This week, our eyes strayed to the current edition of WIRED and their cover story on the genius elBulli chef, Ferran Adriá. The story revealed how Adriá took a unique approach to staying on top of his game. He changed sports.

His Barcelona eatery had three Michelin stars and in 2011, Adriá had 2m requests for tables and 6,000 applications for an internship, and yet, when most people would start to live off reputation, he closed it down. His reason? He couldn't innovate at the level he wished anymore. Instead he took off his chef's whites and set up the elBulli foundation, a centre of innovation that incorporated digital tech to inspire others in the way of Haute Cuisine. 

It reminded us of le cool poster boy, Malcolm Gladwell, who said that you should quit at the top of your game and reinvent yourself. It also reminded us of the Thread Magazine issue 4 launch this Friday (issue theme: 'Out of Our Comfort Zone').

Thankfully, at le cool, we have yet to peak so we should be around for a while longer before we reinvent ourselves as organic farmers, space jumpers or a creative agency.

Who thinks we have a lot done but more to do this week? Ciaran, Michael, Kate or Jerath?

John Colpitts, drummer with rock experimenters Oneida, is also the driving force behind Man Forever, a loose percussion collective that rides a relentlessly juddering juggernaut into the dark heart of rhythm. The dead-eyed  pounding and inexorable drones on Man Forever’s third and newest release, Pansophical Cataract, are beautiful for their stringent and rigorous embrace and the feeling of ecstasy that goes with being smothered in the tumult. It’s like a brutal bear hug, both crushing and comforting. Colpitts (aka Kid Millions) has called on a variety of well-regarded drummers to moonlight in his project ­- such as Brian Chase (Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs), James McNew (Yo La Tengo), Chris Baio (Vampire Weekend) - and the Joinery roll call will be augmented by several local musos who will beef up the searing cacophony. Win Passes / Mark Keane

Underground hip-hop superstar MF Doom, renowned for his madvillainy and masked persona, is one of the most enigmatic figures in hip-hop. With no less than nine solo albums and eleven collaborative albums under his belt, he also counts himself among the most prolific. A master wordsmith and producer, who injects his lyrics with humour and references to everyone from Charles Bukowski to Sally Struthers, MF Doom is one-of-a-kind. This year’s collaboration with producer Jneiro Janel, Key To The Kuffs, won significant plaudits and tonight’s gig will see Doom perform material from both his solo repertoire and JJ Doom’s catalogue. Support on the night will come from up-and-coming Dublin rap-spitter Rejjie Snow, viewed by many as an heir apparent to MF Doom. Hip-hop hooray. / Amy O'Connor

You would imagine Jean-Claude van Damme’s Kickboxer does not provide the best material on which to base a serious theatrical performance. Yet, Zachary Oberzan makes it work. Your Brother. Remember? follows the relationship between two brothers, Gator and Zachary, through their (real) home videos that see them imitating scenes from some of the cheesiest movies of the 80’s and 90’s. Portraying the brothers from early teens until adulthood, the videos form strange witnesses to the evolution of their relationship. One brother has ins-and-outs with drugs and the law, the other brother discovers the world of theatre and art. Yet in spite of differences, through the years they keep re-enacting scenes with the same gusto and silliness – a weird keyhole vision into brothers and family dynamics. / Roisin Agnew

Two and a half years ago, Balls.ie took its moped into the fast lane of the Information SuperHighway with a simple mission: to lessen the unbearable boredom of Irish sport fans trapped in offices and on buses. That task demands ceaseless work, though we’ve made some progress. Tonight we begin the second stage in our evolution: the liberation of the sport fan’s mind via the celebration of useless but fascinating trivia. The inaugural Brilliantly Awesome Balls.ie Sport Table Quiz will bring together a couple hundred of the brightest minds in Irish sport fandom under one roof to answer questions that comb the deepest recesses of our collective sporting consciousness. There’ll also be whiskey bottles to be won. There’s still room for more competitors. Sports knowledge is not necessarily an advantage. / Donny Mahoney

The space limitations for a le cool write-up show up when trying to describe the controversial and complex life of political dissident, polygamist and musical innovator, Fela Kuti. Musically, his horn-driven (and givin') grooves pioneered Afrobeat, while politically, he was in a lifelong battle with oppressive Nigerian regimes. To call his life 'Colourful' would be a massive understatement. He produced over 70 albums, smoked more dope than Marley and Marks, married 27 women in one ceremony and often performed in nothing more than his undercrackers. He lived every minute of his life until his death from AIDS at 58. The day he was buried, Lagos was brought to a standstill as more than a million turned out for his funeral. Today marks your chance to get a feel for Fela with one long night of afro-happenings. Time to felabrate! / Vernon Steel

