There aren’t many entertainers who would guarantee you the “best Sunday night of your life.” But believe us when we say that New England-based musician Jason Anderson is one of those charismatic people who may just be able to do the job. Anderson (aka. – Wolf Colonel) is known in…
New Kids on the Block recently announced their reunion, a new album, and an upcoming tour. There’s no telling what their true motivation is. Maybe it was the mounting mortgage payments or the allure of some sweet MILF love from ladies who were promise-ringed during their first go-round. In sharp…
Perhaps we should all just admit it. There are only three times we pay attention to the Town of Guadalupe. The first is when we use Avenida del Yaqui as a shortcut to get away from I-10’s numbing rush-hour traffic. The second is when we want to buy cheap zarapes…
What a brooding pleasure it is to return to Christopher Nolan’s Gotham City — if “pleasure” is the right word for a movie that gazes so deeply and sometimes despairingly into the souls of restless men. In The Dark Knight, the continuation of Nolan’s superb 2005 reboot of the Batman…
I’ve always enjoyed ABBA — not in that post-hoc, so-bad-it’s-good way, but innocently, the way I like Phil Spector. To this day, howling along in my car to that echoing, cascading, multiply overdubbed wall of sound makes me feel like a member of some dippy but joyous cathedral choir. So…
Battlefield: Bad Company is a video game published by Electronic Arts for the Sony PlayStation 3 and Microsoft’s Xbox 360. It’s a first-person shooter. That means that in Battlefield: Bad Company you shoot, and the shooting is performed from a first-person perspective. Okay, let’s see here: Tools . . …
I’m sorry. It was my intention to review Desert Stages’ production of South Pacific this week, but I’m afraid I was so distracted by the obnoxious teenager who talked and yawned and text-messaged her way through the show’s opening-night performance that I missed much of what was happening onstage. Desert…
The Bay Area-based singer-songwriter is on tour and swings through Trunk Space to perform. (Read a recent New Times concert review here.) Tue., July 28, 8 p.m., 2009…
No, we’re not talking Dean Martin and meatballs. This delightful annual affair pays homage to the homeland of architect and Arcosanti founder Paolo Soleri with a scrumptious feast under the Vaults (pictured) and a performance of operative works by soprano Suzan Hanson, bass-baritone Dean Elzinga, and pianist Victoria Kirsch. The…
You’ve met them before, and you may have even loathed them in high school: the nerd, the jock, the popular girl, and the quirky/arty chick. But you haven’t met the versions of these 10th-grade archetypes who populate Nanette Burnstein’s lately very much admired new documentary, American Teen. Burnstein, whose The…
Some pretentious art critics think digital photography’s a con — that with the right software, you can turn a blurry snapshot of your ugly Aunt Sally into a computerized equivalent of the Mona Lisa. Yeah, the equipment matters, but as women all know, it’s talent, instruction, and a lot of…
The baseball-card-collector subculture is a far cry from that of a generation ago. Two decades back, folks could purchase packs of Topps and Fleer with pocket change. Today, one pack of cards, costing more than a gallon of gas, includes half the quantity, zero stats, and no stinking gum. One…
If your last get-together had all of the fun of a Tupperware party and the thrills of a snail race, you should look to the good folks of AZ Rockabilly for inspiration. The group’s Rock-A-Bella, a hepcat-and-kitten mélange of all things smooth and slick, hot-rods its way into your plans…
It’s been a while since we devoted ink/digital pixels to NunZilla, the punk-rock darlings of New Times cover-story fame (“Bad Habits,” April 5, 2007, Niki D’Andrea) and the group that infamously pulled one of the most-documented punk-rock charades this town has even seen (“More Bad Habits,” August 2, 2007, Niki…
Calling all bros, duders, and anyone who’s ever puked for sport: The World Series of Beer Pong is coming to Tempe. This, being the perfect opportunity to prove your ultimate bro-ness, is what you went to college for. So round up your best drunkard pals and enter your team for…
What can you expect from Ubiquity Records artist and badass producer John Beltran’s first-ever performance out this way? Everything. You see, one never knows where a Beltran cut will meander. Some tunes lean toward a quiet-storm chill-out factor inspired by Radiohead’s Nigel Godrich and even some New Age elements. Others,…
How do you tell someone that you found the girl you just broke up with dead along the railroad tracks? Was the breakup clean? If not, someone’s gonna be asking questions, right? Time to hit the road? With tons of punk-rock credibility under his belt from publications ranging from in-your-face…
Writer’s block has you in a chokehold, and you spend many a night writhing naked on the kitchen floor, awaiting some flare of inspiration. The ceiling lights shine down on you like football-stadium floodlights, and for the pity of the gods, you put on a spectacular show of self-flagellation, perfected…
Though we hate to generalize, we must in the case of those bodice-ripping potboilers called suspense novels. Generally speaking, they suck. Ours is not a time of giants like Greene, Hammett, Cain, and du Maurier. It’s an age of runts like Ludlum, Koontz, Follett, and Perry. Blah. As a writer,…
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country, said Roman poet Horace. However, if you’re more comfortable watching Stripes than enlisting, you might try Tempe Paintball as the remedy for your bloodlust. Every Thursday and Tuesday from noon to 9 p.m.,…
Worried that the New Times Summer of Sound: Experimental/Eclectic show is no bang for your five bucks? Then let us break it down for you: Black Carl: White kids playing super-awesome and authentic soul/funk. Andrew Jackson Jihad: Once before a gig at a family bookstore, lead singer Sean Bonnette nearly…
Say “pool party” to any woman and you’ll notice a slight quickening of the pulse as her underarms begin to moisten. Ever since middle school, when pool parties suddenly turned from games of Marco Polo to contests of puberty’s progress, those words enter into a woman’s neurotic mind and get…
