Find Creativity, Karaoke, and Even a Casket in This Week’s Recommended Events

Kids Club: The Muppets Take Manhattan

Monday 26 - Tuesday 27, Alamo Slaughter Lane, Lakeline, Mueller

Alamo Drafthouse makes it part of its mission to keep kids entertained and cinematically educated on the cheap, offering Kids Club screenings for a paltry $5 apiece – even for their chaperones! Take advantage and revisit a classic celebrating its 40th anniversary that takes the Muppets to Broadway after they graduate college. Unforgettable scenes with a rat cook sliding around the grill on a pat of butter, Miss Piggy chasing a purse-snatcher through Central Park on roller skates borrowed from Gregory Hines, the first appearance of baby Kermie and pals, and a smattering of cool cameos make this an enduring and hilarious hit from the Muppet menagerie.   – Kat McNevins

BookPeople Presents: James Wade, Hollow Out the Dark

Monday 26, BookPeople

Sorry, man, this book’s got two criminal characters in it named Frog and Squirrel. That’s a recommendation all on its own. But maybe you need a little more convincing, like learning Hollow Out the Dark by author James Wade follows veteran Jesse Cole through a Depression-era Texas as he navigates its violent underworld all while pursued by Texas Rangers, a past love, and the winter chill. Or maybe you need a rec from New York Times bestselling author William Kent Krueger, who calls Wade “a poet of the dark.” Or perhaps you should just show up this Monday to Wade’s in-person book event, where the author himself will be in conversation with Sarah Bird. Up to you, dude!   – James Scott

Last Day at the Velvet Casket

Monday 26, the Velvet Casket

Extinguish the black candle, put away the planchette, and dab your eyes with your favorite lace hankie the color of ravens’ wings. As part of the cursed I-35 expansion, Austin’s gothic salon is taking flight, leaving lovers of the strange and unusual bereft of this velvet-covered sanctuary from the bleaching horrors of the Texas sun. Come in your finest, funnest funeral attire to bid farewell to this midnight-blessed center to all things macabre. Tip the glass of one last beverage and help lighten the load of the resident vendors before they have to pack up their crates like Nosferatu stealing away into the night.   – Richard Whittaker

Monday Night Open Stage

Monday 26, Oilcan Harry’s

Just when you thought Monday nights were only for meal prep, Ritzy Bitz gives y’all a non-competitive space to practice the wonderful art of drag. This open stage is the perfect place for “any and all Drag Entertainers in Austin to entertain, workshop, audition and explore their craft,” as Ritzy writes on Instagram. Special guest performers share the stage, all of whom spent time as Grackle Games competitors; this week features Mars and the Queen Fantasia. Sign up before 9:30pm night-of and make sure you’ve got your music on a flash drive.   – James Scott

Terror Tuesday: Sorority Row

Tuesday 27, Alamo South Lamar

Sororities offer a perfect setting for horror movies, with some of the best slashers taking place in these old houses filled with potential victims. But what if the victims were really the killers? Sorority Row remakes the Eighties slasher The House on Sorority Row, taking elements of I Know What You Did Last Summer for a gory tale of a prank gone awry and a secret that the sisters might take to the grave a bit sooner than they anticipated. Carrie Fisher appears in a campy but solid supporting role as house mother to Theta Pi sisters including scream queen Briana Evigan, former reality stars Audrina Patridge and Jamie Chung, and boob tube darling Leah Pipes (CW’s The Originals, Lifetime’s Mommy Group Murder).   – Kat McNevins

The Searchers

Tuesday 27, Paramount Theatre

This is not your granddaddy’s John Wayne movie. He’s not as noble or in charge. Here, his cowboy archetype is floundering. It’s the anti-Western most people don’t acknowledge happening until Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven, only happening decades earlier. Dark, gritty, and featuring Wayne at his most overtly unlikeable onscreen, The Searchers gives an unflinching view of the West hardening a man to the point of inhumanity. Is Wayne’s character an actual shell of a man? Does he learn anything from his desperate quest to “save” his niece from the Comanche tribe that kidnapped her? Check it out in one of the most essential Westerns ever made.   – Cat McCarrey

CineNoche: Itu Ninu

Wednesday 28, Violet Crown Cinema

Cine Las Americas’ monthly CineNoche series at Violet Crown revisits the fest’s 2024 Jury Award Winner for Best Narrative Feature, Itu Ninu, an “indigenous sci-fi.” Set in 2084 (and moving at a brisk 72 minutes), Itandehui Jansen’s Mexican/British coproduction imagines a future of constant tracking, where two climate migrants evade surveillance and forge a secret connection writing pen-and-paper letters in the Mixtec language.   – Kimberley Jones

Lowrider Birthday Celebration

Wednesday 28, Bullock Museum

“It’s not old; it’s classic.” Me too, lowrider, me too. Celebrate the 46th birthday of John Colunga’s award-winning 1967 Ford LTD at this party celebrating vintage cars featured in the Bullock’s exhibit “Carros y Cultura.” Now, we know what you’re thinking: How can a 1967 car be turning 46? Its birthday celebrates its second life after restoration, which I’m really liking as a concept as I approach my own 45th. Anyhow, this fiesta celebrates with owner and restorer John Colunga on hand from 11am to 1pm, plus crafts, music, and more along with the very cool displays about Texas lowrider legacies. Stop by the craft station to spray-paint your own birthday hat for the occasion.   – Kat McNevins

Emo Karaoke

Wednesday 28, Volstead Lounge

Texas Emo Club is doing the good work, providing a space to experience emo classics as they were meant to be heard – screamed by a crowd at the top of their lungs. Volstead Lounge houses this refuge, a karaoke haven where patrons can bust out their Fall Out Boy or My Chemical Romance without the constant threat of someone belting “Don’t Stop Believin’” in the middle of their tortured fun. Get there a bit early to sign up for a slot. Make sure no one takes “Misery Business” before you can grace the stage.   – Cat McCarrey

Thee Gay Agenda: Best in Show

Thursday 29 - Friday 30, Crashbox

Bark, bark; meow, meow; honk, honk: These are the sounds you can expect from the newest Thee Gay Agenda variety show. Running for two nights only – with night No. 1 being a masks-on performance – witness the animal-style antics of your favorite queer performers. Beau Elliot, Mase Kerwick, Kelsey Oliver, Sinful Purchase, Khattie Q, and Irielle Wesley bring their furry & fabulous selves, while Emmet Hunker MCs and Schi the God spins as the night’s DJ. Grab a ticket and see who’ll be crowned Best in Show!   – James Scott

The Front Festival

Thursday 29 - Sunday 1, Various locations

Helmed by women and queer creative collective Future Front, this Labor Day weekend festival celebrates the end-of-summer holiday with this Austinite’s favorite activities: appreciating local music, film, and art, and doing a lot of swimming. The main event launches Friday, when the Contemporary Austin-Laguna Gloria hosts over a dozen independent Texan filmmakers for a movie showcase; on Saturday, Cheer Up Charlies welcomes musical acts Pam Reyes, Never, promqueen, p1nkstar, and more. Thursday and Sunday bookend the event with, respectively, night and day parties at the LINE Hotel pool, featuring DJ sets and pop-up art exhibits to boot.   – Carys Anderson

---

Want to see all of our listings broken down by day? Go to austinchronicle.com/calendar and see what's happening now or in the coming week.