Cooking Talks, Tuba Concerts, and More Thanksgiving Week Events in Boston

Is your idea of modern cuisine the latest meat-cheese-tortilla monstrosity from Taco Bell? Did you think foam was just something you consume in a bad pour of draft beer? Harvard’s Science and Cooking lecture series welcomes Nathan Myhrvold, former Microsoft chief technology officer and the author of “Modernist Cuisine,” a 2,438-page, 52-pound guide to contemporary cooking. The lecture is free and first-come, first-served, and you can also work up an appetite for Thanksgiving at the Museum of Science’s Photography of Modernist Cuisine exhibit of hyper-magnified images from the book. (7 p.m., FREE, all ages)

Just like so many of you will return to your hometowns on one of the biggest drinking night’s of the year — because you’ll need the social lubricant to endure all those awkward interactions with people from your high school — ‘90s/’00s Boston rock royalty The Sheila Divine are back at The Sinclair to headline a bill with Mean Creek, The Daily Pravda, and The Life Electric. Just remember that the next day is the biggest eating day of the year, and you want your gastrointestinal system in tip-top shape. I’ll be sticking to beer. (7 p.m., $15, 18+)

In “Vagina Monologues” author Eve Ensler’s “O.P.C.” at American Repertory Theater, a dumpster-diving freegan is doing just fine squatting in an abandoned apartment until her mother, a candidate running for the Senate, tries to make her toe the party line. It’s fitting that the play premieres in Boston, home of the world’s biggest freegan holiday, Allston Christmas. Most of us draw the line at eating trash, because earlier this year a group of Tufts students failed to reach their Kickstarter goal to open a free restaurant serving food from dumpsters. Maybe they should have promised that all the food had only touched the dumpster for less than five seconds because the five-second rule is scientific fact. The play opens Friday and runs through January 4. (7:30 p.m., $25+, all ages)

America’s oldest performing arts organization, next year the Handel and Haydn Society will celebrate the 200th anniversary of its founding, and 200 years of the Haydn fans quietly seething about his name being second. This weekend H+H brings its annual performance of Handel’s “Messiah” to Symphony Hall, which you might not think you know, but you do. Specifically its famous “Hallelujah Chorus” which has marked moments of euphoria in everything from “Ren and Stimpy” to “Dumb and Dumber” to probably lots of other stuff that wasn’t my favorite thing when I was 11. (7:30 p.m. Friday, 3 p.m. Saturday/Sunday, $25-94, all ages)

Or maybe instead of a full orchestra and chorus you’d prefer 150 tubas. The 25th annual Boston Tuba Christmas Concert takes to Faneuil Hall to play all of your holiday favorites. You might think it’s a cool idea to try to throw Dunkin’ Donuts Munchkins into the instruments, but that’s only appropriate when you’re at a college football game and the rival marching band is starting to seem a little too proud of themselves for playing Pharrell covers as if people are actually there to see them and not, you know, the football game. Bandies are the worst. Tubas are cool, though. (2 p.m., FREE, all ages)

This is it. This is the year you finally start your holiday shopping early so you don’t end up wandering the mall on December 23rd with the rest of the dead-eyed procrastinators trying to decide on which Yankee Candle scent your mom will hate the least. But getting a head start doesn’t mean you have to fight through the Black Friday crowds; instead, check out the Small Business Saturday/Sunday deals in your community, or find the perfect gift from local businesses and crafters at the Local is for Lovers Market at Somerville’s Center for Arts at the Armory. (10 a.m., FREE, all ages)

Every Year on World AIDS day, Medicine Wheel Productions has held an art installation and vigil to provide a space to remember, reflect, and find one’s place in the AIDS crisis. The installation also hosts performances from artists of various disciplines and offerings from spiritual leaders from all traditions on the hour every hour for the twenty four hours that it runs. This year’s program begins Sunday at 11 p.m. on Pleasure Bay with a lantern procession into Fort Independence. (11 p.m., FREE, all ages)

Photo credit: Peter Lee/Creative Commons

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This article was provided by our content partner, The Boston Calendar.