Fun around town, for $10 or less: The Music of Regret: Artist Laurie Simmons introduces her The Music of Regret, a mini-musical in three acts, as part of the ICA Puppet Show, at the International House (3701 Chestnut), 7PM. $6 Thinking Is Hard: "Critical Thinking," a panel discussion of Philly’s One Film The Emperor of the Sun, at World Café Live (3025 Walnut), 7PM. Free Drinking Is Not: Test your knowledge of The Emperor of......

Fun around town, for $10 or less: London Calling: Free dance party featuring Brit Rock from the '60s to today spun by DJs Jared Styles and Jim McGuinn at World Café Live (3025 Walnut), 6PM. Free (pre-registration required) Exit A: Anthony Swofford, author of Jarhead, reads from his latest book Exit A at the Penn Bookstore (3601 Walnut), 7PM. Free Deep Breath: Introduction to Buddhist meditation presented by the Menlha Buddhist Center at the Ethical......

Ah, love. Though we may not have an overflow of the brotherly variety, Philly is offering plenty of options for those happy couples looking to sanctify said happiness with boxes of chocolates and a night on the town. We’ll tackle the latter here; we've given you some chocolate-related goodness already. If you forget to get a card and all the Rite Aid has left are American Idol Valentines, take heart: you can make your own......

Fun around town, for $10 or less: Garlic and Watermelons: Screening of the documentary Garlic and Watermelons, about Gypsy families being evicted to make way for the 2004 Athens Olympics, at Firehouse Bicycles (50th and Baltimore), 8PM. Free (donation requested) Jazzy Jazz: Author Howard Mandel reads from his work and leads a discussion about jazz at the Kelly Writers House (3805 Locust Walk), 6PM. Free Dropshift: Dropshift, Morning Story, and Black Sheep Caravan at Grape......

Fun around town, for $10 or less: If You Missed Them on Conan: Bell X1 performs at Upstairs at World Café Live (3025 Walnut), 9PM. Free Where’s That?: Ars Nova Workshop presents Little Women and Where From Here? at the Rotunda (4014 Walnut), 8PM. Free An Inconvenient Puppet: Puppet Karaoke Inconvenient Goof Show, hosted by Al Gor, at the M Room (15 W. Girard), 9PM. $5 Go Batty: Aderbat, Bon Savant, An American Chinese, and......

Fun around town, for $10 or less: No Really, West: The only remaining original print of West Side Story will be shown at the Bryn Mawr Film Institute (824 W. Lancaster Avenue), 7PM. $9.25 Grubstake: Grubstake and A.K.A.C.O.D. at Tritone http://www.tritonebar.com/ (1508 South), 9PM. $5 Girl With Harp: Gillian Grassie and The Coal Men at World Café Live (3025 Walnut), 8PM. $9 ($7 if using cash) Quizzo Mania: Get your Quizzo on at 12 Steps......

Fun around town, for $10 or less: FRIDAY Ice Dancing: University City District presents Winterfest!, a night of public skating, at the Class of 1923 Ice Rink (3130 Walnut), 5-8PM. $1, skate rental free (but show up ½ hour early to reserve your pair) Sing Us a Song: Steve Odabashian’s Happy Hour Piano Show, every Friday at the Cascamorto Piano Bar (1939 Arch), 5-8:30PM. Free SATURDAY No Clowns: Transistor Rodeo, Rhondo, and Ledbetter Heights at......

Fun around town, for $10 or less: Solstice Film Series 07: Second installment of the Solstice Film Series, a showcase for short independent films, at National Mechanics (22 S. 3rd), 8PM. Free Alex Radus and the Sad Bastards: Alex Radus and the Sad Bastards Upstairs at the World Café (3025 Walnut), 9PM. $8 ($6 cash) Jason Loughlin: Jason Loughlin at Dawson Street Pub (100 Dawson), 10PM. Free Come out and Play: Bobby Zankel and the......

Fun around town, for $10 or less: FRIDAY Try Not to Get Sick on Your Shoes: Positively Sick on South Street, featuring Jukebox Zeros, The Victims, and Women, all to the backdrop of Santa Claus Conquers The Martians at Tritone (1508 South), 9PM. $6 Philabundance Benefit: Featuring Lizanne Knot, John Conahan, the Hustle, and Kuf Knotz at Upstairs at World Café Live (3025 Walnut), 7PM. $8 + a canned good SATURDAY Could You Hold the......

