Calendar for the week

thursday
july 18
Art Hour Concerts: Meza Fine Arts (275 Giralda Ave., Coral Gables), a gallery devoted to works by Latin American and local and national American artists, becomes a music venue six nights a week, with regular weeknight concerts and special Saturday dinner concerts. Every Thursday singer Malena Burke (with bandleader Freddy Bozzo) leads a descarga (Latin jam session). Singer-songwriter Candi Sosa performs Latin folk and son selections every Friday (including the first Friday of the month gallery openings). This Saturday Meza hosts an intimate evening with Cuban torch singer Maggie Carles (tickets cost $30). Every Monday gallerygoers get the blues with Sonia Corp and Jorge Luis Sosa. The gallery dips into Latin and Caribbean folklore with different performance troupes every Tuesday, and every Wednesday Marlene Urbay hosts an evening of chamber music with featured artists. Admission is $15. Shows begin at 6:00. Call 461-2723. (GC)

Sex Life of the Hibiscus: Oh, those naughty plants! Anyone who has seen Pink Floyd's The Wall knows that our fine petaled friends can get down and dirty. But seriously, just where would plants be without pollination and honey bees? After all, it is kinda hard to mate when one is immobile. Former International Hibiscus Society president Jason B. Schwartzbaugh discusses the propagation of these plants at the Master Garderners meeting at 9:30 a.m. at Enchanted Forest Park (1725 NE 135th St., North Miami). Admission is free. Call 895-1119. (GC)

friday
july 19
Buck-O-Nine: Seven-man, San Diego-based skasters Buck-O-Nine boast a sound that melds pop, reggae, punk, jazz, and new wave, with kicking vocals and a bad-ass horn section. Their second album, Barfly (on Taang! Records), demonstrates the band's ability to quick-change tempos (a la Mighty Mighty Bosstones) in an easy integration of smooth jazziness and aggressive punk. Buck-O-Nine goes buck-wild tonight at the Edge (200 W. Broward Blvd., Fort Lauderdale) with Tampa band the Rug Cutters. Admission is six bucks. Doors open at 8:00. Call 954-525-9333.(GC)

saturday
july 20
Meat Loaf: Somewhere in a box of old magazines, tear sheets, and papers, I have a list that a friend and I compiled about five or six years ago that included ten reasons why Meat Loaf's insanely popular 1977 release Bat Out of Hell is the second-worst rock album of all time. (The worst? The soundtrack to the 1978 debacle Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. No contest.) And since the former Marvin Lee Aday is performing tonight at the Coral Sky Amphitheatre (601 Sansbury's Way, West Palm Beach), I tried to find that list, only to come up empty-handed. Since my mind isn't what it used to be, I can't remember every entry, but I do recall something about the album's show-tune-ish main songs coming from a Peter Pan-based musical called Never Land (written by Bat composer Jim Steinway, a way-off-Broadway hack), the shameless sexism of "Paradise by the Dashboard Light," and the bombastic production of Todd Rundgren. Anyway, the list is lost, and Meat Loaf is still around -- and popular as hell, too. Tickets for the concert range from $13 to $33. Call 407-795-8883 for more information. (JF)

I Vitelloni/Diary of a Country Priest: Rootlessness and restlessness are Federico Fellini's thematic forte, and in I Vitelloni, his 1953 portrait of youth in a small town in Italy, the depiction is right on target. Beautifully photographed (of course), the film follows the adventures of five young men, one of whom is a Romeo who won't settle down even after marriage. I Vitelloni screens today at noon (in Italian with English subtitles) at the Alliance Cinema (927 Lincoln Rd., Miami Beach) and tonight at 7:30 at the B.A.R. Space (1659 Lenox Ave., Miami Beach) as part of Cinema Vortex. Tomorrow at the Alliance at noon, the Vortex shows Diary of a Country Priest (1951), French director Robert Bresson's intimate expression of his Catholic faith, which captures the struggle for grace and the tribulations of the soul of a young parish priest in rural France. The film's opening is slow, but the poignant denouement is worth the wait (in French with English subtitles). Admission to each film is four dollars. (After the lights go up, amble next door to buy the novel on which the film is based.) Call 531-8504. (GC)

Beast and Baker Rock the Road Again: Those wacky cowboys of the airwaves host yet another live music marathon tonight at Tobacco Road (626 S. Miami Ave.). Almost twenty local acts -- including Iko-Iko, Omar Stang, the Holy Terrors, Jolynn Daniel and the Gray Area, Raw B Jae and the Liquid Funk, Al's Not Well, Manchild, the Goods, Nicole Miranda, Jeff Rollason, and Rat Bastard -- perform on three stages to celebrate the release of Iko-Iko's latest disc, Protected by Voodoo. The show kicks off at 8:00. Admission is eight dollars. Call 374-1198. (GC)

Twilight Music Series: Miami Beach's Lincoln Road Partnership presents a series of evening concerts on the third Saturday of every month, at the stage at Michigan Avenue and Lincoln Road. Tonight's series opener features the Billy Ross Quartet; additional performances include Caribbean steel-pan jazz master Othello Molineaux, jazzster Arthur Barron and his Afro-Blue Band, violinist Nicole Yarling and her R&B group the Weld, gospel vocalist Maryel Epps, the Turk Mauro/Eric Allison Jazz Sextet featuring trumpeter Pete Minger, and Afro-Cuban rocker Nil Lara. Admission is free. All performances begin at 7:30. Call 531-3442. (GC)