Good thrills and chills!

Wooo-oooo-ooooo. Are you ready for Halloween Eve: Here are a couple of last-minute ideas for the night before the Great Pumpkin. One charges a fee, but it won’t break the bank, the other is free.

Bronco Elite Boise is throwing a Halloween bash, for kids 4-12 and it includes a costume contest, games, pumpkin decorating, movies, pizza, face painting, a cake walk, bake sale and more. Oh, and bonus: dance instructor Natalie is going to show the kids how to do Michael Jackson’s Thriller dance. 6:30 to 11 p.m. Friday, Oct. 30, Bronco Elite Boise, 1187 W. River St., Boise. $25 per child ages 4 to 12. 389-9005. http://www.broncoelite.com/boise

The Record Exchange is hosting a free Monster Mash, featuring all 11 of Boise Rock School’s http://www.boiserockschool.com/ bands, in appropriate costumes. “All the bands are gonna dress up and rock out,” said Jared Goodpaster, co-founder of Boise Rock School. Monster Mash at the Record Exchange, 5:30 p.m.- 7:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 30, The Record Exchange, 1105 West Idaho Street http://www.buymusichere.net/stores/recordexchange/
FREE

Good Halloween history!

Murderers. Convicts. Prisoners. Death row. Who needs a haunted house when you can have a haunted prison? It sounds like a chain rattling event: “Frightened Felons Halloween” at the Old Idaho Penitentiary, 2445 Old Penitentiary Road (off Warm Springs). The Old Pen is going to creak open its prison gates from 6 to 10 p.m. on Halloween eve for spooky tours for all ages — plus tales of executions and escapes, a costume contest and more.

“The Old Pen’s rich — and sometimes spooky — history is a perfect setting to celebrate Halloween,” said Janet Gallimore, executive director of the Idaho State Historical Society. “This event uses one of our state’s most significant historical assets to offer a unique alternative to fabricated haunted houses.”

Take your ghastly pick from a ghost, execution or escape tour. There will be a kid-friendly scavenger hunt to “catch the felon” with candy and prizes, a costume contest and even spooky tales: the Treasure Valley Storytellers will tell fact-based fictional stories throughout the night. Snacks and beverages will be available next door at The Bishop’s House, courtesy of The Friends of the Bishop’s House.

Tickets are $10 for ages 12 and up or $8 for children 6 – 12. Families with younger kiddies can come early for child-appropriate tours from 6 p.m.- 8:30 p.m., and take part in the costume contest at 7 p.m. After 8:30 p.m. the spook level gets cranked up a notch for ages 12 and up when tours showcasing the Old Pen’s “darker” side start. NOTE: This event is NOT recommended for children under the age of 5, and children must be accompanied by an adult at all times.

For more information: 334–2844.
Learn more about the Idaho State Historical Society at www.idahohistory.net.

Murder for a good cause!

Colonel Mustard. In the billiard room. With a knife.

You KNOW how much fun it is to play a rousing game of Clue. And who could forget the campy movie of the same name?

But let’s be honest: Haven’t you always wanted to play the game for real, with in-the-flesh humans, actual murder weapons and honest-to-gosh real rooms, instead of cards, a board and plastic baubles?

On Halloween, Saturday, Oct. 31, your wish will come true.

“Murder at the Grove Hotel” is a real-life (well, almost) murder mystery you and your friends can solve, “just like a game of Clue,” said organizer Wendy Maple. Here’s how it works: there are different suspects — a maid, a bartender, event host, former Grove employee, a sports rep and the hotel manager. And, just like in the board game, there are a variety of murder weapons and locations.

But Murder Mystery at the Grove has a delicious little twist: clues about whodunit will be scattered around the hotel in the form of cryptograms and it’ll be up to the guests to find the clues and solve the mystery.

“People aren’t going to be just sitting at their tables,” Wendy said. “They’ll be all over the hotel.” And, “we will actually have a body.”

Not to worry, the body will be a live one, Wendy said, laughing. And, in the end, the evening will be great fun for a good cause — The Wishing Star Foundation. http://www.wishingstar.org/

Wendy first got involved with the organization that grants wishes to sick kids when daughter Jessica became a volunteer. But then, after what at first seemed like a minor concussion, 19-year-old Jessica was diagnosed with Grade Two Astrocytoma (brain tumor). “She went from being a volunteer to being a Wish Kid,” Wendy said.

Now 20 years old, Jessica has had two surgeries and is recuperating. She’s in chronic pain and it will be another seven years before they can say she’s in remission. Last March, after Jessica’s second surgery, the Wishing Star Foundation granted Jessica’s wish for a spa weekend in Coeur d’Alene. That’s when Wendy started hatching the murder mystery idea.

