The leaders of the slam poetry movement are often heard proudly announcing that they have rescued poetry from the stuffy halls of academia and returned it to the masses. While that may work as a sound bite, it’s a self-serving claim designed to inflate their importance. Claiming that slam poetry…
thursday may 28 Anyone who saw last December’s twisted Christmas special Santa vs. The Snowman is aware of the brilliance that is John Davis and Keith Alcorn, known collectively as DNA Productions. The pair started their computer animation shop 15 years ago, but only recently have they come to the…
They don’t need to grow up Mass Nerder ALL Epitaph Records When Milo Aukerman left the Descendents in 1987 to pursue a career as a microbiologist, it wasn’t like the band couldn’t carry on. Aukerman was the Yber-nerd, the spastic, horn-rimmed geek that embodied the band’s lyrics of suburban alienation…
thursday may 21 When artist Bill Haveron is at his best, his work is reminiscent of the doodlings of a creative adolescent whose mind has wandered from high school algebra class. The strange people and fantastical creatures that make up his crowded pencil drawings would look right at home on…
Jerry Seinfeld killed stand-up comedy. He didn’t mean to, but the damage was done just the same. After Seinfeld, comedians don’t want to be just comedians anymore; they want a 13-episode deal and the time slot after Friends. A guest shot on The Tonight Show or Letterman used to be…
thursday may 14 As if we needed further proof that American culture revolves around television, the week after a historic peace accord was reached in Northern Ireland, Newsweek ran a cover story on the final episode of Seinfeld. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. We know all about lead…
On the surface, the lineup for EdgeFest ’98–the annual music festival put together by 94.5 FM The Edge–looks like one of those package tours from the ’50s where the songs got top billing because nobody knew the names of the bands that played them. Other than Everclear and the Mighty…
When Dylan Silvers reaches out to shake your hand, the first thing you notice is the row of tattoos on his right arm. One stands out from the others, a red and black rendering of the Transformers logo that is located a couple of inches above his wrist. It’s something…
thursday may 7 It’s a shame that writer Larry L. King is best known for scripting the risque (at the time) musical comedy The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. A surprise hit in both its Broadway and big-screen adaptations, Whorehouse was frustratingly tame, a cliched tease that wasn’t as sharp…
It seems strange that the man who is practically synonymous with classical music in the metroplex–pianist Van Cliburn–hasn’t performed a solo recital in the area in more than 20 years. But Cliburn has always been seen as something of an eccentric, at least by classical-music standards. His behavior is not…
Josh Alan Nominated for: Blues, Folk/Acoustic Who knew what to make of Alan’s 1997 Blacks ‘n’ Jews? The title track was a work of absolute genius and chutzpah, the history of black-Jewish relations rolled up into one glib, sharp statement: “Marchin’ two-by-two down in Mississippi/One was a Panther when the…
thursday april 30 Wynton Marsalis is a jazzman’s jazzman, a purist with a discography longer than a Charlie Parker solo and the chops to back it up. But he has also found time to indulge his other love–classical music–squelching the notion that jazz players “just make it up as they…
thursday april 23 Let’s face facts: If wine were really “better than masturbating” (as the tag line for the Art Bar’s Generation X Wine Tasting argues), there would be more Internet sites devoted to full-bodied Merlots instead of Pamela Lee’s full-bodied implants, and peep shows would be replaced by $1-per-glass…
This year’s USA Film Festival may have, uh, sucked, but that doesn’t mean that great films aren’t coming to Dallas. Witness the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture’s special screening of The Night of the Hunter, the 1955 film that did for preachers what Stephen King’s It did for clowns…
Rock it from the crypt The Mullens The Mullens Get Hip Recordings To say that the Mullens are stuck in the past would be as big an understatement as suggesting that maybe someone should keep an eye on Michael Jackson’s kids. Apparently, the band’s collective memory stops around the time…
thursday april 16 In our rush to get out this year’s weak USA Film Festival schedule, we didn’t have time to include last-minute info about major changes that involved two of the festival’s best events. The hilarious, ruthless TV-sitcom writer satire Hacks has been bumped up to Thursday, April 16,…
Since 1993, Denton’s Good/Bad Art Collective has made the unexpected part of its routine. From its one-night-only installation policy to its constant stretching of the definition of art, Good/Bad has created art that not only involves viewers, it depends on them. The collective’s methods extend to the concerts that help…
Slobberbone’s were-you-there? set during last month’s South by Southwest music conference in Austin wasn’t a life-changing show–it was a life-affirming one. During an early evening party thrown by its record label, Austin-based indie Doolittle Records, four boys from Denton made a courtyard full of industry folk forget that they had…
Learn to play Imaginary Enemy Caulk One Ton Records The only thing worse than an average band is an average band that thinks it’s good and/or is popular. The average bands that can’t fill a club on a Saturday aren’t much of a concern; they’ll never rise above the opening…
Thursday April 9 Funny how fast things can change in Hollywood. In the early ’90s, Keenen Ivory Wayans was high on the success of his groundbreaking sketch comedy show In Living Color, and the prevailing wisdom around town was that his brothers and sister would still be waiting tables and…
Betting on horse racing is bad, or so we’ve been led to believe for most of our lives. Movies show us it’s bad through their alternating portrayals of track denizens as either pathetic losers or greasy criminals (for a look at both, check out Richard Dreyfuss’ surprisingly entertaining 1989 film…
“South by Southwest is a little like Fantasy Island. It’s a place where dreams come true.” The lead singer-guitarist utters those words like a child, his voice so high it could touch the stars. He performs for a packed house, a few hundred early-morning revelers who’ve seen Saturday turn into…
