2/6 Theodor Seuss Geisel was born 100 years ago in Springfield, Massachusetts, but we know him better today as the magnificent Dr. Seuss. Lovable, fun, clever and quick in a pinch, he should be sainted for giving us the Grinch. His books, including The Cat in the Hat, put a…
2/6 Matters of the heart will forever baffle the mind. Besides being a multitasker of the highest extreme, with all the pumping and beating and loving and hating, the human heart provides endless fodder for the arts, and we suspect it’s that enigmatic quality that makes it so popular with…
2/10 It took awhile for me to get it, this whole slam poetry thing, which is odd, since I profess to like poetry. But poetry competitions, with teams and judges and points and awards? Poetry as stage performance and quasi-sporting event? That’s not poetry; poetry comes in books, written mostly…
Surf’s up. Palm trees sway invitingly in the breeze. The sparkling beaches are amply decorated with bikini babes and hard-body surfer dudes. Everybody has a nice cold drink with a wedge of fresh lime in it. Seen that way, The Big Bounce is as alluring a midwinter pitch for the…
Behold a tale of true love (between a boy and a bicycle), of tireless courage (from a bitty grandmother with a club foot) and of a very shocking new definition of sexy (three wizened matriarchs who ravenously slurp down frogs). This is The Triplets of Belleville, an animated extravaganza of…
Two years ago, Harvey Weinstein, who runs Miramax Films with an iron fist that no doubt smells of cigarettes and meat, bought a Hong Kong-made movie called Hero for $20 million. That is an extraordinary amount of money for a foreign-language film made by a director, Zhang Yimou, relatively unknown…
Based on the 1996 movie, The Spitfire Grill serves up theatrical comfort food set to a pleasant, bluegrassy score by James Valcq and Fred Alley. The six-voice, seven-character musical, now running at Addison’s WaterTower Theatre, is as warm and wholesome as a plate of home-cooked meat loaf and gravy. Predictable,…
Slaves in Texas didn’t learn of the Civil War’s end and the announcement of their freedom until nearly two-and-a-half years after Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation became official. It took until June 19, 1865, for Major General Gordon Granger’s Union soldiers to land in Galveston and begin spreading the word. And…
Thursday, 29 In college, there was always an event stapled or taped to a lamppost or bulletin board to rescue the disenchanted, lonely or just plain bored. A poetry slam, live music night, an indie film screening. The appeal was fleeting, and attendance was often bleak (unless they were showing…
1/31 Adventure? Excitement? Men in leather? We at the Dallas Observer crave not these. No, we hunger for quilts. Mounds of them. Some might even say an inordinate amount of quilts. But we wouldn’t say that. We love the fluffy buggers. And there’s only one event in this great city…
1/30 If the grass is always greener on the other side, then The Dirt Doctor (a.k.a Howard Garrett) must always be on the other side. Listen to his talk show The Natural Way Sunday mornings on WBAP and marvel at the man’s ability to talk about dirt for four hours…
2/3 Among the new clothing, accessories, toys, social habits and sleeping schedules that come with the arrival of your own little bundle of joy, it’s only natural that some aspects of basic child care take a backseat to more immediate concerns. For instance, why not just pop the top on…
1/30 Let’s get something out in the open. Yes, Ansel Adams made technical discoveries in regard to lighting and in photographing the moon. No, I’m not a big fan of his work. So, yeah, maybe I’m making enemies, but if they’re buying framed Adams prints from Bed, Bath and Beyond,…
1/30 Give us a break. Love doesn’t mean never having to say you’re sorry. It means never hearing a “thank you” when you pick up dirty socks from the bathroom floor. It’s not taking your final breath in his loving arms. It’s prying the box of Cheez-Its away from him…
If you don’t know the name J.K. Rowling, we want to know which spider hole you’ve been living in. It won’t have been in Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Brazil, Denmark, the Faroe Islands, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Korea, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Russia, Slovakia, Spain,…
There is a recent generation of American men who came of age too late for free love and wanton property-grabbing, and too early for post-grunge emotional wankery and info-age immediacy. Stuck on their iceberg, isolated by oceans from anything real like the original punk or goth movements, or Australia’s cinematic…
Win a Date with Tad Hamilton! opens with a movie within the movie. It’s the 1940s, and a hunky, square-jawed soldier (played by Tad Hamilton, who’s played by Josh Duhamel) stops his car along the side of a damp road; a woman, dressed in virginal nursing whites, gets out of…
The setting: an institutional high school in the affluent suburbs. The protagonists: two boys–intelligent, charming and smoldering–with typical suburban lives, including intact families and plenty of spending money. The plot: carnage. Assembling pipe bombs from ingredients purchased at Home Depot and commandeering shotguns slipped from the family cabinet, the boys…
Playing a character named The Maniac, actor Robert Dorfman calmly announces to the audience at Dallas Theater Center that he will serve as the “tour guide” through the zigs and zags of Dario Fo’s political satire Accidental Death of an Anarchist. That’s an understatement. Moments after the lights go up…
We know of a few sex workers. In fact, at least two pages of them help keep a roof over our heads. Some are shockingly witty and artistic. So the situation treads on the old saying about not judging a hook, er, book by its cover. Annie Oakley, founder of…
Thursday 22 We believe that any year that honors the monkey has got to be a good year. Then again, we also believe our horoscopes and trust our TV weatherman. So don’t take our word for it. According to tradition, since today begins the year of the monkey (and more…
The book was gray and dingy, and on its cover a leering miscreant glared at us from behind prison bars. The simple title, Crime, was depicted in red in that ever-recognizable typewriter-style font. The contents of the book–subtitled “A Pictorial History of Crime 1840 to the Present” and peeked at…
