The words “jam band” have become as disturbing to most music fans as the words “George W. Bush” have become to everybody else. It is rare for a jam band to achieve much more than perpetual touring and a few thousand die-hard fans that follow them around doing questionable things…

Hollywood is full of weirdos. When Billy Bob Thornton was married to Angelina Jolie, the unlikely pair wore each others’ blood around their necks and would publicly say things about their sex life that still make the mind reel and the skin crawl. Billy Bob Thornton is, of course, most…

If you love the power of slaying dragons and using a “saving throw” to escape a cave filled with “orcs”, then this is your week. Come out of your parent’s basement and embrace your love of Dungeons & Dragons at the DFW Roleplayers Game Night. A night when all you…

Even though we are at war right now, it probably doesn’t feel like it to your average college type. This was definitely not the case in the late ’60s and early ’70s during Vietnam. It seemed like every college student was either protesting the war or protesting the protesters. One…

Take Neil Simon, throw him in a big gay musical stewpot with the greatest choreographer ever–Bob Fosse–and stir in that chick Paige Davis from TV’s Trading Spaces and what do you get? Well, besides a pretty strange-tasting stew, you get Sweet Charity, a really weird musical about a girl who…

By 1968, The Beatles had migrated from the realm of just being the “greatest rock ‘n’ roll band of all time” to the pantheon of modern day gods. They managed to become more and more popular every year despite the fact they hadn’t even played live since 1966. The progression…

If the gangs that plagued New York in the 1970s looked and acted like the ones in Walter Hill’s 1979 film masterpiece, The Warriors, it’s possible that there wouldn’t be any gangs around today. They were easy to spot with each gang sporting its own “unique” look. The Baseball Furies,…

Years before Titanic, “The Governator” and, um, Beauty and the Beast, there was one strange and wonderful event that united James Cameron, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton. It was called The Terminator. Before this 1984 sci-fi masterpiece was released, Arnold had made a small name in such offerings as Pumping…

For better or for worse, Dustin “Screech” Diamond’s image is etched into the memories of most 20- and 30-somethings like a fading jailhouse tattoo. His high-pitched, adenoidal voice echoes through the collective unconscious, haunting our waking hours and running down the high school halls of our darkest nightmares. On Saved…

All right, all right, we all know that Easy Rider is one of the most iconoclastic films of all time. We all know that it is full of wacked-out performances and was made on a shoestring budget by “real hippies” who most likely don’t even remember being on the set…

Listening to some ’90s rap music is like mowing your lawn with a hamburger. It’s satisfying, but when it’s done, you’re left with a feeling that nothing has been accomplished. Now, this analogy may not make sense to anybody but me, but just think about it for a minute. The…

Ladies and gentlemen, this week you are the luckiest rock ‘n’ roll fans in the world. The “Motor City Madman” is coming to town to “Sacrifice the White Buffalo.” We are getting a rare audience with quite possibly the most over-the-top, misogynistic, bow-hunting, guitar-shredding, loin cloth-clad rocker that ever rode…

I have a dirty little secret. I was born in Shreveport, Louisiana. We moved to Dallas when I was 3 years old, so I don’t remember much about living there except that it was boring and it smelled really, really bad. I went back to visit when I was about…

Frank Zappa was what one would call a freak. Even though he never touched drugs, you couldn’t tell from his 1971 bizarro film, 200 Motels. Ostensibly a movie about “life on the road,” it’s a surreal journey into the mind of a true musical genius. While it is not really…

The first punk rock show I ever saw was the Dead Kennedys. It ruined me for life. From the stage, the band’s wiry, spastic front man seemed more like a conspiracy-crazed preacher than a singer, a political firecracker perpetually poised on the point of detonation. This was Jello Biafra, one-time…

Oh, the sweet smell of the late 1980s. That wet-wool smell that became “grunge.” It bled like a skater-kid’s skinned knee into the early 1990s, and as soon as Nirvana “appeared from nowhere” in 1991, major labels descended upon every band with long hair, a Big Muff pedal and songs…

Before becoming a comedy legend by playing against type in classic cinematic masterpieces such as Airplane and The Naked Gun, Leslie Nielsen was a “serious actor.” In fact, Nielsen has appeared in more than 200 movies and TV shows, playing everything from doctors to soldiers to the ship’s captain in…

It would be easy to dismiss Winger as just another late ’80s hair metal band trying to jump on the sequin-and-spandex bandwagon driven by Poison and Ratt. They had all the ingredients for a glam cocktail: tight pants, power ballads, etc. But what most people don’t realize is lead singer…

When some people think of the name Wayne Newton, they picture a cocky teenage Matthew Broderick defiantly lip-synching “Danke Schoen” whilst straddling a float in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. That’s OK. Most of you out there were only a twinkle in Daddy’s eye when Wayne was scorching the airwaves with…

While ostensibly a tale of triumph set in America’s top jet-pilot training school, Top Gun is, in reality, the greatest big-budget, homoerotic thrill ride ever spewed forth. Released in 1986, this high-octane, sweat-drenched masterpiece redefined the way blockbusters were made. Take an adrenaline-pumping soundtrack by the king of motivational film…

What can one say about Bob Seger that hasn’t been said 100 times at every auto repair shop and truck stop from Detroit to Toronto? Seger’s music speaks to the common man: It has boosted truck sales and brought tears of nostalgia to the eyes of everyone who’s ever made…