Sigma Productions, 1968
starring: Jackie Gleason, Carol Channing, Alexandra Hay and Groucho Marx
directed by: Otto Preminger

When “Watchmen” was first published in 1985, it was a revelation, a striking piece of sequential art that pushed superhero comics out of the realm of cheap entertainment and into the realm of literature. There had always been comics for grownups, but “Watchmen” marked the first time members of the capes ’n’ tights crowd were treated with gravity and humanity. The reverberations from “Watchmen,” written by Alan Moore and drawn by Dave Gibbons, continue to be felt, and almost every superhero comic since then owes some debt to “Watchmen.”

Blues musician and historian Scott Ainslee will share stories and songs at the Kennebunk Coffeehouse in Kennebunk, Maine, on Saturday, March 14.

In addition to playing guitar, fiddle and banjo, Ainslee is an author, educator and historian studying the African roots of American work songs, blues, gospel and jazz. He has toured the United States and Europe and worked with avant garde and Broadway theater productions in New York. He authored the book “Robert Johnson: At the Crossroads” in 1992, and made the instructional DVD “Robert Johnson: Signature Licks” in 2005. Ainslee released his fifth solo album, “Thunder’s Mouth,” in 2008.

The concert begins at 8 p.m. at the Kennebunk Coffeehouse in the First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church, 114 Main St., 207-229-0212. Tickets are $12 in advance or $16 at the door. Visit www.kennebunkcoffeehouse.com.

The four members of Boston-based indie rock band Aloud seemed undeterred by the evening’s obstacles. The band was supposed to split sets with Portland, Maine’s The Cambiata, who canceled at the last minute due to illness. The room in the basement of The Muddy River was mostly empty on this winter weeknight, with a row of attentive patrons dotting the bar. But the low turnout didn’t stop Aloud from spinning the adrenaline dial all the way to max.

The band is led by dual vocalists/guitarists Henry Beguiristain and Jen de la Osa, who have been collaborating as songwriters since their early teens. Behind the two leads are bassist Ryan Majoris and drummer Jonathan Schmidt. During their hour-long set, the group performed several songs from its sophomore album, “Fan the Fury,” released early last year on the band’s own Lemon Merchant Records.

Nat Baldwin played a dangerous set. Standing alone with his double-bass, he lurched from his written material, to guttural free jazz. The rhythm to “Enter the Light Out” was askew; the bow against his strings sounded raw. The half-hour or so set was searching at worst and exhilarating at best. And the audience, rapt as they sat on the floor or leaned against the dark walls, worked with him the whole way.

There are tattoos for remembrance, and others that represent a certain time in life. And then there are those that just can’t be explained.

No matter their shape, size or color, tattoos have a story to tell, and many students at the University of New Hampshire are not shy about sharing their ink.

“I got mine for my mom,” said Eric Gilchrese, a point guard for the UNH men’s basketball team, whose mother passed away on Dec. 9. “I got my tattoo three days after the funeral. She was my heart. My everything. When I look at her on my back it helps to ease the pain. It’s a way of representing her while she’s not here.”

Phil Heckler, a senior English major, has a tattoo in remembrance of his father, a woodworker who passed away in 2004.

Portsmouth’s Pay & Display dilemma

I’m torn. Like many Seacoast residents, I’ve spent considerable time over the last year whining about Portsmouth’s new Pay & Display parking system. The city installed 10 Pay & Display meters downtown as part of a year-long pilot program and now wants to expand the system. The expansion would mean replacing traditional meters at individual parking spaces with central Pay & Display meters, where motorists purchase paper tickets with coins or credit cards and place them on their dashboards. Parking prices would remain the same. 

