Cable TV companies had a economic and geographic choke chains around the necks of some parts of the cable TV market in the ’80s and early ’90s. Only people who could afford satellite dishes, big enough to make their backyards look like mini-SETI projects, had a way out. The wider…
These days, conventions organizers can never stop planning their next fan gatherings. That’s because more conventions than ever are competing to get bigger celebrity guests to mingle and take photos with the fans. The next Fan Expo Dallas gathering doesn’t start until April, but it’s already scored a huge and revered pop…
A group of friends and fans of local emcee Devin Pike — who frequently works at the Alamo Drafthouse, as well as local conventions — gathered Thursday at the Drafthouse’s Cedars location for a special screening of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. The screening was part of a fundraiser to help…
It can be difficult to get tickets to a show by a top-selling comedian like Jim Jefferies. The Australian comic tours the world annually and sells out venues such as Dallas’ Majestic Theatre, but there are other ways to see Jefferies if you have the right timing and know the…
The University of Texas at Arlington is one bout away from scoring its first major championship in front of a roaring crowd in a Las Vegas stadium. The only things standing in its way are the best and the brightest from Louisiana State University and their offensive line of deadly assassins…
Wednesday was wet, rainy and bitterly cold. Could there be a better setting for a primordial scream on the first anniversary of President Donald Trump’s election? A small but loud crowd of five protesters and one surprise counterprotester showed up at the Continental Avenue pedestrian bridge Wednesday night as part…
If you’ve been to a fan convention, a special movie screening or any gathering of fanboys and girls in a public place, then chances are that you’ve seen the goateed face or heard the booming voice of Devin Pike. The host, emcee and program director at the online radio station…
Ethan and Chantra Briggs of Burleson were just a few weeks into a year’s worth of wedding planning when they got an email that would let them bump up the date. The only catch? They’d have to get married at the amusement park Six Flags Over Texas, and they’d have…
When you think of Saudi Arabia and its people, a great sense of humor probably isn’t the first thing that comes to mind, but last week The Middle East Institute was in Dallas to prove that the country has actually produced some fine comedians. The institute sponsored a free, hourlong…
Netflix’s Stranger Things is one of those rare television phenomena that TV executives dream about having on their schedule. Not only is the Duffer brothers’ ’80s throwback horror story about dimension-bending Demogorgans and the plucky small-town kids who fight them an unexpected hit (almost no one in Hollywood wanted to produce it)…
Rob Paulsen and Randy Rogel bring Animaniacs Live! to Arlington Music Hall this Friday. Every child of the ’90s remembers the Warner Bros. cartoon Animaniacs. The zany show featured a cast of wise-cracking, physics ignoring, violence-prone characters presented in a loosely connected series of animated shorts like a moving comic…
State Rep. Matt Shaheen of Plano has been one of the leading voices calling for the abolition of state spending and programs designed to help bring film and TV productions to Texas. Earlier this week, Shaheen used the growing sexual abuse scandal involving Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein to widen the…
Improv comedy may seem like a trendy way for people to get out of their comfort zones on the weekend or a way to keep a crowd entertained with a two-drink minimum. But it’s also a form of philosophical strength training that applies to many facets of life off stage…
It’s been nearly 30 years since the Canadian sketch comedy show The Kids in the Hall first went on the air and almost 35 years since troupe members Kevin McDonald, Dave Foley, Mark McKinney, Scott Thompson and Bruce McCullough first shared a stage together under their troupe name. They continue…
HBO’s Game of Thrones has one of the biggest fan followings in modern television. Almost every frame of every episode has been scrutinized and investigated by fans who have developed more wild theories about political motives and deadly plots than Alex Jones’ radio audience. But while Game of Thrones has…
To become a good comedian, you have to learn more than how to tell a good joke. You also have to learn how to take one. Forty-five-year-old comedian Ralphie May, who died of cardiac arrest Friday at his home in Las Vegas, Nevada, probably heard every fat joke in the…
A few months ago, we told you about Epic Waters, an 80,000-square-foot indoor water park opening in Grand Prairie. Construction on the $100 million project is progressing, and earlier this week, the Observer got a sneak peek at the park, which is scheduled to open before the end of the…
If you have a Ghostbusters fan on your Christmas list this year, look no further for the perfect gift. The Dallas-Fort Worth Ghostbusters are putting their ECTO-1D vehicle up for sale. The DFW Ghostbusters are a local, nonprofit Ghostbusters franchise that celebrates the supernatural comedy movies by building costumes and props and…
The recent death of Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner has inspired praise for his pioneering publishing empire, which helped fuel the sexual liberation of the 1960s and early public support of civil rights and gay rights. Others characterized Hefner’s legacy as an exploitative one that reduced women’s worth to their…
Men and women are about as opposite as any two forces on Earth. Yet many people spend their whole lives trying to find just one person of the opposite sex who is willing to just put up with them. Brian Howie, a writer, author and comedian who hosts The Great…
Jim Norton will perform at Texas Theatre this Friday, Sept. 29 Comedian Jim Norton can’t remember the first embarrassing, sexually perverted story he told. All he remembers is where it happened and that two other comics found it hilarious. “It was a Radisson hotel [in New Jersey] that had a…
Spending the majority of the year on the road isn’t a new experience for seasoned comedy couple Cameron Esposito and Rhea Butcher. They first met in the Chicago comedy scene and got to know each other while doing road gigs together. So what makes their Back to Back tour, which…
