Your next seven days should be filled with laughter. The following could help.

Friday, November 18: Cool Dudes Hanging Out at Velvet Lounge
This monthly stand-up showcase produced by Hillary Buckholtz and Brandon Wardell is the closest thing D.C. has to a UCB or Largo. Every month, they bring in non-local acts that are critically acclaimed but not widely known. This month features Lucas Molandes, whom I interviewed on Arts Desk yesterday. Also appearing are Will Hessler, Kyle Martin, and Jenn Tisdale. Brandon Wardell and Adam Friedland host. 7 p.m. $5. 21+.

Saturday, November 19: Raspberry Brothers Present Sing-A-Long with Moulin Rouge at Arlington Draftjouse
If you’re a fan of Mystery Science Theater but want to sit through something your girlfriend from high school loved and made you watch 10 time, this event is for you. The Raspberry Brothers skewer the films that are meant to be laughed at. Stay for the bucket-list screening of This is Spinal Tap to make your Saturday night full of music, accidental comedy, and market oversaturation. 7:20 p.m. $15. 21+.

Sunday, November 20: Bob Marley at DC Improv
Not the reggae guy. This Marley is a veteran stand-up who has been on every American late-night show and set the Guinness World Record for the longest set (40 hours!). Is this a good thing? Sure. It means the guy can and will riff on anything ever. He's got the style of a more energized Seinfeld. Marley sounds like he’s from Maine (he is), and draws inspiration from the mainstream observational comics of the '80s. No agenda and that’s perfectly fine. 8 p.m. $17. 18+. Also November 18 and 19.

Monday, November 21: Shakes the Clown at McFadden’s
The Washington Psychotronic Film Society returned a few weeks back at a new location in Foggy Bottom. Since relaunching, they’ve screened horror schlock highlights, a softcore B-film and a badass '70s made-in-America kung-fu flick. This week they’re bringing Bobcat Goldwaith's 1992 clown movie back to life. Shakes the Clown, the comedian's directorial and filmwriting debut, looks like it was released in 1992. It took almost 10 years until someone let Mr. Goldwaith behind the camera again. That’s a shame. Since this flick about an alcoholic clown, he’s made the extremely dark, extremely funny, and touching Sleeping Dogs Lie and World’s Greatest Dad. Revisiting Shakes should be an interesting experience: Maybe the story of a loser who can’t shake booze will resonate a little more 19 years later. 8 p.m. $2 donation. 21+.

Morning folks! I found my wallet. It was in a drawer.

Being married to Mandy Moore has been in my regular rotation of fantasies since age 15, but apparently it makes Ryan Adams want to scream. The erstwhile alt-country singer-songwriter has announced that he's completed a metal record. As proof, Stereogum has this self-portrait of Adams doing metal things (see above). In fairness to Ms. Moore, Adams has been dabbling in metal since 2006, and a weirdo for much longer. He calls the new album, Orion, his "most legit METAL record" to date, though I can't see how it could possibly top this (off his 2006 metal album, Feel the Laser):

Everybody smells like rotten meat
We're the maggot police, eating brains
Ripping people's eyes out when they try to use the Stairmaster

Adams says he's pressing the album this week—on vinyl, presumably so he won't have to rip people's eyes out when they try to use iTunes.

Speaking of embracing the man inside, Ben Stiller tells the NYTimes about trading physical pratfalls for emotional ones in Greenberg, a new film by Noah Baumbach that demonstrates how a man needn't have his balls bisected by his zipper on prom night to exist in a state of perpetual mortification.

After the jump: In his new book about global warming, Sir Ian McEwan articulates man's worst fear. (Hint: it has nothing to do with global warming.)

Speaking of genital-based physical comedy, some choice parts of Sir Ian McEwan's latest have been released. So to speak.

Speaking of distressing amputations, TNR rehashes the adversarial relationship between Raymond Carver and his editor Gordon Lish—who was known to hack up Carver's manuscripts with what some would call inhumane abandon—on the occasion of a new biography and a new collection of the writer's unedited work.

Speaking of excessive editing, a long-lost son of Bob Marley is threatening to sue a publisher for re-writing his autobiography to punch up accounts of his family's least mellow aspects; or, a long-lost son of Bob Marley pens unflattering tell-all, then threatens to sue the publisher after the rest of the Marley clan threatens to cut him out of the estate. Depends on whom you ask. WaPo reprints.

Looking for guidance on this dreary Monday? Listen to Dan Reeder's new record, which Oh Boy released quietly last month. It's not metal, but it's most certainly legit. Happy Monday!