For the past few years Ruairi Lynch, aka BANTUM, has been climbing the ladder of Irish electro producers. With a couple of EPs and remixes behind him, Bantum, with his noodle guitar work and twisted vocal samples, has bent this so-called ladder into a spiral staircase, reached its peak, and now sliding down its banister and awaiting a heavy drop is his debut album, Legion. Plucking away at a few Irish bands for some members to join the cohort on this eleven tracked LP, Ruairi, along with names like RSAG, Margie Lewis, Eimear O’Donovan, Owensie & Benni Johnston, ooze themselves together into the signature beats, strings and synths that we know and love Bantum for. Oh yeah, and with support from Reid, Ghosts and visuals by LeTissier, I’ll say no more. See ya there! / Paul Mahon

When an inauspiciously named young man named Kevin Donovan adopted the name of an African tribal chief and founded the international hip-hop organization, Universal Zulu Nation, hip-hop was born. The man? Afrika Baambaataa. As the self-proclaimed “Godmother of Hip-Hop”, my heart skipped a beat when I learned that the hip-hop pioneer and turntable extraordinaire was coming to our fair city. Often credited as the grandfather of hip-hop, Bambaataa played an instrumental role in developing hip-hop culture, as well as electro-funk. While his star may have dimmed in recent years, a hip-hop luminary he remains, and his set in The Button Factory promises to be filled to the brim with throwback soul, funk and hip-hop jams. The only question that remains is, “Can y’all get funky?” / Amy O'Connor

Yes Maeve! We DO have a good time when you're about! You make us laugh like stoners watching the Teletubbies; even if you did once flirt shamelessly with my father during a gig at Wexford Arts Centre. We have a good time with you because we reckon that you've probably stacked it in a bar at some point and tried to recover by doing an impression of a kitten chasing string up a flight of stairs. We have a good time with you cos of your sing-song Cork accent, boy, girl, boy, girl, and cos you make fancy vittels but probably still like skittles! We have a good time because you write day-cent books and read bits aloud, and we have a good time because we like the Gutter Bookshop too. Jaysus Maeve, why're ya asking? We have a good time, and we hope you do too! / Kate Frances

Osaka, Japan, 1981: three hyper-active Japanese teenage girls form Shonen Knife, fusing the cutest J-pop with grungy garage rock. Lyrical themes: Excitement, cats, fruit, boys. Needless to say, it was awesome. Now fast forward over thirty years later and inexplicably, they’re still around and sound fresher than ever! What’s also inexplicable is how brilliant this stuff is. Kurt Cobain himself loved these ladies for their uncanny ability to transport their audience into the headspace of a hysterical 9-year old overdosed on pixie sticks. There’s just something magic in their mash-up of grungy punk-guitar, mega-cheerful vocals and perfect pop structures that will turn even the most jaded, surly rock fan into a grinning idiot. Funnest gig of 2012? Quite possibly. / Marcus O'Sullivan

We all have one. That forgotten drawer of mangled widgets; metal, electronic and plastic ephemera, whose lives began elsewhere. Save them for Upcycling Week and the Makeshop elves at the Science Gallery. Fancy morphing wind-chewed brollies into iPad and iPhone pouches? There's a Workshop for that - by the Upcycle Movement and a crochet expert. Choose from walk in workshops where you can clockify found objects, engage in lunchbreak robotics or learn tecchie DIY tricks. Entrants in the Trash to Cash competition hungry for ideas, take note. Remake, rx3 – ‘rethink recycle, remake’ and myVolts.co.uk will also be guiding aspiring hackers with a Circuit Board recycling workshop that will create a new installation mapping Dublin. Now if someone could just show me how to turn all those dead biros into Christmas gifts.... / Elish Bul-Godley

While taking great patriotic joy in revelling in the new wave of current Irish electro, it is at the same time no treachery upon the seven seas to admire the tide of talent that is flowing from our neighbors in Blighty. The talent provided by both is sometimes so staggering as to make a wily old dog such as myself wonder how these kids have figured it all out so early and so completely. Amongst them is 24-year-old producer Kwesi Sey, better known as Kwes. He produced three albums by the age of 17, but it’s collaborations with the likes of The XX that brought him to mainstream minds. Since his departure as a solo performer last year his star is on the ascendency. As with all the best of this current crop of London producers his sound is urban, soulful and catchy enough to have you bopping along like a cork on the Thames. Win Passes / Emmet Condon