“This particular chapter really concentrates on the Pacific Northwest, so the money stays local,” she said. And, unlike other wish organizations that stop granting wishes at 18, Wishing Star grants them for kids up to 21 years of age. “It’s really nice to be a part of this organization,” Wendy said.

Besides the murder mystery/scavenger hunt, the fundraising event includes hors d’oeuvres, a cash bar, dessert auction and prizes for best costume and best team name (CSI Boise anyone?). Plus, if you get a little spooked, the hotel is offering a special “deadly room rate” of $69.

Murder at the Grove Hotel — an evening of murder, mayhem, fun, food, libation — to support the Wishing Star Foundation
The killings start at 6 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 31 — HALLOWEEN!
$60/person; $450/teamof eight
Get tickets for “a lethal evening:” 870-2089 or 412-2992

Good Divas of Boise Crooning for a Cause!

Who doesn’t love a good diva?

Cher. Diana Ross. Barbra…

Well, hold on to your hats, Boise, ‘cuz we’ve got our own divas to celebrate: Margaret Stigers. Kathy Miller. Rebecca Scott. Deb Sager. Sirah Storm. Kerry Rourke. Mary Weaver. Dana Oland. Rocci Johnson.

You can pay homage to all of ’em 7:30 – 10 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 22. And they’re belting out their best for a good cause.

Join The Divas of Boise with Rosalie Sorrels for: “A Concert for the Children, a Benefit for the WCA” at Hannah’s, 621 Main St.

The event is dedicated to raising funds for the prevention of child abuse. So open your pocketbooks and plunk down the $20 donation. Not only will you be helping kids, you’ll get a night to remember from our very own divas.

Rosalie Sorrels

BONUS: Twice Grammy-nominated Rosalie Sorrels will perform a solo set and join the Divas on stage for the last set of the evening.

Good pet costume contest!

I vant to suck your blood, ruff, ruff!

Fang it! The most popular Halloween get up this year is the vampire.

So if you’ve got the fangs, fake blood and cape, you’re set — but what about Fi-Fi and Fido and Fritz the cat? Maybe your pet wants to get dolled up, too. So get busy and then get down to the 5th Annual Northwest Pets Howl-o-ween Costume Contest this Saturday, October 24th at noon! If your pooch or you and your pooch (yeah, there’s a pet/owner category) win, you can take home some loot. They’re giving away a total of $500 in Northwest Pets gift certificates plus other food prizes. First prize for the best pet costume: $200! Sign up is free — Call 208- 939-8119 to enter your pet in the contest.

They’re also having fun giveaways, discounts and vendors with pet food and people food, too.

Good what in the world are they doing?!

A typical Flash Mob pillow fight.

If you’ve ever seen or been a part of a performance art piece, you may know that not all performance art is well, spectacular. Once, I went to sort of a performance art variety show and about 15 or so acts, some as individual performers, others in a group, took turns on the stage. It was a hodge-podge of weirdness. Me and my partner decided to burn poetry chapbooks on the stage, page by page. We had this blowtorch and a big metal trashcan and lit a page on fire and watched as it flipped down, alight, into the can where a puddle of water sizzled it out. We did this to music, I think, maybe Devo. Anyway, it wasn’t a Laurie Anderson masterpiece, but it did cause a lot of horrified gasping, even from a bunch of freaky artists. It’s not nice to burn books.

Flash Mobs are kind of like that. A group of people congregate in a public place, perform an unusual act, briefly — then disperse into the crowd. So when I heard the Boise Flash Mob was having a little fun last Saturday, Oct. 17 at the Saturday market, I was, all Tina Fey, like: I want to go there. The BFM, by the way, is a group of performance artists who get together on occasion and stage a very public performance art piece — once they assembled downtown and at the stroke of noon or whatever, grabbed pillows from under their shirts and had a little downtown pillow fight. Another time it was a high noon at the water gun shootin’ cafe.

This time, it was some sort of group method acting piece, I think. I got a lot of it on my little Flip video cam, but you won’t get to see the umbrella twirling or the last part, when they were looking towards the sun and someone said THEY’RE ZOMBIES and my audience mate called out: PHOTOSYNTHESIS! PHOTOSYNTHESIS!

That was my favorite part.

But the rest is all here for you to see. My unsolicited advice to the ‘Mob: Shorter and sweeter. Make it like a dance. As a matter of fact, make it like a Micheal Jackson video dance. Following our own BFM is a video from a similarly bent Seattle performance troupe doing it the MJ way as a tribute to the king of pop.

