monday, October 20

• Starting at 7 p.m. in the NextStage at Geva is Katherine's Colored Lieutenant Reading.
  

  Nora Cole (Fences, Voices of the Spirits in My Soul) digs deep into her family's history to tell the story of her uncle, a Tuskegee airman, and her aunt, a Louisville schoolteacher. A moving and captivating love story set amidst the racial divisions of the American South during and after WWII. This is a work-in-progress reading of the play which Geva will premiere in February, 2015.

  [source: Geva Theatre ticket website, 2014-Oct-13]

• The Eastman Wind Orchestra performs in Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre tonight at 8 p.m. [source: Eastman School of Music calendar, 2014-Oct-13]

Tuesday, October 21

• Updated: Scott Hammen will speak at Visual Studies Workshop today from 12 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. to "share his experiences as an artist working in film for over forty years." Then at 7 p.m. in Hubbell Auditorium on the University of Rochester Campus, he returns to present Moving Images from Europe: New Acquisitions of Light Cone. "VSW alum Scott Hammen has been active in the avante-garde film world in France and has brought a program of not readily seen European films to Rochester…" [source: VSW's last-minute e-mail, 2014-Oct-20]
• Today from 12:12 p.m. to 12:52 p.m. in Kate Gleason Auditorium of the Bausch and Lomb Library Building is another Books Sandwiched-In with James Maley reviewing Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces by Radley Balko. [source: Monroe County Library website, 2014-Oct-13]
• From 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Flying Squirrel is a discussion titled U.S. out of my living room: The case of Leslie James Pickering, the Earth Liberation Front Press Office, and Burning Books with Leslie James Pickering in person.
  

  A decade after being under heavy federal surveillance for exercising free speech in support of the underground Earth Liberation Front, Leslie James Pickering discovered that his associates were being questioned by the FBI, the U.S. Post Office is copying his incoming mail and he was put on a secret list for maximum security screening at airports. Not only that but a federal grand jury subpoena was issued for records on him, his family and his bookstore, Burning Books.

  [source: Flying Squirrel website, 2014-Oct-13]

• Tonight at 8 p.m., the Dryden will screen Der Liebe Pilgerfahrt (Yakov Protazanov, Germany 1923, 84 min., 35mm).
  

  This lyrical drama filled with romantic imagery was made by seminal pioneer Russian director Yakov Protazanov during a period in which he fled his homeland after the 1917 Revolution to make films in France and Germany. This was his last expatriate production before returning to the Soviet Union to make his most famous film, the surreal Aelita, Queen of Mars (1924), and eventually become one of the new country's most revered filmmakers.

  [source: Dryden website, 2014-Oct-13]

Wednesday, October 22

• Today from 7:30 a.m. to 10 a.m. is Destination Main Street at Ballroom 384 (384 East Ave.)
  

  A high-impact breakfast presentation for Rochester's business community, local officials, developers and citizens who believe in the future of their commercial corridors and the power of locally owned, small businesses. Jon Schallert is an internationally-recognized speaker and business expert specializing in teaching businesses and communities how to turn themselves into Consumer Destinations. Schallert speaks to thousands annually on his proprietary 14-step "Destination Business" process, which he developed over the course of nearly 30 years of working with independent business owners.

  [source: Landmark Society website, 2014-Oct-13]

• The Eastman Chamber Jazz performs in Kilbourn Hall tonight at 8 p.m. [source: Eastman School of Music calendar, 2014-Oct-13]
• The Dryden will screen The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson, U.S. 2012, 144 min., 35mm) tonight at 8 p.m.
  

  Paul Thomas Anderson's mesmerizing survey of America's bruised post-WWII psyche stands as one of the finest films of 2012 for many reasons: the dreamy cinematography, the exquisite production design, and Joaquin Phoenix's startling, Oscar-nominated turn as Freddie Quell, a psychologically damaged vet who falls under the sway of charismatic cult leader Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman). Not-so-loosely based on Church of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, Dodd is both spiritual savior and dangerous charlatan, and Hoffman's portrayal rivals his Capote as one of this gifted actor's greatest achievements.

  [source: Dryden website, 2014-Oct-13]

• Starting around 9 p.m. at the Bug Jar is Cavalcade, Muler, and good, guitar-driven, synth-enhanced, staccato-rock band Autoverse. [source: Bug Jar calendar, 2014-Oct-13]