Cheap and Free Events in Dallas This Week

The Saboteur Reading

The Wild Detectives
314 W. 8th St.
7:30 p.m. Thursday
Free
We all have friends who say they’re going to write a book someday. But former Observer staffer Paul Kix really meant it. Kix, who’s now deputy editor at ESPN The Magazine and has contributed to The New Yorker, recently published his first book through HarperCollins. The Saboteur is a work of historical fiction that follows the adventures of a French Resistance fighter, which include Nazi imprisonment, escaping death sentences and working as a secret agent. “I’m really proud of this book,” Kix says. “It took four years of work, researching it in five countries.” We’d be proud, too. The book has been optioned for a movie produced by the guy who produced Spotlight and directed by Cary Fukunaga, responsible for the first season of True Detective. Hear Kix read an excerpt from The Saboteur at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at the Wild Detectives, 314 W. Eighth St. – Caroline North

I Can’t Believe I Got This Sh#!t for Christmas

Dallas Comedy House
3025 Main St.
8 p.m.
$8
Gift giving is a tricky activity that flirts the line between a work of social art and an insulting stab at another person’s worth. You really have to know the person to give a joke gift like a hippopotamus night light or an emergency roadside kit that comes with a hip flask. If you’re the incorrect recipient of one of those horrid gift ideas, you can put it to good use at the Dallas Comedy House’s new improvised comedy show I Can’t Believe I Got This S#!it for Christmas. A team of improvisational comedians will take your ideas and turn them into inspiration for a live performance. Bring a new, unwrapped gift item to go to a worthy charity, and get free admission to the show at 8 p.m. Thursday at the Dallas Comedy House, 3025 Main St. Tickets are $8 at dallascomedyhouse.com and $12 at the box office. – Danny Gallagher

Inspiration, Memory, and the Divine in Art

Amon Carter Musuem
3051 Camp Bowie Blvd.
11 a.m.-noon Saturday
Free
Wrestling with some big questions in the lead-up to 2018? If you’re seeking answers to more than, say, which New Year’s events have the best party favors, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, 3501 Camp Bowie Blvd., can help you with reflection and inspiration throughout its galleries. Discover how art is inexplicably linked with memory, inspiration and the divine during a themed tour titled Inspiration, Memory, and the Divine in Art from 11 a.m. to noon Saturday. Participants can meet at the information desk to begin exploring the ways art provokes us and connects us to the spiritual, with particular emphasis on Nobel Prize-winning neuropsychiatrist Eric Kandel’s research on the role art plays in memory storage. No reservations are needed, and admission is free. Visit cartermuseum.org for more information. – Jennifer Davis-Lamm