Look! On the stage! It’s Jim Morrison! It’s Val Kilmer? No, it’s Dave Brock! Heh? Not your mother’s or your father’s child, Dave Brock is the lead singer of Doors cover band Wild Child and a dead ringer for the Lizard King (or what he would look like if he…
The idea of watching two and a half hours of sci-fi made in 1968 to depict the year 2001 using minimal dialogue and no explosions may not sound all that awesome at first, but if you can make it through the apes and cryogenic hibernation pods you get rewarded with…
Things that are hardcore: skydiving blindfolded, wrestling alligators, street luge. Things that are generally not considered hardcore: old people. Things that have hardcore potential only if they’re Irish or in a movie, or both: old people getting trashed and behaving badly. Ellie is left in charge at the retirement home…
Having recurring appearances as Girl Drink Drunk on our City of Ate blog, I have to say that I totally agree with comedian Sebastian Maniscalco when it comes to his disdain for apple martinis. Take it from a girl who has been in a few bars and downed a few…
If you’re going through your New Year’s Eve photos and spot in them a besotted Dirk Nowitzki–or any other Maverick, at that–don’t worry about it. The team doesn’t have Friday off, but it might as well. It’s a home game against a sub-.500 Eastern Conference team saddled with an interim…
When I was in eighth grade, I hung out with a group who did nothing but talk about music. We all had opinions. Some would spend hours arguing about whether Randy Rhoads was better than Eddie Van Halen. Heated discussions arose on the subject of who would win in a…
Did you know that singer Johnny Mathis is a born Texan? Yep. Born in Gilmer, he clearly broke out of the small town to become a class act around the world for some 50 years. He heads back this way just in time to forgo singing tiresome carols. Well played,…
The first instrument I ever recall “playing” was a player piano, which, really, is just a piano that requires absolutely no skill to play. Really, no skill, whatsoever: You just pump the foot pedals, and the piano tells the keys which notes to play. As such, at age 3, I…
Let’s get this out of the way: Tickets to Dancing With the Stars: The Tour range from $49.50 to $225. Yeah, that’s right. And be forewarned, you can drop two Franklins for dancefloor ducats and not get to see Cloris Leachman’s octogenarian cleavage heave its way through a paso doble…
The Cotton Bowl has been a Dallas tradition since the first game between TCU and Marquette in 1937. From the 1947 “Ice Bowl” match between Arkansas and LSU–the game ended in 0-0 tie; must have been a blast to watch, huh?–to the three National Championships won by the Texas Longhorns…
As the Tina Fey of the 17th century, Sister Juana Ines de la Cruz wrote sly comedy that by all accounts cracked up audiences in the parlors and palaces of Mexican viceroys and Spanish nobility. Her works for the stage made light of then-popular cloak-and-dagger love triangles and boldly satirized…
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is certainly curious—a modest F. Scott Fitzgerald story about a man born in the twilight of life and gradually regressing toward dawn that has been adapted into a two-ton, Oscar-season white elephant. Directed by David Fincher from a screenplay by Eric Roth, Benjamin Button…
Claus Philipp Maria Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg—a lot of name for a lot of guy. Born into aristocracy in 1907, he was a soldier by the age of 19—and, by most accounts, a warrior with the soul of a poet (he was especially smitten with the work of Stefan George,…
Like Doubt, Stephen Daldry’s The Reader is low-budget, high-profile and beamed straight at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Category of High Moral Tone. Only in this case, the stakes are way higher and the attitude muted to a fault. Based on a partly autobiographical novel by Bernhard…
Walt Kowalski growls a lot—a dyspeptic rumble that wells up from deep inside his belly when he catches sight of his midriff-baring teenage granddaughter text-messaging her way through her grandmother’s funeral, or when his good-for-nothing son and daughter-in-law suggest that he sell his house in a gang-infested corner of suburban…
You know you’re a grown-up when your idea of great bar games includes Monopoly and not Beer Pong. The Belmont Hotel understands. They’ve recently instituted a game night for the imbibing sophisticate, one with Monopoly, Dominos and Trivial Pursuit along with half-price Belmontinis made with Citron Vodka and Grand Marnier…
I saw The Flying Karamazov Brothers act for the first time at the Scarborough Renaissance Festival in Waxahachie–that is, if I remember correctly. But I’ve seen them a few times since, and what I can tell you with certainty is that none of the members of the comedic troupe are…
I never understand art. I’m the girl that looks at a piece of art and says, “Oh, pretty” or stupidly remarks “Hell, I could have done that.” But, I try to get it, and just as soon as I think I’ve figured out what the art represents, I spot a…
Since the holidays are so much like a circus anyway, what with trying to juggle your pocketbook and avoid those stampeding shoppers competing for the best deal, why not let the professionals handle your holiday entertainment? Hey, don’t you deserve a bailout this year? Celebration-Le Cirque will put on A…
Now, I don’t know about you, but when I have a “jungle fantasy,” contortionists are most definitely always involved. Occasionally there are acrobats and jugglers. Often clad in animal-print Lycra, they writhe around, bending this way and that, with intensely theatrical lighting focused down on them like moonlight amid fake…
Sculptor Ranjani Shettar lives and works in her native Bangalore, India, creating large, abstract installations by combining materials both manmade (PVC pipe, cloth, rubber, steel, etc.) and natural (beeswax, wood, etc.). FOCUS: Ranjani Shettar, a new exhibit at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, collects several of these pieces,…
I am sure very few people need to be told what Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is about. Ebenezer Scrooge’s story has been told so many times in so many ways, with Scrooge being played by everyone from Bill Murray to Scrooge McDuck and adaptations numbering in the hundreds over…
