Aerosmith, Lenny Kravitz

Lock up your daughters (and mothers), because this week, the Pepsi arena will play host to two rock icons in one night. We’re scared, and you should be too.

The five original members of Aerosmith are well into their fourth decade of making music together—in itself no small feat. And, while most of their classic-rock peers have aged gracelessly, Steven Tyler and company continue to defy the odds by turning out buoyant pop-rock records that appeal to basically the same audience as the coke-fueled raunch of 30 years ago did: chicks, and dudes who dig chicks. The band are plugging their latest live record, Rockin’ the Joint, which is a very good thing—with no new tunes to clog up the setlist, they’re likely to play heavily on the aforementioned raunch.

Joining Aerosmith for their current trek is rock superstar Lenny Kravitz, who would be a headliner on any other bill. Instead, expect his “opening” set to be packed with selections from his recently reissued Greatest Hits disc; from his early, peacenik-inspired fare (“Let Love Rule”) to his more-recent, Lenny Kravitz-inspired fare (“Where Are We Running?”).

Aerosmith and Lenny Kravitz will perform at the Pepsi Arena (51 S. Pearl St., Albany) next Wednesday (Nov. 30). Tickets for the 7 PM show range in price from $50 to $125. For more information, call 487-2000.

Fair Game—The Art of Video Game Engines

Come out, all you dorks, geeks, and nerds. We’re not passing judgment; all we’re trying to say is that this is your night and we wouldn’t want you to miss it. You arty folks should dig this, too.

This Tuesday, the folks at RPI’s Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) will present Fair Game—The Art of Video Game Engines. It’s an ambitious, unusual presentation, with a wide range of appeal. Artists Kurt Hentschläger, Friedrich Kirschner, Paul Marino and others will demonstrate how they use video game engines—the same ones used to develop games like Quake and Unreal Tournament 3—to create their own work (Hentschläger’s Karma, pictured here, is an “installation and performance rooted in moving image representations of gravity”). At the same time, a selection of, um, students from RPI’s Games Research Lab will play the aforementioned games on oversized screens. For context, of course.

Fair Game takes place at the Heffner Alumni House (1301 Peoples Ave., Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy) at 7 PM this Tuesday (Nov. 29). Admission to the event is free and open to the public. For more information, call 276-3921 or visit www.empac.rpi.edu.

The Eight: Reindeer Monologues

‘When a doe says ‘no,’ she means ‘no.’” That would seem clear enough, but Santa, in Jeff Goode’s play The Eight: Reindeer Monologues, apparently missed the required North Pole Industries sexual-harassment seminar. He got a little, heh heh, frisky with one of his reindeer, that sultry minx Vixen, and the reindeer crap hit the fan.

This seasonal comedy, first staged off-Broadway a decade ago, has become a perennial favorite in that relatively new genre, anti-Christmas holiday entertainment. From the Santaland Diaries to the gloriously vulgar Bad Santa, folks just love a little bit of seasonal sex and snark. Needless to say, this Confetti Stage production, which opens Wednesday at the Arts Center of the Capital Region, is intended for mature audiences.

The Eight: Reindeer Monologues opens next Wednesday (Nov. 30) with an 8 PM performance and continues through Dec. 3 at the Arts Center of Capital Region (265 River St., Troy). Tickets are $20, $15 seniors and $10 students. For more info, visit www.confettistage.com or call 273-0552.