The system comes with numerous minor inconveniences that add up to a major pain in the rear end. You have to walk back and forth from the machines and sometimes wait in lines to purchase tickets; the paper slips wind up littering your car; the meters don’t accept dollar bills—I could go on. And honestly, who wants to use a credit card to pay for 75 cents worth of parking?

caring for health care

President Obama isn’t the only one with health care on his mind these days. About a week after his Health Care Summit at the White House on March 5, several bills that could render big changes to health insurance in New Hampshire will come before the House Commerce and Consumer Affairs Committee. Two of them with very different approaches will get their public hearings on Tuesday, March 17.

nationalized healthcare

area authorities crack down on teen dances

Merriam-Webster Online has 10 different definitions for the word “grind.” But only the last definition applies to dancing: “to rotate the hips in an erotic manner.”

To some school officials, grinding is—by definition—not appropriate for high school dances. But teens feel it is a harmless style, and it has become so prevalent that many students can hardly imagine dancing any other way.
That’s part of the reason that Exeter High School has canceled its next school dance, which was scheduled for March 27. Exeter High principal Victor Sokul announced the cancellation on March 9 and plans to hold a public meeting about future dances in late March or early April.

“What I hope to do is put together some sort of, for lack of a better word, a forum to discuss this issue so that we can solve it,” Sokul said. “The issue’s not going to go away, and canceling dances is not my preference, but we’ve got to figure this out long-term,”

The New Shanghai Circus will bring a crew of 25 highly trained acrobats to the Rochester Opera House to perform feats of balance and control on Friday, March 6. Jugglers, contortionists, aerialists, plate spinners, hoop divers and dragon dancers will don brightly colored costumes as they show off their skills.

Hailing from China, the New Shanghai Circus puts a modern twist on a traditional form of Chinese entertainment that dates back more than 2,000 years. In early versions of the act, performers used common household items and farm tools like pots and grain sifters to execute unusual theatrics. The show in Rochester will add bits of modern technology to the traditional show.

The performers in the Shanghai troupe range in age from 13 to 45, and most of them have been training since they were 9 or 10 years old. Although they still live in Shanghai, China, they tour the United States for six or seven months each year, keeping a home base in Branson, Miss. They practice for several hours every day, maintaining their uncanny strength and flexibility.
The show begins at 8 p.m. at the Rochester Opera House, 31 Wakefield St., Rochester, 603-335-1992. Tickets are $22. Visit www.rochesteroperahouse.com.

The current exhibit at the University of New Hampshire is a tribute to what happens when people make art, not war.

“Renewal: Printmakers from the New Northern Ireland” features 18 significant printmakers, who present 36 works reflecting the styles and interests of artists in an era of peace after conflict.

Troubles in Northern Ireland started in the late 1960s and continued for about 30 years, killing thousands with violence between the minority, mainly Catholic, nationalists and the mainly Protestant unionist community.

A decade of peace has passed since the conflict settled down in 1998, and the region is now experiencing an economic and cultural transformation. The exhibition highlights the renaissance taking place that mends Northern Ireland’s cultural history with its current art.

children’s author reads in Portsmouth

Local children’s author and illustrator Ryan Higgins will read from his popular debut book “Twaddleton’s Cheese” at RiverRun Bookstore in Portsmouth on Saturday, March 7.

A Kittery native and South Berwick resident, Higgins wrote and illustrated the book, releasing it last year under his own Cocklebury Books label. It tells the humorous tale of a town of mice that decides to start making cheese. The townspeople quickly find themselves producing more cheese than they know what to do with, and a few unlikely heroes must rescue the business.

share your Victory Garden memories

Strawbery Banke Museum is reviving a piece of Portsmouth’s past to help lead the way into a more sustainable future, and people can help by sharing family photos and memories.

Last year, less than 6 percent of the agricultural products consumed in New Hampshire were grown within the state; rather, most of the food travels an average of 3,500 miles, according to a press release from the Museum. Reviving local gardening, like the Victory Garden movement, can counteract rising food costs and the use of fossil fuels to ship food long distances, while enhancing food security in the region.

