I don’t fish but can spend a happy afternoon ogling tackle in a sporting goods store. Don’t do woodworking, but that tool section at Home Depot? I’m the kid in a candy store. Guns, auto parts, camping equipment, electronics—hell, sewing machines—it’s all the same. You may know someone similar. We…
Street fairs are a great excuse to eat meat on a stick while bargaining for some hemp jewelry. When the weather’s nice, the crowds aren’t too pushy and there’s no line at the funnel cakes booth, nothing can beat an hour of strolling down a blocked-off street perusing the wares…
At 7:30 p.m. Friday and 2 p.m. Saturday, May 6, the Texas Radio Theatre Company presents T Minus X: Stories of Tomorrow. If you’re like me, you’re trying to figure out what a Radio Theatre Company is. It’s the art of live audio theatre, minus the visual elements you’d find…
For those who think poverty is a choice, allow me to recommend the book Nickel and Dimed, in which the author, a journalist named Barbara Ehrenreich, works as a waitress, a cleaning woman, a nursing home aide and a Wal-Mart clerk to prove that poverty is not the result of…
With Hairspray, John Waters wrote and directed his first PG-rated film (a step down from his earlier X-ratings), tackling issues of teen angst, racial turmoil and true love all in one combed-out/teased-up package. Then Broadway took over and made the beehives bigger and the dance numbers more spectacular. What remained…
Historians believe the Mayans, one of the earliest recorded civilizations in North and Central America, originally grew and developed the cacao leaf, the precursor to cocoa. For that, Spanish explorers thanked them with pain, disease and destruction. Mmm, sweet chocolate! Celebrate the ancient Mayan discovery with the True History of…
According to his Web site, pop artist Peter Max was born in Germany and grew up in Shanghai, where he lived in a “pagoda-style house situated amidst a Buddhist monastery, a Sikh temple and a Viennese cafe.” When he was 10, Peter and his family “traveled across the vast expanse…
According to his Web site, pop artist Peter Max was born in Germany and grew up in Shanghai, where he lived in a “pagoda-style house situated amidst a Buddhist monastery, a Sikh temple and a Viennese cafe.” When he was 10, Peter and his family “traveled across the vast expanse…
If my kid was a little older, I might take him out to the Little Legends Storytime at Ameriquest Field on Thursday at 10 a.m. for a “fun-filled journey into the magical world of baseball!” As it is, my kid can barely walk, so he probably wouldn’t appreciate it. But…
Teen and ‘tween girls spend a lot of time daydreaming about boys. I spent many years doing it myself. One object of my affection: a super-cute older guy in my church youth group named David Hopkins. Also a daydreamer is Emily Edison, whose creator—that very same David Hopkins (What’s up,…
On the surface, Suzi Matthews’ most recent exhibition of collage work, small clone, seems innocuous enough. She cuts up numbers from her dad’s company’s catalogs and glues them back together in pretty patterns. If you need artsy-fartsy validation for why this is cool, then consider this: Her dad made guitar…
Once, this guy I dated called me “a big bag of apathy.” I would have been pretty offended had I actually taken the time to care, but like many people, I’m often too lazy and/or selfish to think about it. To make me pay attention, it takes greatness (or lots…
In Nicole Holofcener’s first feature, 1996’s Walking and Talking, the writer-director warmly portrayed an adult female friendship, nudging at emotional issues without resorting to shtick or melodrama. Five years later, Holofcener’s Lovely and Amazing attempted to do the same for a family of women but with wildly different results: Virtually…
For most of January 2005, Michael Keaton was on the road pimping White Noise, the psychological thriller in which he stared at TV screens and pretended to be scared of static. Little wonder, then, that Keaton spent most of that couch time selling not his big-studio comeback but his tiny-budgeted…
Lesley Dill Dill combines a variety of material–horsehair, wire, thread, tea, glue, ribbon, paper, felt, organza–to create work that is at once precious and weird. The wall-scaled “Blonde Push” brings to mind the enormous fringy brushes of a car wash without the whim and froth of suds. Long strands of…
The Crucible Arthur Miller’s most-produced play feels more relevant than ever. Sure, we get the old references to the McCarthy witch hunts in the parable, but now the drama resounds with echoes of “the war on terrorism” and even the horrors of Abu Ghraib in its story of witchcraft and…
Every new generation can glean fresh meaning from Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. Now onstage at Addison’s WaterTower Theatre in a stark but precisely rendered production directed by Terry Martin, the play never seems out of date. Such is its legacy as one of the finest tragedies of the 20th century…
Ellie Parker (Strand) This extremely raw portrait of an actress trying — and failing — to make it in Hollywood showcases Naomi Watts in a wrenching and sympathetic performance. Writer-director Scott Coffey shot the movie over nearly six years, beginning in 1999, before Watts was a household name. Though they…
With scrappy warblers like Kellie Pickler and Bucky Covington trying to out-twang each other on American Idol, country music is hotter than a corn dog at a county fair. One reason is that almost anybody can sing it. Even mopes who argue that NASCAR isn’t a real sport have been…
Caved In: Prehistoric Terror (Lions Gate) The Dark (Sony) Death Cab for Cutie: Directions (Atlantic) Deep Blue (Miramax) Dora the Explorer: Dora’s First Trip (Paramount) 18 Fingers of Death (MCA) The Greatest Game Ever Played (Disney) Laugh or I’ll Shoot Collection: The Naked Gun, Airplane!, and Top Secret! (Paramount) The…
Charles Barkley, we’re sick of your shit. Every time our glorious hometown warriors, the Dallas Mavericks, make an impression on a TNT broadcast, you babble and stutter in halftime and post-game analysis about whatever element of the Mavs’ offense/defense/picket fence is “soft.” You know what’s soft, Chuck? Your wrinkly, bald…
It used to be a charming millinery ritual: Every spring, little girls would get new dresses, Mary Janes and Easter bonnets. Well, those little girls grew up and graduated to wearing charming and often elaborate hats to church for Easter. Think of the Annual Mad Hatter’s Tea Party at the…
