Sports, music, Oktoberfest Parties don't get much bigger than the one Cincinnati's throwing this weekend! Events • Weekend schedule • 20/20 arts festival • Oktoberfest Zinzinnati • Ohio Classic and Jamboree • Bengals coverage • Reds coverage Around Downtown • What's new • Places to eat Getting around • Downtown map (PDF) • Driving directions • Current traffic conditions • Latest weather reports Parking: Park for $1 for the first two hours in one of four downtown garages: Fountain Square North, Gramercy, The Westin, and Fifth and Race. (Just look for the $1 Park signs.) More Big Weekend coverage

Fulks and his band are coming to town, with opener Big Sandy and the Fly-Rite Boys, for a 8:30 p.m. show today at the Southgate House, 24 E. Third St., Newport. $15, 18 and older. (513) 779-9462; www.southgatehouse.com.

--C.E. Hanifin

FYI

Artist of the Year: Gramophone magazine's Artist of the Year winner will be announced Oct. 1, editor James Jolly reports. Paavo Jarvi is a nominee.

Jarvi, who opens his fourth season with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra on Friday, will have his sixth Telarc recording released Sept. 28. The album pairs Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring and Carl Nielsen's Symphony No. 5. The idea of the unusual pairing, says Jarvi, is to "create an interesting symbiosis." The album will be released in both regular CD and super audio formats. Information: www.telarc.com.

--Janelle Gelfand

Baritone sub: Raimo Laukka, scheduled to sing in opening concerts of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra on Friday and Saturday, has canceled his appearance due to illness, the symphony reports. Instead, Finnish baritone Jaakko Kortekangas will make his area debut in the Finnish masterpiece Kullervo by Jean Sibelius. Tickets: (513) 381-3300 or www.cincinnatisymphony.org.

--Janelle Gelfand

COUNTDOWN

Theatre kickoff: More than 20 area theaters will raise the curtain on the 2004-05 season in the annual Curtain Up! party starting at 5:30 p.m. Monday at Playhouse in the Park in Eden Park (513-325-3720). Pick up information on shows, nosh and schmooze with the stage crowd. There will be raffles for free tickets and everybody who's there will receive free tickets to Ensemble Theatre's staged reading of the musical River of Freedom starting at 8 p.m. at ETC, 1127 Vine St., Over-the-Rhine, (513) 421-3555.

--Jackie Demaline

MOVIES OPENING FRIDAY

Gold Diggers

Mean Creek

She Hate Me

COMING FRIDAY IN WEEKEND

Roll out the barrel: Weekend steers you through the Oktoberfest Zinzinnati crowd of half a million people with a list of entertainers, a roundup of the food vendors and a map of the main stages.