Teddy Afro, Ethiopia’s biggest pop star, will kick off his 2010 American tour Saturday night at the D.C. Armory.  Afro, born Tewodros Kassahun, is known as Ethiopia’s Bob Marley, thanks to his occasionally sociopolitical lyrics and his frequent use of roots-reggae rhythms. Heralded throughout the Ethiopian diaspora since 2001, Afro is little-known in the Anglo music world—he is not even mentioned at allmusic.com—but he has received some media attention here in articles discussing  his attitude toward his country's government, as well as his recent jail time.

Afro’s profile at home grew when the Ethiopian government banned several of his songs as part of a 2005 postelection crackdown.  Then, after a controversial indictment and trial, Afro began serving a jail sentence in 2008 for a 2006 incident in which he allegedly hit and killed a homeless boy with his BMW and fled from the scene. Afro maintained that he was innocent and that the government trumped up the charges because of his political criticisms. He spent 16 months in jail.  A judge had originally sentenced him to six years but an appeals court ruling and time off for good behavior reduced his jail time.

However, don't expect Afro to cross over to Anglo audiences based on that rebel-poet image, at least immediately. He sings in Amharic and his music often has the very smooth, loungelike feel of quiet-storm R&B. While many of us may just hear polished crooning, the Ethiopian community will hear his messages—his pleas for peace in his homeland, his pronouncements of love, and his ode to Haile Gebrselassie, an Ethiopian gold medal-winning long-distance runner.

TEDDY AFRO PERFORMS SATURDAY AT 7 P.M. AT THE D.C. ARMORY, 2001 E. Capitol St. SE. (202) 547-9077. $50-$100.

Rule #1: Be a fan.
Lee "Scratch" Perry is a 70-plus-year-old reggae icon. He is not some Williamsburg douchebag who just graduated from Vassar and made one catchy world/house 12-inch that got a lot of MySpace hits and a cover story in The Fader—he's from Jamaica. He didn't hear about reggae by listening to Jamiroquai or the Clash or by studying the music of former British colonies in a nine-week seminar at an elite liberal arts institution—he helped invent it. He didn't read about Bob Marley in Rolling Stone or catch some kind of Rasta fashion wave—he produced the Wailers. So don't go trying to, somehow, ironically interview Lee "Scratch" Perry like you might ironically interview, like, Britney Spears or Black Dice. This man is not a bumbaclot. He is a genius. And ironic interviews are worthwhile only when the interviewer and interviewee have shared experiences that makes the irony palpable and humorous. But, in the case of Mr. Lee "Scratch" Perry...

Rule #2: Don't expect "shared" experiences.
Unless you're from Trenchtown, have dreadlocks, and were a pioneering reggae producer who, after allegedly and inexplicably burning down your studio, equally inexplicably live in Switzerland, you probably don't have much in common with Lee "Scratch" Perry. So, just because you yourself happen to be in a band and have a studio of your own, and have a hard-earned appreciation for reverb and tape delay (two effects essential to the production of dub music), don't naively expect Lee "Scratch" Perry to respond to a question like "Why are you so fascinated with tape delay?" or "What's the deal with all the reverb?" which much enthusiasm. Because, even though this is an honest question ("honest" = a question that you sincerely yearn to know the answer to) and you ask it because you yourself have often wondered why musicians are so obsessed with reverb and delay in recordings and live settings that don't seem to warrant such effects, Lee "Scratch" Perry is not conflicted about his use of reverb and tape delay and, just because you might fancy yourself an engineer, Lee "Scratch" Perry doesn't necessarily want to talk about reverb and tape delay with you. Because.....

Rule #3: The stereotypes are true.
Rastafarians talk about ganja, and Babylon, and Jah, and "I." Now, I'm not sure if Lee "Scratch" Perry is Rastafarian–since, like many Rastafarians (or, at least, Bad Brains) his relationship to his presumed faith seems cursory or opaque (though, as a lapsed Catholic, I know that's true for me as well)—but I do know that Lee "Scratch" Perry is from Jamacia and, as a pioneering reggae producer, certainly spent a lot of time with Rastafarians and certainly has spent a lot of time smoking marijuana. Now, I went to an elite liberal arts college and spent a lot of time reading Karl Marx and Thomas Pynchon. For these reasons, I think and talk a lot about Marxism and have a Thomas Pynchon tattoo, just as one might expect me to. So, just as the stereotype of a "wealthy elite liberal arts graduate" fits me, so does the stereotype "he talks about ganja, Bablylon, Jah, and 'I' all the time" fit Mr. Lee "Scratch" Perry. Now, I don't only talk about Karl Marx and get Thomas Pynchon tattoos. Sometimes, I watch Summer School starring Mark Harmon and lose money playing 1-3 Texas Hold 'Em. So, I'm sure Lee "Scratch" Perry just doesn't want to talk about ganja, and Babylon, and Jah, and "I" all the time. Maybe he wants watch Summer School, or play 1-3 Texas Hold 'Em, or talk about the Brady Bunch or the tragedy of the commons. However, when I attempted to interview Lee "Scratch" Perry, he did not raise these subjects but seemed focused on ganja, Bablyon, Jah, and "I." However, I'm not quite sure if that's true, because I...

