THINGS TO DO

WEDNESDAY

“Andrew Bird: Fever Year”

Trylon Microcinema

3258 Minnehaha Ave.,
Minneapolis

7 p.m.

$8

We were hoping this was a National Geographic docu-drama about an ornithologist stopping at nothing to go to the center of the Amazon rainforest to find the single bird responsible for the avian flu, but a Sound Unseen festival documentary about acclaimed musician and Midwest darling Andrew Bird will have to do. “Fever Year” follows the highly technical multi-instrumentalist as he loops, twangs and whistles his way through a grueling, year-long tour schedule. It’s also an ace way to brush up on your Bird songs before he comes to the State Theater for a show next Monday. Featuring interviews with eye-candy indie queen St. Vincent and locally grown phenom Martin Dosh, “Fever Year” is tonight’s choice event where you can unwind, cozy up inside the Trylon and listen to homespun ditties while bitter, hump-day winter winds blow outside.

THURSDAY

KnownUnKnowns

The Soap Factory

514 Second St. SE, Minneapolis

Daily until Dec. 21

Free

Granted, putzing around a gallery after the date of an exhibition’s opening reception isn’t exactly the wine-and-cheese soirees we all like to find ourselves in while seeing and being scene, but at least with this Soap Factory show you’ll stay up on the local art scene with this full sampling platter of artists in all stages of their careers. You might have missed the first night and your opportunity to schmooze with Minneapolis’ finest art scene socialites over Franzia and hors d’oeuvres, but what’s to stop you from bringing your own party in a purse stocked with a couple Ziploc bags of toothpicks and cocktail weenies?

FRIDAY

Martin Dosh with Marijuana Deathsquads

Cedar Cultural Center

416 S. Cedar Ave, Minneapolis

Doors open at 7 p.m., show at 8 p.m.

$10 in advance, $12 at the door

You’ve finished the school week, didn’t forget to put a Bounce sheet in the dryer and have already called Grandpa for his birthday. It’s Friday night, and you’re ready to rage. With sparkling whites and vibrant hues, those clean clothes are ready to be taken out for a spin. No need to shlep over to First Avenue for Bassgasm 2009. Snag a bus to the Cedar for this concert that’ll have multi-instrumentalist Martin Dosh with Marijuana Deathsquads rolling this fatty of a concert that’ll be hot, heavy and include some mad chronic.

CULTURE TO CONSUME

Subscribe to this: Brain Pickings

Oft-unflappable readers got their panties in a twist when The New York Times went all boom-shaka-laka last Sunday on bits-and-pieces web entity “Brain Pickings” and its charming creator Maria Popova. Popova is the sole curator of her project, which simply aggregates intellectual fodder in bit-sized chunks for the Internet surfer, Facebooker, email-newsletter reader and/or tweeter. Though the site is nothing revelatory, it nonetheless speaks of Popova’s love for that “getting lost in a library” feeling and certainly has a few items in its grab bag of tricks to send you on a curiosity kick that somehow only ends three hours and 23 Wikipedia pages later.

Listen to this: “Oppa Spacejam style” by jhlodin

In some fortuituous stroke of luck, Soundcloud user jhlodin discovered that PSY’s “Gangnam Style” and Quad City DJ’s “Space Jam” share near-identical key and beats-per-minute. Of course, he had no choice but to simply combine them, playing both simultaneously for their entirety, without any of the finesse of a DJ. One listen and you’ll feel like someone has either lit a fireworks fuse routing to your brain through your ear canals or that Mr. T has grabbed your little coconut and crushed it like a prop pool ball. Both catchy and chaotic, it combines two flamboyant pop music phenomena in a way that only the wasteland of the internet can.

Read this: “Today’s Assignment” by Louis Menand, The New Yorker

Even if a tidal wave of finals isn’t throwing itself at the mediocre sand castle you’ve built and come to call your life, Menand’s article — touching on French president François Hollande’s call to abolish homework in all of France — will resonate with you as deeply as the last essay exam that’s haunted your dreams for years. Citing inequality of study assistance between privileged and under-privileged students, Hollande asserts homework hinders rather than helps. While staring off into the distance with a Jack Torrance-like soulless depravity, a touch of drool falling from your lip and plip-plip-plipping onto your open notes, you’ll think “Yeah? Why NOT no homework?”