The Old-Fashioned Family Fireworks Picnic promises music ranging from “Elvis to the Eagles to Tchaikovsky’s explosive 1812 Overture.” Performances of the 1812 Overture traditionally incorporate cannon blasts. Instead, they should use the cannonballs to obliterate the orchestra if they start into “Hotel California.” Performances are 8 p.m. Friday through Sunday…
Want to avoid the loud booms and sparkly sky madness this Fourth of July weekend? We won’t hold it against you–we know you’re celebrating Independence Day in your heart, but we do have something you can enjoy. This Thursday through Sunday, July 1 through 4, Michael Colyar will be headlining…
Like a good mix tape, there’s an art to making a really fine diptych. You need a connection between the two images, but you don’t want to make it too obvious. Layer a few ideas together in some fresh relationship that’ll make people think. A shot of a man lying…
Independence Day traditions can be a bit of a bummer to attempt in the heat of Texas summers. Outside activities are not at the top of everyone’s list when the mercury hits the triple digits. So what can you do to salute the red, white and blue and stay cool?…
The cult (and pothead) classic Reefer Madness (1936) was originally titled Tell Your Children, but definitely do not tell your children to attend Ohlook Performing Arts Center’s musical production of the tragic tale. The show includes adult humor, religious parody, drug use, suggested violence, sexual explicitness and more, so, yes,…
Most artists would agree that painting in order to duplicate what a photograph could do is a betrayal of the medium. But if a camera can depict an object as we can imagine it, or dream of it, then it can probably be called art. This is especially true when…
Fantasia has been described as Walt Disney’s acid trip, and with all of those dancing fish, cavorting Greek gods and stressed-out dinosaurs, we’ve got to agree. Not that we think Disney did acid, but in the face of the sheer dizzying, imaginative brilliance of Fantasia, you can’t deny it’s a…
When my wife and I found out that our first child was going to be a daughter, I’ll admit that one of the first things that crossed my mind was the frightening fact that at some point in the next two, three, maybe four decades, I would likely have to…
We’ve bemoaned holding fireworks displays on the third of July ever since the trend got started, but apparently no one listened, as the vast majority of this year’s fireworks displays are happening on Saturday. But at least we had our Fair Park Fourth. That is until the city canceled the…
You know and love Jason Bourne as an implacable killing machine. But what if he were a mouthy asshole instead? That’s the provocative question posed by James Mangold’s Knight and Day, which casts Tom Cruise as a Bourne wannabe who seriously can’t shut up. As Roy Miller, an agent gone…
“Never ask for what ought to be offered,” 17-year-old Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) tells her little brother in Winter’s Bone, Debra Granik’s dark and flinty Ozark fairy tale. Those are words to live by for Ree and her people, scattered across the hardscrabble crooks and hollers of the southern Missouri…
As unrepentantly grandiose and ludicrous as its title, Luca Guadagnino’s visually ravishing third feature suggests an epic that Visconti and Sirk might have made after they finished watching Vertigo and reading Madame Bovary while gorging themselves on aphrodisiacs. That it works so well—despite frequently risible dialogue (“Happy is a word…
Once upon a time people actually milked their own cows, produced their own meat and grew their own fruits and vegetables. Kids’ chores consisted of tending to the farm instead of cleaning their room, and people couldn’t fathom mothers working anywhere but in their own household. Needless to say, things…
From 6:30 to 9 p.m. Tuesday make the drive out to the Fort Worth Central Market Cooking School, 4561 West Freeway, for Cooking With Beer-American Classics. The class will be taught by Joe Synatschk, who’s a sous chef at Screen Door, a home brew expert and a guy whose last…
There’s really no telling what the animals at the zoo get up to after hours. Their daily routines–swatting flies, tearing into raw meat and walking the same slow circle of their pens–are no great mystery, but most of us can only imagine what goes on at the Dallas Zoo when…
John DeMers is a triple threat: he cooks like the devil, writes mystery novels, and hosts a radio show. I’ve never met DeMers, but I bet you my grandmother’s top-secret banana pudding recipe (the secret’s in the Nilla wafers!) that women love him and men want to be him. Heck,…
On the beaches of northwest Florida a few weeks ago, I witnessed an absolute phenomenon. For as far as the eye could see, women and men were sitting on their towels and beach chairs reading books, each with the same bright yellow cover. It created a glare that could probably…
For those of us who love baseball, but can do without glitz, glamour and high ticket prices, minor league ball is a great way to spend a summer evening, without a lot of fuss or expense. For a mere $14, you can be hoity-toity in a reserved box–and even those…
Before that bullshit movie G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, there were real G.I. Joes. You know the ones with the plastic AK-47s, the jangling dog tags and the rubber military-issue boots? No, not the tiny, plastic dudes with the spring-loaded guns–we’re talking about the 12-inch bad boys with the…
It’s hard to believe it, but back in the day Grease was considered a raunchy musical when John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John signed on to play the leads in 1978. Summer love, teen pregnancy and s-e-x won out in the end because the movie’s a classic. Come on out and…
Come to the 5K run for the National HIV Testing Day and get a free HIV test with results in 30 minutes. Prizes will be given away for getting tested. Registration for the run is $25, but those who would just like to watch or get tested can just make…
Baseball truly is America’s pasttime. Where else would a nonprofit organization be able to not only exist but thrive as an entity that supports and facilitates the futures of young lives through baseball? You guessed it–right here in Big D, in the good ol’ US of A. For the last…
