In some ways, Wanda Means is the typical Highland Park mom. She has the youthful yet conservative clothes, four kids in the school system, a successful home-building business with her ex-husband, and a blog, Jesus, Divorce and Over 40, that sounds like something a more pious Elizabeth Gilbert might write…
The notion that wrestling is staged isn’t a new one. Even hardcore WWE fans who lived in denial for years that their heroes were just part of a pre-determined storyline designed to yank on their emotions like a Franciscan monk ringing a church bill on Christmas have accepted that fact. …
When a Comedy Central rep reached out to comedian Josh Johnson last October about appearing on the new season of “Adam Devine’s House Party” on Twitter, he treated it the way most people might expect a comedian would. “I thought it was a joke,” Johnson says. “I thought it was…
All types of people showed up for the three-day Texas Pinball Festival this month. The young and old, male and female, pierced and khaki-ed all came to Frisco to play more than 350 tables. The games spanned the history of pinball, starting with the first flipper games of the ’50s. Kids…
Anyone who’s been top South by Southwest knows that the fun and the stress come in equal measure. This is especially true for any artist trying to network, schmooze and further their careers. To unwind, Dallas’ filmmakers host a basketball game they call #SXhoops. More than a dozen artists, distributors…
Some free advice: If you ever find yourself defensively reminding people that you’re not in a cult, you’re probably in a cult. This comes up early and often in The Path, Hulu’s new series premiering on March 30th, not that any adherents of the fictional Meyerist Movement seem fazed by…
Willful ignorance as a character trait typically evokes annoyance in those who witness it — at least in real life. In many French films, however, a character who’s willfully ignorant is portrayed in the twee manner, encouraging us to believe it is their blissful view of the world we should…
Have you ever considered the fact that, in 1951, Hank Williams actually wrote “Hey Good Lookin'”? That, for the first 175 years years of American history, those words and that melody weren’t already part of our shared heritage? Williams didn’t just pluck it out of the air, of course. Cole…
We Are All Homeless at The MAC Willie Baronet started collecting signs made by homeless individuals in 1993. Now with more than 1,000 signs, the project has developed into an exhibit called We Are Homeless. This attempt to confront an often ignored and uncomfortable issue has been exhibited nationally and…
The conductor’s podium at the Meyerson Symphony Center is hot right now. Just two months after Jaap van Zweden was named the next music director of the New York Philharmonic, the Solti Foundation U.S. announced that Karina Canellakis, the Dallas Symphony’s quickly rising assistant conductor, is the recipient of this…
Flanked by cops and men in cowboy hats, hometown idol Kerry Von Erich strides toward center stage at Texas Stadium as 30,000 friends, family and fans roar. Emotions generally run hot at high-profile wrestling matches, but this bout is something special. The fourth son in the Von Erich wrestling dynasty…
There might not be a more appropriately titled show on television right now than The Circus: Inside the Greatest Political Show on Earth, Showtime’s new weekly documentary series where two reporters and a political strategist follow the presidential candidates on the campaign trail. The show’s resident strategist, Mark McKinnon, the…
These days, what with the trendiness of vintage stores and everything looking like it got fished out of a mid-century dumpster, garage sales have sort of gone by the wayside. Sure, it’s super cool to fish around a musty thrift store until you find an old plaid shirt that only…
You know that if you let yourself, you’ll spend the whole week holed up on your couch picking through jellybeans and justifying the slaughter of hollow chocolate bunnies. But spare yourself: there are so many alternatives to that sugary rabbit hole you’re about to head down—all of which are infinitely…
The Dallas Symphony and music director Jaap Van Zweden indulge, this weekend, in the time-honored classical music programming tactic of matching a new, unfamiliar work with a standard box office cash cow—in this case, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. This strategy can, and often does, result in an odd evening in which…
Improvised comedy is experiencing another renaissance of sorts thanks to television and for once, I’m not talking about another reincarnation of “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” The TV Land sitcom “Teachers” about a group of barely functional educators who let their personal lives bleed into their work came from the…
When comedian Ithamar Enriquez walks on to a stage, his presence commands an audience’s attention. He doesn’t capture it by yelling obscenities into a microphone to punctuate his jokes or screaming like a banshee to exorcise some deep seeded emotional pain that brings some comics to a stage. Enriquez never…
Immediately upon sitting down with artist Tiffany McAnarney, an Oak Cliff-based painter, designer and muralist, it is impossible to ignore the precision, perhaps even compulsion, with which she describes her work. “We specifically crafted the pieces in this series to fit one exact space in the living room, the sun will hit it…
If you’re new to the performance art world, or you slept through the 1990’s, or you’re too young to have been there as it happened, then you probably didn’t flip out when Wordspace announced Karen Finley would be performing not as Karen Finley but as Jackie O on April 1…
Texas Ballet Theater has nailed the perfect fairy tale in its production of Cinderella, a dreamy and funny ballet that appeals to aspiring princesses and cynical mamas alike. The Ben Stevenson version, using Sergei Prokofiev’s wide-ranging score, is a beautifully danced and vivid rendition of the classic tale. For parents…
Ask weary WWE viewers to identify why the professional-wrestling titan’s creative direction has gone so stagnant and you’ll hear one answer time and again: lack of competition. It’s no coincidence that the company’s late-‘90s heyday ran concurrent with the rise of Ted Turner’s World Championship Wrestling, which at one point…
Like the Juggernaut or St. Patrick’s Day drunks, nothing can stop the hundreds of hours of filmed superhero junk that hits our faceholes each year. But rest easy, true believer! Once in a while, the onslaught can still offer surprise and pleasure. A shiver of both hit me minutes into…
