MON 1/18: MLK Day, Art, Red Sox, Film, Rock

It's a good thing I'm not a weatherman, because I thought the weather was going to be crappy last night.

There's MLK Jr events around town (e.g. Cambridge), but...

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MON 1/18

10am to 4:45pm
MLK Jr Day -- Open House
at Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave, Boston
FREE

Gotta love the MFA, they open the doors wide open on Martin Luther King Jr's Day every year. The museum is pretty good at having free admission on holidays. There are quite a few good exhibits as wells as the permanent collection, but they usually have a bunch of extras on MLK Day.

There's an art & civil rights short film program (including a documentary on artist Romare Bearden) at 10:30am, a Baptist gospel choir at 12:15pm, a poetry slam at 2:30, followed by more music.

MON 1/18

1pm
MLK National Speaking Program
at Faneuil Hall, 1 Faneuil Hall Market Pl, Boston
FREE

Various readings of Dr. King's texts will be interspersed with performances by an ensemble from the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra. Poet and activist Sonia Sanchez will deliver the keynote address.

I assume it will be held in the Great Hall upstairs at Faneuil Hall.

MON 1/18

1pm
Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration: Only Love
at Metcalf Hall, 2nd Fl, George Sherman Union, 775 Comm Ave, Boston (BU campus)
FREE

The program to celebrate one of BU's greatest alumni with the Inner Strength Gospel Choir, the REACH! Dance Ensemble, other performances, a speech by Joseph Sebarenzi, former president of the Parliament of Rwanda.

MON 1/18

3:30pm to 5pm
Red Sox Rookie Program Autograph Signing
at Best Buy, 401 Park Dr, Boston (Fenway)
$10 Donation

Maybe none of these minor-leaguers will be superstars, but there's a good chance that some will be damn good. Your donation benefits the Red Sox Foundation.

Scheduled to appear: pitchers Casey Kelly, Randor Bierd, Felix Doubront, Ryne Miller, Junichi Tazawa, and Kyle Weiland; Luis Exposito (C); Yamaico Navarro (SS); outfielders Ryan Kalish and Che-Hsuan Lin.

MON 1/18

7pm
Science on Screen: "The Wild Child" w/ Judy Shepard-Kegl
at Coolidge Corner Theatre, 290 Harvard St, Brookline
$9.75 / $7.75 students, seniors

Sometimes they stretch the science-cinema connection is a bit thin, but they've picked a winner tonight. Francois Truffaut took the real story of a boy who was found living on his own in the woods of France in 1798. It's a now-classic story that an idealistic doctor takes on the case and works years to teach the savage how to speak -- probably proper food-wine pairings.

About 170 years later, a French new-wave director made a black-and-white film that's supposedly faithful to the story while making a larger exploration about humanity.

Prior to the film, Dr. Judy Shepard-Kegl (Linguistics, Univ. of Southern Maine) will speak about language acquisition. Her specialty is ASL, so the discussion -- and film -- will be translated into sign language.

MON 1/18

10pm
Triple Thick, Dan Webb & the Spiders, JJ & Thee Cuban Heels, Jinx Brothers
at Charlie's Kitchen, 10 Eliot St, Cambridge (Harvard Sq)
$5 / 21+

If Martin Luther King were alive and in the Boston area tonight, he'd probably show, I'm guessing he would rock out upstairs at Charlies. There's something cool about hearing some really great bands in a too small room, and tonight is a killer lineup.

The guys in Triple Thick could have been satisfied with just thick, but they wanted their fuzzy brew of garage-rock three times as strong. I haven't heard Thee Cuban Heels, but everything JJ Rassler does (DMZ, The Queers, Downbeat 5, etc) is rockalicious. It will be the same as he and the band mines 50's and 60's rock and R&B. Dan Webb & the Spiders have got a good thing going that'll fit in. The Jinx Brothers are supposed to start the night with a set of early country-blues, and Triple Thick will finish up.