Fintan O'Toole finally lost the Steel family respect when he (along with Eamon Dunphy and others) retreated from threatened involvement in the last general election. Notwithstanding, I'd like to hear him speak in this panel discussion, hosted by Renaissance man, Dylan Haskins, on the themes and topics arising from this year's Dublin Theatre Festival. Safer, more rhetorical ground, no doubt. Alternative visions for Dublin are nothing new, but this talking shop, which also features Grace Dyas (THEATREclub), Ali Grehan (Dublin City Architect) and Michael West (Corn Exchange), does use the interesting springboard of theatrical themes to unearth the thirst for not just change but the right change. Sparks should fly, moot points shall be raised and all sorts of highfalutin will take place. / Vernon Steel

Dublin-based Apartment Records has spent its first year happily burrowing a defiant little niche for itself with a series of vinyl releases from electronic artists, both native and beyond these shores. After efforts from homebrewed mainstays Lerosa and TR One, the fourth and newest release on the label returns to where it began, with London’s NCW, aka Nick Wilson. Titled Pharaoh and the Goose, NCW’s A-side is a hypnotic and immersive 11-minute abstract house odyssey. Flipside The Goose meanwhile possesses an enveloping cohesiveness but uses a dark, trancey, more mordant pallet. Tonight’s basement bash will toast this latest record with dj sets from NCW and label grand poobah Kenny Hanlon, while TR One and David Kitt will go back to back in preparation for their Bande Apartment project debut, the next label release. Win Tickets / Mark Keane

I hate umbrellas. I hate small people who carry umbrellas, apparently unaware that the spokes are painful when they poke us tall people, or that bumping into tall people results in us being soaked with your umbrella water. Sore and gross. Everyone snap your umbrella in half, please. Or burn it. Just break it in someway 'cause you'll need an old broken umbrella for this upcycling workshop (even though breaking something just to upcycle it is totally against the ethos of upcycling). If you don't hate umbrellas but you do love looms, that's fine, that's ok, because this workshops is all about making your own loom and somehow weaving your old umbrella into gold* on it, in exchange for firstborns*. If you haven't snooped your nosy nose into Science Gallery's MakeShop this is a perfect excuse my friends/chums (add me on facebook). / Karl Watson

Science is kewl kids, and we will all be working for nerds one day anyway, so we may as well start speaking their nerdy language, and going to their nerdy gallery. Labcoats will be next season's Minkcoat (you read it here first, poindexters). Magic Materials piques and molests my curiosity in the same way Will It Melt? videos and homemade smokebombs and glowsticks on YouTube do: everything in it is super fucking cool and I have zero idea how any of it works. And I want to touch it all. Particularly awesome are the original superhero-style characters and booklets created by artist Stephen Byrne for the exhibition. So yeah, 6 A1s for the Science Museum - only gripe is that it needs to be twice its current size for double the edutainment (invade the vanity gym maybe?). / Karl Watson

There aren't many of us who have not had our lives touched at some stage by the experience of a loved one needing to go into care. Hard as it is for the family, it's not as often explored in the arts from the point of view of the patient. What's it like for them between our guilt-ridden visits? Halcyon Days explores an unlikely friendship of nursing home residents Patricia and Sean. Patricia's charisma and energy draws Sean out of himself to reveal remnants of the sparky man he once was. This is simple, straight-up theatre has heartbreaking moments we all fear; the realisation you're at the end of your days. The trick is to know when to gracefully surrender and do it in your own unique way. Be warned, this will make you want to run straight to your nearest and dearest and just hold them. / Hayley Reynolds

Charity starts at home, except when it starts in the Ormond Wine bar for an art auction fo' charity yo. The SCOOP guys are genuinely sound dudes and their cause is one so worthy. Buying art is a cool thing, and buying art that then results in helping schools get built in under-privileged areas of India and Cambodia is the coolest. Also auctions in general are cool in an ironic student way thanks to orange Dick and mustachioed Tim. There's some sweet loot on offer here, oh hunters of the bargs, and you can preview it to your hearts' content here. But there will be blood if you bid against me on the Ugly Gus painting. Also good discounts for yourself in the Ormond if you mention it, and that place is delish (all wine is delish anyway, and drinking wine that indirectly helps get schools built = the delishest). / Karl Watson

