Thu 6/17 Sure, New York strip is plenty tasty, as is Omaha steak. But ladies with a taste for beefcake of a foreign flavor best tie on the drool bib. The Thunder From Down Under — Australia’s world-famous male revue — gets local juices flowing this Thursday, June 17. The…
Reviews by Gina Cavallo Collins and Kathleen Vanesian “Flights of Fancy” at Sky Harbor Airport: Nestled in six wall cases on the way to Southwest and America West gates is another of the Sky Harbor Art Program’s engaging exhibitions. “Flights of Fancy” includes artwork by 26 Arizona artists all relating…
Thu 10 Let your soul glow on Thursday, June 10, as The Chi-Lites, The Stylistics, Cuba Gooding Sr. and Harold Melvin’s Blue Notes take the Dodge Theatre stage, 400 West Washington, for the Super ’70s Soul Jam. The big ‘fros, polyester jump suits, and steamed funk of the blaxploitation era…
Chucky Spears has constructed a space to showcase his deconstructed denim. On the first Friday in June, he’s surrounded by beautiful women. Spears’ tiny studio, at Seventh Street and Fillmore in downtown Phoenix, is crammed full of people — friends, First Friday revelers and several models. Spears fields phone calls…
6/12-6/13 Even the most diehard gearhead would be hard-pressed to endure four hours of outdoor racing in the scorching furnace that is the Valley in June. But what if the action were moved indoors for 120 miles of driving — in which the competition was heated, but the climate remained…
Fri 6/11 If genetic soda jerks made a milk shake of Allen Ginsberg’s, Baxter Black’s and George Carlin’s DNA, they’d get JL Reed — beatnik, cowboy, social critic — who appears from 8 to 10 p.m. Friday, June 11, at the Trunk Space, a First Friday stop on Grand Avenue’s…
It’s probably true that behind every great man stands a great woman. And if you’re Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon, that woman is most likely wearing a rhinestone tiara. And clutching a stopwatch. And laughing a whole lot. Because Phoenix First Lady Christa Severns finds humor in pretty much everything –…
I got a bead on the overall quality of art shown this past First Friday in downtown Phoenix when I ended up rating a trip through the funky, skanky Hermanos Drive-In Food Market on Grand Avenue the real high point of the evening. So maybe I’m being just a bit…
Those seeking a spiritual counterpart to the yin of Lynne Ramsay’s masterfully moody Morvern Callar will find their yang in David Mackenzie’s exquisitely sorrowful Young Adam. Art-house aficionados may recall that in Ramsay’s recent film, a young male writer commits suicide, leaving his simple girlfriend to absorb his very being…
I’ve just seen a film that is either a brilliant parody of scholarly documentaries or else final proof that I am the stupidest person on Earth. Obviously, I prefer to believe the former — that What the #$*! Do We Know: A Quantum Fable is a genius of a mockumentary…
Beware the exclamation point. When found at the end of a title, it almost inevitably signals a level of self-hype rarely justified by the content of whatever it hopes to name. In the case of the movie Saved! — an amusing, if facile, comedy about a good Christian girl gone…
So let’s get this straight: You’re a much-loved comedian who just did a low-budget, multi-award-winning film with an acclaimed up-and-coming director. In recent years, thanks in part to your work with the younger, edgier filmmaking set, you’re starting to be taken seriously as an actor. You even managed to score…
“I’m having a fucking nervous breakdown!” Ask author Laurie Notaro how she’s doing, and you may get an answer like that. We did. It’s the kind of reply everyone wants to spit out at some point, but rarely does. That sort of no-holds-barred attitude is what’s made Notaro’s last two…
Rich Moss is probably stretching the truth even thinner than one of his opponents’ hamstrings when he calls cage fighting “a gentle sport.” After all, in his nine Rage in the Cage bouts, the number-two-ranked middleweight champ has either knocked out or beaten his opponents into submission using his patented…
Sat 6/12 An old Sesame Street ditty (“One of these things is not like the others . . .”) will prove useful this Saturday, June 12, when Hamburger Mary’s hosts the AIDS Walk Arizona Launch party at 5111 North Seventh Street. The myriad events at the fund raiser include Chelle’s…
6/11-6/20 With titles such as Death and Taxes, The Trouble With Death and A Prison in the Heart in its repertoire, Phoenix-based Sharkey Productions could win a prize for the most depressing act in town. But since the independent theater company prides itself on producing original plays with a touch…
JUNE Around the World in 80 Days STARRING: Jackie Chan, Steve Coogan, Cécile De France, Jim Broadbent DIRECTOR: Frank Coraci WRITERS: David Goldstein, David Benullo, Michael Weiss . . . and Jules Verne PREMISE: Chan and Coogan take to the skies in the umpteenth remake of this classic novel. OUTLOOK:…
Used to be that when the triple digits rolled around, everyone raced indoors and stayed there ’til Halloween. Then, sometime in the mid-’80s, as legend has it, a Scottsdale dishwasher hosing down some scarcely used outdoor furniture on a blistering June afternoon noted that the spray from his nozzle had…
Summer is almost here, and theater companies are winding down their seasons, mostly with fluffy nonsense meant to lure us out of our air-conditioned caves. As ever, Nearly Naked Theatre is giving the finger to the notion that it’s too hot to think; thus, its production of Gilgamesh, an ancient…
Thu 3 Poor Char’s already has the blues, and the Bad News just keeps on a-comin’. The Bad News Blues Band maintains its weekly gig at “The House That Blues Built” on Thursday, June 3. The Tucson band claims to be “internationally acclaimed,” and recent developments indicate that it just…
Feeling creative, but need a jump start? We crawled the local bars, quizzing (okay, sometimes harassing) the help and compiling a list of cool summer drinks. Bartenders at several favorite Valley spots were kind enough to share signature (sometimes secret) recipes — so you can whip up everything from a…
Last month, the Arizona Legislature killed a bill that would have required convicted drunken drivers to attach a fluorescent sticker to their auto license plates. Republican Senator Slade Mead, who introduced the bill, isn’t discouraged — he plans to reintroduce the bill, because he swears that only shame will keep…
