Take a deep breath and release it. In your core, in your powerhouse, just below your heart, above your diaphragm and to the left of the Texas pride is where, if you’ve lived life to the fullest, you can find your Latin energy. OK, seriously though, living here in Dallas,…
When I think of folk art, two distinctly different things come to mind: A) the dream-catchers, John Wayne portraits and assorted kitsch sold at Cracker Barrels nationwide and B) the strange but wonderful paintings of the David Wark character in the movie Junebug (prepared for the film by Brooklyn artist…
Despite being critically called out for appealing to baser tastes and merely bludgeoning their audiences with volume, orchestration has always been a part of Led Zeppelin’s music. The layered guitar parts of Jimmy Page and the lush colorizations from bassist and keyboardist John Paul Jones, along with an incredibly diverse…
As an awkward kid with thick glasses, I always instinctively sided with underdogs, which explained my affinity for milkweed. Its ugly, thick stalks grow in ditches and along fencerows with the other weeds. But this secret agent doesn’t run on water like ordinary plants; it bleeds thick, white liquid like…
If you’ve ever been to Benihana and marveled at those giant, ugly goldfish swimming around in the pond out front, then you have a lot to learn from the Dallas Koi Kichi Group as it presents its Fourth Annual Koi Show as part of Colleyville’s 50th Anniversary Celebration. The show…
It’s always tough for us to make sense of athletic fund-raisers for debilitating diseases; in the case of Saturday’s Positive Spin for ALS Bike Tour, the difference between a two-day bicycle ride through the metroplex and the cause it raises money for, Lou Gehrig’s Disease, is pretty dramatic. But the…
As another creative and cultural outlet leaves Denton for greener pastures, it’s hard to herald the coming of the “new Fry Street,” poised to effectively gentrify any lingering ounce of counterculture the town once provided. Art Prostitute is only the most recent in a long line of artists and musicians…
As a writer, I have this ego thing going where I can’t wait to see my finished product each week. Even with my little blurbs here and the profound effect I’m sure they have on readers (ahem), I rush to see my legacy in print. So, when I read about…
The art of bodybuilding has been around since the late 1890s, though its athletic roots date back to 11th-century India. By 1904, slathering one’s monstrous physique in baby oil and flexing for the delight of large audiences had developed into a more refined formal sport with the American premiere of…
There’s something to be said about men in skirts—especially if they can toss 100- to 120-pound cabers (those giant, heavy wooden poles) around with ease. Watch what you say, though, because these guys are tougher than you in every way that counts. They’re stronger than you physically (how high can…
Duuuuude. With his roles in American classic films like Next Friday, Friday After Next, How High and All About the Benjamins, comedian Mike Epps has worked to heighten public awareness on an issue still taboo in some households: drugs. On his entertainment agent’s Web site, Epps is touted for his…
It seems that Al Gore may have been underestimated. After defeat in 2000, Gore refocused his energy on saving the planet from what looks to be imminent catastrophe due to global warming. His crusade is captured on film in An Inconvenient Truth, a movie that follows Gore as he brings…
It’s casual dining night. Mom wants Olive Garden and Dad wants Chili’s. Mom decides Dad thinks she’s too fat to eat pasta and that’s why he’s been seeing so much of that neighbor woman. Dad says maybe Mom could stand to lose a few pounds. Mom cries and then the…
A time-traveling dominatrix is pursued through three time periods by a homicidal maniac as she hustles to save the lives of two of his victims, who happen to be the future late wives of the client the hooker was called to service in a hotel room in the year 2014…
The best way to show America how the working class lives, Esther Cohen figured, was to give janitors, cabbies and other low-wage workers cameras to document their lives. The result is a new book called Unseen America, which Cohen will sign 7 p.m. Thursday at Borders West Village, 3600 McKinney…
When kids of all ages discuss comic books and superheroes, there is inevitably one question that comes up time and again: If that one guy and that other guy had a fight, who would win? Comics companies occasionally indulge these debates with special issues pitting Thing against Hulk or Wolverine…
Trotted out like ol’ Trigger whenever there’s a movie with saddles and six-shooters, the term “revisionist Western” would surely be a cliché if there were enough Westerns to warrant its use more than every few years. Fact is, any movie in a genre as depressingly out-to-pasture as the Western is…
There are lots of ways to grow up. The method offered by Somersault is to do something awful and then flee from it. This dreamy, sexy and rather chilly coming-of-age story from Australia captures a teenager’s attempt to escape her past, to build something new atop the rubble of what…
The impassioned new documentary Sir! No Sir! never mentions the words “Iraq” or “Afghanistan.” It doesn’t have to. Unseen and unremarked-upon, those bloody venues nonetheless inhabit the entire 84 minutes of David Zeiger’s film like some deadly, creeping virus for which there’s no cure. Zeiger’s actual subject, which he says…
The Steel Magnolias are in bloom again. Robert Harling’s all-woman 1987 play, full of sap, sass and silliness, is a favorite of regional theaters large and small. Despite its hokey writing and its jolting second-act turn from light comedy to weepy tragedy, it’s a popular, versatile piece. Like Southern women’s…
Boston Legal: Season One (Fox) David E. Kelley’s latest legal drama is nothing more than a TV show about TV shows; hence the casting of Captain Kirk and Murphy Brown, with guest shots by Diane Chambers, Golden Girl Rose Nylund, and Alex Keaton. It’s like a Nick at Night mash-up,…
Yet another Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) has come and gone, and this one was the biggest yet. Exhibitors know all too well that a strong showing at E3 — an event heavily covered by both industry and mainstream press — can turn a great product into a blockbuster and a…
