TUE 10/4From Alice Cooper’s onstage beheadings to Iggy Pop’s broken-glass surfing to the robotic samplings of those Venetian-blinds-headed dudes in Devo, rock has seemingly exhausted its conceptual toy box. Or has it? You might change your mind after experiencing Quem Quaeritis and Weirdo Begeirdo, two bands from Riverside, California’s “freak-pop”…
THU 22Master chef Stephen Stromberg whips out his magic pan on Thursday, September 22, for the final installment in “Cooking & Cocktails” at Latitude 30, a gratis summer series of culinary demonstrations and tastings at the swank eatery, which is named after the imaginary line that bisects the heart of…
SAT 9/24The Bruisers versus the Surly Girlies. It sounds like something out of West Side Story — only with skates. Actually, it’s the latest blood-sport death match between the take-no-shit Arizona Roller Derby chicks, who hit the hardwood for their first match of the new season on Saturday, September 24,…
What do Julie Andrews, Peter Gunn, the Mystery Writers of America, the bolero, and one rather large pink cat have in common? Hollywood director Blake Edwards, of course. Edwards is married to Andrews, he won an MWA writing award for one of his episodes of the 1950s TV show Peter…
THU 15 The sidewalks are still sizzling, and we survived another Hump Day. Now it’s time to chill out and mellow down, and we can think of no better way than mixing, mingling, nibbling and imbibing at Scottsdale’s sleek and sassy SIX Lounge, 7316 East Stetson Drive. On Thursday, September…
9/16-9/17Ah, there’s nothing so sublime as leaning back on a bleacher with a cool drink and a hot dog, a freshening breeze in your face, and watching pitchers pitch and hitters hit. And while slow-pitch softball may not be on a par with pro baseball, it is in a league…
9/16-9/17While most kids long to be baseball stars or astronauts, Darrell Hammond was a comedian born. He started impersonating family members when he was 5, and he’s blossomed into Saturday Night Live’s resident impressionist, specializing in letter-perfect portrayals of political and entertainment figures such as Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Sean…
FRI 9/16The Prince of Motherfucking Darkness: That’s the literary epithet that author John Gilmore has earned after a lifetime spent excavating the noirish underbelly of human existence. From his grim account of Charles Schmid, the homicidal “Pied Piper of Tucson,” in Cold-Blooded, to his mortician-like dissection of Charles Manson’s psyche…
SAT 9/17In the ’60s, there were love beads and hippies. Today, the “make love, not war” mentality lives on through Kandee Kids — ravers with beaded bracelets and positive vibes. On Saturday, September 17, the Gaia of all raves, Earthdance 2005, heads to a Tucson desert locale so secret you…
THU 8Laws of Deception, a short film made on a shoestring by Valley writer/director Charles Peterson, is a compact thriller with a twisted ending that Peterson sets up nicely. It’s a “Hit man meets girl, hit man seduces girl, hit man kills girl?” kinda flick starring Hispanic Schwarzenegger-alike Jose Rosette…
SAT 9/10You know you’ve made it when people start impersonating you. But comedian Neil Hamburger admits he’s a little nervous about seeing his clones at the 1st Annual Neil Hamburger Fan Convention on Saturday, September 10. “I’ve heard about people dressing as me for Halloween,” says the tuxedo-clad comic, who…
9/9-9/10Looks like the lovely ladies of the ASU volleyball team need to step up to the net and show some, er . . . balls. After a dismal 2-4 effort thus far in what is turning out to be a pretty miserable preseason, these spike-blocking sirens are looking to rebound…
TUE 9/13DJ Seduce is trying very hard to be humble. When he started the weekly “P.A.I.N.T.: Music* Art* Spoken Expression” nights at the Paper Heart, he was struggling to get a dozen people through the door. Thanks largely to word of mouth, his conglomeration of underground audio mixes, live painting…
If it hasn’t already, professional racing is threatening to replace hockey as Americans’ fourth-favorite spectator sport, after the NFL, the NBA, and Major League Baseball. This is as true in the Valley as anywhere else, thanks to signature events like the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Checker Auto Parts 500 (coming up…
THU 1Phoenix’s flirtation with the Surreal World continues with the opening of the Paper Heart’s “Surreal September” exhibit on Friday, September 2, and Phoenix Art Museum’s ongoing “Surrealism USA” installation. “Surrealism USA” Live: Poetry Reading, held in conjunction with the latter exhibition, features readings by “surrealist poets” Dean Young and…
SAT 9/3In the ’60s, if you caught people leaving a rock concert and asked how the show was, they might have answered with something like, “Man, that three-hour version of ‘White Rabbit’ was totally groovy!” But in the “here today, gone today” world of modern rock and short attention spans,…
SAT 9/3Wieners go great with mustard. Or ketchup. Or . . . racing stripes? Proud owners of pintsize pups pounded the pavement over the past few months, digging up donations for Arizona Adopt-A-Greyhound. The 32 top fund-raising dogs face off in the 2005 Wiener Dog Nationals on Saturday, September 3,…
SUN 8/28The Indian ballet troupe Mamata Shankar does not perform a subcontinental Swan Lake, nor does it include Native Americans en pointe. Rather, the group fuses classical Indian dance with modern dance steps, says Sarbari Chowdhury of the Bengali Cultural Association of Arizona, the organization sponsoring the troupe’s local performance…
SAT 8/27Quickly, we must flee! Ginormous mutated creatures are preparing to annihilate The Sets, 93 East Southern in Tempe, at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, August 27. These death-bringers will include the demonic simian Hell Monkey and the soup-can-clad martial artist Kung-Fu Chicken Noodle. Surely, we are doomed! Oh, wait, it’s only…
SAT 8/27Club Freedom’s been closed for more than a year now, but that doesn’t mean there’s nowhere in Phoenix for renowned DJs to drop their stacks of wax. On Saturday, August 27, several local organizations, including IONAZ magazine and dance station Energy 92.3, prove the beat goes on with “Splash…
Friends and fans of the late and greatly lamented MARS Artspace — one of the pioneers of Phoenix alt-art and a precursor of today’s downtown scene — will witness MARS’ last gasp at “Wasteland Circus: The Final Curtain” on Saturday, August 27, at the Paper Heart — appropriate given that…
SAT 8/20Last fall, Valley comics Josh Skalniak and Josh McDermitt got the chance to compete at the Las Vegas Comedy Festival, and both felt a little out of place. To the surprise of many — mostly themselves — Skalniak won first place in the Wild Card category and McDermitt took…
