✦Weekender✦ Butterfly feast | Cosmic horses | Underground sushi | Chicken wing music 🐔

FROM TIME-WARP ORCHESTRAS to teacher pig roast parties to Costco bulk tubs of laughter, here's what made The List this weekend. Cheers! – Andrew Kiraly 🤍

🐖 Friday Jan 10

• Not that we shouldn't continue shrieking for better pay and proper funding of public education, but today you can support valley teachers by getting them drunk and gorging them on roast pig. 3p, Starboard Tack
• In 1985, conductor Rick Benjamin stumbled upon a trove of crusty ol' turn-of-the-century orchestra scores once in the possession of bandleader and Victrola recording star Arthur Pryor. Like any of us would, Benjamin thought, hm, why not form a highly stylized retro old-timey band to play this type of music as live soundtracks to classic silent movies? The Paragon Ragtime Orchestra was born. They'll be furiously sawing violins to clips of yesteryear's frenetic "Clown Princes" Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Harold Lloyd. 7p, Clark County Library
• In a world where it seems everyone's an aspiring eff-yr-feelings edgleord telling it like it is, the straightup disarmingly sweet observational comedy of Jenna Kim Jones is like a refreshing waterfall of 26 pounds of Costco hummus sprinkled with the silly foibles of modern living. 7p, Wiseguys Arts District
• Author and "transfemme monster" Vera Blossom doesn't pay much mind to boundaries – gender-wise, lit-wise, whatever-wise. She'll read from her latest essay collection, How to Fuck Like a Girl, which itself is a vividly boundary-smashing mix of confessional memoir, spellbook, and spicy manifesto. I have the sneaking feeling that this intimate reading will be among the last before Blossom blows up to bigger stages in 2025. 7p, The Writer's Block
• That time I posted a blurb about an underground naked sushi club in a taco shop. 7p, 1601 S. Las Vegas Blvd.
• Avenue B is an eminently likeable local Americana cover band that's perfect for barside listening while sipping a cold one and nomming on apps – which, actually, is this blurb's real agenda: Urging you to use this as an excuse to get a taste of Johnny Mac's deservedly legendary chicken wings or subs. 8p, Johnny Mac's
• It's the first Shed Open Jam of the year, and I'll be there, ideally headlocked by the smoky spell of a Chubby Kitty (the cocktail). Come out and hang! Musicological warlock Anu Sun puts on this open mic a couple times a month, and the sonic combos that sprout up are always fresh. 9p, Fat Cat
• Just as jammy but with 5x the horns and a blasting B3 organ to boot is the powerhouse Soul Juice Band. (Also, dunno what kinda cool-ass car that is in the photo, but I want to be it.) 10p, Ellis Island

⛸️ Hella more weekend here, which may contain froth-flecked TV therapists and mice with blades for feet:

📺 Crank therapy | Naked goths | Silent orchestra | Winter weed-lympics | Roast war | Mystic cat | Worst wrestling

The coolest things to do in Las Vegas this week, ever.

The ListAndrew Kiraly

🐱 Saturday Jan 11

• The signs are alive with the sound of learning at The Neon Museum, where this installment of STEAM Saturdays connects music with signal moments in Las Vegas history. Kids can also build their own instruments and take a crack at reading sheet music. 930a, The Neon Museum
• If you happened to be gifted a sweet camera for Xmas, grok its bewildering array of bells, whistles, dials, and buttons at this Las Vegas Photography Group social photo walk. 10a, Downtown
• Yumz, my two favorite foods, butterflies and brunch. 11a, Park on Fremont
• While the very word "kidpreneur" strikes my heart with insuperable despair, I am pre-emptively charmed by this idea: Fantastic Indoor Swap Meet is partnering with Vegas Kids Zone for the VKZ Kidpreneur Market, a mini-swap meet featuring local capitalist kiddies hawking their creations and curated finds. 12p, Fantastic Indoor Swap Meet
• The tiny, delicate, lambent ember of stubborn hope that flickers faintly in my bosom clings fiercely to the idea that Flow is a prescient metaphor for how we fractious and rag-tag Americans are gonna ultimately rally through our differences and triumphantly rescue ourselves from doom while bonding through shared peril and transcendent beauty. I can dream! Anyhoo, tbh, actually got a little choky just from the trailer. 230p, The Beverly Theater
• I can't credit Don't Tell Comedy enough for curing me of my fussy, fastidious, too-picky taste in comedy. The blind grab-bag format is the best thing to happen to laughter since slide whistles and watermelons/Gallagher. 7p, Downtown

