We told you your picnic blanket had plans. Here they are: the Tennessee Stage Company's Shakespeare festival — its thirty-sixth — opens Thursday night on the lawn at Ijams Park, and it opens twice. The Merry Wives of Windsor goes up Thursday, King Henry V follows Friday, and from there the two trade nights straight through early August.

Here's the part worth knowing before you plan the week: tickets are fifteen dollars, but every Thursday performance is pay-what-you-can. So opening night — the comedy, the one with Falstaff getting dumped in a laundry basket — costs whatever you decide it costs. That's a rare thing for professional theater under the stars, and it's five minutes from most of South Knoxville.

Curtain is 7:30 nightly, doors at 7. Bring a lawn chair or a blanket — the lawn is the seating, and nothing is provided. Parking is free starting thirty minutes before showtime, and kids under fifteen get in free through Penny for the Arts. Add that up on a Thursday and a family can see professional Shakespeare outdoors for close to nothing.

If the sky opens up, the Visitor Center serves as the rain space, so a forecast isn't automatically a cancellation. Questions the box office can settle: 865-546-4280.

The weekend rotation: Merry Wives Thursday and Saturday, Henry V Friday and Sunday. Comedy or history — or, if you're ambitious, both.

Spain punched its ticket Tuesday, beating France 2–0 in Dallas. Its opponent gets settled Wednesday afternoon, when England and Argentina meet in Atlanta. Whoever survives that plays Spain on Sunday at three, at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, for the whole thing.

If you'd like to be there in person, the door is open — it just costs $7,253 to walk through it. That's the starting price. Per seat. Before the flight.

Or: Kern's has been South Knoxville's World Cup headquarters since the group stage, running One Knox watch parties on the outdoor big screen match after match, and its tournament banner runs through Sunday — the final's date, exactly. What the food hall hasn't posted is a start time for the last one, so if you're planning around it, call ahead. One quirk on the schedule either way: Ella Pinchok is booked for a solo set from 1 to 4, which means the music and the 3 o'clock kickoff are going to have to work something out.

And the consolation game — France against whoever loses Wednesday — is Saturday at 5, which is also, conveniently, right before the silent disco a few steps away.

A year ago a fully gluten-free fried chicken counter opened inside Kern's — the first all-gluten-free restaurant in Knoxville. Since then Disco Chicken has been written up as one of the best gluten-free restaurants anywhere, which is a sentence that ends with "in the world" and starts in South Knoxville.

Saturday it turns one. The food hall is running a Gluten Free Festival all day around it, and then — this is the good part — a silent disco from 9 to 11, scheduled, per Kern's own listing, to keep the energy up after that afternoon's watch party. Headphones on, everybody dancing to nothing, in a food hall, for a chicken's birthday. We'd call that peak SoKno.

If you're making a day of it: there's a free barre class on the event lawn at 9:30 that morning, the third-place match at 5, Jaystorm Duo playing covers 6 to 9, and then the disco. That's a full Saturday without leaving the building.

Earl's runs Spicy Pineapple Margarita Friday from four to six down on Waterfront Drive: nine-dollar spicy ritas, and a dollar off liquor, beer, and wine across the board — daily specials excepted, as ever.

Note the clock on this one. Happy hour lets out at six. Curtain at Ijams Park is 7:30. That's ninety minutes to get from a pineapple margarita to King Henry V, which is not a coincidence so much as an invitation. Friday in South Knoxville, fully scheduled.

The river is a different animal in the evening — the heat lets go, the light goes long and gold, and the fireflies start up along the banks. Friday's guided Evening Paddle launches from the Ijams River Club at 7:30 and runs two hours, boats and life jackets provided. Register ahead.

One catch, and it's a cruel one: 7:30 Friday is also curtain for King Henry V's opening night, about a mile up the road. Same park, same hour, two very good options. Nobody said July would be easy.

If the weekend's big-ticket items aren't your speed, Ijams Park has two quiet ones. Saturday from 10 to noon there's storytelling out at the Nature Playscape — the good kind of morning where nobody's on a screen and the kids get to climb something afterward. Sunday at 11:30, Self Care Sunday brings Hope Irwin's yoga class back to the trees.

And a service note for the regulars, because we checked: there's no bird banding this weekend. The banding table is back Sunday, July 26 at 7:30 AM. No Ecosystem Explorers this week either — that's August 1. Sleep in with a clear conscience.

The standing Sunday order on Sevier Avenue hasn't moved: six-dollar Bloody Marys and five-dollar mimosas from noon until nine at Hi-Wire. We mention it again because the World Cup final kicks off at three, squarely in the middle of that window, and we trust you to do the math.

This is also still the item a neighbor phoned in to the Ear — which remains the fastest way to get your thing in the paper. The line's at the bottom of this page.