Fenway Franks, Cocktail Competitions, and More Boston Events This Week

Jokes aside, if you didn’t get tickets to the Red Sox home opener today, the next best thing is to stuff yourself full of ballpark food until you have to wipe your brow and your sweat smells like meat. That’s a sign that you have the meat sweats. It’s a good thing. South Street Diner is offering all-you-can-eat Fenway Franks today until 10 p.m. with the purchase of one beer, which is fine because you’re not going to win any eating contests without a beverage to wash them down. If you ask nicely, they might even wrap your dog up in foil and toss it to you from 30 feet away so you can drop it and embarrass yourself in front of everyone, just like at a real game. (11 a.m. to 10 p.m., FREE, all ages)

Harvard Book Store welcomes New Yorker staff writer Malcolm Gladwell to First Parish Church in Cambridge to talk about his new-to-paperback book, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants. It’s more of Gladwell’s usual thing where he combines history, psychology, and storytelling to challenge how we feel about battles between underdogs and giants like David and Goliath. One thing that’ll never change is how awesome sling shots are, I don’t care what you say, mom. (7 p.m., $20, all ages)

You probably heard about President Obama’s recent stop for pizza at Kendall Square’s Area Four. You know who else heard about it? Sibling restaurant A4 Pizza in Somerville. You know that’s going to come up at Thanksgiving: “So, A4, when can we expect you to host a head of state?” Anyways, the Union Square outpost (always the rebellious one) cares more about cool bands and tattoos than pleasing her elders, so check out this month’s Music Trivia night and enjoy some of the same delicious pizza that Obama hand-picked after months of research on Yelp and Chowhound. (9 p.m., FREE, 21+)

In Priestess Faust Walk (2015), performance artist Wilmer Wilson IV embarks on what he terms a “debris-driven dérive,” sourcing discarded lottery tickets from the streets of Boston and weaving them into a ceremonial wreath. The performance begins at 2 p.m. in an unannounced location outside the Museum of Fine Arts, traces “an alternate map of Boston based on the loss, desire and economics of the lottery,” and culminates at 7 p.m. when Wilson bestows the wreath upon an ancient Roman sculpture from the museum’s collection. Luckily, the MFA doesn’t actually sell lottery tickets, so you won’t get stuck behind a bunch of townies buying their scratchies and Marb Reds and one of them’s probably your gambling-addict uncle Dave. Yeah, he’s a hugger. (2 p.m., FREE, all ages)

This month’s WGBH BostonTalks series (“like happy hour, but smarter”) is crunching the numbers, with discussions on sports analytics, math in art, and data with Globe baseball writer Alex Speier, TED-Ed video creator Natalya St. Clair, and RedPoint Global Inc. CTO and Co-Founder George Corugedo. Sounds cool unless you thought it was a panel discussion with the cast and crew of the CBS drama Numb3rs. See that three? It’s a number. That’s how you knew it was going to be a show about numbers. (7 p.m., $10, all ages)

The Boston Center for the Arts’ annual fundraising event, Movers & Shakers brings together Boston’s elite restaurants and caterers compete to craft a cocktail worthy of being called a work of art. Food pairings will accompany offerings from 16 local establishments, and your vote will help decide the BCA’s new signature cocktail. Having a “signature cocktail” sounds like the kind of dumbass advice for men that you’d read in GQ or whatever, but if you’re going to have one it should be something crafted by an expert bartender, instead of the vodka-Kool Aid concoction you survived on in college. (7 p.m., $35, 21+)

Quick: Who was the first woman to run the Boston Marathon? If you answered “Rose Ruiz because all women are cheaters” then not only are you incorrect, you obviously have some of your own stuff you need to work through. Or maybe you’re smart and looked at the title of this event and correctly answered “Kathrine Switzer.” See, context clues are important. Breaking Barriers: An Evening with Kathrine Switzer welcomes the trailblazer who ran the men’s-only marathon in 1967, fending off a mid-stride attack by the race director to finish in 4:20. (6 p.m., FREE, all ages)

Photo credit: Andrew Malone/Creative Commons

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