Inside Fort Worth’s William Campbell Contemporary these days you’ll find Texas, where even the armadillos have a Technicolor glow. Specifically you’ll find Cowgirls and Critters, breakneck kitsch so shrewdly transformed into lively contemporary art that you can imagine the artist, Austin’s Bob “Daddy-O” Wade, with a Velvet Elvis on one…
“I’m in a really, really cool, weird zone.” Well no shit, Richard Lewis. I’m on the phone, talking, but mostly listening, to the veteran comedian, long-time stand-up and favorite on Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm. I can feel the self-loathing through the speaker, and if I’m not laughing, I’m nodding…
Opening night at the opera should be glamorous and opulent. The genre, defined by excess, demands an elaborate celebration. Hundreds of thousands of dollars and countless hours are required to put on a fully staged opera with ornate sets, costumes for a huge cast, highly skilled actor/singers, and a full…
With 150 folks signed up to donate original artwork for auction, this year’s Art Con 8 is shaping up to be a fundraising powerhouse. And in effort to keep the playing field from turning into a battlefield, the Con selected its contributors randomly from an even bigger pool of potential…
In Ink Spot, Amy Price stops strangers in Dallas to shoot, and learn about, their body art. Kathleen Barker, a 24-year-old barback at Station 4 in Oak Lawn, deals with vomit, drunks and awkward Craigslist ads (more on that later.) She also has some pretty badass tattoos. See also: A…
Number 15 From the Double Wide to Lee Harvey’s, house parties to bar bashes, we saw Dallas power-flex its costuming muscles on Saturday night. But the eye of the storm hovered over Cedar Springs at the famous Oak Lawn Block Party, and so did our cameras. We had photographers Jay…
Editor’s note: We sent Jane the Intern to experience the Dallas Comedy House’s Level 1 Improv class. Here’s her report. The sweaty-faced young man to my left turns to me and yells, “Tell me seven things you love about driving!” “Aaaaaaah!” screams the entire group, scooping their voices and arms…
Pee Wee’s Playhouse was a collage of art forms, where furniture puppets turned into characters and wallpaper sucked you into a cross-dimensional portal. If you cracked open the snow-globe brain of artist Wayne White you’d see much of the same. He designed the set for the cult production back in…
Shifting from strange to familiar, then endearing to wacky, the UT-Dallas exhibition “Monstrous Coupling” finds both comedy and sobriety among oddball artistic pairings. Curator Andy Amato contextualizes each piece through a list-of-works stacked by each entrance, and it’s a fun read, using a quote from The Tempest to set the…
Ah, Halloween. The holiday in which we celebrate the one night a year when it’s not a huge red flag to see someone walking around drunk in blood-splattered clothes. Running low on costume ideas, or just wanna wear your snark on your sleeve? We’re here to help, with some locally…
We don’t often hear of sleuth-like happenings on museum property, but today the Dallas Museum of Art released exciting information. A piece of artwork long-thought to be painted by Asher B. Durand, was actually painted by George Inness. The mysterious work was willed to the institution in a lump donation…
In The Parent Crap, Alice Laussade chronicles life as a mom in Dallas. Worried you’re screwing up your kid? Tweet questions to @thecheapbastard and she’ll confirm that, yes, you’re screwing up your kid. Choosing the perfect Halloween candy to pass out to trick-or-treaters is extremely important, if you ever want…
Every Wednesday night at the Graff Chevrolet Ultra Lounge in Grand Prairie, Vince Vance and his crew host a Komic Kontest, searching for the funniest of the funny in Texas. Comedians get on stage and compete to win $50 and the opening spot for the next week’s show. The Lounge,…
Remember how you swore that you’d get over to the Chinese Lantern Festival during the fair, but then got sidetracked by fried foods, Kobayashi and the drunken quest for a Coupon Daddy? (Coupon Daddy: An urban legend figure who gives away free coupons because he likes to see you happy.)…
The limits of time, space and geography seem to fall away in Perro y Sangre (“dog and blood”), a thrilling blend of music, drama, flamenco and sex that opened for a four-night run at the 40-seat Ochre House theater last night. Written and directed by Ochre House founder Matthew Posey,…
Every Thursday we highlight the best comedy of the coming weekend. Find more comedy events at dallasobserver.com/calendar. DeRay Davis at Addison Improv Warning: DeRay Davis is not the for easily offended. A Comedy Central favorite, DeRay grew up so poor, his Freddy Krueger Halloween costume was three spoons taped to…
Dallas could explode this weekend, there’s that much going on. Crazy Halloween parties are cropping up at all of your favorite bars, there’s a theater performance in a wrestling ring, poster art in a movie theater and auditions for MasterChef. To help you with your highly refined party strategizing, I’ve…
The science project of a park above Woodall Rodgers Freeway is finally finished, and what better way to open a park on top of a freeway than with a traffic-jam of a celebration? The grand opening ceremonies of Klyde Warren Park take place Saturday and Sunday. Here are the ten…
When we see you on the street and think you put some thought into your style, we may take your picture and ask you things. See previous installations in the Street Style archive. We spotted Jessica’s bright flower leggings in the West Village, checking out Tu-Lu’s Bakery. We stopped her,…
Pablo Picasso: October 25, 1881 to April 8, 1973 We love ya, Pabs. Here’s a little Modern Lovers to help celebrate your birthday, from your friends at Mixmaster…
The trailer for Cloud Atlas, the gargantuan new movie of David Mitchell’s 2004 novel that took two Wachowski siblings and Tom Tykwer to adapt, looks less like a preview than a whole slate of coming attractions, so many and varied are the times and places that it touches down. The…
Gossip Girl and The O.C., the two teen TV shows created in the past decade by 36-year-old Josh Schwartz, are sly bait and switches. Both are easily marketable for their hot (mess) fashion-plate stars, wide-eyed luxury fetishism, soapy season arcs and savvy self-reference, but both are also, at heart, deeply…
