Videogames compete with movies for our entertainment dollar. Top-grossing movies rely heavily on computer animation and graphics. The actors behind computer-generated characters win Oscars. It’s because of trends like this that we have events like the Industry Giants 2006: Giant Steps Forward computer graphics, animation and gaming forum. The annual…

Despite being critically called out for appealing to baser tastes and merely bludgeoning their audiences with volume, orchestration has always been a part of Led Zeppelin’s music. The layered guitar parts of Jimmy Page and the lush colorizations from bassist and keyboardist John Paul Jones, along with an incredibly diverse…

It’s hard to understand how buying meat and fish at Central Market is upscale, cultured and classy while bagging it yourself is classified as low-class and white trash. The camouflage culture seems to be as easy a target as a fish in a barrel for mockery, but in truth, many…

Capture the Moment: The Pulitzer Prize Photographs within the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza is a great display of memorable images and, by its very nature, it would have to be. It represents the best in photojournalism from 1941, the year of the first award, to the present. If…

Comedian Neil Hamburger evokes a sort of sympathy as he slouches about the stage mumbling anti-jokes. Much like Charlie Brown he gives off a sad-sack vibe that makes one root for him, perhaps even want to hug him. That is, of course, unless you are one of those who don’t…

Celestial Rhythm Celebrations’ Summer SolstiCelebration began as a poet’s roundtable that met regularly at Club Dada in Deep Ellum. One of the nights fell on the same day as the summer solstice–known to most folks as the first day of summer–so Dallas literary fixture and poet Joe Stanco, who passed…

The single life: All the late nights with their pseudo-philosophical discussions about nothing until 4 a.m. and waking up hung over only to do it all again, wishing all the time for that special someone to relate to and give life meaning. Then, when they claim they weren’t looking for…

Outside the Dallas Museum of Natural History is the Leonhardt Lagoon, a nice little pool intended to preserve a small ecosystem, a little part of the Texas habitat. Therefore small animals such as ducks, turtles, insects and grackles (as if they needed any help) have a small plot set aside…

The only time I can recall literally rolling with laughter was during a particularly good Monty Python’s Flying Circus episode. It contained a sketch that had something to do with a giant electric penguin threatening an Arctic adventurer with octopus-like live-wire tentacles. Looking back, it seems more silly than funny;…

Remember back in school the excitement that surrounded getting to see a film during class? Either a projector or a television would be wheeled into the room, those dreadful fluorescent lights were turned off and suddenly we were free for 45 minutes. It would be a great day. Though it…

For all of Dallas’ benefits (Southwestern-style urban sprawl, for example), it can be confusing at times and often more than a little stressful. For many people, the day begins and ends on Central Expressway, Interstate 30 or Stemmons Freeway, and the abundance of tension experienced along these thoroughfares is matched…

During the one karate class I took a couple of years back, one of the first things the teacher said was, “We’d like to think that after practicing a punch a few times we know what to do. Try practicing the same movement a thousand times and perhaps then you…

“Geek” was probably one of the kinder words applied to us during our time in high school bands. But somehow the über-geeks in the drum line were always above the name-calling, possessing some innate cool for no other reason than they played drums. Heck, they even were allowed to wear…

The phrase “car show” typically conjures, within the hipper-than-thou set, images of beer guts, mullets and cheap beer poured into said guts. It is, in the eyes of these trendsetters, one step above a truck-and-tractor pull. But it doesn’t take too much investigation into the 42nd Annual O’Reilly Auto Parts…

The members of Monty Python knew that humor could be a great teaching tool in getting across serious ideas, such as when Eric Idle explained the ways of the galaxy in song during the film The Meaning of Life: “The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding/In all of the…

Only a guy very secure in his masculinity would ever say this: I have a weird fascination with romance novels. Maybe it’s because, being the sensitive sort, I’m somewhat interested in what women want, how they think, et cetera. Plus I can’t believe that women can get away with buying…

Before the Thanksgiving dishes were washed and dried, the question was on everyone’s lips: “What are you doing on New Year’s Eve?” The answer, an honest one at least, would sound something like this: “I’ll be taking my chances on the road with all the other amateur drinkers and having…

Elves are back in style. Of course, to the average role-playing game enthusiast, they never went out. But those not accustomed to spending waking hours dreaming of the darkest depths of Mordor, there is about to be a big-budget introduction by way of the three Lord of the Rings films…

This city can be full of wonder for the newcomer or the native, a neon-drenched metropolis offering plenty of eye candies. But once the allure of bright-green downtown skyscrapers wears off, the sights are replaced by the overwhelming smell of the Trinity River. Still, within the towers and other man-made…

To be a multitalent in multimedia is admirable, although that will never be a formula for superstardom, as most such performers sacrifice the adulation from the average E! Entertainment Television fan in return for peer respect. To earn a buck, the Julia Robertses of the world simply have to appear,…

“It is hardly appropriate just now to be calling upon famous people to travel unnecessarily,” says the Fort Worth Film Festival’s artistic director and vice-president Dwight Greene, explaining why the annual fest–which has in the past hosted such names as Gregory Peck and John Waters–will be short on star power…

In my dream world, chimpanzees could live among us like squirrels. What would be nicer than waking up in the morning to see a chimp outside the window swinging on the phone lines? They could roll around in the grass, play with the neighbor’s toddlers and, maybe if I got…