Comedian Anjelah Johnson is Houston's adopted hometown girl.

When it came time for comedian/actor Anjelah Johnson to tape her comedy special, the San Jose native came to Houston to do it. Her reason? Houston has always treated her like a hometown girl and Johnson wanted an enthusiastic audience for the taping. "Even before my hometown San Jose got behind me, Houston was already on board. I get love from all over Texas, from the rest of the country, really, but Houston treats me like a hometown girl. It always has. I don't know how to explain it, except that maybe Houston is just smarter than the rest of the world," she deadpans.

Johnson's comedy is character-based, usually female characters with lots of attitude, like the infamous Bon Qui Qui, a ghetto-fabulous cutie with the tendency to stab her philandering boyfriends. Bon Qui Qui has become so popular that Johnson has recorded a music video as the character. It's called (what else?) "I'm A Cut You."

More »

Bobby Lee, our favorite queer Korean--American stand-up comedian who isn't Margaret Cho, hits Houston this week and is one of our picks for Friday. Proudly teasing on Twitter recently that he's "a koi fish farmer and a sexual deviant," the veteran of an eight-year hitch on Mad TV as well as the Harold and Kumar film franchise, Pineapple Express and other hefty box-office smashes drops in town for a weekend run. With any luck, Lee will reach into his bag of vintage bits and do a little Connie Chung or Kim Jong-il. Our personal favorite? The Blind Kung-fu Master.

See Bobby Lee at 8 and 10:30 p.m. Friday; 7 and 9:30 p.m. Saturday, and 7:30 p.m. Sunday. Improv Comedy Club, 7620 Katy Freeway. For information, visit the club's website or call 713-333-8800 $30.

Having hosted works by artists and filmmakers such as Andy Warhol, George Lucas and Gus Van Sant over the years, the Ann Arbor Film Festival is the premier avant garde film and new media showcase. This year's festival is over, but experimental film fans can still enjoy some of the selections at the Ann Arbor Film Festival 16mm Touring Program, hosted by the Aurora Picture Show and our second pick for Friday. The 16 mm Film Tour features abstract and surrealistic works from ten filmmakers who are exploring a variety of topics. In Tokyo-Ebisu, a hectic Tokyo subway is examined with in-camera effects and purposeful soundtrack while a single-shot work, A Preface to Red, examines movement and color. In Under the Shadow of Marcus Mountain, a part of a series of works from filmmaker Robert Schaller, rudimentary filming techniques reveal an -ethereal look at a mountainside landscape.

Catch the Ann Arbor Film Festival 16mm Touring Program at 7:30 p.m. 2442 Bartlett St. For information, visit the Aurora Picture Show website or call 713‑868‑2101. Free to $10.

More »

Austin's Moontower Festival (no relation to Houston's wiener-slinging bunch) comes into its second year boasting a massive lineup. In a city chock-full of festivals, it looks to be one of the coolest.

Set for Wednesday, April 24, through Saturday, April 27, the lineup this year is stacked with big names old and young, with plenty of room for upstarts to be seen in front of a new audience, at venues scattered all over Austin.

The Moontower people are boasting a schedule that includes more than 90 comics spread out over 80 performances for four days at 11 venues. It's like a more organized SXSW, without the giant Doritos machine, Japanese people and amateur drinking.

Because comics are professional drunks, you see.

If you are a SXSW regular, the venues will be familiar to you, spread out from Sixth to Eighth Streets. Badges start out at $129 and can run up to $599 if you want to mix and mingle with the comics and get preferred entry to shows. The mid-level badges are sold out.

More »

This past weekend, Houston lost the Comedy Showcase, the longtime comedy club down I-45 that helped break local and touring comics for the past three decades. The closure left Houston with just one dedicated comedy club, the Improv, near IKEA off the Katy Freeway.

Comics in town are obviously distressed. With one comedy club and some stray open mikes to hone their craft, it's a precarious time to be a comic in the Bayou City.

REWIND:

Comedy Showcase Closes Its Doors Leaving Houston With One Comedy Club

One comic, John Wessling, thinks the onus is on local bar owners to take a chance on the scene.

"People in the bar and restaurant business need to be bold enough to open an independent comedy club inside the Inner Loop," he says. "All the economic indicators are solid; there's no overwhelming reason not to do it, it just takes a group with some vision to decide to do it."

More »

This past weekend, Comedy Showcase off 45 South at Fuqua closed its doors. The owner, Danny Martinez, wants to retire, and his wife Blanca Gutierrez looks forward to them both jumping into being grandparents full-time. The changing market and low attendance, plus the lagging economy, also contributed to the closure.

The venue hosted comedians and hypnotists on Friday and Saturday nights, along with defensive driving classes on Saturday mornings. The traffic school will continue to hold classes until the end of April.

Martinez liked to think of the club as a sort of "university for comedians," for newbies and seasoned acts to learn from each other. The couple doesn't own the space, so they are not sure what will become of the location.

The club posted this message on the venue's Facebook page last week:

After 30 years in the business of laughter, The Comedy Showcase is presenting it's last shows this weekend March 29th and 30th, 2013. The club has been producing comedians for the last 3 decades many of whom have gone on to achieve national and international success and recognition. This weekend we present the best of the new and veteran comedians of the industry.

