If you aren’t familiar with Bishop T.D. Jakes, it could only mean you’re white or, like much of the entertainment industry and American media, generally clueless about the lives of this country’s tens of millions of evangelical Christians. To black Americans, Jakes is an icon–a preaching, teaching, entrepreneurial dynamo. Known…
We need Atticus Finch. Dedicated, decent, a scholar and father, Finch is the main adult character in Harper Lee’s perfect 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird. He’s a good man, this lawyer Finch, thoughtful, fair, loving and just. Whether from our adolescent acquaintance with him from a high school reading…
To Kill a Mockingbird Dallas Children’s Theater opens its 21st season with Christopher Sergel’s adaptation of Harper Lee’s Pulitzer-winning 1960 novel. “Maycomb was a tired old town, even in 1932 when I first knew it,” begins the narrator. “Somehow, it was hotter then. Men’s stiff collars wilted by 9 in…
The Dark Matters and the Lingering Lightness, installation by Michael Velliquette Installed in the small “project room” at Conduit Gallery is Michael Velliquette’s full-body multimedia environment, replete with voodoo-cosmic music and a myriad of interior accoutrements–aluminum foil doodads, construction paper chains à la second grade, and paper cut-out silhouettes all…
As we researched this piece, we realized that we’ve been denying ourselves the divine pleasure of a snazzy new bra for some time now. Sure, it may be hidden beneath clothing (Just say “No” to the exposed bra strap. Seriously.), but a really swell bra can make a girl feel…
Our first set of wheels was a trailer house. The “good plates” were the coated rather than the single-ply paper plates. New school clothes meant a six-pack of Hanes, but at least we had two TVs–one with sound, one with picture. We weren’t members of the jet set, but we…
10/1 If you aren’t one of the poor souls so traumatized by the Goosebumps books that you’ve sworn off all things with “haunted,” “horror” or “theme park” in the description, then perhaps you’re one of those ballsy buggers who think it’s not really autumn until you’ve peed yourself in fear…
9/30 Not getting a ring right away wasn’t the sad part of my first proposal. It’s the fact that when I did, Mr. Right gave me the tiny bauble in his Jeep while parked at Wendy’s. If only the proposal could’ve been more memorable (I couldn’t even tell you now…
10/1 Dear God, and/or television programming executives, and/or novelists, and/or filmmakers: May there always be good cop shows and good cop novels from which to make good cop movies. May we be eternally blessed with reruns of Hill Street Blues, Law & Order, NYPD Blue and Oz. May we always…
10/3 Several years ago, when the curators at The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth began to think about accommodating Spanish speakers in the museum’s programs, they considered their options and realized…they didn’t have any. North Texas provided plenty of native Spanish speakers to invite to the museum, but there…
Thursday, September 30 When Ché Guevara was killed in Bolivia in 1967, people shouted in the streets, “We won’t let him be forgotten.” We don’t think they had in mind that Guevara’s image would now appear on T-shirts, purses, watches and posters, appropriated by people who care more about Urban…
Here’s a message for all you single, horny, hot-blooded, heterosexual males out there: It’s time to break out the champagne. Wait, scratch that, make it Jack Daniel’s–lonely single guys seldom have use for champagne. There’s big news to tell, fellas: In When Will I Be Loved, Neve Campbell has ditched…
In this year of political movies, in which agendas serve as plots, comes the unlikeliest candidate of them all, The Forgotten, in which the climactic moment hinges on the belief that a child’s life begins at conception and not in the delivery room. To explain any further would reveal too…
A little bit of Argentina has come to Texas–a taste of Buenos Aires is livening up the fair but jaunty mix of Dallas. Yet in the photographs of Argentinean artist Esteban Pastorino Diaz, now showing at Photographs Do Not Bend Gallery, visual piquancy is the result of a much more…
Esteban Pastorino Diaz The photographs of this young Argentinean artist succeed as form and product–both compositionally and conceptually. Currently showing are three different types of photographs by Diaz, the panoramica, aerial views and night shots of architecture. Originally schooled in engineering, Diaz is a photographer most interested in process. For…
Angus can’t remember anything for five minutes. Or three minutes. Or two. He has a steel plate in his head from a war injury. His short-term memory is shot. He can count the stars in the night sky in one glance and add columns of numbers in a trice, but…
The Drawer Boy Those Canadians can get themselves in some big messes, eh? In Michael Healey’s play, a couple of old bachelor farmers have their lives upset by the arrival of a young actor researching a theater role for a “collective” about farm life. Miles (Will Harper) wants to know…
Thursday, September 23 There is a part of us incredibly shamed by this confession, and a part of us that revels in it for a few hours each year. Not only do we know every word to CATS, but we LOVE it. It’s not that it’s a musical, since most…
9/25 In the summer of 1942, Texans Neil and Carl Fletcher stumbled upon one of the greatest inventions of our modern age: the corn dog. Oh, I know what you’re thinking–what about the personal computer, the Internet? What about the microwave, the remote control, Target’s Swell line? Fine inventions, all…
9/29 The competing comics carried NBC’s Last Comic Standing reality/talent show over the summer, which makes sense. Still, Jay Mohr, a fairly successful stand-up, proved a pathetic host–not funny, no sense of timing, too much fake hugging, weak writing, weak delivery, not funny. Everything about the show fairly sucked–ridiculous attempts…
The very best thing about A Dirty Shame, a giddy sex farce from John Waters, is the credits. What’s not to love about a list of characters that includes “Sylvia Stickles,” “Marge the Neuter,” “Fat Fuck Frank,” “Cow Patty” and “Tire Lick Boy”? The soundtrack, too, bears comic fruit, with…
When we Westerners think of the Mediterranean Sea, we picture a turquoise playground of the filthy rich and famous, bordering Spain, France, Italy and Greece. Yet, the Mediterranean is a big sea, and the countries that border it on the south and east are North African places (Libya and Egypt)…
