The late actor Anthony Quinn, who was known for having played characters of almost every ethnicity–except perhaps Nordic–during his 60-year career, surprisingly didn’t place too much importance on his own background. “It doesn’t make a difference as long as I’m a person in the world,” he said. In its third…
The pages of the first edition of Bridget Jones’s Diary were already yellowed by the time we finally cracked open a copy. There had been too much hype at first surrounding this piece of literary fluff about a sometimes ballsy, mostly insecure single gal who hates her job, her body…
They’re young. They’re in love. And they kill people. That tagline from the 1967 film Bonnie & Clyde tells the basic tale of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, the Dallas bank robbers who led the Barrow Gang across the Midwest, racking up wanted posters while filling body bags. But the…
Brett and Rennie Sparks–the husband and wife duo who record her lyrics and his music as The Handsome Family–often get accused of being depressing. Or dark, or morbid or macabre. Take your pick. They all lead to the same conclusion: Why can’t they just write one happy song? “That’s when…
It sounds like something manufactured in Hollywood: a group of individuals from different backgrounds form a tight-knit community around weekly dance sessions at clubs. The participants teach each other new moves and engage in some friendly competition for partners and, occasionally, a cash prize. “I thought it sounded like Saturday…
We love the ladies who lust in Candace Bushnell’s Sex and the City and the subsequent HBO series not because we envy their strappy sandals that cost more per pair than all our shoes combined. And we definitely don’t covet how they fall in and out of relationships with unavailable…
Though Webster’s, American Heritage and even Oxford’s Dictionary have failed to notice, possums aren’t just American marsupials with prehensile tails and opposable thumbs. Dame Edna–besides making Elton John and Dynasty-era Joan Collins look underdressed and underprimped–has given that frequent roadkill a second life as her beloved nickname for her even…
Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey it isn’t. It’s not Cirque du Soleil, either. There isn’t one ring, let alone three. The Tattooed Man’s inkings are drawings sewn on his clothing, and he has a bunny head. The Siamese Twins are joined at the hip–by a long, wooden table–and dressed…
The notice for the Good/Bad Art Collective’s eighth birthday party was normal. Normal, at least, for the Good/Bad. It was just another wacky, but smart event put on by the prankster artists (or is it artistic pranksters?) at their home at 120 Exposition Street in Denton. It described Forget Anything…
We still can’t decide which type of educational filmstrip did the most damage to our delicate young psyches–the ones in driver’s education that made us fear accelerating over 20 mph and crossing train tracks, the sex films where cartoon kids reacted stoically to the news they’d soon be experiencing nocturnal…
It never works: Trying to pick a winner before the race is over, calling the election before every pencil mark and mouse click is accounted for, tabulated. (Insert your own Dan Rather/Peter Jennings/Tom Brokaw joke here, because we don’t feel like it.) There are always upsets, last-minute votes, surprises. For…
When writing about The Second City, the famed Chicago-based improv comedy and satire empire, it’s easy just to talk about the company’s famous alumni. But no matter how many recognizable names are listed (and there are enough to fill this space and more), rehashing previous shows by The Second City,…
Shannonwright often is compared to Tori Amos, the other red-haired, piano-playing singer-songwriter, but, she points out, only by male rock critics. Perhaps that’s why I don’t understand the comparison. It’s akin to equating Sid Vicious and Eric Clapton on the basis that they were brunet Brits famous in the ’70s…
Walt Disney Pictures is taking a famous singing nanny’s advice that a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. It’s sweetening Mary Poppins, a 37-year-old movie musical about the virtues of cleanliness and proper behavior, with some interactive additions and giving it a revival theater run. In the process,…
Ed Hamell doesn’t know about downtime. For years he’s kept a breakneck schedule of weeks on the road–just him, his car, and his guitar–driving from his home in New York to Chicago, and down to Austin, and east to Memphis playing shows at night and traveling days. Last March, after…
Without question, 2000 was a good year for local music, as familiar faces and genuine surprises delivered the rock and didn’t take it back. From The Rocket Summer’s teenage love rock to Centro-matic’s literate onslaught to Captain Audio’s well-intentioned pretensions to [DARYL]’s new new wave, there was more than enough…
The Rock*A*Teens’ latest album, Sweet Bird of Youth, opens with “Car and Driver,” a deceptively sweet tale that, soon enough, turns into a warning pilfered from the Roxichord-loving loins of Sam Coomes. The organ jaunts along, covering melody and bass, with drums beating a soft path through a lane of…
Every time I move, I make the same promise to myself: This time I’ll clean out all drawers and cabinets, tossing out Tupperware bowls without lids, dried-up ink pens, and all those stamps and postcards I’ve collected to produce a collage to make James Michael Starr proud. If I had…
My first guitar had strings that looked like colored fishing line and a white plastic body emblazoned with a photograph of Luke, Bo, and Daisy Duke, and the General Lee. I wanted a real guitar. That The Dukes of Hazzard guitar was just another in a line of toy instruments…
From We Are the World to the Tibet Freedom Concerts, musicians have been selling their pet charities along with records, concert T-shirts, and logo baseball caps. There are festivals and records dedicated to everything from ending world hunger to aiding the American farmer. Though we’re detached, even apathetic, toward causes…
All’s faireFor years we’ve harbored an idea for the perfect costume for a Medieval fair (or faire, as many aficionados prefer to call it): The Black Death. Dress in a black faceless cape, carry a wooden staff, and pass out black “X” badges to three-quarters of the people in attendance…
It’s said that people spend the first half of their lives looking toward the future — imagining who they’ll be, what they’ll do, what they’ll be, who they’ll do — and the second half looking back at the past. Whether they see life’s great sorrows and failures or its triumphs…