Enjoy. And keep your lighters away from your books, they are precious, oh, so precious these days.

Boise Rock School Rocks!

Jared Goodpaster and Ryan Peck are teachers. By day, Goodpaster teaches 8th grade history at East Junior High and Peck is a professor of biology at Boise State University.

But when the school’s out bells ring, Goodpaster, 32, and Peck, 34, pack up the books and strap on guitars as they get ready to teach another class at Boise Rock School. http://www.boiserockschool.com/

Goodpaster readily admits that Boise’s version stemmed from the one Jack Black made famous.

“A lot of our inspiration came from the movie, ‘School of Rock,'” he said. “I used to look like Jack Black, but I’ve lost some weight.” After the movie came out, a lot of rock schools sprang up around the country.

Boise Rock School started in the summer of 2008.

“We reached out to all our friends who had kids,” Goodpaster said.

At first, “the kids used all of our instruments.” And what started out as a pretty small group has grown into a booming operation.

“Now we have about 50 kids and 11 working bands,” Goodpaster said.

You can see four of the bands perform at The Linen Building Friday Oct. 16 and on Friday, Oct. 30 — for Halloween — they’ll perform in a “Monster Mash” event at the Record Exchange. http://www.buymusichere.net/stores/recordexchange/“All the bands are gonna dress up and rock out,” Goodpaster said.

WHAT: Kidding Around Live at the Linen
WHEN: 5:30 p.m., Friday, Oct. 16
WHERE: The Linen Building, 1402 W. Grove Street
TICKETS: At the door: $8 (21 and older), $5 (12 to 20) and $3 (11 and younger). All ages. Beer and wine available.

WHAT: Monster Mash at the Record Exchange
WHEN: 5:30 p.m.- 7:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 30
WHERE: The Record Exchange, 1105 West Idaho Street
FREE

Good Q&A w/Kid of Comedy

Stand-up comedian Trevor Hattabaugh is appearing with Boise Rock School and hip-hop group Eleven Friday October 15 at 5:30 p.m. at The Linen Building in Boise (see previous story for details).

I sent Trevor some questions. The following is our email conversation:

Q: Trevor you’ve been a funny kid for a while now. As a young comedian you’ve won some awards and in fact, you’ve been on some pretty impressive stages. What have been your personal highlights and triumphs?
A: Going out of state to perform. I got to do The Comedy Store in LA. GREAT audience! I liked getting 3 yes votes from the judges on “America’s Got Talent.” And last week I did a gig near San Francisco & got to ride the cable cars. That was fun!

Q: Who are your mentors or who has inspired you? Also, if not included, who are your favorite comedians?
A: Pat Mac, who now manages HiJinx Comedy Club, gave me my first break. He saw me at the BSU Comedy Contest & invited me to perform at the Funny Bone. He helped me write jokes & introduced me to other comedians who came through town. He let me come to joke writing workshops with the comedians who were performing at the club that week. That was great cuz my parents wouldn’t let me watch their acts. Pete Peterson & Mike Faverman helped me, too. The next year, I won the contest.
My favorite comedians are probably Steven Colbert, Jon Stewart, Dmitri Martin, Jeff Gaffigan and Brian Regan.
As far as inspiring goes, Colby West would be the guy. He’s a professional freestyle skier, but he’s also hilarious! His parts in all the ski movies are awesome. I’ve read articles about him & he’s a pro skier who really wants to get into entertainment. And I’m an entertainer who really wants to be a pro skier. I do comedy to support my ski habit.

Q: You pretty much write your own jokes and material. Where do you get your material — from your day to day life, the news, movies, books, TV?
A: Sadly, most of my “material” really happened. Yeah, I live it. When you’re a teenager, it’s easy to make fun of your parents, teachers, brothers & friends. They PROVIDE the material. I’m also kind of into politics so it’s easy to make fun of politicians, especially local politicians…ESPECIALLY Eastern Idaho politicians. The jokes write themselves!

Q: Trevor, you were 86ed from the stand-up scene in Boise due to some technicality about minors being in bars and how some people think a comedy club is a bar… anyhow, I hear you’re back in the entertainment spotlight again. Can you tell us about that?
A: Getting kicked out of the Funny Bone was a real bummer, because that’s where I practiced my new material. I used to do short guest sets or open mic nights pretty often, which was great. I think the Alcohol Beverage Control (Freaks) went overboard. Now I can only perform at clubs in more open-minded states—like Utah! Yeah, it’s legal for me to perform at comedy clubs in Utah, Oregon, Wisconsin, Nevada & California, but not in Idaho. So I’ve been looking for places to perform in Idaho that don’t have so many state laws & regulations. Lately I’ve been doing a lot of gun shows & childcare centers….. Oh wait, this is a good news only blog, right? The good news is that at least I get to do corporate gigs & private parties. And they actually pay!

