As most people either love Phoenix or loathe it, so it is with Phoenix’s gridlike nature. Oh, sure, there are a couple of roads that shamble drunkenly outside the lines – Galvin Parkway and the Squaw Peak Parkway, or whatever it’s now politically correctly called – but for the most…
Sometimes it’s too easy to speak disparagingly of Phoenix. It’s a young city populated by geriatric people set in their ways. It’s a tired lineup of Applebee’s, strip malls, and understocked liquor stores. Then again, some of us know that there’s more to our unique town and are playing a…
We were pleasantly confounded recently when KTAR’s sports-radio kingpin John Gambadoro stood up to be counted in favor of football – the other kind. Of course, this was during a 10-minute tirade against English cricket, so it was probably relative, but still – soccer! Even Gambo’s partner, Mark Asher, was…
Summer in Phoenix means more than just triple-digit temperatures and massive music festival tours. Here in the Valley of the Sun, it also means a smaller population (see ya in November, snowbirds!) and a ton of awesome local shows. And while paying $45 for a festival ticket at some massive…
It’s kinda ironic that SoCal’s Mad Caddies entitled their latest album Keep It Going, since the ska-punk sextet is doing just that. Ironic not in a cheeky, Flight of the Conchords way, but rather because the Caddies are still rolling with the whole ska-punk thing when Reel Big Fish, The…
Down the list of least needy causes, it’s just below a man standing next to his Hummer bumming for gas. But any true lover of melodic pop music oughtta sign a petition to get Graham Nash inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. What’s that, you say? Nash…
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 is…
By Joseph Golfen It sounds like every thrift store shopper’s dream. Teri Horton, a 75-year-old former long-haul trucker, bought a painting for a friend as a gag in a California thrift store, only to learn that it could be a lost masterpiece by Jackson Pollock worth more than $50,000,000. The…
By PJ Standlee Gamers seeking digital camaraderie and elbow-rubbing competition have a place to call their own. Located at the historical McCullough-Price House opposite the southwest corner of Chandler Fashion Mall, the “ZAP! Vintage Video Games” exhibition welcomes gamers of all ages to come in and pick up the joysticks…
Besides the notion of ultimate creation, God and painting clearly have something in common. For the past 60 years or so, both have been declared dead and buried innumerable times by the usual suspects. But to paraphrase Mark Twain, the demise of both has been greatly exaggerated. Scottsdale Museum of…
Screenwriter Steven Conrad writes movies about success and self-fulfillment in America — how we define it, the price we pay for it, and what it looks like depending on where you’re standing. In Conrad’s The Weather Man, the central figure was a vain TV news personality who had everything that…
The Foot Fist Way has been trying to break into theaters since clawing its way down film-fest row, beginning at Sundance in ’06. It took Will Ferrell and his comedy life partner Adam McKay to get distributors interested; notes the trailer: The men behind Anchorman’s desk and Talladega Nights’ wheel…
In recent days, Universal’s been running a TV spot for The Incredible Hulk that gives away what should come as no surprise to any fanboy worth his action figure collection: the appearance of Robert Downey Jr. as, natch, Tony Stark. From the delighted, deafening squeals of at least one sneak-preview…
I am absolutely dreading the arrival of Guitar Hero: World Tour. Can’t even enjoy the summer. It might sound like insanity, given that the fourth installment in the Guitar Hero franchise could end up being the most successful game of 2008. It won’t even hit store shelves till late October,…
Bitching about the heat in Phoenix is one of our pet peeves (and so is the use of “pet peeve”… grrr), so you’re not going to read such tripe in Night & Day. No sirree. Instead of complaining about the inside of our car reaching nuclear levels or how just…
When the paintball craze first hit critical mass, it seemed like the Hula-Hoop of sports. Fun? Yeah. Doomed? Hell, yeah. Today, paintball’s about as far from obsolescence as a doomed craze can get. Just last year, a group of East Valley investors sank a boatload of dough into a new,…
The first time you hear Eilen Jewell’s voice, you may experience an interesting cross-sensory phenomenon. For example, you might be struck by involuntary synesthesia, confusing the sound of her spellbinding voice for the taste of whiskey and cream or the scent of past lovers. Jewell’s sound – a union of…
The slogan of the Valley of the Sun Juneteenth planning committee is “Remembering the Past, Celebrating the Future.” Ugh. Strangely, the same folks who cooked up that bland, Chamber of Commerce jingle are responsible for the kickin’ Valley of the Sun Juneteenth Celebration. The fest is family-friendly, true, but also…
The bigger the better, yes, but size often has less to do with physical heft than the amount of space one is able to confiscate by sheer noise power. We’re sure they’re all skinny Brooklynites, but Chubby Behemoth’s expansive disregard of stage boundaries and tendency to steamroll every venue it…
It’s no secret that we hate Tucson and the scum who populate the freaking place. But when we remember folks like Hank Arnold – a Tucson racecar driver who won more than 160 main events throughout Arizona before dying in a Manzanita Speedway crash in 1967 – well, we still…
Video games have saturated our culture for 30-something years, so if you haven’t waxed nostalgic about them yet, you’re way behind the curve. Catch up at “ZAP! Vintage Video Games.” “It’ll be an interesting cross-generational experience… a great opportunity to show a time period that has become kind of distant,”…
What’s one of our favorite things about Mesa Contemporary Arts besides the kickass exhibits? The gallery’s sheer size, which makes it the perfect fit for “Mass Consumption,” a show that associate curator Tiffany Fairall describes (in a ginormous nutshell) as “everything about popular culture.” Juror Greg Escalante of Juxtapoz magazine…
