Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country, said Roman poet Horace. However, if you’re more comfortable watching Stripes than enlisting, you might try Tempe Paintball as the remedy for your bloodlust. Every Thursday and Tuesday from noon to 9 p.m.,…

If your last get-together had all of the fun of a Tupperware party and the thrills of a snail race, you should look to the good folks of AZ Rockabilly for inspiration. The group’s Rock-A-Bella, a hepcat-and-kitten mélange of all things smooth and slick, hot-rods its way into your plans…

Ernest Hemingway famously sought depth and heartbreak in the extreme brevity of a six-word story by penning, “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” While not as restricted by word count (and certainly not as morose), the Cave Creek Film and Arts Festival Short Story Reading will give aspiring Raymond Chandlers…

Audiences love epic showdowns. Ali versus Frazier. Jerry Springer brawls. Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. This weekend, National Comedy Theater-Phoenix (NCT for short) squares off against NCT-San Diego in what Dorian Lenz, founder and director of NCT-PHX, says should be a “high-energy, very exciting and fun show.” Lenz’s performing history spans…

Polka Dot Dot Dot embodies one of the great rites of American adolescence: the sleepover, a hootenanny of silly goosery and warm friendships. “We’re totally in love with each other,” coos Jordan Smith, who asked Colleen Johnson and Onyx of Olympia, two Pacific Northwestern singer/songwriters, to join him on tour…

While postpartum depression and nuclear fallout are downers, it’s the aftermath of a great party that gives rise to our leaden sighs. Local polka ensemble Haunted Cologne plans to take full advantage of America’s un-birthday, otherwise known as the day after the Fourth. “We’re gonna make July fifth Polka Dependence…

The Downtown Phoenix Public Market has made shoppers think locally about their produce and proved there are bargains beyond clipped coupons and grocery-store discount cards. Because of the market’s popularity, other homegrown items have sprouted on the downtown asphalt, including Mics @ the Market, an open-mic hootenanny that gathers poets,…

The new iPhone drops and has the Internet going nuts like Paul Wall. Like the bling-mouthed Southern spitter, you feel compelled to stunt and cop the two-year AT&T contract just to keep up with Twitter. In a world thirsty for attention and applause, Jason Koster seeks the Zen of one…

Thanks to countless bumper stickers (and common sense), we know that skateboarding is not a crime. Between Tony Hawk video games and rappers Lupe Fiasco and Pharrell (a.k.a. Skateboard P), we dream of kick-pushing our days away. The national Go Skateboarding Day encourages just that, as the ’boarding industry hopes…

This year’s Phoenix ConGames 2008 will definitely be filled with swordplay and sorcery. But with the recent passing of Dungeons & Dragons co-creator Gary Gygax, gaming geeks may be a bit more somber. Or maybe not. Maybe the d20s will roll into Mesa Convention Center and really geek it up…

Armed with an endless arsenal of records, Afrika Bambaataa threw park jams in the South Bronx as hip-hop took its first steps in the early ’70s. In the ’80s, he and his Soulsonic Force band set the Zulu Nation in motion and united restless youths with the song “Planet Rock.”…

Four-dollar-per-gallon gas is around the corner, and (ugh) $5 is just down the block. Mass transit is on the upswing and folks are modifying their transportation habits. Pedal-pushing bike culture is finally being recognized as one of the best, most viable alternatives to petrol-based consumerism. The Brooklyn, New York, chapter…

When Debbie Carrick of Arizona Women’s Theatre Company put out a call to female playwrights, she may have had that Pink Floyd album title Is There Anybody Out There? rolling through her head. “We knew women playwrights were out there, but we didn’t know where they were exactly,” says Carrick,…

Who knew that Mr. Potato Head, the spud born of George Lerner’s childhood imagination that Hasbro marketed to the masses in the ’50s, was the forerunner of a bright DIY future? These days, interchangeable plastic features have given way to Kidrobot’s Munny, a blank canvas of a toy figure that…

Things are heating up early in the WNBA season for the Phoenix Mercury as the Seattle Storm – the team the Mercury swept in the first round of last year’s playoffs – blows into U.S. Airways Center. During the offseason, the Storm undertook a serious re-build around last year’s league…

Ah, the mystique of the Ladmo Bag. Not only did it contain a dizzying mix of candy and knickknacks, it was also bestowed upon kiddies from the sainted hands of the Wallace & Ladmo characters. Bear Cole, a.k.a. Bear the Astronot, thinks music should be a similar fountain of treats…

Mike Park boasts quite the résumé. He fronted the legendary ska-punk band Skankin’ Pickle, founded the Plea for Peace Foundation – which is Park’s effort “to promote the ideas of peace and unity through music” – and established Asian Man Records, a bastion for affordably priced releases from ska, punk,…

In the soundtrack of our lives, there’s no ignoring Johnny Paycheck’s “Take This Job and Shove It,” a tune that seemed to be going through the heads of some of Marvel Comics’ most popular and notable young artists of the ’90s. In the early part of that decade, Erik Larsen,…

Johnny D, a.k.a. John Dixon, has been archiving Arizona music for nearly 50 years and may well harbor the largest record collection in the Southwest, maybe even in the States. He’s been floating in the Ganges River of soul and R&B since his youth, and has kept alive the names…

Spring is here, which means love is in the air (or so they say). Some will dabble in surface-level infatuations that sate them for a few weeks or months, while others will begin building lasting castles in the sky with their newly acquired snuggle bunnies. Know this, though — the…

Looking for a dead-on definition of the Freudian id? How about a Hollywood blockbuster with a car chase? ASU’s Dr. Diane Gruber brings some super-ego to bear on the exploding-auto genre with her “Wheels on Reels, or 0 to 60 in 24 frames/second” program, which features car-centric clips from the…

Fictional astronaut Steve Austin had six million dollars behind his rebuilding. What does Matt Spastic — drummer for chaotic garage punks The Complainiacs — have? A little help from his friends. Spastic recently took a sucker punch from the universe, fracturing his jaw in five places and knocking out several…