Kick In the Crouch

Fellow Aggies and art enthusiasts unite! Dallas artist and Texas A&M at Commerce alum Patrick Crouch will be showing his work at the Eisemann Center, 2351 Performance Drive in Richardson. Crouch focuses his painting, sculpture and more on the representation of the African-American culture. His pieces are created using vibrant…

Code Breakers

Who doesn’t like art with a code? The thrilling idea of staring at an old master and discovering the cryptic message, “So dark the con of man…” Well, no guarantees that Messages With a Code: Photography/Mixed Media Installations by Kathy Lovas will set you on any kind of DaVinci Code…

We’ll Make Great Pets

You can find so many amazing things at the local public library, and not just in the pages of their books. Sure, they’ve got reading material on everything from aardvarks to zebras, but the really special library moments involve a little something extra. Take, for example, the Petzapalooza event going…

Nuts For The Boot

The road to hell may be paved with good intentions, but author Sue Ellen Hanning covered the road to the real Italy while carrying a bulging backpack and no credit cards. Hanning was a 54-year-old teacher and mom when she and her daughter Jenny went on a three-month search for…

Tapping In The Street

Tap dancing is probably one of the most underrated art forms of all time. Even though Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire and Gregory Hines made it look easy and badass, nowadays everyone thinks ballroom dancing is the superior dancing style. Show me Tap Dancing With The Stars and then I’ll be…

Something New

Scholars maintain that great minds think alike and opposites attract. Well, which is it, dammit? In Circle Theatre’s new production, it’s both. Picture Hollywood in the 1940s, an exciting decade in the city’s illustrious history. Humphrey Bogart is burning up the silver screen and pinup starlet Betty Grable is introducing…

Griffin Remembers

Polar bears are driving cars on skis. Sharks are soaring in the air. An astronaut, a deer and a man with antlers are all loitering in what looks like a gas station called “hell.” Is it real, imaginary — or both? That’s what Dallas artist T.J. Griffin explores in his…

Tonight, We Ride

The booze is a flowin’, the guns are going off and the cowboys–or cowgirls, in this case–are ready to ride off into the sunset. Sounds like a good ol’ rootin’, tootin’ time, doesn’t it? Can you hear the “yeehaws” and the “ride ’em cowboys”? Welcome to Jane Martin’s Wild, Wild…

Rollin’ With The Homies

If you would be deliriously happy to eat sushi every day, yet you aren’t a bajillionaire, then Central Market in Plano has just the class for you. Learn to roll your own this Thursday in the hands-on Sushi 101 class. Any sushi enthusiast knows the secret is in getting the…

Team Coco

There are few love stories in modern cinema that bore me more than this whole Bella-Edward affair everyone is obsessed with right now. The concept of eternal love is a really grandiose one, something we all aspire to–but in this particular case, the characters are so very bland that it’s…

Like A Surgeon

It started way back in 1979 with an accordion and a dream. “Weird Al” was a lowly college disc jockey with a strange sense of humor and questionable fashion sense. During a break from his radio show, Al went across the hall, accordion in tow, to the natural echo chamber…

Restrepo: Capturing Men at Work at War.

In the summer of 2007, two Western journalists dug in with a platoon of American soldiers on a 15-month deployment in the Korengal Valley, a strategic outpost near Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan. The mountainous region was infested with Taliban fighters and possibly was also used by Al-Qaeda leaders as a…

The Kids Are All Right: In Praise of Lesbian Family Values.

Serious comedy, powered by an enthusiastic cast and full of good-natured innuendo, Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids Are All Right gives adolescent coming-of-age and the battle of the sexes a unique twist, in part by creating a romantic triangle between a longstanding, devoutly bourgeois lesbian couple Nic and Jules (Annette Bening…

The Father of My Children Has Daddy Issues Galore.

The Father of My Children, a drama about love, sorrow and the heartbreak of independent film financing, is sliced neatly in half by the sudden death of its protagonist, Grégoire Canvel. I’m not spoiling: Writer-director Mia Hansen-Løve has admitted that Grégoire is based on the French producer Humbert Balsan, who…

Despicable Me Is Any But Despicable.

As the lights were dimming before a preview screening of Despicable Me, the 6-year-old who lives in my house leaned over and said, “I hope this is funny–not like Toy Story 3.” Now don’t misunderstand: He adored that movie. It’s just that whenever the subject comes up, the first word…

The Music Hall’s Dreamgirls, With Its Big Voices and Big Spectacle, Is A Big Crowd Pleaser; Circle Theatre’s Something Intangible Is Smaller But Just As Loud.

Exploding with forced fabulosity, the national tour of Dreamgirls currently at the Music Hall at Fair Park lifts the 1981 musical into the realm of high-tech spectacle. Visually, it’s a stunner. Spanning the stage are revolving walls of LED lights on designer Robin Wagner’s enormous, industrial-grid set. These become giant…

“Flames! On The Side Of My Face!”

We can’t even begin to tell you how many days we wasted (well, maybe not wasted) when we were kids playing Clue at our grandma’s house during the summer. See, she didn’t have a pool or a lot of neighborhood kids, so it was either board games or the sprinkler…

The Key Phrase Is “Used To”

With temperatures soaring into the triple digits, taking a dip in the nearest body of cool water should be on the top of your summer to-do list. Who cares if your hair reeks of chlorine? Way back when bathing suits were rented (um, ew!) and at the dawn of the…

The Final Footie

With Sunday’s Final pitting the Netherlands against Spain, there will be a new country’s name joining the seven already engraved on the bottom of the FIFA World Cup Trophy. While this year’s edition of the quadrennial tournament is the 19th, there are only eight nations who have won soccer’s biggest…

Tale As Old As Time

In Hollywood’s “Golden Age” it seemed like every other movie that graced the silver screen was based on a hit Broadway musical. In recent years, however, that trend has reversed itself. There have even been bizarre “double remakes” like Hairspray and The Producers, where stage musical adaptations of earlier movies…

Catch It!

If you’re not doing anything else Friday Night, your Dallas Vigilantes could really use you cheering them on and intimidating the reviled Tampa Bay Storm at the American Airlines Center. If you haven’t been following the Vigilantes…it’s a little grim. With only a couple wins thus far, a season-ruining injury…

Do You Juan-A Laugh?

Al Madrigal may have dark complexion, a Spanish surname and a Mexican father. He may have even performed at a Latino comic showcase or two. But he is definitely not a typical Latino comic getting by on tired jokes about wacky relatives and the differences between Mexicans and gringos. Hell,…