The season of Metropolitan Opera broadcasts ends with an encore presentation of Handel’s Giulio Cesare, an off-the-wall and widely acclaimed production that re-imagines Julius Caesar and his fellow Romans as 19th-century British conquerors. Countertenor David Daniels sings the role of Caesar. The broadcast is at 6:30pm at various movie theaters. Check Calendar for locations. Tickets are $12.50. Call 818-761-6100.

THU ▪ 16

Why should the Tuna guys have a monopoly on plays in which two actors portray all the characters? Stage West gets into the game with Stones in His Pockets, Marie Jones’ tragicomedy about an Irish village that’s invaded by a Hollywood film crew shooting a movie. Patrick Bynane and Jakie Cabe will play all 15 characters. The play runs May 16-Jun 23 at 821 W Vickery St, FW. Tickets are $20-30. Call 817-784-9378.

FRI ▪ 17

With gay African-Americans having made headlines recently, now’s a fortuitous time to stage Knock Me a Kiss, Charles Smith’s Harlem Renaissance-themed comedy about the 1928 wedding between the secretly gay poet Countee Cullen and the otherwise romantically involved Yolande Du Bois, a match brokered by the bride’s father and civil rights pioneer W.E.B. Du Bois. The play runs May 17-Jun 16 at Jubilee Theatre, 506 Main St, FW. Tickets are $12-25. Call 817-338-4411.

SAT ▪ 18

The string of outdoor festivals continues with ArtsGoggle, with more than 90 businesses on the Near Southside throwing their doors open to the public from 4 to 10pm. Though this spring’s event won’t have anything like last year’s unveiling of the Live Oak, it’ll still have such bands as Whiskey Folk Ramblers, The Will Callers, and Foxtrot Uniform. Admission is free. Call 817-923-1343.

SUN ▪ 19

The winner of multiple Tony Awards in 2008, including Best Musical, In the Heights receives its regional premiere at Rose Marine Theater this weekend. Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegría Hudes’ show tells the story of a bodega owner in New York’s largely Dominican-American neighborhood of Washington Heights. Premiering such a prestigious work is quite a coup for Artes de la Rosa. The play runs May 17-Jun 9 at 1440 N Main St, FW. Tickets are $18-25. Call 817-624-8333.

MON ▪ 20

This first season of the Shakespeare Festival of Dallas’ staged readings of the Bard’s plays concludes with Richard III. Fans of Game of Thrones will easily recognize Shakespeare’s gimlet-eyed take on power and politics in a royal setting. The readings are Sun-Mon at Winspear Opera House, 2301 Flora St, Dallas. Reserved seats are $10; open seats are pay what you can. Call 214-327-4001.

TUE ▪ 21

Lynda Lanker’s portraits of cowgirls and ranch women were a stark departure from the well-groomed rodeo queens whose images were often sold as the epitome of women in the West. Her works are on display at National Cowgirl Hall of Fame’s exhibit Tough by Nature. The exhibit gives viewers a chance to see the artist’s command of all kinds of media: painting, print, and drawing. The show runs thru Sep 9 at 1720 Gendy St, FW. Admission is $8-10. Call 817-336-4475.

At the fortune teller’s house, I expected to be greeted by a gypsy woman wearing a head scarf. Instead, our psychic friend looked more like a body double for Bea Arthur.

She predicted I would have to go through some adversity in the near future, which was true. In a weak moment, I recently stopped at a gas station that shared space with Lisa’s Fried Chicken (2501 Hemphill St.) and ordered two of its gut-rocket burritos (two for $1.50) with an order of fries ($1). The burritos are fried in the same grease used for the chicken and filled with what passes for beans and ground beef. The packets of “taco sauce” tasted like some kind of cough medicine that hadn’t been tested on humans yet. I haven’t felt right since. Of course, I shouldn’t need a psychic or anyone else to tell me to avoid gas station food. I’ll never learn.

The clairvoyant also told me that I would experience something that reminded me of  my youth, and that happened the very next day. I wandered into The Vine Greek Taverna (2708 W. 7th St.) and had the pleasure of hearing beautiful Queen’s English from the mouth of the British-born Julie Ieronymides, one of the owners of the West 7th eatery. Chow, Mere is also a Londoner, so listening to the accent was comforting in a proper English sort of way.

I arrived at the tail end of the usual lunch service and half-expected to be told the kitchen was closed. Instead, the friendly staff made me feel welcome.

The food was good too. I started with the succulent keftedes ($6.50), turkey meatballs served with onion, potatoes, and a tangy tzatziki sauce that tasted of fresh cucumber. For my entrée I played it safe with the gyro ($8.50), shaved pieces of lamb and beef on hot pita bread, with the same tzatziki sauce. It might not have been the most adventurous thing on the menu, but it hit the spot. I would have had dessert, but I already felt bad for having come in so close to closing time. I’ll start with the baklava ($4.50) next time — maybe that will keep me from being so predictable.

