On a Monday night last September, a gaggle of verbose, bright-eyed young people dressed in miniskirts, jeans and tennis shoes filled with the backyard of the Oak Cliff literary watering hole The Wild Detectives. With little warning and at a great volume they began to tell jokes and sing poetry to…
Amanda Wingfield, 1930s tiger mother. The matriarch in Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, now playing at Theatre Three, fits the profile: overbearing, controlling and obsessed with pushing her adult children toward her idea of success. She wants son Tom to work his way up in the St. Louis warehouse where…
There’s a long held idea, fabricated by an optimistic adult that the stories we tell teenagers should be optimistic, aspirational. Maybe that’s why it comes to picking books for curriculums we ban the ones that even sniff of hardship, violence or reality. But if you give a group of teenagers…
It isn’t often that you hear the words “Dallas-based author” and “ultimate orgasm” in the same sentence, but for Jenny Block, that’s just life. Her first book, Open, a book about “sex within the context of open marriage,” thrust Block into the world of “sexperts.” From there, she became a…
If you have managed to brave the crowds and cleared away shelves at Carrollton’s new cheap-ass heaven, Daiso Japan, you should be commended for your efforts. Since those lines that wrapped around the building on the scorcher that was opening day, Daiso has stayed busy. Even a few days later,…
1. Really, it’s all in one line of dialogue. Late in Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four, that ever-lovin’ man-mountain Benjamin J. Grimm sets himself at last to the good work of bad-guy punching. As he rushes off to pound Doctor Doom, he mutters, “This is what I do.” He’s resigned to…
I don’t know why there are so many juried shows opening on the same weekend, and I’m not sure that I like the looks of them any more than any other summer group show. But I suppose if we can build a justice system on twelve impartial men, why not…
One of the biggest and most fist-shaking misconceptions about anime is that it’s made just for children. Often when asking folks what they think of when they hear the word “anime,” these are always mentioned: Pokémon and Dragonball Z. It’s sadder than a Weeping Willow. Sure, a lot of —…
Kate Firth is one of the few artists in Dallas working in steel, not to mention one of the only women. And her art is getting bigger and better all the time. Last week, she completed her biggest project to date, a public sculpture called “I Feel You Feel Me,”…
When boredom strikes this weekend, pull these events up on your iPhone faster than a gun from a holster in a classic spaghetti western, speaking of which, you can see one of those at the Texas Theatre. Thursday, Aug. 6 Neo Camerata The phrase “summer tour” evokes images of a…
Last night we weren’t about to miss the screening of I Am Chris Farley at the Texas Theatre. Now we have lots of thoughts and feels. Here are a few of them. It was good, not great. (See 9 through 12.) Bob Saget and Chris Farley were friends?!? “Yep, they…
Please remove your ignorance blinders and wake up for a second because what you witnessed on Sunday night’s second season premiere of Bachelor in Paradise was not real. In a somewhat elaborate ceremony to announce Dallas native Marcus Grodd and his BIP sweetheart Lacy Faddoul in holy freakin’ matrimony was…
During this week’s meeting of the Voice Film Club, Alan Scherstuhl and Stephanie Zacharek of the Village Voice, along with Amy Nicholson of the LA Weekly, discuss the Marlon Brando documentary Listen to Me Marlon. Our trio of film critics then move to The End of the Tour, the film…
Until self-driving cars come along and you can freely brush your teeth, drink orange juice, and choreograph a dance while in the driver’s seat of a car, Uber is a necessary evil. Because, safety. Plus the fact that DWIs and DUIs are a real bummer. Also, being driven around Dallas…
Some of the best love songs are those whose lyrics perch precariously between “I adore you, let’s be happy forever” and “I’m miserable without you, where have you gone?” Together, the melody and words of Kurt Weill and Ogden Nash’s 1943 ballad “Speak Low” take the shape of a vaporous…
“This conversation is the best one I ever had,” David Lipsky (Jesse Eisenberg) tells us as The End of the Tour wraps up, and the movie, a pleasantly talky chamber piece, gives us welcome bursts of it. That long chat, with a David Foster Wallace (Jason Segel) abashed by the…
Jonathan Demme’s rock ‘n’ roll dramedy Ricki and the Flash exists in a wormhole where the last five decades of pop culture are a blur. There’s 66-year-old Meryl Streep, playing a broke singer who ditched her family to dominate the stage with the whiskey growl of Janis Joplin, the jangly…
The Clinton-Lewinsky scandal was a boon to comedy, but the comedians who feasted then look gouty today: A small group of white, male millionaires — one of whom would later confess to having multiple office affairs, perhaps to distract from sexual-harassment allegations — collectively decided to call Lewinsky, then a 22-year-old…
Anecdote #1: Chris Farley made a habit of pouncing on Mike Myers — at the same exact time each week — during the early- to mid-1990s era in which the two starred on Saturday Night Live. The elfin Myers deliberately took showers at a fixed, quiet time, but each week,…
Liz Cook is a tattoo artist. But not in the traditional sense. She doesn’t tattoo tribal designs or Old English lettering. A dagger driven through the heart or “Born to Ride” emblazoned on a banner is not the kind of ink she’s slinging at Rebel Muse, a small tattoo studio…
At some point Friday, a Dallas Morning News headline started popping up on my Facebook feed. It contained a magical four-word phrase: “Daiso Japan dollar store.” After further investigation (i.e., reading the article), I discovered (i.e., someone else discovered and I just got super excited when I found out) Daiso…
In the local retail landscape, there’s a lot of same-old, same-old. Even some of the boutique spots tend to stock similar merchandise, which can leave you at a loss when you’re looking for something truly unique. You might have to look off the beaten path just a little bit, but…
