THUR 3/5: Cyber-Flirting, Darwin, Video Games, Rock

So "Match Game" was fun last night. I forgot that I even paid a cover charge at some point. It was a little sad thinking that it might've been my last time at that Milky Way Lounge location... If you get nostalgic over places, you only have 2 more weeks...

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THUR 3/5

6pm
Flirt Fest
at Ned Devine's, Quincy Market Building, Boston (Faneuil Hall)
FREE w/ RSVP

Is an iPhone app the future of meeting someone in a bar? Find out tonight.

Horny people with iPhones become guinea pigs for techies, but you might get laid... On the other hand, the techies will talk about the data then go home for a night of hot and heavy programming. Even if you don't hook up, you might win a iPhone 3G...

"Download the TrueFlirt iPhone application and enjoy a complimentary beverage."

THUR 3/5

6pm
"Survival of the Swiftest, Smartest, or Fattest? Human Evolution 150 Years After Darwin": Lecture
at Harvard Museum of Natural History, 26 Oxford St, Cambridge (Harvard campus)
FREE

In the 150 years since Darwin set the world on a path to understand our origins, we've done so much to halt the progress of evolution. Every safety precaution assists the survival of the unfit and moronic:

If you don't recognize that a plastic bag shouldn't go over your head... If you still don't notice it's harder to breathe... Then you shouldn't become president!

Is there a bright spot to our current evolutionary stagnation? Prof. Daniel Lieberman (Biological Anthropology) may give some hope -- at the very least his presentation will be based on science and research.

THUR 3/5

8:15pm
Video Game Orchestra
at Berklee Performance Center, 136 Mass Ave, Boston (Back Bay)
$10 / $5 ages 12 - 18 / $5 seniors / $2 under-12

45-piece orchestra + 40-piece choir + 5-piece rock band = a gut feeling this is the coolest thing that's happening tonight -- maybe the coolest thing this year so far.

People who don't like video games could flip over this stuff. It'll probably be more like a symphonic Pink Floyd concert without the pomposity. So maybe it's like Bugs Bunny conducting an orchestra, choir, and rock band while video game vignettes are projected above.

I'm waiting to hear the swing version of "Donkey Kong", but maybe two people are going to fall in love to the dulcet strains of "Final Fantasy"...

Somewhere two guys might gaze at each other bro-mantically in a Kia while singing some song from "Grand Theft Auto" when they were doing it with hooker in the car -- give me some turbo-charged "Sonic the Hedgehog" riffage!

THUR 3/5

10pm
Illinois, Magic Magic, Baixa
at Great Scott, 1222 Comm Ave, Allston
$9 / 18+

It's the night of good music and bad band names. Illinois isn't really that bad of a band name; it's just that it's already a good state name, and these guys are from PA. When I first met them, they were doing driving indie-rock with catchy tunes and banjos. The new album is a sprawling ambitiously sonic and artistic process. They're almost at the end of releasing "The Adventures of Kid Catastrophe"; a video chapter with 3 songs has debuted every month, and we're at chapter 5. Boston is one of the lucky cities that also gets a corresponding monthly gig. Despite my name issues, this is really good stuff and the video story is wonderfully, beautifully surreal.

Magic Magic might be the best name tonight. Okay, it's actually a good name; and it fits them. There's bits of retro/psych, there's bits of chamber pop. They're going down to SXSW for the second consecutive year, so you might as well enjoy them now, before they're the underground cool band of America. Baixa? Really, a Portuguese town? They even admit to picking lousy band names in their bio. (I liked their previous "Christians & Lions" better.) The music is good and reminds me of the last few Radiohead albums.