Spotted this weekend on the Church Street Marketplace: Meredith and Andy Gordon, in from Underhill and having a romantic dinner of sandwiches outside the Red Onion.

The Gordons are the married twosome of the sextet that make up Burlington's sketch-comedy troupe Potato Sack Pants Theater. Since last September, Meredith and Andy have also been parental units — to Henry Allen Gordon. And now that the little tyke is almost 8 months, his mom and dad and their zany friends are exploiting him, er, staging a performance in his name: HAG Fest 2013.

Billed as an "artist market and sketch comedy," HAG Fest will be held at — where else? — the Off Center for the Dramatic Arts next week for two nights, May 17 and 18.

The Gordons were sans child for their outing on Saturday for said romantic dinner; apparently they'd left him safely at home in a dresser drawer. Totally kidding!

But I've seen numerous photos of young Henry on Facebook, and he sure is cute. Given his genetic profile, he is probably also hilarious. I sure hope so, because otherwise his parents are going to be highly embarrassing in about 13 years.

When Meredith mentioned the upcoming show, I suggested it might be nice to announce it so that, you know, someone would show up to see them. Hence I received the poster at right.

HAG fest is not part of Burlington's five-day  Green Mountain Comedy Festival, which doesn't start until May 22. But there's no such thing as too many laughs, right? Right?

If you've never seen Potato Sack Pants Theater — which also includes Stetson Ward, Erin St. Cyr, Chad Hayden and Kelsi Goodall — you could read my 2011 story about them here. Tix here.  

No grass growing on Harry Bliss. The Burlington-based cartoonist and illustrator has a brand-new, teacher-approved kids' book, Diary of a Worm.

Says Bliss on his Facebook page:

"All my life I wanted to have an 'I Can Read' book...and now I do. It's ironic, because I suck at reading..."

Written by Doreen Cronin, Bliss' partner on other children's books, Worm has a companion — or is it a sequel? — Diary of a Spider.

For someone who claims to just look at the pictures, Bliss does all right with writing, too. He's penned the children's books Bailey, about a charming and surprisingly talented dog, and Luke on the Loose, as well as the adult cartoon collection, Death by Laughter.

And then there are Bliss' very grown-up cartoons, which appear weekly in Seven Days and occasionally in the New Yorker. The magazine has also published more than 15 Bliss cover illustrations.

Can't get enough Bliss? Check the website for his cartoon of the day.

Are there movies I missed that I'd like to be reviewing right now? Hell, yeah.

New on DVD this week is Upstream Color (trailer here), the latest from Shane Carruth (Primer), a self-distributed festival success that was too weird for most U.S. theaters. It's on DVD, Blu-ray and video on demand, and I hope to review it in this space once it reaches my evil overlord, Netflix.

(Sorry, Netflix. I didn't mean that, really. You're a million times better than Blockbuster even if you did kill my favorite video store. I've never had any problems with your top-notch service. Thanks for bringing me the excellent "Top of the Lake." Is that enough groveling? Now, please expand your streaming catalog.)

Anyway, here's an interview with Carruth about putting his film out there by himself.

Meanwhile, what movies are hard to miss this week?

Two of my favorite actors in Burlington make up the entire cast of Gruesome Playground Injuries, which opened tonight at the Off Center for the Dramatic Arts. In fact, the promise of Jordan Gullikson and Chris Caswell onstage together drew me to Rajiv Joseph's intense — and intensely interesting — play despite its off-putting title.

I'm tempted to give a mini review here, but I won't. Seven Days theater critic Alex Brown will provide that in next week's issue. Suffice it to say that Gruesome, which starts out in a school nurse's office following a playground injury, far surpasses childhood mishaps.

In a series of nonchronological vignettes about the entwined lives of Kayleen and Doug over 30 years, it reveals deepening layers and kinds of hurt that adults can bear. At times you just want to reach out and give these two a hug; at other times, you want to slap them.

By turns sweet, funny, wrenching and horrifying, the play could have been titled Walking Wounded. But I suppose Gruesome Playground Injuries is more provocative.

Joseph's one-act was a finalist for a Pulitzer in 2010. In 2011, it was presented by Second Stage Theatre in New York City. In 2013, Heat & Hot Water Production's staging with Gullikson and Caswell, directed by Mark Alan Gordon, deserves to be seen. On opening night, fewer than 10 people did.

So I'm doing my bit to urge you: Go. This Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., plus Saturday matinee at 2 p.m.; and next week, May 8-11, same deal. 

Photo courtesy of stage manager Dylan Friedman.

We've been anxiously awaiting the debut from Shark Victim since the local duo debuted last fall. A collaboration between Lendway's Mike Clifford (grimy-ass bass) and Jess Mateik (grimy-ass drums, druggy vocals), the musicians describe themselves as "chaos pop," which sounds about right. In a Soundbites column last November, I submitted that they reminded me of "Dum Dum Girls run through an organ grinder." Based on "It Goes Down," an advance cut from their forthcoming EP, which SV just released on Bandcamp, let's stick with that description for now.

Shark Victim's debut EP is due out in June — on tape, no less. But here's the track to tide you over. Enjoy.