Strange bedfellows: heavy metal and cellos. And yet they come together in Finnish quartet Apocalyptica, four dudes who have increased the overall bad-assitude of classical instrumentation by 400% by releasing albums like Plays Metallica by Four Cellos and Inquisition Symphony, on which they string-rock a Pantera cover. It’s a surprisingly…
When we address uncomfortable subjects with humor, we feel a little bit better. That’s why it’s a good idea to go see Mid Life! The Crisis Musical with your parents and other old-ass friends. That way, you can broach the subject of that stupid motorcycle Steve bought without offending him…
Doritos get stuck in the vending machine again? TiVo abandon you during a crucial moment of The Hills? Oh, how your life is filled with woe! But it could be worse. You could be a gay Jewish man in a Nazi concentration camp. Narrowly avoided that one, eh? See what…
One of the beautiful things about nature is that it’s free—minus the cost of mosquito bites, sun burns, poison ivy and other sweet treats provided by the outdoors. But for some, avoiding bites and burns is priceless. Or, if not exactly priceless, worth forking over $15,000 if that means they…
The last time you saw something Belgian, it was probably a crisp, golden bier—or it was, until your unrefined tastes caused you to chug it down. Show Belgium some respect, will you? Throw on your finest lace doily, load up on chocolat and head over to the Light & Sie…
It’s always painful when we want most what we can’t have, particularly when it comes to love. How often we pine for someone who has no interest in us, only to realize that the answer to our problems is to dress up in sequined 19th-century clothing, sing show tunes and…
Minis, Maxis and Mods sounds less like a fashion exhibit and more like a group of products I was terrified to buy at the drugstore in the 6th grade. This collection of designer clothing from 1965-1975 doesn’t have wings or come in extra-long/overnight, but it does feature brightly colored caftans,…
My familiarity with motocross racing is near non-existent but for this nugget: hip-hop/rock/pop/whatever’s popular with the Now That’s What I Call Music! crowd this week singer Pink’s estranged husband rides dirt bikes. With an event as important as the Monster Energy Supercross FIM World Championship coming to Texas Stadium this…
You might think you’ve made it in show business when you’ve been in one slacker drug film, but you really haven’t reached the pinnacle of success until you’re in the sequel to that slacker drug film too. That’s how I know John Witherspoon’s upcoming headlining stint at the Addison Improv…
The New York Times-lauded jazz vocalist Dianne Reeves is coming to Dallas soon to promote her new record, When You Know. According to the record’s appropriately gushing press release, it’s a “gorgeous album of songs celebrating the different stages of love in a woman’s life.” The hits? Well, I expected…
Roundabouts mid-March, everybody starts getting a little Irish in them. Most folks take this to mean they have the right to wear ridiculous hats, get drunk in the daytime and talk like the Lucky Charms guy. But not only do we have the right to do these things on St…
Moulin Rouge! is the worst date movie of all time. Not because it isn’t entertaining or because it doesn’t appeal to a wide variety of movie-goers, because it is, and it does. Moulin Rouge! is a bad date movie because whatever you do, Romeo, you’re not Ewan McGregor, you can’t…
It is about damned time somebody did Dallas other than Debbie. Actually, ol’ Deb was just a tease, anyway, as she never did Dallas or anyone in it for the entirety of the classic porno film. Broken promises. Broken hearts. Broken VCRs, tossed across shag-carpeted living rooms in moments of…
It would be wrong to find it funny that a theater festival called “Out of the Loop” will be held in Addison this week. Wherefore? Because it’s not merely funny. It’s also incredibly appropriate that anything involving being out of a loop takes place not only north of the Interstate…
Those blackbirds are mouthy little broads, aren’t they? Yammering and stammering, hiring PR folks to contact famous songwriters and convincing them to write classic acoustic guitar tunes about them. You thought Paul McCartney’s “Blackbird” was a touching metaphor about the state of race relations in America? You thought wrong. You’ve…
“Good teenagers, take off your clothes.” If that sentence sounds familiar, you may have spent time trying to find creepy messages in Disney movies, or you may be a pervert whom we all hope is reading this while tucked safely into your maximum-security cell. Animated Disney hero Aladdin is suspected…
Oh, how the Li’ls have grown bigger and badder over the years. From 1935-1977, Al Capp’s classic Li’l Abner cartoon featured a bumbling man-child prone to long trips. More recently, Cash Money Records features Lil Wayne, a bumbling man-child prone to long trips. ‘Course, Lil Wayne bumbles ’cause he’s always…
It’s a comparative religion fan’s hottest dream: Kamadeva, the Hindu god of love, and Psyche, the Greek goddess of the soul, uniting as one in a steamy mess. Of course, it’d never work in the real world. Ultimately Kamadeva would want to bring around all nine of his other incarnations,…
Gimme Shelter started out ostensibly as a rock and roll concert film but ultimately became a grotesque, intellectual exploration of one of pop music’s great tragedies: the 1969 Rolling Stones concert at the Altamont Speedway in California, where one person drowned, another was stabbed by a Hells Angels security guard…
When I called my old friend Simon Pegg* and told him I’d be writing a short piece about Hot Fuzz, the greatest action film of all time, he didn’t believe me. After all, the British writer and star of Hot Fuzz asked, didn’t everyone already know that Hot Fuzz is…
Some things are better hot: soups, fusses, legs. Some things are not: ice cream, climate change, grandma. Some just can’t help it, like Marilyn Monroe. The sex symbol oozed deliciousness even when she was all doped up singing “Happy Birthday, Mr. President.” No surprise Some Like It Hot is so…
The Pilobolus dance troupe is “the dance world’s equivalent of a summer movie blockbuster,” according to a press release about the group’s upcoming performance at the Eisemann Center. The creepy, bulging codpieces worn by male ballet dancers will surely be upset by this claim. Historically, the coveted “dance world equivalent…
