Wafflefest

I didn't expect much. I figured, okay, these Hideout people, they'll pass out a few handfuls of naked, half-thawed squares of corrugated dough to "enjoy" while taking in all the improv comedy showcased in their third annual Wafflefest. Because, hey, it's just a gimmick, after all.

I'd warned my stomach before leaving the apartment. "Dude," I'd told my stomach, "deal with it, okay? The waffles are probably gonna be lame, sure; but just be cool, and I'll take you out for some pot roast after the show. Because we have to do this, okay? I mean, I promised the cerebellum some prime stimulation, and you know what a bitch she can be when we don't follow through."

We didn't need no stinking pot roast, however. We didn't need a damned thing, it turned out, after tucking into the fluffy, nicely toasted, golden brown waffley delights served up with an array of condiments – chocolate sauce, honey, whipped cream, Mrs. Butterworth, freshly sliced bananas – before the action began onstage.

And the action did begin, and it was no disappointment. Just Friday night itself offered six different troupes of different styles and what they call skill sets, and two of those troupes, Get Up and the Knuckleball Now, were among the best we'd ever seen. The cerebellum was particularly pleased (crying tears of electrochemical brain fluid in sheer joy at one point) by the literary gambits the Knuckleballers assayed within the "Jailed for Overdue Library Book" situation they'd been tossed as a random subject. And later, Girls, Girls, Girls did 20 minutes of their extemporaneous live musical thing with the suggested topic of "Hippie Hollow" and rocked the house with spontaneous guitar-fueled tunage about public nudity and relationships gone awry. And through all of this, between the sets? People with trays of waffles, roaming the aisles, handing out more, more, more.

Improvisational comedy in Austin has been at a peak lately. Maybe it's because the quality of what you'll see, here, outside of Wafflefest, on any given weekend, is so good … maybe that's why the folks at the Hideout didn't scrimp on their surrounding gimmick. Maybe that's why the waffles and their toppings were as good as the improv, and the improv good enough to make your stomach forget about pot roast for at least another six hours.