Culture Compass

THURSDAY

Crimes and Teenage Moods

Cause Spirits and Soundbar

3001 S. Lyndale Ave, Minneapolis

9 p.m.

$5

21+

If you haven’t scoped out the local music scene yet, tonight is as good a night as any to start — some of the Twin Cities’ best bands will play in Uptown. Teenage Moods plays noisy punk, tinged with pop and flavored with lyrics about flower-hunting and bunnies. And Crimes features Andrew Jansen, the Dial-Up man with the musical Midas touch.

Looks like the stars are lining up for a perfect night.

FRIDAY

“Animus” by the Xperimental Theatre

Rarig Center

330 S. 21st Ave., Minneapolis

7:30 p.m.

Free. Email thex@umn.edu for reservations.

A board of student directors decided to close the Xperimental Theater. Let’s take this as an opportunity, not to sob uncontrollably, but to celebrate the fact that the X has given the University community 15 years of whacky, dumb, great, contrived, silly, overblown, genius, slipshod, polished and brilliant productions — in other words, 15 glorious years of experiments.

With students at the wheel, we never knew what we were going to get, but how else were they going to learn how to drive?

Join the X for their last hurrah, “Animus.” It’s a devised work that explores creation. Here at A&E, we can’t wait to see what the artists over at Rarig create in the stead of the X. Keep us posted, thespians.

SATURDAY

Wildflower Walk

Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden and Bird Sanctuary

1339 Theodore Wirth Pkwy., Minneapolis

4:00 p.m.-4:30 p.m.

Free

We live in a green, spacious metropolis, so it’s not too hard to imagine that there are a full 15 acres of spring ephemerals and tall grasses within the city limits. But there’s still something to be said for checking out the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden and Bird Sanctuary. The Garden, founded in 1907, boasts more than 500 plant species and 130 bird species.

The Grand Rounds bike route and Metro Transit buses 9C, 9D and 9E can all take you to the Garden. Once you’re there, a naturalist will take you through the majesty of the wildflower kingdom for a full thirty minutes.

CULTURE TO CONSUME

Read this: “It’s Good Enough For Me” by Emily Nussbaum

Whether you’re always caught watching TV with your little sister or you just can’t help but tune into the brilliant “Phineas and Ferb,” this essay from the New Yorker’s Culture Desk will resonate with you.

Nussbaum outlines the anxieties we have about kids watching so much garbage but makes the argument that children’s TV shows are on the path to a higher plane aesthetically and intellectually. She writes that many of today’s shows are “innovative in ways that parallel the simultaneous rise of great scripted television for adults.”

You’ll never feel guilty for watching three hours of Cartoon Network again.

Drink this: Protein shake

We’re really coming up on the end of the semester here, which can mean two things — excitement and stress. Start priming your bod for both with a protein-rich treat.

Be like Gaston and crack a few raw eggs into your cup along with some flax seed oil and whey and other gross stuff.

You’ll be strong as hell — and that’s how you want to finish off your year, right?

Watch this: Movies at the Fest

Did we mention that the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival is going on? We’re smack in the middle of the Festival’s three-week run, which means that movie buffs will soon emerge from the St. Anthony Main Theatre for the last time, picking shells of popcorn kernels from their molars and assigning star ratings to everything they just saw.

Now is your chance to catch hundreds of movies before their general releases, and to see even more movies that are too cool for general releases.