Arts & Culture

The Arizona State women’s soccer team has not advanced past the first round in the NCAA tournament since George W. Bush had strong approval ratings, but the team’s hopes are sky-high this year. The Sun Devils return a corps of starters from the team that finished fourth in the Pac-12,…

Southern California in the 1980s was a crazy time and place for the region’s hardcord punk milieu. In his book on the topic, We Got Power! Hardcore Punk Scenes from 1980s Southern California, visual artist Cameron Jamie likens photographing punk shows to photographing a crime scene. The book plays out…

If Walter White’s the most famous chemist you can think of, you might be due for a history lesson. Kristin Hendrickson, from ASU’s school of chemistry and biochemistry, obliges with her upcoming lecture on one of the first woman scientiests: Maria the Prophetess, a.k.a. Maria the Jewess, a.k.a. Maria, Sister…

Comments from readers during signings for J.A. Jance’s fourth novel led the bestselling author to realize that her Seattle cop character J.P. Beaumont is an alcoholic, sending him to rehab near Wickenburg in the next installment. But it would be another 13 years before Beaumont met Joanna Brady, the Arizona…

When the average bro thinks of sports on a horse, he pictures snooty trust-fund types whacking balls in games of horseback croquet or uber-rich presidential candidates shipping ponies overseas to compete in horse ballet. He’s not wrong. But there was a time when horses were more than dance partners, and…

You might be in the groove of separating out your aluminum cans, but Paraguay’s Recycled Orchestra goes next level with instruments made from landfill trash. Dr. Daniel Piper will speak about the group during the “Musical Innovation and Social Change in Latin America” lecture at the Musical Instrument Museum Saturday,…

While exercise may come naturally to some, the rest of us need some thorough persuasion. Thankfully, there are events like the Phoenix Neon Dash that disguise burning calories as something much more enjoyable. This colorful 5K course is a nighttime fusion of foam, neon, field games, giveaways, glow-in-the-dark accessories, music,…

If you mourn the loss of Comedy Central’s Chappelle’s Show and still hold onto the hope that HBO’s Flight of the Conchords will return for a third season, we have some good news. While these long-lost laugh makers may not be making a comeback on your favorite cable comedies, they…

Whether you have only a tiny kernel of a funny idea that wouldn’t add up to half a tweet or you have long, entertaining stories that need to be chopped up and polished, it’s time to shape up if you intend to be a soldier of hilarity. Comedy commandant Tony…

Vegetarians, you don’t want to know what the future of food production looks like if it’s anything similar to the eats seen in the Charlton Heston police/sci-fi thriller Soylent Green. The 1973 Saturn Award-winning film finds Heston in 2020 and the planet suffering global warming and over-population. Food is in…

Three ASU art professors have banded together to explore the idea that complexity can exist within what appears to be simplicity. For inspiration printmaker Mary Hood, sculptor Mary Neubauer, and painter-drawer Janice Pittsley look to utopia — specifically Greece’s Arcadia, a region historically reknowned for its paradisiacal landscape and its…

No matter what you’re craving, it’s on the table during Arizona Fall Restaurant Week, the annual event that draws food lovers to local restaurants with the lure of specially priced prix fixe menus. For 9 straight days, more than 100 Phoenix-area restaurants will offer dinner for either $30 or $40…

Playwright Annie Baker uses silence — the pauses before and after tangents — to capture an audience’s psyche. She told the New Yorker she doesn’t consciously write to an academically defined style: “Realism, naturalism — are you talking about, like, Ibsen?” (She, like, isn’t.) Baker’s The Flick, which enchanted and…

Whether you’re looking for a way to wow your art-loving friends at the next First Friday or simply want an up-close and personal preview of the downtown art scene, the Artlink Collectors Tour is your multi-stop ticket to artsy enlightenment. Organized by the curator of modern and contemporary art for…

Phoenix-based home decor company Handmade Riot is throwing its one-year anniversary party at Palabra Collective in downtown Phoenix this Friday…

There are plenty of ways to measure an epic night out: booze, body paint, drunkenly consuming a short stack at two in the morning…. Fortunately for us, this Friday night promises to be one of them, as Los Angeles creative Tom Kirlin brings his Pancakes and Booze Art Show back…

In honor of National Yoga Month, we’re sitting down with some of the Valley’s favorite instructors to find out how they first got involved in yoga, how it changed their life, and why they believe everybody should incorporate yoga in their lives. Our first instructor is Anton Mackey, whom you…

Attention creative types of the Valley: If you happen to have a project brewing that’s of a particularly interesting, unusual, or exotic nature that’s gonna be finished in the next six weeks or so, then Sahar Afi Mitchell and Stephen Strage want to hear about it. And possibly showcase it…