It’s time for fancy-ass wine and free samples from La Duni, Lavendou Bistro Provençal, Paciugo Gelato and a bunch of other places you can barely pronounce the name of even when you’re stone-cold sober. Master of Ceremonies Troy Dungan will be there to talk Beaujolais and bow ties. Well, maybe…
Put a dainty slab of Oregon out-of-towner in between two whole-grain slices of local music and what do you get? Hands down, the worst lead-in to a Critic’s Pick ever conceived, that’s what. Portland’s one-woman reverb fest Fall of Snow swoops into town to unfurl her ghostly resonance; think Boards…
Despite being the president of Shell Oil, John Hofmeister does not feast on baby orphan hearts or spend his off hours harpooning domesticated puppies for sport. Even more surprising, he’s an advocate for energy conservation and unconventional alternative fuel sources. Hofmeister has said, “We can by design, we can by…
As a child you may have learned about death from your grandparents. More specifically, grandma bit it and then your folks had to explain why you wouldn’t be getting any more five dollar checks for your birthday. Or you may have learned about death the same way you learned about…
“Sister Christian” is the Citizen Kane of songs about a skanky teenage girl coming of age. But as with most artistic expression, the lyrics’ message is still open to debate and interpretation. This is why Jesus invented the internet. We visited lyricinterpretations.com to find some alternate takes on the true…
If you want to enjoy Halloween with a movie marathon of Intergalactic Zombie Bikini Bimbo Slashers VII, I Defecate on Your Tombstone and Return of the Face Peeler then you may want to update your Netflix queue. For those of us with slightly more conventional tastes, Addison’s Monster Movie Mash…
“Darkness falls across the land, the midnight hour is close at hand. Creatures crawl in search of blood, to terrorize y’all’s neighborhood.” —Vincent Price, “Thriller” We know there’s nothing like a sugar buzz to cause cranial confusion and a depressed decision-making faculty. Oh, sure, give us 14 Stella Artois and…
You don’t know him, but he’s your brother. More specifically, he’s your blue-eyed soul brother. And who are you kidding? You do know him. For more than 30 years Michael McDonald has been drizzling his distinctive baritone smoothness all over the music world like so much hot fudge; backing Steely…
We can barely keep track of where we spent the last few hours, much less have our thumb on the pulse of America’s Next Top Biggest Model Idol Chef. If memory serves, this dude Elliott Yamin was the prettiest bachelor who prepared the most succulent orange-glazed duck, produced the best…
The Kingston Trio influenced popular song far beyond the boundaries of traditional folk music. Aesthetically they may have been a template for boy bands, handsome young men mugging cutely on their album covers. While there is a fair share of love songs in their repertoire, the Trio’s more famous numbers…
Let’s hope that San Francisco new gaze/shoe wave is the next big thing, if only because we’ve trademarked both of those terms. Prattling screamo brats have held court for far too long. If you’re gonna mope, you may as well do so artfully with echoing melodies and tidal waves of…
Last year’s State Fair of Texas hosted a multitude of musical acts with sounds and styles as mottled as the food items subjected to deep-frying. Our absolute favorite was Cybertron Command Center: two dudes in shiny spandex bodysuits jumping around and playing synth pads and key-tars, creating the sonic equivalent…
To refer to Super Diamond as simply a Neil Diamond tribute band is a gross understatement and a disservice to all involved. The San Francisco band faithfully performs a full range of mega-hits from the sequined troubadour’s extensive song catalog, but they do so with the full blessing of the…
Whether we’re at the casino boats hemorrhaging chips at the Texas Hold ‘Em table or engaging in a furious game of Uno with our 10-year-old niece, we totally suck at card games. But we love the idea of card games, and we love reading about people who are as bad…
An institution once held in the highest of regards, along with Mom and apple pie, as a symbol of unshakable American awesomeness, baseball has become somewhat of a bloated behemoth, all but collapsing beneath the weight of gazillion-dollar franchise dynasties, sordid doping scandals and unnecessary, if occasionally able, expansion teams…
So how about that Kanye West/50 Cent beef, eh? And by “beef” we mean “public rivalry manufactured to stimulate sales of two albums being released on the same day by the same parent corporation.” West’s Graduation and Fiddy’s Curtis ended up making a bunch of Caucasian record label executives very…
Area cat-sitters, prepare yourselves. Science fiction and fantasy enthusiasts will be requiring your services for the better part of the weekend. That’s because FenCon, the region’s hottest fan-run literary sci-fi and fantasy convention, is upon us. FenCon IV hosts more than 50 guests (among them Hugo Award-winning author Connie Willis,…
David Allan Coe’s illustrious songbook is jam-packed with classic country hits like “Take This Job and Shove It,” “You Never Even Called Me by My Name,” and, of course, “Nigger Fucker.” Seems like our good buddy Coe has a problem with his fine white ladies getting the jungle fever. In…
Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme has been trying to escape from the “stoner rock” pigeonhole for the better part of the last decade. The band’s latest offering, Era Vulgaris, offers the tasty hard rock riffage and sweet swirling melodies that QotSA fans have come to know, love…
Believe it or not, Iron Eagle was rife with technical inaccuracies, least of which that F-16s can launch missiles while taxiing on an airstrip. If the filmmakers had the referential aid of, say, the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, they might have avoided some of the movie’s more glaring…
Had there not already been a Japanese cartoon from the 1970s with the same name, Firebomb Production’s The Secret War might have been titled Battle of the Planets. Two teams of stage performers (the Chaldean Enforcers and Hermatic Pymanders) lock orbits and duke it out for celestial domination of the…
We’re horrible dancers, but we love the art of the dance. We love all different types, from ballroom to pop-and-lock to postmodern interpretive combinations of pop, lock and ballroom. We also love attending dance performances. The only problem with your average, everyday dance spectacular—or “dance-tacular”—is that they usually focus on…
