Heading into the weekend, there are all sorts of options for getting it started a bit early.---

Future Islands will help you do just that with their headlining gig at Kilby Court Thursday night, a show that also includes Ed Shrader's Music Beat and YYBS. The gig starts at 7 p.m.

Theater lovers will want to note a new production of Hair, the "American tribal-love musical," at the Babcock Theater at the U. College students in 2011 making like hippies of the 1960s -- sounds like a fine night out, ya?

Mary Josephine Riddle, a respected author in the wellness community, is doing a reading at Golden Braid Thursday at 6:30 p.m. Her latest book is a memoir called Diary of the Last Days, a Holocaust of the Soul.