Bust out your capes and fangs. It’s vampire time, baby. No, we’re not talking about Halloween or some teenage goth event. We’re speaking of the transformation every Phoenician goes through during the summer months. We avoid the sun, socialize in the evening hours, and sleep during the day whenever possible…
One day last year, Michael Sweet — frontman of the Christian metal band Stryper — was sitting down with a bowl of Cheetos to watch a Law & Order marathon when his cell phone rang. Michael Sweet: Hello? God: Hey Michael, it’s me, God. Sweet: No fuc — I mean,…
Finally. The road show known as the Arizona Diamondbacks returns to Chase Field to play only the eighth home game of the month. With little success and lots of struggles of late, that Wizard of Oz moment’s gotta feel good, but not nearly as good as it feels to play…
I solemnly swear not to mention Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story during the writing of this piece. Starting . . . now. When describing an adult-dodgeball affair, it’s de rigueur to reference the 2004 flick. I mean, come on. But if AZ Dodgeball founder Sam Pewitt wants to play coy…
Sci-fi/fantasy convention features various special guests, including artist Todd Lockwood, author Alan Dean Foster, editor Stanley Schmidt, and sci-fi superfans Jim and Doreen Webbert. An artwork by Lockwood is pictured. Wed., July 2; Thu., July 3; Fri., July 4; Sat., July 5, 2008…
Better work on that Pete Townshend-style windmill, ’cause the promoters of this nationally touring event promise “even fewer guitars” this time around. The finals are in San Francisco on August 8. Sat., June 28, 8 p.m., 2008…
The TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer ran for seven seasons and totaled 144 episodes. I double-sourced and tripled-checked, ’cause we’re dealing with the Buffyverse, a subset of the Whedonverse, hallowed home to Joss Whedon fanatics, who have lives outside of their obsession, but not really. I know a Buffy…
Modern celebs are always milking the goodwill angle, whether they’re adopting African babies, playing charity concerts for tsunami relief, or making documentary videos about Darfur. But it wasn’t always about good press. In the late ’60s, WWII hero and International Rescue Committee rep Varian Fry assembled a collection of flight-themed…
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…
Your auto-obsessed husband takes better care of his ride than of the kids. He gives the four-wheeled beast quality time, regularly bathes his “baby,” and whips out pictures of the ride to show his friends. Meanwhile, the kids miss their daddy, run around with dirty hair, and aren’t allowed to…
Last April, former Phoenix cop George Contreras resigned from the force and opened a guitar shop in South Phoenix. Why give up a cushy city gig? “It’s cooler in here and I’m not getting shot at. At least, not yet,” he quips. These days, Contreras sports a cool Corvette, a…
In the U.S., the psycho/slasher movie has usually been a sordid, depressing affair. Leave it to the Italians to make it an exercise in high style. A fine example is Dario Argento’s lyrically titled, blood-splattered The Bird With the Crystal Plumage (1970), a must-see specimen of the so-called giallo genre…
There are a few things you won’t see at a Heaven & Hell Wrestling event: blockbuster pyrotechnics, thousands of fans, and such superstars as John Cena and Randy Orton. What you will witness at the backyard-wrestling group’s extreme extravaganzas is plenty of skull-crunching action, weapons such as garbage cans and…
By Clay McNear I (gulp!) teeter on the brink of being a High School Musical fan. After enduring marathons of dreck like The Wiggles and the creepy Booba as the operating cost of being a dad, HSM seems like West Side Story, only, you know, not as good. The flick…
My friend Michelle and I were the only white people in the audience at last week’s performance of For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf, which made me all the more aware that I was a white man who doesn’t like poetry who’d come to watch…
Wendy Weston is one fierce chick. She’s loud, proud, and puro Native-American badass. I want to be her. More to the point, I want a space like hers. She’s the director of Indian American relations at the Heard Museum, and I’ve been hanging with Wendy a lot lately while we’ve…
As old Broadway shows are revived, new Broadway shows are spun from old movies so that new movies may be fashioned from ancient TV series. It’s an iron law of the culture industry that turns out to be a pleasant surprise in the case of Get Smart, the late-’60s sitcom…
You want a history lesson? Take a class. You want clanging swords, sneering villains, storybook romance, and bloody vengeance? Here’s a brawny old-school epic to make the CGI tumult of 300, Alexander, and Troy look like sissy-boy slap parties. Mongol, alias Genghis Khan: The Early Years, may compress, elide, and…
Just over a decade ago, Russian director Sergei Bodrov made his mark on the West with his Academy Award-nominated movie Prisoner of the Mountains, which transplanted a Tolstoy novella for children to Russia’s war with Chechnya. Though Prisoner seemed an unlikely calling card for Hollywood, its blend of commercial technique…
It’s probably a good thing Game On wasn’t around to review Ninja Gaiden when it hit Xbox in 2004 — we probably would’ve written An awesome, brutal, majestic action masterpiece, then filled the rest of the space with crude crayon drawings of ninjas. Because really, there’d be nothing else to…
He was a defining figure in American public life, and that rarest of people: a local politician of whom we could be proud rather than ashamed. Senator Barry Goldwater’s impressive legacy is particularly resonant in an era in which American conservatism has rather a bad name, and his story, as…
Why is it that no one dances to rock anymore? Today, most nightlife enthusiasts bump and grind to Top 40, hip-hop, and house, but in the swingin’ ’60s, there was enough rock ’n’ roll hip-shakin’ goin’ on to jolt the Richter scale. Though we can’t recapture that magic without a…
