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You thought SXSW was the only days-long party in town promising loud music and smelly animals? Then this must be your first rodeo! OK, this one’s slightly more wholesome: Activities include a stock show, pro rodeo, petting zoo, pig races, carnival rides, and your favorite fareground vittles, plus a fresh headliner every day, including Lukas Nelson, Los Huracanes del Norte, Wynonna Judd, and Flatland Cavalry. Too wholesome? Pull on your finest shitkickers and hit the dance hall; there’s a full bar and, Rodeo Austin teases, a “chance to dance with a real cowboy.” Runs through March 23. – Kimberley Jones

All over Austin since 2016, horror cinema showcase Bat City Cinema brings the word of 16mm film. Their latest collaboration with the American Genre Film Archive bleeds true bad-taste bona fides for this blood-and-guts presentation: Screening on Austin’s “last single-screen cinema” will be two deep-cut AGFA schlock specials. The Undertaker and His Pals from director T.L.P. Swicegood features a murderous medical student biker chopping up bodies for his “studies,” and, according to the American Film Institute entry on it, had a print confiscated in 1967 by Louisville, Ky., police due to its “publication of materials dealing with bloodshed, lust or crime.” The other film, aptly titled The Corpse Grinders, deals in a sketchy cat-food company utilizing the local graveyard for their meat, which of course makes all cats hunger for human flesh. Yum! – James Scott

The history of world cinema teems with “new waves” that symbolized electrifying new directions – in technique, in the kinds of stories being told, and in the people doing the telling. In Taiwan, that New Wave revved up in the early Eighties with Edward Yang at the wheel. Austin Film Society’s new Essential Cinema presents a rare look at Yang’s filmography, which has grown in stature since his early death at 59 from colon cancer. Series kickoff Taipei Story (1985) stars Hou Hsiao-hsien, fellow titan of New Taiwanese Cinema, as a former star baseball player stuck in the past and at odds with his more modern-minded girlfriend, played by Tsai Chin, a pop singer who would become Yang’s first wife.   – Kimberley Jones

David Spade was a key member of one of the best casts in Saturday Night Live history, starting as a writer in 1990 and becoming a beloved cast member along with Chris Farley, his co-star in Nineties buddy comedies Tommy Boy and Black Sheep. Many may know Spade best for Joe Dirt or his Emmy-nominated role as Dennis on long-running sitcom Just Shoot Me!, which leaned heavily on his self-deprecating humor and deadpan delivery dripping with sarcasm. New stand-up show “Catch Me Inside” brings his trademark wry humor to the stage with new material built on a decades-long career. – Kat McNevins

If you caught the 2018 doc McQueen, about the late fashion designer Alexander McQueen, then you’re already familiar with the talents of his nephew and protégé Gary James McQueen, who was responsible for the stunning, under-the-skin skull sculptures featured in the opening credits. Those skulls, as represented via 3D lenticular artworks, form the basis of the Gary James McQueen exhibit – his first stateside – now running at West Chelsea Contemporary through March 24. – Kimberley Jones

Burnout! I, a free alt-weekly employee, obviously know nothing about the concept. But author and Dallas native Sean Enfield brings a hefty education on the subject to his recent essay collection Holy American Burnout! from Split/Lip Press. Essays woven together with cultural critique into a larger tapestry of Black & biracial identity makes for fertile conversation (Enfield also identifies as a gardener), which this day will be had with local writer/editor/founder of anti-racist publisher Abode Press Diamond Braxton. Topics include “the collection, the many forces that lead to our collective burnout, and of course, Frank Ocean.” – James Scott

This world premiere won’t be a danse macabre, per se, but we’re dying to see what Ballet Austin’s Artistic Director Stephen Mills has conjured by way of exploring the life and works of that darkling prince of American letters, Edgar Allan Poe. Mills’ choreography, gracefully (and eldritchly) embodied by the company’s finest at the Long Center, doesn’t take place in any grave silence, of course – the kinetic biography is powered by a musical score from composer Graham Reynolds, performed live by the Austin Symphony Orchestra, and features a thrilling libretto penned by the Rude Mechs’ appropriately raven-haired Shawn Sides. – Wayne Alan Brenner

Push the boundaries between reality and fiction at this performance of Sam Mayer’s persona poolboy00, “an experimental reality show/participatory memoir/talk show for the streaming platform Twitch and irl.” Audiences will be pulled into the Houston-born artist’s tale created from over 20 years of writing – including journals, failed plays, and a School of Rock fanfic – and asked to interact through live question and answer. Be warned, however, that nothing is as it seems in this production. – James Scott

The lady Longhorns go up against the Drexel Dragons for Game 35 in the first round of the NCAA Tournament