I was born in April and have never agreed with T.S. Eliot that it is “the cruellest month.” Why would I want to have been born from that?

Here’s Robert Hedin, who lives in Minnesota, showing us what April can be like once Eliot is swept aside.

This Morning I Could Do/A Thousand Things

I could fix the leaky pipe
Under the sink, or wander over
And bother Jerry who’s lost
In the bog of his crankcase.
I could drive the half-mile down
To the local mall and browse
Through the bright stables
Of mowers, or maybe catch
The power-walkers puffing away
On their last laps. I could clean
The garage, weed the garden,
Or get out the shears and
Prune the rose bushes back.
Yes, a thousand things
This beautiful April morning.
But I’ve decided to just lie
Here in this old hammock,
Rocking like a lazy metronome,
And wait for the day lilies
To open. The sun is barely
Over the trees, and already
The sprinklers are out,
Raining their immaculate
Bands of light over the lawns.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation ( www.poetryfoundation.org ), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright 2013 by Robert Hedin from his most recent book of poems, Poems Prose Poems, Red Dragonfly Press, 2013. Poem reprinted by permission of Robert Hedin and the publisher. Introduction copyright 2014 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. They do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

LAKEPORT, Calif. The Funky Dozen comes to the Soper Reese Theatre at 7 p.m. Friday, April 18, playing fun and funky hits from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.

Led by Larry Thompson, this popular group is also bringing some of its new songs to the show.

All the music features a beat that keeps the dance floor crowded.  

All seats for “Third Friday Live” are $10. Tickets are available online at www.SoperReeseTheatre.com ; at the Theatre Box Office, 275 S. Main St., Lakeport on Fridays 10:30 am to 5:30 pm,; or by phone at 707-263-0577.

Tickets also are available at The Travel Center, 1265 S. Main, Lakeport; Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The Soper Reese Theatre is a restored, historic, performing and motion picture arts venue established in 1949. It operates under the guidance of the nonprofit Lake County Arts Council. The 300-seat theater brings dance, music, film, plays and poetry to all members of the Lake County community.

What might have been? I’d guess we’ve all asked that at one time or another.

Here’s a fine what-might-have-been poem by Andrea Hollander, who lives in Portland, Oregon.

Ex

Long after I married you, I found myself
in his city and heard him call my name.
Each of us amazed, we headed to the café
we used to haunt in our days together.
We sat by a window across the paneled room
from the table that had witnessed hours
of our clipped voices and sharp silences.
Instead of coffee, my old habit in those days,
I ordered hot chocolate, your drink,
dark and dense the way you take it,
without the swirl of frothy cream I like.
He told me of his troubled marriage, his two
difficult daughters, their spiteful mother, how
she’d tricked him and turned into someone
he didn’t really know. I listened and listened,
glad all over again to be rid of him, and sipped
the thick, brown sweetness slowly as I could,
licking my lips, making it last.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation ( www.poetryfoundation.org ), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Copyright 2011 by Andrea Hollander from her most recent book of poems, Landscape with Female Figure: new and selected poems, 1982-2012 (Autumn House Press, 2013). Introduction copyright 2014 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

BAD WORDS (Rated R)

Making his feature directorial debut with the subversive black comedy “Bad Words,” Jason Bateman has no problem turning himself into a truly horrible human being, willing to crush the hopes and dreams of overly ambitious grade school students.

Bateman’s Guy Trilby is a 40-year-old deadbeat who finds a loophole in the rules of the Golden Quill national spelling bee and decides to cause trouble by hijacking a competition that rightfully belongs to the deserving pre-teen contestants.

Starting at the regional level, Guy harasses contest officials, outraged parents and the kids who dream of victory and fame, to say nothing of prize money and academic recognition. His verbal assaults are uncouth and profane.

Possessed of a photographic memory, Guy cites the arcane rules of spelling bee contests to point out that his failure to graduate from the eighth grade has made him eligible, regardless of age and experience, to enter the competition.

Indignant contest officials are powerless to keep Guy out of the orthography contests. By the way, orthography is another word for spelling. This word is gratuitously inserted here as a teachable moment, in keeping with the spirit of the contests.

