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Thursday, March 28, 2024

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Aggregation No. 1The 22nd Annual Cheese Patrol! from noon Saturday to 2 a.m. Sunday at 88.1 WMBR-FM.

You can go on Cheese Patrol while you’re doing any number of other things – running errands, turning off NPR or thinking about how you don’t hear enough Neil Diamond, Abba, John Denver, Donny and Marie Osmond, Lionel Richie or Herman’s Hermits on the radio, for instance. That yearlong despair over the high quality of modern music comes to an end for this weekend with an annual celebration of what WMBR-FM personalities Lisa Gassaway and Sue Safton explain as “all the songs that people vociferously hate but secretly know all the words to … the songs we grew up with; over-orchestrated, overwrought, over-synthed, over the top.” This has been a tradition at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s radio station since 1990, varying over the years from two hours to 24, and this year is a solid 14.

Granted that’s a lot of cheese to consume, but the holidays come but once a year.

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Aggregation No. 2Competitive Erotic Fan Fiction from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. Saturday at the Davis Square Theatre, 255 Elm St., Somerville.

This carnal comedy event, begun in Seattle and developed into a podcast last summer in Los Angeles, is back with Kylie Alexander, Shawn Armistead, Lillian Devane, Samaria Johnson, Mehran Khaghani (pictured), Katie McCarthy, Jake McDowell, Nick Ortolani, Ken Reid and John Staley performing their own purposely terrible erotic fan fiction getting two fictional characters together to make sweet, sweet love.

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Aggregation No. 3Jimmy Tingle performs “Making Comic Sense of 2013: The Year in 90 Minutes!” at 8 p.m. Saturday at The Regent Theatre, 7 Medford St., Arlington. (And at 4 p.m. Wednesday.)

Sure, anyone can make fun of our politicians and love of the dumb and pointless, but Cambridge-born comic Jimmy Tingle has done it from the pundit’s seat on “60 Minutes II” and the podium of Harvard’s 2010 commencement ceremony after earning a master’s degree from the  university’s Kennedy School of Government. This year in “Making Comic Sense,” Tingle takes on everything from the tea party to Rob Ford, beloved mayor of Toronto, as well as sequestration and Senate rules changes. (Also not-so-dumb stuff such as a new pope and the death of Nelson Mandela. )

Tickets are $25 general admission (or $30 on the day of the performance) or $35 with a post-show meet-and-greet with Tingle and appetizers at Arlington’s Tango restaurant.

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Aggregation No. 4David Wax Museum plays indie-folk at 8:30 p.m. Saturday (doors at 7 p.m.) at The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Harvard Square.

Harvard-educated, Mexico-influenced David Wax and Suz Slezak, the heart of the David Wax Museum indie-folk band, have been whipping up enthusiasm in recent years at such venues as South by Southwest and racking up acclaim from publications as prestigious as The New Yorker (“kicks up a cloud of excitement with its high-energy border-crossing sensibility”), Time magazine (“refreshingly spontaneous and awfully sweet … the Museum creates a joyful Mexo-Americana fusion, with virtuosic musical skill and virtuous harmonies”) and Paste (“No. 8 Best Live Act of 2011 … The breakout act at the Newport Folk Fest”).

They’re at The Sinclair on Saturday with opener Cuddle Magic, a six-member troupe trained at the New England Conservatory making what the culture site WITF called a masterful “mix of sometimes sparse, sometimes intricately patterned instrumentation coated with a layer of folk vibes.”

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Aggregation No. 5The Classic Dinner Dance with the Winiker Orchestra at 9 p.m. UpStairs on the Square, 91 Winthrop St., Harvard Square, at 9 p.m. Sunday.

With this restaurant closing New Year’s Eve after 31 years serving fancy food in a confectionary setting of uniquely pink interiors, every occasion is the ultimate occasion. On Sunday it’s what management describes as “probably our most popular event”: Bo and Bill Winiker and their fabulous orchestra, swinging in front of UpStairs’ big Christmas tree. A special prix fixe dinner is part of the $75 package. Call (617) 864-1933 for reservations, because when UpStairs is gone you’ll likely see nothing like it again.