This weekend, the third annual Austin City Limits Festival invades Zilker Park. The schedule grids are here. I don’t think there are quite as many must-see acts as last year but hey - The Pixies! That’s good enough for me. Plus Elvis Costello, Wilco, Blind Boys of Alabama and the usual assortment of local faves.

I’ve written before about how the big outdoor festivals are one part of what makes Austin a place worth living in. Your Spamarama, your Eeyore’s Birthday, your SXSW. But everyone has to draw the line somewhere, and I found out a couple weekends ago that I draw the line at the Hot Sauce Festival.

Someone explain this to me. On a sweltering day in the middle of August, you go out and stand in a series of lines – in direct sunlight – in order to sample various hot sauces. When you make it through the line, you arrive at a steamy tent where a table is loaded with chips and gloppy bowls of salsa that all manner of weirdos with mouth sores in front of you have probably been double-dipping into all day. Why would one do this?

I would have guessed this is all a scam perpetrated by beer companies to drive up their sales, but in the whole of Waterloo Park there was but one beer tent! With long lines out the wazoo! This is madness, I say!

So, the Hot Sauce Fest is one festival too many for me. But I am looking forward to ACL, you betcha.