Head of the Charles, Hipster Olympics, and more events this weekend
By: Jim Martinho - Thursday, Oct 16, 2014 - 3:05pm
(Photo credit: Lorianne DiSabato/Creative Commons)
We’re getting into prime leaf-peeping season around town, so when you’re on your way to this week’s events, try to look up from your phone once in a while. Unless you were just looking at the Google image results for “leaves,” in which case carry on, because real-life trees do not feature high-density retina display.
* In 1913 a clerk in rural India, Ramanujan, sends a letter to the renowned Cambridge mathematician, G.H. Hardy, containing an extraordinary series of theorems. What ensues is a passionate seven-year collaboration — intellectually passionate, that is, and it must have been pretty hot because the brain is the largest erogenous zone, according to smart ugly people. Central Square Theater’s production of “A Disappearing Number” (opening tonight and running through November 16) weaves this story into the present-day relationship between a British math professor and her Indian husband, incorporating comedy, drama, and Indian dance and music. 10.16. 7:30p. $19.50-24.50
* Would you buy a CD called Boston Does Boston that compiles Boston-area bands covering songs by the band Boston? Probably not, because out-of-towners already think you must be into Boston (the band) as well Boston Market, and they’re both pretty awful. How about Boston-area bands covering other Boston-area bands? And it’s for a good cause — the Animal Rescue League? And after you load the CD into your iTunes, you can use it as a coaster and feel like a real adult who doesn’t have the Olympics logo in beer can rings on his coffee table? Go grab it and see six of the featured bands rock out T.T. the Bear’s at Friday’s release party. 10.17. 8p. $10
* Running this weekend and next at Hibernian Hall in Roxbury, Between the Lines: A Work in Progress is a mixed-genre artistic collaboration created by Anna Myer and Dancers in association with North American Family Institute, and featuring dancers, poets, actors, and musicians from the Boston community. It probably doesn’t feature anyone showing their index, middle, and ring fingers and telling the audience to read between the lines because although that is a clever way of flipping the bird, these people are are serious artists. They’re obviously going with the “use your other hand to slowly crank up the middle finger” trick. 10.17 to 10.19. 4:30p. $25
* The fall open studios season is coming to a close, so this weekend’s Fort Point Open Studios might be your last chance to visit a bunch of studios and galleries before it’s too cold to walk anywhere, unless you’re going to find alcohol to warm you up. More than 150 artists and craftspeople welcome you to check out their workspaces in the historic waterfront warehouses that were once home to, you know, real industry: Factories where real men made real stuff you could use every day and horrific workplace accidents were a regular occurrence and the only “art” you needed was a well-packed sack lunch, brother. 10.17 to 10.19. Various times. FREE
* KO Catering and Pies in East Boston hosts the first annual Hipster Olympics to benefit the McKay School. Games will include Polish horseshoes, Sumo wrestling, ladderball, cornhole, foosball, beer pong, fixed-gear cycling, ironic mustache twirling, and racing to deny that you are in fact a hipster. KO sells meat pies and other authentic Australian foods, so it’s kind of like a hipster Outback, except by now there’s probably a normcore foodie movement where hip young people eat at bad chain restaurants, like, ironically. 10.18. 12p. $25
* Tired of the same old horror movies you’ve been watching since you were 13 and even then they weren’t that scary and were just hoping somebody, anybody, would show their boobs before they died? All Things Horror, which hosts regular screenings of independent horror films at the Somerville Theater’s microcinema space, presents a Trilogy of Indie Terror sure to scare you into snuggling with your sweetheart, who hopefully doesn’t mind that you also got scared into peeing a little. 10.18. 5p. $10
* The annual Head of the Charles Regatta celebrates its 50th race and also its 50th year of inexplicably resisting the slogan “Ya gotta Regatta!” Break out your preppiest outfit and line up along the Charles between the Anderson and Weeks footbridges to watch crews of elite athletes/rich assholes who weren’t good at real sports compete in the world’s largest rowing competition. An estimated 400,000 spectators are expected over the weekend, and all of them have reservations are your favorite restaurant in Cambridge so don’t even try to go. 10.18 and 10.19. 8a. FREE
* Halloween falls on a Friday this year, but that’s no reason to limit the party to just one night. Nope, let’s make it the usual two weeks or so of drinking and costume parties and hiding behind literal masks instead of just the figurative masks with which we hide our true emotions and desires from any person who might want to form an honest human connection. Somerville’s SomerStreets series of open streets festivals closes down Somerville Ave. for Monster MashedUp, featuring adult/child/dog costume contests, power tool pumpkin carving, an Oktoberfest party, two stages of live music, and more. 10.19. 12p. FREE