Now That’s Indie Spirit

Dripping in loyalty, passion and determination, the people of Mexico scream for liberty as Father Hidalgo rings the brass church bell. The battle for independence has begun. Join Teatro Dallas as they commemorate this infamous 200 year-old moment in history with this year’s El Grito celebration. WFAA Channel 8’s Gloria…

Jeanne Speaks!

Jeanne Robertson is absolutely not a comedian. Says so in her bio and in the press release for her upcoming appearance at the Lakewood Theater, where many comedians–but not Robertson, because she isn’t one–often perform. Couldn’t be clearer: “Jeanne Robertson is a professional speaker who specializes in hilarious humor based…

View the Apple With the Tree

Last year, Maximiliano Alessandro Vatovac and his mother, L. Hart Rueter, collaborated for a benefit show to raise money to cover Max’s tuition at the Florence Academy of Art in Italy. The exhibition was a success, and work-study opportunities and scholarships are covering costs for Max’s second and third years…

Good Teacher Goes Bad

Kids will believe anything. “Yes, a watermelon will grow in your belly if you eat the seeds,” and “Women with black hair and crooked noses are witches.” So is the story of Miss Nelson is Missing!, a classic children’s book about a long-suffering schoolteacher who has finally had it with…

The Smoky Haze of Art

Mark Sheinkman’s ability to represent an organic curve is lyrical, urban and damn sexy. His exhibition, Manhattanville, named for the area near West Harlem in which he works, conveys a smoky city quality that seems like a perfectly natural product of New York. At times, his works read like the…

It All Comes Rushing Back

They say all is fair in love and war. Both can be painful, overly stressful and highly demanding. But sometimes, love can be even more treacherous than war. So is the case in Betrayal, a play by Harold Pinter. The story follows Emma, a woman looking once more for passion…

King of the Slum

Slumdog Millionaire won Best Picture and Best Original Song at the Academy Awards in 2009. It’s now 2010, and the film’s music has only gained popularity since. The award-winning song “Jai Ho,” or “be victorious” when translated into English, was composed by AR Rahman exclusively for Slumdog. Even if you…

Go, Go, Gadget Green

Wanting to make your life a little more environmentally friendly? Learn more about how to live a greener life and about the nature that surrounds us, and have a good time with the whole family at the third annual Dallas Green Festival, Saturday September 18 from 9 a.m. until 2:30…

Beer Before Beer, Never Fear

Funny thing about Oktoberfest is that it happens in September. It’s actually a two week festival that originated in Germany, and at its center are polka music, bratwurst, lederhosen, and of course–beer. But while Germans halfway around the world are getting hammered on the beverage they’re famous for, we’re still…

Let’s Go RVing

Primitive camping is all well and good, but it can present a few problems, especially during the dog days of summer. First of all, you have no protection from pesky flies when you’re just walking around in the open air. And, as you probably already know, telling flies to leave…

You’ll Flip At His Command

It’s not too often that comedy club patrons actually want to be singled out by the star comedian. Not so with Flip Orley, even though his chosen medium has the most potential for public humiliation. He’s a hypnotist. A funny hypnotist, who creates his scenes from volunteers who are lulled…

Hopper on Over to the Inwood

There’s nothing quite like the experience of being in a movie theater filled with stoned people. It’s marked by lots of crowd interaction, loud conversations, laughing (at appropriate moments or not), abnormally frequent disturbances as people leave and come back, and the occasional hacking cough followed by a billow of…

How ‘Bout a Little Bear Huntin’?

It’s the second week of the regular season, which either means we’re all collectively breathing a sigh of relief because this shit actually counts, or we’re all burying our faces in bags of Fritos Scoops and bean dip because this shit really does count. Either way, seems like a win-win,…

Fire Power

Now that the wave of yellow book covers of The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo has subsided, America is working its way through the best-selling “Millennium” trilogy, written by the late Stieg Larsson, who died before his books were published. The film adaptation of the second installment, The Girl Who…

All the Wine is All for You

It’s the end of summer, and there are plenty of things to celebrate: the end of the hellish heat, for example; the end of a sartorial season that saw rompers on grown women, for chrissakes; and the beginning of football. And grapes, of course. Because nothing signals the onset of…

We Can Do It Without Him

Pre-season seems to exist for two reasons: to give the sports junkies a quick fix, and to give everyone a taste of what to expect from a team. Like an international friendly, a pre-season game gives a team automatic bragging rights in the case or a win, or an honest…

This Patch Has Plenty

“Oh, Great Pumpkin, where are you?” Linus laments in the classic kid’s flick It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, as he awaits the hallowed pumpkin’s arrival. If Linus happened to be loitering with his blankie around these parts, I’d direct him to the Dallas Arboretum. He’d surely go out of…

Dancing Industrial Complex at AAC?

SYTYCD? is coming to town this Wednesday!! Ohmahgady’all!! No, SYTYCD? isn’t an acronym for a sexually transmitted disease, it’s So You Think You Can Dance?! 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, the live tour of So You Think You Can Dance? hits Verizon Theatre at Grand Prairie (1001 Performance Place in Grand Prairie)…

Hops to the Stove

Remember those days when money spent at the bar sounded more reasonable than money spent at a restaurant? Ever consciously chose and then boasted about beer for supper? Step it up and bring your evening meal full-circle, pint to plate. Central Market Dallas’ new course, BREWTOPIA, with instructor Kent Rathbun,…

Proof Positive

Could you survive everyday life in Africa? Sure, it’s easy to imagine the everyday lives of African children, but could you actually grow up in such poverty-stricken conditions? The World Vision Experience’s AIDS: Step Into Africa exhibit invites visitors to walk through replicas of Sub-Saharan villages, where about 22 million…

Earnestly, Speaking, Of Course

It’s important to be honest, but, in Oscar Wilde’s comedy of misidentification, it’s way more important to be — yep I’m going to say it — Ernest. Wilde’s play, a satire of Victorian mores and social obligations, was a hit when it premiered in 1895, showing off the Irish playwright’s…

I’m Still Here: Joaquin Phoenix Makes a Point About Something. Maybe.

I’m Still Here—”that Joaquin Phoenix movie”—capitalizes on an anxiety that’s very of-the-moment, uniting pop cultural phenomena as seemingly disparate as the too-stupid/good-to-be-true Jersey Shore characters, James Franco’s baffling side careers as a professional student and soap opera stud and pretty much every thing having to do with Vincent Gallo. Basically,…