The spelling bee administrator Dr. Deagan (Allison Janney) is determined to have Guy eliminated from the field. That’s why he must spell inaccessible words, including “slubberdegullion.” Fittingly, it’s an archaic word that means a slovenly or worthless person.

Undeterred and unbowed by the vitriol that comes his way, Guy presses on to each new level of the spelling bee, intent on making it to the national Golden Quill event. He’s being sponsored by a publication whose reporter is following his every move.

Journalist Jenny Widgeon (Kathryn Hahn) aids and abets Guy’s qualifying for matches because she has the exclusive rights her subject’s story. Toxic chemistry between them leads to sporadic bouts of hostile sex.

Par for the course, Guy bullies his way through his relationships and into the competitions against nervous adolescents who are easily rattled by his wild antics of verbal abuse and nasty practical jokes.

Guy treats every contest as if he were a UFC cage fighter. His take-no-prisoners approach to winning is alternately funny and unsettling. You feel bad for the kids that are victimized by Guy, but you can’t help laughing, sometimes awkwardly, at the insanity.

Making it to the national championship is Guy’s dream and a nightmare for the organizers, who decide to make his life miserable. His accommodations at the Sportsman’s Lodge include a cot inside the hotel’s utility closet.

Continuing his odious campaign of intimidation, Guy finally meets his match with awkward 10-year-old spelling whiz Chaitanya Chopra (Rohan Chand), a precocious competitor who is completely unfazed by Guy’s antagonistic approach to life.

An unlikely alliance emerges between these two disparate contenders. At first, it seems that Guy is mostly interested in the fact that the Indian boy he calls Slumdog has a mini-bar in his hotel room a few doors removed from the utility closet.

Yet, great chemistry develops between the sweet-natured kid and the ornery middle-aged person who keeps people at arms’ length. Guy takes the kid on a night ride of mischief, inappropriately and hilariously involving strippers, smoking, boozing and shoplifting.

Mostly, Guy treats everyone rudely as the tries to embarrass and outwit the various parties that would deny him the championship trophy. He’s not above being caustic even to his only possible friend, the fellow 10-year-old rival who is best-prepared to actually win.

An unrepentant misanthrope, Guy takes the greatest pleasure in tormenting the Golden Quill’s imperious chief Dr. Bowman (Philip Baker Hall), who is even more unwavering in a quest to get Guy purged from the playing field.

Jason Bateman deserves kudos for his maiden voyage into directing, unafraid to make himself look bad in the service of delivering a good film that showcases great talent and excellent dialogue provided by Andrew Dodge in his first feature screenplay.

A degree of sentimentality creeps into “Bad Words” as the contest winds down to its climactic end. Fortunately, it’s measured so that “Bad Words” does not lose its hard edge of dark comedy.

A quirky black comedy, “Bad Words” is wickedly funny, but its protagonist is often so deeply unlikeable that appreciation of this film may have its limits for some viewers.

Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.

CLEARLAKE, Calif. – “Grounded” is Second Sunday Cinema's free film for April 13.

The film starts at 6 p.m. at Clearlake United Methodist Church, 14521 Pearl Ave. in Clearlake.

This delightful film follows an Alaskan wildlife photographer as he enters a quest to discover if the stories he's heard are true: Is it possible to improve one's health and mood by simply “grounding” oneself in the Earth?  

He finds that by touching his bare skin to ordinary, clean dirt, he feels far better.

He enlists the help of his neighbors in Haines, Alaska (population 1,700), and finds that many enjoy enhanced well-being and great relief from pain.  

He cuts flowers and we see that the flowers grounded to the Earth with wires in their water stay fresh far longer than do those in plain water. Even a baby moose is helped.

Imagine finding a way to improve your health by just taking off your shoes.

Following the film, there will be time for discussion.

After seven years of showing free films, Second Sunday Cinema is birthing Second Sunday Solutions. Come be a part of the process.

For more information, call 707-889-7355.

The TCM cable channel is celebrating its 20th birthday as a network, and complimenting this event is the fifth anniversary of the TCM Classic Film Festival set for April 10 through 13 in the heart of Hollywood.