More »

In Transit by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa

Annabelle Lopez Ochoa's curated version of In Transit by the Compañía Nacional de Danza/National Ballet of Spain is just one of a slew of premieres seen at Dance Salad Festival 2013, which runs Friday and Saturday. The piece was inspired by Ochoa's frequent stops in airports. Ochoa has a second piece on the program, L'Effleure, a solo she created for dancer Rubi Pronk, who performs it here. Pronk also appears in Kurt Weill by Krzysztof Pastor, artistic director of the Polish National Ballet. (The group is back in the United States for the first time since 1980.) Mauro Astolfi's Dangerous Liaisons is performed by Rome-based Spellbound Contemporary Ballet.

Nancy Henderek, the festival's artistic director, travels around the globe in search of new and exciting work to bring to the event every year. One of her most notable finds this year was an evening-length work called PUZ/ZLE by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. After seeing it per-formed in a rock quarry in France, Henderek worked with the choreographer to bring a section of it to Dance Festival. "This is the first time that PUZ/ZLE has been to the United States in any form and we're getting a [version] that hasn't been seen anywhere else in the world. That's very exciting, to be able to work with this world-renowned choreographer on something special just for us," Henderek says. Musicians from Lebanon, Japan and Poland provide live musical accompaniment for PUZ/ZLE. "They're even going to create some new music for Houston."

See Dance Salad Festival 2013 at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Wortham Theater Center, 501 Texas. For information, visit the Dance Salad Festival website or call 877-772-5425. $20 to $50.

More »

Photo courtesy UH

Obviously good at thinking on their feet

The University of Houston can claim another national title now that Glaundor (no, don't check your Scottish history books, they made it up) has won the National College Improv Tournament in Chicago.

It's the first time a group from the Southwest won and the second outside Illinois to win. To get there, the UH student improvisational comedy guys made their way through a regional competition in Austin.

Glaundor's members include Jason Ronje, Colin David, Andrew Garrett, Kirk Ellis, Kevin Lusignolo, Adam Sowers and Saurabh Pande.

More »

JT Haberstaat taking the stage at Mangos

Mixing punk rock and comedy may not seem like a sane idea, but if you were at Mango's last night, then you know that it is. The Montrose club played host to "Bukowski Lives! A Night of Drunken Headliners!" which was an exclusive four show comedy tour that only came through the great state of Texas. The tour is an off-shoot of sorts to the Altercation Punk Comedy Tour, which is the brainchild of JT Haberstaat, who currently hails from Austin. Haberstaat brought some friends along for this tour, including Jay Whitecotton, Ian Stewart and John Tole, who's done quite a bit of national comedy including Howard Stern.

What makes a comedy show punk rock? "It's more of an attitude," says Haberstaat. Haberstaat grew up on punk rock music and the DIY sensibility and has transformed much of that into his approach to comedy. The Altercation Punk Comedy Tour only goes to small punk rock clubs. If the Comedians of Comedy tour started the idea of playing untraditional comedy venues, Altercation is its bad-ass little cousin; they hit up Mango's not the Verizon Theater. "The first year booking was terrible," Haberstaat recalls, "but the next year was awesome." Once clubs got "it," they wanted more.

John Tole, who headlined the show, comes from a similar background as Haberstaat in terms of the music listened to and the scene he hung around. "Punk rock was about tearing down the system when I was a kid," says Tole. And his approach to comedy is about tearing down as well but now with jokes. Tole explains that with comedy the comedian has a different impact on people than say a preacher, but there is a similarity. The comedian can share a message while being entertaining. Fight the man, just do it with a good joke.

More »

Four years ago, comedian Gabriel Iglesias played Houston, filling a comedy club with an audience of just a few hundred people. This week, Iglesias is back in town and he's playing the Toyota Center with more than 10,000 tickets already sold. What happened in those four years? "I learned how to use Twitter," Iglesias tells us with a laugh. "It sounds like a joke, but it's true. The biggest change has been staying in touch with everybody through Twitter and Facebook."

Iglesias, who has almost 400,000 followers on Twitter, says that while he has some help working with social media, he does the bulk of the tweeting and posting. "I do have somebody that helps me with the social network stuff, as far as what's new and what's hot, but all of the messages and updates, all of that is me.The only way to stay in touch with the people is to talk to them one-on-one."

More »

Saturday night, Jones Hall was lit up with excitement for the special appearance of the one and only Lily Tomlin. Tomlin made a stop over in Houston despite her very busy schedule (she appears on ABC's Malibu County and HBO's Web Therapy) and was then off to Dallas, among other cities. The performance promised an evening of Tomlin reenacting some of her most beloved characters as well as new material.

Tomlin took the stage to a thunderous applause. Jones Hall had a good crowd, although I don't think it was sold out. Tomlin was spry and active as she ran on the stage and jumped around with ease, impressive for a woman who is 73 years old. The show began with a video montage of some of Tomlin's best characters to remind you exactly why it was that you were there.

Tomlin opened with some nice stabs at Texas and Houston that warmed the crowd up and got some good laughs. From there Tomlin went into a monologue about all of the things that were currently worrying her, politics, drinking, getting old, the Internet, teenagers and life in general. Throughout this monologue Tomlin seamlessly weaved in her famous characters, which is what the crowd was looking for.

More »