UPDATE: We have our winners: Robert Boro and Lauren Bagato. Thanks for playing!

ORIGINAL ENTRY: This is absolutely last-minute, folks, and a golden opportunity for those of you hanging out here on a late Friday afternoon. I have FOUR tickets to give away to the Artists' Repertory Theatre production of "All in the Timing," which continues this weekend at the Severance Building. (This is a combination of the two wildly popular Rogue Festival presentations.) Tickets are good for the 8 p.m. Friday, 8 p.m. Saturday or 2 p.m. Sunday performances. I'll give two tickets to the FIRST commenter to this post and two tickets to the THIRD commenter. The tickets will be available at the door. Winner will be notified in an e-mail, so leave a real one. No repeat comments. You're ineligible if you've won something in the past 30 days. We won't post any comments until we have a winner. Complete rules after the jump.

Don't forget the Lord High Executioner this weekend. The Fresno City College Opera Musical Theatre Workshop presents Gilbert & Sullivan's "The Mikado." And you don't want to disappoint a guy with a blade.

Details: 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday / Fresno City College Theatre / (559) 442-8221 / $10, $7 students and seniors

Another photo and the flier on the jump.

I saw some interesting shows last night. Feel free to add your own observations about these and other venues in the comments section.

GALLERY 25
Robert Weibel is known for his "gunpowder art," and his full show at Gallery 25 -- he was scheduled to display with Karen LeCocq but she had to drop out -- is, dare we say, explosive. He has a couple of works titled "Delta Smelt," which I'm assuming is a reference to a political powder keg of a Valley water issue (sorry, I have to ease up on the munitions puns), which are stunning visually, with the mixture of gunpowder and metallic leaf making a shimmering impact on the paper. I love how Weibel organized his show, too -- to the extent that representations of birds actually seem to "flock" up a corner wall, as if they're ready to take flight. There will be a reception 1-4 p.m. Sunday at Gallery 25. The show continues through Nov. 29.

DeROUCHEY CREATIVE DESIGN STUDIO
A fun, different ArtHop stop -- definitely with a youthful vibe. Most, if not all, of the artists appeared to be recent Fresno State graduates, and the crowd in this warehouse district -- just down the street from the Chris Sorensen Studio -- brought the average ArtHop age WAY down. I ran into Fresno State art prof Doug Hansen, who was proud as a papa of his former students. One of my favorites of the bunch: Uriel Tekunoff's surrealist-style painting of a bearded man. This was a one-night-only show.

UPDATE 4:30 p.m. 11/5: I added a couple of other ArtHop venues in response to reader feedback today, including this image from Joan Sharma's show at the K-Jewel Art Gallery. (The artist included info about the show in the comments section.)

ORIGINAL ENTRY 6:30 a.m. 11/5: In Thursday's Life section I have a story about the November ArtHop, including a couple of picks for new and different venues to check out:

• DeRouchey Creative Design Studio, at 1803 S. Van Ness Ave., for the third year opens its doors for a group show by local artists. In "Variations of Flight," the emphasis is on the process by which objects move either through the air within or beyond our atmosphere. The show includes digital photography, works in acrylic and mixed media on canvas, granite and stone.
• Fulton's Folly Antique Collective, at 920 E. Olive Ave., features a reception for Brazil native Christina Motta, whose professional career began in 1969 with drawings and oil paintings. She has shown her works in variouscollective exhibitions and more than 25 individual exhibitions in Brazil and other south American countries.

On the jump: more info and images from these and some of the other ArtHop venues I mention.

UPDATE 4 p.m. 11/5: Still no word on Bocelli tickets. The Ticketmaster site still has the Dec. 10 date listed but that tickets are "currently not on sale." The Fresno Grand Opera isn't returning calls, and the company's voice message is telling callers: "Regarding Andrea Bocelli, we are experiencing some unforeseen issues, and we are working hard to solve them. Unfortunately, we will not be taking any orders for tickets today."

ORIGINAL POST 11/4: I'm not sure why tickets for Andrea Bocelli's Dec. 10 concert with the Fresno Grand Opera at the Save Mart Center didn't go on sale as scheduled Monday, but Mike Scott, on his Channel 47 blog, has his suspicions.

I gave the Save Mart a call, and marketing manager Annie Melvold told me that she's not sure why tickets aren't yet on sale. She's supposed to get back to me when she learns anything new. I also called Ron Eichman at Fresno Grand Opera but haven't heard back from him yet, either.

I'm not ready to hunker down into "oh no he's not coming" Fresno mode, and I'm speculating that the ticket delay has something to do with how the arena is going to be configured, but as Mike points out, the Fresno concert date still isn't listed on the Gelb Promotions tour Web site. Wonder what's up?

"Welcome Home, Jenny Sutter," which continues through Saturday, premiered at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2008. Fresno State director Kathleen McKinley deserves kudos simply for getting such a current work onstage. In today's world of 24-hour news cycles and immediate blog postings, it's tempting to think of theater as quaint in terms of reaction time to current events. It often takes years for plays to be written and produced, and university theater seasons are often planned long in advance.

