The Five Best Comedy Shows in Dallas This Weekend, September 7-9

See also: 12 Awesome Things To Do In Dallas This Weekend, September 6 to 9Every Thursday we highlight the best comedy of the coming weekend. We’ve been doing this since Thursday, September 6, 2012, so we’ve really got it down. Find more comedy events at dallasobserver.com/calendar. Is the recent surge in political…

Stage West’s Around the World in 80 Days is an Amazing Race

What a trip! Stage West’s production of Around the World in 80 Days is featherweight comedy that floats along nicely, thanks to the steady breeze stirred by the constant motion of its five hard-charging actors. Director Jerry Russell keeps the pace frantic throughout this immensely amusing farce, lest we notice…

Living Large and Then Feeling Bad About it With Bachelorette

Weddings make such bitchin’ film scenarios because the stakes are believably high: If anything goes wrong, social opprobrium, the loss of your beloved or both can ensue, right in front of your disdainful parents, the clergy and probably Vince Vaughn or somebody. Directors have placed every obvious symbol of holy…

Indiana Jones and the Perils of Humanistic Decency

The story goes that while filming in Tunisia in the summer of 1980, Steven Spielberg avoided the dysentery that afflicted most of the cast and crew of Raiders of the Lost Ark by holing up in his hotel room with a suitcase full of SpaghettiOs. Like most studio-approved behind-the-scenes errata,…

45 Movie Trends That Need to Die Right Now (A Sequel)

Somewhere on Earth right now, an Alf movie is in the works. Rebooting and rehashing big film ideas isn’t a new Hollywood trend, but the modern Hollywood is notable for taking a huge, caustic dump on an already-beloved franchise. Earlier this year, we noted 55 trends that we thought needed…

Game Boy

The big movie event of September will be the anticipated latest from a certain filmmaker who signs his films with the surname Anderson and a pair of initials, a prodigious talent who burst onto the scene with a stylish entry in the mid-’90s crime-thriller wave and never left. The master…

No, Alf Doesn’t Count As Video Art

Dallas’ best quality is its secretiveness. If you know precisely where to be on any given night, you’ll discover hidden treasures. Thursday is the perfect example. The Power Station, a not-for-profit art space in Expo Park, has decided to give us all an amazing gift: A four-week educational survey in…

Where To Blow Your Cash On Fashion’s Night Out

Go ahead and blame Vogue for the cash you’ll blow Thursday. Go on, we’ll wait. The publication launched the initiative for Fashion’s Night Out back in 2009, and since then it’s become the highbrow shopper’s equivalent to Black Friday. Most of your favorite retailers are getting in the mix with…

Pearls And Wisdom, From A Tupelo Miss

There are two popular archetypes of the Southern women: polite marriage material and delightfully tacky diva. One of these is far more interesting than the other and I’ll give you a hint: The fun one doesn’t involve going to cotillion (at least not legitimately). Christy McBrayer seems like she may…

Put Your Boots Up With Friedman

As the saying goes, “If you aren’t from Texas, that’s OK, just get here as fast as you can.” Josh Alan Friedman high-tailed it here in the ’80s and has called the Big D home ever since. He’s filled the city with his own brand of music and writing, which…

A Marinara Massacre

You waited patiently through your entire academic career for someone to yell “Food fight!” in the cafeteria, thereby sanctioning a spontaneous melee of spaghetti-throwing and pudding-dodging that not even Hollywood could top. It never happened — except that time those jock dudes threw a stick of butter at that goth…

Paul Mooney: Still Bringin’ The Good Times

Few comedians’ résumés are as stacked as Paul Mooney’s — in fact, he’s what you would call an unsung legend with a dirty mouth and a quicker mind. Starting as a writer for Sanford and Son, Mooney snagged head writer jobs at In Living Color and Good Times, and also…

Ride The Dragon, Don’t Fight It

It’s taught to us early on that certain literary conflict themes are cornerstones of drama: Man vs. Self is a classic, as is Man vs. Nature. Nowhere in that lesson do we study Man vs. Time, but come gallery night we all wish we had. You’ve got roughly three hours…

It’s Mother Effin’ Décor, Yo.

Have you ever wished a write-up had sound effects? Me too. So just play along and read this entire thing like it’s a monster truck show and anytime you see an “effin’” go ahead and fill it in with the real thing. Why? Because it’s the mothereffin’ Dallas Home and…

Maturing, Without the Stench of Jean Nate

No matter what Bonne Bell says, the true transition to womanhood doesn’t start with Dr Pepper Lip Smackers, it starts with a quinceañera. And when it comes to quinceañeras, it’s all about the dress. It’s pretty much the most important purchase, like, ever. Except for that other “big day,” but…

But Will There Be An Allergy Pride Parade?

As anyone who’s ever been forced to live on a restricted diet can attest, living gluten-free sucks the majority of the time. It’s true. Everything you’ve ever loved, from waffles to pizza dough just vanishes, and most of the quick and easy store-bought substitutes taste like a mean, cardboard joke…

“Gigolo” Was More Of A Hobby

Rob Schneider has been busy, what more can you say? Outside of his own films, he’s acted alongside buddy Adam Sandler, been a part of the Saturday Night Live cast, as well as writing and directing his own side projects. Not bad for a guy who moonlights as a gigolo…

Those Crazy Kids Will Work It Out. Right?

Love is too weak a word for our feelings toward the Texas Theatre. We luuurve it. Loave it. Luff it. Because the richly historical Oak Cliff haunt (231 W. Jefferson Blvd.) is just the type of joint you’ll find Woody Allen’s 1977 tour de force, Annie Hall, on 35mm. Emblematically…