Friday
K.N.E.W Youth Poetry Slam Finals
In the Heart of the Beast Theatre, 1500 E. Lake St., Minneapolis
7 p.m.
$3 for youth; $5 for adults
While most high schoolers are hanging out at shopping malls and playing Xbox, there’s a handful of Minnesota youth that are busy writing and performing poetry. Friday marks the finals of the K.N.E.W Youth Poetry Slam, in which a group of young poets will be selected to represent Minnesota at the national competition, Brave New Voices. Judges are volunteers from the audience, so make sure to come if you feel like crushing some high schoolers’ dreams.
Saturday
KaBaam!!, Splendid Things, Ferrari McSpeedy and The Mess
HUGE Improv Theater
3037 S. Lyndale Ave., Minneapolis
8 p.m.
$10
Every night of the week, HUGE, a nonprofit theater in Uptown, puts on a few hours’ worth of improvisational comedy shows. On Saturdays, 10 bucks will get you in all night, a total of four-and-a-half hours. The first show, KaBlam!!, is super-hero themed, so come armed with your best suggestions for strange superpowers and villains. If things get awkward, as they are wont to do at improv shows, you can at least hit up their reasonably priced bar and drink until it’s funny.
Sunday
Cracked Walnut Literary Reading
The Coffee Grounds
1579 Hamline Ave., St. Paul
6:30 p.m.
Free
Whether Easter Sunday means brunch with the family or sleeping in and watching Netflix, you’ll probably be getting a little antsy come six o’clock. Head over to Midway for an installment of Cracked Walnut, a month-long literary festival happening in different coffee shops throughout the Twin Cities. Sunday’s event will feature local novelist Keith Hollihan and poets Chasity Gunn and Joanne Esser. If you’re left feeling inspired, perform in the Barbaric Yawp open mic immediately following the event.
CULTURE TO CONSUME
Back this: “Veronica Mars” movie Kickstarter
It was a sad day when “Veronica Mars” was canceled, not only because it was a good show or because it had one of the few female protagonists on TV, but because it was replaced by a show about the Pussycat Dolls. Now, a campaign to fund a “Veronica Mars” movie has become one of the biggest Kickstarter campaigns of all time. The sweet spot looks to be $35, at which you can get a T-shirt, a digital copy of the film and the script. Most of the biggest and best rewards were swooped up within hours of the launch, but if you hurry and have $400 to drop, you might still be able to get Kristen Bell to follow you on Twitter.
Listen to this: “Turn Around” by the Postal Service
Ten years ago next week, Death Cab for Cutie’s lead singer and an electronic music producer teamed up and put out a record under the name Postal Service. To commemorate the anniversary, the group has put out a few new songs, including last week’s “Turn Around.” In typical Postal Service fashion, the song puts catchy indie-pop melodies over danceable electronic beats. Hearing Ben Gibbard croon “You gotta know that this will turn around” over and over again is a sure-fire cure for any bad day.
Follow this: @pentametron
You probably thought that you’d never hear iambic pentameter — Shakespeare’s preferred poetic form — outside of an English class. Turns out, people accidently use it all the time. Pentametron is an automated Twitter account that finds tweets that fit the poetic form and retweets them in rhyming pairs. The couplets aren’t screened for coherency, leading to bits of wisdom like “Bon Iver will forever be a god / keep calm and walk a puppy on the quad” and “That Dunkin Donuts really hit the spot / enjoying ‘Frankenstein’ in English #not.”
