11/3-11/26Maybe NASA and Michael Jackson should fall to their knees and kiss the feet of collaborative artists Nicholas Kahn and Richard Selesnick, whose “Apollo Prophecies Project” has made moonwalking cool again. Kahn/Selesnick’s massive “Project” portrays a fantastical world in which astronauts from 1960s and ’70s space missions are mistaken for…
MON 11/7If you value your privacy, don’t drop a love letter anywhere near Davy Rothbart. The founder of FOUND magazine has been scooping up people’s discarded letters, journals and postcards for years and publishing them in the magazine or posting them on his Web site, www.foundmagazine.com. And it’s not just…
Adam Roberts is schizo-rama. On the one hand, he’s the Dr. Jekyll of jazz, a serious-as-cancer student of the form who tosses around names like Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, John Zorn, and Bill Frisell. On the other — slightly hairier — hand, he’s Mr. Hyde, a mad beast…
THU 27Mary Shelley’s piecemeal monster with the weird neck corks and clunky Doc Martens gets a much-needed makeover in The Flying Machine’s Frankenstein, a fairy tale for adults that’s kind of like a performance-art splicing of The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. The presenting troupe, Brooklyn’s Flying Machine,…
SAT 10/29Alas, you won’t see gore-rock band Samhain playing a nude set with backing vocals by a buff Samantha Stevens from Bewitched at “Rites of Hekate, Samhain 2005.” However, there will be naked Wiccans galore at the garment-optional affair, which marks the “witchiest Sabbat of the year.” The 18-and-over event…
MON 10/31Tracy + the Plastics is not a real band. Or is it? The beauty is that it’s so hard to tell. The brain child of “lesbian feminist video artist” Wynne Greenwood, Tracy + the Plastics is a three-piece solo act. Yep, you read that right. Here’s the setup: Greenwood…
THU 20What a glorious racket the Yamato: Drummers of Japan make — glorious, that is, unless you happen to be the poor schlep who lives above them in Japan’s notoriously cozy residential quarters. The 12-piece percussion ensemble makes joyful noise reminiscent of Stomp, only with hands instead of feet. Founded…
10/20-11/6Broken pipelines, rolling blackouts and real estate fraud — ah, life in corrupt paradise. GUV TV, the long-awaited sequel to GUV: The Musical, picks up where the original cult classic left off, making light of our most notorious politicos, as well as polygamous cults in Colorado City and the recent…
SAT 10/22Their résumés boast credits from Seinfeld to The Simpsons, but Everybody Loves Raymond executive producer Phil Rosenthal and the sitcom’s writers found the richest material in the minutiae of domestic life. While the show, starring Ray Romano (pictured at right), may be gone to that great rerun channel in…
FRI 10/21Unlike those works of art that can’t even be breathed on without a whack on the hand by a beefy security guard, J. DeSanti’s creations are meant to be used. They’re pretty nice to look at, too. His funky, functional pieces — which he crafts out of shattered glass,…
THU 13Many stogies will be smoked, cocktails consumed and hors d’oeuvres devoured at Doggy Style — a guys-night-out affair scheduled for 7 to 10 p.m. Thursday, October 13, at Phoenix Greyhound Park, 3801 East Washington Street. Though the event targets the high-testosterone crowd, it’s open to bash-crashers of all genders…
SAT 10/15There you are, surrounded by models from Maxim, FHM, and Playboy, all wearing butt-floss bikini bottoms. The smell of burning rubber permeates the air and, out of a fog of custom-car exhaust, Maxim “Top 10 Hottie” Martina Andrews materializes. She leans over your table with her firm, perfectly symmetrical…
SAT 10/15f you’re tooling around in Tempe on Saturday, October 15, and see a screaming horde running around and tearing its collective hair out, don’t fret; it’s not Godzilla rising from the abyssal depths of Town Lake, but a high-concept affair called High Trek Adventure. The homage to TV’s Amazing…
SUN 10/16″Poetry readings are boring. This is a rock show compared to poetry readings,” says Mary “Bone Mama” McCann, who will perform her high-octane sound poems at the Noisy by Nature book-release party on Sunday, October 16, at Modified Arts, 407 East Roosevelt Street. This definitely ain’t your ordinary “I…
SAT 10/8If you’re a fan of mainstream, steak-and-potatoes Broadway shows — your Phantom, your Rent — then more power to you, frankly. But the latest offering in ASU’s “Beyond Broadway” series brings us something, well, beyond — in a gentle, lovely way. What else would you expect from a troupe…
10/6-10/31The three bone-chilling extraterrestrial attractions at Alien Extreme, 4011 South Power Road in Mesa, are like an episode of The X-Files come to life. Wanna-be Mulders and Scullys can poke around inside a government research outpost, a mysterious UFO, and a crash site, looking for ginormous creatures of extraterrestrial origin…
10/7-10/16Armchair daredevils, wrest yourselves from your Barcaloungers and make tracks to Phoenix International Raceway this weekend for the Richard Petty Driving Experience, which offers average joes the opportunity of a lifetime: to hitch a ride in an honest-to-god stock car. The brain child of the 68-year-old former NASCAR king, Petty’s…
10/7-10/31Teresa Widmer loves trash. The local mixed-media artist has collected garbage off the streets for the past 12 years, documenting her finds and recycling them into artistic assemblages that comment on America’s disposable culture. Among her finds: the People magazine cover featuring Liz Taylor’s 1989 wedding to “that construction worker,”…
Tania Katan has no boobs, but don’t cry for her. The ASU grad turned Renaissance woman has overcome dual mastectomies, transforming herself from a “nerdy 21-year-old” lesbian just trying to get laid into an author, performance artist, topless 5K runner, topless dancer wanna-be, and raconteur deluxe. She lost her first…
THU 29Say amen, everybody, as Black Theatre Troupe opens its 36th season with the rousing gospel musical Amen Corner. Adapted from James Baldwin’s 1955 play The Amen Corner, the work is simultaneously serious and uplifting. It’s centered on the internal struggle of Sister Margaret Alexander, a spiritual shepherd who loses…
10/4-10/16First, a word about Googlewhacking for the uninitiated. Googlewhack! is an online game, the goal of which is to enter two or more unrelated words (“Googlefactors”) on Google’s Web site in an effort to turn up a single URL hit. It’s not as easy as it sounds, especially because the…
10/1-11/6You’ll have butterflies in your stomach as you stroll amid the myriad monarchs flitting and flapping about in Desert Botanical Garden’s Marshall Butterfly Pavilion — a lush, 2,400-square-foot closed environment built especially to house ‘flies. The interactive display is part of DBG’s second annual “Mariposa Monarca” exhibit, which is designed…