Q: Are you planning on continuing, on doing more performances?
A: Yeah, I perform about twice a month. Except in December. Then I perform alot for company Christmas parties.

Q: Do you have a Web site or a way folks can find out about your upcoming performances?
A: My website is http://www.trevorhattabaugh.com/ . But I update my facebook page more often. It’s just under Trevor Hattabaugh. And my “momager” always puts my gigs up on her Facebook page. It’s under Sam Sandmire. If you want to see some of my comedy, you can search “Trevor Hattabaugh” on YouTube. That’s how I book most of my gigs.

Q: Tell us your favorite joke. Pretty please?
A: I like this one (but it’s not mine): Saying “I’m sorry” & saying “I apologize” are pretty much the same thing…except at a funeral.

Good clean fun!

Trevor at a gig in San Francisco last week.

CHECK BACK FOR EXCLUSIVE FIRST THE GOOD NEWS INTERVIEWS WITH TREVOR HATTABAUGH AND BOISE ROCK SCHOOL!!!
The Kid of Comedy is back, baby!

If you’ve been following the comedy scene in Boise the past few years, you already know that back in 2007 little 11-year-old Trevor Hattabaugh was given the ole’ heave-ho! by the Idaho State Police Alcohol Beverage Control from The Funny Bone, what was then the premier comedy club in town. Hattabaugh was 86ed for being underage, even though he was only performing, not imbibing.

Since then, the kid has been honing his comedy chops, performing with the likes of Eddie Brill, Gary Owen and Jimmie JJ Walker (who mentioned Hattabaugh on “The Late Show with David Letterman”). Nonplussed by the lack of Idaho love, he took his show on the road, performing at comedy clubs in Los Angeles, Hollywood, Portland and Salt Lake City.

Most recently he auditioned for “America’s Got Talent,” and grabbed national television exposure, advancing to Las Vegas, where he got kudos from multiple judges — and a standing ovation from the audience.

Now, the Kid is back in town. Friday, Oct. 16 he takes the stage once again in Boise, Idaho, this time at The Linen Building http://thelinenbuilding.com. “Kidding Around Live at the Linen” features Hattabaugh, Boise Rock School http://boiserockschool.com/ and the hip-hop group Eleven.

CHECK BACK FOR EXCLUSIVE FIRST THE GOOD NEWS INTERVIEWS WITH TREVOR HATTABAUGH AND BOISE ROCK SCHOOL!!!

WHAT: Kidding Around Live at the Linen
WHEN: 5:30 p.m., Friday, Oct. 16
WHERE: The Linen Building, 1402 W. Grove Street
TICKETS: At the door: $8 (21 and older), $5 (12 to 20) and $3 (11 and younger). All ages. Beer and wine available.

A Howling Success!

Champion Brighton Lakeridge Summer in Hamptons, Best in Show, Boise, 2009

Arf!

Treasure Valley Dog Show Sunday, Oct. 11 at Expo Idaho was dog-tastic. The event was open to purebreds only (registered with the American Kennel Club) so we left Payton, our shelter-adopted, Heinz 57 pooch at home. If you didn’t go, you missed a fine opportunity to be absorbed into the award-winning “Best in Show” mockumentary.

Dogs from all over the country, of all sizes, colors and shapes, coats glistening, brushed to perfection, teased, bobbed, trimmed. Handlers popped treats in their mouths, waved them about to get the most alert poses from their dogs, tromped them to and fro. We were there to see the final rounds and then, the crowning finale: Best in Show.

A standard poodle, listed as a “bitch” from New York with the longish name of “Brighton Lakeridge Summer in Hamptons” won, and, as I was corrected by her handler, Tim Brazier, is more properly called: CHAMPION Brighton Lakeridge Summer in Hamptons.

She is a gorgeous animal and I stopped at her grooming station after the event to ask about her a bit. Her “call name” is GG and while she was being unprimped and depoufed (rubber bands removed from her top-notch white ‘fro, ear bangs carefully wrapped in soft, blue, plastic sheaths — it “keeps her from getting her hair and fur into her water and food”), I chatted with her groomer and handler.

“Yes, she’s very glamorous,” Brazier said. They said at three-years-old, she’s a real winner. Since they started showing her three months ago, she’s won five “Best in Show”s. “She is the only unbeaten dog at this dog show,” Brazier said.