Hecklers Beware

Comedian Jay Mohr is coming to town for six stand-up sets the same weekend as the Super Bowl. So, is he your typical celebrity-turned-sports fan when it comes time for the big game (and the big parties)? We think not. He’s a verifiable sports freak, as his gigs with NFL This Morning and Mohr Sports attest. This weekend at the Improv, you can expect a solid mix of his good-natured riffing about the wide world of sports and his stellar observational comedy on life in general. But we urge the audience to keep the heckling to a minimum, unless you want his act to take a turn toward boxing.

“I got in a fistfight at the Laugh Factory [in Hollywood] with the audience,
literally the entire audience,” he once told an interviewer. “Someone threw
ice at me and I snapped. I couldn’t see exactly who threw it, only from which
direction. So I walked fists first into that section of the crowd.” 8 p.m. and
10:30 p.m. Thursday and Friday, January 29 and 30. 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. Saturday,
January 31. 7620 Katy Freeway, suite 431. For information, call 713-333-8800.
$30. — Keith Plocek

Ho Da Le Di Who? Why, Riders in the Sky, of course

When Ranger Doug first heard his uncle yodel, he was transfixed. “When you
break into a yodel, people smile,” says the singing guitarist of Riders in the
Sky, the cowboy quartet that’s kept the music of the Old West alive for the
past 25 years. The group’s wry humor and fiddlin’ free-for-all will be backed
this week by the Houston Symphony, giving full effect to the Riders’ panoramic
Hollywood Western music. Ranger Doug, known as the Idol of American Youth on
the group’s syndicated radio show, figures that if his music career tanks, he
could provide protection to astronauts heading for the Red Planet, the way Slim
Whitman’s yodels were used to kill interplanetary invaders in the bizarre flick
Mars Attacks! “Well, have we ever been attacked by Mars?” he asks. “I’ve
kept Earth safe with my ‘strategic defense yodeling.'” 7:30 p.m. Thursday, January
29, through Saturday, January 31. Jones Hall, 615 Louisiana. For information,
call 713-224-7575. $21.75 to $78.75. — Greg Barr

Catch a Cab

For one night only and for only five bucks, you too can take part in one of
the coolest cabaret shows to hit Houston in quite some time. Hosted by none
other than those hipsters at Infernal Bridegroom Productions, Jack Babylon’s
End of the World Cabaret promises to shake the Axiom out of the winter doldrums
with the pre-swing jazz of Kid Ornery and a puppet show from Katie Jackson (who
was the wizard behind the raging rhino heads in IBP’s production of Rhinoceros).
There’s also promise of go-go dancers dressed in lingerie. Need we say more?
8:30 p.m. and 11 p.m. Saturday, January 31. 2425 McKinney. For information,
call 713-522-8443 or visit www.infernalbridegroom.com.
$5. — Lee Williams

Delta Blues

THU 1/29

For playwright Endesha I.M. Holland, “Mississippi” is spelled H-O-M-E. Her play, From the Mississippi Delta, narrates the life of Phelia, a civil rights activist whose tribulations mirror those of the playwright and several legendary heroines from her home state. Fellow Mississippian Oprah Winfrey produced the play’s original run on Broadway. 7:30 p.m. Thursday, January 29, through February 22. The Ensemble Theatre, 3535 Main. For information and a full schedule, call 713-520-0055. $10 to $20. — Keith Plocek