On first sight, it would seem that Gary Panter and Vernon Fisher don’t have a lot in common. And indeed, it’s not a pre-requisite that two artists have a common thread just because they’re being exhibited in the same gallery. However, when you’re poring over their work, trying to find…
On first sight, it would seem that Gary Panter and Vernon Fisher don’t have a lot in common. And indeed, it’s not a pre-requisite that two artists have a common thread just because they’re being exhibited in the same gallery. However, when you’re poring over their work, trying to find…
Mexican art tends to be dominated by the larger-than-life personas of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, at least in perception. And while either one could rightfully hold the title of the definitive Mexican, there’s a case to be made for Enrique ChavarrÃa as well. ChavarrÃa’s paintings and drawings are what…
Of all the things you need to know about Brooks and Dunn, the most important is that George W. Bush is a huge fan. Like, “my campaign song is by Brooks and Dunn” huge. Brooks and Dunn is to W like Fleetwood Mac is to Bill Clinton. Fleetwood Mac could…
Red dirt has never been much of a draw for me. When man-made waterfalls were turned on in my hometown, they bubbled over with red dirt, and I summarily avoided the site for years. I avoided hitting the ball for my fifth-grade softball team out of fear that I would…
Back in the day, people used to talk about going back and taking a few college courses just for fun. Not anymore. Now if you’re taking a college course for any reason, you’d best be prepared to go into serious debt (and serious plasma loss) to do it, particularly if…
Book fairs used to be an all-important matter in schools, a day when the library would mysteriously shut down and re-open with rows of Beverly Cleary books for sale to excited third-graders. It was a powerful sort of affair—elementary school-wise—unifying all manner of readers, from the kids that read the…
Once upon a time, in a town not far enough away, a college freshman (that would be me) pushed open the door to a CD store and saw a salesman and three of his friends jumping up and down in rhythm to Green Day’s recently released Dookie. The guys knew…
I had a boyfriend once that was obsessed with dinosaurs. One commercial for a Discovery Channel special about the T-Rex, and he’d drop all his bad-ass rock and roll pretensions and whimper “dinosaws”. Years later, I still find myself knowing a lot about the brontosaurus (and not enough about why…
Sommore will have you know that she is more than just a comedienne. She’s also a patron of Glamour Shots and a lover of smooooth jams, and this I learned just from visiting her Web site’s home page. Further investigation into this diva o’ comedy revealed that she was featured…
The Pillowman is a creepy name for a play. It makes me think of the super-creepy chief antagonist in those Saw movies. Or maybe the Pillowman is like the Spoon Man in that Soundgarden song—some scary street performer who does weird things with pillows. Actually, though, this play is more…
It’s called A Brief History of White Music, and yet nowhere in the list of songs do I find any trace of tribute to the works of Michael Bolton or Wilson Phillips. If you’re going to do a history of white music, you should really include the cornerstones and at…
Who among us hasn’t caught a few minutes of a soap opera and fantasized just for a moment about being a soap star? Soap operas level the great acting playing field because you don’t have to be particularly talented nor particularly attractive to be a soap star. Sure, being hot…
Mary Roach is one of those rare nonfiction writers with a sense of humor. Among all the gloom and doom cluttering the nonfiction section these days, Mary Roach writes books about dead people that are uproarious. Roach’s Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers is a witty book about what…
My little brother was one of those kids fascinated with geological catastrophes (and Star Trek, but that’s another story), and he had all of those Time-Life books about volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tornadoes and other fire-and-brimstone-type events throughout history. The eruption of Mount Vesuvius was one of his all-time favorite calamities,…
Sometimes, I think the vast majority of us forget about culture. In between Heroes episodes and multiple readings of Perez Hilton, it’s easy to forget that pop culture and culture culture are really two separate things. I’m just as concerned about the fate of Peter Petrelli as anyone else, but…
The first thing you’ll notice when you pull up the Weimaraner Rescue of North Texas Web site is a disclaimer that says that they can’t currently accept any more rescue dogs. Then there’s actually a list of dogs that they can’t rescue. If you’re an animal lover (or if you…
Kathy Griffin has this story about taking her dogs to a resort in Palm Springs that kills. Really, it’s just so funny that it hurts to watch, and it’s even better because it’s something that could happen to any one of us. Sure, she’s famous for her often vicious send-ups…
Many folks give Katharine Hepburn the credit for having the biggest cojones of all the classic actresses, and Joan Crawford definitely was legendarily crazy, but Bette Davis was the queen of them all. She was over the top, more difficult on set than Lindsay Lohan could ever dream of being,…
I’m not exactly sure how you would go about this, but if you could smuggle a bottle of Crown past the American Airline Center’s crack security team (the ones who broke a $50 compact during a particularly aggressive purse search at a Dixie Chicks show in December, thank you), you…
Andy Warhol conjures up a lot of images for a lot of different people. Some think he was a brilliant artist; others feel that his art was a hoax; many just see him as a celebrity-obsessed partier who used his art as a means to climb the social ladder. It’s…
Dr. Michael Phillips’ book White Metropolis: Race, Ethnicity and Religion in Dallas, 1841-2001 will do things to you. It’s a history book in a lot of ways, but it also makes you take a look around at the half-million-dollar condos springing up all over Dallas and realize who gets to…
