As a species, we’ve made a lot of adaptations so we can deal with summer. Take the sno-cone, for example, and cut-off shorts and “Bachelorette in Paradise.” And while these things are all pretty fantastic (well, most of these things), they cannot ever equal the greatness of a pool on…

1961 was a great year for wine. 1983 saw major advances in medical science, including the discovery of the AIDS virus. And 2013—well, it was a banner year for celebrity babies (North West, y’all!). Some years, the planets align and good things happen in clusters. Way back in 1939, good…

Remember when stranger danger was a thing? You know–when approached by someone you didn’t know, you were supposed to book it after-school special style. Maybe stranger danger is still taught, but you wouldn’t know it: we leave our social media accounts open for people we’ve never met to browse through,…

Elvis Presley, God love him, was a man of excess. He was a glam rocker before glam rock — sporting eye shadow and plowing through mass inventories of rhinestones. He drank a case of soda a day, had shag carpet laid in his bathroom and required that his pantry be…

For anyone who laments the lack of role models for little girls in film, Hayao Miyazaki is your go-to moviemaker. His ten-year-old heroine Chihiro Ogino was borne of Miyazaki’s frustration that books and movies marketed to young girls were all about silly crushes and superficial whatnot—in response, he created a…

You could say a lot of things about Miss Candy Barr, but accusing her of leading a boring life is not something you could get away with. The famed stripper/burlesque dancer and one-time Dallas resident had ties to a number of fascinating men (including Mr. Jack Ruby), gallivanted with mobsters,…

There was always a group of girls in the back of the school bus that sat together and sang Broadway tunes. They got all emotive and rolled through the soundtracks from Les Mis and Godspell and Phantom of the Opera. You always thought those girls were so cool and worldly…the…

The statistics are stunning: according to the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, almost 240,000 Americans age 12 and older are sexually assaulted each year. This means that someone you know has probably survived such an attack—and has had to pick up the pieces and keep going after it happened…

In need of a holiday? Lucky you—because, as the old song goes, life is a cabaret, old chum–and nothing will take you away faster than a singer with a songbook of showstoppers. Also, wine helps. Such is the allure of Cabaret and Cabernet, a decadent escape that doubles as a…

Nestled among the quirk of Little Forest Hills, in the middle of a church parking lot, thrives a little garden, somewhat improbably, just above the black asphalt pavement. It’s an inspiring slice of green known as the Promise of Peace Community Garden, and the soil there nourishes more than just…

It doesn’t sound like there are a lot of perks to being First Lady: the President’s wife can only be passionate about what’s politically correct and has to deal with being called FLOTUS, which sounds an awful lot like some sort of menstrual malady. But one perk that the First…

The stroke of midnight brings different feelings depending on your age. For kids, it’s a thing of wonder—a magical hour that we get to see during sleepovers and covertly on Christmas Eve. For young adults, it’s just part of the day; two hours ‘til closing, and the time when they…

If you’ve ever been in a band, you know how difficult it is to manage all the disparate talents involved and make them sound like one cohesive voice. It’s a feat that can drive damn near anyone to drink, pitting bass players against drummers and resulting in dreams as crushed…

Find a theater company without a theater to call its own is sort of like searching for a bathroom close to your departing gate in an airport terminal. You’re going to have to go out of your way to find it, but you’ll be so happy you did. Luckily, the…

Hankering to get out of Dallas, but bound to this slice of sunbaked, heat-stroked geography for the foreseeable future? It can seem dire; days on end of feeling trapped in an air-conditioned space will wear on you, even if you are grateful for the cold air. But this city has…

So few days each year are designated for real family time that it would be a waste to spend Independence Day on your dang smartphone. You’ve gotta park that phone, stop looking at photos crazy friend posted of herself drinking a placenta smoothie and admit that technology probably ruins everything…

In art, different mediums have the capacity for different stories. Canvas conveys swaths of colors, sculpture evokes angles, mixed media gives us sounds and textures and videos. And ceramics—well, ceramics have a trick up their sleeve. They exude folk art sensibility within a cheerful medium, managing to convey a warmth…

There was once a time when a movie about Michael Jordan joining up with a basketball team comprised of Looney Tunes characters could earn a “thumbs up” from Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel. That era was the 1990s, and it was a simpler time — a time when someone actually…

With a Friday the 13th freshly tucked under our belts and Mercury spending some serious time in retrograde this month, it’s easy to feel that everything is all black cats and bad luck lately. Air conditioner failures, car wrecks … it’s all going south and you gotta pin it on…

There’s a moment in everyone’s life when they realize that they are no longer in the “youth” demographic. It happens without warning, like maybe when browsing Urban Outfitters — music blaring — and coming to the realization that the selection of netted crop tops and sequined trapeze dresses are out…

The Beach Boys get all the credit for expanding the horizons of pop music, and rightfully so, given their experimental and innovative sounds. But on the opposite coast, Franki Valli, Bob Gauido, Tommy DeVito and Nick Massi were nothing to sniff at: their band, The Four Seasons, nailed a distinctive…

Need a bit of a karmic adjustment? Sometimes, no matter how kind you think you’ve been, it still doesn’t hurt to tip the scales a little in your favor. Do just a little something good and net a little extra currency in the karmic checkbook by spending some time at…