The other reason for traffic problems is the N.C. State Fair which ends on Sunday night. Today the Wake County Public Schools have an early release day, so there should be many students invading the fairgrounds. Tomorrow is can day, where entry is free for those with 4 cans of food for the needy. The remaining music acts are Julianne Hough, Anoop Desai, Jeremy Camp and Tenth Avenue North, Blake Shelton, and Eric Church.

The State Fair isn’t the only other draw for tens of thousands of people. Raleigh Wide Open begins Friday, and celebrates the grand opening of Raleigh’s new City Plaza. Delbert McClinton headlines the main stage of music, however more interesting, perhaps, is the Cherry Bounce stage, which is the culmination of a week-long local music series downtown. The series aims to get exposure for a mostly unheard of list of bands. Be sure to stop by the WTVD studios on Saturday afternoon for your chance to get on Wheel of Fortune.

The big stand along music event occurring this week is Queensryche at the Lincoln Theatre, tonight. However in the Greensboro Coliseum, rock gods AC/DC will play Sunday night. INto industrial? KMFDM is at the Cradle Monday night.

There is plenty of theater for the people this week, too. The Picasso Ballet performance by the Carolina Ballet continues at the Fletcher Opera Theater while NC Theater’s West Side Story production runs at Memorial Auditorium. Tonight David Copperfield will be at the DPAC, while the Carolina Crown II (wrestling theater) will take place at the RBC Center on Saturday night. NCSU alumnus, John Reep, the “Hemi guy” plays at Charlie Goodnights this weekend.

If all of that excitement isn’t enough, be sure to swing by the Raleigh Convention Center for the Junior League’s Shopping SPREE!, a seriously awesome event when shopping for things women like.

For more info on these events, check out the gogoraleigh Do-It Calendar. That’s a heck of a week! I can’t wait to get out there and DO IT!

Presale ticket sales start on Thursday, October 15 at 10am through midnight the following night. General public ticket sales begin Saturday (10/17). Time is still TBA, but likely 10am.

Friday Show

Saturday Show

How much would you pay for a calendar that only features the good stuff? But wait, there’s more! How about a calendar that updates itself when impressive events get scheduled? Fifty dollars? A hundred dollars? Uh-uh! Oh, There’s more, a lot more! How much would you pay for a calendar that not only contains the right events, but can easily integrate into your very own calendar system? Two hundred dollars? Think again!

Introducing the gogoraleigh Gogo Do-it Calendar System. With just a few steps, planning nirvana is at your fingertips, complements of gogoraleigh. Oh, did I mention that it is free?

OK, enough Ronco sales pitch. The big feature is finally here! Hopefully your life in the Triangle just became a nonstop stream of fun. Powered by Google Calendar, the Gogo Do-it Calendar System allows users a multitude of ways to integrate the best events in the Triangle into their own calendar systems. Here are just a few ways:

Basic

While viewing any page at gogoraleigh, click the Gogo Do-it tab in the right sidebar and a list of upcoming events will expand. Each of the items links to more information such as event time, location, ticket information, and more.

Simple

To see more than just a list of events, go to the Gogo Do-it calendar site at Google Calendar. A link to this will live in both the gogoraleigh Calendar page (tab at the top of this page) and in the expanded Gogo Do-it sidebar section. Google Calendar’s standard views are powerful: Week, Month, and Agenda (list). Navigate to a different week or month by using the arrows or the calendar layout in the top left corner. Click on an event, and you’ll see expanded information such as time, location, and a URL linking to more information.

Full Google Calendar Integration

Google Calendar is the easiest calendar system for viewing in the business. Much like World Book’s old human anatomy overlays, Google displays each selected calendar as an overlaid transparency. This allows one to subscribe to and easily toggle calendars they infrequently need as well as their core calendars. To get the best experience, get a Google account and add the gogoraleigh Gogo Do-it Calendar to your own Google Calendar. The best way to do this is to go to the Gogo Do-it Calendar page at Google (click Gogo Do-it in the sidebar and click “View Complete Calendar”). Next and click the “+Calendar” icon in the bottom right corner of the screen. The “gogoraleigh” will then appear in your “Other Calendars” list where you can customize its color.

Google Calendar users can add specific events to their personal calendars easily. While viewing the Google Calendar, click on an event, then click on “Copy To My Calendar”. This will add the event to your personal Google Calendar whether or not you’ve added the Gogo Do-it Calendar to your Other Calendars list.

A bonus feature will appear soon. As new events are announced on gogoraleigh, a button will appear so one can easily add the event to their personal Google Calendar. For example, here is a button for adding Thursday night’s Coldpay/Elbow concert to a personal Google Calendar

iPhone Integration: There are many ways to integrate the gogoraleigh calendar into the iPhone. The simplest is for users who prefer the web version of Google Calendar. Once the Gogo Do-it calendar is in your “Other Calendars” list on Google Calendar, you can use it on the iPhone. Simply navigate in Safari to calendar.google.com. At the bottom of the page, click “Settings”, and make sure “gogoraleigh” is checked. On the iPhone Google Calendar offers Day and Month views. Unfortunately it does not offer link recognition in an event’s Description section. Copy and Paste is necessary to to see more. Thankfully, though, the map function for each event links to the iPhone’s Google Map native app.

iPhone, Blackberry, Palm, Outlook, iCal

Another way to integrate the gogoraleigh Gogo Do-it Calendar into your iPhone’s calendar is to subscribe to the calendar via Outlook or iCal. After syncing your portable device, the latest Gogo Do-it events will appear. The iPhone will show gogoraleigh as a subcalendar, which can be displayed on its own or included in the “All Calendars” view.

• Subscribe via iCal
• Subscribe via XML

No doubt, this is a big, big undertaking for gogoraleigh. Peruse the calendar and you’ll see that there are many, many events entered. Getting to the calendar is easy from this website, however it can be even easier if you set it as a bookmark in your browser.

The possibilities with the system and I hope you enjoy having it as a resource to finding fun in the Triangle.

The Goodnight’s Free For All shows will be held one day each month beginning in July. The dates and show headliners are as follows:

• Sunday, July 12 – John Kirby
• Wednesday, Aug. 19 – Open Mic All-Stars
• Sunday, Sept. 20 – Greg Warren
• Sunday, Oct. 25 – Brad Reeder
• Sunday, Nov. 29 – Ronnie Bullard
• Sunday, Dec. 20 – Brian Shirley

Brad Reeder, owner of Goodnight’s Comedy Club, said he hopes the free shows will help lift morale in the community when there is an abundance of bad news about the economy.

“Laughter is the best medicine, and everyone deserves a chance to leave the negative news behind and enjoy themselves for a night,” Reeder said.

Goodnight’s Free For All tickets are now available, and can be reserved by calling the box office at (919) 828-5233 or visiting www.goodnightscomedy.com. Free For All tickets are available on a first-come, first-serve basis, with a limit of four tickets per order.

While these crimes were technically committed, Wake County D.A. Colon Willoughby questions how serious the crime is. In fact one of the commenters at nopromise, Chad, suggested that the monster be the mascot for the DOT. Not a bad idea!

• June 11-13 – Kevin Pollack
• June 18-21 – Sinbad
• July 2-5 – Kevin Hart
• July 16-19 – Greg Giraldo
• August 13-16 – John Pinette
• August 20-23, 27-30 – Tim Wilson

This week, Ben Bailey (star of Cash Cab on Discovery Channel) will be performing.