Where to ride a snow tube to an ice bar, plus more Boston events this weekend
By: Jim Martinho - Thursday, Feb 19, 2015 - 2:18pm
Between all the events rescheduled from last weekend and lots of new stuff, you have plenty of options to get out and support local artists and businesses. They’ll be extra happy to see you, and you’ll be extra happy to be there, probably because it took four hours on the T, but you made it so have some fun and forget all the times you cursed out all of humanity in the past week.
* The Cambridge-based Liars & Believers troupe partners with the Boston Circus Guild and more than 20 local artists for Talk to Strangers, a one-night-only immersive theatrical event at Oberon. Through live music, installation, video, aerial performance, dance, poetry, and more, the show invites you to interact with the strangers moving through the world with you. This is an especially important lesson for any kids whose moms made them turn off Home Alone before the end and told them that creepy-ass Old Man Marley murders Kevin with a shovel and that’s why you should never talk to strangers, not even in a church on Christmas. 2.19. 7:30p. $25-35
* The 10th annual College Comedy Festival and Beanpot Tournament unites 18 of the top college improv troupes in New England for three days of nonstop laughs at ImprovBoston. Teams take the stage in long- and short-form competition rounds and showcase performances before Sunday’s finals crown a Beanpot champ that for once isn’t B.U. You know how this is going to play out: The UMass kids will start off like “Hey, bros, let’s party! Yes, and….bro-hugs, bros!” Then MIT comes in like “Equations, amirite?” and Suffolk is all “How about that Boston Common? We’re near that, I think?” I don’t know anything about Suffolk. 2.19 to 2.22. Various times. $12-18
* In the Apollinaire Theatre Company’s production of Nicolas Billon’s Greenland, receding ice levels off Greenland’s coast have revealed that an area thought to be part of the mainland is actually a separate island. This mirrors a growing rift between the island’s discoverer and his increasingly distant family, set adrift after a catastrophic loss. The play opens Friday in Chelsea and runs through March 15, and by then we might discover some receding ice levels around here. Right now we’re looking a lot like Greenland except we don’t even get to appear disproportionately huge on your shower curtain map of the world. 2.20. 8p. $15-25
* When you’re a kid, blizzards mean getting days off from school, making snow angels, going snow tubing, and probably losing a mitten. Now that you’re an adult blizzards mean fighting traffic or the T to get to work, shoveling your car out, generally hating life, and probably losing a mitten. Let’s go back to acting like kids — kids who can get drunk — at the Lawn on D Slope Fest, a three-day winter festival featuring a 70-foot-long snow-tubing run on Saturday and Sunday (tubes will be provided), downhill winter sport exhibitions, hot Latin dancing, and a custom-designed bar carved out of ice. The only thing missing is your mom wiping the boogers off your face, but you’re a grown man now. You have a beard to catch those boogers. 2.20 (6p), 2.21 to 2.22 (11a). FREE
* Another thing that was better when I was a kid? Video games. You could hit a Dream Machine and find the coolest kid in school racking up tickets in sweet Starter jacket, surrounded by bedazzled and be-scrunchied lady friends. A far cry from today’s doughy neckbearded manchild breathlessly screaming IT’S ABOUT ETHICS IN GAMING JOURNALISM!!!!!!111 into a Cheeto-encrusted Xbox Live microphone. Aeronaut Brewing Company brings the good times back with Saturday’s Bit Fest 2: Electronic Boogaloo, a pop-up arcade and old-school video game festival with tournaments, trivia, rad retro vendors, and more. The Contra code does not get you unlimited beers. 2.21. 12p. FREE
* When you eat food, it goes in your belly. When you laugh, it comes from your belly. Have you ever laughed when you were hungry? I know I haven’t. That’s why plying comedy audiences with food is even more brilliant than the tried-and-true two-drink minimum. Hosted by You’re the Expert’s Chris Duffy and comedian Kevin Seefried, Sunday night’s Taste Test Comedy pairs sketch and standup from some of Boston’s funniest comedy people with small bites from Somerville’s A4 and Union Square Donuts. If you’re not laughing, you didn’t eat enough. Or maybe you’re dead inside? That’s probably it, actually.2.22. 7:30p. $12
* The Sinclair in Harvard Square hosts its first annual Enchantment Under the Sea Prom Night to benefit ZUMIX music programming for kids. Tell me you don’t have “Under the Sea” stuck in your head right now after reading those words. Man, you really are dead inside. Dust off your aquatic-inspired formal wear (for girls, seashell bras; for guys, just regular suits with like a seaweed pocket square or something), enjoy specialty drinks from Bulleit and Sixpoint, and dance to the tunes from LoVeSeXy, Boston’s only Prince tribute band. 2.22. 8p. $15