Fun Fun Fun Fest's Yellow Stage: Comedy highlights

More Fun Fun Fun Fest

By Michael Corcoran

Are you ready to hear some Mitt Romney rants this weekend? How about jokes on Lance Armstrong’s situation? Since Fun Fun Fun Fest’s growing comedy presence will take place on the Yellow Stage a few days before the presidential election, those topics will be unavoidable.

Anyone who’s attended FFF knows it’s not a normal music fest. There are monster skate ramps, cannons that shoot tacos into the crowd, punk rock wrestling and a Weird Al Yankovic cover band, among other things you won’t find at the Austin City Limits Music Festival. In its seventh year, F4 has cultivated a quirky mindset that accepts youth culture entertainment in many forms besides music.

The comedy stage mixes such nationally known talents as cult superhero David Cross, Wyatt Cenac of “The Daily Show,” Eugene Mirman, Doug Benson and Hannibal Buress with top local comics Duncan Carson, Chris Cubas, Doug Mellard and Ramin Nazer.

F4 founder Graham Williams books most of the acts on Ol’ Yeller. “There is a whole network of edgy, more indie-minded comics happening right now,” he said of the synergy between yucks and rock. “They cross over in their fanbase with a lot of Fun Fun Fun Fest bands, even often sharing the same record labels.” Cross and Mirman, for instance, have both released two albums on the venerable Sub Pop.

“It’s definitely about picking the right kind of comedians,” Williams says. Mainstream won’t work. “Like, we’d never have Jeff Dunham or Carlos Mencia.” Just as certain bands fit better in an outdoor, general admission, party situation than Bass Concert Hall, there are some comedians who feed off the energy of a festival.

“Low energy, high concept stuff is difficult to execute,” said Austin improv comic Chris Trew, who will be the emcee on Friday. There’s nothing mellow about Yellow, where comics go with the flow or are eaten alive. “That’s why we have things like Air Sex Championships and Veggie Hot Dog Eating Contests in addition to amazing standup comedians like Hannibal Buress.” You might remember Trew from “America’s Got Talent” this year, when he had the rare distinction of offending judge Howard Stern with his air sex routine.

Trew’s performance troupe the New Movement has roamed the fields for four Funfests, with dozens of comedians staging flash mob-type pieces. Part circus, part variety show, but with live music the focus, Fun Fun Fun strives to be just that, by all means necessary.

Yellow Stage notables

Everybody likes great music and everyone likes to laugh. But it takes a certain kind of sound and a fearless style of comedy to go over at Auditorium Shores this weekend. That’s the simple principle behind the fest’s Yellow Stage, which features comedy earlier in the day before giving way to music each evening.

David Cross (5 p.m. Saturday). One of the first comics to play Emo’s (to mixed results), Cross is a major TV and movie star despite his razor-sharp edginess (“Mr. Show,” “Arrested Development,” “Men In Black”). He’s also done well on the bookshelves (“I Drink For a Reason.”) Originally from Atlanta, Cross now lives in New York. Cross’ production partner Jon Benjamin (“Freak Show”) will also perform at FFFF.

Hannibal Buress (4:45 p.m. Friday). When you have Chris Rock and Louis C.K. as fans, and you’ve been called “the new Dave Chappelle,” you have some funny on the money. Hannibal Buress has done all the late night shows — Letterman, Fallon, Kimmel, Ferguson — except Leno, which makes him even cooler. But he’s better out of the PG confines with his rare stew of racial and droll observations. After writing for “Saturday Night Live” and “30 Rock” to pay the bills, the “Animal Furnace” has concentrated on stand-up and is on his way to national headliner status.

Wyatt Cenac (4:30 p.m. Saturday). New York City-born Cenac is the latest top comic to launch from “The Daily Show,” but before that he spent three years as a writer on “King of the Hill,” a gig served by his time growing up in Dallas. The occasional actor (“Medicine For Melancholy”) stopped trying to imitate Barack Obama a while ago.

Douglas “Doug” Benson (5:10 p.m. Sunday). Benson is a regular on Comedy Central who’s best known for smoking marijuana from coast to coast in the 2007 documentary “Super High Me” and as a contestant on “Last Comic Standing” in the show’s fifth season. His former Comedy Central series, “The Benson Interruption” was turned into a monthly podcast last year.

Eugene Mirman (4:40 p.m. Sunday). Though Mirman became known to the masses as the landlord in “Flight of the Conchords,” the Brooklyn native is a top touring standup comic, being named by Paste magazine as one of the best 10 comedians of the past decade. Quick on his feet and absolutely shameless, Mirman thrives in a festival setting. Like Cross, he’s a recent author, with the satirical self-help book “The Will To Whatevs.”

Jon Benjamin (4:15 p.m. Friday). Quadruple threat actor/writer/producer/voiceover artist H. Jon Benjamin plays Sterling Archer in the FX animated series “Archer” and is also the voice of Bob Belcher in Fox’s “Bob’s Burgers.” He’s also co-written and guest-starred in “Important Things with Demetri Martin” on Comedy Central. He doesn’t need to come down to Fun Fun for funds, so he probably has some standup chops we don’t know about.