Five Recommended Arts Events This Weekend

The ROT Rally’s inundating the city in record numbers, sure, but we’ve got just the usual number of suggestions for a different sort of damned good time.

1) Austin Playhouse over there in the ACC Highland complex, they’ve got this show called Lucky Stiff up right now – it’s helmed by Michael McKelvey, the same theatrical disruptor who’s brought us such gory delights as Evil Dead: The Musical! and that all-singing, all-dancing version of Silence of the Lambs – and this new one is about an English shoe salesman who inherits $6 million from an American uncle, but, to get the money, the guy has to take a vacation to Monte Carlo with his uncle’s embalmed body and convince people that the man’s still alive. Holy Weekend at Bernie’s IV, that sounds like a hoot & a half, dunnit? Get your tickets here.

2) Maybe, when you go to the Russian House, you usually go for vodka or borscht? Make note that, this Friday night, there’s also a righteous triple slate of stand-up comedy among the potables and fine cuisine: Hammer & Giggle. That’s three separate shows of three sets each, every show featuring a different (but hilarious) trio of comics. Pat Dean? Chris Cubas? Nikita Redkar? Devon Walker? Yes! And who are the other five, and who’s up when? If you click this link to find out, comrade, you won’t believe what happens to Donald Trump’s shriveled genitalia next.

3) How does “three acoustic robots singing to each other, round-robin style, mimicking a group therapy session” sound as a concept? Like it’s a sketch from SNL when SNL is actually worth watching? Like, maybe sometime after the Singularity? But, no, this is “Deliriums,” a legit art installation that's happening right now, and it’s created by that mechanical savant Matthew Steinke. The local and musically inclined tinkerer who’s delighted the city with robot-driven holiday concerts now brings us his latest exhibition – with a opening reception at Northern-Southern Gallery this Saturday night.

4) If you like zines at all … and especially if you like the more graphically enhanced kind of zines … and even more especially if you like comic books from indie micropublishers … then how can you not attend the Fairweather Friend Fair this Saturday afternoon? Because, we mean, there’ll be plenty of great new zines from host Hellen Jo, and Kevin Muñoz, and Inés Estrada, and many others at this gig. And free hot dogs from your friends at Better Half. And you can buy yourself a Fairweather Cider brew and find out what happens to apples that have lived a very good life and never done wrong.

5) When they say that the Travis County Search & Rescue team is going to the dogs, what they’re probably talking about – in admiration – is the group’s exemplary K9 Unit. And you can learn what working with those heroic hounds is like, as K9 Unit leader Elizabeth Bryant dishes the goods for the latest meeting of Sisters In Crime: Heart of Texas Chapter at Cafe Express this Sunday afternoon.