You don’t know bass improv until you’ve heard the sweet stylings of David Friesen. In the past two years, he’s been named one of the top 20 most influential jazz bass players of all time and inducted into the Oregon Music Hall of Fame. Friesen performs a duo concert with…
You’d think that since we plow through novels and nonfiction reads like nobody’s business, we would be wise to the best strategy for scoring big at the VNSA Book Sale. But no, even we can learn something at the annual festival for superduper literature nerds. For years, we’ve heard that…
Come check out the hottest water accessories — from fishing boats to scuba gear — at the 37th Arizona National Boat and Watersports Expo. Wed., Feb. 6, 3-9 p.m.; Thu., Feb. 7, 12-9 p.m.; Fri., Feb. 8, 12-9 p.m.; Sat., Feb. 9, 10 a.m.-9 p.m.; Sun., Feb. 10, 10 a.m.-6…
The Chinese culture is a lot older than ours, so they must know what they’re doing when they salute the beastly Rattus rattus during the Chinese New Year Cultural and Cuisine Festival. The event, scheduled features ethnic cuisine, live entertainment, and a Year of the Rat ceremony at noon Friday…
More than a billion people watched world-class guitarist Tommy Emmanuel perform at the closing ceremony of the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney. One of the finest finger-picking guitarists alive, the 52-year-old Emmanuel was selected to represent his native Australia, where he’s pretty much a national hero. But here, he enjoys…
The Phoenix Suns seem to roll over whenever they take on the cupcakes of the NBA. The Atlanta Hawks on the road. The Miami Heat at freaking home. Two losses in Minneapolis to the bloody Timberwolves. All we can say is we hope the Suns don’t play possum when the…
David Wilson’s curmudgeonly showcase for the freakishly brilliant in Culver City, CA, is about as far as you can get get from, say, MoMA on this plane of existence. This is a good thing. Past exhibitions have included dogs of the Soviet space program, flowers created from the scales of…
I used to know a crazy lady who looked exactly like Cloris Leachman. Ella was the kind of crazy that can never be cured; the kind of crazy that struck fear in the hearts of her friends and family, that caused former employees to change their telephone numbers after she…
I hate it when people fly into Phoenix Sky Harbor for the first time. They always emerge from the plane to say, “Wow, the city is not exactly what I imagined, it’s just so . . . just so . . . (And I think: Come on, bitch, spit it…
Fiddler on the Roof: It is, of course, too much to ask that we should make it through a single theater season without this kosher chestnut getting dusted off for our perusal. God forbid we should have to not hear “If I Were a Rich Man” or “Sunrise, Sunset” for…
Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden’s Sugar, which premièred in the U.S. Dramatic Competition at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival (and was inexplicably shut out at the awards right about baseball as any movie I’ve ever seen. It gets the hum of the lights in the ozone-heavy summer air and the…
Perhaps the most oft-quoted line from Zack Snyder’s cinematic adaptation of the Frank Miller graphic novel 300 is, “Tonight we dine in hell!” Chowing down on a box of Butterfinger Minis during a screening of Meet the Spartans, you will truly understand what that means. You remember 300, right? A…
A fourth Rambo? The question isn’t why; it’s what took him so long. Was America’s avenging angel of meat just planning to sit out Fallujah and what we’re cooking up for Iran and Syria? (Oops. Pretend that last part was redacted.) Okay, sure, last time we saw John Rambo, 20…
Here’s a one-word review of Nearly Naked Theatre’s production of As Bees in Honey Drown: Phew! And here’s a 601-word one: What a relief it was to attend a show at Nearly Naked, one of my favorite theater companies, that I enjoyed nearly as much as I’ve enjoyed so many…
Aqua Teen Hunger Force: 5 (Warner Bros.) Barn of the Naked Dead (Legend House) Bordertown (THINKFilm) Canvas (Universal) Chancer: Series 2 (Acorn Media) The Comebacks (Fox) Curb Your Enthusiasm: The Complete Sixth Season (HBO) Daddy Day Camp (Sony) Damages: The Complete First Season (Sony) Drumline: Special Edition (Fox) El Cid:…
The King of Kong (New Line) Seth Gordon’s best-of-2007 documentary about the battle for Donkey Kong supremacy remains a work in progress: Billy Mitchell, the longtime titleholder dethroned by Steve Wiebe over the course of this hysterical, thrilling, and occasionally sad little film, recently reclaimed the throne — and Wiebe…
The very first time I saw the Wii’s motion-sensitive “Wiimote,” a single thought bounced in my head like a toddler on corn syrup: Finally we’re gonna get an f-ing brilliant lightsaber game. It was inevitable, a perfect match for the technology. Never again would I be caught doing the Star…
We always thought that Jazzy Jeff got the raw end of the deal when he parted ways with that freaky-bubbly dude who went on to take TV by storm as the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, then conquered Hollywood and the delightfully luscious creature named Jada Pinkett. How fair is…
Art-jewelry designer Michael Sugarman is, interestingly enough, a former rock musician, and he brings that Guitar Hero spirit to his exquisite pieces, which are wild but not crazy, if you catch our drift. It’s our guess that Sugarman brings home a lot more bling these days, too. Thu., Jan. 31;…
Despite what you hear on the radio, true hip-hop isn’t about Escalades, VIP rooms, or “Superman[ing] that ho.” In fact, local dance troupe Foot Klan equates hip-hop with “higher inner peace helping other people.” Representing the local scene since the early ’90s, the Klan’s goal is to enrich the community…
Remixing classic tunes into booty-shaking dance songs is a tricky business. Mess with the original’s integrity too much and folks aren’t going to want to move their feet. On the other hand, some reinterpretations don’t even sound like the original mash-ups, save for an oddly placed, out-of-synch backbeat. The Los…
Most people would finger George Romero’s 1968 Night of the Living Dead as the first modern horror film, but what about the movie that most influenced Romero? That would be 1964’s The Last Man on Earth, the first cinematic take on Richard Matheson’s 1954 book I Am Legend. (The second…