It's a pleasant surprise, then, that this drama about a woman soldier coming home from the Iraq War with a devastating injury has a ripped-from-the-headlines feel to it.

Of course, the war in Iraq has been going on for many years now, alas, so perhaps part of my reaction reflects an unwillingness to believe that it's gone on for as long as it has.

What I like best about Julie Marie Myatt's play is the nonsentimental -- and occasionally brusque -- way that the playwright dives into issues related to the homecoming. Rather than setting "Jenny Sutter" in a traditional family environment, with the wounded soldier returning to the cocoonlike atmosphere of a doting (or dysfunctional) family, Myatt pitches her title character into a more noncommital setting: an itinerant community named Slab City in which various people, many down on their luck, form their own bonds.

Pat Dodds writes:

We just got the mailing from Children's Musical Theaterworks about their 2010 schedule, and they'll do "Hair" in March. For years, our family has had a running gag about CMT and their increasingly edgy shows. (Our daughter was in the company's first-ever production - "Annie" - many years ago.) As they've done shows like "Tommy" and "Sideshow" and "Evita," we keep saying things like, "What'll they do next? Chicago? Oh, Calcutta? HAIR???!!!!!"

This gag is no longer going to work. (By the way, did they once do "Gypsy," or am I making that up?)

There must be a new, young people's version of "Hair" out there somewhere, subtracting a lot of language and adding a lot of clothing. Even the song titles will have to change. I can't wait!

My response: I, too, was a little surprised at the "Hair" announcement. (When I originally posted it on the Beehive, I added that I thought of the much-replayed Jane Lynch line from a "Glee" promo in which she says "That was the most offensive thing I've seen in twenty years of teaching, and that includes an elementary school production of 'Hair.' ") Something to keep in mind, however, is that CMT has a community-theater arm, Musical Theaterworks Fresno, which will be presenting "Hair," and I'm presuming the production will be with an adult-dominated cast. Still, I've gotta wonder if even that version will have to be, um, significantly modified in order to play in Fresno.

A local music news tidbit:

The Youth Orchestras of Fresno, a youth music organization that has served the Central Valley under various names for the past 59 years, announces the appointment of Julia Copeland as executive director. Copeland comes to Fresno from the Musical Arts Youth Orchestra in Bloomington, Ind., where she served in the same capacity

The first concert of the season will be a performance of the Mahler First Symphony combining the 100-strong Youth Philharmonic Orchestra with the 50-member Fresno State Symphony Orchestra. The concert is scheduled for Dec. 6 at 7:00pm at the Saroyan Theatre.

UPDATE 11/5: Our winner is Brad Rocha. Thanks, everyone, for playing.

ORIGINAL ENTRY 11/3: We've got quite the lineup of Beehive ticket giveaways scheduled for you this week. First up: We're giving away two tickets to the Pop Laval Foundation's "The Party of A Century" on Saturday at the RiverView Shopping Center. This fund-raiser benefits the Claude "Pop" Laval Photographic Collection, which will turn 100 years old next year. From the organizers:

The party begins at 2:30 p.m. with an antique automobile show that is open to the public. Then, for ticket holders, The Party of A Century starts at 5:30 p.m. in a tented courtyard in the RiverView Shopping Center parking lot. Although not required for entrance, attendees are encouraged to get into the spirit and come dressed as a Flapper Girl, Gangster or other twenties-style attire to the event. Prizes will be awarded for the best costumes in several categories.

These two tickets are worth $80 each, and I'll give them randomly to one commenter to this post. You have until 11 a.m. Wednesday to enter. No multiple entries are allowed. You must be 21 years or older to enter. I'll notify the winners by email, so be sure to provide a valid email address. Rules are on the jump.

UPCOMING BEEHIVE GIVEAWAYS
Wednesday: Little Dragon concert | Thursday: Fresno Fall Home Improvement Show | Friday: The Fresno Met's Dr. Seuss exhibit.

It'll take me a while to get back into the swing of things after my two-week trip to New York City. (I plan to write more about the experience in my Sunday column and online.) So bear with me.

First I want to ask a theater-related question: Did anyone get out to see the original musical "Havin' a Hot Flash" a couple of weeks ago at the Tower Theatre? I'm always interested in original works, and I'm curious to hear how this project played out. What did you think?

For the remainder of the week, I'll be doing some catch-up. Tonight I'll be at Fresno State to watch "Welcome Home, Jenny Sutter," directed by Kathleen McKinley, which opened Friday. I need to get over to the Fresno Metropolitan Museum to see two new exhibitions, "Marc Chagall: The Early Etchings from the 1920s" and "The Art Books of Henry Matisse," which both opened in mid-October. (Pictured: Chagall's "The Ass and the Dog.") I hope to work in a return trip to "All in the Timing" at Artists' Repertory Theatre, a title that delighted audiences at two Rogue festivals. And there's a slew of mid-November events to get ready for, including Tchaikovsky at the Philharmonic, the touring show "The Wedding Singer" and the Western Band Association championships.

Besides the big hoopla over the mural, did I miss anything else of interest while I was out of town?