Five ordinary LA nights, with a better story at the end

For an evening near LACMA, make dinner and live music the same stop.

On Friday, October 23, Marina Pacowski plays Jazz at LACMA from 6–8 p.m. on the Smidt Welcome Plaza. The concert is free, and that night's food trucks are Tirzahs Mexi-terranean, Earle's and Home Brewed Bar. Food costs extra.

Choose something to eat and catch part of the performance. You've replaced dinner at home with dinner somewhere the music is happening in front of you.

For dinner in Old Pasadena on a Saturday, build the evening around Parson's Nose Theater.

"A Nightmare on Poe Street," a live Edgar Allan Poe adaptation staged in a 1922 former funeral home, plays Saturday, October 17 and 24, at 7 p.m. The theater is at 95 N. Marengo Avenue. It's ticketed, and the stories are properly dark, so leave the kids at home.

Eat early nearby, catch the show, then see how the familiar streets feel on the walk back. One extra stop gives dinner a different ending.

Each person chooses one snack they think the other has been unfairly overlooking. Agree on a spending limit and dietary requirements first.

Back home, reveal the choices and make the case for them. Childhood favorite, strange flavor, packaging that deserves an award: all valid arguments.

The entertainment may be discovering that someone you know well has been quietly devoted to an extremely questionable cracker.

For two people who enjoy bookshops, add a short browse before dinner somewhere nearby.

Each chooses a book for the other person's entirely different life: lighthouse keeper, beekeeper, person who finally learns to make decent bread.

Meet up and explain your selections. You might leave with a book, a future trip idea or a newly appointed household lighthouse keeper.

This works best when browsing together already sounds enjoyable. Let that interest choose the activity.

For friends whose camera rolls are already full of ridiculous photos, give the usual post-dinner walk one destination: the cover shoot for a band you will never start.

Choose an ordinary public spot: a dramatic wall, a stretch of sidewalk, the outside of a laundromat. Take one deeply serious photo. Give the band an appropriately terrible name.

Then carry on with the evening. The group chat has its next picture.