1/14 Lick an envelope. Savor the putrid flavors, the lack of texture, the sharp tongue pain followed by the clean metallic taste of blood. Now consider this: The first “envelope” was a clay wrapper used by the Babylonians in 2000 B.C. to protect important documents. Clay was folded over the…
1/15 When you think of celebrity guests at fitness conventions you expect to see Olympic medalists or German-accented bodybuilders or (if you’re really lucky) Richard Simmons. But the Fifth Annual NBC5 HealthFit Expo has booked a pair of soap opera actors. (Both are from NBC daytime dramas; the convention must…
1/13 On the list of endangered species, the Richardson Symphony Orchestra sits next to the mighty rice rat. The orchestra, now in its 44th season, announced in November that it is in danger of closing because of a dire lack of funds primarily the result of a dearth of private…
1/18 My sixth-grade English teacher was obsessed with Cats. Too young to dispute, we studied that Andrew Lloyd Webber musical with the kind of scrutiny we generally reserved for the bathroom mirror. We listened to Cats, memorized Cats, even performed our own Cats–which, thankfully, transpired before the ubiquity of the…
Clint Eastwood began digging into the third act of his career–the one that reveals the mature, deep-thinking artist…with a little jazz piano on the side–a dozen years ago, with the discomfiting anti-western Unforgiven. Since then, he’s hardly come up for air or given himself a break. Last year’s Mystic River…
Over a three-month period in 1994, machete-wielding Hutu tribesmen in Rwanda hacked to death 800,000 Tutsi men, women and children. News reports, including film footage of the unfolding carnage, were broadcast around the globe. In the face of such unremitting acts of inhumanity, the world community did nothing. It wasn’t…
The Woodsman Anchored by a carefully studied, thoroughly compelling performance by Kevin Bacon, this portrait of a recently paroled pedophile still at war with his old demons is so thoughtful and provocative that we cannot help but become engrossed. Directed and co-written (from a play by Steven Fechter) by recent…
The audience is 50 percent of the performance,” said the great old actress Shirley Booth. At least that much, I’d say. Maybe more. A good audience can inspire and ignite actors into giving the best performances of their lives. And a bad crowd can do just the opposite. Every actor…
You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown The Peanuts gang seems poised for a pop culture comeback, and this lighthearted production of the old musical (reworked for a Broadway revival in 1999) is reason enough to get re-acquainted with Charlie Brown, Linus, Lucy, Sally, Schroeder and everybody’s fave black-nosed beagle, Snoopy…
Texas Vision: The Barrett Collection, the Art of Texas and Switzerland Why is it that regional art, from Texas to inner Pennsylvania, upstate New York to the hills of Tennessee, looks the same–all of it showing naturalistic panoramas of tumbling hills, arabesque trees and tumbledown, homey architecture? Perhaps this has…
Deb Reinhart, a veterinarian and avid jogger who lives in Seattle, was recently in town to visit her mother. Heading back from a run on her mom’s tree-lined residential street, Reinhart spots an opossum in the gutter, mildly mutilated from an unsuccessful encounter with a car. “If she’s a female,…
Thursday, January 6 If ever you’ve found beef stew or cream of potato soup so soothing that you wanted to curl up in it and nap, welcome to our world. It was winter for all of like 15 minutes, and during those minutes we hunkered down and got cozy with…
Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women is a book that everyone is supposed to love–women and men, little and big, bookworms and those who get their classic literature on the screen (there have been more than a dozen versions filmed or animated). Even Joey, the Friends character who is not known…
1/22 Oh, to be a pre-schooler or pre-teen growing up in Dallas, the heretofore undesignated “Hub of Under 18 Culture.” To have from one to four pairs of parental hands guiding you to enrichment activities. To have one to four parental vehicles at your beck and call; one to four…
1/8 Nothing in yoga seems quite as embarrassing as being stuck in the plow position while your curious feline investigates the posterior of her strangely inverted owner. On the other hand, there’s always the possibility of flatulence during your first ever Bikram class. Not that we speak from personal experience…
1/11 If your New Year’s resolutions involve eating more, drinking more or finding a new excuse to get out of the house, then check out the Single Gourmet. Each month the club hosts five or more events for single professionals in their 30s through their 60s including dinners, cocktail parties,…
1/8 My mother can do an amazing Edith Ann impression. She’s got the 10-year-old’s lisp and the flawed, nasal pronunciation, and I thought it was so cool because the creator of that character was safely the funniest lady I’d ever seen. When I was little, I wanted to be someone…
The first week of the new year! Do something to jump-start those ambitious plans for self-improvement in 2006 before reality sets in. The Rotary Resolution Run in Addison is a two-fer. For your vows on physical improvement, run the 5K or 10K race for prizes. (More modest goals? Try the…
On Thanksgiving night 1976, the five men known as the Band—Robbie Robertson, Levon Helm, Rick Danko, Garth Hudson and Richard Manuel—stepped off the stage at San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom, never to share one again. Originally, the show was only meant to put an end to the group’s touring days, with…
As Jennifer Aniston revisits The Graduate in the recently released film Rumor Has It, one might feel compelled to revisit its groundbreaking soundtrack as well. So why not join Simon and Garfunkel’s taller and more soft-spoken half at the Meyerson this weekend as he performs with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra…
We were already blown away that a Manchester native would make his living doing impressions of an American playing a zany Englishman. Then we did some reading up on comedian/Austin Powers impersonator Steve Hirst and found that he is often an opening performer for Kid Reid…that’s right, Kid Reid. As…
It’s our job to get excited about famous events with local ties. Sports teams winning championships, TV shows based on our city, JFK’s death–good or bad, we love it. That’s why we have a special fondness for former Poison lead singer Bret Michaels. Did you know he wrote “Every Rose…
