Nerds take a lot of flak in modern society, but if there’s one thing they deserve credit for, it’s dedication. Nerd love is some pretty severe stuff, particularly in the worlds of sci-fi and fantasy, where devotees re-create episodes of Star Trek better than hicks can re-create Civil War battles…
Bush and Kerry on tap 10/13 The first televised debate between John Kerry and George W. Bush wasn’t over but scant seconds before TV talking heads rushed to their desks to proclaim a winner. Kerry, looking and sounding more presidential than the scowling, fidgety actual president to his left, came…
There’s more to fear at Six Flags Ongoing For some people, Six Flags Over Texas is scary enough without the Halloween spider webs and masked men. Even brave writers at the Dallas Observer have been known to imitate a car alarm when shrieking through wimpy rides such as the Judge…
Dance the night away in Fort Worth’s Hangar 33 10/9 Are you one of those women–or men who are very secure in their sexuality–who’s seen Swing Kids a million times and have always dreamed of sauntering onto a dance floor in a period costume? Have you been practicing your dance…
Even ballet goes Lo-Carb 10/8 Somewhere in Dallas, this very minute, a tall, exquisitely thin, muscular dancer ritualistically measures five tablespoons of peanut butter, snaps the lid on the Rubbermaid container and acknowledges her day’s worth of food. Another, in a darkened kitchen, mini-blinds drawn, whirls a salmon fillet and…
Revolutionary idolatry is an odd business. Just ask unruly pop singer Stew, of the unruly pop group the Negro Problem. On his Naked Dutch Painter album, the melodic rebel dares to challenge a sacred image. “Don’t you wish there was, like, another picture of Ché Guevara?” he inquires. “Like, one…
Shark Tale is an animated film, though after you see it you might wonder whether the term is intended as oxymoronic. Put simply, it has no life in it at all. Not even the kids roped into an afternoon preview screening seemed terribly interested. Perhaps they’ve grown tired of computer-made…
If you aren’t familiar with Bishop T.D. Jakes, it could only mean you’re white or, like much of the entertainment industry and American media, generally clueless about the lives of this country’s tens of millions of evangelical Christians. To black Americans, Jakes is an icon–a preaching, teaching, entrepreneurial dynamo. Known…
We need Atticus Finch. Dedicated, decent, a scholar and father, Finch is the main adult character in Harper Lee’s perfect 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird. He’s a good man, this lawyer Finch, thoughtful, fair, loving and just. Whether from our adolescent acquaintance with him from a high school reading…
To Kill a Mockingbird Dallas Children’s Theater opens its 21st season with Christopher Sergel’s adaptation of Harper Lee’s Pulitzer-winning 1960 novel. “Maycomb was a tired old town, even in 1932 when I first knew it,” begins the narrator. “Somehow, it was hotter then. Men’s stiff collars wilted by 9 in…
The Dark Matters and the Lingering Lightness, installation by Michael Velliquette Installed in the small “project room” at Conduit Gallery is Michael Velliquette’s full-body multimedia environment, replete with voodoo-cosmic music and a myriad of interior accoutrements–aluminum foil doodads, construction paper chains à la second grade, and paper cut-out silhouettes all…
As we researched this piece, we realized that we’ve been denying ourselves the divine pleasure of a snazzy new bra for some time now. Sure, it may be hidden beneath clothing (Just say “No” to the exposed bra strap. Seriously.), but a really swell bra can make a girl feel…
Our first set of wheels was a trailer house. The “good plates” were the coated rather than the single-ply paper plates. New school clothes meant a six-pack of Hanes, but at least we had two TVs–one with sound, one with picture. We weren’t members of the jet set, but we…
10/1 If you aren’t one of the poor souls so traumatized by the Goosebumps books that you’ve sworn off all things with “haunted,” “horror” or “theme park” in the description, then perhaps you’re one of those ballsy buggers who think it’s not really autumn until you’ve peed yourself in fear…
9/30 Not getting a ring right away wasn’t the sad part of my first proposal. It’s the fact that when I did, Mr. Right gave me the tiny bauble in his Jeep while parked at Wendy’s. If only the proposal could’ve been more memorable (I couldn’t even tell you now…
10/1 Dear God, and/or television programming executives, and/or novelists, and/or filmmakers: May there always be good cop shows and good cop novels from which to make good cop movies. May we be eternally blessed with reruns of Hill Street Blues, Law & Order, NYPD Blue and Oz. May we always…
10/3 Several years ago, when the curators at The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth began to think about accommodating Spanish speakers in the museum’s programs, they considered their options and realized…they didn’t have any. North Texas provided plenty of native Spanish speakers to invite to the museum, but there…
Thursday, September 30 When Ché Guevara was killed in Bolivia in 1967, people shouted in the streets, “We won’t let him be forgotten.” We don’t think they had in mind that Guevara’s image would now appear on T-shirts, purses, watches and posters, appropriated by people who care more about Urban…
Here’s a message for all you single, horny, hot-blooded, heterosexual males out there: It’s time to break out the champagne. Wait, scratch that, make it Jack Daniel’s–lonely single guys seldom have use for champagne. There’s big news to tell, fellas: In When Will I Be Loved, Neve Campbell has ditched…
In this year of political movies, in which agendas serve as plots, comes the unlikeliest candidate of them all, The Forgotten, in which the climactic moment hinges on the belief that a child’s life begins at conception and not in the delivery room. To explain any further would reveal too…
A little bit of Argentina has come to Texas–a taste of Buenos Aires is livening up the fair but jaunty mix of Dallas. Yet in the photographs of Argentinean artist Esteban Pastorino Diaz, now showing at Photographs Do Not Bend Gallery, visual piquancy is the result of a much more…
Esteban Pastorino Diaz The photographs of this young Argentinean artist succeed as form and product–both compositionally and conceptually. Currently showing are three different types of photographs by Diaz, the panoramica, aerial views and night shots of architecture. Originally schooled in engineering, Diaz is a photographer most interested in process. For…
