Five Things You'd Totally Enjoy Doing This Weekend
By Wayne Alan Brenner, November 7, 2012, 1:08pm, All Over Creation
Seriously: Where it never stops.
Ooooooooooooh, and it makes me wonder: Was there always way too much going on in the ATX every goddamn weekend?
Is that how it was back in the days when Frank Zappa was still among us and playing the Armadillo World Headquarters? Has it been that way, in fact, since stegosauruses or whatever roamed the pre-subdivisioned Texas plains, scalping tickets to Extinction Event XIV?
This coming weekend's update:
Even more to do, and then some.
Dear reader, allow me to point out a few likely winners among the current, gloriously overwhelming glut of events:
1. EAST : The East Austin Studio Tour, duh, that's a no-brainer – we wait all year for this inside peek at artist studios on the Eastside, and for the various edifying activities (demonstrations, performances, gin-sodden debauchery) that accompany the rare look-see. And of course EAST is one of those events that's many-events-in-one and you could run yourself ragged trying to encompass it all. Give it the old college (or PhD-wielding fry-cook) try, though: You won't be disappointed.
2. The Showdown at Unobtainium : With so much happening constantly within the Austin city limits, a fellow's reluctant to pimp events anywhere beyond those borders – but how could I not raise a brass-geared alarum about this huge steampunk undertaking that creates, renfair-like, an entire village (just half an hour south of here) filled with retrofuturistic revelry, live music, and performances culminating in a staged confrontation (with lightning-chased fisticuffs) between Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison? Answer: I could not not raise such an alarum. Huzzah!
3. Wafflefest : Not that The Hideout's regular slate of comedy improv needs any embellishment to make it a worthwhile experience … but, still, once a year, the inventive team that runs that sweet joint downtown doubles a weekend's schedule of shows and provides audiences with all-you-can-eat waffles & a variety of tasty toppings. This, for the usual price of admission, makes for roomfuls of happy and stuffed improv fans.
4. Heather Woodbury: As the Globe Warms : This "American soap opera in six parts" wraps up at the Vortex this weekend, and you don't need to've seen any of the preceding parts to enjoy Woodbury's brilliant, multicharactered performance. The artist (and her director Michael Yawney) crafted this show from hours and hours and hours of material, honing it into an amazing tapestry of small-town personalities, desperate scientists, endangered animals, and evangelicals gone wild. Woodbury's the tip of her own storied iceberg – and just that is enough to sink the notion that complex theatrical narrative is headed toward extinction.
5. Salon Vanguard : Okay, this one's for after the weekend, between the wild spikes of EAST and before Formula fucking One fully penetrates the ATX's tender zeitgeist. This one's the annual, wonderfully posh fundraiser for Salvage Vanguard Theater, where the food by Jamie Rhodes is as creative and satisfying as what you'd get at a fancy eatery, where Graham Reynolds and others provide live entertainment, where Hank Cathey's concocted the night's unique cocktail, where old-timey parlor games will add whimsy to the shindig's casually structured finery. Where? At the elegant Eponymous Garden. When? This Tuesday night.
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