Topical Humor: Let's go out to the movies (and comic book store) edition
Christa Gary
The cast of "Ka-Baam!" staves off a ninja attack with comedy, a ninja's only known weakness
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It doesn't have the allure, mystique, or patron saints/dead mascots of the local music scene, but recent years have shown that for every few singer-songwriters that pop out of the Austin soil, a comedian sprouts up as well. With eight venues (Café Caffeine, Capitol City Comedy Club, ColdTowne Theater, Esther's Follies, The Hideout Theatre, The New Movement, Salvage Vanguard Theater, The Velveeta Room) currently devoted to regular comedy programming, finding out what's happening in local funny can be a bit of a hassle. That's why we introduced Topical Humor, a semi-regular feature covering the latest of what's happening in Austin's comedy scene.
• Anyone who's ever sat in on a Q&A moderated by Tim League knows that the Alamo Drafthouse co-founder is a pop culture junkie brimming with opinions and observations. But can he spin a ripping yarn? The folks behind next week's Out Of Bounds Comedy Festival certainly hope so, as they've selected League to provide the monologues that will inspire an all-star cast of improvisers for a special edition of ColdTowne Theater's signature show, Stool Pigeon. Pigeon temporarily flies the ColdTowne coop to take roost atop the festival's Sept. 4 slate at Salvage Vanguard Theatre, where League's tales of his absolutely bonkers life (seriously, who could arrange a personal visit from Quentin Tarantino and open a bowling alley/karaoke lounge/arcade/diner in the same year?) follows up sets from local heroes The Frank Mills and Minneapolis-based genre mash-up artists Splendid Things. Just remember: If you talk during the show, he'll take your ass out.
• As the various branches of The Onion, Inc. have found over the past year, there's a lot of humor to be found in the Book Of Mormon-tainted, vampires-and-werewolves drama of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight saga. We've also discovered that the smallest slight to the series and/or anything remotely related to it has a way of turning legions of Twilight fans into luminescent-skinned beasts sniffing out spilled blood. So you don't have to fear for the lives of the Gnap! Theater Project players who'll spend November sending up Twilight, as their Dusk is billed as a "loving" attempt at squeezing the funny out of Meyer's ice-cold "lions" and the "lambs" who love them. The gender politics alone hold the potential for a month's worth of laughs—not that we're suggesting they're harmful or hurtful in any way. Please, no more incensed comments about "RPatz." Uh… hey look, a New Moon trailer!
• This fall's other big improvised tribute to goofy source material with a rabid following (here's a picture of a shirtless Taylor Lautner, okay?) is Ka-Baam!, which returns to the Hideout Theatre Sept. 11 for a baker's dozen of four-color superhero stories, drawn from the ludicrous well of comic books' Golden Age. [A.V. Austin assistant editor Erik Adams is among the rotating cast of players and narrators, so apologies for the lapse into Stan Lee-esque purple prose—Ed.] Each show (or "issue," if you will) features the origins of three never-before-seen, never-to-be-seen again costumed avengers, and culminates in an epic adventure that pits those heroes against villains birthed from the minds of real-life comics creators like Dead Squirrel Girl's Kristin Hogan. All without those pesky, vaguely insulting ads for X-ray glasses or Charles Atlas muscle-building programs.
