BK Top 5: The best things to do tonight, from biting into cannibalism to Lafayette lessons

Oh hey looks like fall is temporarily dead again. Don’t just sit there reading about it’s nice out, throw on your lightest thing with sleeves and get out there to bask in the summer (fine, spring)-like temperatures. Don’t know what to do? Good thing the Brokelyn Events Calendar is chock full of stuff to do.

ANIMAL FARM
It’s October and there’s no treat out there like free humorous personal essays or fiction, for some of you anyway. If you’re the type who can’t get enough of satirical or critical essays, Animal Farm is the place you want to be tonight, as they welcome Gawker/The Awl/The Daily Beast’s Jen Vafidis, New Republic/N+1/The New Inquiry’s J.W. McKormack and more for an evening that will make you laugh and make you think.
8pm, Over the Eight, 594 Union Avenue, Williamsburg, FREE

MSG PRESENTS: FOODS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT
Even for the pickiest eater, food isn’t thought of as scary. So instead of trying to scare you by telling you about normal food you might be freaked out by, the Masters of Social Gastronomy are going to tell you about ergot, which had role in the Salem Witch Trials, and the history of cannibalism that includes reviews of how human flesh tastes and some pointers on how to cook your neighbor. Maybe a live demonstration too.
7:30pm, Littlefield, 622 Degraw Street, Gowanus

SARAH VOWELL: LAFAYETTE IN THE SOMEWHAT UNITED STATES
Before he was a general in the Revolutonary War, before had many blocks named after him in America, Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier de Lafayette was just a young man drawn to the American revolution out of a combination of idealism and hatred of hated British. Once he got to America, he found a different war and country than he thought he was getting, and Sarah Vowell is here to show it to you through his eyes in a chance to learn something about the Revolutionary War that doesn’t turn the Founding Fathers into nine-foot tall, dick swinging superman.
7pm, Bookcourt, 163 Court Street, Cobble Hill, FREE

PLACEHOLDER (A COMEDY SHOW)
It’s obviously great that Brooklyn is never hurting for big names in comedy coming over and doing shows, but what’s cool is that you can see some up and coming comedy names around here too, so that when they get famous you can say, “Oh Blair Socci? Danny Lobell? I saw them in the back of a bar a couple years ago in Gowanus. Look, we took a selfie.” It’s cheaper to do that too, especially at a show like Placeholder that’s free.
8pm, Halyards, 406 3rd Avenue, Gowanus, FREE

THE PROSE BOWL
Hey there struggling fiction writer, having trouble getting an audience for your incredible work of heart lifting smartness? Take it to the Prose Bowl, the open mic reading competition where if your name is picked, you face off against four other writers to see who judges will crown this night’s champion of reading fiction. You don’t win a book deal, but you do win a free drink, and that’s probably a step to seeing your work featured in The New Yorker.
6:30pm, Pete’s Candy Store, 709 Lorimer Street, Williamsburg

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