As distressing as it is that the Christmas season seems to arrive earlier with each passing year, the idea of Halloween creeping up annually makes us shiver with glee. Whereas the former is driven and distorted by greed, the latter (at least superficially) promotes creativity and a simple bit of…
Thursday, October 2 Without high school marching band, we might never have known the glory of “You Can Call Me Al” and “Crocodile Rock.” But thanks to our state-funded training, we can now delight fellow restaurant patrons with our sing-a-long renditions to the Muzak. And it helped in other ways,…
We want men who can cook, juggle every little thing and also suck it up and swallow it whole. And that’s just what we’ll get on Saturday. Well, kind of. As audience members at McFarlin Auditorium, what we’ll actually get is a man juggling change and a man who swallows…
10/4 You’ve probably heard the story about Miss Lady of the Lake. After a nice day of boating, you see a strange woman in a flowing white dress who cons you with tales of sorrow into offering her a ride home. Though she’s never left a puddle of water drenching…
10/4 Unlike other benefit runs where participants pay a flat entry fee, the AIDS Arms LifeWalk requires runners and walkers to work a little harder by collecting pledges from sponsors, thus helping to spread the message of the annual event. Now in its 13th year, the LifeWalk is a growing…
10/3 Sure, trick-or-treating is an all-American tradition for the Halloween season. And so are those annual parties the more well-off family’s kid is throwing down the street equipped with fake fog, silly spooky sounds at the door and cheesy, “scary” games. This year, why not take the kiddies to something…
10/8 If you don’t think that assassins, despite their “moral flexibility,” can be intelligent, charming or, heck, downright lovable, you should rent Grosse Pointe Blank. (You also don’t want to miss out on John Cusack puncturing a guy’s jugular with a ball point pen.) Or if you’re ready for some…
10/2 If one were to meet a man named Chester Nurdiger, would it be a huge surprise that his wife is sexually frustrated? (“She was like a motor so wound up it might just combust.” Pardon our inner-noir-monologue.) With no offense to the Chesters and Nurdigers of the world, the…
Jack Black first appeared on film as a fanatical Young Republican in Tim Robbins’ 1992 Bob Roberts. Black, then only 23, had already mastered his ability to be simultaneously creepy and comic, a round mound of menace leering in a perpetual deep-focus stare beneath eyebrows that appeared to twitch independently…
The dumbed-down movie version of Frances Mayes’ best-selling travel memoir Under the Tuscan Sun is a virtual case study of Hollywood’s irrepressible urge to lower the bar in the hopes of upping the take. Mayes’ 1996 book is a nicely written, carefully observed meditation on buying a decrepit Italian villa…
Recently, ornithologists in Antarctica made a startling discovery: Female emperor penguins, being forced against their wills to endure stern patriarchal societal norms, tend to practice iffy mating habits. Close scrutiny revealed that most adult females go bonkers struggling to choose between an exciting-but-destructive “bad boy” penguin and a dependable-but-boring “good…
The script for The Rundown has lingered for more than a decade and was originally a Patrick Swayze vehicle, well before those wheels fell off. Universal Studios revived it because the studio knows what it has in Dwayne Johnson: a gold mine made of bulging biceps, a man who was…
It’s no given that audiences will embrace a passionately homosexual, drug-abusing male prostitute-cum-drag-queen, especially if he happens not to be a particularly nice person to boot. The cinematic tale of Madame Satã, however, has two big points in its favor. One–the most obvious one–is a dynamite leading performance by relative…
The publicity materials sent in advance of the at-long-last release of The Kids Are Alright on DVD suggest that the maker of the 1979 documentary about The Who has been on the lam–in the rock-and-roll witness relocation program, perhaps, far from the long windmilling arm of justice. A “recluse” is…
At a recent performance of Hamlet at the Dallas Theater Center, the temperature inside the Kalita Humphreys Theater was so cold the ushers were doubling as Sherpas. They handed out small fuzzy wraps to ticket-holders who hadn’t anticipated subzero chill. At intermission, they short-roped half-frozen audience members back up the…
Four years ago, we never would have imagined that corn dogs could have been any less appetizing than they are in their natural state. There’s that tough, chewy skin that proves they were fried at some point; a slightly sweet batter that’s a little soggy; and, inside, a lukewarm pink,…
Ah, the enthusiasm of youth. Sure, some prefer to use the synonym “folly,” but we enthusiastically disagree. See, in our more tender years, we were all about the passion: caring about politics, thinking that love wasn’t a complete bullshit scam invented by Hallmark and studying art history. Yes, we took…
9/26 We’re gonna do it this year. We will go to the State Fair of Texas. We will look at cars we can’t afford, pet animals we only see in captivity, stare at the freaks and watch somebody deep-fry a Twinkie. We won’t run screaming through the front gate, cross…
9/26 Go early, if you dare, to Texas Discovery Gardens on Friday for the shock of your life. People will be swarming for this Fear Factor experience; do not attempt if you have a heart condition. The otherwise benign and beautiful TDC conservatory has been converted to a chamber of…
10/1 Looking for a cool alternative to traditional rug-rat Halloween festivities? An interactive Day of the Dead, or Dia de los Muertos, mini-exhibit starts Wednesday at the Dallas Children’s Museum. Unlike Halloween–based on old European negative views of death, rife with menacing demons, ghouls and other evil spirits–Mexico’s Day of…
9/25 We want to sniff your butt. Well, better put, we know a group that wants to help your butt get sniffed. No, not ‘N Sync. We’re talking about Dog & Kitty City, a no-kill animal shelter run by the Humane Society of Dallas. The group is throwing a fund-raising…
9/30 Everyone says it’s hardest to write about something one truly likes, and it occurred to us, listening to ABBA Gold for inspiration, that it just might be true. Benny and Björn from ABBA have created a widely successful musical around the hits of their former band. Regarding Mamma Mia!,…