Fun around town, for $10 or less: Friday: Last Friday: Last Friday at the Philadelphia Art Alliance (251 S. 18th), featuring visual, literary, and performance offerings, 7PM. Free Saturday: Space is the Place: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts hosts a family day inspired by their Space is the Place exhibit, 11AM-4PM. Free with museum admission, $5-7 (children, adults) No, Not the Bourne: Arab: The Born Identity, featuring four spoken word poets sharing their experiences......

Fun around town, for $10 or less: FRIDAY The N Crowd Thanksgiving Special: Improv Comedy with the N Crowd at the Actor’s Center (257 N. 3rd), 8PM. $10 The Delaware Rag: The Delaware Rag celebrates the release of their new CD at Upstairs Live at the World Café (3025 Walnut), 8PM. Also performing is The Josh Olmstead Band. $9 SATURDAY Rittenhouse Square West: Guided architectural walking tour of the Square (18th and Walnut); meet the......

Fun around town, for $10 or less: Agent Moosehead: Jazz/Rock combo Agent Moosehead performs upstairs at World Café Live (3025 Walnut), 9PM. $8 (includes the processing fee— it’s cheaper if you buy in person/pay with cash) Wareika Hill: Roots, soul and funky reggae collective Wareika Hill at Tritone (1508 South), 9PM. $5 Say Word Wednesday: For those tired of radio, a night of music spun by local DJs presented by Crasher’s Inc, at the Arts......

Fun around town, for $10 or less: ACANA Showcase: The African Cultural Alliance of North America presents a showcase of the best African musicians in the region on the Commonwealth Plaza Stage at the Kimmel Center (260 S Broad), 6:30PM. Free The Friendship Lounge: The Friendship Lounge celebrates their CD release, with Man Like Machine, Team Goldie, and The Climb, at the Troc’s Balcony (1003 Arch), 7PM. $10 Sigur Ros: Documentary of a series of......

Fun around town, for $10 or less: Hey, we’re bad Catholics: Casiotone For The Painfully Alone, To Bad Catholics, and Trtl Soup, courtesy of the folks at R5, at Johnny Brenda’s (1201 N. Frankford), 9 PM. $10 (21+) Foreskin’s Lament: Shalom Auslander, author of Foreskin’s Lament: A Memoir, will be reading from the book at the Free Library (1901 Vine), 7PM. Free. (P.S. Our friends in Boston can give you the skinny.) Trolleyvox: The Trolleyvox,......

We'd heard Matt Duke's name before (like when Phillyist Meghan's sister covered him for us), but this Phillyist's first encounter with the young Jersey-bred singer-songwriter was a few months ago at the WXPN-hosted Philly Local Lonely Hearts Club Band. Duke, in a pair of crazy patchwork-embellished stovepipe pants (each leg was probably wider than his whole body – you can kind of see them here), completely stole the stage with his performance of "When......

We here at Phillyist love throwing a good party almost as much as we love running a contest. Having both at once makes us positively giddy! See, Phillyist turned two about a month ago, and while we didn’t celebrate on the day, we’re all about a belated shindig, and one of our favorite places in the whole city, World Café Live, puts on a shindig called Cream, where the best local artists get a chance......

By his own admission, Michael Penn isn’t a song-and-dance man. (His stage presence is, one might say, subdued.) Twiddling his strings at his Friday night show at World Café, he confessed “I’m a chronic tuner with no gift of gab,” and encouraged showgoers to grab the audience mic between song breaks to offer up “a really good joke, a fun fact, even a well placed heckle!” The crowd didn’t really comply, but no matter. Here......

On average, women and children in developing countries walk three miles a day to provide clean drinking water for their families. This Saturday, Philadelphia’s acknowledgement of the World Water Crisis will continue with the city’s Third Annual Walk for Water. The walk will begin at Love Park and end at the World Café Live, where participants will get to see a performance by the Sekere Women’s Ensemble, as well as enjoy a complementary lunch. Participants......

