Reggae-like grooves that quote 1960s Jamaica. Funk-soaked keyboards, circa 1973. Santana-esque electric guitar solos. No way a modern-day band can successfully fuse all of these elements into something listenable, groovy, and tight. Well, we felt this way until we were made hip to Alfred Howard & the K23, a San…
This year’s Phoenix ConGames 2008 will definitely be filled with swordplay and sorcery. But with the recent passing of Dungeons & Dragons co-creator Gary Gygax, gaming geeks may be a bit more somber. Or maybe not. Maybe the d20s will roll into Mesa Convention Center and really geek it up…
While shagging one of our emotionally unavailable conquests, he screamed our name. (We’re coldhearted. It meant nothing.) But when he started watching an anime DVD on his big screen, we saw pink and gold twittering birds everywhere, then drew a heart in the steam on the window. Needless to say,…
While shagging one of our emotionally unavailable conquests, he screamed our name. (We’re coldhearted. It meant nothing.) But when he started watching an anime DVD on his big screen, we saw pink and gold twittering birds everywhere, then drew a heart in the steam on the window. Needless to say,…
It’s gotten so we don’t even see them, the carefully placed product endorsements that are part of everyday life. On an episode of American Idol, Simon Cowell raises to his lips a monstrous neon tumbler emblazoned with the Coca-Cola logo, and what we see is a man taking a drink…
We hadn’t seen a portraiture group show that knocked our socks off for a long time. We hadn’t, that is, until we checked out “The Portrait” exhibit, which features works of a different breed entirely. Local photographer, eye lounge art-collective member, and show curator Lindsay Palmer gathered works by many…
Portrait artist Derek Wilkinson is among good company, the likes of Da Vinci, Rembrandt, and Van Gogh. Then again, Da Vinci was charged with sodomy, Rembrandt bedded his maid, and Van Gogh mutilated his own ear. Yikes. Luckily, it’s their work we remember, not their personal lives. “I think Rembrandt’s…
You win a jillion dollars in the lottery. First order of business? 48-hour bender of cocaine and hookers, of course. But, after that, you want to invest in something that has sustainable value. So you shell out for a Van Gogh. Safe investment, right? Maybe not. Check out Phoenix Art…
The only way to experience a group this vast, colorful, and earthbound is to simply just listen. An excessive use of adjectives seems unjust. Faun Fables and its creator, Dawn McCarthy, seamlessly draw from a spiritual and mythological realm to convey world sounds that are entrancing. The expression “song telling”…
When was the last time you saw a really good live glockenspiel performance? Can’t recall, eh? Well, leave it to Germany – the same country that worships David Hasselhoff – to incorporate the noble instrument (which is basically a higher-pitched xylophone) into an experimental/progressive metal band. No, we’re not talking…
After a hot start, the Arizona Diamondbacks have been on a serious slide of late. With a boatload of road games coming up – including two separate three-city stops to the Midwest and East coast – and a young club to boot, one has to wonder if a June swoon…
On the one hand, the Arizona Rattlers had nothing to lose. On the other, everything was at stake when they made that preseason promissory note of a 2008 postseason appearance. Who does that shit? Well, whatever it might say about their sanity, the Rattlers displayed a clangin’ set of cojones,…
There are certain things that make for a good night. Finding the hottest party in town, maintaining a lack of mascara globs throughout the evening, and successfully averting visible panty lines. Throw in a casual hookup without catching an STD and, baby, you’re good. But what makes for the best…
Knock balls around the Center’s 15 Rebound Ace-surfaced courts for free all day long. Participants are encouraged to bring used pairs of tennis shoes for donation to the Nike Reuse a Shoe Program. Sat., June 14, 8 a.m., 2008…
Who doesn’t love watching two dozen tall, lanky women panting, sweating, and bumping up against each other? If you do (and we definitely do), then watch the Phoenix Mercury get down and dirty with the Connecticut Sun. In this season’s WNBA preseason opener, Connecticut whipped the Mercury’s ass, so our…
By Jillian Sloan Tatiana Sorokko, model and contributing editor to Harper’s Bazaar, opened her closet and history to audiences on Tuesday, June 10 during her lecture entitled “Collecting Haute Couture” part of an on-going exhibit at Phoenix Art Museum featuring works by American designer Ralph Rucci. Tatiana Sorokko poses with…
By Jonathan McNamara With memorial day long gone, the wait may have seemed a bit longer but once again the weekend is upon us. Richard Cheese and Lounge Against the Machine Dick Cheese is infamous among music fans. Even if you don’t recognize the name, odds are good you recognize…
Behold Adam Sandler, in a passable Israeli accent and outsize codpiece, as Zohan the Mossad super-heavy: catching barbecued fish in his butt crack on a Tel Aviv beach, repelling bullets with his nostril, sculpting hand grenades into toy poodles for delighted Palestinian children while making mincemeat of an Arab terrorist…
It’s been 20 years since Errol Morris made The Thin Blue Line — a found “noir” that served to free an innocent man convicted of murder. Gathering evidence and dramatizing testimony, Morris’s movie circled around a single, unrepresentable event — the death of a cop on a lonely stretch of…
In “Fatso,” a short story by Israeli writer Etgar Keret, monogamy takes a bizarre vacation when the narrator’s pretty girlfriend morphs, every night, into a hairy, beer-guzzling macho soccer fanatic who takes her lover to steak restaurants and sleazy bars — an experience as unexpectedly delightful to him as the…
John Edwards might see two Americas, but this simpleminded little game enthusiast is more preoccupied with America’s two Wii owners. One is the Nintendo fan: the cat who bought a GameCube, Nintendo 64, every incarnation of the Game Boy — and anything Nintendo releases with a “Mario” or “Zelda” in…
I’ve seen Smokey Joe’s Café too many times over the past decade to have been very excited about attending Black Theatre Troupe’s current production last weekend. And as I sat in the Herberger Stage West, staring at Thom Gilseth’s shabbily constructed curtain drop, I thought, If the set design is…
