It’s hard to say that we as a nation take something for granted without sounding preachy or all Fox News-y, but after the year that American women have had, it makes you wonder if we’ve forgotten how hard we had to fight to make decisions for ourselves, get an education…

The first year of motherhood is a learning curve. So much gets thrown at you that you can barely keep your head above water. Every cliche is true: You have no time, no energy and no money. You’re tired and you’re worn down, and if you can’t have a sense…

Someone at a conference asked me once what Dallas cuisine was like. I suppose the easy answer would have been Tex-Mex, because it probably seems right to someone who doesn’t live here, but I put some thought into it and was stumped. Sure, Tex-Mex is a favorite among Dallas diners,…

When I was little, the fireworks in my hometown were shot up over the roof of the local Target store and half the fun was watching the store manager race maniacally back and forth on the rooftop, stomping out embers. These days, as parts of this state continue to experience…

At some point a few weeks ago, I stopped scanning local arts calendars looking for events and activities that were the most stimulating for Baby’s now eleven-month-old brain and started looking for things with the best air conditioners. Hell hath no fury like an overheated infant, and so the criminally…

I thought I had a pretty straightforward relationship with Woody Allen. He made movies and I hated them. This was the way it worked for many years, until I saw Match Point and I liked it. And then I saw Vicky Cristina Barcelona and I loved it. Very confusing. But…

Every summer, across the country, outdoor amphitheaters roll out the red blanket for the Greatest Literary Figurehead Ever and begin cranking out night after night of sonnets and stanzas. This is no small feat- catering to a populace whose concept of tragedy involves that time that Maks dropped Kirstie Alley…

There are few professions more interesting than that of tattoo artist. On one hand, the pro tattooist gets paid to create intricate, often beautiful pieces of art on a daily basis. They form relationships with clients and collaborate on permanent illustrations that people live with for the rest of their…

Usually, when you look up a movie review online, you find a whole bunch of reviews where people liked the movie OK. It kept them interested, and it was entertaining enough to justify the $10 movie ticket. Then, you have the people that loved the film. Vocabulary gets effusive and…

The inner workings of the workplace have long been skewered in popular culture, much to the delight of us worker drones. Nearly all of us experience some level of boredom with our daily tasks or occasional frustration at the futility of our efforts. And we’ve pretty much all been the…

Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque blew a lot of minds when they began to transition their styles in the early part of the 1900s. They both began to bring more abstract elements into their work; first, the wildly saturated color seen in Cezanne’s work, and then an obsession with geometry,…

It’s a well-known truth that the length of time it takes to make a film has little to do with the quality of the finished product. If the opposite were true, then movies like Cleopatra (clocking in a 3-year production time) and Transformers 2 (a year and a half) would…

As a relatively new mom, I’ll admit that the things I don’t know about raising a kid could probably fill all of that empty real estate in Victory Park and then circle round for last call at Ghostbar. For example, while at a 4-year-old’s birthday party a few weeks ago,…

Denmark seems like such a peaceful, harmonious place that it’s hard to understand where Danish filmmakers get all of their angst. But time after time, the country’s cadre of talented directors find and examine the darker side of life, making what seems like an idyllic culture appear rife with drama…

Come Friday morning, something like a billion adoring fans will be parked in front of their television sets/computers/digitally-enabled phones for a glimpse of a fairy tale wedding. The effortlessly glamorous Kate Middleton will unite with the ruddy Prince William as legions of ladies the world over hoist their Official Kate…

The graphic style used by comic book illustrators has long been seen as something of a poor man’s art form, but few mediums give us such a timely glimpse into our culture. The ultra-violent, vivid and kinetic imagery is a pretty telling barometer of our life and times. After 9-11,…

Walking Dallas is not something for the faint of heart. Remember the video of that poor woman from Austin who tried to cross the street in the Knox/Henderson area a few weeks back? Bless her heart; she thought that a crosswalk would protect her from the onslaught of texting Uptowners,…

Until relatively recently, being environmentally conscious meant that you were an earthy, crunchy hippie with earthy, crunchy Birkenstocks. It meant that for all of your composting, recycling and earth-friendly efforts, you were an object of derision on par with the crazy cat lady and her ilk. But unlike the cat…

Spring has sprung, y’all, and that means that the flowers are blooming, the men of Uptown have liberated their man-sandals from the closet, and that bunny rabbits–somehow a symbol of rebirth and renewal despite the fact that they routinely eat their young–are everywhere. These cute and fuzzy little lagomorphs are…

The art world doesn’t come with the cult of personality that music or movies do and that frequently means that we miss out on some of the more interesting dialogues on perspective and culture. Take Martin Creed, a slightly scruffy Scotsman known for his widely acclaimed conceptual pieces, like the…

In a few thousand years, when aliens land on our scorched planet and examine Wall-E style what’s been left behind, we think one of the places they’ll be most fascinated with will be Marfa, Texas. They’ll be impressed with the killer menu at Food Shark, muse over the Prada installation,…