Culture Compass

Tomorrow

Crashing the Party

Mixed Blood Theatre

1501 4th St. S. Minneapolis, MN 55454 9:00 p.m.

$Free (first come, first serve) or $15 guaranteed seating

It seems like everyone and their mother is channeling the Occupy movement into artwork these days, and progressive West Bank playhouse Mixed Blood has now joined that large family. Sarah Rasmussen-directed “Crashing the Party” slides a comic lens over our headlong pursuit of the American Dream, exposing the farce inherent to rich and poor alike. City slickers and suburbanites each take their licks from this critique of conspicuous consumption, but don’t worry: all of these intellectual themes are wrapped in an easy-to-digest (and sometimes naked!) package.

Saturday

Dropkick Murphys

First Avenue Mainroom

701 1st Ave. N. Minneapolis, MN 55403

$31.50

Kids from the country and suburbs alike can know how hard it can be to get your heart truly pumping without driving too fast or doing crystal meth. And that’s why the gods invented mosh pits. Find a bit of your inner disgruntled teen at this seminal Irish-punk outfit’s First Ave. freakout on Saturday night. Dropkick Murphys have introduced many an adolescent to bruised ribs and shout-along choruses, but they write a mean melody despite the bombast. It would be nice if your mom would front you the allowance money for the ticket, though…

Sunday

Minnesota’s Greatest Generation

Minnesota History Center

345 W. Kellogg Blvd. St. Paul, MN 55102

Noon-5 p.m.

$9

The Greatest Generation gave us heroes and fortune, but also suburbs, overconsumption, and a bunch of stupid freaking wars. Learn what they did, and why they did it, at this in-depth multimedia display. The Minnesota History Center is a simple 3 or 16 ride away from campus, and is filled with cool artifacts from your current place of residence. Enjoy a leisurely Sunday getting inside the head of those original American Dreamers, and then go home to make some new dreams yourself.

CULTURE TO CONSUME

Listen to: “The Suburbs” by Arcade Fire

A year after their Grammy win for Album of the Year prompted the internet to ask “Who the f*** is Arcade Fries?!?!?!,” this album still carries the weight of a youth spent languishing in the eponymous landscape. The lyrics are so dense and multifaceted that it takes a few listens to simply begin a full understanding—but even the first take will have you nodding in familiarity if you’ve ever driven for hours just trying to find a place free from watching windows. Everything wrong with the suburbs, and everything beautiful about them, wrapped in an hour of fuzzy synth-tinged rock opera: they should give out degrees just for listening to this disc.

Read this: “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” by Jane Jacobs

Just because it’s a textbook in some classes doesn’t mean it’s boring—some creative writing teachers assign Harry Potter. Seriously. Urban theorist Jane Jacob’s mind-bending 1961 work is an attack on bad city planning and a blueprint for the future, and you can see her truths spread all around you here in the Twin Cities. Learn why the Riverside Plaza and Block E were doomed to fail from the start, why city sidewalks are the best kindergartens, and what we can do to make this landscape a better place. Plus, learn all of that through some of the sassiest, sexiest writing known to man. Can’t lose.

Watch: “Do the Right Thing” by Spike Lee

You have probably seen him most recently screaming on the sidelines at Madison Square Gardens behind that one Harvard basketball guy (Fin something? Garrety Fin?), but Spike Lee was once more than a professional sports fan. He was a socially conscious movie director with an eye for urban inequality. Enter “Do the Right Thing,” a movie that spans a single day in Brooklyn ca. 1989, yet spans a few hundred years of racial history and tension in so doing. At once hilarious, brutal, profound, and timeless, this film is city living at its most vivid.