Photo by Ramon Estrada; Courtesy of www.dita.net October has always been a peak month of activity in New Orleans, coming up right behind Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest. But this month has been particularly amazing, and HALLOWEEN WEEKEND is the biggest reason why. Still, there's so much going on it's hard to put a finger on one thing that's the hottest thing to do. We could say that the Voodoo Music Festival's expansion from one day to three is the biggest thing, and it is pretty big; the newest Halloween weekend tradition this year features a packed lineup including 50 Cent, Godsmack, George Clinton & the P-Funk All-Stars and Rabbit in the Moon (Friday); Marilyn Manson, Staind, the Roots and Mos Def (Saturday); and the White Stripes, Queens of the Stone Age, A Perfect Circle and Cypress Hill (Sunday). (For more info, see profiles of select artists in this issue, or visit www.voodoomusicfest.com.) Then there's the first annual New Orleans Media Experience, which features a wide range of activities including the Halloween-friendly culmination of the weeklong Mario Bava Retrospective on Friday at the State Palace Theatre, and the VIP-only Halloween Masquerade Ball, featuring Dita Von Teese (pictured), Friday at Gallier Hall. (For more on the Experience, visit www.neworleansmediaexperience.com.) But there are also the tried-and-true Halloween events that we have all come to know and love. Sheriff Charles Foti, soon to be Louisiana's attorney general, continues his celebrated Sheriff Foti's Haunted House daily in City Park through the Big Day. There's always the disturbingly freaky House of Shock under the Huey P. Long Bridge on River Road (for more info, visit www.houseofshock.com). Rockers who love to costume always get a kick out of the annual Halloween MOMS Ball at The Howlin' Wolf, this year featuring Johnny Sketch & the Dirty Notes, Funkin' Horns, and Plum (this year's theme: "Moronic Convergence"), or the eighth annual Masked Band Ball. For pure camp value, check out CondomNation!!!, at 7:30 p.m. Friday at the Country Club (634 Louisa St., 945-0742). CondomNation!!! is an all-out costume party (with contest) culminating in a Midnight Mass with the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (including Sister Edith My Flesh and Sister Zsa Zsa Glamour), and music by DJ Pusspuss from San Francisco. For more fun stuff, see our Special Events listings in this issue. -- David Lee Simmons

20 Miles 10 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 28 Mermaid Lounge, 1100 Constance St., 524-4747 Most of the time, Judah Bauer is demon guitarist/foil to Jon Spencer's devil Elvis fury in the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. His band apart from that, 20 Miles, is as understated as the Blues Explosion is in your face. Their new record, Life Doesn¹t Rhyme (Fat Possum) mixes country and blues and rockabilly into a subtle, but not quiet, set of songs. Despite the rotating cast of players, this record is tight and cohesive. At best, it contains the aura of Southern mystique and oblique lyrics that R.E.M. or Alejandro Escovedo did so well in the 1980s and early '90s. Some of the music has that it's-all-about-to-fall-apart ramshackle groove that Neil Young perfected. In a live setting, if Bauer cranks this material up, it will sound mysterious and meaningful and rocking at the same time. Tickets $10. -- David Kunian

Herlin Riley with Robert Dickson's 1:30 Combo 7:30 p.m., Wednesday, Oct. 29 The Sandbar, UNO University Center, 280-6381 The Sandbar Jazz series at UNO is a great idea, pairing more experienced musicians with the students in the excellent UNO music program. This week, drummer Herlin Riley makes an appearance at the Sandbar. Herlin is a member of the Lastie family; the musical blood that runs in his veins is related to that of the late Walter, David and Melvin Lastie, all of whom played great jazz and rhythm and blues here in the Crescent City. Also, Herlin learned from master percussionists James Black and Smokey Johnson. Finally, head of Jazz at Lincoln Center Wynton Marsalis can choose any drummer around the world to play in the J@LC orchestra or in his septet. He chooses Herlin. If he's good enough for Wynton, he's more than good enough for us. Admission $5 general public, free to UNO staff/faculty/students with ID. -- Kunian

Girlz Garage Tour 9 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 29 House of Blues, 225 Decatur St., 529-BLUE According to the mainstream press, it's a big moment for women in popular music. Rolling Stone recently published its "Women Who Rock" issue, featuring such moguls as Alicia Keys and Missy Elliott, and chick-rockers like the Distillers' Brody Armstrong and Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs have become some of the hippest names in rock. The alternative circuit is also brimming with female-fronted bands that are making their way in a male-dominated world. That's the premise behind Hurley International's Girlz Garage Tour. Founder of the Vans Warped Tour, an annual punk rock-geared summertime traveling festival, Hurley created Girlz Garage to present an organic mixture of women musicians in styles ranging from hip-hop to goth rock. Core acts include Canadian rock outfit Lillix, New York-based rap trio Northern State, and rap-rockers Brassy. Gothic-style heavy rocker Lennon, known for her searing guitar music, will play acoustic on this tour. Tickets $12. -- Cristina Diettinger

