Arts & Culture

Sweet fried Tilt-A-Whirl, it’s time! Friday through October 22, your chance to eat like you have a third stomach and scream your lungs out in happy happiness is here. The State Fair of Texas is back—with its auto show and its livestock auction and its gigantic Ferris wheel. It’s so…

In West Side Story, Maria felt pretty, witty and gay. Now, it’s the gay part we’re focusing on, as Q Cinema and the DFW LGBTQ Latino Alliance honor Hispanic Heritage Month by screening East Side Story—the story of a Latino neighborhood romance that’s, honestly, pretty and witty as well. Filmmaker…

It’s not easy on the soul pushing toy guns and brightly colored, bombastic commercials on unsuspecting children, so sometimes advertisers choose to do some good. In the early ’70s, advertising executive David McCall observed that his son was having trouble with multiplication tables but somehow seemed to know the words…

Most Dallasites don’t even know the Great Trinity Forest exists. In fact, the largest urban hardwood forest in the nation lies just south of downtown, where it encompasses some 6,200 acres along the shores of White Rock Creek. The Great Trinity Forest, a new exhibition at Sun to Moon Gallery…

No-talent American Idol finalist Constantine Maroulis is once again ready to serenade you breathily and in no particular key. He’s out to prove that being disgust-o in the looks department does mean you can’t be sexy. You’ll see all of his moves: Squinty Eyes, Pointin’ Atcha and, of course, I…

Much attention has been given to the newly announced AFI Film Festival in Dallas, which begins next year. It used to be the Deep Ellum Film Festival, but the AFI tag probably gives it a bit more clout. Hopefully the attention doesn’t take away from a small fest across the…

I don’t have a daughter, but if I did, I sure as hell wouldn’t take her to anything called “Little Ladies Night Out.” For an etiquette class, the event’s press release sure could use a lesson in manners—”Transform your little girl into a little lady at Firehouse. Firehouse introduces a…

Nature and art collide on Wednesday when the Goss Gallery (2500 Cedar Springs Road) presents Naturally Formed, an earthy exhibit featuring the works of Kate Malone, Junko Mori, Neil Wilkin and Angela Jarman. Malone’s medium of choice is ceramic glaze technology, producing “pebbled” and crystalline stoneware. Mori’s work features hand-hammered…

Much Ado About Nothing is my favorite Shakespeare play, hands down. The movie adaptation was even pretty good despite Keanu Reeves and Michael Keaton. I’d dare to say it’s Shakespeare at his best, but that’s only because I’m a sucker for the romantic stuff. “I will live in thy heart,…

Much Ado About Nothing is my favorite Shakespeare play, hands down. The movie adaptation was even pretty good despite Keanu Reeves and Michael Keaton. I’d dare to say it’s Shakespeare at his best, but that’s only because I’m a sucker for the romantic stuff. “I will live in thy heart,…

Life was hard for the Egyptian temple cat. Worshiped as a god, he longed for freedom. We know how he feels. We Observer writers are inundated with fruit baskets, flower arrangements and free liquor flowing upon us from the cheerful givers of the metroplex. It’s a hard-knock life. We envy…

The haunting sound made famous by Robert Moog, the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations” and almost every science fiction movie made in the ’50s and ’60s was a product of Russian physicist and trained cellist, Lev Termen. The theremin was invented in 1919 quite by accident. Termen had created a large…

I have the upper-arm strength of an infant. I can lift boxes of moderate weight, the occasional appliance and adjust myself on the couch when my legs have fallen asleep, but I can safely say I am in no shape to climb a mountain. Watching other people do it, however,…

In 1999, out of the shadowy darkness of Indiana University came Jared Fogle and his 60-inch pants. Jared “The Subway Guy” quickly became a new hero to dieters looking for a new way. In a single year, on two hoagies a day, Fogle slimmed down from a dangerous 425 pounds…

The trend on Broadway is taking great movies and making them into musicals. It worked great with The Producers, OK with The Full Monty. Now comes a play based on one of my favorite comedies, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. In the movie, the pleasure was in the duel between Michael Caine…

My teeth fall out all the time, smushed into little pieces—in my dreams, of course. Apparently it’s a common theme, but that doesn’t make it any less creepy—or complex—in my opinion. The Dallas School of Metaphysics disagrees. In promoting their upcoming dream interpretation seminar, they invite all dreamers, from the…

Celia Rivenbark is kinda like the Highland Park soccer mom equivalent of David Sedaris. And whereas Sedaris has a popular collection of essays suggesting that you Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, Rivenbank’s latest assortment of sassy, Southern-fried social commentary instructs readers to Stop Dressing Your Six-year-old Like a…

Ask Dallas residents how Reunion Arena got its name and very few will tell you of Francois Fourier and his colony “La Reunion,” which settled in Dallas more than 150 years ago. Dr. Charissa Terranova—the Dallas Observer’s visual art critic—lectures on Fourier’s philosophy and the colony’s history in a talk…

On the eve of its 10-year anniversary, the Angstrom Gallery (3609 Parry Ave.) re-opens with Ab Ova, a show so conceptually bizarre it’s worthy of a Charlie Kaufman screenplay. Fifty-seven artists (including Mike Kelley, Jim Shaw and Paul Noble) were involved in this project, where one group was given the…