EDITORS' PICKS - ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

Best lawbreaker
Weddings, parties, bar mitzvahs, djBC does 'em all. But Somerville mixmaster Bob Cronin's real claim to fame is his skill with semi-legal mash-ups, bootlegs, and "illicit remixes." With partner-in-crime Lenlow, Cronin spins every other Friday at the Independent's "Mash Ave" night in Union Square. Rolling Stone wrote up his The Beastles project (which threw the Beastie Boys and the Beatles into a blender), and his bastard-pop gems (White Stripes versus Outkast, Modest Mouse versus 50 Cent) have been heard on the air everywhere from San Fran and NYC to Paris and the UK.

Hear 'em yourself at www.djbc.net

Best place to bring your beard
When we say our prayers at night, we thank the dear lord for Great Scott. Where else in Boston would the Bravery feel like their 15 split-seconds of fame should get them immediately recognized (and then act like assholes when they weren't) if it weren't for Great Scott? Where else in this city would the New York Times Style Section have interviewed a drummer dressed like "a cross between Lou Reed and Edie Sedgwick"? Where else in town would we watch cute roller girls spin records, the Gossip's Beth Ditto do her best Big Mama Thorton, and Gravy Train!!! shake their cabooses? And where else would we bring our post-ironic intentionally-unintentional-looking beards? Without Great Scott, we might have to shave.

Great Scott | 1222 Comm Ave, Allston | 617.566.9014 | www.greatscottboston.com

Best place to hear the Stones without paying
You can't blame concert promoters for charging hundreds of dollars for tickets to see the Stones or Springsteen at the world's favorite ballpark. But you can't blame us for not paying, either. Not when Sophia's on Boylston Street is well within hearing range, and the roof deck is so pleasant - and has a separate bar as well. You can even see part of the jumbo scoreboard from there. Added bonus: there's no danger that some nutjob climbing the rafters will fall on you.

Sophia's | 1270 Boylston Street, Brookline | 617.351.7001 | www.sophiasboston.com

Best place to realize you are one of us
Maybe you were one of those at the midnight screening of Todd Browning's Freaks three Halloweens ago. Maybe when the chorus of mishaps chanted "One of us!" at the end, you chanted too. You know who you are. This is where you belong. The tradition of weekend midnight shows at the Coolidge Corner Theatre continues, the selections varying from Kung Fu movies to perverse specialties like "Dirty Catholic Night" featuring the randy nuns of Norifumi Suzuki's School of the Holy Beast. Upcoming treats include the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre with live music by Puerto Muerto and a special appearance by Leatherface, Gunnar Hansen himself. According to the Coolidge's programmer Clinton McClung, he's dating his assistant's mother. One of us, indeed.

Coolidge Corner Theatre | 290 Harvard Street, Brookline | 617.734.2501

Best club to see hot-shit blogger DJs
Yes, the Enormous Room's sound system sporadically shorts when a bass-bustin DJ hits the mixer too roughly. But such technical difficulties are easily forgiven when you consider the all-star blogeois lineup that's been hitting the decks at this Central Square club over the past few months: NYC Fader boy blogger/DJ Nick Catchdubs, Blair Carswell of Music for Robots, riddim master Wayne&Wax, Boston bounce boys DJ C and DJ Flack, DFA dude/podcaster Tim Sweeney. As Providence potassium posse/monthly residents Certified Bananas like to say, the Enormous is "doin' it 'til the bed break."

Enormous Room | 567 Mass Ave, Cambridge | 617.491.5550 | www.enormous.tv

Best place to see a Pitchfork act play with naked babies
The Museum of Fine Arts used to be the stodgy grandpa of the Boston art scene. Then some wonderful genius over there steered the MFA's Remis Auditorium in a decidedly awesome programming direction, booking a seasonal live-music series of cool acts like Black Dice, Bonnie "Prince" Billy, the Fiery Furnaces, and Four Tet. Yes, the sedentary, downward-slope hall isn't exactly your typical drunk-rock hangout: no booze, no grub, no stale-beer smell. But the sound is usually spectacular, the show always starts on time, and the music ends while the MBTA is still running. Best of all, there are these iron-gilded naked-baby sculptures from 18th-century Italy installed on stage left. Quoth guitar savant M. Ward, when he headlined the room alone last March: "It's nice when you're by yourself to have all these little naked babies."

Remis Auditorium at the Museum of Fine Arts | 465 Huntington Avenue, Boston | 617.369.3300 | www.mfa.org

Best venue to hate the band
We love the carpeted faux-stage at PA's Lounge. We adore the horizontal-window-blind backdrop. We even cherish the motorized ceiling fan and empty TV stands that make seeing a show at PA's feel like you're crashing your friend's parents' basement. But the best thing about the 125-person-capacity venue in Somerville's Union Square is that there's a completely separate bar next door where you can escape if one of the four bands on the bill sucks. So not only do you not have to watch the weirdo skinny dude badly wiggling to canned laptop beats while waiting for the headliner, the weirdo skinny dude doesn't have to watch you ignore him. The unsung beauty of PA's Lounge? Haters can have fun too.

PA's Lounge | 345 Somerville Avenue, Somerville | 617.776.1557 | www.paslounge.com