Aha! The night when the cliffhanger-ers become the cliffhanger-ees; yes, it's the Man Booker Prize Awards night, when Penguin ain't just the pen wielders' publishers, but the dress-code too. Despite being held at the The South Bank; we can get in on the action at this screening, which will be particularly rewarding if you're one of the bookworms who read the nominated works in the run up to the ceremony. Hilary Mantel (an arresting writer but absolutely cuckoo in real life, from what I can tell) has, yet again been nominated, and Will Self frequents the nominees list, and I'm sure Private Eye and the other denizens of Pseud's Corner will be cheering him on from some Chesterfield sofas somewhere. Swimming Home by Deborah Levy could be a curveball win, tackling Freudian issues with truly contemporary sensibility. / Kate Frances

Oh my god. Rupert Everett in a play. In Dublin. Playing...oh what, OSCAR WILDE? I feel a swoon coming on. You may know the beautiful Rupert Everett from award-winning arthouse film of the decade St Trinians...or you may not. But he has always seemed to love a bit of Wilde, acting in his plays both on stage and on-screen. His notoriously hedonistic reputation, his fabulous acting skills and his ability to effortlessly blend into any Victorian setting makes him a perfect choice for the role of Oscar Wilde. As for the play itself, The Judas Kiss is about Mr Wilde and his famous relationship with his lover, Bosie, and his personal life seems just as juicy as his fiction (actually, it's way juicier). / Chandrika

This year’s installment of the RHA’s Futures exhibitions is the most fun I’ve had in a gallery of late. Peter Burns’ paintings jut from walls, crafted from a myriad of mediums and splattered with scenes in which humans are depicted as fragile and grotesque in relation to nature and the universe. Lucy Andrews uses washing detergent, a black light and a fishbowl to create an eerily fascinating installation piece. An inflatable dolmen dominates the gallery, Jim Ricks’ approach to contextualising authenticity and ownership. An entire wall is covered in paintings of the view from Ed Miliano’s studio window, each completed in a day. Kudos go to the curators, they’ve identified six artists who are both extremely talented and grounded in the self-effacing element of art that is so often lacking, but always appreciated. (image: Stephanie Rowe) / Jerath Head

As productive and functional members of society it can be easy to forget to daydream, to imagine a world in which we don’t know everything about everything and where folklore is law. It’s that sense of imagination, generally abandoned in the throes of adolescence, that seems to underlie Nowhere Here, Somewhere There. With one of her simpler pieces, Ciara O’Hara brought my inner child bounding to the surface; a tree branch, antler-shaped, covered in fabric and entitled Wishful Thinking. To similar effect, coloured pencil drawings and a remarkable etched rainbow landscape sparked a sense of other-worldliness that was at once invigorating and disconcerting. Invigorating because it reminded me to lose myself once in a while, disconcerting because I was great at doing so once upon a time. / Oscar Knight

Ruby Sparks has been marketed as a quirkfest of novelists with tortoiseshell specs and pretty-girl types from the Planet Vom canoodling and making sweet sweet love all day in a house with a swimming pool. What they forgot to mention in the trailer though was that it is a mind-fuck and philosophical cul-de-sac which absolutely ridicules the idea that we can play God and not have karma kick us in the hoop with her steel-toe-capped boots. This film is intelligent, with very rounded and developed characters, and it was probably the first time I looked at Antonio Banderas and saw a great actor and not just a hot piece of ass. That stands for Chris Messina too; HOLLA! All this while Zoe Kazan and Paul Dano put the sparks into Ruby Sparks. / Kate Frances

Liked Babe in the City but are more of a bovine public type? This is the (bizarre) art exhibition for you. If you fell in love with a farmer-lad with big hands on Tuesday's Day of Action this will also make the perfect first date! I've always thought that cows would fit in well in the city...their hides are basically walking handbags and that low mooing noise sounds almost like the iPhone's vibrate setting - tenuous, you say, but hey! a girl can dream! We recommend that you walk around this exhibition making up potential Meme punchlines about the images displayed... Those paintings are a little on the PORKY side!  "Mum, Dad, I'm moo-ving out." See, hours of fun to be had! Relish the fact that it is also damn difficult to make a cow look good and that you have to do this to get a decent photo. Rather them than me! / Kate Frances