Cyclists make a pit stop in Weatherford 7/9 The last organized bicycle ride I took part in–about a dozen years and 30 pounds ago–was in Indiana. Hardy people, those Hoosiers. Stoic Midwestern stock. Which is a polite way of saying they ran the ride like the Marine Corps’ Parris Island:…
They won’t, but maybe the art will 7/9 Art in Dallas. If you don’t know where to look, or if you’re standing in my father’s living room, you would think it was all mounted white-tail bucks, sepia-toned bronco pics and the odd Remington sculpture. Gray Matters Gallery is different. Vance…
To tutu or not to tutu 7/8 World-famous choreographer Martha Graham once described dance as “the hidden language of the soul” and our bodies as “sacred garments” that “say what words cannot.” Well, in that case, let’s just say that if you put my body in a tutu or a…
Gregg Araki likes to shock. That’s no secret to anyone who has followed the director’s career, but a cartoonish layer of unreality has usually kept the polymorphous sexual pairings and graphic violence somewhat at a distance. There’s a little bit of that in Mysterious Skin, but mostly it stays grounded…
Quite simply and quite literally, Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds is Close Encounters of the Third Kind turned inside out: We’re still not alone, only this time the aliens are out for our blood, which they spray all over the countryside like so much red…
What must go on offstage at Disney’s On the Record? Eight singers and nine musicians populate this sickeningly cheerful revue of more than 60 songs plucked from 75 years of movies from the mouse factory. Now playing at the Music Hall at Fair Park, the touring production already has crisscrossed…
Disney’s On the Record It’s too long and unspectacular for kids to enjoy, so what’s in this tedious 60-song revue for the grown-ups? Well, for a start, there are a couple of cuties onstage clad in what can only be described as “daddy-wear.” They may be singing tunes from Mary…
VENICE, Italy–All the ballyhoo over globalization in the last decade has turned the word into just another catchall for life in the age of electronic dispersion. Though meant to convey a new condition of cultural diversity and interconnection, it has come to describe our collective state of bland tolerance. Globalism…
David LaChapelle David LaChapelle imbues his photographs with a sense of good taste based on culture’s lowest common denominator. Theirs is a beauty based on kitsch run amok. LaChapelle’s photographs are a combination of surrealist celebrity and homages to Andy Warhol. Riffing on Warhol’s silkscreen images of electric chairs, LaChapelle’s…
I like to consider myself a connoisseur of celebratory experiences, and July 4 is my specialty. This is partly because of my patriotic parents as well as my preference for holidays that revolve around grilled meat, icy beer and oddity fireworks–like paper chickens that spin around and shoot fireballs out…
Thursday, June 30 You remember them. They wore the beret but shunned the authority. They spoke perfect French but refused those insipid potluck fetes. They were the French Club Dropouts. The West End Comedy Theatre has its own French Club Dropouts, and while a few may have been the high…
We’ll probably never know why alcoholic, womanizing, The Gong Show host Chuck Barris claimed to be an assassin for the CIA who ran missions in enemy territory and seduced women across the globe while inventing game shows such as The Dating Game and The Newlywed Game. But I kinda want…
Rockets’ red glare returns downtown 7/3 Searching for an ideal fireworks display on Independence Day weekend isn’t so simple anymore. As the decades roll by, the amount of crap exploding in the Dallas-Fort Worth sky keeps on growing. In order to sift through the selection, try using a checklist to…
Art plus yoga isn’t a stretch 7/1 Chic art gallery owner Nancy Whitenack isn’t afraid to do a little “down dog” to liven things up. “Galleries can get a tad stuffy sometimes,” says Whitenack, who owns the Conduit Gallery in the Oak Lawn Design District. “With summer here, we wanted…
From the stage to the frame 7/1 Just as rock and roll evolved into a powerful genre of music, rock-and-roll photography has proven to be an equally passionate subset of the visual art world. When a number of local musicians started intersecting Dallas photographer Blake Askew’s social circle, he wasted…
Gaming geeks and classical connoisseurs join forces 7/1 For more than a decade, nerds across the world have joined hands and celebrated once a year at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (known as E3). Every May, the world’s largest gaming conference astounds geeks with the newest systems, titles and Dance Dance…
Bewitched may go down as the first movie about a fictional failed actor that creates a real-life failed actor. This hackneyed, hapless and utterly useless redo of an overrated 1960s sitcom is excruciating to sit through for a dozen reasons. But nothing is more intolerable than the sight of Will…
Not many people saw Lost and Delirious, the 2001 boarding-school drama about two girls in obsessive love, and that was probably for the best. Yes, Piper Perabo (Coyote Ugly) made a stunning androgynous rebel, but she couldn’t rescue the film from its unctuous self-importance. My Summer of Love, a bewitching…
Anyone who would insist that movie reviewing is not a real job (‘sup, Mom) hasn’t been forced to sit through screenings of Bewitched and Herbie: Fully Loaded in the span of five days–and by forced, I mean either you see both movies, write 800 words about each or else you…
We wish that, like our esteemed colleagues, we were into something elegant or intellectual–gourmet cooking, world travel, art house films. (What’s that? You thought Dallas Observer employees spent their time playing video games while smoking illegal substances or imbibing obscene amounts of liquor? Where ever did you get that idea?…
Thursday, June 23 You have your Dick Heads, your Ben Dovers, your Willie Bangers, your Buster Hymens. But these days, it’s quite possible the most unfortunate name to have is none other than George Bush. We’re not sure if Martha Boone Mattia would necessarily agree, but she did interview George…
What I normally think at an airport: Go, go, get out of my way, I’m in a hurry, parking took 30 minutes, I’m a mile from my terminal, I’m late to check in at the airline desk, security will take forever, they’re going to make me take my shoes off…
