The November election once again showed Arizona to be a “red” state, but our conservative political bent doesn’t equate to always playing by the rules. For proof, look no further than Scottsdale, where this weekend a beer festival will celebrate Arizona’s best brews that just happen to be banned in…
SUN 1/16 Very bad thoughts equal very bad health. Okay, so it’s not that simple, but you try boiling down the quirky indie film What the #$*! Do We Know!? to something rather elementary, Einstein! Still, Dr. Joe Dispenza, an Olympia, Washington-based chiropractor/author who makes a memorable appearance in the…
SAT 1/15 Few poets and authors deserve a posthumous roasting more than Edgar Allan Poe. The Master of the Macabre, whose tales of woe and fright have haunted us for more than 150 years, will be “slammed” both literally and figuratively, again, on Saturday, January 15, at the fourth annual…
“Brian Alfred: The Future Is Now!” at the Phoenix Art Museum: New York-based artist Brian Alfred ponders corporate culture and rampant industrialization in his latest exhibition. Although Alfred’s retro-futuristic paintings and collages emphasize society’s fascination with the digital age and subsequent sensory overload, his collection of work is surprisingly sensory-friendly…
THU 6 Admit it: You’ve always wanted to be on shows like Wheel of Fortune or Street Smarts, but you just can’t get past the audition. Don’t give up practicing your buzzer-beating skills just yet, as the folks at Hamburger Mary’s, 5111 North Seventh Street, will debut their weekly Game…
Over a three-month period in 1994, machete-wielding Hutu tribesmen in Rwanda hacked to death 800,000 Tutsi men, women and children. News reports, including film footage of the unfolding carnage, were broadcast around the globe. In the face of such unremitting acts of inhumanity, the world community did nothing. It wasn’t…
At first glance, White Noise looks like one more supernatural thriller aimed at the audience that’s easily scared and easily parted from its hard-earned cash. It will be lumped in among the Rings, Grudges, Otherses, and other gotcha creep shows inhabited by rancorous ghosts and pissed-off ghouls out to off…
FRI 1/7 Sick of the slick, production-driven artwork that passes for hip in other galleries? Kathy Cone, artist and owner of the Cone Gallery, 1324 Grand Avenue, offers the sort of space where edgy art and music can flourish and provide an antidote to the cheesy Southwestern clichés you might…
When I arrive at her office at the Arizona House of Representatives, termed-out Republican Representative Karen Johnson is Scotch-taping the hem of her skirt, which has come unraveled and which she’s rolled up into her lap for a quick repair. She laughs when I offer to help, and waves me…
Cindy Dach, 38, who co-founded the eye lounge gallery/ artists’ collective with her husband, photographer and public arts advocate Greg Esser, talks about the couple’s latest labor of love, Writers’ Bloc, a California-style bungalow just off Roosevelt Row that soon will be home to downtown’s first writers’ collective. While Cindy…
Clint Eastwood began digging into the third act of his career — the one that reveals the mature, deep-thinking artist . . . with a little jazz piano on the side — a dozen years ago, with the discomfiting anti-Western Unforgiven. Since then, he’s hardly come up for air or…
Her career lasted eight years. Her legacy has lasted for more than 40. When Patsy Cline died in a plane crash in 1963, she’d released only three albums. Hundreds of reissues, compilations and tribute albums later, Cline’s become a cultural icon, a role she probably would have hated, according to…
First Fridays have long been the spot for lucky scenesters to score, whether it’s scamming some hottie’s digits or getting the skinny on local music. But hepcats can double up on depravity in one spot during the hippest night of the month at the Paper Heart’s fifth annual “Sex, Drugs…
WED 1/12 Sure, the Suns are the hottest commodity in the basketball world these days, except perhaps for the Argentine Olympic team. But wouldn’t it be refreshing to watch some other really talented Phoenix hoopsters who actually pay for the pleasure of diving for loose balls and taking a hard…
SAT 1/8 Has it really been five years since we all got our collective panties in a bunch over the misplacement of a few lousy zeroes? If you’ve already forgotten the experience of crouching in your shelter with a shotgun in one hand and a flute of Brut in the…
WED 1/12 While the Blunt Club has been lighting up the Priceless Inn, 5014 South Price in Tempe, for almost three years, promoter Adam Dumper (a.k.a. Dumperfoo) is promising something decidedly dope on Thursday, January 6, when the third round of the “All B-Boys Armory Hip-Hop Invasion” goes down. Two…
If your idea of a fun New Year’s Eve consists of sitting at home in front of the TV and doing shots of Tequila Rose while watching the ball drop in Times Square, consider this: Those poor East Coast bastards are freezing their buns off, and there are plenty of…
THU 30 We’ve considered hittin’ the sack early on Thursday, December 30, since we’re planning on at least 24 hours of New Year’s revelry beginning the next day. Then we heard about this month’s Thru the Wires show at Modified Arts, 407 East Roosevelt Street, and realized the experimental electronic…
The early reviews for Beyond the Sea, the Bobby Darin biopic on which Kevin Spacey did everything save for feeding the crew and sweeping the set, have been so hateful that a latecomer to the bashing bash is tempted to head straight for the spiked eggnog and let the man…
SAT 1/1 The year 2005 is only mere hours away, so you’d better get cracking on some resolutions quick, lest your better half will think you’re slacking in self-improvement skills. They already guilted you into snuffing out the cigarettes, so consider whipping your fat ass into shape. Plus, you’ve somehow…
I’ve been thinking about making some New Year’s resolutions. Normally I don’t bother; it’s too easy to give in to the bad habits I’ve honed to perfection, and let’s face it: Ice cream will always taste better than salad, and since I work at home and my spouse is gone…
Despite the reverence given to it in nearly every other corner of the world, the sport of soccer has never quite found its footing within the cynical hearts of the American sporting public. Here we don’t even call the sport by its proper name — football — reserving that term…
