St. Paddy’s Parties, Science on Screen, and More Events in Boston This Week

The Coolidge Corner Theatre and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation present a national evening of Science on Screen, with 22 independent cinemas across the country taking part in the Coolidge’s monthly film and lecture series. I know, you’re thinking: “If I wanted to see a movie about science, I’d go back to eighth grade when my Earth Science teacher threw on an episode of NOVA every time he showed up hungover and wanted to sit in the dark.” It’s cool, though, the films themselves aren’t all that educational — tonight’s program features the Cary Grant dark comedy Arsenic and Old Lace, and then Deborah Blum, Pulitzer-winning author of The Poisoner’s Handbook, will drop some poisonous knowledge on you. Then you’ll point at her and sing ”That girl is poisoonnnnnn!” and she’ll laugh like she doesn’t get that all the time. (7 p.m., $9-11, all ages)

“St. Paddy’s Day is basic. Buncha amateurs. Green beer is stupid.” These are the kind of things you might find yourself saying, to yourself, alone and sober in your sad excuse for a living situation, because you didn’t go out tomorrow. Lucky for you, Stoddard’s in Downtown Crossing decided five years ago that they didn’t want St. Patrick’s Day to turn their bar into a shit show every year, so they started throwing an Evacuation Day Party and now there’s a totally different excuse to turn the bar into a shit show every year. Green beers will be replaced by creamy stouts and Irish red ales, and doors open at 11 a.m. for two floors of food and live music. (11 a.m., FREE, 21+)

Or you could take a one-day break from being too cool for everything and embrace St. Paddy’s, and you might as well do it at a real Irish establishment that doesn’t need to name itself O’Something McWhatever’s Irish Pub to convince you. The Burren in Davis Square hosts traditional Irish music seven nights a week, so the owners go all out for their St. Patrick’s Day Dinner Show with traditional tunes, ballads, stories and dancing, along with corned beef or Guinness beef stew for dinner — or lunch, because shows start at 1, 3, 5 and 7 p.m. (Various times, $23, 21+)

What’s more Irish than storytelling and poetry? I’m a Yeats man, myself. Weirdo Records celebrates with a special five-leaf clover edition of It Just Got Weirdo: A Wordy Evening featuring poetry by Donald Vincent, stories from Stephen McConnon, comedy, music, and more. It promises to be the most excitement on St. Patrick’s Day since Harrison Ford had to evade Tommy Lee Jones during that parade in The Fugitive. Fun fact: That was the real-life Chicago St. Patrick’s Day parade in the movie, and also in real life if you just shave your beard and flip up the collar of your tweed sportcoat then no one will recognize you as an escaped murderer. (8:30 p.m., FREE, all ages)

Break the Chains is a semi-monthly all-ages, all-gender, all-genre liberation dance party headlined by nationally touring queer and trans performers. Defiance, Ohio headlines this month’s edition (yes, the party is so inclusive that even people from Ohio are welcome).
It all goes down at Spontaneous Celebrations in JP, who break their longstanding “no planning of celebrations” rule to give you some advance notice on this one. (7:30 p.m., $10-20 sliding scale, all ages)

The Brattle Theatre celebrates indie director Noah Baumbach with Growing Up Baumbach: A Tribute to Noah Baumbach’s 20 Years in Film. The two-night series kicks off Wednesday with a triple feature of The Squid and the Whale, Frances Ha, and Kicking and Screaming, which is the movie you actually want to watch every time you flip to HBO because they’re showing the Will Ferrell/Robert Duvall film Kicking & Screaming. On Thursday, Baumbach himself will attend a special free preview screening of his newest release, While We’re Young, starring Ben Stiller, Naomi Watts, and Adam Driver. (Various times and prices, all ages)

Whether you want to share recipes, cover restaurant openings, or just spice up your Yelp reviews, the Boston Center for Adult Education’s single-session class So, You Want to be a Food Writer will help your prose match your palate. Instructor Jessica Spier will cover everything from recipe writing, food blogging, critique, memoir, and interdisciplinary journalism in food, with special attention paid to developing voice and story and probably coming up with some adjectives to use besides “delicious.” (6 p.m., $45, all ages)

Photo credit: sarah/Creative Commons

_

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