Philadelphia’s premiere sketch comedy troupe, The Waitstaff, will be performing at the World Café Live this Saturday evening. The Waitstaff has been performing locally for years, and has also garnered acclaim following a variety of national performance engagements. Most recently, The Waitstaff was one of fifty groups to compete in The Great Sketch Experiment, which was held at Duke University, and sponsored by JibJab.com. Their performance this weekend is made up of entirely new......

This suburban Phillyist was felled by the twin terrors of a flooded basement and strep throat (no, really. We're loving March so far) Friday night, and couldn't venture into the city to catch Local Boy Making Good Matt Duke's show at the World Café Live. Fortunately for us, Sister of Phillyist is both a Drexel student and a total Matt Duke fangirl, so she agreed to cover the show for us. What follows is her......

Phillyist has always loved us some Philly Car Share. Easily accessible rental cars at a reasonable price that you can reserve on short notice? Yes, please! But today, as Phillyist went hunting through the wilds of the World Wide Web for Philly-based hip hop acts, we discovered a new reason to love them: Philly Sound Clash. Now, promotions for Philly Sound Clash didn’t exactly start yesterday, and this event is not just a search......

This past Saturday, I was walking east over the Walnut Street Bridge. Just as I passed World Café Live, I heard trombones. Or at least one trombone. I assumed it was coming from inside, but the further east I got, the louder the music became. I was entirely exhausted and assumed that perhaps I was just losing my mind. No, I’ve never imagined brass instruments before, but, hey, I’m weird. Anything’s possible… including playing......

Chicago Afrobeat Project (CAbP) is coming to town tomorrow night. When they take over World Café Live (upstairs), you want to be there. Trust us, it will be hard to resist their Jenga-style tower of funk, jazz, and world music. According to the band’s bio, “CAbP mixes traditional afrobeat with other dance-invoking musical motifs such as Chicago’s electronic house music, complex West African percussion rhythms and upbeat funk. At each performance, the polyrhythmic groove......

“That should dispel that this is the geekiest tour in America,” said John Roderick, lead singer for The Long Winters. He was more than half way into the band’s set last night at World Café Live when he said this, and the “that” he’s referring to was using the phrase “that’s what she said” sans sexual reference. It might not be the geekiest tour in America, but it certainly ranks in the top five......

Big music night coming up. On Thursday, a slew of acts signed to the Barsuk music label are taking over Philly. World Café Live will play host to The Long Winters with Menomena and What Made Milwaukee Famous, and Mates of State with the Starlight Mints will be playing at the Starlight Ballroom. Don’t know which show to choose? Check out Barsuk radio here. It’s not an easy decision, whether you know the acts......

Looking ahead at your Monday night and seeing nothing but watching re-runs or scouring Myspace for high school classmates? No need. Tune in to 88.5 WXPN at 7:30 p.m. tonight for a live broadcast of tonight’s sold out Corinne Baily Ray/Gran Bel Fisher show at World Café Live. Both artists have been featured on the channel’s airwaves before, so if you’re a WXPN listener like this Phillyist is, you’ve heard tracks from Gran Bel’s......

Singer/songwriter Ari Hest...

The Global Creative Economy Convergence Summit ended with a bang – or should we say a beat? After three days of talking up this new way of thinking of artists as talent that can drive the economy, conference-goers headed on down to World Café Live for a concert by two local bands. The first, Soulamite, is a soul group with two stunning leading ladies, one of whom has the coolest mohawk we’ve ever seen......

By Jen A. Miller Jamie Cullum is coming to the Kimmel Center tonight, and even though the show is sold out, a few tickets are floating around Craigslist. Cullum is a mix-up of jazz master and pop star, and expect both sides to be on display tonight. His debut album, twentysomething, was a critical smash, a combination of reworked standards and original songs. There's long been rumors floating around do-ray-me land that, for his follow......

By Jen A. Miller Aaron Karo knows his audience, and we have to hand it to him - he serves them well. The Wharton alumn, who showcased his stand-up at two sold-out shows at World Café Live on February 17, told jokes about hooking up, breaking up, drinking, drugs and warm Gatorade. And while some of the jokes were below low brow (one about eating hit the ground with a mighty thud in both shows.......