There are basically two types of Pez dispenser collectors. There are the minor collectors who buy up all the characters they can find at the grocery store. Then there are the big-time collectors willing to pay thousands of dollars for those little plastic stems with goofy flip-up heads. What separates…

The Freemasons are coming. Twenty thousand will be in town for the annual Shrine of North America Imperial Council Session, where they’ll perform their mysterious degrees and rites, including the Freemasonry initiation ritual that requires candidates to swear to maintain the order’s moral code and secrets. Once, when a former…

Americans are going to celebrate the Fourth of July the only way we know how — with a big, gaudy, over-the-top birthday party with titles using lots of alliteration and words such as sensational and extravaganza. See, stuff like that proves we really love our country. This year, with the…

I used to have this roommate who was addicted to video games. He’d play them all day, from the time he woke up until he went to bed; sometimes, he’d take a break and, like, go to work. But for the most part, he spent hour after hour ass-down in…

As he works his way through a crowded Denton bar on a Thursday night, Paul Slavens looks like a regular guy in his white T-shirt and jeans and brown hiking boots. But when the shaved-headed Slavens takes a seat at the keyboard and opens his mouth to sing, the voice…

Craig Karges probably isn’t invited to dinner parties very often. He also probably gets kicked out of a lot of restaurants. See, he has this little problem of bending spoons, tilting tables, and making things levitate with his mind. Karges calls himself an “extraordinist,” because the word psychic is used…

It all happened because Bill Maher lost a bar bet. Though probably not his first (likely there was one involving a beer, a dollar bill, and a monkey), this one dictated that once a week, an anonymous American gets to sit beside movie stars, politicians, journalists, musicians, and the occasional…

thursday june 10 We’ve always thought Star Search was pretty creepy, with its 6-year-old girls wearing more blue eye shadow than Tammy Faye Bakker and singing “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.” Then there was the always thrilling and vital spokesmodel competition, and we did always like the train-wreck aspect of…

Richard Belzer says he was too interested in girls in 1963 to really think much of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination at the time. Now, of course, he believes that the murder in Dealey Plaza was a conspiracy, and that J.F.K. himself was part of the plan to hide proof…

thursday june 3 Kraft Macaroni & Cheese is hosting a contest called I Want the Blues! The 12 winners will get their pictures on boxes of Kraft Macaroni, in addition to a $10,000 college scholarship and a family vacation in Orlando, Florida. Personally, we wish they’d hold a contest to…

It would be easy to play innocent and imagine that Tim Cridland’s day begins very much like anyone else’s. Have breakfast, take a shower, brush teeth, comb hair. But Cridland is Zamora the Torture King, and his daily routine includes jamming sharpened bicycle spokes through his biceps and smashing concrete…

thursday may 27 People tend to romanticize writers. They’re introspective geniuses living in decadence while waiting for that divine inspiration. Anyone who writes for a living will say that there’s nothing romantic about staring down a deadline, and that it’s really desperation, not divine inspiration. But, hey, if anyone still…

Having once served as a story-reader, I thought I knew what to expect when I arrived at Borders Books and Music in Preston Royal last Wednesday morning. My personal philosophy was: Read the story, do some silly voices, show the kids some pictures, and get out…fast. I expected the same…