OK, Dallas. It’s your last chance to catch acclaimed conductor Andrew Litton leading our Dallas Symphony Orchestra. He’s an international legend now. The last 12 years of his 23-year conducting career have been with the DSO, a group he’s led through three major European tours, seven annual summer residencies at…
Acquaintances and casual relationships can cause fleeting change, but true, real friendships can change your life forever. I may have a scandalous affair with some peek-a-boo-toe heels, but my Converse patiently wait for me to take them to brunch the next morning and bitch about the night before—like true friends…
If I could, I would ask John Stossel’s mustache if it thinks the 20/20 correspondent to whose face it is attached would be able to get by without it. I have strong suspicions that John Stossel’s mustache is the driving force behind John Stossel, and that were Stossel deprived of…
I was a nerd and took extra math in high school. Now the work has paid off. I invite you to join with me in using our algebra skills to decipher the title of Mark Collop’s latest exhibition of paintings at the Dallas Central Library: (me + x) + (you…
What can you do in 24 hours? You can have a shirt dry-cleaned 24 times. You can watch an entire season of 24. Or you can race to make a movie. Those who choose the latter, as part of the Video Association of Dallas’ Fifth Annual 24-Hour Video Race, will…
During Stephen Colbert’s incredible White House Correspondents Dinner speech on April 29, he took a break from attacking the current administration to poke fun at Jesse Jackson…in the form of an anti-Bush barb. After comparing a Jackson conversation to “boxing a glacier,” he said, “Enjoy that metaphor…because your grandchildren will…
Gustafer Yellowgold is gold, and he is part cat and part alien, and he is from the sun. His friends include an eel and a dinosaur. Trust me, your kids will love him, and you might too. That’s because the only way to see Gustafer, the creation of songwriter/illustrator Morgan…
One of the best parts about digital cable is the favorite channels list. The Game Show Network is not on mine, so I don’t know much about their Lingo show other than it’s hosted by Chuck Woolery, formerly of the Love Connection, who has remarkably well-highlighted hair. According to the…
Before Sting got a nose job and delusions of jazz grandeur, before Chrissie Hynde turned into a meat-is-murder wacko, before Ric Ocasek started dating supermodels and not much after Deborah Harry’s junkie days, New Wave was just really cool. And not entirely accepted. I remember my sister’s friends sneering at…
Everything I ever needed to know about science I learned by watching Jeff Goldblum. Some of the lessons I’ve picked up along the way: When working on teleportation experiments, make sure to call an exterminator first to get rid of any pesky insects. Aliens are ugly, smelly and susceptible to…
Let’s say you’re a teenage boy dying of cancer. A well-known charity dedicated to helping people like you offers to make your fondest wish come true–so long as it’s something realistic, as opposed to, say, finding a cure for cancer. Would you choose a VIP pass to Disneyland…or a visit…
Coming closer even than Zhang Yimou’s House of Flying Daggers to resembling the Chinese cover art for an Iron Butterfly album, Chen Kaige’s The Promise is psychedelia extremis. Hardly a minute of it passes without a concentrated dose of digital frou-frou and lavish cartoon-poetic imagery: floating ocean goddesses, flying swordsmen,…
The most important thing to know about the new movie Hoot, adapted from the children’s book by Carl Hiaasen, is that it’s co-produced by Jimmy Buffett, who also appears in a small role and provides new music for the soundtrack. Middle-aged drunks and boat owners might possibly rejoice at the…
Mission: Impossible III finds Tom Cruise downplaying the world’s single greatest piece of action music in deference to an Age of Fear vibe that’s a lot more grueling than rousing. Seems Lalo Schifrin’s adrenaline-pumping “dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum” is now as dated as the Cold War from which it sprang; maybe the star-producer…
Among the six actors in Nickel and Dimed, now playing at Kitchen Dog Theater, only the lead, Kristina Baker, is a member of the Actors’ Equity Association. That means something in this show that it might not in others. Nickel and Dimed is based on journalist Barbara Ehrenreich’s nonfiction bestseller…
Tennessee Williams Film Collection (Warner Bros.) All that’s missing from this boxed set — six movies, one doc, eight discs — is a jar of sweat; even Williams is here, in a 1973 documentary. Then there’s Brando, Beatty, Newman, Taylor, Burton, Gardner, Leigh, Malden, Huston, Kazan — the last of…
The biggest innovation videogaming saw in the past decade or so was the invention of the “sandbox”: Programmers create settings and consequences, but give you, the user, free license to do with them what you want. Grand Theft Auto is certainly the best-known of these games. The carjackings, the hookers,…
BTK Killer (Lions Gate) Chubby Hubby Workout (On Air Video) Dinosaurs: The Complete First and Second Seasons (Disney) The Family Stone (Fox) Flight 93: The Movie (UAV) Jargo (Picture This!) King of Thieves (Picture This!) Last Holiday (Paramount) Lie With Me (Lance) Life in the Undergrowth (BBC) Misaki Chronicles: Volume…
Chances are, if you’re the sort of person who enjoys enduring pain, fatigue and shin splints to the point of vomiting—that is, you’re a triathlete—you already know that the 15th Annual Tom Landry Triathlon begins at 7 a.m. Sunday at the Baylor Tom Landry Fitness Center, 411 N. Washington. You’ve…
So I tried to read a little Harry Potter fan fiction. It got a little racy, and I felt a little…OK, I felt really wrong. So, I thought, maybe if the witches and wizards were “of age,” you know? Perhaps I picked the wrong book, but it still didn’t work…
These kids today. Back in the day, when a child wanted to learn about sex, there was the street corner, maybe a copy of Dad’s Penthouse. Now they teach sex in school, dadgummit. Drugs? You can get anything you want…in school. We had to go to skeezy guys at bowling…
Scary thought—before long, the Barney generation will be running things in America. The Dallas-born show’s target audience has grown up since debuting in 1992; those purple dinosaur-lovers are teenagers now, and some are even old enough for college. Lord knows how long until fraternity and sorority hazing rituals mix their…
