For gamers, E3 — the Electronics Entertainment Expo — is Christmas in July, only you don’t have to endure the Family Dinner from Hell while your new toys gather dust under the tree. Translation: It’s geek Nirvana. The annual industry gathering, held last week in Los Angeles, isn’t the chaotic,…
Considering all the public whimpering and hair-tearing I’ve done about the routine razing of really great old buildings, I have to hand a palm to the folks at the Children’s Museum of Phoenix, which has made its new home in downtown’s historic Monroe School. Rather than plow down this imposing…
Before we get to the macho stuff, we must give a small shout-out to 1130 The Restaurant, still the best thing that’s happened to Arizona Center since about 1990. Or since the last Miss Hooters contest. Now, the macho stuff. While it can’t compete with a bunch of big-boobed blondes…
Ah, the beloved T-shirt. First worn by the Brits in 1880, then called “under vests” by those same blokes (what a bunch of dorks), they weren’t accepted as outerwear until a very tasty Marlon Brando stretched the cotton fibers over his lick-worthy torso and made every red blooded woman in…
Much of what once made it bustling and lovely to look at is gone, but the shadow of downtown Phoenix casts a long memory. It’s a dark shadow filled with pretty sites: The San Carlos Hotel on Central Avenue, with its street-front portico and its swoopy neon sign; the Henry…
How does a quirky beardo from the tiny town of Wynne, Arkansas (pop. 8,615) come to write songs that are so beautiful and moving that they can only be referred to as “pieces?” Chances are, there was nothing else to do in a place that small for Chase Pagan, whose…
Who would have ever thought Stone Temple Pilots would top off 16 drug-and drama-addled years by hitting the road for a reunion tour? Then again, rehab’s expensive, and with at least three albums’ worth of solid music (out of five), the band can make a killing with 65 greatest-hits appearances…
It may be hard to believe, but John Mayer is a white guy suppressing his true soul music soul. Don’t believe us? Then check out these quotes from music czar, incredibly deep dude, and The Roots’ drummer Questlove, who wrote, produced, and performed on D’Angelo’s Voodoo. (An album, in our…
A theory: Yes, he hosted E!’s Talk Soup and starred as Michael Novotny on Showtime’s Queer As Folk. But as far as his onscreen presence goes, Hal Sparks is most hilarious (intentionally or not) in concentrated three-minutes-or-less chunks. The evidence: Everything out of his mouth on all of those VH1…
Believe it or not, P-town peeps, but there are plenty of other events going on this weekend besides that certain championship football game on Sunday afternoon that everyone seems to be all hyped up about. Case in point: SoCal mixmaster J.J. Keo will be staging a boffo birthday bash on…
Foodies Betty Fraser (pictured) and Richard Blais, a couple of contestants from the Bravo Network’s smash culinary bash Top Chef, bring their ladles and the 48-foot Top Chef truck to the Market to host a series of cooking demos and food tastings. There’ll be live, interactive shows from 8:30 to…
If someone asks to have words with you in an alley, expect fisticuffs. However, John Lynn, the host of Words in the Alley: Feral Poetry, just wants to stoke your latent creative juices. You see, Lynn used to secretly write poems until local open mics coaxed him out of his…
The Native American Basketball Invitational Tournament (NABI) has finally hit the big time, according to their Web site, which exclaims, “It doesn’t get any bigger than this!” Actually, we disagree. It should be much bigger. (Insert timely argument about our W.A.S.P. society here.) But we’ll take what we can get,…
Because they make no claim to anything beyond exploitation, there’s really not much you need to know about the chicken-fried clunkers of the Hillbilly Double Feature. Here are the lowlights: The first flick, 1976’s Dixie Dynamite, is about a pair of sisters who set out to avenge their murdered moonshiner…
The music of Teeth Mountain. It doesn’t belong here. On Planet Earth. Or in the Milky Way. No, the eight-piece ensemble must be posting up and composing on some Coast to Coast-like netherworld before traveling to some pod in Baltimore (their so-called home base… we’re not buying it) and scaring…
Think NCAA baseball is one big, ugly abomination on account of those aluminum bats? We think so, too, sometimes, though we do love the sport. That’s why the Arizona Collegiate Wood Bat League is so refreshing and truly the best of both worlds, meaning collegiate athletes get to show off…
Think NCAA baseball is one big, ugly abomination on account of those aluminum bats? We think so, too, sometimes, though we do love the sport. That’s why the Arizona Collegiate Wood Bat League is so refreshing and truly the best of both worlds, meaning collegiate athletes get to show off…
Hoops season was a bust. The Diamondbacks have been struggling mightily. The Coyotes . . . who the hell cares? Thank God it’s time for Arizona Cardinals Training Camp 2008. Our perennial laughingstocks – who’ve won a pitiful total of one playoff game in 61 years – have long been…
We suffer our share of PR come-ons, and as a rule, we place them on par with the hissing cockroach. The Bobcat 50 Years Unleashed North American Road Tour, however, is one of the most endearing idiotic notions we’ve encountered. Who, other than those starry-eyed romantics in the heavy-construction industry,…
He left the seat up. She painted the bedroom fuchsia. He used a photo of her mom for target practice. No wonder playwright Rich Orloff – whose Engagement Rules premières at Phoenix Theatre’s annual New Works Festival – takes his comic cues from other people’s relationships, because dysfunction is damn…
It’s been more than a century since the glory days of Wyatt Earp and Geronimo, yet boys of all ages are still playing cowboys and Indians. And even when semi-automatics replaced six-shooters and battles over land moved into the legal arena, the, um, game has remained exactly the same. Take,…
You’ve got your partner on all fours, bucking and rearing. The two of you met through an online dating service for equestrians, and you thought she was the one. But now, observing her on the floor, doing a botched-up half-pass and neighing uncertainly, you realize she lacks commitment. You suddenly…
