When you think of “graffiti” and “trains,” you probably imagine some subway station tagged to hell, but rail graffiti is a tradition that goes back to a time way before Sharpies and spray paint. Before there was Haze and Banksy, there was Bozo Texino, the mysterious hobo(s) who tagged boxcars…
The bear with the gooey, honey covered paws will always eclipse A. A. Milne’s other creations. Like his lighthearted play about…bigamy. Yup. Bigamy. Written five years prior to the first Winnie-the-Pooh story, Mr. Pim Passes By’s simple plot unfolds with Mr. Caraway Pim ambling into the lives of a happy…
From junkies to casual users, nobody likes tainted drugs. When you end up with atropine-laced coke or smack contaminated with fentanyl, you just feel cheated. Or possibly dead. And if ethanol is your drug of choice, the same truth applies. Grain, grapes and hops, like any other crops, can be…
If you read reviews the way I do, you’ve already started by checking out the score, and now you’re back here to see what the hell my problem is. Peace, brother. Grand Theft Auto IV is a fine game, with tons of content and all the great moments you’ve come…
Things never happen the same way twice.” Thus boometh Aslan the lion (Liam Neeson), alias the Son of God, popping his computer-generated shaggy head briefly into The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian to pep-talk a bunch of discouraged Brits into fighting the good fight again. As in life, so in…
Before the Rains Directed by Santosh Sivan. Written by Cathy Rabin and Dan Verete. Starring Linus Roache, Nandita Das and Jennifer Ehle. Opens Friday. British plantation owner and colonialist extraordinaire Henry Moores (Linus Roache) fancies himself the cowboy of Kerala, cavorting around the jungle with his Indian mistress, Sajani (Nandita…
I love my apartment. It’s tiny, it’s old, and it has a hole in the floor, but I love it. I’ll have you over for drinks sometime. But when I see those displays at Ikea showing how one can live in so little space with fabulous design and organization, I…
Although Pink Martini would be a great drag queen name, the 12-ish-piece orchestra has taken the moniker to worldwide fame. But after poring over their Web site, I can’t quite figure out what exactly Pink Martini is. Is it a jazz orchestra? World music? Big band? Apparently, they are all…
Grab a foldin’ lawn chair, a six-pack of Natty Light and some chicken-fried whatever because the first national tour of The Great American Trailer Park Musical opens tonight in McKinney. Described as “South Park meets Desperate Housewives,” the off-Broadway musical production promises adulterers, agoraphobes and pink flamingos galore. Sure, you…
You know how brothas are always chill about everything, and white boys are always all uptight and shit? That social phenomenon seems like a subject rife with comedic possibilities. Perhaps an aspiring young stand-up comic will create an observational routine about this dissimilitude and perform it for Def Comedy Jam…
You could do a lot with 24 hours. Eat at 24 different restaurants, watch 12 Meg Ryan movies, sleep for 24 hours…OK, so my ideas aren’t so great. But the Dallas Video Association thought of a good one: the 24-Hour Video Race. Yes, it’s back again this year, and it’s…
To be perfectly honest, I’m not terribly familiar with the work of Kansas City artist Archie Scott Gobber. I do know that “Gobber’s mixed-media constructions and works on paper slyly deconstruct ‘of-the-moment’ words and phrases, manipulating both surfaces and meaning in an often biting and humorous manner.” I also know…
The humble bead looks insignificant, but over the course of history it has been used as currency in exchange for everything from goods and land to flashes of skin. It’s been strung on string, wires and nearly everything else that artists and jewelry designers can think of. And, bead by…
The last time singer-songwriter Mark Olson played the AllGood Café, the power went out right before the show. Olson and his band weren’t fazed, however, offering to do the gig completely acoustic. Unfortunately for us, the power came back on, and while the sprinkling of old Jayhawks songs and excellent…
If you haven’t been to Marfa, face it: You’re just not that cool. Two of the year’s most kick-ass movies were filmed there (There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men), seriously indie bands make special trips there (Boris, Joanna Newsom and others) and even Prada developed a…
With the release of his 1991 novel, the darkly comical and ground-breaking American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis confirmed his place as a star in the world of contemporary literature, telling the tale of Patrick Bateman, a 1980s Wall Street investment banker, stuck somewhere between local celebrity and being lost in…
Funny runs through the blood of the Sedaris family like corny flows through the Osmonds. Through the immensely popular works by David Sedaris, many of us are aware of the antics of the family, as their dirty laundry has been aired time and time again in Sedaris’ short stories, essays…
Children seem inherently drawn to craftiness, which they express with crayons, construction paper, glitter, sidewalk chalk and, to the chagrin of their parents, red lipstick on a living room wall. As we age, as we’re told to focus on supporting ourselves, some of us lose the confidence to give life…
Hollywood can do a lot of things with special effects these days: Alien ships fly across the sky with no strings attached, dogs talk and Tom Cruise is tall. Not surprisingly, movies with a big special effects budget tend to be lacking in other areas, like script and character development…
Oh, yes, Grapevine is a hard-ass. It’s the Russell Crowe of DFW suburbs. Being a hard-ass, the city wants you to know of its hard-assness. That’s why at its annual Main Street Days Outdoor Adventure, held Friday through Sunday, Grapevine flexes its muscles by holding extreme sport exhibitions—a BMX bike…
Jeffrey Ross is kind of a jerk. But, then again, that’s kind of the snide comedian’s shtick. More than likely, you know him from his role in the New York Friars Club and Comedy Central roasts, where he’s been known to put down everyone and everything in the room in…
My mother was a children’s librarian, and I am currently a reference librarian in a small public library, so I know children’s books. But even though I really like kids and they tend to be my favorite patrons to deal with, I am far from the children’s librarian type. Yes,…