An Evening of Dance 8 p.m. Thursday and Saturday, Oct. 30 and Nov. 1; 2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 2 Tulane University, Dixon Hall, Newcomb Quad, 865-5360 The Newcomb Dance Company sure won't be accused of sitting on its laurels. The winner of the 2003 Big Easy Tribute to the Classical Arts Award for Best Modern Dance Production for last year's presentation of An Evening of Dance seems ready to up the ante this year. Company members recently took part in the Taylor Classic Repertory Workshop as part of the Taylor 2 Company's guest-artist residency, and will be dancing to excerpts from Paul Taylor's "Esplanade." They'll also perform a wide range of pieces including those from artistic director Alice Pascal-Escher, faculty members Barbara Hayley and Beverly Trask, and two new faculty members: assistant professor John Allen (a member of the Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company) and J. Hamons. Tickets $10 general admission, $8 Tulane faculty/staff, $6 students. -- Simmons

54th Platoon, 5th Ward Weebie, 7th Ward Soulja 10 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 29 The Howlin' Wolf, 828 S. Peters., 522-WOLF Some say hip-hop, at least in its down-and-dirty Southern format, is in a state of recession, but as always, New Orleans is buzzing with backstreet hopefuls aiming at Master P status. With 54th Platoon, 5th Ward Weebie, and 7th Ward Soulja, this bill packs a trinity of artists representing from three famous downtown neighborhoods (54th Platoon hails from the Ninth Ward). Between them they boast collaborations with a host of household names, including Mystikal, Kane & Abel, Mannie Fresh, and Lil' Jon. Singer/actress/model Euricka brings beauty to the bill, along with a vocal style that resonates like a cross between Missy Elliott's gritty delivery and Mary J. Blige's soulful flavor. For intelligent lyrics and unbeatable freestyle skills, stick around for Bionik Brown. This high-minded MC spits lyrics of life and love like he's on auto-pilot. Local DJ Scratchmosis will keep the party rolling, while comedian Byrd grovels for laughs. Tickets $7. -- Diettinger

Eighth Annual Masked Band Ball 10 p.m. Thursday-Friday, Oct 30-31 Mermaid Lounge, 1100 Constance St., 524-4747 The Mermaid Lounge's annual Masked Band Ball features local artists performing sets as Public Enemy (pictured), Pink Floyd and others Thursday and Friday. Each Halloween (and Mardi Gras) the folks at the Mermaid and Turducken Productions put together this great costume/music ball. Local bands get dressed up as their favorite or guilty-pleasure bands, get onstage and play their music. This year the highlights should include The White Bitch as Public Enemy (will he be both Chuck D. and Flavor Flav?), members of Won Ton Lust as the Pretenders, and Potpie, Chef Menteur and musicians to be named later frying brains as they play 1972-style Pink Floyd. Other bands will do sets of the Replacements (will Tommy get his tonsils out?) and Me-So-Horny rappers 2 Live Crew (the band that was into thongs before thongs were thongs). There will also be Led Zeppelin and Blondie tributes. Of course, and especially here, the more you drink, the better these bands will sound. Tickets $10. -- Kunian

The Mystery of Irma Vep 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday, Oct. 31-Nov. 1; 2 p.m. Nov. 2; through Nov. 23 Le Petit Theatre du Vieux Carré, 616 St. Peter St., 522-2081 "Charles Ludlam influenced a generation of writers in comedy that I don't think we can completely measure," says director Carl Walker, who reunites with Ricky Graham in bringing back The Mystery of Irma Vep a decade after the pair first teamed up to present Ludlam's most successful work. "He was doing that sort of cannibalizing from different sources long before there was a trend of doing that. Obviously it affects Mel Brooks, the Airplane series. The difference is that he's got an extraordinarily classical base as opposed to just camp or silliness. Irma Vep revels in its own theatricality." Walker recruited Sean Patterson to team with Graham in this quick-change play that features about 10 characters -- which makes sense considering Patterson won a Big Easy Entertainment Award for his one-man, multi-character tour de force in Fully Committed. Tickets $21 adults, $15 students/children. -- Simmons