Rule #4: Don't expect to understand Lee "Scratch" Perry.
Now, when I say, "Don't expect to understand Lee 'Scratch' Perry," I don't mean that you shouldn't expect to understand—in a philosophical, political, or musical sense—where Lee "Scratch" Perry is coming from, or what he's been through, or where he is now, or where he's going. Instead, when I say, "Don't expect to understand Lee 'Scratch' Perry," I mean "Don't expect to understand the words that are coming out of Lee 'Scratch' Perry's mouth" in the Chris Tucker sense, at least not in a telephone interview conducted from your home in, say, Washington, D.C., on a cheap T-Mobile cell phone tenuously connecting you to a musical visionary who just got off a plane in Switzerland. Because Lee "Scratch" Perry has an accent, and boy...it really is an accent. Instead, expect an interview that produces notes that look a lot like this:

introduce myself
just got in from france...into switzerland...
how are things
very cold 2 degrees.
do you mis jammacia
we go to jammacia all the time. i 'm bored and want to see my house....i will own it forever.
where record now
in switzerland...in amacia...with michelle in the congo.
black ark...
I've got my own studio at home in switzerland...not every day and every night
black ark
after jammacia....
has your music changed?
the music changed because of sampling. when i was ijammacia, i ahd
black musicians. in switzerland, i have white musicians.
what's the difference
most of my fans are white. there is no difference. why. whatever suit the children suit me. I'll be a child forever. whatever makes them happy that what's makes me happy.
what's if you r fascination with delay?
i had a special sound. internationally. i had a sound that the tree of
knowledge...more knowledge than

And then expect to, in a moment of panic, invent a problem with your cell phone so that you can get off the phone with the unintelligible Lee "Scratch" Perry and e-mail his publicist to request an in-person interview in the hope of understanding the pearls of wisdom that drop daily from Mr. Lee "Scratch" Perry's mouth—an interview that will never be scheduled.

Lee "Scratch" Perry plays at the 9:30 club tonight.

This is the question Mike Conklin asks at L Magazine:

Right around the mid-80s, or 25 years ago, or the exact amount of time that needs to have passed since a band's debut in order for them to be eligible for induction, when hair-metal came along and ruined everything, it simply became cooler for rock bands to exist below the radar of the mainstream. With the exceptions of a period of a few years in the early 90s, with Pearl Jam and Nirvana, and then again a decade later with the White Stripes and Radiohead, all the best rock bands have been, for lack of a better term, indie rock bands.

Are the Replacements going to be inducted? Sonic Youth? Husker Du? Joy Division? The Go Betweens? Pavement? Guided By Voices? If they're not, it's bullshit: for people who actually still really, truly care about rock and roll, these are the bands that have carried on in the tradition the Hall of Fame has always held dear. But if they are inducted, the Hall of Fame will surely lose the massive cultural appeal it so obviously strives for, considering barely any of those bands have sold as many copies of all their records put together as most current inductees have of even their least successful record.

While a good question on its face, a little historical digging says we can prolong answering this one for a while yet.

Conklin points out that the induction nominees for next year include "LL Cool J, along with ABBA and Donna Summer," none of whom (perhaps excepting ABBA) fit even the broadest definition of Rock and Roll.

Besides the fact that we haven't run out of mainstream rock acts to induct (Black Sabbath and Lynyrd Skynyrd didn't make it in until 2006. Buddy Guy and Leonard Cohen? 2005 and 2008, respectively), the admission of non-rock and rollers is not new: Isaac Hayes and Chet Atkins were inducted in 2002; Curtis Mayfield in 1999; Gladys Knight and the Pips in 1996; Bob Marley in 1994; The Four Tops in 1990. Sam Cooke in 1986.

Per Conklin's observation, many of those bands existed as alternatives to rock and roll. But existing outside the system? That's rock and roll in nature, if not in expression.

Perhaps Jann Wenner could be convinced to go in for "The American Music Hall of Fame"; that would certainly preserve the institution's broad appeal and more accurately reflect its curatorial instincts. But really, it's been inducting whoever and whatever it wanted for as long as its been around. Why sweat it?

At this rate, we won't have to worry about Husker Du for another two decades, at least.

Elvis Presley: live at Madison Square Garden, taken on June 11, 1972.
Photo credit: Copyright George Kalinsky, taken from the exhibition Live From Madison Square Garden: From the Lens of George Kalinsky. Courtesy of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.