Ri Ra pub brings Irish culture to Portsmouth

St. Patrick’s Day is just around the corner, and Seacoast residents should be able to celebrate at a new Irish pub opening soon in the heart of downtown Portsmouth.

The former bank buildings of 22 and 26 Market St. are being renovated to become Ri Ra Irish Pub and Restaurant this month. The renovation will not only make new use of some of the original elements of the historic building, but will also bring in salvaged materials from old Irish pubs across the Atlantic Ocean. 

The owners, David Kelly and Ciaran Sheehan, are two friends who grew up together in Dublin, Ireland. After college, both happened to emigrate to the United States to pursue their careers, Sheehan in architecture and Kelly in marketing for Guinness. They opened their first Ri Ra pub in Charlotte, N.C., in March 1997. The business expanded and now has nine locations.

the never-ending heartbreak of scifi television

(warning: spoileriffic)

The rebirth of the “Battlestar Galactica” television series in 2003 was unexpectedly brilliant: where the original 1978 series was a hokey (if fondly remembered) Star Wars ripoff, the new series was a full-on reboot of the show, with tight writing, a gritty look and a wonderful long-term story arc. Starbuck had become a girl, the president was a schoolteacher, Adama had turned into Edward James Olmos and the Cylons looked like people and were kind of Christian.

Scifi fans embraced the show, and the promise that it would have a finite 5-season run with an actual planned end to the storyline only made them more ravenous—it turns out that people really love a story that actually makes sense, and doesn’t just wander from week to week and then end, as TV so often does.

Orion Pictures, 1987
starring: Martin Sheen, Helen Shaver, Harley Cross and Robert Loggia
directed by: John Schlesinger

by Cecil Taylor Unit
1990, Enja Records

The evolution of video games, from “Donkey Kong” and “Pac-Man” to “Final Fantasy” and “Halo,” has involved an array of technological advances that goes far beyond computer graphics and fancy controllers. As gaming continues to grow as the nation’s most profitable entertainment industry—surpassing even films in recent years—the skill sets required to produce popular games is spreading to a wider workforce, and musicians are getting in on the action.

Local musician Duncan Watt, who runs Fastestmanintheworld Music out of his home in Exeter, has been composing scores for video games since 2005. Watt and Ed Lima co-composed the orchestral score for “Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway,” which was released for Xbox 360, Play Station 3 and PCs last fall. Instead of using virtual orchestration and synthesized instruments on computers, the pair traveled to Prague in August 2007 and recorded the score with a 60-piece orchestra and 40-piece choir.  

A flood of area RPM participants hand-delivered their completed CDs between Friday, Feb. 27 and Sunday, March 1. By noon on March 1, more than 160 glorious new albums sat stacked in RPM headquarters at The Wire office in Portsmouth. Hundreds of others arrived by the crateful over the next few days from all over the world, all postmarked no later than Monday, March 2. The final days before the end of the month found many participants scrambling to polish off their 10 songs or 35 minutes of original music. What follows is a sampling of unedited statements posted on the RPM discussion board at www.rpmchallenge.com. Local listening parties will take place on Saturday, March 28, beginning at The Music Hall in Portsmouth at 6:30 p.m. Congratulations to all those who saw the 2009 Challenge through to the end.

It’s been close to three years since Newmarket-based musician Craig Werth took an unpaid leave of absence from his teaching job at the University of New Hampshire and embarked on his first tour with Canadian folk singer David Francey. When Werth accepted the gig as Francey’s sideman, he was not sure how long the collaboration would last. But he’s still touring and recording with the three-time Juno award-winning artist, making music his full-time occupation.

Werth co-produced Francey’s last studio album, “Right of Passage,” and played several instruments on the disc, including guitars, bouzouki, mandolin and mountain dulcimer. Last year, “Right of Passage” won a Juno (the Canadian version of a Grammy) for best album in the roots and traditional solo category. “I have a Juno statue in my living room as co-producer,” he said, as if still slightly surprised to have the object in his home.