College dorm room walls are like a Rorschach test—and the art is the key. Van Gogh’s “Starry Night”? Creative, tortured type, into the Cure. Blue doves from Picasso? Boring and predictable, thinks Tom Cruise is a great actor. Dripping watches from Salvador Dalí? Quirky, brainy types with an eye for…
Aaron Neville’s Super Bowl performance of the national anthem bordered on treason. In fact, if I were the New Orleans singer, I’d be worried that Dubya would have interpreted my inane warbling as a direct threat to the American way. I’d be afeared of being branded an evildoer. But for…
The annual SportsPage beauty contest is sure to be a cultural event—if your idea of culture is skanky women in bikinis talking about what professional athlete they’d like to be stranded on a deserted island with. In a gathering of the dim that should be taking place in Mesquite rather…
Many young parents weren’t even born when Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day came out, but its domination in the children’s genre has continued well into the present day. Judith Viorst’s classic Alexander trilogy can often be found rubbing spines on bookshelves with Where the Wild…
Only a woman who’s been everything from a madam and an actress to a playwright and a civil rights activist could get us to read a six-volume autobiography. Only a woman whose honorary degrees read like a grocery list and whose résumé boasts being the inaugural poet for former President…
Since the Cold War ended, we’ve been neglecting our Russian cultural relations. Sure, Oprah stuck a Tolstoy book on her reading list and Aleksandr Petrovsky was a charming character on Sex and the City, but we long for more than these cursory glimpses. So we’re bundling up and heading to…
Parents, let the deceit begin! Your little goons are getting old enough, which means it’s time to roll out the Big Three Stupid Parental Lies—Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. Watch out, though. Of all of the BTSPLs, the Tooth Fairy will impact your child’s psyche the…
My introduction to the banjo came via Ronny Cox’s musical duel with an albino porch dweller in Deliverance. If it weren’t for a young arrow-headed Steve Martin, I may never have learned to love the instrument. But the banjo found a place in my heart and a master in Ralph…
You gotta say Texas is picturesque. Any state that includes Padre Island and Palo Duro Canyon, the Big Thicket and Big D’s skyline has got scenery to spare. Artist Kris Kistner of Colleyville often trains a camera on Texas glories—longhorns and landscapes, whooping cranes and cowboys, boots and bullets. See…
What would you do if you knew the world was going to end in 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes and 12 seconds? Would you visit the local multiplex and watch Jake “Dreamy Eyes” Gyllenhaal lock lips with a closeted cowboy? Or would you rather see him taking orders from…
As funny as we all often think we are, there’s no way in hell that we’d have enough quality material to comprise a stand-up routine. Unless, maybe, we ventured into what stand-up queen Wanda Sykes calls a “goldmine”: our current administration. “This administration has given us so much. [They] should…
I remember clearly the day my sister was relieved of baby-sitting duties. It was rainy, and Mom was out for the afternoon. Instead of watching me, my sister was totally watching Christopher Reeve, Dyan Cannon and Michael Caine in Deathtrap…and so was I. After that initial viewing, I think it’s…
The Byrds once sang, “to every season turn, turn, turn.” Artist Ron Kent thinks every wood should turn, turn, turn. Because, you see, Kent is a professional woodturner. In fact, he’s a pioneer of turned wood. And not just any wood will do; Kent’s medium of choice is Norfolk Island…
As chairman of the Board of Directors of Deloitte & Touche U.S.A., Sharon L. Allen oversees companies with more than $7 billion in annual revenues. But does she balance her own checkbook? Hmmm. Allen will speak as part of the Greater Dallas Chamber of Commerce’s Distinguished Women Leaders Lecture Series…
Sick of hearing Mozart and Wagner over and over again? Maybe it’s time to strap on some Mahler. Gustav Mahler was a musical genius, and like most geniuses he didn’t receive the amount of success and respect he deserved during his lifetime. But at least he didn’t hack off his…
My mom always made mealtime allowances for items like Fruit Roll-Ups and Dr Pepper. Likewise, wholesome public programming was not part of my television diet, as I consumed the plentiful entertainment calories of Nickelodeon. But occasionally, I craved something healthy. My publicly funded drug of choice came in the form…
Once, while in the throes of a Sunday morning hangover, I agreed to go to a Dallas Desperados football game with a friend. To me, football has always been a game where it took a bunch of guys in white pants about 20 minutes to move four yards—hardly a spectator…
At this time of year, when the words “Bowl” and “Hall of Fame” are mentioned, they’re usually related to sweaty athletes. That’s not the case for violinist Joshua Bell, recent inductee to the Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame. He plays in G major instead of the major leagues, and his…
Freedomland manages a seemingly impossible feat: It’s both turgid and overwrought, eliciting the shriek that fades into a yawn without anyone ever noticing. It’s a wholly dreary piece of work, yet another dismal entry on the résumé of director Joe Roth, an only-in-Hollywood hack who’s allowed to make movies, among…
Penguins, shmenguins. If you want some new insight into the codes of animal behavior, have a look at Eight Below, an inspirational adventure in which a team of sled dogs marooned in Antarctica fights to survive winter without benefit of man or Milk-Bone. In the process, the intrepid furry heroes…
Aida the grand opera by Giuseppe Verdi and Aida the Elton John/Tim Rice rock musical now running at the Uptown Players have one thing in common. One thing, that is, besides the title, the setting (Egypt at the time of the pharaohs) and the love triangle involving handsome navy captain…
When you think of Robert Ryman’s work, you think white. Ryman has made square paintings in various alabaster hues–waxen, pearly, gray–for the last 50 years. They are carefully wrought surfaces without the avant-garde hullabaloo. His work brings to mind the Soviet painter Kasimir Malevich’s vaporous “White on White” (1918), a…
