Austin, TX

This weekend hails one of my favorite Austin festivals, the Pecan Street Festival. Back with a brand new sponsor, Capital One. With over 250 arts & craft vendors, music, and performing artists, art classes, dance classes, a scholarship competition, international foods, a carnival, petting zoo, and much more, the Pecan Street Festival has something for everyone. Even better, it’s free!

Old Pecan Street Festival
When: Saturday & Sunday, Sept. 20-21st, 2008
Where: 6th Street, Downtown Austin
$$$: Free

For something a bit different you might try this:

The Bicycle Film Fest
When: Fri. & Sat., Sept. 19 & 20th, 2008
Where: 501 Studios, 501 N. I-35, 900 block of East Fifth
$$$: $25

Movies from a human-powered, two-wheeled perspective.

Want to enjoy wine and chocolate while learning how to pair them up? Then head over to Cork & Co for this class:

Cork & Co. Wine & Chocolate Class
When: Satureday, September 20 2008, 5:00pm
Where: 308 Congress Ave
$$$: $25

Learn the secrets of wine and chocolate. Sample different chocolates and pair it all up with some delicious wines. Before you reach a chocolate coma, you’ll learn what makes them interact in such an intense way, and what makes for a great wine-and-chocolate match!

Need a good laugh? Alamo Drafthouse has got you covered. Over the past year or two, YouTube has been filling up with groups of people performing the zombie dance from Michael Jackson’s Thriller. There are videos of newlyweds performing that choreography as part of their first dance together at wedding receptions, and of course there’s the clip of the 1,500 inmates of the Cebu Prison in the Phillipines. We were watching those videos last winter and thought to ourselves, “What if we could make that even more awesome?” This fall, that’s exactly what we’re going to do.

They’ve joined forces with Ines Markeljovic, a dance teacher and founder of ThrillTheWorld.com, to help her complete her task of setting a Guiness World Record for having the most people around the world doing the Thriller dance at the exact same time. For the past seven months, they’ve been hosting Michael Jackson Sing-Alongs at the Alamo Ritz, then following the music video orgy with two hours of dance instruction that gets everyone in the crowd up to speed on how to do the Thriller dance themselves. They’ve partnered with local theater groups, dance companies, and schools as well, and they’re convinced that when it comes time to participate in the Thrill the World dance, on Saturday, October 25th, they’ll have more people in one place than anywhere else on the globe!

Michael Jackson: THRILL THE WORLD Sing-Along!
When: Sunday, September 21, 2008, 7:00p
Where: Alamo Downtown
$$$: $12.00

Go forth and learn how to Thrill.

Also, Fantastic Fest is going on this weekend at the Alamo. Fantastic Fest is a week-long festival featuring the best in new science-fiction, fantasy, horror, animation, crime, Asian, and all around badass cinema. The event was created to offer exposure to genre films which are often overlooked by the traditional festival circuit. We strive to offer acquisition, media and exhibition opportunities for undistributed films as well as to spotlight upcoming genre theatrical releases and give audiences a chance to see 35mm prints of repertory classics.

Well, those are my picks for the weekend. It’s going to be in the comfortable 80s this weekend. Roll on fall!