Contact Chow, Baby at chowbaby@fwweekly.com

For this year’s blowout –– from 4 to 10 p.m. Sunday, June 23 –– we have the same number of venues (eight) and same number of bands (48). Along with perennial headliners like Burning Hotels, Quaker City Night Hawks, Calhoun, Whiskey Folk Ramblers, The Hanna Barbarians, and Pinkish Black, we’ve added some new blood, including Fungi Girls, The Longshots, recent Capitol Records signees The Unlikely Candidates, Ice Eater, Missing Sibling, Son of Stan, Constant Seas, Lindby, We’reWolves, Patriot, Raging Boner, The Breakfast Machine, Southern Train Gypsy, Sonic Buffalo, The Diabolical Machines, Animal Spirit, and The Fibs.

As always, admission to the festival is free, so call your boss now and tell him or her you’re gonna be late on Monday, June 24, and if you need to lock in a sitter that Sunday, well, whaddaya waitin’ for?!

Crowd Cannibalism?

If I were a Near Southside boss, I wouldn’t worry.

When word came down a few months ago that the Fort Worth Music Festival was going to take place on Panther Island Pavilion during ArtsGoggle, a biannual block party in the heart of the Near Southside, a great many teeth were gnashed and breasts beaten. But since FMFW is two days (Friday, Saturday) and ArtsGoggle just one (Saturday) and since the programming is pretty different, attendance might suffer only a little at both.

Friday night ain’t no thang. It belongs to FWMF and Drive By Truckers, Old 97’s, Quaker City Night Hawks, The Longshots, The Will Callers, and a couple other acts of gritty goodness.

Saturday won’t be a problem either. Well, at least if you’re a local-music aficionado. FWMF’s Saturday evening stages belong to national acts, of which I know only three (The Walkmen, Delta Spirit, and The Sheepdogs), leaving the afternoon to the three local bands booked: The Hanna Barbarians, The Unlikely Candidates, and The Orbans, who will play at the pavilion until 4 p.m. And what time does ArtsGoggle start? Why, 4 p.m.!

And ArtsGoggle, as you can easily imagine, is all about the locals, including Whiskey Folk Ramblers, Siberian Traps, Foxtrot Uniform, Clint Niosi & The Unaccountable, Madras, Year of the Bear, We the Sea Lions, Cleanup, and The Will Callers.

The Will Callers again? Yep. In a diabolical logistical coup, they’re playing both festivals.

Admission to ArtsGoggle is free and to FWMF $20.

Contact HearSay at hearsay@fwweekly.com.

The other night it was a Jeff Bridges meditation lying in wait for me. I’ve always liked Jeff Bridges. I liked him in The Last Picture Show, in Starman and True Grit, even in that corny, ’80s flick Against All Odds. But what I probably liked the most was his ’90s portrayal of Jeff Lebowski in the classic The Big Lebowski. In fact, when I struggled awake thinking about America and Jeff Bridges, “Lebowski” was the only name I could put to him.

Eventually, as my mind cleared, I could see Bridges’ face and his characters, but I still couldn’t conjure his last name: The two Jeffs had melded for a brilliant stretch of celluloid magic. The image transcended their separate realities.

The whole lapse was reminiscent of what folks used to call typecasting. Many classic cases involve actors being pigeonholed in one role and no longer being offered other kinds of parts. Think (if you’re as old as me) of Bob Denver as Gilligan, Leonard Nimoy as Spock, or Adam West as Batman.

By this time, it felt like I might be on to something. I turned on the bedside lamp and tried to trap the thought on a notepad. Here it is: America has the same problem in the international consciousness that Lebowski — I mean Bridges — had for me in those garbled moments of semi-consciousness.

The new millennium has not been kind to America. Perhaps better said, America has not been kind in the new millennium.

The images of America that play across the big screen of international perception these days are mostly negative, no matter what script we’re censoring or spinning to boost our national self-esteem. Even with more progressive White House leadership, we look like a sad, predictable, failing empire, cranking up the old military-industrial complex for one last push, one so prolonged that it will keep us in charge even as our most admirable qualities fade and we devolve into a scruffy, debauched has-been.

In the opening scenes of this new millennium we’ve played wrong-headed warmonger, ruthless torturer, greedy banker, xenophobic bigot, anti-intellectual lout, easy assassin and pathetic gun-nut. And woven through them all: sedentary, flaccid climate-change denier.

We play detestable villains so convincingly that it seems as if this might be not an act. Though we may have taken these parts because we were afraid or desperate, the rest of the planet now associates us with those images, and they may haunt us for years to come, typecasting us as a bunch of bumpkins who aren’t ready for prime time, much less modern times.

This is a turn that Americans should not abide. We have more range than we’ve heretofore displayed. We’re not just Democrats and Republicans or conservatives and liberals. We’re no more Rush Limbaugh than we are Michael Moore or Keith Olbermann. We can do “smart and responsible.” We’re capable of “compassionate and reasonable.” Heck, we even have “compromise” in our repertoire.

Can’t we start acting like it?

OK, back to sleep. See you in the morning … .

E.R. Bills is a Fort Worth-based writer whose work has appeared in numerous publications.