• If, like me, you've made a solemn resolution to enjoy more burlesque in 2025, Pints & Pasties is a fine way to kick off a new year of meteoric self-improvement. This installment sports a veritable funcyclopedia of striptease styles, from Lolita Haze's classic postwar vamp to Cha Cha Nova's glambilly flamboyance. 8p, The Punk Rock Museum
• Mkay, I see you, Railhead Saloon, bringing Mexican dance nights with kickin' live bands to the east side. Tonight it's corrido masters Alta Alianza. 9p, Boulder Station
• You've got the bodacious, outsized personalities, the feuds with murky, elaborate backstories, the complicated soap-opera storylines. Except in Roastlemania, comics use jokes to settle their scores. 930p, Wiseguys Arts District

▼ Saturday cont'd

• Superlative Nevada fun fact that's refreshingly not a downer: The Desert National Wildlife Refuge is the largest wildlife refuge in the lower 48, basically like Summerlin for bighorn sheep and other sensitive species. Another fun fact: DNWR hosts art exhibits in its visitors center, and today you can meet artist and all-around-rad-arts-champion Bobbie Ann Howell and see her mind-bogglingly intricate cut-paper creations. 10a, Desert National Wildlife Refuge
• As long as we're all hopefully sloughing off our spiked pupae of wearied cynicism in ritual deference to the spirit of the new year, further tenderize your heart with the achingly delicate, poignantly beautiful songs of Acoustic Eidolon. 4p, Rainbow Library
• I think it was professional idiot-roaster H.L. Mencken who defined Puritanism as the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be attending a Drag Queen Sip and Paint party. 430p, Notoriety
• Sure, technically this is Queer Kickball, but I bet they won't say no to any vocal ally with a hypertrophic power leg. 11a, Orr Middle School
• Wait, what? The Phoenix is only 11 years old? To my mind, the mural-robed LGTBQ stalwart feels hella older, which I suppose speaks to how quickly it's become not just come-one-come-all party spot, but a community institution as well. Resident monstress Keyska Diva hosts this anniversary party jostling with go-go dancers, body artists, and food and drink specials. 8p, The Phoenix

🚂 Sunday Jan 12

• Sleep in today and veg out – as in clamp dem molars on some fresh vegetables that aren't named Totino's. UnCommons kicks off a new Sunday farmers market. 10a, UnCommons
• Matinee jazz, matinee lasagna, matinee martini? Sounds like a holy trinity to me! Gary Fowler and the Uli Geissendoerfer Trio fire it up. 1p, Bootlegger Bistro
• If, like me, you've made a solemn resolution to learn how to perform burlesque in 2025, you've got two options today. For shy beginners interested in patient, gentle instruction: The Grind Haus (2p, Fred Astaire Dance Studios). For undead banshee leather vixens, consider School of Nasty. 1:30p, Area 15
• Whoa, lit performance doesn't get any more hardcore than this: Two poets enter, one poet leaves. Okay, actually they both leave alive and physically unharmed but one gets $50 as the winner of Poetry After Dark, emceed by Khoree the Poet. 8p, The Composers Room
• By the grace of 10,000 angels and 19 glasses of champagne, I somehow comported myself with dignity and even something approaching rhythm when I applied my YouTube cumbia skills at my wedding reception. If you yourself are cumbia-curious, the amazing lineup of Reventon Sonidero boasts the genre's smoothest, swayingest cumbia purveyors such as Los Askis and Mexikolombia. 6p, Silver Nugget

🙏 Hope you have the raddest weekend. Thanks for your support! – Andrew Kiraly 🤍