Arts & Culture

I know that in 1989, your favorite album was the Cure’s Disintegration. You’ve liked them since sixth grade, right? You were the only person in your high school cool enough to eschew hair metal. You never owned a “Don;’t Have a Cow, Man” T-shirt. And that Mötley Crüe album? That…

Eleven Hundred Springs’ tour dates are full of Texas towns you’ve probably driven through but never stopped in (Gainesville, Stephenville, Helotes, Spring Branch, West Tawakoni, Alpine, Chilicothe, etc., etc), which just goes to show you why they’re one of Texas’ most beloved true country bands—they work hard at it. Like…

You can’t trust short people with your jewelry—at least not your special power ring that controls the universe. I got one in a cereal box when I was a kid and put my parents under a spell where they were late everywhere and couldn’t remember people’s names. It hasn’t worn…

Jason Woelfel’s photographs are the stuff of glossy calendars, “Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy” and those inspirational posters on the ceiling of your dentist’s office, which is to say—they’re damn scenic. His Web site, after all, can be found at scenicimages.com, where you’ll see nature photographs of Texas, Oklahoma, New…

Tolerance? You want to talk about tolerance, Flower Mound Performing Arts Theatre, home of the upcoming play about acceptance, Honk!? OK, then. We’ll talk about tolerating people who think movies are a great place to bring babies. How about tolerating that jerk in sales who drinks the last of the…

Dave Mason is hardly a household name, but he’s had a rather impressive rock ‘n’ roll career. At the age of 18, he founded the seminal prog-rock band Traffic with Steve Winwood, penning the anthemic “Feeling Alright” a year later. Now in the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame—admittedly a…

If ever there were a win-win, it’s this: You grab one or more packages of dried pasta, you bring it down to Ferré, the nouveau Italian joint in the West Village (3699 McKinney Ave., to be exact,) and you hand it over. The Ferré folks will send it along to…

For a while there, we were concerned with the über-patriotism plaguing the nation. Don’t get us wrong, country-lovin’ is good, key, in fact, to a successful community, but that seemingly capitalistic trend of magnetic flaggy car ribbons and decals had us worried for a while (and we weren’t the only…

I graduated from Richland College a couple of years ago, and I swear it totally changed my life. I made great friends, had amazing instructors (one even became my mentor), got published and, ultimately, the Robert Wilonsky spoke to my class. Can it get much better? It didn’t hurt that…

When I was in college, you weren’t supposed to keep pets in on-campus housing, though lots of students had fish, and a couple even got away with kittens for a while. We had a snake. A 3-foot-long black corn snake. Shadow, as she was called, preferred not to remain in…

There’s been a lot of talk about stand-up around these parts lately. As someone who has attended a couple of open mikes recently, I’m gonna have to give it to you straight: Only about a third of the people out there who think they’re funny can actually elicit a laugh…

Cue the scary, ominous echoing music. Dum-dum-dum-dum. Chssh-chssh-chssh-chssh. Nowhere is safe. No one is protected from…the page turner! You can read, but you can’t move forward until…dum-dum-dum-dum, chssh-chssh-chssh-chssh…the page turner says so! Cower in fear of the hand that rocks the novel. No? Not scared? We didn’t think so. But…

It’s clear that the dawning of digital cameras has led to a new phenomenon–the self-portrait. Pose and delete. Pose and delete. It’s an endless cycle for those who search for the perfect photo to place online or send to a long-distance love. But long before cameras of any kind, people…

There’s no better way to get the family together on a summer night than bringing a picnic basket to the park, spreading out and watching some carefully choreographed gang warfare—gang warfare set to rousing music, no less. No, the Crips and the Bloods aren’t throwing down over that Lil Jon…

Doc Watson, who was raised in the woods of North Carolina and lost his vision before his first birthday, grew up around music. While doing chores, his mother would often sing old-time ballads, and at night, when his father came home from the fields, the family would often read from…

Sometimes, I think the vast majority of us forget about culture. In between Heroes episodes and multiple readings of Perez Hilton, it’s easy to forget that pop culture and culture culture are really two separate things. I’m just as concerned about the fate of Peter Petrelli as anyone else, but…

When I worked at the SPCA in college, I cared for a puppy that looked exactly like Falkor, that flying dog-dragon thing from The NeverEnding Story. And at first I was scared, because although this puppy was incredibly cute and went by the name of Snowball, I was absolutely terrified…