Email Author Robrt L. Pela

2009 Stories by Robrt L. Pela

• Katz’s Deli Sandwiches Have Been Replaced with Postino’s Apple Bruschetta — and We Wonder Who’s Next

  published May 21, 2009

  "Okay, so, the guy was like a total loser." "No way!" "Way. His Facebook photo is like 20 years old, and he... More >>

• Hooray for Hollyweird

  published May 21, 2009

  Let’s say you’re a gay teenager, and you’re growing up in the barrio in Hollywood. You can count on being picked on for being... More >>

• Ring of Fire at Broadway Palm Dinner Theater Makes Johnny Cash Cute

  published May 14, 2009

  I like to think that Johnny Cash, the country music singer-songwriter and American institution, mellowed with age. I suspect that late in life,... More >>

• Cruel Twist of Faith

  published May 14, 2009

  Hang on to your wimples. The Seduction of Almighty God is here, and it’s sure to have conservative religious types twisting in their pews... More >>

• So Many Madison Square Gardens, So Little Time

  published May 7, 2009

  Someone threw a dead fish at me at Madison Square Garden. It hit me square on top of the head, and my scalp smelled like mackerel for the rest of... More >>

• Photo Synthesis

  published May 7, 2009

  Photography, like any other art form, has its own language. It’s a language that in recent years has been codified and restructured and... More >>

• Revenge of a King Is a Thuggish Hamlet

  published April 30, 2009

  Okay, seriously: I'm too old and too uncool and, frankly, too white to have enjoyed Black Theatre Troupe's Revenge of a King. Herb... More >>

• Model Prisoner

  published April 30, 2009

  Only diehard Sarah Wayne Callies fans recall her as Kate O’Malley on TV’s quick-to-vanish Queens Supreme, or her starring role... More >>

• Design of the Times

  published April 23, 2009

  To heck with Home and Garden Television -- at least for today. The Phoenix Contemporary Design Fair will preempt HGTV in the hearts and minds of... More >>

• Fully Naked Theater

  published April 23, 2009

  The dying queen of Athens is back, but chances are we won’t immediately recognize her in Nearly Naked Theatre’s workshop production... More >>

• Scottsdale’s SkySong Is One of the Few Phoenix Development Plans That Will Actually See Completion – Too Bad It’s So Ugly

  published April 16, 2009

  I'm always whining about how city planners here appear not to have any real success at continued development; that we're a community continually... More >>

• Laughing Matters

  published April 16, 2009

  The economy sucks. Your house is worth half what it was when you bought it. Your 401k has been bludgeoned to within an inch of its life. You... More >>

• Bless Our Homo

  published April 16, 2009

  It seems, somehow, a little late in the game for another film about the religious condemnation of homosexuality. But while Daniel Karslake’s... More >>

• Tinseltown Without Pity

  published April 16, 2009

  In act one, scene one of Jane Martin's play Somebody/Nobody, an actress enters in an evening dress covered in blood. The story is set,... More >>

• Columbinus Interprets the Columbine Shootings Into Must-See Theater

  published April 9, 2009

  When I got home from the theater the other night, I immediately updated my Facebook page. I typed a note to the virtual community that read, "Two... More >>

• You May Not Know Fred Guirey, But He Knew Phoenix

  published April 2, 2009

  I used to walk past row after row of these weird, pointy-roofed tract homes every day on my way to and from grade school. After I grew up and... More >>

• No Place Like Home

  published April 2, 2009

  Alison King is breaking all the rules – her own. King is co-founder of Modern Phoenix, a virtual community of like-minded city... More >>

• Teenage Wasteland

  published April 2, 2009

  It's a tough call: making entertainment from a story that draws on national tragedy and the death of many children. Yet with columbinus,... More >>

• Death and the Maidens

  published March 26, 2009

  What do Virginia Woolf, Anne Sexton, and Sylvia Plath have in common? They’re all famous dead literary figures. They all kept journals. And,... More >>

• Notes on a Scandal

  published March 26, 2009

  Considering its high profile as both play and film, it wouldn’t be unfair to assume that everyone knows that Frost/Nixon is about... More >>

• Buildings Continually Transform in Phoenix, Making It Possible To Send Letters Where You Once Reclined

  published March 19, 2009

  I went to the furniture store the other day to mail a package. It was weird. Like so many other places in the Valley that aren't what they... More >>

• Cool Kat

  published March 19, 2009

  What does a renowned tattoo artist and television star who’s dating a heavy-metal icon do for an encore? Why, she writes a book, of... More >>

• Around the World in a Bad Mood: Confessions of a Flight Attendant

  published March 19, 2009

  Anything subtitled “Confessions of a Flight Attendant” blares a warning equivalent to “proceed to the nearest emergency exit.”... More >>

• Abridge on the River Kwai

  published March 19, 2009

  They’ve done it to American history, the Bard, the Bible, and classic literature, and now the “bad boys of abridgement” in... More >>

• Rabbit Hole at the Herberger Dumbs Down Death

  published March 12, 2009

  I kept thinking about John Lennon as I watched Actors Theatre of Phoenix's Rabbit Hole the other night. Specifically, about how Paul... More >>