Given its status as one of the most revered fairy tales in history, I think it’s pretty safe to assume everyone knows the story of Sleeping Beauty by now–beautiful princess goes into coma courtesy of attempted murder by bitchy fairy, only to awaken in the arms of Prince Charming 100…

Many of you no doubt know pop artist Peter Max from his work on famous ’60s counter-culture posters and modern postage stamps. Dude’s famous. In the captions for a recent Newsweek slideshow of his late ’60s work, he recalls a time when he went out for some late-night Indian food…

Poor Cinderella. She really had it rough. The mean, old stepmother, the bitchy stepsisters, the midnight curfew–cry me a river. She had a fairy godmother, people. Lady turned a damned pumpkin into a carriage. I don’t know about you, but my pumpkins don’t turn into anything but stale, stinky pumpkins,…

If you’ve seen the movie Top Gun you’re no doubt familiar with the Kenny Loggins song “Playing With The Boys,” which perfectly scores that film’s classic beach volleyball scene. It also happened to be the first thing I thought of when confronted with the title of the Latino Cultural Center’s…

Alice Walker’s 1983 novel The Color Purple won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction that year, as well as bringing Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey to the big screen in 1985 to star in Stephen Spielberg’s Oscar-nominated film adaptation. A musical version also debuted in…

Fort Worth native Bob Schieffer has been a guiding force at CBS News since the late ’60s, most recently filling in at anchor after Dan Rather’s departure and moderating the last 2004 debate between Senator Kerry and President Bush (he’ll reprise this role for the third debate between Senators Obama…

Reading is fundamental. After all, if you couldn’t read this I wouldn’t be able to tell you about the 8th Annual Champions of Literacy Luncheon benefiting Literacy Instruction for Texas (LIFT), an organization on a mission to “to enhance lives and strengthen communities by raising the adult literacy rate in…

You may not know the name Wreckless Eric, but if you’ve seen 2006’s Stranger Than Fiction, then you’ve seen Will Ferrell laboriously learn the simple chord progression of Eric’s irresistible 1978 pub rock classic “Whole Wide World.” And just as Ferrell’s character Harold Crick got the girl, Wreckless Eric (real…

Carlos Santana, for better or worse, is a legend. He’s played guitar on some of FM radio’s most monstrous hits, including “Evil Ways,” “Oye Como Va” and “Black Magic Woman.” He’s shared stages and album credits with Alice Coltrane, Booker T. Jones, John Lee Hooker, Herbie Hancock and the recently…

Honestly, we thought “Spectacular Senior Follies” would be a good name for an America’s Funniest Home Videos-style tribute to the antics of the elderly. But Mark Carroll Productions beat us to the punch and used it for an old-timey song-and-dance revue featuring around 150 local senior talents, including notables like…

For better or worse, Peter Frampton is permanently ingrained in the fabric of rock and roll. It probably doesn’t hurt that he’s sold more than 16 million copies of Frampton Comes Alive! worldwide (though he’s since been eclipsed by Garth Brooks, Bruce Springsteen and The Eagles, whose live albums have…

For the longest time I never really understood the time-honored practice of rich people giving away their art collections to museums. But then I got older, moved a couple of times and helped clean out my grandparents’ house. Translation: Some people, like myself, tend to accumulate a lot of crap…

The idea of the faculty art exhibition is as old as the idea of art school. After all, perhaps the best way to teach a student about visual art is to show them the myriad possibilities inherent in the form. Really, I wish more of my teachers and professors would…

The story goes that Lucky Tubb’s grandfather pulled him over to his deathbed and said, “Carry on the family name, and make me proud.” If you’re a fan of old-school country, then you know that’s a pretty tall order. And while, so far, Lucky isn’t quite the musical trailblazer his…

The creators of the play Heaven for a G are justifiably concerned about youth violence. After all, as they say in their own press release, “violence is quickly becoming the new ‘black’ for the upcoming generation. Unfortunately, they are wearing it too well.” Look around, folks–on runways from New York…

The Frisco RoughRiders are the Class AA affiliate of the Texas Rangers. Nolan Ryan, besides being eternally awesome, is the president of baseball operations for the Rangers. He also happens to be one of the principal owners of the Corpus Christi Hooks, a rival team whose CEO just happens to…

Imagine you’re a Russian Jew coming to live in America in 1909. Odds are you might wind up in New York City, though there are certainly other places you might logically unpack your bags. Hamilton, Texas, however, is not one of them. But that’s just where the protagonist of The…

Painting portraits of your favorite musicians is a time-honored way of paying homage to the artists you love. But more often than not, it’s not that compelling as art. Sure, the original photograph of Johnny Cash flipping the bird is a powerful image, but how many times do we really…

Let’s cut to the chase–Desire is a weird name for a trolley. Lightning, sure. Sparky, Wheels and The Old-Timer? All acceptable. But Desire? Seriously, what was Tennessee Williams smoking? Nevertheless, his 1947 play, A Streetcar Named Desire, remains a classic to this day, while we’ve been shopping our soon-to-be-classic children’s…

Have you ever been, uh, dropping some kids off at the pool and thought, “Hey, I wonder how many other people are dropping kids off at the pool right now too?” Sure you have. So has Arlington, Texas, native Brett Brownell, the brain behind World Wide Movement, an international photography…

Photographer Kent Barker seems rather taken with the process of erosion–“There is a solitude and a quiet that for me is conducive to the act of ‘seeing’ and a unique visual beauty in the way that time and weather acts upon objects,” he says. Barker finds such beauty in the…