Old Town's going old school in a few weeks when the Old Town General Store gets up and running. Owner/operator Maria Van Atta will soon launch her debut solo enterprise next to Preuss Pets, near the corner of Grand River Avenue and Cedar Street.

Nazis are easy narrative villains — the systematic slaughter of 11 million people really puts them in their own class of evil. Consequently, in literature and film, it's a bold move to depict them as anything less than cold-blooded monsters.

The "gateway to East Lansing" is getting a little more welcoming this week with the opening of Jonna's 2 Go, the western-most location for a series of southeast Michigan-based convenience stores.

Last week, the Lansing Board of Education approved a five-year teachers' contract that will get the Lansing School District about $7 million closer to closing the next school year's projected $9 million deficit. On the chopping block: 87 teaching positions, including 23 professionally certified — or "endorsed" — elementary school art, music and physical education teachers.

Spring is off to a relatively chilly start, but in Williamston business is in full bloom. Three new businesses celebrated grand openings last week, while a fourth moved into a space nearly six times the size of its previous location.

The brutal 1998 murder of Matthew Wayne Shepard in Laramie, Wyo., is one of the country's most high-profile hate crimes, and is considered a watershed for the gay rights movement. In 2000, "The Laramie Project" was produced, a play that was composed entirely of interviews with a cross-section of the community.

Next week, the lights go down for the East Lansing Film Society Film Series' final month of programming before taking the summer off. So long, Werner Herzog; hey there, Iron Man — gotta give those blockbusters room to breathe.

In a perfect world, a visionary filmmaker such as Sam Raimi could make a prequel to "The Wizard of Oz" without having it compared to its 1939 predecessor, inarguably one of the greatest motion pictures ever made. Sure, we're in the middle of a spate of subpar big screen adaptations and "re-imaginings" of classic children's stories, but it's hardly fair to make Raimi pay for the sins of his peers. But films aren't made in a vacuum; every allusion has its price.

Last weekend, the festively named Arty Party Studio celebrated its grand opening in Okemos, and co-owner/operator Susan Brewster said the response was overwhelming — about 200 folks turned out, mostly friends and members of the community.

Somewhere between a Penthouse Forum story and a Swiftian journal entry (Taylor, not Jonathan) lies “My First Time,” a staged reading of stories culled from the aptly named website, MyFirstTime.com.