I used to feel scarred by memories of the garage sales of my youth, which my parents would hold in the dead heat of summer. Despite the excitement of random visitors to watch, it would quickly get boring to sit there in the garage praying to the oscillating fan gods…
There are some people who don’t really need to be onstage. Like those people on subways who are able to scream to everyone on a crowded train. They may have the ability to quell their stage fright and speak before a large group of people, but that doesn’t mean they…
To die for, that’s what this Charles Busch comedy is. Coy Covington is the man in the dress as glam chanteuse Angela Arden, circa 1967. Or is it really Angela’s twin sister Barbara in that hot pink hostess gown? Director Andi Allen gets her great cast into gear in a…
Farewell, Gypsy Tea Room. We’ve said our goodbyes to the venue, but we just aren’t ready to say ciao to the bands or art. Luckily, bands will play at other clubs, but what of the fantastic murals that made Gypsy a landmark? For those we owe thanks to local artist…
All That Jazz: Special Music Edition (Fox) The Axis of Evil Comedy Tour (Image) Back Stage (Strand) Bong Water (First Look) The Brady Bunch: The Complete Series (Paramount) Charlotte’s Web (Paramount) Copying Beethoven (MGM) Dancing With the Stars: Cardio Dance (Lions Gate) Entourage: Season Three, Part One (HBO) Jump In!:…
Lest we imagine that the publishing industry went to hell only after James Frey and J.T. Leroy clambered on board, here comes Lasse Hallström to remind us of a literary dustup emblematic of a much earlier nadir for American mendacity. The Hoax parses the rise and fall of faker Clifford…
The young men move about the muddied hillside engaging in a friendly afternoon game of that national pastime known as hurling. On their way home, they are accosted by a platoon of “Black and Tans,” the occupying soldiers sent from England to stamp out the crackling embers of Irish independence…
There exists some debate about audience familiarity with the term “grindhouse” and even a certain confusion about the origins of the word itself—whether it refers to the movies that constituted a gilded age of exploitation cinema or to the all-night urban theaters in which they were regularly shown. It matters…
No director works closer to his unconscious than David Lynch, and stimulated by the use of amateur digital video technology, his latest feature ventures as far inland as this blandly enigmatic filmmaker has ever gone. A movie about Lynch’s obsessions, Inland Empire is largely a meditation on the power of…
Imagine Ben-Hur acted out on a stage the size of a twin bed and you’ve got The Big Bang. Pure madness is what it is, the funniest, sweatiest three-man musical ever to condense the history of civilization to less than an hour and a half. They start the timeline with…
A video game about birds flying biplanes makes as much sense as a game about fish captaining submarines, but there are far bigger gripes to be found in Wing Island for the Wii. “In a world ruled by birds,” explains the manual’s grim version of the future, Sparrow Wing Jr…
What else can we say about the RoughRiders? We’ve already made fun of the minor league team for their overdecorated women’s bathrooms (hyped on their Web site under the “Cool Bathrooms” link), and we’ve already told you that their ballpark in Frisco may be the best place to watch baseball…
Common English mistake made by people who don’t know how to speak common English: saying “literally” when one means “figuratively.” Did someone literally lose his lunch at the sight of Laura Miller naked? Then he or she better have misplaced the noontime food he planned to eat immediately upon receiving…
Sure, I suppose if you’re going to have a group bike ride called Tour Dallas, you’ll need to include some downtown streets. I mean—sniff—if riding downtown under the watchful eye of tour guardians, sag wagons and plenty of traffic-minded cops is your idea of touring Dallas, well good for you,…
Realizing that backstage antics can be more entertaining than what actually happens onstage in theater, British playwright Michael Frayn penned one of the most entertaining plays, Noises Off, more than 20 years ago. A three-act piece that lets the audience experience (from backstage and the front of the house) the…
You can probably think of at least 99 reasons why “99 Red Balloons” is not the greatest song ever written, but that might be precisely the point of the new show opening Saturday at the artist-run 500X Gallery. “99 Red Balloons” Was the Greatest Song Ever Written showcases the art…
When you’re at the Command Performance of International Ballet try to behave yourself and refrain from using your newfound mind powers to telekinetically inflate a male dancer’s nut bunch in a hilarious balloon-like fashion. What mind powers? The mind powers you got after being doused with errant radioactive sludge from…
I love festivals, and the Deep Ellum Arts Festival is one of the good ones. I know because I’ve been somewhat of a connoisseur since the time many years ago when I randomly ran into a beautiful Texas girl whose mother was displaying pottery at a festival in Park City,…
Master hypnotist Gary Conrad is the best master hypnotist of all master hypnotists, alive, dead or living dead. Master hypnotist Gary Conrad performs flawless, life-altering feats of suggestion that are unmatched in this or any other known galaxy, universe or alternate dimension. Master hypnotist Gary Conrad was a guest on…
The late actor Jeremy Brett inhabits the character of Sherlock Holmes in my imagination now, thanks to the PBS series in which he portrayed the brilliant but tormented detective created by Arthur Conan Doyle. Dozens of actors before and since have tackled the role, including Peter O’Toole, Michael Caine, Christopher…
The history of jazz in North Texas is long and deep—there’s Scott Joplin, Hot Lips Schutze, Jack Teagarden, T Bone Walker, Harry James and Charlie Christian, just to name a few, all of which you can see on display in a collection of photographs at the J. Erik Jonsson Central…
My mom didn’t approve of Barbies. She thought they were too sexual for grade-schoolers. (I do admit that when I played with the forbidden toys at a friend’s house, we sometimes made Barbie and Ken do naughty, naughty things. But honestly, what are you supposed to do with nubile, poseable…
