Austin Comedy Weekend Picks: Anthony Fuentes, a Roast Battle and TexAss

Friday the 13th falls on a weekend in Austin, which is fitting, because the scariest thing in this town is still the parking. The big names are already spoken for. Jeremy Piven and Johnny Pemberton were in our listings last week, and Kevin McDonald's two nights at Fallout show as sold out, with sales closed since Nov. 7. So this weekend is for the shows a little further down the marquee, which is where the funny usually hides anyway, like the good silverware.

Start at Cap City's Red Room, the club's small room at 11506 Century Oaks Terrace by the Domain, where Anthony Fuentes has three nights. The club bills him on storytelling and crowd work, plus family, dating and the absurdities of modern life. That covers about everything a man can suffer, short of a property tax appraisal. Crowd work in a small room is a blood sport with better lighting, so sit in the back if your job is embarrassing.

Friday at ColdTowne's new East Second Street home, TexAss mixes queer stand-up with drag, hosted by Sarah Spear. It's $19 with fees and the parking is free, a sentence no one downtown has said since 1987. Then at 11 PM the Creek and the Cave runs Roast Battle: Austin, part of a league that started at the Comedy Store in Los Angeles. Two comics insult each other while judges score it, which is how Congress would work if anybody in it could write.

Sunday is the quiet day, and it has two good options. At 4 PM Cap City has Philip Lindsay, a middle school teacher whose comedy grew out of the classroom. Teaching thirteen-year-olds is the only job where the hecklers have a hall pass. At 8 PM the Creek hosts the Comedy Ladder, a showcase where every comic gets more time than the one before, from new talent up to a headliner. It's the career arc of a comic squeezed into one evening, minus the decade of sleeping on a friend's couch.

If you'd rather end Saturday in a pew, Fallout's Midnight Church starts at 11:45 PM, $19.32, and turns the audience's confessions into improv scenes. It's the only service in town where the sermon gets better the worse you've been. The rule of the weekend is the same one that works at a buffet: skip what everyone's lined up for, and you'll eat better and wait less.