BEST BETS Friday 8/3
7 am-5 pm
Sports
If you’re looking for world-class surfing, there’s nothing better than the Philips Fusion competition this weekend at the Huntington Beach Pier. In the U.S. Open of Surfing, wave-riders from across the country compete for $100,000 in prize money, with divisions for men, women and children. However, this first-ever event offers more than just water sports. Starting Friday, the contest expands to skateboarding, inline skating and cycling, with live rock ‘n’ roll on the beach after the show.
* Philips Fusion, Huntington Beach Pier. U.S. Open of Surfing competition every day through Sunday, 7 a.m.-4 p.m. Skateboarding, inline skating and bicycling today through Sunday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Common Sense plays on Philips Concert Stage today, Ozomatli Saturday, 4-7 p.m. All final competitions Saturday and Sunday. Admission is free. (310) 473-0411.
All Weekend
Jazz
The Costa Mesa/Orange County Classic Jazz Festival, now in its second year, will have plenty of New Orleans-style traditional jazz as it unfolds through Sunday. But also expect liberal sprinklings of big-band, swing, Kansas City and straight-ahead jazz, too. On the lineup are the Jim Cullum Jazz Band, Banu Gibson & the New Orleans Hot Jazz and more than a dozen other groups. All attention will turn to jazz titan Louis Armstrong, who was born not on July 4, 1900, as he commonly boasted, but on Aug. 4, 1901, which makes Saturday the centenary of his birth.
* Costa Mesa/Orange County Classic Jazz Festival, Hilton and Holiday Inn hotels, 3050 Bristol St., Costa Mesa. Friday and Saturday, 10:30 a.m. to midnight. Sunday, 10:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. $30 to $40 per day. (714) 438-4922.
8pm
Pop Music
Speaking of New Orleans, there’s hardly a group or family more beloved in the Crescent City than the Neville Brothers--Art, Cyril, Aaron and Charles--who play the Sun Theatre in Anaheim Friday. The siblings’ latest album, 1999’s “Valence Street,” reaches deep into their roots; the title is drawn from the name of the uptown street in New Orleans where they grew up.
* The Neville Bros, Sun Theatre, 2200 E. Katella Ave., Anaheim. With Steel Pulse. 8 p.m. $52. (714) 712-2700.
8:30pm
Theater
The last time a small, struggling theater company in downtown Santa Ana attempted a play by John Patrick Shanley, it promptly folded. That was “Psychopathia Sexualis,” which drew poorly at Alternative Repertory Theatre last year and helped persuade its burned-out founders that after 13 years they had had enough of doing grassroots, low-budget theater. Now comes the Hunger Artists Theatre Company, which has been going five years, with Shanley’s “Danny and the Deep Blue Sea.” The 1984 play was Shanley’s first success and launched him toward a high-profile screenwriting career that includes his Oscar-winning “Moonstruck.” In “Danny,” a man and a woman join to face their torments and discover love’s redemptive power.
* “Danny and the Deep Blue Sea,” Hunger Artists Theatre Company, 204 E. 4th St., Suite I, Santa Ana. Fridays and Saturdays, 8:30 p.m., Sundays, 7:30 p.m. Also Monday, Aug. 20, 8:30 p.m. No performance Sunday, Aug. 12. Ends Aug. 26. $10 to $12. (714) 547-9100.
