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Starting this weekend, the Arts Council for Long Beach celebrates National Arts and Humanities month with GLOBAL, a menu of nearly 300 events that is a veritable feast for the senses.

Whether your taste is for music, comedy, theatre, architecture, cultural exploration, or even sound art, you can find something to snack on. The list of events below gives you just a small idea of what's on the menu (the full list is online at www.GlobalLB.com).

A bit of everything can be found at Bixby Knolls First Fridays, a monthly event where participating businesses unite to promote local artists and musicians through extended operating hours to showcase performances, exhibits and special activities …all of them within walking distance of each other along Atlantic Avenue.

Feeling traditional? Then don't miss Long Beach Shakespeare Company's pitch-perfect production of Much Ado About Nothing and its plot full of matchmaking and rumor-mongering, where things get serious as death and as silly as all get-out.

Like your Shakespeare modern? Then get over to the Garage Theatre and dig their Richard III. Their Dick is a DJ in this postmodern rendering with a dark comedic twist.

Like your modern ultra-modern? Then you must experience SoundWalk 2009. On Saturday from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m., for the sixth year in a row, four square blocks of the East Village Arts District will be transformed into a one-night-only indoor/outdoor gallery complex of sound installations.

If you're looking for arts in the part of your day before SoundWalk, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. the Aquarium of the Pacific is hosting Southeast Asia Day. For five years running, the Aquarium has staged this festival featuring music, dance, crafts demonstrations, and food from Burmese, Cambodian, Laotian, Thai, and Vietnamese cultures.

Green Port Fest 2009 gives you the perfect chance to see one of the world’s largest ports at work. Take a rail or boat tour through and around the port, drive a virtual train, see demonstrations of the technology, and more. There's also children's playgrounds offering crafts, play equipment, and a touch tank full of sea life.

From about noon 'til 8 p.m. on Saturday at A HREF="http://www.icclb.org/home.html" target=blank>Immanuel Center for Conscious Living, you can help sustain non-profit arts education by attending h'ARTbeats in Harmony, a concert-and-more with jazz, big-band, singer/songwriter, poetry, a drum circle, live art-making, fire-dancing, a children's art project, and a silent auction for musical instruments, art, and more.

Don’t miss the Mid-City Studio Tour, where nearly 20 art studios north of Pacific Coast Highway between the 710 and the 605 are opened up 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. for you to meet the artists and get a glimpse at the environments in which they live and produce artwork. Bicycle tours are encouraged, with details on their website.

For those of us who love pop culture and graphic arts, don’t miss the First Annual Long Beach Comic Con, October 2-4 at the Long Beach Convention Center. The LBCC is bringing amazing talent like Stan Lee, Seth Green, Bloom County’s Berkeley Breathed, and many more.

Cabaret, you say? Then your destination on Friday or Sunday may lie at Bay Shore Community Church Concert Hall, where you can take in Dressed in Black: "Two singers, seven languages, a night of comedy and music for all, from Elvis to Elvish."

And as if that weren’t enough, visit the Free-for-All Museum Days Oct. 3-4 at both the Museum of Latin American Art (MoLAA) and the < HREF="http://www.csulb.edu/uam" target=blank>University Art Museum (UAM). During these dates, while attending UAM or MoLAA for free, you can pick up a coupon for free admission to the Aquarium of the Pacific.

For all of these and much more, visit GLOBAL online at www.GlobalLB.com.

The GLOBAL online calendar features nearly 300 event listings plus itineraries ranging from “Family Friendly” to “Date Night” to help you find your favorites.

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