Rasputina 10 p.m., Friday, Oct. 31 The Parish at House of Blues, 229 Decatur St., 529-BLUE Cello trio Rasputina is one of the best current examples of unlikely fusion. Melora Creager, who backed Nirvana on the band's final tour, formed the group in 1992 by placing an ad in the paper seeking other women cellists to form a rock band. With its Victorian-style costumes and syrupy sound, the band has always managed to add depth to the regiments of rock without turning to gratuitous gothic darkness. The unique sound won the favor of some of rock's biggest names, including Marilyn Manson, who remixed Rasputina's 1997 EP, Transylvanian Regurgitations. Creager has survived personnel shake-ups, noting on the band's Web site that almost any young girl could join up, "much like the American presidency." Current members -- cellist Zoe Keating and drummer and first-ever male member Jonathan Tebeest -- joined in time to make the band's latest recording of rock covers, The Lost & Found EP. The Hazard County Girls open. Tickets $12. -- Diettinger

Mirliton Festival 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday-Sunday, Nov. 1-2 Mickey Markey Park, corner of Royal and Piety streets, 945-7384 Leroy Jones headlines this weekend's Mirliton Festival in Bywater's Mickey Markey Park. Ripe from its fall harvest, the unique mirliton -- a vegetable most of the world refers to as a chayote -- is annually celebrated in a corner of New Orleans fitting to the exotic produce, the funky Bywater. Local chefs create from their own favorite recipes showcasing the vegetable in dishes ranging from stuffed mirliton to mirliton gumbo, with participating area restaurants including Elizabeth's, Palmer Jamaican Restaurant and Bywater BBQ. A solid music lineup is featured both days. Saturday finds all-female jazz ensemble Some Like It Hot (11:30 a.m.), reggae stalwarts the Revealers (1:30 p.m.), Mike West (3 p.m.) and the Jonathan Freilich Sextet (4 p.m.). Sunday starts off with a gospel choir at noon, followed by the Tin Men (1:30 p.m.) and trumpeter LeRoy Jones (3 p.m.). Arts and crafts vendors will be on site. A benefit for the Bywater Neighborhood Association's drive to provide playground equipment for Markey Park, admission is $3 general public, $2 Bywater Neighborhood Association members. -- Frank Etheridge

New Orleans Film Collective Screening 7:30 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 2 Zeitgeist Multi-Disciplinary Arts Center, 1724 Oretha Castle Haley Blvd., 525-2767 One of the most interesting moments during director David Gordon Green's appearance at the recent New Orleans Film Festival came when the 28-year-old showed his disdain for all things digital: "Film does not cost more than digital!" New Orleans filmmaker Helen Hill, whose experimental animation shorts are a delightful excursion in D.I.Y. film, has been preaching that gospel ever since she blew into town. Her work with the New Orleans Film Collective has helped teach aspiring filmmakers the wonder (and simplicity) of celluloid, and now it's time to see the fruits of labors created by such workshops as "Handprocessing Your Own Films" and "Super 8 Filmmaking." Hill and fellow filmmaker Courtney Egan will also present their collaboration, Termite Light, while L.A. transplant Cosmo Ferguson screens The Green Sheik. Admission $6 general public, $5 students/seniors, $4 Zeitgeist members. -- Simmons

Kodaly String Quartet 8 p.m. Monday, Nov. 3 Tulane University, Dixon Hall, 895-0690 Don't get too caught up in the bliss from the New Orleans Friends of Music's season-opening presentation of the Beaux Arts Trio back on Oct. 13; the Friends are doing a quick turnaround with their second offering of the season, the Kodaly String Quartet. The group, which was established in 1966 by former students of the Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, presents a company of traditional classical offerings as well as the works of such noted Hungarian composers as namesake Zoltan Kodaly, Bela Bartok and Erno Dohnanyi. This is a quartet that American Record Guide has described as "one of the finer ensembles around (creating) superior, unforced music." This evening's program: Hayden's Op. 33, No. 1 in B minor, Mozart's K. 387 in G major and Schubert's G Major, D 887. Tickets $18 general admission, $10 students. -- Simmons

Charles Thysell: Garden Through Nov. 5 Hanson Gallery, 229 Royal St., 524-8211 Charlie Thysell, whose stylized paintings of beaming, wincing, leering, mugging, hyperventilating and clownishly more-or-less human heads have long been a staple at the Hanson Gallery, has turned over a new leaf. Actually, many new leaves, as he turns from physiognomy to biology in his new Garden series of paintings based on nature in its more domesticated aspect. Even more abstract than his buoyantly dysfunctional heads, his new subjects include fish swimming in ponds, tree-lined paths, mountains wreathed in clouds in what amounts to his own personal vision of paradise fractured "into pieces small enough for us to handle." Thysell says, "It's so difficult painting from nature. I stand in my garden looking at flowers but become distracted by a cricket in the weeds. How does one go about painting the sound of a cricket?" -- D. Eric Bookhardt