Arts & Culture

It’s a cliché: A picture is worth a thousand words. As a writer, I don’t believe that—until I see a powerful picture or work of art. Then I realize that visual art is storytelling in its purest form. Check out two artists who pursue their work in very different ways…

Winona, Texas, is a small town situated northeast of Tyler in the Piney Woods of East Texas. Approximately 100 miles east of Dallas, the town isn’t much to speak of, with a population of less than 1,000. Unfortunately, Winona is best-known for the pollution, disease and death left in the…

Librettists must have been slapping their foreheads and muttering “Why didn’t I think of that?” when Altar Boyz debuted off-Broadway. Take the boy-band phenomenon and the Christian pop movement, mash it around with double-entendres and create a musical comedy! Five young men—Matthew, Mark, Luke, Juan and Abraham (the Jewish guy,…

A group of friends and a truck crash. That story can’t end well, can it? Perhaps “well” isn’t exactly the right term, but “interesting” could sure fit the bill. And “illogical.” When it comes to Schrödinger’s Ball, a novel by Adam Felber, “entertaining” might work as well—especially since the friends…

What is the science of sexy? Is it that Miracle of Life video you had to watch in junior high? Science, sure, but we’re not so sure about the live birth bit at the end. Coulda done without. How about the Victoria’s Secret fashion show? Sexy, sure, but do you…

What happens when, instead of a glass slipper, Cinderella leaves one of her smelly tennis shoes behind when she flees the ball? Well, the prince better have a clothespin for his nose as he visits the other fair maids while looking for his beloved. Inanimate objects come to life in…

Kelly Price’s mother remembers her baby daughter singing out from her crib in the middle of a quiet night. Not too surprising as the little spiritual diva was raised accompanying her father, the Reverend Joseph Price (as well as her evangelist mother, Claudia, and siblings), to work every day at…

These days, you’d think most kids would be taught by their parents to run like the wind if a stranger offered them a ride on a “magic” school bus. That’s how youngsters wind up on milk cartons or with nasty hallucinogen habits. But have no fears, parents, about Ms. Frizzle’s…

Billy Joe Shaver was the songwriter du jour for the outlaw country movement of the 1970s, penning tunes recorded by Kris Kristofferson, Bobby Bare and Johnny Cash. Waylon Jennings even did a whole album of Shaver compositions, 1973’s Honky Tonk Heroes, often credited for kicking off the movement that would…

We all love stuff. As George Carlin says, stuff is the reason people need houses. Houses are just a place to keep all your stuff while you go out and get…more stuff! And isn’t art, in its simplest form, just stuff you like to look at? Except it’s not called…

The newly opened Veuve is a monster of a restaurant (10,000 square feet, complete with a waterfall) designed to play on your senses, and they’re pulling out all the stops to make a good impression. Here, you can pay attention to the man behind the curtain as Executive Chef Tony…

Some stand-up comedians seem custom-made for crossover sitcom stardom (see: Cosby, Seinfeld or Bernie Mac), while others probably should have stuck to playing nightclub open-mike nights in between shifts at the video store. Earthquake’s sitcom pilot for ABC may have flopped a few years back, but the man is back…

The history of pop-punk is long and illustrious. Starting in the late 1970s with the Buzzcocks, it ran aground with Green Day, blink-182 and all those other suburban California tunesmiths who peppered the charts over the last decade like ants on a wedding cake. I’m sure that by 1999, every…

The cathedral organ is best positioned to fill the house of God with music because it sounds most like the voice of God itself, capable of both bombast and whimsy. Its inspirational and reverent sound is explained and demonstrated in The Cathedral Shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe’s The Cathedral…

Down-home Texas singer-songwriters aren’t just a dime a dozen ’round these here parts; they’re a penny a gross. What keeps Adam Carroll from being just another drop in the guy-and-his-guitar bucket is an approach to the well-heeled genre that is both effortless and expert. More akin to storytelling than songwriting,…

As we age, our tastes change. While the eau de vinyl records and Pearl Light beer used to really get us charged up, these days we get excited about bathroom fixtures, great curtains and stainless steel appliances. Ah, to be a grownup. No longer tempted by rows of freshly minted…

The best thing I’ve ever done on vacation is, well, not die. My vacations have included riptides, Mexican taxis and even a Category 4 hurricane, and I figure I’ve used up all my “Avoid Hell’s Gates” passes. So you won’t see me boarding a plane to the Dark Continent to…

In high school, I won a Martin Luther King Jr. essay contest about diversity and was featured—baggy pants, bangs and all—in the local newspaper. I’d forgotten all about it, but when I was home for the holidays I found the old news clipping laminated and posted in my old room…

He could make you quit smoking. He could make you conquer your stage fright and sing that rousing rendition of “Sweet Caroline” you’ve always wanted to sing…Or comic hypnotist Flip Orley could make you piss yourself in front of a live audience (from laughing too hard, mind you). Take a…

In my efforts to figure out what exactly an aquatint is, which failed miserably, I came across a couple of interesting Picasso vignettes: As a boy, the legendary Spanish painter took lessons from his father, an art teacher who often took his son to bullfights. When he noticed his son’s…