Joe DeRosa! Better Call Saul’s Dr. Caldera!
Austin’s Eighth Annual Moontower Comedy Festival (aka Moontower 2019) was pretty good this year. For me, it wasn’t as cool as last year when they had the after party at a place the comedians enjoyed hanging out at but I still had fun and got my money’s worth via the $100 badge.
They were pretty big sticklers on not letting us peasant badge-holders have any vacant spots with the marquee shows. The only one I really wanted to see was the Schitt’s Creek stuff because the sitcom is going into its last season and who wouldn’t want to see SCTV legends Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara‽ The showcases and podcast recordings are really the better times.
On the opening night I went to this one hosted by Kevin McDonald. Between each comedian, Kevin told a “true story” about his time with The Kids in the Hall. I skipped Thursday because I was tired and wanted to save my energy for the weekend. Friday had a big showcase at the Parish with Eddie Pepitone kicking it off; he had a great dig at Austin’s downtown scooter mess. Another guy brought up how crossfit is really a scam to get overweight suckers to clean out warehouses filled with tractor tires and rope. The lady from Brooklyn pointed on how using “neutral” pronouns made her sound like an escaped slave. I then threw in my support later on for Fragile Rock who played new songs from their upcoming sophomore effort, Smile More.
I returned to the Sklar Brothers’ annual Ping Pong Slap Down. The field was wide open this year thanks to Judah Friedlander not attending! Randy and Jason continued to demonstrate their incredible ability to ad lib during play and when they interview the losers. Ultimately, the winner was a ringer, one of the people who works for the company providing the ping pong equipment.
Saturday night, I gambled on being an audience member at Eddie Pepitone’s podcast Pep Talks. His guests were Joe DeRosa and local comedian J. T. Habersaat. I accidentally got razzed by Joe and J.T. for knowing what the hell a water knife was, so much for watching Science-based television. It was OK, when I met Joe after the show, he was cool and I told him I didn’t mind. We mainly talked about Shudder and how I remembered him hosting a local comedian showcase a couple years earlier. Since the Lucas Brothers bailed, Dana Gould and Eliza Skinner were moved to Cap City and I went to the NYC showcase instead. Good mix of people. One guy used to be on SNL and he plugged his minor character on Hulu’s upcoming remake of Catch-22 with George Clooney.
I had a bit more luck hanging out at the after party, I spoke to Andy Kindler again and found out how he knew MST3K alumnus J. Elvis Weinstein…they’re neighbors, four houses apart back West! There was another local guy I need to catch during his weekly gig at Sixth Street’s Velveeta Room. Dana Gould dropped by for a bit. He gladly modified the autograph on my copy of the Boom Comics’ adaptation of Rod Serling’s original Planet of the Apes script Dana adapted. We even made tentative plans to try the birthday movie thing since he would be returning to Cap City in late May-early June.
What’s sillier is how I was thrilled to score these Moontower Fest socks, I plan to have them ready by next year’s festival. Maybe I’ll have them on whenever there’s a stand-up show I want to attend.
Until then, we await Moontower 9.