Bonnaroo 2012: Thursday Night and Friday Morning Pre-Gaming

Don’t come to Bonnaroo if you aren’t a people person, especially if you are tent camping. It’s a game of Russian roulette, whether you end up next to a party bro tent blaring dubstep at 3 a.m., a family with a crying infant, acoustic-guitar man, tantric orgasmic couple or a…

It’s American Craft Beer Week. Here’s Where You Should Go.

I’m pretty sure there is a holiday honoring some sort of food product every single day, with overlapping weeks and months to celebrate others. They reach a saturation point at which I tune them all out. But American Craft Beer Week, which began yesterday and runs through Sunday, is an…

You’re Going To Sing, Chainsaw.

Gruesome horror flick The Evil Dead and its tongue-in-cheek sequels, Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness, are just about as good as movies can get. So if you’ve ever had the notion that they would be improved by combing all three films into a single theater production and adding…

Five Beers to Try at the Big Texas Beer Fest

Don’t forget: Big Texas Beer Fest is 1 to 6 p.m. tomorrow, and noon for the VIPs who paid $25 more for the opportunity to be first at the taps and close down the event at the Deep Ellum Brewing Co. after-party. But if you haven’t gotten around to obtaining a…

Tim and Eric Get Weird, Blow A Ton Of Cash

Squandering a billion dollars is easier than you think. The federal government spends more than that each month trying to keep people from using certain plant products to feel good. It’s just 0.02 of a percent of the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan so far. Mark Cuban…

Medieval Times: Fun Despite Ye Olde Upsell

While I had a great time at Medieval Times celebrating my 13th birthday more than 20 years ago, and again celebrating my son’s 10th last weekend, I now understand why my parents took me there exactly once as a child. There was a specific moment that drove home the realization…

They Got Herps

Don’t let presentation names like “Not So Creepy Critters,” “Herping Adventures” and “Glades Herps” throw you off. This is not some kind of conference for people who like to look on the bright side of unsafe sex. In fact, caution is strongly encouraged, as Pete Mimikos will give a “Venomous…

A Blue Streak of Funny

The title Kinda Blue for a comedy night suggests a lineup full of crass, foul-mouthed comics trying to one-up and out-raunch one another. True, the all-local bill will present material that is certainly for adult ears only, but that doesn’t mean the stand-ups have to resort to four-letter words to…

Comedy Slam Dunk

Shaquille O’Neal is a funny guy. And we’re not just talking about his inadvertent comedy, such as his infamous response when asked if he visited the Parthenon while in Athens (“I don’t know. I can’t really remember the names of all the clubs we went to.”) or his infamously bad…

Roasted to a Turn

Perhaps the best indicator that your level of fame has peaked is when you are the subject of a comedy roast. But if Andy Warhol’s prediction that in the future each of us gets 15 minutes of fame, that future is here — at least if you’re an American. Jeff…

Sample a Sordid Dish

Del Shores, the playwright responsible for Sordid Lives, Daddy’s Dyin’ (Who’s Got the Will?) and Yellow, is in recent years trying out a new way to write for the stage: stand-up comedy. Wrapping up a 39-city tour in his native Texas, the multifaceted talent — by turns sweet and catty…

Improvised Silence

Fort Worth’s Hentai Improvising Orchestra, a loose and unrehearsed collective of sound and noise artists who bang, buzz and blare away on an endless array of instruments, never seem to have the same lineup twice. So with flexibility and spontaneity mandated by the very nature of the band, who better…