Yes, it’s time for the annual Kartoffel Festival. If you weren’t aware of it, kartoffel is German for men’s lingerine. No wait, that’s lederhosen. A kartoffel is a potato. And potatoes apparently are a big part of German cuisine. If you’re into good food with weird names you owe it…
Grab your plastic sheets, your rain slickers and maybe an umbrella because things are going to get messy at the House of Blues on Saturday. That’s right, Gallagher is coming to town with his handy-dandy Sledge-O-Matic to smash some stuff. There must be something very cathartic about squashing fruit and…
Forget Captain Jack Sparrow and the Pirates of the Caribbean. Chances are in 20 years everyone else will have forgotten it too. But Long John Silver will still be sailing the seven seas long afterward. Treasure Island is one of the most popular and enduring stories in the world. Come…
If you can quote lines from the movie Office Space, have every episode of The Office taped and can’t get enough of Dilbert and his magically monotonous cubicle, then as the Veggie Tales characters say, “have we got a show for you.” Man vs. Office is another take on the…
At first blush, Timothy Ralston seems like any other professor at Dallas Theological Seminary. He has a gray beard, neatly parted hair, and a vast knowledge of Christian scripture. But there is something unusual, some would even say subversive, about this conservative former pastor. He’s a Harry Potter fan. To…
Artist Paul Greco uses mixed media–such as old Disney cartoons and Dick and Jane characters juxtaposed with scenes of skyscrapers and nuclear weapons–to illustrate his philosophy that life was just as hard and confusing in past decades as it is now. For instance, one of Greco’s pieces, “All God’s Children…
Remember lying in bed as a kid terrified of that horrible monster in the corner? And then when you got up the courage to tiptoe over and flip the light switch on, you discovered the “monster” was a crumpled pair of pants draped over a chair? Sometimes our eyes play…
Fifteen years ago while leading a church service for incarcerated women in a dirty room in the Dallas County Jail, Pastor Karen Dudley noticed a familiar face in the crowd. Dudley had first seen the woman a year earlier at another prison. At the time, the woman had been living…
The Dallas Children’s Theater will be putting on a fun-for-the-kiddies-who-love-doggies production with PINKERTON!!! (If you’ve never heard of Pinkerton, think of the old comic strip Marmaduke and you’ll have a pretty good idea. He’s a lovable Great Dane who gets into all sorts of mischief.) For those—young and not-so-young—who have…
I love cable shows like Iron Chef, Trading Spaces and Smack My Donkey. That’s why I don’t have cable. I’d never get off the couch. If you’re a fan of HGTV’s Sensible Chic and Curb Appeal, then chances are you’ve seen Richardson native and designer Linda Applewhite at work. Linda…
Tim Scholz pulls his white pickup off to the side of the road in rural Ellis County. He’s 30 miles south of Dallas, out in hog-hunting country. He gets out, jumps onto the flatbed of his truck and scans the horizon with a pair of Bushnell binoculars. Rain has been…
One of my favorite childhood activities was looking for shapes in the clouds. I had a similar sensation while viewing a few of Brent Kollock’s paintings. “Is that a mouth? Are those fingers? Is that a five-legged gnome with wings?” Whether you like it or not, Kollock’s work demands a…
Sick of hearing Mozart and Wagner over and over again? Maybe it’s time to strap on some Mahler. Gustav Mahler was a musical genius, and like most geniuses he didn’t receive the amount of success and respect he deserved during his lifetime. But at least he didn’t hack off his…
