Editor’s Note: Welcome to V3 Weekend, Vanyaland‘s guide to help you sort out your weekend entertainment with curated selections and recommendations across our three pillars of Music, Comedy, and Film/TV. It’s what you should know about, where you need to be, and where you’ll be going, with us riding shotgun along the way.
Music: Automatique at ManRay
We know we hyped the new punk night at ManRay last week, and we rarely go back to the well and double up here at V3 Weekend. But another new party gets rolling tonight (February 24) at the resurrected Cambridge nightclub, this time an indie night curated by James 808 called Automatique. James 808 is part of the monthly synth night Overdrive at the nearby Middle East, and now brings a flair for the British beat over to ManRay for an indie dance party done right. James 808 is a relative newcomer here in Boston, but his DJ acumen across underground nightlife runs deep, going back to his legendary late-’90s dance party Re:Mission at The Pyramid Club in New York City. Few possess such an encyclopedic knowledge of alternative dance music, so this should be a fun Friday night out. Let’s all meet up in the year 2023.
AUTOMATIQUE :: Friday, February 24 at ManRay, 40 Prospect St in Cambridge, MA :: 9 p.m., 19-plus, $10 :: Venue Info :: Event info
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Comedy: John Mulaney at Symphony Hall
We love our comedy clubs around the city, but this week we’re going from ashy to classy as John Mulaney pulls up for a two-night, three-show weekend fling at Symphony Hall that’s going to live on for a long while. Jason Greenough breaks it down in this week’s Mic’d Up: “It’s been a long road back for Mulaney, and after further traveling that road to bring his deeply personal and introspective new hour all over the country for the better part of the past two years, he returns to Boston to press ‘record’ and etch it into stone with a special taping. If you couldn’t manage to get tickets to the swiftly sold-out shows, we’ll be able to see it unfold in a few months time, but there’s no doubt that the FOMO will be real regardless when it comes to one of the best in the game delivering his best work from the Symphony Hall stage.”
JOHN MULANEY :: Saturday, February 25 and Sunday, February 26 at Symphony Hall, 301 Massachusetts Ave. in Boston, MA :: Saturday at 9 p.m. Sunday at 6 and 9:30 p.m. :: Event info
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Film/TV: ‘Cocaine Bear’ in theaters
By now you know the true backstory that inspired Cocaine Bear: In the mid-’80s drug smugglers dropped a fuckton of blow in a Georgia forest, which was found and consumed by a black bear. We don’t know the real-life details on what happened between the time the bear ingested 34 kilos of the drug and when it died, but we all realize that for a short time, that bear was probably the most apex fucking predator to ever walk the Earth. From USA Today: “The beast (which earned the nickname ‘Pablo Escobear’) eventually was stuffed, owned for a time by country music legend Waylon Jennings and now resides in a Kentucky mall.”
Cocaine Bear, the Elizabeth Banks film that opens this weekend, takes the premise of a bear eating coke and dramatizes it for our dark horror-comedy pleasures. The real bear didn’t kill anyone, but the Hollywood version does, because to not kill would be unbearable. Here’s the synopsis: “This wild dark comedy finds an oddball group of cops, criminals, tourists and teens converging in a Georgia forest where a 500-pound apex predator has ingested a staggering amount of cocaine and gone on a coke-fueled rampage for more blow… and blood.”
‘COCAINE BEAR’ :: Now playing in theaters :: Check local listings for locations and showtimes