Richard's 2017 Moontower Comedy Picks

It’s that time again, the car­ni­val of com­e­dy that is Moon­tow­er Com­e­dy Fes­ti­val. I say ​“again” because it’s become a wel­come tra­di­tion in Austin, but this will actu­al­ly be my first year cov­er­ing it. As the North­ern­most Com­e­dy Wham mem­ber (up in the sub­urbs of Round Rock), spend­ing four straight packed evenings in the heart of down­town is going to be rare, but worth every minute.

I’ll repeat some quick advice I’ve got­ten from the veterans:

• Pre­pare to hoof (or ride share) it around to the venues. The com­e­dy is spread out at mul­ti­ple loca­tions, but in a dense clus­ter in down­town. You like­ly won’t be dri­ving any, unless it’s to get to the heart of the city and park to start your adventure.

• You can’t see it all. That’s not hyper­bole, there’s just sim­ply an over­abun­dance of peo­ple and acts you’ll want to hit, and you can only be in one place at a time. So plan ahead, using the offi­cial sched­ule. That said, most comics and pod­casts at least have a cou­ple of appear­ances, so you should be able to Tetris your way into a fan­tas­tic plan no mat­ter what.

Off we go!

Pat­ton Oswalt

I’m a nerd. I know, I know, you did­n’t see it com­ing. But we’re out there, were before it was cool, and…Well, is it still cool? Who can keep track? Any­way you look at it, Oswalt is a true nerd’s nerd, that is also one damned fine come­di­an. He has insight­ful opin­ions on geeky cul­ture, and a love of film rarely matched. You’ve def­i­nite­ly seen him on TV, in cameos in movies of every genre, and he’s a pub­lished author. If that’s not enough, he also wax­es nos­tal­gic and rants polit­i­cal­ly sar­don­ic on a Twit­ter feed you should­n’t miss out on. Oswalt is a man who knows what he loves, and talks about it with unabashed aban­don­ment. That makes him my pick for April, 22^nd at the Para­mount The­atre. Though the show starts at 9:30pm but you’ll want to get in line early.

My Favorite Murder

If you lis­ten to pod­casts, and haven’t been liv­ing under a rock (or don’t take your phone with you when you go in there), you’ll know about the mete­oric rise of My Favorite Mur­der. It’s a pod­cast with Geor­gia Hard­stark and Karen Kil­gar­iff that takes a lov­ing, fanat­i­cal, but fero­cious­ly light­heart­ed, look into his­tor­i­cal mur­ders big and small. They adore their top­ic and strike the per­fect bal­ance of mak­ing you laugh while also hon­or­ing athe and explor­ing the human­i­ty involved in trag­ic times. Their unend­ing humil­i­ty at their new­found star­dom is too infec­tious to miss. Two shows are planned at 7:30pm and 9:00pm at the Para­mount The­atre on April, 19^th.

Chris Hard­wick

Anoth­er name you might know from pod­casts like Nerdist, his The Walk­ing Dead after­show Talk­ing Dead, or game shows present and past like MTV’s Sin­gled Out, Hard­wick seems to be every­where at once. (In fact, I’m not con­vinced he real­ly isn’t a small army of cloned Hard­wicks, bent on world media dom­i­na­tion.) I’ve seen Hard­wick live once before on his Fun­com­fort­able tour, and it’s a tes­ta­ment to his tire­less cre­ativ­i­ty and inven­tion that I’m set on catch­ing him again this year. He’s on stage at 7pm at the Para­mount The­atre on April, 21^st.

Ali Wong

In fur­ther proof that my daugh­ter is, or will soon be, cool­er than me, she was the one that actu­al­ly intro­duced me to Ali Wong dur­ing a Net­flix binge ses­sion. Her spe­cial, Baby Cobra, takes you through her rela­tion­ships, preg­nan­cy, and fem­i­nism. I was hooked on her abil­i­ty to take some­what every­day top­ics and sneak her sur­pris­ing per­spec­tives on you when you least expect it. She’s dis­cov­er­ing her path in life, and what she’s learn­ing along the way will make yours that much bet­ter. See her at the Para­mount The­atre on April, 20^th. She’s doing two sets: 7pm and 9:30pm.

The Rest (And There’s a Lot!)

Now, you’ll see that I’ve picked out some pret­ty big names, but there are lit­er­al­ly dozens of show­cas­es, spe­cial gigs, and oth­er head­lin­ers to choose from through­out the week­end. Don’t be afraid to check out shows like Stars in Bars, Stash­box or many of the oth­er com­pendi­ums. They may seem like small­er venues, but are filled with both local and nation­al tal­ent, giv­ing you a vari­ety of styles that ensure you’ll find some­thing (and prob­a­bly many things) to love. I’m still hop­ing to find a way to see Eri­ca Rhodes, Bri­an Posehn, and…well, I could go on for anoth­er 5,000 words and still not have enough space to cov­er all the great peo­ple and oppor­tu­ni­ties you have com­ing at you at Moon­tow­er 2017.

So make a plan and hit the streets, you can’t go wrong! You can find any and all infor­ma­tion regard­ing the 2017 Moon­tow­er Com­e­dy Fes­ti­val at their web­site.