THURSDAY

(image via Subtle Pride / Facebook)

Subtle Pride: Live in Concert
Thursday, August 9 at Rubulad, 8 pm: $10 advance, $15 doors

While yes this is a concert, and this listing typically does not include those, I happen to know that seeing the group Subtle Pride in concert is not your average musical experience. In addition to many songs (often a cappella, harmony-laden, and/or improvised), there are often sketches, monologues, and other strange theatrical experiences peppered in within all the music sung by Mina Walker (of the band Daisy The Great), Brigette Lundy-Paine (of Netflix series Atypical), Zach Donovan, and Misha Brooks. It’s sort of hard to explain, but when I saw them at Dixon Place a year or two ago I was very impressed and also a little confused at times. But if you like celebrity culture, vocal harmonies, weird theatrics, and other such things, it is likely you will have a nice time.

FRIDAY

(image via Bailey Williams / Facebook)

Buffalo Bailey’s Ranch For Gay Horses, Troubled Teen Girls, and Other: a 90 Minute Time Share Presentation
Friday, August 10 and Sunday, August 12 at The Brick, various times: $20

First of all, I just want to direct your attention to the fact that when you visit the website for this show, the cursor is of a horse, which violently catapulted me back to my youth where I learned basic HTML and CSS in order to, as they say, jazz up my Neopets page. Once you’ve come back from that nostalgia trip, you will realize that the event known as Buffalo Bailey’s Ranch For Gay Horses, Troubled Teen Girls, and Other: a 90 Minute Time Share Presentation is back once more to serve you up a hefty dose of horse tales (tails…) by way of song, dance, and PowerPoint presentation. I saw this show when it was part of The Exponential Festival last year, but I had been vaguely aware of the show before that, not knowing anything about it really aside from its title, which is very good. The show is also good, so get thee to a ranchery.

(photo: Beatrice Helman)

It’s A Wonderful Everything!
Friday, August 10 at The Brick, 11 pm: $5

If you were wondering what was going on at The Brick after Friday’s showing of Buffalo Bailey’s Ranch, well, here it is. It’s A Wonderful Everything is a “1950’s satirical revue” created by Thomas Fricilone and Kelly Cooper, and as one might expect, takes you back to a time where at the very least the news did not regularly include the phrases “Elon Musk” and “4chan psyop.” But of course, the fifties were not actually better than today. In fact, I would venture to say they were bad for many people, just like how today many people are also unhappy and suffering. We love optimism here at Performance Picks! In any case, you can at least indulge in some brief escapism at Cooper and Fricilone’s night of retro-gone-wrong sketches, songs, and more, presented by the Brooklyn Comedy Collective and directed by Philip Markle.

SUNDAY

(flyer via The Macaulay Culkin Show / Facebook)

The Macaulay Culkin Show: 5th Annual Summer Comedy Fest
Sunday, August 12 at H0l0, 8 pm: $5

You thought it was gone forever, but baby, you thought wrong. Brett Davis and Sally Burtnick’s comedy show (named for the actor, who to my knowledge has never attended, and the show insists it has nothing to do with him at all) is back. Sadly, this does not mean Shea Stadium, the dearly departed venue the show used to call home, has also made a comeback. Rather, the show is reviving its annual Summer Comedy Fest (a marathon show in which a staggering amount of comics do a bunch of five-minute sets) at the Ridgewood space H0l0. They also say there will be air conditioning, which was not true of last year’s show, so that’s a thrilling notion.