April is a great time to visit the iconic venues of the Egyptian Theatre and Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. I am still calling it Grauman’s even though some faceless corporate entity has shamefully renamed it the TCL Chinese Theater, showing a lack of respect for a great tradition.

The festival itself is nicely timed to coincide after the release of the latest “Captain America” Marvel film, with maybe only the opening of Kevin Costner’s “Draft Day,” appealing to NFL fans, as a box office competitor.

“Family in the Movies: The Ties that Bind” is the central theme for the 2014 TCM Classic Film Festival, which vaguely proposes to summon its family of movie lovers from around the globe to come to Hollywood for a cinematic celebration of the ties that bind us together.

Festival passes don’t come inexpensively, and so you have to wonder if the family theme is all that accurate.

On top of that, one of the featured films is “Blazing Saddles,” Mel Brooks’ outrageously spoof of Western cinema. Wildly hilarious, a family friendly film it is not.

One of the festival highlights will be Mel Brooks in attendance for the screening of his comedy classic. Hopefully, he may provide an update on taking “Blazing Saddles,” as he did with two previous films, to Broadway as a musical comedy.

On his own Web site, Brooks has announced the May 6 release of a new 40th Anniversary Blu-ray edition of “Blazing Saddles,” highlighted by a new featurette “Blaze of Glory: Mel Brooks’ Wild, Wild West” in which he reflects on his own movie-making chutzpah.

Additional features on the Blu-ray will include 10 quotable art cards with funny quotes and images from the film, plus vintage extra content including Brooks’ commentary, cast reunion documentary, and “Black Bart,” the 1975 television pilot inspired by the movie.

The dysfunctional family dynamic will be excellently represented at the TCM festival by the film adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ Broadway hit play, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor, displaying great chemistry, played the troubled married couple.

“Father of the Bride,” the classic 1950 version, not the Steve Martin remake of two decades ago, will delight audiences with the father-daughter family model, with Spencer Tracy bringing depth to a charming domestic comedy in which Elizabeth Taylor, as the daughter, was marking her transition into adult roles.

Having grown up on the big screen, Elizabeth Taylor proved to be a huge boon to the film’s publicity, announcing her engagement just as the studio revealed her casting in “Father of the Bride,” and then marrying hotel heir Nicky Hilton shortly before the picture’s release.

A film that has nothing to do with family is Clint Eastwood’s spaghetti Western 1966 classic, “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.” Eastwood starred as a hired gun looking for buried Confederate gold with the occasional aid of Mexican bandit Eli Wallach. Though not family, their relationship was definitely dysfunctional.

Several films from the 1930s are scheduled, with the oldest film to be screened being Alfred Hitchcock’s third feature, “The Lodger,” released in 1927, notable because it not only chilled audiences with a criminal villain modeled on Jack the Ripper, but it was the first time that the “Master of Suspense” made a cameo appearance on screen.

The great thing about the TCM Classic Film Festival is the opportunity to see vintage masterpiece films, too numerous to list here, screened in the proper venue of large theatres with wide screens.

One very notable archetypal film is Charlie Chaplin’s “City Lights,” a work in progress for three years just as sound was beginning its reign. Chaplin persisted in making this a silent film because he felt the Little Tramp would be less effective if he spoke.

The story of the Little Tramp’s efforts to raise money so a blind girl could have a sight-giving operation was one of Chaplin’s biggest hits. The film’s combination of slapstick and pathos was effective and won praise as one of the greatest romantic comedies ever made.

Special events that are open to the public will also highlight the festival’s presence. For the first time ever to coincide with the festival, the US Postal Service will conduct a first-day-of-issue dedication ceremony for the Charlton Heston Forever Stamp at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre (yes, I said Grauman’s).

On the next day, Saturday, April 12, Turner Classic Movies will honor Jerry Lewis with a hand and footprint ceremony in the courtyard of the Chinese Theatre.

The TCM Classic Film Festival is just loaded with celebrity guests who will appear or introduce films. Shirley Jones will kick off the opening night festivities by appearing for a world premiere of a brand new restoration of the beloved Rodgers & Hammerstein musical “Oklahoma!,” a treasure nearly sixty years old.

Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.