✦Weekender✦ Wine walk | Cinco jams | Mohawk omelet | Derby Day | Mystery train | Gem fest | Bird nerd 🦉

FROM LOCOMOTIVE MURDER mysteries to comic book giveaways to fabulous Cinco fiestas, here's what made The List this weekend. Cheers! – Andrew Kiraly 🤍

🚂 Friday May 2

• This Mother's Day, shoot your mom. The ever-expansively eclectically programmed Library District is offering multiple appointment slots for free fancy-schmancy glam shots of yr mom by a pro snapper. 1p, East Las Vegas Library
• It's First Friday, and you know what that means: lots of 14-year-olds vaping. But also art! Stoked about this exhibit featuring the industrially demonstrative but delicate work of sculptor Luis Varela-Rico, who collabs with other artists rounding out the media mix with painting, photography, and ceramics at this intriguing newish studio. 6p, The Process Studio
• By popular demand, Majestic dragged it back outta the basement for another couple weekends: Kidnap-tastic musical comedy I'm Gonna Marry You Tobey Maguire captures that early-aughts big mood when celebrity obsession-turned-creepy-stalking was a cutely zany conceit, not standard operating procedure. 7p, Majestic Repertory Theatre
• When the bodies drop in mysterious fashion – behind a locked door, no less, and on a fast-chugging train, no less, and crowded with all kindsa sus eccentric characters, no less – Hercule Poirot and his magisterial mustache are on the case. And this case is (da dum!) called Murder on the Orient Express. (Note multiple dates.) 730p, UNLV

Also Friday ➤

Ensemble Showcase puts teen thespians in the director's chair at Charleston Heights Arts Center ✦ Block party meets First Friday fiesta at Cinco Con SerVehZah ✦ The Glass Menagerie shatters familial illusions and fragile hearts at Las Vegas Little Theater ✦ Broadway Rave transforms The Space into a showtune sanctuary ✦ Fêtes & Follies uncorks chanteuse champagne with scenes from six opera works at UNLV.

💥 Saturday May 3

• What's better than a peaceful-ass chill af morning spent strolling among the bird-flecked ponds of the Henderson Bird Viewing Preserve? Strolling among those bird-flecked ponds with a pro birder at your side to answer all the nagging questions that inevitably bubble up in your prefrontal cortex, such as "Who would win in a fight between 20 cormorants and one hypertrophic, 'roided-up heron?" Unlock all the ornithological arcana at Ask a Birder. 9a, Henderson Bird Viewing Preserve.
• Countless shops are doing giveaways during Free Comic Book Day, but only one gives you the opportunity to also check out an unapologetically quirky, inspiringly persistent li'l popcult nodule in Commercial Center. 10a, The Sci Fi Center
• If you ever drive by that quirky rock 'n' gem shop on Sahara that's been there forever and wonder what it's like inside, the free Diaspora Spirit Guides & Culture Arts Festival is a good excuse to wander in. 11a, World Gem Art Gallery
• I'll gamely admit that the old Windows 8 version of Andrew would have been instantly entranced with a phrase like "bottomless margaritas" re: Cinco de Mayo, but, hey, I'm running the much more grown-ass Windows 11 Home version of Andrew, so in this case it's the decidedly more humble but no less entrancing "churro cart" that got me here. (Okay, "face painting" too.) 1130a, Tivoli Village
• One can see how cosplaying louche upper-crust dandies has lost just a teensy bit of its luster in an age of ketamine-addled oligarchs recreationally waterboarding the civil-administrative state in an acid bath, but in case that's your cup of mint julep, don your best seersucker and gauchely floral hat for Derby Day. 2p, Circa Las Vegas
• I'm tempted to make a joke here along the lines of, "Usually the high-pitched human peals you hear rending the air after sunset at Lorenzi Park aren't coming from trained sopranos," but I'll let better instincts prevail, shaddap, and just do a game-show hand-flourish framing the free A Les Misérables Night of Music, in which Vegas City Opera sonically samples Les Mis, Phantom, Hamilton, and more. 730p, Lorenzi Park

Also Saturday ➤

There'll be no dearth of Darths competing for $3k in prizes at The Nerd’s 8th annual May The 4th Star Wars Cosplay Event ✦ In a Sahara West Library not so far away, Star Wars Day should draw promising padawan from across the valley ✦ "Waiter, there's a mohawk in my omelet." "Monsieur, eet eez becohz you arghe at zee Punk Rock Brunch at zee Composers Room!" ✦ Hue oughta check out the spectrum of community vibes at Colorfest at Swan Dive ✦ The Fremont Street Experience is always a fiesta (sometimes of bad taste and amorphous despair, but still a fiesta) but this weekend it's literal at the Cinco De Mayo Ultimate Fiesta May 3-5.

🍹 Sunday May 4

• It's Free Locals Day, but this one is packed with extras: live bands, a 'zine workshop, patch-sewing lessons, and local renaissance bad-ass Shahab Zargari spinning punk cuts. 10a, The Punk Rock Museum
• Live music is always a good excuse for a shade-dappled hang at my favorite improbable tiki-bar-behind-an-Italian-restaurant, and in this case the tunes are supplied by Lara Ash & Inferno. 7p, Tiki Di Amore
•  When not oozing earthy earnestness in Bayside, emo pantheon member Nick Ghanbaraian loves him some Star Wars – in fact, he has his own podcast about it, Thank the Maker – making him the perfect host for this emo night/May the Fourth mashup that is, of course, called Mosh Eisley. 8p, House of Blues
• I'll defer to a listing of the pun-tastic character names in burlesque parody Star Whores to reflect its spirit of ludic, freewheeling, dgaf raunch: Darth Slayer, Princess Lay-ya, C3P-hoe, ChewFonda, Fuk’em Maul. 8p, The Space

Also Sunday ➤

Goldford strikes musical paydirt with his anthemic strummers at Backstage Bar & Billiards ✦ Dial into a quirky composer's mystically unique sound when the UNLV Symphony Orchestra performs Bruckner's 7th ✦ Seattle's Magenta Wave brings their rousing arena sound to the sweaty intimacy of The Griffin.

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