For me, The Mule had always been one of those bars I sorta took for granted, in the way that I assume certain celebrities will always be around — for comparison, I was genuinely bummed when Pat Summeral passed away a month ago, even though I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard him slur his way through an NFL game. My casual neglect of The Mule got tested a couple summers ago, when the bar almost shut permanently because owner Robbie Turman couldn’t reach a new lease agreement with his landlord, even though he was willing to pay higher rent. As the story goes, Turman and the putatively unreasonable landlord made an 11th-hour deal, and the bar was back in action by the third week in July. And thank goodness. Any bar that sticks around for even a few years will leave an impression on the people regularly haunting its space; The Mule has managed to stick around for 15.

I guess it’s fitting then that when my gal and I went there on Sunday, the karaoke picks kind of flitted around 1998. Throughout the night, we heard renditions of mid-to-late-’90s hits ranging from Edwin McCain’s schmaltzy “I’ll Be” to Limp Bizkit’s boner-brained “Break Stuff,” to Third Eye Blind’s sorry-I’m-a-sucky-friend suicide ballad “Jumper.” I hated this stuff when it was new, but damned if I didn’t know all the words. Is there a worse way to be than hungover yet still humming the hook of a Linkin Park song because you heard it belted by some random dude at a bar the night before? In the end, does it even matter?

Anyway, it’s probably not a good sign when a karaoke DJ brings his own gong, though I half suspected the crooner-stopping slab of brass might have easily belonged to the bar, because that’s the sort of joke The Mule seems to revel in. If you’ve never graced the venerable neighborhood dive with your presence, you’ll find one of the most peculiar interior designs in town. The Mule’s environs are almost absurd –– after you step through the doors and turn right into a hallway formed on one side by a brick wall, you’ll find a big room with a high ceiling. Awnings hang over an uneven floor covered in worn blue carpet, and the gaming area (populated by a couple of pool tables, some video poker machines, and dudes with their feet up) is roofed with planks and beams painted the same marine blue as the wall, as if the backyard deck of some Lake Worth bar and grill had gotten crammed into a landlocked corner pub. Between the brick wall (which mysteriously begins with an arch) and the pool area is what can best be described as an indoor patio. In fact, the overall impression reminds me of a food court in some forgotten corner of Six Flags, maybe some part of the Spain section long ago taken over and adapted as an employees-only smokers lounge.

The Mule’s sorta-wacky inside vibe is all part of its charm, fostering a convivial vibe amplified by the people hanging around. Even if you’re afraid someone is going to revisit a Korn song you’d prefer not to remember, the patrons are usually nice and there to party, and if you don’t have a good time, it’s probably your own fault. And if you’ve never been gutsy enough to grab the mic and travel back to the days when rap-metal ruled the earth, you might as well go for it. At The Mule, you’ll probably get more cheers than if Crazy Town were singing “Butterfly” for real, and that’s why this place is awesome. –– Steve Steward

Contact Last Call at lastcall@fwweekly.com.

Their yard is a canvas of native grasses and wildflowers that represent how the prairie land looked before Texas soldiers came here in the 1800s to build a fort, which evolved into the country’s 16th most populous city.

The Youngs have been seeding their yard for a dozen years, and it needs no water other than rain to survive.  They’re all about conservation.

The National Wildlife Federation certified the yard as an urban wildlife habitat years ago. A sign in the yard says as much.

The yard looks great at certain times of the year when things are in bloom. At other times, not so much.

Young fought the city’s Code Compliance Department in court for years to establish his right to maintain his yard as a wildlife habitat despite an ordinance that restricts grass height.

So, with all that background floating around, you can imagine Young’s surprise and anger when he discovered a man cutting down his lawn yesterday.

Here’s how Young described it:

“About 5 pm Tuesday afternoon I noticed a car parked out front. Seeing nobody around, I went back to work. A few minutes later I heard a high-pitched motor running and looked out again. An elderly black guy I’ve never seen before was in the process of whacking my prairie yard with a weed eater.

“My first thought was that the city had decided I was in violation of the grass and weed ordinance and was cutting it without notice. Something was fishy about this.

“I ran out outside, waving my arms and yelling at the man to stop his destruction. Switching off his weed eater, he looked genuinely shocked as I threatened him with bodily injury. He even asked if I wanted him to sweep up the grass clippings.

“Barely containing my anger, I asked him why he was whacking my yard. He explained to me that “a man told him to cut it.” I asked him to identify the man but he claimed to forget the name. Writing down his license plate number, I warned him that unless he told me the man’s name I would hold him accountable for destruction of several prairie plants including Antelope Horn Milkweed.

“He promised to call me with the man’s name as soon as he got home but failed to do so as of late Tuesday evening. I called the police and made a report. An investigator is supposed to call me back this week.”

In summary, Young said the whole thing was “weird.”

Stay, as they say, tuned.

HARD TO IMAGINE THE MAD WACKER MISSING THE WILDLIFE HABITAT SIGN THAT’S CLEARLY POSTED.