Local nightcrawlers who’ve grown tired of the tepid Tranzylvania but still wanna let their freak flags fly are in luck, as the twisted turntablists of debaucherous DJ collective Sadisco descend upon Homme’s Upstairs Bar for S_. The wicked weekly club night won’t feature the same surreal and salacious themes as…
Mail artists are fond of telling their fans that the mail-art movement began with Cleopatra, who had herself delivered in a rolled-up carpet to Julius Caesar thousands of years ago. Whatever its beginnings, the medium (which some say is among the longest-lasting art movements in history) has lately been enjoying…
Lowest Common Denominator-ism writ large and engraved in stone like the Ten Commandments according to Cecil B. DeMille, the Hollywood blockbuster is often an allegory for itself. Walt Disney, the notoriously litigious studio that successfully changed the nation’s copyright laws to protect its trademark Mickey Mouse but more recently declared,…
Mystery man of the long-ago Australian new wave, Ray Lawrence evidently has grown less finicky. Lawrence, now 59, made his feature debut with the phantasmagoric Bliss, the famous flop of the 1985 Cannes Film Festival. He then licked his wounds and directed TV commercials for 16 years before reappearing with…
The idea of “getting axed” is exploited for maximum double-entendre value in Severance, a grisly horror-comedy from the U.K. that has its tongue planted so firmly in its cheek that you half expect it to pop out the other side. Yes, heads (and, in one indelible bit, a severed foot)…
I ran from the theater during curtain calls for Nearly Naked’s production of Bat Boy: The Musical the other night, but not because I was either unhappy with or overcome by what I’d seen. I was fleeing because, during the show’s final number, I’d received a call from a young…
Bold proclamation time: There wouldn’t even be an Xbox 360 without Halo. Microsoft lost billions on the original Xbox even with its mega-successful sci-fi games, so it’s hard to imagine the red ink that would have spilled without them; even suggesting a second go at the console business would’ve had…
The Sergio Leone Anthology (MGM) Sergio Leone made westerns like Wagner made ditties. This essential boxed set — four films with four discs of supplemental material, much of it scholarly and insightful — shows the Italian director supplanting the elegiac Monument Valley iconography of John Ford with a darker, ruder,…
DISCO INFERNO Tanning, my love COOL IT Inside, outside — just get wet DIVER DOWN Deep float ABSTRACT RELIEF Cold, cold art STEAMED Yoga that’s so not cool SISTER ACT Sibling authors empty the nest WATER WORLDS Be swept away on page and screen NOW WATCH THIS Coming soon to…
I can tell it’s summer because my left arm resembles a relief map of Utah. In middle age I’ve developed an aversion to sunlight, which causes my skin, after a mere five minutes outdoors, to burst with angry red welts that itch like mad for a week. I threw caution…
For anyone under 18, finding liquid liberation from the scorching summertime heat ain’t that hard a feat, as P-Town provides many an oasis — from wacky water parks to crowded community pools to funky interactive fountains — geared toward drenching massive mobs of moppets. As for grownups? Not so much…
The Valley is a land of contradictions when it comes to staying wet and keeping cool. For example, you hear that oft-quoted factoid that Arizona is tops in the nation regarding boats per capita. And despite the absence of natural bodies of water in our landlocked town, Phoenix is a…
The best advice you can give a Phoenician in summer (other than, “Get the hell out!”) is: Stay hydrated. So gulp a bottle of water and head to the cool climes of the lower level of the Tempe Public Library, or the elegant (and likely deserted this time of year)…
Hot yoga is the place to go if your shins need a good sweat. That’s what I discovered after taking a class at Hot Yoga on 16th Street just north of Bethany Home Road. I was shocked when I looked down after only five minutes of warm-up poses to find…
Remember that night in the tent when you were 5 and really, really had to wee but were afraid to walk across the campground, yet your big brother persuaded you — whispering, snug in his sleeping bag alongside yours — to just go in the corner, right there near the…
The Messages From Water series (1999-2004), by Masaru Emoto (HADO Publishing) You’ll appreciate water as a living and feeling being after delving into these glorious image-based books. Using lightning-fast photography, Japanese scholars and scientists captured hyper-close-ups of water crystals. Each photograph transforms the mundane — like tap water in Japan…
Summer movie season has arrived. There are an insane number of films on the following list, and plenty of room for optimism. To that end, we’ve tried to cut back on the snarky comments about pointless sequels and loathsome actors — although it’s nearly impossible to let those infernal pirates…
After living in Phoenix for more than 30 years, I wanted some rain. I figured I was owed some rain. So when my husband was accepted into the graduate program at the University of Oregon in Eugene, I almost ran there. I made him accept the school’s offer, our new…
Art definitely imitates life in Laurie Notaro’s new book, her first novel, in which a young wife packs up and leaves Phoenix for her husband’s new job at a small, northwestern university. If you’re lucky enough to escape town this summer, take Notaro along to the beach. Or if you’re…
There is a moment in “Dead Dogs and Gym Teachers,” the 14th episode of the brilliant but canceled television series Freaks and Geeks, when gangly, bespectacled, picked-last-in-gym-class high school freshman Bill Haverchuck (Martin Starr) arrives home from school, makes himself a grilled cheese sandwich, and sits down to watch an…
“I think the public doesn’t care about reviews,” says Eli Roth, writer-director of Hostel Part II, which — surprise! — isn’t being shown to the press before it opens Friday on more than 2,500 screens. Still, the 35-year-old perpetrator of high-grossing “torture porn” does appreciate critical kindness when he sees…
Eli Roth is obviously a poseur, but on the evidence of Hostel: Part II, he’s also kind of a pussy. Anyone can string a naked woman up by the ankles and slit her throat. Although I acknowledge it takes a little extra something to position a Eurotrash villainess beneath her…
