Thursday, September 11 Timeless, tried and true. Things deemed “classic” are generally a sure bet. Think about it. Someone says, “That movie was just so classic.” Or, “Now this is a classic spaghetti sauce.” The brain just automatically accepts that the item in discussion is complete, mastered, if you will…
Now that it’s finally cooling down outside, there’s really no good excuse to not shake it to Tito Puente Jr. and other Latin musicians all day Saturday at Festival del Centro, the final leg of the Latino Cultural Center’s five-day grand opening celebration. Puente Jr.’s music–a pop, Latin jazz and…
9/11 Of all the quirks that make us uniquely American, none is as perplexing as our propensity for selective outrage. How easily we assimilate some of our country’s great–and countless–human tragedies with barely a whimper. We hardly blink any more when a newborn is discovered in a trash bin, or…
9/11 Who says all lawyers are evil? In the wake of the September 11 tragedy, the Dallas Association of Young Lawyers wanted to do its part in helping victims and their families. In a few short weeks, the group managed to secure a location and gather all the necessary permits…
9/12 Just in time to kick off Hispanic Heritage Month, Teatro Dallas presents the national premiere of classic Latin American children’s story The Tales of My Tia Panchita. Costa Rican writer Carmen Lyra’s compilation of stories her aunt Panchita told her as a child in the 1890s are a blend…
9/14 Nobody’s putting distinguished art scholar, patron and purveyor Dr. Ted Pillsbury out to pasture, although his graceful exit as managing partner in Pillsbury and Peters Fine Art did land him at the Meadows. Southern Methodist University’s Meadows Museum snagged Pillsbury as its new director this summer and opens its…
9/11 When I was a kid, my mother used to drive me to school in the morning–like other kids, I’m sure–but I was positive they didn’t have to go through the torture I did on the way. She used to listen to classical radio. I remember when I heard that…
Most will deny it, but inside every grown man lurks a hypersensitive adolescent girl. Allow me to tell you all about mine and to share some of my poetry… Whoa! Relax. Put away that gun. Just seeking to emphasize that in the case of director Catherine Hardwicke’s debut feature, thirteen,…
It seems like everybody’s raving up Mexican cinema these days–either as a merit badge of self-conscious hipness, or because the stuff is impressive and sometimes both–yet the excitement is definitely deserved with Herod’s Law (La Ley de Herodes). This movie kicks the feisty Y Tu Mamá También right in its…
Before he even had any kind of legacy, Mark “Gator” Rogowski was imagining, in on-camera interviews, what it might someday be. “When fear is gone,” the 18-year-old skater opined, “nothing will remain. Only I will be here.” A few years later, when a drunken binge in Germany led him to…
The 1990-’95 run of Saturday Night Live, when the show was a playground populated by, among others, Adam Sandler, Rob Schneider, Dana Carvey, Chris Rock, Chris Farley, Kevin Nealon, Mike Myers and David Spade, was a low point in a show with a longer history of making you groan than…
J.J. Abrams should have no time to talk about the past, not when before him lies an extraordinary amount of work due in the very near future–like, any second. The creator of Felicity and screenwriter of Armageddon is preparing a new series about bounty hunters for ABC, which will debut…
You have to have some big set of scones to rewrite William Shakespeare’s longest, most famous play. So here’s some advice for Dallas writer-composer-actor-director Scott Eckert, who has done just that with Lesson 2: Hamlet: Get fitted for an extra large codpiece, sirrah; you have succeeded at making the Bard…
Two-and-a-half years ago Dallas business owner Greg Weiner’s mental light bulb went on. For about a month now, his brainchild has found a home in one of the several bars he owns. It is a dark, womb-like hole in the wall called the Slip Inn, and its description, as well…
Thursday, September 4 Our favorite board games from childhood involved brightly colored mats and cute little place markers. We loved Candyland. But we wouldn’t call it art. The Mexican children’s game called Loteria, however, appears in visual art, but–in addition to being colorful–it has meaning behind it, with cards marked…
The most common misconception about Lewis Black, the once-weekly commentator on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, is that he’s an angry, angry man. Certainly, he gives off all the signals of the furious: His voice, the rumble of the chain-smoker who spends his time yelling at passers-by on street…
9/5 Ah, those hot days at Traders Village. You know the place. The smell of pickles and popcorn filling the air. Your accidental step in a pink glob of gum that baked all day in the sun just for you to goo your shoe. Those great knockoff T-shirts that fade…
9/7 The seventh annual 9-Ball Billiard Tournament at Hawley’s Billiards continues Sunday (from Pugsley’s Library the day before), and with it comes a renewed resolve in my life. This resolve is a two-headed hydra bent simultaneously on the annihilation of anyone foolish or unfortunate enough to oppose me in a…
9/5 Children are so easily influenced, emulating parents, peers and the television, for better or worse. See, it’s all your fault. Be a better influence already. Gather the neighborhood posse and minivan it to the Skillman Southwestern Branch Library on Friday at 3:30 p.m. when Aesop’s Fables II: Electric Boogaloo…
9/5 The Pan American Art Gallery opens another season Friday with a reception for new show Landscapes of the Americas. The gallery, which carries one of the world’s largest collections of Cuban, Haitian and Jamaican art, is expanding, with the goal of eventually including artists from all across the Americas,…
9/6 If you know who Renée Fleming is, do not read this concert preview. Because if you know her name, then you are quite aware that she is, arguably (an argument you will lose), the biggest opera star in America today. You know she sang “Amazing Grace” and “God Bless…
Sin Noticias de Dios, retitled Don’t Tempt Me for U.S. release, didn’t fare too well in Spain upon its release there in December 2001, despite its cast of faces famous and almost famous; it wasn’t quite Gigli, but damned near. The reasons for its tanking like a boxer taking a…
