I suck at New Year’s resolutions. Resolving to discontinue my various bad habits is, I know, nothing more than an exercise in good intentions. Stop eating crap? Curtail my endless shopping for useless ephemera I coveted as a child? Refrain from procrastination? These things will never happen. I’m smitten with…
Okay, don’t laugh: This year, instead of bashing this sprawling, hot vacuum we call home, I’ve resolved to stop dissing Phoenix. That’s no simple task, because there’s something about these miles of desert-y ‘burbs that invites — no, begs for — criticism. From the endless traffic to the cookie-cutter houses…
The Oldest Profession: The cast of Algonquin Theater Company’s first show of the season features JoAnn Yeoman, Judy Rollings, Sharon Collar, Jacqueline Gaston, and Barbara McGrath — and that’s all you need to know. That this astonishing cast is performing Paula Vogel’s tart story about five aging hookers whose clientele…
There’s something about the planet tipping and calendar pages turning that makes us take a good, hard look at ourselves and say, “I could be better.” Then, typically, we go out and get plastered. We wake up the next morning having forgotten our resolution, with absolutely no intention of changing…
Alex Haley’s Queen (Warner Bros.) Amazing Planet Earth (Questar) The Attic (Allumination) Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown (Warner Bros.) Breaker Morant (Image) Extras: The Complete Series (HBO) Dora the Explorer: Undercover Dora (Paramount) DragonLance: Dragons of the Autumn Twilight (Paramount) Good Luck Chuck (Lionsgate) In the Heat of the Night:…
It took nine years for Godzilla to rise up out of the ashes of Hiroshima and wreak his destruction on the good people of Tokyo in 1954. Here in America, it’s taken just over six years for the idea of an escapist disaster movie set on the streets of New…
JoAnn Yeoman’s played in everything from Becket to Bye, Bye, Birdie! (her fave role: Dulcinea in Man of La Mancha), from princesses to hookers (currently, in Algonquin Theatre’s The Oldest Profession). I knew I wanted to be in show business when I was 3 years old and my mom took…
Andrea Beesley-Brown ain’t crazy about going to the gym. Ask the affable 28-year-old why, and she rattles off some fairly standard anti-fitness excuses: lack of motivation, tedious workout regimens, and those dang perplexing exercise machines. “I’ve never quite figured out how to use a lot of those beasts,” Beesley-Brown says…
I needn’t have worked very hard this week reviewing the show I saw, because the noisy dame who sat in front of me critiqued every musical number, every punch line in Arizona Theatre Company’s The Pajama Game. “That was good!” she bellowed to her seatmate after the cast busted moves…
Downtown’s Burn nightclub is going out with a bang when RedMonkey, in association with White Crane Kung Fu, presents Drunken Monkey. Pete “SuperMix” Salaz put together this 21-and-over shindig that will feature a special Lion Dance and demo by White Crane Kung Fu. Best of all, Burn is trying to…
When you’re zooming too fast from one place to another, what do the constant pockets of construction say to you? Hope of a metropolis that balances our humble and quirky past with the aspirations of a prosperous future, or dread of a money-hungry wildfire obliterating open spaces and historic buildings?…
Mondays bite, which you already know. What you may not know is that you can haul yourself and your post-weekend malaise down to one of the hippest joints around — Majerle’s — for Martini Monday, where you suck down half-price cocktails. You’re welcome. Have a nice day. Mon., Jan. 21,…
Thanks to WindUp Gallery, the Mormon-rich city of Mesa, of all places, has gained a chokehold on lowbrow art. Since May 2007, gallery owners Anthony and Lindsay Cresta have regularly exhibited titillating, somewhat grotesque, pop-culture-heavy art, a medium that has its roots in the 1970s L.A. surf/punk/hot-rod subcultures. That these…
“Hippie chic” was once an exercise in irony, since there was nothing fashionable about the reality. Patchouli-drenched, unwashed tie-dye shirts. Burlap-like hemp shoes. Crusty denim jeans. “Sustainable” just meant how long it was possible to go without a shower. As a result, there was no runway here, just a stifled…
On VH1’s date-a-hairball hit Rock of Love, the tucked-and-tied-together bag of straw that is Poison frontman Bret Michaels whispers, “Only one of you will be my rock of love.” Criminy, the last time we said anything so inane we were 9 and forced to choose between an aggie and a…
A trout-fishing tournament in the drought-stricken desert might seem as sensible as a high-stakes poker tourney in Mormon country. But as odd as it may seem, it’s time to dust off your rod and reel, get those hands grubby with some filthy live worms, and fill the cooler with Keystone…
“Oh, my! What’s that red ball doing wedged under that bridge?” one spectator will certainly ask. That might be answered with, “It’s not just any large, rubber sphere, but a whimsical Po-Mo mobile installation art sculpture.” Guaranteed to mess with a viewer’s sense of scale, RedBall is a 15-foot-diameter, 200-pound…
If any musician in town has the cred to open up a club whose name translates as “voice,” it’s Khani Cole. The adult-contemporary soultress and her skins-playing hubby, Mike Florio, have transformed the old Leccabaffi space into Vocé Ristoranté & Lounge. In one room, there’s a swanky Italian eatery. In…
Ecch, California. They’ve got beautiful weather and miles of coastline for their fancy boats. We want some of that. But we like a challenge, and we’ve got grit enough to make it happen in the middle of the desert. Beat that, you lazy effing bastards! At the 48th Arizona Yacht…
Most folks go to car shows just to see slick autos. Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art’s new “Car Culture” exhibit invites a deeper reflection on the whole fetishistic American automotive mess. Promo materials bill the show as “a look at the interrelationship of cars, people, and society,” a sentence that…
It’s a rare child who, when asked about his or her future aspirations, expresses the desire to become scribe to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth and to one day inscribe a modern-day Bible. Donald Jackson was one such wunderkind who realized his vision. One of the world’s most prominent calligraphers, the…
Dodge? Cool? Who knew? While we’ve been preoccupied with the Far East, the American auto manufacturer has been making insidious inroads into our collective subconscious with its whiz-bang Viper engines and curvaceous Rams. Join fellow fanatics at the Viper Truck Club of America’s MOPAR Desert Challenge. Sun., Jan. 20, 9…
