Arts & Culture

Indian jewelry is one of the Southwest’s signature art forms, and one of the loveliest. Unfortunately, even the best of it’s often lumped in with the Native dreck hawked at roadside stands and retail stores. Discerning jewelry-philes haunt the Heard Museum, both as a place to shop for genuine, topflight…

When you think of a ukulele, do you think of Joan Rivers and Cheech & Chong? You will once you get a load of Ukulele Ray & The KokoNutz, a tropical/classic rock/comedy act from Tempe. Leader Ray, an ex-Chippendales dancer, is a conjugation of hot and hilarious. The self-hailed pop…

One of the most lamentable facts about the ’90s was the inability of underground hip-hop to register even the slightest blip on the mainstream radar. While gangsta rap rose to pop-culture ascendancy – ruling Top 40 charts and pretty much directing the speech, fashion, and reference points of every American…

L.A. four-piece HEALTH sounds more suited to the hipster-tastic Rogue Bar than Trunk Space, where the band will be posting up tonight. We felt this especially after we listened to Health’s hit “Crimewave.” During certain movements of the dance-happy song, which is driven by palpitating, drum-circle-like beats, something screams at…

Leave your cynicism at the door for the totally unironically named Unlimited Enthusiasm Expo (subtitle: Camp Jump & Yell for Girls and Wizards). The package tour features three proudly nerdy bands from the Northeast who will not only pummel you with their indomitable spirit but will use it to beat…

The longest span of any American’s life is from age 18 to 21. You’re old enough to vote, own property, and carry a firearm, but you don’t have the right to get shitty drunk at a bar? Brutal. Of course, everyone in the age range is boozing it on the…

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…

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…

There are plenty of words to describe Phoenix. Dusty. Sunlit. Sprawling. Somehow, “green” doesn’t make the list. Artists Lindsay Palmer and Rebekeh Brems might disagree. Their joint exhibit “The G R E E N B E L T: a photographic collaboration” features large-scale images of natural forests, deforested areas, and…

West Coast Comedy 101: To springboard into acting, you strike out for LA. To perform standup for – gasp! – standup’s sake, you slug it out in the wilds of the San Francisco club scene. Al Madrigal falls into the latter category, having honed his deceptively baby-faced delivery and effortlessly…

Onetime Hollywood strongman Michael Ovitz used to make news for all the wrong reasons: voicing paranoiac slurs about the “gay mafia,” causing schisms in the Mickey Mouse fantasy factory during his star-crossed Disney stint, and manhandling the help as documented in Suzanne Hansen’s book You’ll Never Nanny in This Town…

Missed the Phoenix Mercury during the Olympic break? Jonesing for some women’s basketball on account of all of that sweet balling in Beijing? Then you can totally score when the Mercury hosts the San Antonio Silver Stars at U.S. Airways Center in the Merc’s first home game after the Olympics…

Why did Laurie Notaro leave her hometown of Phoenix, AZ? Had she sucked the last drop of marrow from every 1990s Mill Avenue moment and chewed the bones into dust? (She does have big teeth.) Whatever the case, the Muchacha del Idiota returns to her former stomping grounds to read…

Not to be confused with the ultra-polished Indiana University a cappella group of the same name (though that would be funny as shit), this extreme metal outfit dares to go where most of its peers fear to tread. Which is to say: awkwardness. Yes, Straight, No Chaser will still melt…

We were surfing through DJ Tranzit’s impressive-looking MySpace page the other day, and besides being amused by the house music maestro’s catchphrases (“Some people call it a dance floor. I call it my office”), we peeped a pretty lengthy list of the clubs and gigs where he’s plied his turntable…

A couple years back, this “bloody-disgusting love story” from playwright Tracy Letts was made into a feature film directed by William Friedkin and starring Ashley Judd and Harry Connick Jr. It was a squirmer — pretty tough for even hardened gore-hounds to sit through. So will this live version produced…

The 4th Dimension: 7 p.m. Saturday, July 5, at Space 55 Theatre By Clay McNear David Lynch, blecch. He’s the Alan Rudolph of cinematic subversion, and here’s how much I dislike him: I’d rather writhe through a Rudolph triple-bill of The Moderns, Choose Me, and Trouble in Mind before seeing…

Mark Mothersbaugh’s “Beautiful Mutants” reception: 6 p.m. to midnight Friday, July 4, at Perihelion Arts By Clay McNear Mark Mothersbaugh lives a symmetrical life of wild extremes. Consider: • He’s was born and still lives in Akron, Ohio – all-American birthplace of the rubber tire, Alcoholics Anonymous, and the soap-box…

The guy can’t even cast his own ballot. But Efrain Robles still rocks the vote. Big-time. Robles, a Phoenix resident from Mexico, is here legally. But he’s not a naturalized citizen, so technically, he can’t vote. That doesn’t mean he can’t get his voice heard. He tried it four years…

How much of a game has to be interactive for it to actually be a game? I’m not being snide; it’s a serious query. If an experience is mostly passive, isn’t it just a movie with elements of gameplay, and not vice versa? Or does even the tiniest bit of…