Presented by QC Pride and numerous other area organizations, businesses, and venues, more than a half-dozen inclusive events are scheduled in celebration of 2019 Quad Cities Unity Pride Week, which, from June 22 through 29, will boast nine days of activities and entertainment including a parade, a film screening, a pageant, a pub crawl, and, on June 28 and 29, a festival in downtown Davenport.

Following a two-year hiatus for the popular summertime event, the Quad City Air Show roars back above and throughout the Davenport Municipal Airport on June 29 and 30, the exhilarating aerial celebration featuring airborne performances, aerobatic teams, helicopters, squadrons, information booths, vendors, and more.

From June 28 through August 16, works by a pair of familiar faces from St. Ambrose University's art department will be on display at the Quad City Arts Center, with the Rock Island venue showcasing paintings by the school's gallery director and university curator Christopher Reno, and digital collages by Associate Professor of Art Renee Meyer Ernst.

Described by the San Diego Reader as “a true Motown-glam show-stopper” and with Consequence of Sound stating that “his vocals and personality go well with just about everything,” Diane Coffee – the stage moniker of California-based musician and actor Shaun Fleming – headlines a Moeller Nights concert on June 28, bringing his teasing pop sensibility and singular style to local audiences in support of the artist's new album Internet Arms.

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I read an article this past weekend devoted to our current, collective state of franchise fatigue, with the disappointing domestic box office for Godzilla: King of the Monsters, The Secret Life of Pets 2, and Dark Phoenix cited as proof that audiences are getting tired of seeing the same ol' things in newfangled packaging. What that “Are franchises finally over?!” piece failed to suggest, though, was that maybe these particular sequels weren't making major bank because they're just not good. And the third sequel to 1997's Men in Black might be the not-good-est of them all – an exhaustingly manic and just-plain-exhausting reboot to a series that should have ended with 2012's surprisingly clever Men in Black 3. The only real surprise here is that cleverness is in such depressingly slim supply.

The Mississippi Bend Players' third season opened on Friday with Neil Simon's Biloxi Blues, a tribute to our military veterans and all the brave men and women who currently serve this great country. This second installment in Simon's semi-autobiographical comedic trilogy – one that begins with Brighton Beach Memoirs and concludes with Broadway Bound – had me rifling through my purse to find a tissue to dry my eyes, given that they were watering so much from laughter. Director and St. Ambrose University theatre professor Cory Johnson, who also gave us MBP's Brighton Beach in 2017, delivered a hilarious show that was not only extremely funny, but touched on some very serious subject matter.

A literary classic becomes a moving and tune-filled stage entertainment at the Black Box Theatre June 20 through 30, when the Moline venue treats audiences to the beloved characters and timeless charm of Little Women: The Musical, the Tony Award-nominated adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's novel that the Chicago Reader called “an absolute delight” and Broadway.com deemed “a chamber-size musical [that] pulses with a generous affection for its source material.”