If We’re Not Going to Reform Immigration, Let’s Make It Fun

In 2006, hunters generated $2.63 billion in retail sales for their sport in Texas, paying nearly $284 million in state and local taxes and supporting more than 44,119 jobs, according to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. That doesn’t include the millions spent by birdwatchers, photographers and others who enjoy…

Cake, Please, and a Side of Eddie

It’s impossible to accurately describe an Eddie Izzard show. Intellectually dazzling, multi-lingual stream of consciousness? Well, yeah, it’s that, but way, way more fun than that sounds. He dives into history, religion, culture, nature and language – but with silly voices and physical comedy that can leave a crowded hall…

All That Glitters

Razzle Dazzle, the Dallas street festival celebrating Gay Pride Month – that’s June – returns to the Oak Lawn area this year with vendors, food, booze, live music and none of the controversy over bare skin. Nope, that’s the pride parade in September that had the brouhaha over how much…

Wax on, Wax … Oops. Wrong Movie

Here’s what we gleaned about Ping Pong Summer, the indie comedy screening at 9:15 p.m. Friday at Texas Theatre, 231 W. Jefferson Blvd.: It’s Karate Kid, except with table tennis and hip hop, the beach is on the East Coast, the time is 1985 and Susan Sarandon is Mr. Miyagi…

Perry Breaks Wind Over Obama’s Carbon Cuts

Staff in Governor Rick Perry’s office must have had a case of the Mondays. It was noon before we got his emailed statement blasting the Obama administration’s proposal to cut carbon emissions from power plants 30 percent from 2005 levels over the next 15 years. Seriously? That was, like, hours,…

Baby, You Can Drive Their Cars

There comes a time in most men’s lives when they realize they will never front a rock band, never dunk a basketball, never engage in witty banter with Penelope Cruz, never own a European sports car capable of hitting 200 mph. New ships are sailing every day, and that’s too…

Swing It, Sisters

Attention Yankee transplants, snowbirds, corporate carpetbaggers and assorted other Texas immigrants: Do your adopted state a favor and go check out the free concert by the Quebe Sisters Band at 8 p.m. at Klyde Warren Park. Hulda, Grace and Sophia, the fiddle-playing, three-part harmonizing trio from Denton, have won awards…

A Wun, anna Two anna Whee!

The polka has a lot to answer for, namely the terrible damage polka-ing did to the reputation of the innocent accordion in this country. In the right hands — the late Clifton Chenier’s, or Flaco Jimenez’s for example — the accordion is a perfectly fine folk instrument that can boogie…

No More Comics? Aack!

What will become of comic strips when the last printed newspaper rolls off the presses? Can the art form that brought us Little Nemo, Krazy Kat, The Far Side and Calvin and Hobbes endure in a digital age? Yes, indeed, it would be just tragic to lose the pages where…

Stick a Fork in It

Here’s the Iron Fork deal: Returning champion chef Matt McCallister of FT33 will square off against Richard Gras of Oak in a toque-to-toque competition moderated by restaurateur Kent Rathbun. Each chef receives a basket of ingredients, including one mystery item, and they compete to see who can whip up the…

MacParty Time

Among Celtic cultures, the Irish get the most publicity, what with all the boozy parades. But while plenty of faux Irish hurl on St. Paddy’s Day, we bet you’ve never seen anyone on Greenville Avenue hurl a nearly 20-foot-long, 175-pound log through the air. That’s called the caber toss, and…

The Game’s Afoot

A man walks into your office with white, chalky powder on his fingers, a nervous twitch and bags under his eyes. Obviously, he’s a school teacher. It’s elementary. Next case, Watson. Um … unless, of course, he’s just some slob who snarfed too many powdered doughnuts with his espresso after…

We’re All Bit Players

Are you unfamiliar with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, the Tom Stoppard play being produced with a cast of 10- to 16-year-olds at Fun House Theatre and Film? Allow us to sum up the plot in one word: Cabbage, zinc and talcum powder. OK, so that’s not one word, and…

Go Ahead, Cry for Her

If ever a life deserved to be retold in a grand, bombastic musical, it was Eva Peron’s. You think Jean Valjean fleeing through Paris’ sewers is dramatic? Hah. Peron clawed her way up from poverty to become first an actress, then Argentina’s first lady and finally a sort of secular…

Look, It Was Only One …

They still call Detroit the Motor City. As if. And Philadelphia is the City of Brotherly Love? Whoever came up with that one obviously never met an Eagles fans. So let’s not take the whole City of Hate thing too much to heart. It’s not like anyone calls Dallas that…

Shave and an Aria, Two Bits

Did you know that the role of Rosina in Gioachino Rossini’s The Barber of Seville was originally written for contralto, but a general shortage of contraltos — who apparently are the operatic equivalent of rhythm and blues’ Big Mama Thornton — means the role is mostly performed by mezzo sopranos?…

Draw the Melons, Don’t Just Look at Them

Are you, like a certain former U.S. president, a budding artist looking to expand your horizons? Tired of sketching the usual still lifes of bowls of fruit? The Dallas chapter of Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School has just the thing to expand your endeavors into life drawing. Better yet, if you’re…

Nocturnal Emotion

In Nocturne, a 17-year-old piano prodigy accidentally decapitates his 9-year-old sister in an auto accident. Mom goes nuts. Dad threatens to shoot son. Son heads off to New York, escapes to books, becomes a writer and struggles to comes to grips with the tragedy. No further word on what happened to…

Listen Up, Fellow Liberals, It’s Time to Lay Off the Boy Scouts

Every week, Managing Editor Patrick Williams disappears into his office and reemerges a cranky, anti-depressant-gobbling, third-person-referring superhero we like to call Buzz. Listen up, fellow leftist members of the conspiracy to destroy America. It’s time to lay off the Boy Scouts of America and other Scout-like groups. We had a…