It’s First Friday time again. Yay! Right? Actually, boo (well, kind of). Ever since the monthly shebang caught on with the mainstream (example no. 1: emo kids from Mesa’s Dobson High School; example no. 2: Mercedes Benz-driving Scottsdale folks of all ages), it’s been nearly impossible to scope out the…
A geodesic dome is the only structure made by man that strengthens proportionately to each increase in size. The geo’s also considered one of the most stable forms of construction, and it’s pretty cool-looking, to boot – think Epcot Center, Expo 67, Silent Running. So why aren’t we all lounging…
As a small child, you wore those moon boots from your Halloween costume to school everyday. When you were a teenager, your parents begged you to make good grades and don a wardrobe like the mannequins at The Gap. Instead, you started pulling Ds in your best subjects and wearing…
Life in England during the early ’80s wasn’t an easy slog. It was quite bollocks, in fact, what with the Tories putting the screws to the working class and all. One of the bright spots during the first part of the Ray-Ban decade, however, was the isle’s lush music scene,…
It’s oft-times impossible to marinate our ears to all of the talented bands out there. That’s why the “Influences” section on MySpace is so important, and the first column of text that we tend to look at before checking out the downloadable tunes. When we visited the music page for…
She’ll never be allowed to live down that oddball wig she wore in her most famous film role, but Carrie Fisher has so much more to offer than Princess Leia and her Star Wars cinnamon-bun ’do, and she’ll prove it with the new Spy in the House of Me. Fisher…
If you’ve ever had a garage sale, you’ve witnessed that special breed of bargain shopper. As soon as you put out the signs, they’re dive-rolling out of their minivans to get the so-called best stuff. And here’s the creepy part. They’re not interested in your accidentally underpriced box of one-of-a-kind…
Forget for a minute that Marcus Miller – who was one of Miles Davis’ last collaborators – is one of the best bass players in the entire world. The “Superman of Soul” is also totally schooled in clarinet, bass clarinet, saxophone, and keyboard, and he’s produced works by Luther Vandross,…
Our accountant kept telling us, “Diversify.” We took that to mean, “Break up with your boyfriend and try out for a stripper gig.” Humiliating on both counts. Now we realize that the bean counter was gabbing about the Tres de Mayo Diverse-Fi Five-Year Anniversary Party featuring sounds by Fetti Profoun,…
We’ve always figured that near-fame must be infinitely better than the thing itself. If you can be eternally on the verge, like country-rockin’ Cross Canadian Ragweed, man, you’re livin’ the dream. But these smokin’ Okies aren’t long for the intimate kind of gig they’ll play at Martini Ranch so squeeze…
Gigantic, pissed-off chickens with teeth. That’s the impression created by the imposing models on display in the “Feathered Dinosaurs and the Origins of Flight” exhibit. After you check out these dentally impressive fowl, run for your life to Arizona Science Center and marvel at the computer-controlled dino-matrons galore featured in…
Search Google with the phrase “ska sucks” and you’ll encounter various vitriolic ventings about how the musical style blows. It’s not a surprise, really, as ska has long been considered the whipping boy among musical misanthropes, who unilaterally deride its seemingly repetitive nature and upbeat spirit, or how bands like…
The 2007 New York Mets suffered a magnificent collapse. It was one of the greatest in baseball history, even loftier, in many minds, than that of the 1969 Chicago Cubs, who squandered a 9.5-game lead to . . . the New York Mets. While those Amazin’ Mets won the ’69…
By Jonathan McNamara On April 29, Carrie Fisher kicked off the first of six performances of her one-woman tour de force Spy in the House of Me at Theater 4301. Spy,which is roughly taken from her other show Wishful Drinking, is heavy on audience interaction. It begins and ends with…
By Jonathan McNamara In the wake of the Suns’ loss there was one event this weekend that sports fans could totally rock out to. I’m talking about curling, the sport in which boulders are slid across ice (Get it? Rock out . . . boulder . . . never mind)…
Not long ago, I went to a play in East L.A., where I ran into a fantastic young Latina filmmaker named Almudena Carracedo (www.madeinla.com). She’s from Madrid. I told her how I visited the town of Najera in the La Rioja region of Spain a couple of years ago, to…
Watching Marilyn Monroe in Cinemascope, a critic once wrote, is “like being smothered in baked Alaska.” Reading that as a teenager raised some thrilling questions: Is that good or bad? What is “baked Alaska”? And then a realization: How singular it must be for a woman — or a filmmaker…
Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg wrote Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle with the novel idea: What if you made a John Hughes movie, but instead of writing garishly caricatured bit players with names like Long Duk Dong, you cast an Asian actor as the smart, handsome, upwardly mobile…
Could have sworn I’ve seen this episode of Baby Mama before — like sometime in January 2007, when it was originally titled “The Baby Show” and aired on the other prime-time series starring Tina Fey, 30 Rock. (Waitaminute — you say Baby Mama’s a movie and not a TV show?…
She’s what’s politely called a curmudgeon, but more commonly called a bitch. Ruth Steiner is a short-tempered, arrogant, bossy woman “of a certain age,” a celebrated writer of stories who’s been slumming as a literature professor for a little while. One of her students, Lisa, shows some promise, and Ruth…
Earnest, sad, and righteous, they are not. More inspired by M*A*S*H or Dr. Strangelove than The Deer Hunter or Coming Home, a new pack of political films that defy the clichés of the post-9/11 Iraq War cinema has arrived. Notwithstanding a few holdovers of moral outrage (Kimberly Peirce’s Stop-Loss, Nick…
Atlus’ Baroque imagines eternal life in gaming limbo. It isn’t pretty. First of all: God bless Atlus. As a publisher devoted to bringing obscure Japanese gaming gems to the West — basically, the much-needed heir apparent of Working Designs — Atlus is the only hope for gamers who crave oddball,…
